THE “LITTLE PEOPLE” OF PARIS
The “little people” of Paris are not confined to any particular quarter
of the city. They are to be found everywhere, in spacious avenues,
in streets of heraldic renown, in the sinister neighbourhood of La
Roquette, through the noisy length of St. Denis. Opposite the palace of
the Duke of La Rochefoucauld in the Rue de Varennes will you see an old
curiosity shop, and close by work a mild-eyed cobbler and his wife, a
little sempstress. Excellent types, both of these indefatigable little
people of Paris, living in two tidy attics of this aristocratic street,
with an air of quiet independence. The little people are of all sorts:
beginning with the “little” _bourgeoise_ and ending with the rag-picker
and the _marchand de quatre saisons_. The little _bourgeoise_ is a
curious study, and to penetrate into the precincts where she breathes and
thrives, the foreigner must be her boarder. Else will he obtain none but
a superficial view of her; and as her aspect is generally cheerful, her
manners pleasing, he will be disposed to think better of her than she
altogether deserves. The thrift of the little _bourgeoise_ must be given
its real and ugly name, avarice, for it is nothing else. It has turned
its back upon the virtue of economy, and has assumed the coarseness of
a vice. And so when she furnishes a spare room, it is that she shall
exploit mercilessly the stranger at her gates. The traveller in search of
experience may drop in upon her, but those not supplied with patience,
with fortitude in the endurance of cynical imposition and lucre to meet
complacently exorbitant demands upon their purse, should avoid this
interesting creature, and go to a hotel. In the first place, the opening
of private doors to the traveller or over-seas student is so foreign
to the habits and instincts of her race, that once she has allowed the
brilliant idea of “taking in” a foreign boarder to enter her narrow mind,
she starts immediately by magnifying her legitimate profits, and in her
ardour to amass francs on ground where she is practically free from all
commercial or professional restrictions, she is not beset by any paltry
fear of overstepping the limits of honesty. Her sole conception of that
homely virtue lies in its rigid application in her own regard, in an
austere resolution to see that nobody on earth shall cheat her of the
value of a single farthing. I know not which is the more astounding: her
inflexible insistence on the honesty of her _bonne_, or the flexibility
of her conscience when she comes in contact with alien claims upon her
own honesty.
Her favourite boarder is the young American or English art student.
Young women she naturally prefers, because it is easier to fleece them,
and they are shyer of monetary disputes than men or experienced women.
She will not scruple to demand for the poorest table imaginable and
the perfunctory service of a single maid-of-all-work, the terms of a
first-rate _pension_ or a comfortable hotel, where there are servants in
plenty and the table is varied and excellent. Her excuse is that, not
being a boarding-house keeper or a hotel keeper (“Would that she were
either!” dejectedly moan her victims), she is entitled to relatively
higher prices for the privilege of a seat at a private table. In the
region of bills she is altogether her own mistress, for she has no
commercial reputation at stake to balance her notions on the subject of
profits, which are colossal, and so she enters every extra she can think
of with gaiety of heart, and a smiling conviction that all is fair that
puts cash into the big pocket of the rapacious little _bourgeoise_. Not
that she will risk frightening off a possible boarder by a revelation
of this view beforehand, and no mention of those formidable trifles
called “extras” will be made in the preliminary treaty. Then it will be
all beguilement and blandishment, allurement and promise, with a hint of
paradise through the open door of her modest establishment. Within there,
seems to say this cheering creature, will you find the warmth of home,
maternal care and tenderness when you are ill, and intelligent sympathy
in all hours. Ten pounds a month seems a small sum to pay for this, and
you enter gratefully, not disposed to criticise, on the contrary, eager
to see everything through the rose hue of satisfaction, to find another
fifty or seventy francs added to your bill at the end of the month for
wine, light, coffee, service, linen, and baths. When fire comes to
be included, you discover that you might have boarded, with comfort,
independence, and good living, for the same price in one of the hotels
of the Rue de Rivoli. For independence is the very last thing the little
_bourgeoise_ is disposed to allow her “paying guest.” It needs a quality
of brain of which she is destitute, to recognise a single woman’s right
to liberty.
