Street Police.--Cleaning Beds.--Tinning Kettles.--Building
Houses.--Loading Carts.--Preparing for the Scavenger.--Want
of Drains.--Bad Pavement.--Darkness.
My last letter was of the Tuileries Gardens; a theme which furnished
me so many subjects of admiration, that I think, if only for the sake
of variety, I will let the smelfungus vein prevail to-day. Such, then,
being my humour,--or my ill-humour, if you will,--I shall indulge it
by telling you what I think of the street-police of Paris.
I will not tell you that it is bad, for that, I doubt not, many others
may have done before me; but I will tell you that I consider it as
something wonderful, mysterious, incomprehensible, and perfectly
astonishing.
In a city where everything intended to meet the eye is converted into
graceful ornament; where the shops and coffee-houses have the air of
fairy palaces, and the markets show fountains wherein the daintiest
naïads might delight to bathe;--in such a city as this, where the
women look too delicate to belong wholly to earth, and the men too
watchful and observant to suffer the winds of heaven to visit them
too roughly;--in such a city as this, you are shocked and disgusted at
every step you take, or at every gyration that the wheels of your
chariot can make, by sights and smells that may not be described.
Every day brings my astonishment on this subject to a higher pitch
than the one which preceded it; for every day brings with it fresh
conviction that a very considerable portion of the enjoyment of life
is altogether destroyed in Paris by the neglect or omission of such a
degree of municipal interference as might secure the most elegant
people in the world from the loathsome disgust occasioned by the
perpetual outrage of common decency in their streets.
On this branch of the subject it is impossible to say more; but there
are other points on which the neglect of street-police is as plainly,
though less disgustingly, apparent; and some of these I will enumerate
for your information, as they may be described without impropriety;
but when they are looked at in conjunction with the passion for
graceful decoration, so decidedly a characteristic of the French
people, they offer to our observation an incongruity so violent, as to
puzzle in no ordinary degree whoever may wish to explain it.
You cannot at this season pass through any street in Paris, however
pre-eminently fashionable from its situation, or however distinguished
by the elegance of those who frequent it, without being frequently
obliged to turn aside, that you may not run against two or more women
covered with dust, and probably with vermin, who are busily employed
in pulling their flock mattresses to pieces in the street. There they
stand or sit, caring for nobody, but combing, turning, and shaking the
wool upon all comers and goers; and, finally, occupying the space
round which many thousand passengers are obliged to make what is
always an inconvenient, and sometimes a very dirty _détour_, by poking
the material, cleared from the filth, which has passed into the
throats of the gentlemen and ladies of Paris, back again into its
checked repository.
I have within this half-hour passed from the Italian Boulevard by the
Opera-house, in the front of which this obscene and loathsome
operation was being performed by a solitary old crone, who will
doubtless occupy the place she has chosen during the whole day, and
carry away her bed just in time to permit the Duke of Orleans to step
from his carriage into the Opera without tumbling over it, but
certainly not in time to prevent his having a great chance of
receiving as he passes some portion of the various animate and
inanimate superfluities which for so many hours she has been
scattering to the air.
A few days ago I saw a well-dressed gentleman receive a severe
contusion on the head, and the most overwhelming destruction to the
neatness of his attire, in consequence of a fall occasioned by his
foot getting entangled in the apparatus of a street-working tinker,
who had his charcoal fire, bellows, melting-pot, and all other things
necessary for carrying on the tinning trade in a small way, spread
forth on the pavement of the Rue de Provence.
When the accident happened, many persons were passing, all of whom
seemed to take a very obliging degree of interest in the misfortune of
the fallen gentleman; but not a syllable either of remonstrance or
remark was uttered concerning the invasion of the highway by the
tinker; nor did that wandering individual himself appear to think any
apology called for, or any change in the arrangement of his various
chattels necessary.
Whenever a house is to be built or repaired in London, the first thing
done is to surround the premises with a high paling, that shall
prevent any of the operations that are going on within it from
annoying in any way the public in the street. The next thing is to
arrange a footpath round this paling, carefully protected by posts and
rails, so that this unavoidable invasion of the ordinary foot-path may
be productive of as little inconvenience as possible.
