Nip back out front, and just around the corner to your right you’ll find a set of stairs that might look a little familiar ... It’s here, in Midnight in Paris, that Owen Wilson’s Gil Pender, an aspiring novelist, sits before hitching a ride back into the 1920s, where he meets his literary icon, Ernest Hemingway. Much of Paris has changed since Hemingway first arrived, in the winter of 1921, but you can still do some time-travelling in a way, by following the great man’s footsteps. Walk eastwards along the skinny Rue Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, veer right into Rue Descartes, and then left down Rue Clovis. On your right you’ll soon see a crumbling brick wall; it’s a remnant of the city barrier built at the turn of the thirteenth century — creating a protective enclosure that helped foster the growth of schools in this area, which in turn attracted intellectuals from all over Europe.
At the bottom of the hill, swerve right and ascend Rue du Cardinal Lemoine. In the early twentieth century, brilliant minds, and voices, from all over the world were flocking to Paris, and even to this very street. In an apartment somewhere along the rustic lane behind the willow-green gates of no.71, James Joyce wrote his 1922 blockbuster Ulysses, acknowledged by many as one of the greatest books of all time. A few minutes’ walk further, you’ll find another literary landmark in the cobalt-blue door of no.74: it was in this building that Hemingway and his wife, Hadley, found their first Parisian apartment.
It was an apartment in the very loosest of terms: a couple of rooms that had barely changed in centuries. There was no gas, nor electricity, and the bathroom was a closet containing a water bowl and bedpan, which was emptied out on the landing, near the communal pissoir. Sewage ended up in a pit that was pumped every night, and carted off by a horse-drawn carriage. You can imagine the stench. Still, as the plaque by the door, quoting Hemingway in his later-life memoir A Moveable Feast, says: ‘This is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.’ On the ground floor, there used to be a rowdy bal musette, where the couple often went dancing, carefree and in love before the pressures of impending fame and parenthood.
Just up ahead is Place de la Contrescarpe, a lively spot with a quartet of paulownia trees at its cobbled centre. It was a down-and-out place back in Hemingway’s time, and he grumbled about the crowded and drunken ‘cesspool’ that was the Café des Amateurs (now Café Delmas). The street that runs west along the square is Rue Mouffetard. Its name is said to be derived from the Old French word for stink — in addition to the urine-drench funk, nearby tanneries and butchers lent their putrid notes to the eau de neighbourhood. Those industries are now, happily, long gone (and the plumbing is up to date). The tourists have taken over from the tanners, and so the strip is heavily populated with eateries that cater to the sight-seeing crowd, many in search of Hemingway’s old ’hood — without realising that if Hem were here today, he’d certainly be living elsewhere. Still, if you wander south down Rue Mouffetard, into the cobbled pedestrian zone, where there’s a marché most days, you’ll well sense the village feel of Ernest’s ‘wonderful narrow crowded market street,’ where Hadley would buy leeks, the couple’s staple in those poor-but-happy days. There are pungent fromageries and poissonneries, and vibrant fruit and vegetable stands — not to mention the colourful characters. This is a street that has long celebrated fresh produce; in a once poor but proud area, food was of utmost, life-or-death importance. The old sign of no.122, a painted wooden carving that originally advertised a wine store, and the fine mural gracing the façade of no.134, once a charcuterie, speak to a time well before Hemingway’s.
Once you reach Place Georges-Moustaki, it’s time to turn back and consider your lunch options. You could grab a baguette-sandwich to-go from the boulangerie, but if you feel like resting your feet, head to Le Mouffetard, a friendly, family-run affair right in the thick of the market action. The food is classic French fare (escargots, confit de canard and the like) that you can imagine Hemingway might have himself eaten once he’d been paid for his most recent newspaper article. There are even the old-school hard-boiled eggs decorating the polished counter, like you used to see everywhere in Paris. It’s a place the author might well have called ‘honest.’
‘Write the truest sentence that you know,’ Hemingway would urge himself, as he struggled over his first novel. Paris ultimately helped him to find his voice: clear, substantial, authentic. He in turn helped to bring prose into the twentieth century, at a time when Modernism was reshaping the arts. Joyce had experimented with stream-of-consciousness, and Hemingway would focus on strength in simplicity. Some say you read Hemingway in black and white, and perhaps this is the influence of his time in this monochrome city, especially having arrived in the depths of winter, with its stripped-back trees. Paris, at the best of times, is subtle in its approach to ornamentation. It’s a classically designed city, with a demure attention to detail that holds back as much as it shows off. Hemingway’s writing, too, limits extraneous flourishes and emotions, keeping much between the lines.
