A CRUEL CALM: Paris Between The Wars

Reviews

Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all—well, yes and no. Read Daly-Lipe’s view of this age old dilemma.

Rita Mae Brown, author of eleven novels,

poet and two-time Emmy nominee.

A very pleasant surprise, on the surface, ‘Forbidden Loves’ (aka A Cruel Calm) is a romantic coming of age novel about love, loss, and redemption. It throws in a surprising ending to boot. But it’s not just" a love story. As the novel works out its story line, it brings to life a society and a culture that would otherwise be hauntingly unfamiliar to today’s readers. Daly-Lipe spices up her story with side trips to such diverse areas as the history of aviation, the American exile community in Paris, modern art, Hannibal, and the Catholic Church. The diverse characters include Charles Lindbergh, James Joyce, and Gertrude Stein—and each of them belongs in the story.

I don’t want to give away the plot. It takes many unexpected twists before it arrives at the ultimate twist at its end. The story is worth reading without anticipating anything but surprises. This is not the type of book I normally read. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it enormously.

Robert Goodman, founder and past president of

PW SD (originally San Diego Publishers alliance),

award-winning book designer, recognized speaker,

and board member of PMA, The Independent Publishers

Marketing Association, San Diego, California.

"Patricia Daly-Lipe has written a fascinating and compelling account of life in Paris between the two world wars from the point of view of a young and inexperienced Catholic woman. She has obviously researched her subject extensively, and deftly weaves social norms, glimpses of cultural giants, both literary and artistic, of the period as well as a look at history.

She combines with this a moving love story and a delightful tour of the city, as well as other locations in France. You will feel you are there!

Kay Pfaltz, Author of Lauren’s Story:

An American Dog in Paris

Congratulations! This is superb work. I appreciate the quality, the substance, and the style. Very well done.

Dr. M. P. Cosman, Esq. (Died March 2006) La Jolla, California Pen Woman, author and lawyer. One of her 14 published books was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and was a Book of the Month Club Dividend Selection. The late Dr. Cosman was an attorney known for work in Medical Law.

She was President of Medical Equity, Inc.

I greatly enjoyed this excellent recreation, almost a recollection, of the seeming distant but really so recent past that still shapes our present world. This is an amazing evocation of the Paris of a time when it truly was the cultural and intellectual heart of the west. Famous personages are-were a part of everyday life in a concentrated mix of cross-fertilization that would be difficult to imagine happening today. All of this in the context of an improbable, but ultimately plausible love story. Read this story and be transported back to a magic, vanished time. You will find this one of those books that quickly captivates and may not allow you to put it down. I would highly recommend this book to lovers of Literature, History, France, and of course Romance.

Felix E. Westwood, Vietnam Veteran,

Charlottesville, VA

A great read. A rare inside glimpse of a remarkable era: Paris between the wars. A love story with many turns and unexpected twists, told within the context of the Paris that will never return again—the Paris of giants like Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, and Gertrude Stein. The Paris that was the cultural capital of the West, where idealism, innovation, experimentation and taboos reigned. I recommend it highly to romantic buffs, historical buffs and avid readers in general.

Michael O. Schwager,

President of Worldlink Media Consultants, Inc

History with a Twist: I adore fiction and I adore Paris, but this fascinating story kept me glued to my seat. The characters and situation, always more compelling when based on true life, were beautifully drawn. What a wonderful window into a time that we know about but have not witnessed! And how brave of Ms. Lipe to share these intimate details. She draws us in and keeps us reading until the final page.

Erica Miner, Author Travels with my

Lovers and Murder in the Pit

The roaring twenties

It’s no wonder that this book won two awards. Like any great classic, the reader comes away feeling that he or she has learned something about the human journey. In this book, the author achieves it by telling a poignant romance based on a fictionalized version of her mother’s life in Paris. She also achieves it by weaving into this personal story the character of the roaring twenties, when breakthroughs in technology seemed to make anything possible. I’ve never seen anything so creative and unique—the author puts the great aviator Lindbergh in the story, as well as literary giants such as James Joyce and Gertrude Stein. They actually interact with the heroine, and what they say are truly their own words. Very clever and beautifully written.

