Parisian Lives

by Deirdre Bair

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  Mary Nichols was bursting with so many amazing ideas for bringing feminist recognition to Penn that in our numerous follow-up calls she had my head spinning. After one of her creative bursts, I asked what she hoped to gain by tossing all those idea balloons up in the air, and she had a ready answer: “It’s good to send up three hundred because if you can get ten to stay up, you are way ahead of the game.” But when it came to “the Beauvoir conference,” as it quickly became in our shorthand parlance, at least a good hundred or so stayed there.

  By the time I was home at the end of February 1982, Mary had secured the cooperation of everyone who mattered in New York’s French Consulate, and with their help she received the same enthusiastic support from French Embassy officials in Washington. They helped her plan a trip to France during which she and I would be the guests of the government and officials would make sure that we had access to everything and everyone whose participation we wanted. But first Mary asked me to go back to Paris alone and persuade Beauvoir that, even though she had refused to come to Philadelphia for the honorary degree, she really had to come to the conference.

  Thanks to Mary’s budget, I was back in Paris several weeks later for a quick ten days in March, busy ones both for me and for Beauvoir. Hélène was having a vernissage, an opening to show her newest work at her gallery, and Simone was planning to attend. Publicity was under way, too, as journalists and interviewers wanted to feature both sisters in articles and broadcasts. She groused a little about how much of her time it was taking, but she didn’t really mean it. She told me something that had to be “off the record, just between the two of us”: that she feared the most recent attention Hélène was receiving for her painting came only because of the newfound attention Simone was getting because of her outspoken cooperation with French feminists. However, the sad truth was that Hélène had been involved in feminist activities for many years before her sister. As early as 1975, Hélène had been instrumental in establishing a home for battered women in Alsace, and since then she had participated in marches, contributed to manifestos, done whatever she could to help women. But her name did not command the attention of her sister’s, and when the women in Paris mobilized in so many ways, it was Simone they chose to lead them. Hélène, always wanting only what was best for women, graciously stepped aside and left the leadership to Simone.

  Simone loved her sister, although she sometimes complained that she could not understand Hélène’s paintings and wondered why she kept at it when she sold so few and gallery exhibitions were so far between. Unfortunately, she made the mistake of confiding these thoughts in fairly ugly language to several letters that Sylvie collected and published years later, after Simone’s death, when Hélène was still alive. I was with Hélène on several occasions when I saw how deeply hurt she was by her sister’s thoughtless, offhand remarks. No one in “the family” could understand how Sylvie could have been so cruel in publishing them, and to this day I know of no suitable explanation.

  Simone de Beauvoir said a lot of things that she really didn’t mean, and some of her general comments about the feminists fall into this category. Just as she was so dismissive of her sister’s painting, she told me she was upset that we would have to curtail our meetings during these ten days because of the “demands those feminists” were making on her. She still managed to meet me every time I said I wanted to talk, and each time she had something good to say about how well the “strategy meetings” were going. It was obvious how much they energized her, and how, despite griping about how much time they took, she relished these contacts.

  “Ah, Darrred,” she would say as she mock-complained about having to go off to yet another meeting and suggested that I should escort her. I was probably overreacting when I searched quickly to come up with an excuse for why I could not do so but said I would go along later on my own. I think this attitude went back to the days when I had been involved in Beckett’s world and was determined to practice scrupulous objectivity by not becoming a part of it. Many of these feminists had become my good friends; indeed, some of them were my houseguests when they came to the United States. When I was in France, I often cooked “American dinners” for them. American “daube” (beef stew) and meatloaf and baked potatoes were two specialties they requested often. I suppose I always found a reason not to be Beauvoir’s escort because I did not want anyone to think that the book I wrote about her would be the book she dictated.

  And now here I was, having to impress upon her the importance of her presence at the conference in Philadelphia, and no doubt to have her as my houseguest if she chose not to stay in a hotel. I talked as persuasively as I knew how, telling her how everything depended on her presence. She listened attentively, and after a long silence that gave me hope she was seriously considering it, she said, “I just can’t come. I’m too old and I get too tired.”

  When I wrote this in the DD, I also wrote how upsetting it was to hear her say that, after all her earlier talk about the “private vacation” she wanted to make to New York in July 1982. And I was irritated further by the fact that as soon as she told me she was too old and too tired, she brightened up and said that the minute she concluded our business, she was leaving for a vacation. She had told me on many earlier occasions that she was on her way to visit London one last time (a trip she never made), so I asked if she was going there: “I am not going to London, but I’m not telling you where, either.” (Later she told me she was going to take the waters at Biarritz.)

  What had I said or done to bring this on? She was often feisty and secretive with me, but this was something new. Before I could digest it, she added offhandedly that she would give me the list of Frenchwomen whom she wanted the government to sponsor for the conference, but “there is really only one American I want you to invite, Kate Millett.” And in conclusion, “I will do everything you want me to do, but I will not come in person.” I tried for the last time to impress upon her how important her presence was and how the French government was not going to sponsor so many women without her. “Of course they will send the women, because I will tell them they must.”

