p. 393 The Nazis had sent Telegram sent (Secretary of State Cordell) Hull to American Embassy London, 14 September 1944, RG 59, Decimal File 1940–1944, Box 1160, Document 351.1121, Jackson, Sumner W./9- 1444, US National Archives, College Park, Maryland.
p. 393 The others were Lucienne Catherine Rothman-Le Dret, L’Amérique déportée: Virginia d’Albert-Lake de la Résistance à Ravensbrück, Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy, 1994, pp. 17 and 41.
p. 393 Toquette’s sister, Tat Letter from Julia Barrelet de Ricou, American wife of Toquette’s brother, to Mrs Franklin Roosevelt, 1 November 1944, RG 59, Decimal File 1940–1944, Box 1160, Document 351.1121, Jackson, Sumner W./9-664.
p. 394 ‘I am full of hope’ Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, Is Paris Burning?, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965, p. 62.
p. 394 ‘his gigantic size … Nicht Messe’ Maisie Renault, La Grande Misère, Paris: Chavane, 1948, pp. 19–20.
p. 394 ‘Since this morning’ From the journal of Virginia d’Albert-Lake, quoted in Rothman-Le Dret, L’Amérique deportée, p. 96.
p. 394 ‘They pitied us’ Virginia d’Albert-Lake, An American Heroine in the French Resistance: The Diary and Memoir of Virginia d’Albert-Lake, New York: Fordham University Press, 2006, p. 144. See also Rothman-Le Dret, L’Amérique deportée, p. 97.
p. 394 The trains taking Renault, La Grande Misère, p. 21.
p. 396 His French Second Armoured Collins and Lapierre, Is Paris Burning?, pp. 61–2n.
p. 396 ‘It is highly desirable’ John Lichfield, ‘Liberation of Paris: The Hidden Truth’, Independent, London, 31 January 2007. See also Olivier Wieviorka, Histoire du débarquement en Normandie, Paris: Seuil, 2007.
p. 397 ‘This guerilla warfare … was credibly informed’ Clara Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen: The Story of My Life, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949, pp. 224–5.
p. 398 Clara did not know Collins and Lapierre, Is Paris Burning?, pp. 249 and 279.
p. 398 ‘He came on his bicycle … and, before Joyce’ Sylvia Beach, Shakespeare and Company, London: Faber and Faber, 1960, p. 102.
p. 399 ‘Cannon is roaring’ Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen, p. 225.
p. 399 ‘The hospital found … I am, General’ René de Chambrun, Sorti du rang, Paris: Atelier Marcel Jullian, 1980, pp. 230–31. p. 399 ‘I asked why he’ Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen,
p. 226. There are accounts of the battle at Neuilly from Aldebert, Clara and René de Chambrun, as well as from Otto Gresser. They conflict on a few dates and times, as well as the exact statements made by the principals. My account emphasizes the points on which they agree and, where they do not, relies on the eyewitnesses, Aldebert and Gresser, more than the two who were told about it, Clara and René. Their versions agree, however, on the main points.
p. 399 ‘The French have to receive’ de Chambun, Sorti du rang, p. 231.
p. 400 ‘More wounded have … I did not need’ Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen, p. 226.
p. 400 Leclerc, she believed Clara was not alone in thinking the Resistance were ruffians. A Free French lieutenant, who ordered his MP not to allow Ernest Hemingway to get ahead of a regular armed column, added, ‘And none of that guerrilla rabble either.’ See Ernest Hemingway, ‘How We Came to Paris’, Collier’s, 7 October 1944, p. 65. Despite the fact that the Resistance was providing the Allies with minute by minute intelligence on the location of German tanks and defences, many of the regular officers distrusted them.
p. 401 ‘What you hear is’ Another version of this incident was that von Cholitz was asked by a secretary why the bells were ringing. He is said to have replied, ‘They are ringing for us, my little girl. They are ringing because the Allies are coming into Paris. Why else do you suppose they would be ringing?’ Collins and La pierne, op. cit., p. 258.
p. 401 ‘went to the roof’ Otto Gresser interview with Kathleen Keating, ‘The American Hospital in Paris during the German Occupation’, 19 May 1981, 14-page typescript, p. 11, American Hospital of Paris Archives, File: German Occupation by Kathleen Keating and Various Other Histories, 1940–1944.
p. 402 On schedule, a command car … ‘Stack arms’ Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen, p. 226.
p. 402 The ‘fanatic’ Major Goetz de Chambrun, Sorti du rang, p. 233.
p. 402 ‘we met within three’ Otto Gresser, ‘History of the American Hospital’, 14-page typescript, 28 September 1978, American Hospital of Paris Archives, unnumbered blue file: ‘Miscellaneous materials’.
p. 402 ‘Telegraph exact location’ Telegram, Hull to Harrison, Berne, 25 August 1944, RG 59, Decimal file 1945–1949, Box 1710, Document 351.1121, Jackson, Sumner W./8-744, US National Archives, College Park, Maryland.
