#64 - A literary tour of Paris

In which we delve into the lives of some seriously famous authors who thought "You know what would make me a better writer? Moving to France and especially Paris!"

Paris has been the playground of some of the true literary greats, from Ernest Hemingway to Oscar Wilde. Today, we’ll explore why France had such a magnetic pull for these writers, what they created while they were here, and, of course, the wildly entertaining lives they led. Think Hemingway drunkenly fishing in the river Seine or Oscar Wilde… well, just being Oscar Wilde.

By the end of this episode, you’ll be booking your one-way ticket to Montmartre. Or at least Googling where the nearest French bakery is!

After listening to this podcast, you'll feel one beret away from literary greatness, or at least from a really great Instagram post!

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Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 3:02 A literary tour of Paris
• 25:07 Where to find Janine

Transcript

Transcript Podcast 64 A literary tour of Paris 

Janine: A very big bonjour to you wherever you are. I’m your host Janine Marsh, and I love to chat to you here from my desk in a little office which was once a pigsty in the garden of my farmhouse in rural France. As you can easily tell from my accent, though I live in France, I’m not French, in fact I’m from London. I’ve had a home in Pas-de-Calais in northern France for 21 years and I have been fascinated by and studying French history and culture, traditions and heritage ever since I first saw the hovel that became my home, and it was – really I mean, dirt floors in some rooms, metal farm doors flapping in the wind! Not now though, even if we’re still renovating, it’s very different! I’ve written several books about France, and I’m the editor of a magazine and website about France. And if you, like me, are a France lover – then check out the magazine which is free at magazine.thegoodlifefrance.com. Now, let me introduce you to my podcast partner, suave and sophisticated Frenchman Olivier Jauffrit.

Oli: I’m not sure what to say to that Janine, you’ve never called me suave and sophisticated before but I’m glad we’re recording this so that I can keep those words for posterity! My daughter will laugh when she hears this episode! 

Janine: Well you know the original meaning of the word suave, which is an English word which came from old French, the original meaning is agreeable! Which you certainly are! And sophisticated comes from the Greek ‘sophistry’ for wise man, which I am sure you will agree with! 

Oli: Hmmm, yes indeed, I am clearly suave and sophisticated, and I shall be sure to tell my partner that later though she may laugh too! I am in reality Olivier, Oli for short, and I’m a radio presenter on national radio and on prime-time Lyon Radio. I live in sunny Lyon in the south of France, after spending many years living and working in the UK which I loved, and where I picked up a British accent as you can hear. But enough of us – let’s dive into today’s topic. Janine tell us, what are we going to be chatting about today?

Janine: Well, today we’re going to delve into the lives of some seriously famous authors who thought "You know what would make me a better writer? Moving to France and especially Paris!" Paris has been the playground of some of the true literary greats, from Ernest Hemingway to Oscar Wilde. Today, we’ll explore why France had such a magnetic pull for these writers, what they created while they were here, and, of course, the wildly entertaining lives they led. Think Hemingway drunkenly fishing in the river Seine or Oscar Wilde… well, just being Oscar Wilde.

Oli: Spoiler alert: they weren’t wrong about moving to Paris! Stick around, and by the end of this episode, you’ll be booking your one-way ticket to Montmartre. Or at least Googling where the nearest French bakery is!

Oli: So, Janine, what do you think it is about Paris that’s made it the ultimate writer’s retreat? 

Janine: I think it’s a combination of several things. I know from experience that being in a different place from normal, being away from the distractions of your normal everyday life can be truly inspiring. I became a writer when I came to France. I wrote before, for fun, but I became a writer in France – inspired by the change in scenery and lifestyle. And there are several other factors that make France and Paris an inspirational place for creative people - from the wine and the cheese to the architecture and history. But it’s more than that. Paris has long been a place of creative energy, you can feel it. People visit Paris and they feel full of verve and vitality, and they’re inspired by what they see, the café lifestyle – being able to people watch, and to observe life in action, the fact that small pleasures are to be relished which makes you enjoy slowing down a bit and enjoying the moment – for me especially that was a big thing, I was used to working at a speed in London where I worked in an office for a merchant bank, a lunch break was a sandwich in one hand, tapping the keyboard with the other to save time. But writing isn’t a quick process, you need time to think of your words. I feel it when I go to Paris, I am happy to walk for miles, to sit in a café with a cup of tea people watching and making up stories about what I see. I live a couple of hours north of the city centre, I often go to Paris and my new book, a romance, will be partly set in Paris. I think too that the bohemian freedom – certainly in the 1800’s and early 1900s and compared to other countries, was a big thing for those earlier writers. 

