SOME ASPECTS OF PARIS AND OF TOWN LIFE IN GENERAL
The reckless driving and the wonderful lack of regulation in the
streets of the capital and the majority of the cities of France do not
prevent the streets from possessing a character encouraging sociality
and relaxation. This is due to a great extent to the ever-inviting
cafe, which contrives to keep clean table-cloths and the opportunity
of a comfortable meal in the open air within six feet of a rushing and
tempestuous stream of wheeled traffic. In addition there is much
marketing in France, which adds colour and human interest to what
might otherwise be a featureless street or square. In walking as a
mere visitor through the streets of a French town, one seems to
witness more of the intimate life of the place in a few hours than one
would do in England in a week. From the baking of bread to
haircutting and shaving and the eating of food, there is much more of
work and play visible from the curb-stone. In England the staff of
life seems to reach the dining-room table by invisible means, so
seldom does one see bread carried through the streets, but among the
French--a nation of bread-eaters--long loaves as well as circular ones
are to be seen tucked under the arm of almost every tenth person one
meets. The working classes seem to be continually buying bread freshly
baked, and one loaf at a time! And those who may be seen carrying
bread or vegetables, or whatever they have just purchased at the
market, are more at home in the street than are Anglo-Saxons, who are
apt to regard the common highways of their towns as channels for
coming and going to and from business or pleasure whereon lingering or
conversation is undesirable, indiscreet, and not without danger, for
it is generally recognised that those who pass hours of rest or
idleness in the streets are persons without homes or of undesirable
reputation. But in a French city one is invited at every turn to buy a
newspaper or periodical at a kiosk and to take a seat at a table close
by, where, having ordered a bock or a cup of coffee, one is free to
read undisturbed for hours.
In Paris the gossip of the _boulevards_ is part of the life of a big
section of the people, and yet to the casual and superficial observer
it might be thought that there was less opportunity for chatting in
the streets than is offered in London. The French _boulevard_ is in
reality no more free from danger than the English street, but the
people have accustomed themselves to the conditions. Among Latin
peoples there is a time-honoured weakness for throwing out of the
window all sorts and conditions of rubbish, and those who are chatting
in a patch of shade in some quiet corner of a street may be rudely
disturbed by the fall of a basinful of old cabbage leaves or other
kitchen ejecta. Worse than this are the strange and often offensive
odours that assail one in the streets. Imperfect sanitation is
commonly the cause of the noxious atmosphere of so many streets in
French towns. The artist sometimes pays a heavy price for the picture
he obtains of some picturesque quarter on account of the contaminated
air he is obliged to breathe. In Caen, where splendid Norman and
Gothic churches thrill those who appreciate mediaeval architecture,
the malodorous streets often frighten one away.
Sanitation has improved enormously in recent years, and is still
making great strides forward, but the people have a great deal to
learn in the use of the new appliances that are provided. This leeway
is less easy to make up than that of mechanical contrivance, and much
time will no doubt elapse before every one is educated up to the
proper appreciation and use of sanitary arrangements. Municipal
authorities have also much to learn. There should not exist the
smallest loophole for an architect to erect a modern building without
providing a direct outlet to the open air to all the sanitary
quarters, and yet in a recently erected hotel in the Etoile district
of Paris, such a cardinal requirement of health is ignored, the only
ventilation being a window that lights a cupboard for hot-water cans,
and that in turn is the sole ventilation of a bathroom, outside air
reaching neither the first nor the last! London, which before the
Great Fire was a city whose smells had become proverbial, is now the
cleanest and healthiest city in the world, its sanitary by-laws
leaving no loopholes for slipshod work; but Paris, the world centre
for the choicest and most exquisite of perfumery, has still much
progress to make before complete enjoyment of its cheerful, busy,
richly coloured street life can be experienced.
