Two words have drifted past me with slightly unexpected meanings. At the top of Sceaux's high street (rue Houdan), among many other delicatessens, is a wine shop called le Repaire de Bacchus. I have not seen the word 'repair' used in this sense as a noun in English, but only a verb.... 'let us repair to the garden....', with the idea that repairing means to go to somewhere safe, quiet, delightful. That is in addition to the usual meaning of mending, where of course we can have 'a repair'. The second word is 'fast', which again has many meanings in English - but here in French it is used in the plural (les fastes) to mean 'luxury, extravagance, richness', quite the opposite of 'going without', or 'fasting' as in 'the Lenten fast'. I have seen 'le faste' twice now, once at the chateau of Sceaux, and once in a rather enticing book about places to visit in Paris. The book is called Metronome illustré, and is based round various underground stations to give you a detailed guide to the history of the capital. My only criticism is that it's too darn big to lug around with you, but we'll take some notes and see what we can find.
It's somehow surprising to find a chateau so close to the centre of Paris, still sitting in its huge park complete with avenues, canals, lakes, forests, vistas and so on. Everyone has heard of Versailles, and this is smaller but very lovely and thought provoking. It has a newish area of topiary laid out, which is interesting to see because of course while we are used to seeing topiary gardens in their maturity grandeur, the people who commissioned these palaces and gardens would have seen their topiary in its hilarious infancy with tiny little twigs being trained into cones and baubles.
The chateau houses the museum of the Ile-de-France and so has a regional responsibility for cultural displays for the whole of Paris. The ceramic displays are fascinating - covering the many potteries which produced fine and domestic wares in the Paris locality and - my goodness! - some of it is utterly wonderful, with sculptures, figures, ornaments, services, and decorated china of great beauty. There is also a set of more domestic plates with printed illustrations worthy of Punch magazine, extolling the royal virtues of various vegetables, which are elevated onto comic characters parading around in amusing activities. That is a permanent exhibition.
The temporary exhibition at the moment is of works by Picasso - drawings and paintings and some assemblages from the 30s, many never exhibited before. The theme is 'nature' and includes some amusing cartoons of animals, some 'sur l'herbe' studies (musicians, naked women), a very nice little mountain landscape, studies around the theme of a woman at a table with a vase of flowers, and a few roofscapes. It's a charming show, well curated with extensive notes and a fine book to accompany the show. It's interesting to see how he understood the construction of things - partly through his ways of disassembling them in the drawings. There are some oils paintings, and several mixed media works - crayon, aquatint, linocuts, etc. I particularly liked a couple of assemblages made on framed canvases, with collages of objects which he then covered with stained sand. One of these was made on the back of a framed canvas so that the frame has become a kind of container. It has a tiny figure of a woman sitting on a bench in one corner. I have never seen anything quite like this before, with this scratchy tarry-looking moonscapey surface. Very interesting.
The staffing levels of the chateau are slightly eye-boggling especially considering the punitive laws for employment in France. In effect no-one can ever be sacked. Whole businesses go under because the owners can't rationalise their staffing levels. But (as we saw in Greece a few years ago) museums are very highly staffed. I don't know how many staff we counted in what is really a small area - no more than eight or so public rooms. A man to check your bags by the door. A man in the left luggage. A man to sell tickets. Three ladies in the shop. About five guys patrolling the exhibits. And outside (staff or contractors, I have no idea) a large gang of guys trimming the older sweeps of topiary - at least a dozen of them. The ladies in the shop were very helpful and kind. The guys sitting and standing in the rooms (all black, by the way) looked bored out of their heads. Outside, it was very cold dark wet and windy. We came home to Nathalie's flat with a copy of the Picasso book, some postcards and bits.
The rue de Houdan was glorious with its food shops and Christmas window displays, many with animated animals nodding and waving to catch your attention. We did a little shopping, had fruit tea (and an iceream to the astonishment of the waiter), and then came back to eat a superb cold seafood supper bought earlier in the day.
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