On his nightly trek through the Place de Clichy in the period of 1932-1934, Henry Miller’s attention would have naturally been drawn to the massive Gaumont Palace. The sleek Art Deco cinema with seating for 6,000 was then the largest film venue in the world.

Miller was an avid cinephile, but he was not drawn to the Gaumont Palace to see movies. In fact, he had a rather low opinion of the place. Incensed by a Gaumont-produced film, Quatre de l’Infanterie, which he felt had sanitized the carnage of WWI, he penned an invective-laced tirade against all things Gaumont. “Everything marked with the label ‘Gaumont’ is shit—pretentious shit,” he wrote in 1931. “And to harbor this pretentious shit a palace is being erected on the Boulevard de Clichy.”¹

What attracted Miller to the Gaumont Palace was the vibrant streetlife surrounding the theater. He had read with delight Francis Carco’s sordid descriptions of this neighborhood in The Last Bohemia and now he prowled Carco’s precincts with eyes wide open, absorbing the louche atmosphere of pimps and prostitutes in the gritty cafés of the Place de Clichy.

Of particularly interest was a prostitute with a wooden leg who stood on the corner outside the Gaumont Palace every evening. The sight of her never failed to arouse Miller’s curiosity.

Approaching the Place Clichy toward evening I pass the little whore with the wooden stump who stands opposite the Gaumont Palace day in and day out. She doesn’t look a day over eighteen. Has her regular customers, I suppose. After midnight she stands there in her black rig rooted to the spot. Back of her is the little alleyway that blazes like an inferno.²

“Must be strange taking that wooden stump to bed with you,” he thought. “One imagines all sorts of things—splinters, etc.” He was fascinated to discover that in the Paris streetworld any pronounced defect or deviation from mainstream standards of beauty only served to enhance a woman’s sexual appeal. “I have never seen a place like Paris for varieties of sexual provender,” he wrote. “As soon as a woman loses a front tooth or an eye or a leg she goes on the loose. Any misfortune that aggravates the natural homeliness of a female, seems to be regarded as an added spice, a stimulant for the jaded appetites of the male.”³

In the spring of 1932, Miller brought Anaïs Nin along for a whirlwind walking tour of the seedy areas around the Place de Clichy, making sure to point out the red light district and the girl with the wooden leg:

Henry makes me aware of the street, of people. He is smelling the street, observing. He shows me the whore with the wooden stump who stands near the Gaumont Palace. He shows me the narrow streets winding up, lined with small hotels, and the whores standing by the doorways, under red lights. We sit in several cafés, Francis Carco cafés, where the pimps are playing cards and watching their women on the sidewalk.⁴

Impressed, Nin later portrayed the girl with the wooden leg in Delta of Venus and gave her a passing mention in Seduction of the Minotaur.

The Gaumont Palace opened in 1911 in a graceful stone building that had formerly been a venue for horse races. At the time, its world record seating capacity was a mere 3,400. In 1930, a major renovation brought in a sleek Art Deco design and increased seating capacity to 6,000, once again setting the world record—only to be surpassed by the 6,200 seat Radio City Music Hall which opened in 1933. In 1972 the theater was torn down and replaced by a retail and office block.

Notes

1. Henry Miller, “The New Instinctivism,” Nexus vol. 4, 2007, pg 20
2. Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, 76-77
3. Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, 165
4. Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1934, 77-78

Gaumont Palace posted by: Walking Paris with Henry Miller

I was recently directed to this great old postcard of avenue Anatole France in Clichy by Michael Jones, a frequent commenter on this site. A cleaned-up version of the image has been added to my post about Henry Miller’s apartment on this street.

Examining the full-resolution image, I was unable to make out any addresses on the buildings, though someone has thoughtfully drawn an arrow pointing out a particular balcony. The light-colored awning on the left reads “ET LIQUEURS” (presumably the tail of “Vins et Liqueurs”—a liquor store) and the darker storefront next to it is “Librairie Anatole France”—a bookstore. The postcard is undated, but the cars in the picture should provide a pretty good estimate of the era. Compare with the images below of two popular French cars from 1932, the year Miller and Alfred Perlès moved to Clichy.

