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| Man Ray's photo of Hemingway in 1923 |
Back in July 2013 my wife
and I were in Paris for five days. I took the opportunity to visit and
photograph a lot of sites linked with American author Ernest Hemingway. Later I
prepared a detailed account of Hemingway's life in Paris up to 1926, when he
was still married to Hadley Richardson and living on rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs.
I included many of the pictures from that visit.
I was back in Paris two
months ago during our summer holidays in France. Although I didn't have specific
plans to revisit any Ernest Hemingway sites this year, I did get more photos of
his apartment at 74 rue du Cardinal Lemoine and also took shots of 6 rue Férou
- his home with second wife Pauline Pfeiffer. But then I discovered, after the
fact, several interesting coincidences cropping up about the places I had visited
and photographed during our stay in Paris this year.
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| Rue Monge near Les Arenes de Lutece |
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| Looking west along rue Rollin to Hemingway's apartment on rue du Cardinal Lemoine |
I dealt with Hemingway's
first apartment in detail in a previous blog post. He and wife Hadley moved
into 74 rue du Cardinal Lemoine in early 1922. They were living on the eastern
edge of the Latin Quarter, just north of
the Place Contrescarpe and rue Mouffetard - a rather run-down neighbourhood,
but very cheap. My wife and I went past the place many times in 2013 as we
walked to and from our hotel on rue des Écoles to "La Mouffe" (as the locals refer to the Mouffetard area, which
is crammed with specialty shops and restaurants).
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| Approaching the blue door - Hemingway's place on Cardinal Lemoine |
But this July we found an
interesting new angle on the place. After a visit to the nearby Roman site of
Les Arènes de Lutèce, we crossed rue Monge, and took a shortcut back towards
the Panthéon, using a narrow side street called rue Rollin. As you walk west
towards La Mouffe, the prominent blue
door at the entrance to Hemingway's former apartment comes into view - and is
framed dramatically as you get closer. When we reached the front door I got my
son to pose on the pavement beside it.
Hemingway and his first wife
Hadley Richardson separated in August, 1926. They had been married for six
years. Hadley set up home with son Jack ("Bumby") at 35 rue de
Fleurus - near Gertrude Stein's apartment; and Ernest loaned temporarily his friend
Gerald Murphy's studio apartment at 69 rue Froidevaux. Hemingway continued to
rent their former apartment on rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs for many months, but
neither of them could stand to live there any more..
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| First home of Hemingway and Pauline Pfeiffer at 6 rue Ferou |
Eventually Pauline Pfeiffer,
Ernest's second wife, found them a very comfortable place in the same area of
Paris - with the help of Ada MacLeish, the wife of Ernest's poet-friend
Archibald MacLeish. It was situated at 6 rue Férou, a quiet, cobbled,
side-street running between the Luxembourg Gardens and Place Saint-Sulpice.
They signed a three-year lease for only 9,000 francs per year.
The place was only 50 francs
more per month than the cold-water flat on rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, and it
proved to be a huge improvement in size, comfort, and modern conveniences. It
came with a garden courtyard, a large master bedroom and salon, two small
rooms, a dining room, kitchen, bathroom and two toilets. And heat! The
apartment was also open to the front and back of the building, so it got both
morning and evening sunlight. It was a huge improvement on his previous
Parisian residences - indicative of the financial stability brought by his
marriage into the Pfeiffer family.
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| The front door leading into the complex at 6 rue Ferou |
From their door on rue
Férou, Ernest and Pauline were only about 150 metres from the Church of
Saint-Sulpice. Turn left and it's a brief three-minute walk. They used it as
their parish church.
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| Saint-Sulpice - the Hemingways' parish church was just five minutes from home |
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| The Rimbaud wall poem - "Le bateau ivre" |
As you walk north along rue
Férou, beyond the former Hemingway apartment at #6, you soon reach a long
stretch of wall that has been decorated with the entire text of "Le bateau
ivre", one of Arthur Rimbaud's first important works. He wrote it 1871, at
the age of sixteen. When he came to Paris that year, he read the 100-line
verse-poem out loud one evening at a dinner of the Villains Bonshommes. This was a recently-formed society of like-minded
artists and writers who met for dinners about once a month, to discuss their
work and their literary theories. Rimbaud was introduced to the group by his
new friend Paul Verlaine. Rimbaud's recitation of the poem in the
restaurant Denogeant, on the Place
Saint-Sulpice - just a couple of hundred metres away from this wall on rue
Ferou - created quite a stir.
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| Rimbaud's 100-line verse painted onto a wall on rue Ferou |
"Le
bateau ivre" was the first mural poem created outside the Netherlands. The
project Poems on Walls started there in 1992 in the town of Leiden. This
mural poem in Paris was painted by Dutch artist Jan Willem Bruins and unveiled
in June 2012.
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| Barb and Colin on the two-levelled street rue Malebranche - note Hotel de Senlis at left |
For our visit to Paris this summer, instead of
staying in a hotel, we rented an apartment that we found on the internet. It
was located at 15 rue Malbranche, one block away from rue Soufflot, a main
street which runs between the Luxembourg Gardens and the Panthéon. Our
apartment was centrally located in the Latin Quarter, and proved to be a quiet
spot - surrounded by other residences. No cafés, restaurant or bars.
