THE MARAIS
A L32,000,000 Rebuilding Scheme--Romance and Intrigue--The
Temple--The Archives--Illustrious Handwriting--The "Uncle"
of Paris--The Wall of Philip Augustus--Old Palaces now
Rookeries--The Carnavalet--The Perfect
Museum--Latude--Napoleon--Madame de Sevigne--Chained
Streets--John Law--The Rue St. Martin.
The Marais is that district of old streets and palaces which is
bounded on the south by the Rue St. Antoine, on the east by the Rue du
Turenne, on the west by the Rue du Temple, and fades away in the north
somewhere below the Rue de Bretagne. The Rue des Francs Bourgeois is
its central highway east and west.
It was my original intention to devote a large proportion of this book
to this fascinating area--to describe it minutely street by
street--and I have notes for that purpose which would fill half the
volume alone. But the publication of the L32,000,000 scheme for
renovating this and other of the older parts of Paris (one of the
principal points in which is the isolation of the Musee Carnavalet,
which is the heart of the Marais), coming just at that time, acted
like a douche of iced water, and I abandoned the project. Instead
therefore I merely say enough (I hope) to impress on every reader the
desirability, the necessity, of hastening to the Rue des Francs
Bourgeois and its dependencies, and refer them to the two French
writers whom I have found most useful in my own researches--the
Marquis de Rochegude, author of a _Guide Pratique a travers le Vieux
Paris_ (Hachette) and the Vicomte de Villebresme, author of _Ce que
reste du Vieux Paris_ (Flammarion). To these I would add M. Georges
Cain, the director of the Carnavalet, to whom I refer later.
No matter where one enters the Marais, it offers the same alluring
prospect of narrow streets and high and ancient houses, once the abode
of the nobility and aristocracy, but now rookeries and factories--and,
over all, that sense of thorough insanitation which so often
accompanies architectural charm in France and Italy, and which seems
to matter so little to Latin people. Hence the additional wickedness
of destroying this district. The Municipality, however, having
acquired superfine foreign notions as to public health, will doubtless
have its way.
Wherever one enters the Marais one finds the traces of splendour,
intrigue and romance; howsoever modern conditions may have robbed them
of their glory, to walk in these streets is, for any one with any
imagination, to recreate Dumas. For the most part one must make one's
own researches, but here and there a tablet may be found, such as that
over the entrance to a narrow and sinister passage at No. 38 Rue des
Francs Bourgeois, which reads thus: "Dans ce passage en sortant de
l'hotel Barbette le Duc Louis d'Orleans frere du Roi Charles VI. fut
assassine par Jean Sans Peur, Duc de Bourgogne, dans la nuit du 23 ou
24 Novembre, 1407". Five hundred years ago! That gives an idea of the
antiseptic properties of the air of Paris. The Duke of Orleans, I
might remark here, was symmetrically avenged, for his son assassinated
Jean Sans Peur on the bridge of Montereau all in due course.
The Marais was at its prime from the middle of the fifteenth century
to the beginning of the eighteenth; at which period the Faubourg St.
Antoine was abandoned by fashion for the Faubourg St. Germain, as we
shall see when the time comes to wander in the Rue de Varenne and the
Rue de Grenelle on the other side of the river.
Let us enter the Marais by the Rue du Temple at the Square du Temple,
a little south of the Place de la Republique. One must make a
beginning somewhere. The Temple, which has now disappeared, was the
head-quarters of the Knight Templars of France before their
suppression in 1307: it then became the property of the Order of St.
John of Jerusalem, who held it until the Revolution, when all property
seems to have changed hands. Rousseau found sanctuary here in 1765;
and here Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette were imprisoned for a while
in 1792. More tragic by far, it was here that the little Dauphin died.
Napoleon pulled down the Tower: Louis XVIII. on his accession awarded
the property to the Princesse de Conde, and Louis-Philippe, on his,
took it back again.
The Rue du Temple has many interesting old houses and associations.
Just north of the Square is the church of Elizabeth of Hungary, the
first stone of which was laid in 1628 by a less sainted monarch, Marie
de Medicis. It is worth entering to see its carved wood scenes from
Scripture history. At 193 once lived Madame du Barry; at 153 was, in
the reign of Louis XV., the barreau des vinaigrettes--the vinaigrette
being the forerunner of the cab, a kind of sedan chair and
jinrickshaw; at 62 died Anne de Montmorency, Constable of France, in
the Hotel de Montmorency.
