Sometimes I think of Paris as a series of courtyards opening into each other if you have the right key or, if you don’t, lying adjacent, unexplored, cut off. These courtyards take you up or down, like a game of snakes and ladders, from a grand cour d’honneur to a little, weed-filled garden full of thrushes. I see them, above all in the Marais, as a sequence of courts in a vast palace without a king where we citizens now have the right to roam. I notice that, having found my feet again in this enchanted labyrinth, I am drawn more and more to silent spaces, forgotten courtyards, secret gardens. The square Léopold-Achille beside rue du Parc Royal (the original, much larger royal park where François 1er kept his pet camels and ostriches) is a favourite haunt because of its mixture of pretty flowerbeds and preserved architectural oddities that include a pair of sculpted salamanders, the mythic animals that lived in fire and that the same François 1er took as the symbol of his power. Square Saint-Gilles Grand Veneur, off rue des Arquebusiers, is another quiet garden with luxuriant rosebeds where I sometimes snatch a moment to dream that I live in one of the seventeenth-century buildings that surround it and have this scented haven as my view.
But there is also a very extensive public garden, only five minutes from rue Michel le Comte, where I go and walk every day. It consists of four interconnected gardens, each overlooked by the façade of an early eighteenth-century palace and joined by one of the most ancient streets of Paris, ruelle de la Roche, which now exists only as a humble, gravelled pathway. Together the gardens and the buildings form the Archives Nationales, and until a few years ago (when I, for instance, was living in their shadow on rue de Braque) they were closed to the general public.
The gardens have everything from formal French parterres and an alley bordered by aromatic shrubs and bushes to huge rosebeds, rare trees (including a catalpa and the only Indian horse chestnut in Paris), small fountains, and a tiny river that snakes through a maze of subtly juxtaposed plants. I discovered the gardens in the first few days after we returned to Paris and they have now become an essential part of my daily routine. However well or badly my work is going, I stop in the late afternoon and walk several times around the entire area, pacing up and down the huge portico of the Hôtel de Soubise if it’s raining, but otherwise plunging into the tightly packed, winding labyrinth of flowers, breathing in their perfume and breathing out the petty irritations or minor triumphs of the day; or striding around the formal lawns, gazing up at the Hôtel de Rohan’s array of columns and pilasters that mark the nine bays of its powerfully sober façade. All these sites have been host to remarkable families and outstanding houses since Olivier de Clisson built his home here in 1371 (its fortified entrance and little pepperpot towers still overlook rue des Archives), and the sense of an unbroken human presence, with its wars and ennoblements, marriages and offspring, diseases and deaths, gives me a sense of perspective where I can take the measure of my own transience.
On summer evenings, the gardens are at their most beautiful, the magnificent trees clothed in bright, fresh leaves and the plants in full flower as the swallows dive and loop across the sky. The excited chatter of the birds gives way slowly to the sound of bells rising, tolling all over the city, faintly at first, a sea of sound rising and falling, one fresh note in counterpoint to the reverberations already fracturing and extending the golden light. From various key points on both banks, Notre-Dame, Saint-Eustache, Saint-Sulpice, Paris, that ‘city of a hundred belfries’, comes alive and calls out, resonating, in this other dimension. The sound grows symphonic, with a single peal merging and disappearing into another, repeated and suspended until it is once more absorbed into the greater mass of music filling the Archives gardens like a distant concert and held for an instant as if in a secret hollow before it disperses on the warm, scented air.
I sit beside a broken Doric column and two maritime pines, caught up intently in the rise and fall of the bells, listening to their story of the city and of everyone who has ever lived here. The peals start out as sharp and querulous at times, quivering for an instant on the air before they dissolve into the overall harmony. I listen entranced, as if I am hearing my whole life in Paris being played out like a pattern on this rich thunder of music gathering in the sky. Like never before I feel I am now at the centre of my life, just as I am at the centre of this ancient place that I know so well. It is a timeless moment in which I can summon up all the prevailing tones and timbres of my past, the laughter and tears of the lost years where so many hopes and illusions were shed. I sit here, a single residue of experience, content at last to be who and what I am, accepting all the mistakes and mirages because the journey has at last brought me to this calm celebration of truth.
The blue of the sky is darkening, and the shadows of the trees reach over the gravelled paths like roots seeking to sink back into the black earth. Overhead the swallows are swooping higher and higher in a frenzy of despair, as if this evening will be their last and they will never dive through the dying light and sing again. For all of us in this twilight, it will be time soon to go.
The bells toll more faintly with the fading of the light. The attendants begin to lock up the small wrought-iron gates that lead to the densest part of the garden where the trees hide the trickling stream. One by one the bells fall silent, but their reverberations hang on, trembling in the metal, trembling in the air. It’s time now to go. I can no longer distinguish the sound of the bells from the silence that has absorbed them. The silence is a tolling of silence, ringing in my ears, perhaps my ears alone, because I can see no one else. The few others who might have shared this instant are perhaps at home already, sitting under lamplight, or on a café terrace waiting for the full darkness of evening to close about them.
