In Lise de Baissac’s Footsteps in Marseille
Finding Lise’s apartment on the Quai Rive Neuve
Before travelling to the south of France, I knew that Lise de Baissac had lived in an apartment overlooking the Vieux-Port after the war on the Rive Neuve side, but I hadn't been able to work out exactly in which building she lived. So, sitting in my hotel room overlooking the harbour and having walked up and down in vain, I decided to email Martyn Cox, who had interviewed Lise in her house in the early 2000s, not long before she passed away, to ask whether he happened to remember her address.
Within ten minutes, he replied: 15 Quai de Rive Neuve. Not only that, he sent me photographs to help me recognise the building, and when I looked out of my hotel window I realised, rather wonderfully, that I could actually see Lise's house from my room.
So I immediately set out on my expedition with the address in hand. The building was still there, rather unremarkable between its more imposing neighbours, above the Bar de la Marine, although the first thing I noticed was that the front door was covered in graffiti.
"Oh no, I don't want that for Lise," was my first thought. “How can that be in such respectable surroundings?”
I went into the Bar de la Marine and spoke briefly with two young waiters, who did know that Lise de Baissac had once lived upstairs, although they probably were still in diapers when she died in 2004. The patron may have known more, but he wasn’t in.
From her house I walked a little further down and took the ferry that crosses from one side of the harbour to the other, so I could look back at her house from the water. It was nice to realise I was seeing and enjoying sights she had probably cherished for decades: all the vitality of a busy port city, both on the road and on the water.
A Street without a Sign
There was another trace of Lise I wanted to find because my research had shown me Marseille had named a street after her: Rue Lise de Baissac in Saint-Mauront in the 3rd Arrondissement.
I had been advised not to wander around that particular area alone, so I found a young English-speaking taxi driver and explained what I was looking for. He took me there in his Tesla — my first ride in one, incidentally — and we gradually left the familiar Marseille around the Vieux-Port behind for a very different part of the city, with tower blocks, satellite dishes, washing hanging from balconies and, once again, an extraordinary amount of graffiti.
According to Google Maps, Rue Lise de Baissac should have been alongside an primary school school, and we found the school easily enough, which was closed on Sunday, of course. What we couldn't find was any evidence whatsoever of the street name or sign.
We parked the Tesla and walked around the school and the block several times while I stared at Google Maps and the taxi driver got more confused by the minute. If the street existed as Google Maps showed, there should be a sign, according to his taxi driver mind. I was quite prepared to accept defeat, but not the young Tesla driver.
“Stay close to me,” he warned, and although I was taller than him and he didn’t look particularly muscled, it sounded reassuring. “This is an area where you have to stay very vigilant. Keep your bag close and don’t leave my side.”
We spotted a group of young men loitering outside the closed school entrance and he resolutely walked over to them. I watched him trying to explain who Lise de Baissac had been and why this English historical novelist desperately wanted to photograph a street sign with her name on it, but they were too drugged and disinterested to provide him with anything but a vague stare and a shake of heads. Tesla man gave up as well.
I took a photograph of the school instead, just to be sure.
I’ll never know whether we missed the sign or it simply wasn’t there.
Cours Julien
The third place I wanted to visit in relation to my book had nothing to do with the historical Lise de Baissac. It was about The Colour of Courage.
The contemporary part of my novel takes place in Marseille in 2004, and my modern heroine, Sil Anderson, is a young graffiti artist. I had deliberately brought Sil to Marseille because of its street-art culture, so Cours Julien was an area I very much wanted to see.
I went early in the morning, before the shops and restaurants had opened, and wandered around taking photographs of the murals. Some were wonderful, although there was also a lot of scribbling over some, and I wondered if Cours Julien might actually have become more run-down over the years. Not an artist in sight, but they probably slept in.
I couldn’t suppress the thought that — unbeknownst to me when writing my novel — graffiti seemed to follow Lise throughout my Marseille research. It was on the front door of the house where she’d lived, all around the neighbourhood where I couldn't find the street bearing her name, and now it surrounded me in Cours Julien, where it had become part of the fictional story I had written about her.
Lise, quite the aristocratic lady, probably wouldn’t have approved, but then again she married a painter, Gustave Villameur, so who knows? She might even have enjoyed wandering around Cours Julien herself and remembered that she too had once been young and a bit of a rebel, parachuting into France to fight the Nazis.
