MONTMARTRE
Steep Streets--The Musee Moreau--The
Sacre-Coeur--Francoise-Marguerite--Paris and Her
Beggars--A Ferocious Cripple--The Communard
Insurrection--The Maison Dufayel--Heinrich Heine--The
Cimetiere de Montmartre--The Boulevard de Clichy--Cabarets
Good and Bad--An Aged Statesman is Entertained--Three
Bals--Paris and Late Hours--The Night Cafes--The Tireless
Dancers--A Coat-tail--The Dead Maitre d'Hotel.
One may gain Montmartre by every street that runs off the Grands
Boulevards on the left, between the Opera and the Place de la
Republique; but when the night falls and the tide begins to turn that
way, it is the Rue Blanche and the Rue Pigalle that do most of the
work. All are very steep. To the wayfarer climbing the hill in no
hurry, I recommend for its interest the Rue des Martyrs (Balzac once
lived at No. 47), leading out of the Rue Laffitte; or, starting from
the Boulevards at a more easterly point, one may gain it by the Rue du
Faubourg Montmartre, which runs into the Rue des Martyrs at Notre Dame
de Lorette and is full of activity and variety.
By taking the Rue de la Rochefoucauld one may spend a few minutes in a
little white building there which was once the home and studio of the
painter Gustave Moreau and is now left to the nation as a permanent
memorial of his labours. In industry the man must have approached
Rubens and Rembrandt, for this, though a large house, is literally
filled with paintings and drawings and studies, which not only cover
the walls but cover screens built into the walls, and screens within
screens, and screens within those. The menuisier and Moreau together
have contrived to make No. 14 Rue de la Rochefoucauld the most tiring
house in Paris--at least to me, who do not admire the work of this
painter, or at any rate do not want to see more of it than is in the
Luxembourg, where may be seen several of his pictures, including the
most famous of all, the Salome. Herr Baedeker considers that Moreau's
works have a charm of their own, but I do not find it. I find a
striving after the grandiose and startling, with only occasional
lapses into sincerity and good colour. It is better than Wiertz, no
doubt; but less entertaining, because less shocking.
Montmartre's life may for our purpose be divided into three distinct
periods: day, evening, and the small hours. By day one may roam its
streets of living and of dead and study Paris from its summit; in the
evening its cabarets are in full swing; and then comes midnight when
its supper cafes open, not to close or cease their melodies until the
shops are doing business again.
Montmartre (so called because it was here that St. Denis and his
associates were put to death) really is a mountain, as any one who
has climbed to the Sacre-Coeur can tell. The last two hundred yards
are indeed nearly as steep as the Brecon Beacons; but the climb is
worth it if only for the view of Paris. (There is, however, a
funicular railway.) As for the cathedral, that seems to me to be
better seen and appreciated from the distance: from the train as one
enters Paris in the late afternoon, with the level sun lighting its
pure walls; from the heights on the south side of the river; from the
Boulevard des Italiens up the Rue Laffitte; and from the
Buttes-Chaumont, as in Mr. Dexter's exquisite drawing. For the
cathedral itself is not particularly attractive near at hand, and
within it is cold and dull and still awaiting its glass. It was,
however, one of the happiest thoughts that has come to Rome in our
time to set this fascinating bizarre Oriental building here. It gave
Paris a new note that it will now never lose.
Before leaving, one ought perhaps to have a peep at
Francoise-Marguerite, for one is not likely to see her equal again.
Francoise-Marguerite, otherwise known as La Savoyarde de Montmartre,
is the great bell given to the cathedral by the province of Savoy. She
weighs nineteen tons, is nine feet tall, and her voice has remarkable
timbre.
Behind the new cathedral lies the old church of St.
Pierre-de-Montmartre, on the side of which, it is said, once stood a
temple of Mars. (Hence, for some lexicographers, Mont-Mars and
Montmartre; but I prefer to think of St. Denis wandering here without
his head.) It was in the crypt of this church, I have somewhere read,
that Ignatius Loyola, with Xavier and Laine, founded the order of
Jesuits.
