Walking Paris with Henry Miller

Gillotte’s was a small bistro located across the street from the Chicago Tribune offices on rue Lamartine that stayed open throughout the night. As such, it was a favorite eatery for the Tribune staff who worked late nights to produce the morning edition. Waverly Root, the Tribune editor and well-known food writer, found the quality of Gillotte’s cuisine confirmed by it’s popularity among taxi drivers who, unlike the Tribune staff, were free to take their meals in any part of the city they wished.¹ The bistro was a favorite of Henry Miller’s and he looked forward to his nightly meal there, usually taken about 2:30 am, following his work at the paper:

my life has not become any easier because I have a job. Au contraire, I am worse off than ever. [...] However, there is the life at Gillotte’s nightly (that is, the little bistro around the corner from the office). That compensates for everything.²

The Tribune staff and taxi drivers were joined at Gillotte’s by other denizens of the Paris nightlife, notably the local prostitutes and their pimps. It was just the sort of setting, bringing together the Paris literati with the working class and demi-mondaine, all mixed with copious quantities of food and wine, at which Miller was in his element:

Naturally we always had a few liters of wine with our meals, which were veritable banquets. Miller shone at these little gatherings. He was brilliant, especially when a little tipsy, and made friends with the whores and the pimps and even the ‘upstairs guys [editorial staff].’³

Miller described Gillotte’s in Tropic of Cancer, where it appears as “Monsieur Paul’s”:

At Monsieur Paul’s, the bistro across the way, there is a back room reserved for the newspapermen where we can eat on credit. It is a pleasant little room with sawdust on the floor and flies in season and out. When I say that it is reserved for the newspapermen I don’t mean to imply that we eat in privacy; on the contrary, it means that we have the privilege of associating with the whores and pimps who form the more substantial element of Monsieur Paul’s clientele.⁴

The newspapermen ate on credit and were expected to pay their bill every other week. So, when Miller was fired from the Tribune, he used part of his final check to settle up with Gillotte’s, ensuring that he could continue to eat regularly:

Well, I wouldn’t starve, that’s one thing. If I should do nothing else but concentrate on food that would prevent me from falling to pieces. For a week or two I could still go to Monsieur Paul’s and have a square meal every evening; he wouldn’t know whether I was working or not.⁵

During a 1969 return trip to Paris, Miller made a point of seeking out Gillotte’s as part of his son’s project to photograph the writer’s former Parisian haunts, but discovered that the bistro had already disappeared.⁶ The photograph above is taken from Vol. 2 of Nexus: The International Henry Miller Journal and appears to be from the 1950’s.

Unfortunately, I don’t know the address or exact location of Gillotte’s. However, there are presently two small café restaurants on rue Lamartine across from the former Tribune offices that are worth stopping by. If you know the correct address or have a more recent photo of the location, please let me know in the comments.

Location

rue Lamartine – See it on Google Maps

Notes

1. Waverley Root, The Paris Edition: 1927-1934, 107
2. Henry Miller, Letters to Emil, 80; August 24, 1931
3. Alfred Perlès, My Friend Henry Miller, 46
4. Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, 158
5. Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, 191
6. Brassaï, Henry Miller: Happy Rock, 155; July 17, 1969

Posted August 20, 2007 - trackback