Cloistered

July 5, 2015

     The Languedoc has forty-eight monasteries and convents by one count, and France many more.  So it's not surprising that in French, the verbs "to cloister" --cloitrer) , or "to cloister oneself" --se cloitrer-- (both bearing an accent circonflex over the "i" I'm unable to reproduce here)-- are used more frequently than in English.

      As I learned to my surprise hearing a news report about the heat wave on one of the major stations.  The presenter --contrasting the behavior of tourists, out in full strength in Paris and other tourist centers, notwithstanding the intense heat-- said the French response to the high temperatures was "to cloister themselves".

      Which explains why, when you are anywhere in France on a particularly hot summer afternoon, all the windows and doors are shuttered.  When they are closed, French houses, many made of stone, with heavy tile floors, are surprisingly cool, even in the hottest weather.  (My own house is always ten degrees colder than it is outside. ) Shuttered windows look unwelcoming, but it is the custom here.  And those locals who keep some windows open during the day shutter them religiously at night, the sound of groaning latches audible throughout the village once the sun has set.  In the winter, the same logic prevails, in reverse: energy is to  be conserved, heat kept in.  Many people still heat their houses using fireplaces with ducts from which heat rises to the upper floors to heat their houses.  The former owners of my house did so, supplementing the heat from the one fireplace with portable electric heaters for the coldest days.  As do the old couple down the road from me, whose three chimneys supply all the heat for their home.

     Picture windows, air conditioning and central heating are not features of old French houses.  Those features are available in new construction, in planned developments that cater to well-off people, not the average. Which means that the average French home is a place where entertaining is frequently limited to close family members.  The French are very social, but because few people have the money to spend on modern conveniences for their homes that many Americans take for granted, much of social life is conducted in public spaces.  For instance, today, the Anti-Cancer League in the village is hosting a day dedicated to educating villagers about the disease.  Tuesday, in Villefranche --the next village towards Carcassonne-- there will be a party with music and food, a subscription event.  Next month, the chapel where I go to Mass will hold its annual picnic and bazaar.  The price of all events is 15 Euros, food included.  These events are how most of the French meet their compatriots.

     The France of intimate dinner parties and champagne toasts is limited to the gratin, the upper crust in Paris and big cities such as Toulouse, Nice and Lyon.  On the rare occasions when one is invited to a meal at someone's house, it's usually a lunch on Sunday, and the table is set for a large group.   At lunch, the French talk and talk and talk about not much of anything, the whole purpose of the gathering being to enjoy good food and wine in the company of others.  Serious subjects are banned, unless they concern food.  After a long Sunday lunch, everyone goes home and takes a sieste, an afternoon nap.

       Most of the time, however, everyone makes do without much fuss.  An elderly local woman and her husband live in a very old house whose back stands behind the old village walls, walls that date from the time when a much smaller village, before the village expanded beyond the walls.  The house has little light, but there is a walled back garden, a place where the owners plant some flowers, some herbs and some tomatoes.  It is their pride and joy, and it was a signal honor to have been invited inside to see the house and garden.

        What do they do on a hot day?  After a bit of lunch they take a sieste, the television in the sitting room lulling them to sleep.  They are perfectly happy.  The house has been in the family for generations, it is where their son and his wife and their two young children will move while renovations are being done to their house.  Neither the older generation nor the younger has any desire to live anywhere other than Caunes.  They know all about picture windows and such modern conveniences, but they see no need for them.

         Their homes in Caunes are their cloister.  In their homes they escape the world.  Not for them and the other villageois the bustle of cities.  The Caunois work hard, and they are not unaware of what is going on in the world beyond Caunes, but they prefer to keep away from the madding crowd, and have little desire to know more of it.

        "The French have a remarkable capacity for minding their own business" wrote the author of Instructions for American Servicemen in France, a guidebook for U.S. Servicemen serving there during World War II.

       As so much of what is contained in the book reminds me of the villagers of Caunes, I quote from it here:

        You have certainly heard of gay Paree.  Yet the French have far less the regular habit of pleasure than we Americans.  Even before the Nazi occupation, when the French were still free to have a good time, they had it as a special event and managed it thriftily.  A whole French family would spend less on pleasure in a month than you would spend over a weekend.  The French reputation for gayety was principally built on the civilized French way of doing things; by the French people's good taste; by their interest in quality, not quantity; and by the lively energy of their minds.  The French are intelligent, have mostly had a sensible education, without frills, are industrious, shrewd and frugal.

         The French are not given to confidences, or to telling how much money they make --or used to make --or bragging.  And they think little of such talk in others.  The French have a remarkable capacity for minding their own business.  Even in the days when they used to travel, before the Nazis shut down on it, the French never used to sit down in a railway station and tell their private affairs to a total stranger.  They are observant, don't think they won't notice what you do.  But they have little curiosity.

          All the author writes rings true in my experience.  The longer I live here, the more I realize how much happier these folk --cloistered in their modest homes-- are than many of their urban counterparts.  The idyllic landscape, the fertile land, the dominance of agriculture still in the hands of families, the resulting slow pace of life, seems to make for greater happiness, the limitated cultural possibilities notwithstanding.   Everyone has to entertain themselves, but there is no shortage of people who do so successfully: women who embroider beautifully, lending their talents to the church bazaar, people who read, who tinker, who cook, who garden.  Not everyone has the self-reliance to live here, but those who do are, I believe, happy.

          --Thoreau would have liked Caunes.  For after all, wasn't Walden a cloister, when you come right down to it?