The attendants blow their whistles to signal that the main gates are about to be bolted for the night. I savour this final moment in the Archives Gardens, thinking of all the history that was pealed out across the city this evening and all the documents of the past that lie buried in the buildings that surround me. The attendants give one last, impatient blast on their whistles. It’s time to go.
Acknowledgements
My editor, Michael Fishwick, not only helped shape this book but also pinned down its elusive title. My warmest thanks to him and to the whole team at Bloomsbury, notably Alexandra Pringle, Sarah Ruddick, Holly Ovenden, Hetty Touquet, Hannah Paget and Lilidh Kendrick.
My agent, Rebecca Carter at Janklow & Nesbit, has once again been as invaluable for her advice on the text as on every other aspect of the book.
Charles Campbell, Patrice Cotensin and Frank Slattery read the manuscript and made numerous valuable suggestions.
My greatest debt, as ever, is to my wife, Jill Lloyd, whose talents, generosity and love have sustained me throughout.
I should like to take this opportunity to thank the following people for their help, their encouragement and their friendship: Fiamma Arditi, Frank Auerbach, the late Ida Barbarigo, Oliver Barker, Peter Beard, Luc Bellier, André Bello, Alice Bellony, Philippe Bern, Tony and Glenys Bevan, Peter Blake, David Blow, Peter Bogdanovich, Anne and Yves Bonavero, Viscount and Viscountess Bridgeman, Adam Brown, Ben and Louisa Brown, Richard Bucht, Marlene Burston, Natasha Campbell, Neil and Narisa Chakra Thompson, Pauline Choi, Charles Cholmondely, Mala Cotensin, Monique Couperie, Casimiro di Crescenzo, Stéphane Custot, Sir Howard and Lady Davies, Barbara Deimling-Ostrinsky, Adrian and Jamie Dicks, Mark Eastment, Christopher Eykyn, Lord and Lady Norman Foster, Colin and Sophie Gleadell, John Gordon, Nicholas Goulandris, Catherine Grenier, Cyrille de Gunzburg, Claude-Bernard Haïm, Nadine Haïm, Robin and Rupert Hambro, Barrie Hoar, David Hockney, Richard and Christina Ives, Bill and Janet Jacklin, Jeanne Job, Sam Keller, Ulf Küster, Andrew Lambirth, Lee Mingwei, Mark and Lucy Lefanu, Jim and Sally Lightburn, Magnus Linklater, Nicholas Maclean, Gillian Malpass, Sandro Manzo, Richard Mason, Henry and Alison Meyric Hughes, Lucy Mitchell-Innes, Bona Montagu, Serena Morton, Martin and Smita Murphy-Davé, David Nash, Lynn Nesbit, Thomas Neurath, Sophie Neve, Hu
ghie and Clare O’Donoghue, Francis Outred, Clara Pastor, Edmund Peel, Alex Peppiatt, Clio Peppiatt, Kate Pool, Elliott Power, Renée Price, Tomaso Radaelli, John Rivett, Piers Russell-Cobb, Frédéric and Carole de Sénarclens, Christopher and Carmel Shirley, Philippe Sollers, Lynne Spencer, Arturo di Stefano, Ian and Mercedes Stoutzker, Sophy Thompson, Thérèse Tigretti Berthoud, Stanley Tucci, Jorge Virgili, Diana Watson, Thomas West, Ortrud Westheider, Thomas Williams, Clive and Catherine Wilson.
Notes
Part one, chapter 3: ‘The expression that there is nothing to express…’, Samuel Beckett and Georges Duthuit, ‘Three Dialogues’ in transition (magazine) 49. Paris, 1949
Part two, chapter 7: ‘The world of a deaf child…’ Louis Aragon, ‘An Open letter to André Breton on Robert Wilson’s Deafman Glance’ in Les Lettres françaises, 2–8 June 1971
Index
Académie Française here, here
Adzak (Royston Wright) here, here, here
Aeschylus here
African art here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
Aga Khan here
Agnelli, Gianni here
Ahmed here, here
AIDS epidemic here
Alex, Monsieur here
Althusser, Louis here
Andrews, Michael here
Apollinaire, Guillaume here, here, here
Aragon, Louis here, here, here, here, here
Arikha, Avigdor here, here, here
Aristophanes here
Arletty here
Arrabal, Fernando here
Art International here, here, here, here, here ceases publication here
relaunched under Peppiatt here, here, here, here, here, here, here
Art News here
Artaud, Antonin here, here, here, here, here
ARTforum here
artists’ studios see Imagination’s Chamber
Artnews here, here
Auden, W. H. here, here, here
Auerbach, Frank here, here, here
Aulenti, Gae here
Averroes here, here
Avicenna here, here
Bach, J. S. here, here
Bacon, Francis here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and Art International here, here, here
biography here
and champagne here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
and Dado here
and David Hockney here
David Sylvester interviews here, here, here
death here, here
friendships here
and Giacometti here, here, here
and Jasper Johns here, here
Paris retrospective here, here, here
and Peppiatt’s book here, here, here, here, here, here, here
and Peppiatt’s child here
and Picasso here, here
prices for lithographs here
proposed German exhibition here
and Raymond Mason here
