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A Taste for Provence
By Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz The University of Chicago Press
Copyright © 2016 Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-32284-1
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Why had I come to Provence? As I sat in a hotel in Aix, my mind turned to a moment in the Dallas/Fort Worth airport a few years back. In making a connection on a westbound flight, I glimpsed a shop in the terminal. On my return flight a few days later, I knew exactly where I wanted to spend the minutes between planes. I sped to the distinctive storefront of mustard yellow and, in L'Occitane, bought the Verbena liquid hand soap that I had been hankering for.
And now I was in Provence, the place of the soap's supposed origin. But, I reasoned, there had to have been more than this subliminal prompt to impel me across the Atlantic into southern France. In the mid-1960s, when my husband and I took a long trip in France, we never went south of the Loire Valley. Now, in the second decade of the twentieth century, the hills of Provence were the first place that came into my mind as the two of us talked about where we wanted to travel. What made this particular part of the earth emerge as special and call me to it? Why Provence?
With this question I began to imagine a book that set out a history of how Provence emerged as a significant travel destination. As I set about research in books and articles on travel, my first steps were conventional ones, but then the story began to take an unexpected turn. I started to venture deeply into Americans' changing relationship with food. A Taste for Provence thus has a double meaning — yes, "taste" as aesthetic appreciation of the region's special qualities, as for example its light and air and landscape; but also "taste" in the literal sense as it pertains to food. The ability to enjoy Provençal cuisine became an essential element in the desire to go there.
No one has understood this better than Patricia Wells, an American journalist, food writer, and culinary teacher based in France who lives part of the year in Provence and writes about and offers classes in its cooking. In addition to her celebration of Provençal food, Wells provides another key to understanding the region's appeal — the association of Provence with special meanings. After she and her husband, Walter, bought and restored a house at the edge of Vaison-la-Romaine, northeast of Avignon, she wrote, "It is more than sunshine that draws us to Provence: We come because life here seems more real, less modern, more slowly paced, more personal, and more richly human than almost any other place we know on earth."
Wells was writing about the hills of Provence, not about its southern edge on the Riviera. The Côte d'Azur had long been easy to love. British seekers after the sun came to it as a destination as early as the eighteenth century, and other denizens of northern Europe followed soon after. Facing the sea and the sun, these travelers ignored the land reaching into the hills behind them. They were on the French Riviera. In the words of one British writer, "They never would have called it living in Provence."
It took much longer for the English-speaking world to discover the many positive aspects of the land stretching to the north. English guidebooks of an early era took the land above St. Tropez and Cannes seriously in only one way. Echoing the educational purposes of the Grand Tour, their intention was to instruct visitors about the important Roman ruins, principal religious sites, and the once papal city of Avignon. However, if the influential Murray's Handbook (1873) is an appropriate bellwether, linked to these landmarks was the wish that they be located somewhere other than in Provence. The guide tried to disabuse its readers of any romantic notions they may have harbored of "a region beautiful to behold, and charming to inhabit." With the exception of the "little paradise" near Cannes, it instructed, the region's "nature has altogether an arid character; — in summer a sky of copper, an atmosphere loaded with dust, the earth scorched rather than parched by the unmitigated rays of the sun, which overspread everything with a lurid glare. The hills rise above the surface in masses of bare rock, without any covering of soil, like the dry bones of a wasted skeleton." The Murray guide found the landscape of Provence to hold "a sombre, melancholy sternness" and characterized its people as often violent, loud, coarse, and rude, speaking a language unintelligible even to the French.
There were travel accounts that went against this grain. In the late eighteenth century, Thomas Jefferson stood in thrall before Provence's monuments and enjoyed its sun and wine. Almost a century later, Henry James explored the important Roman sites of that part of Provence close to the Rhône and reported his guarded appreciation. He was followed in the early twentieth century by other Anglo-American travelers appreciative of Provence's unique monuments and atmosphere. Lovers of art came to view and respect both its Roman and medieval ruins and its restored churches.
The Americans who began to flock to the Riviera in the 1920s in summer as well as winter typically ignored remnants of the past. Converging around Gerald and Sara Murphy, this well-publicized gathering of American writers and European and American artists and filmmakers — as well as the merely wealthy — typically placed themselves near the beaches. Some of the Americans tried out expatriation; others stayed only for a while for work or pleasure. The fame and seeming carelessness of this "lost generation" attracted others in imitation and made the Mediterranean coast an important destination for Americans and Europeans. But except to venture into the immediate hills for a quick view or a restaurant meal, Provence was essentially ignored.
