Paris The Novel

Chapter Twenty-one




• 1920 •


Marie Fox had certainly not expected to become a widow when she did. But in the spring of 1919 she’d lost her husband, James.

The great influenza epidemic of 1918 and 1919—the Spanish flu, as it was called—did not enter the popular imagination of the age. Yet it killed more people than even the Black Death nearly six centuries before. In Britain, a quarter million people died; in France, nearly half a million; in Canada, fifty thousand; and in India seventeen million. Around the world, of those who caught the flu, between ten and twenty percent died. The death toll was especially high among the young and fit. Not only was it a human tragedy, but a huge statistical event. In the United States, as a result of the flu, life expectancy fell by ten years.

But there were plenty of deaths among the middle-aged as well.

The flu came in great waves. In England there had been two waves in 1918 and a third in March 1919. It was the third that carried off James Fox.

He became sick one afternoon. That night the aches and fever of flu began. All through the next day he grew worse, and during the night it seemed he was developing pneumonia. The following afternoon, as Marie watched, he began to turn a strange, pale shade of blue. And not an hour after teatime, she heard the rattle in his breath, and he left her.

Marie was holding his hand when he died. Despite her protests, Marie wouldn’t let their daughter, Claire, into the room. “Those are the doctor’s orders, and it’s what your father would want.” Marie was lucky not to catch the flu herself. Claire did not catch it either.

For the rest of that year she and Claire remained in London.

For Claire, at least, London was her home. She had gone to the Francis Holland School, near Sloane Square. This suited her parents’ religious compromise, for though Church of England, the school was so High Church that its observances could almost have been mistaken for Roman Catholic. Its academic standards were unsurpassed. French at the school was even taught by a Frenchwoman—a concession that lesser schools might have viewed as rather suspicious, but which Francis Holland could carry off with aplomb. Since Claire’s parents had always made a point of speaking French in the home, she always came out top of the class in that subject.

But her friends were English. The games she played, the entertainments she went to, the music she loved were all English. And her mother was content for this to be so. Marie had been happy with James in London.

As the months went by after James had gone, however, Marie could not help feeling a little lonely. She missed her own family in France. And toward the end of the year, she began to think that perhaps she should take Claire to see her family in Paris for a while.

“I should like you at least to know your French family a little better,” she told her. Matters were brought to a head in December 1919, when she received a letter from Marc to say that her aunt Éloïse was not well, and that he thought she should come over before too long.

A month later, she and Claire crossed the Channel. They had no particular plan.



Even in the depths of winter, the simple charm of the family house at Fontainebleau with its welcoming courtyard and its long garden brought Marie a sense of peace and restoration she had needed more than she realized. Her father was in his eighties now, rather smaller than she remembered him. Her mother was remarkably unchanged, except that she walked stiffly, and her hair formed a sort of fluffy, snowy white aureole around her head.

They were delighted with Claire, especially pleased that she still spoke near-perfect French.

“But it’s formidable how she resembles you,” her mother remarked to Marie.

It was true. Claire had the same golden hair and blue eyes. Was her face just a little longer than her mother’s? people might ask themselves. Perhaps. She was certainly an inch taller.

Claire was delighted to find herself with the old couple. She hadn’t seen them since before the war when she was a young girl. Now she had all sorts of questions she wanted to ask. She was delighted to learn that Jules’s grandfather had bought the house a century ago, and that he had been present in the French Revolution and known Napoléon.

“Can we stay here awhile?” she asked.

After two days, Marc brought Aunt Éloïse down to stay for a few days.

In many ways Marie found her aunt remarkably unchanged, but she did notice that she looked thinner, and that she was rather weak. That evening Aunt Éloïse took her aside.

“My dear Marie, I am very glad you came when you did. I’m perfectly all right, I am very fortunate to have lived in quite good health for so long. But the doctor tells me that I shall be leaving you in a little while.”

“How long?”

“About six months. So I shall be able to see the summer in. I love it so much when the chestnut trees blossom in May. But I shall be glad to go by August, when it becomes much too hot—unless, of course, le bon Dieu is planning to send me somewhere even hotter.”

