Moonlight Over Paris

by Jennifer Robson

  Ninety years on, it’s difficult to reliably establish the number of Americans living in Paris in the 1920s, for official estimates vary considerably. The French census of 1926 counted just under 18,000 Americans living in France, with roughly half of them based in Paris and its suburbs; but that figure didn’t include the thousands of undocumented visitors who had, for instance, overstayed their visas or had entered the country illegally. In 1923, an article in the European edition of the Chicago Tribune (yes, Sam’s paper) cited a figure of 32,000 Americans living in Paris. The real number, which likely hovered somewhere in between these two estimates, fluctuated according to the exchange rate and other economic factors, and it also included all Americans in Paris, many of whom were businessmen with no connection to the arts. Historian Warren Susman has speculated that only one-tenth of American expatriates were writers or artists, which leaves us with a very rough estimate of two or three thousand men and women, to which must be added several hundred expatriates from other countries, most notably Britain, Russia, and Spain.

  It may seem implausible that a newcomer to Paris in 1925 might have been able to attend a party and there meet a dozen or more famous writers and artists, but making some provision for exaggeration and hindsight, the people who belonged to the expatriate artistic community did socialize with one another, did spend great amounts of time in one another’s company, and did tend to frequent the same cafés, restaurants, and bars. Paris, in that sense, was a small town—and like most small towns it was the sort of place where everyone seemed to know everyone.

  Two of the most central figures of the Lost Generation were Sara and Gerald Murphy, although they would almost certainly have resisted being attached to any sort of label. Immortalized in Calvin Tomkins’s long-form essay of 1962, “The Best Revenge is Living Well,” and recently the subject of several biographies and novels, it is impossible to read or write about France in the 1920s without encountering the Murphys. My characterization is a sympathetic one, for they were simply the sort of people you wanted to be around—funny, charming, warm, witty, and interesting. They instantly made any gathering a success, and they retained their characteristic warmth of spirit and generosity even in the face of the two overwhelming tragedies that brought an end to their life in France. These were the death of their son Baoth in 1935, age 16, of meningitis, followed by the death of their other son Patrick in 1937, also at the age of 16, after a long battle with tuberculosis. After Patrick’s diagnosis in 1929 they moved to Switzerland, where he might receive the most modern treatments available, and then back to the U.S. in 1934. After they left France Gerald never painted again.

  During their years in France, the Murphys gathered around them a group of friends that included Archibald MacLeish, a famed poet and later the Librarian of Congress; Ernest and Hadley Hemingway; Pablo Picasso; and, perhaps most famously, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. The Murphys were partly the inspiration for Fitzgerald’s characters Dick and Nicole Diver in Tender is the Night, although the literary notoriety that came with this connection always upset Sara. “I didn’t like the book when I read it, and I liked it even less on rereading,” she told Tomkins in 1962. “I reject categorically any resemblance to us or to anyone we knew at any time.”

  By establishing a friendship between Helena and Sara Murphy, I was able to create a pathway into the world of the Lost Generation, a world that leads her not only to Sam Howard but also to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, the Hemingways, the Fitzgeralds, Sylvia Beach, and even such lesser-known figures as Rosalie Tobia, the proprietor of Chez Rosalie. Signora Tobia was a real person, mentioned by name in a turn-of-the-century directory of artists’ models, and was known for her kindness toward many struggling artists, most notably Amedeo Modigliani.

  Through the fictitious character of Aunt Agnes, whom I like to imagine as a cross between Margot Asquith and Madame de Staël, I was able to gain entrée for Helena into the salon of Natalie Barney, and introduce her to a group of women who were intellectually curious and socially daring. They included Peggy Guggenheim, Winnaretta Singer (the Princesse Edmond de Polignac), Djuna Barnes, Colette, Elisabeth Gramont (the Duchesse de Clermont-Tonnerre), Thelma Wood, Mina Loy, Nancy Cunard, and Romaine Brooks.