1932 Peugeot 301 – source		1932 Citroën C6 G

Looks like a match to me! For a glimpse of how avenue Anatole France appears today, check out the more modern postcard below, which points out the entrance to Miller’s address on this street.

The source of the older postcard is notrefamille.com and the more recent postcard is something I picked up in Paris few years ago.

Postcard: avenue Anatole France posted by: Walking Paris with Henry Miller

In March 2004, Artists de la Vie, a play by Florence Boog and Jacques Lallié based on the relationship between Miller and Anaïs Nin, had its opening at the Espace Henry Miller.

The Espace Henry Miller is located at 3 rue du Docteur Calmette in Clichy. Visit their website to learn more about current events and course offerings.

Espace Henry Miller posted by: Walking Paris with Henry Miller

A plaque on the wall of number 4 avenue Anatole France in Clichy marks Henry Miller’s stay here between 1932 and 1934. This apartment was Miller’s first fixed address in Paris. After living on the bum for two years, shuttling between cheap hotels and the hospitality of friends, he moved in 1932 with his friend Alfred Perlès to the flat in Clichy. Here, he worked voraciously on his writing, completing his first published book, Tropic of Cancer and begin writing Black Spring and Tropic of Capricorn. Miller later wrote extensively of his experiences in this working class suburb of Paris in Quiet Days in Clichy.

It is strange that I always think of this period as “quiet days.” They were anything but quiet, those days. Yet never did I accomplish more. I worked on three or four books at once. I was seething with ideas. The Avenue Anatole France on which we lived was anything but picturesque; it resembled a monotonous stretch of upper Park Avenue, New York. Perhaps our ebullience was due to the fact that for the first time in many a year we were enjoying what might be called a relative security. For the first time in ages I had a permanent address, for about a year.
—Henry Miller, Remember to Remember

Miller and Perlès moved here primarily to save money. They split the rent (about 300 francs per month each), which was much cheaper than the rates of the cheap hotels they were accustomed to paying. The flat was equipped with a small kitchen, allowing them to further economize by cooking their own meals. Miller became an accomplished cook, often preparing his favorite dish, the French classic pot-au feu, for which he acquired a special cauldron.

Perlès described the apartment in My Friend Henry Miller:

Our flat consisted of two rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom. The hall separated Henry’s room from mine, so that we could come and go and receive our visitors without inconveniencing each other. We only had to share the bathroom and the kitchen. This was no drawback, for we usually cooked and ate our meals together in the kitchen.

Part of Miller’s daily routine at the Clichy apartment was to strip down, climb into his pajamas and take an afternoon nap. These naps, he said, put “velvet in his vertebrae”. Miller believed that dreaming was an important part of his work—things would happen to him when he slept,—and his creativity was refreshed. He began keeping a dream diary at this time and many passages in Tropic of Cancer have a surreal, dreamlike quality. In the afternoons he would take a bike ride or long walk, exploring the neighboring districts of Paris:

I can’t remember any period of my life when the time flew more quickly than it did at Clichy. The acquisition of two bicycles worked a complete metamorphosis in our routine. Everything was planned so as not to interfere with our afternoon rides.
—Henry Miller, Remember to Remember

Anaïs Nin visited frequently, as she wrote to Miller, “I love to go to Clichy, and I love sitting in the kitchen with you and Fred, and all the books on the table.” Nin and Miller were lovers at this time and having a stable residence removed from her husband’s view allowed the couple to explore their sexual passions freely. The two referred to the apartment as their “black-lace laboratory.” After sharing dinner with Fred, they would retire to Miller’s bedroom for a session of what Nin described as “acute core-reaching fucking.”

Miller’s creativity was at its most fecund in the Clichy apartment. He covered the walls of his room with large sheets of brown wrapping paper on which were scribbled notes and diagrams of his plans for novels, as well as photographs, pages torn from his favorite books and lists of exotic words he wished to incorporate in his writing. He could often be heard clattering away at his typewriter while he chain-smoked Gauloise Bleues. At his height, Miller was producing twenty pages a day of the manuscript of Tropic of Cancer, which reached a total of approximately 900 pages before being trimmed down for publication.

