Cocktails in Springtime Paris

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Long before destination drinking had a moniker, Paris was already a hot toddy hot spot in the 1920s and 1930s. Drinks like the Whiz Bang, Green Hat, Sidecar, Blue Bird and Fog Horn were in circulation among the haute cocktail crowd and local lushes at places like the Ritz Paris, the American Bar in London and less posh spots. It’s no surprise that this timeframe between the two World Wars was called les années folles—among other nicknames. These are cocktails that don’t beat around the bush: sip a bit of the Depth Bomb, named after the M.L. Submarine Chasers of the First World War, made with brandy, Apple-Jack brandy, grenadine and lemon juice, and you’ll see stars in your eyes. Bored with teatime? Try serving Dirty Earl Grey Martinis to spike things up. Feeling groggy? If coffee doesn’t do the trick, maybe a Corpse Reviver No. 2 made with Pernod, Champagne and lemon juice will speak to you—or depending on how many you imbibe, it may take the words right out of your mouth. Spoken like a true habitué, F. Scott wrote, “First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.”

But the early twentieth century isn’t all flapper fluff; drinking was serious business and boasts an exceedingly long, compelling history that would be impossible to explore in this column, if for no other reason than it’s the apéritif hour somewhere in the world and time for a toast. I’m delighted to write that this column celebrates its first-year anniversary this month, and right now seems as good a time as any to raise a glass—or coupe, flask or shot glass. And the Lost Generation certainly knew how to raise the stemware of their choice.

Were all of the drinkers back then writers? No, but all the writers were drinkers. (It’s comforting to know that some things haven’t changed.) Whether accusation or accolade, Zelda had her husband’s number when she wrote, “You were literally eternally drunk.” The Fitzgeralds shared a bed, bills and a deep love of Gin Rickeys (gin, soda and lime juice). Although Cole Porter sang, “I get no kick from Champagne / Mere alcohol doesn’t thrill me at all,” he must have christened the Sea Pea (anis, tonic and lemon juice), as it was created in his honor at his favorite Parisian bar, le Cambon. Hemingway was drinking at the top of his game during his Paris years and did a lot of reconnaissance in the Ritz—or at least the bar—and legend has it that he celebrated the end of the Second World War by liberating Shakespeare and Company then carousing his way over to the Ritz, knocking back fifty-one Dry Martinis before reeling down the stairs to liberate its splendidly well-stocked cellars. So much has been written about him by experts, expats and ex-wives, this little cameo doesn’t do justice to the man or the myth; he deserves at least one entire column dedicated to him, if not an entire year.

Recently, in pre-celebration of this March Apéritif moment, I was at a party with my good friend Pierre (name changed to protect the innocent) who makes lumberjack plaid look aristocratic and holds the distinction of being The One Who First Served Me A Sidecar And Told Me How To Make This Staggeringly Good Vintage Cocktail (Cognac, Cointreau and lemon juice). He’s also the one who told me that the Italian version that includes Limoncello was nothing more than a peck of lays, pack of lies, and whose text to me later that same night read, Thanks 4 coming! Drink & flours!

You lack wanderfoul darling! Pierre knows just how to make a girl swoon more than any Monkey Gland (Gin, absinthe, grenadine and orange juice, a delightfully anesthetizing cocktail from the 1920s named after “a surgical technique of grafting monkey testicle tissue into humans with the intention of producing longevity,” according to impeccably reliable source Wikipedia).

Another friend, Anne, (whose name has not been changed to not protect the not innocent), recently asked, “Wait a sec—you write a column about happy hour drinks and dead French writers? Sounds totally BO-ring. What. Ever.” A stiff Death in the Gulf Stream, Hemingway’s own potent potable, could possibly help untwist her knickers. A cocktail to be taken from eleven o’clock in the morning, it was created in 1922 in London—or was it 1937 in Key West?—such blurry beginnings . . . Hemingway might suggest you just drink it, not date it. He notes that, “Its tartness and bitterness are its chief charm[s].” (Not unlike Anne.) He continues, “Take a tall thin water tumbler and fill it with finely cracked ice. Lace this broken debris with four good purple splashes of angostura, add the juice and crushed peel of one green lime and fill the glass almost full with Holland Gin. . . no sugar, no fancying. It’s strong, it’s bitter . . . reviving and refreshing; it cools the blood and inspires renewed interest in food, companions and life.” And renewed interest in making it home alive—no sugar, no fancying necessary.