I attended early mass at the Sacre-Coeur church on January 1st,
1908. It was snowing lightly and very cold, and as I came away, at
about eight, and descended the hill towards Paris, I was struck by the
spectacle of the lame and blind and miserable men and women who were
appearing mysteriously from nowhere to descend the hill too, groping
and hobbling down the slippery steepnesses. Such folk are an uncommon
sight in Paris, where every one seems to be, if not robust, at any
rate active and capable, and where, although it eminently belongs to
the poor as much as to the rich, extreme poverty is rarely seen. In
London, where the poor convey no possessive impression, but, except in
their own quarters, suggest that they are here on sufferance, one sees
much distress. In Paris none, except on this day, the first of the
year--and on one or two others, such as July 14th--when beggars are
allowed to ask alms in the streets. For the rest of the year they must
hide their misery and their want, although I still tremble a little as
I remember the importunities of the Montmartre cripple of ferocious
aspect and no legs at all, fixed into a packing-case on wheels, who,
having demanded alms in vain, hurls himself night after night along
the pavement after the hard-hearted, urging his torso's chariot by
powerful strokes of his huge hands on the pavement, as though he
rowed against Leander, with such menacing fury that I for one have
literally taken to my heels. He is the only beggar I recollect meeting
except on the permitted days, and then Paris swarms with them.
Standing on the dome of the cathedral one has the city at one's feet,
not as wonderfully as on the Eiffel Tower, but nearly so. From the
Buttes-Chaumont we see Montmartre: here we see the Buttes-Chaumont,
which, before it was a park, shared with Montmartre the gypsum
quarries from which plaster of Paris is made. Beyond the
Buttes-Chaumont is Pere Lachaise, a hill strangely mottled by its
grave-stones, while immediately below us is the Cimetiere du Nord,
which we are about to visit for the sake of certain very interesting
tombs.
One realises quickly the strategical value of this mountain. Paris has
indeed been bombarded from it twice--by Henri IV., and again, only
thirty-eight years ago. It was indeed on Montmartre that the Communard
insurrection began, for it was the cannon on these heights that the
rebel soldiers at once made for after the assassination of their
officers. They held them for a while, but were then overpowered and
forced to take up their quarters in the Buttes-Chaumont and Pere
Lachaise, which were shelled by the National Guard from Montmartre
until the brief but terrible mutiny was over.
The great dome, close by us on the left, which might be another
Pantheon, crowns the Maison Dufayel. Who is Dufayel? you ask. Well,
who is Wanamaker, who was Whiteley? M. Dufayel is the head of the
gigantic business in the Boulevard Barbes, a northern continuation of
the Boulevard de Magenta. His advertisements are on every hoarding. I
think the Maison Dufayel is well worth a visit, especially as there is
no need to buy anything: you may instead sip an aperitif, listen to
the band or watch the cinematoscope. One also need have none of that
fear of what would happen were there to be a sudden panic which always
keeps me nervous if ever I am lured into the Magasins du Louvre or the
Galeries Lafayette; for at Dufayel's there is space, whereas at those
vast shopping centres there is a congestion that, in a time of stress
would lead to perfectly awful results. The Maison Dufayel is not so
varied a repository as Wanamaker's or Whiteley's: but in its way it is
hardly less remarkable. Its principal line is furniture, and I never
saw so many beds in my life. It was M. Dufayel who brought to
perfection the deposit system of payment, and his agents continually
range the otherwise pleasant land of France, collecting instalments.
Since I had wandered into this monstrous establishment, which may not
be as large as Harrod's Stores but feels infinitely vaster, I
determined to buy something, and decided at last upon a French
picture-book for an English child. Buying it was a simple operation,
but I then made the mistake of asking that it might be sent to England
direct. One should never do that in a bureaucratic country. The lady
led me for what seemed several miles through various departments
until we came late in the day to rows and rows of Frenchmen and
Frenchwomen each in a little glass box. These boxes were numbered and
ran to hundreds. We stopped at last before, say, 157, where my guide
left me. The Frenchman in the box denied at once that the book could
go by post. It was too large. It must go by rail. For myself, I did
not then care how it went or if it went at all: I was tired out. But
feeling that such an act as to abandon the parcel and run would be
misconstrued and resented in a home of such perfect mechanical order,
I waited until he had written for a quarter of an hour in a fine
flowing hand with a pen sharper than a serpent's tooth, and then I
paid the required number of francs and set out on the desperate errand
of finding the street again. The book was a week on its journey. Go to
Dufayel's, I say, most certainly, for it is quite amusing; but go when
you are young and strong.
