Henry Miller in Hydra, 1939
Photo by George Seferis, via Ellopos.org

Golden morning on the Mediterranean. The sapphire-quartz water spreads to the horizon. My family is halfway through a tour of Italy and Greece. I’m restless, standing on the deck of the superfast ferry. Waiting for my first glimpse of a fabled land. Layers of meaning, history, and fiction mix together in my expectations. And then, like the shadow of a Titan, out of the heat haze and morning mist appears the mythic island of Corfu. I stare as we pass it for at least a half-hour. Then we glide past Ithaca, Ulysses’ kingdom. The guide informs us that Hercules’ island is on our right.

Here in Greece, gods and heroes walked among us. And one from my pantheon, Henry Miller, came to this extraordinary country in the first years of World War II. He stayed on Corfu with his friend, the writer Lawrence Durrell. Their visits to monuments and ruins were empty and silent. No tourists during a war. I’m sure I won’t be so lucky. On the ferry I have begun The Colossus of Maroussi, Miller’s famous travel book about his experiences here. I have read it every summer for the last five years, with the self-imposed rule that I must read only in the hot sunlight. I have the thin volume with me today, holding on to it like a lifeline to the past.

I first read Henry Miller ten years ago. I waded through Tropic of Cancer, finding the prose difficult and dense. But alive! Bristling with energy and hope. So, over the next few years I read everything by him I could get my hands on. I became what passes these days for an expert. I modeled my life and writing on his. I composed a poor Masters thesis on “The Inhuman in Tropic of Cancer.” As I got older, more authors crowded my consciousness, more books attached themselves to my psyche. But Henry always held on somehow, laughing and singing.

Reaching the mainland, we disembark and get on the bus to Olympia. A few quick hours pass as I stare out the window, making occasional comments to my parents. But as soon as we reach the hotel, I grab my things and head into the hills alone. The yellow afternoon light burns on my smiling face. Next to the hotel I get sidetracked and poke around in a small grove of oranges and lemons. But I continue, finding a trail over a small wooden bridge that heads in the forest. Where does it go? Who cares! Henry wouldn’t. A fence bars my way, but I crawl underneath and then head up a steep grade to the right. Someone has cut the bark away on the sides of the many pines at the top and placed plastic bags underneath them to collect sap. I push along the ridge, the open Mediterranean vegetation giving me plenty of room to maneuver. Then, the knoll drops off at a near cliff and I clamber down to a dirt track that heads back up into hills of olive groves.

Twisted trees are carefully spaced along the slopes, separated by yellow meadow. Small paths wind from the main road at intervals. I take one of them, eventually leaving it, pushing uphill, and reaching a small crest, where I have a spectacular view. Proud upright cypresses overlook a primitive valley. A stone spire rises to the west along the hazy horizon. A range of green and rocky hills stretches in the distance to the north. About a mile away, one lone village perches on the side of a pine-covered hill. Abandoned huts crouch in the groves below. This is the place. I flop down in the dust under spreading olive branches near the top of the hill.

Dragonflies flash from leaf to leaf. Ants crawl in the shade of the young tree, through dirt and fungus, over patches of sun. I read a few chapters of Colossus. A rooster crows in the valley. This is one of the most peaceful moments of my life. This is the fruit of solitude, the true travel. An hour passes like a breath. I look up from the book at the landscape periodically, in disbelief that I am finally in Greece, a magical place I have dreamed of my whole life. Yet I turn back to the beautiful prose, using the descriptions to give adjectives to the surroundings, even though I know that Henry was never on this spot.

Jackals bark on the far side of the hill, coming closer. Time to head back to the hotel, to my family, to tourism. I take a long way back, through fields of wildflowers and tomato plants. I stumble across the skeleton of a building hiding among tall green clumps, long since fallen into disuse. Then, heading towards the setting sun, I follow a wide swath that has been made by cows across a hill of orange grass, messy with tracks and dung. I find the fence and slip back into the olive grove behind the hotel.

Apollo temple, Delphi
(cc) Photo by Pierre Metivier

The next day we visit the ruins at Olympia in the morning. Then, we ride north back to Patras, ferry across the Gulf of Corinth, and ride east to Delphi, high on the side of Mount Parnassus. That afternoon I read on the terrace of the hotel, far above the Gulf of Corinth and the largest olive grove in the world, which spreads like a green delta thousands of feet below. I read slowly until nightfall, savoring words and phrases with the patience of someone sipping fine wine.