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| Our apartment at the back (middle) |
Rue Malbranche turned out to
be a unique looking side-street. It has two levels separated by a wall. There
are steps at one end, near the door leading into our apartment complex; these
steps provide access from one level of the street to the other. Rue Malebranche
is just a short stretch, running between rue Saint-Jacques and rue Le Goff. It
was created in 1646 - eventually named after philosopher Father Nicolas
Malebranche back in 1877.
Back here in Canada I
discovered that the interesting look of rue Malebranche has attracted the
attention of several film directors. Billy Wilder used 17 rue Malebranche as
the location for the apartment of the father-and-daughter characters played by
Maurice Chevalier and Audrey Hepburn in his film Love
in the Afternoon (1957).
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| "Love in the Afternoon" - used 17 rue Malebranche, at bottom of stone steps |
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Bernardo Bertolucci used the
Hotel de Senlis, on the other end of the street, at #9, as the home of one of
his lead characters in The Dreamers
(2003). And in Woody Allen's Midnight in
Paris (2011) 17 rue Malebranche is used yet again.
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| "The Dreamers" - Hotel de Senlis at 9 rue Malebranche |
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| "The Dreamers" - running up the steps by our front door at 15 rue Malebranche |
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| Looking west on rue Malebranche towards rue Le Goff |
After Allen's protagonist in
Midnight in Paris (Gil Pender) meets
Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and Cole Porter at a Jean Cocteau party in 1920s
Paris, they decide to move on to "Bricktop's". This was a popular
nightclub run at Le Grand Duc by Ada Smith. The real "Bricktop's" was
located at 52 rue Pigalle up in Montmartre. In Woody Allen's film it is set at
17 rue Malbranche. There is a brief, atmospheric scene in the film showing the
tipsy crew of late-night revelers coming down the street in a 1920 Peugeot
Landaulet. Ada Smith ("Bricktop") lived into the 1980s - she is a
featured as a "talking head" in Woody Allen's intriguing film Zelig (1983).
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| The Puegeot Landaulet on rue Malebranche to visit "Bricktop's" in Midnight in Paris |
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| rue Malebranche |
When in France, this year
and last, Barb and I drank a lot of white wine - going out of our way to sample
bottles from many of the key regions: the Loire Valley, Chablis, Burgundy,
Bordeaux, Alsace, Languedoc-Rousillon, Savoy, and the Rhône Valley. But once in
a while, I would hanker for a pint of ale. So I looked for a place in, or near,
the Latin Quarter. I found a couple of interesting spots.
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| Orwell's flat at left of blue awning |
The first was called
Brewberry's. It's more like a wine bar, than a pub. It doesn't have any beer on
tap; instead, it has a wide variety of bottled beers from all over the world -
specializing in ale from Belgium and lager from Germany. It's a small
establishment, with five or six small tables inside, and some tables set outside
- in typical Parisian-fashion - on the pavement. In addition to the beer, they serve snacks and
"finger-food" - what the Greeks would refer to as mezes. Brewberry is located just off rue
Mouffetard at 18 rue de Pot de Fer. I sat at the counter near the back of the
place chatting with Cécile Delorme, the proprietor. I mentioned to her, in
passing, that George Orwell had lived in an apartment just down the same street
at #6. He lived in the Latin Quarter in 1928-1929 and worked as a dishwasher (plongeur) at a prominent hotel. He
described his experiences later in his first book, Down and Out in Paris and
London (1933).
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| The Bombardier Pub near The Pantheon |
The other place I found for
good beer in the Latin Quarter was The Bombardier, an English pub with lots of
beer on tap - specializing in ale brewed by the Wells and Young's Company.
Bombardier is a particularly fine dark ale created by Wells. I discovered this
pub in 2013, and dropped in a couple of times to enjoy a pint whilst writing a
few postcards. So, when I was planning ahead this spring for a likely pub or
tavern in which to watch the two World Cup semi-finals that would take place
whilst we were in Paris, I knew where to go! I wasn't disappointed.
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| Steps at Saint-Etienne-du-Mont - Bombardier pub behind |
The Bombardier Pub is in a
wonderful location - the north-east corner of the Place du Panthéon. As you
come up rue Soufflot towards the Panthéon, go left, past the north side. Ahead
of you is the impressive Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, built in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. When you pass The Bombardier, and bend left to head downhill, the
road changes from Place du Panthéon to rue de la Montagne Sainte Geneviève. Where
these two thoroughfares meet, at the north-west corner of the church, there is
a small set of stone steps leading up to a side door at the front of the church.
If the Bombardier Pub is particularly hot and crowded - as it often is during
the summer - you can step outside with your pint, and cross the street to these
steps. They're only about twenty metres away. A cool spot to sit with your beer
in the late evening breeze.
