Bereft of air conditioning, Americans in Paris last week cursed the locals for their antediluvian ways. Parisians did not exactly take it with a wry Gallic smile. Stomach-churning entitlement and sheer effrontery, they answered
I was in the City of Light on my way to the Alps, and read most of this stuff in the newspapers. Yes, it was hot, very hot, but walking down the Seine and along the quais, in the small park at the head of the Île de la Cité, or passing Notre Dame glistening in the sunshine, I forgot the heat and thought back of the wonderful years I had spent as a youth in France’s capital. We never thought of air conditioning back then, especially at New Jimmy’s nightclub, where queen of the night Régine kept the place sauna-like on purpose.
Paris for me began in 1956 and ended in 1968. The pestilence of mass tourism had not as yet ruined beautiful European cities, and Paris was the center of merrymaking. It was full of South Americans and rich Yankees, and the place was jumping after the long years of war and privations. Everyone knew everyone, and I remember sneaking into the Ritz hotel from the rear entrance on Rue Cambon in order to avoid relations or perhaps husbands who might spot me entering in the front on the Place Vendôme.
It all started with an invitation to a grand ball given by Countess Rochambeau at her magnificent chateau outside Paris. Upon being announced to the pleasantly plum hostess, I kissed her hand and asked her how come I had been invited. “I heard you were nice looking and had good manners,” was her answer.
“And by the way, I was born Sheila McIntosh in Kentucky,” said the countess with a big smile. Her hubby was a direct descendant of the Rochambeau who fought the Brits and helped win a certain war back in 1781.
Paris back then was the gayest (in the old meaning of the word) city in the world. And the most convenient. I worked the ponies in the morning in the Bois de Boulogne, where the Bagatelle Polo Club is located, and in the afternoon played a few sets of tennis at the Racing Club, also in the Bois. The night was reserved for Maxim’s and New Jimmy’s. I know, I know, it sounds like an empty life, but I have no regrets. I was young, eager to live fast, and had read Tender Is the Night two times by the time I was 15.
The good life finished in 1968, when the students and the workers revolted against De Gaulle. Paris had gone dry and no cars circulated. I got around on Tango, my best-loved white pony, and was booed by the so-called proles wherever I went. But young female students would pet and feed sugar to Tango even in the middle of a riot. My good friend, the playboy diplomat Porfirio Rubirosa, who had married three of the richest women of the planet—the dictator Trujillo’s daughter, Flor de Oro, Doris Duke, and Barbara Hutton—had been killed in his Ferrari after an all-nighter with me at New Jimmy’s. The riots had brought some reality to the crazy period. It was time to go to work and start writing.
Feeling a bit like Charlie Wales in F. Scott’s “Babylon Revisited,” I visited some old haunts. They’ve all gone with the wind. But Paris is, despite millions of Algerians, still Paris, and the French heartland is still a gourmet’s delight. Food and gastronomy are seen as metaphors for national identity in France. Suckling pig, canard a l’orange, artisan cheeses, washed down by the great French wines are standard in the beautiful land. But the Americans were complaining about the lack of air conditioning.
Well, America is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions in the world; hence the bitching of the Yankee tourists that the lack of air conditioning was making their stay miserable fell on deaf French ears. Only one in four households has air conditioning in the land of cheese. What has not fallen on deaf ears, however, is criticism of the American ambassador to France, Charles Kushner, father of the son-in-law of you know who.
The nicest thing I heard about him from the few friends I have left in Paris is that Kushner is a know-it-all whose ignorance of diplomacy and France is as mind boggling as it is insulting. Jean-Louis at the Quai d’Orsay told me that Kushner is there for the Jews of the world and Israel, not for America. The pardoned criminal is an embarrassment, especially coming from the land that once upon a time sent great ones like Adams and Franklin as its representatives to the Hexagon.
Algeria was once viewed as part of Metropolitan France, and millions of Algerians emigrated to France after independence in 1962. Kushner complains of antisemitism when poor Algerians riot against the massacres in Gaza. Perhaps he should read a book of French history before constantly crying about the lot of Jews in France—which incidentally has the largest number of Jews in Europe. A friend of mine said that Kushner’s tactics will result in the few French people who still remember D-Day and American sacrifices to forget all about them.
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