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Maison Maison Carrée in Nîmes
With Virginia ancestors on both my parents’ sides, and having proudly lived here for more than a couple of decades, it made sense to me to cover the wall in my office with antique framed portraits of famous Virginians. These had been collected over a period of several years of hunting through stacks of dusty portraits in antique shops all over the eastern US.
Of great interest to me was the path that architect and French Ambassador, Thomas Jefferson took from Paris to Italy and back between February and June of 1787. I’d read that he stopped in Nîmes on his way through the Languedoc region of Southern France and was so impressed by the Roman copy of a Greek temple (now named the Maison Carrée) still standing in the center of the modern commercial district that he took time to measure and sketch it. Later, when commissioned by the Commonwealth of Virginia to design a capitol building for Richmond, he pulled out this sketch and used it for the basis of his design. It wasn’t too long a stretch for me to want to include an antique picture of this building among my other “famous Virginians.”
In 1998, a canal-side vendor of old postcards in Provence’s famous antiques town, Isle-sur-le-Sorgue, helped me find just the thing. The sepia photo on the front of the postcard was a side view of the Maison Carrée (Square House in English), and would look quite handsome beside my prized Washington, Wilson, and Lee finds. Then I made the mistake of turning the postcard over and I was instantly and hopelessly intrigued by the mystery of the French scribbling and postmark with date on the flip side. The provenance of antique postcards is much more apparent than that of any other kind of antique. And now having just fulfilled my dream of finding an antique picture of the Maison Carrée, I had to find out what I could about who had sent it where and to whom and when and why.
I couldn’t read the French handwriting but I was delighted to find out from a Provencal waiter that it was sent from Nîmes, of course, in the Gard département of the Languedoc region on November 6th, 1903 and arrived at the home of a Monsieur Argence at Number 9, Place St. Joseph in Perpignan on December 5th. A place (in France pronounced plahz) sounds so much more appealing than our English “place”. My postcard had traveled down the path of the old Roman road, the Via Domitia, from Nîmes to a pretty little place in Perpignan in the département of the eastern Pyrenees almost a century earlier. Would it be too much to hope that in 5 years an overly nostalgic romantic Virginian could go to Nîmes and retrace this postcard’s path to the place in Perpignan after 100 years?
After a week of concerts at the International Piano Festival in La Roque d’Anthéron, last summer, in the 100th year after the postcard was sent to Perpignan, my wife and I started at Nîmes and made the same trip. Driving into the city, we expected to immediately see signs pointing to the Maison Carrée but saw none. Assuming it was in the center of the old town we followed the directions to Centre Ville until we saw the first Maison Carrée signs.
When its right side came surprisingly into view, I almost hit an elderly lady who pointed up at the light that I wasn’t looking at. Like other citizens of Nimes, she’d seen it before and perhaps it had become an irrelevant waste of downtown space—a nuisance to her. For whatever reason, she wasn’t about to cut me any slack because I just got my first glimpse of the Maison Carrée.
We parked the car a few blocks away, making Nîmes a safer place for all, walked back to the Maison Carrée and then up the stairs and like new parents counted 6 columns across and 11 down each side. It looked a little crummier up-close than the photos we’d seen. With ragged edges and chunks of 1,953 year-old marble having slid down the columns and off the triangle pediment. Inside, displays explained that it survives today because it’s been in use for one purpose or another—a tomb, a church, a legislative seat, and a stable, among other things since the 1100s.
The holes across the bottom of the pediment were deciphered to have once held letters dedicating the temple to a son and stepson of Caesar Augustus (yes, the one who issued a census decree to the Roman world at the beginning of the first millennium). If Caesars performed well in life, they were deified after their death. The temple was built as part of the imperial cult of Caesar worship that held the empire together before Christianity. The townspeople of Nîmes wanted to show they were on board—politically correct—so they helped build this temple to impress Rome that they were loyal to the imperial cult.
