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- Aug 19, 2018, 11:00am
- ☁️ 20 °C
- Altitude: 74 m
EnglandCoventryStivichall52°22’50” N 1°31’25” W
Home Sweet Home
August 19, 2018 in England ⋅ ☁️ 20 °C
Linda has her sixty ninth birthday today. Happy birthday sister......Where are we today ? We are ensconced at Birmingham airport waiting for our flight to Gay Paris. We set off quite early as we had to drop the car off and check into customs and security. The kids as always were hungry and thirsty so we headed for the first Burger King we could find at the airport. We at least know the kids will eat here. We are now at gate 56 awaiting boarding. The only perk you have travelling with children is you get to board first. So it’s sit back and wait for the plane to take us high in the sky and to the beautiful city of Paris......
The good thing about this journey is we get picked up at the airport. Our driver was a young Romanian man who was obviously lacking sleep. Tabby tried to have a conversation with him and he told us he spoke four languages,his family were still in Romania and he was in France because the pay is better...dropping us off he made no attempt to help us with our luggage,he was off. We are booked into The Novotel hotel in the suburb of Pasteur close to Montparnasse station.
Montparnasse was a community where creativity was embraced with all its oddities, each new arrival welcomed unreservedly by its existing members. When Tsuguharu Foujita arrived from Japan in 1913 not knowing a soul, he met Soutine, Modigliani, Pascin and Léger virtually the same night and within a week became friends with Juan Gris, Picasso and Matisse. In 1914, when the English painter Nina Hamnett arrived in Montparnasse, on her first evening the smiling man at the next table at La Rotonde graciously introduced himself as "Modigliani, painter and Jew". They became good friends, Hamnett later recounting how she once borrowed a jersey and corduroy trousers from Modigliani, then went to La Rotonde and danced in the street all night.
Between 1921 and 1924, the number of Americans in Paris swelled from 6,000 to 30,000. While most of the artistic community gathered here were struggling to eke out an existence, well-heeled American socialites such as Peggy Guggenheim, and Edith Wharton from New York City, Harry Crosby from Boston and Beatrice Wood from San Francisco were caught in the fever of creativity. Robert McAlmon, and Maria and Eugene Jolas came to Paris and published their literary magazine Transition. Harry Crosby and his wife Caresse would establish the Black Sun Press in Paris in 1927, publishing works by such future luminaries as D. H. Lawrence, Archibald MacLeish, James Joyce, Kay Boyle, Hart Crane, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, William Faulkner, Dorothy Parker and others. As well, Bill Bird published through his Three Mountains Press until British heiress Nancy Cunard took it over.
Cafés rented tables to poor artists for hours at a stretch. Several, including La Closerie des Lilas, remain in business today.
The cafés and bars of Montparnasse were a meeting place where ideas were hatched and mulled over. The cafés at the centre of Montparnasse's night-life were in the Carrefour Vavin, now renamed Place Pablo-Picasso. In Montparnasse's heyday (from 1910 to 1920), the cafés 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 fuelled 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. We booked into our room and after having a little rest and freshen up we went for a walk.
We were looking for the station to take us to Euro Disney tomorrow. After sorting out where we were going we walked back toward the hotel. Stopping On the way we found a nice Italian restaurant and settled in for pasta and wine. By the time we arrived back at the hotel it was time to relax and get ready for our big day tomorrow. Tomorrow is Hell Day..........Euro Disney......goodnight diary.Read more
