A Life in Paris – March 23, 1920

Hotel Terminus, room 142, second floor, looking onto the courtyard, twin beds, 34 francs a day, 39 because of the little dog…

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Hotel Terminus, room 142, second floor, looking onto the courtyard, twin beds, 34 francs a day, 39 because of the little dog. Twin beds! Snores, promiscuity, invitations, arguments, sulks! We have been here since yesterday. We were welcomed and installed with the manners refugees have to put up with.

Liane de Pougy

Notes:
• From My Blue Notebooks
• Liane de Pougy was a famed courtesan in Paris who then married a Romanian prince and eventually became a nun.

A Life in Paris – March 22, 1923

A thousand good mornings and good nights. I have just seen the Picassos myself — Dame & Monsieur…

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A thousand good mornings and good nights. I have just seen the Picassos myself — Dame & Monsieur. I couldn’t get to see them earlier:…they weren’t free.

I talked to them about the Divertissement [commissioned for a Parisian high society masquerade ball, to include music, choreography and costumes]. They want to take part in it, but tell me they haven’t heard anything about it from you…What’s happened?…A mistake, no doubt…I was counting on you to bring us together with some ladies for the choreography. Don’t abandon the idea, I beg you…let’s have everything arranged before you leave, if possible.

Erik Satie, to the host of the ball

Notes:
• From Satie Seen Through His Letters by Ornella Volta
• Erik Satie was a French composer. He is described as flippant and eccentric, composing music with a spare, unconventional, often witty style. From 1898, in his early 30’s, he lived alone and permitted no one to enter his apartment.

A Life in Paris – March 21, 1942

But the sweet light has returned. And that is stronger than everything. This morning, toward 11, I took the longest way to walk back home, along the quays…

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But the sweet light has returned. And that is stronger than everything. This morning, toward 11, I took the longest way to walk back home, along the quays. The air was silvery over the Seine, the palaces, the city, so peaceful. The sun was inflaming the poplar trees and the windows of the Louvre. The streets were just about empty. What silence! Never, for centuries, had spring set up its quarters so tranquilly in Paris. The river was bubbling. The nymph of the Seine had come into the city….Should I have turned my back on this felicity?

Jean Guéhenno

Notes:
• From Diary of the Dark Years, 1940-1944
• Jean Guéhenno was a French writer and intellectual who kept a diary during the WWII German occupation of France.

A Life in Paris – March 20, 1903

…my debts in France remain now 19 francs: they were 18 francs at the end of last month. I paid off 7 francs as I told you and borrowed as much again. My reductions of expenses, however, is accompanied by a lack of clean linen…

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…my debts in France remain now 19 francs: they were 18 francs at the end of last month. I paid off 7 francs as I told you and borrowed as much again. My reductions of expenses, however, is accompanied by a lack of clean linen—I have had one handkerchief for three weeks—but I have a grey tie which is something under a mile in length—it floats all over me so that it is difficult to for the worlds to discover the state of my shirt. One boot is beginning to go—I knew that that bootmaker wouldn’t put leather in them. I have taken to wearing the ‘good’ black suit as the ‘other’ is impossible. The trouser-buttons of the ‘good’ black suite are falling out one after the other—however I have two safety pins and I shall stitch in buttons now that I have money to buy them. As for the food I get—I do not always get food only when I can. Sometimes I take one meal in the day and buy potatoes cooked and dry bread in the street. I do not know if I am getting lean or not. But, I can assure you, I have a most villainous hunger. Today I came laughing and singing to myself down the boulevard Saint-Michel without a care in the world because I felt I was going to have a dinner–my first dinner (properly speaking) for three days. This shows what simpletons we all are. […]

Every Sunday I try and get out into the country. Last Sunday I went out to the woods of Camart and walked through them to Sèvres—coming back by steamer. I read every day in the Bibiothèque Nationale and every night in the Bibliothèque Saint-Geneviève. I often go to vespers at Notre Dame or at Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois. I never go to the theatre—as I have no money. I have no money either to buy books.

James Joyce, to his mother

Notes:
• From Selected Joyce Letters
• James Joyce was an Irish writer.

A Life in Paris – March 20, 1651

I went this night with my Wife to a Ball at our neighbours…

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I went this night with my Wife to a Ball at our neighbours the Marquis de Creve Coeurs, where were divers Princes, dukes & great persons; but that which I found very mean [common], it began with a puppet play.

John Evelyn

Notes:
• From The Diary of John Evelyn
• John Evelyn was an English writer and diarist.

Thoughts on Paris – March 19, 1959

It was very nice having Debo here. She & Diana (my goodness they have become eccentric) rushed about Paris in huge long coats & their heads tied up in white satin like two beauties distracted by tooth-ache…

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It was very nice having Debo here. She & Diana (my goodness they have become eccentric) rushed about Paris in huge long coats & their heads tied up in white satin like two beauties distracted by tooth-ache. Woolworth bags bulging open & a hundred parcels dangling from their arms. The staring that went on, you can imagine! Debo bought, I thought, a lot of expensive rubbish, rather on the line of the clothes Diana buys at Harrods—rather less nice in fact. Of course Paris isn’t arranged for that sort of wild two-day shopping spree—it takes an age to buy properly here. However a good time was had by all, including me!

