THE COCKAYNES IN PARIS.
The morning after a bevy of "the blonde daughters of Albion" have
arrived in Paris, Pater--over the coffee (why is it impossible to get
such coffee in England?), the delicious bread, and the exquisite
butter--proceeds to expound his views of the manner in which the time of
the party should be spent. So was it with the Cockaynes, an intensely
British party.
"My dears," said Mr. Cockayne, "we must husband our time. To-day I
propose we go, at eleven o'clock, to see the parade of the Guard in the
Rue de Rivoli; from there (we shall be close at hand) we can see the
Louvre; by two o'clock we will lunch in the Palais Royal. I think it's
at five the band plays in the Tuileries gardens; after the band----"
"But, dear papa, we want to look at the shops!" interposes the gentle
Sophonisba.
"The what, my dear? Here you are in the capital of the most polished
nation on the face of the earth, surrounded by beautiful monuments that
recall--that are, in fact----"
"Well!" firmly observes Sophonisba's determined mamma; "you, Mr.
Cockayne, go, with your Murray's handbook, see all the antiquities, your
Raphaels and Rubens, and amuse yourself among the cobwebs of the Hôtel
Cluny; _we_ are not so clever--we poor women; and while you're rubbing
your nose against the marbles in the Louvre, we'll go and see the
shops."
"We don't mind the parade and the band, but we might have a peep at just
a few of the shops near the hotel, before eleven," observes Sophonisba.
Cockayne throws up his eyes, and laments the frivolity of women. He is
left with one daughter (who is a blue) to admire the proportions of the
Madeleine, to pass a rapturous hour in the square room of the Louvre,
and to examine St. Germain l'Auxerrois, while the frivolous part of his
household goes stoutly away, light-hearted and gay as humming-birds, to
have their first look at the shops.
[Illustration: A GROUP OF MARBLE "INSULAIRES." _So cold and natural they
might be mistaken for life_.]
I happen to have seen the shops of many cities. I have peered into the
quaint, small-windowed shops of Copenhagen; I have passed under the
pendant tobacco leaves into the primitive cigar-shops of St. Sebastian;
I have hobbled, in furs, into the shops of Stockholm; I have been
compelled to take a look at the shops of London, Dublin, Edinburgh,
Liverpool, and a host of other places; but perfect shopping is to be
enjoyed in Paris only; and in the days gone by, the Palais Royal was the
centre of this paradise. Alas! the days of its glory are gone. The lines
of splendid boulevards, flanked with gorgeous shops and _cafés_; the
long arcades of the Rue de Rivoli; and, in fine, the leaning of all
that is fashionable, and lofty, and rich to the west, are the causes
which have brought the destruction of the Palais Royal. Time was when
that quaint old square--the Place-Royale in the Marais--was mighty
fashionable. It now lies in the neglected, industrious, factory-crowded
east--a kind of Parisian Bloomsbury Square, only infinitely more
picturesque, with its quaint, low colonnades. You see the fine Parisians
have travelled steadily westward, sloping slowly, like "the Great
Orion." They are making their way along the Champs-Elysées to the Avenue
de l'Impératrice; and are constructing white stone aristocratic suburbs.
So the foreigners no longer make their way direct to the Palais Royal
now, on the morrow of their arrival in Paris. If they be at the Louvre,
they bend westward along the Rue de Rivoli, and by the Rue de la Paix,
to the brilliant boulevards. If they be in the Grand Hôtel, they issue
at once upon these famous boulevards, and the ladies are in a feminine
paradise at once. Why, exactly opposite to the Grand Hôtel is Rudolphi's
remarkable shop, packed artistically with his works of art--ay, and of
the most finished and cunning art--in oxidized silver. His shop is most
admirably adapted to the articles the effect of which he desires to
heighten. It is painted black and pointed with delicate gold threads.
The rich array of jewellery and the rare ecclesiastical ornaments stand
brightly out from the sombre case, and light the window. The precious
stones, the lapis lazuli, the malachite, obtain a new brilliance from
the rich neutral tints and shades of the chased dulled silver in which
they are held.
Sophonisba, her mamma and sisters, are not at much trouble to decide the
period to which the bracelet, or the brooch, or the earring belongs.
"_Cinque cento_, my dear! I know nothing about that. I think it would
suit my complexion."
"I confess to a more modern taste, Sophonisba. That is just the sort of
thing your father would like. Now, do look at those--sphinxes, don't
you call them--for a brooch. I think they're hideous. Did you ever see
such ears? I own, that diamond dew-drop lying in an enamel rose leaf,
which I saw, I think, in the Rue de la Paix, is more to my taste."
And so the ladies stroll westward to the famous Giroux (where you can
buy, an it please you, toys at forty guineas each--babies that cry, and
call "mamma," and automata to whom the advancement of science and art
has given all the obnoxious faculties of an unruly child), or east to
the boulevards, which are known the wide world over, at least by name,
the Boulevards de la Madeleine, des Capucines, des Italiens, Montmartre.
