The Lilas, known in the narrative as the Closerie des Lilas, is a café in Paris where artists and writers gather after dinner. For Philip Carey it becomes more than a stop in the Latin Quarter’s social circuit: it is the place where the young art student meets Cronshaw, whose conversation will stimulate thought even as the gap between his commanding presence and his poetry unsettles Philip’s expectations.

Setting and Artistic Company

The café is established as a regular evening destination. Lawson proposes that Philip and his companions go there to see Cronshaw, and the narrative identifies it as a place they often visit after dinner. Cronshaw is usually there from nine at night until two in the morning, giving the establishment a recognizable rhythm as a venue for lingering conversation rather than a brief meal.

The Lilas belongs to a Parisian art world in the midst of changing standards. In the Latin Quarter, Impressionism has recently prevailed over older schools; young artists debate the standing of Raphael against Velasquez, while Whistler and Japanese prints have become markers of discerning taste. The café’s conversations therefore take place within a community actively revising its artistic loyalties. Philip arrives with views shaped by Hayward, but his sense of what counts as modern art is already beginning to change.

Philip’s First Visit

On his first evening, Philip’s choice of destination distinguishes him from Flanagan. After drinking absinthe to feel like an art student, he joins a frugal dinner with the artists and listens to their argument about painting. When Lawson suggests going to the Lilas, Flanagan instead urges the group toward a music hall. Philip says he would rather see Cronshaw and stay sober; the party divides, with Flanagan and several others leaving for the music hall while Philip walks to the café with Clutton and Lawson.

The approach to the café also reveals a tension in Philip’s artistic outlook. Lawson praises the music hall’s visual possibilities: its lighting, shadow, worn reds and golds, and decorative lines have recently attracted painters. Philip, influenced by Hayward, still regards music halls with scorn. The alternative chosen by the group is thus not simply a different entertainment; it places Philip beside artists who are beginning to find aesthetic value in subjects his inherited taste dismisses.

Cronshaw at the Café

The Lilas is closely associated with Cronshaw’s protected corner and his habits. Although the autumn air is not especially biting, the poet fears draughts and insists on sitting inside even in warm weather. When Philip and his companions arrive, they find him in the most sheltered part of the café, coat on, collar turned up, and hat pulled low over his forehead. His surroundings register both his physical anxiety about cold air and his established place in the café’s nightly routine.

Cronshaw is introduced through a contrast between reputation and appearance. Lawson says that he knows people worth knowing, including Pater and Oscar Wilde, and is acquainted with Mallarmé and other literary figures. At the table, however, Cronshaw is playing dominoes with a Frenchman. He greets the newcomers with a quiet smile, pushes aside the saucers that mark the drinks he has consumed, and continues his game. Before he speaks, the café has already made him legible as a regular whose presence is measured by repeated visits and accumulated drinks.

Philip is captivated by Cronshaw’s talk. The poet’s sonorous voice and forceful manner of presenting ideas make his remarks seem to provoke thought, and Philip and Lawson sometimes walk between their hotels afterward discussing a point Cronshaw has raised. Yet the influence is not the same as originality: Philip does not at first recognize that little of what Cronshaw says is new. The café therefore serves as a setting where intellectual impression depends not only on ideas but on the personality, voice, and performance through which they are delivered.

Art, Conversation, and Disappointment

The Lilas also locates Philip’s developing artistic judgment. His first exposure to the café’s talk about art occurs amid sharp comparisons between old masters and modern painters. Later, his allegiance changes: he comes to admire Manet, Monet, and Degas, buys photographs of Ingres’s Odalisque and Manet’s Olympia, and pins them side by side over his washing stand. The artistic shift is not confined to a debate at the café, but the café’s social world gives it a conversational setting and a circle of companions with whom Philip can test new opinions.

Cronshaw’s poetry complicates Philip’s admiration. The poems have appeared in periodicals rather than in a collected volume. When Cronshaw brings down pages from journals including The Yellow Book and The Saturday Review, Philip finds that most remind him of Henley or Swinburne; they seem to gain their personal force chiefly through Cronshaw’s splendid delivery. After Philip voices his disappointment to Lawson, Lawson repeats it, and Cronshaw confronts Philip on his next visit. The café’s familiar meeting pattern thus turns private judgment into interpersonal conflict: what Philip had treated as an observation reaches the poet himself.

The Lilas’s significance lies in this double function. It is a recurring refuge and meeting place for Parisian artists, but it is also a testing ground for Philip’s judgments—about modern painting, literary reputation, and the difference between a compelling presence and original work. In its sheltered corner, Cronshaw can command attention; in the conversation that follows, Philip begins to discover that admiration need not prevent scrutiny.