Anyway, the 1920s weren’t the time for flowery poetry and sugary adjectives; sparse, graphic and even macho prose felt much more suitable after the devastations of World War I. Many Americans moved to Paris after the war, lured not only by the vibrant arts scene but also by a favourable exchange rate. Wannabe writers and artists could now easily buy into that time-honoured myth of la vie bohémienne.
After lunch, continue walking up Rue Mouffetard until you reach Rue du Pot de Fer on the left. This slim cobbled strip of restaurants dates from the sixteenth century. The original sewage ditch, running down the centre of the street, is still in place, and would have been functioning back when Hemingway tramped around these streets. British author George Orwell would also have stepped gingerly over these cobbles; he lived on the street in the late 1920s, a truly bohemian existence that saw him working as a dishwasher in posh Right Bank hotels for a pay that barely extended to one meal a day. It was, at least, food for thought, and gritty inspiration for his 1933 book Down and Out in Paris and London — although Orwell’s reminiscences were far from the romantic musings of Hemingway. Take the first right, Rue Tournefort, at the end of which swing left into Rue de l’Estrapade, which follows the line of the ditch that ran along the old city wall. In a few blocks, you’ll see glimpses of the Panthéon to your right. The looming presence of this monument, an ode to past greats, must have served as powerful encouragement to many aspiring, struggling authors around here. Hemingway, in fact, rented a nearby hotel room in which to write, with a top-floor view of the Panthéon’s dome floating above a zig zag of rooftops that surely inspired those strongest, truest sentences of his.
Rue de l’Estrapade runs into Rue des Fossés Saint-Jacques and then, beyond the cross street of Rue Saint-Jacques (stop to admire the countrified eighteenth-century cabaret Au Port du Salut on the corner), into the elegant, split-level Rue Malebranche (which you might also recognise from Midnight in Paris). Swing right into Rue Le Goff, then left down Rue Soufflot (the Panthéon over your shoulder) towards the Luxembourg Gardens. Hemingway pounded these footpaths most days, clearing his head and formulating future sentences. Perhaps that’s why his prose has such momentum and pronounced, repetitive rhythm to it; he walked out his words before he wrote them.
Take a right along Rue de Médicis and enter the gardens by the Rue de Vaugirard gate. The first statue you’ll see, on the left, is the rose-strewn bronze bust of our original boho, Monsieur Murger; he and his pale, poetic friends would hang out in this very nook of the park. Wander ahead and around the back of the Senate, past the children pushing sailboats around the pond. Hemingway, in his own bohemian era, would often walk around this lovely park; it was the perfect way to avoid any food smells when he was ‘belly-empty, hollow-hungry.’ But if the aspiring author aimed his slingshot right, he could catch himself and Hadley a free dinner in the form of a poor unsuspecting pigeon.
Curve around to the north-western corner of the gardens, to the gate by the Musée du Luxembourg. In Hemingway’s time,
this museum showcased the Impressionists and it was here, while marvelling at the Paul Cézannes, that the author experienced what you could call an ‘aha’ moment: he realised he wanted his words to be like Cézanne’s brushstrokes: quick but controlled, clear and concentrated. There might have been relatively few of these brushstrokes, but the minimalism somehow made for more impact, because the power was also in suggestion, in what was additionally left to the imagination. Just as the painter didn’t need to overly embellish his canvases, Hemingway understood that he need not go into too much detail, or use excessive adjectives. Paris, yet again, was exerting its influence over the author to be.
Cross Rue de Vaugirard and head up Rue Férou. Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926, to critical acclaim, making him an instant superstar. He and Hadley were no longer poor and happy, but rich and miserable. After their divorce in early 1927, Hemingway married Pauline Pfeiffer, a fashion editor with a trust fund along with a wealthy, indulgent uncle who treated the newlyweds to an apartment on the top floor of the eighteenth-century garlanded townhouse at 6 Rue Férou — look for the pair of sphinxes guarding the gate. It was a new chapter in Hemingway’s life and a new side of Paris, too. Their apartment was filled with antiques but also all the modcons, including two flushing toilets. It was here that he wrote A Farewell to Arms.
