De Potter's Grand Tour (2 page)

*   *   *

“To travel is to live,” Armand declared in advertisements in his tourist magazine, and Aimée liked to recite the motto to herself as a reminder that the difficulties of traveling were far outweighed by the rewards. To travel is to live, indeed—and off they raced after landing on May 27, the Americans rushing to keep up with Armand while Aimée brought up the rear, lingering for an extra moment to make a hasty note in her diary so she would always know where she'd been in the world on every day of her life.

From Boulogne they went to Amsterdam. By June 10 Armand was leading the party through the streets of Copenhagen to see “the resplendent assembly of Apostles” at the Vor Frue Kirke, Aimée wrote in her entry for the day, quoting the short lecture her husband had given on the steps of the church. The next day they made the brisk passage across the sound from Helsingør to Helsingborg. In Christiania, Armand arranged a private tour of the Viking Ship, which pleased everyone, from Victor to Samuel Worthington, Esq., of Delaware, an irritable traveler whose mood steadily improved as they headed farther north. Ever since a passing storm had caused him to roll out of his bed on board the
Noordland
and sprain his wrist, Aimée was prepared to make an extra effort to placate him. But when they rode in carriages through the Valdersdal, between rows of weeping birch, Mr. Worthington didn't complain about the hard wooden seats. On the steamer up to the North Cape, he stood beside Aimée at the rail and blew a kiss at the glittering Svartisen Glacier. And he was the one who delivered the speech that night at dinner, thanking the de Potters for treating the members of the party to the unforgettable experience of seeing the midnight sun.

All in all it was a successful tour, thanks in large part to Mr. Worthington, who proved such an indomitable optimist that no other member of the party dared complain—not when their train traveling from Cracow to Kieff broke down and they were stuck for five hours in the sultry heat, or when they discovered that the Hôtel des Bergues in Geneva had lost their reservation, and they had to gather up all their luggage and move to the Hôtel Métropole, or even when Armand rose during their banquet in Lyon and announced a substitution in the program: “
Mesdames et messieurs
, ladies and gentlemen, Madame de Potter and I thank you for permitting us to share the delights of Northern Europe with you. Now it is my pleasure to inform you that the esteemed Monsieur Gastineau, assistant
directeur
of the Paris branch of the American Bureau of Foreign Travel, will be accompanying you back to the United States while my wife and son and I remain …
en France
!”

To Aimée's relief, no one in the party objected to the change. They all understood why the de Potters would want to stay in France and agreed that they would have done the same if they, too, had been free to start their lives over again.

*   *   *

But the de Potters weren't starting over, not exactly. Rather, they were nearing the culmination of the project they'd begun more than twenty years earlier and were ready to enjoy the prosperity that was the result of their hard work. They wanted what all their customers already had—a permanent abode for their child, a place to leave and to return to at the end of each trip. And if they were particular in their preferences—if a well-appointed residence in Albany or New York, Los Angeles, Pasadena, or even Summit, New Jersey, wouldn't do—it was because experience had taught them that they would thrive best in an environment that matched the sensibilities they'd been cultivating through, in Armand's words, “continuous exposure to the accomplishments of diverse civilizations.” More simply, as Aimée wrote to Mrs. Murray to explain why they wouldn't be disembarking with the rest of their party at the pier in Hoboken, even those in the tourist profession deserve a home to call their own.

They moved to Cannes on October 5, 1902, into a rented villa on the chemin Prince de Galles. Aimée was woken early the next morning by doves roosting in the palm trees. She peeked into the adjacent bedroom and saw that Armand was still asleep, then she checked on Victor, who was curled like a cat on top of his bedspread in his own room.

Picking out her clothes from her closet, she enjoyed the awareness that she could take her time getting ready for the day. She moved slowly, as if she were testing her strength in the aftermath of a long fever. When she looked in the mirror, she saw a woman she would have envied if she'd been a stranger. True, her hair was dusted with a powdery gray, her forehead threaded with fine wrinkles. The skin beneath her chin had begun to sag. But her cheeks were still round and youthful, her lips were smooth, and the blue of her eyes was as bright as ever. As she fastened a string of pearls around her neck, she couldn't help feeling impressed by the obvious evidence of her poise. She was proud of her privileges even while she remained attentive to the needs of others. Admiring the reflection of a woman who had reached a station she hadn't known enough to aspire to when she was young, she felt as if she'd come to the end of a tour that had lasted for years and years, and she could finally relax and enjoy herself.

