THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE--THE CHAMPS-ELYSEES AND THE INVALIDES
A Dangerous Crossing--An Ill-omened Place--Louis the XVI. in
Prosperity and Adversity--January 21st, 1793--The End of
Robespierre--The Luxor Column--The Congress of
Wheels--England and France--The Champs Elysees--The Parc
Monceau--A Terrestrial Paradise--Oriental Museums--The
Etoile's Tributaries--The Arc de Triomphe--The Avenue du
Bois de Boulogne--A Vast Pleasure-ground--Happy
Sundays--Longchamp--The Pari-mutuel--Spotting a Winner--Two
Crowded Corners--The Rival Salons--The Palais des
Beaux-Arts--Dutch Masters--Modern French Painters--Superb
Drawing--Fairies among the Statues--The Pont Alexandre
III.--The Fairs of Paris--A Vast Alms-house--A Model
Museum--Relics of Napoleon--The Second Funeral of
Napoleon--The Tomb of Napoleon.
The Place de la Concorde by day is vast rather than beautiful, and by
night it is a congress of lamps. By both it is dangerous, and in bad
weather as exposed as the open sea. But it is sacred ground and Paris
is unthinkable without it. The interest of the Place is summed up in
the Luxor column, which may perhaps be said to mark what is perhaps
the most critical site in modern history; for where the obelisk now
stands stood not so very long ago the guillotine.
The Place's name has been Concorde only since 1830 It began in 1763,
when a bronze statue of Louis XV. on horseback was erected there,
surrounded by emblematic figures, from the chisel of Pigalle, of
Prudence, Justice, Force and Peace. Hence the characteristic French
epigram:--
"O la belle statue, O le beau piedestal!
Les Vertus sont a pied, le Vice est a cheval."
Before this time the Place had been an open and uncultivated space; it
was now enclosed, surrounded with fosses, made trim, and called La
Place Louis Quinze. In 1770, however, came tragedy; for on the
occasion of the marriage of the Dauphin, afterwards the luckless Louis
XVI., with the equally luckless Marie Antoinette, a display of
fireworks was given, during which one of the rockets (as one always
dreads at every display) declined the sky and rushed horizontally into
the crowd, and in the resulting stampede thousands of persons fell
into the ditches, twelve hundred being killed outright and two
thousand injured.
Twenty-two years later, kings having suddenly become cheap, the
National Convention ordered the statue of Louis XV. to be melted down
and recast into cannon, a clay figure of Liberte to be set up in its
stead, and the name to be changed to the Place de la Revolution. This
was done, and a little later the guillotine was erected a few yards
west of the spot where the Luxor column now stands, primarily for the
removal of the head of Louis XVI., in whose honour those unfortunate
fireworks had been ignited. The day was January 21st, 1793.
"King Louis," says Carlyle, "slept sound, till five in the morning,
when Clery, as he had been ordered, awoke him. Clery dressed his hair:
while this went forward, Louis took a ring from his watch, and kept
trying it on his finger; it was his wedding-ring, which he is now to
return to the Queen as a mute farewell. At half-past six, he took the
Sacrament; and continued in devotion, and conference with Abbe
Edgeworth. He will not see his Family: it were too hard to bear.
"At eight, the Municipals enter: the King gives them his Will, and
messages and effects; which they, at first, brutally refuse to take
charge of: he gives them a roll of gold pieces, a hundred and
twenty-five louis; these are to be returned to Malesherbes, who had
lent them. At nine, Santerre says the hour is come. The King begs yet
to retire for three minutes. At the end of three minutes, Santerre
again says the hour is come. 'Stamping on the ground with his
right-foot, Louis answers: "_Partons_, Let us go."'--How the rolling
of those drums comes in, through the Temple bastions and bulwarks, on
the heart of a queenly wife; soon to be a widow! He is gone, then, and
has not seen us? A Queen weeps bitterly; a King's Sister and Children.
Over all these Four does Death also hover: all shall perish miserably
save one; she, as Duchesse d'Angouleme, will live,--not happily.
"At the Temple Gate were some faint cries, perhaps from voices of
pitiful women: '_Grace! Grace!_' Through the rest of the streets there
is silence as of the grave. No man not armed is allowed to be there:
the armed, did any even pity, dare not express it, each man overawed
by all his neighbours. All windows are down, none seen looking through
them. All shops are shut. No wheel-carriage rolls, this morning, in
these streets but one only. Eighty thousand armed men stand ranked,
like armed statues of men; cannons bristle, cannoneers with match
burning, but no word or movement: it is as a city enchanted into
silence and stone: one carriage with its escort, slowly rumbling, is
the only sound. Louis reads, in his Book of Devotion, the Prayers of
the Dying: clatter of this death-march falls sharp on the ear, in the
great silence; but the thought would fain struggle heavenward, and
forget the Earth.