At the ruins of Delphi I can feel the pale presence of gods. The static gods of statues, of crumbling time, of patient, faded perfection. I stare at the cliffs, wanting to climb the stony heights of Parnassus, the playground of muses. The muses! How many times have I invoked them, trying to find inspiration? How many times have I looked outside myself for strength? But I am weak. Myth and literature invade the pure panorama, as I try to see through other, greater eyes. I climb the winding path, passing other visitors, all on their own pilgrimages. I wonder what superstructures they have laid on their journeys, what preconceptions and pictures have altered their experiences, as I have allowed Miller’s to shape mine.

I stare up at the massive Rock of the Sibyl, asking the vanished oracle. No answer. But I can hear my old friend Henry laughing at my useless and juvenile ponderings, dancing in the sunlight, invisible and joyous. Telling me to see things as they are. Telling me to make my own conclusions.

We travel south and spend that night in Athens. The next morning we hike up the ancient temple of the Acropolis with the usual hordes of tourists. I try to ignore them and think of all the kings and writers who had trekked up those steps to the Parthenon, wanting to feel like I am walking in the footsteps of giants.

That afternoon I finish Colossus on the rooftop of the Zafolia hotel, the city honking and steaming all around. At night we watch the sun set over the Acropolis, which would have been an appropriate conclusion to our tour. But instead of ending there, the next day we visit Aegina, Poros, and Hydra. I reread a particularly good chapter at a café along the water at Poros, while my parents shop. And as we pull into the harbor at Hydra, I can see Spetsai in the distance, and know that some day I’ll be back, to visit another godshome, John Fowles’ semi-fictional island of Phraxos, where The Magus takes place. Another day, another Olympus.

Back at the hotel, the rest of the tour group prepares to leave. But I am not done yet. Before we started this trip, I convinced my family to book an extra day in Athens after the tour was officially over, so that we could drive to the ancient ruin of Mycenae. This had always been my favorite place in Henry’s book, a place where he had both an epiphany and a failure. He had come here twice, once with Katsimbalis, the Colossus of Maroussi himself, and once with Lawrence Durrell. Both times he had tried to conquer his fears and had not.

The excursion from Athens is not as bad as we feared. My father drives west and onto the Peloponese, across the Corinth canal, a deep gap of rock. My mother and grandmother comment on the native driving habits. I point out the place between Salamis and the mainland where the Athenians trapped the Persian fleet at one of the turning points in the Persian Wars. My grandfather munches on some of Aegina’s famous pistachios. As we turn inland, the Acrocorinth, a huge sprawling fortress on top of a brown peak, looms to the right. My father pulls off the road and I snap some photos. A short while later, we leave the highway and wind through the empty semi-arid countryside. Somehow this is different, far better than riding in the bus, but I can’t wait to get out and walk. We pass through a small town, heading east up into the hills. Getting out of the car, we make our way to the entrance, paying the fee and climbing the conical hill to the Lion’s Gate. I snap photos of the oldest carved relief in Europe. A billion cicadas hum and chatter. My family is worn out from weeks of travel and decides that they have come far enough. They sit down in the morning heat. I can’t stop. I have a mission to complete.

Cistern at Mycenae
(cc) Photo by Trent Strohm

Leaving my family at the Lion’s Gate, I scramble up the height of Mycenae, a camera, Colossus, and a bottle of water in my backpack. Twisted trees and crumbled rock walls waver in the heat. Occasional tourists stare off across the Argive plain. I must find the cistern, the dark place where Henry Miller could not go. The slippery staircase into Hades. I wander down the backside of the fortress, through the palace ruins and to the point where the mountains push up against the protective gorge. A few groups loiter at this final wall of the fortress. I check my map, search to my left. There it is. A gaping doorway, a hole black as night in the morning brilliance.

A few steps inside at the first turn to the left, a Greek family waits for something. They make small forays into the dark, but don’t go far. I curse myself for not bringing a flashlight. I wait, possibly for the Greeks to just blindly push down into the abyss, steeling my courage to do it.

