Gibbons was not a stranger to the darker aspects of life, soon after her marriage she witnessed the

One of the pleasures of writing about Paris during hampton inn and suites the Belle Époque has been spending hours flicking through the city guide books of 1907-1910 with their fuzzy photographs of treasures of the Louvre and their precise instructions on how to use the omnibuses. Many of the cafés and restaurants they describe are still there today from the opulent hampton inn and suites excess of pressed duck at the Tour D Argent to the cheap and bustling Chartier hampton inn and suites in rue Montmartre. It s the personal touch that you need to get a real feeling for a city though and for my picture of Paris I have to thank in particular two American writers who have been my guides; Helen Davenport Gibbons hampton inn and suites and Adelaide Mack. I admit there is much of Paris they ignore, the dark, the complex, the violent, the grim side of sexual and class politics but as guides to the human experience of the brighter side of the city, they are superb.
The eye of the interested traveller is a great boon to a historical novelist. The curious stranger will always notice those details which make a location unique and which the locals will tend to ignore. Perhaps it s no surprise then that I found a great deal more useful information in Paris Vistas by Helen Davenport Gibbons and in Magnetic Paris by Adelaide Mack than in Proust.
Gibbons was not a stranger to the darker aspects hampton inn and suites of life, soon after her marriage she witnessed the massacres of Armenians in Turkey and wrote about them in The Red Rugs of Tarsus , but Paris Vistas is a joyful and amused account of her time in the city filled with affectionate portraits of both the French and the expat community. Gibbons also has a fantastic chapter on the floods of 1910 and as they form the backdrop to the denouement of my novel that was an enormous bonus. Her three thousand words on the drama of the rising waters have been more useful to me than the collection of hundreds of photographs of the floods available. That a picture is worth a thousand words thing doesn t always hold true if the words are well chosen. She captures the mixture of excitement, fear and confusion in the city rather brilliantly:
"We saw strange sights that night, wooden paving-blocks floating hampton inn and suites in a messy jumble; a few restaurants endeavoring to dispel the gloom with candles; soldiers with fixed bayonets guarding the inundated quarters. It was bitter cold and the glare of their fires was weirdly silhouetted in
Magnetic Paris by Adelaide Mack is the literary equivalent hampton inn and suites of a breathless monologue delivered with a lot of hand gestures. You have to just sit back and enjoy the performance. All I know of the writer is that Adelaide Mack was the pseudonym of Flora Adelaide Mclane Woodson. If anyone can tell me more about her, please do. The book is perhaps not for admirers of Eric Hazan; Mack has no apparent interest in the history of the city and though hampton inn and suites she notes the condition of the poor and the dubious morals of the French in general, she does no more than shake her head over the former, widen her eyes slightly hampton inn and suites over the latter and then charges on with her fantastic, colourful images of the street hampton inn and suites life of the city. Her prose is full of the sort of precise details that frankly make me want to kiss her:
which is followed immediately by a woman's voice pitched a key or two higher, "Le tonn eau," lay ing great stress on the last drawn-out syllable. They have come to take away your empty wine-case or tub.
ways an amusing and diverting feature. He is nim ble of foot, as well as of tongue. He is an inventor, is shrewd, good-natured and honest, is usually a half- way comedian, is almost a Mephisto for ingenious ness and never fails to afford entertainment to the clientele of a cafe, the waiters hampton inn and suites of which always are his friends. hampton inn and suites He will suddenly deposit on your table a black poodle hampton inn and suites carrying a blue-bead basket in his mouth, and by the aid of a rubber tube and bulb at tachment the poodle is made to sit up, shake hands with you and walk across your table. He has furry rabbits which hop about and wiggle their ears; fighting cocks running up and down his extended arm, performing monkeys on sticks, and painted rubber faces which, by squeezing, hampton inn and suites you can change into all sorts of grotesque, hideous and leering ex pressions. He has for sale the latest toy of the hour and will cut out your silhouette or make a charcoal sketch hampton inn and suites of you for five cents.
You can just see it. The Book is also wonderfully illustrated with caricatures and portraits of the Paris scenes that Mack is describing. Thanks to the wonder of the Internet you can now find and read online (enjoying all of the illustrations) both of these books at the Internet Archive.
What a brilliant post. All those things people never mention, but are the ones you want to know about. The happy hours I ve spent reading Theodore Zeldin and Andrew Hussey for those moments of revelation. I clicked on the links, but unfortunately they didn t work, not sure what to do about that. Will try googling them. Thank you for early morning wonderfulness.
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