Chanteuse and Chartreuse
Extra Muros continues the serialization of Pardon My French, a light-hearted look at some of the French expressions that have taken up residence in the Anglosphere.
In France, a chanteuse is any singer of the female persuasion. In the English-speaking world, a chanteuse is a songstress who, in the style of the middle years of the last century, dons an evening gown and opera gloves to regale her fans with pathos-filled songs of love gone bad.1 Thus, while Joan Jett may be a chanteuse when she gives a concert in Paris, she loses that title the moment her plane exits French airspace.
Here’s a story for folks who liked The Da Vinci Code. Sometime in the late Middle Ages, an alchemist caught in a terrible snow-storm seeks refuge in a remote alpine monastery. Full of gratitude to the monks who just saved his life, the mysterious stranger gives them the formula for a wondrous liqueur. Centuries later, the glowing yellow-green color of Chartreuse migrates to crayons, fire trucks, and safety vests, proving, once and for all, that Gérard Depardieu is really Mary Magdalene.
The links appended to the titles will take you to Google Translate, where you will find an icon similar to the one used with many volume controls. When you click that button, an authentic French robot will pronounce the word or phrase in question.
The same sort of thing happened when chanson moved to Japan. What had been the generic word for “song” became a term of art reserved for ballads sung by Edith Piaf and her (somewhat less melancholic) contemporaries.
That story around "Elixir Végétal de la Grande Chartreuse" is really interesting, and it's a marvelous liqueur. It makes an interesting, if more medicinal, version of a gin gimlet. I came across this story about 15 years ago and got the only bottle I could get in the States at the time. The Carthusians who got that recipe still make it in their monastery in the mountains north of Grenoble. There is now, allegedly a shortage because the monks have cut back production and the demand for it went way up during COVID.
The Carthusians are an interesting order - they like practical things - and working animals. They developed the breed of cat named for them called the Chartreux. The legend is they descend from a breed of feral Syrian mountain cats the monks brought back from Crusade. The Montreal International Jazz festival's mascot is a blue Chartreux. De Gaulle had one names Gris Gris.
There is a line of Spanish horses descended from a stallion the Carthusians of Andalusia used to create the line. The breed registry goes back to the 15th century and is alleged to be the oldest breed registry in the world. My friend Terry Bowman who runs Starlight Stables in Missouri keeps Lipizzaners and was telling me about this horse very recently.