The Accidental Empress Itinerary in Austria

Posted on August 10, 2015 by americangirlsartclubinparis

I first heard about Allison Pataki’s book The Accidental Empress from Barbara Rinella, a Chicago area friend and “book dramatist.” If you’ve never seen Barbara perform, check out her website, she’s a real tour de force. Hilarious and salty, Barbara dresses up like the character from a book — Marie Antoinette, Camille Monet, John Adams, to name a few — and gives a highly entertaining book review, as only a former high school English teacher could. She’ll be reviewing Accidental Empress and performing as Empress Sisi starting in the fall of 2015. You can catch her throughout Chicagoland, maybe on a cruise ship, and if you’re lucky, in a town near you.

I have a special interest in Empress Sisi after reading Accidental Empress and touring through Austria this summer. Sisi seemed to pop up everywhere on our travels. My husband finally asked, “Who is this Cissy anyway?” I answered: “It’s ‘Sisi.‘ She was Empress Elisabeth of Austria, but so tragic, the Princess Diana of her time.” He gave me that look — you know, the ones husbands give when they realize they’re getting dragged into another museum.

Such is life with a history major.

The first stop on our Accidental Empress itinerary was the town of Bad Ischl, just an hour or so east of Salzburg in the Salzkammergut region of Austria. Bad Ischl was the summer playground of the Austrian aristocracy. As readers of the book know, this is where Elisabeth of Bavaria first met Emperor Franz Josef of Austria. Elisabeth was just 15 years old at the time, invited to Bad Ischl as a member of her older sister’s bridal party. Allison Pitaki’s book is perhaps the most fun when we see the (prettier, spunkier, more athletic) little sister steal the (older, quieter, bookish) sister’s betrothed. Wedding plans are quickly swapped out and “Sisi” becomes the accidental Empress of Austria.

Sisi’s mother-in-law bought a beautiful villa in Bad Ischl to give to Sisi and Franz Josef as a wedding gift. Over the next few years Franz Josef had it made into the beautiful Kaiservilla that still stands today. The palace, its beautiful grounds and Sisi’s little Tudor tea cottage are open to the public. It would make a great day trip from Salzburg or a good stop for lunch and a tour on the scenic route from Salzburg to Vienna.

After buying a ticket to the Kaiservilla you walk across the Kaiserbrücke, a lovely steel arch bridge over the Ischl River. The stream is fast moving and fresh, just like it must have been in Sissi’s day.

A view of the front of the Kaiservilla in Bad Ischl. It is painted an imperial yellow similar to the Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna.

The front of the Kaiservilla with the fountain in front.

The gravel driveway brings you into a lovely symmetrical plaza in front of the Kaiservilla. If you’re lucky you won’t have too long to wait before your timed guided tour of the villa begins.

A charming huntsman statue, “The Listener” stands in the lawn in front of the grounds and gardens across from the villa. Emperor Frank Josef was a big hunter. The inside of the villa (no photos allowed) contains many hunting trophies, including antlers and deer heads.

This hunting statue called “The Listener” stands in the lawn in front of the grounds and gardens across from the villa. Emperor Frank Josef was a big hunter. The inside of the villa (no photos allowed) contains many hunting trophies, including antlers and deer heads.

Your first glimpse of Elisabeth’s Tea Cottage as you walk up the pebbled path from the palace. It reminds me a little bit of Marie Antoinette’s Hamlet at Versailles (although on a much smaller, less crazy scale). It must have offered a welcome feminine retreat away from the uber-masculine trophy hunter vibe of the main palace.

The beautiful front door of the Tea Cottage

Tea Cottage Interior

Tea Cottage’s wrap-around porch with iron railings and vines

All around the exterior of the Tea Cottage you can read signs and see photographs from Elisabeth’s time at Kaiservilla. She was considered quite the beauty.

This sign (in English and German) tells about the “imperial betrothal” at Bad Ischl.

After a couple-few hours in Bad Ischl there would be time to grab a quick bite and head back to Salzburg or to continue to drive on to Vienna, as we did.

In Vienna, you won’t want to miss the Imperial Apartments and the Sisi Museum at the Hofburg Palace, where Elisabeth and her husband Franz Josef lived (but not necessarily very happily) from 1854 until her death in 1898.

Hofburg Palace in Vienna. You can buy tickets to visit the Imperial Apartments and the Sisi Museum. Highly recommended!

An original portrait of Elisabeth and her extraordinarily long hair hangs in the Imperial Apartments above a desk.

And of course, no itinerary is complete without a stop at the gift shop. The Sisi Museum Gift Shop offers every souvenir you can imagine, and then some. No, I didn’t buy a Sisi Fan, but I did pick up a few postcards to toss into my scrapbook.

I recently heard that Allison Pataki is currently writing a sequel to Accidental Empress, which I can’t wait to read. Maybe you’ll have time to plan your own Empress Elisabeth Itinerary in time for the next book!

Accidental Empress by Allison Pataki: Recommended

The Lady in Gold’s Footsteps in Vienna

Posted on July 12, 2015 by americangirlsartclubinparis

Have you ever take a trip because of a book? I just did.

I’d always wanted to go to Vienna, but every time I got as far as Munich or Salzburg, it seemed I always had a reason to head elsewhere or hurry home. This time it would be different. I wanted to walk in the footsteps of The Lady in Gold by Anne Marie O’Connor.

I enjoyed the movie The Woman in Gold (I enjoyed Helen Mirren’s witty little quips), but it didn’t come close to covering the breadth and depth of the book.

From O’Connor’s book you get the whole story. You learn all about Gustav Klimt, his background, his rise to fame, and his women. About Adele Bloch-Bauer, her affluent Jewish family and her sophisticated intellectual circle. We learn how Klimt came to paint Adele’s famous portrait and how it became the Mona Lisa of fin de siècle Austria.

We don’t just learn what became of The Lady in Gold after the Germans took over in 1938, we see how the entire Bloch-Bauer family suffered under Nazi rule. The Gestapo terrorized and extorted wealthy Viennese families to gain access to their factories, valuables and bank accounts which would be used to fuel their war machine. The story is much, much bigger than the story of one painting.

