1992 Trip to Giverny
Reopening my 1992 Paris Journal, I turn to the events of my 47th birthday on October 21.10.92—a trip by train from Paris to Vernon and the 6 K walk that followed to the village of Giverny. Tucked into the journal are penned notes, train and museum tickets, photographs, and hand-drawn maps of that unforgettable day. At the top of my first entry that day is a postcard of la Gare Saint-Lazare painted by Claude Monet in 1877. And so it begins….
From this grand urban train station in NW Paris, Claude Monet and his wife Alice travelled between Vernon and Paris. And though steam locomotives are gone, Kit and I felt an excitement that is like no other that comes from traveling by train. An hour after our departure from la Gare Saint-Lazare, we arrived in Vernon at 12:15 p.m. to clouds and real rain. Rather than wait an hour for a bus, we opted to walk. Without a clue as far as signage, we made our way on foot through the town center and over a bridge where we saw our first signs—Giverny, Musée C. Monet.
We estimated our 6 K walk would take an hour and it did. Opening time at Monet’s home and gardens was 2 p.m. Perfect! And it was. Out came the sun, though the clouds stayed around to play as we walked for 5 K on a narrow rural highway past French cottages with neat, Japanese scale gardens and fields of corn across the narrow valley.
For a stretch, we took a lovely detour along a quiet bike path 1 K from Giverny and encountered a gaggle of Toulouse geese, a dog and a jogger. The final 1 K of our walk was along Rue C. Monet. Red-leafed ivy covered the narrow street’s stone houses. We had entered the artist’s world of color and texture completely. Every wall, every vine, every roofline was a cause to pause, touch, capture in the mind’s eye, and treasure for a lifetime.
Before reaching Maison #25—Monet’s home and gardens—we paused at Eglise Sainte-Radegonde—a country church and cemetery where we found a monument aux morts pour la France…1945-57 (Indochine). The tiny church was empty inside. The stone floor arrayed with small wicker chairs. Warm light poured into the room and warmed the cold blue stone. Kit lit candles for his mother and my grandmother. The scene felt timeless, and we imagined Monet walking there on Sunday mornings a century ago.
Nearing our destination, the temptation was to wander up one of the narrow side streets of Rue C. Monet and find a house to rent. Then stay 10 years and paint the scenes in the valley we’d just walked through, just as the American painters who flocked to Giverny had done in the early decades of the 20th century. Up a side street located a block from Maison C. Monet, we found many of their paintings on display at the Musée Américaine Giverny that had just opened that summer.
At 2:00 we finally spotted the pink walls and teal green shutters of a small building at Maison # 25, opened the door, and bought entry tickets to the artist’s the private studio, home and gardens that were our destination. It was the final weekend of October, and for the next couple of hours we were the only visitors except for a tall, stately woman with whom we spent the remainder of that day. But that is all a part of the story I will save for next week’s installment from my Paris 1992 journal.
(To be continued….)