"As the clocks strike ten, behold the Place de la Revolution, once
Place de Louis Quinze: the Guillotine, mounted near the old Pedestal
where once stood the Statue of that Louis! Far round, all bristles
with cannons and armed men: spectators crowding in the rear; D'Orleans
Egalite there in cabriolet. Swift messengers, _hoquetons_, speed to
the Townhall, every three minutes: near by is the Convention
sitting,--vengeful for Lepelletier. Heedless of all, Louis reads his
Prayers of the Dying; not till five minutes yet has he finished; then
the Carriage opens. What temper he is in? Ten different witnesses will
give ten different accounts of it. He is in the collision of all
tempers; arrived now at the black Maelstrom and descent of Death: in
sorrow, in indignation, in resignation struggling to be resigned.
'Take care of M. Edgeworth,' he straitly charges the Lieutenant who is
sitting with them: then they two descend.
"The drums are beating: '_Taisez-vous_, Silence!' he cries 'in a
terrible voice, _d'une voix terrible_'. He mounts the scaffold, not
without delay; he is in puce coat, breeches of gray, white stockings.
He strips off the coat; stands disclosed in a sleeve-waistcoat of
white flannel. The Executioners approach to bind him: he spurns,
resists; Abbe Edgeworth has to remind him how the Saviour, in whom men
trust, submitted to be bound. His hands are tied, his head bare, the
fatal moment is come. He advances to the edge of the Scaffold, 'his
face very red,' and says: 'Frenchmen, I die innocent: it is from the
Scaffold and near appearing before God that I tell you so. I pardon my
enemies: I desire that France----' A General on horseback, Santerre or
another, prances out, with uplifted hand: '_Tambours!_' The drums
drown the voice. Executioners, do your duty!' The Executioners,
desperate lest themselves be murdered (for Santerre and his Armed
Ranks will strike, if they do not), seize the hapless Louis: six of
them desperate, him singly desperate, struggling there; and bind him
to their plank. Abbe Edgeworth, stooping, bespeaks him: 'Son of Saint
Louis, ascend to Heaven'. The Axe clanks down; a King's Life is shorn
away. It is Monday the 21st of January, 1793. He was aged Thirty-eight
years, four months and twenty-eight days.
[Illustration: VIEUX HOMME ET ENFANT
GHIRLANDAIO
_(Louvre)_]
"Executioner Samson shows the Head: fierce shout of _Vive la
Republique_ rises, and swells; caps raised on bayonets, hats waving;
students of the College of Four Nations take it up, on the far Quais;
fling it over Paris. D'Orleans drives off in his cabriolet: the
Townhall Councillors rub their hands, saying, 'It is done, It is
done'. There is dipping of handkerchiefs, of pike-points in the blood.
Headsman Samson, though he afterwards denied it, sells locks of the
hair: fractions of the puce coat are long after worn in rings.--And
so, in some half-hour it is done; and the multitude has all departed.
Pastry-cooks, coffee-sellers, milkmen sing out their trivial quotidian
cries: the world wags on, as if this were a common day. In the
coffee-houses that evening, says Prudhomme, Patriot shook hands with
Patriot in a more cordial manner than usual. Not till some days after,
according to Mercier, did public men see what a grave thing it was."
The guillotine for more ordinary purposes worked in the Place du
Carrousel, not far from Gambetta's statue to-day; but from May, 1793,
until June, 1794, it was back in the Place de la Concorde (then Place
de la Revolution) again, accounting during that time for no fewer than
1,235 offenders, including Charlotte Corday, Madame Roland and Marie
Antoinette. The blood flowed daily, while the tricoteuses looked on
over their knitting and the mob howled.
Another removal, to the Place de la Bastille, and then on 28th July,
1794, the engine of justice or vengeance was back again to end a life
and the Reign of Terror in one blow. What life? But listen:
"Robespierre," lay in an anteroom of the Convention Hall, while his
Prison-escort was getting ready; the mangled jaw bound up rudely with
bloody linen: a spectacle to men. He lies stretched on a table, a
deal-box his pillow; the sheath of the pistol is still clenched
convulsively in his hand. Men bully him, insult him: his eyes still
indicate intelligence; he speaks no word. 'He had on the sky-blue coat
he had got made for the Feast of the _Etre Supreme_'--O Reader, can
thy hard heart hold out against that? His trousers were nankeen; the
stockings had fallen down over the ankles. He spake no word more in
this world.
