I'll Always Have Paris

The news this week has, of course, been dominated by the fire at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.

I have never been to Paris. My only trip to Europe was 40 years ago this summer, and France was not on the itinerary. And, honestly, Paris was never high on my "I must see this" list. All the same, the day the edifice burnt, I kept the CNN camera nonstop video running in the corner of my computer screen, enlarging it from time to time to watch the building glow red and the flames reach silently upwards.

I told Warren that night that all I could think of was Samuel Dodsworth, my favorite Sinclair Lewis character, found in his novel Dodsworth. There is a wonderful scene when Dodsworth has a rare afternoon to himself in Paris (his shallow, shrill, and social climbing wife is off at a fitting and a sitting) and decides to go see Notre Dame, thinking rebelliously, "I think I'll sneak off and see if I really like it! You can't tell! I might!" So he takes a taxi to the cathedral, then crosses the river to sit in a cafe and looks at it without "Fran's quivers of appreciation." I'll let Lewis take it from there:

He admitted the cathedral's gray domination. There was strength there; strength and endurance and wisdom. The flying buttresses soared like wings. The whole cathedral expanded before his eyes; the work of human hands seemed to tower larger than the sky.

Dodsworth crosses the bridge and enters the cathedral:

[The lack of cushioned pews] made the cathedral seemed bare and a little unfriendly; but aside a vast pillar, eternal as mountains or the sea, he found a chair, tipped a verger, forgot his irritation...and lost himself in impenetrable thoughts. [He] stared at the Rose Window, but he was seeing what it meant, not what it said. He saw life as something greater and more exciting than food and a little sleep...he felt that he could adventure into this Past about him—and possibly adventure into the far more elusive Present.

At this point in my life, I will never get to Paris. I doubt I will get to Europe again, for no reason other than my traveling capacity has been circumscribed by the myeloma which co-inhabits my body and demands a seat at the table. And that's okay, for I'll aways have Paris, thanks to Samuel Dodsworth.