We read all the displays showing how the Maison fit into the huge Roman metropolitan forum complex that has since disappeared, but the Maison was a little jewel that no one during the first millennium had the heart to tear down. We walked around the perimeter and wondered how anyone could think that building the ugly modern museum across a short plaza in 1993 was a good idea. We, like Jefferson were awed to be inside a piece of antiquity built in 50 AD. Unlike Jefferson, we did not gaze at it for hours, “like a lover at his mistress.” We did purchase a modern postcard depicting the same scene as the one addressed to Monsieur Argence at 9 Place Saint Joseph and then headed out of town toward Perpignan on the autoroute.
South of Montpelier, we were frequently put on notice that we were in Cathar Country. Far enough from both Rome and Paris to care little for the authority of either, the 11th century Langedociens were fertile ground for the Cathar heresy to take firm root. They were exterminated in the 12th century when Languedoc was acquired and annexed to France. Also we noted between Beziers and Vias that we crossed the Canal du Midi, an engineering feat completed in the late 1600s connecting France’s Mediterranean coast with her Atlantic coast for commerce. The canal is now used by laidback floating vacationers who want to watch the vineyards and sleepy little villages go by at a very slow pace.
Nearing Perpignan, I was entertaining a fantasy of a shady Place Saint Joseph, where, when we arrived, we’d sit on a cool bench by a well dressed lady, who when asked if she knew of a Monsieur Argence answered, “Which one? My father? My grandfather? Or my great grandfather?” And who, at seeing my astonishment said, over the sound of the nearby fountain, “Oh yes, my family has lived on this square for many generations.” And then, “You have a postcard that was sent to my great grandfather in 1903? One hundred years ago? Can you show it to me? I’d love to have it as a memento of him and to leave to my children after I’m gone.”
Perhaps, but first we strolled down Perpignan’s Promenade des Plantes, a long walking park lined with palm trees and plane trees, tastefully adorned with statues and fountains to get to the Tourist Information (TI) office at the far end. After a lot of head scratching, map scrutinizing and squinting, the TI attendant determined Place St. Joseph must be under the logo of the mapmaker on our map so he couldn’t show us exactly where it is. He suggested we walk in the general direction and see if we could find it. But then, “Wait,” he said, “I’ll check another map.” There was the place plain as day and only a few blocks from the TI. With a quick merci, we darted out, eager to discover any traces of the house on Place St. Joseph or the Argence family. We ascended through a portal in the old ramparts, turned left on Rue Francois Rabelais, walked past an ancient convent, then, at the corner, turned right on Rue Saint Joseph. We could see the road widen ahead. This must be the place.
Without even a glance at each other, a fog of disappointment rolls in over both of us. This place is the place but it’s a dump—no trees, no grass, no fountain, no bench, not even a sidewalk. But the place still exists and there among the beat-up cars and desperate looking foreigners with dirty babies walking from one dingy apartment to another was Number 9. It had not been a home for many decades. In an eyesore of a neighbor hood, it’s the neighborhood eyesore. The barely discernable sign on the plaster front advertised auto towing and engine removing and rebuilding. The broken glass on the front door was covered with a combination of screen and plywood and plants were growing out of the holes and cracks in the plaster.
Ever hoping for a little fantasy fulfillment, in one of the screen doors, I spied a little letter flap covering a slit for the mail. Maybe when Monsieur Argence lived here, my postcard slipped through this mail slot. Probably not ‑ the entire building must have been remodeled to convert it from housing for Monsieur Argence to engine rebuilding for somebody else.
Now, the quest is over, mission accomplished, and all I’ve got to show for it is the joy of the journey. As we do so often in France when we experience some endearing combination of beauty and history with signs of day to day life, Anne and I look at each other and repeat simultaneously, “This isn’t Disney World, people really live here.” This time the point is that wishes do come true—some of the time. Dreams are fulfilled sometimes and sometimes they’re dashed and joy must be squeezed out of real living even when the prince doesn’t come through with a kiss in the end. I still cherish my postcard and fondly re-live the retracing of its journey. And the intrigue of the Canal du Midi, the Land of the Cathars, and the Roman leftovers in the Languedoc will pull me back again and again.
Kirk Woodyard and his wife, Anne, host small groups of European classical music festival-goers. Information :www.musicetc.us
