The Pursuit of Laughter (46 page)

This book consists of letters, a scrappy diary, and short sketches of the royal
personages
James interviewed when he was researching for his biography of Queen Mary. According to his diary my husband and I met him in 1950, dining with the painter Derek Hill; I think it was Len Adams who arranged it. We remained friends and sometimes went to his house in Ladbroke Grove; he often sent his books to Mosley, whom he describes in his diary as ‘so remarkably intelligent'. Peter Quennell speaks very highly of
Verandah
, a travel book about the grandfather, Sir John Pope-Hennessy, who governed various colonies. My own favourite is his
incomparable
biography of Queen Mary. It is incomparable because it succeeds in giving a real, accurate portrait of its subject, and in being
perfectly
polite, and yet there is a laugh on every page. The only royal portraits to compare with it are those which were kept hidden for several generations, like Saint Simon's. Yet there was nothing to offend, none of the impertinent, boring insults of the authors now busy publishing libels on the Duke of Windsor.

Pope-Hennessy's hilarious account of life at the Windsors' Mill in France is the best thing in the book, and of the Duke he has this to say: ‘I was startled to find that… he is not only the one member of our royal family for whom one needs to make no allowances whatever, but that he is exceedingly intelligent, original, liberal-minded and quite capable of either leading a conversation or taking a constructive part in one. He is also one of the most considerate men I have ever met of his generation.' This makes one regret that Lady Donaldson, who, though not as clever as James Pope-Hennessy, is no fool, so resolutely refused to meet the Duke when she wrote her life of him. She was probably afraid that her preconceived idea of him might be upset. James wrote the above in 1959 when he had become something of an expert on royal personages all over Europe, as he gathered impressions from them about Queen Mary. He was a good letter writer, but with his books he took endless trouble, re-casting, re-writing, working really hard to achieve excellence.

He had a number of devoted women friends to whom most of the letters are addressed. In his expressions of love, admiration and esteem for them one clearly sees the fatal exaggeration of his delightful nature, its fickleness, the way he found the
irresistible
star of one moment the near-bore of the next. He was not a faithless friend, but his wild enthusiasms cooled rather quickly, and collapsed like an overdone soufflé.

Publishers are in a poor way at the moment, but it is unforgiveable that there should be no photograph of James Pope-Hennessy inside this book. There are two on the dust jacket, a horribly uncharacteristic one on the front which has been widely reproduced and in which he looks like a querulous old woman. Ideally, there should have been a
frontispiece
of the portrait Lucian Freud painted of him, one of those rare, jewel-like Freuds, when affection for his subject is not marred by a desire to preach; where the avenging
puritan
so evident in much of his work is momentarily absent.

Peter Quennell has edited the book with a preface and notes which are all that could be needed or desired.

A Lonely Business: A Self-portrait of James Pope-Hennessy
, ed. Quennell, P.
Book Choice
(1981)

Here they all are, from Josephine Baker to Brancusi, from Cocteau to Chanel, from Gamelin to Gide, the old familiar Parisians, some French, many from abroad. Vincent Cronin gives each one at least a paragraph, because for the under-seventies the names are not always enough. His thesis is that hundreds of talented writers, painters, sculptors and
musicians, and a sprinkling of geniuses, made Paris a brilliant city of self-centred
individualists
, hardly conscious that they were rushing towards world war, to be followed by decades of colonial wars and a potentially dangerous cold war.

One good and valid political idea came out of the First World War: self-determination. It was never tried. Even Clemenceau, who insisted that Germany must be encircled, described the new countries with their outlandish names as ‘an absurd hotchpotch'. Lloyd George pointed on the map to the Polish Corridor and said: ‘Here is where the next war will start.' The Versailles and Trianon treaties could have been designed to ensure disaster. Disarmament was a farce; Germany offered not to re-arm if France would disarm. France declined. An attempt was made to outlaw bombers. England declined. (It ‘needed' them for the North-West Frontier of India.)

The truth is European countries were not wholehearted in advocating self-
determination
, even in Europe. They did not want it to spread to North Africa, the Middle East, India, Indo-China and elsewhere. All these anxieties are over and done with, but they seemed real at the time. Other anxieties have taken their place.

The twenty years described in this book were just about perfect in Paris, if you could put the international situation out of your mind. It did not unduly worry painters, or
nightclub
proprietors, or the givers of fancy dress parties; there was gaiety, beauty, amusement and the joys of the intellect. This loveliest of cities was shabby, but not yet choked with traffic.

The miracle of the last war is that Paris was not bombed. If you shut your eye to the outskirts it is very little changed and as beautiful as ever. It may not be a centre of great art now, but there is still a
douceur de vivre
hardly to be found elsewhere.

War is no longer an option, there will be no more fighting on the beaches; the choice is between Europe and a radioactive desert. The Balkans must do as they please.

