Walking Paris with Henry Miller

Café de l’Eléphant (photo by Michael Jones)		Paris prostitute (photo by Brassaï)*

When Henry Miller arrived in Paris in 1930, one of the first neighborhoods to draw his fascination was the confluence of streets around the boulevard Beaumarchais in the eleventh arrondissement:

Night after night I had been coming back to this quarter, attracted by certain leprous streets which only revealed their sinister splendor when the light of day had oozed away and the whores commenced to take up their posts.¹

Of particular appeal was a little tabac at 40 boulevard Beaumarchais called Café de l’Eléphant where the local prostitutes gathered to attract clients or throw back a drink between bouts. Miller became infatuated with one prostitute who stood out for the pleasure she took in her work. In Tropic of Cancer, he wrote that “she was thoroughly satisfied with her role, enjoyed it in fact:”²

Germaine was different. There was nothing to tell me so from her appearance. Nothing to distinguish her from the other trollops who met each afternoon and evening at the Café de l’Eléphant. [...] It was not difficult to come to terms with her. We sat in the back of the little tabac called L’Eléphant and talked it over quickly. In a few minutes we were in a five franc room on the Rue Amelot, the curtains drawn and the covers thrown back.³

What most interested Miller was the high esteem Germaine placed on her pussy:

she spoke of it as if it were some extraneous object which she had acquired at great cost, an object whose value had increased with time and which now she prized above everything in the world. Her words imbued it with a peculiar fragrance; it was no longer just her private organ, but a treasure, a magic, potent treasure.⁴

Though Tropic of Cancer is notorious for it’s descriptions of sex, Miller generally uses these passages to chide his characters for turning a natural act of passion into a dead mechanical grind. He championed Germaine because though she was obliged proffer her body countless times to all comers, she maintained a convincing human connection with her clients.

When she lay there with her legs apart and moaning, even if she did moan that way for any and everybody, it was good, it was a proper show of feeling. She didn’t stare up at the ceiling with a vacant look or count the bedbugs on the wallpaper; she kept her mind on her business, she talked about the things a man wants to hear when he’s climbing over a woman.⁵

Miller and Germaine met regularly at the café and struck up a kind of friendship. When he revealed that he wasn’t the rich American tourist she took him for, Germaine let Miller sleep with her on credit and introduced him to her friends who teased him for falling in love with a prostitute. Miller took the teasing in stride and even enjoyed watching Germaine hustle new clients:

It gave me pleasure to sit on the terrasse of the little tabac and observe her as she plied her trade, observe her as she resorted to the same grimaces, the same tricks, with others as she had with me.⁶

Aside from her role in Tropic of Cancer, Germaine was one of the models for the story “Mademoiselle Claude,” Miller’s first work of fiction to be published under his own name.⁷

The Name

The Café de l’Eléphant derived its name from an incident which occurred one night in 1912 when an escaped elephant from the nearby Cirque d’Hiver (Winter Circus) rumbled into the café and began smashing things. The café’s proprietors, seizing the marketing opportunity, changed its name and decorated the seating area with the heads of elephants in bas-relief.⁸ Recently, the name of the café has been lengthened to “l’Eléphant Noctambule” (The Sleepwalking Elephant).

Location

40 boulevard Beaumarchais – see it on Google Maps

Practical information for visiting l’Eléphant Noctambule, which features a wi-fi hotspot, can be found on qype.fr. And if you’re interested in seeing the elephants at the Cirque d’Hiver, check their website for show times.

Notes

* Brassaï, “Prostitute at angle of rue de la Reynie and rue Quincampoix”, from Paris by Night, 1933.

1. Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, 43-44
2. Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, 47
3. Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, 44
4. Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, 45
5. Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, 48
6. Ibid
7. “Mademoiselle Claude” was published in the August 1931 issue of Samuel Putnam’s New Review.
8. Ecrits-vains.com:
   http://ecrits-vains.com/ballades/balade21/balade21.htm

Many thanks to Michael Jones for providing me with the photo of the Café de l’Elephant and the idea for this post.

Posted August 24, 2008 - trackback