True Pleasures (29 page)

Finally we head back down to the Seine. The clouds have come over and a greenish tinge has returned to the sky and the water. The trees shake and roll in the wind. I look along the great panorama of bridges and buildings and monuments.

There are, of course, things I don't like about Paris. I don't care for the Pompidou Center. I am not keen to visit the new Bastille Opera House, although Rachel says it's great. And I have always refused to go up the Eiffel Tower.

But today I look at the Tower with new affection. There is a legend – who knows if it is true? – that Gustav Eiffel invented the garter belt. I used to think the Tower was an ugly phallic symbol, out of place in this beauteous, feminine, shapely city. But now when I look at it I see something different. A long, long
belle époque
leg encased in a fishnet stocking.

I remember Ellen saying to me once that no matter how many times she came, no matter how long she stayed, the rose-colored glasses never came off; that special Paris feeling never went away. ‘You know, in Australia I am nothing special, but in Paris, they find me beautiful,' she said.

Australia could have been French. It was a close-run thing. French explorers like Bougainville, La Pérouse, d'Entrecasteaux and Baudin conducted important early research into Australian geography and botany. The Frenchman La Pérouse and the newly arrived English Governor Phillip literally bumped into each other on the shores of Botany Bay in 1788. The first printed reference to the term ‘Australia' was by the French scientist Labillardière in 1804. And Matthew Flinders's celebrated maps of Australia relied in part on earlier French maps confiscated by the British. It was a sheer accident that the English saw a purpose – if you can call it that – for this great southern land before the French did.

Most astounding of all, perhaps, the young Napoleon Bonaparte applied to join La Pérouse's ill-fated expedition and was knocked back. It's hard to believe the future conqueror of Europe could have resisted the chance to attempt settlement in Australia. It's also strange to imagine that he might have died alongside his shipmates in the South Pacific, changing the course of European history.

In the end of course, Australia became part of the British Empire. We'll never know what might have been.

As if zeroing in on my thoughts, the young taxi driver leans his head back and asks me where my flight is going. I tell him Australia.

‘Ostralia,' he repeats excitedly, ‘I adore zis country!'

I can't help but smile. ‘Really? What do you adore about it?'

‘
L'éspace!
It's so spacious and free, you know?'

‘Yes I do. Have you been?'

‘But of course! Right now I am saving up to go back zere. I woz on ze Golden Coast. I zed to myself: What if all ze people here were speaking French, zis would be Paradise!'

I tell him I come from Sydney.

‘Sydney! Ah,' he shakes his head regretfully, ponytail swinging, ‘Our explorers were not zo smart. We did not get Sydney. Instead we got
Nouvelle Calédonie
.'

Suddenly the thought of his nation's historic miscalculation sets him rocking with laughter.

Many people hate flying. It's not just the fear. It's the infantilization enforced by airline routines – the endless instructions, the baby food, the imposed sleep. But I don't mind. I rather enjoy being airborne, feeling timeless and weightless. These air stewards can boss me around all they like. I settle into my seat and tune into my interior world. In the noisy vacuum of the cabin it's easy to hear myself think.

People like to quote the famous Ernest Hemingway line that
Paris is a moveable feast
, as if the memory of Paris alone is enough to satisfy. If Paris is a feast, then I'm still hungry. I haven't yet had my fill: in fact, I doubt I will ever be sated. That's why I'll just have to keep coming back.

And I'm sure the city will always welcome me, no matter what my stage of life. I can't see myself returning to, say, Mexico or China as an old lady. But I can see myself
in the teashops of Paris, still perfectly at home. Paris has, after all, been meticulously constructed by intelligent women for their pleasure. There's even a graceful language for a woman's evolution: she might arrive in Paris as a fresh-faced
ingénue
, grow through experience into a
femme du monde
, try out her style as a
femme fatale
, and wind up as a
grande dame
.

Before I came to Paris I had been only too conscious of my messy life, with its mistakes and false starts. The past lacked grace; the future lacked purpose.

But over these last three weeks I have had the privilege of inhabiting other lives. I've walked in the footsteps of the fabulous women of Paris. I've immersed myself in their city, stepping across the grand stage on which they played their greatest roles. Best of all, by gazing at the world through their eyes, I've seen a woman's life in a new way. My frame of reference has forever expanded. It's as if I was trapped in a small room and discovered the door was unlocked all the time. As I venture into the fresh air, there is suddenly space and light and room to move.

In the Luxembourg Gardens there's a central octagonal pond where the children sail their model boats in the sunshine. Arrayed around the pond are no less than fifty white statues of the queens of various French regions. Up on their high white pedestals the women appear cold and remote, their eyes turned away from the colorful scene below.

Now I too have a gallery of grand women. These are not, however, haughty elevated creatures; they have stepped off the historical podiums and into my heart. My own personal advisory council of divas, artists, aristocrats and heroines, they will forever be there for me, to teach and tease, to spur and encourage, to inspire and console.

And to remind me that women can do anything, including create an entire culture that is the delight of the world.

And my messy life? I went to Paris fascinated by the art of living. I've come away seized by the notion of a life as art. When a woman wishes to construct her life she requires an inventive will, a conscious application to the task. But life can never be totally controlled. Inventing a life also demands a letting go; a gracious succumbing to the flow of time and the turn of dramatic events. It means being open and ready when the new phase is set to begin.

