Salon · Île de la Cité · 1er arrondissement

Daniel Halévy's Salon (39 Quai de l'Horloge)

The buildingStill standing

Getting inOutside only

What's there nowShops below, flats above

An address on the Île de la Cité with shops at street level and private apartments above. Halévy held the salon here until his death in 1962; nothing marks it, and the flat itself cannot be visited.

Daniel Halévy's literary salon on the Île de la Cité, where D. H. Lawrence went to a tea in March 1929 and met François Mauriac. It produced the only line about Paris that anyone quotes him on.

Address: 39 Quai de l'Horloge, 75001 Paris
Years: Halévy's lifetime, to 1962

Illustration The same façade in colour, red brick and pale stone above a blue shoe shop, a black bookshop front and a green stationer's

The same frontage in colour, from the quay.

Editorial illustration

The story

The room

The quai de l'Horloge runs along the north side of the Île de la Cité, past the Conciergerie towers, with the Seine directly below the windows. It is one of the oldest addresses in Paris and one of the quietest, a few minutes from the Palais de Justice and from nothing else at all.

Halévy's authority came partly from inheritance. His father Ludovic wrote librettos for Offenbach and the book of Carmen; his grandfather was the composer Fromental Halévy. Daniel took the family standing into history and the essay, and used the salon to keep lines open between people who would not otherwise have been in a room together.

That was the point of the institution and also its limit. A salon is a place where literature is discussed by people who have arranged to discuss literature. Lawrence had spent his life being suspicious of exactly that arrangement.

One tea, March 1929

Lawrence was in Paris for four weeks and going out as little as he could manage. He was forty-three, tubercular, and there on business: the Florence edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover was being pirated and he wanted a cheap Paris edition to kill the market for it. Meeting French writers who might support the book was part of the errand.

Mauriac was the significant name in the room. He was forty-three too, a Catholic novelist of considerable standing who would take the Nobel a quarter of a century later, and the kind of ally whose endorsement travelled. Nothing came of the meeting.

I went to a French literary tea yesterday – with Mauriac and a few more – ye gods, how literary – the Lord made Adam out of printer's ink, in Paris.
D. H. Lawrence, letter to his agent Laurence Pollinger, 24 March 1929

The complaint is characteristic. Lawrence's objection to literary society was not that it was pretentious but that it was made of paper: people who had turned themselves into text and could no longer be reached any other way. He had made the same charge against Bloomsbury, against Cambridge, and eventually against most of the people who admired him.

Visiting today

Address: 39 quai de l'Horloge, 1st arrondissement, on the Île de la Cité
Métro: Cité, or Pont Neuf across the river
The apartments are private and nothing marks the salon, but the ground floor is shops: the Librairie du Palais and the Papeteries Gaubert, a stationer
The quay itself is the reason to come: the Conciergerie towers are on the same stretch, and the Pont Neuf is at the western end
Worth the trip? The building is not, but the walk is. This is a two-minute detour from a route most visitors already take

Last verified: August 2026.

Key facts

Address: 39 quai de l'Horloge, 1st arrondissement
Whose salon: Daniel Halévy, historian and essayist
Ran until: Halévy's death in 1962
Lawrence's visit: One literary tea, March 1929
Who Lawrence met: François Mauriac, "and a few more"

In images

Pen-and-ink drawing of the brick-and-stone façade at 39 quai de l'Horloge, Paris, with the Librairie du Palais bookshop and the Papeteries Gaubert stationer at street level — 39 quai de l'Horloge, where Daniel Halévy kept his salon until his death in 1962. The building stands and the apartments above are private; a bookshop and a stationer hold the ground floor.Editorial illustration

The same façade in colour, red brick and pale stone above a blue shoe shop, a black bookshop front and a green stationer's — The same frontage in colour, from the quay.Editorial illustration

Timeline

1929
Lawrence attends a literary tea here and meets François Mauriac.
1929
He describes the evening to his agent on 24 March: "ye gods, how literary".
1952
Mauriac, whom he met here, is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
1962
Halévy dies; the salon he had kept going for four decades ends with him.

On the map

Questions before you go

Whose salon was at 39 quai de l'Horloge?

Daniel Halévy's. He was a French historian and essayist from a distinguished literary family, and his apartment on the Île de la Cité was one of the meeting places of Paris intellectual life from the interwar years until his death in 1962.

Did D. H. Lawrence meet François Mauriac?

Yes, once, at Halévy's salon in March 1929. Lawrence reported it to his agent the next day without enthusiasm. Nothing came of the meeting; Mauriac did not become an ally for the Paris edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover.

What did Lawrence say about the evening?

In a letter of 24 March 1929: "I went to a French literary tea yesterday – with Mauriac and a few more – ye gods, how literary – the Lord made Adam out of printer's ink, in Paris." It is the most quoted thing he wrote about the city.

Is the address on the Left Bank?

No. The quai de l'Horloge is on the Île de la Cité, the island in the middle of the Seine, in the 1st arrondissement. It is often described as Left Bank in passing accounts of Lawrence's visit, and it is not.

Can you visit?

Not the apartment, which is private and unmarked. The ground floor is shops and open to anyone: the Librairie du Palais and a stationer, the Papeteries Gaubert. The quay itself is worth walking, with the Conciergerie on the same stretch and the Pont Neuf at the end of it.

Writers who knew this place

D. H. Lawrence

English · English novelist and poet out of a Nottinghamshire coalfield. A court destroyed The Rainbow in 1915, the police took his paintings off a London wall in 1929, and he came to Paris that March to get Lady Chatterley's Lover cheaply into print.

Frequented by · 1929

One literary tea, in March 1929, where he met François Mauriac. He described it to his agent the next day without enthusiasm and did not go back.

— Catherine Brown, D. H. Lawrence in Paris in 1929

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