To me the most interesting thing on Montmartre is the grave of
Heinrich Heine in the Cimetiere du Nord, a strange irregular city of
dead Parisians all tidily laid away in their homes in its many
streets, over which a busy rumbling thoroughfare has been carried on a
viaduct. I had Heine's _Salon_ with me when I was last in Paris, and I
sought his grave again one afternoon with an increased sense of
intimacy. A medallion portrait of the mournful face is cut in the
marble, and on the grave itself are wistful echoes of the _Buch der
Lieder_. A little tin receptacle is fixed to the stone, and I looked
at the cards which in the pretty German way visitors had left upon
the poet and his wife; for Frau Heine lies too here. All were German
and all rain-soaked (or was it tears?)
[Illustration: LA PROVENDE DES POULES
TROYON
_(Louvre: Thomy-Thierret Collection)_]
Matthew Arnold in his poem called Heine's grave black: the present one
is white. How do the lines run?
"_Henri Heine_"----'tis here!
That black tombstone, the name
Carved there--no more! and the smooth,
Swarded alleys, the limes
Touch'd with yellow by hot
Summer, but under them still,
In September's bright afternoon,
Shadow, and verdure, and cool.
Trim Montmartre! the faint
Murmur of Paris outside;
Crisp everlasting-flowers,
Yellow and black, on the graves.
Half blind, palsied, in pain,
Hither to come, from the streets'
Uproar, surely not loath
Wast thou, Heine!--to lie
Quiet, to ask for closed
Shutters, and darken'd room,
And cool drinks, and an eased
Posture, and opium, no more;
Hither to come, and to sleep
Under the wings of Renown.
Ah! not little, when pain
Is most quelling, and man
Easily quell'd, and the fine
Temper of genius so soon
Thrills at each smart, is the praise,
Not to have yielded to pain
No small boast, for a weak
Son of mankind, to the earth
Pinn'd by the thunder, to rear
His bolt-scathed front to the stars;
And, undaunted, retort
'Gainst thick-crashing, insane,
Tyrannous tempests of bale,
Arrowy lightnings of soul
* * * * *
Ah! as of old, from the pomp
Of Italian Milan, the fair
Flower of marble of white
Southern palaces--steps
Border'd by statues, and walks
Terraced, and orange-bowers
Heavy with fragrance--the blond
German Kaiser full oft
Long'd himself back to the fields,
Rivers, and high-roof'd towns
Of his native Germany; so,
So, how often! from hot
Paris drawing-rooms, and lamps
Blazing, and brilliant crowds,
Starr'd and jewell'd, of men
Famous, of women the queens
Of dazzling converse--from fumes
Of praise, hot, heady fumes, to the poor brain
That mount, that madden--how oft
Heine's spirit outworn
Long'd itself out of the din,
Back to the tranquil, the cool
Far German home of his youth
See! in the May-afternoon,
O'er the fresh, short turf of the Hartz,
A youth, with the foot of youth,
Heine! thou climbest again.
* * * * *
But something prompts me: Not thus
Take leave of Heine! not thus
Speak the last word at his grave!
Not in pity, and not
With half censure--with awe
Hail, as it passes from earth
Scattering lightnings, that soul!
The Spirit of the world,
Beholding the absurdity of men--
Their vaunts, their feats--let a sardonic smile,
For one short moment wander o'er his lips.
_That smile was Heine!_--for its earthly hour
The strange guest sparkled; now 'tis passed away.
That was Heine! and we,
Myriads who live, who have lived,
What are we all, but a mood,
A single mood, of the life
Of the Spirit in whom we exist,
Who alone is all things in one?
Spirit, who fillest us all!
Spirit, who utterest in each
New-coming son of mankind
Such of thy thoughts as thou wilt!
O thou, one of whose moods,
Bitter and strange, was the life
Of Heine--his strange, alas,
His bitter life!--may a life
Other and milder be mine!
