Our aging president

We've all known for several years that our former president Jacques Chirac is presenting inevitable signs of growing old... like all of us, for that matter.

Few French people would have imagined that this rather ordinary individual would in fact turn out to be the most popular former French president by far, probably for the simple reason that he is truly an ordinary human being.

I remember an amusing event in the Rue Rambuteau, long ago, when the candidate Chirac was moving around in our neighborhood and shaking hands with local people. Our young daughter Emmanuelle, like countless kids, was wandering around on the footpath, waiting to join in the fun of shaking hands with a politician. For some strange reason, she decided that shaking hands once was not good enough. So, she stepped back into the line of people waiting for Chirac. Surprisingly, in spite of the hordes of people standing there, Chirac realized instantly that he had already shaken hands with my daughter, and he made some kind of a trivial remark to that effect, which surprised my daughter.

In that tiny incident, I have the impression that Jacques Chirac had demonstrated to Emmanuelle (and me) that he was indeed a rather personal and attentive kind of political friend.

Back in contact with Queen Victoria

This morning I received an email from an Australian lady named Henty (descendant of the famous family of Australian explorers) who now lives in Paris. Years ago, when she happened to be living in Pont-en-Royans for a while, she asked me to examine an interesting little portrait of the young queen Victoria. My friend had always imagined that this painting was valuable, but it took me little effort to discover that this shoddy unsigned portrait of Victoria, created on a ceramic background, was somewhat pretty, but surely worth nothing at all.

Here's my presentation of four of the lady's ancestors, all artists:

I'm convinced that it was the fourth fellow, Ernest Heath [1867-1945], more an imaginative craftsman than a talented portraitist, who produced the ceramic plaque belonging to my friend. To do so, he simply "borrowed" an existing portrait of the young queen, painted by a portraitist who was probably a friend of one of Ernest Heath's famous ancestors. What interested Ernest was the possibility of creating a copied version of the original portrait on a ceramic plaque. Clearly this was some kind of graphic arts experiment that he carried out in his London school.

A website explains my conclusions: http://nutopia.free.fr/victoria/

Lion beyond trainer's control

Normally, we don't imagine that lions in a circus act might get beyond the control of their trainer. It's rare, but that's what happened a few days ago in the north of France.

"I thought they were going to eat me," explained the shocked trainer, who stated that he no longer intends to work with the white male lion, who had stirred up a fight between the animals that soon got out of control, forcing the trainer to escape from the cage. Onlookers felt certain that they were about to witness a bloody battle between the animals, but the trainer succeeded in coaxing the animals back to their individual cages.

Although I know next to nothing about this field of entertainment (?), I would imagine that the trainer might look into the idea of another professional activity... in the sale of pups and kittens, say.

Just over two days to go

The COP21 president Laurent Fabius is making an all-out attempt to get people to agree.

It's a difficult task. Some people would say it's impossible. I hope he succeeds.

Russian dog ready to discover France

The delightful little dog Dobrynya (German Shepherd race), given by Russia to France, to replace the Raid star Diesel killed at Saint-Denis, has recently been delivered to the French embassy in Moscow.

Click to enlarge

I'm convinced that Dobrynya will be happy to settle down in France, where she'll be loved by everybody.

My grandfather's London

Over the last few years, several members of my Australian family have taken advantage of the addresses of places indicated in my family-history research to visit the area of northern London where our grandfather Ernest Skyvington [1891-1985] lived, before his arrival in Australia on Christmas day 1908. Pop, as we called him, was born and grew up in a comfortable London district that is known today as Stroud Green, located just to the west of lovely Finsbury Park.

My family-history book entitled They Sought the Last of Lands contains lots of references to this pleasant corner of London, which still contains (in spite of World War II, followed by urban development) the totality of places associated with Pop's childhood: the house at 65 Evershot Road where Ernest was born, the house at 16 Marriott Road where his mother died when her son was nine years old, the house at 72 Mount Pleasant Crescent (today's address) where the young boy was brought up by his mother's family, and Ernest's Stroud Green school.

At the web link http://issuu.com/gamone/docs/last, readers can browse through an on-line version of my book, which includes various photos of my grandfather's childhood district of Stroud Green.

