Ramon Guthrie arrived in Paris within a few days of his twenty-first birthday and thereafter considered France a second, generally preferable, homeland. He lived in Paris and the south of France (visiting Paris often) from 1920 to 1923 and again from 1926 to 1929. From 1930 on he returned as frequently as war and his duties as professor of French at Dartmouth permitted. Guthrie's France was a congenial place to write and--as a gifted amateur--to paint. But he also steeped himself in French culture, language, and literature. At the Sorbonne he studied Provencal and Old French while trying to support himself as poet, novelist, and translator. He married a Frenchwoman, Marguerite Maurey, in 1922 and took his only earned degrees, the licence and doctorat en droit degrees for foreigners, in 1921 and 1922 at the University of Toulouse. ("Privately tutored--by myself": he lacked even a high school diploma.)

In France he accumulated friends and experiences that...