Heather Hartley is Paris editor at Tin House. She’s the author of Knock Knock, released by Carnegie Mellon University Press. Her poems and essays have appeared in or on PBS NewsHour, The Guardian, and elsewhere. She has been Co-Director of the Shakespeare and Company Bookshop literary festival and lives in Paris.

And whether yours involves wingtips, nightcaps, smoke machines or none of the above, here’s a little lexicon to keep your dance card full:

le 5 à 7—the 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. In the hyphen of time between work and home are two lost, blissed out hours reserved for lovers.

une aventure—a fling. Found throughout history, not limited by peerage, demographics, or wireless carrier.

une liaison—often more noteworthy than une aventure, it can involve at least one breathless décolleté, a couple songs by Edith Piaf and a handful of furtive glances.

une affaire—among other things, a business deal, or a super good deal on something, not necessarily involving cost. Une affaire can be more sobering and less spicy than anything mentioned in the list above.

Mon Jules

mon jules—my boyfriend, my lover.

mon petit chou—literally my little cabbage, otherwise my dear little one.

ma mie—my inside part of the loaf of bread, or you may prefer the figurative version, my sweetheart.

ma puce—a motley choice of meanings including my thumb, my flea, my electronic chip or my sweetie, my darling.

mon lapin—my bunny, my dear.

poser un lapin—with this expression, you literally set a bunny rabbit down or figuratively stand someone up, depending on your mood.

la littérature rose—your rendezvous with erotica a la française.

You may prefer the more public barstool to the intimacy of the boudoir from 5:00 to 7:00, or a café to a cabaret, or dropping the rabbit altogether. These are just ideas, a little crib sheet that fits in the palm of your hand.

Heather Hartley is Paris editor at Tin House. She’s the author of Knock Knock, released by Carnegie Mellon University Press. Her poems and essays have appeared in or on PBS NewsHour, The Guardian, and elsewhere. She has been Co-Director of the Shakespeare and Company Bookshop literary festival and lives in Paris.

For Vincenzo, as with all Neapolitans I’ve met, the Camorra, for all its bravado, is an intimate matter not discussed with outsiders—meaning anybody from farther than ten kilometers outside of city limits. Ask them about it and they’ll shrug: just a basic part of city structure like the impressive number of apron-wearing widows and caffe-bars. Try speaking Neapolitan dialect with them. It’s like wearing someone else’s underwear: although it may be your size, it makes everyone a little edgy and uncomfortable.

So, in the spirit of trying on foreign garments, I have decided to give you a post-Capodanno apocalyptic linguistic debrief of common Camorristi terms from Napoli, the city whose legendary birth mother is Parthenope, the wronged siren who washed up on the shore of the Bay of Naples about a zillion years ago and created chaos.

Casal di Principe—decrepit little cement town twenty kilometers from Napoli. In addition to the card player who was shot down Sunday morning at a local social center during a card game, the city boasts the highest murder rate in Europe as well as tasty coffee on the main drag.

il corno—Symbol of good luck and fertility, representing the penis. Found on key chains and handy metal or ceramic talismans that fit in your pocket. Important: if someone gives you the malocchio (the evil eye), stroke your corno to undo hex or rub it on your face after the person has passed by. Do not wait. Remember that the corno is not a red pepper.

la puttana—a prostitute and the second half of the name in the famed pasta dish pasta puttanesca. Both ancient history, both children of Napoli.

il prestanome—A sort of figurehead or dummy corporation. The Mafia needs clean names and asks someone not involved in organized crime to open a new business under their personally clean name; the Mafia provides money for this business, you smile and rock up like it’s all yours. You literally prestare, lend, your nome, name.

Va fanculo—fuck you.

tattling—very uncool; usually dangerous.

taunting—encouraged.

gli azzuri—soccer team, the pride of Napoli. 

pizza—the pride of Napoli.

La Camorra—the cancer of Napoli.

una caporale—Someone who works for the Mafia and finds people to work for them,

often of Polish or African descent. For example, those who work for the caporale make 30 euros per day and the Camorra pockets at least a third of it.

Roberto Saviano—writer with death warrant for exposing the names and practices of the Camorra in his 2006 book, Gomorra.

bunga bunga—Berlusconi’s most successful political platform.

Kalishnikov—kills people.

laundry—just look up.

la sfogliatella—traditional triangular-shaped Neapolitan pastry that is not too sweet, made with semolina and flaky layers of dough. The mix of nuts, butter and thickness is the essence of Napoli.

