South Yorkshire Times, August 25th, 1951
City of Food – and High Prices
Kilnhurst Visitors to Paris for a Week
From Paris yesterday came a letter which gives cost-of living-conscious Britain a real inferiority complex. Kilnhurst visitors to the French capital – Miss Freda Newby and niece Doreen Newby – writing from the Grand Hotel, Saint Lazare, on the fourth day of their week’s stay comment: “French money is very easy to reckon up” and their subsequent observations show that it needs to be.
“People here are very helpful” Miss Freda Newby writes, “and on most of the shop windows it says ‘We speak English’ so we have no difficulty. Cigarettes are 20 for 3s 4d., so they are not much cheaper than in England. Shoes are very expensive (here you start your French reckoning) – from 2,750 francs (£2 17s 6d approximately) for the cheapest and up to 6,500 franc (£6 15s) and only very ordinary.”
Miss Newby continues “Food here is very dear, one meal is about £1 to 27s 6d., though it is wonderfully cooked and served.” The following example well illustrates this point: soup for a start, then Miss Newby takes up the mouth-watering description “fish garnished with tomatoes, chopped onions and spices, then comes a large thick steak – grilled – potatoes cooked in olive oil, or artichokes sliced finely and garnished with grated onions. On top of that comes mushrooms which taste as though they have been cooked in olives. These mushrooms, of course, are cooked whole. It takes one about an hour and a half to eat a meal.”
High prices predominate in Miss Newby’s shop window comments: “At the moment the city is full of American tourists and it is surprising how the French like to serve them. In the window are cards which say on them ‘Sales discount to Americans cashing dollar cheques,’ and just now the Americans seem to be able to get everything they ask for.”
Miss Newby and her niece toured modern Paris on Tuesday and on Wednesday planned to see the older parts of the city, followed by a night cabaret at Montmartre.
Last comment is again a pricey one. Miss Newby writes on a contemplated trip up the Eiffel Tower. “There is a fashionable restaurant half-way up which charges anything from 5,000 to 6,000 francs a meal (five to six guineas). Of course the Americans are about the only ones able to afford them.”