GOLDSMITH, Money, Women and Power
By Chris Hutchins and Dominic Midgley
Mainstream Publishing, 1998
Brothel-creeping
Another regular at the Crillon bar in those days was a journalist-turned novelist Frederic Mullally. A former political editor of the Sunday Pictorial - now the Sunday Mirror - under the late Hugh Cudlipp, he had moved to Paris following the success of his debut novel, Danse Macabre.
One memorable lunchtime in the spring of 1960, he and Goldsmith were introduced. 'He was a young man: tall, good-looking, well-dressed and blond,' recalls Mullally, adding, 'with a full head of hair', a description which contradicts Goldsmith's authorised biographer's description of a man prematurely balding through grief and stress. Indeed, Mullally got the impression that Goldsmith was, even then, something of a party animal.
He continues: 'Goldsmith asked, "Would you like to come to a maison de rendezvous?" A maison de rendezvous was a sort of upmarket brothel reminiscent of the type of establishment portrayed in the film Belle du Jour, where bored housewives like the woman played by Catherine Deneuve found illicit
excitement and supplemented the housekeeping into the bargain.
'I immediately said, yes,' says Mullally, who now lives in Hammersmith, west London, and continues to write books despite being in his late seventies. He, Sam White [of London's Evening Standard, and the doyen of post-war Paris correspondents] and Goldsmith duly repaired to a four-storey town house on the Avenue Hoche, just off L'Etoile, where Goldsmith was received by a high-class Madame, who obviously knew him very well. 'The girls came down one by one, did a twirl round the salon and smiled,' says Mullally. After making their choice of companion, each man retired to an upstairs room.
'My normal effort would be twenty minutes in those days ,' says Mullally. 'I came down to the salon again and assumed I would meet our hostess, Jimmy and Sam, but there was no one there. When I eventually found the Madame, she told me that Jimmy had sent the first girl down and requested another one.
When I asked about Sam, she told me he was in the cabane, where the ladies relaxed when they weren't working. It was a small room with a large refectory table. Sam was at one end surrounding by girls in negligees, and there was French bread, cheese and half a bottle of red wine on the table. Sam was entertaining them in his impossibly fractured French - he spoke with a very strong Australian accent - but they were hanging on his every word.'
The pair left shortly afterwards. Mullally had enjoyed the novelty of the visit and White had to go back to the office, but Goldsmith remained to sample the delights of girl number three and. sportingly, to settle the bill.
By Chris Hutchins and Dominic Midgley
Mainstream Publishing, 1998
Brothel-creeping
Another regular at the Crillon bar in those days was a journalist-turned novelist Frederic Mullally. A former political editor of the Sunday Pictorial - now the Sunday Mirror - under the late Hugh Cudlipp, he had moved to Paris following the success of his debut novel, Danse Macabre.
One memorable lunchtime in the spring of 1960, he and Goldsmith were introduced. 'He was a young man: tall, good-looking, well-dressed and blond,' recalls Mullally, adding, 'with a full head of hair', a description which contradicts Goldsmith's authorised biographer's description of a man prematurely balding through grief and stress. Indeed, Mullally got the impression that Goldsmith was, even then, something of a party animal.
He continues: 'Goldsmith asked, "Would you like to come to a maison de rendezvous?" A maison de rendezvous was a sort of upmarket brothel reminiscent of the type of establishment portrayed in the film Belle du Jour, where bored housewives like the woman played by Catherine Deneuve found illicit
excitement and supplemented the housekeeping into the bargain.
'I immediately said, yes,' says Mullally, who now lives in Hammersmith, west London, and continues to write books despite being in his late seventies. He, Sam White [of London's Evening Standard, and the doyen of post-war Paris correspondents] and Goldsmith duly repaired to a four-storey town house on the Avenue Hoche, just off L'Etoile, where Goldsmith was received by a high-class Madame, who obviously knew him very well. 'The girls came down one by one, did a twirl round the salon and smiled,' says Mullally. After making their choice of companion, each man retired to an upstairs room.
'My normal effort would be twenty minutes in those days ,' says Mullally. 'I came down to the salon again and assumed I would meet our hostess, Jimmy and Sam, but there was no one there. When I eventually found the Madame, she told me that Jimmy had sent the first girl down and requested another one.
When I asked about Sam, she told me he was in the cabane, where the ladies relaxed when they weren't working. It was a small room with a large refectory table. Sam was at one end surrounding by girls in negligees, and there was French bread, cheese and half a bottle of red wine on the table. Sam was entertaining them in his impossibly fractured French - he spoke with a very strong Australian accent - but they were hanging on his every word.'
The pair left shortly afterwards. Mullally had enjoyed the novelty of the visit and White had to go back to the office, but Goldsmith remained to sample the delights of girl number three and. sportingly, to settle the bill.