  Consuelo Balsan, whose fictitious nephew by marriage proves so irksome to Helena, was a real-life figure, too. Born a Vanderbilt, raised in the very top drawer of New York high society, she became a duchess at the age of eighteen when she married the Duke of Marlborough. The marriage was an unhappy one, and resulted in separation eleven years later, followed by divorce in 1921. Later that year, however, Consuelo remarried, this time to Lt.-Col. Jacques Balsan, a pioneering French aviator.

  No discussion of Paris in the 1920s can be considered complete without Sylvia Beach and her iconic bookshop Shakespeare and Company, which she opened in 1919. Beach is best known today for her championing of James Joyce, and her decision to become the publisher of his magnum opus Ulysses after it was deemed too inflammatory in its subject matter and language to be published in the United States or Britain. In addition to being a center of English-language cultural life in Paris, Shakespeare and Company also operated as a paid lending library, and nearly every acclaimed writer who spent time in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s had a subscription there. Beach closed her shop after the German occupation of France in 1940 and it never re-opened; the Shakespeare and Company of today’s Paris bears its name as an homage to the original shop.

  To learn more about the Lost Generation and Paris in the 1920s, please turn to my list of Further Reading in this section.

  Glossary of Terms and Places in Moonlight Over Paris

  NEARLY ALL OF THE PLACES I mention in Moonlight Over Paris still exist, in one form or another; in a few cases the original building has been destroyed and replaced with a modern structure, though the street address remains (Chez Rosalie is an example). If you’re interested in seeing what the buildings look like today, or would like to get a sense of where they are in relation to one another, I’ve created a Moonlight Over Paris map via Google Maps. Feel free to visit (and use the Street View option to take a closer look). The url is goo.gl/t18Q75 and a link is also available via my website at www.jennifer-robson.com

  à demain: so long; literally “until tomorrow”

  à la Véronique: a savory dish prepared with grapes

  absinthe: an aniseed-flavored liqueur that was infamous for its allegedly hallucinogenic and toxic qualities, it was banned in France and much of the world from 1915 onward, with restrictions on its sale removed only in the early years of this century

  Aéronautique Militaire: original name of the French Air Force from its inception in 1910 to its renaming as the Armée de l’Air in 1933

  allô: hello; less formal than “bonjour”

  American Field Service: established in 1915, the AFS provided ambulances driven by American volunteers to the French army until the entry of the United States into the war in 1917

  ancien combattant: veteran; literally “old soldier”

  Antibes: a small town on the Mediterranean coast that was popular among the wealthy for winter holidays; in the 1920s it also became a sought-after destination in the summer months

  aquarelles: watercolors

  arrondissement: Paris is divided into a series of twenty administrative districts, with boundaries that rotate clockwise from the center rather like the segments of a snail’s shell. Each arrondissement is numbered, and often people will refer to the number as a destination in and of itself: for example, “the Eiffel Tower is in the seventh.”

  Belle Époque: literally “beautiful era,” it describes the period from the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, and is roughly analogous to the Gilded Age in the United States

  Blue Train: nickname for the Calais-Méditerranée Express, the Blue Train (le train bleu) was a luxury rail passenger service that ran from Calais via Paris and Lyon to the resort towns of the Mediterranean

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bsp; Le Boeuf sur le Toit: the famed restaurant and cabaret, established in 1921, which was known for its jazz music; its audience was a who’s-who of the Parisian cultural elite

  boulangerie: bakery

  boulevard du Montparnasse: the central boulevard in the neighborhood of Montparnasse, along which many of its iconic cafés and restaurants were located

  boulevard St.-Michel: the boulevard St.-Michel ran north-south through Montparnasse, roughly parallel to the eastern border of the Luxembourg Gardens, and was known colloquially as the “boul’ Mich’”

  boulots: compressed egg-shaped lumps of coal dust that were often used in place of firewood or coal

  les bouquinistes: booksellers of used and sometimes antiquarian stock whose stalls can be found along the banks of the Seine

