Amiens
11 September
The door to Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks’s epic First World War novel, swings open onto number 39 on the Boulevard de Gange, “a broad, quiet street that marked the eastern flank of the city of Amiens.”
From the descriptions of “a strong, formal front towards the road from behind iron railings”, “a slate roof plunged in conflicting angles to cover the irregular shape of the house”, and “the stone balcony over whose balustrades the red creeper had made its way up to the roof”, there is “no doubt this was the property of a substantial man.”
In the novel, the house belongs to a local textile grandee who lives there with his much younger wife and teenage daughter. In 1910, a young Englishman comes to lodge with them while serving his apprenticeship. What could possibly go wrong?
River Somme at Amiens
Yet it’s the evocation of the interiors that truly sets the stage: a series of erotically charged encounters between the Englishman and Madam, and the beginning of a narrative arc spanning seventy-five years. The “unexpected spaces and corridors”, the creaking floorboards, and the “echoing air” make the house “always a place of unseen footsteps.”
In 2004, the house appeared to be operating as a museum, which might explain how the author was able to describe it in such minute detail. We returned during opening hours to take a closer look.
It is now abandoned and derelict. With modern development closing in on either side, demolition seems likely.
For now, though, it stands brooding and intimidating—a keeper of secrets, and a home only to the ghosts of Faulks’s characters.
Amiens Cathedral