A poor nineteen year old student in Paris, I found a bedroom to rent in the grand salon of a…read morewidowed French government official's wife, who took in students to offset her own need for income. Once wealthy and the daughter of Polish nobility, but now living on a pension and what little she had inherited from the former minister and governor of a colony in French Equitorial Africa, the most gracious Madame V took me under her wing and mentored me in the Parisian life that no longer existed except within her old world apartment and the vibrant galleries of her romanticist mind. She at 60 had more worldly experience than I would ever have, or at least so I believed then.
Her fourth floor abode lie on Avenue Theophile Gautier, named for the 19th Century poet, novelist, critic and journalist, who was a strong influence on the Romantic and Aesthetic periods in French arts and literature. He was a contemporary of Balzac, Hugo, Flaubert, and Baudelaire, the giants of the period. He was a friend of Princess Mathilde, who found him a job as a librarian when his other work sank in popularity.
I often wondered about this man as I walked the street to and from school and while shopping in the corner boulangerie. In those days I didn't believe in coincidence, and was certain he held a message for me about life. Of course, his extreme romantic reviews about art ("Art for art's sake."), two mistresses and close ties with ballerina Carlotta Grisi with whom he composed the ballet libretti Giselle, all led me to understand that only by complete emersion is creativity and writing about it as descriptively as possible, would ultimate truth be found. Of course, Gautier was far more excessive than I could be, but his influence on my psyche that year was all consuming.
I returned to his street a few times after departing Paris, once to visit Madame V and another to impress someone with my knowledge of the city and this bit of arcane literati history. Although refined over the years to allow me to live in balance with my world, both Madame and Theo have had an outsized influence over me.
I thank them both profoundly for that.
