In honour of Louisa Paulin, 1888-1944

Sometimes, street names are signposts to history. I was reminded of this recently when my road was given a name and my house was allocated a number.

​Our street is short, and most of its residents are buried in the graveyard beyond our garden hedge. Naturally my wife wanted to be number one (she always does), while I would have been happy to be number two (as usual). But honestly, number 17? Perhaps the naming committee had decided to give numbers to the larger monuments funéraires. Fortunately, the name of our street brought more consolation than the number of our house. 

​As the most famous – and only – living writer in my tiny commune, I had briefly enjoyed the fantasy of residing in a street named after myself. Unusual, but not impossible, although because I am both alive and foreign, article 1 of decree 48-665 published on 12 April 1948 would have obliged our mayor to seek approval from the ministry of the interior. It was far simpler to name our road after another writer who was well and truly dead. Mind you, when they unveiled the new map of our commune, I didn’t recognise her name, or even know she was a lady of letters.

​Who on earth is Louisa Paulin, I wondered. It was time for some research.

​Louisa was born in 1888 in a small town in the Tarn called Réalmont. She trained as a teacher in Albi, and went on to be la maitresse in several village schools in the Tarn including my own, Saint-Sernin-les-Lavaur.

​In the early 1930s, she began writing in Occitan, the first language she had learned to speak, but a language which few people knew how to write. (Occitan was the ancient language of the troubadours, and if you want to know more about it, read my book, ‘Lauragais: Steeped in History, Soaked in Blood’.) Her work won several prizes, including an award from the oldest literary institution in the western world – the Acadèmia dels Jòcs Florals, or the Academy of the Floral Games, founded in 1323 by seven troubadour-citizens of Toulouse.

​Louisa died in Réalmont in 1944. More recently, her friends have created an association and a website where you can find much of her work, and the photo portrait I have used in this article (click the button 'Louisa Paulin').

Louisa Paulin

A few days ago, I was pruning the hydrangeas at the front of my house. A few lines from one of her poems kept going around inside my head.

‘Someone touched me lightly on the shoulder
I turned around but they had gone.
Perhaps you are the one I was no longer expecting
And of whom the confused memories
Sometimes disturb the mirror of my dreams.’

Louisa, I am honoured to live in a street named after you, and it is only fair that your old home should be No. 1, rue Louisa Paulin.