Paris Letter
DEAR
PR:
You wanted a Paris Letter? You've picked the right man for it!
Of all Expert Literary Observers (you would have had, in any case, to
pass me off as such) I am for the moment the most immobile. I lie on
my back in the nth Military Hospital, at Neuilly, and observe the breasts
of my wardmates rising and falling jerkily in the uneasy pattern of
feverish sleep.
I flew from Algiers to Paris on April 10, the only Expert Literary
Observer not
returning
to this city of light but simply going there, for
the first time in a long life replete with adventures. This month's
Fon–
taine
(the first Paris edition) has a note by Adrienne Monnier saluting
the Americans-in-Paris, a very special breed. These are not the untold
thousands who have installed their "Rainbow Corner" in comfortable
proximity to the Madeleine. They are rather the people who love what
is
most Parisian in Paris, who live along the Seine, on the Ile Saint–
Louis or in the Palais-Royal; who read all the highfalutin reviews and
frequent all the best painters (although the latter have followed Picasso
back to Montmartre, it seems). "Et d'abord Sylvia Beach, mon amie
fraternelle" (sic) says Miss Monnier, and goes on with Sarah Watson
apd Katherine Dudley
~nd
the angelical Mabel Gardner and Dru Tar–
tiere and Camilla Steenbrugge, all of whom stuck it out through the
German occupation. I copy all these names in order to make a point, un–
blushingly: with the exception of the mistress of Shakespeare and Co.,
I've never heard of any of them. Of course there follows a list of very
familiar names: MacLeish, William Carlos Williams, Waldo Frank, the
dead: Sherwood Anderson and Scott Fitzgerald, the unmentionable:
Ezra Pound, etc., etc. And Miss Monnier ends with the story of Heming–
way's arrival in August, bearded and warlike and preoccupied-after
the first joyous embraces-with an arresting idea: had she, Adrienne,
not been induced to collaborate, just a wee bit? In which case he offered
to shield her from any possible danger. "I
~eriously
examined my con–
science; my faith, no, I hadn't collaborated. He took Sylvia (Beach)
aside and repeated the question. 'Sylvia, are you sure Adrienne hasn't
collaborated and doesn't need a helping hand?' 'Why no,' answered Syl–
via, 'if she's collaborated, it's been with us Americans.' Hemingway
seemed to show some regret at not being able to employ his succoring
chivalry-a slight regret flickering over the waves of his good, tranquil–
lized face."
