Paris

Chapter 2  Paris

"I wish he would not go to Paris," said Miss

Matilda anxiously. "I don't believe frogs will

agree with him; he used to have to be very

careful what he ate, which was curious in so

strong-looking a young man."

(Cranford - Mrs. Gaskell)

I returned to London only to collect a Burmese visa which had just been confirmed and in three days I was on my way to Paris - for my first visit. Within ten minutes of my arrival, I had managed to get myself kidnapped.

The loudspeaker at Le Bourget Airport was asking "Monsieur Shalleece" to go to the transit desk. As I approached expectantly, a man came to me with outstretched hand and announced: "Fenwick!" (The name, surprisingly enough, of the large French factory I was visiting.) I said: "Heureux de faire votre connaissance" -I had been practicing this all the way from London and was rather pleased with the way I got it off.

Within minutes we were driving briskly along the road into Paris. He told me that his name was Dreyfus and I repressed a stupid impulse to ask him how he had enjoyed Devil's Island.

Even allowing for the fact that his English was not much better than my French, we quickly seemed to be at cross-purposes. When it became obvious that there was a mistake somewhere, he stopped and we re-introduced ourselves. He had not said "Fenwick.' but "Fenwick?" - because he was there to meet a Mr. Fenwick from England, whereas I was expecting to be met by someone from the French Company of that name.

Laughing heartily, my kidnapper turned and drove back to the airport where we parted with expressions of mutual esteem.

For almost forty years, Paris had been a city known to me only through my reading, and ghosts peopled the streets so familiar by name.

Boswell dismissed Paris in a few words: “approached Paris; Invalides appeared as St. Paul's does, coming to London. Was not affected much." Next day, January 13th, 1766, he added: "No change of ideas from being in Paris

A friend drove me around and obligingly translated place-names into English, so that Sacré Coeur became "Holy Heart", and I had, mentally, to translate back into French before I knew what I was looking at. The same friend said: When you do not know a French word, pronounce the English as though it were French, and nine times out of ten you will either be correct or be understood."

Later, it occurred to me that this advice might create misunderstandings, as I wanted to know when the news came on T.V. and was searching my memory for the French for "news". I might have found myself asking at what hour the nudes appeared, (les nues). Probably it would not have mattered; our drive took us through Montmartre where every other place was a strip-joint.

Approaching the Louvre, the next day, I was gratified to be offered indecent photographs. No doubt the man was employed by the Bureau of Tourism to ensure that visitors are not disappointed in their expectations, just as the drunks I was to see rolling around the New York Bowery at noon, were undoubtedly there to provide local colour.

Paris is a fine and beautiful city. The horse chestnut trees along the Champs Elysees were spilling "conkers" profusely. I pocketed two which had burst from their cases at my feet, fly stained and varnished, and eventually used them in Australia to demonstrate the game of "conkers".

"A dinner without cheese is like a day without sunshine", quoted my French host as he selected four varieties from the fifteen or so on the cheeseboard. France is justly noted for its cheeses and in general is a death-trap for the gastronome.

Two meals, at Le Grand Veneur and at a restaurant with the fascinating name of Les Anysestiers du Roy will linger in my memory along with the recollection of a tripe and cow—heel pie I shared with an alleged friend in Lancashire - but for different reasons.

Prices, not merely of meals, are high, and a shopping expedition produced only the melancholy reflection that apparently, I could afford nothing. An attempt to buy lingerie ended when the critical measurements, which I had carefully memorised, proved useless because they were in inches. My efforts at instant conversion into centimetres produced results which could not possibly be the measurements of any human female, however unfortunate, and the shop-assistant, like so many more, spoke no English and apparently understood no French.

I hesitated a moment outside a window advertising individual eyelashes.  Probably I could manage the price of one, but whom did I know, short of an eyelash?

My last whole day was a Saturday and as the weather was kind, I was able to carry out a project of seeing Paris, on foot. The route from my hotel in the Avenue D'Iena was planned to give me a few hours at the Louvre and at the Galerie du Jeu de Paume where most of the Louvre's Impressionist paintings are hung.

I saw the originals of paintings familiar to me as reproductions and felt that I had not been misled except when the original was massive in size, like the fragment of Monet's "D'ejeuncr Sur L'Herbe", which turned out to be about fourteen feet high - a fairly substantial fragment!

The magnificent cathedral of Notre Dame, seen first by moonlight and floodlight, displayed its Gothic splendour to great advantage, but even in the sunshine it retained its impact. Surely, high up, the face and figure of Quasimodo could be seen - and, in the shadows, the Archdeacon for ever slips from his desperate handhold on the gargoyle, two hundred feet up. And the beautiful Esmeralda? "All at once the man at the gibbet kicked away the ladder with his heel, and Quasimodo, who for some moments had not breathed, saw swinging from the end of the rope, about two yards from the ground, the unfortunate girl, with the man crouched upon her shoulders.

The rope twisted around several times and Quasimodo saw the girl writhe with horrible contortions."

Those of us too squeamish to re-read Hugo's novel can take heart. Quasimodo's eyes must have deceived him, or someone else was hanged in error, for nestling in the shadow of Notre Dame Cathedral I found "Esmeralda's Cafe". Strangely enough, some months previously, when passing through Haworth, the Brontes’ birthplace, I had seen "Heathcliff’s Cafe". It is a comforting thought that after their trials and tribulations, famous characters should be able to settle down to serving tea and cakes to the tourists. At first, I felt that Heathcliff's grim and forbidding temperament would not be conducive to success, but in Yorkshire, as J.B. Priestley has said, civility is still regarded with suspicion as something hypocritical and unmanly, so no doubt Heathcliff has prospered.

I did not go into Esmeralda's Cafe'. She might have turned into a strident hag, serving cold coffee in dirty cups, and I could not have borne that. No, on reflection Hugo was right - it was better to hang her.