Juliette Rigondet: Un village pour aliénés tranquilles (2019)

Juliette Rigondet's Un village pour aliénés tranquilles is very fully researched, and in fact is a remarkable book about a kind of experiment which continues to this day. In late nineteenth-century Paris psychiatric hospitals (or asiles (asylums, as was the term of the day)) were overflowing: left to institutionalisation, the inmates weren't being 'cured' at all. Hospitalisation was adversely affecting the very reason why they were hospitalised in the first instance. In 1868 writer Hector Malot drew attention to this problem in his novel Le Beau-frère, in which a man, eager to gain possession of his brother-in-law's money, has his wife send her brother to a psychiatric hospital: the unfortunate man was perfectly sane, although on being moved to the hospital he soon goes mad – obviously in part a pre-echo of Samuel Fuller's film Shock Corridor (1963). The most saddening thing perhaps is not merely that psychiatric hospitals 'caused' madness, but that rapacious relatives did sometimes resort to such barbarous practices.
Auguste Marie was a psychiatrist who had investigated experiments with psychiatric patients in Scotland, and was impressed by what he saw. As a result, in 1892 a number of patients were sent away from Paris hospitals to Dun-sur-Auron: this meant taking the train to Bourges and then the 'Tacot' to the small town, where the patients – almost all females and mainly over the age of fifty, although there were a number of younger women – would be welcomed in host families which would be paid to board them.
The title of the book, Un village pour aliénés tranquilles, relates to the kind of person needed in the host family: a quiet, non-violent individual who would be of no risk to the local community. And obviously if the women were over fifty there would be little risk of complications, such as unwanted pregnancies. Nursing staff with an infirmary in the town ensured that the patients received professional care, and today the Centre hospitalier George-Sand, with its park, is a substantial landmark on the edge of the town. The fact that the 'experiment' still exists is testimony to its success, and in one of the early stages as many as 1000 patients existed side by side with the non-patient population of 4000. Also, another smaller similar community was established in Ainay-le-Château (Allier) for men, and a further one in Lurcy-Lévis (also in Allier), initially for older patients.
Rigondet's book is a story culled from medical and historical records, and also, we learn from the final paragraph, also a part of the author's personal family history, as one of the patients she has been writing about is her aunt, her mother's sister using one of her forenames which she never used, in order to retain her anonymity.
The book investigates the situation from many angles: the patient's adaptation to the new home rather than hospital environment, and the host family's adaptation to a stranger (or perhaps two) in the household; the reaction of the community as a whole to strangers in its midst; patient suicides (very few); cases of patients being raped; sexual relationships and pregnancies (which tended to be hushed until later years); patients working for the host parents and in the hospital buildings; etc.
This is a fascinating book about a little-known aspect of French society.

Marguerite Audoux, Sancoins, Cher (18)

As this plaque says, Marquerite Audoux, author of Marie-Claire, was born in this area of Sancoins on 7 July 1863.

Suzanne Brucy, Sancoins, Cher (18)

Suzanne Brucy (1872-1903) was the daughter of a friend of Jean Baffier's. With Baffier's own grave and Hugues Lapaire's, these three form the most interesting graves in Sancoins cemetery.

Hugues Lapaire, Sancoins, Cher (18)

Poet, novelist and literary critic Hugues Lapaire (1869-1967) was born in Sancoins, where he died at the age of 97. Berry was his main inspiration, and he produced many works in both French and patois berrichon, although he also defended Nivernais and Bourbonnais traditions and values. He lost he father at the age of two, was brought up by his grandparents, and much lamented the dying of peasant society. It was in the lycée in Moulins that he met Alfred Crépin, director of Le Courrier de l'Allier, which led him to a taste in literature. Meeting Jean Baffier was even more decisive to his future, and later he met Achille Millien and contributed on several occasions to the Revue du Nivernais. Moving to Paris, he made his presence known as a patois poet. His early novels Le Courandier (1904), and L’Epervier (1906) were regional, along with a number of other works. He also published many books on the history of the region. A square in Sancoins is dedicated to him, with a bust, and he is buried in Sancoins cemetery. Jean Baffier sculpted La Prieuse in an arched niche above his grave, although a copy of it was stolen in 2011.

Jean Baffier, Sancoins, Cher (18)

Jean Baffier was a sculptor and writer born in Berry (Neuvy-le-Barrois, Cher) in 1851 and died in Paris in 1920. He had a kind of epiphany on working on the restoration a Nevers cathedral and took lessons in sculpture in Paris, making a name in bronze figures and pewter vases, etc. He was also a staunch regionalist interested in the traditional music and popular tales of Berry. On the negative side, he had reactionary, anti-Semitic opinions which he expressed in local papers such as Journal du Cher and Dépêche du Berry. A square with a bust representing him is in Sancoins, where he is buried.

Gaspard Thaumas de La Thaumassière in Bourges, Cher (18)

Gaspard Thaumas de La Thaumassière (1631-1702) was born in Sancerre and died in Bourges. He wrote a number of works about France's ancient laws, but he was also a local historian and produced a series of volumes about the history of Berry.

