Looking for Hemingway
I’m re-reading Ernest Hemingway’s memoir of his time in Paris in the 1920s, which has me pursuing ghosts and listening for echoes of that time during our stay in the Fifth Arrondissement. I rent an apartment in Saint Germain with my husband and son in a Haussmann building, keen to feel the history in its musty foyer and solid, thickly painted creamy walls.
Hemingway wrote his first novel, The Sun Also Rises in this bustling quartier, forming friendships with other famous ex-patriots like Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ezra Pound. I research the buildings where they lived, worked, and played, hoping traces of their artistry might infuse me as I expand my repertoire as an author into fiction for the first time.
Place de la Contrescarpe
I’m drinking coffee in the Place de la Contrescarpe on a spring morning, crisp and so very quiet. I’m surprised that Paris doesn’t seem to do early mornings, or maybe it just does them inconspicuously, away from prying, foreign eyes like mine. Only the café proprietor buzzes between the sparsely populated tables, distributing steaming short blacks, and baskets of oven-fresh bread, butter, and croissants.
Later, more workers will arrive to serve long lunches, working through the smoky aperitif, into the bustling dinner hours.
Place de la Contrescarpe Paris
I’m watching ‘life‘ in the iconic square through romance-tinged Raybans.
I periodically scan a yellow, disintegrating 1970s paperback of A Moveable Feast, passed on to me by a friend whose mother lived and loved here. I’ve underlined some addresses to include in our walks, following in Hemingway’s steps, imagining a time that I fantasise was creatively richer than the here and now. I gaze across at a house that proudly displays the date 1748, and its boast hits its mark with this Australian who’s never lived with buildings that age. Then, a movement pulls my eyes to a man flat on his back in the centre of the Contrescarpe, and I can’t believe I didn’t see him sooner.
A woman crosses the road and crouches beside him, placing a paper bag and coffee cup on the cobbled paving. After exchanging a few words, the man props himself on his elbow and begins enjoying his breakfast and the woman moves on. They seem to know each other, know this place, know how things work.

Man in Place de la Contrescarpe
The Café des Amateurs, the place Hemingway referred to as “the cesspool of the Rue Mouffetard” has long gone from the square.
The latest iteration on its former site is Café Delmas, on the corner of ‘the Mouffe.’ The Delmas’ menu looked good last night as we perused the board, but my husband preferred Le Bistro Italien adjacent, feeling fancy pizzas coming on. After devouring a delicious meal I chatted with the owner. I’m eager to speak French whenever I come across a friendly, willing conversation partner. Many Parisians quickly revert to English, wanting to help me out when they hear my accent, but not everyone can, which makes me try.
The man asked where we came from and told me that his grandparent was one of ten siblings who all migrated to Australia after WWII, except for his direct ancestor. That’s why he still lives in Paris today he shrugged, looking disappointed that his many cousins, like us, live on the other side of the planet. When he left the table, I translated the story to my son and husband who excitedly applauded my ability to converse in another language. It feels good when countless hours of work come to fruition for sharing stories and connecting with other humans. It’s the same reason I love writing books, language finding its deepest purpose.
After croissants with raspberry jam, we head for the building in Rue Cardinal Lemoine where Hemingway and his first wife Hadley lived, poor and wide-eyed. My family jumps around in silly poses as I try to take serious photos of the historical plaques until I give up and laugh with them.

Hemingway’s apartment
That evening, we eat at a nearby traditional-style bistro, La Maison de Verlaine. It’s the building where Hemingway had his office, a former hotel at 39 Rue Descartes, where the poet Verlaine also lived. We enjoyed Aperol Spritz and delicious meals al fresco, chatting about our travel plans, dodging cigarette smoke, and trying not to talk over each other too much. When I could get a word in edgewise, I pulled out my slim, tatty book and read my son and husband the most relevant passage about where we sat, from A Moveable Feast:
All of the sadness of the city came suddenly with the first cold rains of winter, and there were no more tops to the high white houses as you walked but only the wet blackness of the street and the closed doors of the small shops, the herb sellers, the stationery and the newspaper shops, the midwife—second class—and the hotel where Verlaine had died where I had a room on the top floor where I worked.
This building is precisely where Hemingway eked out a living, writing in a plain, unheated room above the street. I wonder if, like me, he hoped that the talent of those who had gone before might rub off on him, or that at least, the location might inspire his work. We take a beat to gaze up at the top floor of the building, then get on with the job of devouring dinner.
The building is beautiful, but I cannot capture a strong sense of that time, and it almost grieves me. Maybe I don’t know what I’m looking for, or maybe it’s just too long gone.

