Carpenter Geniuses Together

American Writers in Paris in the 1920s
Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-30941-2
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 272 Seiten

In Humphrey Carpenter's own words, 'This is the story of the longest-ever literary party, which went on in Montparnasse, on the Left Bank, throughout the 1920s.' 'This book', to continue to quote Carpenter himself, 'is chiefly a collage of Left-Bank expatriate life as it was experienced by the Hemingway generation - 'The Lost Generation', as Gertrude Stein named it in a famous remark to Hemingway.' There are brief portraits of Gertrude Stein, Natalie Clifford Barney and Sylvia Beach, who moved to Paris before the First World War and provided vital introductions for the exiles of the 1920s. The main narrative, however, concerns the years 1921 to 1928 because these saw the arrival and departure of Hemingway and most of his Paris associates. 'He is a compelling guide, catching the kind of idiosyncratic detail or incident that holds the readers' attention and maintains a cracking pace. Anyone wanting an introduction to the constellation of talent that made the Left Bank in Paris during the Twenties a second Greenwich Village would find this a useful and inspiring book.' Times Educational Supplement

Humphrey Carpenter was born and educated in Oxford, and attended the Dragon School and Keble College. He was a well-known biographer and children's writer, and worked previously as a producer at the BBC. He wrote biographies of J. R. R. Tolkien, W. H. Auden, Benjamin Britten, Ezra Pound, C. S. Lewis and Dennis Potter. Among his many books for children were the best-selling Mr Majeika series. He also wrote several plays for the theatre and radio. A keen musician, he was a member of a 1930s-style jazz band, Vile Bodies, which was resident at the Ritz Hotel in London for a number of years. He died in 2005.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Carpenter, Humphrey

Leseproben

In the seventeenth arrondissement of Paris, roughly half-way between the Arc de Triomphe and the railway lines that sprout north-westwards from the Gare St Lazare, lies the rue de Chazelles, where in former times stood the iron foundry of Monduit et Béchet. Here, during the year 1883, passers-by had their attention diverted by a curious spectacle.

The first that could be seen of it, projecting above the foundry walls, was a hand of stupendous proportions, grasping a gigantic torch, of which the rim was so broad as to permit several workmen to stand upon it. A few weeks later the hand had risen level with the second storey of the neighbouring apartment blocks, and a face could be seen frowning over the foundry, its forehead topped with a spiked corona. Thereafter, month by month, the colossus relentlessly raised its robed torso, until it dominated the surrounding streets with their little tabacs and wine-shops. All the time there was the sound of hammering.

The foundry and its formidable iron figure soon became a favourite Sunday resort for Parisian strollers. Wine-stalls were set up in the street, and leaflets were distributed by the Committee which had proudly given birth to the giantess. She was called (so read the Parisians) La Liberté éclairant le monde, and she was to be a gift from the French people – or such as cared to contribute to her cost – to their republican brethren across the Atlantic. The noted sculptor Monsieur Bartholdi had designed her; the ingenious framework beneath the iron sheets of her skin was the work of the up-and-coming engineer Monsieur Eiffel; and the entire project was the brainchild of the distinguished historian Monsieur Laboulaye, who had conceived it as a commemoration of the centenary of the American nation’s Declaration of Independence.

Admittedly the project had been so long in gestation that the centenary had come and gone, and it was true that the American Congress had shown itself somewhat hesitant about the gift. But a splendid site, on an island at the entrance to New York harbour, had been granted, so that future generations of emigrants to the New World would be greeted by La Liberté, a symbol of that Franco-American amity which had begun in 1776. Plans were already being made to transport her, piece by piece, by train from the Gare St Lazare to the harbour at Rouen, whence she would take ship to her new home. Some disappointment was expressed in the newspapers that so splendid a creation would not be remaining in Paris.

*

A hundred and seven years earlier, on 5 July 1776, Paris had received its first official American visitor. His name was Silas Deane, and he did not know that he was technically an American. News had not yet come that a Declaration of Independence had been signed, and Deane, a Connecticut congressman, regarded himself as still a subject, though an unwilling one, of the British Crown. He was the first member of a delegation sent to win the support of France for the colonies’ War of Independence to arrive in Paris.

He was not well equipped for the task: he could scarcely speak half a dozen words of French, and on principle he would not address any Frenchman who claimed an aristocratic title. By October he had managed to buy arms from France, but he had hardly attracted the notice of the Parisians. However, by Christmas another member of the delegation had joined him, and suddenly Paris was agog.