The losses of this extended family are staggering. Adele’s widowed husband Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer gave up his home and valuables in Vienna (with The Lady in Gold still inside) and escaped to his castle in Prague until that too was overtaken by the Nazis. Ferdinand lived until 1945, when he would die impoverished and alone in Switzerland. Adele’s nephew Leopold was arrested by the Gestapo and held until he promised to turn over the stock to the family sugar company. (Interesting sidebar: in 2005, Leopold’s heirs would receive $21 million in restitution for the theft of the sugar company, made possible by the collaboration of Swiss banks. Read more here.)

Adele’s niece Maria (played in the movie by Helen Mirren) and her new husband Fritz Altmann were able to sneak out of Vienna to England, thanks to the cash and connections of her father-in-law who owned a factory in Liverpool. Adele’s other niece, the Baroness Luise Gutmann, became trapped in Yugoslavia with her husband Viktor and her children. Viktor was arrested and killed by the Nazis, but Luise and the children survived. The remaining members of the Bloch-Bauer, Altmann and Gutmann families emigrated to Los Angeles and Vancouver after the war, living in close connection with other Austrians.

O’Connor even came upon a fascinating true story about how a different kind of “gay marriage” saved Jewish lives in Vienna. Gay culture had in fact flourished in artistic circles before the Nazis arrived. An underground network of eligible “Aryan bachelors” offered to marry Jewish women and get them out of Austria. A Bloch-Bauer in-law, Ada Stern, found a gay Dutch man who did exactly that.

Not surprisingly, the movie just scrapes the surface of all this tragic and important history of wartime Vienna. The Lady in Gold by Anne-Marie O’Connor is a must-read whether or not you have seen the movie. And once you’ve read it, you too will probably want to visit Vienna and walk in the footsteps of Gustav Klimt and Adele Bloch-Bauer.

First on my Lady in Gold literary tour was a walk to Adele Bloch-Bauer’s home near the Vienna Opera on Elisabethstrasse.

Standing in front of 18 Elisabethstrasse, the home of Ferdinand and Adele Bloch-Bauer. They moved into this four-story palatial townhouse across from the Academy of Fine Art in 1919. In 1925, Adele died here, leaving the will instructing her husband to leave her two Klimt portraits to the Austrian Gallery after his death.

18 Elisabethstrasse, where Adele Bloch-Bauer would hold Saturday salons with her artistic and progressive circle of friends, including Alma Mahler, Richard Strauss and Karl Renner, the former chancellor of Austria. (Renner was also Adele’s lover – Adele’s maid had to quietly remove his love letters from her nightstand upon Adele’s death.)

Adele Bloch-Bauer’s lovely and sophisticated neighborhood. She lived across the street from Schillerpark and the Vienna Academy of Art. (The same academy that would reject Adolf Hitler’s application in 1907 after he flunked the drawing exam.) As Anne-Marie O’Connor says in The Lady in Gold: “If Adele had passed Hitler on the street in Vienna in those days, carrying his pants and pastels, she would have seen only an unfortunate young man, lacking in confidence. She probably would have felt sorry for him.”

The Secession Building in Vienna: Gustav Klimt's Beethoven Frieze

The Secession Building in Vienna, 12 Friedrichstrasse: A must-see for Gustav Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze. Klimt created the frieze in 1902 for the XIVth Secessionist Exhibit. The frieze stayed in place until 1903, the year that Klimt would begin his portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. If you’re following in my own footsteps, this building is just a couple of blocks from 18 Elisabethstrasse on the other side of the Academy of Fine Arts.

The Secession Building: Unfortunately photos aren’t allowed inside, so you’ll either have to visit for yourself or check out the photos on their website, http://www.secession.at/beethovenfries/index.html. Klimt made a stunning use of gold leaf and displayed a highly modern sensibility with a great deal of nudity. Adele would have had no illusions about what kind of portrait she would be sitting for. By the way, there is litigation over the Beethoven Frieze as well. Heirs of Erich Lederer, the owner of the frieze at the time of its “Aryanization,” have sued the Austrian government for its return. Although Lederer was paid $750,000 for the frieze in in 1973, it was far below its fair market value. The Austrian government and the Secession Building are fighting for the right to keep it. Read Anne-Marie O’Connor’s Huffington Post article here.

A visit to Vienna wouldn't be complete without a trip to the Belvedere Palace, which was once home to the Lady in Gold.

A visit to Vienna wouldn’t be complete without a trip to the Belvedere Palace, 27 Prinz Eugen-Strasse, which is just a short scenic walk from the Secession Building. This art museum might not be the home to the Lady in Gold anymore, but it still holds The Kiss, and plenty of other fabulous works of art.

The view from the inside of the Belvedere.

A terrace of the Upper Belvedere looking through the gardens toward the Lower Belvedere.

Picture Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds right here.

Picture Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds walking in the gardens of the Belvedere.

I just had to go find the Jewish Memorial that Ryan Reynolds visited at the end of the movie. It's located in the Judenplatz, over in the older area of Vienna. Definitely worth the longer walk from the other sites.

I just had to go find the Jewish Holocaust Memorial that Ryan Reynolds visited at the end of the movie. It’s located in the Judenplatz, over in the older area of Vienna. It is named Silent Library and was designed to resemble book with their spines turned inward, which represents all the life stories that will never be known. Definitely worth the longer walk from the other sites.

The Lady in Gold by Anne-Marie O’Connor: Very highly recommended

For further reading:

The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig. I read this haunting autobiography-memoir while I was visiting Salzburg and Vienna this summer. One of the best book and travel pairings I’ve ever made. Set in Vienna, Salzburg, Paris and much of Europe, it was published after Zweig’s exile to Brazil and his subsequent suicide. It is a beautifully told story about the lost world of old world Vienna and the horror of a world in the midst of war. Fun fact (as revealed in The Lady in Gold): Stefan Zweig was a friend of Adele Bloch-Bauer. Very highly recommended.

The Painted Kiss by Elizabeth Hickey. The story of Gustave Klimt and his long-time companion, partner and muse Emilie Flöge, the subject of The Kiss.

The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund DeWaal. Read my prior posts here: Vienna Sites, and Paris Sites.

Freud’s Mistress by Karen Mack and Jennifer Kaufman (historical fiction set in turn-of-the-century Vienna).

