Of Cabbages and Queens

After a few days at the hotel in the Rue de Gay-Lusac, I began to think of the Paris Left Bank as “our neighborhood.”  Some days David and I never went further than a few blocks from our hotel. 

I had always thought of the Left Bank as haunted by the ghosts of Hemingway and Fitzgerald and those other ex-pat Americans who lived here in the 1920's and met Picasso and Matisse at the apartment of Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas.  Instead, I found myself evoking other ghosts. 

David and I spent an afternoon in the Luxembourg Gardens with its grassy lawns and flower beds, Parisians (very much alive) relaxing in the sunshine amid marble statues of dead Frenchmen. 

I paused before a statue of a woman in period dress.  The label identified her as “Marie di Scotland” and I realized this was a memorial to Mary Queen of Scots, who grew up in France and expected to live her life here.  She became Queen of France, but when her young husband, the king, died, she was shipped back to Scotland, where she was totally inept in dealing with the unruly Scots.  Her own foolishness lead inexorably to her being beheaded in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. . 

Mary’s life is a lesson in the necessity of adapting to changing conditions.  Having grown up in the autocratic French court, she never understood how limited her power actually was. 

In recent years the World changed dramatically, and we must adjust to a global economy.  Contrary to what some idiots believe, no Chinese or Arabs are coming to chop off our heads, but some Americans have “lost their heads” figuratively, by failing to adapt and insisting we should persist in an “every man for himself” independent system. 

So much for thoughts while lolling in the park.

The park was an adjunct to the Luxembourg Palace, former home of French royalty..  That series of Rubens paintings extolling Marie di Medici, which I saw in the Louvre, were commissioned originally to decorate the Luxembourg Palace.  

Which brings me to talk about two other queens of France.  Marie was never as famous or powerful as her cousin, Catherine di Medici, but from what I have read, I think she was happier.

Catherine was a schemer who usually succeeded in controlling everything but fate.  She couldn’t control her husband, but she controlled her sons who succeeded him.  Also, she gave a hard time to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth I and Prussia’s Frederick the Great.  Her sons died, and she had to relinquish control to that wily son-in-law, France’s Henry IV.  Not a happy life.

Marie also was left a widow with a young son as king.  Rubens painted her as the ideal queen.  She happily sopped up the flattery and let others run king and country.  A silly woman?  Perhaps.  Not a good example for feminists.  But was it not better to be remembered as a happy fool, rather than a shrew and a witch?