Since I wrote last I have seen much of a certain city in France. Huston, Ernie Schoedsack and Jack went into town with me one day. We went to Montmartre and had a great time seeing the “night life” of the city. Ordinarily Paris is dark and sleeping at 9:30 in these war times. But we found the “Black Cat” which stays open till 11. It was worth seeing but I can’t describe it in a letter.
Next day Frank and I went in and headed straight for the Pantheon, which, you remember, I had determined to see by day. Then we wandered all around the quarter, which is the students’ and artists’ section. The University of Paris and Sorbonne, etc., are there, and the narrow streets of the Latin Quarter; of course, every one is at war, so it is somewhat denatured.
Frank had a dinner engagement with a Scotch woman and I was dragged in. We went to the bois de Boulogne and waited an hour at the appointed place but she didn’t arrive. We had brought a bottle of wine and a cake of chocolate as our contribution. (She was to come with the lunch and a friend and we were to eat in the wood.) After an hour I was hungry; we had about 4 francs between us – it was just before pay-day, and I had insisted on buying particularly good wine. So we went back to the place where we’d bought the wine, prevailed on the woman to sell us some bread, and went out and bought some cheese, and made a meal of bread, cheese, wine and chocolate. Later in the week Frank got a letter from the lady asking us to her house for dinner; it had been mailed in time, but unaccountably delayed in delivery, so she was cleared.
After that we went to the Bois de Boulogne and walked all afternoon came back by the Champs Elysées and saw soldiers of every nation but Irish.
This will end here, with a promise of more soon. I am exceedingly healthy; not a trace of hay fever yet, though it is a week past the day for it.
Pep came this week, with a number of other old friends. It’s a small, as they say, world.
The people I’ve mentioned, as well as a pair a French women and an old, dirty and kindly French photographer, took every evening.
It is a varied time, if nothing else, and it is far from what you called “the four walls view of life.” If there is any place in the world where you fell you want to live lively, it is Paris. Some day I must tell you more about it.
Remember the woman who stopped us one night and said I must know Jack Munday – he had the same hat cord. She’d be convinced now, for he’s here. Also Pep and lots of others from the old place.
Apropos of four walls and Mrs. Cleveland, have you read Lewis Waller’s “Wood Carver of ‘Lympus?” It’s worth reading a couple of times. And I couldn’t stand “The Jungle” on shipboard; I gave up on it.
So far I haven’t had a word from home or Nannette. Of course I’m pleased to claim a nephew with a vocabulary consisting of “Dada,” but I know a kid about four years old who can talk French! Besides, “Dada” won’t do me any good; when I get back Bobbie will be reading Bernard Shaw and will be able to tell me in minute detail what was the crime that put Oscar Wilde in prison.
“Bobbie” is Robert Friend Rothschild (1918-2015), eldest son of Sidney’s sister Nanette and her husband Herbert Rothschild.
Next post August 20
Letters from Sidney Friend During The Great War 