MEGLIO MORTO CHE PENTITO!—BETTER DEAD THAN COLLABORATOR! A pentito is a Mafioso collaborating with authorities. Most of the time they are in prison or in hiding and protected by justice. You’ll find this saying on a t-shirt displayed in the front window of a shop in Castellemmare, a nearby town, or perhaps you fancy IMINMIAMIBITCH.

chiavare—(from the word chiave, “key”) in Neapolitan, “to key somebody to death,” meaning to royally fuck them.

il pizzo—protection fee you pay the Mafia. When you pay the pizzo, it becomes a little bit more their business. And the love their business.

L’immondizia

la pizza—Something you put in your mouth.

gun—Something someone else puts in your mouth.

uno encensurato—Someone who has never had problems with the law. Someone who is “insured” in some way and good for the Mafia to work with.

Halloween—Though not an important holiday, it is a good night for the Camorra to get dressed up and get to work in a witches’ mask, black cape and shoot someone in front of a Napoli Soccer Fan Club, seven bullet casings, city center, two others injured. The murdered person was ‘involved’ with the Mafia and possible cigarette trafficking (big business involving old widows too: don’t be fooled by their cute hand-knit shawls).

‘E Riavulille (Neapolitan dialect)—the little devils, number 77 in the Smorfia, the ancient number system of luck and love, related to the Cabala.

L’immondizia—the big business of trash. (For verification, check streets of Napoli and surrounding towns for past fifteen years.)

Annalisa Durante—collateral damage from a Camorra-related drug dispute. Fourteen-year old Annalisa stood on her front porch nattering with friends in one of the poorest areas of the city, Forcella, the Devil’s Fork, and was shot in the head by Camorristi on Vespas.

Ruby Rubacuori—Ruby the Heartstealer, one in a happy gaggle of Berlusconi’s burlesque underage showgirls.

I Falchi—The Falcons are police on motorcycles who patrol the tiny twisted alleyways of Napoli.

la pallottola vagante—When a bullet goes ping where you weren’t expecting and wounds or kills someone, like the bouncing bullet on New Years Eve a couple years ago in Napoli in a courtyard; you wake up, and boom boom boom: somebody’s dead.

Heather Hartley is Paris editor at Tin House. She’s the author of Knock Knock, released by Carnegie Mellon University Press. Her poems and essays have appeared in or on PBS NewsHour, The Guardian, and elsewhere. She has been Co-Director of the Shakespeare and Company Bookshop literary festival and lives in Paris.

In Possum Living, Dolly Freed writes beautifully about a childhood spent living frugally with her father on a half-acre lot just outside of Philadelphia. During this time, she mastered the complicated task of distillation, providing her readers with a recipe for basic moonshine must, as well as variations like dandelion wine and sugar beet liquor.

Our staff has recently been going through something of a beet awakening, and the fact that we can get tipsy off them just solidifies the fact that everyone we know should expect to find some root vegetables in their stockings this holiday season.

Sugar Beet Liquor

Slice thin of mince into a kettle 10 pounds of sugar beets.

Add just enough water to cover and bring to a boil.

Simmer 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Strain off this liquid and retain. Retain the pulp.

Repeat the previous three steps to the pulp.

Discard the pulp. (Give it to the bunnies.)

Combine the liquids and simmer until the steam no longer has a rank odor.

If the liquid is less than a gallon, add water to make it so. If it’s more than a gallon, boil it off till it is.

Cool to below 110°F, and add one package Fleischmann’s yeast.

Ferment.

Distill.

Enjoy!

A staple at the Tin House holiday party for years, this powerful drink, first developed by Greg Connolly at the Four Seasons restaurant in New York City, has been known to get Tony Perez many an editor cut off from the open bar.

Taken from our Food & Booze anthology, Elissa Schappell explains how to shake, stir, and serve our namesake cocktail.

The Tin House Martini

Ingredients:
Pernod
Cinzano dry vermouth
Tanqueray

Pour ½ ounce of Pernod into a cocktail shaker and swirl until it coats the inside of the shaker; pour off any excess. In countries where it is still legal, absinthe can be appropriately substituted for Pernod.

Splash 2 eye-dropperfuls of Cinzano dry vermouth into the bottom of the shaker, and again swirl it about, then pour off the excess.

Pour 4 to 4 ½ ounces of Tangueray gin into the shaker, add ice, and with a ridiculously long-handled silver mixing spoon, stir exactly twenty times.

Pour the drink into a very well-chilled martini glass, then add 3 small cocktail olives, or 2 large ones, sans toothpick.

