Walking Paris with Henry Miller

In March of 1932, Henry Miller lived at the Hôtel Cronstadt for about two weeks while waiting for repairs to be completed on his new apartment in Clichy. Miller was expecting the move to Clichy to deliver him from the circuit of cheap hotels he had been traveling since arriving in Paris more than a year before. But when he and Alfred Perlès arrived to take possession of their flat, they discovered that the water had yet to be connected, the electric lighting was not installed and the apartment was in general disarray. That first night in Clichy, they awoke from a fitful sleep covered in bites and the walls seething with insects:

Then we get busy and inspect. Hold the candle to the walls. Marvellous! The walls are alive! Big ones, egg-layers, nests, nits, cocoons, spider webs, dead ones, comatose ones, active ones … we take matches and burn them alive.¹

The sight was enough to convince their concierge to order repairs and Miller spent the interim at the Hôtel Cronstadt.

The Cronstadt had two points of recommendation for Miller. First, it was convenient, located directly across the narrow rue Lamartine from his office at The Chicago Tribune. And second, the look of the place had a certain charm for Miller, as he told Anaïs Nin, “The Cronstadt looks like what a French hotel should look like.”² He was anxious for her to see it with him.

So I’m here at the Cronstadt and you have the telephone number. I will be here at the office until the afternoon, If you don’t find me at the hotel try this joint—editorial room. I want you to see the Cronstadt.³

When Nin did visit him, their conversation left him in an agitated creative state. He remained in the hotel room after she left scribbling a series of telegraphic notes:

The night you left me in the Hotel Cronstadt I was in a fever. I made so many notes, and I was going afterwards to the office to write … but I didn’t.⁴

A smattering of his notes from that night include:

“Read Rabelais in old French.” “Reread Cervantes” … “Write Joe’s column in the morning.” “Include dream of Aunt Annie—see the dream book.” “Make the last book the first of a series—a life job, like Proust’s.” “Anaïs must see A Nous la Liberté.” … “Read the Golden Ass of Apuleius and Les Diaboliques in French” … “Go to Russian Church on Rue Crimée for the music.” … “Get back the first volume of Albertine and make annotations … write copiously, there is time for everything” … “Read Jacques Maritain” … “Tell Anaïs how I stumbled into Anatole coming out of the Gare St. Lazare that afternoon … Anatole is a beautiful character.” “Begin the book with a paean to Buñuel.” “Go with Anaïs to the Franco-Czech restaurant on the Rue St. Anne.”⁵

By March 28, Miller had left the Cronstadt and he and Perlès were installed again in the their newly cleaned apartment in Clichy.

Location

10 rue Lamartine – See it on Google Maps

Try it out

The Cronstadt is a 2 star hotel with room prices starting around 38 euros. Many hotel booking websites, such as this one, will help you reserve a room.

Notes

1. Henry Miller, A Literate Passion, 26-30; March 17, 1932
2. Ibid
3. Ibid
4. Henry Miller, A Literate Passion, 37-45; March 28, 1932
5. Ibid

Posted August 1, 2007 - trackback