There is never any ending to Paris. and the memory of each person. who has lived in it. differs from that of any other. We always returned to it. no matter who we were or how it was changed. or with what difficulties. or ease. it could be reached. Paris was always worth it. and you received return for whatever you brought to it. But this is how Paris was in the early days. when we were very poor. and very happy.

 Ernest Hemingway. A moveable Feast

Hemingway would immortalized his time in Paris in the book. A Moveable Feast. He came to Paris with his wife Hadley. to work as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Daily Star. Here he wrote. Drank. Loved, and loathed. He loathed Gertrude Stein. Loved James Joyce. Ezra Pound. F. Scott Fitzgerald. Joan Miró. and Picasso. He was the Lost Generation. A term created by the very person he loathed and loved. Gertrude Stein. Later Hemingway would use it in the epigraph for his nineteen. Twenty. Six. novel. The Sun Also Rises. quote. You are all a lost generation. end quote.

Paris was an inexpensive place to live in nineteen. twenty. one. but most importantly it was a place where interesting people could be found. Living in a small walk up in the Latin quarter. he befriended the gatekeeper of modernism in Paris. Gertrude Stein. She was his mentor and godmother to his son Jack. She introduced him to expatriate artists and writers. The very ones he would recall in later years with tender endearment. Stein would not be a part of these memories. A decades long quarrel would separate the mentor and mentee. Forever.
Hemingway would become one of the greatest American writers. Writing such works as. Farewell to Arms. For Whom the Bell Tolls. and the aforementioned. A Moveable Feast.

He would never forget Paris. A city cut out of dreams. Yet. while some dreamed. others hoped.

Violette Morris had dreams. She dreamed of being in the Olympics. becoming a boxer. wrestler and race car driver. Morris achieved most of these dreams. except for one. That one would propel her to make a decision that would ultimately cost her her life.

Welcome to Wicked Dual.

Violette Morris was born to Baron Pierre Jacques Morris, a retired French Army cavalry captain. and Élisabeth Marie Antoinette Sakakini, of Palestinian origin. She married Cyprien Edouard Joseph Gouraud on August twenty second. Nineteen. Fouteen. Morris was different. She dressed in mens attire. was a heavy smoker and swore often. She had divorced her husband in Nineteen. Twenty three. and began frequenting a club called le Monocle. Le Monocle opened its doors in the Nineteen. Twenties. By a mysterious figure who preferred short hair and mens clothing. Simply known to her patrons as Lulu. Lulu was friends to many. One included George Brassaï . who was the only male photographer permitted to photograph inside le Monocle. One of his subjects was Violette Morris. Theres a photograph in his later published book.The Secret Paris of the thirties where Morris sits nestled next to her girlfriend. Yes I said girlfriend. because the truth was Morris was gay. A not so hidden secret. Her personal life cost her many things. As well the decision from the French Womens Sports Federation as to have her banned from the Nineteen. Twenty eight. Olympics.

Citing her love of dressing in mens clothing as immoral. This decision would eventually cost her her life. Yet not to jump ahead lets highlight other reasons she was banned from the Olympics.
She punched a football referee and was accused of giving other players amphetamines. Yet discrimination was apparent as the same year. Morris. an avid racer. license was revoked over the same grounds for having immoral behavior.

Everything that Morris loved was slowly taken away. Yet Morris being a natural born fighter was not going to give up easily. She unsuccessfully sued the French Womens Sports Federation for damages but once again did not go away quietly. A quote was attributed to Morris but was censored. quote. We live in a country made rotten by money and scandals. ruled by speechifiers. schemers. and cowards. This country of little people is not worthy of survival. Someday its decay will bring it to the level of a slave. but if I’m still here. I wont be one of the slaves. Believe me, its not in my temperament. end. quote.

After all of this you would think life would get a little easier for Morris. but that was not the case. On Christmas Eve nineteen. Thirty seven. while having dinner with friends and neighbors Robert and Simone de Trobriand at a restaurant in Neuilly. the trio encountered a drunk and aggressive young man named Joseph Le Cam.

