Are you a Boulevardier?
November, 2024
BY ANISTATIA MILLER AND JARED BROWN
It is impossible to visit Paris without stopping at Harry’s for a simple reason: You haven’t truly found the city—its spirit, its pulse—until you push through those venerable saloon doors at Harry’s Bar.
During our years of exile on an island in Le Sud, we frequently escaped north to Paris. A visit to Harry’s invariably went something like this: We had every intention of a quick Martini or Bloody Mary at 4 p.m., before getting to wherever we needed to be. Then, there was a second round, because it’s Harry’s. Then, a red hot, because food is essential after two drinks. (People might call them hot dogs, but the enamelled cabinet clearly states, Star Red Hots.) Then, after falling in with the crowd and being guided through more French drinking songs than we could count in the crowded alcove between the bar and the front window, an interruption: “Last orders, please.” It’s 4 a.m. again. By our fourth or fifth visit, we gave up scheduling any evening that began at Harry’s.
On Anistatia’s birthday one year ago, we were determined to raise a glass there. We dragged our suitcases twenty minutes from Gare du Nord before spotting a taxi idling in front of a shop. After a moment, the driver emerged and turned us down. Off duty. He’d been driving 24 hours straight. We begged. His garage or home was roughly in the right direction. We got in.
It is impossible to visit Paris without stopping at Harry’s for a simple reason: You haven’t truly found the city—its spirit, its pulse—until you push through those venerable saloon doors at Harry’s Bar.
At the first stoplight, he nodded off. I woke him when the light changed. It became a rhythm. He drove to the next, passed out, and I nudged him on the green. When his head didn’t slump forward mid-block, I missed that he was unconscious again until we smacked a double-parked van at 20 mph. Thankfully, the van driver and his passengers had just stepped to the curb, and no one was injured — except Anistatia. She had bruised her kneecaps hitting the driver’s seat, but this was no time to stand around. If we loitered, we would be roped into witnessing les flics. We had nothing to hide, mind, but they would have formed a blue line of bureaucracy between us and l’heure du cocktail. I palmed the driver a couple of twenties and walked against traffic for a block. Thankfully, he had also missed Harry’s, because suddenly there we were. No idea why, but the manager at the time—Alain—embraced us both as family, absent too long. He sat us down and ordered our first round, perhaps sensing our state.
Looking back, I still find myself contrasting the impact of the taxi with the van with the subsequent velvet embrace of that first Martini: the latter succinctly mollified the former.
Our next drinks arrived. A Negroni for me, a Martini for her (twist expressed and discarded—or, as the late Sasha used to say, “Turn it ’n burn it!”). Our new friend on the next barstool ordered a Boulevardier.
“Which came first?” he asked after we toasted, “the Negroni or the Boulevardier?”
“The Negroni.”
“Why?”
“Well, because I ordered before you. So, he made mine first.”
“Seriously.”
“Seriously, there are loads of origin stories around the classics; some might even contain a shred or two of truth. But they’re for those moments when you’re not bellied up to the bar in a place where, no matter how often you visit, it is still a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
A century ago, there was an era of gilded youth and unfettered celebration. In the States, the revellers were flappers and sheikhs (so-called after Valentino set the silver screen ablaze in the silent movie The Sheik). In Britain, the Bright Young Things filled the cocktail bars and jazz clubs. France saw the rise of the boulevardier.
Boulevardier? In Paris in 1927, boulevardiers were wealthy, decadent youths: socialites seeking pleasure, beauty, and art. It was also the name of a magazine dedicated to those living or aspiring to the boulevardier lifestyle. And it referred to a drink of whiskey, Campari, and sweet vermouth. It was the former who created both of the latter.
Erskine Gwynne landed in Paris as a semi-boulevardier — a golden-haired youth, a talented writer, a bon vivant born with a silver-plated spoon in his mouth. He was the grandnephew of the wife of mega-millionaire Cornelius Vanderbilt II. But his father, Edward Erskine Gwynne, had passed away aged 35, shortly after filing for bankruptcy when young Erskine was only six. So, Erskine relied on his wit and intelligence rather than an inheritance to fund la belle vie in Paris.
To be a boulevardier was—and is—to seek out and celebrate joie de vivre.
Harry MacElhone’s 1927 book Barflies and Cocktails contained the first recipe for the Boulevardier, although Harry didn't pen those words. The drink appeared in an essay toward the back titled “Cocktails Round Town” by Arthur Moss. (A history of the International Bar Flies in the book was also penned by Moss.) He was Gwynne’s co-publisher at The Boulevardier. Moss would have spent many nights drinking with Erskine at Harry’s before writing, “Now is the time for all good barflies to come to the aid of the party, since Erskine Gwynne crashed in with his Boulevardier cocktail: 1/3 Campari, 1/3 Italian vermouth, 1/3 Bourbon whiskey.”
While we only presume The Boulevardier magazine came before the drink, there is no question this recipe precedes the first published Negroni formula by two years, and both appeared in Paris.
Why does the world assume that the Negroni was born in Italy in 1919? The story of Count Camillo Negroni and Fosco “Gloomy” Scarselli has been told and retold for decades despite a paucity of substantiation.
The 1929 book L’Heure du Cocktail contained the first drink recipe with modern Negroni proportions: “Dans un shaker, avec de la glace en morceaux, un tiers de Campari, un tiers de Gin, un tiers de Vermouth italien, bien mélanger et servir avec un zeste de citron.” However, this drink was called a Campari Mixte. The Negroni as we know it today was not recorded until 1947. That year, Orson Welles, on assignment in Rome, critiqued the Negroni in a US newspaper: “The bitters are excellent for your liver, the gin is bad for you. They balance each other.”
Here, we celebrate that beautifully illustrated magazine, The Boulevardier, a publication that attracted a flotilla of literary luminaries and top commercial artists, and now gathers another generation of brilliant creatives in tribute to its celebration of Paris, with Harry’s as its centre. Let it never be forgotten that a boulevardier is more than a glossy or a cocktail. To be a boulevardier was—and is—to seek out and celebrate joie de vivre.
Please raise your next glass accordingly.
