Temple à l'Amitié

Natalie Clifford Barney,

Temple a l'Amitié

I have reminded one of the scenes from one of my favourite films, Le Feu Follet, by Louis Malle; a place where roam the protagonist of the history and his girlfriend (the actors Maurice Ronet and Jeanne Moreau), just where is the “Temple à l'Amitié” (Temple to the Friendship), and, as it always happens to me, one thing brings me magically to the other... and I discovered that it is a small temple located in a place almost secrecy that is part of a plot adjacent to a flag of the 20 rue Jacob in Paris.

Le Feu Follet, (1963)
by Louis Mallle

Le Feu Follet

Temple surrounded by mystery and legends, romantic since its creation in the 19th century, was known mostly by a woman, the american millionaire called Natalie Clifford Barney, which at the beginning of the s. XX, made the flag of the 20 rue Jacob her usual housing.

A woman full of mystery also and inclined toward everything artistic and intellectual world important in that historic moment of which she finished forming part, inspiring the time to many writers and artists, organizing these famous encounters literary in its tea room and festivals surreal in the gardens of the temple dedicated to the Friendship located behind the mythical street, 20 rue Jacob. By there passed writers like Hemingway, Proust, Joyce..., also musicians.

 
interior temple


20 rue Jacob, 1910

In some apartments adjacent to the plot was installed some artists and writers too, among them Colette, a friend of the american, and that curiously had lived there before she arrived. Colette writes about the place: « La plupart des maisons qui bordèrent la rue Jacob, entre la rue Bonaparte et la rue de Seine, datent du XVIIIe siècle. Le seul danger que j'aie couru rue Jacob était l'attrait de l'ombre, les brèves échappées d'air libre, quelques rafales de grêle printanières se ruant par la fenêtre ouverte, l'odeur vague des lilas invisibles venue du jardin voisin. Ce jardin, je n'en pouvais entrevoir, en me penchant très fort sur l'appui de la fenêtre, que la pointe d'un arbre. J'ignorais que ce repaire de feuilles agitées marquait la demeure préférée de Remy de Gourmont et le jardin de son "amazone". Beaucoup plus tard, je franchis la palissade du jardin, je visitai le petit temple qu'éleva "à l'amitié" Adrienne Lecouvreur. Garé du soleil, ce jardin ne veut, encore aujourd'hui, nourrir qu'un lierre de tombeau, des arbres âgés et grêles et ces plantes aqueuses qui croissent en couronne à l'intérieur des puits. »


("Most houses which surrounded rue Jacob, between the rue Bonaparte and the rue de Seine, date of the eighteenth century. The only danger that I ran rue Jacob was the attractiveness of the shadow, the brief escape routes of free air, some gusts of hail to spring--by the open window, the smell wave of the lilacs invisible coming of garden neighbor. The garden, I could not foresee, in me very strong bias on the support of the window, the tip of a tree. I was unaware that this den of leaves turbulent marked the preferred remains Remy of Gourmont and the garden of its "amazon". Much later, I crossed the enclore of the garden, I visited the small temple that lifted up "to the friendship" Adrienne Lecouvreur. Parked of the sun, this garden does not want, still today, feed nothing than an ivy tomb, of older trees and hailstorms and these aqueous plants that grow in crown within the wells. “)