I recently went to Paris and while I was there I checked out the road that George Orwell stayed in when he lived in Paris in 1928-9. Orwell is a hero of mine and his book about poverty in London and Paris was the first thing I read by him. Orwell's book seemed at first a great adventure but drawn with a great realism and vivid language which grabbed me and made me think. The Paris section amounts to half of a slim volume but it has a special and compelling atmosphere. After I read it I browsed in bookshops looking for something that might have that special quality again. I found and read Genet's The Thief's Journal and Isherwood's Berlin novels and later Tropic of Cancer. I have a tremendous affection for the book and for my old orange Penguin edition with the Christopher Corr cover and bought in WHSmiths in Lewisham in 1985 along with Elton John's Greatest Hits, if I recall correctly. It came to Paris with us.

  Getting back to Orwell's Paris, we took some pictures of the Rue Du Pot De Fer--the road he calls 'Rue Du Coq D'Or' in his Down and Out in Paris & London--and they can be seen below. For one reason or another I didn't get to see as much specifically Orwell Paris as I'd like and so intend to go again and make this page live up to its name.

Rue Du Pot De Fer, 6th July 2004.

It was easy enough to find 6 Rue Du Pot De Fer (it apparently means cooking pot or fireman's helmet). We got the metro to a station called Monges I think and wandered for a bit and then we found it. The buildings were tall but not quite so leprous-looking—though I expect they been repaired many times since 1928.
 Underneath the tall houses, in the narrow cobbled street (which had a trickling stream of water running down its central gutter), little restaurants and shops stood where the old ‘bistros’ of Orwell’s time had been. I imagined the Arab navvies of Orwell’s time fighting out their mysterious feuds with ‘chairs and occasionally revolvers.’

It was easy to see in the next street where that squadron of Cavalry came from on the first page of Down and Out in Paris and London: there was a large building and gateway with an ancient Garde Imperial sign above it.
 ‘He describes them as looking like they’re about to fall down,’ V commented about the houses before she filmed me walking up Pot De Fer. I looked up and thought about it.
 ‘Artistic licence, shall we say?’

Rue Du Pot Du Fer.

They were of course far more high and narrow than any in a London street, I *think*.
 At that moment a young heroin addict accosted us for money. Without thinking I shook my head and said I had no money (actually I had a few loose euros and some notes). As he tottered away I thought of the irony.
 First we got the wrong building but we asked and found number six. Underneath a shop sold sunglasses, handbags and accessories, all designed by the young, camp owner, a sort of wizened, Gaultier wannabe in his thirties.
 While he tried to sell sunglasses to V (‘I will pick the design especially to suit *your* face’) I took photos of the street.

Orwell's old door in 1928.

Next to the shop at number six was a low blue doorway, where Orwell and his fellow hard-up residents passed in and out.
Cars still drive up and down the street and presently one did, very fast considering the narrowness of the street and with chairs and tables in it. It was a Renault hatchback and it had the same effect, I reckon, as that squadron of cavalry did al those years ago.

RRue Du Pot De Fer

Orwell's old lodgings. 'A fairly rackety place'

Another view.

It was a nice hot, sunny day and we fancied a beer and so went in a bar/pub at the top of the street. We were too early and so, because we wanted to have a drink in the Rue Le Pot De Fer wandered back down and around the quarter for a bit.
 All the restaurants were open but deserted and an open pub or bar was nowhere to be seen. There are lots of literary connections with this area, notably Hemingway, who I can’t get that excited about for some reason.
Round the corner we were approached by another beggar, this time fat and about forty. He looked foreign, possibly Russian, like Orwell’s friend the lame kitchen worker and sometime soldier Boris.
Round the corner a black kitchen worker stood outside a restaurant, washing his bicycle.

Rue Mouffetard, looking towards Orwell's old road.

Rue Mouffetard.

We wandered back to the bar, which was now open and blasting rap music. A pint of lager was five Euros. V noticed a sign announcing that the bar, which was small and dark—we sat outside and regarded the street—was playing host to ‘The Official Red Hot Chilli Peppers after show party’ in a few weeks time. The place was evidently hip. I didn’t like it.

Top of Rue Du Pot De Fer

A restaurant in Rue Du Pot De Fer. In Orwell's day they were 'brick-floored bistros where one could be drunk for the equivalent of a shilling.

Looking up Rue Du Pot De Fer from Rue Mouffetard. A small fountain is on the left out of shot.

 After our drink we decided to get some picnic stuff and go to the Louvre—though it was apparently closed all day Tuesday. We bought a fine bit of cheese, some pate and bread plus a bottle of chateau-bottled Bordeaux for a ludicrously (compared to England) cheap price and found a pleasant spot in the Tuileries Gardens to sup.
It was just right: late afternoon sunshine, some nice things to eat, people to watch and a good drop of wine.
 Later we wandered, I had my photo taken underneath the statue of Caesar, then we were accosted by a scruffy looking man with a pad.
 ‘Let me draw you…. A caricature.’
 ‘No thanks mate.’
 ‘Just for publicity I’ll do it for free, just for publicity. You look famous.’
 ‘No thanks.’
 ‘Come one, no money, don’t worry, let me draw you.’
  So I sat down. Soon, V was accosted by a young Indian with the same spiel about ‘doing it for free and publicity’ and she reluctantly agreed.
 I asked my caricaturist, a little man in his early forties with cracked lips and a small moustache, about himself. He’d been drawing caricatures of people in the Tuileries Gardens for ten years. He was from Brazil. He concentrated on drawing me, looking up, half-smiling, squinting and then peering down again. He said he earned, if things were going well, sometimes a hundred or more euros in a day.
 ‘What’s it like in winter?’
 ‘In winter things are not so easy.’
  When the drawing was done he showed it to V first who said nothing, then turned it to me. It was awful. I’d made up my mind to buy it if it showed any merit.
 ‘Now,’ he said lifting the sheets up on his drawing pad and showing two sums in pencil on the cardboard backing. ‘Normally this would cost thirty euros but I’m willing today to do it for five.’
 ‘No thanks.’
 ‘For your girlfriend?’
 ‘No thanks, she’s an artist herself.’
 ‘Four.’
 ‘Really, I told you I have no money,’ which was nearly true, I had about thirty euros left and we were putting dinner on V’s card.
 He gave up and moved away, folding the drawing. Meanwhile, V’s had finished and if the Brazilian’s drawing of me had been rubbishy, then this was simply a joke. A few mean lines and scribbles in biro, it didn’t resemble V, or, for that matter, any other human being that I could think of.
 He was more determined.
 ‘Go on, buy it, five euros.’
 ‘No mate it don’t look like her.’
 ‘Go on, for your girlfriend.’
 We both said no and started to move away. The Indian looked angry and thrust the drawing into my hands.
 ‘Four!’
 I attempted to give the drawing back but he dropped his hands, so I tucked it into his shirt, between the buttons and he threw it back. We turned away and he began to curse under his breath.

Hopefully I'll be updating soon with some film footage I took of Paris. WORD CHEMIST AT HOT MAIL for all queries.