The foreign boarder’s days under her roof constitute a march through
surprises. Here no gleaming glass and shining damask at table; no
flowers, no silver, no tasteful arrangement of desert; for tablecloth a
coarse sheet and cloths to match for napkins, sometimes patched, and
invariably sewn down the middle. There is nothing to please the eye or
the palate, but the disappointed boarder must stoically hold her tongue
if she would maintain agreeable relations. The hostess is an arbitrary
as well as a parsimonious and dishonest housekeeper. The exactions, the
arrogance, must be allowed to remain all on her side and the malcontent
has nothing to do but pay a month’s board and lodging in advance and pack
up her things. If she stays, a hushed civility is expected from her, and
all payments rigidly in advance. Why, the little _bourgeoise_ should have
instituted this singular law, that a month’s food should be paid for
before it has been consumed, I have never been able to understand: but I
confess I have never been able to master the complicated ethics of this
interesting woman. She is a fervent Catholic, attends church regularly
morning and evening, confesses, teaches Catholicism and morality to the
outcast infant, and never seems to suspect that honesty is one of the
virtues incorporated in the Christian doctrine. When she orders anything
for you she will pay one price in the shop and charge you another; yet,
good, consistent creature, she goes to market on market days after Mass
to take note of the prices, in order to calculate to a farthing what the
day’s purchases will cost, so that the _bonne_ shall not cheat her of the
value of a sou. This is hard on the _bonne_, whom she pays as little
as she can, and underfeeds, and overworks, and who is thus defrauded of
one of the acknowledged perquisites of the servant in France,—_le sou
du franc_. When a Parisian servant makes a purchase over a franc, each
tradesman returns her a sou on every franc paid in cash. The avid “little
_bourgeoise_” usually insists on having this sou back, and if the _bonne_
is meek and afraid she gives up the sou, for her mistress understands the
question of perquisites only in her own right. She watches her servant
closely, though there is nothing of a shrew or a Sally Brass about her.
She victimises her through the attendant vice of avaricious, unsleeping
suspicion. And so she visits the kitchen when the girl has left, to see
if a lump of sugar or a piece of bread, or anything else, should be
secreted anywhere. Perhaps once a week she will give the domestic martyr
a half-dozen rotten strawberries or cherries when these can be had for
next to nothing, or the last spoonful of rice or stewed prunes when the
enraged boarders have turned their eyes from nauseous remains of these
choice dishes three or four days old.
Her cuisine is a thing to gape at. You forget you are in France, the land
of good, inexpensive living, and pronounce it frankly execrable. The
dinner usually consists of vegetable water or greasy water with pieces of
bread floating about, of ragged _bouilli_ (the meat used in the boiling
of this insipid liquid), a tasteless dish of sorrel and of stewed prunes
that will be served no less than four or five times successively until
the very last of the dish has been consumed, or a dish of rice which
will also in its half-finished condition make its successive appearance
until the last grain has vanished, and the dish, presumably on the score
of economy, on which these luxuries are served will not even be changed.
In the same quaint spirit the remains of cold vegetables are reheated
and served again, with such result for eye and palate as no pen can
describe. Whatever you find at her table you may know beforehand will be
of the worst and cheapest of its kind, and there will be as little as
possible of it. When fruit outside, in the markets, along the streets in
barrows, in the shops, is plentiful, excellent, and absurdly cheap, she
will assure you it is far too expensive for her table, and treat three
art students, each paying, exclusive of extras, ten pounds a month, to
musty biscuits and dried figs that taste like caked sawdust. As for
sweet dishes, creams, sauces, varieties of well-cooked vegetables, all
the thousand little kickshaws we associate with the dainty French term
cuisine, these you are as likely to find at her table as ice-cream or
champagne.
The home life of the little _bourgeoise_ is a strange and a dull one.
