I was reading this piece on the Barnes and Noble blog today about Sylvia Beach, owner of the original Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris. I particulalry liked this note about the liberation:

Shakespeare and Company would never reopen, but in her memoirs Beach says that she and the books were liberated in August, 1944, by Hemingway and Company, the author and his irregulars arriving on that day in jeeps and with machineguns. At Beach’s request, they routed some German snipers on the nearby rooftops and then rode off, “to liberate the cellar at the Ritz.”

I don't know how true it is and how much it owes to the perception of Hem as a bit of an action man but it does sound rather like him. Arrive back in town, get in the jeep and make sure the books are safe, belt off a few rounds at the Bosche then go to secure that other of his good friends - the booze from the cellar at the Ritz. (Not that I imagine yon Nazis had left a whole lot) Brilliant.

When I was browsing I found this account of what Sylvia was supposed to have said to Hem when he arrived. I like her reaction to the German officer, I hope it's true.

They closed me down, Hemingway, closed Shakespeare and Company down. How dare they, how dare they? One morning a very small and very brutish German officer came in and demanded to buy a copy of Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake – demanded! Have you ever heard of such a thing? I told him I only had one copy left and that it was not for sale, not to him, not to anyone. Not for sale he screamed, do you know who I am, madam? Do you know who I am!? Naturally I didn’t know who he was, how could I? No. I have no idea who you are, nor do I wish to, I responded. But do you know who I am, sir? I am Sylvia Beach, who, in the nineteen twenties, knew D.H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, Ford Maddox Ford, Morley Callaghan, Scott Fitzgerald – well, who didn’t I know, Hemingway – and that I was the first to publish Joyce’s Ulysses when no one else would touch him. Do not come into my shop, whoever you are, I said, and demand anything from me. Do you hear me, sir? Well he went quite silly then, acted like a little boy, started knocking books off the shelves, and then told me the shop was now closed until further notice. Good, I responded, then I won’t have to deal with the likes of you will I, even if you do read James Joyce, who, I told him, would not want his books read by the rapists of Poland, Belgium and France. With that he slapped me twice in the face, and then marched out and placed an armed guard in front of the shop door. Of course the guard was a pussy cat – a Zane Grey fan too – and over the next few days Adrienne and I were able to move all the stock into the apartment, with business pretty much continuing as usual. We moved back in here last week. Did I do well, Hemingway?

I love the story of Shakespeare and Company, such a great shop and so of it's time. I love reading about Paris in that era with the talents of so many writers and musicians and other creative people being thrown together in the general sense of high living that followed the end of the first world war. I really want to write something set there it at some point, though sadly I got side tracked when I started so my novel set there is only at about six thousand words at the moment.