Were you to pass a spot in Paris under similar circumstances, you
would fancy that some tremendous accident--a fire, perhaps, or the
falling in of a roof--had occasioned a degree of difficulty and
confusion to the passengers which it was impossible to suppose could
be suffered to remain an hour unremedied: but it is, on the contrary,
permitted to continue, to the torment and danger of daily thousands,
for months together, without the slightest notice or objection on the
part of the municipal authorities. If a cart be loading or unloading
in the street, it is permitted to take and keep a position the most
inconvenient, in utter disregard of any danger or delay which it may
and must occasion to the carriages and foot-passengers who have to
travel round it.
Nuisances and abominations of all sorts are without scruple committed
to the street at any hour of the day or night, to await the morning
visit of the scavenger to remove them: and happy indeed is it for the
humble pedestrian if his eye and nose alone suffer from these
ejectments; happy, indeed, if he comes not in contact with them, as
they make their unceremonious exit from window or door. "_Quel
bonheur!_" is the exclamation if he escapes; but a look, wholly in
sorrow and nowise in anger, is the only helpless resource should he be
splashed from head to foot.
On the subject of that monstrous barbarism, a gutter in the middle of
the streets expressly formed for the reception of filth, which is
still permitted to deform the greater portion of this beautiful city,
I can only say, that the patient endurance of it by men and women of
the year one thousand eight hundred and thirty-five is a mystery
difficult to understand.
It really appears to me, that almost the only thing in the world which
other men do, but which Frenchmen cannot, is the making of sewers and
drains. After an hour or two of very violent rain last week, that part
of the Place Louis-Quinze which is near the entrance to the Champs
Elysées remained covered with water. The Board of Works having waited
for a day or two to see what would happen, and finding that the muddy
lake did not disappear, commanded the assistance of twenty-six
able-bodied labourers, who set about digging just such a channel as
little boys amuse themselves by making beside a pond. By this
well-imagined engineering exploit, the stagnant water was at length
conducted to the nearest gutter; the pickaxes were shouldered, and an
open muddy channel left to adorn this magnificent area, which, were a
little finishing bestowed upon it, would probably be the finest point
that any city in the world could boast.
Perhaps it will hardly be fair to set it amongst my complaints against
the streets of Paris, that they have not yet adopted our last and most
luxurious improvement. I cannot but observe, however, that having
passed some weeks here, I feel that the Macadamised streets of London
ought to become the subject of a metropolitan jubilee among us. The
exceeding noise of Paris, proceeding either from the uneven structure
of the pavement, or from the defective construction of wheels and
springs, is so violent and incessant as to appear like the effect of
one great continuous cause,--a sort of demon torment, which it must
require great length of use to enable one to endure without suffering.
Were a cure for this sought in the Macadamising of the streets, an
additional advantage, by the bye, would be obtained, from the
difficulties it would throw in the way of the future heroes of a
barricade.
There is another defect, however, and one much more easily remedied,
which may fairly, I think, come under the head of defective
street-police. This is the profound darkness of every part of the city
in which there are not shops illuminated by the owners of them with
gas. This is done so brilliantly on the Boulevards by the _cafés_ and
_restaurans_, that the dim old-fashioned lamp suspended at long
intervals across the _pavé_ is forgotten. But no sooner is this region
of light and gaiety left, than you seem to plunge into outer darkness;
and there is not a little country town in England which is not
incomparably better lighted than any street in Paris which depends for
its illumination upon the public regulations of the city.
As it is evident that gas-pipes must be actually laid in all
directions in order to supply the individuals who employ it in their
houses, I could in no way understand why these most dismal
_réverbères_, with their dingy oil, were to be made use of in
preference to the beautiful light which almost outblazes that of the
sun; but I am told that some unexpired contract between Paris and her
lamplighters is the cause of this. Were the convenience of the public
as sedulously studied in France as in England, not all the claims of
all the lamplighters in the world, let it cost what it might to
content them, would keep her citizens groping in darkness when it was
so very easy to give them light.
But not to dwell ungratefully upon the grievances which certainly
disfigure this city of delight, I will not multiply instances; yet I
am sure I may assert, without fear of contradiction or reproach, that
such a street-police as that of London would be one of the greatest
civic blessings that King Philippe could possibly bestow upon his
"_belle ville de Paris_."