The Writing on the Wall in Bourges, Cher (18)

Sometimes the only way to protest and for the maximum number of people to understand your message is to write it on the wall. I translate this in the same breathless, completely unpunctuated way in which it is written: 'i remember the time when i was little we lived in a block of flats that no longer exists today [sic] with the progressive destruction and reconstruction of the town its as if a part of our memories has been torn from us'.

'Les Fesses de la cathédrale' in Bourges, Cher (18)

It's like something you'd see in a book called, say, 'Cher insolite', in fact it probably makes some people think there's been some Photoshopping going on, but no, there it is on the south face of Bourges cathedral: an arse with prominently dangling scrotum. No one knows anything about it, if is was discovered soon after the event, or not. But why is it there? Was the worker bored? Or more likely, is this how he showed his hatred for receiving very little pay? Needless to say, for those who know it's there, it's a huge attraction!

Marcel Bascoulard in Bourges, Cher (18)

I've written about Marcel Bascoulard (1913-78) before, after I read the huge beau livre about him, telling of how his mother shot his tyrannical father dead from the back, of how Bascoulard (in his late teens at the time) went on to lead the existence of a down-and-out. He was, though, a much loved figure in Bourges, noted for riding an elongated tricycle, wearing women's clothing, having a number of cats, but most of all of course for his artwork. He did few abstract paintings, but most of his art was meticulously sketched works of Bourges cathedral, or of the town's old streets. It was a great shock to the town to  learn that he was strangled by an unstable man in his twenties in a wreck of a van someone had given Bascoulard, and in which he lived on wasteland. But he received the posthumous honour of having a square named after him, with in the centre a bust of him by the sculptor André Bézard (1921-98): a tall stone with a representation of the man in a bronze bust.

He also received a decent grave, although I suspect that not many people have seen where Marcel Bascoulard is buried: online it's possible to find the exact location of it, although none of the cemetery divisions is marked, and if you visit (as we did) when the gardien is having his lunchtime break, the chances of finding him are remote. However, I spoke to a man watering the graves and he knew exactly where Bascoulard's is: there are now two pot cats on it.

Alain-Fournier in La Chapelle-d'Aiguillon, Cher (18)

The small museum in La Chapelle-d'Aiguillon, Cher, is not where Alain-Fournier was born. Jacques Rivière (1886–1935) was a director of La Nouvelle Revue française from 1919 until his death, and also a friend of Alain-Fournier, with whom he exchanged many letters and became his brother-in-law.

Alain-Fournier in Épineuil-le-Fleuriel, Cher (18)

Alain-Fournier (1886–1914) was born Henri-Alban Fournier at La Chapelle-d'Aiguillon (Cher), and is of course best known as the creator of his only novel Le Grand Meaunes, which for many years, as a frequently set school text book, remains in many people's memories and hearts. Moved to the school in Épinay-le-Fleuriel in 1891, Fournier's teacher father taught him here between 1891 and 1898, and as the above plaque states, the character 'Le Grand Meaunes' was born here. The school was also the family home.

A broad view of the front elevation, with the well in the foreground.

The school was an important building in local villages, and here (as elsewhere) part of it doubled as the Mairie, or town hall.

Albanie Fournier, Henri's mother, taught the infants' section (with some initial controversy).

The junior class, where Henri's father taught pupils aged from nine to thirteen.

The kitchen at the foot of the staircase.

The family dining room.

The red drawing room, to which Albanie would often retire.

The bedroom where Henri's parents slept.

The attic, in effect the place where Le Grand Meaunes was created.

The rear elevation, which looks out onto a large lawn.

Er, I'll just use the polite expression 'toilettes à la turque'.

Claude Seignolle in Sainte-Montaine, Cher (18)

On the wall of the Mairie, along with a plaque of Marguerite Audoux (see below), is a plaque dedicated to another literary figure who had lived in Sainte-Montaine – Claude Seignolle (1917–2018), who lived there from 1945 to 1959, and who found the Sologne area a rich source for gleaning many of his folkloric tales. Probably his most famous novel is the fantasy La Malvenue (1952), which went through many editions and is set in the Sologne. The UCPS (Union pour la Culture Populaire en Sologne) erected this plaque in 2006.

Marguerite Audoux, Sainte-Montaine, Cher (18)

Marguerite Audoux (née Donquichote) was a working-class novelist who was born in 1863 in Sancoins (Cher) and died in Saint-Raphaël (Var) in 1937. She and her sister Madeleine were in effect orphaned when Marquerite was three, and they were both sent to the Hôpital général de Bourges orphanage, where they spent several years. She was later sent to a farm where she worked as a shepherd in Sainte-Montaine, near Aubigny-sur-Nère. She later moved to Paris, where she became a seamstress. She went on to become the friend of various novelists, and her own autobiogaphical novel Marie-Claire (1910) was a huge success, winning the Prix Femina. A number of the furnishings, including her bed, in the Musée Marguerite Audoux (at the back of the Mairie, the former school) in Sainte-Montaine were her own.

