9. La Serre
I think one of the reasons a place like Le Moulin has such a deep, calming resonance is that it is fresh, has nothing familiar about it, is free of the goods of our accumulating lives. Elizabeth, me, three suitcases, the jackets we wore leaving Dallas and anticipating winter in France. The coffee press, the simple boulangerie, the quiet streets (ruelles, lanes), the snow freshly fallen on the chateau grounds, the paths to discover and walk (we are in a veritable goldmine for les sentiers balisés, carefully marked trails mapped with charts you can buy at the bookstore). The short days. The wood fire no different down the ages immemorable. Same with the church bells, now marking 8AM, noon, and 5PM.
I am back at my boarding school in Western North Carolina, where the Angelus rang at five o’clock and asked us to be quiet and stop where we were, until the final trolling peal. I’d like to say with the same downturned faces in prayer of the couple in the field of Millet’s famous painting, but boys must grow up to be men. We were only starting that process.
Elizabeth gets to sleep late. I wasn’t good at that. I love her lying in bed, the grasse matinée (sleep in), groggy and warm, slightly incoherent as sleep loses its place and we awake to a world dawning. We are not where we usually are, and so the daily chores and checklists and anxieties are lost in the ether.
Courances, we will learn, is one-third families living in smaller houses, some recently built in a new quarter (a lotissement). One-third people with residences secondaires in this charming mediaeval village with its chateau and tolling bells, typically from Paris. One-third en retraite — retired folks with means who have found a great place to buy a home and invite les petits-enfants. Total population, around 300.
So, it is quiet. Marvelously, rejuvenatingly still. No wonder Elizabeth sleeps so soundly.
This has sent my mind back to other experiences like this we have shared in France. Before we moved here and which conspired to make that happen.
I am a writer of various kinds of academic books. It comes with my position, and it how one attracts graduate students anxious to work with a published scholar. I had been given a contract to write a commentary on one of Paul’s letters. I was trying to move out of some familiar writing tracks—not unlike moving to Courances—and so accepted the invitation (my area of writing was Old Testament at the time). The commentary series was an experimental one, asking the authors to leave their favorite haunts and strike out. I resonate with that, by nature. I wanted to re-situate the single Letter to the Colossians within the larger corpus of letters attributed to Paul.
As noted above, I had come to a point in my professional career after full-time posts at Yale and St Andrews—and now on le grand voyage avec ma femme—that I had been able to carve out my own rhythms. Elizabeth and me, fresh trails, adventures to be shared husband and wife.
We had spent so many fun days in les Alpilles that we decided that would be our home and my writing atelier, for a two-month stretch. Elizabeth is wise about finding unique lodgings and she has many personal contacts to draw on. This is the region around St-Remy de Provence, to the west of Aix-en-Provence, where the grand alpine ranges, having descended as they move west, begin to find their ground-level resting place above Arles and east of the Gard. Alpilles meaning miniature alps.
So, our writing home, our relaxing home, our uncluttered of the rush and bother home, in the middle of an olive grove, at the foot of Les Baux, appeared in the form of a two-month lease. La Serre, it was called.
A serre is a hothouse, a place for storing plants in the winter, among other things. It could be all glass, une verrerie, or as in our case, a building with lots of windows and sliding doors. La Serre had been converted into a charming two-bedroom cottage. We were in the middle of an olive orchard. The main house was at some distance, so we had total privacy. We would be there in late Spring through June, perfect months in les Alpilles.
Elizabeth had discovered the region taking clients to the Relais et Chateau hotel, le Cabre d’Or (the legendary “golden goat” in provençal) and we were located about a football field away from some of the private independent properties on the road behind the main hotel. We had stayed there in 2009 after we first met, now seven years ago. The area (St-Remy-de-Provence, Maussane, Eygalières, Fontvielle, Paradou) is a fixture for French Affaires trips, and we know it and its locals well.
Les Baux de Provence is a rocky outcrop that is crowned with a ruined castle overlooking the plains to the south. Its name refers to its site: in Provençal, bauç is a rocky spur. From the village name the word bauxite was coined for aluminum ore when first discovered there in the early nineteenth-century. If you know the stories of Marcel Pagnol (Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources), you may recall the young teacher searching the hills and discovering the muddy material used to block up the water source that would bring ruin to Jean. C’est de la bauxite.
In a twist of fate, the famous actor who played the evil mastermind, Daniel Auteuil (together with his uncle Caesar, played by Yves Montand), would later buy a property near Paradou. Le Bistrot Paradou is a hugely fun inn just west of Maussane. The fixed price includes all the wine you care to drink. I treasure a photo of Elizabeth and her driver Rémy standing next to the famous actor, he and my wife deep in conversation.
In fact, several well-known people have discovered the pleasant climate and (still for now) slow paced lifestyle of les Alpilles. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt bought a vineyard property outside of Eygalières. This is the land of Frederic Mistral and Vincent van Gogh. The latter, supported by his brother, lived in Arles (Gauguin and he had an ill-fated friendship there) before he was committed to the asylum at the Monastère Saint Paul de Mausole, just south of St-Remy. At Saint Paul, van Gogh produced the majority of his paintings, including Starry Night. The nuns gave him a second room for an atelier to help calm his nerves and there he painted virtually non-stop.
We visit with clients annually and have a close friend from van Gogh’s village in the Brabant who has permission to paint where Vincent painted.
My writing routine involves long walks after lunch, after writing for several hours in the morning. I use this as a way to conceive what I will be writing next, then return to la Serre, and edit and write for another hour. I follow the rule of Hemingway. Never stop when you have concluded, but rather when you can easily pick up again. On the path up the hill beside La Serre, one passes by a private domain owned by Guns and Roses, so the famous Paris DJ who is renting us this property tells me. Further along that path, are grand quarries of bauxite, reddish caverns of the aluminum rich earth. Manon des Sources come alive!
Elizabeth is always busy with French Affaires and this is a perfect retreat for her. We go shopping, take walks of our own, visit friends at le Chateau des Alpilles, go to Mass, and visit all our favorite towns. We have vacationed here often and will return when we have settled into our new home.
The time passed quickly. When I have already done the research for a writing project, I can make very good progress. La Serre is a hothouse where good memories are stored forever.
P.S. The French Language Immersion in Provence starts 28 August, two weeks long.