"And so, at six in the morning, a victorious Convention adjourns.
Report flies over Paris as on golden wings; penetrates the Prisons;
irradiates the faces of those that were ready to perish: turnkeys and
_moutons_, fallen from their high estate, look mute and blue. It is
the 28th day of July, called 10th of Thermidor, year 1794.
"Fouquier had but to identify; his Prisoners being already Out of Law.
At four in the afternoon, never before were the streets of Paris seen
so crowded. From the Palais de Justice to the Place de la Revolution,
for _thither_ again go the Tumbrils this time, it is one dense
stirring mass; all windows crammed; the very roofs and ridge-tiles
budding forth human Curiosity, in strange gladness. The
Death-tumbrils, with their motley Batch of Outlaws, some twenty-three
or so, from Maximilien to Mayor Fleuriot and Simon the Cordwainer,
roll on. All eyes are on Robespierre's Tumbril, where he, his jaw
bound in dirty linen, with his half-dead Brother and half-dead
Henriot, lie shattered; their 'seventeen hours' of agony about to end.
The Gendarmes point their swords at him, to show the people which is
he. A woman springs on the Tumbril; clutching the side of it with one
hand, waving the other Sibyl-like; and exclaims: 'The death of thee
gladdens my very heart, _m'enivre de joie_'; Robespierre opened his
eyes; '_Scelerat_, go down to Hell, with the curses of all wives and
mothers!'--At the foot of the scaffold, they stretched him on the
ground till his turn came. Lifted aloft, his eyes again opened; caught
the bloody axe. Samson wrenched the coat off him; wrenched the dirty
linen from his jaw: the jaw fell powerless, there burst from him a
cry;--hideous to hear and see. Samson, thou canst not be too quick!
"Samson's work done, there bursts forth shout on shout of applause.
Shout, which prolongs itself not only over Paris, but over France, but
over Europe, and down to this generation. Deservedly, and also
undeservedly. O unhappiest Advocate of Arras, wert thou worse than
other Advocates? Stricter man, according to his Formula, to his Credo
and his Cant, of probities, benevolences, pleasures-of-virtue, and
suchlike, lived not in that age. A man fitted, in some luckier settled
age, to have become one of those incorruptible barren Pattern-Figures,
and have had marble-tablets and funeral-sermons. His poor landlord,
the Cabinet-maker in the Rue Saint-Honore, loved him; his Brother died
for him. May God be merciful to him and to us!
"This is the end of the Reign of Terror."
In 1799 the Place won its name Concorde. The next untoward sight that
it was to see was Prussian and Russian soldiers encamping there in
1814 and 1815, and in 1815 the British. By this time it had been
renamed Place Louis Quinze, which in 1826 was changed to Place Louis
Seize, and a project was afoot for raising a monument to that
monarch's memory on the spot where he fell. But the Revolution of 1830
intervened, and "Concorde" resumed its sway, and in 1836
Louis-Philippe, the new king (whose father, Philippe Egalite, had
perished on the guillotine here), erected the Luxor column, which had
been given to him by Mohammed Ali, and had once stood before the great
temple of Thebes commemorating on its sides the achievements of
Rameses II. Since then certain symbolic statues of the great French
cities (including unhappy Strassburg) have been set up, and the Place
is a model of symmetry; and at the time that I write (1909) a great
part of it is enclosed within hoardings for I know not what purpose,
but I hope a subway for the saving of the lives of pedestrians, for it
must be the most perilous crossing in the world. One has but to set
foot in the roadway and straightway motor-cars and cabs spring out of
the earth and converge upon one from every point of the compass, in
the amazing French way. Concorde, indeed!
[Illustration: THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE
(LOOKING NORTH)
AUTOMOBILE CLUB
THE MADELEINE
MINISTERE DE LA MARINE]
If the Place de la Concorde may be called at night a congress of
lamps, the Champs-Elysees in the afternoon may be said to be a
congress of wheels. Wheels in such numbers and revolving at such a
pace are never seen in England, not even on the Epsom road on Derby
Day. For there is no speed limit for the French motor-car. Nor have we
in England anything like this superb roadway, so wide and open,
climbing so confidently to the Arc de Triomphe, with its groves on
either side at the foot, and the prosperous white mansions afterwards.
