The Times's man in Paris — the journalist who knew every table in the quarter, French and Anglo-American alike, and wrote the era down while it was happening.
Sisley Huddleston (born 1883) spent the great years of literary Paris as the city's best-connected English journalist — Paris correspondent of The Times of London through the twenties, after covering the 1919 Peace Conference. Where the expatriate memoirists knew their own café tables, Huddleston knew everyone's: he sat with Paul Fort's poets at the Closerie des Lilas, championed Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare and Company in print, contributed to Ford Madox Ford's transatlantic review, and presided over the press association whose lunches a young Toronto Star stringer named Ernest Hemingway attended.
He turned that access into a shelf of books interpreting France for English readers — France and the French (1925), Paris Salons, Cafés, Studios (1928), Back to Montparnasse (1931), In My Time (1938). The 1928 memoir is his monument: a quarter-by-quarter, café-by-café eyewitness record of both literary Parises, the French and the foreign, written before anyone knew how the story ended. He watched Hemingway hunt for 'a simple realistic style' — and affectionately parodied the result within two years of The Sun Also Rises.
Huddleston settled in Normandy in the thirties and stayed in France through the Occupation, taking French citizenship during the war; his sympathetic writing about Pétain's regime clouded his final years, and he was briefly detained at the Liberation. He died in France in 1952. The arguments about the later choices belong elsewhere; the value of the record is not in dispute — no one else wrote down so much of the Paris these pages map, from the next chair, while the chairs were still warm.
Born at Barrow-in-Furness, Lancashire.
The Times's man in Paris — covering the Peace Conference at Versailles, and then everything after.
The best-connected table in the quarter: a decade of columns introducing literary Paris — French and Anglo-American alike — to the English-speaking world.
Paris Salons, Cafés, Studios — the era's rooms, tables, and talk, preserved while the paint was still wet.
Trades the boulevards for a Normandy farmhouse and the columns for memoirs — Back to Montparnasse among them.
Remains in France through the war years — the choices of those years still argued over by his readers.
Dies in France, 14 October.
Met
The Anglo-American press lunches of the early twenties, where the Times man watched a young Toronto Star stringer hunt for a style — and, within two years of The Sun Also Rises, affectionately parodied the finished product in print.
Met
Neighbors in the small world of literary Paris — Huddleston championed Shakespeare and Company in his columns and gave the shop and its keeper a chapter's warmth in his 1928 memoir.
A Times correspondent's eyewitness tour of the salons and café tables of 1920s Paris — Joyce, Pound, Sylvia Beach, and the young Hemingway, sketched from the next chair.
He sat with Paul Fort's Tuesday court of poets on the terrace, and wrote the cafe a chapter of its own while the chairs were still warm.
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Sisley Huddleston wrote about Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris Salons, Cafés, Studios.
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Sisley Huddleston wrote about Le Dôme in Paris Salons, Cafés, Studios.
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Sisley Huddleston wrote about Le Select in Paris Salons, Cafés, Studios.
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Sisley Huddleston wrote about La Rotonde in Paris Salons, Cafés, Studios.
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Sisley Huddleston wrote about Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris Salons, Cafés, Studios.
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The upper room on the Boul' Mich' where he, Ford, Pierre Loving, and Pound gaily played with ideas for hours.
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Sisley Huddleston wrote about Shakespeare and Company (12 Rue de l'Odéon) in Paris Salons, Cafés, Studios.
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Sisley Huddleston wrote about Bal Musette in Paris Salons, Cafés, Studios.
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Sisley Huddleston wrote about The Salon on the Avenue Charles Floquet in Paris Salons, Cafés, Studios.
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Sisley Huddleston wrote about 2 Square de Robiac in Paris Salons, Cafés, Studios.
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Sisley Huddleston wrote about Bal Bullier in Paris Salons, Cafés, Studios.
Visit the placeAn English journalist (1883–1952), The Times's man in Paris, who knew every table in the literary quarter — French and Anglo-American alike — and wrote the era down while it was happening.
His 1928 memoir Paris Salons, Cafés, Studios, an eyewitness record of the cafés, salons, and studios of 1920s Paris. It is a primary source for many of our places and people.
Nearly everyone in the quarter. He sat with Paul Fort's Tuesday court of poets on the Closerie des Lilas terrace, and traded ideas for hours with Ford Madox Ford, Ezra Pound, and others in an upper room on the Boulevard Saint-Michel.
He watched the young Toronto Star stringer hunt for a style at the Anglo-American press lunches of the early 1920s — and, within two years of The Sun Also Rises, affectionately parodied the finished product in print.
He championed Sylvia Beach's bookshop in his columns and gave the shop and its keeper a chapter's warmth in his 1928 memoir.
Frequented
He sat with Paul Fort's Tuesday court of poets on the terrace, and wrote the cafe a chapter of its own while the chairs were still warm.
Frequented
The upper room on the Boul' Mich' where he, Ford, Pierre Loving, and Pound gaily played with ideas for hours.
Met
The Anglo-American press lunches of the early twenties, where the Times man watched a young Toronto Star stringer hunt for a style — and, within two years of The Sun Also Rises, affectionately parodied the finished product in print.
Met
Neighbors in the small world of literary Paris — Huddleston championed Shakespeare and Company in his columns and gave the shop and its keeper a chapter's warmth in his 1928 memoir.
