French snapshots

 

My previous post about my week in Paris twenty years ago got me thinking more about France.  I want to look at some individuals who are French or at least in some way connected to France that have particularly impressed me.

Julia Child

Julia Child (née McWilliams) was an American born in Pasadena, California, but who did more to popularize French cooking in America than anybody else. 

Many people don't know that she worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor to the CIA, during World War II.  She first worked in Washington D.C. but was later posted to Ceylon and then to China.  Her main duties were the registering, cataloguing and channeling of great volumes of highly classified communications.  For a time she assisted the developers of a shark repellant needed to ensure that sharks wouldn't accidentally detonate mines targeting German U-boats. 

In Ceylon, Julia met fellow OSS member Paul Child and they were later married.  After the war, Paul worked for the United States Foreign Service and the couple were posted to Paris in 1948.

It was in Paris that Julia fell in love with French cuisine.  She attended Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris and eventually collaborated with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle on writing a French cookbook that would appeal to Americans.  The result was the best-selling Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 1961.  She would of course go on to author more successful cookbooks as well as host popular TV cooking programs.

I have her book From Julia Child's Kitchen which I highly recommend.  My wife and I have only attempted a handful of the recipes in this 677-page volume, but everything we've tried has been a delicious success.  Child had a knack for simplifying the complexities of good cooking.  I also recommend her book My Life in France which chronicles her love for France and its cuisine and, maybe most importantly, the love she and her husband Paul shared.

Hilaire Belloc

Hilaire Belloc was born to a French father and English mother in France in 1870.  He spent most of his boyhood in the county of West Sussex, England - a place he loved deeply for the rest of his life.  He returned to France in 1891 to voluntarily serve a term of military service in the French army, in an artillery regiment.  He become a naturalized British subject in 1902 but retained his French citizenship as well. 

He was a physically robust man and along with the great amount of marching done while serving in the army, he was an inveterate walker nearly his entire life.  While courting his future wife Elodie, the financially strapped Hilaire walked most of the way from the Midwest of the U.S. to her home in northern California, paying for his lodging at farmhouses along the way by sketching the owners and reciting poetry.

Belloc was a prolific writer of poetry, travelogues, books and essays covering topics such as Catholic apologetics, history, politics, economics and biographies.  His poetry alone ranges from deeply felt Christian faith to humorous poetry in the spirit of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll (a couple of titles here should suffice to give you their tone: 'Jim, Who Ran Away from His Nurse, and Was Eaten by a Lion' or 'Rebecca, Who Slammed Doors for Fun and Perished Miserably.'  Though, of course, I recommend you read the actual poems.)

Belloc had the penetrating clarity of thought typical of French writers (and, like a good Frenchman, preferred wine to beer) with the pungent humor and good sense of the best English writers (and, though he preferred wine, he did like beer, too).

I have his book The Path To Rome in which he relates a solo walking pilgrimage he undertook from Toul, in eastern France, across southeastern France, across the Alps and the Apennines mountains, and then southward across northern Italy to Rome.  As well as describing the different places, people and adventures he encountered along the way, Hilaire reflects on politics, language, human nature and religion (the man had strong opinions!).  The book contains 77 of his own line drawings that he made during his journey.  I've read the book 3 times now and each time I didn't want the book to end.

 

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Although he is best known for his children's book The Little Prince, I admire Saint-Exupéry more for his life as an aviator and the books he wrote about his flying experiences.

While serving in the French Army in the early 1920's, he took private flying lessons and later was transferred to the French Air Force.  After his military service he was a pioneer in international postal flight.  Planes in those days had few instruments and pilots flew in bad weather or at night by a combination of sight, feel, experience and nerve.  Saint-Exupéry flew for the French postal service in Saharan Africa and in Argentina and survived a number of crashes.

In his 40s, he flew again for the French Air Force during the Second World War, flying reconnaissance missions.  On July 31st, 1944, while flying a reconnaissance mission from the island of Corsica in the Mediterranean Sea, his P-38 aircraft disappeared.  A portion of his flying suit was discovered by a fisherman off the south coast of France in 1998, with the remains of his P-38 discovered two years later.

My favorite books by Saint-Exupéry are Wind, Sand and Stars (it's in this book where he describes spending a night in the Sahara Desert after crashing, and seeing the stars hanging as in three dimensions in the clear desert air - one of the most beautiful passages I've ever read), Night Flight (some very dramatic accounts of early night flying) and Flight to Arras (where he meditates on the collapse of France during the German invasion in May-June 1940 and the necessary spiritual rejuvenation of France).

 

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux - The Little Flower

Born Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin in 1873 in Alençon, France to devoutly Catholic, middle-class parents, Saint Thérèse has become one of the most popular saints in the Catholic Church.  Her mother Zélie died of breast cancer when Thérèse was only 4 years old.  All four of her surviving older sisters (her parents lost a total of 4 children) became nuns and little Thérèse eventually followed. 

They were a comfortably provincial family and though Thérèse was a lively and intelligent girl, there was no sign of any future greatness.  And in fact, by earthly standards of greatness, Thérèse didn't accomplish much of anything.

Thérèse wanted to be a missionary in far off lands to win souls to Christ and more than anything she wanted to be a saint who, from heaven, would assist those on earth in getting into heaven too.  Ill health meant she couldn't become a missionary, but she corresponded with various missionaries and prayed fervently for their success.

While in the Carmelite monastery in Lisieux, Thérèse had to learn to deal with the everyday annoyances that come with living in close proximity to other women.  She set about dealing with these annoyances and with the cold unfriendliness of a few of the other nuns by being loving and cheerful and accepting criticism from others in silence.

Her experiences in the monastery made her realize how small and insignificant she was, but she learned that it was this very littleness that required her to lean on God for help.  She referred to herself as God's 'little flower.'  She learned to live her daily life in what she called 'the little way,' the daily giving of herself to God through love and acts of kindness to those around her. 

Thérèse became terminally ill with tuberculosis.  It was at this time that she undertook writing her spiritual autobiography under the orders of Mother Agnes, the head of her monastery.  She died at the age of 24 in 1897. 

Her autobiography, The Story of a Soul, has been translated into many languages and has affected the lives of countless thousands of people, including mine.  She couldn't become a missionary in the ordinary sense, but her writing has reached people all over the world, bringing the Good News of Jesus Christ and showing ordinary people that they can offer up their simple, everyday actions to God.

After her death, miracles were attributed to her intercession and she was formally canonized as a saint on May 17th, 1925.

Love proves itself by deeds, so how am I to show my love? Great deeds are forbidden me. The only way I can prove my love is by scattering flowers and these flowers are every little sacrifice, every glance and word, and the doing of the least actions for love.          

                                                                                                                 -Saint Thérèse of Lisieux