There's a line of Nancy Mitford's that means a lot to me. It's in her biography of Voltaire, called
Voltaire in Love
. She is referring to another amazing French woman, this time the scientist and intellectual Emilie du Châtelet, who was Voltaire's lover and companion for many years. The thought could be a reference to Nancy Mitford herself – or to me. Nancy Mitford wrote:
She was waiting, unconsciously, for that revolution which often comes in the life of a woman no longer young and directs the future course of her existence
.

I never guessed that a revolution could be so quiet.

My heart lifts and fills. At this lovely, shimmering, indeterminate moment in my life, poised in mid-air, the past and the future extend limitlessly before me. And I'm ready to embrace it all.

Harold Acton,
Nancy Mitford: A Memoir
, Harper & Row, New York, 1975.

Joseph Barry,
Passions and Politics: A Biography of Versailles
, Doubleday, New York, 1972.

Shari Benstock,
No Gifts from Chance: A Biography of Edith Wharton
, Penguin, New York, 1994.

Shari Benstock,
Women of the Left Bank: Paris 1900–1940
, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1986.

Bryan Bevan,
The Duchess Hortense: Cardinal Mazarin's Wanton Niece
, The Rubicon Press, London, 1987.

Anita Brookner,
Romanticism and its Discontents
, Viking, London, 2000.

Evangeline Bruce,
Napoleon and Josephine: An Improbable Marriage
, Phoenix Giant, London, 1996.

Edmonde Charles-Roux,
Chanel
, translated by Nancy Amphoux, The Harvill Press, London, 1995.

Edgar H. Cohen,
Mademoiselle Libertine: A Portrait of Ninon de Lanclos
, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1970.

Letters from Colette
, selected and translated by Robert Phelps, Virago, London, 1982.

Colette,
Chéri
and
The Last of Chéri
, Penguin, London, 1954.

Colette,
Gigi
and
The Cat
, Secker & Warburg, London, 1953.

Colette,
My Apprenticeships
and
Music-Hall Sidelights
, translated by Helen Beauclerk and Anne-Marie Callimachi, Secker & Warburg, London, 1957.

Benjamin Constant,
Adolphe
, translated by Leonard Tancock, Penguin, London, 1964.

Benedetta Craveri,
Madame du Deffand and her World
, translated by Teresa Waugh, David R. Godine, Boston, 1982.

Vincent Cronin,
The Companion Guide to Paris
, Harper & Row, New York, 1963.

Vincent Cronin,
Louis and Antoinette
, The Harvill Press, London, 1974.

Pierson Dixon,
Pauline: Napoleon's Favorite Sister
, Collins, London, 1964.

Janet Flanner,
Paris was Yesterday
, edited by Irving Drutman, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1988.

Pierre Galante,
Mademoiselle Chanel
, translated by Eileen Geist and Jessie Wood, Henry Regnery Company, Chicago, 1973.

André George,
Paris
, Nicholas Kaye, London, 1952.

Maurice Goudeket,
Close to Colette
, Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, New York, 1957.

Cyril Hughes Hartmann,
The Vagabond Duchess: The Life of Hortense Mancini, Duchesse Mazarin
, George Routledge & Sons, London, 1926.

Joan Haslip,
Madame du Barry, The Wages of Beauty
, George Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1991.

Selina Hastings,
Nancy Mitford: A Biography
, William Abrahams, New York, 1986.

John Hearsey,
Marie Antoinette
, Heron Books, 1969.

J. Christopher Herold,
Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Staël
, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, New York, 1958.

Ruth Jordan,
George Sand
, Constable, London, 1976.

Linda Kelly,
Juniper Hall, An English Refuge from the French Revolution
, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1991.

Linda Kelly,
The Young Romantics: Their Friendships, Feuds and Loves in the French Romantic Revolution
, Random House, New York, 1976.

Madame de Lafayette,
The Princess of Cleves
, translated by Nancy Mitford, New Directions, 1988.

Philip M. Laski,
The Trial and Execution of Madame du Barry
, Constable, London, 1969.

Maurice Levaillant,
The Passionate Exiles: A dual biography of Mme Récamier and Mme De Staël
, Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, New York, 1958.

R. W. B. Lewis,
Edith Wharton: A Biography
, Vintage, London, 1993.

Axel Madsen,
Chanel: A Woman of her Own
, Henry Holt and Company, 1991.

André Maurois,
Lélia: The Life of George Sand
, translated by Gerard Hopkins, Jonathan Cape, London, 1953.

Dorothy McDougall,
Madeleine de Scudéry: Her Romantic Life and Death
, Methuen & Co, London, 1938.

James R. Mellow,
Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein & Company
, Phaidon Press, London, 1974.

Yvonne Mitchell,
Colette: A Taste for Life
, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1975.

Nancy Mitford,
Madame de Pompadour
, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1954.

Nancy Mitford,
The Sun King
, Penguin, London, 1994.

Nancy Mitford,
Voltaire in Love
, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1957.

Nancy Mitford,
The Water Beetle
, Harper & Row, 1962.

The Nancy Mitford Omnibus (The Pursuit of Love, Love in a Cold Climate, The Blessing, Don't Tell Alfred)
, Penguin, London, 1974.