Hôtel Luxembourg Parc

Before it was Hôtel Luxembourg Parc, this corner building housed the Hôtel des Principautés-Unies, where William Faulkner stayed in 1925. His address was 26 rue Servandoni, on the side of the building whose present hotel entrance is at 42 rue de Vaugirard. A plaque on the rue Servandoni façade commemorates his autumn here.^[3][4]

Faulkner moved into his room on 18 August 1925. Drawing on his letters, scholar Frédérique Spill describes a small room in a boarding house with steep stairs and shared toilets. He wrote to his family about being able to sit, write and watch children in the Luxembourg Gardens. He spent time there writing, feeding sparrows and helping children sail their toy boats.^[5]

His letters grew less cheerful as autumn wore on. He had trouble cashing an advance for his first novel, Soldiers’ Pay, and needed the money for his passage home. He finally left Paris on 9 December. The stay also fed into his unfinished fiction Elmer, while the Luxembourg Gardens would appear in the closing scene of Sanctuary. The commemorative plaque was installed in September 1997, a century after his birth.^[5]

Today’s hotel offers much more comfort than that boarding house. Its rooms use Louis XV and Napoleon III decorative styles. In the courtyard, Italian artist Antonio Nocera’s work includes a fountain and a large moon sculpture whose shadow falls across the inner façade. These are features of the present hotel, alongside the older literary connection marked outside.^[1][2]