Saturday, June 9, 2012

VERSAILLES


Al boasts, “I went around the World three times and never went west of El Paso.”

He meant that while in the Merchants Marine during World War II, he sailed from the east and west coasts but never crossed the U.S. by land.  I don’t know how he traveled from Dallas to either coast.  By magic?  In any case, in his around-the-World travels, Al stopped in ports to unload ships.  He never saw anything of the places he “visited”.   In a way he never left Texas; he came home just as prejudiced and ignorant as when he left. 

My first goal in traveling was enjoyment.  But I also learned a great deal wherever I went.  Some things were just as I expected.  More often I was surprised, at times by trivial events, which gave me a whole new perspective on places and people I had read about.

On that trip with David, I hoped to discover that Romantic Paris that I saw in movies, read about in novels, and dreamed about since I was a teenager.  I knew seeing the city with a 13-year-old would be different from going there with a lover.  But what did I expect?  I was not sure.  Perhaps that is why, after landing in Frankfurt, I did not head straight for Paris but spent days wandering around Germany and Austria. 

When we finally drove into Paris, it was late at night.  The City of Lights was dark, and I could not find a room for David and me.  So we ended up leaving the city and going to Versailles. 

On Sunday morning David and I went to see the palace.  I bought tickets for the public rooms.  The Treaty of Versailles, ending World War I, was signed in the Hall of Mirrors.  I had seen photos of the long room so many times that, as Yogi Berra said, “It was deja vu all over again.”

All the rooms were enormous.  In those royal bedrooms the life of a king was a bummer.  First of all, no privacy.  Marie Antoinette was forced to give birth in a room full of people, men as well as women.  In the king’s bedroom a low marble wall kept lesser nobility from crowding around the royal bed.  Privileged nobles were permitted to hand the king his nightshirt or hold the chamber pot while he peed. 

When I returned to France in 1983, I bought a ticket to see the “private apartments” at Versailles.  Beside that big bed in the king’s official bed chamber was a secret panel in the wall.  As soon as the courtiers had tucked him in and left, Louis XV would hop out of bed, open his secret panel, and go up a little winding staircase to a series of small, intimate rooms where his mistress waited.

On later trips I traipsed through the vast rooms in many royal palaces.  All over Europe I discovered that no one ever “lived” in those enormous halls.  Every king and prince had a little hideaway, where he could relax.  Figuratively, take off his shoes and put his feet up on the ottoman.  (Why do America’s nouveau rich want these McMansions?  Any house over 3,000 square feet is too big to be a comfortable home.) 

Kings needed to escape being royal.  At the time I did not question why I needed to leave my husband in Chicago and run away to Paris with a 13-year-old.  I learned a lot in my travels, but I am a slow learner.    

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