THE GRANDS BOULEVARDS: II. THE OPERA TO THE PLACE DE LA REPUBLIQUE
The Christmas Baraques--The Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin--The
Rue Laffitte--La Musee Grevin--The Bibliotheque
Nationale--The Roar of Finance--Tailors as Cartoonists--A
Bee-hive Street--Cities within the City--Pompes
Funebres--The Church as Advertiser--The Great
Marguery--Gates which are not Gates--The Life of St.
Denis--Highways from Paris--The First Theatre--St. Martin's
Act of Charity--The Arts et Metiers; a Modern Cluny--Statues
of the Republic.
From the Place de l'Opera to the Place de la Republique is an
interesting and instructive walk, but at no time of the day a very
easy one; and between five o'clock and half-past six, and eight and
ten, on the north pavement, it is always almost a struggle; but when
the baraques are in full swing around Christmas and the New Year, it
is a struggle in earnest, at any rate as far as the Rue Drouot. Indeed
Christmas and New Year, but especially Christmas Eve and New Year's
Eve, are great times in France, and presents are exchanged as
furiously as with us.
On Christmas Eve--Reveillon as it is called--no one would do anything
so banal as to go to bed. The restaurants obtain a special permission
to remain open, and tables are reserved months in advance.
Montmartre, never very sleepy, takes on a double share of wakefulness.
The first street on our left, the Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin, is one
of the busiest in Paris, with excellent shops and many interesting
associations. Madame Recamier lived at No. 7, the site of the Hotel
d'Antin. So also did Madame Necker and Madame Roland, and for a while
Edward Gibbon. Chopin lived at No. 5. This street, by the way, has
suffered almost more than any other from the Parisian fickleness in
nomenclature. It began as the Rue de la Chaussee Gaillon, then Rue de
l'Hotel Dieu, then Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin, from Richelieu's Hotel
d'Antin, then the Rue Mirabeau, from the revolutionary who lodged and
died at No. 42, then, when Mirabeau's body was removed ignominiously
from the Pantheon, the Rue Mont Blanc, and in 1815 it became once
again the Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin.
At the foot of the Rue Laffitte one should stop, because one gets
there a glimpse of Montmartre's white and oriental cathedral, hanging
in mid-air, high above Paris and the church of Notre Dame de Lorette.
This street is, to me, one of the most entertaining in the city, for
almost every other shop is a picture-dealer's, and to loaf along it,
on either side, is practically to visit a gallery. Two or three of
these shops keep as a continual sign the words "Bronzes de Barye". The
Rue Laffitte was named after the banker Jacques Laffitte, whose bank
was in the Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin. Cerutti, who delivered
Mirabeau's funeral oration, set up his revolutionary journal _La
Feuille Villageoise_ here. At the Hotel Thelusson at the end of the
street the Incroyables and the Merveilleuses assembled. Among the
guests was General Buonaparte, and it was here that he first met
Josephine Beauharnais.
The Musee Grevin, to which we soon come on the left, is the Parisian
Tussaud's; and it is as much better than Tussaud's as one would expect
it to be. Tussaud's is vast and brilliant; the Musee Grevin is small
and mysterious. There is so little light that every one seems wax, and
one has to look very narrowly and anxiously at all motionless figures.
The particular boast of the Grevin is its groups: not so much the Pope
and his pontifical cortege, the coulisses of the Opera (a scene of
coryphees and men about town), and the Fete d'Artistes, as the
admirable tableaux of the Revolution. To the untutored eye of one who,
like myself, avoids waxworks, the Grevin figures and grouping are good
and, what is perhaps more important, intelligent. Pains have been
taken to make costumes and accessories historically accurate, and in
many cases the actual articles have been employed, notably in the
largest tableau of all--"Une Soiree a Malmaison"--which was arranged
under the supervision of Frederic Masson, the historian, an effigy of
whom stands near by. Among these scenes the historical sense of the
French child can be really quickened. There are also tableaux of Rome
in the time of the early Christians--very clever and painful.
[Illustration: MADAME LE BRUN ET SA FILLE
MADAME LE BRUN
_(Louvre)_]
At the Rue Drouot, at the conjunction of the Boulevards des
Italiens and de Montmartre, there is an angle. Hitherto we have been
walking west by north; we now shall walk west by south. From this
point we shall also observe a difference in the character of the
street, which will become steadily more bourgeois. At this corner,
where the traffic is always so congested, owing largely to the
omnibuses with the three white horses abreast that cross to and from
the Rue Richelieu, all the best cafes are behind us.
