Les Deux Magots, the celebrated literary café and restaurant at Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
Patrick Comerford
One night last week, after strolling around the Left Bank and the Latin Quarter in Paris for an hour or two after dinner, we ended up sipping drinks at Les Deux Magots, the celebrated literary café and restaurant at 6 Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés in the 6th arrondissement.
We sat for a while at a table facing onto the Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés and the Boulevard Saint-Germain, across from the Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the sixth century church that is one of the oldest in Paris and that gives its name to this quarter.
The cafés in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés quarter include Les Deux Magots, Café de Flore, the Brasserie Lipp and le Procope, which we had visited earlier that day. There are many bookshops and publishing houses in the area, and – as the street sign near our table reminded us – in the 1940s and 1950s, this was the centre of the existentialist movement associated with Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) and Simone de Beauvoir (1902-1986).
A street sign is a reminder of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
If Le Procope claims to be the oldest café in Paris, then Les Deux Magots earned its reputation as the rendezvous of the city’s literary and intellectual elite. It is now a popular tourist destination, but its reputation comes from the patronage of writers, artists, intellectuals like Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, and writers such as James Joyce, George Orwell and Ernest Hemingway.
Other patrons included Albert Camus, Pablo Picasso, Bertolt Brecht, Julia Child and the American writers James Baldwin, Chester Himes and Richard Wright.
When James Joyce was interviewed by Djuna Barnes for Vanity Fair in Les Deux Magots in 1922, he ordered a glass of white wine. In 1948, George Orwell thought he remembered seeing James Joyce in Les Deux Magots 20 years earlier in 1928, ‘but I’ve never quite been able to swear to that because J. was not of very distinctive appearance.’
James Joyce refers to the café in Finnegans Wake (1939), it is referred to by Vladimir Nabokov in (1955), by Ernest Hemingway in A Moveable Feast (1964), and it features in several films and television dramas.
Since the beginning, Café Deux Magots has been the favourite haunt of artists and writers such as Guillaume Apollinaire, Louis Aragon, André Gide, Jean Giraudoux, Fernand Léger, Jacques Prévert and Ernest Hemingway.
It was there that many literary and artistic movements were conceived and nurtured, such as the surrealism of André Breton and the ideas of existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.
‘Les Deux Magots de la Chine’ who give the café its name (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
The word magot is said to mean ‘stocky figurine from the Far East.’ The name originally belonged to a silk and novelty shop nearby at 23 rue de Buci. The shop was there from 1812, and took its name from a popular play of the 19th century, Les Deux Magots de la Chine. Two statues representing Chinese ‘mandarins’, or ‘magicians’, or alchemists, gazed down over the room.
The shop was moved to place Saint-Germain-des-Prés on the Boulevard Saint Germain, opposite the church, in 1873, so that the business could expand. It gave way in 1884 to a café and bar under the name brought from rue de Buci. Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarmé and other writers then became regular habitués, meeting there in the midst of absinth vapours and cigar smoke.
The business was on the brink of bankruptcy when Auguste Boulay bought it in 1914 for 400,000 francs. He made it more brightly lit and welcoming, attracting Guillaume Apollinaire and his friends. But the statues of the two magots have remained the same ever since the café opened.
The café enhanced its role in Parisian cultural and literary life with the creation of the Prix des Deux Magots in 1933. Raymond Queneau was the first recipient and the literary prize has been awarded to a French novel each year since.
In the 1950s, you could have listented to Boris Vian play his trumpet, while Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir sat at a table where she worked on her novel Les Mandarins, which received the Goncourt Prize in 1954, or as Ernest Hemingway was smoking a cigar at the end of the room.
The shop has been located across the square from the Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés since 1873 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
The café became a favourite location and background for films in the 1970s, including the comedy The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob and the cult film La Maman et la Putain.