When they took Victor to his boarding school in Mandelieu the following week, Aimée assured him that he could come back at any time and attend the neighborhood school if he preferred. But he was so quick to make friends that it didn't occur to him to be unhappy. In his first letter he reported that he had a new best friend named Simon, who slept in the bed next to his, and a new pet, a lizard named Pegasus, who lived in a jar. In his second letter, he announced that he was the only boy in the class who had been inside a pyramid. Also, he'd caught another lizard, and now Pegasus had a companion.

Aimée wrote back on a postcard with a picture of the seaside boulevard de la Croisette on the front: “Dearest Victor, You make Papa and I very cheerful with your letters. Let us know if you need extra blankets. Our days have been quiet now that Papa isn't traveling so often. We take long walks and go to the flower markets. Papa will come on Friday at five o'clock promptly to bring you home for dinner. We send bundles of love, Maman.”

She included a note at the bottom of the card: “PS—we like our villa so well that we have extended the lease another three months.”

They celebrated Christmas with roast goose and plum pudding. In the early spring they began visiting properties for sale in the area. On Easter of 1903, wearing a spring costume made by a dressmaker in Nice, a pink, lacy affair with a tulle skirt and silk jacket and a hat crowned by a magnificent white feather that might have been plucked from the same bird the porter on the
Noordland
had almost dropped into the water, Aimée announced to the friends who had gathered for dinner that the de Potters would finally have a permanent home. After looking all across Cannes, they had purchased a seventeen-room villa on the avenue de Vallauris.

The Villa du Grand Bois had a swooping marble staircase leading to the front entrance, a white stucco façade crowned by a bracketed cornice, and two flanking towers, one encircled with three tiers of wrought-iron balconies. It had been closed up for two years and would need a good airing out. The garden was overgrown with borage and nettles. The basin of the fountain had cracked in half, and a stone nymph had fallen from its pedestal. But the top floor had a view of the sea, the perfume from the thick wisteria vines hung in the air, and when the de Potters first came through the front gate, the splash of afternoon light gave the villa the sheen of fine marble. They knew at once that they had to make this magnificent estate their own. They thought themselves especially lucky when the owner agreed to lower the price.

They moved in September, and by their anniversary in October they had the help of a full-time staff that included a cook, a maid, and a gardener. On November 20, the furniture and boxes they'd left in storage back in New Jersey arrived, and Aimée and Armand devoted themselves to unpacking. They set out the crystal, sorted through clothes, and repacked their woolens in their steamer trunks. While Armand organized his curios on the shelves of the fine gilt cabinet that had traveled with them from France to America and back to France, Aimée put their books and photograph albums in order in the library.

On November 26, Armand had a meeting at the bank all morning. As planned, Aimée met him for lunch at La Réserve in the center of Cannes. He was uncharacteristically late and arrived disheveled, with his coat open and his hat in his hands, as if he'd run all the way from the bank. But he said grandly, “
Ma chérie
, one day I shall prove myself worthy of your affection,” kissing her gloved hand in his courtliest fashion. And later, when they were at Galleotti's furniture shop, he sprang out from behind a set of bureaus on display, swinging her into his arms. They'd come to look over the Stevens cane-mesh reclining chairs that were for sale, and they had a laugh trying them out, kicking their feet up and testing the levers.

It was a pleasant day all in all, though not until evening, when she was writing a note in her diary, did Aimée remember that it was a holiday. Back in America, friends were sitting down to their Thanksgiving feasts. Here in Cannes, the de Potters were quite too busy to celebrate.

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Aimée was a farmer's daughter and used to waking early. She didn't think it strange to work right alongside the servants. She would go after a clogged drain with a plunger while Felicie prepared dinner, or she'd follow Ernestine from room to room with a second feather duster, chattering about anything in an effort to practice her French.