[Illustration: L'HOMME AU GANT
TITIAN
_(Louvre)_]
From the Square du Temple we may also walk down the Rue des Archives,
parallel with the Rue du Temple on the east. This street now extends
to the Rue de Rivoli. It is rich in old palaces, some with very
beautiful relics of their grandeur still in existence, such as the
staircase at No. 78. The fountain at the corner of the Rue des
Haudriettes dates only from 1705. At No. 58 is the gateway, restored,
of the old palace of the Constable de Clisson, built in 1371. Later it
belonged to the Guise family and then to the Soubise. The Revolution
made it the property of the State, and Napoleon directed that the
Archives should be preserved here. The entrance is in the Rue des
Francs Bourgeois, across the green court; but do not go on a cold day,
because there is no heating process, owing to the age of the
building and the extraordinary value of the collections. The rooms in
themselves are of some interest for their Louis XV. decoration and
mural paintings, but one goes of course primarily to see the
handwriting of the great. Here is the Edict of Nantes signed by Henri
IV.; a quittance signed by Diana de Poictiers, very boldly; a letter
to Parliament from Louis XI., in his atrocious hand; a codicil added
by Saint Louis to his will on board a vessel on the coast of Sardinia,
exquisitely written. The scriveners have rather gone off than improved
since those days; look at the "Registre des enqueteurs royaux en
Normandie," 1248, for a work of delicate minuteness. Marie Therese,
wife of Louis XIV., wrote an attractive hand, but Louis XIV.'s own
signature is dull. Voltaire is discovered to have written very like
Swinburne.
Relics of the Revolution abound. Here is Marie Antoinette's last
letter to the Princess Elizabeth, written the night before she was
executed; a letter of Petion, bidding his wife farewell, and of
Barbaroux to his mother, both stained with tears. Here also is the
journal of Louis XVI., 1766-1792, and the order for his inhumation (as
Louis Capet), 21st January, 1793. His will is here too; and so is
Napoleon's. I say no more because the collection is so vast, and also
because a franc buys a most admirable catalogue, with facsimiles,
beginning with the monogram of Charlemagne himself.
On leaving the Archives we may take an easterly course along the Rue
des Francs Bourgeois, with the idea of making eventually for the
Carnavalet; but it is well to loiter, for this is the very heart of
the Marais. One's feet will always be straying down byways that call
for closer notice, and it is very likely that the Carnavalet will not
be reached till to-morrow after all. Indeed, let "Hasta manana" be
your Marais motto.
One of the first buildings that one notices is the Mont de Piete, the
chief of the Paris pawnbroking establishments. I am told that the
system is an admirable one; but my own experience is against this
opinion, for I was unable on a day of unexpected stress at the end of
1907 to effect an entrance at the very reasonable hour of a quarter
past five. The closing of the English pawnbrokers at seven--the very
moment at which the ordinary man's financial troubles begin--is
sufficiently uncivilised; but to cease to lend money on excellent gold
watches at five o'clock in the afternoon (with the bank closed on the
morrow, too, being New Year's Day) is a scandal. My adventures in
search of relief among French tradesmen who had been at my feet as
recently as yesterday, before supplies had broken down, I shall never
forget, nor shall I relate them here. This aims at being an agreeable
book.
It is interesting to note that one of the entrances to the Mont de
Piete is reserved for clients who wish to raise money on deeds, and I
have seen cabmen very busy in bringing to it people who quite
shamelessly hold their papers in their hands. And why on earth not?
And yet your English pawner seldom reaches the Three Brass Balls with
such publicity or by any other medium than his poor feet. Our Mont de
Piete for the respectable is the solicitor's office. A trace of the
wall, and one of its towers, built around Paris by Philip Augustus in
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, may be seen in the courtyard of
the Mont de Piete; but the wall is better observed in the Rue des
Guillemites, at No. 14.
All about here once stood a large convent of the Blancs-Manteaux, or
Servants of the Virgin Mary, an order which came into being in
Florence in the thirteenth century and of whom the doctor Benazzi was
the general. After the Blancs-Manteaux came the Hermits of St.
Guillaume, or Guillemites, and later the Benedictines took it over.
Next the Mont de Piete at the back is the church of the
Blancs-Manteaux in its modern form. It is plain and unattractive, but
it wears an air of some purpose, and one feels that it is much used in
this very popular and not too happy quarter. Just opposite, in a
doorway, I watched an old chiffonniere playing with a grey rabbit.