The flavors of olive and Pernod commingle so deliciously that at least one of the olives should be consumed after the drink is finished. You see, sometimes consolation can be found in the bottom of a martini glass.

My friend Krista and I had just left Shakespeare and Company for drinks on the Île Saint-Louis, a hop, slip and a pratfall from the bookshop. It was the night for Vespers, not prayers at nearby Notre-Dame, but libations, the potent James Bond-martini-kind of Vesper. Three parts gin, one part vodka, a dash of Lillet and, in the original recipe, lemon peel (see Krista’s crucial swap ingredient below), the drink is named after the female lead character, Vesper Lynd, in Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale, and is magnificently tasty.

“And whose legs will walk you home?” asked our waiter, Benoit, in a lawless, rough-cut franglais. He seemed to really want to know. I was hoping to borrow Krista’s strong dancer’s legs for the tilted walk home later. Leaning towards us, he said, “Ladies, I will tell you this thing: I have a deep need of the pirate.” It was hard to tell if his revelation was: 1) secret code for some form of kinky skullduggery, 2) a desperate plea for a Dark ‘n Stormy, or 3) a Parisian hedging technique practiced by members of the service sector to avoid putting in drink orders.

What he needed, he went on, was a book, and since we worked at or around Shakespeare and Company, we must know the book he was looking for. “The one about the pirate,” he said. Benoit was one of those loose literary cannons you meet sometimes and the best thing to do was just go with it because not only was he our direct link to the blissful Vespers, he was also the first person ever to assume that we were walking, talking card catalogues in lipstick and leather boots.

Henry Miller, expatriate drinker extraordinaire, said, “The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.” As the night wore on, the thing I was most aware of was how much the bar tipped and splashed about, not unlike a pirate ship. (I swear I saw clientele with hooks for hands.)

So many writers have drunk their way through Paris in huge gulps, delicate sips or just plain lapping up the booze. The list is long and lush in more ways than one: Hemingway, F. Scott and Zelda, Guillaume Apollinaire, Djuna Barnes, honorary Parisian Dorothy Parker, James Joyce, Françoise Sagan, Marguerite Duras and many more. The nineteenth century boasts absinthe drinkers like Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud and, Guy de Maupassant, among others. The crowded, rich list of writers who enjoyed drinks and drinking in Paris during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries merits at least another month’s column, so that recipes like Alice B. Toklas’ “Hot Toddy for Cold Nights” (that she attributes to Gustave Flaubert) can be fully contemplated.

This end-of-the year Apéritif is devoted to writers who are imbibing now, those whom we can go to for advice about what to order when we’re in need of liquid inspiration. From tipple to toast, souse to swallow, here’s a taste of what writers are savoring these days. As is said in Paris when drinks are served, be it in the local lounge, hipster bar, or pirate ship: À votre santé!

Krista Halverson (Editor at Shakespeare and Company Bookshop): I take my Vespers with an orange peel (that is, rather than an orange slice) or nothing at all. I find the citrus of the lemon kills the whole creamy, sweet goodness of that splash of Lillet—though no doubt others (Ian Fleming / James Bond) would disagree.

Samantha Dunn  (Falling Paris): The year I lived in Paris was the most libertine of my life—which, trust me, is saying a lot. I arrived fresh-faced from New Mexico, with dreams of going to Champagne in the company of someone refined and handsome to drink the famed elixir. I thought I would learn to sip espresso from that tiny white cup at the Cafe Flore itself. In truth what happened was that refined and handsome wouldn’t give me the time of day, and I was too soon dead-ass broke. I learned to love the café au lait my roommate from Marseille made every morning in our French press on top of a two-burner stove that was our kitchen in glorified chambre de bonne in the back attic of a hotel. I came to crave the 2-franc Beaujolais we bought at the UniPrix pour faire la bouffe with friends from “Hard Force,” the French-language, heavy-metal magazine that hired me because they wanted someone who spoke not English but “américain.” And when all else failed, there was always Le Violon Dingue, the ex-pat bar in the 5th near the Pantheon, where pints of Guiness were always free. Why? I was the female equivalent of a wing man for a hot-looking California girl, plus there was a certain British bartender who, let’s just say, appreciated my Celtic heritage. I never did make it to Champagne, but I did enjoy fresh milk in Normandie.

Sandra Beasley (Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl): At age 18, I left behind a stressful semester at college–including an incomplete midterm on the Civil War—to go to Paris with my family. I’d never traveled abroad before, and because of extensive allergies I stuck to the same foods over and over: a quick espresso and still-warm baguette as we walked to a museum or cathedral each morning; smoked salmon and frisée salad at lunch; duck breast with haricot verts and fries for dinner. I must have had those same meals two dozen times, at different cafes spanning from the fourth arrondissement to Montmarte, and always with a glass of cold Muscadet to begin.