Every one knows the difficulties of looking at and observing with
seeing eyes the everyday objects with which one is surrounded. A
little girl paying a visit to London from the country once pointed out
to the writer what a number of blind horses there were to be seen in
the streets, and he was obliged to confess that he had never noticed
any. Such limitations seem to debar one from making comparisons
between one's own form of urban civilisation and another, but allowing
for a certain lack of observation in the land of one's upbringing,
there are some features of French town life to which one may draw
attention.
[Illustration: A TYPICAL COCHER OF PARIS.]
Very early in his first experiences of Paris the visitor discovers
that the rule of the road is to keep to the right, and that there is
little certainty of what may happen where the great streams of traffic
meet. The policeman of Paris may hold up his baton, but it is not in
the least likely that a complete check to the traffic behind him will
result. After an exhaustive study of London methods the Parisian
authorities have come to the conclusion that it is the French
character which prevents their officers from carrying out the same
methods in Paris. Notwithstanding the quiet way in which the French
submit to certain laws which would not be tolerated in England, they
appear to resent control in this department of life. The police of
Britain are a bigger, more solid and imperturbable type than those of
their neighbours across the Channel, but an east-ender might make
impertinent comments if the policeman who held up his donkey-cart had
patent leather toe-caps to his boots--a by-no-means unusual sight in
Paris!
The quaint, noisy omnibuses pulled by three horses abreast have been
replaced by heavy motor-propelled vehicles which still, however,
preserve the old features of first-and second-class sections, and the
standing accommodation for eight or ten persons. One mounts and
alights from the middle of the rear of the vehicle, the opening being
guarded by a chain controlled by the conductor--a method offering less
opportunity for dropping off before the 'bus has come to a standstill.
Although the motor-cab is present in considerable numbers, the
horse-drawn taxi still holds its own. It is cheap, and although,
through the close coupling of the front pair of wheels, it can be
overturned quite easily, it is a decidedly pleasant means of
conveyance, with less anxiety for the fare than the auto-taxi, but the
drivers seem to desire to out-do the chauffeurs in giving as much
thrill and sensation as skilful and often reckless driving will
provide.
His hatred of the _bourgeois_--the "man in the street"--in spite
of, and indeed because of, his being a potential client, is
expressed at every yard. He constantly tries to run them down,
which makes strangers to Paris accuse the Paris cabman of driving
badly, while in point of fact he is not driving at all, but
playing with miraculous skill a game of his own.... The cabman's
wild career through the streets, the constant waving and slashing
of his pitiless whip, his madcap _hurtlements_ and collisions,
the frenzied gesticulations which he exchanges with his "fare,"
the panic-stricken flight of the agonized women whose lives he
has endangered; the ugly rushes which the public occasionally
make at him with a view to lynching him, the sprawlings and
fallings of his maddened, hysterical, starving horse, contribute
as much as anything to the spasmodic intensity, the electric
blue-fire diablerie, which are characteristic of the general
movement of Paris.[7]
[7] Rowland Strong, _The Sensations of Paris_.
No doubt the hansom-cab--the gondola of London as some one termed
it--would have survived if it had accepted the limitations of the
taximeter, but refusing to adjust itself to circumstance its numbers
steadily diminished.
Among the omnibuses and taxis of both types and the numerous private
motor-cars there passes at all times of the day a wonderful stream of
country vehicles. Vegetables are conspicuous, but these might be
overlooked, whereas the hay and straw carts assail the eye by their
immense proportions. They might almost be dubbed lazy men's loads, for
they have the appearance of moving hay-stacks and require the most
skilful manoeuvring in the midst of so much impetuously driven
traffic. These country carts almost give the streets of Paris a
provincial flavour, their horses and drivers being more essentially
rural than anything one sees in London, even in the neighbourhood of
Covent Garden. Riding quietly through the wheeled traffic the sight of
half a dozen members of the semi-military _Garde republicaine_ is a
very familiar one. Their uniforms are so military in character that
visitors to Paris generally mistake them for soldiers.
