La plus belle...

The most beautiful Gabrielle Petit post card is without any doubt the following. I saw it on ebay a couple of weeks ago but I was unable to buy it (I decided to go to the swimming pool with my son, instead of waiting for the deadline of the auction, and of course someone else bought the item). Too bad, but I am very happy with this scan too.



It's an extremely special post card.
First, it's a picture made by a photographer during her life and duplicated after her death in 1916 (maybe as late as 1920). The picture post card is much rarer than the ones of her statue(s). Curiously the verso site of the card is blank. There's no name of a publisher, nor are there any other printed items (lines or squares). This is rather strange and may suggest it's a real photo or a memorabilia. Since I don't own the object, I can not tell.
Second, the stamps, King Albert (national hero of the Great War par excellence), dated February (?) 1920 and stamped in Brussels. Six different stamps. Same image, but different value (5c, 15c, 25c, 30c, 40c). I don't know anything about stamps, but the buyer propably does. Maybe the stamps are rare; the fact that there's a whole series of them on the same card might makes them especially valuable as a collector's item.
Third, the post card was sent to a gentleman named Jules Gasthuys living in the '4 Rue Cachet' (rue Cadet?) in Paris. Both the man and his address are unknown today.
Fourth, the text. Underneath the picture there are two texts. The first one is a hand written text saying: Gabrielle Petit, 24 ans, notre héroïne nationale. Fusillée par les Allemands le 1er Avril 1916'. Below this text, the sender of the card added 'Si à Paris il y a de jolies femmes, en Belgique il y a des femmes courageuses. Vive Gabrielle Petit'. The name of the sender is not mentioned, so one can assume the addressee would probably know who it was from anyway. Maybe this person was his only acquaintance in Brussels. Intuitively I think the person sending this postcard was a woman, not very young, around 30 maybe? If you think of it, the second text is rather strange. Why would anyone send this as a personal message to a friend in Paris? One may even read some jealousy in it... Anyway, such passionate expressions of patriotic fervour are truly wonderful. It demonstrates that Petits memory was still very much alive in 1920, 4 years after her death. It may also demonstrate that Parisian women were still considered the most beautiful in the world.

Anyone who knows more about this post card (or similar post cards), do contact me.

Never stop smoking cigars

More Gabrielle Petit memorabilia. I managed to get hold of a cigar band figuring her portrait. The cigar band with her portrait actually exists in 5 different colors: yellow, blue, red, purple and green!



The Petit band is part of series of bands with 12 women's portraits. I found it rather curious to find out who the other women were:

Cleopatra (obvious?)
queen Astrid of Belgium: born in Sweden, she was married to king Leopold III and died in a car accident in 1935. Mother of our present and previous king
George Sand: writer, unhappily in love with Frederic Chopin
Sarah Bernhardt: during the First World War - at the age of 70 - she supported the war effort by playing in patriotic theatre plays and films
queen Victoria: she was one of the first women to go to the French Riviera for holidays
Marie Curie: Maria Salomee Skłodowska-Curie, discoverd polonium and radium
Catharina II of Russia: her full name is Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst, which sounds quite Dutch to me
Edith Cavell another heroine from the First World War
Pearl Buck: the first (American) woman to win the Pulitzer and the Nobel prize for literature
Mme de pompadour: mistress of Louis XV of France

This does make me wonder who makes up this kind of lists and on what criteria? It is rather strange to see Gabrielle Petit listed next to Cleopatra and George Sand. Another remarkable thing is that the people connected to the First World War are kind of over overrepresented in the list (Petit, Cavell, Bernhardt)

The series of cigar bands was issued by 'Principal' (=brand of cigars) in 1987. I always thought Gabrielle Petit was completely forgotten in Belgium until she was rehabilitated in 2005 through the national 'Grootste Belg' election. But I guess she was never forgotten by true cigar lovers. Never stop smoking cigars.

First time

Yesterday, my son and I had a hair cut for the first time. Meaning: he had his hair cut for the first time; and I cut hair for the first time. He's two, I''m thirty. I decided not to be too drastic and I think it worked out quite well.

