Hot Chocolate In Paris

...Where I have not been. Been more or less just about everywhere else across Europe - never ever been to Paris.

Anyway, so Angelina Jolie's mother, Marcia Lynne Bertrand, a French-Canadian, used to proclaim rather strongly that her mother at least, 'was as far away from French Parisian as you can get,' and that may well have been quite true. Her husband, and therefore Jolie's grandfather, Rolland Bertrand, was French enough though, if you wanted to make a thing of it.

I think it was John Voight who may have been more intent on preserving the French connection here, since he gave his daughter the name 'Angelina.'

Angelina's is a famous tea rooms in Paris, that is famous in fact, more for their hot chocolate than their actual tea.

What are they doing serving Scotch whisky 
at Agent Provocateur's in Paris?

And then of course, Angelina's is just as famous for being the favored hang-out of Coco Chanel and her friends.

You know, there is just so much more to all of these characters of history than the common history and narratives even have the knowledge to say...

If I started to go into my grandmother's sisters' (on my father's side) history in Europe we will not only be here all day, but some of these people's live were not only 'larger than life' but so far beyond the sheer scandalous, that the highest of society were in awe.

The Greffuhles were endowed with female members of such social prowess - in every possible sense - that... ...well, their salons, especially the one run by Elaine (Bill? Are you following? LOL) openly 'tolerated' the emergent new 'class' of well-heeled American lesbian with massive inheritances, who themselves were eventually taught how to run these things. And they did that. You know, to put it rather crudely here - out of which many great personages of modern times, like Karl Lagerfeld, sprang fully-armed, as it were.

Coco Chanel in the end was a partner with one of the female denizens of this grade of society -, who was a major dancer at the Moulin Rouge and also 'expensive friend' of some of the boys and girls of the salon set. And what were they partners in? Well, asylums for women and children and poor men as well. She and her friend invested heavily, considerable sums, in fact, in these places throughout the latter parts of their very successful lives.

All the while somehow also being able to attend morning coffee at Angelina's, or in this case, hot chocolate.

They bring the hot chocolate out to you in silver or ceramic jugs, right - and then you have that poured out for you into cups with lots of cream on top and also sometimes coffee underneath as well.

...Why am I telling you all this?

Well because we like hot chocolate! 

Don't we?

I must say - Adele Charvet, eh. Very impressed.

Salons, by the way, are not about sex-for-money or even anything like that. Money is there because well, rich people have money.

They came about, quite frankly, because these super wealthy women who were all incredibly sophisticated and highly educated in the highest aristocracy, were being frozen out of 'academies' that were being strictly open to males only at the time. 

Still, it's all too easy for those who wish to be lurid about things to impute many false ideas about what is going on with these women. But there was never any implication by anyone that Elisabeth Greffulhe, for instance, was any kind of 'mistress' to anyone, and never certainly to Edward VII, who always dined informally at her house when he was in Paris.

I tell you all these things for a reason.

Nothing changes:
Plus ca change...
Google says 'the fundamental immutability
of human nature and 
institutions.' 

How do these people, these kinds of people know to conduct their private lives with this person and not with that one? You cannot really say Prince Andrew, for example, is in fact educated in these things at all, really.

Look - why was Andrew hanging with the crowd he was hanging around with, when he might have seemingly as easily been where say Karl Lagerfeld was, for example, and it is no secret to say by extension then in context of the Kaiser, where, oh, Caroline of Monaco was... They don't seem to get into trouble. How come he did?

There are high aristocrats, and they are still around today -, and there are others.

They know because they know the court slippers of Balthazar in the Merchant of Venice.

They know because they know when you wear a certain type of socks.

They know when - if you are a woman - you have zibellino around your neck.

So, Andrew, did your so-called 'friends' in mercantile London do you any favors, did they, Andrew? Money buys you what, then?

There are people here reading this Blog who will have the wit to go and watch Pacino's Merchant of Venice (it is the best one; not that he has particularly distinguished himself recently with any public pronouncements on this or thon...) again now. 

And why not? There could be a salon in their town and they are simply getting ready.