Emil Schnellock

On a snowy day in February 1930, Henry Miller boarded a ship in the New York Harbor and set sail for London—the first stop on a journey that eventually led him to a new life in Paris where he began writing the novels that made him famous.

For Henry Miller, the view of the Sacré Coeur from the rue Laffitte was an emblematic vision of the ideal Paris that had formed in his mind long before he arrived in Europe.

I like my cheap hotel—like its crazy wallpaper, the stains on the wall, the odor of mildew, the broken things, etc. Even the noise! For I have selected the very busiest district imaginable—one short block from the Rue Lafayette, from Chicago Tribune, from Folies-Bergère—etc. I like the bustle and smell and sweat and dirt—for a while anyhow.

La Fourche is a Y-shaped intersection in Montmartre where the avenue de Saint Ouen branches away from the avenue de Clichy. Fourche means "fork", indicating the branching of the streets, but the word can also be used in French to indicate "crotch", a double-meaning which Miller found appropriate. During the 1930's La Fourche enjoyed a bustling sex trade and the sidewalks and cafés were thronged with prostitutes and their pimps…

In an October 1931 column for the Chicago Tribune, Wambly Bald published a short biographical sketch of Miller which claimed that he occasionally spent the night sleeping on the bench outside the Closerie des Lilas…

Henry Miller made himself at home on the terrace of the Rotonde where, over a glass of Pernod, he might be found having an animated argument with his wife, June, or writing letters to friends…