  brocante: type of market that sold used or antique furniture and household goods

  bunkum: useless talk or nonsense

  cablese: series of codes, almost a language unto themselves, used by telegraphists and newspaper editors to shorten telegrams, or cables, to save on the costs of transmission; since cables were priced by the word, great efforts were made to combine words, create memorable acronyms or mangle accepted rules of grammar to reduce costs

  café allongé: literally a “stretched coffee,” an allongé is prepared espresso-style but with extra water. Other specialty coffees mentioned in Moonlight Over Paris are a café au lait, in which coffee is mixed with an equal amount of hot milk; a café crème, which is espresso combined with hot milk; a café express, equivalent to a shot of espresso; and a café noisette, in which a small amount of milk, sufficient only to turn the drink the color of a hazelnut, is added to a shot of espresso.

  cami-knickers: essentially a camisole and knickers combined into one garment, these had superseded combinations as the undergarment of choice for young women in the 1920s, and typically were worn along with a soft-cup brassière

  carte d’étudiant: student card

  chambre particulier: private room

  Chez Graff: a bohemian restaurant and bar in Pigalle known for its gay clientele

  Chez Rosalie: a modest restaurant in Montparnasse that was popular among artists and students looking for a cheap and filling meal

  Côte d’Azur: the stretch of Mediterranean coast from St.-Tropez to the Italian border; then, as now, a popular destination for the rich, famous, and glamorous

  Cubism: an avant-garde movement, at its height in the first quarter of the twentieth century, which sought to break up and reassemble objects as abstract forms, and thereby encourage multiple points of view and a greater understanding of the artwork as a whole. Its most famed adherents were Picasso, Georges Braque, and Juan Gris.

  dépêche-toi: hurry up; literally, “hurry yourself”

  deskmen: term for the copywriters and/or editors at a newspaper; in the context of the Paris edition of the Chicago Tribune, Sam’s employer, it was the staffers who spun short and often unintelligible cables into longer stories for use in the newspaper

  désolé: sorry; literally, “desolated”

  dessin: drawing or sketching

  dessin à modèle vivant: live model drawing

  devoré: a type of fabric, often velvet, in which parts of the nap are burned away, leaving only the fabric backing; this produces a patterned effect on the fabric

  Le Dôme: properly Le Café du Dôme, this Montparnasse landmark was a favorite gathering spot for writers, Ernest Hemingway among them

  Dona nobis pacem: translated from the Latin, “give us peace.” Here it refers to the final movement of Bach’s Mass in B Minor

  Ecole des Beaux-Arts: France’s pre-eminent school of fine arts, based in Paris, and located in the Palais des Beaux-Arts in St.-Germain-des-Prés

  Eighteenth Amendment: enacted in 1919, the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution banned the production, transport, and sale of alcohol, though not its consumption, and marked the beginning of Prohibition in the U.S. It was repealed in 1933.

  Élysée Palace: analogous to the White House, it is the official residence of the President of France and is also the center for much official state business

  en tout cas: in any event; at any rate

  entrez: come in

  European Edition: the official title of the Chicago Tribune’s eight-page Paris-produced newspaper; colloquially known as the Paris edition

  fais des beaux rêves: sweet dreams; literally, “make beautiful dreams”

  Fauchon: luxury grocer, first established in 1886, and still in business today

  La femme de fermier: farmer’s wife; name of the painting Helena originally submits to the Salon des Indépendants

  La femme dorée: the golden woman; name of the painting Étienne submits to the Salon des Indépendants

  fine à l’eau: brandy diluted with water; one of Hemingway’s preferred drinks when he lived in Paris

  Fokker C.IV: two-seat biplane introduced in 1924

  “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow”: immensely popular song at birthdays and most celebrations; the song “Happy Birthday to You” was not widely known in this period and would not have been sung at a birthday celebration in the mid-1920s

  Fouquet’s: first established in 1899, this traditional Parisian restaurant (its name does include an apostrophe) was for many years the venue for the annual French film awards, the Césars

  Gare du Nord: one of the main rail stations in Paris in the 1920s, it served northern France and points beyond. Other stations in central Paris at that time included the Gare de Lyon (southerly destinations), the Gare d’Austerlitz (central and southwestern France), the Gare de l’Est (serving eastern France and Germany), the Gare Montparnasse (western and southwestern France), the Gare d’Orsay (since closed; now the Musée d’Orsay), and the Gare St.-Lazare (western France, including Normandy).