I loved the light, crisp, melon acidity of those Loire grapes. I loved the ritual. I loved that by the time we had a drink, we were truly thirsty, my head swimming with the inspirations of the day.

The first poems of mine that I took seriously were from that trip to Paris. That was also when I realized that a routine can be sophisticated, even sublime. If I didn’t value routine, I could never be a writer. I could be an “author,” sure; I could tell saucy stories over Sazeracs at every bar in town. But when it comes to actually putting the words to the page, you need a little modesty and discipline. You need a glass of Muscadet.

Courtney Maum (Electric Literature’s “Celebrity Book Review“): My favorite place in France is Brittany, a romantic, coastal region in the northwest. A girlfriend and I used to channel our affection for this place with a drink we named after our favorite town there, Lancieux. It looks like a gin and tonic, but tastes like a refreshing vacation by the moody sea.

“The Lancieuse”
2 oz of Cachaça (Ypioca brand)
5 oz tonic water
Lime to taste
3 springs of cilantro

Pour the Cachaça and the tonic into a highball glass, squeeze lime to taste and stuff the cilantro into the glass. C’est bon et c’est jolie!

Tara Ison (The List): My Parisian aperitif of choice: a Kir, or a Kir Royale – very dry white wine or Champagne (for the joy of the flute), touched with crème de cassis. Love how the glass glows ruby in late-afternoon light, it’s nutritive (Vitamin A! Anti-oxidants! I tell myself), not too sweet, the colder the better, but tricky to order, as I find the word “kir” (a proper noun, actually, the cocktail was named for a former mayor of Dijon), a challenge to accent properly.

Dylan Landis (Normal People Don’t Live Like This): I’m so tame. It’s just Champagne. But it’s in a Paris apartment with 11-foot ceilings, and book-lined walls, and views of some cobbled street with quirky shopping and great cafes, and I’m up there sipping Ruinart and writing fiction on our balcony, with Dean across the little table reading, and once again I’m grateful I didn’t get trapped in the teeny cranky elevator with my baguettes and Camembert and, at least, the Ruinart.

Matthew Rohrer (Destroyer and Preserver): What is Kir and Why Do I Like It? My wife and I were introduced to Kir at a reading at Shakespeare & Co. It looked like something we normally wouldn’t drink: it was pink. But on the other hand it was free, which is something we normally drink.

Kir is crème de cassis (just a little) mixed with white wine. The Kir Royale is crème de cassis with Champagne. In the summer it’s amazingly refreshing. A touch of sweet and sour crème de cassis (black currant syrup) makes the white wine (which is normally gross) refreshing.

The word “Kir” is very strange and seemingly not very French. I thought I was on to something when I assumed it was related to the German Kirsch—the cherry liqueur. Black currants and cherries. But the drink is named after the former mayor of Dijon, M. Kir. Where he got that name is a mystery to me, one I am not interested in pursuing.

Cecilia Woloch (Carpathia): I drink what everyone drinks in Paris, I guess: cafe crème in the morning — half strong black coffee; half hot frothed milk—and a tiny espresso in the afternoon, sweetened with sugar and gulped; a kir before dinner, perhaps; then red wine with dinner, unless there’s Champagne. And if there’s Champagne, there’s more Champagne. And if I’m still thirsty, water.

Karen Karbo (How Georgia Became O’Keeffe): “I only drink Champagne on two occasions, when I am in love and when I’m not,” Coco Chanel is said to have said. Cagey Chanel, ever ahead of her time, understood the power of the sound bite, and to that end employed a talented though underappreciated poet and self-styled mystic named Pierre Reverdy to help her craft her witticisms. Presumably she drank a lot of Champagne during their short, intense affair, which evolved into a forty year long friendship.

I seem to only drink two things in Paris, a 3 euro bottle of Chardonnay available at the chain grocery store Franprix, or a 25 euro glass of Lagavulin scotch at the Hemingway Bar in the Ritz, where each lady still receives a flower beside her glass.

Dorianne Laux (The Book of Men):

“Margarita!”

Li Po let the moon slip into his wine,

alone among the flowers of the Milky Way.

Baudelaire drank to stave off “Time’s horrid fardel”,

the burden of aging diminishing with each swallow.