1927

I finally managed to go to the city archive to look up the official file of our future house. Very exciting!! I was thrilled and happy and found the dossier quite remarkable: next to boring administrative letters and forms, it also held the original ground plans of all the floors (some alterations were made while building), a letter from the 'Comiteit voor stadsschoon' and an etching of the façade. I will get copies of most of the document next week.
The approval of the plans dates from February 1927 (the dossier was submitted right before Christmas 1926, on December 21st). So I assume the house was build in 1927 or 1928. The architect was a Mr. Boon from Leuven (F. Lintstraat 111), his client was a Mr. Malfait, living at the time in the nearby Corbeek-Loo (Chaussée the Tirlemont). I was actually surprised the house dates from the 1920s, since our architect guessed it was from the early forties because of the materials used in the basement (concrete). But I'm happy, the older the better for me!


Before the city council approved the building plans, the 'Comiteit voor Stadsschoon' had to give an advice too. The commission was active in the years after the Great War and saw to the uniformity and stylishness of all new buildings. The advice of the commission was quite remarkable (and very funny). Since the plan indicated a lot of little windows would be used (as you can see on the picture), the commission complained: ' le menuiserie en petits bois de toutes les fenêtres donnent à l'ensemble un aspect un peu prison, qui n'est pas riant du tout' and would therefore not approve the initial plan. I don't know what happened then, but the little windows were realised after all. While planning the renovation, it was only with pain in the heart that we decided that we would have to get rid of the charming 'menuiserie en petits bois' because it would be too pricy to have those restored or replaced. 'les goûts et les couleurs...'.

I also tried to find out what was there before our house was. I don't find any traces of another builing and my hypothesis is that the land was part of a park belonging to a huge house a couple of houses down the street. This house was - as most houses in this street - almost completely destroyed in September 1914. After the war it was rebuild and the park may have been divided into different lots. I have seen some pictures indicating this, but I still want to check this in the document archive. The city archive hold the complete photo collection inventorying the damage done by the German army in 1914. Nearly every house in the city was photographed as evidence and to assure German reparation (money) after the war.

The archive is really fascinating. While there I started looking at the files from our neighbours' houses and thus found out when they were build, rebuild, when their pergola's, kitchens and bathrooms were added. I need to go back there anyway because I also found out they have a rather big collection of film posters from 1932 on. I may find some interesting illustration for my book.

The past three weeks in a nutshell

Nieuwvliet (The Netherlands) - one week
Antwerp (home) - five days
Darmstadt (beautiful Mathildenhohe) (Germany) - one afternoon
Mittelberg (Germany) - two days
Würzburg (Germany) - one afternoon
Fischl am See (Austria, Salzkammergut) - two days
Vienna (Austria of course) - three days
Passau (Germany, I think) - one day
Antwerp

Documenting our move

Since we will be moving to Leuven in the spring, I started documenting our move. Meaning that I've been trying to find out more about the history of our house and the lot it was build on. I've been looking at postcards from Leuven in 1914-1918. There are plenty of postcards of the damage caused by the invasion of the German army in 1914, but I haven't found any of our street yet.

This is a picture from the Diestsestraat in ruins. 1915:


A lot of houses in our street were severely damaged too, but it was not one of the central disaster eras. According to our architect our house probably dates from the late 1930s or early 1940s. I'm pretty sure it wasn't one of the many houses being rebuild after the First World War, since most of these have a special remembrance stone built in their facade. The previous house on the lot may have been destroyed (as was the villa a couple of houses down the block) and not rebuild for a decennium or more. I'm planning to go to the city archive to find out more about this. But this'll have to wait till after the holidays.

Jacqueline Harpman

I am reading 'Moi qui n'ai pas connu les hommes' by the Brussels writer Jacqueline Harpman (1940). She's a psychoanalyst and her books are surrealist, bizarre and absolutely fascinating. If I remember correctly, most of her books are written in the style of a kind of 'monologue intérieur'. This one's about a young girl whose name, age and appearances are unknown to both herself and the reader. Together with forty other women she's locked up in a cave without windows. They have no idea how they got there and what the purpose of their imprisonment might be.

I've also read 'Orlanda' and 'La plage d'Ostende' by the same author. So far, the latter is definitely my favourite.