"MANY WATERS CANNOT QUENCH LOVE"
Higher than 1883; higher than 1879; higher than 1876; higher than 1802;
higher than 1740; higher than 1699; equalling the flood of 1658, the
worst in the history of Paris; finally breaking all records, both as to
height attained and as to damage done, such was the daily crescendo of
the press in recording the progress of _la Grande Crue_ during the last
week of January, 1910. No investing army, no Commune, no revolution,
threatened Paris this time. The best friend of Paris had turned against
her. For several days the older generation, who passed through the
trials of 1871, recalled painful memories and feared a worse peril from
the Seine than from the German invaders or the Internationalists.
In the third week of January, from Tuesday to Friday, we were concerned
over the news of devastation wrought by floods in different parts of
France. There was much damage and suffering in our own suburbs.
Sympathetic editorials appeared in the newspapers: relief funds were
opened. On Friday afternoon, when we were taking a walk along the
_quais_ of the Rive Gauche, we had no suspicion what was going to
happen.
Only on Saturday did Paris begin to worry for herself. Neuilly and
Courbevoie were flooded. Loroy reported ten drowned. The Seine, within
the city limits, suddenly rose ten feet. The first subway tunnel, that
of the "Métro" from the Chatelet under the Cité to the Place
Saint-Michel, was filled with water. The river spread into the original
"Métro" line under the Rue de Rivoli. The second tunnel, that of the
"Nord-Sud," was an easy prey because it was still in the course of
construction. The Gare d'Orléans was invaded. Its tracks, which parallel
the left bank of the river under the _quais_, disappeared. The Gare
d'Invalides, whose line runs the opposite direction along the Seine, was
also flooded.
On Sunday morning we heard that in the Rue Félicien-David people were
rowing around in boats. We thought this interesting enough to invest in
a _fiacre_, and took Scrappie in the afternoon to Auteuil. On the way,
we got out and wormed ourselves through the crowd to hear the waters
swishing around the stair-cases down to the train levels at the two
flooded stations. When we reached the Rue Félicien-David and actually
saw people in boats, we bought photographs from an enterprising hawker,
wanting to preserve this souvenir of Paris. Little did most of the crowd
dream that within a few days they would not have to go farther than
their own front windows to see such a sight!
On Monday evening everyone realized that the flood was not a curious
spectacle but a disaster. The river had been rising at the steady rate
of an inch an hour, and by nightfall was sixteen feet above its normal
height. Herbert decided to report the flood. This justified a taxi-cab
by the day. As this was an unheard-of luxury for the Gibbons family,
which had few chances to ride in automobiles at that stage of its
evolution, of course the baby and I decided to profit by the
opportunity, even though it was winter and not the best time of the year
for joy-rides. Anyway, I was interested in the great drama that was
being enacted, and we could tell Scrappie about it later. From notes
taken at the time, I am able to reconstruct the story of days as
stirring as any of those during the Great War.
On Monday afternoon we went up and down the _quais_. All the river
industries, with their wooden buildings squatting on the river bank
under the shelter of the solid ramparts of the _quais_, were swept away.
Freight and customs stations and depots came within the grasp of the
river. At the Entrepôt de Bercy and the Halle aux Vins, barrels of the
spirits and wine were first gently floated and then drawn out into the
angry stream. The water in the Nord-Sud tunnel was threatening the Gare
Saint-Lazare. The Eiffel Tower moved slightly.[C] The cellars of the
public buildings along the river front--Palais de Justice, Chambre de
Deputés, Hôtel de Ville, Monnaie, Institut, Chancellerie de la Légion
d'Honneur, Grand Palais, Louvre--were gradually flooded until their
furnishings were extinguished. At Billancourt we saw the inundation of
the Renault automobile works and the Voisin aeroplane factory. The
effect of the latter disaster reached as far as Heliopolis in Egypt,
where an Aviation Week was scheduled. In those days aeroplanes were in
their infancy and depended upon a single factory for their motors.
[C] My critic says this is not true. He did not see it, and he doesn't
think it is possible that the Tower would have remained standing, if it
had moved during the flood of 1910. But I find this statement in my
notes. Why shouldn't the Eiffel Tower move? I reminded my critic that we
had seen together on our honeymoon at Pisa a tower that had been leaning
for centuries. I do not intend to cross out this statement about the
most striking landmark of Paris, the participant in most of my vistas.