If that L32,000,000 reconstruction scheme of which I have already
spoken comes to pass, this point will be unrecognisable, for among the
items in that programme is the uniting of the Boulevard Haussmann,
which now comes to an abrupt end at the Rue Taitbout, with the
Boulevard de Montmartre, which, as a glance at the map will show, is
in a line with it. But my hope is that the improvement will be long
deferred.
It is in the Rue Richelieu that the Bibliotheque Nationale stands,
where the foreign resident in Paris may read every day, precisely as
at the British Museum, provided always that he is certified by his
Consul to be worthy of a ticket, and the visitor may on certain days
examine priceless books and autographs, prints and maps and cameos and
wonderful antiquities. Here once lived Cardinal Mazarin, and it is in
the galerie that bears his name that the rarest bindings are to be
seen--some from Grolier's own shelves. Among the MSS. is that of
Pascal's _Pensees_. The library, which is now perhaps the finest in
existence, has been built up steadily by the kings of France, even
from Charlemagne, but Louis XII. was the first of them who may really
be called a bibliophile, to be worthily followed by Francois I. It was
not until 1724, in the reign of Louis XV., that the royal collection
was removed to this building. The Revolution greatly added to its
wealth by transferring hither the libraries of the destroyed convents
and monasteries. The treasures in the Cabinet de Medailles I cannot
describe; all I can say is that they ought not to be missed. They may
be called an extension of the Galerie d'Apollon in the Louvre.
Before leaving the Bibliotheque I should add that in certain of its
rooms, with an entrance in the Rue Vivienne, exhibitions are
periodically held, and it is worth while to ascertain if one is in
progress. In the spring of 1908 I saw there a most satisfying display
of Rembrandt's etchings.
It was in one of the old book-shops in the neighbourhood of the
Bibliotheque that I received my first impression of the Paris Bourse.
I was turning over little pocket editions of Voltaire's _Pucelle_ and
naughty Crebillons and such ancient boudoir fare, when I began to be
conscious of a sound as of a thousand boys' schools in deadly rivalry.
On hurrying out to learn the cause I found Paris in its usual
condition of self-containment and intent progress; no one showed any
sign of inquisitiveness or excitement; but on the steps of the Bourse
I observed a shouting, gesticulating mob of men who must, I thought,
be planning a new Reign of Terror. But no; they were merely financiers
engaged in the ordinary work of life. The Bourse is free, and I
climbed the steps, pushed through the money-makers, and entered. Never
again. I have seen men engaged in the unlovely task of acquiring lucre
by more or less improper means in various countries, but I never saw
anything so horrible as the rapacity expressed upon the faces of this
heated Bourse populace.
Capel Court is not indifferent to the advantages of a successful coup,
but Capel Court differs from the Bourse not only in a comparative
retention of its head, but also in a certain superficial appearance of
careless aristocracy. Capel Court dresses well and keeps time for a
practical joke now and then. The Bourse is shabby and in the grip of
avarice. Wall Street and the Chicago pit, I am told, are worse: I have
not seen them; but no race-course scramble for odds could exceed the
horrors of that day in the Bourse. The home, by the way, of this daily
vociferous service of Mammon, was built on the site of the old convent
of the Filles de St. Thomas. During the Revolution the connection
between the Bourse and Heaven was even closer, for the church of the
Petits Peres was then set apart for Exchange purposes.
Returning to the point where we left the Boulevard--at the Rue
Richelieu--I am moved to ask what would happen in London if Messrs.
Baker in the Tottenham Court Road or Messrs. Gardiner in Knightsbridge
were suddenly to break out into caricature and embellish their windows
with scarifying cartoons of Kings, Kaisers, Presidents and Premiers?
The question may sound odd, but it is simple enough if you visit the
High Life tailor at the corner of the Rue Richelieu, or, farther east,
a similar establishment at the corner of the Rue de Rougemont, for it
then becomes obvious that it is quite part of the duties of the large
Parisian clothier to do his part in forming public opinion. These
cartoons are always bold and clever, although often too municipal for
the foreigner's apprehension.
