Depicted in its pages
Paris Salons, Cafés, Studios
The upper room on the Boul' Mich' where Ford, Pierre Loving, Pound, and Huddleston played with ideas for hours — a room only this memoir remembers.
Chez Émile
Permanently closedAn Alsatian restaurant with an upper room at the quiet end of the Boul' Mich' — where Ford Madox Ford, Ezra Pound, and Sisley Huddleston talked for hours, and only the memoir remembers it.
- Bd Saint-Michel, by the Bal Bullier (exact number unrecorded), 75005 Paris
Artistic reconstruction
The place, briefly
Some rooms of the era survive on plaques and awnings; Chez Émile survives on a single page. Huddleston remembers the proprietor exactly — a picturesque Alsatian restaurant keeper, perpetually dressed in white twill and a high cook's bonnet — and the upper room on the Boulevard Saint-Michel, next door to the Bal Bullier's mock-oriental façade, where the quarter's talkers went when the café terraces were too public for a real conversation.
The evening he chose to preserve is the era in miniature: Ford Madox Ford, the poet-critic Pierre Loving, Ezra Pound, and Huddleston himself in the upper room, gaily playing with ideas for hours — Pound, by the memoirist's account, the merriest spirit of the party. A hundred such evenings vanished undocumented; this one had a journalist at the table.
No directory entry, no photograph, and no plaque survives that we have found — the restaurant's afterlife is Huddleston's paragraph, which is precisely why it belongs here. Some places are preserved by their fame; this one is preserved by a witness.
In their words
What a vivacious evening we spent for example in an upper room chez Emile! Emile is a picturesque Alsatian restaurant keeper, perpetually dressed in white twill clothes, and a high cook's bonnet.
Key facts
- An Alsatian restaurant with a private upper room, next to the Bal Bullier
- Émile — white twill clothes and a high cook's bonnet, per Huddleston
- Ford, Pierre Loving, Pound, and Huddleston, playing with ideas for hours
- Gone without trace — the memoir is the only plaque
In images
Timeline
The upper room hosts the quarter's talkers, a landmark's width from the Bullier.
Huddleston preserves the room, the proprietor, and one merry evening in print.
No trace on the boulevard; the page is what remains.
On the map
Related books
Writers who knew this place
Sisley Huddleston
Frequented by
The upper room on the Boul' Mich' where he, Ford, Pierre Loving, and Pound gaily played with ideas for hours.
Within walking distance
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La Closerie des Lilas
Ernest Hemingway's favorite writing spot, where he drafted much of The Sun Also Rises. Quieter than the other cafés, which was the point.
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Bal Bullier
The students' dance hall behind the mock-oriental façade opposite the Closerie des Lilas — where the Latin Quarter danced for a century, and Robert and Sonia Delaunay painted the dancers.
Visit the place
113 Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs
Ernest Hemingway's second flat, above a working sawmill — where the journalism stopped, The Sun Also Rises was finished, and the first marriage ended.
Visit the placeReferences
References
The sources below include histories, archival materials, scholarly research, and official records that informed this page. They document Chez Émile, the people connected to it, and its place in Paris.
1Paris Salons, Cafés, Studios
MemoirSisley Huddleston, 1928Used forFirst-person evidence and historical context used in preparing the Chez Émile page.
2OpenStreetMap
Map dataUsed forMap data used to verify addresses, geographic coordinates, and the placement associated with Chez Émile.
3Stella Bowen: Sisley Huddleston
WebsiteAustralian War MemorialUsed forWeb source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Chez Émile page.
4Ezra Pound Papers
ArchiveBeinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale UniversityUsed forArchival evidence used to document the historical record connected to Chez Émile.
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Why these sources are here
These references provide the documented foundation for this page's history and context. Claim-level citations remain attached to the specific claims they support.
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Paris, one address at a time.
The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.