For a lover of both, the similarities between the 9th (IXème) arrondissement and Acton are manifold. 19th-century houses built about a great station, the wide tree-lined streets, the vast motor routes leading to the centre of great cities, the associations of great artists who lived in both, the courtesans, the writers, the streets selling delicious produce, the plethora of bars, the parks, these are common to both and when I walk along the Avenue Trudaine or the Rue Lafayette my mind turns to Milton Road or the High Street. In the one French one Mary Cassatt lived and in the other Eric Ravilious. As I pass Our Lady of Lourdes, built by Irish immigrants I remember the stately synagogues built by refugees from pogroms in Eastern Europe and my mind drifts to the moghul mansions of Shaa Road. In both we have havens, craftsmen and women, there in glass, ironwork and ceramics. Here in pottery, silversmithing and funerary art.

Shall I compare the Churchfield Road to the Rue des Martyrs on a Summer’s day? Not yet, but soon, as the restaurants, the florists, the hair salons, les traiteurs, the groceries, the chemists all expand and burst out upon us as faces emerging from the dark of the Metro.

So Acton can and does beguile us, evokes others greater than itself, and in that it bears close examination.

I shall be a visitor armed with my interests and set out to find what it offers. Acton Green, at the Southern end of Acton Lane, a patch of grassland cut in two by the railway, where Van Gogh would have walked through from Isleworth to preach at a tin tabernacle (which used to be on Turnham Green). Did he pass the house where Camille Pissarro stayed? They did not meet until 1876 in Paris but they are a part of Acton's history worthy of blue plaques albeit in the pavement. Pissarro painted images of the building of Bedford Park, then in Acton, and interiors in the IXème.

This was at the time he was painting his famous series ‘Effects of Snow, Mist and Springtime’ in Lower Norwood. Lucien Pissarro lived at 62 Bath Road – in those days it was in Acton - painting and printmaking; setting up the Eragny Press.

Augustus John lived at 8, Milton Road whilst he was a student. He studied at the Slade School of Art. After injuring his head diving into the sea he started to drink heavily, grew a beard and dressed as a Bohemian. In 1914 he obtained a commission from the Canadian army to paint on the Western Front. He was allowed to keep his beard and became the only officer apart from the King to sport facial hair. Despite this concession, he was sent home after two months for taking part in a brawl.

Eric Ravilious was best known for his water colours, his prints and his work for Wedgwood. He was also a friend of Nash and Piper whose window is in St Aidan’s, East Acton. Ravilious was one of the most gifted artists and designers of his time. Despite this, he was sneered at by his wife's family for being the child of a haberdasher and born in Acton. He died on active service as a war artist.

And literature should not be forgotten. Thackeray and William Arnold visited, Alexander Pope passed through, Andre Gide lived close by at the end of the Vale for a time to perfect his already perfect English and, in more recent times Peter Ackroyd was born in Acton. Likewise, in the IXeme arrondissement Mallarme and Zola poet and novelist but art critics both who worked with the painters Monet, Pissarro, Manet, Cassatt, Degas and Cezanne. Monet and Pissarro were in England together in 1870 painting English scenes in the French manner. Pissarro inspired by the buildings of Bedford Park, Monet by the Houses of Parliament.

I have often wondered if John, one of our greatest painters and draughtsmen was caught by the fair in Acton Park as I the visitor was by its gypsies, its campfires, its caravans, the ribambelle of children and little dogs.

I came once and saw the carousels, the flashing lights, I heard the melancholy familiar music, smelled the sweetness of the candy floss and roasting nuts, was enticed to win a goldfish by a smiling olive face in chiaroscuro and I felt ageless, timeless and uplifted. And then, a vision. In the cedar of Lebanon in the garden of the Almshouses I saw a peacock, its tail pendant, watchful. Had it too come with the fair to adorn the white façade of that simple elegant building, a goldsmith’s setting for the King of Birds to gaze upon fireworks under the new moon? It shivered as the owls hooted.