Miller left Clichy in early 1934, staying briefly with Anaïs Nin in Passy, followed by several months back on the hotel circuit before settling in to the Villa Seurat in September 1934.

Henry Miller’s apartment in Clichy		Miller and Perlès in the Clichy apartment

Furthermore

Around the corner from Miller’s apartment is a cemetery (Cimetière Sud de Clichy, beginning at the corner of the rue des Cailloux and rue Chance Milly) that Miller and Perlès visited frequently: “There was a cemetery a few blocks from the house to which we repaired in the evenings, always with one eye open for an agent.” (Henry Miller, Remember to Remember, 354)

Clichy (ave. Anatole France) posted by: Walking Paris with Henry Miller

And now I am running the gauntlet, I and myself firmly glued together. The little stretch from the Place Clichy to La Fourche. From the blind alleys that line the little stretch thick clusters of whores leap out, like bats blinded by the light. They get in my hair, my ears, my eyes. They cling with bloodsucking paws.
—Black Spring

On one of his daily walks between Paris and Clichy, Miller witnessed a scene at La Fourche which he described to Emil Schnellock as capturing the real spirit of Paris:

When I leave the café to pursue my usual way along the Avenue de Clichy towards the Porte, I suddenly come upon a drunkard dancing in front of another café—Chez Richard, at La Fourche—and now again a fine feeling of approbation comes over me. On the edge of the curb is a blind man strumming the strangest instrument I have ever seen; the terrasse is crowded with working men and women … we are approaching the low quarters of the city. And a few paces off, moving with imbecilic rhythm, is this drunkard, and the crowd on the terrasse watches in amusement, [...] the curious thing happens that on the other side of the street, a whore who had been standing against the shutters waiting for her prey, suddenly grows inspired, grows intoxicated by the music and by the crazy drunkard’s antics too, no doubt, and she lifts her dresses with a grand whoop-la and commences to do a jig. And there, by God, you have the real spirit of Paris. The man of the streets, the woman of the streets, the open café, the tolerance, the amusement, the wasting of time, the indifference, the common humanity.
—Letters to Emil

In Black Spring, La Fourche becomes the spiritual crossroads where Miller can ponder the different paths available to him in life and commune with his own past and potential identities:

Afternoons, sitting at La Fourche, I ask myself calmly, “Where do we go from here?” By nightfall I may have traveled to the moon and back. Here at the crossroads I sit and dream back through all my separate and immortal egos. I weep in my beer. Nights, walking back to Clichy, it’s the same feeling. Whenever I come to La Fourche I see endless roads radiating from my feet and out of my own shoes there step forth the countless egos which inhabit my world of being.
—Black Spring

Today, La Fourche is a busy, but unremarkable intersection. There is a metro stop here, but no sign of a Chez Richard or dancing whores. To continue our walk, follow the avenue de Clichy as it branches to your left.

La Fourche posted by: Walking Paris with Henry Miller

And so, when I stand at the bar of the Little Tom Thumb and see these men with three-quarter faces coming up through the trapdoors of hell with pulleys and braces, dragging locomotives and pianos and cuspidors, I say to myself: ‘Grand! Grand! All this bric-a-brac, all this machinery coming to me on a silver platter! It’s grand! It’s marvelous! It’s a poem created while I was asleep.
—Black Spring

Au Petit Poucet still exists and can be found just a few steps away from the Brasserie Wepler and the entrance to the Avenue de Clichy, which we’ll follow to our next stop, La Fourche.

Notes

The above illustration of Tom Thumb is taken from the Au Petit Poucet letterhead Miller used in his letters to Anaïs Nin and Brassaï.