It is not our way. We English, with our ambition to conquer and
administer the world, have neglected our own home; the French, with no
ambition any longer to wander beyond their own borders, have made
their home beautiful. The energy which we as a nation put into greater
Britain, they have put into buildings, into statues, into roads. The
result is that we have the Transvaal, Australia, New Zealand, Canada
and India, but it is the French, foregoing such possessions and all
their anxieties, who have the Champs-Elysees.
The Champs-Elysees were planned and laid out by Marie de Medicis in
1616, and the Cours la Reine, her triple avenue of trees, still
exists; but Napoleon is the father of the scheme which culminates so
magnificently in the Arc de Triomphe. The particular children's
paradise of Paris is in the gardens between the main road and the
Elysee, where they bowl their hoops and spin their Diabolo spools, and
ride on the horses of minute round-abouts turned by hand, and watch
the marionettes, with the tired eyes of Alphonse Daudet, who sits for
ever, close by, in very white stone, watching them. Here also are the
open-air cafes, the Ambassadeurs and the Alcazar, while on the other,
the river, side are the Jardin de Paris, a curiously Lutetian haunt,
and Ledoyen's, one of the pleasantest of restaurants in summer.
Just above this point we ought to turn to the left to visit the Petit
Palais and cross the Pont Alexandre III., but since we are on the way
let us now climb to the Etoile, and on to the Bois, first, however,
just turning off the Rond-Point for a moment to look at No. 3 Avenue
Matignon, where Heine (beside whose grave we are to stand on
Montmartre) suffered and died.
The Place de l'Etoile might be called a kind of gilt-edged Seven
Dials, since so many roads lead from it. Aristocratic Paris comes to a
head here. On the right runs from it the Avenue de Friedland, leading
to the Boulevard Haussmann, which meets with so inglorious an end at
the Rue Taitbout, but is perhaps to be cut through to join the
Boulevard Montmartre. Next on the right is the Avenue Hoche, running
directly into the Parc Monceau, a terrestrial paradise to which good
mondaines certainly go when they die. A little appartement overlooking
the Parc Monceau--there is tangible heaven, if you like!
The Parc itself is small but perfect, elegant and expensive and
verdant. The children (one feels) are all titled, the bonnes are
visibly miracles of distinction and the babies masses of point lace;
the ladies on the chairs must be Comtesses or Baronnes, and the air
is carefully scented. That is the Parc Monceau. It needed but one
detail to make it complete, and that was supplied a few years ago: a
statue of Guy de Maupassant, consisting of a block of the most radiant
marble to be procured, with the novelist as its apex, and at the base
a Parisienne reading one of his stories. Other statues there are: of
Ambroise Thomas the composer, to whom Mignon offers a floral tribute;
of Pailleron the dramatist, attended by an actress; of Gounod
surrounded by Marguerite, Juliet, Sappho and a little Love; and of
Chopin seated at the piano, with the figures of Night and Harmony to
inspire him. These are only a few; but they are typical. Every statue
in the Parc has a damsel or two, according to his desire. It is the
mode. There is also a minute lake, on the edge of which have been set
up a number of Corinthian columns; and before you have been seated a
minute, an old woman appears from nowhere and demands twopence for
what she poetically calls an armchair, the extra penny being added as
a compliment to the two uncomfortable wires at the side which you had
been wishing you could break off. Such is the Parc Monceau, the like
of which exists not in London: the ideal pleasaunce of the wealthy.
Through it, I might add, you may drive; but only at a walking
pace--_au pas_. If the horse were to trot he might shake some petals
off.
At the western gate is the Musee Cernuschi, containing a collection of
oriental pottery and bronzes. I am no connoisseur of these beautiful
things, but I advise all readers of this book to visit both this
museum and the Guimet in the Place d'Iena, which is a treasury of
Japanese and Chinese art.
Returning to the Etoile, the next avenue is the Avenue de Wagram,
running north to the Porte d'Asnieres, while that which continues the
Avenue des Champs-Elysees in a straight line west by north is the
Avenue de la Grande Armee, running to the Porte Maillot and Neuilly.
On the left the first avenue is the Avenue Marceau, which leads to the
Place de l'Alma; the next the Avenue d'Iena, leading to the Place
d'Iena; the next, the Avenue Kleber, running straight to the Trocadero
(into which I have never penetrated) and Passy, where the English
live; the next, the Avenue Victor Hugo, which never stops; and finally
the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, the most beautiful roadway in new
Paris, along which we shall fare when we have examined the Arc de
Triomphe.