These make up the heart and soul of Paris. Within the limits of these
gorgeous lines of shops and _cafés_ luxury has concentrated all her
blandishments and wiles. This is the earthly heaven of the Parisians.
Here all the celebrities air themselves. Here are the Opera stars, the
lights of literature, the chiefs of art, the dandies of the Jockey Club,
the prominent spendthrifts and eccentrics of the day. About four
o'clock in the afternoon all the known Paris figures are lounging upon
the asphaltum within this charmed space. Within this limit--where the
Frenchman deploys all his seductive, and vain, and frivolous airs; where
he wears his best clothes and his best manners; where he loves to be
seen, and observed, and saluted--the tradesmen of the capital have
installed establishments the costliness and elaborateness of which it is
hardly possible to exaggerate. The gilding and the mirrors, the marbles
and the bronze, the myriad lamps of every fantastic form, the quaint and
daring designs for shop fronts, the infinite arts employed to
"set off" goods, and the surprising, never-ceasing varieties of
art-manufacture--whether in chocolate or the popular Algerian
onyx--bewilder strangers. Does successful Mr. Brown, who, having doffed
the apron of trade, considers it due to himself to become--so far as
money can operate the strange transformation--a _fine fleur_; does he
desire also to make of plain, homely Mrs. Brown a leader of fashion and
a model of expensive elegance?--here are all the appliances and means in
abundance. Within these enchanted lines Madame B. may be made "beautiful
for ever!" Every appetite, every variety of whim, the cravings of the
gourmet and the dreams of the sybarite, may be gratified to the utmost.
A spendthrift might spend a handsome patrimony within these limits, nor,
at the end of his time, would he call to mind a taste he had not been
able to gratify.
Sophonisba enters this charmed region of perfect shopping from the west.
Tahan's bronze shop, at the corner of the Rue de la Paix, marks (or did
mark) its western boundary. There are costly trifles in that window--as,
book cutters worth a library of books, and cigar-stands, ash-trays,
pen-trays, toothpick-holders (our neighbours are great in these), and
match, and glove, and lace, and jewel-boxes--of wicked price. Ladies are
not, however, very fond of bronze, as a rule. The great Maison de
Blanc--or White House--opposite, is more attractive, with its gigantic
architectural front, and its acres of the most expensive linens,
cambrics, &c. Ay, but close by Tahan is Boissier. Not to know Boissier
is to argue yourself unknown in Paris. He is the shining light of the
confectioner's art. Siraudin, of the Rue de la Paix, has set up a
dangerous opposition to him, under the patronage of a great duke, whose
duchess was one day treated like an ordinary mortal in Boissier's
establishment, but Boissier's clients (nobody has customers in Paris)
are, in the main, true to him; and his sweets pass the lips still of
nearly all the élégantes of the "centre of civilization." Peep into his
shop. Miss Sophonisba is within--_la belle insulaire!_--buying a bag
of _marrons glacés_, for which Boissier is renowned throughout
civilization. The shop is a miracle of taste. The white and gold are
worthy of Marie Antoinette's bedroom at St. Cloud--occupied, by the way,
by our English queen, when she was the guest of the French Emperor in
1855. The front of the shop is ornamented with rich and rare caskets. A
white kitten lies upon a rosy satin cushion; lift the kitten, and you
shall find that her bed is a _bon-bon_ box!
"How very absurd!" exclaims Sophonisba's mamma, _bon-bon_ boxes not
being the particular direction which the extravagance of English ladies
takes.
Close by the succulent establishment of M. Boissier, to whom every
dentist should lift his hat, is the doorway of Madame Laure. Sophonisba
sees a man in livery opening the door of what appears to be the entrance
to some quiet learned institution. She touches her mamma upon the arm,
and bids her pause. They had reached the threshold of a temple. Madame
Laure makes for the Empress.
"Ah! to be sure, my child, so she does," Sophonisba's mamma replies. "I
remember. Very quiet-looking kind of place, isn't it?" It is impossible
to say what description of "loud" place had dwelt in the mind of
Sophonisba's mamma as the locale where the Empress Eugénie's milliner
"_made_" for her Majesty. Perhaps she hoped to see two _cent gardes_
doing duty at the door of an or-molu paradise.
At every step the ladies find new excitement. By the quiet door of
Madame Laure is the renowned Neapolitan Ice Establishment, well known to
most ladies who have been in Paris. Why should there not be a Neapolitan
ice _café_ like this in London? Ices we have, and we have Granger's; but
here is ice in every variety, from the solid "bombe"--which we strongly
recommend ladies to bear in mind next time--to the appetizing _Ponch à
la Romaine_! Again, sitting here on summer evenings, the lounger will
perceive dapper _bonnes_, or men-servants, going in and out with little
shapely white paper parcels which they hold daintily by the end. Madame
has rung for an ice, and this little parcel, which you might blow away,
contains it. Now, why should not a lady be able to ring for an ice--and
an exquisitely-flavoured Neapolitan ice--on the shores of "perfidious
Albion?"
