After perusing the stalls along Quai de Montebello and Quai de la Tournelle, turn left onto Pont de la Tournelle — stopping to admire the dramatic view of Quasimodo’s old digs — and continue through to the Île Saint-Louis once home to Monsieur Baudelaire himself. Head over Pont Marie and take a left at the Quai de l’Hôtel de Ville, where the book sheds start up again. This is an especially appealing stretch of the quays, overlooking the redeveloped riverfront — the Parc des Rives de Seine — where Parisians come to drink rosé with friends, or recline in a slouchy chair and read.
The Right Bank has never been as associated with literature as the Left Bank, it’s more the traditional home of power. Soon, on your right, you’ll see the Hôtel de Ville, or town hall. It looks like a turreted château from a Renaissance fairytale, but its most famous literary appearance was actually a gruesome one. The square out front, once known as Place de Grève, was the city’s site for executions. In Hugo’s Hunchback, it’s where Quasimodo was whipped and — spoiler alert — Esmeralda hanged. Much worse happened in real life. All types of torture and execution equipment could be found at this address (now the Place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville), from stakes to gallows, the guillotine to the wheel. Incidentally, wheel in French is la roue; a rake, à la Richelieu, is known as a roué — as in, a man so dastardly and dissolute he deserves to be strung up on a wheel.
Many of the bouquinistes, as you’ll see along Quai de Gesvres and Quai de la Mégisserie, peddle vintage magazines along with old books, or posters repurposed from old fashion or fragrance advertisements. For lovers of glamour from another era, it’s enough to make you giddy. So is this worthwhile detour …
When you get to Rue de l’Arbre Sec — just opposite the northern edge of the Square du Vert-Galant — turn right and head up to no.52. Behind the cobalt-blue coach doors, tucked into the back corner of a cobbled courtyard, is La Galcante — part gallery, part brocante. You can’t miss it — your nose will lure you on a uniquely musty, musky scent trail. It’s the aroma of centuries’ worth of ink-infused paper, well-thumbed glossy magazines and crumbling, yellowing prints.
Creak through the arched doorway and you’ll swear you’re in a Woody Allen movie. Dust particles shimmer in the soft light, and zippy jazz notes dance in the air. The effect is almost hypnotic. Prepare to spend a good half-hour among all the paper paraphernalia, some of which dates back to pre-revolutionary times. Flip through 1950s Vogue magazines, locate the Le Monde of your birth date, or ooh at the box of Brigitte Bardot clippings. The past right there, at your dusty fingertips.
It’s a bittersweet experience. Print seems all the more ephemeral in this otherworldly store. Then again, La Galcante serves as a museum for the power and poetry of paper. And the bouquinistes, of course, are also proud of the role they play in keeping the legacy going. For centuries, France has been a leading light in literature, both high and low. Paris produced one of the first printed magazines, Le Mercure Galant (The Gallant Mercury), in 1672. And it was the first gazette to orient itself to the world of style, although it also covered numerous cultural and social issues: when La Princesse de Clèves came out, for instance, the editor asked his readers to have their say on one of the book’s most contentious issues: should a woman be honest enough to tell her husband she’s in love with another man?
Head back down to Quai du Louvre, and scan the remaining green boxes. Now is the time to buy a few spare souvenirs you might need for random gifts. How can anyone not enjoy a kitsch snow globe? Also, tiny Eiffel Towers double up nicely as ring holders, while those pill boxes bouquinistes love, the ones topped with images of Moulin Rouge girls or the Mona Lisa, are nifty for vitamins. When you’re done, take yourself, and your stash of books and magazines, into the Tuileries; to get there, keep walking along the river until you reach the high-pitched pavilion at the end of the Louvre’s Denon wing, and take a right. As you descend the stairs, stop to take in the celebrated axe historique, that perfect axis of Parisian monuments.
Soon after the Tuileries opened to the public in 1667, the park became a place where Parisians came to eat and drink, promenade and pose. While entry was essentially democratic, anyone not deemed adequately stylish was turned away. So Paris’s first social scene also acted as a kind of fashion runway, at a time when the French luxury industry was coming into its own. It was here where the editor of Le Mercure Galant came, to interview the most smartly attired and accessorised women about where they shopped, and here where illustrators would sketch Parisiennes wearing the latest looks. These became fashion plates, those delicious chocolate-box watercolours you probably saw hanging from the bouquinistes’ sheds — usually a depiction of two women dressed in all kinds of flounces and finery. The precursors to fashion shoots, before the mainstream advent of photography, fashion plates informed women of France — such as a daydreaming Emma Bovary in the provinces — and beyond how to dress à la parisienne.
You could pull up a green chair by the pond and indulge in the good old-fashioned fun of people-watching. Or if you prefer to delve into the Paris of the pages you’ve just bought, follow the topiary-trimmed gravel of the Allée Centrale towards the Grand Couvert, the dense greenery in the middle of the park. Venture past the pleached hornbeams and luscious chestnuts that frame this wooded wonderland, and you’ll come upon a chequerboard of wooded groves that reveal all sorts of horticultural and creative delights. By one of the exèdres, the Ancient-style pond features, is a sun-dappled restaurant terrace, where it’s easy to imagine yourself back in time. Sit down for dinner, with French literature’s most colourful characters as your dining companions.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I have collected countless memorabilia and trivia during my numerous Parisian jaunts, but Paris for Dreamers would have not been possible without many of the books on Paris that have come before it, which inspired and enriched my research process no end. I’d like to particularly credit:
Seven Ages of Paris by Alistair Horne, and Paris: Biography of a City by Colin Jones. They’re two of my favourite general histories of the city. I also adore Paris by John Russell, a lavishly illustrated and richly informative read that should be on ever Paris lover’s coffee table.