This trophy of success was begun, as I have said, by Napoleon to
celebrate the victories of 1805 and 1806; Louis-Philippe finished it
in 1836. Why Louis XVIII. did not destroy it or complete it as a
further memorial of the Restoration, I cannot say. Napoleon's original
idea was, however, tampered with by his successors, who allowed a
bas-relief representing the Blessings of Peace in 1815 to be included.
The sculptures are otherwise wholly devoted to the glorification of
war, Napoleon and the French army; but they are not to be studied
without serious inconvenience. My advice to the conscientious student
would be to buy photographs or picture postcards, and examine them at
home: the Arc de Triomphe is too great and splendid for such detail.
From the top one can see all round Paris, and though one cannot look
down on it all as from the Eiffel Tower, or see, beneath one, such an
interesting district as from Notre Dame, it is yet a wonderfully
interesting view.
The Avenue du Bois de Boulogne has the finest road in what is, so to
speak, the Marais of the present day; that is to say, in the modern
quarter of the aristocratic and wealthy. We have seen riches and rank
moving from the Marais to the Faubourg St. Germain and from the
Faubourg St. Germain to the Faubourg St. Honore, and now we find them
here, and here they seem likely to remain. And indeed to move farther
would be foolish, for surely there never was, and could not be, a more
beautiful city site than this anywhere in the world--with its wide
cool lawns on either side, and its gay colouring, and the Bois so
near. Here too, on the heads of the comfortable complacent bonnes, are
the most radiant caps you ever saw.
The Bois de Boulogne, which takes its name from the little town of
Boulogne to the south of it, now a suburb of Paris, began its life as
a Paris park in the eighteen-fifties. Before that it was a forest of
great trees, which indeed remained until the Franco-Prussian war, when
they were cut down in order that they might not give cover to the
enemy. That is why the present groves are all of a size. I cannot
describe the Bois better than by saying that it is as if Hyde Park,
Sandown Park, Kempton Park, and Epping Forest were all thrown together
between Shepherd's Bush, Acton and the river. London would then have
something like the Bois; and yet it would not be like the Bois at all,
because it would rapidly become a desert of newspapers and empty
bottles, whereas, although in the summer populous with picnic parties,
the Bois is always clean and fresh.
There are several gates to the Bois, but the principal ones are the
Porte Maillot at the end of the Avenue de la Grande Armee, and the
Porte Dauphine at the end of the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, and it is
through the latter that the thousands of vehicles pass on their way to
the races on happy Sundays in the spring and autumn. Most English
people visiting the Bois merely drive to the races and back again; it
is quite the exception to find any one who really knows the Bois--who
has walked round the two lakes, Lac Inferieur, which feeds the cascade
under which one may walk (as at Niagara), and Lac Superieur; who has
seen a play in the Theatre de Verdure, or an exhibition at Bagatelle,
the villa of the late Sir Richard Wallace, who gave the Champs-Elysees
its drinking fountains and London the Wallace Collection. Bagatelle
now belongs to Paris. Every English visitor, however, remembers the
stone animals, dogs and deer, in the lawn of the Villa de Longchamp on
the right as one approaches the race-course, and the windmill on the
left, one of the several inoperative windmills of Paris, which
marks the site of the old Abbey of Longchamp, founded by Isabella, the
sister of Saint Louis.
[Illustration: VENUS ET L'AMOUR
REMBRANDT
_(Louvre)_]
The Bois has two restaurants of the highest quality and
price--Armenonville, close to the Porte Maillot, a favourite
dining-place when the Fete de Neuilly is in progress, in the summer,
and the Pre Catelan, near Lac Inferieur and close to the point where
the Allee de la Reine-Marguerite and the Allee de Longchamp cross. In
the summer it is quite the thing for the young bloods who frequent the
night cafes on Montmartre to drive into the Bois in the early morning
and drink a glass of milk in the Pre Catelan's dairy, perhaps bringing
the milkmaids with them.
The Bois has two race-courses, but it is at Longchamp that the
principal races are run--the Grand Prix and the Conseil Municipal.
Racing men tell me that the defect of the pari-mutuel system is that
one cannot arrange one's book, since the odds are always more or less
of a surprise; but to one who does not bet on horses anywhere but in
Paris, and who views an English bookmaker with alarm, if not positive
terror, the pari-mutuel seems perfect in its easy and silent workings
and the dramatic unfolding of its surprises. For first you have the
fun of picking out your horse; then quietly putting your money on him,
to win or for a place; and then, after the race is run and your horse
is a winner, you have those five to ten delightfully anxious minutes
while the actuaries are working out the odds.
