General Spears, Le Chapon Fin, and Mary Borden

I’ve written before about my fascination with General Sir Edward Louis Spears, who was Winston Churchill’s personal liaison to French Premier Paul Reynaud, and then Britain’s liaison to General Charles de Gaulle. I never thought I would write about Spears’ favorite restaurant in France … until I stepped inside that restaurant a couple of weeks ago.
 
In his book The Fall of France: June 1940, Spears wrote with gusto about Le Chapon Fin, one of the finest restaurants in Bordeaux. Spears mentioned sitting down to “meals … to be dreamed of for a lifetime.”
 
Le Chapon Fin has a rich heritage. Its doors first opened in 1825. When Michelin began awarding stars to restaurants in the 1930s, Le Chapon Fin was included in the first group to receive three stars. Their website proclaims that in the early twentieth century, Le Chapon Fin “was a destination for the cream of society: wealthy Bordeaux merchants, passengers from transatlantic liners …” As luck would have it, although I hardly belong to the cream of society, I happened to be in the area as a passenger on a transatlantic liner. (OK, our passage to Europe was by air, but our ship did cruise along the coastlines of the continent. For what it's worth, we ended up bussing into Bordeaux from a remote port as a consequence of King Charles and Queen Camilla’s visit that week).
 
With some time to kill before a trip to a winery in Saint-Émilion, I asked a tourist official if Le Chapon Fin was nearby. When she pointed me in the general direction, I headed over.  In his description of June 14, 1940 dinner, Spears described the: “remarkable establishment, where the best food in Europe is served in a room imitating a rockery”  I will admit that I was not 100% sure what he meant by “rockery.” Intuition suggested that it was a rock garden, and the Merriam-Webster dictionary confirmed that assumption. When I walked into Le Chapon Fin just as several customers were beginning to enjoy lunch, the maître d kindly allowed this American tourist to snap the picture below which, sure enough, confirmed the rockery design.

I was a bit rushed, and did not have time to stay for lunch. Plus, I’m such a plain and boring eater that dishes like “Tender thigh of Brannens pigeon smoked with organic hay” (46 Euros) would have been wasted on me.
 
During the course of researching and writing about Spears in Everybody Knows a Salesman Can’t Write a Book, I gradually realized that my admiration for this British general was misplaced. He remains a useful character in history, and I still admire his writing (and rely on much of it in my next book). But he was not a very nice human being. He betrayed his long-suffering wife, and his biography includes at least one potentially brutal episode with his dog.
 
In hindsight, I wished I had written more about the other partner in that marriage. Mary Borden was an American, born in Chicago to wealthy parents. She move to Britain with her first husband … and left him for Spears after they met during the First World War. Borden put her wealth to selfless – even heroic – use during both World Wars. In the First World War she funded and served as a nurse in a field hospital for French soldiers. In the Second World War, she funded and served through the war with a military ambulance unit that cared for (primarily) French soldiers near the front lines of battle. She was a critically-acclaimed author of novels, poetry, and non-fiction books. She even dabbled in American politics, writing several speeches for her nephew-in-law Adlai Stevenson, who ran for president twice against Dwight Eisenhower (and lost both times). Mary died in December 1968. General Spears married his former secretary one year later. I would have truly enjoyed drinking a pint with Mary Borden (which makes more sense if you read my book).
 
Thanks for reading,
Bill