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By Root 2355 0

though was long human experience, a sense of justice, perhaps not too frequent among my sex, and a sense of humor capable of carrying me over very rough ground.’ Clara ‘wangled’ coal from unnamed suppliers, undoubtedly black marketeers, when other establishments were freezing. Nonetheless, there were times when the library lacked enough coal to heat the whole building and the staff worked in ‘overcoats, mufflers and gloves’. When the Germans attempted to conscript male employees to work in Germany, she wrote stern letters stating that ‘the individual designated was absolutely indispensible [sic] to the proper functioning of the Library’. Her appeals worked, even for Russian Boris Netchaeff after Germany invaded its former Soviet ally in June 1941.

As directress of the library, Clara became acquainted with one of the ugliest aspects of the occupation: la dénonciation. The German authorities were inundated with correspondence, often anonymous, from Parisians denouncing their fellow citizens as Jews, communists, Freemasons, black marketeers and résistants. Earning anyone’s animosity could lead to denunciation and, thus, arrest. One day, a woman who was upset at having to wait in a long check-out queue at the library threatened to denounce ‘our long-suffering librarian’, Boris Netchaeff. Clara lost her temper. ‘Take back your subscription and never darken our doors again,’ she ordered. The woman began crying and, in what Clara called ‘the greatest tribute ever given us in wartime’, said, ‘I cannot get along without the books I find here.’ Clara told her, ‘In that case, you may come back, apologize to Boris and take out your book.’ The woman apologized.

When Maynard Barnes closed the American Embassy on 7 May, he entrusted the keys and the flag to Mme Simone Blanchard. The Frenchwoman, who had been housekeeper at the embassy since 1928, hid the Stars and Stripes to await the Americans’ return. Barnes drove south to Vichy with Edward B. Close, managing governor of the American Hospital. After reporting to Ambassador Leahy, who had a low regard for him, he returned to Washington. Close sailed to the United States from Portugal, leaving the American Hospital’s administration in the hands of Aldebert de Chambrun and its medical staff to Dr Sumner Jackson.

‘After the departure of the Chargé d’Affaires,’ Clara wrote, ‘we bade adieu to almost all our American friends … Most of the few that did not take that opportunity of leaving, remained to the bitter end–among them was John Robinson, head of the Coudert firm who stayed on because his wife was too seriously ill to be moved. His presence was a real asset as he managed to do so much for the relief of numerous families unable for different reasons to abandon the country. ’ No Americans in Paris knew it, but even their embassy in Vichy had prepared two emergency escape routes for its diplomats. One was by sea from a Mediterranean port, and the other was overland to Spain. The embassy had ‘accumulated and buried in tins in concealed places along the roads enough gas to drive in our own cars over either route’.

Many Americans had no option other than to remain. The poet Pauline Avery Crawford, who had a prosthetic leg, could not make the arduous journey by land to Lisbon, point of embarkation for America-bound passenger ships and the Pan American Clipper aeroplanes. Charles Bedaux was too involved in his business schemes to return to the United States, where his company had not been under his control since the ill-fated Windsor affair of 1937. Sylvia Beach had not considered abandoning Paris or Adrienne Monnier since the first day of occupation, when the two booksellers had briefly contemplated escaping to the countryside. And Dr Sumner Jackson, whose wife and son were French, was responsible for the American Hospital’s surgery department and for a growing Resistance network. The American community in Paris dwindled by the spring of 1941 to 2,000 men, women and children–no longer protected by an embassy in the city, but served by their own hospital, library, churches and charitable