Hemingway’s Paris
It seems that everywhere I go, the ghost of Ernest Hemingway follows me. I was born in Idaho where Hemingway lived and died; I feel a tug at my heart. My father to this day has vivid color dreams of him and Ernest hunting and playing! In Cuba, at a bar, I was told, that is where Hemingway used to sit. In Spain, I was informed, that is where Hemingway used to drink and write. Now living in Paris, I can't shake the urge to write, never have I written before, always an artist accomplished with the brush, but never with a pen.
I decided to meet the legendary man head on and take some walks throughout Hemingway's Paris, to stroll in his steps and feel some of his hope, suffer his artistic ways (we are very poor in this extravagant city, and he is right, that hunger makes you more imaginative, though I won’t eat street pigeons) but mostly to see my new ‘ville’ through his eyes!
This walk can be done easily in four hours, but I like to savor it all, and take pictures along the way, so it takes me longer. I have made this walk numerous times so as to find his true footsteps in the cobble stone streets. My old copy of his book "A Movable Feast" has the addresses that he mentioned scribbled on the inside of the front cover. That list created this walk.
Rue Mouffetard
Start at Censier Daubenton (Metro line 7), in the 5th arrondissement and begin your walk on Rue Mouffetard. It is a narrow street with smells of fresh baked bread, cheeses, coffee, and crepes. Fruit and légume stands flow with market life. The street inclines steeply as you trek up towards La Place Contrescarpe. This is where the Cafe des Amateurs was. Hemingway described it as the "cesspool of the rue Mouffetard"; now it is a large airy restaurant with a Häagen-Dazs next door!
Between these two is the rue du Cardinal-Lemoine, and it is just a couple of strides to No. 74 where on the third floor the 22-year-old Hemingway and his wife Hadley found their first teeny-tiny Paris apartment. It was the "poorest of addresses" he lamented in "A Movable Feast". As you look up at the building you can almost picture their shabby room with the bed on the floor, books scattered around, rejected manuscripts shoved under the front door, and their cat watching their young son—he said that their cat was so possessive of the baby and slept with him in his crib that they just left him as the baby sitter!
Hemingway did not do his writing here, he took a room in a hotel round the corner at 39 rue Descartes. He climbed to the very top floor each day to write. He has been upstaged by Paul Verlaine, whose death in this same building in 1896 is commemorated by a large wall plaque, while Hemingway is inaccurately described on a sign squeezed in by the door as having lived here between 1921 and 1925. This is were he built fires and ate tangerines while writing perfect paragraphs.
Boulevard St. Michel
At the beginning of "A Moveable Feast," he recalls writing a story in "a good cafe on the place St-Michel." To get to the area of the mysterious café--that doesn't exist any more--take a left off Descartes and along past the impressive Pantheon, entombed in grandeur Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo and Zola were urging him on as he is now influencing me. Take rue Cujas past the back of the Faculty of Law. Past the place de la Sorbonne, Paris most prestigious university, then right down rue Champollion, face the noisy boulevard St-Michel. The streets are lined with book stores, souvenir shops and clothing stores for the many college students that live and go to school in this area.
Shakespeare and Company
Here, squished in-between sixteenth-century houses, leaning at all angles, is Paris' most interesting foreign bookshop, Shakespeare & Company. Though it isn't the original shop run by Sylvia Beach throughout the 1920s and 30s, it continues the tradition of personal and idiosyncratic service. George Whitman, the current owner, who I meet one day, is a stanch Communist and runs the store at about zero profit. I traded in some old Fiction that I had finished and for one Euro more got four more books to read! His daughter is now running the shop, her name is Sylvia Beach, I kid you not.
The store is for artists and writers; a safe haven for the English speakers of France. He has surrounded himself with tons of books, on every subject, crammed on shelves so precariously balanced you feel that if you took the wrong book it could bring the entire shop crashing down around you. He has sleeping accommodation for visiting writers and serves tea on Sundays and a cute black library cat!
Photo: Riana in front of Shakespeare and Company bookshop
Quai des Grands Augustins
Walk across to the Seine and turn west along the quai des Grands Augustins. Hemingway liked to browse here among the bouquinistes, the second-hand booksellers whose aging green metal boxes are fastened to the stone walls of the embankment. They have old damp copies of French manifestos and art books, posters, line drawings and touristy knick knacks, that have stood the test of time and storage!
Turn right on St-Andre-des-Arts, and cut through to rue Jacob, a long straight street full of elegantly displayed antiques. At the junction with rue Bonaparte is the Cafe Pre aux Clercs, a Hemingway favorite, which is only a few doors down from the Hotel d'Angleterre where he spent his first night in Paris, in Room 14.
Boulevard St. Germain des Pres
Up rue des Sts-Peres, passing on your left the Faculty of Medicine. Boulevard St-Germain is equally busy. Along to the left is the well-visited cafe of Les Deux Magots (6 place St-Germain-des-Pres, 6th, open 7:30am-2:00am daily). Though the street side tables are the most popular, go inside for the period atmosphere and best-looking decor.
Take a right on boutique-lined rue Bonaparte up to St-Sulpice and then go left along rue St-Sulpice. The church here is of “Da Vinci Code” fame. This is an unusually barren stretch for refreshment of any kind, but relief is at hand if you can make it to Odéon. At the end of the street is a excellent fish restaurant, part of a tiny curve of buildings that faces the elegant columned portals of the Odéon, Théâtre de l’Europe. Take a right down rue de Vaugirard.
Jardin du Luxembourg
Gertrude Stein
And, above all, he came through here on his way to visit his greatest single artistic influence in Paris, Gertrude Stein, who lived at rue de Fleurus. You will be seeing pretty much what Hemingway saw as he made his way along to Stein's apartment at No.27. "It was easy to get into the habit of stopping in at 27 rue de Fleurus for warmth and the great pictures and the conversation," he wrote in “A Movable Feast”. A wonderful new novel called the "The Book of Salt" has come out about a cooks life living with the “Mesdames of rue de Fleurus and their frequent visitors including Hemingway, its fiction but very realistic.
As you walk in off the busy rue de Vaugirard you enter a serene and calming world leading to the Palais du Luxembourg. The gardens are dotted with nineteenth-century park furniture where he is rumoured to have captured pigeons for dinner. In 1924 Hemingway moved to an apartment at No.113, above a sawmill. Nowadays, the concrete-coated block is part of the Ecole Alsacienne. Much of the area is home to schools and colleges.
Boulevard du Montparnasse
The front door of the Patisserie Grascoeur opens on to the boulevard du Montparnasse and a final massed climax of Hemingway sites. Turn left for Librairie Abencerage at No.159, an upmarket travel bookshop that was once the Hotel Venetia, where Hemingway carried on an adulterous affair with Pauline (who became the second Mrs. Hemingway in 1927). Carry on to the junction of rue de l'Observatoire where you will find La Closerie des Lilas (171 boulevard du Montparnasse, 6th, 01.40.51.34.50, open 11.30am-1am daily), one of Hemingway's favorite writing, eating and drinking spots. Past the statue of Marshal Ney across the road, is the sign of the Hotel Beauvoir, where Hadley Hemingway and their young son stayed after Hemingway left her for Pauline.
This is the walk the way Hemingway liked it, no metro, no buses. I took pictures along the way and compiled them into a book which I sent to my father in Idaho so that he could see Hemingway's Paris through my eyes.