Just beyond Rue Férou — and the wall decorated with the words of Arthur Rimbaud’s poem Le Bateau Ivre (The Drunken Boat) — you’ll come to the Église Saint-Sulpice. Hemingway surely attended mass here; he had converted to Catholicism for Pauline. The author would have appreciated the neo-Classical church for being the site of Charles Baudelaire’s baptism and Victor Hugo’s marriage. Hugo, incidentally, derided the towers for being akin to ‘two huge clarinets’ (the Romantic similarly scoffed that the Panthéon looked like ‘the finest sponge cake’ – little did he know the architectural gâteau would be his final resting place). And true, the towers do appear a little odd, like a pair of oversized salt-and-pepper shakers, because the southern one remains unfinished. Still, the two-tiered colonnade is a masterpiece, as is what’s beyond it — particularly the Eugène Delacroix murals in the Chapel of the Holy Angels, just to your right as you enter.
When you emerge back onto Place Saint-Sulpice, pivot right and walk through to Rue des Canettes — Street of the Ducklings, named for the timeworn carving above the doorway of no.18. You’re on a path well-beaten by past bohemian boots. No.5, just ahead, was once a flea-ridden hotel and home for a while to Murger and his friends, many of whom were so ill their next check-in would be a pauper’s grave. Murger and his Mimi were shacked up in a glacial garret room for a while, in their own ‘poor but happy’ days.
Turn left onto Rue du Four, then right again. Rue Bonaparte will take you up to Boulevard Saint-Germain, on the other side of which you’ll see the iconic Les Deux Magots. Its name refers to the pair of Chinese figurines overlooking the main room, all that remains of the earliest incarnation of the business. Originally a luxury fabric emporium on the nearby Rue de Buci — in Scenes of Bohemian Life Mimi longs for a gown she has seen there — Les Deux Magots moved to larger premises when the Boulevard Saint-Germain was completed. But the boulevards planned by Baron Haussmann seemed tailor-made for restaurant terraces, so it was only a matter of time before the boutique made itself over into a café. Les Deux Magots quickly became the go-to for the intellectual set. Oscar Wilde was an early fan, seen here sipping absinthe most evenings.
Sit yourself down en terrasse. Les Deux Magots offers a library of books to flick through, but despite its literary cred the best way to experience the café is to settle in for some unabashed voyeurism. Admire the passing parade of soignées Parisiennes and eccentrically attired locals, or brush up your French by surreptitiously eavesdropping on the tables around you. The district might not be the publishing central it once was, but this is still a popular meeting place for editors and writers, who appreciate this café as one of the city’s lieux de mémoire. Hemingway would come here to jot away in his notebook, but also to indulge in his favourite pastime of people-watching, and so perhaps this café helped him hone the observation skills that made his novels and various sketches so sharp. His preferred tipples here were café crème and sherry (depending on the time of day or state of deadlines), so order yourself a pick-me-up in salute to Papa. And perhaps some afternoon tea. As Hemingway’s career took off, so too did his taste for the good life, the committed gourmand doubtless making up for all of those hungry years, so it’s totally appropriate to indulge in his honour. Ask to see the photo-worthy dessert tray: a silver platter laden with such pâtisseries as glossy berry tarts, pastel macaron sandwiches and caramelised millefeuilles. Don’t be shy. Anyway, you’ll soon walk it off …
Today’s final destination is Montparnasse, about a half-hour walk away. When you’re ready, stroll south back down Rue Bonaparte, and take a right into Rue Vaugirard. On the next corner you’ll see a picturesque bookstore, Le Pont Traversé, whose Belle Époque storefront speaks to its past life as a boucherie — and sure enough, the old meat hooks are still in place above the floor-to-ceiling shelves of antique French books. Thankfully, however, the only aroma is that of powdery paper.