Every inch of this neighbourhood offers priceless material to the hand
of Mr. Muirhead Bone.
One of the old tavern signs of Paris is to be seen close by, at the
corner of the Rue des Blancs-Manteaux and the Rue des Archives: a
soldier standing by a cannon, representing l'homme arme. It is a
comfortable little retreat and should be encouraged for such
antiquarian piety.
The pretty turret at the corner of the Rue des Francs Bourgeois and
the Rue Vieille du Temple marks the site of the hotel of Jean de la
Balue. Turning to the left up the Rue Vieille du Temple we come at No.
87 to a very beautiful ancient mansion, with a spacious courtyard,
built in 1712 for the Cardinal de Rohan. It is now the national
printing works: hence the statue of Gutenberg in the midst. Visitors
are allowed to see the house itself once a week, but I have not done
so. You will probably not be interfered with if you just step to the
inside of the second courtyard to see the bas-relief of the steeds of
Apollo. Nos. 102 to 108 in the same street mark the remains of another
fine eighteenth-century hotel. There is also a house which one should
see in the lower part of the street, on the south side of the Francs
Bourgeois--No. 47, where by penetrating boldly one comes to a perfect
little courtyard with some beautiful carvings in it, and, above, a
green garden, tended, when I was there, by a Little Sister of the
Poor. The principal courtyard has a very interesting bas-relief of
Romulus and Remus at their usual meal, and also an old sundial. This
palace was built in 1638.
Returning to the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, we find at No. 38 the
little impasse already referred to, where the Duc d'Orleans was
assassinated. At No. 30 is a very impressive red-brick palace with a
courtyard, now a nest of offices and factories, once the hotel of Jean
de Fourcy. A bust of Henri IV. has a place there. At No. 25 on the
other side (seen better from the Rue Pavee) is an even more splendid
abode--now also cut up into a rookery--the Hotel de Lamoignon, once
Hotel d'Angouleme, built for Diane, Duchess of Angouleme, daughter of
Henri II.: hence the symbols of the chase in the ornamentation. The
hotel passed to President de Lamoignon in 1655.
And here is the Carnavalet--the spacious building, with a garden and
modern additions, on the left--once the Hotel des Ligneries,
afterwards the Hotel de Kernevenoy, afterwards the Hotel de Sevigne,
and now the museum of the city of Paris. The only way to understand
Paris is to make repeated visits to this treasure-house. You will find
new entertainment and instruction every time, because every time you
will carry thither impressions of new objects of interest whose past
you will want to explore. For in the Carnavalet every phase of the
life of the city, from the days of the Romans and the Merovingians to
our own, is illustrated in one way or another. The pictures of streets
alone are inexhaustible: the streets that one knows to-day as they
were yesterday and the day before yesterday and hundreds of years ago;
the streets one has just walked through on the way here, in their
stages of evolution: such, for example, as the picture of the wooden
Pont des Meuniers in 1380 with the Tour Saint-Jacques behind it; the
streets with dramas of the Revolution in progress, such as the picture
of the emblems of Royalty being burned before the statue of Liberty
(where the Luxor column now stands) in the Place de la Concorde on
August 10th, 1793; such as the picture of the famous "serment" being
taken in the court of the Jeu de Paume on June 20th, 1789; such as the
picture of the funeral of Marat. For the perfection of topographical
drawing look at the series by F. Hoffbauer. But it is impossible and
needless to particularise. The visitor with a topographical or
historical bent will find himself in a paradise and will return and
return. One visit is ridiculous.
The catalogue, I may say, is not good, therein falling into line with
the sculpture catalogue at the Louvre. Everything may be in it, but
the arrangement is poor. In such a museum every article and every
picture should of course have a description attached, if only for the
benefit of the poor visitor, the humblest citizen of Paris whose
museum it is.