Late in life, my grandfather (accompanied by his daughter Yvonne) went on a trip to London, but I don't believe they actually identified and located many (if any at all) of his childhood places. (That trip to London took place before the start of my personal research into my grandfather's personal history.)

An English writer exactly ten years younger than my grandfather lived in that same Stroud Green district. I'm talking of the police officer Cecil Rolph Hewitt [1901-1994], who published books under the name of C. H. Rolph.

As a young boy, at the time that Pop was at school in Stroud Green, "Bill" Hewitt (as he was called) lived in a narrow terrace house at 101 Woodstock Road, just across the road from Pop's school.

So, if any of my readers are interested in obtaining sound facts about Pop's childhood places in Stroud Green, I advise them to purchase (through the Internet) this well-written book: London Particulars - Memories of an Edwardian Boyhood, C. H. Rolph, Oxford Paperbacks, 1980.

Fork in the road

Nations of the planet Earth are moving towards a fork in the road.

Let's take the right direction. The outcome of COP21 will define future life for our descendants.

Brazil mudflow

When I was a boy of 15, in my final year at Grafton High School, somebody encouraged me (?) to enter a competition for the award of a bursary from Australia’s celebrated BHP company. I knew that this gigantic company had obtained its name from a mining town, Broken Hill, in western New South Wales, and that it had a steelworks in Newcastle, to the north of Sydney. But nobody bothered to provide me with information about this potential employer, or to take me on a visit to its sites.

I was awarded the bursary, but I didn’t stay with BHP for more than a year. That was more than enough time for me to learn (often from hands-on experience at their Newcastle site) that I had no desire whatsoever to spend my earthly existence in such an environment. Normally, if my parents and school-teachers had been a little more alert, they would have reached such a conclusion a year or so earlier.

Today, the Australian-registered mining, metals and petroleum company is called BHP Billiton, and their latest revenues class it as the planet’s largest mining company. Can you imagine me still working for such an employer?

A month ago, there was a mudflow in one of their mines, in Brazil. Here’s a photo of the site (which appeared in the context of COP21):

I look upon this photo as a watery and muddy image of Hell on Earth, and I'm relieved to know that I was in no way associated with the folk who create such a hellish environment.

Climate negotiators seem to be making progress

The latest news from COP21 appears to be encouraging. People are apparently engaged in discussions and debates, searching for possible agreement. Nobody seems to be yelling or throwing punches...

The planned timing schedule has been respected. That's both amazing and most reassuring. Ladies and gentlemen, we respect your efforts. Please carry on your good work! Today, Saturday 5 December, after a week of discussions, negotiators have drawn up a rough copy of the text to be proposed next week as the basis of a future agreement.

Tensions existed between negotiators for a while, but they appear to be easing down.

In the context of COP21, today was labeled Action Day. Why not? Hearing that label, negotiators are less likely to stand still. A French lady, Laurence Tubiana, produced a nice conclusion: "We could have done better; we could have done worse. What's important is that we have a text."

As for the conference president, Laurent Fabius, he gave the impression that he was pleased with events.

And a final happy Action Day speech was delivered by the French president François Hollande.

If only Sarko hit the nail on the head

This message from Nicolas Sarkozy fills me with hope: "Voting for the right-wing Front National is a way of making sure that the Left wins the second round."

That would be a great way of making sure that our Socialists remain in power. But we can no longer trust in Sarkozy's beliefs.

In any case, I don't think I'll go out to vote this weekend.

Presidential visit to our aircraft-carrier

Apparently the French president François Hollande is currently visiting the aircraft carrier Charles-de-Gaulle, in service against our Daech enemy at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. I'm pleased to know that the president is visiting our 2000 armed fighters, and that he'll be watching the catapult takeoff of Rafale and Super Etendard aircraft. I'm pleased too that this information is being presented by the media in a low-key fashion, and that we're light years away from the stupid era of the US idiot Bush. Jeez, I'm relieved that we no longer have to deal with idiotic heads of state (and heads of forces) such as George Bush and his UK-Australian cronies. Sure, the survival of our Abbott fellow was a momentary mistake, but I consider that this idiot is henceforth totally out of action.

