Sunday, May 6, 2001
As far as church services that I can’t interpret go, I like St-Sulpice’s 10:30 a.m. mass best. Very “Sound of Music.” Lots of choir boys singing glorias and alleluias; pipe organ resonating through arches, domes and transepts; candles flickering; lots of acanthus leaves; lots of artwork and echoes. Not to mention a nun.
We arrived
at St-Sulpice slightly after the 10:30 mass started. Sat
through that and the 30-minute organ recital and waited for the side door
next to the Delacroix mural to open so we
could “scamper like 8th notes” upstairs to the big organ to watch
the organ master play for the next mass. So far, for the congregational
singing (sit, stand, stand, sit, stand, stand) there’s been small-organ music
from somewhere while the friendly organ master asked visitors where they were
from and answered questions.
The
crowd of Stevies (tourists carrying “Rick Steve’s Paris 2001" – Alan
got the organist to sign his copy) are gone, leaving us with six other people
(three of whom are friends of his inquiring about a relative’s health) and
an Australian TV crew.
The madding crowd
of Stevies saw upstairs and the organ, but only we few are still here to have
watched Daniel Roth play things like former St-Sulpice organist Widor's
"Toccata from Symphony No. 5" while the pipes vibrate around us.
Around us, and a well-dressed Melvin Frohike-esque dude who cues the
distracted organist and hums vigorously.
The Australian TV crew got footage of the crowd; Alan and I walking past the bellows; and later, Alan sitting on the bench with Daniel Roth telling him how well Nikki and Kilory are doing on the piano. Roth started organ at age 12 (your legs have to be long enough to reach the pedals).
We lunched at Aarapana, an Indian Restaurant on rue du Petit Pont. We shall never return there. I need to find a different Indian Restaurant so I can have a good experience with it – getting back on the horse so to speak. Saw my third Doppelgänger: this one was a David Read. Last night at the hotel it was a badly behaved T. Daniel S-------d. Last week it was Jim Landelius.
Across from Aarapana is “les Metormorphoses”, a shop that had a pin I liked
in the window the other day. I've always loved the shop’s sign: “sesohpromroteM
sel”. I finally got to go inside... I LOVED it. Brocante (second-hand) jewelry,
hats, and offering cans that parishioners couldn’t steal from. They had an
emu pin! I hate the dratted things but I had to have it! Bought a fleur-de-lis
pin, too. Went to Shakespeare and Co. intending to buy a tiny Van Gogh book
and tell George Whitman how much we’ve enjoyed his shop, and how we’ve saved
and enjoyed his episode of Michael
Palin’s “Hemingway Adventure”. 
I
bought instead “Three Racine Plays” and when I spoke to George, he invited
us to 4'o’clock tea which lasted until 6 p.m.
George appointed Patricia Page, author of “Clean Start” to hostess the tea party only 30 minutes before it began. On the 4th floor we gathered in a room the size of a bedroom with a group that fluctuated between 12-25 people, including the poet for tomorrow night’s reading, and a woman from Keene, New Hampshire. Along with Patricia, we sat with a grandmother and granddaughter from Wisconsin. Alan somehow brought up his search for signed Sam Campbell books and the hip-happenin’ grandmother said she’d met him and enjoyed his nature talks.
We met Andy the architect, his wife Robbi, and Picola (sp?) the dog, who are
all from Berkeley. I got to pet Picola. Picola kissed one admirer’s nose
repeatedly while Robbi practiced her French with a young bachelor, pointedly
asking him if he’d ever seen “The Graduate.” Robbi and Andy have a house now
in France, too. Robbi was quite insistent we return for the poetry reading
tomorrow.
One of tour
guides for “the writer’s room” was Steven, a Gareth Steele pseudo Doppelgänger
(only with moustache/goatee and long hair). We learned:
– George gave his daughter, Sylvia Beach Whitman, on her 20th birthday,
a first edition autographed “Ulysees” by James Joyce (which was published
by Sylvia Beach, owner of the original Shakespeare and Company at 8 rue Dupuytren,
then 12 rue l’Odéon*) [Dr. Woolley guesstimates that it might go for $500,000].
*Adrienne Monnier’s shop was at 7 rue de l’Odéon.
– George’s
shop, which used to be a monastery for Notre Dame, then the lamplighter’s
house, then a defunct Arab grocery store when he bought it, used to be called
“Le Mistral”. He renamed it Shakespeare and Co. after Sylvia Beach died,
to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth.
– The
café next door has the longest original ceiling in Paris.
– George
fixes pancakes every Sunday morning and Steven said “NO COMMENT on quality.”
– A TV crew came to film the Shakespeare inmates the other day for “Things
You Might Miss in Paris”. It’s probably “our” Australian TV crew.
–
PBS or Passepartout Productions gave George a videotape of him and Michael
Palin, but George doesn’t have a TV.
– Steven
says George doesn’t carry the two most requested books in Paris (Hemingway’s
“A Moveable Feast” even though it talks about Sylvia Beach and her Shakespeare and Company; and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's “The Little Prince” – they’re
both on the 50 Franc note) because people would BUY the books and leave and
he’d rather that they browse. Steven wants to stand outside with a trench
coat and hiss “Psst. Want ‘A
Moveable Feast’? I got your ‘Little
Prince’ right here.” Other requests? One customer requested any book
bound in leather. Another, “non-decadent” books.
[If you were to buy those books through these links or the one at disaster-area.org
instead of from Steven's trenchcoat, a portion of the proceeds go to the Wes
Stoops Scholarship.]
– To
stay there, one must work one hour in the shop and read one book – every day.
And leave a short autobiography and photo. Or write...period.
– The bed in the “writer’s room” has slept Henry Miller (three months); Lawrence
Ferlinghetti; Allen
Ginsberg; Lawrence Durrell; Christopher Gilmore; and others. I, too,
reclined on it. Others whose sleeping quarters are uncertain but have been
hosted at “Shakespeare and Co” are Langston Hughes, William Burroughs, Michael
Hastings, James Baldwin, Anaïs Nin, Richard Wright, and some others I don’t
recognize.
– After
having fed, sheltered, helped, and befriended the likes of the above and more,
George wasn’t impressed when self-aware Oscar-nominee Ralph Fiennes visited.
Robert DeNiro came around when his girlfriend lived near blvd St-Michel, but
she dumped him a few weeks ago.
– Steven, who came to visit and has stayed for three months so far, considered
inviting Mark Wahlberg to The Tea but decided against it [Back home, research
revealed Wahlberg was filming a Jonathan Demme remake of Grant/Hepburn’s “Charade”
in Paris. I’ve always wondered when they’d do a remake of “Charade”...I never
anticipated Wahlberg and/or Thandie Newton in the leading roles...poor them...who
COULD compare to Grant and Hepburn?]. Steven will eventually continue to Vienna
to continue studying something so complicated I couldn’t comprehend what he
was saying.
– Patricia
(who came for a weekend in 1963 and hasn’t left yet)’s husband has been saying
for 20+- years “George isn’t doing well. He may not be here long.”
Friday, April 27 | Sabbath, April 28 | Sunday, April 29 | Monday, April 30 | Tuesday, May 1 | Wednesday, May 2 | Thursday, May 3 | Friday, May 4 | Saturday, May 5 | Sunday, May 6 | Monday, May 7 | Tuesday, May 8 | Wednesday, May 9 | Thursday, May 10 | Friday, May 11| Saturday, May 12 | Sunday, May 13 | Monday, May 14 | Epilogue