When Paris Sizzled by Mary McAuliffe

Author:Mary McAuliffe [McAuliffe, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2016-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

While the unobtainable might possess an allure for some, Americans and others sought a more reliable form of glamour and excitement when they came to Paris and Montparnasse. As with the Jockey, the more unusual the clubbing experience turned out to be, the more “genuine” and appealing it became. By 1924, a new nightclub, the Bal Nègre, which began as a local dance hall for West Indians, quickly captivated an A-list of Parisians and Americans. Soon it began to draw crowds to its run-down quarters on the far side of Montparnasse, on Rue Blomet.

Although the Murphys and their good friends Archibald and Ada MacLeish now abandoned Paris for nearby Saint-Cloud (as well as Cap d’Antibes) in search of more peaceful lives, most Americans wanted the full Paris experience and continued to flock to Montparnasse. June brought a never-ending crowd of Americans, while during a single week in July, ocean liners (which had recently come up with more thrifty travel options)24 disgorged some twelve thousand Americans onto French shores. Although most were looking for good times, a few had more serious objectives in mind. Edward Titus, for example, had left New York in the wake of his indomitable wife, Helena Rubinstein, to open what quickly became a renowned Montparnasse bookshop, At the Sign of the Black Manikin. Another, the poet William Carlos Williams, was taking time off from his medical practice to write, first in New York, then in Paris, much as F. Scott Fitzgerald would soon leave New York for Paris to complete The Great Gatsby. John Dos Passos, who had already published two novels (One Man’s Initiation: 1917 and Three Soldiers) and was working on another (Manhattan Transfer), returned that spring to Paris after travels throughout the Continent, Russia, and the Middle East (Sylvia Beach recalled that she met him “between Three Soldiers and Manhattan Transfer, but caught only glimpses of him as he raced by”).25 Dos Passos was well acquainted with Paris, having visited there during a precollege Grand Tour of Europe, and having lived there off and on during wartime, when based there (along with his friend E. E. Cummings) as a member of a volunteer ambulance corps. After Armistice, he lingered in Paris, studying anthropology at the Sorbonne. Now, returning once more to the City of Light, he became friends with Ernest Hemingway, whom he may have met briefly during the war, when both served in Italy.26

The Hemingways left for their second visit to Pamplona in late June, along with several friends, including Dos Passos. “It was fun and we ate well and drank well,” Dos Passos later wrote, “but there were too many exhibitionistic personalities in the group to suit me.”27 By this, he meant Hemingway, who indulged in a variety of boneheaded feats to prove his courage. Hadley especially suffered, as Ernest’s alarm that she might again be pregnant created a tense and miserable situation for them both. It turned out that she was not pregnant after all, but Ernest later blamed the entire

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