Just then, light and sound emanate. The faint flicker of candles and muttering voices. Spirits of the underworld? No, a small group is climbing out of the depths. As they reach us they hand off their dripping, waxy candles. The ghost of Henry Miller, disguised as an elderly British woman, hands me hers.

I descend the slippery staircase, behind two young boys and a girl. The light bobs and flickers. My knees shake. The ancient steps, probably the oldest on the continent, are worn and wet. I remind myself that I need to do this, to go where my hero could not. The walls are slick, marbled slime. At the third turn, the three teens balk, echoing at each other in Greek. I take the lead, stepping down, down, down. The meager light from our three candles makes the cistern seem small and tight. Finally, the bottom appears in the dimness, wavering and watery, muddy and flat. I step into the muck and touch the final cold wall with my right hand, invoking a blessing for my gods and heroes. For poor, claustrophobic Henry.

I don’t linger. Some victories are not meant to be savored. The ascent is easier, and again I lead the family up the smooth stairs. Back at the top, in the dayshine and breezes, my eyes adjust slowly. The brisk wind whistling though a hole in the wall nearly blows out the flame, but I protect it with a cupped hand. I realize people are nearby, waiting. I hand the light to a young girl, who thanks me sweetly, shyly hiding her eyes with her hair.

In the sunlight, the humid ruins spread out above me to the hazy sky. On the steep surrounding hills sheep bay over the roar of the cicadas. I watch a shepherd slowly lead his flock across the empty, trackless mountains. Faint bells jingle on the great green-gray slopes. And something stirs in me, telling me that I have left my own shepherd behind.

The Ghost of Henry Miller posted by: Walking Paris with Henry Miller

In the winter of 1930, six months into his first year in Paris, Henry Miller moved in with Richard Osborn to his flat on rue Auguste Bartholdi. Osborn was the youngest child of a blueblood New England family from Bridgeport, Connecticut and was prone to bouts of schizophrenia. “A Connecticut Yankee, with a slip in the ancestry somewhere” is how Miller described him.¹ Only recently removed from his Yale graduation, Osborn had come to Paris in order to experience the wild side for a few years before settling into a planned career on Wall Street. While in the city of light, he found employment in the legal department of the Paris branch of National City Bank. Osborn Appears in Tropic of Cancer as Fillmore, a name derived from Fillmore Place, a favorite street from Miller’s childhood in Brooklyn.

The apartment was a seventh floor walk-up “with a separate kitchen and good-sized bedroom.”² The space was too large for one person, Osborn reasoned, and Miller would help him take care of the place and keep the fire going while he was away at work. The apartment was conveniently located next to a metro line and from his window perch, Miller could observe soldiers absurdly flourishing their swords and practicing bayonet charges on the parade grounds of the nearby École Militaire. Beyond, he was afforded a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower.

The two got along well for most of the winter. Miller admired Osborn’s adventurous nature and Osborn, in turn, was sure that Miller was a budding genius. Osborn’s only complaint was Miller’s habit of clattering away at the typewriter into the early hours of the morning.³ In exchange for Osborn picking up all of the expenses, Miller diligently swept the floors, cleaned the apartment and cooked meals.

With his bank salary, Osborn treated Miller to wine and revelry and took him to the Cirque Medrano.⁴ Often he returned from work with arms laden with bottles of Miller’s favorite Anjou, Vouvray, Macon, or Rhum Negrita, ready for a night of carousing. Upon crossing the threshold he would inevitably shout in absurdist French, “Ce soir, Henri, nous vouldras fait un rigolo!”⁵

Each morning Osborn deposited a 10 franc note on Miller’s pillow in hopes that the money would be spent on a healthy meal. He was disappointed to learn that the daily fare went only toward two packs of Gauloises Bleues cigarettes and a breakfast of croissants and café crème.