Olivier: I agree – freedom, energy, inspiration - ding, ding, ding! And there was another thing that really encouraged writers of the 19th and 20th centuries to come to Paris – the low rent — well, at least back in the day, not so much now. And don’t forget the exchange rate. American writers especially loved it because a little bit of money went a long way for them. Ernest Hemmingway who was in Paris as a correspondent for the Toronto Star, wrote an article entitled ‘living on $1000 a year in Paris” in 1922 and he said that the hotel in central Paris he and his wife stayed in, cost the equivalent of one dollar a day, and that included heat and water. I tried to find out how much it would cost in New York and according to a university of Missouri article, it would be around $4 a day for the equivalent – so that was a huge difference, and it was mostly due to the very good exchange rate. $1000 a year – included them pretty much eating out for every meal too! 

Janine:  Absolutely. In the 1920s, the city was crawling with expat writers, thanks to cheap living compared to other countries, plus they enjoyed a celebration of diversity, and an open attitude to, well, pretty much anything and everything. Think about it: you’re surrounded by the most amazing architecture, vibrant art, and a culture that celebrates leisure. I mean, what more could a writer want? I know that there are certain places I go and I think, I could just stay here and write a ton of notes, a whole chapter, places where you can just relax, and just let it all out, scribble the words, go for it. And you’re not in your normal surroundings when you’re expected to do certain things,  and get distracted by normality of everyday life. And I think that those writers felt the same, 

Olivier: Translation: no one cared if you wrote poetry while wearing your pyjamas at mid-day. And don’t forget that French cafés didn’t exactly enforce time limits and mostly still don’t. You could sit with one espresso for hours, and no one batted an eye  - and you still can today. 

Janine: It’s true, I’ve done that many times. Not worn my pyjamas at a café – I don’t mean that! But sat with a coffee for hours in a café writing notes, creating characters for my new romance. 

Olivier: And sometimes those writers accidentally spent three days at a café "networking" – a polite word for letting it all hang loose with several bottles of wine and sharing thoughts, bouncing ideas of each other, a bit like when musicians get together and jam, and those writers were also critiquing each other’s work. 

Janine: That’s certainly true and this really fostered a sense of camaraderie among expat writers and really shaped the creative community. They weren’t just writing in solitude all the time, they were experiencing things in an environment strange to them, sharing what they observed, heard, tasted - and that really does help you to bond but also to be inspired. 

Oli: Yes, you have that background of being immigrants in a foreign country which can be a bond but also sharing all the new and amazing experiences – and wine!

Janine: And in the 1900s I think that there were people who really valued these expat writers in France. I’m thinking about Gertrude Stein. She moved to Paris from the US at the age of 29. She was a poet, playwright, and novelist and she adored Paris, she never left. She once said "America is my country and Paris is my hometown." It’s strange that she was so nurturing of other writers that many people don’t know that she was actually a really good writer herself, there’s a line she wrote that I always remember "A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears."

Oli: Her home at 27 rue de Fleurus in the 6th arrondissement, became a gathering place for the in-crowd. She was quite well off, and she loved art and writing and was even the first patron of Pablo Picasso. She hosted parties where the intellectual elite mingled and argued about everything from cubism to commas. And her soirees were attended by many of the great artists including Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse. And she was very supportive of writers. 

Janine: Which leads us nicely to start with our literary lovers of Paris - the big guy: Chicago-born Ernest Hemingway. He arrived in Paris in 1921 as a young journalist and left as a literary heavyweight.

