After leaving Shakespeare and Company, I headed back to Boulevard Saint Michel and down rue St André des Arts, another narrow and charming street in the Saint Germain neighborhood. I then turned on rue Jacob, the street of Michaud’s, Pré aux Clercs, and the hotel Hemingway stayed in when he first moved to Paris, Hotel d’Angleterre. Michaud’s was an expensive restaurant Hemingway could only afford to go to on occasion, as on this one, after they had won some money at the track.
Café de Flore and Les Deux Margots
It was a wonderful meal at Michaud’s after we got in; but when we had finished and there was no question of hunger any more the feeling that had been like hunger when we were on the bridge was still there when we caught the bus home. It was there when we came in the room and after we had gone to bed and made love in the dark, it was there. When I woke with the windows open and the moonlight on the roofs of the tall houses, it was there. I put my face away from the moonlight into the shadow but I could not sleep and lay awake thinking about it. We had both wakened twice in the night and my wife slept sweetly now with the moonlight on her face. I had to try to think it out and I was too stupid. Life had seemed so simple that morning when I had wakened and found the false spring and heard the pipes of the man with his herd of goats and gone out and bought the racing paper.
But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight.
I then turned on Boulevard St. Germain des Prés and discovered that Lina had opened up a sandwich shop in Paris. Apparently it has lots of locations worldwide, including a strong presence in the Arab world.
Lina’s new financial venture
On Boulevard St. Germain Hemingway would get drinks with other famous poets and writers at Les Deux Margots. Café Flore was Simone Beauvoir’s retreat from her cold apartment.
Saint Germain is famous for its shops. I’ve come to the realization (and it’s a really obvious realization) that there’s a whole community here of very rich people, including very rich expats. In fact, the feeling in the city center (within the 20 arrondisements circumscribed by the Boulevard Périphérique) is decidedly upper class; certainly it’s an expensive city, so most working class people live outside of Paris and commute in. Certainly different than DC, where I grew up, which has some very rich neighborhoods (Georgetown and much of NW) but also some very, very poor ones. Within Paris itself, no one will assign a “bad” neighborhood. This changes once you move outside the Boulevard Périphérique.
In any case, Saint Germain has its share of the comforts of home (Starbucks, American Apparel), as well as upscale chic shops that I can’t afford. There was a line out the door for Hermès for some reason. The prices for the clothes are written in the window so I didn’t even need to go inside and fall in love with anything. Which is too bad, because I desperately need new clothes – mainly because Seattle “fashion” and Parisian style couldn’t be more different. I definitely have nothing for nicer weather. That said, they have a big H&M in Les Halles, so that will hold me till I can get to the States and a large Good Will.
I was very very tired and hungry at this point in my walk, but I knew I would be at the Jardin du Luxembourg soon. First, a stop at Hemingway’s apartment after he left Hadley (I know, sad) and married his mistress.
And now to the Jardin du Luxembourg. Every morning I cross this beautiful, peaceful place. There are joggers and pétanque players and bright light streaming through paths criss-crossing the park.
There’s an enormous building housing the Senate and statues and trees, and a beautiful line from the Senate to the Observatory.
In this it reminds me of Washington, DC, where I grew up and which has lovely lines connecting all the monuments. I remembered that it was designed by a Frenchman and read some more about him. Pierre L’Enfant was born in Paris in 1754 and fought in the American Revolution under Lafayette. People forget how much the French helped us during the American Revolution. All these historical things are important to keep in mind – they inform the way other cultures think about us. In any case, L’Enfant was asked by George Washington to design DC, and came up with a plan, but basically fell out with the bureaucrats who felt that his plan was too grandiose.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:L%27Enfant_plan.jpgHe finally gained recognition in the early 1900s when they redesigned the Mall according to his specifications; what you see today is his original plan, thus its similarity to classic Parisian design.
They do grow flowers in the garden – there are greenhouses I pass everyday, and staked plants that are inaccessible to the public along the periphery. These are labeled with their species; I’m excited to see them bloom in the coming months.
But today I start my walk from a different location, along the north-south axis instead of east-west, as Hemingway did.
You got very hungry when you did not eat enough in Paris because all of the bakery shops had such good things in the windows and people ate outside at tables on the sidewalk so that you saw and smelled the food. When you had given up journalism and were writing nothing that anyone in America would buy, explaining at home that you were lunching out with someone, the best place to go was the Luxembourg gardens where you sat and smelled nothing to eat all the way from the Place de l’Observatoire to the rue de Vaugirard.