The Hare with Amber Eyes in Vienna

Posted on July 3, 2015 by americangirlsartclubinparis

9780312569372 I’ve been a fan of The Hare with Amber Eyes for years. I wrote about this book and its Paris connections back in 2011 (Art, Books, Paris: The Hare with Amber Eyes), and it has been with me ever since.

On recent travels to Austria, I remembered there was a Vienna connection to this book and I was determined to track it down. The Ephrussi family had owned a palace on the Ringstrasse. The last members of the Ephrussi family to live in it were Viktor, his wife Emma and their four children. You might remember from The Hare with Amber Eyes that Emma kept the family netsuke collection in a lacquered black cabinet in her dressing room.

After the Anchluss in 1938, the Nazis “Aryanized” the Ephrussi Palace and most of its contents. Viktor, Emma and their children made it out of the country alive, but both Viktor and Emma would die before the end of the war. What became of the palace after it was seized by the Nazis? Would it still be there? Who currently owns it?

I didn’t have to look far. A simple Google search took me to a Wikipedia page for Palais Ephrussi. It was there I learned that the palace survived World War II, although one wing had been destroyed. The building was in the American Sector of Vienna during the Occupation and housed the American Legal Council Property Control.

The Germans who occupied the building from 1938-1945 used much of the Ephrussi family furniture, as did the Americans during the Occupation, but “artistic and high-quality pieces that [were] unsuitable for office purposes” went to various museums in Vienna, including the Kunsthistorische Museum, the Naturhistorische Museum and the “Depot of Movables”. The Depot of Movables was used to furnish various museums and government offices in Vienna.

The surviving members of the Ephrussi family had to go to court to regain title to the building and its contents (reminding us of the litigation that was at the heart of Lady in Gold). By 1950, the palace and much of its contents were returned to the Ephrussi heirs. As we know, a maid smuggled the netsukes out of the house and hid them under a mattress. She made sure they were returned to the family after the war.

Unfortunately, Vienna had bad memories for the surviving members of Ephrussi family, so they chose to sell the palace. The building only sold for $50,000 (today’s dollars) due to its poor condition and Vienna’s economy at the time. For many years the building was owned by Casinos Austria.

Sadly, this palace now houses a Starbucks and a McDonald’s. It can be found at the corner of Schottengasse and Molker Basei, across the street from the University of Vienna. In the first photo below you can see the Votivkirche in the background.

One more interesting note about the Ephrussi family. I came upon a website that shows there were some additional pieces of Ephrussi family property that were discovered in the “Depot of Moveables” as recently as 2000 that are still available for restitution.

Austria has certainly taken a long time to remedy the wrongs of the holocaust.

Bronze table.
Taken from the ‘aryanised’ apartment of Viktor Ephrussi
Held ready for restitution since 1999

Vanessa and Her Sister

Posted on January 21, 2015 by americangirlsartclubinparis

I just finished Vanessa and Her Sister by Priya Parmar (Ballantine, 2015). And I loved it.

paper+photo-medium

It’s the story of the Stephen siblings of London (Vanessa, Virginia, Thoby and Adrian) who formed the nucleus of the Bloomsbury Group when they moved into a bohemian Gordon Square neighborhood together in 1904.

Vanessa Stephen is 25 years old at the beginning of the novel, and has already studied art at the Royal Academy School of Art, taking painting instruction from John Singer Sargent. Her younger sister Virginia, also single, is recovering from a bad spell of mental illness after the death of their father and has yet to write her first novel.

This novel has as its heart the story of two intensely intelligent, unconventional and competitive sisters. Virginia is jealous and toxically dependent on Vanessa, and feels threatened by Vanessa’s first successes in art and romance. The two sisters are happiest when Virginia poses for a portrait by Vanessa, which she does often. As Vanessa says in the novel:

I always paint Virginia. I tell myself that it is the lean planes of her beautiful face that draw me, but really, it is her company I seek. . . .

She posed for an hour this evening, until the June light failed, her eyes closed in comfort, and her face settled into her hand in a way it never does when she is in conversation. Her fine hair, a paler brown than mine, was swept back from her elliptical face into a loose knot and lay in the shallow curve of her long neck. She did not speak nor try to break the moment but kept impossibly still. When Virginia knows I am watching her, she does not try to be anywhere else.

Vanessa Bell, Portrait of Virginia Woolf (1912) Virginia Woolf (c. 1912), © Estate of Vanessa Bell, courtesy Henrietta Garnett. Photo © National Trust / Charles Thomas

Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf (1912), Estate of Vanessa Bell

Vanessa Bell, Viginia Woolf [In An Armchair] (1911-12), Oil on canvas, National Portrait Gallery, London

Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf in a Deckchair (1912), Oil on board, Mimi and Peter Haas. (Leonard Woolf once said that this portrait was "more like Virginia in its way than anything else of her.")

Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf in a Deckchair (1912), Oil on board, Mimi and Peter Haas. (Leonard Woolf, Virginia’s husband, once said that this portrait was “more like Virginia in its way than anything else of her.”)

Vanessa and Her Sister more than a tale of sibling rivalry and codependence: it’s also about the differences between two forms of art: writing and painting. Priya renews our appreciation for the talent of Vanessa Bell, the lesser known sister, and does a fabulous job exploring and expressing the mind of an artist, which is less accessible than that of a writer. Priya understands that Vanessa feels slighted because their highly literate Bloomsbury crowd seems to prefer words to images. Vanessa broods (p. 66):

Painting does not qualify as work in this family of literati. Work is not work where words are not involved. The unfixed mark of paint alters when it alteration finds. The distribution of colors is a curious sort of hobby to them. A lightweight experiment with insubstantial shade instead of the integrity-bound dimensional shape of letters on a page.

I love how Vanessa (p. 33) explains the mind of a painter:

I think in mass, In color and shape and light and volume and texture. Not in words. Words delicately sewn around an abstract idea leave me feeling large and awkward and with nothing to say. What is the meaning of good? My mind asks “What is the color of good? What size? What light? Where to put the bowl of poppies?”

In 1905, Vanessa experiences the thrill of her first exhibition. A commissioned portrait of her friend Lady Robert Cecil (“Nelly”) is exhibited at the New Gallery in London.

Photograph of Vanessa (Stephen) Bell painting a portrait of Lady Robert Cecil (1905). Source: Tate Archive Showcase.