Oli: Also probably with a permanent hangover. But, why Paris?

Janine: Hemingway’s wife, Hadley, had a small inheritance. They moved because… why not? Paris had a reputation for being somewhere you could be yourself without worrying about too many rules and regulations. The prohibition was on in America from 1920 to 1933 but in Paris you could drink freely which appealed to artists and writers quite a bit. Plus, it was cheap to live here which meant you didn’t have to have a day job and write as a hobby. And Hemingway was determined to write seriously. And he was truly inspired to do that. His iconic memoir A Moveable Feast, one of my favourite books, gives us a backstage pass to his Paris years. Hemingway’s writing routine was rigorous. He’d wake up early, write feverishly for hours, thousands of words a day, then spend the afternoon exploring Paris or hanging out with other writers. He believed that his time in Paris sharpened his writing, teaching him to strip his prose down to its raw, honest core.

Oli: Hemingway spent 7 years in Paris, and that time was really important to him as a writer, it helped shape not just his writing style but also his adventurous persona. It’s hard to separate Hemingway the man from Hemingway the myth, and Paris played a huge role in building both.

Janine: There are so many legends about Hemingway in Paris – that he was a starving writer and claimed that he was so hungry he hunted pigeons in the Luxembourg Gardens for dinner for instance, probably not true but it made him seem like a man willing to do whatever it took to be a great writer.

Oli: What we do know is that he really liked to have a good time. He spent a lot of time in bars and cafés, there’s a legend that he even helped name the cocktail Bloody Mary at the Paris Bar! He was working as a war journalist then and it’s said that when the American troops arrived to liberate Paris, Hemmingway headed straight to Ritz with his submachine gun where he told the door man “I’m coming to free the Ritz” and the manager apparently said to him “Of course Mr Hemmingway but please leave your weapon at the door.

Janine: And then he apparently ordered martinis all around. The Ritz bar is named after him to this day. Another legend is that in the 1950s, a trunk full of his notes turned up at the Hotel, stored away for 30 years, and those notes formed the basis of his book A Moveable Feast. 

Oli: Fun fact: He loved fishing. Legend has it he once tried to catch trout in the Seine… unsuccessfully, of course. Hemingway also loved boxing. He’d spar at the American Club in Paris and sometimes even write standing up, as if ready to punch out bad prose. And speaking of punches, he had his share of fiery friendships. 

Janine: He was one of those larger-than-life characters, and quite, erm what’s a good word, cocky, he had a lot of belief in himself. He even fell out with Gertrude Stein who was so supportive of him as a writer, saying she felt she was "always right and never wrong."

Olivier: He was always falling out with people – James Joyce even Picasso and another writing legend in Paris -  F. Scott Fitzgerald. He and Hemingway were… let’s say "frenemies." They partied together, but Hemingway thought Fitzgerald was too flashy and they were always falling out. Once Hemmingway had a boxing match and Fitzgerald was supposed to be the referee, but he had too many glasses of wine and forgot to ring the end of the round and Hemmingway took a few punches and was convinced that his friend deliberately let the match go on to humiliate him. 

Janine: So let’s talk more about the great F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda arrived in France in 1924, and spent their months in the south of France where Fitzgerald completed the Great Gatsby which he’d started writing back home in America. You know, the book was a failure when it first came out and when he died in 1940, his last royalty check was just $13.13. And here’s an interesting fact. - the F. of his first name stands for Francis and he was named after his cousin Francis Scott Key who wrote the Star Bangled Spanner. 

Olivier: Well Fitzgerald and his wife certainly lived it up and in 1925 they got an apartment in Paris. But life wasn’t all glitter and jazz. Zelda’s mental health struggles and Scott’s drinking made things messy. They’d party all night and then argue all morning. It was a lot of "le drama." Gertrude Stein befriended Fitzgerald too. She coined the phrase “ the lost generation” the young men who had survived the Great War but had lost their brothers, their youth and their idealism. Fitzgerald and Hemingway became close friends as well as writing rivals. Gertrude Stein said that Fitzgerald was the most talented writer of his generation.” You can imagine how that went down with Hemmingway. 