Au Petit Poucet posted by: Walking Paris with Henry Miller

The Wepler was a habitual destination for Miller while he lived in the nearby suburb of Clichy from 1932 until 1934:

At one corner of the Place Clichy is the Café Wepler, which was for a long period my favorite haunt. I have sat there inside and out at all times of the day in all kinds of weather. I knew it like a book. The faces of the waiters, the managers, the cashiers, the whores, the clientele, even the attendants in the lavatory, are engraved in my memory as if they were illustrations in a book which I read every day.
—Quiet Days in Clichy

Miller’s first visit to the Wepler occurred in 1928, when he spent a year touring Europe with his wife, June. The occasion provided a harsh awakening for Miller to what he perceived as the “stoical indifference of the French” toward the welfare of prostitutes:

I remember the first day I entered the Café Wepler, in the year 1928, with my wife in tow. I remember the shock I experienced when I saw a whore fall dead drunk across one of the little tables on the terrace and nobody ran to her assistance. I was amazed and horrified by the stoical indifference of the French; I still am, despite all the good qualities in them which I have since come to know. “It’s nothing, it was just a whore … she was drunk.” I can still hear those words. Even today they make me shudder.
—Quiet Days in Clichy

A few years later, Miller would become a regular customer at the Wepler. Now firmly settled into Paris and accustomed to local attitudes toward the demi-monde, he developed a warm and lasting regard for the Wepler:

On the gray days, when it was chilly everywhere except in the big cafés, I looked forward with pleasure to spending an hour or two at the Café Wepler before going to dinner. The rosy glow which suffused the place emanated from the cluster of whores who usually congregated near the entrance.
—Quiet Days in Clichy

The Brasserie remains open to this day and provides an inviting place to enjoy a drink or meal amid the bustle of the Place de Clichy. Their website provides historical and current photos, menu selections and an informative video (in the “Welcome” section).

Furthermore

The Wepler is likely the spot Louis-Ferdinand Céline had in mind when he set the opening scene of his first novel, Journey to the End of the Night on the terrace of a café in the Place de Clichy.

Brasserie Wepler posted by: Walking Paris with Henry Miller

Our next walk begins at the Place de Clichy in Montmartre and will finish in the adjoining suburb of Clichy. You can reach the Place de Clichy on metro line 12 (Paris metro map PDF).

Today, as in the nineteen-thirties, the Place de Clichy is a bustling intersection filled with restaurants and movie theaters. While Henry Miller lived in Clichy between 1932 and 1934, he passed through the Place Clichy daily on his walks to and from work at The Chicago Tribune. Several of his favorite haunts were to be found here, such as the brasserie Wepler and Au Petit Poucet, which still exist. Miller often recalled that his years spent living in this area were some of the happiest of his life:

Today it is the third or fourth day of spring and I am sitting at the Place Clichy in full sunshine. Today, sitting here in the sun, I tell you it doesn’t matter a damn whether the world is going to the dogs or not; it doesn’t matter whether the world is right or wrong, good or bad. It is—and that suffices—Black Spring

In the thirties, the cafés in the Place Clichy were littered with prostitutes and their pimps, spilling out from Pigalle, the red-light district which runs from the Place Clichy to the Moulin Rouge on Boulevard Rochechouart. Miller was particularly fascinated buy one prostitute with a wooden stump who stationed herself in front of the Gaumont movie theatre each night: ” One imagines all sorts of things-splinters, etc.” In Quiet Days in Clichy, he likened the neighborhood favorably to Broadway in New York:

On a gray day in Paris I often found myself walking towards the Place Clichy in Montmartre. From Clichy to Aubervilliers there is a long string of cafés, restaurants, theaters, cinemas, haberdashers, hotels and bordels. It is the Broadway of Paris corresponding to that little stretch between 42nd and 53rd Streets.

The comparison is apt, but miller found the squalor of Montmartre more appealing than the glitter of Broadway:

Montmartre is worn, faded, derelict, nakedly vicious, mercenary, vulgar. It is, if anything, repellent rather than attractive, but insidiously repellent, like vice itself. There are little bars filled almost exclusively with whores, pimps, thugs and gamblers, which, no matter if you pass them up a thousand times, finally suck you in and claim you as a victim. There are hotels in the side streets leading off the boulevard whose ugliness is so sinister that you shudder at the thought of entering them, and yet it is inevitable that you will one day pass a night, perhaps a week or a month, in one of them. You may even become so attached to the place as to find one day that your whole life has been transformed and that what you once regarded as sordid, squalid, miserable, has now become charming, tender, beautiful.

Place de Clichy posted by: Walking Paris with Henry Miller