May'st thou a mood more serene,
Happier, have utter'd in mine!
May'st thou the rapture of peace
Deep have embreathed at its core;
Made it a ray of thy thought,
Made it a beat of thy joy!
Heine has many illustrious companions. If you would stand by the grave
of Berlioz and Ambroise Thomas, of Offenbach, who set all Europe
humming, of Delibes the composer of Genee's "Coppelia," of the
brothers Goncourt, of Renan, who wrote the _Life of Christ_, or of
Henri Murger, who discovered Bohemia, of De Neuville, painter of
battles, of Halevy and Meilhac the playwrights, or of Theophile
Gautier the poet, you must seek the Cimetiere du Nord.
Montmartre in the evening centres in the Boulevard de Clichy--a
high-spirited thoroughfare. Many foreigners visit it only then, and
the Boulevard spreads its wares accordingly, and very tawdry some of
them are. Here, for example, is a garish facade labelled "Ciel," in
which a number of grubby blackguards dressed as saints and angels
first bring refreshments at a franc a glass, and then offer the
visitor a "preche humoristique" followed by variations of Pepper's
ghost in what are called "scenes paradisiaques," the whole performance
being cold, tawdry and very stupid. Next door is "Enfer," where
similar delights are offered, save that here the suggestion is not of
heaven but hell. Instead therefore of grubby blackguards as saints we
have grubby blackguards as devils. On the opposite side of the road is
the Cabaret du Neant, where you are received with a mass for the dead
sung by the staff, and sit at tables made of coffins.
It is hardly necessary to say that very few Parisians enter these
places. The singing cabarets, however, are different: they are
genuine, and one needs to be not only a Parisian but a very
well-informed Parisian to appreciate them, for the songs are
palpitatingly topical and political. The Quatz'-Arts, the Lune-Rousse
and the Chat-Noir (once so famous, but now lacking in the genius
either of Salis, its founder, or of Caran d'Ache, Steinlen or
Willette, who helped to make it renowned) are all in the Boulevard de
Clichy. So also is Aristide Bruant's cabaret, where an organised shout
of welcome awaits every visitor, and Aristide--in costume a cross
between a poet and a cowboy--sings his realistic ballads of Parisian
street life. Here also is the Moulin-Rouge, which in the old days of
the elephant was in its spurious way amusing, but is now rebuilt and
redecorated out of knowledge, and for all the words you hear might be
on Broadway.
Here also, at the extreme western end of the Boulevard, is the
Hippodrome, now a hippodrome only in name and given up to the popular
cinematoscope. I regret the loss of the real Paris Hippodrome. Paris
still has her permanent circuses, but the Hippodrome is gone. It was
there that, one night, in 1889, I chanced to sit very near the royal
box, into which, with much bowing and scraping of managers, a
white-haired old gentleman with the features of a lion and an eagle
harmoniously blended was ushered. He was only seventy-nine, this old
gentleman, and he was in the thick of such duties as fall to the
Leader of the Opposition and promoter of Home Rule for Ireland; but he
followed every step of the performance like a schoolboy, and now and
then he sent for an official to have something explained to him, such
as, on one occasion, the workings of the artificial snow-storm which
overwhelmed Skobeleff's army. That ill-fated Russian general was the
hero of the spectacle, a remarkable one in its way; but to me the
restless animation and whole-hearted enjoyment of Mr. Gladstone was
the finer entertainment.
Montmartre has also three dancing halls, two of which are genuine and
one a show-place. The genuine halls are the Moulin-de-la-Galette, high
on the hill on the steepest part of it above the Moulin-Rouge, and the
Elysee in the Boulevard de Rochechouart, which are open only two or
three times a week and which are thronged by the shop-assistants and
young people of the neighbourhood. The spurious hall is the Bal
Tabarin, which is open every evening and is a spectacle. It is,
however, by no means unamusing, and I have spent many pleasant idle
hours there. Willette's famous fresco of the apotheosis of the
Parisian leg decorates a wall-space over the bar with peculiar
fitness. At all the bals the men who dance retain their hats and often
their overcoats, and for the most part leave their partners with
amazing abruptness at the last step. Some of the measures are
conspicuous for a lack of restraint that would decimate an English
ballroom; but one must not take such displays "at the foot of the
letter": they do not mean among these Latin romps and frolics what
they would mean with us, whose emotions are less facile and sense of
fun less physical.
