Inevitably, any tangible encounter with the past, bumps up against the intrusive present. In a city like Toulouse—in any city, steeped in history, yet thriving in the present moment—it’s sometimes impossible to reconcile the richness of the past with the jarring intrusion of modernity: Those snarling trucks and shrieking motor-scooters; flashily-fronted restaurants, and tourists posing with their selfie-sticks…. If only, I think, it were possible to scrape away the layers of modern life and get down to the pentimento beneath, back to a realm untouched by the intervening centuries.
On the other hand, I console myself, if I actually could strip one of these cities, like an artichoke, to its ancient heart and literally step into the past, I might run the risk of facts getting in the way of my story and paralyzing my invention. Possibly, for the purposes of a novel, ’m better off simply using those remaining vestiges of the distant past—the odor of old brick, the enduring brilliance of the cerulean sky, the sensation underfoot of paving stones hollowed in places by centuries of boot-and-sandal-shod feet—an affirmation that the past, as I’ve imagined it, is somewhat accurate.
In Toulouse, for instance, a 13th-century monastery garden enclosed by arcades of columns looks exactly like the backdrop of a scene I’d already written in a monks’ garden, where a villainous character sits serenely peeling an apple that he plans to infuse with poison plucked from a nearby plant. To me, a totally recognizable location—although I’d never previously passed that way, except in imagination. Just as I’d been startled on a previous trip, to the Western U.S, by the familiar décor of a hotel bar I thought I’d invented.
But whatever the upshot of the journey—whether undertaken to reach back into the past or to scout locations for some future adventure now only in the planning phase—having a purpose enriches the experience, turns a mere destination into a part of some grand plan or organizing principle—un but, if you like.
I recall as a teenager reading John Steinbeck’s “Travels With Charley” and being impressed. Not only did Steinbeck outfit a small truck as a camper-cum-sleeper to live in on the road with his dog, he organized his itinerary around a geographical exploration of the mood of America, in the lead-up to the presidential election of 1960.
For some reason I now forget, he began his odyssey in northern Maine, before proceeding westward and then south and back to the east around the periphery of his native country. Much that Steinbeck learned over the course of his lengthy road-trip, I also forget. What still sticks with me is the value he placed on having a plan to hang his hat on, a question to direct the quest, a grail of some kind—holy or otherwise—to propel his journey.
Of course, attempting to retrace the footsteps of a 13th-century saint feels less like a road-trip than an old-fashioned pilgrimage. For instance, to the cliffside shrines at Rocamadour whose long, steep staircase Saint Dominic allegedly ascended (on his knees) in 1219, in search of the Chapel of the Black Madonna, during his final trip north from Languedoc to Paris—thence, to depart France forever and establish new headquarters in Bologna.
Henry II of England’s pilgrimage, more than half a century before Dominic’s, is noted at Rocamadour. There is also a plaque, commemorating the 16th century visit by Jacques Cartier and his crew, specifically to pray for relief from the scurvy on their voyage.
Yet, I did not locate Dominic among all the statues of saints in any of the chapels. Nor did I find any references to him in the wall text documenting the history of the many “pelérins” who’d passed through Rocamadour over eons.
Dominic’s absence was a bit disappointing. Still, when it comes to quests, it ultimately doesn’t matter whether or not you find your grail; the search is all. Lord knows, in the past, I’ve encountered glitches in even my best-laid itineraries: A search for the statue of Greyfriars Bobby in Edinburgh that sent my companions and myself far off-course into the suburbs, thanks to a faulty tourist-department map; a driving trip to the homes of several writers of the American South, only to find the Asheville boyhood home of Thomas Wolfe closed because of a recent fire, and William Faulkner’s home in Oxford, Mississippi similarly shuttered for renovations. And the vaunted “museum” in a former residence of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald in Montgomery, Alabama, consisted merely of a few readily-available books about the couple and a typewriter, in a house they’d occupied for less than a year.
Most recently, in France, my partner and I undertook a quixotic search for a statue of Samuel de Champlain, supposedly located in his birthplace of La Rochelle. Of course, in Canada, interest in Champlain as a seminar figure in the history of New France requires no explanation and evidence of his influence is easy to find.
Indeed, during several summers on Nova Scotia’s Annapolis shore, I regularly biked in the early morning the seven or eight kilometres each way from Granville Beach to the re-creation of Champlain’s first settlement at Port Royal. I would gaze out at the river, imagining him beside me on that shore, almost half a millennium before, worrying about the viability of his little habitation. And of course, throughout modern-day Québec, where he was later able to make a more lasting mark, statues of Champlain and namesake structures abound.
Sadly, Champlain’s enduring importance in La Vieille France is somewhat less apparent. Although we were staying in La Rochelle at L’hôtel Champlain, nobody on staff was able to direct us to where his statue might be found. At the Musée du Noveau Monde nearby, there was scant mention of him in the surprisingly limited exhibits and text relating to New France. Ultimately, it was at the museum reception desk (manned by a helpful gentleman who’d been born in the New World, in Cuba) that we received regretful confirmation of the complete lack of Champlain commemorative statuary in La Rochelle. Nevertheless, the man assured us, Champlain had most definitely been born there, and only a street or two away was the Protestant church where he’d been baptized.
Back at our hotel, a search of the web confirmed that Champlain had indisputably been from La Rochelle—and most emphatically not the town of Brouage, down the coast, as once believed. Even so, it seemed possible to us that some visual remembrances of him might still exist there.
Brouage was once a citadel town, entirely enclosed within protective walls, of which there are now only remnants, with grassy bunkers and stone structures, similar to what the French built in North America to fend off the British. Brouage boasts a Rue de Champlain, as well as a Place Champlain, where stands a small house with a plaque explaining that it is often “confused” with a dwelling Champlain once lived in. However, the plaque fails to make clear where the great explorer did reside, if he ever actually once lived in Brouage.
And no signs of a statue. At the nearby restaurant where we had lunch, the wait-staff were good-naturedly unaware of a Champlain statue and unapologetic about it. At the Office de Tourisme, the young woman was apologetic when she failed to turn up any information about a statue, particularly because we were Canadians to whom Champlain’s legacy evidently meant something. She suggested there might be some material on him at the Catholic church.
We’d already traipsed past that church, at least three times, in our futile quest. Since Champlain had been baptised in a Protestant temple, it had seemed pointless to seek him in a Catholic holy place. However, we dutifully traipsed past the church yet again—and this time, thought to glance up at a tall, somewhat weather-beaten column, topped with a globe and boasting some nautical carvings, but no likeness of Champlain. However, on the base was a near-illegible inscription commemorating Champlain, as explorer, map-maker and foundational figure of la Nouvelle France. Who had been born in Brouage—at least according to the inscription, if not according to history.
So, if history is a lie, can we say that it’s the past that is fiction and the present that is fact? Or, is the real truth, as T.S. Eliot wrote, that “Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future.” In which case, it may well be that for us—as well as for Champlain and John Steinbeck and Saint Dominic it’s the next destination that promises to be the best, the richest and the most rewarding.