Over the years, in explaining the backstory behind my book, The French Desk: A Brooklyn Gal’s Journey into Wartime Propaganda, I would mention that my mother had participated in the Paris Study Group to my friends, and they would invariably say, “What was that?”
The Paris Study Group (PSG) was a group of catholic college women (about 20 per year), who travelled to France for their junior year abroad, lived with a French family and studied at either the Sorbonne or the Catholic Institute of Paris. The students came from all over the world. The program ran between 1928 and 1940.
The PSG Founder and Director, Miss Erin Samson, was born to a French father and an Irish mother and grew up in in Washington, DC. As a young girl, Miss Samson traveled to France often to visit her father’s relatives and ended up attending college there, earning her French Baccalaureate at the Catholic Universite of Angers. Miss Samson also went on to study in England, earning advanced literature degrees at Oxford.
She wanted other young women to have the opportunity to travel, attend school, learn about other cultures and generally gain a larger view of the world, so she created the PSG. She gave lectures throughout the year at major cultural sites, museums and many other special opportunities to supplement their school studies. It was an elixir that worked.
My mother spent her junior year with the PSG in 1938-1939. Her younger sister went the following year (they were only a year apart) and stayed with a different family than my mother. They always felt very lucky to have gone on this adventure. At the time, it was an extraordinary opportunity.
The diploma Mom earned from the Sorbonne is for the Cours de Civilsation francaise, Degre Superior. The framed document hung at the top of our stairs in the house I grew up for over thirty-five years. The simple, yet elegantly lettered parchment surrounded by a thin black frame, greeted you on every trip up or down the stairs. It still hangs in a bedroom in my family’s house, looking a little worse for wear. We call it the “French Room.”
To say the year in France was a foundational experience in my mother’s life is an understatement. In fact, it made all her war work possible as her ability to understand and speak French fluently was an incredible asset. Most of her jobs between college and marriage required knowledge of French. Lifelong friendships were created with many of the girls in her year.
As the five of us children grew up, we often were called to dinner with the words “a table,” the French version of “to the table.” She loved to say little things in French, from instructions to commands to reprimands. Somehow, it all came across a tiny bit softer than it would in English. “Maintenant,” French for ‘now’, often precipitated the need to leave for church or some time sensitive event. “On y va” was another favorite when it was time to depart. It sounds so much nicer than “let’s go.”
During their year in France, Miss Samson became good friends with and mentor to many of the girls and kept in touch with them for years afterward. She would organize reunions, newsletters or send an informative group Christmas card. She was very dedicated to her PSG students for many years.
After my parents had died, and my siblings and I were going through their papers and ephemera, we found Mom’s faded copy of Miss Samson’s Trinity College (now called Trinity Washington College) 1969 Alumni Magazine obituary tucked into an old college yearbook. Clearly, the PSG and Miss Samson had meant a great deal to our mother. To a large degree, it was the defining year of her life.