On the pavements of the streets a striking feature is the number of
women who go about their business without wearing hats. In the dinner
hour of the _midinette_, between twelve and one (from which she
derives her name), this is particularly noticeable, the streets and
public gardens overflowing with this hard-worked and underpaid class
of _Parisienne_. These girls and women are the "labour" of the
dressmaking establishments wherein is produced all that is most
admired by the well-dressed women of the world. The majority are very
underpaid, the young and inexperienced earning about 1 fr. 50 a day,
the _petites couturieres_, as a rule, having a wage between 1 and 3
francs a day, which does not go far in Paris, where the cost of living
is roughly double that of London. In the leading establishments the
_midinette_ may earn from L35 to over L50 a year, but these are the
highly skilled _ouvrieres_ and do not represent a very large
proportion of the whole, whose incomes have been roughly estimated in
three divisions, each representing one-third of the whole number. The
most poorly paid third receives less than 5 francs a day, the
intermediate section attains the 5-franc level, and the most
prosperous third exceeds it to the amount already mentioned. A small
number of women become what is known as _premieres_ in famous
houses in the Rue de la Paix, the classic street from which the
fashions in woman's attire for the whole of the civilised world are
believed to emanate. These clever French women are endowed with a very
high degree of taste and skill, and their gifts reach a comparatively
high market value, bringing in an annual income of about L150.
[Illustration: AUTUMN IN THE CHAMPS ELYSEES, PARIS.]
The work-girls who take sewing to their homes can earn from 75
centimes to 2 francs a day. In her interesting book on Paris life
Mlle. de Pratz gives the following two budgets of _midinettes_
receiving L34 and L48 per annum:--
850 fr. per annum 1200 fr. per annum
(L34). (L48).
Lodging 100 L4 150 L6
Food 550 L22 750 L30
Clothes 100 L4 150 L6
Heat, light, washing, and 100 L4 150 L6
recreation ____ ____
850 1200
The struggle to make ends meet on the smaller incomes is no doubt
great, for Paris, it must always be remembered, does not provide cheap
living for any one, not even in its poorest quarters. As a whole the
_midinette_ class is badly fed and therefore delicate and too often a
prey to consumption. It does not produce a high average of
good-looking girls, for, being fond of amusement, late hours are
indulged in very generally, with the result that when the hour for
work arrives insufficient rest has been obtained. No doubt in so large
a class--they are computed to number about 110,000--there is a wide
range of character and morals, but there seems little doubt that, as a
class, the chastity of the most poorly paid does not rank high. In a
moral atmosphere such as that breathed by Parisians as a whole, it
would be almost impossible for girls subjected to so much temptation
on account of poverty to resist. And there is commonly no loss of
self-respect when the downward step has been taken, for even when a
girl convicted of such moral laxity is blamed, she merely replies with
calmness that it is quite natural.
The Apache class lives in its own particular quarter of the city, and
its members are not easily recognisable by the general public. The
fraternity tattoo a certain arrangement of dots on the forearm by
which recognition is instantly obtained. These dots indicate the motto
of the Apache, _Mort aux vaches!_ by which is intended their perpetual
warfare with the police. This strange class of anti-social beings is
recruited from many grades of Parisian life, all suffering from some
abnormal mental condition unless drawn into the grip of the strange
brotherhood by mischance when very young, as will sometimes happen
with girls at an immature age. In spite of the national training in
arms of the young men of France, this incredible class continues to
exist and to perpetrate outrage, murder, and robbery. How many of
these outlaws of society have experienced military service, and to
what extent it has modified or accentuated their abnormality, are
questions to which one would like to have answers.
Probably the average Parisian of the middle classes is more aware of
the enormities of the _concierge_ than of the Apache. The one is an
ever-present annoyance, and the other a thing read about in the
evening newspapers, but not encountered personally. Not so _La
Concierge_. This individual is employed by a landlord to act as his
watchdog in a block of flats. His duties are connected with showing
the flats to prospective tenants, collecting rent, keeping the
staircases clean, and delivering letters, the last being required
because the Paris postman does not climb the stairs in flat
buildings--all the letters for the building being delivered into the
hands of the _concierge_. It is this matter of one's letters which
gives the caretaker his power. He uses it to extort liberal gratuities
for every small service, as well as a handsome _etrenne_ on New Year's
Day. It is the landlord who is at the fountain-head of the trouble.
