1 - The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (or Brief Encounter With Mrs. Davis)

HOTEL MEURICE, Paris

Mrs. Davis 1970

         I probably wouldn’t remember her at all today, were it not for the photo still hanging on the wall.   Mrs. Davis is a quirky little memory from my earliest and poorest days in Paris, and she gave me my first peek at the Hotel Meurice.

I have always been interested in taking photos, though never motivated to learn anything on the technical side.  As a result, my pictures are more often than not quite unsatisfying, but when I manage to eliminate 99 percent of them, I end up with a few that are more or less what I was hoping to attain.

Vintage me (photo by Ann Gazères)

In 1970, I had rented a small room in a large apartment off the Champs-Elysées.  It was just around the corner from the Hotel Plaza Athenée, though I didn’t know that at the time. It was a ridiculous neighborhood for a poor person to live in, but I didn’t really know that either. 

I had just found a job which consisted of typing English and French translations of what I think were missile specifications.  They were destined for some middle eastern government, were certainly incomprehensible in any language, and my fairly liberal politics of the period didn’t go so far as interfering with my minimum wage paycheck.

                                                                                             

One Saturday morning I was walking about the neighborhood when I saw a glamorous older woman, elegantly dressed in what I now imagine was a designer suit and a snazzy wide-brimmed hat, with a tiny chihuahua cuddled next to her bosom.  She was strolling up the Avenue François Premier, looking to my mind very much like the latter day Vivien Leigh whom I had recently seen at the Cinémathèque in “The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone.”  

A young Tennessee (Google photo)

 My Mrs. Stone turned into a local café, and as she     entered, two young Mediterranean men reached over simultaneously from either side to pet the little dog.  It was  a provocative gesture, and it reinforced my association with  the Tennessee Williams novella.

 I was both timid and brazen in those days, depending on the moment, and perhaps on how much wine I had consumed (ultimately a bit of a problem that I came to terms with while still young).  I approached Mrs. Stone, who turned out to be Mrs. Davis, an American resident in Paris.  I explained I’d like to take her photo.

“Are you with a magazine?”  Unfazed, appearing to me the epitome of sophistication.

I then had to explain what must have seemed odd, that I didn’t actually have my camera with me.  As it turned out, Mrs. Davis was very pleasant, as well as patient, and said if I would hurry, she’d wait with her coffee until I returned with camera.

I did take the picture which is the one above. She said she lived at the Meurice Hotel across from the Tuileries Gardens (as did Salvador Dali that year), and suggested I could perhaps drop a copy off there.

Salvador Dali (Google archives photo)

I’m sure I had never heard of the Meurice in those faraway days, but probably didn’t admit it.   The following week I went there with my folder of photos, hoping she would be there and thinking she might become some sort of glamorous friend.  When I entered, the hotel was so unexpectedly grand that I was seized with a kind of stage fright, and I hurriedly left them for her at the desk.  

I never saw Mrs. Davis again, but I’ve always kept her picture, framed with others all these years in my bathroom.  It was the first time I had ever set foot in a Parisian Palace hotel.    It took me a few years, but I soon made up for lost time.

Entering The Meurice today

click to enter My 1970 Paris Album

[Photos are mine unless otherwise credited]

Next week: "Sunday Lunch With Grandmother Pleasants ..."