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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
IllustrationThe 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.[1]

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.[1]

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.[2]

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

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 frontage in colour, from the quay.Editorial illustration

Timeline

  1. 1929

    Lawrence attends a literary tea here and meets François Mauriac.

  2. 1929

    He describes the evening to his agent on 24 March: "ye gods, how literary".

  3. 1952

    Mauriac, whom he met here, is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

  4. 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

Illustrated portrait of D. H. Lawrence

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

Within walking distance

Bright color view of the red-brick and pale-stone Place Dauphine façade

Apartment · Île de la Cité (1st)

28 place Dauphine

The apartment on the Île de la Cité from which Camille Pissarro painted twenty-six canvases between October 1901 and May 1902 — the Seine, the Pont Neuf, the Louvre and the statue of Henri IV, all from one set of windows.

Visit the place
Bright present-day color view of the Palais de Justice extension beside the Seine

School · Île de la Cité (1st)

Académie Suisse

The informal life-drawing studio on the quai des Orfèvres where anyone could pay to draw from the model without an examination — and where Camille Pissarro met Paul Cézanne around 1861.

Visit the place
The same view of the Seine in colour, green water under a pale sky

River · Central Paris

The Seine

The river through Paris, and the thread that runs the length of Giovanni's Room: the crossing at dawn, the men sleeping under the bridges, and the barge where Giovanni is caught.

Visit the place
The 3 rue des Grands-Augustins doorway in color, grey-blue double doors under the stone arch, red brick above

Apartment · Saint-Germain-des-Prés

3 Rue des Grands-Augustins

Robert and Sonia Delaunay's apartment and studio from 1910 to 1935 — where La Prose du Transsibérien took its colors, and whose key Blaise Cendrars held while the couple waited out the First World War abroad.

Visit the place
References

References

The sources below include histories, archival materials, scholarly research, and official records that informed this page. They document Daniel Halévy's Salon (39 Quai de l'Horloge), the people connected to it, and its place in Paris.

  1. 1abD. H. Lawrence in Paris in 1929

    Website
    Catherine Brown
    Used for

    Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Daniel Halévy's Salon (39 Quai de l'Horloge) page.

    View source

  2. 2↑Extended Biography of D. H. Lawrence

    Website
    University of Nottingham, Manuscripts and Special Collections
    Used for

    Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Daniel Halévy's Salon (39 Quai de l'Horloge) page.

    View source

  1. 3Chronology of Lawrence's Life and Works

    Website
    University of Nottingham, Manuscripts and Special Collections
    Used for

    Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Daniel Halévy's Salon (39 Quai de l'Horloge) page.

    View source

  2. 4The Cambridge Companion to D. H. Lawrence

    Essays
    Cambridge University Press, 2001
    Used for

    Published analysis and historical context used in preparing the Daniel Halévy's Salon (39 Quai de l'Horloge) page.

    View source
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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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