Everything's right in America

Last Wednesday, in San Bernardino (California), six females and eight males were killed in a typical if not rather ordinary shootout in God's Own Country. Do the people of that nation really wish to put an end to sad events of that kind, or is that their accepted way of life?

At the same moment, a US firm has just announced its launch in January 2016 of a TV-shopping channel called Gun TV, dedicated to the sale of weapons throughout the land.

Violence due to gun conflicts apparently costs the USA some 229 billion dollars a year. That's a lot of money just to stand up for your rights and to protect (?) yourself.

My most successful Australian blog post

This was certainly the most successful (popular) blog post I ever made on the subject of Australia:

http://skyvington.blogspot.fr/2011/01/free-settlers-in-antipodes.html

And so it should be, because this blog post combined several different but related themes, including the amazing idea that the first free settlers in Australia included relatives named Rose from Dorset. This is more than likely, but I never got around to searching for some definite proof... and so I let this interesting question drop.

Young cousins in Australia could look into this subject, if they were motivated. As for me, I promptly inserted a fictitious version of the Rose family into my future Israeli novel All the Earth is Mine... where there were already so many themes of all kinds that this new one didn't bother anybody!

A snake at Gamone

I have some Australian readers, so here's a rare kind of Gamone news item that should interest them.

Yes, we have snakes here! In the case of this fellow, I was so busy taking out my Nikon to get a photo of him, and making sure that my dog didn't try to attack the serpent, that I hardly noticed when the snake turned back towards the reddish door (of a shed attached to my house, which was once upon a time a pig sty) and disappeared under the foundations.

Now what kind of a reptile could it be ? I can hear my Australian friends debating about whether it's some kind of deadly snake. Do these Aussies see me as silly because I didn't dash in with a spade to kill the creature ?

Now, I'm sorry to disappoint my Australian friends. I think that snake specialists would discover rapidly, if they magnified my photo, that the dangerous reptile is no more than a nice old greenish-colored carpet snake (check with Google) of the kind that eats toads and lizards... and wouldn't possibly do me any harm whatsoever.

I must point out to readers that this friendly old snake appeared on the Gamone scene several months ago, just before my accident. I hope he's still around... and ready to return next spring.

A silly thing I did as a genealogy writer

When you're working seriously on family-history research, and attempting to blend all the data together in the form of a pleasant book, it's fair enough that the writer should have a little bit of fun.

That typescript sort of exploded little by little in my face. First, I discovered that a young brother of one of my great-grandfathers said his family name was Latton, and pretended to descend from an ancient nobleman. Then I discovered that another great-grandfather said his family name was Courtenay, and also pretended to descend from an ancient nobleman. In both cases, this crazy make-believe gave rise to genuine offspring bearing the fake family names. Talk about my mad ancestors...

The only bit of innocent fun I had as a researcher/writer consisted of looking for proofs that one of my first-known X-great grandfathers (where the X can be replaced by a few dozen "great" terms) was in fact the Norman fellow known as William the Conqueror. At the time, I truly imagined this as a playful item that wouldn't bother anybody. But readers are inevitably impressed by such trivial facts.

Today, after ages of separation, I've just been brought in contact with a much-appreciated Australian cousin. And the first thing he did was to tell me that he was proud to be related to William the Conqueror. Maybe I should have never even mentioned this Norman war-lord in my otherwise serious family-history study.

Icebergs in Paris

Icebergs in Paris, in front of the elegant church of the Madeleine. Why not ?

That was the corner of Paris where I started work with IBM (in the nearby Cité du Retiro) in February 1962. All that's missing today is a polar bear or even an Eskimo...

Worse than that: I've confused the Panthéon for the Madeleine !

Britain will be helping us

A lot of UK politicians have decided to help France in the combat against Daesh (the most acceptable title of the terrorist organization that carried out terrible attacks in Paris).

We are obliged to realize that a considerable body of politicians did not vote to support the decision. However David Cameron is reassured.

I believe the House has taken the right decision to keep the UK safe - military action in Syria as one part of a broader strategy.

