PEOPLE IN PARIS
319
before a swallows' nest under a barn. "Wait," he said, "the mother bird
will return in a moment with food, we must not miss that." He invited me
to walk with his group in the Fourteenth of July procession and to sit in
the stadia afterwards, which I did. We walked for miles at snail's pace
round Paris; I shall never forget the faces of friends standing on the
pavement as we passed.
•
There were four or five literary and political Salons in Paris-that of
the Duchesse de Ia Rochefaucauld on Wednesday, of the Comtesse de Fels
on Monday, the political Salon of the Marquise ·de Creusol, and, during
the time of the rue Boissonade, that of Marie Loiuse Bousquet. (Later, this
Salon changed into a kind of annex to the Ritz Bar, rarely did one meet a
writer there, only mondaine lounge lizards, ladies dressed in Schiaparelli
clothes, painters who frequent ladies of fashion, and dressmakers. I shall
not name them because they are all in New York now. I could never quite
understand the change in Marie Louise's visitors-from being one of the
most interesting Salons, it became a whispering gallery of gossip and
intrigue from the moment she moved from the rue Boissonade to the Place
du Palais Bourbon.) Princesse Edmond de Polignac received on Fridays,
but hers could hardly be called a Salon, her musical parties were one of
the really worth while private entertainments in Paris. There one met
Stravinsky, Satie, Poulenc, in fact everyone concerned with music. Mme.
Edmond de Polignac (born Singer) lived in a palatial house in the avenue
Henri Martin,
plus royale que le roi
in her way of living. Most people
were terrified of her, but in reality she was terrified of them, shy and
always on the defensive, this great lover of music was herself an excellent
pianist. The mondaine women and their polished escorts would rather
have chatted to each other but ·they were forced into silence by the severe
quick glance of their hostess who would be herself playing one of the
pianos in Bach's concerto for three pianos.
The most learned, the most intelligent and the most virtuous of the
ladies who held Salons or
jours,
was the Duchesse de Ia Rochefoucauld.
She was the head of the Feminist movement in France, one can hardly call
it a Suffragette movement because they refused to manifest in public
places or march through the streets.
(I
gave Mme. de La Rochefoucauld
a book on the Feminist movement in England by Christabel Pankhurst.
On looking at the illustrations-eggs being thrown at Winston Churchill,
and Winston Churchill waving an umbrella ·at a woman who felt it her
right to be able to vote-she said,
"jamais je n'irais dans la rue.")
She
hoped to get political equality for women through persuading the ministers
and senators who came to her house. Blum was about to do something
about it, when the bankers got him out of power. One day she congratulated
me on an article I had written in
Activite
against the Armament Ring,
"Mademoiselle Schneider (Creusot) will be here in a minute but I shall
not tell her that you wrote the article," she said with a smile. Edmee de La
Rochefoucauld was a biue stocking who happened to have married a duke;