Veronica Li, author: Nightfall in Mogadishu and

Journey Across the Four Seas:

A Chinese Woman’s Search for Home

Other Books By Patricia Daly-Lipe:

Myth, Magic and Metaphor,

A Journey Into the Heart of Creativity

Messages from Nature, Short Stories and Vignettes

La Jolla, A Celebration of Its Past

All Alone, Washington to Rome

Patriot Priest, The Story of Monsignor William A. Hemmick,

The Vatican’s First American Canon

Helen Holt, Memoir of a Servant Leader

A CRUEL CALM

PARIS

BETWEEN THE WARS

Patricia Daly-Lipe

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

All written history (is) a compound of past and present, state Barzun and Graff in their book, The Modern Researcher. They explain that the instrument with which the historian uses to look at the past is his or her own mind. The obvious bias in this historical fiction is my prejudice toward the little I remember or knew about my mother’s life in Paris between the wars. I was benefited from letters written by my grandparents, as well as letters preserved by my grandmother and written by my great-uncle, The Right Reverend Monsignor William A. Hemmick, from the front lines, WWI.

To discover the so-called pulse of the period, I read original works, listened to the music, studied the art, traveled to Paris and Provence, and tried to interview anyone who might remember the period. For the latter, I am grateful to have known the late Mrs. Francis LeBaron (Regina) Smoot of Washington, D.C. An accomplished artist, she had studied art in England and Europe during the thirties and kindly read pertinent parts of my manuscript and confirmed their authenticity.

Thanks also to my late Tante Tiffie, Mrs. (Raymond Harper) Shenstone of Princeton, New Jersey. In a recently discovered document, we found a copy of a letter she had written on board the S.S. Manhattan, leaving Bordeaux and the war, dated September 25, 1939. Beautifully written, I have incorporated some of its contents to give a true flavor of France at the onset of WWII.

The French poetry is my own translation. The dialogue of James Joyce, Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Coco Chanel, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Beach, and Ambassador Herrick is taken from either their written work or newspaper accounts and should be considered authentic. Although the story line is fiction, the time, places, events and activities are well researched and can be authenticated.

Thank you to Harry Houghton, docent, San Diego Aerospace Museum and Dan Clemons, Lindbergh and Eddie Rickenbacker Collector, San Diego, for information pertaining to Lindbergh and Spirit of St. Louis, some of which they said had never been published before.

Thanks to Bill Gine for taking me for a ride in his 1910 Model T and Herb Cook of Johnsonville, Tennessee, for showing me how his 1926 Model T was driven.

Steele Lipe who not only took me for a ride in a biplane, but traveled with me to France, lived through years of research, and was sympathetic to my desire to see this book published. Without his encouragement and support, this book would probably never have been completed.

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to the memory of Katharine Elisabeth Johnson Highleyman

Be patient with all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves … Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions, now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke

CHAPTER ONE

There is nothing stable in the world; uproar’s your only music.

John Keats

Paris, 1928

The War confirmed that the Western world is culturally bankrupt, claimed the gentleman sitting at the far end of the long rectangular table the restaurant had set up in the back of the dining area. Certainly, Western civilization as we knew it before 1914 is lost forever.

The room was warm and stuffy. Smoke was puffed into the air from cigarettes by both men and women. I was certainly not one to take on this habit even though many physicians argue for the cigarette’s pathophysiological innocence and psychological benefit. Nevertheless, despite the cigarette’s supposed attributes, the mood was grim.

Was it the War that destroyed the romance we knew before or was all that an illusion? I had to lean across the table to see who was speaking. It came from a lady with the look of stoic dignity. Did that catastrophe then destroy illusion and put truth back in its place? Silence prevailed as everyone around the table seemed to be contemplating her somewhat caustic comment. After taking a sip of wine, she continued. Yes indeed, which was truth and which illusion? The lady’s name was Virginia Woolf, an elegant woman in her mid forties, her voice very clipped and so refinedly British, it was a bit difficult to understand. Again, her question appeared to be rhetorical since she continued, this time without a pause. For my belief is that if we live another century or so; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think, then perhaps our relation, not to each other, but to the world of reality will …

A dark haired, fair skinned lady with piercing blue eyes on her right finished the sentence with embellishment, allow us to grow and know the truth. Clearly, this was not a timid group. The evening meal had been taken away and only liquid refreshments remained on the table. This was the time for talk.

