When the south of France doesn’t work

Provence and my Affliction

Dear Friend,

I hope you’ve had a good week and that you’re enjoying the season. 

Please excuse my missing letter last week. A week ago, I was in lovely Marseille visiting a good friend.

British aristocrats started going to the south of France to ‘take the waters’ in the 19th century, hoping the ancient thermal spas and clement weather would cure them of consumption and other ailments. Annoyingly, I managed to get a chest cough in le Sud, though it was probably the fault of the tightly-packed TGV, rather than the beneficent winter sun.

Local birds and persons at Marseille’s Vieux Port

I usually write about my week, but this week has mostly involved lying red-nosed on the sofa in my pyjamas and watching obscure English period dramas — so instead, I am going to write about the much more exciting PREVIOUS week I had, before I got the cough! 

Last weekend, before I became Afflicted, we took a day-trip to St Rémy de Provence, a town made famous partially by Vincent van Gogh’s stay at the nearby Saint-Paul asylum in 1889 and 1890. During his stay he was both unwell and very productive artistically. He produced many moving paintings during his stay here, which brought constraints but also stability, including the very famous Starry Night scene. Today, St Rémy is a rather elegant and high-end place. We stopped for a delicious lunch at a restaurant called La Maison Favier and a coffee at the charming Café Colette, where the owner was so impressed by my outlandish gold coat that he gave me a free peanut butter cookie. We then wandered a little round the charming Provencal streets before motoring on to our next stop (I would be unlikely to use the word ‘motoring’ in conversation, but it felt acceptable and apt in this Provence context). 

A Nostradamus fountain in St Remy

Festive Provence

We ascended to reach Les Baux-de-Provence, a small village located on the picturesque and craggy Alpilles mini mountains. Our destination was a cultural venue called Les Carrières des Lumières, or the Quarries of Light. It’s a former limestone quarry dating from the period of high industrial production in the 1800s. In the 1820s, a red mineral, which was subsequently named ‘bauxite’, was discovered in these same quarries. In the 1930s, the mines shut down as new building methods prospered. In 1959, director and all-round creative Renaissance man Jean Cocteau filmed his movie The Testament of Orpheus in the abandoned cavernous space. Today, visitors can watch a film about Cocteau at the site, projected onto the wall of a stone cave. In more recent years, the management of the space was taken over by a company (aptly) called Culturespaces, and it’s now home to a rotating roster of projected art shows (there’s a sister project in a former warehouse in Paris called L’Atelier des Lumières). This particular exhibit focused on the work of Dutch masters, from Vermeer to Van Gogh. In the vast, cathedral-like space it was quite something. I wonder what Vincent himself would have made of it. 

Many Rembrandts in a quarry

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Thirty-second book club

A few weeks ago, my friend Fiona and I were browsing in Emmaüs Défi in the north of Paris, a giant warehouse version of what in the UK we would call a ‘charity shop’. There’s a section for everything: crockery, umbrellas, crutches(!), clothes, buttons and zips, sofas, strange paintings, reading lamps, toys and books of all kinds. On this particular occasion, we were delighted to discover that the Emmaüs people had added a bookshelf of English-language books. Fiona was a good person to have with me because she is someone who has read many books and has very dependable taste. On her recommendation I bought A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. I finished the book this week. It tells the story of a Russian aristocrat after the Revolution who finds himself under house arrest in the luxury Metropol Hotel in Moscow. It’s an absorbing and delightful read that explores the true meaning of luxury and what makes a life rich and full.

My entry for the strange paintings section at the charity shop

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Thank you very much for reading this edition of Pen Friend about Provence and my Affliction.

I hope you have a good week! Please share this letter with a friend, if you think they’d like it.

Yours,

Hannah