Emile Zola made these Halles Centrales the background of one of his
naturalistic stories, "Le Ventre de Paris." Even his realistic and
graphic descriptions fail, however, to convey an adequate idea of the
colossal food traffic carried on in this market place, which, to be
sure, is now much bigger than it was when he wrote his novel, not long
after the erection of the vast structure, in 1851.
Ten pavilions there are in this building, each of them containing two
hundred and fifty stalls. Retail dealers are installed in the front
pavilions, while the others are occupied by the wholesale vendors,
whose business also overflows into the streets leading to the market
place. For the storing of provisions there is further a cellar under
the Halles, divided into twelve hundred compartments.
To see this food market in its most characteristic aspects one has to
get up long before the sun. It was half past four on a May morning when
my wife and I unbolted the door of our hotel and hailed an auto-taxi to
take us to the Halles. All Paris was still in bed, with the exception
of the street-cleaners, who were giving the city its morning bath, a
few chauffeurs, and the market gardeners, porters, vendors and buyers
whose business it is to bring and distribute the daily provisions of
the French metropolis. The following details as to what we saw are
taken from an article written by my companion:
"At this early hour buyers are still rare. Inquisitive Americans may
wander about with the freedom of disembodied spirits, and without
attracting much more attention. We kept discreetly out of the way
of hurrying porters and of swearing cartmen who were bringing their
huge loads of vegetables to market. From the carts enormous mounds
of carrots, long white turnips, cauliflowers, salads of all kinds,
cabbages, sorrel tied in neat packages, radishes black and red, were
being unloaded and stacked with incredible dexterity and rapidity,
each mound a picture; the carrots and turnips were built up in square
fortresses, the vegetables turned outward with perfect regularity, an
orange and white feast to the eye, as well as a promise of joys to come
for the palate. Beside these are heaped pointed cabbages of freshest
green; cauliflowers as white as bridal bouquets; lettuces laid head
down; escarole and romaine lying on their sides, displaying round,
appetizing tips; chicory, a frizzled tangle of greenish white; while
nearby bee-hive heaps of rosy radishes add another vivid color note.
[Illustration: The world's greatest market place]
"A little farther on our noses are greeted by the most exquisite
perfumes, coming from large baskets of strawberries--the big cultivated
ones--and the still more fragrant wild berries, the 'petites fraises
des bois' which Parisians so dote on. Cherries, too, are plentiful, but
they do not fill the air with luscious odors, as do the strawberries,
though their deeper red, the gloss of their perfect surface and the
contrasting pale green of their stems are a delight to the eye.
"The æstheticism of the Paris Halles is one of its dominant
characteristics. Flowers appear in every corner mixed in with the
stalls for edibles. Although a whole cross-street is given over to
them, they are too abundant, Paris loves them too well, and needs too
many for them to find sufficient room in one place only. A whole long
block is devoted to _bleuets_, the simple corn flowers of the fields,
packed in bunches a foot square; but roses reign supreme, pink, red,
tea, moss, of all varieties, picked fresh and adding their perfumes to
those of fruits and vegetables.
"There are also masses of irises, France's flower, yellow and blue;
spicy pinks, ranging from white to dark red, through all the shades
from palest salmon to deep rose; pansies, purple or yellow, bunched by
colors; peonies, rose-scented, long stemmed, heavy-headed, in crimson,
in pink, in white; Iceland poppies, bitterly fragrant, white, yellow,
orange.
"It is almost impossible to tear one's self away from this riot of
color and perfume, but there are so many sights that demand attention.
"Even the dead are not forgotten in the great market, for in one
section of the Halles, under its huge resounding roof, one may buy the
bead wreaths which are made to adorn French graveyards. There is almost
a western American atmosphere in this light touching upon death in this
center of vivid life, and once more we realize the kinship between
French and Americans--except in the matter of eating, in which alas, we
are so far behind them.
"The fish market does not open till late, for Paris wants its fish
fresh caught, but there is the meat market to see, and there are
still streets and streets of vegetables, streets filled with people,
especially of busy porters with full or empty 'hottes'--the large
baskets used in carrying vegetables--on their backs; or with the flat
fruit baskets, four feet by two and a half, balanced on their heads,
on which they carry loads of other baskets filled with strawberries,
walking along as calmly as if they were alone in the world, and as
if the streets were not slippery with vegetable leaves. We found it
difficult to keep our footing on this green refuse from cabbages and
lettuces, carrots and turnips, which had been cut off at one blow
by the men who stacked them. But it was all fresh, clean, and sweet
smelling.
[Illustration: Paris market porters]
"By six o'clock the vegetable mounds had disappeared almost
entirely, as if melted away by the rising sun, and one understands
why photographs of the Paris market are so scarce. When the sun
finally shines through the soft morning haze there is little left to
snap-shot. Three porters in blue blouses with 'hottes' on their backs
politely consented to pose, and a pretty Parisian girl, brown-eyed and
red-cheeked, had gladly stood near her pile of sorrel to be caught in
the camera.
"The artichokes do not pose well. Great baskets heaped with these green
scaly globes fill one street, but to catch them is next to impossible.
First a cart gets stalled in front of a particularly fine group, and
when that is gone there is a mass of people who must pass. Every one
who notices the photographic attempts asks 'Is it for the Cinéma?'--the
Paris rage of the moment--and one good-natured, impertinent Parisian
asks if photographs are for sale and at what price. He is really so
'sympathique,' in the French sense, that one immediately confides one's
desires and difficulties to him.
"At the chicken stalls, where the would-be photographer has to change
a film, she finds an exhibition of the lower-class rudeness, and
also of the lower-class politeness of the French market woman. From
a corner which seemed to belong to no one she is rudely requested
to move on, while ten steps farther on she is made welcome, given a
chair, questioned about the 'Cinéma,' and apologized to for the lack of
civility of the other woman.
