How a purple stone fed hostilities of British, French
When I got the invitation from the French ambassador for a blacktie gala called “Améthyste,” I wondered what that name meant. Was it a promotional party for a French jewelry company or maybe a new perfume?
I didn’t go to the Nov. 18 fête, because I’m studying for a master’s at Columbia University and I had to read “Henry V.” Little did I know that I could have done my homework at the party, because the Hundred Years’ War is still raging in the French and British embassies in D.C.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends!
Améthyste, it turned it, was a French troll of the British: It’s the name of a French nuclear submarine. A recent sub deal — where the Australians canceled plans to buy French diesel-powered submarines after secretly negotiating with the British and Americans to build nuclear-powered ones — torpedoed relations among all four countries.
We few, we unhappy few … Suffice it to say, British and Australian diplomats were nowhere to be seen at the party, at the residence of Ambassador Philippe Étienne, where Joe Manchin was, naturellement, busy holding court.
One of the co-hosts of the party, Steve Clemons, a journalist here, told me it was a sheer coincidence that the name of the purple gem chosen to make a statement about healing and unity — that red and blue Washington should blend into more of a purple hue — also turned out to evoke the dastardly sub snub.
Clemons said Tom Bossert, a homeland security adviser under Donald Trump, came up to tease, “Steve, I may be the only one who knows that Améthyste is named after a nuclear submarine.”
Once the guests learned the nautical meaning of Améthyste, they weren’t buying the coincidence excuse, either.
But no one was surprised at the chill between the French and British embassies. It takes very little to get the two countries to start trashing each other.
The British sniff that the French are arrogant. And the French sniff that the British are … not French.
Shakespeare’s history plays are still very alive for the British; Boris Johnson has worked for years on a book about Shakespeare. In “Henry V,” the French are portrayed as catty, wimpy and, in the case of killing boys in the English camp, “cowardly rascals.”
Joan of Arc — who inspired the French to win back their country from the English after Henry V conquered it and married a French princess — is still burning in the French imagination.
But things are at a particularly low ebb now in terms of relations across the channel. There was the submarine scandale and a nasty territorial fishing dispute with the French seizing a British trawler. And the Brexit divorce still galls, making it harder for the two small nations that always projected power way beyond their size to show puissance, a favorite Shakespearean word from the history plays.
They look at each other and see the ghosts of empire.
No country was more disrupted by Britain leaving Europe than France. So much of the trade between the U.K. and France runs across the English Channel. Donc, the French took it very personally.
The French want to show that the British exit from the European Union is a failure, scaring other countries who might consider leaving. The Brits want to show that it is a success. There’s friction between Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron.
This misalliance was not helped when Johnson was here in September and said the
French were making too much of the sub spat, noting “Donnezmoi un break” and telling them to “prenez un grip.”
Meanwhile, the British and French embassies are deep in their own competition to woo top Biden officials.
Some Brits rolled their eyes recently when they heard that the French had given Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s mother, Judith Pisar, a prestigious honor, although, given her time as a cultural figure in France, she certainly had merit.
There was more eye-rolling at the double-entendre of the Améthyste gala.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la
même chose.