Occasionally tempers flared between Osborn and Miller. The truth was that each man envied the other’s freedom. Miller, who was penniless, longed for the liberty Osborn enjoyed to lavish money on good food, drink and entertainment. Osborn, a would-be writer who never got around to writing very much, envied Miller’s freedom to indulge his artistic passion removed from the constraints of the workaday world.⁶

Miller was making good use of his free time in the apartment. While on the rue Auguste Bartholdi he completed the fledgling novel Crazy Cock and began composing his first published articles. “Mademoiselle Claude” and “Buñuel, or Thus Cometh to an End Everywhere the Golden Age” were printed in Samuel Putnam’s New Review at this time while “The Six Day Bike Races” and other articles began making their appearance in the Paris edition of The Chicago Tribune. Emboldened, Miller began to anticipate greater tasks. He wrote to Emil Schnellock that after Crazy Cock, whose literary pretensions had made him feel walled-in and suffocated, “I will explode in the Paris book. The hell with form, style, expression and all those pseudo-paramount things which beguile the critics. I want to get myself across this time—and direct as a knife thrust.”⁷ ‘The Paris book,’ of course, was to become Tropic of Cancer.

Miller began constructing the new novel in his usual disjointed manner: scribbling cryptic notes, copying interesting phrases he found in an assortment of books and cleaving passages from his letters home to Schnellock. “On the wall to one side of him, on a sheet of large brown wrapping paper, is a list of words which he adds to from time to time: scientific words, descriptive words, mythological terms, archaic and obsolete expressions, crapulous words, insulting words, explosive words, garnered from the weirdest sources.”⁸

Later in 1931, Osborn would introduce Miller to the woman who would become his muse and lover, Anaïs Nin. Nin was the wife of Hugo Guiler, Osborn’s boss at National City Bank. Osborn, who had a habit of bragging over his literary flatmate, showed some of Miller’s writing to Nin. Impressed, she arranged a meeting and would record her first encounter with Miller in her diary: “In his writing he is flamboyant, virile, animal, magnificent. He is a man whom life makes drunk, I thought. He is like me.”⁹ The first shoots of one of history’s great literary love affairs had begun to take root.

Osborn, meanwhile, had become smitten with a woman named Irene who quickly joined Miller in sharing the apartment. Irene frustrated Osborn by claiming to be a Russian princess and demanding luxuries befitting her title. She further made claim to a dose of gonorrhea in apparent ruse to prevent him from attempting to have sex with her. Unlike Osborn, Irene’s charms were entirely lost on Miller and the two essentially ignored each other while living under the same roof for most of the winter.

When the lease ran out on March 4, 1931 Miller and Osborn parted ways to find separate living arrangements.¹⁰ They remained friends however, with their further Parisian adventures occupying much of the latter portion of Tropic of Cancer. The two kept in contact over the years through letters and Miller would go on to dedicate The Wisdom of the Heart to Osborn:

“To Richard Galen Osborn originally of Bridgeport, Connecticut, who rescued me from starvation in Paris and set my feet in the right direction. May heaven protect him and guide him safely to port.”

Notes

1. Henry Miller, Letters to Emil, 68
2. Richard Osborn, “No. 2, Rue Auguste Bartholdi,” Henry Miller: A Book of Tributes, 1931-1994, 35
3. Osborn, 36
4. Osborn, 38
5. Jay Martin, Always Merry and Bright, 220. Anther variant found in Letters to Emil, 69
6. Osborn, 41
7. Letters to Emil, 72
8. Osborn, 29
9. Anaïs Nin, Henry & June, 6
10. Letters to Emil, 71

Life with Richard Osborn posted by: Walking Paris with Henry Miller

On a snowy day in February 1930, Henry Miller boarded the passenger ship American Banker and left New York to begin a new life in Europe. His journey would eventually take him to Paris, where he was to live for nine years and where he began writing the novels that made him famous. The American Banker carried Miller as far as London and there, with only $10 to his name—hastily borrowed at the dock from his friend Emil Schnellock—he was obliged to wait until his wife could wire the funds to complete his travel.

To the right, you’ll see the cover page of the timetable Miller would have used to plan his journey. The timetable is for American Merchant Lines and was published in December 1929, covering departures for January to April of 1930. The American Banker was one of five American Merchant Lines ships that plied the route between New York and London.

Arrival

Miller arrived in London on the twenty-fifth of February and, according to biographer Jay Martin, took a room at the Melvin Private Hotel on Gower Street.¹ Michael Jones, an intrepid reader of this blog, has researched this location and uncovered some further information: The full name of the hotel at the time of Miller’s stay was the John Melvin Groundwater Private Hotel and it was located at 67 Gower Street. The hotel was renamed The Georgian during the 1940’s and today is known as The Ridgemount Hotel, occupying 65-67 Gower Street. Incidentally, 67 Gower Street was in 1869 home to Elizabeth Stride, a victim of the notorious murderer, Jack the Ripper.