I have said somewhere that one of my favourite streets in Paris is the
Rue Montorgeuil. That is largely, as I have explained, because it is
old and narrow, and the people swarm in it, and the stalls are so
many, and the houses are high and white and take the sun so bravely,
and it smells of Paris; and also, of course, because the Compas d'Or
is here, bringing the middle ages so nigh. Another favourite is the
Rue du Faubourg Montmartre (which is now the next on the left
eastward) for its busy happy shops and its moving multitudes. In its
own narrow way it is almost as crowded as the Grands Boulevards.
A little way up this street, on the right, is a gateway leading into a
very curious backwater, as noticeably quiet as the highways are noisy
and restless: the Cite Bergere, the largest of those cites within a
cite of which Paris has several, to be compared in London only with
St. Helen's Place in Bishopsgate or Park Row at Knightsbridge. The
Cite Bergere is practically nothing but hotels--high and narrow, with
dirty white walls and dirty green shutters--very cheap, and very
incurious as to the occupations of their guests, whether male or
female. It has a gate at each end which is closed at night and
penetrated thereafter only at the goodwill of the concierge, whom it
is well to placate. The Cite Bergere leads into the Cite Rougemont
(hence offering an opportunity to an innkeeper between the two to hang
out the imposing sign of the Hotel des Deux Cites), and from the Cite
Rougemont you gain that district of Paris where the woollen merchants
congregate.
Returning to the Grands Boulevards, the next street on the left is the
Rue Rougemont, and if we take this we come in a few moments to the
Conservatoire, where so many famous musicians have been taught, and
where Coquelin and Sarah Bernhardt learned the art of elocution. There
is a little museum at the Conservatoire in which every variety of
musical instrument is preserved, together with a few personal relics,
such as a cast of Paganini's nervous magical hand, with its long
sharply pointed fingers, and the death-mask of Chopin.
Close to the Conservatoire is the darkest church in Paris--Saint
Eugene, a favourite spot for funeral services. I chanced once to
stay in a room overlooking this church, until the smell of mortality
became too constant. There was a funeral every day: every morning
the undertakers' men were busy in the preparations for the
ceremony--draping the facade with heavy curtains of a blackness that
seemed to darken the circumambient air: every afternoon removing it,
together with the other trappings of the ritual--the candlesticks and
furniture. It is not without reason that the French undertaker
ambushes beneath the imposing style of Pompes Funebres.
It was, by the way, on the walls of Saint Eugene, each side of the
door, that I first saw any of those curious affiches, made, I suppose,
necessary, or at any rate prudent, by recent events in France,
directing notice to--advertising, I almost wrote, and indeed why
not?--the advantages of religion. Religion (this is what the notice
came to in essence), religion has its points after all. When President
Fallieres' daughter was married, it remarked, where was the ceremony
performed? In a church. (Ha, Ha!) Who, it asked, is called to visit a
man on his death-bed, no matter how wicked he has been? A priest.
(Touche!) And so forth. Surely a strange document.
In the same street is an old book-stall whose shelves are fastened to
the wall, giving the appearance of an open-air library for all--the
Carnegie idea at its best. There used to be one on the side of the
Hotel Chatham in the Rue Volney (opposite Henry's excellent American
Bar) but it has now gone.
We may regain the Boulevards by turning down the long Rue du Faubourg
Poissoniere, which leads direct, through the Rue Montorgeuil, to the
Halles and the Pont Neuf--a very good walk. Passing Marguery's great
restaurant on the left, famous for its filet de sole in a special
sauce, which every one should eat once if only to see the great
Marguery on his triumphant progress through the rooms, bending his
white mane over honoured guests, we come to a strange thing--a
massive archway in the road, parallel with the pavements, which I
think needs a little explanation. It will take us far from the Grands
Boulevards: as far, in fact, as _The Golden Legend_; for the arch is
the Porte St. Denis, and St. Denis is the patron saint of Paris.