Great Britain has 8 Tornados GR4 stationed in Cyprus, and others will be mobilized shortly.

Blue trams are good for you

It takes a lot of smart thinking to transform our ordinary vision of a tramway into something excessively attractive. In Sydney, when I was a university student, the depot where trams were housed would become the site of the famous opera house, but that didn't make these noisy vehicles any more pleasant and comfortable.

I'm convinced though that everybody will fall in love with this sexy French vehicle called a Bluetram, which is essentially an elegant electric-powered bus.

These superb vehicles are being tested experimentally in Paris on the Champs-Elysées from now until the end of January 2016, along a nine-stop "tram line" between Concorde and Etoile. The only aspect of the Bluetram that makes it differ from an ordinary electric vehicle is the obligation to charge its battery automatically, for 20 seconds, at every "tram stop".

Hydrangea-covered slopes above the sea in Brittany

When my son François first drove me onto these slopes (which can be found in several different places along the coast), and told me the story of this spectacular horticultural entreprise, I was amazed.

It's a relatively recent affair, imagined by a single fellow. He decided that Hydrangea would grow well in such places, and that the flowers could then be picked, packaged and transported economically to various major flower markets. And the rest is a splendid success story. It's the sort of lovely story that makes me wonder: Gee, it's so simple; why didn't I think of that?

Back to good health with my Macintosh

There's no better way of making sure you're in good mental and physical health (of a psychological kind) than to decide to carry out an update to the latest version of the Macintosh operating system. So, as of the end of the afternoon, I've acquired (for free) the latest El Capitan system.

Did I really need this latest version of the Macintosh operating system ? Of course yes, it proves that I've still got basically the same cerebral system (mine, not that of my computer) as before I had my accident.

Living on water

This is an old version of the cover of my novel All the Earth is Mine, published by Gamone Press and available through Amazon.

To access it on the screen, click http://issuu.com/gamone/docs/earth.

This novel has several linked themes inspired primarily by my fascination with the Jewish state of Israel. One of the themes is the high-tech idea of building artificial islands on which people can live. In fact, this has become a reality. In Holland, for example, the idea of building your future house on water has become quite common.

People at the COP21 gathering have suggested that floating houses might be a means of avoiding the nasty threat of getting drowned by rising seas.

Renewable energy from Paris

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV9ByfAgqaY&feature=youtu.be

Bad students of the class

For many years, the climate-change class has had two lazy and lousy students, who simply weren't making an effort to work hard enough to get near the top of the class. They're a pair of hill-billy nations, with exceptionally conservative governments of what the French refer to as the climato-sceptique variety. The names of these lousy students: Australia and Canada. They consume huge quantities of fossil fuel, and they take pride in polluting the rest of the planet. In the case of my native land, we even had an idiotic prime minister from 2013 to 2015, Tony Abbott, who suggested that climate change was bullshit, and claimed that coal was good for humanity. It was impossible to imagine a greater asshole.

China can perform wonderful magic tricks

Some magicians can get animals of all kinds to dance.

But China has a trick for getting vehicles moving along a highway to break into amazing dance antics.

http://www.lemonde.fr/asie-pacifique/video/2015/11/30/l-etrange-levitation-de-trois-vehicules-cree-le-mystere-en-chine_4820770_3216.htm

In fact, all you need is a metal cable and some kind of a vehicle to throw the cable all over the road, in the way of innocent vehicles. Good trick.

This young Italian fellow can find the right simple words

Matteo Renzi, 40-year-old prime minister of Italy since 2014.

Culture is stronger than ignorance,

beauty is more powerful than barbarity.

Jonah ascends into the great white cloud

I found this French video clip on the web:

http://www.lemonde.fr/rugby/video/2015/11/30/hommage-et-derniers-hakas-pour-jonah-lomu_4820550_1616937.html

It's weird, like many things these days. This dead rugby giant is like one of the assassinated young people at the Bataclan a fortnight ago. There's simply no obvious way of fitting such a happening into the world order. The world seems to have fallen apart. There is no world order, only disorder. And immense sadness.

Everybody's rolling into climate action

The conference president, Laurent Fabius, has officially started the COP21 operations.

