Paris after the Liberation 1944-1949

not to ask after this person or that.’
    André Gide, whom he went to see, was scarcely more encouraging from another point of view. He told Green that he would die ofcold and hunger in Paris. To escape such misery, he himself was off to Egypt.
    Foreigners returning received a slightly different impression; not one of external dilapidation, but of an internal decay while the exterior remained untouched. Isaiah Berlin wrote to a friend: ‘Paris seemed terrifying to me – so cold and abnormally clean and empty and more beautiful than I have ever seen a city to be – more so than Leningrad, and I cannot say how much that means – but empty and hollow and dead, like an exquisite corpse; the metaphor is vile and commonplace, but I can think of nothing else.’ And Susan Mary Patten, the wife of an American diplomat, wrote that ‘it was like looking at a Canova death mask’. But the city’s empty elegance soon began to be filled with those who regarded it as the most civilized setting for their entertainment.
    The Duke and Duchess of Windsor reached Le Havre on the liner
Argentina
on the morning of Saturday, 22 September 1945. Their first concern was to smuggle ashore their little Cairn terrier, Pookey, who had been brought on to the ship with the help of an American general. Now they needed to get himpast the French authorities. ‘H.R.H. asked me to smuggle Pookey ashore,’ wrote Brigadier Daly in his diary that night, ‘as I was the most unlikely person to be caught. I hope nothing is ever heard of it.’
    The Duke spoke to the large group of waiting newspapermen of the terrible damage around them, and the Duchess said that she hoped to join a relief organization for helping war victims. Finally, after the 134 pieces of luggage and packages had been dealt with, the Windsors climbed into the British Embassy Daimler with Daly. Their staff – the Duchess’s secretary, a maid and their black butler Sydney – were put in the car behind. Meanwhile, the drivers of an American military escort in five jeeps revved their engines impatiently. The British military attaché was still far from relaxed at breaking the law. ‘There was a terrible moment when Pookey was in the car safely ashore and the journalists crowded round for a final cinematograph show and photographs. The little beast kept quite quiet in his covered box shaped like a suitcase – he must have known he was a stowaway.’
    Within a couple of days of the Windsors’ return to their rented house at 24 Boulevard Suchet, Adrian Holman, the minister at the embassy,had a talk with the Duke of Windsor – still referred to as ‘Edward P’, from his signature when Prince of Wales. Holman warned him that things had changed since his departure from the Côte d’Azur in 1940. French politics had moved sharply to the left, and he and his wife must recognize the new state of affairs. They should also be careful to avoid French people who were not
bien vus
– the safest course would be to stick to British and American friends for the time being – and they should not patronize the black market. But it was clear that the Duke and his wife, whatever her pronounced intentions to work for war victims, had not emerged from their egotistical cocoon. The Duchess remarked that Paris now offered ‘the most expensive discomfort she had ever known’.
    There was no shortage of people ready to provide their luxuries. Count O’Kelly, a member of an Irish expatriate family who had a well-established wine business in the Place Vendôme, was able to provide much more than just wine. Nor was there a shortage of guests. ‘The house was looking extremely well, with masses of flowers,’ wrote Daly in his journal after a party there. ‘One of the best dinners we have ever had in Paris in a private house.’ Others were curious to see at close quarters this famous couple, rather less than fairy tale, but still unreal. ‘At fifty,’ recorded Jacques Dumaine, ‘the Duke remains the royal Peter Pan… his wizened jockey’s face, his fair hair and his debonair appearance contribute towards his persistent youthfulness and make one understand the note of novelettish sentimentality in his abdication.’ Janet Flanner observed that the lines on his face were the result of too much sun and not too much thought.
    Duff Cooper’s greatest problemwas that the Duke was ‘so anxious to do right’. The ex-king was still angling for an official position, preferably in the United States.