Paris on the Eve: 1900-1914
, Cronin, V.
Evening Standard
(1995)

This is a clever scissors-and-paste book with a theme: Paris in the 30s had a flare-up of the best of everything—the best painters, sculptors, composers, writers, as well as the best dressmakers, cooks, restaurants and parties, the wittiest talkers and the most elegant ladies. All this gathered in the loveliest of cities.

But there was a dark side. Dim and old-fashioned soldiers were controlled by vile politicians, some short-sighted, some wicked, while war threatened. Bernier hardly has words strong enough to condemn them.

He finds one shining exception: Léon Blum. This mild, cultivated and charming
individual
became Prime Minister, waved his Popular Front wand, and everything changed
overnight. The miserably paid workers had their wages raised, their hours cut, and
holidays
with pay became statutory.

A few months later, unsurprisingly, ‘the budget deficit was growing alarmingly, a pause in the reforms had to be proclaimed. It was, Blum explained, not a retreat but a phase of prudent consolidation.' The government fell.

So much for politics, but most of the time Picasso, Brancusi, Stravinsky, Schiaparelli and Josephine Baker take the centre of the stage. They were none of them French, but they were all part of Paris. Daisy Fellowes was the best-dressed woman in the world, Princess Edmond de Polignac gave splendid musical evenings, Comte Etienne de Beaumont the most amusing parties. People loved fancy dress and they loved dancing, young, middle-aged and old. Elsie Mendl, a great party goer and party giver, was 80.

At the end of this wonderful decade of great art, luxury and silliness, the politicians blundered into war, so that after the fireworks came the dusk. That is the thesis.

Well, yes and no. Paris was never bombed, except by the Allies who had a go at
factories
on the outskirts. It was short of food and fuel but there was no English austerity after the war. There was a short, sharp, bitter civil war, after which it recovered speedily. The late 40s and 50s were the 30s over again. Picasso was painting, Cocteau being witty, Schiaparelli making lovely clothes—though Balenciaga was king of fashion—M de Beaumont giving grand parties, and Elsie Mendl, now 90, standing on her head every morning.

There were new plays by Sartre, Marcel Aymé, Montherlant and Thierry Maulnier. Céline, Aragon and Paul Morand were writing their best books. Paris was fortunate, it
survived
. It is now ringed with ugliness, but the centre is relatively untouched. There will always be people willing to give madly luxurious parties and others delighted to go. Rather harmless, perhaps.

In the 50s, just as in the 30s, some were terrified of war, and thought Soviet Russia about to invade. Maybe if Spain had been communist it might have tipped the scale—there was a massive communist vote in France at that time. Bernier's high praise for the French Left reads oddly in 1993 after its striking electoral defeat, the French would not agree with him there.

His source for high life is Janet Flanner, on the whole reliable; for politics the
newspapers
. He illuminates the Stavisky affair, which has close parallels with Robert Maxwell's, except that Stavisky swindled rich corporations.

Whizzing from the Chamber of Deputies to the Folies Bergère, from Picasso's studio stacked with unsigned pictures to descriptions of pink ruffles edged with gold, it is
recognizably
Paris, even if dawn followed dusk. The style and the spelling are American. What on earth is a car ‘with a huge custom body'? Oh yes, of course, quite easy really.

Fireworks at Dusk: Paris in the Thirties
, Bernier, O.
Evening Standard
(1993)

The authors of this account of the Liberation describe the Paris of half a century ago. They give a balanced summing-up of political Paris, intellectual Paris, commercial Paris and silly Paris, with a slight bias towards the latter. They are probably right to do so, because there are several histories where the muddled story can be found. It is such a
dismal
tale that a little light relief in café society is in order. Essentially, it is the story of a civil war.

François Mauriac is far from being the only writer to emphasise that civil war has been part of French life for hundreds of years; in his recently reprinted political diary he says it again and again. Perhaps it is tribal, Frank versus Gaul, as he seems to think. With the trauma of defeat and four years of enemy occupation, this Franco-Gallic war assumed a violent aspect of the Liberation. Even now, half a century later, it still surfaces from time to time. There will always be argument about the extent the Resistance movement during the war was Communist-led. So many lies were told at the time that even now it is
anybody's
guess.

De Gaulle was said by Bidault, his Foreign Minister, to love France and hate the French. De Gaulle himself was the object of intense love and bitter hatred. He loved myths, and one that was highly important in his eyes was that Paris was liberated by his small army and by the Parisians themselves. The Americans obligingly stepped aside, and the Germans were pulling out as quickly as they could in the summer of 1944. Parisians were so happy to be rid of them and so intoxicated with joy at the arrival of French troops that there was an orgy of lovemaking, flag-waving and bell-ringing, a
Te Deum
at Notre Dame and General de Gaulle marching down the Champs Elyseés. A few shots were fired from roofs and windows, which made it seem more thrilling and realistic. The French then turned from the vanishing Germans and began killing and tormenting each other. De Gaulle stuck it for a few months and then retired to Colombey, where, as it turned out, he had to wait twelve years before returning to power.