Postcard from Paris

“You start at a café table because everything in Paris starts a café table.” -Irwin Shaw

Life in Paris revolves around the café…it has for decades. It is the normal part of life in that great city. An English journalist once observed that in London there are 5,000 people for every waiter. In Paris, there are 5,000 waiters for every person. That may be very close to the mark. Most Parisians start and end their day in a café.

The café in this painting sits in Montmartre. If you are not familiar with Paris, Montmartre is the only hill in Paris. It is 426 feet high. You can see it from everywhere. When you see a movie set in Paris and you see outdoor stairs, that is Montmartre. On top of the hill sits the white-domed Basilica of the Sacré-Cœur. It is quite tall, topped by a beautiful dome. There are stairs that one can climb all the way to the top to get a breath-taking view of this magnificent city. I know because I did it.

As an aside, there are 3 very high places to get a great view of Paris…Sacre-Coeur, the Eifel Tower, and the Montparnasse Tower (the tallest building in Paris). A Parisian friend once asked me if I knew the best place to view Paris. I, of course, said no. He explained that the best view was from Montparnasse Tower. The reason…because it is the only place where you can’t see Montparnasse Tower. I agree as the building is not very attractive.

Back to Montmartre… you can get up the hill by either walking up the nearly never-ending, but beautiful stairs or take a special bus. I say it is special as there is only one seat on either side of the aisle. The streets are very, very narrow. When I took the bus, I thought sure the driver would hit several cars along the way or at least knock off their rear-view mirrors. He never did, but on several occasions it was very close.

For many years, Montmartre was a center for arts, especially the painters. At the beginning of the twentieth century, during the Belle Époque (translation: Beautiful Era, from 1871-1914) , many artists had studios or worked in or around Montmartre, including Salvador Dali, Amedeo Modigliani, Claude Monet, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso, Camille Pissarro and Vincent van Gogh. Today, many painters gather on a daily basis in the large square outside the Basilica.

But around 1909, Montmartre as a center for the arts began to unwind. It began with Pablo Picasso moving to Montparnasse. As he was the foremost painter of that time, other painters began to move there also. By the end of World War I, if not before, Montparnasse became the new center for the arts and artists. There were writers and poets living there already, but all art now seemed to begin and end in this section of Paris on the Left Bank.

That’s where we pick up the story of the cafes. In the 1920’s writers from America and the British Isles seemed to flock to Paris, specifically Montparnasse. They are known by the term, “The Lost Generation.” Included are Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, D. H. Lawrence, Gertrude Stein, Archibald MacLeish, Kay Boyle, Hart Crane, John Dos Passos, William Faulkner, Dorothy Parker and others.

The cafes are where they, the painters, poets, composers and their friends met on a daily basis. Poor artists and writers, which included most of them at the time, would rent tables by the hour and drink coffee and wine and talk into the late night. Cafes such as Le Dôme, La Closerie des Lilas, La Rotonde, Le Select, and La Coupole, all of which are still in business, were the places where starving artists could occupy a table all evening for a few centimes. If they fell asleep, the waiters were instructed not to wake them.

Arguments were common, some fueled by intellect, others by alcohol, and if there were fights, and there often were, the police were never summoned. If you couldn't pay your bill, people such as La Rotonde's proprietor, Victor Libion, would often accept a drawing, holding it until the artist could pay. As such, there were times when the café's walls were littered with a collection of artworks, that today would make the curators of the world's greatest museums drool with envy. Cafes were the center of all arts, not only for Paris, but for the world.

You arrived at your café at 1 p.m. and stayed until seven. You went out for dinner. You came back at nine and stayed till 2 a.m. -Jean Moreas

While the hey-days of the Montparnasse cafes ended with World War II, they are still an important part of French life…it could be called a living tradition. Today, you can see writers and poets slaving away to produce their masterworks…now using laptops as well as pencil and paper. Times change, but traditions don’t.

Having spent time in these cafes, I can tell you they are special. I will admit I am fascinated by Paris of the 20^th century, and to sit where some of the greatest artists and writers in the history of the world spent part of their daily routine…well it was very special. I love the cafes of Paris and the life style they engender. Starbucks and other coffee shops are just not quite the same.

“You end at a café table because everything in Paris ends at a café table.” -Irwin Shaw