Paris after the Liberation 1944-1949
saying ‘model’.
All this came as a great anticlimax to Comrade Popova, the leader of the delegation of Soviet women, when they arrived from Moscow in June 1945: ‘We were told that we would see some beautiful shops in France. But all the shops are either empty or shut. There is nothing to buy. The population as a whole walks on wooden-soled shoes… Nobody wears stockings. They wear very short dresses, not because it’s the fashion but because there’s no material. Yet on the hats one can see whole vegetable gardens and swallows’ nests.’
In spite of the widespread decay and hardship, there were still many who remained far from poor, despite their protestations. A woman trying to sell the very best satin sheets at £400 a pair ‘has more orders than she can put through,’ wrote an astonished Diana Cooper to a friend in England, ‘and all the orders are from
the French
– none from the US or UK – and not from nouveau-riche black-marketeers – just “nos
vieilles
clientes” – so you can see there’s pots of money around’.
The
gratin,
or very uppermost crust in France, was more complex than it appeared from the outside. The Duc de Mouchy – a distinguished member of the Noailles family – claimed that he did not qualify as true
gratin
because he had an American grandmother. He painted a trulydepressing picture of his peers: ‘They crouch in their apartments discussing marriage settlements and degrees of consanguinity, they do not travel, their silver is dirty and their bronzes unshined, and their servants hate them for their meanness.’
Political views in such a milieu were perfect for a caricaturist’s pen. ‘Today,’ wrote Nancy Mitford to Evelyn Waugh, ‘I heard an old count say to another old count about a third old count: “But my dear friend,
very
left wing, he’s an Orleanist.”’ But there were exceptions, especially among the younger generation after the Occupation. Margot de Gramont became partially estranged from her family because they were unenthusiastic about her heroic role in the Resistance. This also led to her marrying one of the great figures in the Dordogne
maquis,
Baron Philippe de Gunzbourg, a Jew of Russian origin. And the son of the Duchesse de La Rochefoucauld later volunteered to be the doorman of a subterranean nightclub in Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
In the country, the traditional way of life had been much less affected. On 3 November 1945, the feast of Saint-Hubert, the Duc de Brissac insisted on celebrating the start of the hunting season in the old style. High mass took place in the church of Celle, with hunt servants in full dress blowing the large circular silver horns, and hounds brought up in front of the altar. A reception followed at the château. A vin rosé was served to the tenants, who came up afterwards to thank their landlord for restoring the old customs. ‘Monsieur le duc, at last we are reassured,’ they said.
French society after the Liberation, although firmly set in most of its ways, was much more welcoming to foreigners than before, particularly Americans and British. The Duc de Mouchy, however, warned Susan Mary Patten that she should not believe that his countrymen had suddenly changed. ‘The French,’ she wrote, passing on his explanation, ‘having been thrown in on themselves for four years during the German occupation, were bored, bored, bored and eager for new faces.’
Foreigners, newcomers and those returning after the Occupation were a welcome distraction from the cares of everyday life, and they themselves were equally eager to see their Parisian friends again. Daisy Fellowes, seeking to banish the embarrassment caused by her two elder daughters, resumed her entertaining. There was ‘not a frill out of place’,recorded one guest, ‘gleaming, rich – no bibelots missing, carpets, cushions on the chairs and all the candles lighted on the stairs’. Daisy Fellowes also organized smaller parties. Claus von Bülow, who described himself in those days as no more than ‘a Scandinavian student in wooden shoes’, felt like ‘a rabbit with a rattlesnake’ when he turned up for dinner and discovered that they were
en tête-à-tête
.
The person who most wanted to be received, above all in official circles, was the Duke of Windsor. The British ambassador wrote to Sir Alan Lascelles, King George VI’s private secretary, supporting the idea that the Windsors should live in the United States. ‘He can do no good in this
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