French Sketches: Cap d'Antibes and the Murphys

Gerald and Sara Murphy, a wealthy young American couple, arrived in Paris in 1921 and walked into the Modernist cultural revolution sweeping through France. They were charter members of the Lost Generation chronicled so poignantly by Ernest Hemingway in "The Sun Also Rises." In fact, they were with Hemingway at Pamploona, Spain in 1926 for the famous running of the bulls.

The Murphy legend began earlier in the summer of 1922 when songwriter Cole Porter, a friend of Gerald's at Yale, invited ...