PART SEVEN: 24–26 AUGUST 1944
Chapter Fifty: Liberating the Rooftops
p. 407 ‘It was Saturday’ Adrienne Monnier, ‘Americans in Paris’, in The Very Rich Hours of Adrienne Monnier: An Intimate Portrait of the Literary and Artistic Life in Paris Between the Wars, translated by Richard McDougall, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976, p. 416.
p. 407 ‘The way back’ Ibid.
p. 408 ‘Sylvia ran down’ Ibid., p. 416. Hemingway did not write of his reunion with Sylvia Beach in his Collier’s articles about the liberation of Paris, but Sylvia and Adrienne did. Most of their accounts are in Adrienne’s ‘Americans in Paris’ and in Sylvia’s Shakespeare and Company, London: Faber and Faber, 1960, pp. 223–4. Sylvia discussed it with Niall Sheridan for the documentary film Self Portraits: Sylvia Beach, Radio Telefis Eireann (RTE), Dublin, 1962. She was in Dublin for the dedication of the Martello Tower, where the first chapter of Ulysses opens, on 16 June 1962, the fifty-eighth anniversary of Bloomsday.
p. 408 ‘I flew downstairs’ Shakespeare and Company, p. 220.
p. 408 ‘War correspondents are’ Ernest Hemingway, ‘Battle for Paris’, Collier’s, 30 September 1944, p. 83.
p. 408 ‘I couldn’t say’ Ernest Hemingway, ‘How We Came to Paris’, Collier’s, 7 October 1944, p. 17.
p. 408 ‘For the moment’ Monnier, ‘Americans in Paris’, p. 417.
p. 409 ‘invited them to come’ Ibid.
p. 409 ‘We went up to Adrienne’s’ Shakespeare and Company, p. 220.
p. 409 ‘Hadn’t I, Adrienne’ Adrienne Monnier, ‘Americans in Paris’, p. 417.
p. 409 ‘He brought his men’ Interview by Niall Sheridan with Sylvia Beach, Self Portraits: Sylvia Beach, documentary film for Radio Telefis Eireann (RTE), Dublin, 1962.
p. 410 When Hemingway brought Beach, Shakespeare and Company, p. 224: ‘We heard firing for the last time in the rue de l’Odéon. Hemingway and his men came down again and rode off in their jeeps–“to liberate”, according to Hemingway, “the cellar of the Ritz”.’
p. 410 At the American Embassy ‘Caffery Thanks Aids Who Held U.S. Embassy’, New York Herald Tribune, Paris, 11 January 1945, p. 4.
Chapter Fifty-one: Libération, not Liberation
p. 412 Anderson folded his newspaper William Smith Gardner, ‘The Oldest Negro in Paris’, Ebony, vol. 8, no. 2, February 1952, pp. 65–72. Charles Anderson, then 91, told Gardner he had courted Eugénie Delmar for a year and a half before they married in 1922. She took him afterwards to meet her family in Calais. ‘They have never once even mentioned the fact that I’m a Negro,’ Anderson said. Anderson supplemented his income from de Brosse by teaching chess, English and music. Although a good musician who lived in Montmartre, he did not frequent its American black jazz clubs before the war. This may have been because he neither drank nor smoked and was devoted to his wife.
Epilogue
p. 414 ‘We eat quantities … She is sad’ Letter from Sylvia Beach to Holly Beach Dennis, 4 October 1944, Sylvia Beach Papers, Princeton University, CO108, Box 20, Unnumbered folder.
p. 414 ‘closed for the time being’ Sylvia Beach, ‘French Literature Went Underground’, Paris Herald Tribune, 4 January 1945, p. 2.
p. 415 ‘I must say’ Longworth de
Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen: The Story of My Life, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949, p. 233.
p. 416 At the Prefecture … Miss Comte took Aldebert Eric Hawkins, ‘Elder Chambruns Questioned in Paris Collaborationist Purge’, New York Herald Tribune, 11 September 1944.
p. 416 ‘Chambrun situation’ Letter from Edward A. Sumner to Dr David H. Stevens, Rockefeller Foundation, 12 March 1945, American Library of Paris Archives, File: Correspondence.
p. 416 Rather than pay ‘American Library in Paris Intact’, Library Journal, vol. 70, no. 1, February 1945, p. 111.
p. 417 Along with Aldebert ‘Member of Pioneer Family Dies in France’, Cincinnati Times Star, 2 June 1945. ‘Mme. De Chambrun Dies in Paris at 80’, New York Times, 2 June 1945, p. 31.
p. 417 ‘On the morning’ Letter from Phillip Jackson, 8–10 May 1945, written at Neustadt, Holstein, Germany, in Massachusetts General Hospital Archives, Dr Sumner Jackson file.
p. 418 ‘I want you to know Letter from Charlotte Jackson to Freda Swensen, 18 July 1945, Massachusetts General Hospital Archives, Dr Sumner Jackson file.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Fluctura nec mergitur. (It wavers but does not sink.)