China has made a spectacular point by announcing an extraordinarily high level of air pollution in Pekin.

And here in France, citizens have just been informed that the sexy new electricity meter known as Linky will be installed free-of-charge to tens of thousands of customers as of tomorrow.

So, things are in fact moving forward. Thank you COP21 !

Hopes for our children, and for our children's children

The decisions to be made in Paris, from today until December 11, are no less an affair than writing the next chapter of the geological story of our planet. We're facing our primary possession: our unique framework of human life. For the coming decades, our decisions will determine the stability of societies, and the well-being and security of millions of human beings.

This is the goal and ambition of the unique international conference that is about to open in the French capital. It is unique, first and foremost, because of the huge company of people to be gathered together here: 150 heads of state and governments from the delegations of the 195 states that belong to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

At the end of the Paris conference, their future agreement will replace, as of 2020, the Kyoto Protocol, which was a huge disappointment.

We know the figures. Today, the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide (CO2), the major greenhouse gas created by human beings, is higher than ever since the Pliocene era, more than two and a half million years ago. The temperature of the present year will be, for the first time ever, more than 1°C above the pre-industrial level.

Throughout the coming fortnight, the international community will have to agree upon the ambition of reduced output, associated with the choice of economic controls that must be adopted in order to achieve the reduction.

Nothing can arise solely on the grounds of fear and hopelessness. We need to believe in the possibility of social and cultural innovation.

After the massacres of November 13, the French capital acquired world-wide compassion. Today, Paris is about to symbolize the target of immense hope for the future. Our children and our grandchildren will inherit, for years to come, the outcome of COP21.

[This blog post was inspired largely by today’s editorial of Le Monde.]

Start of the COP21 conference in Paris

The big climate conference COP21 will be opening tomorrow in Paris, and our French minister of foreign affairs Laurent Fabius will be playing the role of conference president.

The major goal of the conference attendees will consist of agreeing upon a common goal to reduce the global heating of our planet to less than a degree and a half (Centigrade) before the end of our 21st century.

To remain optimist, we might insist upon the fact that the conference of 195 nations is in fact about to take place really… which is already a giant success. But the big problem will consist of getting these 195 nations to reach a common agreement to prevent increased global warming.

Unfortunately, if the world’s nations don’t get their act together, there’s no plan B. To do so, they’ve got until the end of the conference on 11 December.

It was the UN secretary Ban Ki-moon who once said: “We’ve got no plan B for the simple reason that we’ve got no planet B."

Three quarters of a century old

I'm recovering slowly but surely from a nasty fall, and attempting to master details of writing and blogging that had disappeared totally from my mind.

Tomorrow is my 75th birthday. It's a nice opportunity to attempt to open up Antipodes after this long delay.

An Australian seeks refuge in France

Julian Assange has just written an open letter to French president François Hollande asking to be received in France. Click here to access the French-language version of that letter.

As a French-naturalized Australian-born citizen, I would be immensely happy if the French president were to respond positively to this request for asylum. I’ve always been convinced that Assange is an exceptional and exemplary case of a citizen of the world using his state-of-the-art Internet knowledge, political awareness and imagination in a constant combat, often of a spectacular nature, for the betterment of humanity.

French kids can’t really cope with English

There’s an uproar in France today among baccalauréat students because their English exam expected them to discuss the ways in which a certain fictitious personage managed to cope with the horrors of the bombardment of his village. Apparently hordes of students had simply never encountered the verb “to cope”, and they’re now trying to suggest that this is some kind of exotic or antiquated verb. That’s to say, they’re attempting vainly to drown their ignorance in ridicule.

The funniest thing of all is that “cope” is a variant of the French noun “coup” (a blow dealt to an opponent). So, coping with an obstacle means that you’ve managed to deal it a blow.

I reckon that, back in my native Australia, I must have been about five years old when I mastered the verb “to cope”. That’s what our life Down Under was all about: coping with adversity.

