One of the sacred caves of nineteenth-century Paris

Above: Sarkozy on the cover of a magazine. The magazine is portraying him as Ubu Roi. The headline is very uncomplimentary.

The last day of the Master Class. I got on the wrong Metro train and so arrived a little late. We talked about the pan-European political situation and how it affects the continent’s economy. I thought an unreasonable amount of time was spent discussing Sarkozy. I was also surprised at how much they knew about Gordon Brown. The general view was that the British economy had risen to continental pre-eminence despite government policies, not because of them.

“The PFI is just Mefo Bonds under a different name” said the German economic historian. “It is not good to expand the money supply in this deceitful way.” PFI means the British government’s Private Finance Initiative.

I later looked up Mefo Bonds on Google: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MEFO_bills

When lunchtime arrived I went round the group shaking hands with everyone and then left - who knows if I will see any of them again.



Because Robert Leiper had to go to a job of some kind (he was very mysterious about this job and the odd hours he has to work - a security guard possibly) I went back to my hotel and waited for Charles Frappe. I think I would have preferred going round Paris on my own, but the arrangement had been made and I thought it best to go along with it. I waited for him in the courtyard of my hotel (above) - actually just a quarter of the courtyard, a rickety trellis dividing it off from the neighbours’ shares so that I heard French voices talking away beyond the foliage, just a few feet from where I was sitting. It was a sunny day and the sunshine had penetrated into the deep well of the courtyard to where I sat reading newspapers. Two o’clock arrived and I began to hope that Charles Frappe wasn’t going to turn up. I decided to give him another twenty minutes and then set off by myself.

Charles Frappe arrived, and we left the hotel. He was taciturn and gave minimal responses to my attempts at small talk, so that we mostly walked in silence. Not for the first time I wondered what his problem was.



We went to the Marais district, and walked around the Place des Vosges (the synagogue was closed). In a nearby street we stopped at a restaurant (above) to have lunch. Charles Frappe was unwilling to go into this establishment, but I told him I would pay. The waiter who looked after us was very young (about seventeen), but was extremely expert at his job (rushing everywhere, making sure we had everything we wanted, always watching our table without being intrusive). A plate of red olives was put on the table, and Charles Frappe ate all of these, putting the stones in a disgusting little heap on the white tablecloth until the black wine waiter told him to put the stones in an ashtray. Every table in the restaurant was occupied and the noise was quite loud.



To drink we had a very fine Gigondas and some Perrier (in a pale blue bottle, which I had not seen before). As I hadn’t eaten that day (I had got up late and missed breakfast) the wine soon made me feel relaxed, even in the company of Charles Frappe. We talked about Jane Birkin, and Charles Frappe described her career in some detail.



Avocado mousse to start. We talked about Tony Blair’s resignation, and I said how pleased I was that we were finally going to see the back of him. It seems incredible that he has lasted ten years.




For the main course I had a steak (fairly well done). We talked about Gordon Brown and Charles Frappe described Britain as buying a pig in a poke (as if we have any choice in the matter). The restaurant became absolutely packed with diners.

For pudding I had the chocolate mousse. A large woman brought round a huge basin of the heavy mixture, spooning out as much as I wanted and saying I could have seconds (and even thirds). We discussed Iraq and Charles Frappe compared the situation to Theodore Roosevelt’s conquest of the Philippines (very bloody and messy).

Above: postcards of Maywald’s photographs, including a portrait of Tamara de Lempicka.

From the restaurant we went to an exhibition of the work of photographer Willy Maywald, in a museum off the Place Vosges. Fashion photography, reportage of the 1937 Paris Exposition, a sequence recording atomic research (these in particular were very fine images). Maywald had the ability to take a variety of disparate themes and give them an overall stylistic gloss, so that you felt they were all part of the same world-view (a visual and artistic ideology).

Early evening. We had gone to the Palais de Chaillot to look at the site of the 1937 Exposition, Charles Frappe describing the juxtaposition of the German and Soviet pavilions. After such a heavy lunch neither of us was hungry but we decided to have an early dinner as the concert we were going to in the evening would finish very late. After some discussion we went to a nearby hotel, one of the five great hotels of Paris. The façade of this Belle Époque building seemed to consist entirely of trailing red geraniums (above). Charles Frappe thought the main restaurant was too expensive, so we went into the terrace café which ran along the front of the hotel (in the open air, separated from the street by a hedge of indeterminate foliage).