When the Mathivat family became involved in the café in 1985, they developed the restaurant. Catherine Mathivat, a great-great-granddaughter of Auguste Boulay, started to work in the café in 1993. When her father died in 2012, she became the fourth-generation owner and was determined to breathe new life into the café.
When a study showed that 60% of the clientele were international tourists, Catherine Mathivat and her cousin Jacques Vergnaud began working to redesign the café and to reclaim its Parisian clientele.
There are cafés with the name and brand of Les Deux Magots in Riyadh, Tokyo and São Paulo, and there are plans to bring this unique French brand and a taste of Parisian life to Cape Town, Prague, London and Guangzhou. But the café in Paris is the flagship and a recent report shows the café in Saint-Germain alone has an annual revenue of €15 million.
Les Deux Magots remains an exciting creative and cultural crossroads in French life, drawing celebrities from the arts, and the literary, fashion and political worlds, as well as tourists who come to savour an authentic slice of Paris.
It was still a week time before Lent, and it was not yet Saint Valentine’s Day. But it was a delayed honeymoon of sorts. So we lingered a little longer, savouring the literay legacy and imagined the wroters and philosophers who had been here before us. I enjoyed a glass of red wine rather than joining James Joyce in that glass of white wine over a century ago. We stepped inside to see the original figures who give their name to Les Deux Magots, still perched on the wall overseeing the evening conversations, before strolling back to our hotel.
‘Santé!’ … sharing a glass with James Joyce, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and so many more (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
14 February 2024
Daily prayer in Lent with
early English saints:
1, 14 February 2024,
Ash Wednesday, Saint Alban
Saint Alban, England’s first martyr and saint … an icon in St Albans Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
Patrick Comerford
The Season of Lent begins today with Ash Wednesday (14 February 2024). I have a local clergy meeting in Wolverton at lunchtimes, and later today I hope to be present with the Parish Choir at the Ash Wednesday liturgy in the Church of Saint Mary and Saint Giles in Stony Stratford at 6 pm.
In previous years, my Lenten reflections have journeyed with the saints, looked at Lent in Art, read poems in Lent, reflected on the music of Vaughan Williams, selected sayings from Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), the Lichfield lexicographer, and similar themes.
In the days before Lent, I have been looking back on some interesting French saints and writers from a variety of backgrounds. This year, I am planning to take time each morning throughout Lent reflecting on the lives of early, pre-Reformation English saints commemorated by the Church of England in the Calendar of Common Worship.
As Lent begins, but before the day begins, I am taking some quiet time early this morning for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:
1, A reflection on an early, pre-Reformation English saint;
2, today’s Gospel reading;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.
The shrine of Saint Alban dates from the mid-4th century and was restored in 1992-1993 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
Early English pre-Reformation saints: 1, Saint Alban (ca 250)
For many people, today is more likely to be marked as Saint Valentine’s Day rather than as Ash Wednesday. Saint Valentine is not named in the Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship. But that calendar has an extensive list of saints and saintly individuals. They are the ‘celebrities’ of the Church, and they include angels, members of Christ’s immediate family, apostles, evangelists, martyrs, figures throughout Church history, writers, poets, Church reformers and social reformers, with a wide and ecumenical embrace.
At least 40 to 50 if not more of those saints and figures of holiness have immediate associations and connections with England.
The Saints and Martyrs of England are commemorated on 8 November. The date when Christianity first came to these islands is not known, but there were British bishops at the Council of Arles in the year 314, indicating a Church with order and worship.
Since those days, Christians from these lands have shared the message of the good news at home and around the world. As the worldwide fellowship of the Anglican Communion has developed, incorporating peoples of many nations and cultures, individual Christian men and women have shone as beacons, heroically bearing witness to their Lord, some through a simple life of holiness, others by giving their lives for the sake of Christ.
The English saints and martyrs of the Reformation are commemorated on 4 May, a day set aside to remember all who witnessed to their Christian faith during the conflicts in church and state that lasted from the 13th to the 17th centuries but that were at their most intense in the 16th century. Although the reform movement was aimed chiefly at the papacy, many Christian men and women of holiness suffered for their allegiance to what they believed to be the truth of the gospel.