I’m convinced that the main reason why the French run into so many problems in trying to master English is that they find it hard to liberate themselves from the powerful attraction of their own native language. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that French readers, running into the verb “cope”, imagine vaguely that it might mean “écoper” (to cop punishment). Consequently, the students were confused by the possibility that they might be expected to talk about the ways in which the fictitious personage copped punishment from the horrors of the bombardment of his village. Or maybe this fellow was intent upon punishing the forces behind the bombardment. Or whatever…

In the domain of foreign languages, the French can be terribly stubborn. For years, I’ve been trying spasmodically to point out that a sad individual who has a constantly negative relationship with the problems of existence should not be designated as a “looser”, because the verb “to lose” and the adjective “loose” have strictly nothing in common. But French people persist in making this error.

These days, I’ve come to sense the kind of English traps that French people fall into. For example, they’re almost incapable of understanding the elementary adverb “solely” in a simple sentence such as “It’s solely a question of taste”. In spite of their adverb “seulement”, they don’t seem to grasp the simple fact that “solely” is a blend of “only” and “uniquely”.

Once, when I worked as a technical writer with a major French software company, their technical genius tried to convince me that standard English is simply a convenient second-class language, useful solely as a communication tool, which doesn’t deserve to be taken too seriously. To Hell with Shakespeare and all the rest! I told my colleague [now a senior Internet administrator] that I didn’t agree. He smiled, as only a smug English-speaking Frenchman might smile.

Cars with a difference

This is a new Renault Kangoo: the same brand-name as mine, with a similar external appearance.

But it’s no ordinary automobile. Judge from the fuel station where this vehicle fills up.

In fact, it’s an ordinary electric version of the Kangoo ZE that has been enhanced by the insertion of a hydrogen fuel cell, located in small compartment behind the front seats. This unit, referred to as a range extender, can be seen in the following photo of one of a fleet of 50 such enhanced Kangoos.

The general idea is that the range extender burns compressed hydrogen, producing electrical energy that is either consumed directly in moving the vehicle or used to recharge the vehicle’s battery.

I happen to be living in the middle of the geographical zone where the two major partners in this fascinating technological adventure have their headquarters. The hydrogen fuel cell has been created by a company named Symbio FCell in Grenoble, founded by Fabio Ferrari, seen in the above photo. [Click here to visit their website] The hydrogen consumed by the cell is produced by the French McPhy company, located in the tiny village of La Motte-Fanjas in the Drôme department, and directed by Pascal Mauberger. I drive past their neat and tidy little production plant every time I go to Valence. [Click here to visit their website.]

It’s interesting to note that these two high-tech businessmen—Ferrari and Mauberger—were recently invited along to the Elysée Palace for a luncheon with François Hollande in the context of planning for the forthcoming COP 21 conference in Paris.

Finally, another prestigious French company, Air Liquide, is playing a downstream role in this fabulous project as the creator of hydrogen refueling stations such as the one seen in the first two photos, located at Sassenage, between Grenoble and the Vercors mountain range.

Readers might be wondering why several major partners in this Renault Kangoo ZE-H2 adventure happen to be located, as I’ve pointed out, in my corner of the Dauphiné region. One significant explanation is the existence, on the outskirts of Grenoble, of a laboratory of the CNRS [Centre national de la recherche scientifique, France’s national science-research organization] that bears the name of Louis Néel [1904-2000], who was awarded a Nobel Prize for Physics in 1970 (along with the Swedish astrophysicist Hannes Alfvén). The fundamental research work that is now being exploited by McPhy, concerning the storage of hydrogen in the solid form of magnesium hydride, originated in the laboratory of Daniel Fruchart at the Institut Néel. McPhy was also able to take advantage of the industrial expertise of Michel Jehan, in charge of a company at Romans, MCP Technologies, that had become a specialist in the processing of magnesium. So, the “green hydrogen” of McPhy (or is it rather blue?) provides an exemplary illustration of synergy between basic research and high-tech industrial partners.

The day that England thrashed France

In France, it's a fact, rightly or wrongly, that few folk celebrate the Battle of Waterloo, which took place exactly two centuries ago, on 18 June 1815.

My wife and I used to drive to Waterloo often when we were living in Brussels, but it’s an uninteresting place. Funnily enough, I’ve always been intrigued by the fact that the illustrious Napoléon Bonaparte was defeated by a dull Englishman, Wellington, neither in France nor in England… but on the outskirts of the Belgian capital. That has always appeared to me as what the French call une histoire belge (a Belgian tale, which might be translated as a shaggy dog story).

