OBSOLETE PARIS SHOPS.
The Old Wooden Stalls of Forty Years Ago--The “Lucky Fork”--The
Cobblers’ Shops--The Old Cafés.
The quays on the left bank of the Seine were at one time remarkable for
their shops; and the book-stalls of the Quai Voltaire are still
celebrated. It was on one of the quays of the left bank that the old
curiosity shop stood, so picturesquely described by Balzac, in which the
hero of the “Peau de Chagrin,” who had entered the shop merely to pass
the time until it should be dark enough for him to throw himself from
the Pont Neuf without attracting too much attention, purchased his fatal
talisman.
Thirty or forty years ago Paris contained thousands of antique little
shops or covered stalls, of which now very few specimens remain. They
were painted wooden structures, six feet high by three feet broad,
picturesquely situated at the corners of squares or public monuments, by
the side of churches or city houses, with plank roofs through which a
stove-chimney protruded, and with the street pavement for their floor.
The extermination of these quaint establishments necessarily accompanied
the general improvement of the city; they were an eyesore when the
thoroughfares had become elegant. By degrees the keepers of these huts,
who were once the gaiety and life of the streets, disappeared. They took
refuge for the most part in overcrowded houses which had escaped the
pickaxe of the architectural improver, though this removal was only a
prelude to their final departure. These petty shopkeepers were often
intellectually superior to the proprietors of the finest shops on the
boulevard, for many a scholar who found that the art or science to which
he had sacrificed his life proved ungrateful, would for the sake of his
daily bread set up in one of these street huts as a “public writer,”
there, as set forth in a previous chapter, writing love-letters for
domestic servants or grooms who could not express the sentiments of
their bosom with a pen. Schoolmasters without pupils, students who had
been plucked at their examinations, and professors without chairs,
formed a large proportion of this hut-inhabiting population.
Amongst these primitive establishments were a number of fried-potato
shops, which were besieged by street urchins in quest of the traditional
halfpennyworth of tritters. In the Rue de la Vieille-Estrapade
flourished a shop well known under the sign or title of the “Lucky
Fork.” Here might be beheld an enormous metal cauldron, in which
constantly simmered a dark-coloured broth of somewhat too odoriferous a
character. Floating in this gigantic vessel, tossed hither and thither
by the bubbling of the hot liquid, were pieces of tripe, pork, and other
even less inviting viands, which the customer had to make a stab at with
a sharp fork of huge dimensions. Yet although the aspect of these
establishments was not altogether appetising, cleanliness was by no
means a quality in which they were deficient. For a halfpenny the
consumers had the privilege of a stab with the fork. The patrons of
these shops were numerous and varied: porters, workmen, students,
tinkers, artists. The poet Berthauld, author of the “Fille du Peuple,”
was famed for his skill with the weapon in question; Chartelet the
painter and Fourier the philosopher frequently tried their hand with it,
not to mention other votaries of the arts and sciences who, unknown at
that time, were destined to become celebrated. It used to be a source of
great amusement to watch the customers, whatever their trade or
profession might be, as, with keen gaze, they awaited some unusually big
morsel which was floating towards them, and then suddenly made a thrust
at it like eel-spearers. The piece of meat, incessantly dancing and
revolving as it was, frequently eluded the prongs of the fork, whereupon
cries of irony would escape from the attentive crowd; but when, at the
first stab--for a halfpenny, that is to say--one of the combatants had
secured a bulky morsel, this victor paraded through the ranks of the
spectators, who, as they made way for him, applauded vociferously. Many,
however, of the vanquished went to bed on nothing but water and a crust
of bread.
There were fruit-stalls, where apples, pears, and even peaches, were
sold at prices which have quintupled since then; and huts kept by
knife-grinders, who, at a later period, resumed their daily pilgrimage
through those quarters of Paris where blunt instruments were most
likely to be requiring a cheap edge. There was a bird-shop on the island
of Saint Louis where the feathered stock was confided to the care of two
enormous white cats, besides other like establishments, unprovided with
cats, which were numerous enough in that space which is to-day occupied
by the square of the Louvre. Then there were cobblers who, within their
little pavement cabins, had no bills to deliver, no rent to pay, no
reproaches to bear, no masters whose caprices must be humoured, since
their toil from one hour to another produced immediate payment. The
spirit of independence which was a characteristic of these artists in
leather dated back, indeed, to ancient times. Simon of Athens, the
friend of Socrates and the author of the thirty-three dialogues, in
which a system of philosophy is set forth with great lucidity, received
from Pericles an invitation to quit his shop and go to live with that
magnate. “I would not sell my liberty for all the treasures in Greece,”
was the reply.