As the movement grew in strength, it suffered its own internecine struggles, with one group determined that they were the keepers of truth and that all others were therefore at best in a state of ignorance and at worst heretical. In the 20th century, ecumenical links drew the churches closer to each other in faith and worship and all now recognise both the good and evil that evolved from the Reformation Era.
The first saint I have chosen to remember during this season of Lent is Saint Alban, regarded as the first Christian martyr in England.
Saint Alban was a citizen of the Roman city of Verulamium – now St Albans in Hertfordshire – who gave shelter to Saint Amphibalus, a priest fleeing persecution, hiding him in his house for several days. Greatly influenced by his devotion to prayer, Alban received instruction from the priest and was converted.
When the priest’s hiding-place was discovered, Alban dressed himself in the priest’s cloak and was arrested in his place. Tortured by the Roman authorities, Alban refused to renounce his faith. He was beheaded, probably in the year 250, and so is acknowledged as the first martyr on these islands. The remains of his shrine stand today as a place of pilgrimage in St Albans Cathedral.
Saint Alban shelters the priest Saint Amphibalus … an icon by Peter Murphy in St Albans Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-21 (NRSVA):
1 ‘Beware of practising your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.
2 ‘So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 3 But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
5 ‘And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 6 But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
16 ‘And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18 so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
19 ‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; 20 but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
St Albans Cathedral … a cathedral since 1877, and the oldest place of continuous Christian worship and pilgrimage in Britain (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 14 February 2024, Ash Wednesday):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Ash Wednesday Reflection.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday by the Revd Jessie Anand, Chaplain, USPG.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (14 February 2024) invites us to pray in these words:
Let us pray for our broken world and sinful selves. May our hearts be turned and Your passion for justice be released.
The Collect:
Almighty and everlasting God,
you hate nothing that you have made
and forgive the sins of all those who are penitent:
create and make in us new and contrite hearts
that we, worthily lamenting our sins
and acknowledging our wretchedness,
may receive from you, the God of all mercy,
perfect remission and forgiveness;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Almighty God,
you have given your only Son to be for us
both a sacrifice for sin
and also an example of godly life:
give us grace
that we may always most thankfully receive
these his inestimable gifts,
and also daily endeavour
to follow the blessed steps of his most holy life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Holy God,
our lives are laid open before you:
rescue us from the chaos of sin
and through the death of your Son
bring us healing and make us whole
in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflection: Vladimir Lossky (1903-1958)
Tomorrow: Petroc, Abbot of Padstow
Saints depicted on the High Altar Screen and reredos in St Albans Cathedral, dating from 1484 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
Patrick Comerford
The Season of Lent begins today with Ash Wednesday (14 February 2024). I have a local clergy meeting in Wolverton at lunchtimes, and later today I hope to be present with the Parish Choir at the Ash Wednesday liturgy in the Church of Saint Mary and Saint Giles in Stony Stratford at 6 pm.
In previous years, my Lenten reflections have journeyed with the saints, looked at Lent in Art, read poems in Lent, reflected on the music of Vaughan Williams, selected sayings from Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), the Lichfield lexicographer, and similar themes.
In the days before Lent, I have been looking back on some interesting French saints and writers from a variety of backgrounds. This year, I am planning to take time each morning throughout Lent reflecting on the lives of early, pre-Reformation English saints commemorated by the Church of England in the Calendar of Common Worship.
As Lent begins, but before the day begins, I am taking some quiet time early this morning for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:
1, A reflection on an early, pre-Reformation English saint;
2, today’s Gospel reading;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.