“I’m sure He isn’t,” said Marie, with an affectionate smile.

But that decided her. She discussed it with Claire the next morning, who entirely supported her decision.

“Marc,” she said, “Claire and I will stay in Paris at least until the month of August. Will you help us rent an apartment? Somewhere near Aunt Éloïse, I think.”

“I was hoping,” he said, “that you’d do that.”



For the next six months, they lived in a delightful apartment just northwest of the Luxembourg Gardens, near the great baroque church of Saint-Sulpice.

Marie had never lived on the Left Bank before, and she found that she liked it. Two minutes’ walk northward and she was in the aristocratic Saint-Germain district. If she continued northward up the rue Bonaparte, in less than five minutes she was at the river, looking straight across at the Louvre. If she turned eastward, on the other hand, along the boulevard Saint-Germain, in five minutes she’d be in the heart of the university Latin Quarter, where she could cross to the Île de la Cité under the elegant spire of the Sainte-Chapelle.

Marie saw Aunt Éloïse every day. Meanwhile Marc arranged for Claire to take a course at the École des Beaux-Arts, at the top of the rue Bonaparte.

Marie and her daughter had always had an easy relationship. Toward the end of her school days there had been the usual moments of friction to be expected between a mother and a daughter of that age; but the huge consciousness of the war, with its daily tragedies and privations, did not leave much space for family strife.

The sudden death of her father had matured Claire, as well. She knew that her mother needed company, and made a point of being her friend as well as her daughter. They often went out together and if, as sometimes happened, a stranger wondered if they might be sisters, she was both amused and happy to see her mother’s pleasure at the compliment.

Claire soon made friends in Paris. She liked the company of people her own age. But she also enjoyed exploring the city together with her mother, and most weekends she and Marie took the train down to Fontainebleau.

At least one day a week, Marie would go over to the Right Bank, where she would meet Marc for lunch and then spend the afternoon with him in the office. “For as you’re here now, Marie,” he had remarked, “you may as well know something about the business. When our parents die, you’re going to own a part of it, after all.”

Though it wasn’t how he really wanted to spend his time, Marc had been conscientious in managing the family’s affairs. Gérard’s son, named Jules after his grandfather, was taking an active part now. “He works hard, and he’s absolutely determined to run the business successfully,” Marc told her, “but he’s still in his twenties. I oversee what he does, and I watch over the finances like a hawk. Two or three years more and I hope he won’t need me.”

Marie rather liked the young man. He reminded her a little of her father, except that he was slimly built and he was going prematurely bald. He worshipped his father’s memory—and even if she couldn’t share his enthusiasm, she found it rather touching. His sisters were already married, so he regarded himself as the future head of the family, and protector of his mother.

Marie hadn’t a lot to say to Gérard’s widow. She was a perfectly pleasant woman with plenty of friends and not a lot to do except shop and pay calls. A year after Gérard’s death she had dyed her hair with henna. “A mistake,” said Marc laconically, “but it may be a signal that she hopes to find another husband. We invite her to all family gatherings,” he continued, “and she gives no trouble. You should go shopping with her. She’ll be quite happy if you do that.”

So that’s what Marie did. It was agreeable enough, just the same as shopping with one of the mothers she’d known in London. Their tastes were different. Once or twice Marie tried to lure her sister-in-law into art galleries or exhibitions, without success. She’d rather look for bargains in a department store. But Marie discovered that her brother’s widow had a weakness for jewelry and high fashion. They would spend a happy hour or two in the area north of the Tuileries Gardens, around the elegant Place Vendôme, looking in the showcases of Cartier and the other jewelers, or in the new couturiers like Chanel. After that, Marie would arrange for Marc to give them lunch at the nearby Ritz Hotel, before she went off to spend the afternoon with him at the office.

And it was thanks to a chance remark of her sister-in-law’s that Marie came to a realization that was to change her life.