In the novel, Parmar has Vanessa describe the feeling of seeing her own painting on the walls of a gallery for the first time, knowing it has changed her experience of being an artist (p. 29):

We stood in the gallery. Watching people watch the painting. It was exhilarating but mixed with an elusive bittersweet I could not place. Nelly looked lovelier hanging on that wall than she ever did resting on my easel, but she had grown unfamiliar in the weeks since I handed her over to the gallery. It is true that we do not understand the boundaries and dimensions of what we have created until it is consumed by another. I loved being an artist today.

Vanessa expands her circle of artist friends and her view of the art world. Clive Bell, a Cambridge pal of her brother Thoby becomes a frequent visitor to their Gordon Square Thursday Night “At Homes.” Bell is an art critic, and he and Vanessa share their interest in the leading-edge art scene in Paris, including Manet, Cézanne and Picasso. They discuss the recent Durand-Ruel exhibition at the Grafton Galleries in London, debating whether “it take[s] vision to understand beauty.”

Vanessa Bell, Interior Scene with Clive Bell and Duncan Grant Drinking Wine, Birkbeck Collection, University of London (painted at Gordon Square – check out the red slippers!)

Vanessa and Clive will marry in 1907 and head off to Paris, where they spend time with their bohemian British ex-pat friends, including Duncan Grant and Henry Lamb. Their artistic newlywed idyll will be interrupted by the birth of their first child Julian within a year of the wedding. Vanessa is blown away by childbirth and her love for the baby. Clive, not so much.

Vanessa Bell, Portrait Julian Bell (1908)

Vanessa Bell, Portrait of Julian Bell (1908)

Vanessa Bell, Portrait of Julian Bell [Sleeping] (1908)

The year Julian is born Vanessa learns that Clive and Virginia have become involved in what is (at the very least) an emotional affair. Their betrayal shakes her to her core and leaves her marriage forever altered, but Vanessa is able to turn to her painting for relief.

In 1909, Vanessa finishes what is now known as one of her most famous early paintings: Iceland Poppies.

Vanessa Bell, Iceland Poppies (1908-9), The Vanessa Bell Estate, The Charleston Trust, Sussex, England.

The painting is chilly and deeply psychological. As Vanessa says in the book:

I am painting well, given all that has happened. I am pleased with my quiet still life and have decided to call it Iceland Poppies. Each time I come back to it, I am surprised at how well I like it: the wintry palette, the antique medicine jar and pale matching bowl, the green glass poison bottle, and the contrasting poppy. Yes, they are right together. Of course, I could fall out of love with it in an afternoon. Rightness can be a transitive thing.

Clive wanted to know if the painting is about Virginia’s suicide attempts. How very obvious of him. He did not see the triplicate nature of the canvas. The three stripes on the wall. The three vessels: two white, one tree. The three flowers flying in the foreground: the two white, turned to the wall, and the one short-stemmed, poppy facing outward and painted in a fresh bolt of red. I alternate. Sometimes I am the white flower and sometimes I am the red.

Vanessa is thrilled when Iceland Poppies is exhibited at The New English Art Club, right alongside John Singer Sargent, Augustus John and Duncan Grant: “So something good has tumbled out of this appalling year.”

In 1910, Clive and Vanessa renew their acquaintance of Roger Fry, famous art critic and former curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Fry asks Clive to help plan his exhibit at the Grafton Galleries, “Manet and the Post-Impressionists.” The show stuns London with the avant-garde art of France, including works Manet, Cézanne, Gauguin, Derain, Matisse, Van Gogh, Seurat and Picasso. After this exhibit, Vanessa’s view of art expands, her style matures and she becomes more and more liberated from convention.

Roger Fry, Self-Portrait (1928)

In 1911, the Bells travel to Constantinople with Roger Fry, and Vanessa and Roger spend much of their time painting side by side. Free from the constraints of a conventional marriage any longer, Vanessa allows a romance to commence with Roger.

Roger invites Vanessa to exhibit in the Second Post-Impressionist Exhibit at Grafton Galleries in 1912, where Vanessa Bell’s painting Nursery Tea will appear in the same room as works by Matisse, Picasso, Braces and Cézanne. Vanessa Bell has become one of Britain’s most noted Post-Impressionists.

Vanessa Bell, Nursery Tea (1912)

Vanessa Bell, Monte Oliveto (1912), Art Gallery of South Australia

Although Vanessa and Her Sister ends here, in 1912, Vanessa will go on to have a long, satisfying career in art. And as we also know, her sister Virginia will have a brilliant writing career, but a tragic life marred by the ups and downs of mental illness. Virginia Woolf will take her own life in 1941. Vanessa survived until 1961, leaving two surviving children, Quentin and Angelica. Her first child Julian would be killed in the Spanish Civil War in 1937.

Vanessa and Her Sister by Priya Parmar: Highly Recommended

For Further Reading:

The Art of Bloomsbury by Richard Shone

Paris, August 1,1914: Edith Wharton Waits for War

Posted on August 1, 2014 by americangirlsartclubinparis

August 1, 1914: Edith Wharton Wakes Up at the Hôtel de Crillon; Russia and Germany Declare War

Edith Wharton had been living in Paris for over seven years by the time World War I started. She first arrived in 1907 at the age of 45, along with her then-husband Teddy Wharton. She settled in along the rue de Varenne in the fashionable 7th arrondissement.

For an enjoyable read about Edith Wharton’s early years in Paris, her surprising mid-life affair with Morton Fullerton, and her divorce from her American husband, you should definitely check out Jennie Fields’ 2012 novel, Age of Desire. (And follow along on my Edith Wharton Paris Literary Tour here.)

By the time war came in 1914, Wharton was a seasoned American in Paris. She knew Paris and Parisians well, and had claimed the city as her own.

On July 30, 1914, Wharton had just returned to Paris from a “motorflight” to Spain with her friend Walter Berry. She checked into her favorite suite at Hôtel de Crillon, her favorite Paris hotel on the Place de la Concorde. It was her habit to check into the Crillon to get settled back into town, even if she had owned her own home at 53 rue de Varenne since 1910.

Hôtel Crillon, Paris

The view of the back of Edith Wharton’s apartment at 53 rue de Varenne, which overlooked beautiful private gardens.

