FRANCE: Mirage au Fromage

For decades, perhaps centuries, before the woman called Marie Harel was born, farmers and their wives in the green, rolling valley near the Norman town of Vimoutiers were making a rich, creamy cheese known as Camembert. Like the rest of them, Marie, whose years spanned the latter half of the 18th century, probably made and relished the cheese herself, but beyond that, no one in Vimoutiers recalled that she had any special connection with it. There was, true, a local legend that one of Marie’s relatives had once been received by Napoleon III and had given him a box of cheese, but . . . alors.

One day in 1926, however, a well-dressed New Yorker who called himself Dr. Joseph Knirim turned up in Vimoutiers determined to honor Marie Harel, “the discoverer of Camembert cheese.” “I suffered from indigestion for months,” explained Dr. Knirim, “and Camembert was the only food my stomach could absorb. I have carried across the seas this bunch of flowers to honor our common benefactress.”

Grave Matter. Glad of any honor that might come his town’s way, the mayor of Vimoutiers promptly organized a search for Marie Harel’s grave. It failed to materialize, but another grave was made to serve as well, and the doctor deposited his flowers. After that everyone joined in a banquet, in the midst of which Dr. Knirim proposed raising a statue of the great Marie, and whipped out a $20 bill to start a fund for it.

Next morning the good doctor left Vimoutiers, never to return or be heard from again—but the curd he had started fermented after him. Two years later a statue of Marie Harel, or someone who was supposed to be Marie Harel, was unveiled at Vimoutiers by Alexandre Millerand, a former President of the Republic. It soon became a shrine for tourists, and also for local peasants, who often placed flowers at its feet and knelt in prayer for the secrets of properly ripened Camembert. Then, because of a G-2 mistake in World War II, both Marie and a good part of her village were blown to bits by a flight of U.S. Ninth Air Force bombers.

Curd, Thou Never Van Wert. American money helped restore the blasted town at war’s end, but nobody did much about Marie until 1950, when chunky, Wisconsin-born Dairy Executive Will Foster began singing her praises among workers at a Borden cheese factory in Van Wert, Ohio, where most of the Camembert-style cheese in the U.S. is made. Within a month the U.S. cheese workers had shelled out $2,000 to honor their long-dead French colleague. Last week, thanks to their generosity, a statue was unveiled in Vimoutiers for the second time in a century to the glory of the woman who did not discover Camembert cheese. “Marie Harel was a benefactor of humanity!” said Mayor Augustin Gavin, who had helped to dedicate the first statue. “I dare hope that a United States of the World will be formed rapidly and peacefully, modeled after the conquest of the world by Camembert.” Said Will Foster, who paid for lunch for about 40 fellow celebrators: “This is the happiest day of my life.” Said a local farmer: “Humph! I don’t think Marie Harel ever existed at all.”