You will win your fight, Polly, but to savour your victory, you must treasure your heart.
In a life lived in wonder, you are the most wonderful thing that I’ve gained.
I’m so grateful for you.
Aunt Marjorie xxxx
The real characters at the heart of The Heart of the Ritz
The path to this book was paved by the books of others – wonderful books by wonderful writers – and it was only after I had read the third of what grew to be many that I realised the joy of discovery I was feeling had purpose: I was researching. The books were linked, even though I hadn’t seen them as being so to begin with. In retrospect, I must have been blind. Actually, I was dazzled. I had read these books because that was what I was seeking to be. Bedazzlement begets diversion, and there were one or two things I was happy to be diverted from.
At the time of my reading, I had been feeling very troubled, as were so many millions of people around the world, by the assaults against institutions of democracy being waged in countries where democracy had previously seemed unassailable. This unease was a constant in the back of my mind. Coupled with it was a growing sense of unfairness at the manner with which my generation, Generation X, was treating the generation to which our children belong, the so-easily disparaged Millennials. Perhaps the most cherished by-product of my day-job as a university lecturer is the number of these so-called Millennials I have in my life. I know more people in this age group than I do in any other, and unlike many of my own generation I am not dismayed by them. Far from it. I am continually and marvellously inspired by young people – and I hate how they are so often disregarded. This, too, was a constant in my mind.
And so, it was, with these two concerns engaged in a dialogue in my creative subconscious, I was reading, I thought, purely for diversion. Except that I wasn’t. I was unwittingly seeking the means to channel my brain-buzz into the thing I most enjoy writing: historical fiction. And that, I believe, is why I ended up choosing the books that I chose. What linked them was time and place: the late 1930s and early 1940s in France; a period when that most iconic of democratic nations not only betrayed a generation of its young people, it slipped loose from democracy to embrace Fascism, thanks to the Nazi invaders. That France returned to democracy at all was due in no small part to the same young people it had sidelined. French teenagers formed the backbone of the Resistance movement, stealthily fighting back against the Nazis and French collaborators, and doing so side by side with others who had found themselves marginalised through no fault of their own: patriotic French women.
But back to those books. The first one I read was The Riviera Set: 1920-1960: The Golden Years of Glamour and Excess, by Mary S. Lovell, a book I picked up for its promise of hedonistic escapism. It delivered. And while not remotely about the French Resistance, it did provide my introduction to a wonderfully seductive milieu, where bohemians and celebrities, and wealthy expatriates, and decidedly unconventional aristocrats intersected. The second book I read, several months later, examined that same milieu in Paris, away from its favourite pleasure grounds. The Hotel on Place Vendôme: Life, Death and Betrayal at the Hotel Ritz in Paris, by Tilar J. Mazzeo, was a revelation, providing a history of the famed hotel across the decades, but most particularly during World War II. I was astonished by what I read of the Resistance activities conducted by guests and staff under the noses of the Nazis. By this point I was starting to get an inkling that there was fine material for a novel here. The third book I read confirmed it. Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died in the 1940s, by Anne Sebba, provided me with compelling portraits, at turns both inspiring and heartbreaking, of the women of Paris during the Occupation. I knew by the time I’d finished it what my own book would be. So did my publishers, pleasingly. I sent them a proposal for what evolved to become The Heart of the Ritz, and they said yes within half an hour of receiving it. If there is a paradise for novelists, it will be wallpapered with such happy emails. Other excellent books joined my reading pile, all of them further inspiring me no end. The best of them were, When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light Under German Occupation, by Ronald C. Rosbottom; The Paris Ritz, by Mark Boxer and Pierre Salinger; Is Paris Burning?, by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre; and Nancy Wake: A Biography of Our Greatest War Heroine, 1912-2011, by Peter FitzSimons.