Benjamin Franklin was seventy years old, and in many ways typified the founding fathers of the USA. As a youth he had made his way from Boston to Philadelphia, where he set himself up as a printer. He made his fortune and fame by publishing almanacs full of self-help maxims (‘He that riseth late must trot all day’), and by the age of forty-two could afford to retire and devote himself to public works and scientific experiments. He established a Free Library and a university in Philadelphia; he also invented the lightning-conductor, and devised much of the electrical terminology that we still use today, including ‘positive’, ‘negative’, and ‘battery’. He served in Congress, made a trip to London to conduct some tricky Government business, and soon after the Declaration of Independence was chosen as a commissioner to the Court of France. It was hoped that he could secure economic and military assistance for the Americans, and raise French sympathy for their cause. France was chosen for this mission because it was the traditional enemy of England.

Franklin had never before set foot in Europe, but had spent hours in the reading room of his own Free Library in Philadelphia teaching himself French, and had corresponded with French scientific societies. His lightning-conductor had already been adopted all over France. The French were looking forward to meeting him in person.

He arrived in Paris in mid-December 1776, putting up in a mansion on the rue de l’Université, and was immediately besieged by Paris intellectuals and fashionable persons who wished to inspect this distinguished emissary of the New World. After a few weeks he escaped to the comparative quiet of Passy, a little village on the road to Versailles. He was given quarters free of charge in the mansion of one Monsieur de Chaumont, supplier of uniforms to the French army, who hoped that in return for hospitality he might be rewarded with a grant of land in the USA. Five years later, when Franklin was still staying in the house and no land had been offered, Monsieur de Chaumont thought he had better charge rent after all.

Franklin was thoroughly amiable, and women and children adored him, especially women. A young American visitor to Passy describes one of the de Chaumont girls approaching the old man as if she were his own daughter, tapping him playfully on the cheek and calling him ‘Papa Franklin’. Franklin himself reported to a niece in Boston: ‘This is the civilest Nation upon Earth …’Tis a delightful people to live with.’ He had brought his two grandsons with him; the younger boy was sent to school in Passy, while the elder acted as secretary to his grandfather.

Franklin was amazed by the extravagant costume and manners of the French aristocracy, who filled their noses with tobacco, dressed their heads so elaborately that their hats would not stay on, and therefore had to walk about with them under their arms. But unlike Silas Deane he was amused rather than outraged by it all, while for their part the aristocrats reciprocated his kindly curiosity, admiring his shrewdness and lack of artifice rather than being affronted by his rough ways. One French count wrote enviously of Franklin’s ‘almost rustic attire, the simple but proud attitude, the free and direct language, the hair-style without trappings or powder’, and judged him more genuinely civilised than his French counterparts; it was as if one of Plato’s friends had suddenly strolled into ‘the weak and servile civilisation of the eighteenth century’.

Franklin himself perfectly understood the effect he was having, and played on it. He described himself as ‘very plainly dressed, wearing my thin, gray straight hair, that peeps out from under my only coiffure, a fine fur cap, which comes down on my forehead almost to my spectacles. Think how this must appear among the powdered heads of Paris!’ The fur cap, acquired during a journey to Canada a few months earlier, seemed a good middle course between the aristocratic hairstyles and the headgear of the poor. Franklin also wore bifocal glasses (another of his own inventions) and found that he particularly needed them when talking to Frenchmen, since ‘when one’s Ears are not well accustomed to the Sounds of a Language, a Sight of the Movement in the Features of him that speaks helps to explain; so that I understand French better by the help of my Spectacles’. Even with them on, he did not always understand everything. Attending a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences, he decided it was safest to clap whenever his neighbour did – and so applauded loudest and longest when he himself was being eulogised.

From the outset, Paris adored him. After only three weeks it had become the mode for everyone to have his picture over the mantelpiece. His face appeared on trinkets and snuff-boxes, on vases, even on chamber-pots, and ladies began to arrange their wigs in imitation of his fur cap. A medallion of him was put on sale, bearing the legend B. FRANKLIN – AMERICAIN.

Silas Deane went home and was replaced by the young American statesman John Adams; some time later Thomas Jefferson was sent over to join the delegation. Both men brought their families. An American colony was establishing itself in Paris, for along with the diplomats there was now a trickle of merchants, artists, and young men in search of an education. Soon the trickle became a flow, and they all expected Franklin to invite them to dinner. He tried to keep at least part of his weekend free for ‘my grandson Ben with some of the American children from his school’, but Americans were always turning up at Passy, and he felt obliged to entertain them.

Despite the warm welcome the Parisians had given him, Franklin found it an uphill task to negotiate a firm Franco-American alliance. The two countries could scarcely have differed more in religion and method of government, and there was also the snag (said Franklin) that the French noblesse, ‘who always govern here’, thought it ‘indiscreet and improper’ even to mention Trade.

Meanwhile the British suspected the worst of Franklin’s negotiations. They...