The theme for this evening’s discussion was the aftermath of the Great War. I was honored to be included in such a prestigious group of writers despite being not only too young to have shared their experiences, but having been, until recently, living on the other side of the Atlantic where vestiges of war were unknown. However, I did have one relative who had crossed the ocean and had courageously participated. Before we left Washington for France, my mother gave me a copy of a letter my Uncle William had written from the trenches. I had placed the envelope with the missive in my pocket before leaving our apartment in anticipation of possibly sharing it with this eminent group.

Soft sounds of sotto voce chattering surrounded the table until another lady clicked her glass so the rest of us would listen. During the war she had driven an ambulance. I saw it on their faces, she said somberly, the wounded and the dying. They had sacrificed their lives for an ideal. Heads nodded. "And why? Did they hate the Germans that much? No. For the French, it was ‘La Gloire’ that was France. For the Americans, it was ‘for democracy’. And for me nursing and driving the wounded was ‘the right thing to do’. But that was in the beginning. Soon, it became my life. For years I knew little sleep, few baths, constant exhaustion, bombs, gas, filth, dirt and blood. I stopped questioning. I think that my emotions overtook my intellect. Maybe I became less civilized but maybe, just maybe, I am more civilized now." I discovered later that she was an American who had spent most of her adult life in France. No wonder she had such an objective perception of the war.

Sitting adjacent to the American was a middle aged lady dressed in black. Wishing to add her point of view, she said, When you have been through a war like the last one, you come to believe in the supernatural. I saw boys lying on their stretchers just before they died. I listened as they talked to their sweethearts back home. It was just as if they could see them standing next to their cots. Yes, anything is possible when you have experienced war.

Timidly, I took out the document my mother had given me. It seemed appropriate to the present atmosphere. I asked if I might read what my uncle had written. Miss Woolf nodded her head.

Thank you. My mother told me that my Uncle William, her brother, was under gunfire almost constantly as he administered to the sick and dying on the American and French fronts during the Great War. He is a priest. Mother gave me a copy of a letter he sent home. It is dated April 29, 1918. Uncle William was with the American troops under Foch.

I paused, taking a deep breath. The room was silent, faces around the table staring at me blindly, their expressions belying inner thoughts. Unfolding the paper, I cleared my throat and gathering courage, began to read. "It seems as if hell itself were let loose; the roar of the battle is so terrific. I am scrawling this in a cave right near our front lines.

Several officers share it with me and we sleep on straw and live the lives of moles … Never in all my life have I seen such days of horror. We are constantly under shellfire day and night … The strain is something terrible. At midnight the food wagons come by and we get a hot stew and coffee as most of the men’s work is done by night and we sleep during the day when we can. Then at dusk I crawl out and bury the dead in a deserted garden by a ruined house. There are no coffins even, but just a big trench and there the poor mangled bodies of our men are laid, and I hurriedly read the funeral service over them and sprinkle them with Holy water. I seem to be sort of numb with horror and the tragedy of it, but manage to get through it somehow. The battle is raging all about of us and it sounds like the crack of doom. God knows what the outcome will be. Our men are splendid, courageous and enduring and are putting up a splendid fight and I am glad to have a chance to be with them and help them … The ruin and desolation all about are beyond words as a perfect hail storm of shells is falling. The tragic prevails, of course, as they bring the dead and wounded by stretchers … I was also quartered in the same town on the second line, where Lt. Col. Griffiths was killed, and whom I buried."

For several minutes, no one spoke. Carefully, I folded the document and returned it to my pocket.

Finally, Sylvia Beach, whom I had not noticed before, broke the silence. First thanking me, Miss Beach proceeded to tell how she had delivered pajamas to Serbian troops traveling between Paris and Belgrade. I too observed the death and dying your uncle described. In Paris, she witnessed the death of ninety-one worshipers when the Church of Saint-Gervais received a direct hit from Grosse Berthe. Everyone present knew about Big Bertha, the largest gun ever made. It was named after the daughter of Krupps of the German armament manufacturing family. Again there was silence. Some took sips of wine. Some took a drag on their cigarette while others took to methodically stirring their coffee, as if the solution could be found in a cup.

A young student-writer at the other end of the table finally broke the silence with a brash statement: The WORD. We need to concentrate on the word, he cried out. I heard a giggle and rejoiced in the change in atmosphere. We writers have an obligation to humanity, he continued. This obligation can be defined by the written word. Smiles returned to the somber faces. After all, he upheld, basking in his new celebrity, doesn’t language define human experience? Think about it. Its power to shape and remake the world could be said to invoke even the power of God. Looking around for approval and receiving enough for confidence, he finished with a flourish. Raising his wine glass, he announced, I am speaking about the written word. Use it, engage in it and let it take over.