To all disparagers of historical fiction, should I ever have the misfortune of meeting any, I am ready to defend the form. The key to appreciating it, and indeed to writing it, is in embracing the meaning of the confluence: ‘history’ is presented ‘fictionally’. Historical fiction is not non-fiction but is inspired and informed by it. Nowhere in the historical fiction writer’s manual, should there actually be such a document, is artistic license precluded. If it was, then we’d all be in trouble, writers and readers alike. Some of the characters in The Heart of the Ritz are based directly on real people, and thus have been given their names. Other characters are composites, built from various aspects of one or more real people, and thus they have been given fictional names. It has been my intention to create an absorbing, emotional, and hopefully inspiring story about the Resistance movement at the Paris Ritz, and then explain the real-life characters behind it. All the characters in my book were in some way drawn from the excellent non-fiction works named above.
Maxine Elliott, the early-twentieth century American star of Broadway and the West End, who gave away the stage to live in the South of France as a society hostess and philanthropist, provided me with the inspiration for Polly’s beloved Aunt Marjorie. Aspects of another great star of the era, the Australian soprano, Marjorie Lawrence, also aided me here.
Alexandrine, whose act of self-sacrifice was among the very first story ideas to enter my head for this book, was inspired by several aristocratic French women of Jewish faith, who acted with both heartbreaking courage and naïve foolhardiness during the Occupation. The two women most influential to me were Élisabeth, Baroness de Rothschild, and Béatrice Reinach (née Camondo), both of whom died in the Holocaust. Anne Sebba’s Les Parisiennes contains stories of many upper-class women who did extraordinary things for their country, and I acknowledge the inspiration their heroism also gave me. Alexandrine’s husband Eduarde was inspired by aspects of Philippe, Baron de Rothschild, once husband of Élisabeth, who survived the war in exile and served in the Free French Army.
Lana Mae was directly inspired by the colourful life of Laura Mae Corrigan, the American millionairess and long-term Ritz resident dubbed, like Lana Mae, ‘The American Angel’ for her work with wounded French soldiers. Many aspects of Lana Mae’s story are derived from Corrigan’s adventures, although I also found inspiration in the internment experiences of another American, the actress Drue Leyton. The would-be cancer scam was Leyton’s cleverness, although unlike poor Lana Mae, it really was a scam.
Zita was inspired by the once celebrated French film star, Arletty, who set a trend that Cher, Madonna and Bono would follow decades later for mononyms. A fabulous Ritz denizen, Arletty epitomised the treachery of one’s own heart with her misfortune of falling in love with a handsome Nazi. As she so famously said, ‘My heart is French, but my ass is international.’ Arletty’s lover was Hans-Jürgen Soehring, from whom I partly drew in creating both Metzingen and Jürgen, although the former’s downward spiral of dope addiction was entirely artistic license on my part.
Arletty survived the war in body if not in career, sadly for her, although the power of her screen presence in the films in which she starred remains undiminished. I allude to three great French films in The Heart of the Ritz. Zita’s fleapit hotel film is Hôtel du Nord (Northern Hotel, 1938, directed by Marcel Carné), which I made silent (and filmed in Berlin!) for my plot purposes, although it was neither in actuality, of course. Zita’s blackmail film is Le Corbeau (The Crow, 1943, directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot), and her film set in a nineteenth-century theatre is Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise, 1945, directed by Marcel Carné), which starr
ed Arletty. The latter two films, both glorious, are additionally revered for their subversive Resistance messages. I was a little loose with their production dates, again for plot purposes. The Jean-Paul Sartre play that Zita and Blanche fail to warm to was Huis Clos (No Exit, 1944), which debuted at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier, with its sly warning to collaborators, just ahead of the Liberation.
Other Nazis provided aspects of their lives to Metzingen, including Hans Speidel, who had responsibility for maintaining ‘Parisian cultural life’, centred at the Ritz. Speidel, along with Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel and Caesar von Hofacker, was among the high-ranking Nazi conspirators of the failed 20 July 1944 assassination attempt against Hitler, which was partly hatched at the Ritz. I kept this plot well to the periphery of The Heart of the Ritz – it’s so complex it warrants an entire book to itself, which it already has, numerously, as well as informing the storyline of Valkyrie, the 2008 film starring Tom Cruise.
