It seems that our mind, our temper, passions, taste and feelings are influenced by the places where we dwell.
La Bruyère
RACHEL AND I are drinking champagne. I love champagne. I really love it. The ‘thwop!’ as the cork pops. The burble of the pale liquid as it rises up the long delicate flûte. The tingling ‘chink’ of the clinking glasses. The first sweet heady rush as the liquid aerates the blood. I never get bored with the little rituals. And I love the legends of champagne, so many of which are associated with women.
The most famous of the champagne dames was Lily Bollinger. She’s the one who said of champagne: I drink it when I’m happy and when I’m sad. Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it when I’m not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it – unless I’m thirsty.
I knew this quote for many years, and developed a completely idiosyncratic mental image of its originator. In my mind’s eye Madame Bollinger was a French version of Morticia Addams – slender and willowy, possibly sporting a long cigarette holder. Then I saw a photo of the real thing. Here was a stout working woman with thick ankles and bushy hair, riding a bicycle through her vineyards.
After a moment’s mental readjustment, I liked the reality even better than my imaginings – an old lady cheerfully popping a bottle at afternoon tea-time. There were other champagne women too – and it may or may not be pertinent to note that they were all widows. It’s hard to believe they weren’t merry. There was most famously the veuve (widow) Cliquot as well as Mesdames Pol Roger, Pommery, Perrier and Roederer.
Hortense Mancini’s best friend in London, St Evremond, is credited with introducing the British to champagne: he did so in Hortense Mancini’s salon. Madame de Pompadour didn’t drink much, but she made an exception for champagne. She thought, Champagne is the only wine that leaves a woman beautiful after drinking it.
For the past few days we’ve been at play. Rachel has barred me from old museums and historic buildings. Instead we have preened in the Café Beaubourg and posed at the China Club. Rachel bought chunky shoes at Freelance and groovy knits at Joseph, and I bought a pair of sunglasses at Karl Lagerfeld’s gallery shop and a pair of red skin-tight gloves from a century-old gantier. We explored the glorious nooks and crannies of the Marais district. We took a long afternoon tea at Mariages Frères.
But now this is my last night in Paris and Rachel and I are drinking in the bar of the Brasserie Alcazar. We’re talking about the future. She’s decided she’s had enough – she’s had a job offer and she’s going to move to London. ‘Look, there are a lot of things about this place that get to me,’ she says, ‘but the main thing is: I need to live in English!’
Actually, I know what she means. I’ve got language troubles of my own. For years now I have been writing in the voice of men and in the language of men. Speeches for men like the Deputy Prime Minister, papers for management consultants. To earn a living in my second bedroom I shall probably have to continue speaking in the voice of men. But somehow I want to find a way to express myself in my own voice. Discover what a modern woman’s voice is like. Discover what this woman’s voice is like.
It’s the following morning and slightly hungover, dark glasses in place, Rachel and I set out for our last long sunlit walk through Paris. We walk down the rue Vieille du Temple, across Pont Louis-Philippe, across Pont Saint-Louis, behind Notre-Dame, and then over the Pont de l’Archevêché to the Left Bank. It’s Rachel’s favorite walk in Paris and I can see why. Every step is beautiful. As we cross the bridges the Seine flows beside and under and around us.
And so – it seems inevitably – we wind up at Shakespeare and Company bookshop where the wordy young Americans squat on benches, boxes and chairs; where the dust rises and falls on thousands of unsold books; and where once, on my first visit to Paris, an ex-lover from Australia recognized me by the sound of my voice.
I head straight over to the bookshelf full of old Paris guidebooks. One of them has a red hardback cover and gold print. It’s called, simply, Paris. It is by André George and was published in 1952. I flick through it, admiring the plentiful black and white photos of the great buildings and cityscapes, the gloved women and snub-nosed Citroëns. Then I come to this: Of great moment in the history of France is the Rue de la Victoire, named to commemorate Bonaparte’s victorious campaign in Italy. He used to live at No. 60, in the hôtel of the young and unattached widow Josephine de Beauharnais … Oops. I had taken Evangeline Bruce’s word as gospel and looked for signs of Josephine’s house at number 6. That’s where I took Rachel on that dreadful rainy day when she was bored stiff. Now it appears that all along we were at the wrong end of the street. As Rachel approaches I snap the book shut. ‘Anything interesting?’ she asks. I shake my head casually. ‘Not really,’ I say. I quietly buy the book and stuff it discreetly into my bag.
Finally we head back down to the Seine. The clouds have come over and a greenish tinge has returned to the sky and the water. The trees shake and roll in the wind. I look along the great panorama of bridges and buildings and monuments.
There are, of course, things I don’t like about Paris. I don’t care for the Pompidou Center. I am not keen to visit the new Bastille Opera House, although Rachel says it’s great. And I have always refused to go up the Eiffel Tower.
But today I look at the Tower with new affection. There is a legend – who knows if it is true? – that Gustav Eiffel invented the garter belt. I used to think the Tower was an ugly phallic symbol, out of place in this beauteous, feminine, shapely city. But now when I look at it I see something different. A long, long belle époque leg encased in a fishnet stocking.
