DEEP FRANCE...NO, DEEPER...

THE ACADEMIE DE SAINTONGE.

            This is a busy week. Our daughter Louise leaves for a year in Australia. My wife Marie Dominique returned from shooting her new film in Rome and started editing. I finally signed off on my book of Paris love stories. Friends from Wisconsin and other points west will shortly be in town

Marie Dominique and myself at the Christo-wrapped Arc de Triomph last year.

            For Marie Dominique, however, these are as nothing beside the annual award presentations this Sunday of the Academie de Saintonge, of which she’s the director.

            The who? The Academie of what? Until 2001, we would have scratched our heads too.

            The year before, Marie Dominique had made a documentary for French TV about novelist and publisher Jacques Chardonne. Not a big name internationally, he enjoyed a following in France before World War II, somewhat sullied by his friendships among those who collaborated with the occupying Germans, for which he was briefly jailed after the war.  The producer said he’d understand if she preferred not to risk potential controversy but Chardonne came from her native region of Charentes, so she took the job

A book Marie Dominique compiled about Chardonne’s youth in Charentes.

            The film aired in 2000 to no particular fuss and was more or less forgotten when, a year later, a card landed in our letterbox. In elegant embossed Garamond, it announced that it had won the Gold Medal of the Academie de Saintonge, to be presented at a ceremony in Saintes, the county town, that August. 

            We turned up in Saintes that hot afternoon, expecting a modest local event,  fronted in all probability by the parish priest and a handful of local dignitaries, accompanied by their wives in unfortunate hats. Instead, a clearly prosperous audience had given up their day to assemble in a medieval chapel converted to state-of-the-art conference center.

Ushered to seats in the front row, we watched as a succession of ducs and marquises accepted or presented medals for the restoration of their Delacroix ceiling or financing a recording of a lost work by Couperin. Clearly, the Academie was, for Charentes anyway, a Big Deal.

            “And now,” said the president, whom we’d learned owned a publishing house, “we come to the climax of today’s proceedings, the presentation of our Gold Medal to Marie Dominique for her film about our beloved Jacques Chardonne…”

            He beamed towards where we sat, astonished. The other twenty-four menbers of the Academie seated on stage followed his gaze, as did most of the audience. A few even stood up to get a better view.

            “….so unjustly condemned,” he continued, “for his wartime associations, but now exonerated, and by a daughter of Charentes!” There was applause, which he subuded with a raised hand.  “Shortly,”  he went on, “she’ll be telling us how she came to make her stirring film…”

            “I what?” Marie Dominique muttered, fumbling in her purse for a note book and pencil to scribble some notes.

            At the coctel that followed, people were effusive in their praise. Cards were exchanged, appointments made. You must come and visit

            Which is how I found myself on the balcony of the 15th century Chateau de Roche-Courbon, looking out over baize-like lawns, trees trimmed to topiary precision and a lake on which swans moved with serene grace. In case we didn’t get the point,  a hidden sound system piped harpsichord music by Rameau over the garden.  

            We weren’t in Kansas any more. In fact I wasn’t sure what world this was, except that it had little to do with Paris. Behind the majestic façades and rural tranquility lay vast fortunes, backed by the only wealth that really mattered; land. These were the people who really ran France. (What did their enthusiasm for Chardonne say about their politics? I promised myself not to ask.)

            The following year, one of the twenty-five Academicians died. Marie Dominique was invited to replace him. Now, more than two decades later, she’s the director, overseeing the process of awarding the medals, and – since the organisation is entirely non-profit – finding the money to pay for their forging, and for the Academie’s other activities promoting Charentais creativity and enterprise, which means navigating the reefs and shoals of local politics.

            She complains bitterly of its frustrations, but secretly she’s passionate about the Academie. That first director was right: she really is a daughter of Charentes, devoted to the region where her father was born and is buried (a victim of the Occupation), and where she spent her childhood summer vacations in a house which, on their death, her grandparents left to her. Like most things this far from the cities of the north, the roots run deep.

            If you’d like to watch the ceremony, you can do so on YouTube, since, thanks to an injection of video expertise, the proceedings will be broadcast live.  Here’s the link.