Memories

The cover

The very beginning

One of the pictures

I think I acquired this Simeon memoir - that is to say reference 3 - as a courtesy in the course of the ebay transaction noticed at reference 1. As I recall it, one of the books I had signed up for was a bit stained with tea, so the vendor threw in a couple of extras. With this one being a (near) wartime economy edition from 1945, possibly a first edition, complete with rough cut pages. And had I bought one of the first 100 of the first 1,000, printed as seems to be the custom in France, on fancy paper, I would have had signed original by the illustrator, one Jean Reschofsky, thrown in. 

A good read. Mainly a memoir of infant childhood in Liège, and Simenon tells a good story about life in the lower middle classes in the years before the first world war. A father who was content to be a clerk in an insurance company and a mother who seemed to need always to be anxious about something and who seemed to be very conscious of her social standing. So, for example, the small Simenon was not allowed to try the grub being consumed by the market gardeners from the country around about, in the cafés around the market square on market days, probably quarters of what we know as Quiche Lorraine, on the grounds that it was peasant food. On the other hand, buying chips in a basin, Orwell fashion, was OK.

Both father and mother came from very large families, of a dozen of more children, while the Simenon's settled for two. The elder of Maigret fame and the younger who was the favourite - and who died rather young. Another subject of complaint from mother to surviving son.

Despite her husband making a reasonable living, she was keen to make some money on her own account, coming as she did from a family of shop keepers and merchants, and insisted on moving into running a rooming house, despite her husband's love of the quiet life. A rooming house (or houses) which featured in 'Le Locataire', noticed at reference 5.

And then we had the aunt's shop, down by the canal on the very edge of the town, providing for the various alimentary and marine needs of the barge people - needs which included a spot of gin drinking at the counter, by both husband and wives, albeit separately. The sort of shop for which Simenon had a soft spot and which he included in a number of his stories and novels.

There was a feature of his parents' social life which he commented on several times and which he says was reproduced in his own social life later. This was that it was in part serial. His parents would see someone - usually one of the many aunts or uncles - very regularly, perhaps at the same time every week, for months or perhaps years. And then, rather abruptly, the relationship would cease and they would move onto someone else. With the difference that in his case the someone's were not aunts or uncles.

I was puzzled about how harsh he was about his mother, in a book written when she was sixty or so, going on to live to be ninety or so. Vicious even. Maybe this was because it was written in the early 1940's, when he was holed up in Fontenay-le-Comte (in the Vendée) and had just been misdiagnosed with the heart complaint which had carried off his father rather young. Maybe he blamed his mother. In any event, he felt the need to unburden, in the form of this memoir addressed to his son Marc, a memoir mainly about Liège, but also about his time in Fonteney-le-Comte.

All that said, I think there was a strong bond between Simenon and his mother.

All of which left a slightly sour taste; but, all in all, I am grateful to the Lady of Aubenas for her gift. A worthy addition to the Simenon shelf. Sixth from the left at reference 2.

PS 1: For once Bing does a lot better than Google, telling me that 'Jean Reschofsky (1905-1998) was a famous French artist who attended Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts, Paris. A graduate from the Ecole Nationale des Arts Décoratifs in architecture and sculpture, he leaves an impressive and varied work in painting, sculpture, and the illustration of some 150 titles'. So probably a well regarded book illustrator around the time of the second world war when the present book was published. He certainly has a nice knack of capturing an urban or domestic scene in not very many of what look rather casual strokes of the pencil.

PS 2: near the sketch in the snap above, we are told that the bargemen sometimes fed their horses with large chunks of rough rye bread, of which I had not heard of before, but which seems reasonable enough given the sometimes delicate digestion of horses. And these horse needed their grub; they had to work for their livings.

PS 3: Fontenay-le-Comte is a little to the east of Talmont-St-Hilaire, where we spent several summer holidays in a tent. A campsite involving both bats and whiffs of tobacco from more than one country. And a village which included a large castle once owned by one of the models for Bluebeard. A large castle which was used as a vegetable garden, rather than being turned over to (heritage) holiday makers.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/06/breaking-news.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-shelf.html.

Reference 3: Je me souviens - Simenon - 1946.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/05/dirty-snow-part-1.html.

Reference 5: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/05/wry-neck.html. With Fontenay-le-Comte being a few miles up the road from the house featured in this post.

Reference 6: https://www.trussel.com/maig/liege.htm. The roads in Liège in which Simenon spent his childhood. With rue Louis Pasteur having been renamed rue Georges Simenon at some point. Gmaps and Street View added a spot of spice to the read, a spot of spice which would not have been available at the time of first publication.

Reference 7: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/03/when-i-was-old.html. Notice of another part of the ebay purchase which gave me the present book.