She possesses a house, one wonders why, when a bedroom seems to be all
that she requires. She lives in her bedroom as Englishwomen of the same
class live in their parlours. That a _salon_ was made for use, to be
sat in and worked in and talked in, never enters her head. She uses her
dining-room only for meals, and thus never has any fire in it during the
winter, does not dream of lighting the stove which every French _salle
à manger_ has, however small. She puts on a shawl to go into lunch and
dinner. The _salon_ is hermetically sealed all the week, and opened
gingerly should she have an at-home day; if not, it is opened only when
some very important visitors call. I have known a little _bourgeoise_,
whose “paying guest” I, for my misfortune, happened to be, who allowed
the inmates of her establishment to pass into the _salon_ after dinner
for exactly an hour. At nine o’clock she rose and graciously dismissed
us from the sacred precincts, bidding us disperse to our chambers, while
she locked up the holy of holies. Here, as elsewhere, I discovered that
such a thing as a comfortable chair or sofa is unknown, undreamed of by
the little _bourgeoise_. To do her justice, she never lounges herself,
and consequently does not understand the need. This is the admirable side
of her character,—the complete absence of self-indulgence. She swindles
you, not for her comfort, but for the security of her old age. She is
circumspect and formal in all her attitudes, absolutely self-respecting,
of a cordial coldness, and there is something impersonal, something
claustral in her selfishness. I have remarked that nuns resemble her
astonishingly in all their material relations with the world: the same
implacable hardness, the same smiling austerity, the same lack of honesty
or of consideration for others, the same resolute determination to get
the best of outsiders in the matter of labour or bargains, to give as
little and obtain as much as possible in all transactions, to underfeed,
underpay, and overwork,—and all with the same high air of self-approval
and righteousness.
Religious communities will cheerfully, singing, as it were, hymns of
thanks, do for the glory of God things modest pagans would shrink from
in honour of the devil, and the little French _bourgeoise_ has much
of this inexplicable complacency in dishonesty. Like the nuns, she is
active and virtuous, and she is most pleasant as long as you are pliant
and uncomplaining,—the ideal art student! But she is essentially a
despot, the unyielding mistress of her own house; and she is cynically
indifferent to your dissatisfaction should you think fit to make it
visible. She has no hesitation whatever in letting you understand,
with a sincerity that does her honour, that she did not take you as a
boarder with the naïve intention of rendering you comfortable or giving
you an adequate return for your money, but with the simpler design of
making a considerable profit on you. She will say to you, with that
French independence I ever admire, that it is not your purse but hers
that is in question; and I judge her to regard as idiots such saints as
Martin of Tours and Francis of Assisi. Truth is no more conspicuous than
charity and honesty among her virtues, for she will lie with a courage
befitting a nobler cause in the interests of her pocket. The minute and
persevering genius of Balzac alone could follow her through the maze of
economical twists she has devised wherewith to save or make a sou. She
is impaled in my memory over her sugar-bowl like the king of nursery
legend counting out his money. If avarice be an impediment to reception
within the gates of Paradise I fear my arrogant, self-approving little
friend has small chance in the next world. Yet far be it from me to deny
her good qualities and her charm. She is so well-mannered, so pleasant,
so intelligent, such a plausible villain when off the field of her
illegitimate profits, that fain would I see her flourish and triumph.
After all, money matters are not the sole test of virtue. I have known
persons of the most unimpeachable honesty and delicacy on this ground,
utterly insupportable in all things else, with horrid tempers and
tongues, an utter lack of heart, which is not the little _bourgeoise’s_
failing, for if you are ill she will overwhelm you with kindness and
attentions, accompanied ever with her equable, smiling cordiality; and
if your bill is the heavier, well, at least you have had the pleasure
of the attentions; and her presence, when you are not considering its
consequences in your bill, is more often than not a tonic and a ray
of sympathy and gaiety. Of so priceless a quality is gaiety, that
good-humoured roguery is better any day than sour, ill-natured honesty.