There you could always go into the Luxembourg museum and all the painting were sharpened and clearer and more beautiful if you were belly-empty, hollow-hungry. I learned to understand Cézanne much better and to see truly how he made landscapes when I was hungry. I used to wonder if he were hungry too when he painted; but I thought possibly it was only that he had forgotten to eat. It was one of those unsound but illuminating thoughts you have when you have been sleepless or hungry. Later I thought Cézanne was probably hungry in a different way.
There are tons of joggers in the Luxembourg, at all hours of the day and night. The park is closed at night, so instead they jog around it (which makes no sense at all). Otherwise, you don’t see runners in Paris very often. They don’t just run around whereever, as you would in Seattle or other cities. Perhaps it’s like NYC in this sense.
On a Saturday, there are lots of people in the garden. I hadn’t quite realized what it would be like, since I always cross in the mornings and (when I don’t work too late) in the evenings. It was lovely sitting in the sun on the grass, eating my baguette and cheese, watching and listening. One other thing: the French are very publicly affectionate. I can’t decide if it’s sweet or irritating.
Not to be dumb, but somehow I never noticed this ENORMOUS statue of a head. I pass right by it every day, too.
I continued down towards the Place de l’Observatoire; lots of kids playing soccer, on bikes, on little scooters. Then I arrived at the Closerie des Lilas, the café just around the corner from Hemingway’s second apartment with Hadley, on rue Notre Dame des Champs.
113 rue Notre Dame des Champs
His old apartment is now an unlovely building housing students, but you can get some idea of what it would have looked like on his street.
The Closerie des Lilas was the nearest good café when we lived in the flat over the sawmill at 113 rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, and it was one of the best cafés in Paris. It was warm inside in the winter and in the spring and fall it was very fine outside with the tables under the shade of of the tress on the side where the statue of Marshal Ney was, and the square, regular tables under the big awnings along the boulevard.
And now I am quite close to home, and how strange that it already feels like home. I pass the Rue d’Assas, going the long way around to stop by Gertrude Stein’s apartment. My place overlooks the Rue d’Assas, and it is a lively street with many shops.
Close to the corner, I discover a pet shop (brilliant!) and manage to carry on a conversation in French and get some new litter. I won’t bore you with further details, but this made me very happy.
Gertrude Stein’s apartment
It was easy to get into the habit of stopping in at 27 rue de Fleurus late in the afternoon for warmth and the great pictures and the conversation. Often Miss Stein would have no guests and she was always very friendly and for a long time she was affectionate. When I had come back from trips that I had made to the different political conferences or to the Near East or Germany for the Canadian paper and the news services that I worked for she wanted me to tell her about all the amusing details. There were funny parts always and she liked them and also what the Germans call gallows-humor stories. She wanted to know the gay part of how the world was going; never the real, never the bad.
And earlier, about his first visit: There were many things to understand in those days and I was glad when we talked about something else. The park was closed to I had to walk down along it to the rue de Vaugirard and around the lower end of the park. It was sad when the park was closed and locked and I was sad walking around it instead of through it and in a hurry to get home to the rue Cardinal Lemoine. The day had started out so brightly too. I would have to work hard tomorrow. Work could cure almost anything, I believed then, and I believe now. Then all I had to be cured of, I decided Miss Stein felt, was youth and loving my wife. I was not at all sad when I got home to the rue Cardinal Lemoine and told my newly acquired knowledge to my wife.
I feel the same about the park, and work. Often I work too late (it closes at 6:30) and must walk around the Luxembourg, and it always makes me sad. But luckily I have sweet cats to come home to, and in this I am like Hemingway.
He loved cats; descendants of his cats still have the run of the Hemingway museum in Key West. Mine, due to the tiny size of my apartment, are finally starting to sleep together, although Bird essentially tolerates Flotsam.
There were no babysitters then and Bumby would stay happy in his tall cage bed with his big, loving cat named F. Puss. There were people who said that it was dangerous to leave a cat with a baby.
The most ignorant and prejudiced said that a cat would suck a baby’s breath and kill him. Others said that a cat would lie on a baby and the cat’s weight would smother him. F. Puss lay beside Bumby in the tall cage bed and watched the door with his big yellow eyes, and would let no one come near him when we were out and Marie, the femme de ménage, had to be away. There was no need for baby-sitters. F. Puss was the baby-sitter.