And so we come to midnight, when Montmartre enters its third, and, to
a Londoner exasperated by the grandmotherly legislation of his own
city, its most entertaining phase. The idea that Paris is a late city
is an illusion. Paris is not a late city: it is a city with a few late
streets. Paris as a whole goes to bed as early as London, if not
earlier, as a walk in the residential quarters will prove. Montmartre
is late, and the Boulevards des Capucines and des Italiens are late,
although less so; and that is about all. When it is remembered that
Paris rises and opens its shops some hours earlier than London, and
that the Parisians value their health, it will be recognised that
Paris could not be a late city. One must remember also that the number
of all-night cafes is very small, so small that by frequenting them
with any diligence one may soon come to know by sight most of the late
fringe of this city, both amateurs and professionals. One is indeed
quickly struck by their numerical weakness.
There is a fashion in night cafes as in hats; change is made as
suddenly and as inexplicably. One month every one is crowding into,
let us say, the Chat Vivant, and the next the Chat Vivant kindles its
lamps and tweaks its mandolins in vain: all the world passes its doors
on the way to the Nid de Nuit. What is the reason? No one knows
exactly; but we must probably once again seek the woman. A new dancer
(or shall I say attachee?) has appeared, or an old dancer or attachee
transferred her allegiance. And so for a while the Nid has not a free
table after one o'clock, and on a special night--such as Mi-Careme, or
Reveillon, or New Year's Eve--it is the head-waiter and the
door-keeper of the Nid into whose hands are pressed the gold coins
and bank notes to influence them to admit the bloods and their parties
and find them a table. A year ago the douceur (often fruitless) would
have gone to the officials of the Chat Vivant.
They remain, when all has been said against them, simple and
well-mannered places, these half-dozen famous cafes on which the sun
always rises. To think so one must perhaps graduate on the Boulevards,
but once they are accepted they can become an agreeable habit.
Sleepiness is as unknown there as the writings of Thomas a Kempis. Not
only the dancers de la maison but the visitors too are tireless. There
may be ways of getting ennui into a Parisian girl, but certainly it is
not by dancing. Nor does the band tire either, one excellent rule at
all of them being that there should be no pause whatever between the
tunes, from the hour of opening until day.
[Illustration: THE WINDMILL
R. P. BONINGTON
(_Louvre_)]
There lies before me as I write an amusing memorial of the innocent
high spirits that can prevail on such a special all-night sitting as
Reveillon: one of the tails of a dress coat, lined with white satin on
which a skilful hand has traced with a fountain pen (my own) two very
intimate scenes of French life. These drawings were made between five
and six in the morning in the intervals of the dance, the artist,
lacking paper, having without a word taken a table knife and shorn off
his coat-tails for the purpose. His coat, I may say, was already being
worn inside out, with one of the leather buckles of his braces as a
button-hole. A tall burly man, with a long red Boulevard beard, he had
thrown out signs of friendliness to me at once, and we became as
brothers. He drew my portrait on the table-cloth; I affected to draw
his. He showed me where I was wrong and drew it right. He then left
me, in order to walk for a while on an imaginary tight-rope across the
floor, and having safely made the journey and turned again, with
infinite skill in his recoveries from falling and the most dexterous
managing of a balancing-pole that did not exist, he leaped lightly to
earth again, kissed his hand to the company, and again sat by me and
resumed his work; finally, after other diversions, completing the chef
d'oeuvre that is now lying on my desk and lending abandon to what is
otherwise a stronghold of British decorum. We parted at seven. I have
never seen him since, but I find his name often in the French comic
papers illustrating yet other phases of their favourite pleasantry for
the entertainment of this simple and tireless people.
Another incident I recall that is equally characteristic of
Montmartre. "Ca ne fait rien," said a head-waiter when we had
expressed regret on hearing of the death of the maitre d'hotel, for
whom (an old acquaintance) we had been asking. "Ca ne fait rien: it is
necessary to order supper just the same." True. True indeed
everywhere, but particularly true on Montmartre.