The small dressmaker is another pleasing picture of the humbler walks
of Paris. The _grisette_ I deem to be as extinct as the dodo, while the
class of work-girl I have in view may be supposed to step out of her
rank. But the novelist who would try to turn her into copy for Musset or
Mürger would be all abroad. She earns her bread honestly and diligently
in the skilful exercise of her art, with a band of juvenile needle-women
round her who ought to be playing in the fields, but who, instead, are
content to sit in a tiny workroom and sew and snip all day. Nothing
more dignified, more modest, more self-respecting than all this young
world, seemingly unaware of any reasons for dissatisfaction. The youthful
mistress exercises her authority with good-humour and gentleness,
and her willing little workers appear really fond of her. It is in
Paris that I have become converted to Tolstoi’s belief that the humble
class is the _vrai grand monde_, a thousand times more interesting and
instructive, worthier of our admiration, than the wealthy and educated
classes. The deeper you penetrate into these obscure lives, the deeper
you feel a sense of humiliation by confrontation with the futility of
education, breeding, blood,—the accepted adjuncts of superiority. The
poor and humble of the world are inarticulate, and they live and die
unconscious of the heroism of their existence. But the average woman
of the people gathers more virtue into a single day than the educated
woman, who enjoys the priceless benefits of leisure, space, and ease,
spreads over a week. Mark the gaiety and content with which she will
toil for inadequate pay, rising early, resting late, with few pleasures,
fewer distractions, maintaining through all her never-ending trials a
dignity of bearing, an ideal of honesty, an incomparable altitude of
disinterestedness that should shame us for the idle price we put upon
birth and education. Let us pick out of the crowd one figure of the small
dressmaker Dickens or Daudet might have made a charming study of. I have
been observing her life now for some years with friendly interest, and
have not found a flaw in it. She is good to look upon, a supple French
figure, clear skin, pretty features, reddish soft eyes, and red hair
a painter would delight to paint. Young, too, with winning manners,
she would not have far to look for assistance in her difficulties with
term-day, work-girls, and other expenses. Her father, an invalid, and her
mother live in a suburb, and she dwells alone all the week in a somewhat
squalid flat near the Bon Marché, her own protector, and needing none
other; such is her indestructible purity. No well-born girl could show a
more delicate reserve towards men than this pretty French dressmaker, no
nun could reveal herself less of a flirt. Her sole desire is to please
her customers and extend her connexion, to work early and late, sometimes
into the small hours of the morning; and her sole distraction, after a
week’s hard labour, is to go out to her parents in a dusty suburb beyond
Sant-Ouen, from Saturday evening to Monday morning. She never grumbles,
she is never unhappy; and though I give her books and encourage her to
talk to me about them, I have never detected in her remarks a particle
of envy or discontent with her humble lot. Her mind is clear and fresh,
essentially a lady’s mind, and her notions on the score of honesty are as
primitive as those of the poet who taught us in our infancy that it was
a sin to steal a pin. Quite as good and graceful pictures may be drawn
from the lower class of sempstresses who come to the house and work by
the day. These, too, have their ideal of conduct, which owes nothing to
education, and which a lady need not disown.
The _concierge_ belongs to a more complex order of being. These often run
down to desperate depths of degradation, and, in the wealthy quarters
especially, constitute one of the curses of Parisian life. I suspect
it is the tips and the endless sources of gossip that demoralise them.
And yet I can remember a delightful old lady, who looked as if she had
stepped out of a perfumed page of the last century, with her lovely white
hair fluffy and soft under a black mantilla; tiny, elegant, wrinkled
hands; gentle glance and exquisite smile, with the manners as well as the
appearance of a French marquise. She was my _concierge_, and a sweeter,
more disinterested little creature I have never known. I lived on the
fifth floor, and had no servant, contenting myself with the services of a
_femme de ménage_ in the morning. I was seriously ill for months; and had
this dear, gentle old lady been a relative or a friend she could not have
nursed me more devotedly, and never a farthing in coin would she accept.
She overwhelmed me with thousands of charming attentions, and the only
payment she would take gratefully was the assurance that they gave me
pleasure.
So, though I constantly hear terrible tales of the wicked doings of the
Paris _concierge_, I have to pass them over lightly for the sake of my
white-haired little marquise. Whenever I want to show an English friend
what an enchanting creature a Frenchwoman of the people can be, I make a
point of passing through her street, for the pleasure of looking in on
her, and saying, “Good-day” to my old friend. The _concierge_, should he
or she happen to be disagreeable, can do a singular lot of mischief, and
make the lodger’s life a burden to him. If you are out, friends who call
can be sent up several flights of stairs for nothing; if you are in, your
callers will be assured you are out. Letters can be held over, mislaid,
or forgotten; your servants can be set by the ears in the _concierge_’s
parlour; evil reports can be spread of you in the neighbourhood;
hints given to trades-people against your solvency. All these things
I have known to happen to persons in discordant relations with their
_concierge_; so that it is recognised in Paris that if the _concierge_
does not like you, the best thing you can do is to pack up your things,
pay a term in advance, and go.
The rag-picker of Paris is a familiar figure. To him belongs, I know
not why, some of the glory of romance. Everybody feels a sneaking
tenderness for the rag-picker. When, some years ago, M. Poubelle, the
Prefect of Police, decided that the rubbish of Paris was no longer to
be left outside along the pavements, but that each house should have
its big refuse-box, called ever since by his name, there was a general
uproar in the Press. What! disturb the amiable customs of the interesting
rag-picker! Diminish the income of these delicious Parisians!
