A Civilised and Cultured Nation

I had intended to write my next blog on 14th July, a significant enough date in French history but also the day on which I was going to start my summer jam making, one of the great annual events in life at Bardies. I promise that the next one will be concerned with the simple joys of such everyday mundanities.

Instead, as ever in life, events have intervened. On Wednesday morning, after an overnight pit stop with Peter near Lancaster Gate, I decided on the spur of the moment to pop down briefly to the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition, before meeting up with him again for our special treat to ourselves of a theatre double bill at 3.00pm. As I hopped on the number 94 to Picadilly, two undernourished and painfully thin men blocked my way through the almost empty bus, and I thought 'how odd'. A few seconds later, I realised that they had pickpocketed me and there I was with no money, including lots of euro notes which I had exchanged especially, no credit or bank cards and worst of all, no driving licence. Quel catastrophe!

With the lunchtime ferry to Le Havre looming on Monday, I did not begrudge them the money [well, not much!], but I am beside myself with the loss of my cards and driving licence. It is, to my knowledge, unlawful to drive in France without carrying a driving licence. After the bus was evacuated, the police called, endless phone calls and mild hysteria on my part, Peter met me with some cash and off we went to Ronald Harwood's double bill of 'Taking Sides' and 'Collaboration' at the Duchess Theatre. All thoughts of my predicament evaporated the moment the curtain went up.

The first play, 'Taking Sides', is about Dr Wilhelm Furtwangler, the German composer and conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, and is set in 1946 when he was interogated by the Americans over his collaboration with the Nazis. The second play, 'Collaboration', is about Richard Strauss's relationship with his Jewish librettist, Stefan Zweig, and the impact on their relationship of Nazi threats to Strauss's Jewish daughter-in-law and his grandchildren. Both plays examine the propensity to take the high moral ground from the safety of our own comfort zones. Nothing is as it seems, especially when we discover that Furtwangler also helped over eighty Jewish musicians to escape.

In case you are wondering why I am writing this in a blog about Bardies, I wanted to share some thoughts about some notes in the programme. Mathew Scott, the composer, asks why such a cultured, intelligent country fell for Nazism. Ronald Harwood, the writer, replies, "It is one of the mysteries of history. I've always said about the Germans that they are cultured but not civilised, we're civilised but not cultured and the French are civilised and cultured, which makes them unbearable."

Of course, it got me thinking. Firstly, about the fictional events in Sebastian Faulkes's 1999 novel, 'Charlotte Gray', specifically about how some people behaved in occupied France, and the events surrounding the Drancy holding camp to the east of Paris. The plight of the two little Jewish boys in the story, Andre and Jacob, still brings me to tears. And then, inevitably, my thoughts turned to what is probably the greatest and most awe-inspiring work of fiction that the occupation of France produced, the wonderful 'Suite Francaise' by Irene Nemirovsky.

Only two of the planned five books were written, in her miniscule script in a leather bound notebook. 'Storm in June', about the flight from Paris, and 'Dolce', about life under German occupation in the fictional village of 'Bussy', are all the more compelling because they are almost simultaneous with the events in the lives of the writer, her two daughters and her husband, Michel Epstein. These two magnificent novellas are set between June 4th 1940, as German forces prepare to invade Paris, and July 1st 1941, when some of the German occupying forces are re-deployed to the Soviet Union.

We shall never know what happened to the vast array of characters in her planned later books because Irene Nemirovsky was arrested on 13th July 1942 in the village of Issy-l'Eveque, and sent to her death in the Auschwitz infirmary, of typhus, on 17th August 1942. Her husband also suffered the same fate a few months later, when he was sent to the gas chamber immediately upon his arrival, but her daughters survived. One of them, Denise, discovered the treasure of her mother's manuscript in 1999. The book was published in Paris to great critical acclaim in 2004, and later brilliantly translated by Sandra Smith for a wider audience.

I cannot reccomend it highly enough to all lovers of all things French. It is both sad and joyful, as Nemirovsky records the best and the worst of times in France under German occupation. Who knows what any of us would do in such dire circumstance? We all like to think that we would behave with the utmost honour and integrity, but the reality of choices with the severest of consequences would undoubtedly lead most of us to inhabit that grey world of uncertain morality in between the black and white.

Both Furtwangler and Strauss, and many of the characters in 'Suite Francaise' were confronted with difficult dilemmas. The fictional Bruno von Falk, the young German Wehrmacht officer billeted with Lucille Argellier and her widowed mother-in-law in Bussy, in 'Dolce', the second novella, is charming, has read Balzac and plays the piano beautifully. He had hoped to be a musician before his Wehrmacht obligations intervened. Like Captain Corelli, he is a civilised and cultured man living in uncivilised times. We feel for him, because the world he now lives in was not of his making. He is from our world, where music, art and literature are the mark of the civilised human being.

But, oh, how quickly such glorious things can evaporate before our liberal eyes. The real choices of war take precedence, unless like Furtwangler we close our eyes to reality. In our part of France, the starting point of Le Chemin de la Liberte was St Girons. Evaders, who included hundreds of Frenchmen wanted by the Gestapo, Jews fleeing their oppressors and the many RAF and American airmen shot down over Nazi occupied Europe, were passed from one link to the next in a chain of local helpers who clothed, fed and hid them at great personal risk to themselves. According to official statistics, there were a staggering 33,000 successful escapes across the whole length of the Pyrenees during the course of the war.

Of these, 782 escaped over the mountain peaks of the Ariege. In June 1943, there were 113 successful evasions through Le Chemin de la Liberte. Several other escape trails were established near St Girons as the war progressed, starting from Foix, Tarascon, Aulus-les-Bains, Massat, Castillon, Seix and Seintein, each one known only to its special guide, its 'passeur'. These men were incredibly brave. Not for them the musings of black and white, as they risked not only their own lives but the lives of their nearest and dearest too. As German surveillance increased, often they were betrayed by their fellow countrymen working for the hated Vichy run paramilitary 'Milice'. Over a hundred 'passeurs' were arrested or deported, or shot on the spot for their bravery. Remarkably, despite such setbacks, the St Girons-Esterri escape route via Mont Valier remained operational until the end of the war.

We owe these truly brave and civilised men and women, an incalculable debt. For, as well as the precious lives that they saved, they have enabled us to retain our fundamental faith in human nature. Sadly, I do not know their names. They will never have the fame and adulation that Furtwangler and Strauss were accorded, both in Germany and beyond, for their great music making. But they are as much a part of the great tapestry of human history that has made France a civilised and cultured nation as its greatest writers, artists and composers.