Hemingway loved his Mexican Mojito’s, sugary lime,

mint leaves adrift like small veined boats in a sea

of fermented molasses.  Faulkner his Julep, Fitzgerald

his gin, the drink you can’t smell but that takes you away

like the grace note of a bitch goddesses’s perfume.

Chandler slipped his gimlets into the The Long Goodbye,

Marlow downing them two at a time: Rose’s and bitters,

his hat and gun.  Fleming’s Bond tipped his Vesper Martini

from a Champagne flute, shaken, not stirred,

chilled vodka cooling his prayerless throat.

Edna invented Between the Sheets, two men

in her tawny sidecars, reeking of rum.

But it was Kerouac who caressed the sleek stem

of the Margarita, fan dance of tequila, lime wheels,

and ice, a scant ounce of Cointreau and crushed

diamonds of salt winking off the rim, garnished

with a wedge of green light.

Heather Hartley is Paris editor at Tin House. She’s the author of Knock Knock, released by Carnegie Mellon University Press. Her poems and essays have appeared in or on PBS NewsHour, The Guardian, and elsewhere. She has been Co-Director of the Shakespeare and Company Bookshop literary festival and lives in Paris.

The first Parisian café, Le Procope, opened in 1686 on the Left Bank and soon became the hip hangout of the movers, shakers and dictators of world history including Voltaire, Robespierre, Napoleon and Karl Lagerfeld. In the eighteenth century, huddled around Le Procope’s battered coffee pots, les Philosophes boldly wrote all twenty-eight tomes of L’Encyclopédie without the help of Wikipedia. Diderot and D’Alembert, wanting to educate and inspire people in the ways of science and art, were forced to battle it out together sur place with parchment and plume as To Go cups had not yet been invented. Benjamin Franklin also frequented the café and Thomas Paine wrote Rights of Man down the street.

Hence stumbles into history la pause café, the coffee break, a ritual still going strong in France. These days, the world might be freaking out but the French have found their own fine balance between bickering over their 35-hour workweek and taking a break from the arduousness of it all around the office coffee maker, a sexy young thing who graduated from the Sorbonne last year with a degree in Philology and the Perfect Foulard.

Charles Henri Sanson: Professional Headroller

Three caffeinated facts:

1.) Ask a French person what a French press is and they will tell you it is a newspaper like Le Monde or Libération.

2.) The Enlightenment was a period of time before the expression “killing it” could be directly applied to poetry readings and pounding espresso shots, yet the expression was a vibrant part of daily life during the Terror.

3.) The executioner takes his coffee black.

Calamity and coffee go together and late-eighteenth century France was pretty much swimming in both. Centuries before Charles Manson there was Charles-Henri Sanson, Royal Executioner, avid fan of the guillotine and like all café-crazed French of the period, incorrigible coffee drinker. During a time of great professional instability, Sanson’s grisly job security was assured under the Reign of Terror: the gruesome gentleman caller was responsible for executing close to 3,000 people including the King.

You may want to pour yourself another cup. After morning coffee, you realize that rules sometimes suck and absolute monarchy is overrated. Walking down your street some days you think: I am the state, I am the state.

Heather Hartley is Paris editor at Tin House. She’s the author of Knock Knock, released by Carnegie Mellon University Press. Her poems and essays have appeared in or on PBS NewsHour, The Guardian, and elsewhere. She has been Co-Director of the Shakespeare and Company Bookshop literary festival and lives in Paris.

Klondike Kate

Confidantes, friends, lovers and in some cases business partners to everyone from royalty to writers, courtesans were savvy and sexy, experts in the sensual arts, often knowledgeable about politics and astute negotiators, beginning with their own state of affairs. Aspasia, lover of Athenian statesman Pericles and considered by many as one of the first courtesans, set the standard in 4^th century BC, most likely advising her lover on political decisions and influencing Athenian politics. Ninon de l’Enclos, writer, patron of the arts, hostess of a fashionable literary salon and seventeenth-century courtesan said, “Much more genius is needed to make love than to command an army.”

From the Second Empire in the 1850s to the end of the Belle Époque in the 1910s, courtesans benefited from celebrity status at a time when there were more sumptuous and rewarding perks to the star system than having your own reality TV show and a nail polish named after your little dog. Subordinate? In many ways, but in nineteenth-century Paris in particular, courtesans often had more financial stability and independence than married women and could take advantage of alliances in and out of the boudoir.