Maybe we should have made an effort for the second centenary of this terrible defeat… but it’s not easy to rouse enthusiasm for this affair. Besides, France has always had an excellent reason for celebrating a quite different event: the BBC radio speech of Charles de Gaulle on June 18, 1940.

Be that as it may, the French newspaper Le Monde has just reacted to this anniversary by the publication of a moving English-language editorial addressed to our British neighbors:

http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2015/06/18/britain-beware-brexit-could-be-your-waterloo_4657095_3232.html

Paris wall

For centuries, an old-fashioned bank in Paris, the Crédit municipal, has enabled ordinary citizens to deposit valuable stuff such as jewelry and take out low-interest cash loans. Later, if and when clients get back onto their feet financially, they can return to the institution and buy back their deposited goods. After a certain time, if the stuff is not bought back, then the institution, in the time-honored traditions of pawnbrokers, auctions it off and makes a nice profit. So, everybody is happy… except maybe the ghosts of ancestors who see their precious family legacies being dilapidated by cash-strapped descendants.

Click to enlarge

This kind of money-lending institution, referred to in Italian as a Monte de Pietà (Mount of piety), was invented in the 15th century by an Italian monk as a scheme designed to end the monopoly of usurers of the kind that would be stigmatized, a century later, by Shakespeare’s notoriously anti-Semitic portrait of Shylock.

The Italian expression has in fact been misunderstood. Monte de Pietà has nothing to do with mounts. It refers rather to an amount of cash that is offered, allegedly through piety, to people in need.

Since the eve of the French Revolution, the Parisian Mont de pieté has been located in the Marais quarter. Its ancient entrance still exists in the Rue des Blancs-Manteaux.

Meanwhile, the main entrance is located in the Rue des Francs-Bourgeois: the eastern continuation of the Rue Rambuteau, where I lived for many years.

I’ve walked past that door almost daily, for years. Well, I’ve just learnt that this ancient Parisian financial institution is about to be closed down, simply because (like many other old-fashioned social entities) it can’t adjust itself to the digital era. This is weird in a way, because it shouldn’t be too hard to invent an Internet business model for pawnbroking…

I come now to the subject of this blog post: the existence of an ancient wall around Paris. referred to in French as the Enceinte de Philippe Auguste [Wall of Philip II Augustus]. This protective wall around the French capital was erected as a reaction against threats from the nasty English monarch, my ancestor King John, who would be forced at sword-point to sign the Magna Carta on 15 June 1215. Here’s a plan of the wall dating from 1223:

Click to enlarge

Its builder was the king of France, Philip II, commonly referred to in French as Philippe Auguste, primarily because he was born in August, and also because this nickname likened the monarch to a wise ruler of ancient Rome. Be that as it may, the French king appears to have been a nicer sort of a fellow than the abominable English monarch on the other side of the Channel.

Parenthetical comments: From a pragmatic viewpoint, the fact that King John was my 22-times-great-grandfather means little, if anything at all. His genetic contribution is diluted homeopathically today in a chromosomal soup stewed up from the gametes (reproductive cells) of countless other male and female ancestors. He was no more than a single member of the vast cohort of my medieval ancestors, whose number cannot even be vaguely estimated. Realizing that he’s one of my ancestors, I’ve nevertheless made an effort to know more about the man. Sadly, it’s almost impossible to find anything whatsoever of a noble nature in his profile. Consequently, it’s not surprising that no other English king has decided to call himself John.

Let’s get back to the Paris wall. Inside the domain of the Paris pawnbroking institution that is about to become extinct, there’s a fine fragment of the wall of Philippe Auguste.

Observing this tower, I was always impressed by the lovely pink-brick structure at the top… but what counts, in fact, is the relatively dull stone structure at the base, which is a perfectly intact fragment of the wall of Philippe Auguste.

