A New York Exile

The idea of summer in the woods of Michigan, staying in a cabin on Cedar Lake, greatly appealed to Jacqueline Fournier. A fresh lake breeze and a simple way of living would be a fine alternative to the sophistication and culture that were her habits in Paris. She packed her water-skis and summer clothes, and boarded the luxury French Line flagship Normandie at Le Havre, unaware that she was stepping into a five-year exile. Like the rest of the world in that spring of 1939, Jacqueline did not see the shadow of hardship that lay ahead, or the twists in the path that eventually would lead her back home.

She was twenty-nine years old and single, with blue eyes, short, dark brown hair, and a quiet and serious manner. She had been working as secretary to a Paris-based writer, Jean Pellenc, for seven years. His wife was American, and in May 1939, they asked if she would join them for a four-month vacation in the States to help care for their three-year-old son. They were going to spend the summer at Cedar Lake and then visit Pittsburgh. Jacqueline had sailed the Adriatic and the Aegean; she had visited England and Switzerland, but crossing the Atlantic was a voyage of a larger order. That was further afield than she had ever been, and she was thrilled at the idea.

They docked in New York harbor after six days at sea. Skyscrapers! She had never seen them before. They seemed to tilt for a day or two after she got off the ship. They took a train to Detroit, and a car was waiting there to take them to Cedar Lake. She spent the summer swimming and playing tennis; the boat turned out to be not powerful enough to pull a skier. The family had given her a car to use, and she drove into a nearby town for an occasional milkshake. So much was new. The drugstore, the five-and-ten. Hamburgers. Cafeterias. The wooden cabin in Michigan was the antithesis of the elegant Paris apartment where she grew up, where meals were formal, education was strict and classical, and she and her two younger sisters were looked after by an English nanny. Even as a grown woman with a job, Jacqueline was tied to the rather rigid structure of bourgeois family life. But in the woods of Michigan, everything was easy, and she felt free and relaxed. It was as pleasant a summer as she could imagine.

The idyll was shattered in early September, with the news that France and Britain had declared war on Germany. Summer was over. They packed up and drove to Pittsburgh, where Madame Pellenc's family had a home. There was no question of going back to France, even if they could find trans-Atlantic transport, which had disappeared into the breach of the war. They would be stuck on the American side of the Atlantic for quite a while. None of them dreamed it would be five years.

The Pellencs offered lodging and support for as long as she liked, but Jacqueline felt that she should strike out on her own. She went to New York and took a room at a women's hotel on Madison Avenue, stayed for two weeks, and then found lodgings with a French family that had emigrated to the States before the war. In November, she found a job in the military mission of the French consulate, buying explosives and chemicals. She didn't know anything about the materiel, but at least it was work, and if the salary was low, she had enough to eat. Missing music, she started scrimping and saving her meager pay—based on the weakened franc—to buy a radio. She had looked at different models, and had her eye on one with a wooden cabinet, which she thought would have a nicer sound. On Christmas Eve, 1939, she went to the store and bought it, took it home, and set it next to the chimney to find the following morning, a Christmas gift to herself. It was a small, cold Christmas, but at least she could finally listen to the world. She waited until the after-Christmas sales to buy a winter coat. She had arrived with no warm clothes, and it was already below freezing.

In the spring of 1940, she and a Swiss office-mate called Ellen Gautier rented an apartment together, "furnished" with a sad couch and two twin beds, but a large empty living room that suited them perfectly. Their first move was to rent a baby-grand piano and put it in the center. They struck a deal: the first one home from work got an hour, not a minute more, on the piano, and then it was the other's turn. They had musician friends as well and got together to play as often as possible. Around Jacqueline, music was always in the air.

"I liked my life there," she said. She walked and walked the streets of the city, discovering it bit by bit. She ice-skated at Rockefeller Center and played tennis at a friend's apartment-house courts. She and Ellen met a fellow who took them water-skiing and horseback-riding. Sports and music kept her from missing her family too much, or feeling too alone in the big city. "I loved New York. I still have it under my soles," she said years later.

The Nazis invaded France in May 1940, and with the French surrender in June, the consulate in New York closed. Jacqueline had "government official" stamped on her passport because of her work there, and needed a civilian visa in order to find another job. It wasn't easy. She had to go to Montreal to apply for entry into the U.S. as a civilian. She managed to accomplish that by October 1940, and through friends, found work at Roger & Gallet, the cosmetics company. But back in New York at last, Jacqueline discovered that the French were now being treated as "enemy aliens" because of the Nazi occupation of their country and the Vichy government's collaboration. French friends with pleasure boats suddenly had their licenses confiscated; American friends in the U.S. military suddenly could no longer see them. Not only were the French in exile, they found themselves isolated socially and treated with mistrust.

The reports from France were bleak. She had no more news of her family, and could only imagine their suffering. In fact, her father's export business had been closed by the Nazis, leaving the family with no income. Her maternal grandfather, who had lived through the German occupation of France in 1870, and had lost both his sons in the First World War, now lost his family home in Herblay to Nazi occupation. Going to collect his sons' portraits and military medals from the house, he collapsed suddenly and died. Jacqueline's sister Suzanne said he died of chagrin, that he simply could not face a third round of tragedy. Many in France felt the same way. The devastation of the First World War was not yet in the past, but an enduring sorrow in every village, in nearly every family. The rapidity of the French surrender in 1940 was in large part due to this legacy of loss.

Jacqueline would not hear...