Baby shoes
Some mentions of infant loss (in fiction) in this one, just a heads-up. If you want to give that a pass, scroll down to below the picture.
SOULIER, n. This is a French word for “shoe.” It’s not the first French word for “shoe” this newsletter has discussed: I also wrote about “sabot” (clog) a few years ago. I didn’t plan to do more shoe words, but Victor Hugo made a big deal out of some souliers in Notre-Dame, which I just finished, so here we are.
Before we get into that, though, let’s figure out what a “soulier” is. In France, “soulier” not exactly synonymous with “chaussure,” which also means “shoe.” Soulier is a little more specific: it means a low shoe with a rigid sole and an upper part that covers most of the foot. So a sneaker is a chaussure, but not a soulier. Chaussure is both more general and more common; soulier feels a little old-fashioned to me. These distinctions might not apply in Québec or other parts of the francophone world. I don’t know much about other Frenches, but if you do, please reply and tell me!
Soulier does not have an especially exciting etymology. It comes from Vulgar Latin “subtelaris,” where you can see regular Latin “sub” (under) and “talaris” (heel + adjective ending). The sound change is what we’d expect. As I said, the real reason I’m writing about this word is Victor Hugo.
I knew very little about Notre-Dame de Paris going in. I had no idea, for instance, that there is a plotline about a frightful old recluse who’s been living in a cell for 15 years, surviving on whatever food people pass through her barred window, grieving her four-month-old baby who was “stolen” or perhaps “eaten” by the Roma (she refers to them with another word that I have opted not to use, as does everyone else in the novel, though the recluse is the only character shouting Blood-Libel-like racist conspiracy theories). She spends her time crouched in the cell clutching her baby’s shoe (soulier!). When any of the Roma who live in Paris pass by her cell, she hurls insults at them, but she especially hates the 16-year-old dancer Esmeralda. You can see where this is going: meanwhile, Esmeralda carries one of her baby shoes with her because the Roma who raised her told her that when she found its twin, she would find her mother.
It makes sense to choose shoes for this story about finding the other half of a pair. I couldn’t help but wonder if this part of Notre-Dame de Paris gave rise to the famous six-word short story in English “For sale: baby shoes, never worn” that is anecdotally attributed to Ernest Hemingway, or if there’s something about shoes in particular that makes us emotional. Regarding “never worn,” there are a lot of baby shoes in my house right now, hand-me-downs and gifts, and my (very much alive!) baby has never worn any of them because he’s four months old and can’t walk. What does he need shoes for?
According to Victor Hugo, the answer is cuteness (okay, “grâce et petitesse”), which, sure, that’s the answer to most questions about babies. Here’s Isabel Hapgood’s 1888 translation into English, via Project Gutenberg, and yes I am tickled to link Project Gutenberg in this newsletter about a novel that has so much commentary on the printing press, but back to the shoes:
I do not believe that there is anything sweeter in the world than the ideas which awake in a mother’s heart at the sight of her child’s tiny shoe; especially if it is a shoe for festivals, for Sunday, for baptism, the shoe embroidered to the very sole, a shoe in which the infant has not yet taken a step. That shoe has so much grace and daintiness, it is so impossible for it to walk, that it seems to the mother as though she saw her child. She smiles upon it, she kisses it, she talks to it; she asks herself whether there can actually be a foot so tiny; and if the child be absent, the pretty shoe suffices to place the sweet and fragile creature before her eyes.
Baby shoes are indeed very small and cute, but so is everything else a baby wears. Shoes evoke presence and absence because, unlike clothing, they hold their shape even when not worn. As the recluse cries, “[V]oilà le soulier ; le pied, où est-il ?” (Here is the shoe; where is the foot?)
Now there’s a gutting eight words, but Victor Hugo would never stop at six or eight words if he could use 60 or 600,000, and that’s why I love him, but that’s also why he’s such a reliable knife to the heart. The recluse’s pain overflows in long, long monologues, howling and catastrophic, so wrenching to witness that she makes a squad of soldiers weep. I can relate.
One last note about “soulier” and Notre-Dame: this plant, a lady’s-slipper orchid in English, is called “sabot de Vénus” (Venus’s clog) in French, or sometimes “soulier de la vierge” (Virgin’s shoe) or “soulier de Notre-Dame” (Our Lady’s shoe), due to the shape of its lower petal. I don’t think it has anything to do with the novel, but it came up in my searches and I like this illustration.
And here’s a timely and very cool Guardian article about the cathedral itself and the craftspeople practicing medieval carpentry who might rebuild its forest of a roof after the 2019 fire.
I really need some happily-ever-afters while reading Victor Hugo, who absolutely did not provide, so here are a couple of wonderful small-r romance novels:
The Comeback (m/f, both cis and het, contemporary) by Lily Chu. I enjoyed Lily Chu’s novel The Stand-In so much that I went right into reading (well, listening to, since this book is audio only) her next book, which takes on the same celebrity-and-normal-person tropes as the first novel. Ariadne is a workaholic lawyer in Toronto who returns to her apartment after a long day to find a strange man on her couch. She pulls a kitchen knife on him, instantly winning my heart. The man turns out to be her roommate’s cousin from Seoul, staying in the apartment while the roommate is away on a work trip. He also turns out to be a K-Pop idol fleeing his fame, but he doesn’t mention it. Perhaps you will find Ariadne’s inability to divine that her stunning, perfectly fit houseguest who says he’s a “music producer” and never leaves the house without a facemask and sunglasses is, in fact, famous—well, perhaps it will try your patience a little, since Ariadne is otherwise intelligent and competent. But I will accept any amount of obliviousness from a romance protagonist, because in my youth I received a burned CD from a guy, accompanied by a handwritten note about the songs, and did not understand that this constituted A Flirtation until a decade after the fact, by which time the world had stopped using CDs. (Sorry, guy, I hope you’re doing well wherever you are.) Anyway, if you’re down to feel smug about knowing something the protagonist doesn’t, The Comeback is a ton of fun. Serious, orderly Ariadne makes a great foil for playful, chaotic Jihoon, who takes over her bathroom with hair dye and skincare products, fills her cabinets with instant noodles, and texts her cat gifs all day long. He loves to talk about feelings and the very thought gives her hives. This opposites-attract dynamic is common, but in romances between a man and a woman, it’s usually the man who’s serious and allergic to feelings. An emotionally open man with a skincare routine is a rare find. Ariadne and Jihoon also bond by planning an ideal trip, which is dreamy, and I loved the scenes where they explored Toronto and Seoul together. There’s also really great stuff in this book about connecting with your siblings, setting boundaries with your loving but overbearing parents, and finding a workplace that values you. I can’t wait for Lily Chu’s next book. Content notes: a parent having a heart attack, fatshaming from a parent, racism from Ariadne’s coworkers.
Where Love Grows (m/m, both cis and gay, contemporary) by Jay Northcote. This is such a tender, engaging read about two very lonely men who’ve suffered and survived a lot finding each other and themselves. Luke is a recovering addict who struggles with depression and has been shut up in his London apartment because of it, while Stephen is recovering from Guillain-Barré syndrome and doesn’t have the strength and energy to get out of his house in the Welsh countryside and into his garden like he used to. A mutual friend suggests they help each other out, so Luke moves in with Stephen and starts taking care of his garden. They don’t get along—until, of course, they do. This is a kind, respectful portrayal of disability and mental health, and the story is both sweet and sexy. And it made me want to go outside and weed my own neglected garden. Content notes: addiction, depression, suicidal ideation and suicide, death of a parent from cancer, death of a parent from drug overdose, ableism, sex.
See you all in September!