Miller remained in London for about a week and was not impressed. In a letter to Emil Schnellock he complained of the pervasive poverty and cold, gloomy weather.

London gave me a severe cold. The houses are not sufficiently heated. You take a bath and run through the halls—and br-r—you shiver before you get your clothes on. I don’t like London anyhow. I would never advise anyone to go there. It is a wonderful city—but they can have it. They—who? Not the English. Christ, what beggars! The scum of the earth is London’s poor—and that means the big majority. Otherwise a fine people.

You said the gloom was rich. It was. You could cut it with an axe. Ate breakfast at the window under an electric light.²

Several of London’s best known sites—Leicester Square, Picadilly Circus and Charing Cross—left Miller cold, appealing to him only as a pale reflection of the New York he recently fled—“just another 42nd Street back in 1895,” as he described them to Schnellock.

Miller’s sense of gloom was no doubt exacerbated by loneliness, his knowledge that his marriage was falling apart and the realization that he faced an uncertain future in an alien land without resources of money or friends. Based on his letter to Schnellock, Miller’s only enjoyable moments in London occurred when he saw an exhibition of paintings by J.M.W. Turner, and on a few stimulating walks through Limehouse and Whitechapel.

The Ridgemount Hotel, London © Photo by Michael Jones		The Ridgemount Hotel, interior © Photo by Michael Jones

Sexus

In Sexus, Miller informs us that while in London he also took in the sites of The Crystal Palace (destroyed in 1936) and the Covent Garden Opera (now known as the Royal Opera House). The Sexus account actually begins in New York, seven years prior to Miller’s arrival in London and frames his experience in the British capitol as a dreamlike series of coincidences which fulfill a premonition he had of losing his wife, June.

Seeing a Broadway advertisement for a performance by “Thomas Burke of the Covent Garden Opera,” Miller makes a date with Mara to attend (Mara is the fictionalized June Miller and at this point in the story, she and Henry have recently met are not yet married). Mara never arrives and Miller is left to see the performance alone. Burke, Miller wrote, “made a tremendous impression on me, for reasons which I shall never be able to fathom. A number of curious coincidences are connected with his name and with the song which he sang that night—’Roses of Picardy.’”³

At this point, Miller leaps ahead seven years and the string of coincidences is revealed. Upon arriving in London, Miller turns up at the Covent Garden Opera, which has been temporarily converted to a dance hall: “It is to Covent Garden I go a few hours after landing in London, and to the girl I single out to dance with I offer a rose from the flower market.”⁴ Miller’s arrival at the dance hall recalls his initial meeting with June at Wilson’s Dancing Studio, an encounter which he references in the opening words of the novel: “It must have been a Thursday night when I met her for the first time—at the dance hall.”⁵ The setting of the Covent Garden Opera conveniently provides a link back to Thomas Burke, and the rose Miller offers connects to his rendition of “Roses of Picardy” with its line that sparks Miller’s premonition of losing Mara—“the words which stab me and leave me desolate”—and which he quotes, “but there is one rose that dies not in Picardy … ‘tis the rose I keep in my heart.”⁶

From the dance hall, Miller leaps ahead to his last day in London and a visit to the home of an astrologer who lives near the Crystal Palace. To reach the house Miller must cross another property, which the astrologer informs him belongs to Thomas Burke. This, however, turns out not to be Thomas Burke the opera singer, but Thomas Burke the writer, author of Limehouse Nights. Miller makes no comment on this transition from one Thomas Burke to another, but in my reading, he is using this dreamlike transference of identities to mark an important transition in his own life.