I remember Ellen saying to me once that no matter how many times she came, no matter how long she stayed, the rose-colored glasses never came off; that special Paris feeling never went away. ‘You know, in Australia I am nothing special, but in Paris, they find me beautiful,’ she said.
Australia could have been French. It was a close-run thing. French explorers like Bougainville, La Pérouse, d’Entrecasteaux and Baudin conducted important early research into Australian geography and botany. The Frenchman La Pérouse and the newly arrived English Governor Phillip literally bumped into each other on the shores of Botany Bay in 1788. The first printed reference to the term ‘Australia’ was by the French scientist Labillardière in 1804. And Matthew Flinders’s celebrated maps of Australia relied in part on earlier French maps confiscated by the British. It was a sheer accident that the English saw a purpose – if you can call it that – for this great southern land before the French did.
Most astounding of all, perhaps, the young Napoleon Bonaparte applied to join La Pérouse’s ill-fated expedition and was knocked back. It’s hard to believe the future conqueror of Europe could have resisted the chance to attempt settlement in Australia. It’s also strange to imagine that he might have died alongside his shipmates in the South Pacific, changing the course of European history.
In the end of course, Australia became part of the British Empire. We’ll never know what might have been.
As if zeroing in on my thoughts, the young taxi driver leans his head back and asks me where my flight is going. I tell him Australia.
‘Ostralia,’ he repeats excitedly, ‘I adore zis country!’
I can’t help but smile. ‘Really? What do you adore about it?’
‘L’éspace! It’s so spacious and free, you know?’
‘Yes I do. Have you been?’
‘But of course! Right now I am saving up to go back zere. I woz on ze Golden Coast. I zed to myself: What if all ze people here were speaking French, zis would be Paradise!’
I tell him I come from Sydney.
‘Sydney! Ah,’ he shakes his head regretfully, ponytail swinging, ‘Our explorers were not zo smart. We did not get Sydney. Instead we got Nouvelle Calédonie.’
Suddenly the thought of his nation’s historic miscalculation sets him rocking with laughter.
Many people hate flying. It’s not just the fear. It’s the infantilization enforced by airline routines – the endless instructions, the baby food, the imposed sleep. But I don’t mind. I rather enjoy being airborne, feeling timeless and weightless. These air stewards can boss me around all they like. I settle into my seat and tune into my interior world. In the noisy vacuum of the cabin it’s easy to hear myself think.
People like to quote the famous Ernest Hemingway line that Paris is a moveable feast, as if the memory of Paris alone is enough to satisfy. If Paris is a feast, then I’m still hungry. I haven’t yet had my fill: in fact, I doubt I will ever be sated. That’s why I’ll just have to keep coming back.
And I’m sure the city will always welcome me, no matter what my stage of life. I can’t see myself returning to, say, Mexico or China as an old lady. But I can see myself in the teashops of Paris, still perfectly at home. Paris has, after all, been meticulously constructed by intelligent women for their pleasure. There’s even a graceful language for a woman’s evolution: she might arrive in Paris as a fresh-faced ingénue, grow through experience into a femme du monde, try out her style as a femme fatale, and wind up as a grande dame.
Before I came to Paris I had been only too conscious of my messy life, with its mistakes and false starts. The past lacked grace; the future lacked purpose.
But over these last three weeks I have had the privilege of inhabiting other lives. I’ve walked in the footsteps of the fabulous women of Paris. I’ve immersed myself in their city, stepping across the grand stage on which they played their greatest roles. Best of all, by gazing at the world through their eyes, I’ve seen a woman’s life in a new way. My frame of reference has forever expanded. It’s as if I was trapped in a small room and discovered the door was unlocked all the time. As I venture into the fresh air, there is suddenly space and light and room to move.
In the Luxembourg Gardens there’s a central octagonal pond where the children sail their model boats in the sunshine. Arrayed around the pond are no less than fifty white statues of the queens of various French regions. Up on their high white pedestals the women appear cold and remote, their eyes turned away from the colorful scene below.
Now I too have a gallery of grand women. These are not, however, haughty elevated creatures; they have stepped off the historical podiums and into my heart. My own personal advisory council of divas, artists, aristocrats and heroines, they will forever be there for me, to teach and tease, to spur and encourage, to inspire and console.
And to remind me that women can do anything, including create an entire culture that is the delight of the world.
And my messy life? I went to Paris fascinated by the art of living. I’ve come away seized by the notion of a life as art. When a woman wishes to construct her life she requires an inventive will, a conscious application to the task. But life can never be totally controlled. Inventing a life also demands a letting go; a gracious succumbing to the flow of time and the turn of dramatic events. It means being open and ready when the new phase is set to begin.
There’s a line of Nancy Mitford’s that means a lot to me. It’s in her biography of Voltaire, called Voltaire in Love. She is referring to another amazing French woman, this time the scientist and intellectual Emilie du Châtelet, who was Voltaire’s lover and companion for many years. The thought could be a reference to Nancy Mitford herself – or to me. Nancy Mitford wrote: She was waiting, unconsciously, for that revolution which often comes in the life of a woman no longer young and directs the future course of her existence.
I never guessed that a revolution could be so quiet.
My heart lifts and fills. At this lovely, shimmering, indeterminate moment in my life, poised in mid-air, the past and the future extend limitlessly before me. And I’m ready to embrace it all.