The street cobblers of Paris have frequently given heroic instances of
devotion and patriotism. During the massacre of St. Bartholomew they
saved many Protestants from the edge of the sword. Their little shops
were divided into two compartments, of which the upper one, approached
by a small ladder, served as lumber-room for a mass of leather scraps
and old shoes. It was here that more than one of the companions of
Admiral Coligny found safety.
Some time afterwards, defying the terrible edicts of Richelieu, a Paris
cobbler transmitted some vitally important correspondence to the
prisoners in the Bastille, by cleverly sewing the letters between the
soles of shoes. Later on his shop became a sort of literary rendezvous.
Politics were indeed talked there; but it was the latest prose and the
latest verse which chiefly occupied the frequenters. The cobbler was at
that period accustomed to combine with his leathern functions those of
“public-writer.”
French authors and poets have always had a kindness for the cobbler.
François Villon wrote what is considered the best of his odes in honour
of the “Povres Housseurs,” makers, that is to say, of a species of boots
worn in the fifteenth century. It is known that the great Corneille did
not think it beneath his dignity to make an intimate friend of the
cobbler of the Rue d’Argenteuil.
The free atmosphere which surrounded his wooden shop apparently inspired
the artist in leather with a passion for joyous rhymes and a love of
literary works, together with a certain fund of satire which attracted
men of letters towards him.
The most celebrated Paris cobbler of the eighteenth century was Henry
Sellier, whose shop stood in the Rue Quoquereau, to-day the Rue
Coq-Héron. This shop was a vile hut of rotten planks, the roof of which,
a piece of oil-cloth held up by a couple of broom-handles, was riddled
like a sieve. Nevertheless, the proprietor wrote spirited verse, and the
success of his poems was such that Louis XIV. received a copy of them,
together with their author, in his château at Fontainebleau. The
effusions of Sellier, moreover, gained the approbation of Fontenelle,
whose good opinion brought them greatly into fashion, and even excited
the jealousy of contemporary poetasters. One of Sellier’s critics
published a couplet charging him with being assisted by famous
collaborators; to which the cobbler, who, whether poet or not, was
always ready with a repartee, penned in reply another couplet to the
effect that the absence of wit and every other quality from the verses
of his accuser sufficiently proved that _he_, at least, wrote everything
himself.
In 1789 the cobbler’s shop promptly and proudly bore aloft the tricolour
cockade; it became a rendezvous for patriots, and a political cabinet in
which more than one great popular resolution was passed. When the
legislative assembly had declared that the country was “in danger,” all
the young shoemakers hastened to enlist; the paternal artists in leather
offered their children to France. In those battalions of volunteers
which were sometimes disdainfully described as an army of “vagabonds,
tailors and cobblers,” the last-named contingent, a numerous one, fought
heroically enough.
Under the Restoration the hut of the cobbler was a political and secret
rendezvous for the Bonapartists and the Republicans. Much whispering and
much writing went on there; many a song, penned by a literary cobbler,
issued thence in manuscript, to travel rapidly from workshop to workshop
and inflame the political sentiments of partisans. After 1830 the
cobbler openly showed his disapprobation of the citizen royalty. The
interior of his shop was completely papered with political caricatures;
one manuscript satire or cartoon, torn down by the police to-day, was
succeeded by another to-morrow. The police, however, were so vigilant
that the cobbler at length found it advantageous not to meddle too much
with politics, and developed a tendency for frequenting cheap taverns,
in which his songs and conversation procured him a satisfactory measure
of admiration. He did not become a drunkard, but he sought inspiration
in moderate potations. A celebrated advocate had lived for sixteen years
in the Rue Coq-Héron, and just beneath the walls of his mansion a
cobbler had long been accustomed to hammer at the soles of shoes. A
provincial visitor one day asked this cobbler whether he knew the
advocate in question. “No, sir,” was the imperturbable reply. The
advocate overhead was told of it, and, mystified at such an instance of
ignorance, came down to reproach his humble neighbour. “You do not know
me?” he said, “and yet we have lived sixteen years side by side!” “Just
so,” answered the cobbler, without the least embarrassment; “you have
been next door to me for sixteen years, and have not once asked me to
drink with you.”
Among the shops and other establishments that have disappeared from
Paris may be mentioned the ancient “café,” properly so-called, where
coffee was served but smoking forbidden, and the “café estaminet,” where
smoking was permitted. Every café is now a café estaminet; though it is
the latter term, not the former, which has gone out of use. The serving
of beer at cafés was of course an innovation; but the drinking of beer
has become so general in Paris that there are now numbers of so-called
“brasseries” (literally “breweries,” which these places are not), where
beer is the principal if not the only beverage served. In a history of
cafés the introduction of music and the development of the café
concert--the French music-hall--would have to be noted. Of late years,
too, music of a certain kind--especially the music of the Hungarian
gipsies--executed by members of the gipsy race more or less authentic,
has been introduced into restaurants.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: BOOKSTALLS ON THE QUAI VOLTAIRE.]