The unemployed ex. legionnaire became embroiled in a heated argument with Simone de Trobriand. Morris was able to calm the man after some time. The following evening, after more drinking in Montmarte. Le Cam arrived at Morrises houseboat and another argument took place. this time between Morris and Le Cam. Le Cam left the houseboat. but soon returned after seeing Simone de Trobriand. with whom he had been arguing the night before. boarding La Mouette. Le Cam then rushed back to the houseboat. brandishing a knife and threatened both Morris and de Trobriand. Morris pushed Le Cam several times before he lunged at her and she produced a revolver. Morris fired four shots. the first two into the air. the following two at Le Cam. He would later die in hospital. Morris was arrested and charged with homicide and incarcerated for four days at the La Petite Roquette prison in the eleventh arrondissement of Paris. She was tried in the cour d’assises in March nineteen. Thirty eight. but was acquitted when the court accepted her plea of self-defense.

The rejection by the French Womens Sports Federation decision to not let her compete in the nineteen. Twenty eight. Olympics still festered with Morris. There choice created a strong dislike of the French government. By the end of December nineteen. Thirty five. the Nazis had finally recruited her into the SS with the code name Hyena. Adolf Hitler invited her to attend the nineteen. Thirty six. Berlin Olympics as his personal guest.

Morris would eventually be responsible for turning over the plans to the Germans for the French Maginot Line. strategic parts of Paris. and the engineering plans for the French tank known as the Somua S35. All of this contributed significantly to the success of the German invasion of France and in particular. Paris. During the occupation years. Violette partnered with the Bonny. The French Gestapo. and participated in their tortures. primarily women prisoners. and executions of members of the French Resistance. She also was responsible for infiltrating and arresting members of the British led teams of the Special. Operations. Executive. Violettes collaboration with the Nazis was well known around town.

By 1944. the French Resistance had had enough of Violette Morris. On April twenty. six. Nineteen. Forty. four. while driving in a car with fellow collaborators. Violette and all of her party. including two children. were gunned down outside Paris by the French Resistance. Her body went unclaimed and her remains were thrown into a communal grave. I’m not sure if the pit was ever marked. While speculative. I would imagine that had she not been killed in April. Violette would have been one of the first to be arrested shortly after the Liberation and quickly executed without trial by the French partisans.

Lulu kept Le Monocle going through the Jazz Age of the twenties and the hard times of the Depression in the nineteen. thirties. Yet the clubs end came when Hitlers troops marched into Paris on June fourteenth. Nineteen. Forty. they brought with them not only soldiers. tanks. and guns. they brought hate.
The rulers of German. occupied Paris stifled the arts. and persecuted people deemed. inferior. Homosexuals were a prime target for the Nazi onslaught. Soldiers and collaborating Paris police rounded up lesbians and gay men. and sent them off to the horrors of the concentration camps.

Lulu. through sheer grit and the determination to provide lesbians. with what we would now call a .safe space. kept the doors of Le Monocle open for a while. but early in the decade of the nineteen. forties. this safe space was safe no longer.
Le Monocle. like dreams. had come to an end. And Lulu. as mysterious as she arrived on the left bank of Paris.

Disappeared.

According to Brassai. she relocated to Montmartres Rue Pigalle.

The world had changed. and Paris. with all its glory and inhibition. changed with it. The Lost generation. coined by a lesbian. was loathed by the world people like her. created.

If you look for old photos of the Le Monocle. You won’t find many. Yet it existed. It was a place dreamed by Lulu. a place to laugh. To loathe. To love. Freely. Hemingway reminiesced of Paris as a party. but the party was for the few. Violette Morris illustrated the uninvited.

What Morris did was wrong. it was cruel and it was selfish. It was cowardly. but the world as I can imagine in her eyes wronged her first.

Le monocle as Morris knew it. no longer exist. The building still stands but a mere shadow. Very few things are left of this hidden city. The under belly that Brassai loved to photograph. The outcasts. The unloved. The tarnished glint of Paris. Yet I believe Hemingway said it best of this place. Of this time. Of Paris. So I will end as I started. with words. from the lost.

When Spring came. even the false Spring. there were no problems. except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day. was people. and if you could keep from making engagements. each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness. except for the very few. that were as good as spring. itself.