Boîte à lire in Maisons-Laffitte, Yvelines (78)

This boîte à lire in Maisons-Laffitte, here called a Bibliobox, was made from a former telephone box in Remagen, Maisons-Laffitte's twined town in Germany. The project was carried out by a joint effort between the twinned towns, Les Amis de Remagen and the Lycée des Métiers Jules Verne in Sartrouville, a town across the river from Maisons-Laffitte. Pupils at the lycée conceived the exterior with images from Maisons-Laffitte and Remagen such as a horse and the plan of the park in the former, and the bridge towers and Liebeskraft ('The Srength of Love') sculpture by Lajos Barta in front of the Peace Museum in the latter. The box was opened in March 2017, although a Bücherbox had been in place several months earlier in Remagen.

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

Jerzy Giedroyc in Maisons-Laffitte, Yvelines (78)

'Jerzy GIEDROYC

1906–2000

Fondateur de « Kultura »

revue politique polonaise –

et de l'Institut Littéraire

a vécu et travaillé

dans cette maison'

Kultura was a Polish and world cultural magazine designed as an instrument against communist totalitarianism. Many important writers of the twentieth century contributed to it, such as Albert Camus, Simone Weil, George Orwell, Witold Gombrowicz, T. S. Eliot, Emil Cioran and Czesław Miłosz.

Roger Martin du Gard in Maisons-Laffitte, Yvelines (78)

Roger Martin du Gard (1881–1958), who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1937, lived in Maisons-Laffitte from 1890 to 1895. He based the house above, in the place Wagram, on the patriarch Oliver Thibault's summer house in Les Thibault.

Arthur Koestler in Maisons-Laffitte, Yvelines (78)

2 place de Wagram, Maisons-Laffitte.

'Arthur

KOESTLER

1905–1983

Écrivain engagé

a sejourné en 1934

dans cette maison.'

'La Villa Voltaire', as it was then called, was built in 1838 by Saint Georges Catherine Molesworth. In the 1930s it became a children's garden nicknamed 'La Pouponnière' ('The Crèche' | 'The Nursery'), which Koestler organised for two months. He welcomed children whose parents were Jews or communists pursued by the Nazis. Koestler also wrote his first novel here, although it was never published.

Jean Cocteau in Maisons-Laffitte, Yvelines, France

The life of Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) was celebrated last year on the fiftieth anniversary of his death in his birthplace in Maisons-Laffitte, Yvelines. These information banners went around the town hall.

 

Cocteau's childhood home and place of birth is in the background here, while in the foreground is his birth certificate, giving the département as it was at the time – Seine-et-Oise – and his father Georges Alfred (47 years old, without profession) and mother Eugénie Junia Émilie (32 year old, without profession).

Cocteau in Maisons-Laffitte in about 1908.

 

Cocteau, his elder sister Marthe, mother Eugénie (née Lecomte), and a male and female cousin from the Lecomte family about 1908.

 

 Marthe Cocteau.

Eugénie Cocteau in the salon about 1910.

 

Emilie Lecomte, Cocteau's maternal grandmother, by Patrois in 1847.

 

Paul, Cocteau's elder brother, on a tricycle in about 1885.

 

 The transport in Maisons-Laffitte in 1909 or 1910.

A quotation from Cocteau, saying he grew up in a place where horse racing and cycling reigned supreme and where the Dreyfus affair divided the bourgeois world.

Pierre Giffard: Cimetière de Maisons-Laffitte #2

'PIERRE LOUIS GIFFARD
1853 – 1922
HOMME DE LETTRES
OFFICIER D LA LEGION D'HONNEUR
VULGARISATEUR DU TÉLÉPHONE EN 1877
                                           DU PHONOGRAPHE EN 1878
                                            DE LA BICYCLETTE EN 1890
                                            DE L'AUTOMOBILE EN 1894'

A rather unusual epitaph, 'Vulgarisateur' of course meaning 'Populariser'. Below is a link to an earlier post I made on Giffard, which also includes a little on Jean Cocteau's house in Maisons-Laffitte:

 

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Jean Cocteau and Pierre Giffard in Maisons-Laffitte

James Darmesteter: Cimetière de Maisons-Laffitte #1

 

'CI-GÎT
JAMES DARMESTETER
PROFESSEUR AU COLLÈGE DE FRANCE
NÉ À CHÂTEAU-SALINS
LE 28 MARS 1849
MORT À MAISONS-LAFFITTE
LE 19 OCTOBRE 1894

ET SA FEMME
MARY DARMESTETER'

James Darmesteter is noted for his work on the Avesta, the holy book of Zoroastrianism, which he translated into English with L. H. Mills (1883–87); he also wrote a three-volume translation of the book in French (1892–93).

 

His other published books include works on Persian poetry and mythology, popular Afghan songs, and Jewish history.

Jean Cocteau and Pierre Giffard in Maisons-Laffitte, Yvelines, France: Literary Île-de-France #46

As well as Jules Vallès, Jean Cocteau and Pierre Giffard have plaques marking their former residence in Maisons-Laffite. (As does Arthur Koestler, although the tourist bureau could only direct me to Cocteau's place: there's a point where tourism of the literary kind just becomes too obscure for the tourist industry, and that point is very soon reached.)

So here we have Cocteau's birthplace.

'Ici est né

le 5 juillet 1889

JEAN COCTEAU

Prince des Poètes'

Also in the town is Pierre Giffard's former house.

This has two plaques, and the weatherbeaten one (which bears two date discrepancies, one of them saying that he lived here a year after his death) provides additional information that he founded the paper Le Vélo and was the godfather of the Petite Reine.

The later plaque tells us that this place was known as 'The Grotto', which this other weatherbeaten photo shows.

Jules Vallès in Maisons-Laffitte, Yvelines (38), France: Literary Île-de-France #19

Jules Vallès (1832—85), a pseudonym of Jules Louis Joseph Vallez, was born in Puy-en-Velay (Haute-Loire). He was of the extreme left and created the paper Le Cri du peuple, which published eighty-three issues between 22 February and 23 May 1871. He was elected to the Commune de Paris 26 March and condemned to death in 1972. He went into exile in London between 1873 and 1880.

His most well known works of fiction are perhaps the autobiographical novels concerning the life of the main character whom he called Jacques Vingtras: L'Enfant (1879), Le Bachelier (1881), and L'Insurgé (1886).

'Jules VALLÈS

Ércrivain — Journaliste

1832 — 1885

séjourna en 1832

dans cette maison'

'Jules VALLÈS

Writer — Journalist

1832 — 1885

stayed in this house

in 1832'