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Salon · Invalides (7th) · 7e arrondissement

Comtesse Rosa de Fitz-James's salon, 142 rue de Grenelle

The buildingStill standing
Getting inOutside only
What's there nowThe Swiss Embassy

The building now houses the Swiss embassy and is not open to visitors. The salon belongs entirely to the past.

The Faubourg Saint-Germain salon where Edith Wharton found her Paris society — the Comtesse Rosa de Fitz-James's Tuesdays, and the circle in which her relationship with Morton Fullerton developed.

Address
142 rue de Grenelle, 75007 Paris
Years
Rosa de Fitz-James's Tuesday salon, in the years before the First World War
IllustrationColour photorealistic view of 142 rue de Grenelle and the Swiss flag beneath a blue sky

The same diplomatic facade in bright present-day colour; it is not open to visitors.

Editorial illustration

The place, briefly

Rosa de Fitz-James was Viennese by birth and an outsider by origin, and she built one of the more determined salons of pre-war Paris in this house on the rue de Grenelle. Her Tuesdays gathered writers, diplomats, academicians and aristocracy, and getting into them was an achievement.

Edith Wharton attended and thrived. This was the French intellectual society she had wanted and had not found in New York, and it took her seriously. It was also the milieu in which her relationship with the journalist Morton Fullerton developed — the affair that ran through the years around 1908 and left its mark on her fiction.

The house is now the Swiss embassy. The salon is entirely historical and there is nothing to visit.

Key facts

Whose salon
The Comtesse Rosa de Fitz-James
When
Tuesdays, in the years before the First World War
Why it mattered to Wharton
It was her entry into French intellectual society
The building today
The Swiss embassy
Access
Not open to visitors

In images

The former Fitz-James salon at 142 rue de Grenelle, now the Swiss Embassy.Editorial illustration
The same diplomatic facade in bright present-day colour; it is not open to visitors.Editorial illustration

Timeline

  1. 1900s

    Wharton attends the Fitz-James Tuesdays after settling in Paris.

On the map

Questions before you go

Whose salon did Edith Wharton attend in Paris?

Among others, the Comtesse Rosa de Fitz-James's Tuesday gatherings at 142 rue de Grenelle in the 7th arrondissement.

Can you visit the house?

No. It houses the Swiss embassy and is not open to the public.

Writers who knew this place

Illustrated portrait of Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton

American · American novelist of The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth, who left New York for Paris in 1907, kept an apartment on the rue de Varenne in the Faubourg Saint-Germain — the aristocratic quarter on the Left Bank — for thirteen years, ran refugee charities through the First World War that earned her the Légion d'honneur, France's highest national honour, in 1916, and became, in 1921, the first woman awarded the Pulitzer Prize, America's foremost literary award, for a novel.

Frequented by

Wharton attended the Comtesse Rosa de Fitz-James's Tuesday salon on the rue de Grenelle, the Paris social world in which her relationship with the journalist Morton Fullerton developed.

— A Day in Paris with Edith Wharton

Within walking distance

Present-day color view of visitors approaching the Musée Rodin through blooming rose beds

Museum · Invalides (7th)

Musée Rodin

An eighteenth-century Paris mansion where Auguste Rodin rented four rooms in 1908, later took the whole building, and which he gave away in advance — donating his entire output to the French State on condition it buy the house and turn it into his museum. It opened in 1919, two years after his death.

Visit the place
Colour photorealistic view of 58 rue de Varenne beneath a bright blue sky

Apartment · Faubourg Saint-Germain (7th)

58 rue de Varenne

The apartment Edith Wharton rented from George Vanderbilt for the winters of 1907 and 1908 — her first real Paris home, a few doors from the address that would become her permanent one.

Visit the place
Colour photorealistic view of 80 rue de l'Universite beneath a bright blue sky

Press · Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin (7th)

The Little Review Paris office, 80 rue de l'Université

The Paris office of The Little Review, the magazine that serialised Ulysses and published Djuna Barnes — a publication link rather than a place she is known to have worked in.

Visit the place
Colour photorealistic view of 53 rue de Varenne beneath a bright blue sky

Apartment · Faubourg Saint-Germain (7th)

53 rue de Varenne

The apartment Edith Wharton took in January 1910 and made her principal Paris address — and which became, during the First World War, the headquarters of one of the largest private relief operations in France.

Visit the place
References

References

The sources below include histories, archival materials, scholarly research, and official records that informed this page. They document Comtesse Rosa de Fitz-James's salon, 142 rue de Grenelle, the people connected to it, and its place in Paris.

  1. 1A Day in Paris with Edith Wharton

    Website
    American Girls Art Club in Paris
    Used for

    Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Comtesse Rosa de Fitz-James's salon, 142 rue de Grenelle page.

    View source

  2. 2Edith Wharton: A Chronology

    Website
    The Edith Wharton Society
    Used for

    Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Comtesse Rosa de Fitz-James's salon, 142 rue de Grenelle page.

    View source

  1. 3Edith Wharton

    Biography
    Alfred A. Knopf, 2007
    Used for

    Biographical evidence used to verify chronology, relationships, and historical context connected to Comtesse Rosa de Fitz-James's salon, 142 rue de Grenelle.

  2. 4The Book of the Homeless (Le livre des sans-foyer)

    Nonfiction
    Charles Scribner's Sons, 1916
    Used for

    Published analysis and historical context used in preparing the Comtesse Rosa de Fitz-James's salon, 142 rue de Grenelle page.

    View source
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Why these sources are here

These references provide the documented foundation for this page's history and context. Claim-level citations remain attached to the specific claims they support.

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