How seldom is it otherwise! He pays the _concierge_ an entirely
inadequate sum for his services, and as he has to supplement his
income in some other way he, as a rule, leaves his wife in charge for
a large part of the day and earns a supplemental sum elsewhere. The
Frenchwoman is too often inclined to avarice, and it seems to be the
exception to find in Paris a _concierge's_ wife who will not levy a
form of blackmail on the tenants whose letters come into her hands.
She will make herself familiar with the character of the
correspondence that each tenant receives, and if insufficiently tipped
will not hesitate to hold up any letters that she believes are of
importance. The opening of letters with steam is not beneath the moral
plane of _Madame la Concierge_, and by various means she obtains such
an intimate knowledge of the concerns of each tenant that peace and
freedom from endless petty annoyances can only be bought at the price
which she deems satisfactory. Mlle. de Pratz gives a vigorous picture
of this bugbear of flat life in Paris, telling of the scandals that
are circulated concerning entirely innocent people who have failed in
the liberality of their _etrennes_, and how the residents of
ill-reputation buy immunity from these baneful attentions by their
liberal tips. How long, it may reasonably be asked, will Paris consent
to this iniquity, which could be remedied by the delivery of letters
direct to the door of each flat?
It is often a matter of discussion how far the proverbial politeness
of the French goes beneath the surface. Generalising on such a topic
is hedged about with pitfalls, and the wary are disinclined to
enter such debatable ground. Compared to the British, whose
self-consciousness or shyness too often leads to awkwardness in those
moments of social intercourse when dexterity is needful, the French
are undoubtedly ages ahead. The right phrase exactly fitting the
requirements of the moment comes easily to their lips, and with it, as
a rule, the right expression and attitude; and yet one must travel
often in the underground railways of Paris to see a man give up his
seat to a woman who is standing. It is understood that a young man
cannot offer his place to a young woman, because it would suggest
_arriere-pensees_; but if this regrettable state of affairs does
exist, the restriction to such action does not apply when an old woman
carrying a bundle is standing beside a youth, who could not be accused
of anything but courtesy if he rose to save her the discomfort of
standing. But no one seems to think such action a requirement of
common politeness. While one finds great charm and civility among the
assistants in shops, which often add very much to the pleasure of
shopping, a disagreement on a business matter may be handled with much
less courtesy than in a British shop. A hard, almost angry expression
will come upon _madame_ or _mademoiselle's_ face, where over the
Channel one would meet a look of mere anxiety. But Paris shopkeepers
no doubt have a very cosmopolitan world to attend to, and they perhaps
encounter many rogues. There is unevenness in manners everywhere, and
while one class of workers may be soured by adverse conditions and
lose their natural charm in the economic struggle, another will expand
in the sun of easy and pleasant conditions. The Parisian horse
taxi-cab driver with his picturesque shiny tall hat and crimson
waistcoat is not conspicuous for his politeness unless his
_pour-boire_ is very liberal, and the railway porter can easily be
insulting if he is dissatisfied with a tip. In London there is much
unmannerly pushing on to trams and omnibuses during the morning and
evening hours, restricted here and there by the method of the queue,
but in Paris all the chief stopping-places of the omnibuses are
provided with publicly exposed bunches of numbered tickets. On a wet
day a little girl or a cripple has merely to tear off one of these
slips of paper, and when the 'bus arrives the conductor takes up his
passengers in the numerical order of their tickets--all unfair
hustling being thus eliminated.