  Obviously she was letting her recent popularity among feminists go to her head, but how could I tell her that the French government would not trip over itself to allocate many thousands of dollars just to glorify her reputation? And how was I to convey her decision to the conference organizers, who had spent so much time, energy, and money to get this far? She had an answer for that, too. “I will write you a formal letter tomorrow. They will accept my decision.” I think my chin dropped down to my ankles after she said this. I wrote that night: “She never ceases to amaze me. Just AMAZING!!!”

  It was good I had no evening engagement after I left her, because I needed to figure out how I would present it to Mary Nichols. It was the evening before my last full day in Paris, one that was booked from early morning to late night, so I took myself down to La Coupole and ordered a good half-bottle of wine and an expensive dinner. I had had little time for socializing on this trip, so I decided to indulge myself (on my own credit card) and enjoy my oysters and Dover sole. I would not let myself think about how to present Beauvoir’s astonishingly unrealistic attitude until I had to. Once again, no sense worrying until the time came.

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  I worried throughout the flight home about how to tell Mary Nichols that Simone de Beauvoir would not be coming to the conference. I can’t say I was angry with her, but I was certainly miffed. And I feared that the French government would withdraw its commitment and that Mary would not have enough balloons left to keep the conference afloat.

  I should not have worried, because the always-innovative Mary knew exactly how to overcome Beauvoir’s refusal. She got in touch with her contacts at PBS in Washington, and within a week or so we had their solution: a satellite hookup that would enable Beauvoir to address the conference, live and from the comfort of her apar
tment. We in Philadelphia would be able to interact with her, and audience members would be able to greet her and ask questions. A live satellite hookup was something fairly novel in the early 1980s, and Mary sent out a press release explicitly announcing it, generating an avalanche of interest from people the world over who volunteered to participate. We could have created a program that would have run for a month if we had accepted everyone.

  All this was happening as my Bunting Fellowship ended and my teaching at Penn resumed. Mary and her staff took care of everything connected to planning and promotion, but I was expected to construct the program. I asked for a reduced teaching schedule and didn’t get it. And then there was the committee work, especially my membership on the advisory board of the university’s press, which took an enormous amount of time. I did get a work-study student to assist with the conference for four hours three times a week. He had a decent command of the French language and was a splendid help just answering the phones. I remember him at the end of each workday, sitting dazed in his chair, his eyes glazed and voice raw from dealing with people who were determined that they deserved a place—if not a starring role—in the program. Imagine, then, if he was reduced to this, how I was at the end of what was usually a sixteen- to twenty-hour day. For the better part of a year I wrote next to nothing on Beauvoir’s biography.

  After nine solid months of nonstop planning, Mary and I thought we had the program essentials together and were ready to go to France to talk to the fifteen women the government wanted to sponsor. In April 1983, I joined Mary and a woman she had hired to help with public relations on an Air France flight to Paris, courtesy of the French government. We were met by a driver with an official car and were whisked into the city in more posh comfort than I, always the poor writer on a tight budget, had ever enjoyed. The driver took us to the hotel the French government was paying for, the PLM Saint Jacques, on the boulevard directly across the street from Samuel Beckett’s apartment building.

  I did not know our destination when I wrote to him before my departure. I had his reply before I left, telling me he would be between Paris and Ussy but was overburdened with new writing and dealing with nervous actors and directors in Germany and was not sure he could see me. Period. I was relieved to think that I would not have to worry about upsetting him if he ran into me unexpectedly in the hotel’s coffee shop, where I knew he often held meetings and where I had asked several friends to meet me during the few brief breaks in my official schedule.

  Once I arrived, I sent another letter to explain why we were staying just across the street from his house, because I didn’t want any surprises if our paths happened to cross. I think he was curious about what I was doing there, for he left a telephone message asking me to meet him at two o’clock several days later. I had to see Beauvoir at four, so the timing was perfect. I did most of the talking, telling him about the preliminary plans for the conference. He talked very little, saying again that he was overwhelmed with writing and going back and forth to Ussy in search of the privacy he needed to finish several works in progress. We said a cordial goodbye, and I could not help but think that he was slightly annoyed. My university was going to all this trouble for Simone de Beauvoir, but nothing had ever been proposed—by me or by others—to honor him.

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  We were in Paris for two weeks, and I knew from the start that I would have a problem with Mary and her PR woman whenever we had to interact with the French. Mary was ebullient and outgoing, and she never hesitated to express opinions that were often tactless and could shock people who did not know her well. Her associate must have patterned her professional conduct on a single public relations primer she had read who knows how long before, for she was never able to discern what a person or a situation required and stuck unwaveringly to her preordained script. She knew nothing about French history, culture, or language, but she did not hesitate to present our initial ministerial contacts with a list of outrageous and completely inappropriate actions she expected them to take. I had tolerated her in Philadelphia because Mary insisted that she was useful, but in Paris she was an officious woman whom I muzzled after our first official meeting, a lunch with Minister Yvette Roudy. After that, unless we were attending a large reception or lecture, I usually did not allow her to accompany us. I told them both repeatedly that we were never to discuss our real thoughts about any of our meetings until we were alone. I warned Mary and her associate that they must never—ever, with three exclamation points—say anything negative or derogatory in the car, where the driver could overhear us. My cautions went, as one of my dear friends often said, in one ear and out the same one.

