On Tuesday we started the day off by taking the metro to the Gare Lazare neighborhood. I’ve always liked the lyrical sound of those words coupled—Gare Lazare—reminding me of a similar train station where the Lumiere Brothers shot some of the world’s first film footage in 1895.
We had tickets for a 12:15 visit to the Monet Museum nearby a small park by upscale apartments.
It’s a small museum, a shrunk down pocketed chateau, with a limited collection of Monets. (It reminded me of a widely advertised Caravaggio exhibit that LACMA had where there were a couple of unremarkable Cravaggios in the midst of a large array of lesser talented imitators.) Fortunately there was an interesting exhibit of trompe l’oeil paintings that had nothing to do with Monet.
On the other side of the park from the museum was a patisserie that Ella remembered from her last sojourn in Paris. Decadent tartes, great coffee. Time to walk the streets.
We happened on an avenue of deli delights where I imagined what Thanksgiving dinner would be like if I lived in the hood.
Then Ella noticed that Balzac used to live in the area. Sure enough, at 47 rue Raynouard there was the Maison de Balzac, an early nineteenth century cottage below the street not readily visible from the surrounding buildings. Free admission. No crowds here.
In his house there was the small study where, fortified by countless cups of coffee, Honoré penned Cousine Bette and a large portion of his La Comedie humaine.
All in all, it seemed like the half-hidden place where you would write if you were avoiding your creditors.
Where next? Ella said, “The statue of liberty.” What? Huh? But lo and behold, down by the Seine, there she was in the middle of the river on a little spit of land.
Off to the north there was a large tethered balloon adding a Jules Verne touch to the tableau.
Since (to Ella’s dismay) my famous authors reflex had been stimulated, I decided we should head in the direction of what at one time had been Proust’s residence. So we caught a bus which gradually got filled and by the time we got to Pom Neuf was packed with Notre Dame refugees. Luckily we got squeezed out a couple stops later.
When Proust was writing La Recherche du Temps Perdu he was living in a suite of apartments above Rue Haussmann. The place now, to Ella’s amusement, is a bank with doors securely shut. I suppose, since Marcel is famed for creating his masterpiece in a cork-lined room to silence the noise of the city, a bank vault might be a fitting tribute.
Okay, on to Pigalle to walk the Henry Miller walk. On Monday I had steered us to Rue de Pigalle and expected the lively risqué neighborhood where Miller had gone mooching drinks when he was writing The Tropic of Cancer. But the street we found was quiet and upper class.
Later that night I looked it up and discovered the street we had found was named after the 18th century sculptor, Jean Baptiste Pigalle. The Place Pigalle I was looking for was in a far different section of the hood.
It was like 42nd Street in Manhattan before Rudy Giuliani made it PG. Back in the 30s when Henry prowled the streets, the Pigalle was mostly brothels and bars and cabarets. Now it’s sex shops and dance clubs and cafés.
I looked for down-and-out poets begging money, but ran into teenagers lining up for ice cream. That’s right, kids, enjoy a scoop of chocolate and buy a sex toy in the shape of the Eiffel Tower. Were they channeling Henry and doing their best to be merry and bright? Maybe just merry…. As I look over their shoulders on the metro they seem to get a kick out of watching YouTube antics. Funny faces, pratfalls, the Pigalle turned into Circus Circus. Henry wouldn’t belong here; for one, he wouldn’t have been able to afford a cellphone. He would have been too feral for this tourist laden middle-class crowd.
And come to think of it, I wasn’t holding any francs to give beggars. I haven’t had to use cash since we arrived. And I certainly wasn’t expected to lay any out when later we found a great little restaurant in the Montmartre neighborhood.
