London Transfer

AML timetable—December, 1929
from the collection of Björn Larsson

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

Location