A courtesan was an essential part of Parisian pecking order, like the heroine Nana in Émile Zola’s eponymous novel, “a smart woman, mistress of all that is foolish and filthy in man, marquise in the ranks of her calling.” Honoré de Balzac dedicated four volumes to them in The Splendors and Misery of Courtesans. Proust loved a good courtesan, or at least loved to write about them, and his fictive fetish was Odette de Crécy, who shows herself to be an excellent hostess, mistress and a lot of other words ending with the suffixes “–ess” and “–ix.”

Here’s a peek into the world of Parisian courtesans, both imagined and real:

Little wild thing, Odette de Crécy in Proust’s Swann in Love: “I know that I’m quite useless,” she had replied, “a little wild thing like me beside a learned great man like you . . . And yet I should so much like to learn, to know things, to be initiated. What fun it would be to become a regular bookworm, to bury my nose in a lot of old papers!” she had gone on, with that self-satisfied air which a smart woman adopts when she insists that her one desire is to give herself up, without fear of soiling her fingers, to some unclean task, such as cooking the dinner, with her ‘hands right in the dish itself.’’

Le Belle Otero

From Émile Zola’sNana, based on the life of singer and actress Blanche d’Antigny: “Her movements were lithe as a serpent’s, and the studied and yet seemingly involuntary carelessness with which she dressed was really exquisite in its elegance. There was a nervous distinction in all she did which suggested a wellborn Persian cat; she was an aristocrat in vice and proudly and rebelliously trampled upon a prostrate Paris like a sovereign whom none dare disobey. She set the fashion, and great ladies imitated her.”

Ninon de l’Enclos: “Feminine virtue is nothing but a convenient masculine invention.”

La Belle Otero, dancer at the Folies Bergère: “I have been a slave to my passions, but never to a man.”

Liane de Pougy, rival of La Belle Otero, also a dancer at the Folies Bergère and author of My Blue Notebooks: The Intimate Journal of Paris’s Most Beautiful and Notorious: “My Father, I have lived very freely. Outside of killing and stealing, I’ve tried everything.”

Heather Hartley is Paris editor at Tin House. She’s the author of Knock Knock, released by Carnegie Mellon University Press. Her poems and essays have appeared in or on PBS NewsHour, The Guardian, and elsewhere. She has been Co-Director of the Shakespeare and Company Bookshop literary festival and lives in Paris.

It’s the end of September and with summer crushes long over, Parisians are looking for love to get them through the cold season. Fall is also the time to brush up on language skills and the language of love in Paris personals this year is full of stumbles and sweet blunders. When you read, “Seeking a cleaver and smear girl for fun things—tanks to your response,” your heart just warms.

Paris has a big reputation to live up to, being the city of love, light and hooking up for well over the past 2,000 years. There’s a long list of lovers, punters and working class heroes who wrote their aches and cravings on a desk in a corner of Paris somewhere—historical precedents to the tempting offer, “I vile in Paris & want a grill to make me happy. R U the she?” Here, with Paris as a backdrop, are a few steamy, stormy couples and some of their love letters through the centuries, in no particular order:

Star-crossed existentialist Simone de Beauvoir to novelist Nelson Algren: “I should give up travels and all kinds of entertainments, I should give up friends and the sweetness of Paris to be able to remain forever with you; but I could not live just for happiness and love, I could not give up writing and working in the only place where my writing and work may have a meaning.”

Golden Arms: Beauvoir & Nelson

Madame de Sévigné to her daughter, Paris’s prolific epistolary It Girl of the 17^th century, was devastated when her daughter Françoise Marguerite got married and moved to Provence, writing to her almost daily: “I set you up as an idol in my heart.”

Zelda Fitzgerald to F. Scott:  “I don’t suppose I really know you very well—but I know you smell like the delicious damp grass that grows near old walls and that your hands are beautiful opening out of your sleeves and that the back of your head is a mossy sheltered cave . . . ”

Marquis de Sade to his little beast, Mademoiselle Rousset, writing from prison where he was incarcerated for sodomy and the supposed non-lethal poisoning of prostitutes in Marseille with Spanish fly: “My little beast, like a new Don Quixote, I will go to break my lances at the four corners of the world to prove that my little beast is, of all the little female beasts breathing between the two poles, she who writes the best and who is the most lovable.”

From the tragic story of twelfth-century philosopher and theologian Abélard to his student and beloved, Héloïse (a tumultuous love that ended with her uncle castrating him; now they are buried together in Père Lachaise Cemetery): “Ah, Héloïse, how far are we from such a happy temper? Your heart still burns with that fatal fire you cannot extinguish, and mine is full of trouble and unrest. Think not, Heloise, that I here enjoy a perfect peace; I will for the last time open my heart to you; I am not yet disengaged from you, and though I fight against my excessive tenderness . . . I remain but too sensible of your sorrows and long to share in them.”