There are a few works of art here too, as well as topographical
drawings. Georges Michel, for example, who looked on landscape much as
Meryon looked on architecture and preferred a threatening sky to a
sunny one, has a prospect from the Plaine St. Denis. Vollon paints the
Moulin de la Galette on Montmartre as it was in 1865; Troyon spreads
out St. Cloud. Here also are a charming portrait by Chardin of his
second wife; the well-known picture of David's Life School; drawings
by Watteau; an adorable unsigned "Marchand de Lingerie"; an enchanting
leg on a blue pillow by Boucher; a portrait by Prud'hon of an
unknown man, very striking; and some exquisite work by Louis Boilly.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT DE JEUNE HOMME
ATTRIBUTED TO BIGIO
_(Louvre)_]
The Musee is strong in Henri IV. and the later Louis, but it is of
course in relics of the Revolution and Napoleon that the interest
centres. A casquette of Liberty; the handle of Marat's bathroom; a
portrait of "La Veuve Capet" in the Conciergerie, in the room that we
have seen; a painted life-mask of Voltaire, very horrible, and the
armchair in which he died; a copy of the constitution of 1793 bound in
the skin of a man; Marat's snuff-box; Madame Roland as a sweet and
happy child,--these I remember in particular.
Latude is, however, the popular figure--Latude the prisoner of the
Bastille who escaped by means of implements which he made secretly and
which are now preserved here, near a portrait of the enfranchised
gentleman, robust, portly and triumphant, pointing with one hand to
his late prison while the other grasps the rope ladder. Latude's
history is an odd one. He was born in 1725, the natural son of a poor
girl: after accompanying the army in Languedoc as a surgeon, or
surgeon's assistant, he reached Paris in 1748 and proceeded to starve.
In despair he hit upon an ingenious trick, which wanted nothing but
success to have made him. He prepared an infernal machine of
infinitesimal aptitude--a contrivance of practically harmless but
perhaps somewhat alarming explosives--and this he sent anonymously to
the Marquise de Pompadour, and then immediately after waited upon her
in person at Versailles to say that he had overheard some men plotting
to destroy her by means of this kind of a bomb, and he had come
post-haste to warn her and save her life. It was a good story, but
Latude seems to have lacked some necessary gifts as an impostor, for
his own share was detected and he was thrown into the Bastille on the
1st of May, 1749. A few weeks later he was transferred to the prison
at Vincennes, from which he escaped in 1750. A month later he was
retaken and again placed in the Bastille, from which he escaped six
years later. He got away to Holland, but was quickly recaptured; and
then again he escaped, after nine more years. He was then treated as a
lunatic and put into confinement at Charenton, but was discharged in
1777. His liberty, however, seems to have been of little use to him,
and he rapidly qualified for gaol again by breaking into a house and
threatening its owner, a woman, with a pistol, and he was imprisoned
once more. Altogether he was under lock and key for the greater part
of thirty-five years; but once he was free in 1784 he kept his head,
and not only remained free but became a popular hero, and did not a
little, by reason of a heightened account of his sufferings under
despotic prison rule, to inflame the revolutionaries. These memoirs,
by the way, in the preparation of which he was assisted by an advocate
named Thiery, were for the most part untruthful, and not least so in
those passages in which Latude described his own innocence and
ideals. Our own canonised prison-breaker, Jack Sheppard, was a better
hero than this man.
The little room devoted to Napoleon is filled with an intimate
melancholy. Many personal relics are here--even to a toothbrush dipped
in a red powder. His necessaires de campagne so compactly arranged
illustrate the minute orderliness of his mind, and the workmanship of
the travelling cases that hold them proves once again his thoroughness
and taste. Everything had to be right. One of his maps of la campagne
de Prusse is here; others we shall see at the Invalides.
The relics of Madame de Sevigne, who once lived in this beautiful
house, are not very numerous; but they exercise their spell. Her salon
is very much as she left it, except that the private staircase has
disappeared and a china closet takes its place. Within these walls
have La Rochefoucauld and Bossuet conversed; here she sat, pen in
hand, writing her immortal letters. "Lisons tout Madame de Sevigne"
was the advice of Sainte-Beuve, while her most illustrious English
admirer, Edward FitzGerald, often quotes her. He came to her late, not
till 1875, but she never loosened her hold. "I have this Summer," he
wrote to Mrs. W. H. Thompson, "made the Acquaintance of a great Lady,
with whom I have become perfectly intimate, through her Letters,
Madame de Sevigne. I had hitherto kept aloof from her, because of that
eternal Daughter of hers; but 'it's all Truth and Daylight,' as Kitty
Clive said of Mrs. Siddons. Her Letters from Brittany are best of all,
not those from Paris, for she loved the Country, dear Creature; and
now I want to go and visit her 'Rochers,' but never shall." "I
sometimes lament," he says (to Mrs. Cowell), "I did not know her
before; but perhaps such an acquaintance comes in best to cheer one
toward the end." With these pleasant praises in our ears let us leave
the Carnavalet.