After finding a drawing of the original plan in the cellar, she turned her attention to the garden. She hired a local mason to repair the broken fountain and bought huge terra-cotta pots to place around the perimeter of the grass terrace. She planted clumps of lavender around the fountain and filled the pots with carnation plants. She had François spread gravel and repair the steps of the paths that curved out from the terrace, and she helped him thin brush from a little orchard of apricot and cherry trees on the west side of the garden. Once he'd trimmed the box hedge, she filled the flower beds with rosebushes and geraniums and more carnations. She bought a stone bench to set beneath the gnarly branches of a grand old magnolia. For the boundary just inside the back wall, already partly established with tall cypresses, she brought in a dozen saplings. For the final touch, she had a plumber lay a new pipe to the fountain, and soon water was spilling from the pitcher being tipped by the nymph.

With so much rewarding work to be done at Grand Bois, she was grateful to be free from the demands of set itineraries. The de Potters could travel when they wished and stay at home for as long as they pleased. Armand took a short trip to Cairo in April, and in May he and Aimée joined the Old World Tour in northern Italy. With Victor they spent a week in June at Baden-Baden and the rest of the summer in Cannes. Time passed too quickly. In the long letters Aimée wrote to her friends back in America, she liked to say that the only thing she lacked was a means to slow the hours so she could fully savor the pleasures of life in the south of France.

On the twenty-first of October 1904, the eve of their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, they hired a car, picked up Victor from his school in Mandelieu, and drove to the mountain village of Auribeau-sur-Siagne, coming as close to the top as the narrow street permitted. They had lunch at a café and lit a candle in the chapel. On their way down, the chauffeur drove so fast that Aimée's scarf blew right off her head.

Lightning and thunder kept them awake that night. Armand joined Aimée in her room, his feigned fear of the storm his pretext for diving under the covers. Oh, she'd let the whole household know what a clown he was if she couldn't stifle her giggles. “Stop, please stop,” she begged, but of course he knew she meant
don't stop
, and he didn't.

By the time they came downstairs the next day, Felicie had already prepared a lamb stew. After the meal, they walked with Victor into town, where they treated themselves to chocolate ice cream topped with marshmallow parfait. Back inside the front hall of Grand Bois, they found the servants waiting with a basket of flowers. Armand opened a bottle of champagne to share with everyone—even Victor was given a thimbleful. Armand presented Aimée with a silver bread basket and platter, along with a Limoges ceramic head of a peasant girl. Aimée gave Armand a silver coffeepot.

“Is it possible to be
too
happy?” she murmured later, when they found themselves alone for a moment. She interpreted the short laugh he offered in response as fondly conspiratorial. She playfully straightened his bow tie before giving him a kiss.

Such a perfect day deserved a record, and that evening, after Armand had left to take Victor back to school, Aimée headed out to the garden to write in her diary. Stopping in her husband's study to find a pencil, she noticed an envelope on the desk. It was from the University Museum in Philadelphia, where her husband had his collection of Egyptian treasures on loan. She felt curious. Since the letter had already been opened, Armand surely wouldn't mind if it was opened again.

The letter turned out to be nothing more remarkable than a handwritten note from Mrs. Stevenson, the curator in Philadelphia, who was writing in response to Professor de Potter's recent inquiry to tell him that she would not have time to compose a comprehensive catalog of the De Potter Collection in the near future—news that Armand would hardly have felt compelled to share with his wife. She did not expect him to report to her on every piece of business related to his collection. The only surprising element was that he had so successfully hidden his disappointment.

She couldn't remember the last time he'd spoken of his collection at the museum in Philadelphia. Why hadn't she thought to ask? She knew he was as sensitive about his antiquities as if he'd made them himself. He might as well have made them. It had taken him nearly thirty years and dozens of trips to North Africa to acquire treasures that included not just rare jewels and sepulchral bronzes but also a painted sarcophagus that contained a mummified high priest of Thebes. And though he could have sold his antiquities long ago, he had chosen instead to deliver them at his own expense to the University Museum, where they were on display in the Egyptian Section—the same section overseen by Mrs. Stevenson, who had failed to keep the promise she made years ago to write a catalog that would confirm the importance of the De Potter Collection.