An experience of my own will illustrate not only the method of the
system but the haphazard principles on which a stranger's modest
gambling can be done. On the morning of the races I had visited the
Louvre with Mr. Dexter, the artist of this book. We had not much time,
and were therefore proposing to look only at the Leonardos and the
Rembrandts, which are separated by a considerable stretch of gallery
hung with other pictures. On leaving the Leonardos we walked briskly
towards the Dutch end; Mr. Dexter, however, loitered here and there,
and I was some distance ahead when he called me back to see a Holbein.
It was worth going back for. In the afternoon at Longchamp, when the
time came before the race to pick out the horses who were to have the
honour of carrying my money, I noticed that one of them was named
Holbein. Having already that day been pleased with a Holbein, I
accepted the circumstance as a line of guidance, and placed a
five-franc piece on the brave animal. He came in first, and being an
outsider his price was 185.50.
The Longchamp course is perfectly managed. There are three places
where one may go--to the pesage, which costs twenty francs for a
cavalier and ten francs for a dame; to the pavillon, which is half
that price; or to the pelouse, where the people congregate, which
costs a franc. Perfect order reigns everywhere.
For the wanderer who has no carriage awaiting him and no appointments
to hurry him there are two entertaining things to do when the races
are over on a fine Sunday afternoon. One is to cross the Seine to
Suresnes by the adjacent bridge and sitting at the cafe that faces it,
watch the crowd and the traffic, for this is on a main road from Paris
to the country; or walking the other way, one may enjoy a similar
spectacle at the Cafe du Sport outside the Porte Maillot and study at
one's ease the happy French in holiday mood--the husbands with their
wives and their two children, and the Sunday lovers arm in arm.
And now we return to the Champs-Elysees in order to look at some
pictures and admire a beautiful bridge. For the Avenue Alexandre III.,
as for the Pont Alexandre III., Paris is indebted to the 1900
Exhibition. These are her permanent gains, and very valuable they are.
Of the two white palaces on either side of this green and spacious
Avenue, that on the right, as we face the golden dome of the
Invalides, is the home of the Salon and of various exhibitions. I say
Salon, but Paris now has many Salons, two of which, in more or less
amicable rivalry, occupy this building at the same time. In one, the
Salon proper, the Salon of the old guard, the Royal Academicians of
France, there are miles of paint but few experiments; in the other,
where the more independent spirits--the New Englishers, so to
speak--hang their works in personal groups, there are fewer miles but
more outrages. For outrages, however, pure and simple (or even impure
and complex), I recommend the Salon that is now held in the early
spring in some of the old Exhibition buildings on the banks of the
river, close to the Pont d'Alexandre III. I have seen pictures
there--nudities, in the manner of Aztec decorations, by the youngest
French artists of the moment--which made one want to scream. It was
said once that the French knew how to paint but not what to paint, and
the English what to paint but not how to paint it. Since then there
has been such a fusing of nationalities, such increased and humble
appreciation on the part of the English painters of the best French
methods, that one can no longer talk in that kind of cast-iron
epigram; but it is impossible to see some of the crude innovating work
now being done without the reflection that France is rapidly and
successfully creating a school of artists who not only know not what
to paint but how to paint too.
The Palais des Beaux-Arts, which was built for the collection of
pictures at the Exhibition of 1900, is now a permanent gallery for the
preservation of the various works of art acquired from time to time by
the municipality of Paris, thus differing from the Luxembourg
collections, which are national. The Palais has become a kind of
brother of the Carnavalet, the one being the historical museum of
Paris and the other--the Palais--the artistic museum of Paris. The
Palais undoubtedly contains much that is not of the highest quality,
but no one who is interested in modern French painting and drawing can
afford to neglect it, while the recent acquisition of the Collection
Dutuit, consisting chiefly of small but choice pictures of the Dutch
masters, including a picture of Rembrandt with his dog, from his own
hand, has added a rather necessary touch of antiquity.
