nos­tal­gia at the Musee Rodin

Our sec­ond day in Paris dawned fair and per­fect, with a sharp breeze and intense blue skies. After break­fast we were all agreed that a vis­it to Sarah’s and my old haunt, the Musee Rodin, was in order. We walked down a beau­ti­ful lit­tle street that I’d like to vis­it again when the shops are open, the rue de Four, lined with gor­geous mag­a­sins whose win­dows were full of dar­ling lit­tle skirts and shorts. The new thing this fall seems to be tiny lit­tle cuffed wool shorts, which I would love to have. We arrived at the Musee Rodin to find, to our amaze­ment, not just a love­ly open gar­den through which to walk to get to the front entrance, but an entire­ly new mar­ble build­ing, pro­vid­ed, the wall lit­er­a­ture assured us solemn­ly, by Sam­sung, com­plete with a video dis­play and a SHOP. Now, in MY day, the Rodin Muse­um did not take itself so seri­ous­ly. I am quite sure there was no shop. Cer­tain­ly no enor­mous sets of glass floor-to-ceil­ing doors marked “tir­er” and “pouss­er.” Sarah and I gaped in aston­ish­ment at the enor­mous quan­ti­ties of mer­chan­dise. Admit­ted­ly a love­ly book­shop with lots of new books I had not seen or heard of since tak­ing my vow of silence on all things Rodin and Claudel, but also cuf­flinks fea­tur­ing lit­tle sil­ver like­ness­es of his water­col­ored Cam­bo­di­an dancers, paper­weights, ash­trays, mouse pads, pot hold­ers, t‑shirts and even neck­ties fes­tooned with “The Thinker,” “The Kiss” and oth­er icon­ic imagery. Lit­tle leather cell­phone hold­ers, pen and pen­cil sets, note­books, ear­rings, you name it. At some point it ceased being tacky and was just fun­ny. I bought Avery a lit­tle viewfind­er after our vis­it to the muse­um, because she did man­age to see every­thing fea­tured in it.

We bought our tick­ets and duly “tir­er-ed” the pre­ten­tious entry door, and there we were, look­ing up at the mag­nif­i­cent build­ing where Sarah and I each spent so much time in the ear­ly 1990s. I looked up at the tiny win­dow on the upper right of the top floor, remem­ber­ing the hours and days and weeks I spent in the room beyond, the Archives Rodin. The lit­tle wiz­ened man who held court there, with a cig­a­rette in one hand and une verre de vin rouge in the oth­er, giv­ing me chary access to his trea­sures with many exhor­ta­tions to “soyez soigneuse.” We felt quite over­whelmed with nos­tal­gia! How did I have the courage to storm the citadel, a lit­tle 25-year-old nobody?

The girls zoomed around the gar­den, play­ing Avery’s old Tribeca game run­ning up and down wheel­chair access ramps, chant­i­ng as she did as a two-year-old, “the dog goes up, and the dog goes down,” over and over, to Sarah’s intense ner­vous­ness since last year Eve broke off her front tooth doing just that. They posed as you can see beneath “The Thinker,” and shook their heads over the creepy fig­ures in “The Gates of Hell.” I deliv­ered a lit­tle homi­ly about the mean­ing of the sculp­ture, how it was Rod­in’s project from H‑E Dou­ble Hock­ey Sticks because after it was com­mis­sioned and he’d spent half his career work­ing on it, to be the door­way to a new muse­um in Paris, it was can­celled. “He could­n’t stop work­ing on it, and he put all his frus­tra­tion and con­flict into all these fig­ures,” I explained. “When he died, the man he had instruct­ed to set up a muse­um here went into his stu­dio and found it all in pieces on the floor, and had to think up as best he could how to put it togeth­er. Then it was cast in an edi­tion of mul­ti­ples and sent all over the world. That’s why it’s known as the world’s only sculp­ture of which there are copies, but no orig­i­nal,” I said. The girls ingest­ed this drop of art his­tor­i­cal wis­dom in respect­ful silence (or just bore­dom). “Why is every­body so depressed on this sculp­ture?” Avery asked. “Can’t any­body just be hap­py?” Eve sighed and said gloomi­ly, “Not in H‑E Dou­ble Hock­ey Sticks, they can’t.” So then they raced around look­ing for a hap­py sculp­ture, and after a bit we went inside and found Eve’s name­sake, which they liked a lot, and some piles of tiny plas­ter hands which they deemed “freaky.” There was, final­ly, one “hap­py” bust, but then it was dis­cov­ered that her eye sock­ets were emp­ty and that was that. “Creepy,” was the ver­dict. But they great­ly enjoyed them­selves. I found the lit­tle hid­den door that leads up to the archives and was vis­it­ed with a very strange sense of the pas­sage of time: the years I spent there as a new­ly­wed, home­sick for my hus­band in Lon­don, work­ing so dili­gent­ly on what would become a 400-ish-page dis­ser­ta­tion, then to be whit­tled down to a 20-ish-page arti­cle in a learned jour­nal, and hun­dreds of hours of lec­tures. And now here I was, one teach­ing career and one gallery lat­er, with one of my best friends, and favorite artists, lead­ing our 10-year-old daugh­ters around. Very odd.

