A Life in Paris – March 15, 1969

I fear it is preparing to rain again after two dullish days after an early part of the week with radiant unParisian sun…

Photography print available at Found View Gallery.

I fear it is preparing to rain again after two dullish days after an early part of the week with radiant unParisian sun. In the midst of getting my Paris Letter [New Yorker column] off, Marie my maid came and unpacked me into my new elegant [Ritz hotel] room on the garden, which is very large, has many good roofs to look at, two fine old buildings and the dome of the Polish church in the rue Cambon behind which the Eiffel Tower shines bright at night, though how on earth it can be there on the Paris horizon is a mystery. I have no sense of direction any more. There are blackbirds in my garden singing at dawn and rooks in the church dome rooking about with their strange, cracked voices. They are very Christian, since they always inhabit churches.

Janet Flanner, to a friend

Notes:
• From Darlinghissima: Letters to a Friend
• Janet Flanner was an American writer and journalist.

A Life in Paris – March 14, 1949

Here it is grey, chilly with a wind. The hotel greeted me with smiles…

Photography print available at Found View Gallery.

Here it is grey, chilly with a wind. The hotel greeted me with smiles and handshakes of joy—very kindly. I have my old room tomorrow. We shall, if needed, poison the gent in it. I am next door in waiting till he leaves.

Janet Flanner, to a friend

Notes:
• From Darlinghissima: Letters to a Friend
• Janet Flanner was an American writer and journalist.

A Life in Paris – March 3, 1959

Photography print available at Found View Gallery.

I have some freesias on my table as I work to remind me that it is spring, as indeed it has looked to be over the past week of sunshine and abnormal warmth with the warmest Friday in the recorded temperature of Paris. With all the sunshine we wasted behind the two weeks of fog and this past week’s solar joy, we now start to pay today with grey skies and chill air. Not a drop of rain here except one day for nearly a month. […]

I was in the Fbrg. St. Honoré yesterday and saw a strange sight, though the papers have mentioned it as an occasional habit of de Gaulle’s. Two mounted horse guards at his Elysée palace doorway which, of course, immediately attract crowds who wait to see him come out or go in and are shooed along by the police who indeed force you to cross the street to begin with. One cannot walk on the palace sidewalk. If he is going to imitate the guards at Whitehall in London, at least let the tourists and citizens enjoy the sight and connect it with his high position as they do with the Queen’s, rather than have their curiosity unsatisfied by being trundled along by policemen who keep treating them like chickens escaped from the barnyard. […]

I will add more personally that at last I have ordered a grey flannel suit with a dark and light grey patterned silk blouse, at a small tailors in the Fbg. St. Honoré, the blouse costing $80, the whole three pieces coming to $200 instead of Lanvin’s $450 if not $500 where I shall instead get a black silk afternoon dress as it is in a dress that the genius of the best dressmaking shows. I should think nearly anybody can cut and make simple, short-jacketed suit such as I have worn for three years now. Anybody can and everybody does.

Restaurant prices have gone down a little for food, in fear of losing all clients. Shops nearly empty. The pinch has not yet started pinching the modest people on mere food prices at the market.

Janet Flanner, to a friend

Notes:
• From Darlinghissima: Letters to a Friend
• Janet Flanner was an American writer and journalist.

A Life in Paris – February 21, 1946

This morning, the weather was spring, animating and affecting us all…

Photography print available at Found View Gallery.

This morning, the weather was spring, animating and affecting us all—all us human beings—like a drug, a pleasant poison of annual mortal gaiety. A divine hasheesh, of flowers in the air, soon to come. I felt happy. Now tonight I still feel happy, but it is winter. Snowflakes are as large as white carnations.

Janet Flanner, to a friend

Notes:
• From Darlinghissima: Letters to a Friend
• Janet Flanner was an American writer and journalist.

Thoughts on Paris – February 18, 1964

A grey winter here, a mild one, thank heaven, but for ten days the only sun has been the midnight brightness of the Eiffel Tower…

Photography print available at Found View Gallery.

A grey winter here, a mild one, thank heaven, but for ten days the only sun has been the midnight brightness of the Eiffel Tower, turning and whirling. It has been declared a monument historique, which seems redundant.