And they screech in the gardens of the houses of the Rothschilds too whose great houses dominated both Acton and the IXeme. Gunnersbury House which still graces the park that bears its name was their Acton house and in Paris their mansion was in the Rue Laffitte, Paris IXeme.

Visits to and from Acton were frequent. Not only Rothschilds but their friends; Rossini was a close friend of Lionel Rothschild who became head of the bank in England and master of Gunnersbury. Rossini who was all fun and charm also lived in the IXème arrondissement in the street now named after him. Felix Mendelssohn came and went and his sister Fanny composed music for Charlotte, Lionel’s beautiful wife and cousin, to play to her children. Another constant visitor was Benjamin Disraeli who was a close friend of both Lionel and Charlotte. The lavish hospitality and celebrations brought the haut-monde of England and Europe to dazzle and amaze dear Acton.

Lionel Rothschild, a passionate horse flesh lover would race his animals under the name ‘Mr Acton’. Sometimes those horses travelled to France to Longchamps and Chantilly. They were stabled both at Gunnersbury and the Rue Laffitte and whilst in Paris they raced in the Bois de Boulogne where ‘Mr Acton’s’ horse ‘Sir Beuys’ won the French Derby.

We may look at the courtesans now - La Paiva, the great Parisian courtesan whose house was in the Place St Georges and who ended her days as the Baroness Von Donnersmark in a vat of formaldehyde ceaselessly pirouetting, had a great friend - Lydia Delmont who ended as she may have begun her days not in Silesia but in Milton Road. Delmont, whose activities have been handed down to us by word of mouth, was known as ‘Sapphire’, so blue were her eyes. She was in all likelihood the daughter of an officer who had turned her out into the world perhaps through poverty to work as a governess. She was well educated knowing, unusually, Latin and Greek, French and Italian. Was there ever a rector of Acton whose daughter left home only to return years later enriched, bejewelled and oft deflowered? It might account for her return thither.

Lydia Delmont was certainly the name she adopted to protect her real identity. She found that teaching deadened her enthusiasm but in Paris she observed the conduct of the great courtesans. They were interesting: often ugly, but possessed of a charm which enabled them to lure benefactors. Lydia was resourceful. Her assets were her intelligence, her breasts ‘which rose and fell like a settling butterfly’, her eyes and her fabled legs. She was all kindness and generosity both with herself and her purse. Her good sense made her fortune. She saw that great men liked simple comforts and her specialities were a wonderfully soft goose-down bed, comfortable chairs – ‘les comfortables’ of recent invention - and delicious food cooked by her Yorkshire housekeeper Edith. She was discreet, a stalwart unfailing friend who preferred to be seen naked at home to being seen dressed at the theatre.

She loved nature and painted watercolours and gouaches of the flowers she grew and birds that came to her garden just below the Place Pigalle.

Lydia arrived in Acton somewhat after 1870. War and the surrender of Napoleon III to the King of Prussia led her to bring her fortune back to England. She had ‘heaps and hills and mounds’ of jewels; sapphires, emeralds, rubies and diamonds – white, yellow and pink. It is believed that Edith her housekeeper came with her but in England her cookery was all for one man and it was cuisine á la française and exquisite. The days when she was famed for the beauty of her decolletage and her jewels were over but she was loved and spent her time with Taroques a friend of Pierre Loti, dining at the Café Royal and enjoying the company of many devoted friends.

Like Liane de Pougy, one of the very great courtesans of a later generation, who had admired Sapphire’s discretion and wit, Lydia Delmont was very devout and had dedicated herself to Saint Mary Magdalene. Her funeral mass was at Vézelay in Burgundy and, it is said, she was buried in the habit of a tertiary Benedictine. Sadly, the site of her grave remains unknown.

She said of her new life, on moving to Acton, "I am no longer horizontal but upright, helas!" This may be true of many of us but we can, nevertheless, enjoy the warmth and charm of Acton and take the train to the Gare du Nord financed originally by Lionel Rothschild and enjoy the IXème where the gates of Heaven are never closed.

Louise La Teinturiere