Walking with Henry Miller through Parisian Cafes

Anais Nin once wrote, the hours I have spent in cafes are the only ones I call living, apart from writing. She met Henry Miller in 1931, and their relationship would span a lifetime (Val Clark).

Proust is going to my head... This afternoon I was reading him in the Cafe Mirroir... From time to time I looked up and allowed my eyes to rest on the string of cafes cremes that ran from one end of the hall to the other.
(letter of Henry Miller to Anais Nin, February 7, 1932)

For me, things are looking up. I am elated. I wake up now after five or six hours sleep and I am thinking the next line for my book. At the same time I am thinking in terms of color. I want time too to make a few water colors, at least one or two every day... I have begun to whistle and sing mornings. Oranges first, and then porridge at the Coupole.
(letter of Henry Miller to Anais Nin, February 27, 1932 - 2:00 A.M. Saturday)

Miller seemed to make optimal use of cafe stationery, and many of his letters to Anais are from cafes all over Paris.

Henry's letters give me a feeling of plenitude I get rarely. They are extraordinary. I take great joy in answering them.
(Anais in her diary, the same month of February, the same year of 1932)

There was in New York a Henry Miller's Theatre, on the 43-rd Street, close to Times Square. It is not the name of the famous author of the Tropic of Capricorn and Tropic of Cancer. That theatre was built by another Henry Miller, an actor-producer who died in 1926. It used to be a famous Broadway theatre - here the musical La Lucille of George and Ira Gershwin was performed in 1919 - in 1925 Noel Coward stared here his Vortex - Days Without End of Eugene O'Neill was here performed in 1926. In 1934 the theatre hosted Thornton Wilder's Our Town. Helen Hayes, Leslie Howard, Lillian Gish and Douglas Fairbanks performed on Henry Miller's Theatre.

But these were the golden years. The theatre passed to other owners - and in the 60's was there a porno movie venue, then a disco. It came back to its original destination in the 90's - sadly the theatre was demolished in 2004 - only the facade was kept, as it's considered a New York landmark. It happened that I passed in front of that facade just in 2004.