The shrine of Saint Alban dates from the mid-4th century and was restored in 1992-1993 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
Early English pre-Reformation saints: 1, Saint Alban (ca 250)
For many people, today is more likely to be marked as Saint Valentine’s Day rather than as Ash Wednesday. Saint Valentine is not named in the Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship. But that calendar has an extensive list of saints and saintly individuals. They are the ‘celebrities’ of the Church, and they include angels, members of Christ’s immediate family, apostles, evangelists, martyrs, figures throughout Church history, writers, poets, Church reformers and social reformers, with a wide and ecumenical embrace.
At least 40 to 50 if not more of those saints and figures of holiness have immediate associations and connections with England.
The Saints and Martyrs of England are commemorated on 8 November. The date when Christianity first came to these islands is not known, but there were British bishops at the Council of Arles in the year 314, indicating a Church with order and worship.
Since those days, Christians from these lands have shared the message of the good news at home and around the world. As the worldwide fellowship of the Anglican Communion has developed, incorporating peoples of many nations and cultures, individual Christian men and women have shone as beacons, heroically bearing witness to their Lord, some through a simple life of holiness, others by giving their lives for the sake of Christ.
The English saints and martyrs of the Reformation are commemorated on 4 May, a day set aside to remember all who witnessed to their Christian faith during the conflicts in church and state that lasted from the 13th to the 17th centuries but that were at their most intense in the 16th century. Although the reform movement was aimed chiefly at the papacy, many Christian men and women of holiness suffered for their allegiance to what they believed to be the truth of the gospel.
As the movement grew in strength, it suffered its own internecine struggles, with one group determined that they were the keepers of truth and that all others were therefore at best in a state of ignorance and at worst heretical. In the 20th century, ecumenical links drew the churches closer to each other in faith and worship and all now recognise both the good and evil that evolved from the Reformation Era.
The first saint I have chosen to remember during this season of Lent is Saint Alban, regarded as the first Christian martyr in England.
Saint Alban was a citizen of the Roman city of Verulamium – now St Albans in Hertfordshire – who gave shelter to Saint Amphibalus, a priest fleeing persecution, hiding him in his house for several days. Greatly influenced by his devotion to prayer, Alban received instruction from the priest and was converted.
When the priest’s hiding-place was discovered, Alban dressed himself in the priest’s cloak and was arrested in his place. Tortured by the Roman authorities, Alban refused to renounce his faith. He was beheaded, probably in the year 250, and so is acknowledged as the first martyr on these islands. The remains of his shrine stand today as a place of pilgrimage in St Albans Cathedral.
Saint Alban shelters the priest Saint Amphibalus … an icon by Peter Murphy in St Albans Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-21 (NRSVA):
1 ‘Beware of practising your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.
2 ‘So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 3 But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
5 ‘And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 6 But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
16 ‘And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18 so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
19 ‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; 20 but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
St Albans Cathedral … a cathedral since 1877, and the oldest place of continuous Christian worship and pilgrimage in Britain (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 14 February 2024, Ash Wednesday):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Ash Wednesday Reflection.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday by the Revd Jessie Anand, Chaplain, USPG.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (14 February 2024) invites us to pray in these words:
Let us pray for our broken world and sinful selves. May our hearts be turned and Your passion for justice be released.
The Collect:
Almighty and everlasting God,
you hate nothing that you have made
and forgive the sins of all those who are penitent:
create and make in us new and contrite hearts
that we, worthily lamenting our sins
and acknowledging our wretchedness,
may receive from you, the God of all mercy,
perfect remission and forgiveness;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Almighty God,
you have given your only Son to be for us
both a sacrifice for sin
and also an example of godly life:
give us grace
that we may always most thankfully receive
these his inestimable gifts,
and also daily endeavour
to follow the blessed steps of his most holy life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Holy God,
our lives are laid open before you:
rescue us from the chaos of sin
and through the death of your Son
bring us healing and make us whole
in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflection: Vladimir Lossky (1903-1958)
Tomorrow: Petroc, Abbot of Padstow
Saints depicted on the High Altar Screen and reredos in St Albans Cathedral, dating from 1484 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)