"At another stall among the vegetables, one saucy young woman gets
well laughed at by her companions. She is not too busy to notice the
strangers, and, after looking them over with rather an impertinent
stare, she remarks that it is 'funny to see these English people in
Paris.' A laughing rejoinder from the strangers that they are not
English but Americans makes her look abashed, much to the amusement of
the other women.
[Illustration: Halles Centrales]
"In this retail department there are plenty of string beans which are
better in Paris than anywhere else, but the best of which an ignorant
American would not think of buying. They are small and thin, and
streaked with black, almost as if rusted. To the eye they are far less
tempting than the thick rich green beans in our markets, but in taste
they are more luscious. On the other hand, French peas are not equal,
usually, to the English and American ones, being harder and less sweet,
and therefore their flavor is not impaired, as ours would be, by the
fact that the market-women sell some of them shelled. A real genre
picture they make, three of these women, dropping the pale green pearls
into wooden bowls, and talking even faster than they shell.
"We passed rather hastily through the meat market, although that is
quite as interesting in its way as the other quarters, but we were
especially desirous to see the fish market in its glory. However, we
had a rapid view of great beef carcasses hung in rows, hundreds of
lambs, calves and other creatures, and of the neat stalls where calves'
heads, pigs' and lambs' feet, livers, sweetbreads, brains, and even
lungs are all hung in neat array, or displayed attractively on slabs.
French dealers know to perfection how to set off their wares. They have
special methods of presenting their fine poultry so that no buyer can
resist them, no matter what the price may be for turkeys, ducks, capons
and poulardes.
"Vine and other leaves for decorative purposes are sold regularly
in the market, and no one who has not seen it can imagine how much
more tempting a fine Camembert or Pont l'Evêque can appear when it
is set carefully on a fresh green leaf. The large cheeses cannot be
thus decorated, but the smaller ones, as well as the pats of Normandy
butter and the tempting little brown pots of delicately sour 'crème
D'Isigny,' are always displayed in this way. The fine fruits, too, are
made the object of solicitous care; in one corner of the market we ran
across two men who were tenderly unloading the most fragrant melons,
and arranging fine peaches, six in a box, laid carefully on a bed of
soft white cotton. The perfect bunches of grapes for which some wealthy
American may, later in the day, pay a fabulous price at the Café de
Paris or at Voisin's, are temptingly exhibited in the same manner. It
is strange that Paris is generally more æsthetic and artistic in its
food and flower displays than in those of the many other luxuries and
fashions it provides for the world.
"At six-thirty the fish market opens, and as one approaches, the
deafening noise of the wholesalers, crying their wares, and selling to
the highest bidder, fills the ears. The nose, too, takes cognizance of
the perfume of the sea, the salt freshness of recently caught fish,
quite different from the ancient and fish-like smell of an ordinary
New York fish stall. We breathe it in with almost as much pleasure as
we did the fruit, vegetable and flower perfumes. Here again the eyes
are satisfied as well as the nose. Pale brown fish in a pale brown
basket may be an accident, but it is a happy one. Quantities of spiny
'langoustes,' with long feelers, splotched with yellow and red; of
lobsters with huge claws; of neatly arranged soles, lying in pairs; of
beautifully marked Spanish mackerel, of great white skates, and of many
other sea-fish are being rapidly transferred from the wholesale to the
retail departments. In the fresh-water section, huge tanks, with water
flowing in rapidly from great faucets, hold carp, eels, and other fish,
all alive; but the greater number of tanks are filled with scrambling
hundreds of crawfish, the much prized French 'écrevisse,' which, with
the langoustes, reach the high-water mark for shellfish prices in the
restaurants--but they are worth it. The écrevisse is no better than our
Oregon crawfish, but the latter are being rapidly exterminated, whereas
in France the delicious creatures are properly protected.
[Illustration: A bit of the great Paris market]
"In this same section another French delicacy, snails, are for sale.
Boxes full of them may be seen, some of the snails remaining patiently
in their home corral, while others, more adventurous, were crawling up
the fish tanks, or had even dropped to the floor, owing to their too
great desire to explore the world.
"The market itself is quite as much inclined to spread as the snails.
All the adjacent streets are filled with shops for edibles, especially
of the less perishable variety, like cheeses of all kinds, some as
big as auto-wheels. The cabarets do a brisk business in feeding the
providers of Paris food, but foolishly we failed to try one of these
places to discover what kind of breakfast the food-raisers themselves
eat, and we went back to our hotel hungry, past all this mass of
eatables, past cafés which were just being opened, where floors were
being washed and chairs lay inhospitably on the tables. One almost felt
as if Paris never was ready to eat breakfast."
Besides the Halles Centrales there are a number of smaller covered
markets distributed over the city, much frequented on certain days
by all classes. Women everywhere are fond of shopping, but in France
foreigners as well as natives revel in the joys of marketing. Read, for
instance, this joyous outburst of an American girl dwelling in Paris
for her musical education:
"Now the mystery why the shops and galleries are almost deserted by the
French on Wednesdays and Saturdays is explained. They are all at the
market,--a dense struggling, chattering mob, pawing away at the fresh
country produce, while above the din rise the shrieks and howls of the
booth venders. A lively, a typically French scene. You get one of those
French net-work bags, which will stretch to hold nearly a bushel of
supplies, and sail into the thick of the fray. By the time you are out
on the other side you are loaded to the ears with enough stuff to last
the party a week and have spent just four francs. Celery, one cent a
bunch. Fresh country potatoes, 35 cents a bushel. Country killed meats
at one-half city prices. It is more fun than a circus, and from that
time on you will set aside an hour every Wednesday and Saturday to go
a-marketing, as one of the prime joys of life."