One of the special rooms is devoted to pictures of the opulent Felix
Ziem, painter of Venetian sunsets and the sky at its most golden,
wherever it may be found, who is still (1909) living in honourable
state on those slopes of the mountain of fame which are reserved for
the few rare spirits that become old masters before they die, and who
presented his pictures to Paris a few years ago; another room is
filled with the works of the late Jean Jacques Henner, whose pallid
nudities, emerging from voluptuous gloom, still look yearningly at one
from the windows of so many Paris picture dealers. Henner, I must
confess, is not a painter whom I greatly esteem; but few modern French
artists were more popular in their day. He died in 1905, and this gift
of his work was made by his son. Other French artists to have rooms of
their own in the Palais are Jean Carries the sculptor, who died in
1894 at the age of thirty-nine, after an active career in the
modelling of quaint and grotesque and realistic figures, one of the
best known and most charming of his many works being "La Fillette au
Pantin" (No. 1338 in the collection); and Jules Dalou (1838-1902),
also a sculptor, a man of more vigour although of less charm than his
neighbour in the Palais. That strange gift of untiring abundant
creativeness which the French have so notably, Dalou also shared, his
busy fingers having added thousands of new figures to those that
already congest life, while he modelled also many a well-known head.
I think that I like best his "Esquisses de Travailleurs". Nothing
here, however, is so fascinating as Dalou's own head by Rodin in the
Luxembourg.
Of the picture collection proper I am saying but little, for it is in
a fluid state, and even in the catalogue before me, the latest
edition, there is no mention of several of its finest treasures: among
them Manet's portrait of Theodore Duret, a sketch of an old peasant
woman's hand by Madame David, a Rip Van Winkle by that modern master
of the grotesque and Rabelaisian, Jean Veber, and one of Mr. Sargent's
Venetian sketches--the racing gondoliers. For the most part it is like
revisiting the past few Salons, except that the pictures are more
choice and less numerous; but one sees many old friends, and all the
expected painters are here. It is of course the surprises that one
remembers--the three Daumiers, for example, particularly "L'Amateur
d'Estampes," reproduced opposite page 286, and "Les Joueurs d'Echecs,"
and the fine collection of the drawings of Puvis de Chavannes and
Daniel Vierge. I was also much taken with some topographical drawings
by Adrian Karbowski--No. 494 in the catalogue. Other pictures and
drawings which should be seen are those by Cazin (a sunset),
Pointelin, Steinlen (some work-girls), Sisley, Lebourg, and
Harpignies, who exhibits water-colours separated in time by fifty-nine
years, 1849 to 1908. The drawings on a whole are far better than the
paintings.
In the collection Dutuit look at Ruisdael's "Environs de Haarlem,"
Terburg's "La Fiancee," Hobbema's "Les Moulins" and a woodland scene,
Pot's "Portrait of a Man," Van de Velde's landscape sketches, and the
Rembrandt. The rooms downstairs are not worth visiting.
Among the statuary, some of which is very good, particularly a new
unsigned and uncatalogued Joan of Arc, is a naked Victor Hugo holding
a MS. in his hand; while Fremiet of course confronts the door, this
time with a really fine George and the Dragon, George having a spear
worthy of the occasion, and not the short and useless broadsword which
he brandishes on the English sovereign.
On my last visit to this thinly populated gallery I was for some time
one of three visitors, until suddenly the vast spaces were humanised
by the gracious and winsome presence of a band of Isidora Duncan's gay
little dancers, with a kindly companion to tell them about the
pictures, and--what interested them more--the statues. These tiny
lissome creatures flitting among the cold rigid marbles I shall not
soon forget.
And so we come to the Pont Alexandre III., the bridge whose width and
radiance are an ever fresh surprise and joy, and make our way to the
Invalides, at the end of the prospect, across the great Esplanade des
Invalides, so quiet to-day, but for a month of every year, so noisy
and variegated with round-abouts and booths. It is, by the way, well
worth while, whenever one is in Paris, to find out what fair is being
held. For somewhere or other a fair is always being held. You can get
the particulars from the invaluable _Bottin_ or _Bottin Mondain_,
which every restaurant keeps, and which is even exposed to public
scrutiny on a table at the Gare du Nord, and for all I know to the
contrary, at the other stations too. This is one of the lessons which
might be learned from Paris by London, where you ask in vain for a
_Post Office Directory_ in all but the General Post Office. _Bottin_,
who knows all, will give you the time and place of every fair. The
best is the Fete de Neuilly, which is held in the summer, just outside
the Porte Maillot, but all the arrondissements have their own. They
are crowded scenes of noisy life; but they are amusing too, and their
popularity shows you how juvenile is the Frenchman's heart.
