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Updated: June 25, 2025
A Paris journalist a year or more ago, while sitting among a little coterie of literary and artistic folk at Lavenue's famous terrace-café, recounted the following incident clothed in most discreet language, and since it bears upon the Tuileries and its last occupants it is repeated here.
Solferino's had a Barsac that Bob liked to order, chiefly I fancy for all it represented to him of Paris and Lavenue's and Barbizon and student days, and the old memories warming him over it as lunch went on, he would unfold one theory of art after another until suddenly a critic, more nervous than the rest, would take out his watch, and the hour he saw there would send us post-haste back to Piccadilly and the Academy, which at that time thought one Press Day sufficient.
He felt like a little girl making ready for a party, it was so long or seemed so long; since he had put on evening clothes. Then he went out, leaving at the loge of the concierge a note for Hartley, to say where he might be found. He went to Lavenue's and dined in solitary pomp, for it was after nine o'clock.
The dinner, of which I recall nothing in particular, did not interest me as much as the place itself. To see Bob Stevenson at Lavenue's was like seeing Manet at the Nouvelle Athènes or Dr. Johnson at the Cheshire Cheese, and to make the background complete Alexander Harrison, with two or three American painters of his generation, was dining at a near table.
"Lavenue's is about the best place round here," answered Philip. Albert Price settled himself on a velvet seat with a sigh of relief. He ordered a substantial luncheon and a bottle of wine. "Well, I'm glad that's over," he said. He threw out a few artful questions, and Philip discovered that he was eager to hear about the painter's life in Paris.
"Let me think," he said to himself. "I don't want her to alight at my place. Too dangerous. Then the best thing to do would be to offer her a glass of port and a biscuit and conduct her to Lavenue's, which is a hotel as well as a café. I will reserve a room. That will be less disgusting than an assignation house.
That night at the LaPérouse the Publisher was dazed by his unexpected rashness as art patron; to-day, when he points to the one of the three paintings still hanging on his walls, he flatters himself that he discovered Van Gogh before the multitude. Bob Stevenson took us to dine at Lavenue's in Montparnasse, and if he had not of his own free will we should have compelled him to. He belonged there.
The breakfast was ordered at Lavenue's, where no one need be ashamed to entertain even the master; the table was laid in the garden; I had chosen the bill of fare myself; on the wine question we held a council of war with the most fortunate results; and the talk, as soon as the master laid aside his painful English, became fast and furious.
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