Hear, hear! they teased the young enthusiast, but toasted him nevertheless.

A gentleman named William Carlos Williams had just joined the group. His mood was not so gay. Somberly, using the literary reference, he brought the gathering back to the prior discussion. It is difficult to get the news from poems. Yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.

An older poet, his solemn yet earnest voice rising two octaves as he spoke, his words coming slowly but distinctly, declared, We cannot allow another desecration to take place. Do you all realize that nearly nine million soldiers were killed between 1914 and 1918? That’s an average of 5,600 each day. I feel the Germans are plotting. Yes, plotting, despite the fact that they were required to surrender their military fleet. I know the Treaty of Versailles forbade them from manufacturing military aircraft or tanks. But we would be naïve to think that there will be no more battles, no more wars. Look at old Field Marshal von Hindenburg; he won’t last another two years. The German Republic will fall and, God forbid, I feel something tyrannical will take its place.

Old man, you are wrong, gasped another octogenarian. We have seen the war to end all wars. It will never happen again. I too remember this war vividly. I was there. I saw trees as round as a man’s thigh literally cut down by the stream of lead.

He is describing the effects of a machine gun, a British lady seated to my right explained. The machine gun could fire five hundred bullets a minute.

We must work hard, write, let the Word take over, piped in the same enthusiastic young writer at the other end.

Enough! Words are like sweets. Too many of them make you sick. This came from Cecil Lewis who, I was told, had been a pilot in the war. Too bad Michael hadn’t stayed.

Right. We can’t go back to pre-1914, but we can learn our lesson and move on. Have faith in mankind, my friend. Remember, man is blessed with a soul. He is capable of compassion, of sacrifice, and of endurance. And it is the writer’s duty, nay his obligation in these times, to write about this war and its horror, but it is also his duty to write about the courage and the honor of the men who fought. It is the writer’s privilege to help his fellow man endure by not only recording events of the past but by providing a pillar of words to help him endure and prevail over whatever odds befall his and our future.

I could not help but clap at this enthusiastic and positive presentation. And several at the table did also. However, several beside Mr. Lewis disagreed. Nevertheless, one thing was clear, at least to me. This discussion was beneficial both to understand the past and to learn about options for the future.

Most members of the group were English speaking; only one appeared to be French. I wondered what he was thinking. Turning back to my British neighbor, I whispered, After all, their land has been desecrated, their young men slaughtered, their homes, farms and countryside reduced to rubble. I wonder how they, as I nodded toward the Frenchman, feel listening to us, Brits and Americans?

Young lady, said a middle-aged British gentleman sitting directly across from me, you may not know it, but it is a matter of record that in 1917 there was a mutiny among French and British soldiers. They had walked out of the battle. The Germans, however, did nothing. Perhaps they too were worn out.

I remember the end of the summer in 1914 when the Germans were coming down to take Paris, interjected the other octogenarian. It was the Battle of the Marne. A horrible day for both sides and that included the British forces who were helping the French. Thousands were killed. The French and British army came close to defeat and was only saved by the use of Paris taxis who rushed 6,000 reserve troops to the front lines. The German commander, General Helmuth von Moltke, proved to be indecisive during the invasion and his failure to give clear orders resulted in field commanders ordering a retreat. What is truly frightening, my young American friend, is what the general said about war.

The atmosphere was almost palatable. It was as if I were living in the midst of the battle itself. These gentlemen had experienced such horrors in their lifetime.

Without waiting for a request, the old man explained that the German General had said that in his opinion, perpetual peace was a dream. A dream? We couldn’t believe such a statement.

A dream indeed and not a beautiful dream either. He said that war was ‘an integral part of God’s ordering of the universe’.

Now we were truly shocked.

Yes, the General believed the courage and fidelity to duty and a readiness to sacrifice troops exhibited in war are the noblest virtues man can have. Therefore, for him, war was indispensable. Without war, the world would become ‘swamped in materialism’. I am quoting what he said.

I was receiving more education than any school or university could have taught me. How privileged we had been in the United States.