The Parisian _bonne a tout faire_ has been diminishing in numbers for
many years. In the thirty years between 1866 and 1896 the total was
nearly halved, leaving about 700,000 of this overworked and underpaid
class. The day of frilled caps has gone, and even a bib to the apron
is considered an out-of-date demand. It is no doubt the need for
stringent economy in the flats constituting the greatest part of home
life in Paris, which is responsible for the dislike to domestic
service on the part of the young women of the capital.
An undesirable arrangement in flat buildings is the housing of all the
maids of the building in very small bedrooms on the top floor. In the
hours in which the girls are free from duty they are able to do more
or less as they please on their floor, and the result is that the
natural protection of the home is missing in the hours of rest and
leisure, when their need is most pressing. The average _bonne a tout
faire_ is not disinclined to hard work, and she is clever and willing
to put herself to any trouble in an emergency or when there are guests
to be entertained. Boredom however, seems to settle upon her during
the normal routine of life, and her buoyant nature makes her inclined
to sing and talk loudly about her work. She is in a great proportion
of cases more intimate with the family than the servants in London
flats, and on this account her manner assumes a familiarity that in
the circumstances is fairly inevitable. A man visitor will commonly
raise his hat to the maid and call her "Mademoiselle."
Probably the Paris maid-of-all-work is not worked any harder than the
single servant in London--the only real difference being the morning
marketing, which she regularly undertakes. There is attractiveness in
the life she sees in the streets and markets, and in addition there is
the tradesman's _sou_ which finds its way into her pocket for every
_franc's_ worth of goods purchased. If honest the girl's commission
begins and ends with the _sou du franc_, but if she is otherwise she
will make little alterations to the amounts in the household books,
and thus add by these petty but perpetual thefts a considerable sum to
her annual wages. How far such dishonesty is practised it is
impossible to say, and in the absence of any figures one may hope that
a few cases are the cause of much talk.
Rents in Paris are high, and the tendency is to mount still higher.
Blocks of flats that have been let at a quite reasonable rent are
frequently "modernised" with a few superficial improvements and
renovations and relet at vastly increased prices. This is much the
case with those formerly let at from L60 to L100 a year, and the
restriction in the number of cheaper homes available for the poor has
been going on so steadily that the problem has become one which it
will be necessary for the State to tackle. The increase in rents has,
in some instances, been only 10 per cent, but in many instances it is
more than that, and here and there the upward bound has reached three
or four times that amount.
One is sometimes puzzled to know how the Parisian struggles along, for
besides his ascending rent he has to pay much more for all household
stuff, whether it is curtains for his windows (which are taxed), a
cake of soap, or an enamelled iron can. No wonder that the best
sitting-room is kept shut up on certain days of the week, and that
polished wooden floors are so frequently seen in place of carpeted
ones.
Tenants having large families are in a most awkward predicament, for
landlords on all hands discourage them, and if the Government wish to
go to one of the root causes of the diminishing birth-rate, they must
see to it that the housing of the middle and lower middle classes is a
less difficult and precarious feature of their struggle for existence.
Perhaps, now that the United States has set the example of lowering
and in some instances sweeping away the protective tariffs on certain
articles, France may follow suit. If the heavy duties on cotton goods
were removed there is no doubt whatever that the burden of
housekeeping in France would be instantly relieved. But the relief in
this respect would be trifling compared to that which would be felt in
the food bill. Tea costs from 4s. to 6s. per pound. Sugar averages
5d., rice 6d., and jam 10d. per pound. A remarkable instance of the
working of the tariff is given by Mlle. de Pratz in her interesting
work already quoted. "In a small village I know near Paris," she
writes, "thousands of pounds worth of fresh fruit and beet-sugar are
exported each year to England. But this village uses English-made jam
made from their own fruit and sugar, which, after being exported and
reimported, costs half the price of home-made French jam."
As recently as March 1910 the protective system of 1892 was
strengthened, duties being raised all round. In support of the changes
it was argued that foreign countries were adopting similar measures,
and that fiscal and social legislation were laying new burdens upon
home industries. With Great Britain still maintaining its system of
free imports and the United States moving in the direction of Free
Trade, the first argument begins to lose its force.