[Illustration: LE PONT DE MANTES
COROT
_(Louvre: Moreau Collection)_]
St. Denis was not a Frenchman but an Athenian, who was converted by
St. Paul in person, after considerable discussion. Indeed, discussion
was not enough: it needed a miracle to win him wholly. "And as," wrote
Caxton, "S. Denis disputed yet with S. Paul, there passed by adventure
by that way a blind man tofore them, and anon Denis said to Paul: If
thou say to this blind man in the name of thy God: See, and then he
seeth, I shall anon believe in him, but thou shalt use no words of
enchantment, for thou mayst haply know some words that have such might
and virtue. And S. Paul said: I shall write tofore the form of the
words, which be these: In the name of Jesu Christ, born of the virgin,
crucified and dead, which arose again and ascended into heaven, and
from thence shall come for to judge the world: See. And because that
all suspicion be taken away, Paul said to Denis that he himself should
pronounce the words. And when Denis had said those words in the same
manner to the blind man, anon the blind man recovered his sight. And
then Denis was baptized and Damaris his wife and all his meiny, and
was a true Christian man and was instructed and taught by S. Paul
three years, and was ordained bishop of Athens, and there was in
predication, and converted that city, and great part of the region, to
christian faith."
Denis was sent to France by Pope Clement, and he converted many
Parisians and built many churches, until the hostile strategy of the
Emperor Domitian prevailed and he was tortured, the scene of the
tragedy being Montmartre. "The day following," says Caxton, "Denis was
laid upon a gridiron, and stretched all naked upon the coals of fire,
and there he sang to our Lord saying: Lord thy word is vehemently
fiery, and thy servant is embraced in the love thereof. And after that
he was put among cruel beasts, which were excited by great hunger and
famine by long fasting, and as soon as they came running upon him he
made the sign of the cross against them, and anon they were made most
meek and tame. And after that he was cast into a furnace of fire, and
the fire anon quenched, and he had neither pain ne harm. And after
that he was put on the cross, and thereon he was long tormented, and
after, he was taken down and put into a dark prison with his fellows
and many other Christian men.
"And as he sang there the mass and communed the people, our Lord
appeared to him with great light, and delivered to him bread, saying:
Take this, my dear friend, for thy reward is most great with me. After
this they were presented to the judge and were put again to new
torments, and then he did do smite off the heads of the three fellows,
that is to say, Denis, Rusticus, and Eleutherius, in confessing the
name of the holy Trinity. And this was done by the temple of Mercury,
and they were beheaded with three axes. And anon the body of S. Denis
raised himself up, and bare his head between his arms, as the angel
led him two leagues from the place, which is said the hill of the
martyrs, unto the place where he now resteth, by his election, and by
the purveyance of God. And there was heard so great and sweet a melody
of angels that many of them that heard it believed in our Lord."
Any one making the pilgrimage from, say, Notre Dame to the town of St.
Denis to-day, can follow the saint's footsteps, for the Rue St. Denis
at the foot of Montmartre leads out into the Rue du Faubourg St.
Denis, and that street right over Montmartre, Caxton's hill of the
martyrs, to St. Denis itself. I do not pretend that the legend as it
is thus given has not been subjected to severe criticism; but when one
has no certain knowledge, the best story can be considered the best
evidence, and I like Caxton better than the others, even though it
conflicts a little with the legend of St. Genevieve. It is she, I
might add, who is credited with having inaugurated the pilgrimage to
St. Denis's bones.
The Rue St. Denis was more than the road to the saint's remains: it
was the great north road out of Paris to the sea. Just as the old
Londoners bound for the north left by the City Road and passed through
the village of Highgate, so did the French traveller leave by the Rue
St. Denis and pass through the village of St. Denis. Similarly the Rue
St. Martin was the high-road to Germany. In the old days, when this
street was a highway, the Porte St. Denis had some meaning, for it
stood as a gateway between the city and the country; but to-day, when
the course of traffic is east and west, it stands (like the Porte St.
Martin) merely as an obstruction in the Grand Boulevard--not quite so
foolish as our own revised Marble Arch, but nearly so. The Porte St.
Denis dates from 1673 and celebrates, as the bas-reliefs indicate, the
triumphs of Louis XIV. in Germany and Holland; the Porte St. Martin
(to which we are just coming) belongs to the same period and
commemorates other successes of the same monarch.
The Rue St. Denis is one of the most entertaining of the old streets
of Paris, although adulterated a little by omnibuses and a sense of
commerce. But to have boundless time before one, and no cares, and no
fatigue, and starting at the Porte St. Denis to loiter along it
prepared to penetrate every inviting court and alluring
by-street--that is a great luxury. The first theatre in Paris, and
indeed in France, was in the Hospital of the Trinity in the Rue St.
Denis. That was early in the fifteenth century, and it was designed
for the performance of Mystery plays in which the protagonist was, of
course, Jesus Christ. Paris has now many theatres, with other ideals;
but whatever their programmes may be, they proceed from that early and
pious spring.
