VISITOR FROM PARIS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 39, Issue 988, 25 July 1958, Page 30

VISITOR FROM PARIS

NEw ZEALANDERS who feel that their country has little to offer a ‘young woman born and brought up in Paris should be especially pleased to hear of one who came -here for nine months, stayed for 22 and was sorry to go back. "I loved New Zealand people and did well on the New Zealand food and way of life," Christiane Foiret said when she left to return to Paris earlier this year. "I hope to bring to France a breath of New Zealand air, and I would like to return and learn more about the people here." Mlle Foiret, who has been heard from YC stations in recent months in La France Qui Chante, could, of course, have simply been reacting in our favour after a taste of Yorkshire en route, for she admits she found Yorkshire very

cold and miserable, and didn’t like the moors or Yorkshire pudding. "I felt that the early morning bus to school reeked of bacon and eggs, and the late bus after flicks was full of drunkards speaking Yorkshire dialect." So Mlle Foiret, who had gone there to teach in a girls’ high school, occupied her time doing an M.A. thesis on Thomas Malory and the tale of the Holy Grail. "I kept look.ing for the Grail for a year," she said, "and not finding it even in the left luggage office in Victoria station, I decided to track it further down to the Antipodes." Katherine Mansfield’s writings were a special reason for wanting to visit New Zealand-"I wanted to find out how much New Zealand essence there is in them"-where eventually Christiane Foiret came on a fellowship

to lecture in universities, talk to private groups, visit schools and so on. Back in Paris Mile Foiret will study English and American literatures and civilisations "so that I can induce French little girls and boys to say ‘How do you do’ in the right way." Of her studies at the Sorbonne, where she will "try her luck" once more at national scale examinations in English, she says: "I won't get through, but I will keep at it until the examiners are tired to see my face popping up at each exam, session." Mile Foiret loves ping-pong, tennis, the sea from a boat, folk music, making dresses and cooking the ‘French way, dancing but not rocking and _ rolling. "And I love Paris, of course," she says, "but not under the bridges or the Follies." She adds: "I would like to organise tours in France and Paris for New Zealand people, so that they could learn more about my country and see it in the right way."