SPORTS AND DIVERSIONS.
_Le “Sport”_--Longchamps--Versailles Races--Fontainebleau--The
Seine--Swimming Baths--The Art of Book-collecting.
The Seine at Paris is the scene not of much boating, but of a good deal
of swimming. Baths on the Thames have never been successful: they abound
on the Seine, and the Parisians, whatever they may be as
boatmen--“canotiers,” to use their own word--excel as swimmers.
The French are not naturally a sporting nation. In the first place they
have found it necessary to borrow our English word for their pastimes;
and their spelling of sportsman as “sportman” is somewhat indicative of
their generally unsuccessful imitation of English sports.
The French are themselves conscious of the failure of this imitation.
“Sport,” says a French writer, “is an English word which signifies
literally relaxation, distraction, and which the English employ, by
extension, to designate the pleasures to which powerful aristocrats or
opulent citizens abandon themselves as a relaxation from the serious
labours of political life or the absorbing occupations of commerce. In
“sport” they include large hunts and shooting expeditions such as can be
practised on vast estates, together with betting, which involves
millions of pounds sterling, riding and driving, fencing, boxing,
swimming, skating; everything which calls into play the forces and
energy of the body, to the too frequent neglect of mental activity.
“We have adopted the word and attempted the thing. But independently of
the fact that our French society lacks some of the fundamental
conditions which, in this respect, English society possesses, we have
done what imitators generally do: we have diminished, sometimes even
travestied the model. Large aristocratic hunts have become impossible on
our democratic and parcelled-out soil. Well-bred horses cost a great
deal of money, and the instability of fortunes is an obstacle to fine
stables. The most reckless of our millionaires only hazard a few
thousand francs in the way of bets, and it is now generally understood
that when a “louis” is spoken of on the turf, the ambitious word must be
translated into the more modest expression, “twenty sous.” ... Even
fencing is abandoned to fiction and the stage. Duellists who are at all
serious must go beyond the frontier to find a ground which will place
combatants and seconds beyond the reach of the French law. The
police-court of the nineteenth century is perhaps more dreaded than was
the scaffold of Richelieu.”
Parisian summers, this same writer goes on to observe, are on the whole
too cold for bathing, and Parisian winters too hot for skating.
Unquestionably horse-racing has taken a certain hold on the French,
though it is true that the crowds who frequent the most popular races do
not confine their attention, or their conversation, to the horses or the
stakes, but regard the event principally as a fête.
It is at the hippodrome of the Bois de Boulogne (or Longchamps, as it is
also called) that the most largely attended races occur. A minimum
charge of a franc is made for admission, to stand or walk about outside
the ropes which mark off the course. For the reserved places higher
prices are charged: five francs to the pavilions, twenty francs to the
weighing enclosure, fifteen francs for a one-horse carriage, twenty
francs for a carriage with more than one horse, and so on. The races of
La Marche are in the form of steeple-chases. The Château de La Marche
stands in a park at a short distance from Ville d’Avray and Saint-Cloud;
and it is in the park that the races take place.
The races of the Bois de Vincennes are less fashionable than those of
Longchamps and of La Marche, perhaps because the approach to Vincennes
through crowded streets is less attractive than the drive through the
Champs Élysées and the Bois de Boulogne.
The races of Chantilly, founded in 1834 under the patronage of the Dukes
of Orleans and of Nemours, are run twice a year on the spacious meadows
which extend right and left of the magnificent stables of the château of
the Condés. The first races are fixed for the second fortnight of May.
The later series, those of the autumn meeting, are held in September and
October. The last race of the season is for the grand prize of the
Jockey Club. The racecourse of Chantilly describes an ellipsis
measuring some 2,000 metres. Several stands have been erected opposite
the stables: prices of admission to the various places as at Paris. At
Chantilly are the principal training establishments.
The Versailles races are run on the plain of Satory, where Napoleon III.
held some of his most brilliant reviews. They take place in May and
June.
At Fontainebleau the races are run on a course cut through the part of
the forest known as the Valley of the Solle. From various woody heights
the spectator, well protected from the sun, can obtain an excellent view
of the running. Shooting is practised at a club in the little town of
Argenteuil, close to Paris, where the society of Parisian Riflemen is
established. Candidates duly proposed and seconded are put up for
election, and, if admitted, pay ten francs entrance money and an annual
subscription of fifty francs. The organ of the society is the well-known
sporting paper, the _Journal des Chasseurs_.
