Claude introduced Elsa to his best friend and mentor, Jean Galtier-Boissière. The two men met while serving as soldiers during the first World War. Both were freethinkers and irreverent to the bone. Galtier-Boissière had founded a satirical newspaper, Le Crapouillot, which he distributed to fellow soldiers in the trenches.¹ He soon enlisted Claude to write on assignment.

As a way to keep informed about Parisian gossip, Galtier-Boissière and his magazine hosted splendid dinner parties at the older brasseries and cafés. He called these gatherings Le Panier de Crabes, a basket of crabs, to describe his group of guests—a diverse collection of writers, artists, and musicians with non-conformist views and wide-ranging opinions who took great pleasure in arguing with each other.²

But these parties were known to others as Les Dîners du Crapouillot, as each signified a night of unparalleled extravagance, often featuring Belle Époque themes—a night that would leave its mark, both glorious and terrifying, on the soul of any brasserie that dared to host it.³ Overturned tables, shattered glassware, the lingering scent of spilled champagne. A night whispered about for months afterward.

**

Claude and Elsa sat together at a corner table in La Petite Chaise, the oldest restaurant in Paris.⁴ She wore linen trousers, and smoked and drank coffee while he edited galleys with a blue pencil. “Gertrude wants you to make a bust of her poodle,” he said. “You’ll be famous in Montparnasse for immortalizing the beast.”

“Then I’ll belong here,” Elsa said.

“You belong wherever stone turns to skin in your hands. That’s your passport.”

In reply, Elsa kissed him boldly in front of everyone.

***

As their friendship became romance, Claude and Elsa began sharing their evenings together at her hotel. With a wink and a grin one morning, he handed her a folded scrap of newspaper over her cafe au lait. Scrawled on the paper, a cryptic invitation:

Wear something scandalous. Bring your wit. Rue Saint-Benoît, 9 PM. —C.

At precisely nine that night, Elsa stepped through the smoky door of a narrow brasserie where the night vibrated with sound—laughter, jazz, the clatter of glasses—and the buzz of English, French, and something in-between. A makeshift stage was crammed with a violinist, a blind accordion player, and a woman singing Satie songs in bare feet.

Claude emerged from the crowd, taller than anyone else, glass in hand, tie undone. “Ma petite sculptress!” he called out. “You’re late. Stein’s been dissecting Proust’s punctuation, and Adrienne is threatening to ban her from the shop.”

Like a heavy-lidded oracle, Gertrude Stein sat at the center of a long table, puffing a cigar and holding court beside Alice B. Toklas, who whispered sharp observations behind a lace fan. Across from them, Sylvia Beach, proprietor of the Shakespeare and Company bookstore, passed around a dog-eared manuscript from one Mr. Joyce, while Adrienne Monnier argued the merits of Éluard’s latest verse with a sculptor from Montmartre.

Claude pulled out a chair for Elsa just as Pascin shouted something obscene from the bar and someone else—possibly Man Ray, Elsa wasn’t sure—threw a firecracker into the piano.

“Welcome,” Claude murmured beside her, “to the heart of beautiful madness.” Elsa took it all in—the bohemian clamor, the champagne-stained philosophy, the women with cropped hair and cigarette holders, the men in velvet jackets who spoke in poetry and touched each other’s shoulders as they laughed.

Now across the room, Claude stood on a chair reciting Rimbaud, badly, while Gertrude rolled her eyes and Alice pretended to stab herself with a fork. Elsa laughed. She laughed with all the weight of her Pasadena upbringing, her years as wife and mother in Kauai, the stifled days of garden parties and dinner bells. And for the first time, she didn’t feel like a visitor in someone else’s life. Here, no one asked if she was married. No one cared that she was a mother, a Protestant, a woman. They asked what she was working on. They asked who she read. They asked what clay felt like between her fingers. Here, she was a sculptor, a free thinker.

****

Elsa cut her dark hair in a Twenties bob. The flapper look also featured a loose yet streamlined, androgynous silhouette, where neither breasts nor waist were emphasized. The look symbolized emancipation for women, who could now vote, obtain birth control, smoke, dance, play sports, drive cars, drink, and even have affairs. Elsa embraced it all with great enthusiasm.

Including Les Dîners du Crapouillot, synonymous with indulgence and chaos. Guests beat on drums, played the piano, sang. Sometimes they threw fire crackers in pianos! And always they argued, often loudly. Claude was a pillar at these parties, “a bon vivant, very bawdy, who appreciated wine, love, and tobacco,” as recalled by his best friend, Jean, in his memoirs.⁵

The air was thick: a cloying blend of ripe Chardonnay, the sweetness of Sauternes, and the acrid bite of a hundred Gauloises. Crystal flutes, half-empty and beaded with condensation, reflected the candlelight.

Josephine Baker teased Elsa: “Girl, you are a scandal in sculptor’s clothes.”

“And you are liberty in sequins,” Elsa replied.

“Another glass, mon ami?” a booming voice cut through the laughter and conversation. The clinking of glasses answered.

Then, a hush. A single voice, rich and resonant, filled the brasserie. Claude, eyes closed, sang of a lovesick aviator—a ballad that resonated with raw sincerity.

“Magnifique!” a voice cried out. Applause erupted. Elsa, her face radiant in lamplight, leaned forward, capturing the moment with her Leica. Later, the photograph graced the cover of Le Crapouillot, Claude’s face mirroring the fervor of that summer night.⁶

Sheila Grether-Marion

was born and raised in Pasadena, California, and is the grand-niece of Elsa Behr Blanchard. Sheila, a Chair Emerita of the Pasadena Playhouse Board of Directors, is retired from careers as a professional fund-raiser for non-profits and as a financial advisor at Merrill Lynch. She now has more time to focus on writing her memoirs. The three stories—“Claude Tries Scriptwriting”; “1923: Elsa Studies Sculpting”; and “1923: A Basket of Crabs”— are the first excerpts to be published from her manuscript-in-progress of historical fiction. She is also writing a play about her grand-aunt.

During high school, Sheila was an usher at The Pasadena Playhouse, and later served many years on The Playhouse Board of Directors. A former actor and professional fund-raiser, she assisted in raising millions of dollars for non-profit organizations, and received several awards including The President’s Award for Public Sector Initiatives in 1982, as well as citations from Mayor Tom Bradley, the Board of Los Angeles Library Commissions, and the Los Angeles County Library for her work to raise funds to combat illiteracy.

In 1987, Sheila began her second career, as a broker and financial advisor with Merrill Lynch in Pasadena, and retired three decades later as the senior partner of her investment team. She now lives in Sierra Madre with her husband, Mark.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Resurrection by Sheila Grether-Marion, a feature article about her recovery from an injury received during a canoe ride on the Zambezi River; published 2 November 2018 in So Cal Women’s Conference Magazine (Volume 7, Number 1), pages 30-31. Magazine is available at Issuu.com.