Speaking of Toms, The Heart of the Ritz’s Tommy was directly inspired by a truly heroic teenage Resistance fighter named Thomas Elek. My biggest conceit was to place this character at the Ritz and make him the illegitimate son of a Comte. The real-life Tommy was neither aristocratic nor resident at the hotel, although many other aspects of his life are shared with his fictional self. Tommy Elek was a Hungarian-born Jew, whose mother ran a restaurant in Paris which was very popular with the Occupiers. With his Aryan good looks and shock of blond hair, Tommy was popular with them, too. What began as schoolboy pranks like the ‘butterflies’ grew into a far more dangerous resistance. Polly’s book bomb was one of Tommy’s real-life acts of anti-Nazi terrorism (he used a copy of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital), along with many other reckless deeds, including grenade attacks and train derailments. Tragically, Tommy Elek did not survive the war. His teenager’s false sense of invincibility brought him to grief. Along with a number of his young Resistance colleagues, Elek was arrested by the Gestapo and shot in 1944. He had not long turned nineteen.
If the idea of a near-sightless Resistance fighter seems somewhat far-fetched, it was in real-life, too, and thus was another perfect disguise. Odile was inspired by Jacques Lusseyran, a blind teenager whose disability proved no impediment when it came to fighting Nazis. Because his remarkable ability to navigate the streets of Paris carrying weapons and messages between Resistance cells so impressed his sighted colleagues, Jacques Lusseyran became a leader of the movement. Like Tommy Elek, he was eventually brought undone by his activities. Unlike Elek, he wasn’t executed for them. Instead, also aged nineteen, Lusseyran was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp where, astonishingly, he actually survived to be liberated in 1945. My character Odile started out male, and thus more like Jacques, until she evolved along with the story, and eventually became female. Artistic license again. Her defiant spirit is very much Lusseyran’s though.
Ritz husband and wife, Claude and Blanche Auzello, and the hotel’s Swiss owner, Marie-Louise ‘Mimi’ Ritz, are direct portraits of real people, and thus have been given their real names. The Auzellos have been well documented for their extraordinary Resistance work, which included relaying messages for the Free French Army, and hiding Jews and Allied airmen in the Ritz attic rooms. Both Auzellos were highly active, although, and perhaps surprisingly, they worked independently of each other. Neither seems to have let the other know of the true extent of their respective activities, presumably to protect their spouse. They did not have a child. I added Odile to their union purely to serve my story purposes.
None of the research material I read specifically names Mimi as working for the Resistance – she was exceedingly discreet by nature, like all great hoteliers – but none of it names her as not working for the Resistance, either. Because Mimi so successfully created her own myth of being across everything that went on in the Ritz, I found it hard to believe she wasn’t wise to at least some of the Resistance work being carried out by her staff and guests. And given how outrageously the Occupiers exploited her establishment with the non-payment of bills, it’s no great stretch to imagine Mimi wishing to settle the score somewhat. So, again, Mimi has benefited from my artistic license, but I like to think that my version of her is not beyond the bounds of reason.
Other minor characters mentioned among the hotel guests were also real people, like the disgusting Hermann Göring and his quack doctor, Kahle; the drug-addled poet, Jean Cocteau; the sculptor, Arno Breker and his wife Demetra; and the actor and playwright, Sacha Guitry. All the fashion houses, labels and designers mentioned in the book are, of course, real, and many of them are still icons of French haute couture today. Sebba’s Les Parisiennes mentions the employees of a house that were active in the Resistance while their Nazi and BOF customers remained wholly unaware – yet it doesn’t say which house it was. So, I decided to make it Lanvin, whose determination to stay in business I admired rather more than I did Chanel’s decision to close.