Of course, because of its exceptional light and relatively low cost of living, the Provence that lay north of the sea had attracted a few Continental artists in the nineteenth century. Paul Cézanne, born and raised in Aix, chose to return there to paint its landscape and people. Vincent van Gogh took refuge in Arles and Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, and Paul Gauguin came to visit. In the early twentieth century, modernists followed in their wake. The work of painters drew appreciative tourists to the region, but on the whole these visitors came only for a quick look at the locations of artistic endeavor.
Today's Provence of desire is neither coastal nor a place of study or art appreciation. It is inland, and life there is domestic and leisured. In the American imagination of those, such as Patricia Wells, who came into adulthood in the second half of the twentieth century, Provence exists to draw travelers to dream of the bounty of weekly produce markets savored in farm or village houses in the sun. One ideal is to own a second house in those hills, especially a farmhouse looking like it came out of a Cézanne painting (plate 1). This is the Provençal mas best described as one of the "massive looking, walled in farmhouses ... made out of stone and mortar" typically "pale ... yellow, pink, off-white," and topped with tiled roofs. For most Americans, such a second home is out of reach, and the dream becomes the desire to go with close friends or family and rent one for a month or a week or two. Or, if time is of the essence, merely to have a restaurant meal and view quickly this earthly paradise. Provence as the re-creation of Eden wasn't always there. It had to be created in the mind — and, to some extent, in reality.
Exploring the evolution of Provence from Roman ruins and rough land to a destination of desire has led me research and write this book. I am a traveler and a cultural historian, keenly interested in the ways we are influenced by the changing culture of the places we encounter, especially those we come to love. I want to understand the many ways culture has shaped us in the past as it moves into the present, guiding us to think and feel. In the case of Provence, what interests me is how economic and social transformation in that French region and the many changes in life in the United States have affected Americans over time as they have moved through their lives and traveled. Thinking about being in Provence in the second decade of the twenty-first century led me to examine what had been written and pictured about this region, past and present. It drew me to powerful, imaginative evocations of both travel and place.
So I began what became a fascinating quest. I looked for and found messages about travel to Provence in a wide range of media, including books and magazines, guidebooks, cookbooks, goods, advertisements, paintings, films, and television. The examples I've selected involve all levels of culture and the varied ways commerce enters into the mix. For this mélange and its blend of high and low I have no apologies — only an explanation that it is the cultural stew itself, not any single element, that shapes perceptions and feelings in the United States and has engendered a taste for Provence.
I give substantial attention to the work of travel writers describing Provence. From among the wide range of those discussing the landscape, food, or other aspects of the region I've selected those writers who were particularly influential or who illustrated key aspects of the tourist experience. Let me point out just a few who exemplify the range. Peter Mayle dramatized Provence's pleasures for many in the late 1980s. Paul Zimmerman in 1971 had the broad readership of the New York Times of his era, but Willa Cather in 1902 had only those in the orbit of the Nebraska State Journal. Each of these, however, has something important to tell about traveling and lingering in Provence that I feel deserves exposition or emphasis.
I treat a wide range of informants about Provence and promoters of the region, including authors of important works of literature, a Founding Father writing a flirtatious letter, a major novelist, a future museum curator, a French studies scholar trying out anthropology, established journalists and magazine writers, celebrated but hard-up authors commissioned by travel magazines, and those in the business of selling a service or a product. In thinking about my interest in Provence, a friend said, "Keep your eye on the money." This, of course, is something not hard to do in the present age when everything and every act seem monetized. Nonetheless, these words did alert me to what I might have missed. Commercial considerations are almost always present. Even Thomas Jefferson's 1787 trip was financed by his role as United States Commissioner so that he might learn firsthand about agriculture and transport (and secretly gather foreign intelligence). The time he spent viewing Provence's Roman ruins came during recreational breaks.
The absence of a monetary motive is why I dwell on the truth-teller A. Hyatt Mayor, who in the 1920s wrote an unpublished travel journal for only himself and a few members of his family. I see the work of the academic Laurence Wylie partially in this light, even though he published a book in 1957 that was to bring him both wide attention and royalties. What is important in the words of both men is that they saw and experienced parts of Provence without trying to draw others to venture there. In doing so, they have provided important markers along the way, leading me to explore the ways Provence itself has changed over time, especially how it developed to accommodate travelers and to appeal to them in new ways.