After raid­ing the muse­um shop, we hopped in the Metro and head­ed to the Champs-Ely­sees for our one pure­ly-pho­to-op-moti­vat­ed stop. The girls had messy choco­late crepes (Sarah and I brave­ly resist­ing our urge for a French hot dog, encased as they are in baguettes), and the we start­ed on the marathon walk to the Tui­leries, where they indulged in anoth­er time-hon­ored French child’s past­time: they rent­ed lit­tle dilap­i­dat­ed old, old boat mod­els, and sticks, and spent a bliss­ful half hour push­ing them out into the enor­mous foun­tain, rac­ing from one side to the oth­er as the breeze sent the boats on mys­te­ri­ous jour­neys. The nice, dreamy lady who rent­ed the boats to them said, “You must tell the boats what is your heart’s desire, and then the boats will go in search of it, and you must fol­low.” Which was a nice way of explain­ing that the boats would have a path of their own! They had a very good time. Sarah said rue­ful­ly, “You know, we’ll show them the Rodin Muse­um, and the Lou­vre, and all that, and THIS is what they will remem­ber from their first trip to Paris.” Not such a bad thing, that. Sarah and I took the time to chat, and mar­vel at the quirks of fate that have smiled down on the two of us. Not long into our friend­ship, lo these 10 years ago, we dis­cov­ered that we spent the iden­ti­cal two years from 1990–1992 in Lon­don, both of us study­ing in the library of the Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um, both of us liv­ing in South Kens­ing­ton. Now what is the chance that we did not see each oth­er dur­ing those two years, indeed we prob­a­bly shared a tube ride, prob­a­bly sat across from each oth­er at a study table, had a sand­wich next to each oth­er in the muse­um cafe? And then to meet up years lat­er at the Col­lege Art Asso­ci­a­tion and become such fine friends. Even if Avery and Eve don’t become best chums, to spend their first trip to Paris togeth­er will be a nice mem­o­ry, and it was so sat­is­fy­ing for us.

From there to the Lou­vre, where the girls were deter­mined to see the Mona Lisa, of course. We warned them that they might­n’t be able to get very close, and that it would be small­er than they expect­ed. They were, how­ev­er, invit­ed by the guard to come right past the bar­ri­er and real­ly quite close, and Avery whipped out her Rodin Muse­um note­book and made a lit­tle sketch, then they came back to us. “You know, that’s kind of a dis­ap­point­ment,” Avery said. “I mean, why is it so famous, any­way? Is it real­ly bet­ter than any of these oth­er paint­ings?” Of course the $64,000 art his­tor­i­cal enig­ma. Sarah and I explained a bit about the chick­en-and-egg nature of “great art” and “great artists.” When does the object make the artist famous, and when the oth­er way round?

