Women of the Luxembourg
Writing about the Jardin du Luxembourg is pure delight. And with the elegance and exuberance of the fall fashion shows over, now is the perfect time to visit this most luxurious and historical of gardens—resplendent in its fall fashions of outrageous red, green, and golden leaves. Keeping with the feminine spirit, I’m compelled to write about the women whose lives were intimately associated with the jardin and the palais. 
Immediately to mind, Marie de’ Medici, responsible for commissioning the Palais du Luxembourg in the early 1600s. Widow of Henry IV, she intended to build an estate reminiscent of the Pitti Palace in Florence where she had been born. But, the architect Salomon de Brosse urged her to temper this Italianate concept and built instead the French château before our eyes, which he embellished with Italianate architectural details, such as the rusticated stonework, bosses, and “ringed” columns. Her fate, complex, linked with Cardinal Richelieu, resulted in her own son, Louis XIII, banishing her to Cologne, where she died impoverished in 1642. But, her spirit remains here. She stands proudly as one of 20 honored queens along the terrasse surrounding the octagonal Grand Bassin, where children intently nudge their sailboats from edge to edge. I get lost in her elegant costume, the open ruff, lace cuffs, and sleeves of intensely chic decorative rolls. Her hair tightly curled, with a hint of a double chin. She’s queenly, yet human, as history tells us. You can follow her to the Louvre where Ruben’s series of 24 immense paintings chronicling her life now hang in the Galerie Médicis. They first decorated the interior of her palais here. I’m also drawn to Sainte Bathilde. The seventh century queen of Clovis II who began life raised by pirates and then became enslaved. There are so many stories. Each one reveals a compelling persona and personal style. It’s worth the time to take a closer look at each one, when you have the time. It’s also a good idea to consult a detailed map so you can find your favorites easily. 
Often unnoticed, but one of my favorite statues is George Sand, born Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin Dudevant. She’s outside the formal gardens and tucked away in the mysterious jardin anglais portion. Although noted for taking a man’s name in order to get published in the early 1800s, dressing like a man in trousers, and smoking cigars, she is also known as woman with many lovers. Chopin, Listz, de Musset to name only a few. Here we see the feminine George Sand—it’s easy to see why so many were attracted to her. Here, she’s diaphanous, gentile, not the male writer, but the female lover.
Seeing the statue evokes the charming sketch made by de Musset of George and her two children as they strolled one day through this park. He depicted the trio from a flaneur’s point of view, following a few steps behind, but noticing the jaunty hat and swaying voluminous skirt of George and the children dawdling on either side of her. Charming also is a vignette about George and her daughter Solange in the gardens. Solange, having taken ill, was advised by her doctor to get some fresh air. The Jardin du Luxembourg seemed the perfect cure to everyone—except Solange. En route to the gardens in a fiacre, she persisted in asserting she was not going to take a walk in the park under any circumstances. Once at the jardin, coerced from the wagon, Solange descended--without her shoes--she’d thrown them out along the way!
I can’t speak of the gardens without mentioning the most romantic fountain anywhere. The Fontaine de Médicis, now located near rue de Médicis. The incredibly sensuous figures date from the 1860s, the fountain per se from 1624. The sensuality of the adoring Acis and Galatea shocked the public so much that it is said the statues were painted black to tone down the overt sexuality of the couple. Today, we still see the doomed romantic pair, Galatea, a sea nymph, and the handsome Acis, son of a river nymph, embracing, unaware of the outraged, jealous cyclops Polyphemous hovering above, just moments before he murders Acis with a huge boulder. Polyphemous’s love songs to Galatea had fallen on deaf ears. Before leaving the gardens, and looking at the palais once more, its past as a prison haunts me. During the Revolution, imprisoned here Thomas Paine, Danton, Joséphine de Beauharnais (before she was consort to Napoléon I). What was she doing here? Born in 1763 as Marie Josèphe Rose Tascher de La Pagerie on the family’s sugar plantation in Martinique, and called Rose, after a failed marriage and several lovers, poverty and trips back to Martinique, she involves herself in coming to the aid of her ex-husband who commanded the defeated Army of the Rhine. He is soon beheaded and she for some unknown reason is not and let go after the fall of Ropespierre. Napoléon falls madly in love with her—but not her name, and drops Rose, in favor of Joséphine. The rest is history.
Cafés Recommended (not in immediate vicinity, but worth locating!)
La Pallette, 43 rue de Seine. Wonderful find, near Beaux-Arts, with used artists’s palettes as décor. Hopefully the weather is nice, so you can eat outdoors.
Café Procope, 13 rue de l’Ancienne-Comédie; the oldest café in Paris, for history lovers.
Les Deux Magots, 6 place St-Germain-des-Prés: Hemmingway’s and Fitzgerald’s haunts, for literary lovers.