Wharton woke up at the Crillon on August 1st, observing and listening as she moved through the hotel and the streets of Paris. As Wharton later reported:

The next day, the air was thundery with rumors. Nobody believed them, everyone repeated them. War? Of course there couldn’t be war! The Cabinets, like naughty children, were dangling their feet over the edge; but the whole incalculable weight of things-as-they-were, the daily necessity of living, continued calmly and convincingly to assert itself against the bandying of diplomatic words. Paris went on steadily with its mid-summer business of feeding, dressing and amusing the great army of tourists who were the only invaders she had seen in nearly half a century.

All the while, everyone knew that other work was going on also. The whole fabric of the country’s seemingly undisturbed routine was threaded with noiseless invisible currents of preparation, the sense of them was in the calm air as the sense of changing weather is in the balminess of a perfect afternoon. Paris counted the minutes until the evening papers came.

They said little or nothing except what everyone was already declaring all over the country. “We don’t want war – maid il faut que cell finesse!” “This thing has got to stop”: that was the only phrase one heard. If diplomacy could still arrest the war, so much the better – no one in France wanted it. All who spent the first days of August in Paris will testify to the agreement of feeling on that point. But if war had to come, the country, and every heart in it, was ready (Fighting France, 1915).

What Wharton does not say is exactly what the papers had reported. In fact, on August 1, 1914, Russia and Germany declared war on each other, just four days after Austria-Hungary had declared war on Serbia. France was not yet at war, but all of Paris waited the news that was likely to come.

Coming Next: August 2, 1914 – Edith Wharton Visits Her Dressmaker; France Issues a Mobilization Order

Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort by Edith Wharton is available as a free ebook.

Edith Wharton Waits for War

Posted on July 29, 2014 by americangirlsartclubinparis

Edith Wharton, 1905

Edith Wharton might have looked like one of the Gilded Age society matrons straight out of the pages of her novels like The Age of Innocence or The House of Mirth, but it turns out she could really roll up her sleeves when the situation demanded. Now, on the 100th anniversary of World War I, it is time we give Wharton full credit for her service as an American war correspondent and refugee aid worker.

Wharton recorded her observations about World War I in a series of articles for Scribner’s Magazine. Since then, these articles have been published together in a book called Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort. Her war work, which included charitable efforts on behalf of Belgian refugees and international advocacy against American neutrality, earned her a French Legion of Honor medal in 1916.

A postcard sent by Edith Wharton to her housekeeper Anna Bauman picturing the town of Heiltz-le Maurupt after the First Battle of the Marne in September, 1914.

This blog will follow in her footsteps from the outbreak of World War I in July, 1914 through her travels through the battlefields of the Champagne-Ardennes region in early 1915, and her visit to the Lorraine and Vosges regions in May of 1915. In addition to her travels to the German front, Wharton worked tirelessly to organize workshops for unemployed Parisian women and shelters for Belgian refugees.

July 30, 1914: Wharton Returns to Paris, Stops at Chartres Cathedral on the Eve of World War I

It was the last days of July, 1914. Edith Wharton and her “unromantically companionable” travel partner Walter Berry were hurrying back to Paris from a three week trip to Spain. Events in Europe were quickly escalating after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. As Wharton herself put it: “the international news [was] looking fairly black.” Just a few days earlier, on July 28, 1914, Austria had declared war on Serbia. Wharton and Berry spent the night in Poitiers, where the atmosphere was “strange, ominous and unreal, like the yellow glare that precedes a storm. There were moments when I felt as if I had died, and waked up in an unknown world.” (A Backward Glance, 1934).

Nevertheless, as Wharton and Berry drove from Poitiers to Paris, they stopped for a picnic lunch underneath some apple trees and she found it hard to think about the reality of war: “the serenity of the scene smiled away the war rumours which had hung on us since morning.” (Fighting France From Dunkerque to Belfort, The Look of Paris, Scribner’s, 1915).

The traveling companions made it to Chartres by four o’clock that afternoon, just as the sun was bursting out from behind banks of thunderclouds. They entered the Chartres Cathedral, stood before the magnificent stained glass windows, and sought solace from the beauty and power of the sight before them. Wharton later recalled the scene like this:

[S]teeped in a blaze of mid-summer sun, the familiar windows seemed singularly remote yet overwhelmingly vivid. Now they widened into dark-shored pools splashed with sunset, now glittered and menaced like the shields of fighting angels. . . . When one dropped one’s eyes from these ethereal harmonies, the dark masses of masonry below them, all veiled and muffled in a mist pricked by a few altar lights, seemed to symbolize the life on earth, with its shadows, its heavy distances and its little islands of illusion. All that a great cathedral can be, all the meanings it can express, all the tranquilizing power it can breathe upon the soul, all the richness of detail it can fuse into a large utterance of strength and beauty, the Cathedral of Chartres gave us in that perfect hour (Fighting France, The Look of Paris).

A Visit to Chartres in Wharton’s Footsteps

You too can feel the same tranquilizing power of the stained glass windows of Chartres. The train ride from Paris to Chartres is as short as one hour, and the Cathedral is an easy five minute walk from the Chartres train station. If you’re lucky, the sun will pop out for you just like it did for Wharton and Berry in 1914. Unfortunately, the day of my visit it was wet and rainy, and only the dimmest of light poured through the windows.

The Blue Virgin Window in the Chartres Cathedral.

South Rose Window

Standing in the rain outside the cathedral

If you’re looking for a good spot for lunch on a day trip to Chartres, the town is absolutely full of them. But for an unbelievably memorable crêpe, you’ve got to stop in at Creperie la Picoterie at 36 rue des Changes, Chartres.

Creperie la Picoterie

Creperie la Picoterie’s buckwheat crepe with smoked duck, apples, cherries, goat cheese, lettuce, black olives and rhubarb compote. As good as it looks!

One of my traveling pals got the Pain de Poilane sandwich with sun-dried tomatoes and it was incredible too.

Next Up in Wharton’s Footsteps: Paris on the Eve of War, August 1914

Back to Sarah’s Key

Posted on July 25, 2014 by americangirlsartclubinparis

The original US cover of Sarah’s Key. (In which the Eiffel Tower strangely appears on the wrong side of Luxembourg Palace. Anyone else notice that or is it just me?)

Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay was one of the first books I wanted to map out during my year in Paris. I read this book with my Chicago-based book club and never forgot it. I was determined to find the sites from the book and take some photos for my blog. My original post, with photos of the commemorative plaques and statues near the Eiffel Tower can be found right here.

I’ve been meaning to update that post for awhile now. Back in 2012, I made some new discoveries and went back to take some more photographs. How it happened is kind of cool.

I noticed that one of my favorite Paris bloggers (Richard Nahem of Eye Prefer Paris) had posted photos of the courtyard of the fictional apartment from Sarah’s Key. But wait! His photos were of 26, rue Saintonge in the Marais, and mine were from 32, rue Saintonge. Whoops!

I tweeted out to Richard (I’m @parisartclub, he’s @eyepreferparis) wondering about the mix-up, when who should tweet us back? Tatiana de Rosnay herself (what a treat!), explaining the reason for our confusion. Apparently, in the book Sarah’s address is 26, rue de Saintonge and in the movie it’s 32.

So then of course I had to go see the address from the book for myself. I good friend and fellow reader from Chicago was visiting and was game for a literary trek. We headed into the Marais (she had a recent travel article in hand about the hopping Haut-Marais) and we found ourselves near rue de Saintonge. “This way to Sarah’s house!” I pointed. Obviously, book lovers like me have a hard time distinguishing fact from fiction.

I found the bright blue doors at #26, just like Eye Prefer Paris had earlier. My friend and I also got the chance to peek in the courtyard, and we had a little “book club moment.” We looked up at the open windows, picturing Sarah’s old neighbor the music teacher, playing the violin as he sat in his window. Seriously, I think I wiped away a tear or two.

Here is the passage from Sarah’s Key that we recalled:

Outside, the girl saw a neighbor wearing pajamas leaning out his window. He was a nice man, a music teacher. He liked playing the violin, and she liked listening to him. He often played for her and her brother from across the courtyard. Old French songs like “Sur le pont d’Avignon” and `A la claire fontaine,” and also songs from her parents’ country, songs that always got her mother and father dancing gaily, her mother’s slippers sliding across the floorboards, her father twirling her round and round, round and round until they all felt dizzy.

“What are you doing? Where are you taking them?” he called out.

His voice ran across the courtyard, covering the baby’s yells. The man in the raincoat did not answer him.

“But you can’t do this,” said the neighbor. “They’re honest good people! You can’t do this!”

At the sound of his voice, shutters began to open, faces peered out from behind curtains.

But the girl noticed that nobody moved, nobody said anything. They simply watched.

The bright blue doorway to 26 rue de Saintonge

The fictional courtyard from the book Sarah's Key at 36 rue de Saintonge, Paris

The fictional courtyard from the book Sarah’s Key at 26 rue de Saintonge, Paris. Can’t you just picture the nice man and his violin leaning out the window?

The plaque on a nearby school on rue des Quatre-Fils in the 3rd. It says: “From 1942 to 1944, more than 11,000 children were deported from France by the Nazis with the active participation of the Vichy government of France and assassinated in death camps because they were born Jewish. More than 500 of these children lived in the 3rd arrondissement. A number of them went to the Ecoles Elementaires Filles et Garcons des Quatre-Fils. Never Forget Them.

This is all probably a good reminder as we prepare to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Paris on August 25, 2014. Ne les oublions jamais.

Visit Saint-Malo with Anthony Doerr

Posted on May 22, 2014 by americangirlsartclubinparis

I just finished Anthony Doerr’s most recent book, All The Light We Cannot See (Scribner 2014). I’ve loved Doerr ever since The Shell Collector, About Grace and Four Seasons in Rome, but this latest novel is nothing short of breathtaking. And best of all, at least for me, the novel is set in Saint-Malo, a small fortified town on the coast of Brittany which I’ve had the pleasure to visit. Doerr captures its briny smells and moody seas just perfectly.

Doerr has a rare gift. He understands what makes science and nature tick, but he also has the words to elevate them them into art. He can make seashells, snails, rare diamonds and radio waves all seem miraculous.

This time Doerr sets his sights on France during World War II, blending history, technology and legend to tell the story of a blind French girl and a young German soldier whose destinies are entwined through the miracle of sound. All the light we cannot see.

The story is artfully woven. It moves back in forth in time and place, spiraling faster and faster toward its incredibly suspenseful center. It begins in Paris where a young blind girl named Marie-Laure lives with her devoted father, who is the master locksmith at the Museum of Natural History. She grows up in a magical world of science and cherishes her braille edition of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

In the meantime, Werner Pfenning begins his own story in a German orphanage where he lives with his sister Jutta. They come upon an abandoned radio out in the trash and Werner plays with it until they hear music — and as Doerr himself would say, “the magic of a stranger’s voice.” Werner dabbles with radios until his aptitude for math and technology (not to mention his snow-white hair and Aryan eyes) earns him a spot in an elite Hitler Youth Academy. Werner becomes an expert at radio transmissions and is drafted into the German army.

When the Germans occupy Paris in 1940, Marie-Laure and her father escape to the west and are welcomed in by a reclusive great-uncle who lives in an old house on the sea in Saint-Malo, Brittany.

The Germans quickly take over Saint-Malo as well, and it becomes a natural German stronghold with all of its medieval ramparts and old stone fortifications. The Germans rule the little town with an iron fist. Little do they know that Marie-Laure’s great-uncle has a secret radio transmitter in his attic.

In this video, Doerr tells us about the inspiration for his novel and his decision to choose Saint-Malo for the setting. Apparently he was traveling through France on a book tour and found himself in the lovely town of Saint-Malo. Like me, he had no idea that the town had nearly been destroyed by American bombs during the liberation of France in 1944.

If you get the chance to take a 2-3 day side trip from Paris, you should go to Saint-Malo. It is easily reachable by train from Gare Monparnasse. Or perhaps take the train to Rennes, rent a car, drive to Mont Saint-Michel, and then drive 25 or so miles to Saint-Malo. I enjoyed my stay at Le Grand Hôtel des Thermes, which is right on the beach and a short walk from the old town walls. You can take a tour of Fort National, the place where Marie-Laure’s great-uncle is imprisoned at the end of the German Occupation, or Memorial 39/45 Blockhaus, which is what remains of a German anti-aircraft defense blockhouse. A guided tour of the blockhouse is followed by a film “The Battle of Saint-Malo.”