Official motto of Paris
LARRY COLLINS, whose offer to be a mentor of this book was quickly accepted, deserves special thanks. If he had lived long enough to go over the manuscript with the master’s red pencil, it would have been infinitely improved. No one wrote a better book on Paris at the conclusion of the German occupation than his and Dominique Lapierre’s Is Paris Burning? It is my regret that I must thank him posthumously for his good will and inspiration.
I must offer exceptional thanks to Priscilla Rattazzi and Stanley and Lisa Weiss, without whose friendship and support this book would not have been completed. If I were not dedicating this book to my father, who read the early chapters just before he died, it would be dedicated to them.
In France, I owe much to the Duc and Duchesse de Mouchy, Joan and Philippe, for advice, kindness, hospitality and insights into Franco-American life now and during the war. I must also thank my old friends Jonathan and Geneviève Randal, Julian Nundy, Elizabeth Lennard and Ermanno Corrado for unfailing support and more of their time than they needed to give. I am grateful as well for valuable help from Sarah Kefi, Anna Elliot, Lee Hunnewell, Luke Burnap, Thierry Bertmann, Colette Faus, Michael Neal, Caroline Huot, Rowan Fraser, Sophie Grivet of the René and Josée de Chambrun Foundation, Adele Witt and the rest of the American Library of Paris staff, Rebecca Allaigre of the American Hospital of Paris, Frances Bommart of the American Cathedral, Werner Paravicini of the Institut Historique Allemand, Don and Petie Kladstrup, Madame Claude du Granrut, William Pfaff and Sylvia Beach Whitman of the revived Shakespeare and Company Bookshop.
In Britain, I am grateful to Allan Massie, David Sievewright, Charles and April Fawcett, Edward Venning, Carol Anderson, Laura Cooper of the Royal Institute for International Affairs, Amanda Court and the other staff members of the London Library, the archivists at the National Archives in Kew Gardens and the Travel Bookshop in Notting Hill. My debt to Vera Tussing for rendering German documents into impeccable English is considerable.
In the United States, my profound thanks must go to one of the world’s finest researchers, who should soon be producing books of her own, Cora Currier. My gratitude extends to Nancy Smith and Susan Boone of the Sophie Smith Collection at the Smith College Library, Chris and Jennifer Isham, Mary Kathryn Cox, Mrs Mary Alice Burke, Elaine Krikorian, Svetlana Katz, Giselle Remy Brachter of the Craig Lloyd/Eugene Bullard Collection at the Columbia State University Archives, Ayuna Haruun of the Chicago Defender, Rob Warden, Douglas Spitzer, Dolores Kennedy, Pegeen Bassett, Elizabeth L. Garver of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, Mary Miller of the American Library Association Archives at the University of Illinois, the staffs of the New York Public Library and the Library of Congress, John Taylor and his fellow archivists at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland, Martha Stone and Jeff Mifflin of Massachusetts General Hospital and John F. Fox, Jr, historian at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Jim Christy, who wrote a biography of Charles Bedaux (The Price of Power), and Hal Vaughan, biographer of Sumner Jackson (Doctor to the Resistance), were exceptionally kind in pointing me towards documents I needed and only they knew about. I owe them favours that I look forward to repaying.
Natasha Grenfell, Laure Boulay and Jasper Guinness exceeded the usual parameters of friendship to grant me congenial surroundings and their delightful company in houses far from the distractions of my confused life. I am beholden as well to Alessandro and Michelle Corsini (and their eight children) for weekends in their Porto Ercole house to revise this book in the garden that inspired Puccini to write ‘Turandot’. My gratitude to them is unbounded but, now, not unstated.
I would also like to mention my children Julia, Edward, George, Hester and Beatrix, and my godchildren, Mia Ross, Laura Gilmour, Charlie Cockburn and Max McCullin, for no other reason than that they are my children and godchildren.
It is usual for writers to show appreciation to their publishers and agents, but this utterance of gratitude is more than pro forma. My lawyers in New York, Steve Sheppard and Michael Kennedy, my New York agent, Tina Bennett, my London agent, Georgina Capel, Ann Godoff of Penguin, Martin Redfern, Michael Upchurch, Minna Fry, Taressa Brennan, Judith House and Richard Johnson of HarperCollins and France Roque of Editions Saint-Simon gave me time, encouragement and sympathy that moved our professional connections into the realm of friendship.
My final acknowledgement must go to the Café Flore, Café La Palette, Café de Tournon (haunt of my literary hero, Joseph Roth) and Bar du Marché in Paris, Caffè Appia Antica and Camilloni a Sant-Eustachio in Rome and the Coffee Plant and the Café Oporto in London, all of whose staffs supplied me with the coffee, ash trays and writing tables that I needed to put this story on paper. No one was better provided with space in which to puzzle out a tale that took a long time to decipher and longer still to tell.
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