This becomes evident as Miller’s narrative again leaps suddenly ahead several years to his second attempt to visit London. This voyage, recounted separately in the story “Via Dieppe New Haven” proved unsuccessful, as he was denied entry at the port and sent back to France. In the account provided in Sexus, Miller points out that he was obliged to return to Paris via Picardy, the French province featured in Burke’s song,

and in traveling through that smiling land I stand up and weep with joy. Suddenly, recalling the disappointments, the frustrations, the hopes turned to despair, I realized for the first time the meaning of “voyage.” She had mad the first journey possible and the second one inevitable. We were never to see each other again. I was free in a wholly new sense—free to become the endless voyager.⁷

Miller’s premonition of losing June—coming here at the beginning of their relationship—is joined through this passage to the moment when he actually does lose her. Though not explicitly stated, Miller’s unsuccessful attempt to visit London a second time marked the true end of his marriage to June.

To briefly provide the background: June traveled to Paris in late 1932 to visit Miller and resume their relationship. Though still married, the couple had long been estranged and they began to quarrel—viciously. Miller’s friends tried to free him from June’s clutches by sending him on a trip to England. He was denied entry however, because he lacked the necessary funds for the return voyage and was sent back to France. Before he could meet up with June again, she had sailed back to New York, demanding a prompt divorce.⁸

The Sexus passage is an example of the spiral form of narrative for which Miller has become known. Arriving at the beginning of the novel, this interlude of premonitions, roses, dance halls and opera singers must seem a confusing jumble to readers not already familiar with the biographical story underlying Miller’s attempted second trip to London. I find it interesting though, that while lacking in narrative clarity, Miller’s account provides his readers a taste of the very sort of premonition he is describing—a vision of the future whose narrative specifics are uncertain but whose emotional character is clear.

Notes

1. Jay Martin, Always Merry and Bright, 179-80. Martin is referencing a letter from Henry Miller to Abe Elkus written on letterhead from the Melvin Private Hotel.
2. Henry Miller, Letters to Emil, 17
3. Henry Miller, Sexus, 53
4. Ibid.
5. Henry Miller, Sexus, 5
6. Henry Miller, Sexus, 54
7. Ibid.
8. Jay Martin, Always Merry and Bright, 268-77

London Transfer posted by: Walking Paris with Henry Miller

Unfortunately, I don’t have a photograph of rue Henry Miller or its street sign. The image at the top of this post is just something I cobbled together in Photoshop. If anyone can provide such a photo it would be much appreciated.

Update: for the Nin fans in the audience, You’ll find the rue Anaïs Nin in the town of Castanet-Tolosan, just outside of Toulouse.

Rue Henry Miller posted by: Walking Paris with Henry Miller

Pepper Pot

First up is the site of the Pepper Pot cafe, where Miller’s wife, June, worked as a waitress in 1925 and 1926. RC at the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company blog has provided an excellent history of the Pepper Pot. June sold Miller’s broadsheets, known as Mezzotints here under her own name and it was also at the Pepper Pot that June met Jean Kronski, who appears in Miller’s novels variously as “Vanya” and “Stasia.” The Pepper Pot itself appears in The Rosy Crucifixion under the guise of “The Iron Cauldron.”

The Pepper Pot occupied the basement level of 146-150 Fourth Street, at the intersection with Sixth Avenue. Today, the basement at number 146 is occupied by a laundry and the first floor houses a skin care center known as Beauty Jewel (the yellow awning on the left). Number 148 is home to a Belgian bar called Vol de Nuit (the red door at the center of the photo). 150 Fourth Street is now the Washington Square Diner (at the right of the photo).

It’s not clear from my photo, but the exterior of the Pepper Pot appears to have changed only slightly since the 1920′s. Compare the following image, which I cobbled together from Google Maps’ street view, with the old postcard image RC provided on his site:

Image from Google Maps’ street view		Image from RC’s blog

The Roman Tavern?

After returning to Miller from her European trip with Jean in 1927, June opened a cafe called The Roman Tavern, likely with the money from her wealthy admirer, Roland Freedman (Freedman appears in The Rosy Crucifixion as “Pop”). Like the Pepper Pot, The Roman Tavern operated out of a basement and, according to Miller biographer Mary Dearborn, was located at Macdougal and Third Street. Another biographer, Robert Ferguson, simply places it on Macdougal Street.

Two of the corners at the intersection of Macdougal and Third Streets are reasonable candidates for the site of a 1920′s tavern (the other two corners are occupied by large institutional buildings). Ben’s Pizzeria is lodged on one of these corners while the other is home to Groove, a nightclub featuring live R&B and Blues music. I have no idea if either of these places is the true site of June’s Roman Tavern. If you know the specific address of the tavern, please post it in the comments.