These questions of rent and the cost of food do not, of course, press
upon the very considerable numbers of wealthy residents in Paris, but
they are not on this account less vital to the well-being of the
mighty cosmopolitan city. And if these features of urban existence
were overlooked in any book, however slight, which aims at putting
before the reader some salient aspects of French life, the blank would
leave much unexplained. Bearing in mind the expense of living in the
large towns a thousand little things are at once interpreted.
It has been said of Paris that the population belongs less to France
than that of any other city in the country, for the proportion of
residents of other nationalities has gone up prodigiously in the last
half century. There is a glamour about the city which seems to act as
a magnet among all the civilised nations of the world. "The
aristocratic class," says Mr. E. H. Barker,[8] "nominally so much
associated with Paris life, is becoming less and less French. The old
Legitimist families, so intimately connected with the Faubourg St.
Germain under the Second Empire and a good while afterwards, who at
one time held so aloof even from the Bonapartist nobility, have
greatly changed their habits and views of social intercourse. The two
nobilities now intermarry without apparent hindrance on the score of
prejudices, and mingle without any suspicion of class divisions. But
all this society helps to form what is called _Le Tout Paris_, which
is almost as cosmopolitan as French."
[8] _France of the French._
When one stands before the great Byzantine Church of the _Sacre
Coeur_, that holds aloft its white domes against the sky up above
Paris on the hill of Montmartre, and looks down on the multiplicity of
roofs, there is always a film of smoke obscuring detail and softening
the outlines of some portions of the city. Yet when one walks through
the streets the clean creamy whiteness of the buildings would almost
give the stranger the impression that he had reached a city that had
no use for coal. Even in the older streets where renovation and
repairs are very infrequent there is never a suspicion of that uniform
greyness that the big cities of Britain produce. In all the great
boulevards in the whole of the Etoile district and wherever the houses
are well built and of modern construction, the bright clean stone-work
is so free from the effects of smoke that a Dutch housewife would
fail to see the need for external cleaning. The facades of nearly all
the houses in the newly reconstructed streets have a certain monotony
about them which has been inherited from the days of Hausmann's great
rebuilding. There is seldom any colour except in the windows of shops,
for the universal shutters, which in Italy are brilliantly painted
bright green, brown, blue, or even pink, are here uniformly white or
the palest of greys. So many of the new streets are, however, planted
with trees that the colour scheme resolves itself into green and pale
cream, except in winter, when the blackish stems of the trees add
nothing to the gaiety of the streets.
Contrasting the streets in the neighbourhood of the Parc Monceaux with
those of Mayfair, London has the advantage for variety of
architectural styles and for complete changes of atmosphere; but for
spacious splendour, for what can properly be termed elegance, Paris
stands on a vastly higher plane. The dreary stucco pomposity of
Kensington and Belgravia fortunately cannot be discovered in Paris,
and it is well for the world that few cities indulged in this
architectural make-believe. While Belgravia can only keep her
self-respect by continually covering herself with fresh coats of
paint, the honest stone-work of Paris lets the years pass without
showing any appreciable signs of deterioration. Unlike London, where
there are seemingly endless streets of two and three storeys, Paris
has developed the tall building of five or six floors. The girdle of
fortification has no doubt directed this tendency. Where the streets
are not wide the lofty houses increase the effect of narrowness, and
many of the side streets in the St. Antoine district have, with their
innumerable shutters, a very close resemblance to some Italian cities.
It is a mistake to suppose that the whole of Paris has been rebuilt;
for, apart from Notre Dame and such well-known Romanesque and Gothic
churches as St. Etienne-du-Mont, St. Germain, the tower of St.