  And when I arranged for them to meet Simone de Beauvoir, I thought they would give me a heart attack. After a brief exchange of pleasantries in Beauvoir’s apartment, she in her usual place and the three of us lined up on the little chairs like students in a classroom, Mary launched into comments about Beauvoir’s refusal to travel that I could see were making her angry. The obtuse associate, who probably thought she was defusing the situation, interrupted Mary, only to make the situation worse. Beauvoir’s expression showed me that she was smoldering, and I knew I had to get them out of there. I jumped up and nudged Mary up and out of her chair and motioned to the associate that we were going. I told Beauvoir we were late for our next appointment and had to leave at once, thanked her for her kindness, and hustled them out before they could do any more damage. I saved my scolding for the sidewalk as we waited for the driver to bring the car.

  I always sat in the front passenger seat, because I spoke French to the friendly young driver, who claimed she neither spoke nor understood English. It was good that I did so, for it allowed me to turn around and glare at my two companions whenever they misbehaved. They called it my “straighten up and fly right” look. On the last day of our stay, our driver said goodbye to us in perfect English and told us that she was the kid sister of the high-level cultural attaché who had arranged our itinerary. She cheerfully explained that she had gotten the job because she spoke English and could make daily reports to her sister. And because we were so highly positive about everyone we had met and everything we had seen or done, she told her sister that our conference was well worth supporting. My two companions had the grace to look sheepish and avoid my eye contact when they heard this.

  On my own, I managed to see Beauvoir almost every weekday during our two-week stay. She listened attentively as I told her of all the ministers who were cooperating and of the feminist women who were going to participate. I also told her how the cultural attaché at the American Embassy had invited us to tea in order to offer whatever cooperation could come to us directly from France. I think she liked that best of all. And then she asked me about my book’s progress, and I had to tell her the dispiriting news that I had not written very much since she and I had finished our last working sessions.

  I did write a lot in that nine-month interim, but mostly pieces I accepted for the brownie points I needed to secure promotion to full professor: reviews and op-ed pieces, an introduction to a book about Beckett’s canon, and even the entry for Simone de Beauvoir in the Encyclopedia Brittanica, complete with a photo of the two of us taken by my husband, who was the only photographer she would trust with the assignment. After he hastily snapped a few photos and left the apartment, she said, “He’s very nice but he’s very quiet.” I didn’t tell her that I had instructed him not to speak unless spoken to, and then only in pleasantries, and to beat as hasty a retreat as he could make!

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  Everything about the French visit was more positive than I could have hoped for. I slept all the way home to Philadelphia, confident that once the program was officially set, all we had to do (besides deal with the many colossal egos involved) was wait for it to happen. I was able to find enough free time on the weekends to return to the book, even though it was hard to pick up where I had left o
ff. The semester was ending soon, and I looked forward to a summer at home in my office. I was certainly not prepared one fine spring day to see Mary, who seldom left her department office, appear in the doorway to mine. She was uncharacteristically subdued as she came straight to the point: she had been fired. I had to ask her to repeat what she said several times. When the university president had summoned her to come to his office that morning, she had thought all he wanted was an update on the progress of the conference. Instead he told her to leave as soon as possible.

  We were both flummoxed, going around and around until we had exhausted ourselves without arriving at an explanation for such devastating news. Eventually we moved on to talk about what would become of the conference. Mary said that all her programs and promotions then under way would continue to their conclusion, but that she was to make her exit a swift one. “But who is going to be in charge of the conference?” I wailed.

  “You,” she said.

  Several weeks later, at a reception for the university trustees, I thought I found out why Mary had been summarily dismissed. One trustee I particularly disliked said how lovely it was, now that Mary Nichols was gone, to wake up in the morning and not have to worry about seeing a story on the front page of The New York Times highlighting some achievement connected to Penn. Philadelphia was such people’s little backwater fiefdom, and they wanted to keep it that way.

  There was no way I could run the conference Mary had envisioned. I had none of her contacts and none of her administrative abilities. Almost immediately her friends at PBS withdrew their cooperation for the satellite hookup. Their allegiance was to Mary and certainly not to the university that had harmed her. When the French government heard that Mary was gone and PBS had pulled out, the various ministries said that perhaps they could scrounge funding for four or five women but no more. At Penn, faculty women did not come to aid their beleaguered colleague (me) but formed several partisan factions and battled for control of the conference. I was too tired to fight for something I no longer believed in. I gave it to them willingly and resigned from all participation.