John Baxter
The Golden Moments of Paris
Museyon, Inc., New York, 2014
Introduction: (pp. 4-5)
Paris has enjoyed many golden moments, but few more strident, seminal,
and flamboyant as that between the end of World War I in 1918 and the rise of European
totalitarism in the mid-1930s: the period known as les années folles—
the crazy years. "Paris was where the 20th century was," wrote Gertrude Stein, one of
the American expatriates whose writings helped preserve a memory of that time, like
a gaudy insect embedded in the amber of nostalgia.
At times, the history of Paris between the wars can seem like a scientific
discovery to which the formula has been lost. As with the evolution of jazz in the United Staes,
the chemistry that led a few gifted individuals in Paris to develop Cubism and Surrealism is
hopelessly tangled. Why in Paris, publishing Joyce and Miller and Hemingway changed the
direction of modern literature, stubbornly resists analysis.
In a culture where few had private phones, cafés were places to meet,
to gossip, to plot, to seduce, to buy and sell, but seldom to work. Ernest Hemingway
retreated to Closerie des Lilas, at the far end of boulevard du Montparnasse, to write
such stories as "Big Two-Hearted River" and parts of his expatriate novel The Sun Also Rises.
Though his characters often disparage café life, he wasn't averse to relaxing in the
wicker chairs that spilled out onto boulevard du Montparnasse from the Dôme and
the Select. In 1923, in "Christmas on the Roof of the World", he wrote lyrically of
"Paris with the snow falling. Paris with the big charcoal brazier outside the cafés,
glowing red. At the café tables, men huddle, their coat collars turned up, while
they finger glasses of Grog Americain and the newsboys shout the evening papers." (p. 14)
Montparnasse extended for a few blocks on either side of the Raspall/Montparnasse
intersection. Around the corner from the Dôme, rue Delambre was lined with small hotels
and studios, the homes and working places of Amadeo Modigliani, Tsuguharu Foujita, Jules Pascin,
and Isadora Duncan, who gave Foujita dance lessons in return for champagne. At Dingo Bar on Delambre,
Hemingway and Fitzgerald first met. A block further south, just this side of the Cimetière
du Montparnasse, on rue Edgar Quinet, were Le Sphinx, the Left Bank's most modern brothel,
and lesbian club Le Monocle. (p. 14)
Chapter 6: The First Lady of Bohemia:
Sylvia Beach and Shakespeare and Company (pp. 52-59)
Few booksellers can claim to have changed the course of literature, but Sylvia Beach
is one of them. This Presbyterian minister's daughter founded and ran the English-language bookshop
Shakespeare and Company in Paris from 1921 to 1942. She also published James Joyce's Ulysses.
The experience cost hr dear, but her support for literature and for Paris's expatriate writers,
in particular Joyce, never wavered. (p. 52)
In 1914, Sylvia defied American neutrality, joining Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos,
E.E. Cummings and others who volunteered to fight for France. Having no practical skills, she was
sent to harvest grapes and wheat in the Loire valley... Back in Paris in July 1919, she gravitated
to the literary world around the colleges of the Sorbonne, and in particular to rue de l'Odéon.
Because of its closeness to the university, this short street near the Luxembourg gardens housed
numerous teachers and students, and supported a number of bookshops. (p. 54)
When Sylvia proposed returning to New York to oen a shop selling French books,
Adrienne Monnier, more shrewd than her new friend, urged her to remain in Paris and start an
English-language bookshop instead. With $3000 from her mother, Sylvia leased a former laundry
on rue Dupuytren, around the corner from rue de l'Odéon, and stocked it with books.
She called the shop Shakespeare and Company, and commissioned a hanging sign of the playwright,
which also became the shop's trademark. In May 1921 she relocated at 12, rue de l'Odéon,
just across the street from Monnier. Her two-room shop had an apartment above, which was occupied
at various times by avant garde composer George Antheil, and, during Worl War ii, by Samuel Beckett
and his mistress. In 1921, Sylvia and Adrienne moved in together, sharing a fourth floor apartment
at 18, rue de l'Odéon. Shortly after, Sylvia met James Joyce at a party... She offered to
publish his novel Ulysses at a great loss to herself. (pp. 54-55)
Chapter 8: Where the 20h Century Was:
Gertrude Stein and Her Salon (pp. 68-77)
Stately in a robe of brown corduroy, attended by Alice Toklas, her watchful "wife",
Gertrude Stein was the uncrowned queen of 1920s Paris. Even her appearance reflected her regal role.
"She got to look like a Roman emperor", wrote Ernest Hemingway, "and that was fine if you like
your women to look like Roman emperors." Appropriate to an empress, her pronouncements had the status
of holy writ— even when a quote was wrongly attributed. She did say "Paris is where the 20th
century was." However the most famous phrase ascribed to her— "you are all a lost generation"—
came from a French garage owner. Most people thought this applied to the expatriate writers of the 1920s.
The garage owner was actually complaining about a lazy
mechanic and, by extension, the whole of French
youth, which, deprived of education and
prospects by the war of 1914-18, could look forward only to
aimless adulthood. (pp. 68-70)
Even so, no memoir of Paris between the wars is complete without an evocation of Stein's
Saturday night salon at 27, rue de Fleurs. Attendance signified admittance to an intellectual and
artistic elite. Stein claimed her Saturdays began because Henri Matisse would ask to bring people
to the apartment to see her collection of his work. Rather than refusing, she invited him at the
end of her working week. (p. 70)
As the fame of Picasso, Matisse and Cezanne increased, an increasingly large number
of people visited rue de Flerus to view the Stein collection. In the early years of the century,
guests were almost invariably painters or art lovers, and eithr French or Spanish. With typical
dogmatism, Stein wrote "Painting in the 19th century was only done in France and by Frenchmen."
Those attending her soirees were Braque, Matisse, Juan Gris, Picasso with his mistress Fernande Olivier,
one of the models for the Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, as well as Marie Laurencin with
her lover Guillaume Apollinaire. (p. 71)
With Stein's own writing now widely published and discussed, she altered the emphasis
of her salon to favor authors. People still came to admire the collection but stayed to talk
literature and, in some cases, to solicit her opinion and advice. These new visitors, almost
all expatriate and English-speaking, included Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound,
James Joyce, Sherwood Anderson, Thorton Wilder, and Paul Bowles. (p. 73)
In February 1922, Hemingway and his wife Hadley visited Gertrude to present a letter of introduction
from Sherwood Anderson. The penurious young couple delighted Stein.
They were soon regulars at the Saturday salons... Stein counseled him on drinking,
sex and profanity, and urged him to take
a more liberal view of homosexuality. She read
and criticized his stories, suggesting he refine their
structure and composition by studying
cubist painting. Rather than the Cubists, Hemingway preferred
Cézanne, and would haunt
the little Musée du Luxembourg, which housed the national
collection of his work. (p. 74)
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