“You should stay in Paris, you know,” she told Marie one day. “You have your family here, and you could have a pleasant life just like mine.”

It was perfectly true, Marie thought. She could find plenty to interest her in Paris for the next thirty or forty years, become a grandmother no doubt, devote herself to some good causes perhaps, and in the end die quietly, in Paris or in Fontainebleau. She could do all that and count herself a very lucky woman.

But rather to her own surprise, she realized it wasn’t what she wanted. She needed something more. She just didn’t know what that something might be.

She was chatting with Marc in the office one afternoon in May, when he’d remarked what a blow it had been to close down Joséphine. “It was the right thing to do. It was draining money,” he said. “But I wish in a way we’d held on until the war was over, because I think it could be a viable business now.” He laughed. “The lease was taken up by an insurance business, but they’ve just moved on, so it’s available at this moment. I haven’t got the energy to start it again, though, and young Jules couldn’t possibly do it, and wouldn’t want to.”

And then, almost before she knew what she was saying, Marie had asked: “So why don’t I do it?”

Marc had looked at her in astonishment.

“My dear Marie, you’ve never been in commerce.”

“No, but I’ve been learning a bit recently. You could help me.”

“You’re also a woman.”

“The widow Clicquot ran her champagne business for decades and made Veuve Clicquot the most famous label in the world. Chanel is a single woman. She seems to be doing all right. I’m in her store almost every week.”

Marc laughed.

“It’s not a boutique,” he said. “It’s huge.”

“I wouldn’t take the whole space. Just the Art Nouveau part that you designed.”

“I’m flattered.” He smiled. “I suggest, my dear sister, that you sleep on the idea. You may have been in the sun too long today. When you wake up in the morning, no doubt you will have regained your sanity.”

“No,” she said. She suddenly saw everything very clearly. “This is my plan. I am going to devote my time entirely to Aunt Éloïse as long as she’s alive. But if she says she’s going to die in August, then she probably will. After that, if the lease is still available, I want you to get it for me.”

“I’ve never seen you like this,” he said.

“Well, you have now,” she answered. “Joséphine is going to be reborn.”



In the spring of 1919, when Louise had said she wanted to learn French, her parents had been surprised.

“You learned it at school,” her mother said. “Are you sure you need more than that, dear?”

“I learned schoolgirl French at school,” said Louise, “but I couldn’t really have an intelligent conversation with anybody. You never know,” she continued, “it might come in useful. I might marry a diplomat, or something.”

Her father was quite agreeable to the idea. The war had only just ended. The world was still at sixes and sevens. There could be no harm in his daughter acquiring such a useful accomplishment.

“As long as you work at it properly,” was his only stipulation.



So a French teacher was found and Louise began to work with her.

After six months, her teacher was astounded. “I have never had such a pupil,” she declared.

Louise had never worked so hard in her life. She attacked her studies with a passion. By the end of three months she knew many of the Fables of La Fontaine by heart. They even began to tackle the novels of Balzac together, despite their huge and complex vocabulary.

Her father was pleased with what he took to be signs of a new maturity. At the end of a year, Louise announced: “Mademoiselle says it would be a good idea for me to spend a few months with a French family,” Louise told her parents. “Total immersion, she calls it.”

Her mother was not so happy about this idea. Though she was quite accomplished artistically, she was a conventional woman of her class, and she felt it was unseemly for a girl to have too many intellectual attainments.

But her kindly, round-faced father was more amenable.

“It’s not as if she wanted to go to university,” he remarked. “No man wants to marry a girl who does that.” He paused. “But going to France, it’s more like a finishing school really, isn’t it?”



And so she was sent to stay with a suitable family, who lived in a small manoir, a farmhouse really, in the valley of the Loire, not far from the Château de Cygne. Her hosts were a retired official from the colonial service and his wife, who was from the petite noblesse, the minor nobility. Their children were all grown up, their son in Paris. And for more than six happy months Louise had lived with them like a daughter. By the end of 1920, although she might not be up to date with some of the latest idioms used by the young, Louise spoke perfect French.