As I discovered last week, it is impossible to come to Paris and not encounter something that relates to GertrudeandAlice, even if you’re not specifically looking for something pertaining to them.
We had made plans about a month ago to end our around the world trip with seven days in a rented apartment in Paris. We’d rented apartments in the city before and our primary criterion this time as it was August, was to find a place that had air conditioning. It was a smart decision as the temperatures during our stay were in the upper 80s, low 90s. We found a rental on rue de Seine.
rue de Seine, August 2009
It was not until the taxi that had picked us up from the airport (after a ten and a half hour flight from Bangkok and the brief hour flight from Frankfurt) and dropped us in front of the building on rue de Seine that I noticed a commemorative sign above the entryway. It was one of those plaques which appear on many edifices in Paris and London letting you know that someone of importance had either lived or died in or near the building you were about to enter.
The sign read:
So, two famous people had slept here, the writer George Sand and the brother of modern dance innovator Isadora Duncan, Raymond. (The exterior of 10, rue de Seine is used in the movie JULIE AND JULIA as Julia and Paul Child’s first apartment in Paris.)
Raymond had not only slept here, but had done a lot more as 31, rue de Seine had been the location of the art academy he had started with his wife Penelope. (What a perfect name for the wife of someone who along with his family dressed in Greek garb and tried to emulate the ancients’ life-style as much as possible.)
Raymond Duncan in toga & sandals, 1912
Several friezes in the courtyard of the building attest to some of the training that must have been at the core of the school’s studies.
And that’s the Gertrude connection. Not the Grecian inspired flowing robes, though Gertrude did from time to time wear amply tailored, full-figured garments which caused some to mistake her for a Catholic cleric, but the connection was the hand-made Raymond Duncan sandals. They offered comfort and that de rigueur Bohemian look that graced Gertrude’s feet, as well as the feet of the whole Duncan clan and their followers. Whether Alice also fell under the Duncan sandal spell isn’t clear, but in some photos of Alice in her later years, she is wearing very sensible, almost sandal-like shoes – maybe more Dr. Scholl than RayDu originals.
The Duncans and Steins had known each other in Oakland, California in the 1880s during pre-sandal days (both Raymond and Gertrude were born in 1874) and one story tells of the Duncan siblings often taking fruit from the trees in the Stein’s orchard. It’s not clear, however, at what point Gertrude decided to contact her former neighbor in Paris to order her first pair of sandals.
Rue de Seine is a good twelve block stroll from rue du Fleurus and I wonder how often GertrudeandAlice visited the Duncan compound for a fitting or to preview the season’s latest sandal couture?
courtyard, 31 rue de Seine
Or maybe Raymond just loaded a saddlebag full of samples and joined GertrudeandAlice for tea and baklava at rue du Fleurus.
COPYRIGHT HANS GALLAS ©2009
§ 5 Responses to August in Paris: In the sandal prints of Raymond Duncan"
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Posted from Chicago
3 days ago I was walking by the building located 31 Rue de Seine in Paris and was wondering how the inside looked like these days. That same day when I called my wife in Chicago she told me about your blog and about the photos that illustrated your post about Raymond Duncan and its sandals.
Back home last night I took a look at your piece and was quite surprised to find that beautiful paved courtyard that you took pictures of.
When my wife and I lived in that building from 1965 to January 1970,when we moved to Chicago,there was no courtyard. The major part of the street-level (Rez-de-chaussee) floor was occupied by the Raymond Duncan Akademia and consisted in a “Gallery-bookstore-print shop” where you could see R.D’s production, books, photos, artwork, clothes,jewels, musical instruments, pottery, his loom, etc. On the left was the entrance to our aisle of the bulding, a very grubby staircase that we used to reach our 4th floor tiny two rooms apartment. I do not remember what was the exact geographical location of our aisle of the building. Raymond, still wearing his traditional Greek off-white “robe”, bandenna,bracelets, necklace, and sandals,was getting old (he died in 66) lived on the first floor with his second wife, Aia Bertand. She was a Lithuanian or Latvian woman, dressed in the same fashion, and was our landlady who managed (poorly) the building and Raymond’s “collections”. Part of these collections are now located at Syracuse University. On the second floor was Madame Jailleu’s appartment who obviously was very close to the couple. We occasionally wondered if she had more intimate links with R.D in the past?
On the 3rd floor lived a gentleman named Pierre Merle, who was the former husband of Ligoa, Raymond and Aia’s daughter. He was working for the French National Television Network. However I was more interested in his past career when at one time he was the assistant-director of Jean Vigo, the famous French filmmaker who directed 2 masterpieces: Zero de Conduite and l’Atalante. But I never succeeded in engaging him to talk at length about that part of his professional life.
On the 5th we had a good relationship with an American painter of Hungarian origin, George Agoston. I still wonder nowadays if he ever made it as a recognzed artist.
The building in these days was in a poor, almost derelict, shape. Behind the gallery, right below our windows, was a small theater where on week-ends some singers, musicians, and poets, came to perform for an audience of elderly people. The artistic potential of most of these “has been” performers was most often abysmal, and sometimes we had to close the window to minimize the vocal assaults of an old soprano….
I’m very happy to have discovered your blog.
I myself publish a blog about French food, wines, restaurants, and occasionally films: French Virtual Cafe.
All the best,
Alain Maes
I am surprised no one pointed out a bigger – than the sandals – connection between Raymond Duncan and Gertrude Stein/Alice Toklas, and that is the former used to live at 27, rue de Fleurus. “It was just about this time that Raymond Duncan, the brother of Isadora, rented an atelier in the rue de Fleurus. Raymond had just come back from his first trip to Greece and had brought back with him a greek girl and greek clothes. Raymond had known Gertrude Stein’s elder brother and his wife in San Francisco. The Duncan family had been then at the Omar Khayyám stage, they had not yet gone greek. They had after that gone italian renaissance, but now Raymond had gone completely greek, and this included a greek girl. Isadora lost interest in him, she found the girl too modern a greek. At any rate Raymond was at this time without any money at all and his wife was enceinte. Gertrude Stein gave him coal and a chair for Penelope to sit in, the rest sat on packing cases.” (Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Vintage Books, New York, 1990,pp. 43-44)
Also, as far as the exact location on 27, rue de Fleurus, Shari Benstock mentions that Raymond Duncan “lived across the courtyard” from Gertrude Stein (Shari Benstock, Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900-1940, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1986, p. 85).
Thank you for this specific information. I do try to check my books to gather and verify facts, but I missed this.
I’m puzzled by the plaque in the photograph above (which I photographed myself last week). It indicates that the Raymond Duncan Academy was in that building from 1929, whereas according to biographical notes on the Syracuse Library website it was founded at 31 Rue Seine in 1911.
There’s clearly inaccuracy somewhere. I wonder if anyone can help me to shed light on it?
The friezes, by the way, look like reproductions of those on the frontage of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, which I also took shots of last week.