But most of all, take an afternoon to stroll through the same Saint-Malo streets as the brave young Marie-Laure. Walk along the windswept ramparts, enjoy the fabulous seafood, and then maybe stop in a boulangerie and order a baguette. And just in case, check inside the baguette in case there’s a secret slip of paper from the French resistance. . . .

Porte Saint-Thomas, Saint Malo, France.

Saint-Malo sea ramparts with Fort National in the background. Marie-Laure’s uncle Etienne is arrested and imprisoned in Fort National at the end of the German occupation. A stray American shell hit the Fort on August 9th, killing 18. Etienne is there.

The houses of Saint-Malo reflect their golden light onto the wet beaches as the tide recedes. I didn’t know at the time that much of Saint-Malo had to be rebuilt after the war.

Saint-Malo sunset in more peaceful times.

A view of Le Grand Hôtel des Thermes from the beach

The view from Le Grand Hôtel des Thermes

A view of the Saint-Malo harbor from Dinard

If you have time, the drive west from Saint-Malo to Cap Fréhel is magnificent.

Cap Fréhel, France, which was also occupied by the Germans in World War II.

Cap Fréhel, France in more peaceful times

All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr: Most highly recommended. I’m serious, it’s knock-your-socks-off good.

Book Review and Related Paris Sites: Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932

Posted on May 5, 2014 by americangirlsartclubinparis

I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this book. I mean, just look at that cover. So hard to resist for a lover of all things Paris.

But I have to admit, the charms of the story resisted me for nearly 200 pages. While the structure of the book makes it feel as if it was enormously fun to write, it makes it quite a challenge for a reader to slip into. It is the story of a band of friends, acquaintances, enemies and lovers in Paris in the 30s and 40s. Their story doesn’t unfold, it demands that you piece it together for yourself, like a 2,000 piece jigsaw puzzle of a Picasso painting.

You hear the discordant voices of a number of strange and lively characters, from a Hungarian photographer named Gabor (modeled after the true-life Brassai ), an American expat writer (à la Henry Miller), a French baroness married into the Rossignol car dynasty, a French language teacher named Suzanne who works for the Resistance, and then most bizarrely of all, the alleged great-niece of a character named Lou Villars, a lesbian race-car driver, German spy and agent of the French Gestapo (a stand-in for the real-life Violet Morris). Yes, there’s a lot on the plate.

Violet Morris, French race car driver and Nazi spy. Source: http://www.influx.co.uk/wordpress/blog/fast-ladies-women-in-motor-sport/#sthash.nxVIbUzb.dpbs

Violet Morris, the French race car driver and Nazi spy who inspired the character Lou Villars. Source: http://www.influx.co.uk/wordpress/blog/fast-ladies-women-in-motor-sport/#sthash.nxVIbUzb.dpbs

The characters are all drawn to a fictional Chameleon Club in Paris, a free-wheeling 1920s-40s era nightclub with singing acts by cross-dressing sailors and mermaids, men in drag, women in tuxedos, and an owner named Yvonne who parades around with a pet chameleon on her shoulder. When Gabor takes a photo of Lou Villars and her lover Arlette at the club, it is a clear shout-out to Brassai’s Lesbian Couple at Le Monocle, 1932 (Cleveland Museum of Art Collection).

“Lesbian Couple at Le Monocle, 1932” by Brassai, Cleveland Museum of Art

A photo from Le Monocle, a lesbian bar in Montmartre in the 1920s-40s, via http://civillyunioned.tumblr.com

The fictional Chameleon Club is the perfect setting and a revealing title for a book about people who cross all sorts of lines in all sorts of ways. Especially when war comes.

That’s when the narrative shifts into a faster, more sinister gear. Lou Villars takes up professional race car driving on behalf of the Rossignols and becomes a public relations sensation. She dresses like a man and gets a double mastectomy to fit behind the wheel. But soon, enemies in France take away her license on the grounds that she is a threat to morality. Smelling opportunity, the Germans invite her to the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games and to dinner with Hitler. Lou is easily seduced into becoming a German spy, and agrees to travel through France seeking out intelligence such as the weakness in the Maginot Line. (Believe it or not, nearly all of this is a true story about the real Violet Morris.)

The stories about Lou Villars continue, and by now, you don’t care who’s narrating or why. You’re hooked into hearing about how the good people of the Chameleon Club endured and resisted the horrors of the Occupation, and how people like Villars could possibly rationalize the evils they perpetrated. We learn that Lou Villars (and in turn, the real Violet Morris) may have been involved in the Vel d’Hiv’ Round-up of 1942, and then became an agent of the French Gestapo, known for her violent interrogations of French resistance workers. Which would all be terrific fiction, but is actually based on the true story of Violet Morris.

Lou Villars becomes a notorious interrogator with the 93 rue Lauriston Gang, a group of French Gestapo gangsters who have been the subject of many books and films, including Louis Malle’s 1974 film, Lacombe Lucien and the 2004 television movie 93, rue Lauriston. The gang’s headquarters were located on a quiet little street in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. Lou Villars conducted her interrogations in the cellar of their building.

I first spotted the plaques for 93 rue Lauriston on my frequent walks through my old neighborhood in the 16th. In fact, the address was just across the street from one of my favorite boulangeries. I took photos of the plaques and went back to learn more about the horrible history of this neighborhood.

The plaque outside the former 93 rue Lauriston in the 16th arrondissement of Paris: In homage to the resistants tortured in this house during the occupation 1940-1944 by French agents, auxiliaries of the Gestapo, the group called “Bonny-LaFont”

93, rue Lauriston

97, rue Lauriston, just a few doors down from the old Gestapo interrogation house, where a lovely boutique hotel now stands is a plaque commemorating one of the heroes who died trying to liberate the Quatier Lauriston.

At 97, rue Lauriston, where a lovely boutique hotel now stands, there is a plaque commemorating one of the heroes who died trying to liberate the Quatier Lauriston. The hotel is just a few doors down from the French Gestapo house.

The plaque at 97 rue Lauriston: Here Died For France, August 25, 1944, Louis Moreau, FFI, Married, Father of his Family, Came from Bourg-la-Reine for the Liberation of the Quartier Lauriston. In His Memory: Those He Delivered.

