As Irish rugby fans flock to Paris next weekend, RUADHAN MACCORMAICtakes a tour of the places in the French capital where the Irish have left their mark
You don't have to dig that deeply beneath the surface of modern Paris to unearth the Irish imprint. Thousands of Irish have made the French capital their home and are constantly renewing the deep ties between the two countries. Estimates of the number of Irish in Paris range from 10,000 to 15,000, in a vibrant infrastructure that includes the Irish college, the GAA club and dozens of Irish-run businesses. The Irish state works assiduously on cultivating the relationship, France being one of Ireland's biggest export markets and a source of tourists. A stroll around Paris reveals Irish echoes almost everywhere – in some places the link is explicit (Place de Dublin, rue des Irlandais, Square James Joyce) but at times it's more oblique – a spot where Brendan Behan liked to drink, Eileen Gray worked or Oscar Wilde "died beyond his means".
Take the Hôtel Corneille, a cheap pension house that once stood near the Odéon in the Latin Quarter. There's no trace of it today, but the site is steeped in Irish history. Isadore Ryan, a longtime Paris resident whose book on the Irish in Paris is to be published in Ireland later this year, points out that Beckett, Yeats, Joyce, Synge and the leading Fenian John O'Leary all stayed at the Corneille.
Ryan says his book, from which a number of the addresses in this selection are drawn, was inspired by the work of WG Sebald, the German author who was "able to make these associations between history and places and weave them into a sort of dreamlike literature." Ryan has spent years strolling and photographing, compiling his list of generals, priests, thieves, artists, politicians and poets. Compelling juxtapositions result: on facing pages the reader finds a photo of the 18th century revolutionary Charles Jennings Kilmaine alongside one of the Château d'Esclimont, which caught Irish attention when Georgina Ahern and Nicky Byrne of Westlife celebrated their wedding there in 2003.
THE QUIET MAN
5 rue des Haudriettes (3rd arrondissement)
Billing itself as the Gaeltacht-sur-Seine, the basement at the shabbily authentic pub becomes an Irish-speaking enclave on the last Tuesday of every month. Listen to the Paris-based poet Derry O’Sullivan read Irish translations of Baudelaire and Rimbaud.
EILEEN GRAY’S HOME
21 rue Bonaparte
(6th arrondissement)
Enniscorthy-born Eileen Gray, neglected and largely unrecognised until her later years but now regarded as one of the foremost modernist designers of the 20th century, spent her adult life in France. In 1907, aged 29, she moved into the apartment on rue Bonaparte (her studio was around the corner, at 17 rue Visconti). Gray’s breakthrough came in 1917, when she was asked to decorate the apartment of Madame Mathieu-Lévy on the rue de Lota. Her elaborate interior, with lacquer panels and furniture (including her famous Bibendum chair), drew great praise. Several architectural projects and exhibitions followed, and in 1922 she opened a gallery at 217 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. After the second World War, Gray became something of a recluse, her achievements largely forgotten, until she died in the flat on rue Bonaparte in 1976.
ALLÉE SAMUEL BECKETT
(14th arrondissement)
This is the central pedestrian strip that runs along the avenue towards the Parc Montsouris, an elegant stretch where, fittingly, not much happens. Having been a regular visitor to Paris for many years, the writer settled in the city in 1937 and spent most of the next 52 years living on the left bank. He was based for a number of years in a studio at 6 rue des Favorites, before he and Suzanne Deschevaux-Dumesnil moved into an apartment block at 38 rue Saint-Jacques in 1960. The allée bearing his name is in the middle of Beckett’s Paris. Nearby Montparnasse is filled with bars and cafes he knew well – the Falstaff, the Rosebud, the Closerie des Lilas and the Petit Café PLM – and he is buried, alongside Suzanne, in Montparnasse cemetery.
EMBASSY OF IRELAND
12 avenue Foch (16th arrondissement)
Built in the early 1890s, the Hôtel de Breteuil has housed Ireland’s embassy since 1954. It was first owned by the eighth Marquis de Breteuil and his American wife, whose glittering receptions were attended by Marcel Proust and other luminaries of the day. How it came into Irish hands is the stuff of legend. The then owner offered it to Con Cremin, the ambassador of the day, who recognised the value of such a prestigious site in promoting Ireland in France. He recommended the purchase to the minister for external affairs, Frank Aiken, who then had to convince the department of finance to sign off on the £150,000 asking price. As luck would have it, Aiken was asked around this time to fill in at finance while the minister, Seán McEntee, went on a three-week official visit to the United States. So the story goes that Aiken requested funding for the embassy in one department and approved it in another.
JANIE MCCARTHY’S APARTMENT
66 rue Saint-Anne
(2nd arrondissement)
Few people will have heard of it, and there’s no plaque to signal its significance, but this was once the home of Janie McCarthy, one of a small and little-known group of Irish men and women who joined the resistance in Paris during the second World War. McCarthy, originally from Killarney, was working as an English-language teacher when the war broke out. She joined four different resistance networks during the occupation, using her apartment on rue Saint-Anne as a safe house for Allied agents and helping to spirit downed airmen out of the city – while never arousing the suspicions of the authorities. She died in Paris in 1964.
PARIS GAELS GAA
The French capital’s GAA club – whose colours, naturally, are red, white and blue – is one of the biggest and most active on the continent. The club is spread across Paris: football, hurling and camogie training takes place in the suburb of La Courneuve, midweek circuit training happens at the Champ-de-Mars (7th arrondissement), in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, and the unofficial “clubhouse” is the Coolin pub at Saint-Germain.