The long, narrow café consisted of about twenty tables in a line behind the hedge, with a walkway for the waiters. Our table was about half-way along the line of tables. Our waiter was very short, aged about twenty-five, and spoke fairly good English with an American accent (our choices from the menu he pronounced “wunnerful”). Petals fell continuously from the ranks of geraniums above us, so that the white table cloth was littered with bits of dying red flowers. Seated, we could just look over the hedge at the passing pedestrians in the Avenue Montaigne. Mingled with the wonderful aroma of the haute cuisine there was a very faint smell of urine (possibly the hedge was used by late-night Parisians needing to relieve themselves).

We had glasses of champagne with our main course of quails’ eggs (see picture above). The food was very good, but served on square avant-garde china which was awkward to cope with. The waiter was constantly coming up to us to ask if everything was alright.

The table directly behind us was occupied by two Germans, one of whom seemed to know a great many people walking in the Avenue Montaigne, waving to them and calling out greetings in German.

For a pudding I had this peach granita with wild strawberries (they are underneath the ice). Charles Frappe complained of visiting London - all the prices are the same as they would be in America except they are in pounds not dollars (and thus twice as expensive). He described the shortcomings of the one-star hotel in Paddington he stays at when he is in London (“I dislike going to London, but that is where most art is bought and sold”).

The coffee arrived black and so I asked for some milk. It took nearly ten minutes for the milk to be brought from the kitchen to the table, by which time my coffee had gone cold. Rather than make a fuss I just drank it (but I thought of the woman at the Café Lenotre, and wondered what she would have done).

Towards the end of the meal I took this photograph of Charles Frappe. You can see the hat he wears to protect his balding head from the sun. The light reflected onto his glasses gave him a sinister appearance.

In the evening we were back in the Marais for a concert held at a large church in the middle of a maze of small streets. In the dark the building loomed up unexpectedly (“This is one of the sacred caves of nineteenth-century Paris” Charles Frappe said to me). Inside Robert Leiper was waiting for us, sitting among an audience of about fifty people.

Once I was sat down I was able to have a good look around. We were in the nave of a white marble basilica, the decoration done in a heavy florid Corinthian style, an impressive barrel vault above us. Along the south wall, standing out against the cool white of the marble, was a very colourful and baroque pulpit.

Instead of facing towards the altar, the seats (hard wooden individual seats) had been turned round so that they faced the west end where an enormous architectural organ filled the entire wall. I say the organ was architectural as the musical instrument was integrated into a colossal wooden construction that reached from floor to vaulted ceiling, supported by Doric columns, every part of the structure displaying carving of the highest quality (swags, putti, barley-sugar banisters etc). Half-way up from the floor (about forty feet) was a balcony where the organ itself was located, the ranks of pipes rising up a further thirty feet to almost touch the vaulting.

The lights dimmed and then went out completely. A spotlight illuminated a small balcony to the right side of the organ-edifice, and on this balcony was a young woman holding a large white folio. She began to sing the Pie Jesu from Faure’s Requiem.

I had not expected much from this concert. In fact I had thought it a typical cheapskate gesture by Charles Frappe, as it was a virtually free event. But as soon as the girl (she couldn’t have been more than nineteen) began to sing the audience was enraptured. The hard seat, the chilly feel to the air, the fatigue I felt at the end of a long day, all these negative considerations fell away when exposed to the purity of the soloist’s voice. Her golden hair glistened under the spotlight, the black sequins on her dress gleamed in the darkness, the space between the balcony and the nave became so filled with concentrated sequential sound vibrations that you could almost see the air move (I think the proportions of the building were crucial to the harmony of the sound, as if the spatial area was an extension of the singer’s voice).

This is a very poor photograph taken at the concert. I am ashamed to put it up. But it shows you roughly where the balcony was located in the organ-edifice of the west wall (picture taken towards the end of the concert when all three singers were performing).

After the concert we picked a café at random and had some coffee and vanilla tart.