Here's my favorite little rue Lauriston boulangerie, which just goes to show how history and present day life go hand-in-hand in Paris.

Here’s my favorite little rue Lauriston boulangerie, which is just across the street from 93 rue Lauriston. It just goes to show how history and present day life go hand-in-hand in Paris. Maybe that’s why I love it so much.

The book ends without clear resolution, offering different versions about what might have happened to all of the friends and enemies from the Chameleon Club. To me, that was the most satisfying ending of all. Because if there is one thing that historians have learned about the aftermath of the Paris Occupation, is that truth and virtue are very slippery things. Kind of like a chameleon.

Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 by Francine Prose: Highly recommended.

Related posts on this blog about World War II Reads:

Sarah’s Key Paris Sites: https://americangirlsartclubinparis.wordpress.com/2011/12/09/pictures-at-an-exhibition-art-war-and-memory-in-paris/

In this blog post I share my own photographs of the plaques and memorials near the site of the old Paris Velodrome (Vel’ d’Hiv’), along with directions on where to find them.

Some V-E Day Reading – Paris During the Occupation: https://americangirlsartclubinparis.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/some-v-e-day-reading-recommendations/

Coco Chanel: Sleeping with the Enemy: https://americangirlsartclubinparis.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/coco-chanel-sleeping-with-the-enemy/

Wine & War in France: https://americangirlsartclubinparis.wordpress.com/2012/10/01/wine-and-war-in-france/

Crossing the Borders of Time: https://americangirlsartclubinparis.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/crossing-the-borders-of-time/

Art, Books, Paris – The Hare with Amber Eyes: https://americangirlsartclubinparis.wordpress.com/2011/11/30/art-books-paris-the-hare-with-amber-eyes/

Pictures at an Exhibition: Art, War and Memory in Paris: https://americangirlsartclubinparis.wordpress.com/2011/12/09/pictures-at-an-exhibition-art-war-and-memory-in-paris/

Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead

Posted on April 26, 2014 by americangirlsartclubinparis

I don’t know how I do it, but it seems that every book I pick up these days has at least a touch of Paris in it. The latest is Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead (Knopf 2014), which I highly recommend.

You might have heard of this book by now. Even Oprah’s touting it. It’s a steamy story of love and ambition in the competitive world of professional ballet. It is the story of Joan, an American ballet dancer who is starstruck (why not just say “astonished?”) by a famous star of the Russian Kirov Ballet. Picture Mikhail Baryshnikov in 1975.

While Joan is spending a year as a quadrille, a junior member of the Paris Opéra Ballet, she watches Arslan Rusakov rehearse from one of the dark crimson red loge boxes at the Palais Garnier. Joan manages to evade the Kirov Ballet security men and enters the star’s dressing room, where she makes an unforgettable impression on him. Their encounter kicks off a clandestine Cold War love affair, fueled by secret love letters delivered through helpful intermediaries. Joan agrees to help Rusakov defect to the United States during one of his ballet tours to Toronto. Together, they are front-page news. But only for a time. The love affair dies and Joan moves forward with a life as a wife, mother and owner of her own ballet school in Southern California.

The whole book is good, from New York to Paris to California, but I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed the passages set in Paris. No wonder, then, when I read the Acknowledgments at the back of the book (yes, I always read those, don’t you?) where Maggie Shipstead says: “Much of this book was written while I was in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris.” You can tell.

Here is a passage from the book, which honest to God is one of the best paragraphs about visiting Paris I’ve ever read (and readers of this blog know I’ve read a lot):

For Joan, Paris has the feeling of waiting. All the elegance, the light and water and stone and refined bits of greenery, must be for something, something more than simple habitation and aggressive driving of Renaults and exuberant besmearing with dog shit. The city seems like an offering that has not been claimed. Its beauty is suspenseful. Joan has walked the boulevards and bridges and embankments, sat in the uncomfortable green metal chairs in the Tuileries, puttered down the Seine on a tourist barge, been to the top of the Eiffel Tower, stared politely at countless paintings, been leered at and kissed at by so many men, stood in patches of harlequin light in a dozen chilly naves, bought a scarf she couldn’t afford, surreptitiously stroked the neatly stacked skulls in the catacombs, listened to jazz, gotten drunk on wine, ridden on the back of scooters, done everything she thinks she should in Paris, and still there has always been the feeling of something still to come, a purpose as yet unmet, an expectation.

In particular, I loved Shipstead’s scene in the Opéra Garnier, which captures the beautiful excess better than a camera ever could:

The houselights are down, but the glow from the stage picks out a profusion of gilded plasterwork: serene deities, trumpeting angels, lyres, garlands, flowers, oak leaves, masks, Corinthian columns, all deeply shadowed, piling up around the proscenium and among the boxes like the walls of a craggy old cave, climbing to Chagall’s painted round ceiling of naked angels and volumptuous ballerinas and goats and chickens and lovers and blue Eiffel Tower and red-splotched rendering of the Palais itself. From the center of thing hangs the great sleeping chandelier: an enormous gold and glass thistle hung upside down to dry, darkly gleaming.

Speaking of cameras, here are some of my own photographs of the Opéra Garnier, which aren’t the best quality, but you get the idea:

So whether you read Astonish Me for the ballet, the love story or the lovely Paris passages, I think you’ll be delighted.

If you’re in Paris or plan to visit, don’t miss a visit to Palais Garnier, whether it’s for a ballet performance or a public tour. Click here to go to their website, which has more beautiful photographs, a lot of history and information about your visit.

Suggested reading: Check out my previous post The Painted Girls: Degas and the Dancers featuring Cathy Marie Buchanan’s book The Painted Girls, historical fiction about young French ballet dancers set in Belle Epoque Paris.

Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead: Highly Recommended.

American Girls Art Club In Paris. . . and Beyond

Exploring The World In The Footsteps of The Artists and Writers Who Came Before

Category Archives: Literary Site

The Accidental Empress Itinerary in Austria

The Lady in Gold’s Footsteps in Vienna

The Hare with Amber Eyes in Vienna

Vanessa and Her Sister

Paris, August 1,1914: Edith Wharton Waits for War

Edith Wharton Waits for War

Back to Sarah’s Key

Visit Saint-Malo with Anthony Doerr

Book Review and Related Paris Sites: Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932

Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead

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