La Maison de Verlaine
I look for the remainder of that belle epoque wherever we go, but time has changed almost everything. For instance, I read about Shakespeare and Company, the book shop on the Left Bank where Hemingway once borrowed books from his friend Sylvia Beach because he was too poor to buy them. A beautiful store of the same name exists today, but in a different location from the original, founded ten years after its namesake permanently closed its doors.
Bouquinistes
We walk along the Seine and visit the bouquinistes, and I’m amused and confused to see an AC/DC Highway to Hell print proudly displayed alongside the traditional, cliché posters of Le Moulin Rouge and La Tour Eiffel. I wonder if anyone buys Australian rock music memorabilia here and in that funny moment, Hemingway and friends feel even further away.

Bouquiniste with AC/DC print
The next afternoon, the Rue Gay Lussac where we’re staying reverberates with wailing sirens as armoured police vans spew riot police holding machine guns into the street. They look up at us suspiciously as we perch transfixed behind the wrought iron balconettes of our apartment, wide-eyed. The sound of distant chanting and drums, a manifestation, gradually moves closer until cries about Palestine and the Middle East conflict become discernible.
Within a couple of hours, the crowds disperse without incident, but the nearby cafés strum with hungry students and other protestors, long into the evening. We see the police vans peel off into the night one by one, crisis averted, as we stroll around the nearby Pantheon.
Last Day in Paris
On our last day in Paris, we booked lunch at the Brasserie at La Tour Eiffel, and we decided to spend the morning meandering there slowly, taking in the Boulevard Saint-Germain and the gardens of the Luxembourg Palace.
We have coffee at Les Deux Magots, another one of Hemingway’s places, which is now an iconic literary café popular with tourists. It boasts a depth of famous past clientele including Albert Camus, Pablo Picasso, James Joyce, Bertolt Brecht, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir.

Les Deux Magots
While my husband and son talk, I ask myself if I’m feeling a connection to great writers of the past, by drinking coffee in the same cafés, retracing their steps, standing in front of the same monuments, and eating in the same restaurants. Despite loving every second of Paris, I’m not sure I feel any closer to that time or those artists. The past is gone, and I accept with a tinge of grief that I can’t get there.
Yet, in the following weeks, something changes.
Returning to the frosty southern winter, I feel more driven to write and create than I have for perhaps years, words flowing with ease. There’s anticipation and pleasure each day as I come to the desk in my cosy office, surrounded by my dogs. There’s a new openness and generosity in my attitude towards myself as a profoundly liberating author, almost revolutionary for me, previously a chronic self-doubter.
Hemingway’s Paris doesn’t exist to be experienced anymore, at least, not in obvious ways. That’s unsurprising after 100 years. I’m not sure what I thought I’d find, but the searching reminded me that although things end, people die and times change, art can remain, retaining its vivid intensity, even as the world moves on.
The past endures strongest through architecture, art, and stories.
Books live on beyond their authors, continuing to let us see and feel the deepest and most intricate parts of a person, long after that person and their epoque have disappeared. Maybe the wisdom of the authors who have gone before did seep into my pores in Paris, from the cafés, the bars, and the pavements, infusing me with confidence and fresh creativity. Or perhaps the adventure of travel simply blew the fog of ennui from my mind.
All I know is I’m unexpectedly clearer, more confident, and a better writer than I was before this Paris sojourn, and I’m grateful for that.
Have you ever had a ‘writer’ travel experience such as this? Please share in the comments below.
Image credits:
1.Booktopia.com.au
2-7 copyright author Debra Campbell
Living in Paris since 27 years I greatly enjoyed your recherche du temps perdu with
Hemingway sitting down where he once had his habits (“avoir ses habitudes”). I think you grasped that those places such as Les Deux Magot have become tourist traps with exorbitant prices
I would never put my foot there however every now and then I will sit down on second floor of adjacent Cafe Flore where you will actually find writers busy as well along with other celebrities let alone some book publishers
I don’t know if Hemingway was ever there and it doesn’t matter.
Bon retour à Paris !