It’s finally February!

Some inspirations for the chunky little month ahead

Feb 02, 2025

Dear Friend,

If you are reading this, it means you survived January – so well done! Judging by conversations I’ve had, and by my own sentiment, this January has felt particularly never-ending. But now here we are inside compact, tunnel-like February, transporting us all the way to springtime (in this part of the world, at least). It’s finally not so crushingly dark in the mornings and the light is lingering a bit longer each evening. How is the transition to February feeling where you are?

My January actually got a very nice interlude last weekend when we travelled down to the south of the country for some hotel review commissions and winter sunshine. We spent two nights in Aix-en-Provence, the beautiful, fountain-dotted town that blends the elegance of some of Paris’ swankiest corners with the colours and climate of Provence. A winning combination.

We had lunch with a friend of my partner’s from Kenya who now lives in the town with her family, and though she is used to it, she still finds the picture-book prettiness of Aix striking. “Sometimes the little scenes — the shops, the fountains and the sunlight — make me feel like I’m inside an Instagram post,” she told me. “And I don’t even use Instagram.”

I wrote about my last visit to Aix-en-Provence in 2023 in these letters, which was inspired in large part by the writing of MFK Fisher. I discovered the American writer’s work – about food, France and also generally being alive – a couple of years ago. My trip to Aix was inspired by her book Map of Another Town, comprising essays about her time spent living there with her two pre-teen daughters.

I wrote this about her before (excuse me quoting myself):

“I love the way she writes and the way she thinks. She writes often about the joys of eating out alone, travelling alone — being a woman out in the world alone. In my last letter, I wrote about the experience of being a woman in different spaces and how spaces can invite or un-invite us. I was really struck by the number of women who wrote back to that letter sharing they could relate to the feeling of being excluded, patronised, belittled.
In this regard, Fisher’s writing is a tonic, because — regardless of the reactions of others — she seems to conduct herself with a remarkably steely poise. She does what she wants, she goes where she wants and she thinks what she wants. Particularly remarkable when we consider she was writing in the Forties, Fifties, Sixties, Seventies.”

On a related theme, yesterday evening I went to a local wine bar/ restaurant in the 18th arrondissement called Aux Vins Vivants where my friend

Sutanya Dacres

is hosting a culinary ‘pop-up’. We sat amid shelves of wine bottles in a dinky dining room while Sutanya bustled away in the establishment’s small kitchen, producing delectable dishes.

Since starting her podcast Dinner For One in 2018, charting how she rebuilt and transformed her life in Paris through food, Sutanya wrote a memoir of the same name. After that, she started a supper club exclusively for single women, which she hosts in her home. On top of this, she now regularly does these culinary cameos in different independent restaurants around the city. Each one is phenomenally well-attended by her seemingly never-ending roster of friends. Her podcast is back for a new season which, in MFK Fisher style, celebrates women cultivating rich lives for themselves, or “transforming solo living into a celebration of self.”

A final note on women cultivating rich lives for themselves. The Centre Pompidou is soon set to close for FIVE WHOLE YEARS to undergo a big refresh. Just before it does, the art gallery is hosting a phenomenal exhibition dedicated to the work of Suzanne Valadon. The Post-Impressionist artist, a bit like MFK Fisher, is perhaps not as well known as she ought to be – and I hope this exhibition will change that.

She grew up in Montmartre, living with her mother, a laundry woman, during the end part of the 19th century when the hilltop village was a haven for artists and counter-culture. As a young teen she joined the circus, but her career as a performer was cut short when she fell off the flying trapeze. Confident, intelligent and beautiful, she went on to find work as an artist's model for the likes of Toulouse-Lautrec and Renoir. While posing, she watched their technique and how they went about creating each painting. After seeking some advice from her pal Degas, she decided she could definitely do it too – and what’s more she had interesting things to paint about!

She began painting bold, vibrant portraits of friends, her mother, her lovers. She painted male and female nudes and arresting self-portraits. She experienced commercial success quite rapidly and became rich from her own work.

Concurrently, she developed a reputation as one of the big bohemian characters of Montmarte. She had many lovers, including the composer Erik Satie, who seemed to have trouble getting over their dalliance once it ended – reportedly he put up a mournful sign outside his house documenting the day and time that Valadon had left him.

Valadon’s son Maurice Utrillo, born to an unknown father when Valadon was 18, also became a painter, his art proving to be a tonic in his otherwise quite troubled life. Later, Utrillo’s friend André Utter (also a painter) would become Valadon’s long-term lover. In the exhibition you’ll see portraits she created of the three of them together.

Suzanne Valadon’s work has long been on display in the charming Musée de Montmartre, where her apartment and studio is also recreated. It’s a delightful small museum and it’s fitting her work should have a home in her neighbouthood, but it’s also great to see her striking paintings get such a high-profile airing at the Pompidou. If you’re in Paris, be sure to catch the exhibition before it closes on 26 May. I went the week it opened with my friend

Jion Sheibani

, herself a very talented writer, illustrator and artist. We both loved it, and she has already been back a second time to see Suzanne again.

Thirty-second book club

I’m afraid I’m still making my way through Germinal by my good personal friend Emile Zola. I am enjoying it, and many of its observations about the toil of workers vs. the leisure of shareholders still ring true today. Now, the whole series of Rougon-Macquart novels was written as a big interconnecting web of characters, a bit like a soap opera. However, there was no TV then, so large and elaborate group scenes instead of being shown are described, which makes for a rather long book. I do hope to finish it within February.

Thank you to those who wrote lovely replies to my last letter. Thanks also to those who came back with naming suggestions about the new tradition for dinners in a different area of Paris that I’ve developed with my friend Fiona. Some strong proposals include “the Gour-mondes” (Alex in Berlin), or "Culinary Crusaders" (Judge Roy Bean). I will convene with Fiona before the grand official naming at the next meeting.

I hope this first week of compact February treats you well. I’ll write very soon!

Yours,

Hannah