We come next to the Boulevard de Strasbourg, running north to the Gare
de l'Est, and the Boulevard de Sebastopol, running south to the Ile de
la Cite; and then to the second archway, the Porte St. Martin. St.
Martin (who was Bishop of Tours) lived in Paris for a while, and it
was here that he performed the miracle of healing a leper by embracing
him--an act commemorated by Henri I. in the founding of the Priory of
St. Martin, which stood a little way down the Rue St. Martin on the
left, on a site on which the Musee des Arts et Metiers now stands. But
it was at Amiens that the saint's most beautiful act--the gift of his
cloak to a beggar--was performed, and perhaps I may be allowed to
quote here, from another book of mine, the translation of a poem by M.
Haraucourt, the curator of the Cluny museum, celebrating that deed:--
CHARITY
Because so bitter was the rain,
Saint Martin cut his cloak in twain,
And gave the beggar half of it
To cover him and ease his pain.
But being now himself ill clad,
The Saint's own case was no less sad.
So piteously cold the night;
Though glad at heart he was, right glad.
Thus, singing, on his way he passed,
While Satan, grim and overcast,
Vowing the Saint should rue his deed,
Released the cruel Northern blast.
Away it sprang with shriek and roar,
And buffeted the Saint full sore,
Yet never wished he for his cloak;
So Satan bade the deluge pour.
Huge hail-stones joined in the attack,
And dealt Saint Martin many a thwack,
"My poor old head!" he smiling said,
Yet never wished his cape were back.
"He must, he shall," cried Satan, "know
Regret for such an act," and lo,
E'en as he spoke the world was dark
With fog and frost and whirling snow.
Saint Martin, struggling toward his goal,
Mused thoughtfully, "Poor soul! poor soul!
What use to him was half a cloak?
I should have given him the whole."
The cold grew terrible to bear,
The birds fell frozen in the air:
"Fall thou," said Satan, "on the ice
Fall thou asleep, and perish there."
He fell, and slept, despite the storm,
And dreamed he saw the Christ Child's form
Wrapped in the half the beggar took,
And seeing Him, was warm, so warm.
The Arts et Metiers is a museum devoted to the progress of mechanics
and the useful crafts: a kind of industrial exhibition, a modern
utilitarian Cluny. It is a memorial of the world's ingenuity and the
ingenuity of France in particular, and one cannot have a much better
reminder that the frivolity of the Grands Boulevards is not all.
Apropos, however, of the frivolity of the Grands Boulevards, I may say
that the case that was attracting most interest on the Sunday that I
was here contained a collection of all the best mechanical toys of the
past dozen years, with their dates affixed. The only article in the
vast building which seemed to serve no useful purpose was a mirror
cracked during the Commune by a bullet, with the bullet still in it.
In the square opposite the Musee is the statue of Beranger, who for
many years made the ballads of the French nation.
[Illustration: THE PORTE ST. DENIS
(SOUTH FACADE)]
Returning to the Grands Boulevards once more, we pass first the Porte
St. Martin theatre, where the great Coquelin played Cyrano, and where
he was rehearsing _Chantecler_ when he died, and then the Ambigu, home
of sensational melodrama, and come very shortly to the Place de la
Republique, with its great central monument. The Republic thus
celebrated is not merely the Third and present Republic, but all the
efforts in that direction which the French have made, as the twelve
reliefs round the base will show, for they begin with the scene in the
Jeu de Paume in 1789, and end with the National Fete on July 14th,
1880. Paris would still have statues of the Republique if this were to
go, for there is one by Dalou, the sculptor of these bas-reliefs, in
the Place de la Nation, and another by Soitoux at the Institut. Dalou
(whose work we saw in such profusion at the Little Palace in the
Champs-Elysees) made a very spirited and characteristic group, with
the Republic standing high on a chariot being drawn by lions and urged
forward by an ouvrier and an ouvriere.
There is another and hardly less direct walk eastward to the Place de
la Republique, which, taken slowly and amusedly, instructs one as
fully in the manners of the busy small Parisian as the Boulevards in
those of the flaneur. This route is by the Rue de Provence, the Rue
Richer, the Rue des Petites-Ecuries and the Rue Chateau
d'Eau--practically a straight line, and in the old days a highway. You
see the small Parisian at his busiest--at her busiest--this way.