“A beautiful girl of twelve or twenty, while she may merit attention, does not deserve admiration. Reserve that laurel for decades hence when, if she has kept buoyant the weight of her gifts, been faithful to the vows a Swan must, she will have earned an audience all-kneeling; for her achievement represents discipline, has required the patience of a hippopotamus, the objectivity of a physician combined with the involvement of an artist, one whose sole creation is her perishable self.”
Truman Capote
When His Ryness first referred to me as one of his Swans, I was beyond tickled pink to be considered a “Babe Paley,” “Gloria Vanderbilt,” “Slim Keith,” or “Lee Radziwill” in his world. To be fancied a Swan by a Peacock whose sartorial standard is as endangered as his, and who is such an avid connoisseur of Black & White Balls, is an honor that inspires me to have reverence for the standard that I hold myself to.
So when I realized that this same Peacock had set into motion a series of events that would lead me to Paris, I was beside myself with a sense of serendipity. We met on Good Friday, I was a springtime Swan, and in time to ring in the “Bonne Année,” I arrived in Paris, France: simultaneously 4,391 miles away and still closer to “home” than I had ever been before.
Yes, I arrived in Paris on The Seventh Day of Christmas - a day for Swans.
This Swan, to be quite frank (a phrase whose humor I’m now intimately appreciative of), didn’t exactly have the sweetest welcome. For one thing, I was greeted immediately outside of the train station with an odor of ammonia. Paris was saying hello to me with a (literal) potty mouth. But if truth be told, nobody was actually saying hello to me at all. Not so much as a smile. In return to the one plastered on my face? Nope. No m’am.
I, however, was singing! Inside. To myself, I walked down the street, singing: “I’m gonna make you Love me! Oh, yes I will. Yes I will!”
Inside the doors of THE BEST BIRTHDAY PRESENT EVER, I had a taker. The clerk at the hotel enjoyed my company immensely! He liked me. He really, really liked me! So much so that he was kind enough to point out that I had a double and would be comfortable enough to entertain, if I so desired. I was flattered to say the least.
Settled in and unpacked, I decided to try a new exploration strategy. No phone, no map, I determined North and headed southwest on a ramble. After some time I looked up to determine my whereabouts. My. heart. just. stopped. Without so much as a “be still” from my lips.
Rue Cambon.
I floated down the street. My guides had delivered me to Mademoiselle Chanel’s doorstep: the front door of her hat shop “Chanel Modes” at 21, the street below her personal apartment at 31, the back entrance to her suite at The Ritz. It might seem to be a no-brainer that I have such an attraction to her if I remind you that she suggests a woman apply perfume anywhere she wants to be kissed. My kind of girl! But if I tell you, the lesser known fact, that they found only three complete outfits in her closet upon her death, you might just understand the depth of my connection to this true Revolutionary in a light that tells you something you didn’t know about either of us.
Crossing the Seine several times and staring into the dark black water, I made my way to the Eiffel Tower. Twas there that I found His Ryness - in the shape of not one but two carousels, on either side of the bridge, both of which I took a spin upon.
When I reached the top of the Trocadero, down came the rain. The angel’s happy tears were falling on my face, an elixir I would rather have one drop of than a whole bottle of the finest.
I walked down Avenue du President Wilson thinking “Who needs champagne & funny hats? I have Paris! And as they say, now I always will.”
“It may be that the enduring swan glides upon waters of liquefied lucre; but that cannot account for the creature herself - her talent, like all talent, is composed of unpurchasable substances.”
Monsieur Capote
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