Braisserie Lipp's

"Don't you know that all writers ever talk about is their troubles?" Sylvia Beach

     "Outside on the rue de l'Odéon I was disgusted with myself for having complained about things. I was doing what I did of my own free will and I was doing it stupidly...You God damn complainer. You dirty phony saint and martyr, I said to myself. You quit journalism of your own accord...Hunger is healthy and the pictures do look better when you are hungry. Eating is wonderful too and do you know where you are going to eat right now?
     Lipp's is where you are going to eat and drink too....
     There were few people in the brasserie and when I sat down on the bench against the wall with the mirror in back and a table in front and the waiter asked if I wanted beer. I asked for a distingué, the big glass mug that held a liter, and for potato salad.
     The beer was very cold and wonderful to drink. The pommes a l'huile were firm and marinated and the olive oil delicious. I ground black pepper over the potatoes and moistened the bread in the olive oil. After the first heavy draft of beer I drank and ate very slowly. When the pommes a l'huile were gone I ordered another serving and a cervelas. This was a sausage like a heavy, wide frankfurter split in two and covered with a special mustard sauce.
     I mopped up all the oil and all of the sauce with bread and drank the beer slowly until it began to lose its coldness and then I finished it and ordered a demi and watched it drawn. It seemed colder than the distingué and I drank half of it.
     I had not been worrying, I thought. I knew the stories were good and someone would publish them finally at home."

                                                                                                      A Moveable Feast

Lipp's was an important place in Hemingway's career, because he says it was there that he remembered when he had been able to write again after his wife accidentally lost all his manuscripts. He said hunger was a good discipline and he learned from it. And he knew he must write a novel.

After leaving Lipp's Hem walked back to La Closerie des Lilas...

     "I sat in a corner with the afternoon light coming in over my shoulder and wrote in the notebook. The waiter brought me a café creme and I drank half of it when it cooled and left it on the table while I wrote...The story was about coming back from the war but there was no mention of the war in it...

     There were days ahead to be doing that each day."

                                                                                                      A Moveable Feast

Along the river...

Today we return to the banks of the Seine. It's refreshing journey, after going back to work and finding it more depleting than wandering 4-6 miles a day in Paris. In the latest chapter of A Moveable Feast, Hemingway talks about the People of the Seine.

"Across the branch of the Seine was the Île St.-Louis with the narrow streets and the old, tall, beautiful houses, and you could go over there or you could turn left and walk along the quais with the length of the Île St.-Louis and then Notre Dame and Île de la Cité opposite as you walked."

Looking toward the Île St.-Louis

This was particularly meaningful, as the Île St.-Louis was our home away from home during the Left Bank Writer's Retreat. There are two islands in the river.  The Île St.-Louis is an island behind the Île de la Cité on which the city was founded, and on which sits Notre Dame. There is also the Crypte Archeologique under the island, with early Roman and Gaul ruins.

Notre Dame from the rear

He continues ~ "In the bookstalls along the quais you could sometimes find American books that had just been published for sale very cheap." These bookstalls are still there, all along the river, and they are proudly owned by multi-generational families.

"At the head of the Île de la Cité below the Pont Neuf where there was the statue of Henri Quatre, the island ended in a point like the sharp bow of a ship and there was a small park at the waters's edge with fine chestnut trees, huge and spreading, and in the currents and back waters that the Seine made flowing past, there were excellent places to fish. You went down a stairway to the park and watched the fisherman there under the great bridge."

The Pont Neuf ~ unfortunately I balked at the idea of taking a picture of another statue,
so Henry 4th is not visible...

Under the great bridge...

Hemingway says "if the day was bright, I would buy a liter of wine and a piece of bread and some sausage and sit in the sun and read one of the books I had bought and watch the fishing." We had our farewell drinks by the Seine very near that spot. Although the fishermen are gone and Hemingway is gone (and this so near the anniversary), the sun is still good, and so is the wine. And so is the river.