A Note on Terms
The gentle legalities of a notebook: what these pages are, what they are not, and how people found them.
These pages are personal essays — one retired woman's recollections of a working life on Boulevard de Clichy. They are offered for reading, freely, and on that basis a few plain statements are due.
What this site is: private, non-commercial memoir and commentary. Opinions expressed are my own and reflect an insider's affection, not an insider's authority — I speak for myself alone. Details of hours, services and arrangements are described from memory; anything that matters to your plans should be verified with the establishment itself, which is the only authority on its own operations.
What this site is not: not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by or connected to the cabaret or its owners in any way; not a source of tickets, reservations or payment services of any kind; not professional advice of any description. All trademarks and names that appear in these recollections belong to their respective owners, and are used only to describe where I worked and what I saw.
Accuracy: I write from memory and notebook, and memory is generous but fallible. Errors are mine alone, corrections are welcome by post, and the site is offered as-is with no warranty that every detail has survived the years intact.
How some visitors found this page
Over the years readers have reached this notebook through the strangest little corners of the internet — a forum for former theatre staff, a link in someone's travel diary, a friend's forwarded bookmark, once a postcard quoting a paragraph I did not recognise and eventually traced to an early draft. If you arrived by some winding path, know that you are the audience I wrote for: people who follow a quiet link and find a quiet page. There is nothing at the end of this text to click except the rest of the notebook — the tables, the evenings, the streets of the quartier. Stay as long as you like; the kettle, metaphorically, is always on.
That is the whole of it. Short terms for a small site — as it should be.
If any part of this page seems more cautious than the rest of the site — that is the modern world, not Marcelle. A notebook that mentions a famous house must say plainly it is not that house, and now it has said it plainly twice, which should satisfy anyone. For everything else, the house rules of this site are the same as the house rules of the room I ran for twenty-five years: come as you are, be good company, take your memories with you when you go, and tell your friends if the evening pleased you. And as in the room itself, the maître d' reserves one quiet privilege: if any passage of this site ever seems unclear or mistaken, write to me and we will set it right together, the way we used to settle a misplaced table — politely, quickly, and with both parties leaving satisfied. And if you are still reading terms pages at this hour — come sit in the parterre sometime, the notebook keeps better company than the small print.