Special envoy to Yainville (Seine-Maritime)
From Paris, take the A13, leave Rouen behind then take the ferry to Heurteauville.
Straddling the Seine, you are at the foot of the majestic towers of Jumièges Abbey.
The
“most beautiful ruins”
in France which fascinated Hugo and Flaubert.
Two or three kilometers away, in Yainville, is the property that Sacha Guitry acquired in January 1913 after the triumph of The
Night Watchman
, a comedy in three acts.
Its current owners have just requested classification as a Historic Monument.
Guitry named this half-timbered mansion “Chez les Zoaques” like his play which also had great success in 1906 – a contraction, according to random biographies, of Zouaves and Cossacks.
Or is it simply the Frenchization of “The Oaks” (“Les Chênes” in English).
Or this happy people, living on an island in the Indian Ocean, imagined by the author?
“At home,” Guitry dreamed, “the woman is free and there are no cuckolds.”
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