We emerged from the muse­um, feel­ing a bit hun­gry and tired, and decid­ed to take the Bato­bus to the hotel neigh­bor­hood and find a snack. As we wait­ed for the boat, how­ev­er, we got more and more fam­ished. Final­ly the boat came, we got on, and Eve was sure there was a vend­ing machine, so we weren’t too pan­icked about hav­ing no food with us. Well, there was a vend­ing machine, but it was evil­ly out of order. And then what was meant to be a 15-minute ride around the Eif­fel Tow­er and back to Notre Dame, became an hour-long ride with many irri­tat­ing­ly long stops! Eve had a book, but Avery did not, and she became more and more wilt­ed. Final­ly Sarah had an inspi­ra­tion: her box of mints! It turns out that if you’re des­per­ate enough, Certs are one of the Four Basic Food Groups. Sarah saves the day!

We final­ly trouped off the boat and walked toward our hotel, unde­cid­ed as to whether we should eat at the now-awk­ward hour of 5 p.m., or stick it out till din­ner. Until we came upon the strangest lit­tle side­walk eatery we had ever seen, spe­cial­iz­ing in… falafel, piz­za and hot dogs! Yes, there was the hot dog we had resist­ed five hours before, dis­played before us in all its bizarre glo­ry, in a baguette topped with cheese. We suc­cumbed. “Une verre de the cit­ron pour vous,” the lit­tle pro­pri­etor said in a jol­ly way, and sure enough, two lit­tle paper cups of lemon tea appeared on the counter. It was strange­ly wel­come, and we sipped hap­pi­ly as we wait­ed for the odd hot dog to emerge from the pani­ni mak­er. We divid­ed it into four por­tions and walked along munch­ing. “Now, I con­sid­er us to be quite the gourmets, as well as the gour­mands,” Sarah said indis­tinct­ly through a cheesey bite. “Is this real­ly good, or are we just starv­ing to death?” “Well, we are starv­ing to death, true,” I agreed. “But think: it’s a real­ly good qual­i­ty hot dog, and a Paris baguette, and what tastes to me like real­ly quite good Gruyere cheese,” I diag­nosed. Sarah con­sid­ered. “So what we’re basi­cal­ly eat­ing is a croque mon­sieur with a hot dog instead of ham,” she decid­ed final­ly. “Exact­ly,” I said. The girls were gid­dy with relief at hav­ing some­thing to chew and swal­low, and we were all in quite the best humor pos­si­ble. “Oh, I know where we are,” said Eve. “Look, there’s that Vieux Campeur store, the Old Camper. It’s quite near to the hotel.” Avery paused. “Except, Eve, that there’s anoth­er Vieux Camper store, there, on THAT cor­ner as well.” “And look, there’s anoth­er halfway down the block,” Sarah point­ed out. All in all, we count­ed eight Vieux Camper shops with­in two blocks. It turns out there are 19 of them all in all. Tres bizarre.

We final­ly arrived at our respec­tive hotels and made a plan to meet up in an hour, after we rest­ed a bit. Eve invit­ed Avery to come play with her Nin­ten­dog, so we part­ed, and I fetched a buck­et of ice from the friend­ly hotel bar­man (I was ridicu­lous­ly pleased when he com­pli­ment­ed my French!) and had a love­ly Scotch while speak­ing with John on the phone. “You guys can nev­er leave me!” he wailed. “I am so pathet­ic when you’re gone! All I do is watch movies.” He was plan­ning to have noo­dles and the home­made pesto I left for him, and was proud to have bought lam­b’s let­tuce for a lit­tle sal­ad. Don’t ever buy com­mer­cial pesto, because look how easy it is (and very flex­i­ble, you can always do less or more of any ingre­di­ent accord­ing to your taste):

Fresh Basil Pesto
(makes enough for a sauce for pas­ta for two)

1 medi­um bunch of basil leaves (a gen­er­ous hand­ful), stems removed
1/4 cup grat­ed pecori­no or parme­san cheese
juice of a lemon
1 clove gar­lic (or more)
1/2 cup pine nuts
olive oil to achieve con­sis­ten­cy you like, per­haps 1/2 cup
sea salt to taste

Place all ingre­di­ents in Cuisi­nart and whiz till liq­uidy (although pine nuts will remain tiny chunks). Taste for salti­ness. If the cheese was not salty you will want to add some. VOILA. You will be amazed at how pret­ty, and how fresh, this is.

More on our Paris Sun­day evening din­ner lat­er, because it was, as was so much of our trip, a real French expe­ri­ence. A toute a l’heure.