Jacques, and the Sainte Chapelle, there are gabled houses of
considerable age in many of the by-ways. These are almost invariably
covered with a mask of stucco that does its best to hide up their
seventeenth-century or earlier characteristics. The beautiful and
dignified quadrangular building that is now called the Musee
Carnavalet, was the residence of the Marquise de Sevigne and was
built in the sixteenth century, although altered and added to in 1660.
Earlier than this is the fascinating Hotel Cluny, a late Gothic house
built as the town residence of the abbots of Cluny. This building even
links up modern Paris with the Roman _Lutetia Parisiorum_. Another
interesting architectural survival is the Hotel de Lauzan, a typical
residence of a great aristocrat of the days of _Le Roi soleil_. The
Palais du Louvre, dating in part from the days of Francois I., the
Tuileries, begun in 1564 and finished by Louis XIV., and the
Conciergerie wherein Marie Antoinette and Robespierre were confined,
are buildings of such world-renown that it is scarcely necessary to
mention them.
In many ways Paris is similar in arrangement to London. It is divided
in two by its river, which cuts it from east to west, and the more
important half is on the northern bank. The wealthy quarters are on
the west and the poorer to the east. The great park, the Bois de
Boulogne, is also on the west side of the city. In Paris, the ancient
nucleus of the city was an island in the river, but London, although
it originated on a patch of land raised high above the surrounding
marshes, was never truly insulated. The Bastille, which may be
compared with the Tower of London, occupied a very similar position
not far from the north bank of the river and at the eastern side of
the mediaeval city. All the chief theatres and places of amusement are
on the north side of the river, and, as in London, so are all the
Royal Palaces; but here the parallels between the cities appear to
end, and one observes endless notable differences.
The Seine divides the city much more fairly than does the Thames.
London has no opulent quarter south of its river, but Paris has the
Faubourg St. Germain, where her oldest and most distinguished
residents have their residences--houses possessing solemnly majestic
courtyards guarded by stupendous gateways. In the same quarter are
some of the more important foreign embassies. And the river of Paris
being scarcely half the width of that of London has made bridging
comparatively cheap and resulted in more than double the number of
such links. There is no marine flavour in Paris. No vessels of any
size reach it, and its banks are not therefore made ugly by tall and
hideous wharf buildings. It is a walled city, being encompassed by a
circle of very formidable fortifications, still capable of resisting
attack by modern military methods. Its broad avenues and boulevards,
tree-planted and perfectly straight, give the whole city an atmosphere
of spaciousness and of dignity that is lacking in London, if one
excepts the vicinity of Regent Street and Piccadilly, and a few other
west-end thoroughfares.
Wherever one goes in France among the cities and larger towns the
ideas of big and eye-filling perspectives are aimed at by the
municipal authorities and architects. Lyons, Nice, Orleans, Tours,
Havre, Montpellier, Nimes, Marseilles, to mention places that come
readily into the mind, have all achieved something of the Parisian
ideal, and even the more mediaeval towns, whenever an opportunity
presents itself, expand into tree-shaded boulevards of widths that
would make an English municipal councillor rub his eyes and gasp. It
is curious to witness how, in many of the older towns, the narrow and
cramped quarters, necessitated in the days when city walls existed,
are continuing their existence in wonderful contrast to spacious
suburbs. The glamour of these narrow ways is so entrancing to the
visitor and the lover of history that he trembles to think that a day
may come when all these romantic nuclei of French cities have been
rebuilt on the ideals of Hausmann.
Wherever one wanders in France, even in mere villages, one can
scarcely find a place that has not at least one cafe with inviting
little tables on the pavement, giving that subtle Latin atmosphere so
refreshing to the Anglo-Saxon (who, however, would never dream of
wishing to imitate the custom in his own country), and so full of that
curiously fascinating Bohemianism which Mr. Locke has caught in the
pages of _The Beloved Vagabond_. Could Britain exchange the
public-house for the cafe half the temperance reformer's task would be
done, but one can scarcely contemplate without a shiver the prospect
of eating and drinking in the open air anywhere north of the Thames
for more than a few weeks of summer.