The sole Frenchman overheard what we were discussing and switched seats to come next to me to explain the facts. Libby, if I may call you by your first name (I nodded), what I overheard you discussing earlier was a conspiracy. It was Caillaux, the banker and our ex-premier, who plotted with the Germans and caused the mutinies in the French army. What you were talking about, I think, was the breakdown of one of our offenses against German trenches north of the Aisne River. You see, Caillaux had instigated a movement called ‘defeatism’ and it worked, especially in Russia, because after years of fighting, the morale was very low. We desperately needed the American soldiers and are forever grateful for their help.

I was humbled and grateful that my nation had come to the assistance of the French. I had not known the war nor did I have friends killed or maimed.

Almost nine million men lost their lives and almost twenty million were wounded, Libby. Don’t forget that the soldiers killed were mostly young and able, the strongest, most spirited, and most promising members of the human family.

Yes, and don’t forget the millions of private citizens who perished from starvation and violence, added Sylvia Beach who had moved over to our side of the table.

Libby, the Frenchman continued, "you must go to the Arc de Triomphe and pay your respects to the burial spot of the Unknown Soldier. He was buried there in 1919 to symbolize all the Frenchmen who lost their lives in assuring their country military triumph in the Great War."

I wished my husband had stayed to hear these facts about the war. But Michael had left. An aviator not a writer, at least he could have discussed the aspect of the fast development of aviation which resulted from the war with the pilot Cecil Lewis. A kindred spirit, I gathered, since both men chose to live dangerously. Safety last, Mr. Lewis had said.

Glancing to the other side of the café, I searched for the table where Philippe and his mother had been eating when we first arrived. It was empty.

War or fighting is like a dance because it is all going forward and back, and that forward and back movement, that is the reason that revolutions and Utopias are discouraging. They are up and down and not forward and back. That came from Gertrude Stein who was at the far end. I was surprised how quiet she had been up until then. Miss Stein was not a lady known to be silent. I listened as she recounted a time toward the end of the war when she and Alice were in Nimes helping to care for both French and American soldiers. The Armistice had just been declared and I remember a remark a wounded French soldier made when I told him, ‘Well here is peace.’ The soldier replied, ‘At least for twenty years.’ War is a dance going forward and back.

What do you think, Libby? asked Francis, a young man whom I had met at Natalie Barney’s soirée. He and I were the youngest members of this exclusive circle.

Excuse me? I mean, what are you asking? I was still thinking about ‘the dance’.

Do you think our generation is culturally deprived? Just because we didn’t go through the war, does that mean we can’t sympathize?

I considered the question in light of the horrific realities we had heard about earlier. Francis, you use the word ‘deprived’ but I may have a different understanding. My father has a fine library. Some of his books are in Greek; some Latin. I never learned Greek. The only Latin I know I learned in Catechism classes. Perhaps I wasn’t exposed to the classics because I am a woman. But maybe if I had an opportunity to read the great thinkers of the past, I would be better equipped to put in perspective some of the life changing events these people have been discussing. I looked over at Miss Stein and wondered if she had studied the classics. She was always wearing loose clothes reminiscent of Greek tunics and had sandals on her feet like the philosopher Socrates probably wore.

While Francis, the Frenchman and I were talking, several serious female writers at the table were moving onto a different topic. We stopped speaking to listen.

The artist, Miss Stein was saying, is not someone apart from the rest of the world. She was describing the artist as being more sensitive, more receptive to the wave of the future, someone who would ultimately inundate the rest of the public. No one is ahead of his time; it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who also are creating their own time refuse to accept. And they refuse to accept it for a very good reason and that is that they do not have to accept it for any reason.

I shook my head. This was impossible for me to understand. And, I wondered and vocalized, as an American citizen, why did Miss Stein choose to live and write in France? Another gentleman sitting next to me seemed receptive to my question. He was the publisher of a literary magazine

in my country, but I too was more comfortable in this artistic climate. Meanwhile, the chatter called transition and, I discovered, he too was born an American but had chosen to live in France. His name was Eugene Jolas.

I asked Miss Stein the same question, he said, and this was her reply. Using her typically paradoxical choice of words, she told me that, in her opinion, the United States is ‘just now the oldest country in the world.’ I didn’t understand until she continued, saying that ‘there is always an oldest country and she is it; it is she who is the mother of the twentieth century civilization.’

I looked at Mr. Jolas with question marks in my eyes which he clearly recognized. We both chuckled. Then he continued saying that Miss Stein considered the United