Walking Paris with Henry Miller

The American Express office at 11 rue Scribe has been serving tourists in Paris for more than one hundred years since its opening in 1900, timed to coincide with the Paris Exposition. A booklet published for the exposition described the services on offer:

They are equipped with reading and writing rooms, in which the latest American journals are on file; a post office, through means of which the letters of clients will be forwarded on request; a telephone; commodious quarters for the handling and storage of baggage, bicycles, and purchases of travelers, together with a bureau of information.¹

Henry Miller made extensive use of these services throughout his years in Paris as the American Express grew to be strongly associated with his personal misery. Miller’s first unhappy encounter with the Paris American Express office occurred before he left New York, arriving in the form of a Dear John letter letter from his estranged wife, June, when she left him to run off to Paris with Jean Kronski:

“Dear Val,” it ran. “We sailed this morning on the Rochambeau. Didn’t have the heart to tell you. Write care of American Express, Paris. Love.”²

When Miller made his first visit to Europe a year later, the American Express office served as one of the cardinal points in his mental map of 1928 Paris: “Paris! Meaning the Café Select, the Dôme, the Flea Market, the American Express. Paris!”³

During his early years of living in the city without a fixed address, Miller received mail poste-restant at the American Express, often citing 11 rue Scribe on letters as his return address, on one exuberant occasion, signing a letter “Henry V. Miller, Man of Letters, c/o American Express, 11 rue Scribe—Vive la France! Liberté Egalité Fraternité—Pax Vobiscum.”⁴

In Tropic of Cancer, Miller recounts these early days of hardship and his many unhappy returns to the American Express:

I experience once again the splendor of those miserable days when I first arrived in Paris, a bewildered, poverty-stricken individual who haunted the streets like a ghost at a banquet. [...] The golden period, when I had not a single friend. Each morning the dreary walk to the American Express, and each morning the inevitable answer from the clerk.⁵

The dreary, fruitless return to the American Express is a thread that runs throughout the novel. At times, he would make the pilgrimage several times a day:

For five days I have not touched the typewriter nor looked at a book; nor have I had a single idea in my head except to go to the American Express. At nine this morning I was there, just as the doors were being opened, and again at one o’clock. No news. At four-thirty I dash out of the hotel, resolved to make a last minute stab at it.⁶

The office acts as a gloomy beacon in the center of Paris, drawing Miller’s memory from any of the various streets and alleyways he traversed to arrive there:

I remember passing this way the other morning on my way to the American Express, knowing in advance that there would be no mail for me, no check, no cable, nothing, nothing.⁷

When he is offered free room and board from a new friend in the suburbs, it is only Miller’s fixation with the American Express that clouds his decision:

The only question is, how will I get from Suresnes to the American Express every day.⁸

Miller’s fixation with the American Express is only resolved at the very end of Tropic of Cancer in the scene where he is escorting his delirious friend Fillmore as he flees France to avoid a paternity claim. On the way to the train station they stop by the American Express to withdraw all of Fillmore’s money:

When we got to the American Express, there wasn’t a devil of a lot of time left. The British, in their usual fumbling, farting way, had kept us on pins and needles. Here everybody was sliding around on castors. They were so speedy that everything had to be done twice. After all the checks were signed and clipped together in a neat little holder, it was discovered that he had signed in the wrong place. Nothing to do but start all over again. I stood over him, with one eye on the clock, and watched every stroke of the pen. It hurt to hand over the dough. Not all of it, thank God—but a good part of it. I had roughly about 2,500 francs in my pocket. Roughly, I say. I wasn’t counting by francs any more. A hundred, or two hundred, more or less—it didn’t mean a goddamned thing to me.⁹

Once his friend is packed off for America, Miller pockets most of the money intended for Fillmore’s girlfriend.** With the ill-gotten loot in hand, Miller reaches apotheosis. His journey along the American Express, progressing from a marginal existence eked out from begging and the crumbs of his wife’s soft prostitution earnings to relative affluence derived from cheating a friend caught in a compromising position constitute a kind of subversion of the Horatio Alger American Dream story, which he vowed to destroy.¹⁰

Anaïs and June

While Miller had awaited letters from June at the American Express, Anaïs Nin waited there anxiously for June to arrive in person. Her diary reveals that during the first months of 1932, the American Express office was their regular meeting place:

We met, June and I, at American Express. I knew she would be late, and I did not mind. I was there before the hour, almost ill with tenseness. I would see her, in full daylight, advance out of the crowd. Could it be possible? I was afraid that I would stand there exactly as I had stood in other places, watching a crowd and knowing no June would ever appear because June was a product of my imagination. I could hardly believe she would arrive by those streets, cross such a boulevard, emerge out of a handful of dark, faceless people, walk into that place. What a joy to watch that crowd scurrying and then to see her striding, resplendent, incredible, towards me. I hold her warm hand. She is going for mail. Doesn’t the man at American Express see the wonder of her? Nobody like her ever called for mail. Did any woman ever wear shabby shoes, a shabby black dress, a shabby dark blue cape, and a violet hat as she wears them?¹¹

The American Express Today

The neighborhood of the American Express office, known as l’Opera, is one of the principal tourist hubs of Paris, most famous for its elaborate opera house, upscale shopping destinations such as Galeries Lafayette, and its expansive Grands Boulevards. The office itself is still open for business and though the interior was completely overhauled in 1955, the exterior appearance remains largely as it was when Miller made his regular visits in the thirties.¹²

Location

11 rue Scribe – See it on Google Maps

Notes

** Miller researcher Karl Orend has asserted that in real life, Miller didn’t pocket the money intended for Fillmore’s girlfriend, Ginette. Instead, he handed over all of Fillmore’s money to Ginette and acted as friend and counselor to them both.¹³

1. “Our Story in France”, American Express web site.
   http://home3.americanexpress.com/corp/swfs/global.swf
2. Henry Miller, Nexus, 153
3. Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, 17
   [see also: Brassaï, Henry Miller: Happy Rock, 145]
4. Jay Martin, Always Merry and Bright, 181
5. Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, 14-15
6. Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, 51
7. Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, 70
8. Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, 74
9. Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, 314
10. Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn, 23-27
11. Anaïs Nin, Henry and June, 19
12. “Home Away from Home”, Time. October 24, 1955.
    http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,891629,00.html
13. Karl Orend, “A Man Cut in Slices : New Perspective’s on Henry Miller’s Paris Years”. Alyscamps Press: Paris and Austin, 2002

Posted August 5, 2008 - trackback