Nancy Mitford MANY COUNTRIES have a great house, a place that symbolizes the nation state in all its authority and power. There’s the White House in Washington. There’s Number 10 Downing Street in London. In Australia, far less grandly, there’s the Lodge in Canberra. In Paris, of course, there’s the Palais de l’Élysée, 55–57 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, at the corner of Avenue de Marigny. This is the home of the French President. But as I stand across the road, gazing at the immaculate guards and the high gates of the Élysée, I am not thinking about the grandeur of this place. I am thinking how delightful it is – how quintessentially French it is – that the French President should live in a home owned and decorated by a courtesan, the famous Madame de Pompadour, mistress to Louis XV and the most gifted woman of her age. This house was designed purely for love and pleasure. I’m sure France is the only nation in the world to permit such a feminine, romantic – and let’s face it, decadent – association to contaminate a position of national authority.
