More than 25 years ago, in 1980, I had temporary custody of the keys to CHM's Paris apartment. He had loaned them to me because we were in negotiations aimed at Walt and I buying the apartment from him. He was in the U.S. and had only recently retired from his job in Washington DC, sold his house there, and bought a house in California. He wanted to keep a place in France. Walt and I were going to spend a week in Paris and we wanted to show the apartment to a French friend who had extensive experience when it came to buying and selling properties in France. We also wanted to show it to a notaire (a contract lawyer) that CHM had recommended we consult about finalizing the negotiations... which, for numerous reasons, were never finalized. One reason for that was CHM's requirement that he would retain a lifetime right to occupy the apartment. By 2002, we were ready to leave California and re-locate to France. We needed to buy a house or apartment in France outright, not a property that might not really become ours free-and-clear many years later.
While I was in the Paris apartment in Oct. 2000, I took some photos of paintings and other artwork hanging on the wall of CHM's place. I don't know who the people in the paintings are, and I don't know who had painted them. I assume some of them might have been painted by CHM's grandfather, but I never asked CHM about them. I've never posted them on this blog before. There were other artists in CHM's family. When CHM passed away a couple of years ago at age 99, he still hadn't sold the apartment. I've heard that he didn't leave behind a valid Last Will and Testament. I would love to know what happened to the apartment, where CHM's father (the doctor) lived from about 1880 (not a typo) until his death in 1956.
I wonder... if you Googled the address of the apartment, followed by à vendre, if it had a listing in the years since chm passed away, it could come up. I do that all the time for Sears kit houses that I'm looking for. However, since he didn't have a will or trust, I guess it could be a several year time frame for when ownership would have been settled (obviously, this is all speculation on my part, backed only by my experiences in the U.S.).
ReplyDeleteThanks for the suggestion, J. I'll have to do some research.
DeleteHi Ken, I found this about French inheritance law online from a French notary web site, rather complicated stuff:
ReplyDeleteIf the deceased didn’t write a will:
the transmission of the inheritance is carried out, according to the order of the heirs set by law.
If the deceased wasn’t married:
If the deceased had children, the entire inheritance belongs to them (or their descendants if they themselves have passed away).
If the person had no child or brother and sister, his parents shall each receive half of the inheritance.
If he had no children but brothers and sisters, his parents receive a quarter of the inheritance each and the brothers and sisters shall receive the remaining half (three quarters, if one of the parents has passed away or the entire sum, if both have passed away).
If the person didn’t have children, parents, brothers or sisters (living or represented), the inheritance is divided into two equal parts: one half for the maternal family, the other for the paternal family. In each of the two families, the closest heirs inherit: the uncles or aunts first, then the first cousins.
It doesn't take long for your eyes to glaze over when you read that. CHM had no children, he told me. He was never married. His only sibling, a brother, pre-deceased him by a year or two. I don't know if he had uncles or aunts or first cousins.
DeleteWalt and I could have made the apartment a very nice place, but it would have taken years and cost a fortune. We didn't want to live in a construction zone, anyway. I don't remember if I ever knew what the sq. meters of the space is. There was a basement with windows that CHM had stuffed full of junk. Once he told me that at his house in Arlington VA one day he was cleaning out the living room and he found his piano! He had lost it years earlier.
I was lucky that CHM let me (and Walt) stay there with him when I went to Paris. He had a bedroom that I don't think I ever saw. I think it was packed full. He ever opened the door except furtively and just wide enough so that he could slip in. I slept on a day bed in the living room. I would take my own sheets and then bring them back to wash them in our machine in Saint-Aignan. I didn't want him to have to go to the laundromat to wash the sheets I had slept in.
I never stayed more than 1 or 2 nights because I couldn't take a shower there. There was a bathtub with a shower head but CHM didn't use it and said I couldn't either because the plumbing was so leaky. I was allowed to go get myself a glass of water in the kitchen, which was the size of a walk-in closet, but I wasn't allowed to do anything else in there. Still, it was very generous of CHM to put me up for three or four nights every summer between 2005 and 2015. I never saw his house in Arlington VA but saw some pictures one time. I bet that house was torn down (it was a scraper) after he sold it. It was in a nice neighborhood.
As for the art, the top right looks like it could have been grandfather, in style anyways.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if that might be a self-portrait done by CHM's grandfather.
DeleteBercail.com might give you some information on recent sales at the address, but you may not be able to distinguish the specific apartment if there are several sales in the same time period. You can also try dvf.com or this newer government website that allows you to work with an address: https://explore.data.gouv.fr/fr/immobilier?onglet=carte&filtre=tous
ReplyDeleteSorry! Not dvf.com - that takes us to Diane Von Furstenberg! I meant Demande de Valeur Foncière, which has been updated to that new government link I added at the end of my comment above.
ReplyDeleteLots of mysteries to solve.Who owns the apartment and what happened to this artwork and furniture in the house.I think you are happier living in S-A for sure.
ReplyDeleteWe would have loved to live in that apartment in Paris (it was across the street from the restaurant where we had lunch with CHM when you and Lewis were in Paris and we went to the Arts et Métiers museum). It would have required major work to make it liveable, and who knows how long that would have taken. Anyway, we decided to start our house search in the Loire Valley and in four days' time we had put a down payment on the house where we've lived ever since. The first time CHM came here, in 2004 just before you did, he looked around and said: well this house looks like an apartment to me. I never knew what he meant by that. Maybe he thought it wasn't very big, but it was as big as his house in Virgiinia and the house he bought in the southern California desert. We stayed in that house a number of times in the late 1990s. We slept on a mattress on the floor there!
DeleteMy comments above are my blog post for today. A demain...
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