Dorothy Richardson : Online Exhibition

Hotel de la Haute Loire.
Boulevard Raspail.
Paris.

Dear Bryher_

Sunday afternoon in Bloomsbury, buses carrying bourgeois to le Bois, Salvation Army Band marching by. A. waiting for me over a Bock at the Dôme _ & me up here in this queer little room feeling at home to the core of me. Aow. Mustn’t dwell on it. Atavism. And a hat – 1st I’ve had since one that hid discreetly in a box under my bed, somehow uniting its freshness to the bright clang of St Pancras bells. And a gown, oh Lord, I once possessed a truly stunning djibbeh, but a gown I’ve never had. A. made me put them

[page 2]

on late last night, they weren’t ready when I called & were sent later, when we came home from sitting with the Bunch in the Dôme (Nina turned up & I had the joy of seeing her & Alan sitting at a little table together hanging over the past). He wants me to go arrayed in these glories from morning till night. They are real nice. Thats a clever little shop. Those women came round me when I called & held my hands & again smacked me. Article – for V. Fair on the difference between buying a hat – Peter Robinson – & acquiring a chapeau.

Of course you are

[page 3]

not forgiven. Never has anybody dared – never – I splutter – you are monstrous. I’m damned if I ever – – – Alan has just come in. He was near weeping when he found you had evaporated on Friday. Couldn’t take it in. Seems to have thought he’d see you several more times before you left. It was very nice at the Dingo – but somehow a little bleak. There was a gap.

I suppose I must give in about our beastly luggage & indeed there is no denying that it would be the greatest blessing to find it gone when we arrive. I’m so chewed up now that I can only crawl. Frightful rapidity of

[page 4]

impressions. Frightful moral cost of this beloved Paris. Here’s the billet. My plan was to put the basket in a taxi, take [its] number & send it to
Miss Lyon
14. Queen’s Terrace.
(near Eyre Arms.)
with a slip, please pay bearer –

But there’s the douane. What if they want it opened. I can’t let you in for all that. If they do it must wait, if need be till we come from Cornwall.

We look in as soon as I’m tidy, with M. L. at the Vails – for

[page 5]

an hour, & tomorrow look in at the Hemingways for coffee – & I have Marc Allegret’s address & we’ll try & get him to tea one day – & probably cross on Thursday. I’ll let you know.

Au revoir, little thing,

Much love
Dorothy.

Thats an amazingly illuminating thing by Carlos Williams in the Transatlantic, its dangerous, too, I think. We found, smelt our way to the Louvre yesterday.
D.

Greet Hilda & R. & Mrs Doolittle.

Notes

• ‘Le Bois’ is Le Bois de Boulogne, a large park in Paris.
• ‘A.’ is Alan Odle, Dorothy Richardson’s artist husband. He is waiting for her, with a glass of strong German beer, in ‘Le Dôme’ café, a haunt for ex-pat writers and artists on the Left Bank.
• A ‘djibbeh’ is a long, collarless coat or smock derived from a garment commonly worn in Egypt.
• Dorothy Richardson met many of the English and American artists and writers who had removed to Paris while she was there, including Ernest and Hadley Hemingway, Mary Butts, Cecil Maitland, and Mina Loy. They frequently gathered in ‘Le Dôme’.
• ‘Nina’ is Nina Hamnet, an artist friend of Alan Odle’s.
• ‘V. Fair’ is Vanity Fair; ‘Peter Robinson’ is the name of a department store on Oxford Street, London. Richardson is comparing the London department store shopping experience with the more laid back and ‘chic’ shopping experience of Paris.
• The Dingo was a late-night bar in Montparnasse.
• Bryher has offered to pay for the return of Richardson’s luggage, but Richardson is worried that there will be trouble with the ‘douane’ (customs). This was probably because she had a copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses in her wicker trunk, which was banned in England.
• ‘M.L.’ is the writer Mina Loy, and the ‘Vails’ are the artist Laurence Vail, his wife Peggy Guggenheim, and his sister Clothilde. The Hemingways are Ernest Hemingway and his first wife Hadley, and Marc Allegret was a screenwriter and film director.
• William Carlos Williams’s article about Bryher’s husband, ‘Robert McAlmon’s Prose’, was published in the Transatlantic Review in May-June 1924
• ‘Hilda & R. & Mrs Doolittle’ are H.D., Robert McAlmon, and Hilda Doolittle’s mother.