Louise Lewis's Notebooks

The French

Hello! My name is Louise Lewis and I live in the south-west of France, in a tiny medieval village called Cordes. Cordes is second home to many Brits in search of a long-lost paradise. The village which was re-baptized Cordes-sur-ciel some decades ago by a mayor with sharp public relation acumen is strikingly beautiful and romantically medieval. It towers at the top of a steep hill over the Gaillac area vineyards and its steep meandering cobbled streets which require more climbing than walking, lead painstakingly to the gates of the old city. In the only newsagent's of the place, down below on the main street, I once bumped into the last British governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, who was having a chat with the then British government conservative minister Douglas Hurd. They were both wearing loose T-shirts and knee-length shorts. It struck me then that the rare natives, who walked about with a permanent stoop born from working on the land, rarely lifted their weathered faces to look at the foreigners. They had no clue as to the identities of the English people around them and must have got used to hearing English spoken in the tiny shop which sold The Times next to La Dépêche du Midi. It also occurred to me to wonder which of the two groups I fitted in. The answer was probably: in both, and in neither of them.

So, do I sound to you like an expat? As a matter of fact, to English people I am "la petite française" but to my French friends and lovers I sound distinctly English and they sometimes call me "l'Anglaise". To my mother I am only the one who went away too soon and for too long: "celle qui est trop partie".

Although France is definitely my home country, I am not always particularly at ease with my fellow citizens as I tend to feel readily judged, gauged, assessed. I don't quite trust them; when they are friendly I suspect some dissembling and if they are haughty, I recognize the arrogance they are sometimes accused of. Well, you might wonder why I use the pronoun "they"? I ought to say "we". After all I am one of them, aren't I?

I have never forgotten an article from the American newspaper "Village Voice" that I came across over twenty years ago. It was entitled "1001 reasons to hate the French". At the time, in the late 1980s, early 1990s, I used to teach French in an English university in the north of England (more about that later) and someone had brought this article to my attention, to use it as teaching material. No doubt, the English colleague -I was a very junior and inexperienced member of staff- who had given it to me had had ulterior motives; it was not an innocent gesture; possibly his intention had been to test my ability to resort to self-derision, something that the French are not renowned for. I remember that the article, after listing all the reasons to dislike the French, concluded that France was indeed a beautiful country but :"shame about the French!". Of course the reasons were a pile of clichés and prejudice but, even at my young age I could tell that a lot of them had the ring of truth and had not been totally fabricated. The argument that had struck me most and has stayed ingrained in my mind, was that, in France, all those who had been young adults during WW2 (of course there aren't many of them left today) claimed to have been part of the Résistance. Touché!