HÔTEL CORNEILLE
5 rue Corneille (6th arrondissement)
The hotel itself doesn’t exist any more, but it was such a focal point for Irish writers in Paris in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that it gets a mention anyway. The Corneille was small and cheap; new arrivals to Paris knew it well. While staying there in December 1896, WB Yeats was introduced to a “poor Irishman at the top of the house” who turned out to be one John Millington Synge. Joyce was a guest in 1903. There, according to Joyce’s brother Stanislaus, he and Synge “had many quarrelsome discussions . . . about language, style, poetry, drama and literature in general”.
CHARVET
28 Place Vendôme (1st arrondissment)
The ugly shell of the Anglo Irish building on Dublin’s quays stands as a monument to the bank that broke Ireland. More unlikely, perhaps, is how the name of an expensive Parisian shirt shop can instantly evoke memories of an earlier scandal in Irish public life. Over a 17-year period, former taoiseach Charles Haughey received more than Ir£9 million in secret payments and stole from Fianna Fáil to fund what the Moriarty Tribunal called his “conspicuously lavish lifestyle”. There was a mansion, an island, expensive hotels and much else. But it was the bespoke Charvet shirts, which were delivered to him through the diplomatic box system even when he was in opposition, that became shorthand for the Haughey story. Curious Irish people would even seek out the shop on Place Vendôme. “There was a lot of press coverage at the time of the scandal,” says Charvet director Anne-Marie Colban, who knows the story well. “To us he was a customer, but I know in Ireland it became very significant.”
SQUARE JAMES JOYCE
7 rue George-Balanchine (13th arrondissement)
James Joyce and Nora Barnacle lived at 19 different addresses in Paris between 1920 and 1939, nearly all of them apartments in western arrondissements (6th, 7th, 8th and 16th). By the time Joyce got to the city he was approaching middle age and near-blindness. He had one more novel to write – Finnegans Wake – and he lived a relatively quiet life during these years.
Until the late 1990s, the only physical reminder that Joyce lived in Paris was a plaque erected by the James Joyce Society of Sweden and Finland at the original Shakespeare Co bookshop on rue de l’Odéon. Another has since gone up on rue Cardinal Lemoine. Otherwise, Joyce pilgrims can stroll past the old apartments or stop by his favourite brasseries (Chez Francis on the Place de l’Alma or the stylish, expensive Fouquet’s on the Champs-Élysées). Or while away a few hours in the public park that bears his name.
CENTRE CULTUREL IRLANDAIS
5 rue des Irlandais
(5th arrondissement)
Europe’s largest Irish cultural centre, based in the magnificent Collège des Irlandais, has a full programme of exhibitions, concerts, readings, lectures and film screenings throughout the year.
To the right as you enter are St Patrick’s chapel, the médiatheque (a resource centre on contemporary Ireland) and the restored library, whose 8,000 volumes can be accessed by researchers.
RUE SAINT-FIACRE
(2nd arrondissement)
Saint Fiachra – or Fiacre as he became in France – left Kilkenny in the early 7th century and could claim to have opened the first Irish-run BB in France when he established a priory and guest house in the village of Brueil (now Saint-Fiacre), about 50km east of Paris. He became famous as a healer and established Brueil as a place of pilgrimage.
Today, Fiacre is best known as the patron saint of gardeners, and his statue – a spade in one hand and book in the other – can be found in churches across the country.
PÈRE-LACHAISE CEMETERY
(20th arrondissement)
Oscar Wilde’s tomb, a sculpture of a modernist angel by Jacob Epstein, was fully restored last December. A glass screen has gone up to keep it free of lipstick and graffiti, but the writer’s grave remains one of the most visited in the city’s most famous cemetery. Wilde visited Paris many times in his life, and was staying at the Hôtel d’Alsace on rue des Beaux-Arts (6th arrondissement) when he died on November 30th, 1900. His funeral mass was held at the nearby church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in the presence of about 50 people, and he was originally given a pauper’s burial at Bagneux cemetery. Fifty years later, Brendan Behan stayed at the Hôtel d’Alsace because of its “reputation at being liberal with its credit”. The old pension house is now a four-star hotel.
Rugby weekend dining tips
Where to eat after the match next weekend? Tourists in Paris tend to stay around the 5th and 6th arrondissements, where there's a wide selection of restaurants in most price ranges. A good option for traditional French food is Le Coupe-Chou (11 rue Lanneau) near the Panthéon. Place de la Contrescarpe, Odéon, Bastille and Oberkampf offer wide choices, though you'll find the best restaurants — and some good deals — by doing a bit of research in advance. The website lafourchette.com offers big reductions on your bill at a large selection of restaurants, while up-to-date information on new and popular addresses can be found on
lefooding.comor in Wednesday's edition of Le Figaro.
It's well worth venturing farther out for a truer sense of the modern city — to the 15th, 19th or 20th arrondissements, for example. One popular, atmospheric restaurant around the Canal Saint-Martin, for example, is the Hôtel du Nord (102 Quai de Jemmapes). In general, a vegetarian in France will feel like a teetotaller at Oktoberfest, but the typical seafood brasserie is a good bet, as is Fish la Boissonnerie on rue de Seine.
For those who will be in Paris next Friday night (Feb 10th), there are still some tickets available for the Wild Geese Ball, a charity event held in Paris every two years by the Ireland Fund of France. This year's guest of honour, on the 25th anniversary of his famous Tour de France victory, is the cyclist Stephen Roche. See
irlfunds.org