Janine: Fitzgerald struggled with the weight of his own talent. He wrote to Hemingway, "The price was high… I’ve squandered too much of myself." Maybe he did. But without his time in France his writing would not have been the same. His work reflects the highs and lows of chasing the dream, France and Paris-style.

Olivier: And now, to Oscar Wilde. Or to give him his full name, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde. Unlike Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Wilde’s time in France was… bittersweet.

Janine: More bitter than sweet, really. Ireland’s most famous writer fled to France in 1897 after his release from prison, punishment for having an affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, it was illegal for same sex affairs in those days. He had visited Paris before, in much happier times. First with his mother in 1874 as a 20-year-old, and to him, he said that Paris was the “literary capital of the world.” He spent several months in Paris and hobnobbed with other writers and artists like Emile Zola and Edgar Degas, he met Victor Hugo who was by then very old and it’s said he nodded off at their meeting, and he frequented some of the same cafés and bars that Hemmingway and Fitzgerald went to later. 

Olivier: Wilde went back to Paris several times including in 1874, when he honeymooned here in 1884 with his wife who was wealthy, and with whom he had two sons, and he went several times without her when he liked to mix with Paris intellectuals, artists and poets. By the 1890s he had become famous for his writing and for his sharp wit. His writing did cause a bit of a stir in Victorian England his writing was considered somewhat immoral, but his plays were hugely successful and had big audiences,

Janine: He loved Paris and in 1893 even wrote a play in French, Salomé, a one act tragedy about the seduction of John the Baptist by Salome. It was translated to English and Sarah Bernhardt was going to play the leading role, but it was banned in Britain because depicted Biblical figures on the stage was prohibited at the time, and Wilde threatened to leave Britain and take French citizenship. The play was produced in Paris in 1896 – just for one night but by then Wilde was in prison. Also, the German composer Richard Strauss used the text of Salome to create his famous opera Salome. Oscar Wilde’s sayings are legendary including one of my favourites: “I can resist everything except temptation.” 

Olivier: Well clearly that was true as he tried to resurrect his relationship with Lord Douglas when he got out of prison and after he promised his wife he wouldn’t. She had had enough of him by then and all but cut him off, and since she was the one with the money – it was a bitter blow for him. 

Janine: She also told his sons that he was dead. The scandal of his affair and imprisonment really ended his career. People stopped buying his books, his plays were cancelled. He was stony broke.

Olivier: He fled Britain for France and stayed first in Normandy where he wrote “The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” a poem that describes the brutality of the Victorian prison system, including the treatment of child prisoners, and which would later help bring reforms to the English criminal justice system.

Janine: The poem was published under a nom de plume, bit of French for you there, and was quite successful so Wilde thought maybe it was the right time to go back to Paris where he hoped to resurrect his career but sadly it didn’t work. He was never again to find big success with his writing while he was alive. And he never wrote again. He eeked out what little money he had living in cheap hotels and eating cheap food. From a flamboyant dresser with a taste for the finer things in life, he now lived as a lonely pauper. He spent his last months at the then shabby Hôtel d'Alsace, under the name Sebastien Melmoth, his great uncle had written a book called Melmoth the Wanderer. Wilde is alleged to have said of his room “My wallpaper and I are engaged in a duel to the death. One or other of us is going to have to go.” 

Olivier The wallpaper won. Wilde’s health got worse, but he never lost his wit. Even in his darkest days, he managed to leave a legacy of sharp, beautiful words. 

Janine: At the end he couldn’t even pay the bill at the fleapit of a hotel he stayed in and joked that he was “dying beyond his means.” By the way, the hotel is now very luxurious and gorgeous – tres 5 star! Wilde was buried in a pauper’s grave before being moved 9 years later, when there was enough money from posthumous sales of his works, to be interred at Père Lachaise Cemetery among several other writers including Gertrude Stein. Fans from around the world used to leave lipstick marks on his tombstone, a gesture as flamboyant and heartfelt as the man himself. Now there is a glass screen around the tomb as the stone was kissed so much, that the saliva and chemicals in the lipstick started to damage the tomb. Wilde once wrote “A Kiss may ruin a human life” and if he were here now, he might add “and my tombstone.”

