Why don’t you come? You aren’t sick now. You are as strong as ever, if you would just believe it, and if you could convince Mother of it.
You’d love it here. The school sits at the base of a mountain. Not the hills we see in the Lake District, but real snowcapped mountains where you can’t find the tops some days because the clouds don’t reach that high.
You’d like the girls. Well, not all the girls. There are three from the United States who would make you laugh. They talk like something is sitting on the back of their tongues, flattening them out. But they are bold—you’d love that. Bolder than you ever were! And they brought books . . . I’ve never read such writing, Margo. You would love them. I gather there was a group of American writers who lived in Paris several years ago and one of them dubbed their group the Lost Generation. Their ideas are incredible and their new ways of writing fresh and innovative. Find some if you can. Order a few from Hatchards on Piccadilly. Ask for Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Stein, Cummings, and Eliot. Well, T. S. Eliot is British now, but he was born American.
Oh, and keep them from Father. He is not going to appreciate the artistry of these novels and may well be offended by their politics.
I miss you, my darling sister. Give Mother a kiss for me and tell Father I send my love.
Always yours,
Caro
P.S. Did Mother give you a heart necklace? I assume she did—we always receive matching gifts, and that makes me smile. When next I’m home, let’s trade. I’ll wear the M and you wear the C. That way we will always be together. Love you!!
Brilliantmont, Lausanne, Switzerland
12 June 1936
Dearest Margo,
It feels wrong to graduate without you. Daily life is one thing, but the milestones? We should celebrate those together. Since you can’t be here next week, promise we will celebrate turning eighteen together—but I don’t want that ball Mother keeps going on about, do you? Discourage her if you can, then come to Paris to celebrate with me.
Because I am not coming home.
I need your help, Margo. I have received a job offer to work at the famous House of Schiaparelli in Paris. I’ll be an assistant, secretary, whatever you want to call it. I won’t touch design work, not at first, but that may come later. Elsa Schiaparelli! The Schiap Shop in Paris! Can you believe it? It’s beyond anything I ever imagined.
I’m traveling with Renée on the 5:34 p.m. train following the ceremony next Friday. Her father has secured us an apartment merely blocks from Schiaparelli’s salon. We’ll settle in over the weekend and I’ll begin work the following Monday.
I will write Mother and Father after I’m settled. They never planned to come see me graduate, so they shouldn’t be surprised when I make my own plans.
And soon you can be my first guest! What fun we shall have!
All my love,
C
Paris
23 July 1936
Chère Margaret,
Paris est vivant! Absolutely pulsating with life!
I work all day, my feet never touching the ground; it’s so fascinating. Then at night, we head to the Montmartre neighborhood and I soar higher. It’s not the drinking or anything like that. It’s the ideas, the creativity, and the passion. The Lost Generation—I learned Gertrude Stein started the term, but Ernest Hemingway made it famous in that book I told you to read, The Sun Also Rises—is long gone, but the heat and the spark of new thinking remain. We carry the baton now.
Please console Mother if she needs consoling. Father’s letter said she was desolate, but I suspect it’s his new tack. His threats to cut my funding didn’t go far as I’m making my own money now. If he decides to try silence next, that is nothing new for me.
But you? Please don’t be silent. I couldn’t bear it. Write to me again soon and tell me of life at Parkley. It’s not that I don’t love home, Margo, I do. I just don’t fit there anymore, not like you do.
I suspect you’ll refuse again, but I won’t stop inviting you . . . Come visit! I have a charming flat on the rue Chabanais with Renée. You’ll love her. She’s more like you than me—she’s smart, forthright, and practical. She keeps me on budget and food in our pantry.
I saw Greta Garbo last week. Truly, I did. She stopped at the salon on her way back to America. Schiap dresses her, along with Katharine Hepburn and Mae West. You should see Mae West! Schiap designs long lines except when it comes to her. The bust on that woman! It’s her defining feature and Schiap accentuates it in the most cunning ways. And you won’t believe this, but Schiap is using Miss West’s form, her bust-line fashioned in glass, as the bottle for her new perfume. It will be Shocking! By name and by nature.
Everything here is shocking, Margo—in all the best ways. There are so many things to taste, experience, think, discuss, and debate. At home, we were fed one way of doing things and one way to think. The door cracked open at Brilliantmont, but here it’s been blown off its hinges. There are so many ideas, and not little ones—big ones about people and the ways we should live and how we should be valued for our work—and my views matter. I don’t sit silent at the table listening and absorbing. I share my thoughts and truly contribute to the formation of new thinking, as well as new designs now.
I want you to taste it all, Margo. Please come visit.
Your loving if slightly impatient sister,
Caro
Seventeen
I heard Mom’s shoes squeak on the stairs. “Good morning . . . I brought you coffee. More coffee, I should say. This can’t be healthy.” She set the carafe on the other side of the table and stared at me. “Please tell me you haven’t been at this all night.”
She pointed to the green notebook in which I’d started jotting down the details I thought might be worth remembering.
“I got sleep. I promise. In fact”—I tapped my phone to bring up the clock—“I’ve only been awake an hour.” I laid my hand on the letter I’d just finished. “I’m pairing the 1936 diary entries with the letters.”
I stretched my back as Mom handed me a mug. “They had fun, Mom. They were the best sisters. Then scarlet fever came along and, with it, George.” I heard my voice. It was critical. Clearly, deep within, I was on Margo’s side, maybe even Caro’s, but I blamed “George” as an interloper into my family’s happiness.
I was being unfair, far from objective, and crazy illogical. There would be no family, no me, without Randolph George Payne. He was integral to their story and vital to my own.