Anaïs Nin: An Anecdote by Rehan Qayoom

This anecdote and images are from the last return visit to Paris made by the diarist Anaïs Nin in 1974 for a book signing.

The poet Ted Joans remembered an event on 12 November 1974 at the Shakespeare and Company bookshop in Paris, which Nin attended to sign copies of volume five of her Diary that had just been published. George Whitman, the owner of the bookshop, appointed him sergeant-at-arms to keep the crowds moving from around her, with instructions not to let people hold her up.

She was in the back room, and when George brought in some tea in a battered old teapot from which he poured tea into smudgy jars, she protested, “You are still serving tea in those little dirty glass jelly-jam jars; why don’t you buy a proper tea serving set? No, George, I don’t want any of your tea.”

George defended himself, “Oh but, Anaïs, this is very nice. This is darjee – ”

But she insisted, “Yes, served in little jelly and yogurt jars.”

Joans brought a bottle of French wine in his bag from which he took a sip from time to time. Nin noticed this and asked him, “What is it you are drinking?” She said, “Give me some”, so he offered it to her, but apologized that he had no glass or cup. She told him she knew how to drink from a bottle without her lips touching the spout. “I learned this from a Spanish peasant.”

Grabbing the bottle by the neck with four fingers, thumb against her lower lip and tilting her head back, she took “a long, cleanly flow”’” of the wine.

Joans recalled, “She could actually do it! You have to do it real fast. You have to know what you’re doing. The wine doesn’t touch your thumb. It pours right into your mouth. It works, but when I tried it, I got wine all down the front of my shirt.”

They shook hands and kissed goodbye, and she made him promise to tell Gunther Stuhlmann (her literary agent and co-editor of the Diary) to send her the money immediately.

George Whitman claimed he “might have loved Anaïs once,” and she left her will for safekeeping under his bed.

That night, she read from the Diary, took the usual questions, and signed 200-300 books and autographs. When she stood to leave, her husband, Ian Hugo, wrapped a coat around her shoulders and took her by the hand as they both walked out.

Steven Forry recalled being unable to get anywhere near her that night. He ran up the street behind them and held out his hand, as Nin, startled, looked into his eyes, greeted him with both hands, asked his name and what he was doing in France. With tearful eyes, he told her how he bought a one-way ticket from California to Paris, starving and struggling while continuing to study French.

This must have struck a chord with Nin, because she pulled out a pen and some paper from her purse, wrote down her Silver Lake address and home phone number on it, kissed his cheeks three times and said, “When you go back, you can join us at our gathering of writers. See you in California.”

He watched as they walked away, turning left onto the Rue Saint-Jacques.

Copyright © 2023 Rehan Qayoom