One should enter the Invalides from the great Place and round off the
inspection of the Musee de l'Armee by a visit to Napoleon's tomb;
that, at least, is the symmetrical order. The Hotel des Invalides
proper, which set the fashion in military hospitals, was built by
Louis XIV., who may be seen on his horse in bas-relief on the
principal facade. The building once sheltered and tended 7,000 wounded
soldiers; but there are now only fifty. From its original function as
a military hospital for any kind of disablement it has dwindled to a
home for a few incurables; while the greater portion of the building
is now given up to collections and to civic offices. There could be no
greater contrast than that between the imposing architecture of the
main structure and the charming domestic facade in the Boulevard des
Invalides, which is one of the pleasantest of the old Paris
buildings and has some of the simplicity of an English almshouse.
[Illustration: LES PELERINS D'EMMAUES
REMBRANDT
_(Louvre)_]
It is not until we enter the great Court of Honour that we catch sight
of Napoleon, whose figure dominates the opposite wall. Thereafter one
thinks of little else. Louis XIV. disappears.
Passing some dingy frescoes which the weather has treated vilely, we
enter the Musee Historique on the left--unless one has an overwhelming
passion for artillery, armour and the weapons of savages, in which
case one turns to the right. I mention the alternative because there
is far too much to see on one visit, and it is well to concentrate on
the more interesting. For me guns and armour and the weapons of
savages are without any magic while there are to be seen such human
relics as have been brought together in the Musee Historique on the
opposite side of the Court. The whole place, by the way, is a model
for the Carnavalet, in that everything is precisely and clearly
labelled. This, since it is a favourite resort of simple
folk--soldiers and their parents and sweethearts--is a thoughtful
provision.
The Musee Historique has at every turn something profoundly
interesting, and incidentally it tells something of the men from whom
numbers of Paris streets take their names; but the real and poignant
interest is Napoleon. The Longwood room is to me too painful. The
project of the admirable administrator has been to illustrate the
whole pageant of French arms; but the Man of Destiny quickly becomes
all-powerful, and one finds oneself looking only for signs and tokens
of his personality. So it should be, under the shadow of the Dome
which covers his ashes. I would personally go farther and collect at
the Invalides all the Napoleonic relics that one now must visit so
many places to see--the Carnavalet, Fontainebleau, the Musee Grevin,
our own United Service Museum in Whitehall (as if we had the right to
a single article from St. Helena!), Madame Tussaud's, and Versailles.
There is even a room at the Arts Decoratifs devoted nominally to
Napoleon, but it has few articles of personal interest and none of any
intimacy--merely splendid costumes for occasions and ceremonials of
State, with a few of Josephine's lace caps among them. Its purpose is
to illustrate the Empire rather than the Emperor, but the Invalides
should have what there is.
At the Invalides you may, I suppose, see in three or four rooms more
Napoleonic relics of a personal character than anywhere else. In
Whitehall is the chair he died in; but here is his garden-seat from
St. Helena, one bar of which was removed to allow him as he sat to
pass his arm through and be more at his ease as he looked out to the
ocean that was to do nothing for him. At Whitehall is the skeleton of
his horse Marengo; here is the saddle. Here are his grey redingote and
more than one of his hats. Among the relics in the special Napoleonic
rooms those of his triumph and his fall are mixed. Here is the bullet
that wounded him at Ratisbon; here are his telescopes and his maps,
his travelling desks and his pistols; here are the toys of the little
Duke of Reichstadt; here is the walking stick on which Napoleon
leaned at St. Helena, his dressing-gown, his bed, his armchair and his
death-mask. Here are the railings of the tomb at St. Helena, and a
case of leaves and stones and pieces of wood and other natural
surroundings of the same spot. Here also is the pall that covered his
coffin on the way to its final burial under the Dome close by.
It is a fitting end to the study of these storied corridors to pass to
the tomb of the protagonist of the drama we have been contemplating.
The Emperor's remains were brought to Paris in 1840, nineteen years
after his death at St. Helena. Thackeray, in his _Second Funeral of
Napoleon_, wrote a vivid, although to my mind hateful, description of
the ceremonial: a piece of complacent flippancy, marked by the worst
kind of French irreverence, which shows him in his least admirable
mood, particularly when he is pleased to be amusing over the
difference between the features of the Emperor dead and living. None
the less it is an absorbing narrative.
One looks down upon the sarcophagus, which lies in a marble well. It
is simple, solemn and severe, and to a few persons, not Titmarshes,
inexpressibly melancholy. The Emperor's words from his will, "Je
desire que mes cendres reposent sur les bords de la Seine, au milieu
de ce peuple francais que j'ai tant aime," are placed at the entrance
to the crypt. He had not the Invalides in mind when he wrote them; but
one feels that the Invalides is as right a spot for him as any in this
land of short memories and light mockeries.