Ben’s Pizzeria, 123 Macdougal Street		Groove, 125 Macdougal Street

The Speakeasy

Between September and November/December of 1925, Henry and June ran a speakeasy in the basement apartment of 106 Perry Street. They also used the apartment as their living quarters. I haven’t come across any indication that the speakeasy had a name, but that was likely the norm for drinking establishments during the Prohibition era. As with the Pepper Pot, RC’s blog has the most thorough information on the Millers’ speakeasy, which Miller himself described in Plexus.

106 Perry Street, site of Henry and June Miller’s speakeasy in 1925

Map

The map below shows each of the locations photographed in this post:

View Larger Map

Greenwich Village Miscellania posted by: Walking Paris with Henry Miller

Henry Miller met Nin through their common friend, Richard Osborn, — Hugh’s coworker who was then providing Miller a place to sleep in his apartment. Nin’s curiosity was aroused when Osborn showed her the article Miller had recently published on the filmmaker, Luis Buñuel. Enamored of the vigorous writing style, Nin commented in her diary, “the words are slung like hatchets, explode with hatred, and it was like hearing wild drums in the midst of the Tuileries gardens”. She invited Osborn and Miller to Louveciennes for a meal.

This meeting took place at the end of November, 1931. At the time, Nin was 28 years old and had just completed a book about D. H. Lawrence (D. H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study). Miller was 39 and working on Crazy Cock, a novel which would not be published during his lifetime.

Nin’s diary records their first encounter: “I have met Henry Miller … When he first stepped out of the car and walked towards the door where I stood waiting, I saw a man I liked. In his writing he is flamboyant, virile, animal, magnificent. He is a man whom life makes drunk, I thought. He is like me.”

Miller’s was impressed by Nin’s exotic flair for decor: “The place is an astrologic den, with violet blue lights and zodiacs on the wall, apricot-colored dining room and peach blossom bedrooms, black painted bookcases, bowls filled with strange stones.”

Miller and Nin became lovers in 1932 following a series of flirtatious meetings at Le Viking. “Come and be my husband for a few days,” she would write to Miller when Hugh remained away on business. Miller often stayed overnight or on extended visits of four or five days. When Hugh was at home Miller would sometimes be secreted away in a guest room. At one point, Nin set aside a room for Miller to use as an office in the former billiard room of the old DuBarry estate. He worked on Black Spring here.

Here in the billiard room where the rats once scurried, sit Anaïs and I—or I pace up and down, gesticulating while I explain to her the bankruptcy of science, or the meta-anthropological crisis. Here, at her desk, littered with shattered material for the future, I hammer out my impetuous thoughts and images. Here all the images that grip and invade us are given free rein and new cosmological frontiers established. —Henry Miller writing in Nin’s diary, Incest

Nin’s diary recounts, “when he is here, Louveciennes is rich for me, alive. My body and mind vibrate continuously. I am not only more woman, but more writer, more thinker, more reader, more everything.” And Miller, also writing in Nin’s diary, confides, “Louveciennes becomes fixed historically in the biographical record of my life, for from Louveciennes dates the most important epoch of my life.”

Miller never discussed his affair with Anaïs in print, a promise he kept to her in order to avoid jeopardizing her marriage. He did however publicly champion her writing, most notably in an essay on her work titled, “Une Etre Etoilique” (A Star-like Being), published in the October 1937 edition of The Criterion. He wrote to his friend Emil Schnellock, “I know no woman writer of any period who has the courage to express herself as Anaïs does.”

Directions

From Paris, go to Gare St. Lazare and take the Transilien train in the direction of St. Nom la Bretèche. Descend at the Louveciennes station (about 30 minutes outside of Paris). It’s a short walk from here. Turn right when getting off the train and the first cross street you will encounter is rue Monbuisson. Turn left onto rue Monbuisson and follow to number 2 bis.

Notes

Follow the rue Monbuisson a short distance beyond Nin’s house as it veers off to the right at the entrance to the former home of painter, Auguste Renoir, who lived here from 1897 until 1914.

Louveciennes posted by: Walking Paris with Henry Miller