Janet Flanner, to a friend

Notes:
• From Darlinghissima: Letters to a Friend
• Janet Flanner was an American writer and journalist.

Thoughts on Paris – February 14, 1946

For the first time in my recollection, Paris shopkeepers have mentioned this saint Valentine. Florists have signs about him out front…

Photography print available at Found View Gallery.

For the first time in my recollection, Paris shopkeepers have mentioned this saint Valentine. Florists have signs about him out front, among the tulips, explaining that you should buy a pot of blooms (at three hundred francs) to send to your beloved. So business has grasped the value of hagiography here, finally, as connected with this particular saint.

Janet Flanner, to a friend

Notes:
• From Darlinghissima: Letters to a Friend
• Janet Flanner was an American writer and journalist.

A Life in Paris – January 24, 1958

Bill Bullitt just phoned, will lunch with him tomorrow. Says he has been four months having his flat here redecorated, modernized; ceiling of salon fell in for FOURTH time yesterday…

Photography print available at Found View Gallery.

Bill Bullitt just phoned, will lunch with him tomorrow. Says he has been four months having his flat here redecorated, modernized; ceiling of salon fell in for FOURTH time yesterday (fortunately, not hitting him; unfortunately, not hitting any of the workmen), in the new bathroom, no water flowed, he called the architect and plumber who said impertinently, “You asked me to install plumbing. I’ve done it. You didn’t say anything about my connecting it with any water.”

Janet Flanner, to a friend

Notes:
• From Darlinghissima: Letters to a Friend
• Janet Flanner was an American writer and journalist.

A Life in Paris – January 23, 1945

Paris would be beautiful if each snowflake were not a frozen tear for the cruelty of suffering it adds to civilian life here, even not to speak of men at the front…

Photography print available at Found View Gallery.

Paris would be beautiful if each snowflake were not a frozen tear for the cruelty of suffering it adds to civilian life here, even not to speak of men at the front. […] Little food for average, modest French families, no heat, no light between eight-thirty and five; coiffeurs closed until five, then open till eleven. [Robert] Capa, Life photographer, is here in my hotel. […]

I walked into Notre Dame last Sunday—and out. It meant nothing to me. I have never liked its nave, which I find hard, its columns of a too late Gothic; it was a period of my past which I was no longer interested in and on which I walked out. I seem to have no aesthetic interest left at all; it alarms me. It was my chief intellectual passion. I never read, never have; I was all eyes for beauty. If I no longer care for that, I might as well be blind, if I only use my eyes to see what I eat.

Janet Flanner, to a friend

Notes:
• From Darlinghissima: Letters to a Friend
• Janet Flanner was an American writer and journalist.

A Life in Paris – January 22, 1962

It is now six o’clock. At four-twenty as I sat at my table writing the Malraux part of this week’s Paris Letter [New Yorker column], there was a terrific BOOOOOOOM close at hand…

Photography print available at Found View Gallery.

It is now six o’clock. At four-twenty as I sat at my table writing the Malraux part of this week’s Paris Letter [New Yorker column], there was a terrific BOOOOOOOM close at hand. I thought it was on the Seine somewhere, rushed to the window which was open for air to the balcony, as the pompiers began rushing by and ambulances. I could tell by the direction of their sirens that they were crossing the Chamber’s bridge. Soon my pal on the New York Times Magazine, Josette Lazar, rang me. It was the plastic bombing of the Tunisian diplomat’s car behind the Quai d’Orsay. She had already talked to an American professor who came to her office, shaken, horrified. He had been going into the Quai d’Orsay to go up to its library when the bomb exploded. The smoke and fumes were strangling, he said, blood was on the staircase. He fled. All the three-story windows on the Cour Constantine were in crumbs on the stones below.

Janet Flanner, to a friend

Notes:
• From Darlinghissima: Letters to a Friend
• Janet Flanner was an American writer and journalist.

Thoughts on Paris – January 18, 1953

Weather continues foggy by night, misty by day, with a continual twilight…

Photography print available at Found View Gallery.

Weather continues foggy by night, misty by day, with a continual twilight. Even the French who are hardly pagan are already talking eagerly of the advent of coming spring.

Janet Flanner, to a friend

Notes:
• From Darlinghissima: Letters to a Friend
• Janet Flanner was an American writer and journalist.