Nancy Mitford, to her mother

Notes:
• From The Letters of Nancy Mitford
• Nancy Mitford was a British writer.

A Life in Paris – March 18, 1971

I got a phone call from Dad. […] He had arrived this morning, found himself a hotel, and had taken a nap. The hotel he had chosen was 153 Blvd. St. Germain…

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I got a phone call from Dad. […]

He had arrived this morning, found himself a hotel, and had taken a nap. The hotel he had chosen was 153 Blvd. St. Germain, right between the Drugstore and he Brasserie Lipp, a rather interesting location. […] Then we came back to the apartment so he could meet Mme. Bergeret and get a quick look at the apartment. Then we took a short tour (Sainte Chapelle, the upper terrace of the La Samaritaine, the Seine, St. Michel) and back to the apartment by 5:00 PM for champagne, caviar and conversation with Mab. That lasted until 7:00 PM.   Quite a long talk, I must say. Then we went back to the hotel to wait until dinner time, but poor Dad was so tired from the trip and the time change that we set out right away to eat so he could get to bed early. That meant a walk all the way to St. Michel for dinner at Mitsuko. It was absolutely delightful and Dad enjoyed it very much. Then as we were walking back to the hotel, looking for a café to have some coffee (at Dad’s suggestion), right in front of the Eglise Saint Germain, we came across this little bank of about ten guys playing oompah‐pah jazz and a weird girl dancing and an old lady dancing with another old lady.   Dad was delighted, so was I because it was the perfect example of the weird kind of things that happen in this quarter and why I love Paris so much!

William H. Nelson, Jr.

Notes:
• From A Paris Journal by William H. Nelson, Jr.
• Bill Nelson, Jr. was an American who kept a diary while he was living in Paris for eight months in his early twenties.

Thoughts on Paris – March 18, 1930

You must know that the opera in Paris considered, not without some reason by the Paris intellectuals as beneath contempt…

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You must know that the opera in Paris considered, not without some reason by the Paris intellectuals as beneath contempt and the spectacle of the immensely illustrious author of Ulysses endeavouring to hustle crowds of journalists and protesting admirers into that old fashioned playhouse to hear antiquated music sung by old timer Sullivan was too much. No doubt I may have exaggerated in my exertions for him and perhaps made myself ridiculous in the eyes of sober thinking people, but I do not care very much, for it is incomparably the greatest human voice I have ever heard[….] On one of the evenings he sang when Miss Beach and Miss Monnier were present I said, it may seem incautiously, when asked by the latter why I had done all I had for a person they considered unknown, that since I had come to Paris I had been introduced (i.e. by them) to a great number of recognised genuises, without specifying names, in literature, music, painting and sculpture, and that for me all these persons were quite sympathetic and friendly, but they were all, for me, perhapses, but that there was no perhaps about Sullivan’s voice. […]

I do not think that if I cease working there is much point in my continuing to live in Paris. It involves continual sacrifice of capital for one thing, which up till now was covered over by an output on my part, so that I do not think I shall renew the lease of this apartment, and as for my books it is useless to transport immense loads of what I cannot read so that I think I shall keep only the signed gift books and good old dictionaries. These questions I shall now think over, having nothing else to do, as I have to decide by May.

James Joyce, to a benefactor

Notes:
• From Selected Joyce Letters
• James Joyce was an Irish writer.

A Life in Paris – March 17, 1937

The French Negro students in Paris rely on my lending library  to keep them in touch, as much as possible, with American Negro literature…

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The French Negro students in Paris rely on my lending library  to keep them in touch, as much as possible, with American Negro literature. I have a number of very interesting books by the poets and novelists, and studies on the subject of the problems of the American Negro, but no as many as I should like and would purchase if I had the funds for it. Unfortunately my little shop is going through a crisis just now, and would have gone under if it had not been for the help of friends. Pardon me for telling you this, but it is to explain why I have to make a very careful selection of only the most essential books, and to ask you to help me by suggesting a few representative ones that my library should possess.

Sylvia Beach, to The Friendship Press

Notes:
• From The Letters of Sylvia Beach
• Sylvia Beach was an American who founded the original Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris. She also published Ulysses by James Joyce.

A Life in Paris – March 16, 1956

After a very agreeable huge dinner chez les Carter we went to the Embassy where the Jebbs really had assembled the very cream of the Tout Paris..

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After a very agreeable huge dinner chez les Carter we went to the Embassy where the Jebbs really had assembled the very cream of the Tout Paris. It was intensely elegant & I think the Guest must have been rather fascinated. […]

My old white Dior dress perfectly lovely, one of the 3 or 4 best. These dresses are worth getting in spite of the awful price (£250) because you feel comfortable in them. My brooch, fixed on a pink bow round the neck was admired even by Rothschilds!!

Nancy Mitford, to a friend

Notes:
• From The Letters of Nancy Mitford
• Nancy Mitford was a British writer.