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| Church of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont |
When the protagonist (Gil
Pender) of Woody Allen's film Midnight in
Paris gets lost by himself late one night, we see him stop for a moment and
sit on a set of stone steps. That scene was shot right here beside The
Bombardier. When a church bell rings midnight - the camera doesn't shift up and
show the church at all - a 1920 Peugeot Landaulet emerges out of the darkness
of rue de la Montagne Saint Genevieve and stops. A passenger gets out and
entices Gil to join them inside. Soon he is off and away, travelling back in
time to 1920s Paris - home of Fitzgerald, Picasso, Dali, Stein and Hemingway.
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| Owen Wilson ("Gil Pender") on the steps of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont |
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| The Peugeot Landaulet coming up rue de la Montagne Saint Genevieve |
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| Gil being enticed back to 1920s Paris! |
On our last evening in Paris
I was considering where we might go for dinner. I had nothing in mind, so I
thought I'd check Rick Steves' travel guide to France - to see if he had any
suggestions for some place interesting nearby. He mentioned Le Restaurant
Polidor on rue Monsieur-le-Prince, near the north end of the Luxembourg gardens
- about a fifteen minute walk down rue des Ecoles, crossing Boulevard Saint
Michel. He writes: "A bare-bones neighbourhood fixture since 1845, is much
loved for its unpretentious quality cooking, fun old-Paris atmosphere, and fair
value. Stepping inside, you know this is a winner - noisy, happy diners sit
tightly at shared tables as waiters chop and serve fresh bread." Sounded
good to me, and Barbara agreed. Off we went.
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| Restaurant Polidor on rue Monsieur-le-Prince |
At the front door of the
restaurant, I noticed a newspaper clipping taped to the inside of the window. It
included a photograph of Woody Allen. I didn't have time to examine the text of
the article; we stepped inside for dinner. During the meal that clipping was on
mind. "I wonder if Woody Allen ate here regularly when he was directing
Midnight in Paris", I said to Barb; "Or maybe he shot a scene right
in this restaurant?"
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| Woody Allen on the window of the Polidor |
I noticed the manager step outside several times to
the sidewalk. Perhaps she was enjoying a cigarette - or getting some fresh air?
As we left the restaurant later, after a very satisfying meal, there she was at
the entrance. I took the opportunity to ask her what the Woody Allen connection
was. Indeed, he had shot a scene inside the Polidor, she confirmed - and, yes,
he'd enjoyed a few meals there too.
When
I got back to Canada, I watched Midnight
in Paris again. There's the scene of Gil Pender sitting on the steps next
to The Bombardier. You can't see the Pub; it's just out of the shot. But you do
see La Capannina Restaurant next door. And there's the scene of the revellers
in the Peugeot car on rue Malebranche arriving at Bricktop's. Ah ... there's
Restaurant Polidor. After some time at Bricktop's - lots of dancing and alcohol
- the party continues on into the night at the Polidor.
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| Gil Pender and friends arrive at the Polidor |
And it is here that Gil
meets Ernest Hemingway: "You liked my book?", Ernest asks.
"Liked?" Gil responds, "I loved all of your work." "Yes", Hemingway says, "It was
a good book because it was an honest book, and that's what war does to men. And
there's nothing fine and noble about dying in the mud unless you die
gracefully. And then it's not only noble but brave." Over the top
intensity from Hem. Hilarious!
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| "... unless you die gracefully" - Corey Stoll as Ernest Hemingway |
A couple more coincidences
to finish with. When we were in Dijon, in central France, we went to visit the Saint Michel Church
on rue Vaillant. Nearby we accidentally discovered the Musée Rude - a museum
dedicated to the work of Dijon artist François Rude. The museum was established
in 1947 in the transept of the ruins of the Church of Saint-Etienne. Inside
are a collection of casts of many famous sculptures by Rude - including a cast of
The Marseillaise, his magnificent bas-relief on the eastern facade of the Arc
de Triomphe.
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| Francois Rude's cast of Marshall Michel Ney |
Amongst the other casts in the museum is one of Marshall Michel
Ney. The completed statue is found at the intersection of Boulevard Saint-Michel
and Boulevard du Montparnasse in Paris. It is mentioned with admiration by Hemingway in
his Paris memoir A Moveable Feast. He would gaze at it from his seat in
La Closerie des Lilas, his favourite cafe when he was living nearby on rue
Notre-Dame-des-Champs. I talk about it in my previous blog post about Hemingway
in Paris.
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| The statue of Ney outside La Closerie de Lilas |
Finally, in that same blog post from last year, I
included a photograph of Barbara sitting in the Café de Flore on Boulevard
Saint-Germain.
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| Barbara at Cafe de Flore on Boulevard Saint-Germain |
On the wall of our apartment at 15 rue Malebranche was a
black-and-white photograph by famed French photographer Jean-Loup Sieff. It's a
picture taken from inside the Café de Flore from exactly the same angle!
Echoes and coincidences, indeed.
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| On the wall of our apartment at 15 rue Malebranche |
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| photo by Jean-Loup Sieff |
Photographs
© Clive W. Baugh
(using
a Nikon D7000 with a Nikkor 18-105 mm zoom lens)
Resource: Hemingway: The
Homecoming by Michael Reynolds (the third volume of his five-part biography
of Ernest Hemingway). Superb.
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