and ‘School of London’ here
and Sonia Orwell here, here
his studio here, here, here
and Susan Sontag here
Three Studies for a Portrait of Peter Beard here, here, here
Three Studies of the Male Back here
visits Paris here, here, here, here, here, here, here
Balajo nightclub here
Baldwin, James here
Balthus here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
Barbarigo, Ida here, here, here
Barnes, Djuna here, here, here, here, here
Barnes, Julian here
Barney, Natalie here, here, here, here, here
Barral, Carlos here
Barrault, Jean-Louis here, here
Bataille, Georges here, here
Baudelaire, Charles here, here, here, here, here, here, here
Baudrillard, Jean here
Beach, Sylvia here, here
Beardsley, Aubrey here, here
Beat Generation here, here
Beauvoir, Simone de here
Beck, Julian here, here
Beckett, Samuel here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Foirades here
Molloy here
Waiting for Godot here
Beckmann, Max here
Beethoven, Ludwig van here
Beistegui, Carlos de here, here
Belcher, Muriel here
Bellmer, Hans here
Benjamin, Walter here
Benoist, Jean-Marie here
Berès, Pierre here
Bergen, Candice here
Berggruen, Heinz here
Bergson, Henri here, here
Bernard, Claude here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
Bernhardt, Sarah here, here, here
Bernheim, André and Claude here, here
Berryman, John here
Beston, Valerie here, here, here
Bibliothèque Polonaise here
Birague, Cardinal here
Black Panthers here
Blake, William here
Bogart, Humphrey here
Bogdanovich, Borislav here
Bogdanovich, Peter here, here
Bonnard, Pierre here, here, here
Bonnefoy, Yves here
Borges, Jorge Luis here, here, here, here
Boulez, Pierre here
Bowles, Patrick here
Brancusi, Constantin here
Braque, Arnoul de here
Braque, Georges here
Brassaï here, here
Brasserie Lipp here, here, here, here
Bray, Barabara here
Breton, André here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
Breuer, Lee here
Brook, Peter here
Brookner, Anita here
Brooks, Romaine here, here
Buffon, Comte de here, here
Buñuel, Luis here, here
Burroughs, William here
Byron, Lord here
Cage, John here
Cahiers d’art here, here
Calder, Alexander here, here, here
Camus, Albert here, here, here, here
can-can here
Caravaggio here
Carême, Marie-Antoine here
Carolus-Duran here
Cartier-Bresson, Henri here, here, here, here, here, here
Casals, Pablo here
Casarès, Maria here
Castaing, Madeleine here
Castro, Fidel here
Centre Georges Pompidou here, here, here
Cézanne, Paul here, here
Chabaud, Louis-Félix here
Chanel, Coco here, here
Change here, here, here, here
Chants de Maldoror here
Chardin, Jean-Baptiste here, here
Chareau, Pierre here
Charlemagne, Emperor here
Charles VI, King here
Chastel, André here
Chateaubriand, Vicomte de here
Chez Goldenberg here, here
Chirac, Jacques here
Choquet, Victor here
Christo here
Cimabue here
Cimémathèque here, here, here, here, here
Clair, Jean here
Claude (le Lorrain) here
Clermont-Tonnerre, Comtesse de here
Clisson, Olivier de here
Cloetta, Yvonne here
Clouet, Jean here
Clouzot, Henri-Georges here
Club de la Chasse here
Cocteau, Jean here, here, here, here
Colet, Louise here
Colette here
Collège de France here, here, here
Collobert, Danielle here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Cahiers here
Meurtre here, here
suicide here, here
Colony Room here, here
Connaissance de
s Arts here, here, here, here
Connolly, Cyril here, here
Cooper, Duff here
Cooper, Gary here
Corneille, Pierre here
Corti, José here
Coward, Noël here
Cravan, Arthur here
Crevel, René here, here
Crommelynck, Aldo here
Crown of Thorns here
CRS here, here, here
Cubists here, here
Dado, (Miodrag Đurić) here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
Dalí, Salvador here
D’Annunzio, Gabriele here
Dante here, here
Daumier, Honoré here
David, Jacques-Louis here
de Chirico, Giorgio here
de Gaulle, General Charles here, here, here, here, here, here, here
Debray, Rosine here
Dédé here
Degas, Edgar here, here, here, here, here, here, here
Delacroix, Eugène here, here
Delaunay, Sonia here, here
Deleuze, Gilles here, here
Delon, Alain here
Deneuve, Catherine here, here, here
Derain, André here
Derrida, Jacques here
Descartes, René here, here
Desert Rose here
Desportes, Madame here
Deyrolle taxidermy here
Dickens, Charles here
Dietrich, Marlene here, here, here
Diva here
Doisneau, Robert here
Downing, Joe here, here
Dubuffet, Jean here, here, here, here, here
Duchamp, Marcel here, here, here, here
Duchamp, Teeny here
Dupin, Jacques here, here, here
Duras, Marguerite here, here
Durrell, Lawrence here, here
Duthuit, Claude here
Dyer, George here, here, here, here, here, here
Dylan, Bob here
Ecole Normale Supérieure here, here, here, here, here, here
Eiffel Tower here
The Existential Englishman Page 40