In 1970, I was attending one of Albany's two private girls' schools. Our French teacher was from France, and her sister taught at the other school. They decided to take their best students to their home country. Here it is, nearly fifty years ago, and I can remember us gathering near my school's statue of St. Agnes. I was wearing an awkward new spring raincoat, and had a TWA bag at my feet. There must have been about twenty of us girls and only two tiny French chaperones. No cell phones. No internet. No selfies.
Somewhere in storage I still have the itinerary, but we were met in Paris by a small bus that took us out to Mont Saint Michel, down the western side of France as far as Carcassonne, then up the middle of the country via a few of the chateaux and Chartres Cathedral, to Paris, which I barely remember from that trip. My most vivid memory is that the sisters took us to the town they grew up in, where we were feted by hundreds of people and had our first glasses of wine. Our bus driver spoke virtually no English, but I remember he was enthusiastic about the Beatles' recently-released album, "Abbaye Rud."
So, Carcassonne. Several years ago, in England, I walked into an antique store (I love antiques) and of course couldn't afford much and don't have a home in which to place antiques. But I wanted something, a little symbol of my resolve to have a beautiful home someday, somehow, and this little ceramic pitcher caught my eye ("jug" in British English). It's only about two inches tall, cream-colored on the outside and mustard yellow on the inside. The design, sketched in brown ink, is of the walled Cite de Carcassonne. I think I bought it because it represented pitchers full of abundance. It reminded me of my visit there in 1970. It also reminded me of Kate Mosse's book Labyrinth set in Carcassonne, fictionally depicting a search for the Holy Grail. I am fascinated by the traditions which say that Mary Magdalene made her way to the south of France, even further north, after the crucifixion; I remember the imposing city walls, and their amazing beauty. My little pitcher's sketch is centered on a gateway, which draws me in.
Of the chateaux that we visited on that school trip, the one that made the biggest impression was Chambord. And when I arrived at Royal Holloway on a sunny early morning in September 1980, the Founder's Building appeared out of the mist, and I realized in an instant that it had been designed to look like Chambord (which had escaped me looking at the college's printed catalogue). It's so intriguing how we have our own natural memory pathways that link numerous events and images and impressions. My Royal Holloway MMus studies focused on a musical office dedicated to French saint Valeria, and I went to the Paris Bibliotheque Nationale to study the 12th century manuscript in person...in other words, my experiences of England often seem to have a small but significant French echo. As I watch the slow sharpening of the blurry image of my future projected up on the screen, and keep my little French pitcher on my side table, I sense that this may be no coincidence. Nous verrons, eh?