"I wish Papa were here," cries Sophonisba; "we should have ices."
Sophonisba's mamma merely remarks that they are very unwholesome things.
Hard by is Christofle's dazzling window, Christofle being the Elkington
of France.
"Tut! it quite blinds one!" says the mamma of Sophonisba. Christofle's
window is startling. It is heaped to the top with a mound of plated
spoons and forks. They glitter in the light so fiercely that the eye
cannot bear to rest upon them. Impossible to pass M. Christofle without
paying a moment's attention to him. And now we pass the asphaltum of the
boulevard of boulevards--that known as "the Italiens." This is the apple
of the eye of Paris.
"Now, my dears," says Sophonisba's mamma, "now we can really say that we
are in Paris." The shops claimed the ladies' attention one by one. They
passed with disdain the _cafés_ radiant with mirror and gold, where the
selfish men were drinking absinthe and playing at dominoes. It had
always been the creed of Sophonisba's mamma that men were selfish
creatures, and she had come to Paris only to see that she was right.
They passed on to Potel's.
Potel's window is a sight that is of Paris Parisian. It is more imposing
than that of Chevet in the Palais Royal. In the first place Potel is on
"the Italiens." It is a daily store of all the rarest and richest
articles of food money can command for the discontented palate of man.
The truffled turkeys are the commonest of the articles. Everybody eats
truffled turkeys, must be the belief of Potel. If salmon could peer into
the future, and if they had any ambition, they would desire, after
death, to be artistically arrayed in fennel in the shop-window of Potel.
Would not the accommodating bird who builds an edible nest work with
redoubled ardour, if he could be assured that his house would be some
day removed to the great window on "the Italiens?"
Happy the ortolans whom destiny puts into Potel's plate of honour! Most
fortunate of geese, whose liver is fattened by a slow fire to figure
presently here with the daintiest and noblest of viands! The pig who
hunts the truffle would have his reward could he know that presently the
fragrant vegetable would give flavour to his trotter! And is it not a
good quarter of an hour's amusement every afternoon to watch the
gourmets feasting their eyes on the day's fare? And the _gamins_ from
the poor quarters stare in also, and wonder what those black lumps are.
Opposite Potel's is a shop, the like of which we have not, nor, we
verily believe, has any other city. It is the show-store of the
far-famed Algerian Onyx Company. The onyx is here in great superb
blocks, wedded with bronze of exquisite finish, or serving as background
to enamels of the most elaborate design. Within, the shop is crammed
with lamps, jardinières, and monumental marbles, all relieved by
bronzes, gold, and exotics. The smallest object would frighten a man of
moderate means, if he inquired its price. There is a flower shop not far
off, but it isn't a shop, it's a bower. It is close by a dram-shop,
where the cab-men of the stand opposite refresh the inner man. It
represents the British public-house. But what a quiet orderly place it
is! The kettle of punch--a silver one--is suspended over the counter.
The bottles are trim in rows; there are no vats of liquid; there is no
brawling; there are no beggars by the door--no drunkards within. It is
so quiet, albeit on the Boulevard, not one in a hundred of the
passers-by notice it. The lordly Café du Cardinal opposite is not more
orderly.
Past chocolate shops, where splendidly-attired ladies preside;
wood-carving shops, printsellers, pastrycooks--where the savarins
are tricked out, and where _petit fours_ lie in a hundred
varieties--music-shops, bazaars, immense booksellers' windows; they who
are bent on a look at the shops reach a corner of the Grand Opera
Street, where the Emperor's tailor dwells. The attractions here are, as
a rule, a few gorgeous official costumes, or the laurel-embellished tail
coat of the academician. Still proceeding eastward, the shops are
various, and are all remarkable for their decoration and contents. There
is a shop where cots and flower-stands are the main articles for sale;
but such cots and such flower-stands! The cots are for Princes and the
flower-stands for Empresses. I saw the Empress Eugénie quietly issuing
from this very shop, one winter afternoon.
Sophonisba's mother lingered a long time over the cots, and delighted
her mother-eye with the models of babies that were lying in them. One,
she remarked, was the very image of young Harry at home.
And so on to "Barbédienne's," close by the well-known Vachette.
Sophonisba, however, will not wait for our description of the renowned
Felix's establishment, where are the lightest hands for pastry, it is
said, in all France. When last we caught sight of the young lady, she
was _chez_ Felix, demolishing her second _baba!_ May it lie lightly on
her--!
I humbly beg the pardon of Mademoiselle Sophonisba!