Little by little their favourite and most famous citadels have been
demolished, their oddly named groups dispersed. There used to be the
_Cité des Singes_ and the _Cité des Mousquetaires_, now no longer in
existence. The rag-pickers are everywhere, and live just like other
citizens. I visited the rag-pickers of my quarter the other day. I found
them in an airy quarter of Grenelle, like a quiet little town of the
provinces on the edge of a wide river. Who would dream it was Paris, and
that broad splash of dull grey, the lively brilliant Seine that flows
past the Louvre? When I reached the rag-picker’s dwelling, she was out,
and two neighbours from different doors appeared to assist me. If they
had known me all their lives they could not have given me a more friendly
greeting. One went off in search of the rag-picker, the other pressed
me to take a seat in her room. The rag-picker came, one of the jolliest
and pleasantest-looking women I ever saw. She spoke admirably, with
perfect gesticulation, with inflection of voice, management of eyebrows
that would have won her distinction in a _salon_. Her expressive face
was clean, but her hands were the hue of soot, and her hair was the
grey of dust. Her little room, kitchen and sleeping-chamber, was freshly
washed and in perfect order. Outside the window clothes hung drying, and
below in the courtyard a pile of rubbish lay for sorting. It would be
impossible to find anywhere a healthier-looking or a happier creature.
Yet this has been her life from the age of twelve: she gets up at four
A.M. winter and summer, hail or snow; she heats some milk for her dog,
boils coffee for herself and her husband, leaves coffee simmering for
her three children, who, when she and her husband, with their cart and
dog, have gone off on their rag-gathering mission, get up, dress, and go
off to school. She paid fifty francs to her fellow-rag-pickers for the
whole of the Avenue de Breteuil, which was then only half built upon, and
to-day her practice is worth three hundred francs. I imagined the tax was
paid to the town; but no, it is paid to a sort of guild of rag-pickers,
who thereby assure her and her husband that they only have the right to
the refuse of the avenue. When they have picked up all the refuse, they
return and sort it out in the yard. She told me the prices of each thing,
and hair is the most valuable,—above all, white hair. The honesty of the
Parisian rag-picker is proverbial, and I know something of it, for once
a silver spoon of mine was accidentally flung out, and the next day the
rag-picker brought it back to the _concierge_.
Her visage shone with a positive radiance of soul. Her cheerfulness was
so contagious that it set me wishing to be a rag-picker too. Her devotion
to her husband and her children, of whom she spoke in rapturous terms,
was hardly more touching than her devotion to a saintly priest, who seems
to do an immense deal of good in the neighbourhood.
This man is quite remarkable; and a friend, speaking of him to me, and
of his well-known enthusiasm for rag-pickers and their like, told me he
once said to her: “See you, when once you get into the heart of that
class, you can’t endure any other. It becomes a passion.” And I can well
understand it, from all I have seen of the humbler classes of Paris.
There is a fulness of life, of vitality, of inarticulate, unconscious
goodness about them that puts you in sympathy with Tolstoiïsm. But
instead of the mysticism, the intensity of the Russian character, you
have here that irresistible French gaiety, which is not by any means
so light as it is said to be. Action is its virtue. Its mental horizon
is brightened by a personal charm of character, as a twilight sky is
enriched by an arch of radiant colour. In spite of the false romancers,
morality is in the air, everywhere about us.
In these humbler walks I refer to, pure girls, faithful husbands,
devoted wives, hard-working, honest sons and daughters abound, and the
force, as well as the weakness of all may be found in the love of home
and family. The temple of self-respect is lit with the unquenchable
flames of independence. All these admirable “little people” work so hard
and so contentedly that they may enjoy the delights of freedom and a
hearth, and they work the more contentedly, without embittered or soured
temper, because they have the inestimable art of living and enjoying
themselves when they leave aside work. The lower down you go among the
people, the greater the readiness to open the purse, and a workman bent
on a holiday will not hesitate to pay twenty or thirty francs for a
picnic carriage for the day, and fill the hamper with an abundance of
good fare and drink. I remember once hearing a well-to-do woman violently
complain because her coachman’s brother-in-law had paid such a price
for a vehicle to take a marriage party out into the country. I could
not share her indignation, to her disgust. The French people work so
hard, and so gallantly, and so well, that I think they earn their right
to an outbreak now and then. They at least pay for their pleasures and
dissipations with the sweat of their brow, and we who profit by their
labour owe them all thanks and indulgence.
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