The various works of Joan DeJean, John Baxter and David Downie. They’re all a pleasure to read and are so clever they surely raise the IQ several points.
I doff my beret to the gorgeous guides to Paris by Marcia DeSanctis, Susan Cahill, Christina Henry de Tessan and Vanessa Grall. Each has enhanced my own walks through Paris over the years.
The Flâneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris by Edmund White is an exquisitely written love letter to this city, and so beautifully sells the wonder of walking in Paris.
Dictionnaire Historique des Rues de Paris by Jacques Hillairet was my indispensable guide to the history of Parisian streets, and who lived where. My head spins at the wealth of information within.
The following were my other go-tos for information on Parisian buildings: The Architecture of the French Enlightenment by Allan Braham, Paris: An Architectural History by Anthony Sutcliffe, The Architecture of Paris by Andrew Ayers, and Transforming Paris: The Life and Labors of Baron Haussmann by David P. Jordan. And I could not have confidently written my chapter on the Louvre without having had The Architecture of the Louvre by Geneviève Bresc-Bautier at hand.
My chapter on the Marquise de Pompadour’s Paris equally owes debts to Madame de Pompadour: A Life by Evelyne Lever, Madame de Pompadour: Mistress of France by Christine Pevitt Algrant, and Madame de Pompadour by Nancy Mitford.
Nancy Mitford’s Voltaire in Love was also a joy to sink into. Voltaire: A Life by Ian Davidson also has my appreciation for being a comprehensive study of the man behind the legend.
Other biographies I consulted throughout my writing include: Ritz & Escoffier: The Hotelier, The Chef & The Rise of the Leisure Class by Luke Barr; Héloïse & Abélard: A New Biography by James Burge; Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France by Leonie Frieda; The Rival Queens:
Catherine de Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal that Ignited a Kingdom by Nancy Goldstone; Renoir’s Dancer: The Secret Life of Suzanne Valadon by Catherine Hewitt; The Girl Who Loved Camellias: The Life and Legend of Marie Duplessis by Julie Kavanagh; Cooking for Kings: The Life of the First Celebrity Chef Antonin Carême, by Ian Kelly; Paris and her Remarkable Women: A Guide by Lorraine Liscio; Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life by Justine Picardie; George Sand by Martine Reid; Grandes Horizontales: The Lives and Legends of Four Nineteenth-Century Courtesans by Virginia Rounding; A Dangerous Liaison: A Revelatory New Biography of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre by Carole Seymour-Jones; and, The Real Traviata: The Song of Marie Duplessis by René Weis.
I adored the following books for taking me back to different Parisian eras: Left Bank: Art, Passion and the Rebirth of Paris 1945-1950 by Agnès Poirier; In Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse and Modernism in Paris 1900-1910 by Sue Roe; The World of the Salons: Sociability and Worldliness in Eighteenth-Century Paris by Antoine Lilti; The Age of Conversation by Benedetta Craveri; and the series of books by Mary McAuliffe.
A huge merci to these highly enjoyable reads, for helping me better understand a particular place: A Corner in the Marais: Memoir of a Paris Neighbourhood by Alex Karmel; Into a Paris Quartier: Reine Margot’s Chapel and Other Haunts of St-Germain by Diane Johnson; and Shakespeare and Company: A History of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart by Krista Halverson (editor).
Other titles that enhanced my literary knowledge of Paris were: Paris: A Literary Companion by Ian Littlewood; Writers in Paris: Literary Lives in the City of Light by David Burke; and, The Atlas of Literature by Malcolm Bradbury (editor).
I only hope I can pay it forward one day, inspiring other future writers on their own journeys around Paris, both figuratively and literally.
I wrote Paris for Dreamers as 25 distinct walks, or essays. I am eternally grateful to Julia Cain for helping to ensure that all chapters all came together as a seamless collection, without too much overlap or repetition.
I am also indebted to illustrator Clémentine Campardou and designer Sandy Dao for the cover of my dreams.
I originally hoped Paris for Dreamers would only take a few months to pull together. A year later … I look back and see that this book on whimsical Parisian walks had, suitably, its own meandering path to take, and I was merely along for ride. As was my family. So I send as thousand bisous to my parents, husband and sons, for their patience and encouragement throughout this process. And for letting me nip back to Paris from time to time for some more, ahem, research.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Katrina Lawrence is a former beauty journalist who mused on makeup, perfume and more for a wide range of women’s magazines and online publications. She has won a number of industry accolades, including two esteemed Jasmine Awards for fragrance journalism. Katrina lives in Bondi Beach with her husband and two sons, but her spiritual home will always be Paris, a city she has visited countless times (seriously: she has lost count) since the age of five. Her first book was Paris Dreaming: What the City of Light Taught Me About Life, Love & Lipstick.
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