The Rue de Sevigne itself has many interesting houses, notably on the
south side of the Rue des Francs Bourgeois; No. 11, for example, was
once a theatre, built by Beaumarchais in 1790. That is nothing; the
interesting thing is that he built it of material from the destroyed
Bastille and the destroyed church of St. Paul. The fire station close
by was once the Hotel de Perron de Quincy. It was in this street, on
the day of the Fete Dieu in 1392, that the Constable de Clisson, whose
house we saw in the Rue des Archives, was attacked by Pierre de Craon.
The Rue des Francs Bourgeois is the highway of the Marais, and the
Carnavalet is its greatest possession; but, as I have said, the Marais
is inexhaustible in architectural and historical riches. We may work
our way through it, back to the Rue du Temple by any of these ancient
streets; all will repay. The Rue du Temple extends to the Rue de
Rivoli, striking it just by the Hotel de Ville, but the lower portion,
south of the Rue Rambuteau, is not so interesting as the upper. There
is, however, to the west of it, just north of the Rue de Rivoli, a
system of old streets hardly less picturesque (and sometimes even
more so) than the Marais proper, in the centre of which is the church
of St. Merry, with one of the most wonderful west fronts anywhere--a
mass of rich and eccentric decoration. The Saint himself was Abbot of
Autun. He came to Paris in the seventh century to visit the shrines of
St. Denis and St. Germain. At that time the district which we are now
traversing was chiefly forest, in which the kings of France would
hunt, leaving their palace in the Ile de la Cite and crossing the
river to this wild district--wild though so near. St. Merry
established himself in his simple way near a little chapel in the
woods, dedicated to St. Peter, that stood on this spot, and there he
died. After his death his tomb in the chapel performed such miracles
that St. Peter was forgotten and St. Merry was exalted, and when the
time came to rebuild, St. Merry ousted St. Peter altogether.
[Illustration: THE ARC DE TRIOMPHE DE L'ETOILE
(APPROACHING FROM THE AVENUE DU BOIS DE BOULOGNE)]
St. Merry's florid west front is in the Rue St. Martin, once the Roman
road from Paris to the north and to England, and by the Rue St. Martin
we may leave this district; but between it and the Rue du Temple there
is much to see--such as, for example, the Rue Verrerie, south of St.
Merry's, the head-quarters of the ancient glassworkers; the Rue
Brisemiche, quite one of the best of the old narrow Paris streets,
with iron staples and hooks still in the walls at Nos. 20, 23, 26 and
29, to which chains could be fastened so as to turn a street into an
impasse during times of stress and thus be sure of your man; the Rue
Taillepin, also leading out of the Rue du Cloitre St. Merry into the
Rue St. Merri, which has some fine old houses of its own, notably No.
36 and the quaint Impasse du Boeuf at No. 10.
Parallel with the Rue St. Merry farther north is the Rue de Venise,
which the Vicomte de Villebresme boldly calls the most picturesque in
old Paris. Now a very low quarter, it was once literally the Lombard
Street of Paris, the chief abode of Lombardy moneylenders, while the
long and beautiful Rue Quincampoix, into which it runs on the west,
was also a financial centre, containing no less an establishment than
the famous Banque of John Law, the Scotchman who for a while early in
the eighteenth century controlled French finance. When Law had matured
his Mississippi scheme, he made the Rue Quincampoix his head-quarters,
and houses in it, we read, that had been let for L40 a year now
yielded L800 a month. In the winter of 1719-20 Paris was filled with
speculators besieging Law's offices for shares. But by May the crash
had come and Law had to fly. Many a house in the Rue Quincampoix,
which is now sufficiently innocent of high finance, dates from the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. There is a fine doorway at No. 34.
We may regain the Rue St. Martin, just to the east, by the Rue des
Lombards, which brings us to the flamboyant front of St. Merry's once
more. The Rue St. Martin, which confesses its Roman origin in its
straightness, is still busy with traffic, but neither itself nor the
Rue St. Denis, two or three hundred yards to the west, is one-tenth
as busy as it was before the Boulevard Sebastopol was cut between them
to do all the real work. It is a fine thoroughfare and no doubt of the
highest use, but what beautiful narrow streets of old houses it must
have destroyed! We may note in the Rue St. Martin the pretty fountain
at No. 122, and the curious old house at No. 164, and leave it at the
church of St. Nicholas-des-Champs, no longer in the fields any more
than London's St. Martin's is.
And now after so many houses let us see some pictures!