Two blocks on, swing left into Rue d’Assas then right into Rue de Fleurus. At no.27 a plaque declares this to be the former address of Gertrude Stein. The American-born author was also a patron of the arts — her walls were cluttered with a museum-status collection of Post-Impressionist paintings — and a mentor to hopeful writers, a succession of whom would drop into the salon with a letter of introduction, praying to be taken under her wing. A young Hemingway was one of the lucky ones, his charm rewarded with a standing after-five invitation. In his early Paris years, after those chilly, head-clearing walks around the Luxembourg Gardens, Hemingway would make his way to Stein’s parlour, where — warmed by a roaring fire and fruity liqueur — guests would sink into tufted-leather, gentleman’s-club chairs and talk shop. Stein, who lived here from 1903 to 1938, in the city that was then the global centre of artistic expression, had a front-row seat for observing the action. It was she who coined the term the ‘Lost Generation’, to describe the twentysomethings of the 1920s, whose youth had been interrupted by war. ‘You have no respect for anything,’ Hemingway recalled her saying. ‘You drink yourselves to death.’
The Lost Generation theme weaves itself through The Sun Also Rises, which starts off in the carefree barhopping culture of post-war Paris. It was a decade known here as Les Années Folles, The Crazy Years, for the wild partying as much as nose-snubbing artistic movements such as Surrealism, all hedonistic reactions to the apparent absurdity of life. The capital of the craziness was Montparnasse; to get there continue west along Rue de Fleurus, turn left at Boulevard Raspail, and head down to Boulevard du Montparnasse. On your right at this intersection — the Carrefour Vavin — you’ll see the lipstick-red awnings of La Rotonde and, across the boulevard, the glassed terrace of Le Dôme.
At the turn of the twentieth century, a still-pastoral Montparnasse was the haunt of students and artists living the bohemian life, in stables converted into art studios. But the neighbourhood quickly became fashionable — as cool districts are wont to do — and by the era of Art Deco it had a fast flashiness to it, with a cluster of cafés that doubled as global tourist attractions. Start at La Rotonde, either en terrasse, or in the ruby-velvet, tasselled-lamp-lit interior. The perfect apéritif is surely a kir royal, with its rosy sparkle. Soak it all in; almost a century on, you can still sense how it was when F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald partied here, along with other Americans escaping a culture of Puritanism and Prohibition. Hemingway mostly avoided La Rotonde — too many tourists for his liking — and it’s as crowded as ever these days. Still, it’s impossible not to feel a frisson when sitting amid the glamour, in the very place where Henry Miller once declared his love for Anaïs Nin.
Once your apéro hour is up, make your way west along Boulevard du Montparnasse, to find Le
Select. Unassuming in style, Le Select was Hemingway’s preferred spot down this way, and his characters in The Sun Also Rises are regular drinkers here — probably because it was the first of the Montparnasse cafés to stay open all night. Nowadays, Le Select is one of those Parisian eateries that dish up French comfort food with a side serve of nostalgia (onion soup, omelette, egg mayo), which makes it the ideal dining choice for today’s walking tour.
After dinner, pop across the road to peer into the Art Deco monument that is La Coupole. The mega brasserie opened in 1927, and instantly became the place to be seen for all socialistas. It still features a ‘Bar Américain,’ a phenomenon at the time for Parisians, who were only just learning the art of the cocktail from American bartenders run out of business back home by the Prohibition. If you feel like un cocktail — the original attempt to Frenchify the word to coquetèle never quite took off — drop in; if not, stroll back towards the Carrefour Vavin, and Le Dôme. Now a seafood restaurant, it was a favourite hang for expat writers in the 1920s, when you could linger for hours at one of the many terrace tables, for the price of a coffee.
Keep walking eastwards along the boulevard, to our final address: La Closerie des Lilas. In the nineteenth century, this part of Paris was still largely rural, dotted with dairies and orchards, as well as several bals jardins — pleasure gardens. The most popular of the open-air dancehalls was the Bal Bullier, also known as La Closerie des Lilas for its lilac hedges, which infused the enclosure with a fresh country air. Here, students and grisettes flirted among the fragrant, shady groves, and danced beneath a galaxy of candelabra and stars. The current La Closerie is named in tribute to the old dancehall, which was just across Avenue de l’Observatoire. Originally a village-like café, it was a favourite of the area’s bohemian artists, and still had a bucolic air about it when Hemingway made its peaceful terrace his favourite writing spot, far from the madding crowd of Carrefour Vavin. He griped, though, when the café transformed itself into an American bar in the mid-1920s. The Deco cocktail lounge is still there, so venture through the leafy bower of an entrance, into the cosy piano bar, with its amber glow and glossy banquettes, and order yourself a nightcap. Consider the French Martini, which seems a very Hemingway-in-Paris way to end today.
Paris for Dreamers Page 24