Henri Cornioley was a French native, but his father had been born in Switzerland and his mother in Hungary. Although he and Pearl had sharply contrasting childhoods—Henri’s family ran a prosperous beauty salon—they were attracted to each other when they became friends on Henri’s return from his military service in Tunisia during the early 1930s.
Henri was three and a half years older than me, the brother of my childhood friend Evelyne, but I didn’t see him often when we were young. That’s because Henri was very ill when he was a child. The doctor thought he might have tuberculosis, so he was sent to Switzerland as a preventative measure. In fact it was diphtheria. When he returned to Paris I didn’t see him then because his parents sent him to boarding school.
My first recollection of Henri was in front of the Madeleine Church. I was passing the church on the way back from the market with Mummy and my two sisters. I saw him and said to Mummy, “That’s Evelyne’s brother.” That was it.
Years later, I was strolling down the Champs Elysées [a famous street in Paris] with Henri’s brother, Charles, and Evelyne. Henri walked past. It was just before he did his military service in Tunisia [in 1930]. He didn’t say hello or anything—[behaving as a typical] elder brother. But on his return from his military service, he joined our group, and that’s how it all started. In fact, when it started, as far as I’m concerned anyway, we were just very close friends. But one day he suddenly made it clear that his interest in me was romantic. I said, “Hold on; we can’t. In any case, I can’t leave Mummy and my sisters.” I was 19 when we really started courting in 1933.
We started courting—in fact we got engaged—against both our families’ wishes. My mother was against it because I was her only support for the family—by this time my father had died [in 1930] and my sisters were somewhat younger than myself. Mummy definitely disapproved my leaving home.
I must add, though, my mother encountered many difficulties in France. She was never used to the type of life the family led. First, we were very isolated; she rarely had the chance to meet French people, and her one idea was to get back to England. She didn’t even have enough money to pay for the journey—we had nothing, no money whatsoever. They were very difficult times.
As for Henri’s father, one day while Mummy and my sisters were in Wissant by the sea—Mummy earned money then by taking small groups of children there to teach them English—he trailed me round the streets of Paris telling me his son was a good-for-nothing. I told him that, for the moment, I wasn’t in a position to marry Henri, but, I said, “We’re very good friends. I can’t say whether one day we’ll marry or not, but I won’t accept not being able to see him anymore.”
From then on, I wasn’t allowed into Henri’s house. Henri’s father was against us for a number of reasons. First, he needed Henri at work. Also, Henri had confided our secret relationship with his mother; it was through her he learned about us. The third reason is that his father thought that if Henri married the eldest girl of a large family, he’d find himself responsible for the lot.
I thought all this was so unfair, and I thought Mummy would help me. But when I told her about my problems, she said, “What? Turn one of my daughters out of his house? In that case, Henri cannot come to us either.”
The outcome was that we could only meet in the streets of Paris and on park benches, as in Brassen’s song: “Sur les bancs publics, bancs publics …” [“On the public benches, the public benches …”]. We had our own bench on the Champs Elysées.
This lasted six years, almost until the war started. At that point, I was allowed to come to Henri’s house. Henri’s mother had finally won over his father. I don’t know what she said, but I started visiting Henri at home before he ever came to us.
For a few years while courting we each had a diary, which we kept in turn for a week. Every day we jotted down our comments; then we swapped them at the end of the week. That went on for several years. We don’t have many left. But I found one from 1937 where I hesitated between [the more intimate] tu [you] and [the more formal] vous [you]. From 1933 to 1937, I used vous. In 1937, I used tu from time to time; then I’d switch back to vous. Today, people start by calling you by your Christian name and by using tu.
Henri and I played tennis, in 1933 or ‘34, in Aubervilliers. We also went to the cinema, in winter, on Sunday mornings. It was a bit warmer than sitting on benches. We had just enough money to pay for the news films. There was one cinema open, the Berlitz Palace; we went there. We saw the news film and a cartoon, or something similar. There was no television at the time, so small cinemas showed the weekly news and one or two cartoons. The big cinemas showed the news and a feature film. It was warm in there, and the films went on for a long time. You could stay as long as you liked, you just paid to get in once. We knew the Berlitz Palace inside out. Usually we walked along the grands boulevards [main streets] to get there.
During Henri’s leave from the military in February 1940, my mother invited Henri to our house. After that, Henri and I didn’t see each other for three and a half years, because of the war, until the end of 1943.