So I made enquiries of Amazon France, to find that I could buy a three volume edition of Simenon from Pléiade at around £50 a pop. But this did not seem right. Simenon may have been annoyed not to have received the literary recognition he thought he deserved, but Maigret is nevertheless a bunch of detective novels. The full Pléiade treatment, with all that scholarly apparatus, does not seem right. Or I could buy individual books at around £2.50 a time - which I did not find attractive either. At which point I had the bright idea to try Ebay France, where there turned out to be a number of collected offerings from an edition called Rencontres, not that unlike the Heron edition of Agatha, of which we already own three quarters. I imagine that, collectors being what they are, you get a good mark-down for incomplete collections.
While I have been unable to track down exactly who Éditions Rencontres were or are, google being too vague for my French, the picture of the books on Ebay looked OK, so I pressed the button to purchase, fortunately in the same position on the screen as in our version of Ebay.
At which point the problems started. I was not allowed to Paypal. The vendor wanted cash, a cheque or a banker's order. On a Sunday.
After a while, I thought I had extracted the necessary details from Ebay and started to talk to HSBC, who did not seem bothered that the name of the bank involved both the words 'Marseilles' and 'Corsica' (I had thought that they might fire up the money laundering and drugs units in the HSBC command centre), but who did want the name and address of the vendor. Further palaver with Ebay and quite quickly I have the address, with the view (from streetview) to the southwest illustrated above. All very peaceful and attractive. Presumably the books were kept in some barn, no longer needed for cows or hay.
At the third attempt the money is transferred. Several emails and several days later I have confirmation that the money has arrived and that the books have left their rural idyll. And about a week after that the books arrive - 19 volumes out of a possible 25 or so - very stoutly wrapped in a sturdy cardboard box. Lots of brown tape and an impressive sticker with my address on it. The books were just what I wanted, but the catch was that now I had to find shelf space for them, having decided that I had to get rid of as much book as I was taking in.
This was not as hard as I had expected, perhaps helped along by the reflection that in my absence, 99% of my books will probably wind up in a skip in fairly short order. Various thoughts went through my mind as I selected books for the skip - or, to be more precise, the Epsom Methodist Church annual book sale, coming up shortly - with the fact that a book had never been read and was unlikely ever to be read, or even consulted, in the future, not usually being enough for it to be selected. All kinds of other factors came into play. Was the book a family heirloom of some sort? Was it an unusual book in some way? Did it have some special association? Was it a pretty book? Was it the sort of book that I liked to think that I might read? In about half a day all done, and the new-to-me books housed. All bar one that is, as I have now started on volume one.
From which I offer two snippets.
First, a bateau-lavoir. Which, after casting about in our various dictionnaries, I was reduced to finding in google. It turns our that in the Paris of old, say between the two world wars, you used to have barges moored in the centre of Paris which served as laundries. I suppose the ready supply of water was convenient.
Second, a contremarque. Which, in this novel meant a pass-out ticket issued to theatre goers who wanted to nip our for a quick refreshment in the interval. But for which my miniature Littré offers all kinds of other meanings which I have not yet got the hang of. One, for example, seemed to be to do with the hall marks one puts on gold and silver ware. Another seemed to be to do with scratching the grinding surfaces of a horse's teeth to make the horse look younger than it was. And yet another the second label you stuck over a first label on a bale of goods - for what reason was not clear.
PS: what I think is one of the wrong Éditions Rencontres is to be found at reference 2. Far too snooty looking to be anything to do with second hand copies of Maigret.
Reference 1: http://www.la-pleiade.fr/.
Reference 2: http://www.lannexemontolieu.com/montolieu_html/la_cooperative_editions_rencontres.html.
Group search key: smna.
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