At forty-six, Florence was still fascinating and beautiful with many male admirers, and it was now, at the Bristol, that she started her legendary hostessing career, becoming extremely close to a number of men, especially Marcel Jouhandeau, whom she first met at Marie-Louise Bousquet’s salon. In order to hide their relationship from his jealous wife Elise, Jouhandeau invented stories about giving Latin lessons to a rich American whom he had met at a restaurant called Chez Florence. History does not relate whether or not she believed him. Bousquet also introduced Florence to Gerhard Heller, head of the Propagandastaffel, and Heller in turn brought the renowned German writer serving in Paris, Captain Ernst Jünger, whose wife Gretha had remained in Hanover. Jünger had written one of the most powerful memoirs of the First World War, Storm of Steel, an account of his time fighting in France and Flanders in 1914–18, a book which Hitler admired. Jünger had been wounded several times, once in the chest by a British bullet, and even though his loyalty was obviously to Germany, he was more philosopher than politician and no mere anti-Semite. Jünger was immediately smitten with Florence and out of delicacy hid her real name in his diaries, referring to her as ‘Lady Orpington’.
It was Jouhandeau’s suggestion that Florence, who always admitted that she liked authors more than books, established regular Thursday literary salons. These salons, effectively co-hosted by Florence and Jouhandeau in a sumptuous apartment at 129 Avenue de Malakoff, were highly sought after, and sometimes there were as many as fifty guests, ranging from secret resisters such as Jean Paulhan, the artist and designer Christian Bérard and the artist Marie Laurencin* to influential Germans in uniform. Florence herself, rarely seen without several pieces of fabulous jewellery, was a magnetic attraction, almost as much as the free-flowing champagne, cognac and lavish black-market food. Discussion at the salons veered between literature, politics and gossip, the latter often focusing on discussion about Florence’s latest affairs. Her behaviour was complicated – behaviour she would have to explain at the Liberation, behaviour for which others were punished when it was described as collaboration horizontale. But although Florence was never heard to utter anti-Semitic or even pro-German remarks, it was clear that, thanks to her fortune and her connections with high-ranking Germans, she enjoyed many favours not available to most Parisiennes, including a rare permit to use her car at night during the curfew and a permanent pass allowing her to cross into the unoccupied zone to visit her husband in Juanles-Pins.
But, despite her cool exterior, Florence Gould was not left entirely undisturbed. According to documents unearthed after the war, there was an unsavoury episode when G?ring’s henchmen inspected the cellars of the Gould villa early in 1941 on the pretext of searching for weapons. None was found, but a valuable triptych and two precious single pieces were discovered, ‘everything very old, carved in ivory’. These were taken by the ERR amid protestations from Florence that she had not known of the presence of these objects.
No doubt worried by what else they might seize, ‘Mrs Gould declared on the spot that she wanted to contribute the entire stock of wine for soldiers on the eastern front; all the copper and brass, which filled an enormous cellar room, was to go to the German war industry.’ But the matter did not end there. A few days later there was a conference with Kurt von Behr of the ERR at which a deal was agreed that, although as an American citizen she was not obliged in any way, she would offer the triptych to G?ring, who would in turn present it to the Cluny Museum in Paris, ‘to which the Gould family had intended to will it’. In gratitude to G?ring for donating the triptych, he was then to have the two single pieces as his private property. But when G?ring finally inspected the entire haul he decided that he liked the triptych too ‘and ordered that all three were to be brought to Germany’.