Boîte à Lire, Épineuil-le-Fleuriel, Cher (18)

This one is called a Cabane à livres, which has a sentence not from Alain-Fournier but from Jules Renard: 'Chacune de nos lectures laisse une graine qui germe' ('Every one of our readings leaves a seed which greminates.') Um. I bagged Pierre Lemaitre's Goncourt-winning Au revoir, là-haut, Claudie Gallay's Les Déferlantes, and, er, Joël Dicker's La Verité sur l'affaire Harry Québert. I say 'er' about Dicker's book as I have my doubts: Bernard Pivot appears to have given it a great review (but what has it left out that Pivot said?), but Yann Moix (for what his opinion is worth) said on ONPC that Dicker's follow-up reads like a YA book. I shall find out what I think in the near future.

Boîtes à lire:
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Boîte à Lire, Dicy, Nièvre
Boîte à lire, Maisons-Laffitte, Yvelines
Boîte à lire, Sorigny, Indre-et-Loire
Boîte à Lire, Jonzac, Charente-Maritime
Boîte à lire, La Roque-d'Anthéron, Bouches-du-Rhône
Boîte à Lire, Épineuil-le-Fleuriel, Cher
Boîte à lire, Marseille, Bouches-du-Rhône
Boîte à lire, East Markham, UK
Boîte à lire, La Folie Couvrechef, Caen, Calvados
Boîte à lire, Bergues, Nord
Boîte à lire, Le Havre, Seine-Maritime
Boîte à lire, Villerville, Calvados
Boîte à lire, Saint-Servan, Saint-Malo, Ille-et-Vilaine
Boîte à lire in Caen, Calvados
Boîte à Lire, Noyant d'Allier, Allier
Boîte à lire, Dampierre-en-Burly, Loiret
Boîte à lire, Illiers-Combray, Eure-et-Loir
Boîte à lire, Chartres, Eure-et-Loir
Boîte à lire, Saint-Romain-au-Mont-d'Or, Rhône

Marcel Bascoulard (artwork); Patrick Martinat (text): Bascoulard: Dessinateur Virtuose, clochard magnifique, femme inventée (2014)

Bascoulard is an enormous book in more ways than one: this hardback (49 euros and well worth it) won't fit onto the average bookshelf with the spine legible, it probably weighs about two kilos, and the number of pages is about three hundred. Many would describe this as a coffee table book (or beau livre in French), but that expression just suggests something pretty to look at, with little to read, and invariably of a very well-known subject.

Certainly the text in this book (by Patrick Martinat) is very soon read, and there are a great number of photos in it of the artist Marcel Bascoulard (1913–78) and his work, but from there it parts company from the regular coffee book, in fact it subverts the coffee table book: outside central France (the Bourges (and Sologne) areas to be specific), how many people are aware of Marcel Bascoulard, who has his own square with his bust in Bourges, as well as a street named after him in Saint-Florent-sur-Cher, where he spent his youth?

Shortly after his mother Marguerite, when her elder son Marcel was nineteen, shot her violent husband dead in the back and was institutionalised, he moved to Bourges and began painting. He didn't fit in with society, and I won't even bother involving psychological analysis, which he would (quite rightly, I'm sure) have detested. Marcel grew away from conventional society, being unconcerned with the trapping of success, unconcerned with money or fame to such an extent that he wasn't interested in a roof over his head with running water and electricity, and traded his paintings for food and suchlike to feed his cats and dogs as well as himself. His mother had been the main love of his life, and no one else.

And yet Bascoulard was a gifted painter, first a realist depicting in minute detail the city of Bourges (particularly the cathedral), including the few other places he visited, although they were very few and probably the furthest he ever ventured was Paris. He later introduced odd colours to his townscapes, even painted abstract pictures, but they weren't welcomed, although he didn't care, he wasn't interested in painting to order, in being commissioned, he preferred his outsider, tramp status, although he didn't see himself as a tramp: after all, how many tramps dress in female clothing, for example, or ride tricycles that they've designed themselves? OK, many may live on wasteland, but what of it?

Marcel Bascoulard saw his death coming in the form of the twenty-three-year-old social reject Jean-Claude Simion, but no one else in Bourges did, otherwise they'd have protected him. Such a waste.

Bascoulard is a magnificent book, one of the few which you must have in your possession even if you don't speak French, as it so evidently speaks for the outsiders, the outcasts who have so much to tell us. Only Bascoulard wasn't an outcast, he was loved in spite of the dirt he lived in, in spite of (even because of) his anarchism, and his death was a great blow to Bourges: after all, how many other people have played such a role in putting the town on the French map?

My criticism is that Patrick Martinat glibly dismisses Marcel Bascoulard's writing, quotes from it very briefly, and gives it virtually no space. Fascinating as photos of Bascoulard are, as his painting and sketches are, as his precise maps are, many photos here would have lost nothing by their exclusion, although so much could have been gained by the inclusion of Bascoulard's writings, no matter what Martinat think of them: he is no expert in literature, and should not pretend to be one. It would have been very interesting, for instance, to give just one example, to have read 'Maternelle réhabilitation' in full.