Further to the west, we enconter the address of 16 rue Rambuteau, where Christine and I lived with our children Emmanuelle and François for many years. At the time, we didn’t think much about the fact that our apartment was situated upon the wall of Philippe Auguste. People had told us that this was the case, but this didn’t mean much in the context of our daily existence. In my personal photographic archives, I have countless images of our children on the balcony overlooking the nearby Hôtel de Saint Aignan, seen here:

Today, the elegantly-restored edifice has become (thanks to Jacques Chirac) the Museum of Jewish Art and History.

The balcony of our apartment was located in the upper left-hand corner of the above photo, where there seems to be a video camera. In the middle of the courtyard, there’s a huge statue of the extraordinary man who symbolized French anti-Semitism: Alfred Dreyfus. On the left of the courtyard, directly below our apartment, a stone façade with fake windows has been erected, solely for esthetic reasons, against the ancient wall of Philippe Auguste.

I often wonder what the ghost of the Colonel Dreyfus might think to be depicted here at a spot that I know so well, in the heart of Paris, where he looks out upon a panoramic façade of which the left-hand third, built against the wall of Philippe Auguste, is both archaic and totally false.

In any case, and above all, I'm overcome by a strange and wonderful feeling of warmth and pride every time I reflect upon the fact that our tiny Skyvington-Mafart family came into being here in the ancient inner heart of the fabulous City of Light. At the time, I didn't think that this might be any kind of achievement (maybe Christine did). But today, I realize that Emmanuelle and François grew up on the top of a legendary wall, in a fabulous Old World place that might even be thought of (by people like me, in any case) as the cultural centre of western civilization.

My ancestor King John

Elias Ashmole's suggestion that my Latton ancestors descended from the illustrious Estouteville family was published in 1719, with superficial documentary evidence. In They Sought the Last of Lands, I explored the possible origins of this alleged Estouteville/Latton link, and concluded that it probably came about during the 12th century, in the context of Latton Priory in Essex, through the marriage of Robert de Stuteville with Sibyl de Valognes.

Click to enlarge

Today, 15 June 2015, is the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta by our ancestor King John.

Our descent from this monarch passes through one of his illegitimate sons, Richard Chilham.

Yesterday, I discovered, quite by chance, that Richard’s maternal family, whose French surname was de Warenne, provides us with a link to the original French line of the Estoutevilles. It’s a trivial link between two sisters and their respective husbands, but this information nevertheless adds weight to the Estouteville/Latton hypothesis presented in my book. The starting point of this newly-discovered link is a famous personage, Geoffrey Plantagenêt, Count of Anjou [1113-1151], who reposes peacefully (except for the last 24 hours) in the capital of the ancient French province of Maine, Le Mans.

Geoffrey got his “Plantagenêt” nickname through his habit of decorating his hat with a sprig of the yellow broom shrub [genêt in French].

Geoffrey went down in history as the father of Henry II of England, founder of the Plantagenet dynasty. Not surprisingly, Geoffrey had several illegitimate children. His son Hamelin (nothing to do with the German town of the Pied Piper), of an unidentified mother, was invited by his half-brother King Henry to marry an extremely wealthy English widow, Isabel de Warenne, 4th Countess of Surrey. Young Hamelin was delighted to accept this invitation, even to the extent of adopting the lady’s Warenne name. Consequently, in a flash, the French bastard child became Hamelin de Warenne, Earl of Surrey. 

The couple had several daughters, one of whom was the above-mentioned Suzanne de Warenne, who jumped into the royal bed of her cousin King John and gave birth to my ancestor Richard Chilham. And I have just discovered that, in 1190, her sister Maud (Matilda) de Warenne [1166-1212] married Henri d’Estouteville [1170-1232], lord of Valmont.

This Estouteville/Warenne marriage plays no direct role in my Latton ancestry. That’s to say, the English marriage between Robert de Stuteville and Sibyl de Valognes remains the only explanation I can find for an alleged Estouteville/Latton link. But the Estouteville/Warenne marriage indicates that the French Estouteville family had personal links with ancestors of the Wadham, Stourton and Berkeley families, described in my book. Incidentally, in the context of Hamelin de Warenne, we come upon references to the feudal town of Ambrières in the Mayenne department (mentioned in my book), which played a role in early French Estouteville history.