My treatment of Coco Chanel in this book may be a surprise to some readers, because it jars with so many other depictions of the great designer. Few fashionistas have been better at cementing their own legend. Sadly, a rather different picture of Chanel emerges in the cold light of history. As with Arletty, I feel some sympathy with Coco for having fallen in love with one of the handsome Occupiers (her lover was Hans Günther von Dincklage), but I feel no sympathy for the actions she took in exploiting the anti-Jewish laws to regain control of her perfume business. Coco Chanel’s Occupation history is very muddy, yet unlike Arletty, she paid no price for following her heart. In the fallout of the Liberation she successfully called upon the protection of friends in very high places, including Winston Churchill. Luckless Arletty found she no longer had any friends to call upon.
Characters like Suzette, Anaïs, Guy and others, weren’t drawn from specific people so much as they were derived from the ‘spirit’ of so many courageous French women and men whom I read about and absorbed. Gendarme Tessier was drawn from what I learned of the inglorious history of the French police during the Occupation.
It is perhaps ironic that the character most important to The Heart of the Ritz is also the most fictional. Polly’s circumstances are entirely my own creation, although many of her actions were drawn from the Resistance activities of real people. The idea that haute couture might serve as a disguise was one that seems to have occurred to several upper-class women mentioned in Les Parisiennes. The real-life person most like Polly is a woman whose name is still highly revered in France and in her country of birth, Australia. Nancy Wake was a young Sydney woman whose sense of adventure took her to France in the early 1930s, where, of course, she fell madly in love with the country – and with a dashing French man, Henri Fiocca, whom she married. Nancy’s egalitarian contempt for authority, her belief in equality, her championing of the rights of the individual, and of course, her natural warmth and good humour, found immediate reflection in the culture of France. She took to the French and the French took to her – like glue. When the Nazis came, Wake did not hesitate to stand up and fight for her adopted country. Peter FitzSimons’ biography details her Resistance activities in passionate detail and is an excellent read. Nearing her thirties when the war broke out, Wake was older than I wanted my character Polly to be, and she conducted her Resistance in rural France, not Paris, so I didn’t use her as a direct inspiration. But I did draw greatly upon Wake’s personality in The Heart of the Ritz. Polly’s idealism and courage, her outrage at injustice, her refusal to give in, her steadfast feminism (before the word even existed), her ability to see and do what needs to be done, no matter how much danger it brings upon herself, are all Nancy’s. These are wonderful qualities to find in a young person – qualities I know are still to be found in young people today.
We are so very lucky that the times aren’t as grim as they were in France, mid-1940, when all that the French held dear was made so much more meaningful with the arrival of a regime that despised such values. Things aren’t quite that dire now, but as I look at some d
emocratic countries around the globe, I see the same signs that the people of France were blind to back then. Democracy is so fragile, and history is cyclical, after all. It could happen again. But one thing is certain: it’ll be to our young people that we’ll turn to step up and fight back should we find we have lost what matters most to us.
Acknowledgements
I’m very lucky to have a network of support when it comes to writing. So many family and friends remain enthusiastic about me doing it, which is lovely. My partner, Andrew Brown, the yin to my yang, would happily put my novelist’s aspirations out with the rubbish, I know (and should I depart this world before he does, I encourage scholars to examine our recycling bin for my archive), yet remarkably, he continues to endure me. Perhaps it’s because, despite everything, we both know we’re doing something right. In 2018 we clocked up twenty-five years together. Our secret is humour: a quarter century of making each other laugh.
My agent, Lyn Tranter, for whom the passage of this book was somewhat smoother than the book that preceded it, remains a shining jewel. Likewise, Roberta Ivers and the editorial and promotional team at Simon & Schuster Australia are utterly wonderful to their authors – I’m very grateful for the kindness. Deonie Fiford is a truly sublime editor; her every deletion felt like a masseuse’s caress from heaven to me.
Richard Nylon, one of my oldest friends, proved very valuable in an area of research I initially knew little about: French fashion. One of Melbourne’s great fashionistas, Richard’s emails and texted replies to my questions were a joy to receive. As is always the case with my work, however, the necessities of plotting and pace forced me to whittle away excess historical details during the drafting process. The published book has a little less ‘fashion stuff’ than I started with, but I still enjoyed the exploration.
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