  La Garoupe: name of the beach in Antibes where the Murphy family and their guests would often gather in fine weather

  Gillotte’s: officially called Le Rendezvous du Petit Journal, but known to all as Gillotte’s, this small bistro was the favorite watering hole of the deskmen at the Paris edition

  Grand Bassin: a large octagonal pond in the Luxembourg Gardens; much favored, then and now, as a place for children to sail model boats.

  Le Grand Duc: a cabaret in Montmartre renowned for its American jazz music

  Grand Palais: an immense exhibition hall located just off the Champs-Élysées in central Paris

  grand salon: in a private home this might be the largest of several drawing rooms; in a public space, such as a school, it would be the largest classroom or lecture hall. A petit salon was simply a smaller or less grand version of the same.

  Guignol and Madelon: puppet characters who are roughly equivalent to Punch and Judy in England

  Les Halles: for centuries the central market for Paris, the glass-and-ironwork buildings at Les Halles (literally “the halls”) were constructed in the mid-nineteenth century and demolished just over a century later. Today the area is a transit hub and shopping mall and in the middle of a large-scale redevelopment.

  horaire: timetable

  Hôtel de Lisbonne: the small and exceedingly modest hotel where many deskmen for the Paris edition lived; rent for a single room in the mid-1920s was the equivalent of ten dollars a month

  Île de la Cité: one of two remaining islands in the Seine in central Paris, much of it is taken up by Notre-Dame Cathedral, the Sainte-Chapelle, and the Conciergerie

  Île St.-Louis: the second island in the Seine in central Paris, it is mostly taken up by residential buildings, many of which date to the seventeenth century and are among the most valuable and coveted real estate in Paris

  impasto: a painting technique whereby paint is laid on very thickly; can also refer to the paint itself when so applied

  Jardin Luxembourg: see Luxembourg Gardens, below

  le jazz hot: French term for American jazz music, particularly that originating from New Orleans


  Lapérouse: one of the oldest restaurants in Paris, Lapérouse has been open since 1766 and is known for its luxurious private dining rooms and classic French cuisine.

  Latin Quarter: a Left Bank neighborhood in Paris, centered around the Sorbonne, that has long been a focus of student life and avant garde culture in the city

  Luxembourg Gardens: created in the early seventeenth century, the public gardens (“Jardin Luxembourg” in French) are known for their manicured paths and flowerbeds, children’s amusements (puppet show, carousel, and pond) and displays of statuary. The Musée du Luxembourg is located at the northern end of the Gardens.

  Magasin Sennelier: an artists’ supply shop, open since 1887

  Maison Vionnet: the fashion house of Madeleine Vionnet, the designer famed for her pioneering use of the bias cut. She closed the house upon her retirement at the beginning of the Second World War, though her name is currently used under license by a Paris designer.

  maître: literally “master,” it is used as an honorific for teachers

  Métro: the Paris Métropolitain is the system of underground trains, first opened in 1900; the iconic Art Nouveau entrances and décor of its first stations remain as highly visible landmarks throughout much of central Paris

  Montparnasse: this neighborhood, center of much of the artistic and literary life of 1920s Paris, takes its name from the cemetery at its southern border

  Musée du Luxembourg: Paris’s first museum of contemporary art, it was later superseded by other museums, among them the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée Nationale d’Art Moderne. Today it functions as a display space for traveling exhibitions.

  mutilé de guerre: a person left wounded or scarred by war; literally, “mutilated by war”

  Orteig Prize: a $25,000 award for the first aviator who successfully flew non-stop between New York and Paris, it was first offered in 1919 but not won until 1927, when Charles Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic in his Spirit of St. Louis

  pagaille: a terrible mess