Just a Couple of Gal Pals: Stein & Toklas

Victor Hugo to Juliette Drouet: “Let us remember all our lives that dark little room, . . . the two armchairs, side by side, the meal we ate off the corner of the table, our sweet conversation, your caresses, your anxieties, your devotion.”

Henry Miller to Anais Nin: “I sent a second letter to Switzerland, same address, did you get it? . . . Don’t be terrified by the avalanche of mail. It is a bad habit of mine . . . Hugo [Anais’ husband], I hope, is not annoyed . . . He must not. In any case, I am not dropping them on his desk . . . But, I know how it can be sometimes. I should hate to have him saying to himself—‘More mail from that guy? What’s the meaning of all this? I hope to Christ he croaks.’”

Gertrude Stein to Alice B. Toklas:

Ir

Re

Sis

Ti

Belle

For the 2012 French fall harvest of personals, sometimes the clumsier, more candid requests in English are the most appealing. Here are some of the more rousing (arousing?) prospects. Remember, in Paris, no gate is too far:

-I travel the world in case of your job. Move to your home and making the love. I can move on your state. You pay my visit. We share this dream.

-He must love animal. Preference juvenile. Long hairs.

-I AM CLAM. I AM NOT CONFLICT.

-Meat me, no everything about me!

-I make you the little death big time. (La petite mort, the little death, means orgasm among other things)

-I love my mob. Taxt me!

-Looking for an essay woman, bed soon.

-Massy girls is for me, oui oui!

-It is hard to describe one’s self. I am salute and of the umble ear. I focass on the positive.

-Hi every girl, it’s oaky for relations and I love really love the Sweden.

-I want to relocate you. We can move wood together. No gate too far.

Heather Hartley is Paris editor at Tin House. She’s the author of Knock Knock, released by Carnegie Mellon University Press. Her poems and essays have appeared in or on PBS NewsHour, The Guardian, and elsewhere. She has been Co-Director of the Shakespeare and Company Bookshop literary festival and lives in Paris.

I could blame it on Google or Kindle, that with all their efficiency and speed, there’s no need to go further than my desk for research, reading or what I indulge in most: mindless site-cruising, the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button a tempting trigger. Borges wrote, “I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library,” and he may have imagined it to be something like La Bibliothèque Mazarine, housed in the same 17^th-century grand sandstone building as the Académie française and the renowned Institut de France. Shadows slant as you walk under stone arches leading to a small spiral staircase that takes you to the library on the second floor.

La Bibliothèque Mazarine faces the Seine on the Left Bank and the crowded Pont des Arts folds out just in front with its buskers, love padlocks (couples mark their initials on a lock, fasten it to the railing and toss the key into the river), and improvised picnics (a bottle of white, a bottle of red, a couple friends and a basket of bread). It is France’s oldest public library and was the personal collection of Cardinal Mazarin, a central member of Louis XIV’s cortege, who opened it to the public in 1643.

Padlocks of Love

I went with a small group of writing students, high schoolers from all over the States. We had the rare opportunity to be shown some books from their remarkable collection—a fifteenth-century illuminated manuscript with gem-like blues and perfect black, spiky script, correspondence between poet Paul Verlaine and a young Marcel Proust, a large book of cream-colored maps of the United States before anything was united. Kelly, Talli, Kinsey, Christina, Tatiana, Erin and I didn’t have much to say in the library—too exciting and so very French.

I’d forgotten the appetite you can have just by walking into a library and smelling that potent combination of paper, dust and possibility. The Mazarine has a particular sweet smell of dried herbs, velvety parchment and aged Moroccan leather—it’s intoxicating (a word that seems to come up a lot in this column).

The morning we went, there were eight or nine patrons working at long wooden tables with elaborately carved feet (the tables, not the patrons). Some come regularly to write, others visit now and then. For 12 euros ($15.00) per year, anyone can come and consult much of the antiquarian collection or just come and sit and drink in the atmosphere, like we did, with bookshelves reaching two-stories high and giving you vertigo, and on the table in front of you, opened: a little block of god, a book.

Heather Hartley is Paris editor at Tin House. She’s the author of Knock Knock, released by Carnegie Mellon University Press. Her poems and essays have appeared in or on PBS NewsHour, The Guardian, and elsewhere. She has been Co-Director of the Shakespeare and Company Bookshop literary festival and lives in Paris.