While all who publish their writings do so for a purpose, even if in many cases this is disguised, the thrust of writing has nonetheless shifted over the years. Many of even the greatest authors did indeed depend on royalties for a living, but what emerges as increasingly important by the mid-twentieth century is the commercial impetus driving writing on Provence. The leader in travel writing, Holiday magazine, was launched in the late 1940s out of the discovery of a niche market for advertising — vacationers with discretionary income to spend on fun. Travel & Leisure was from 1971 to 2013 the offspring of American Express. Agencies with clients seeking rentals in Provence and companies formed to sell products from the region have an undisguised commercial motive. With the changes in Provence and its image after World War II, marketing, promotion, and advertising increasingly have become the engine driving the printing of words about travel there.
I've sought numbers to learn how many Americans in the past have traveled to Provence and presently do so, but, as the most serious scholar to have studied tourist statistics kept by the French has found, useful numbers are hard to come by. In the case of my subject, this is more difficult because data about inland Provence, the region of my specific interest, are generally blended with those of other parts of southeastern France and, at the same time, separated from areas joined by history and custom. Despite the lack of hard numbers, I have been driven forward by an awareness that I care not only about real travel to the region but also about virtual travel through reading, viewing, dining in restaurants or at home, and purchasing Provençal-themed goods. Once a taste for Provence is acquired, it can be satisfied in many disparate ways.
I begin this account with the understanding of Provence as a travel destination that held from the eighteenth century until the mid-twentieth century — the region is important because it contains valued Roman ruins. I then get to the heart of my story, the changes that followed World War II both in the United States and in France. Americans' long love affair with France centered around Paris. As early postwar travel restrictions eased and transatlantic transportation improved, Americans flocked there in such great numbers that the French government sought to encourage them to seek out the provinces. However, for the fascinating but very poor region of Provence to emerge as a significant travel destination required more than just advertisements. It took the evolution of a complicated tourist infrastructure involving transportation and accommodations, including those that offered the possibility of longer stays in a single place. These considerations are the ground on which a critical part of my story rests — the reinvention of Provence directed at the minds and hearts of American travelers and dreamers.
Important transformative words and photographs began in the 1960s, but their true impact came in the 1970s when they were broadcast widely to a newly receptive audience. In uncovering this development, my primary sources have been works in English by writers in the United States and Britain, along with their accompanying images. These include travel pieces in books and magazines, cookbooks and descriptions of furnishings, and information about agencies that negotiated international rentals, all replete with commercial considerations. Joined with them are paintings, photographs, television, and film — the visual media that form the many ways that Provence was brought to the attention of Americans. My eye has been trained on this foreground. These portrayals of Provence evoked a cultural shift in the United States that turned Provence from a place of Roman ruins and rough living into an imagined destination that promised to fulfill the desire for the good life.
Despite my disclaimer that I'm a cultural historian, I've worried at times that I might be mistaken for the anthropologist R. J. Sheldrake, the fictional professor of tourism in David Lodge's Paradise News. Yes, I admit that just as he made lists of the word "Paradise" in Hawaii, it has occurred to me that I might count the number of times that lavender appears in images of Provence. But I have never lectured on tourism nor been offered champagne at a hotel I was not paying for, as was David Lodge's character. Moreover, I am no debunker of the travel experience. Sheldrake announced that he was "doing for tourism what Marx did to capitalism, what Freud did to family life. Deconstructing it." He was determined to puncture the myths that sent people to Hawaii for a holiday, in the hope they might stay home. I, on the contrary, enjoy travel. And I have come to love being in Provence. What follows is inquiry and analysis, but not deconstruction in the negative way Sheldrake put it. For me, learning about how the taste for Provence developed has added to the pleasure of going and being there.
The fictional Sheldrake's field emerged in the 1960s when the impact of travel to faraway places for pleasure became too powerful to miss. A range of scholars who studied travel established the field of tourism studies. Economists got into the act early on, measuring the effects of such journeys on the economies of both hosts and guests. The subject of travel attracted sociologists and anthropologists as well, and with the revival of radicalism within the academy, political considerations moved into play in these disciplines. Tourism, especially in the Third World, was linked to the heritage of imperialism. In the 1970s, ecological concerns came to prominence in the social sciences, and new work began to emphasize damage to the hosts' environment. Voices emerging later in that decade began to look at guests no longer as negatives but as explorers seeking authenticity, evoking a wide range of interesting studies. Fresh social science scholarship appeared, exploring tourism from different facets, including human interactions, the gaze, language, image performance, and pilgrimage. Some of these studies, despite their often turgid language, have opened my mind to new insights and interpretation. As a cultural historian exploring the transformation of Americans' awareness of Provence, however, I have a different cast of mind. As one way of marking this and differentiating my work from the rigors of social science and tourism studies, I tend in this book to employ the word "traveler" rather than "tourist."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A Taste for Provence by Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz. Copyright © 2016 Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
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