The French House: An American Family, a Ruined Maison, and the Village That Restored Them All
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As I worked and reworked with time and memory, a dozen or so concentrated moments became, for me, luminous as reliquaries. In following my own methodology, such as it is, I did take a special personal inspiration from The Horse of Pride, Pêr-Jakez Helias’s memoir of Breton country life. How Helias handles physical descriptions and imbues them with psychological traits and depths of mystery stunned me when I first read it twenty years ago. (There is also a film of the book, by Claude Chabrol.) Also, anyone who has enjoyed the films of Jacques Tati, particularly Mr. Hulot’s Holiday and Play Time, will recognize my debt to his rhythms in the beach scenes.
I’m a writer by profession, not an academic, so while I have made my best efforts to get things right, I can’t guarantee that I haven’t asserted one or two things here as fact that can be dismissed with a wave of the hand by any self-respecting lecturer or assistant professor. For anything I get right in the more subtle interpretations of events and relationships I am absolutely indebted to my wife.
Mindy is always on me to sharpen my thought, my French, my facts, my accounts of events, and I take her advice to heart wherever possible. She could’ve written this book with me but turned me down, probably knowing we would debate the slightest differing version of the same event until we’d beaten the life out of it. Instead, she fills this book with her humor and wisdom (and an occasional groan of exasperation at Young Strudel).
It will be obvious, to the discerning, that I have changed the name of our village and obscured certain identifying characteristics and found equivalents for the names of our friends. But I didn’t alter the names or locations of anything else.
Facts are stubborn things, as John Adams said. But so are experts. University types have a way of being too blinded by the lights along the tenure track to take note of the life going on in the hedgerows and fields around them. In this book, as on Belle Île, I have followed the light of a glowworm on a country lane.
Resources and Attributions
The author’s blog has photos and continuing reports from Belle Île at DonWallaceFranceBlog.tumblr.com.
Portions of “The Sole of Solitude” chapter originally appeared, in considerably different form, in essays for the Sunday travel section of the New York Times. All photos are taken by or through the courtesy of Don Wallace (copyright 2013), with the exception of pages 273 and 305 by Thomas Rennesson.
Among the more than thirty histories and accounts read as background, the most crucial include the first book written about the island, Histoire de Belle Île en Mer, by Chasle de la Touche (1852); Europe Between the Oceans: 9000 BC–AD 1000 (2008) and The Ancient Celts (1997) by Barry Cunliffe; The Old Regime and the Revolution by Alexis de Tocqueville (1856); The Divine Sarah: A Life of Sarah Bernhardt by Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale (1991); Belle Île en Mer: Histoire d’une Île by Louis Garans (1999); the works of Fernand Braudel and Norman Davies; and the many excellent pocket histories of various facets of island life by the Société Historique de Belle Île en Mer.
Quotes on the myth of Ankou are from various journal citations of La Légende de la Mort en Basse-Bretagne (1893) by Anatole Le Braz, as well as The Appointed Hour: Death, Worldview, and Social Change in Brittany by Ellen Badone (1989), culturebreizh.free.fr, and other websites. As these descriptions of Ankou, La Chienne, and the Breton way of death are drawn from folklore, I believe Anonymous should get the credit.
Fin
Acknowledgments
Although this is a book that invokes the lives of many people both living and dead, I have changed names and altered some identifying characteristics. On the other hand, my wife, Mindy Pennybacker, and our son, Rory Wallace, are mercilessly exposed in these stories. I can only offer in my defense that I come off much worse. And that I owe this book, and much more, to you both.
Similarly, I use portions of the lives of my parents and of Mindy’s mother and family, but again out of love and a desire to tell a truthful and human story. I am grateful that both my mother and father blessed my earlier published portrayals of them. They were daring storytellers, never ones to hold back a savory detail out of prudery or propriety, and I think they would be pleased to see me carrying on the tradition. My sister Nancy; my brother Alex; my late sister Anne; and my cousin Marcella have been tremendously enabling of my wild and wicked memoir addiction.
Thanks to my îliens and fellow lovers of Belle Île: Adrien, Aidan, Aileen, Alain, Anne, the Two Alexanders, Benedict, Bill, Bridgette, Bruno, Carine, Celeste, Celia, Chantal, Coco, David, Dede, Denis, Didier, Dominique I & II, Dorotheee, Fabrice, Francois, Francoise, M. Grancoeur, Gwened, Gwenn, Guillaume, Henry, Herve, Daniel, Jacques I & II, Jean, Jean-Claude, Jean-Daniel, Jean-Paul, Jos, Julien, Kaitlin, Katrine, Katherine, Leo, Leonore, Man, Marie, Martin, Mattias, Monique, Nancy, Natasha, Noel, Patrick I & II, Pierre-Louis, PJ aka French Spike, Richard, Robert, Rodolph, Sam, Sidonie, Stephane, Stephanie, Sylvie, Theophile, Thibault, Tom, Tomas, Valerie, Veronique, Victor, Will, and Yannick.
To members of the Dream Team and its successors, I stand before you with my hand over my heart. I also must thank the owners and management of Castel Clara, Chez Renée, Crêperie Les Embruns, and the Hôtel du Phare for all the fine meals and companionship.
Great thanks, almost immeasurable, go to my agent Laurie Fox for taking peeks at early drafts and, later, throwing herself deeply into the construction of this complicated thirty-year story. A “genius prize” to Stephanie Bowen, my editor at Sourcebooks, for finally unlocking the sequence—almost as tricky as a genome, in my opinion. The design team at Sourcebooks has done splendidly by the book and Belle Île. Thanks also to Chris Bauerle, director of sales, for his early enthusiasm and to publisher Dominique Raccah for growing such a creative publishing house.
I also would like to thank the editors at the New York Times travel section over the years for their support of my storytelling and research jaunts to Brittany and Belle Île. The same thanks go to Donna Bulseco and Ellie McGrath, my soul mates at SELF; to Anne Alexander at Walking magazine; to Islands magazine; and especially to Peter Janssen at MotorBoating & Sailing magazine, who repeatedly allowed me to construct reporting assignments in France that took me curiously close to Belle Île. May all writers be blessed with a boss whose sensibilities are still susceptible to the dreams of their underlings. God knows we all need a vacation.
I wish to memorialize my late friend Christopher Burgart, a singer and songwriter in Santa Cruz who, in 1973, long before I ever heard of the island that would so shape my future, came back from a summer abroad and strummed a new song he’d composed on the road: “Belle Isle.” Chris, years later, I’ve realized that you nailed it.
Finally, there is the woman I call “Gwened Guedel” and to whom Mindy and I owe so much. “Gwened,” you always knew this book was coming, and I firmly believe you engineered its final surprising revelations. As long as this book lives, you are, in a sense, immortal, which may even have been your intention. All I can say is that you’d love to see how the village that you did so much to preserve and to shape has turned out.
About the Author
Photo credit: Mindy Pennybacker
Don Wallace was born in Long Beach, California, and has spent most of his life as a journalist and editor in New York City and Honolulu—that is, when not in France. He is the author of four books, including the novel Hot Water and One Great Game: Two Teams, Two Dreams, in the First-Ever National Championship High School Football Game. His essays, articles, and fiction have appeared in such publications as Harper’s, the New York Times, SELF, Fast Company, Wine Spectator, and Naval History. You can visit his website at www.don-wallace.com and DonWallaceFranceBlog.tumblr.com for updates on Belle Île-en-Mer.
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