Olivier: One more writer who loved Paris Charles Dickens. When he first visited Paris in 1844 he wrote “ I cannot tell you what an immense impression Paris made upon me. It is the most extraordinary place in the world.” The French are great admirers of Dickens, we even have a fan club for him in the north of France.

Janine: He visited Paris often and he spent years in my bit of France, Pas-de-Calais which he also loved. And clearly he was inspired by his time here, one of his most famous books was A Tale of Two Cities – Paris and London. Sorry Mr Dickens your slot is a bit short on the podcast today but we’re almost out of time and we want to talk a bit about the lifestyle these writers enjoyed in Paris - the cafés, bars, and bookshops. And so many of the places are still there.

Olivier: Les Deux Magots café in St Germain des Pres was a setting in Hemingway’s  book The Sun Always Rises. And he often went to the Closerie des Lilas, on the corner of Boulevard Montparnasse and the Avenue de l’Observatoire. He listed this café as one of his favourite places in Paris in his memoirs. It’s where he wrote most of The Sun Also Rises, and where he first read The Great Gatsby that his friend F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote. A placard marks Hemingway’s favourite seat at the bar, and the menu lists “Le filet de boeuf Hemingway”.  

Janine: And these spots were more than hangouts. They were creative hubs. Writers, painters, and philosophers all gathered there. The café culture fostered endless discussions, debates, and collaborations. And then there’s Shakespeare and Company, the iconic bookstore where Hemingway borrowed books and James Joyce worked with Sylvia Beach to publish Ulysses. It’s practically a rite of passage for literary pilgrims even today. And there’s Brasserie Lipp where Hemmingway like to eat sausage and potato and lashings of beer. 

Olivier: And there’s also less well-known places like Hotel du Pont Royal in Rue Montalembert, in the 1920s it was one of the first cocktail bars in Paris and pretty much all the expat writers went there and also artists like Degas who was very old by then and liked to go there for the Champagne, and Dali, Picasso – they all went there. France wasn’t just a backdrop; it was a muse. The language, the culture, the people… everything fed their creativity. Walking along the Seine or sipping wine at sunset, you can almost hear the echoes of their musings.

Janine: I love that film Midnight in Paris where and American writer visiting Paris goes back in time to the early 1920s and meets his literary heroes including Hemmingway who he gets to ask to read his draft novel! But beyond the stereotypes, the Parisian lifestyle offered these writers a kind of freedom they couldn’t find elsewhere. It was a place where art and life intertwined seamlessly.

Olivier: And there you have it — a whirlwind tour of some the literary expats who turned Paris into a creative nexus.

Janine: From Hemingway’s boozy boxing matches to Wilde’s tragic wit, it’s clear that Paris left an indelible mark on their lives — and their writing.

Olivier: So, next time you’re sipping coffee at a café in Paris, remember you’re one beret away from literary greatness.

Janine: Or at least from a really great Instagram post.

Olivier: Thanks for tuning in to this episode! Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and leave us a review. Until next time, au revoir!

Thank you so much, a massive merci beaucoup, to everyone for listening to our podcast in nearly 150 countries all around the world! And a massive thank you for sharing the podcast with your friends and family, we’re truly grateful when you do that. You’ve been listening to Janine Marsh and me Olivier Jauffrit. 

Janine: And you can find me  and heaps of information about France – where to visit, culture, history, recipes – everything France - at thegoodlifefrance.com where you can subscribe to the podcast, my weekly newsletter about France and our totally brilliant, totally free magazine which you can read at magazine.thegoodlifefrance.com 

But for now, it’s au revoir from me.

Olivier: And goodbye from me.

Janine: Speak to you soon!