The canotiers and canotières of the Seine are counted by thousands. They
all seem to row more for amusement than for exercise and pace. The
principal ports of the Parisian navy are Charenton above bridge, and
Asnières below. Charenton may be reached by the Lyons Railway: the
charming Asnières (famous for its balls) by the Saint-Germain and
Versailles line. The water-side restaurants are organised in view of the
canotiers, and appeal specially to this floating population.
If the Seine is remarkable for its swimming baths and, at some little
distance on each side of Paris, for its innumerable boats with rowers
and rowed in gay fantastic costumes, one bank of the Seine, the left, is
celebrated for its stalls of second-hand books. It was at a curiosity
shop on one of the quays of the left bank that Balzac’s “Peau de
Chagrin” or “Chagreen Skin” was offered for sale. It was at a
neighbouring bookstall that the poor student in the “Vie de Bohème” sold
his Greek books for little more than the price of waste paper in order
to buy medicine for the dying mistress of his friend. It is not at the
bookstalls of the Quai d’Orsay that one would look for the rarest
editions, though rare editions may here be found. There are connoisseurs
who seem to spend every day and all day long at the bookstalls of the
quay; resembling the celebrated English bibliophile, Lord Spencer, who
remained an entire year at Rome, visiting neither St. Peter’s, nor the
Coliseum, nor the Vatican, but only the old bookshops. When he had once
found the Martial of Sweynheym and Pannartz dated 1473 he went straight
back to London. Such a passion looks like insanity; but it is at least a
respectable, innocent kind of madness. To have a genuine passion for
books is to care neither for cards, nor for good living, nor for useless
luxury, nor for racehorses, nor for political intrigues, nor for ruinous
love affairs. The bibliophile is never troubled by the storms of
political life. Pixéricourt, the author of thirty amusing or terrible
novels, would be forgotten in France but for the rare editions that he
collected in his library, and which after his death did more for his
reputation, at the sale of his books, than all his works of fiction had
done. Few writers of the day grudged him his talent or his success; but
many envied him his “Imitation of Jesus Christ,” given to the monk
Laurence “by his very humble servant, Pierre Corneille.” His Elzevirs
and Baskervilles, for which Holland and China had furnished their rarest
paper, England and France their best engravers, Russia and Morocco their
incomparable leather, filled amateurs with enthusiasm. A great French
book-collector, Grolier, had adopted this motto, “For myself and my
friends.” Charles Nodier wrote for Pixéricourt an epigraph to be
inscribed inside his books which, if somewhat selfish, was at least
true:
Tel est le triste sort de tout livre prêté,
Souvent il est perdu, toujours il est gâté.[D]
[D] This is the sad lot of every book that is lent: often it is lost,
always spoilt.
The bookstall-keeper acquires gradually a knowledge of the finest or, if
not the finest, the most curious editions; and he would be but a poor
dealer were he unable to judge of their value. At one time the Pont-Neuf
was full of bookshops; and the second-hand dealers in books had their
stalls in the Cité, close to Notre Dame and to the Palace of Justice, as
well as on the Place de Grèves. But they are now nearly all to be found
on the parapets of the left bank.
The picture-dealers, at one time numerous on the quays of the left bank
of the Seine, have for years past been gradually disappearing. It was in
the curiosity shop already mentioned in connection with Balzac’s “Peau
de Chagrin” that a certain Christ, by Raphael, was supposed to be kept
hidden away like a treasure. That, however, was more than sixty years
ago; and no masterpieces by Raphael are now to be found in the curiosity
shops of the left bank. The one place for buying and selling pictures
is the Hôtel Drouot, on the other side of the river. Here pictures are
sold by auction at the hands of official auctioneers and authorised
brokers. In addition to the purchase-money five per cent. must be paid
in the way of fees and for the cost of the sale. This charge is thought
exorbitant, and it has not been forgotten that at the sale of Marshal
Soult’s pictures, when Murillo’s “Conception” was purchased by the
Government for the Square Room of the Louvre, nearly 30,000 francs
commission had to be paid independently of the 586,000 francs, which was
the adjudicated price. The sales about to take place are announced on
the walls of the Hôtel Drouot; also in the columns of certain journals,
such as the _Moniteur des Ventes_ or the _Chronique des Arts_.
[Illustration: SECOND-HAND BOOKSTALLS.]
[Illustration]
[Illustration: THE BUREAU DE BIENFAISANCE ASYLUM AT VINCENNES.
1. The Façade. 2. The Bowling Green.]