Tuesday morning a heavy snow was falling. Awakened early by an
explosion, we thought that the Pont de l'Alma was being blown up. This
heroic measure had in fact been contemplated by the city engineers in
order to prevent the backing up of the water into the Champs-Elysées
district. The flood was rapidly gaining street after street in Auteuil
and Charenton. A rumor was afloat that we would soon be cut off from the
outside world. This meant a run on provisions and profiteering by
shopkeepers. We yielded to the common impulse and laid in kerosene and
potatoes for ourselves and condensed milk for Scrappie, paying double
prices and thinking we were lucky in having a chance to buy.
On Wednesday morning commenced what we regarded at the time as a real
reign of terror. Underground communication ceased. Owing to the
inundation of their power houses, electric-trams stopped running. The
subway station at Bercy collapsed. Sewers began to burst in all quarters
of the city. A subterranean lake formed under the Rue Royal from the
Place de la Concorde to the Madeleine, and the street was closed to
traffic. In front of the Louvre and at the Pont de la Concorde soldiers
worked night and day raising the parapets higher and building barricades
with paving-stones and bags of cement. By evening the water had reached
a height of thirty feet, breaking all records since 1799. Refugees began
to pour into the city by the thousands and were lodged in the old
Seminary of Saint-Sulpice near us, the Panthéon and other public
buildings. The Red Cross began to be displayed throughout the city.
Boats and sailors arrived from seaports. The markets required
substantial police protection to prevent mobs from taking them by storm.
On Thursday and Friday the fight against the ever-rising waters was
continued with desperate energy. In spite of all that human skill and
labor could accomplish, the Seine pushed its way over parapets and
through barricades, flooding rapidly the _quais_ and adjoining
quarters. By means of subways and sewers (channels opened to the river
by man's hand and that had not existed in the
seventeenth-and-eighteenth-century floods), districts far from the river
suffered equally. Auteuil, Grenelle, Charenton, Bercy were submerged. On
either side of the Trocadéro the palatial private homes of the _quais_
were in the Seine up to the second story. The river appropriated to
itself the entire length of Cours-la-Reine from the Pont de l'Alma to
the Pont de la Concorde, reached the fashionable restaurants at the foot
of the Avenue des Champs-Elysées, and partly surrounded the two palaces
of Fine Arts, souvenirs of the Exposition of 1900. The streets between
the Avenue des Champs-Elysées and the river formed a transplanted
Venice.
Hotels and stores on the Rue de Rivoli, the Théâtre Français--and even
the Opéra--found their heat and light cut off by the attack of the
Seine. Far away from the _quais_, in the neighborhood of the Gare
Saint-Lazare, the Seine, following the subway tunnel, burst forth into
the Place du Havre and the Cour de Rome. Hasty barricades were of no
avail. One could hardly trust his eyes when he looked up the Boulevard
Haussmann from the Opéra and saw boats flitting back and forth as far as
Saint-Augustin and the Boulevard Malesherbes. On the Rive Gauche the
aspect of Paris grew even more alarming. The Esplanade des Invalides and
the Quai d'Orsay joined the Seine. Soldiers threw a pontoon bridge
across the Esplanade for pedestrians. But taxi-cabs and buses were
compelled to plunge into the water hub-high. We saw motor-drawn vehicles
stalled because the water had reached their engines, while the
old-fashioned _cochers_ went merrily by, proud of their superiority. All
the people in _fiacres_ had to do was to put their feet up on the
_cocher's_ box. The Chamber of Deputies and the Ministery of Foreign
Affairs were approachable by boat. The angle formed by the Boulevard
Saint-Germain, the Quai d'Orsay and the Rue du Bac was all under water.
In this angle the Rue d'Université and the Rue de Lille were practically
inaccessible. We who lived in the Latin, Luxembourg and Montparnasse
Quarters could reach the Seine only by the Rue Dauphine or the Boulevard
Saint-Michel. For increasing torrents soon covered the Rue des
Saints-Pères, the Rue Bonaparte and the Rue de Seine. We had never
realized before how the early builders of Paris, in their determination
to stick to the river for purposes of defence, had reclaimed ground much
lower than the flood level of the Seine, relying upon the masonry of the
_quais_ to keep back the river. In modern times we have undermined the
natural defences of the Rive Gauche by bringing our railways to the
center of the city, by our sewers and by the subways. When you are on a
Seine river-boat, you can see all along the river how we have opened up
the city to floods. Paris, honeycombed underground, fell an easy prey
to the fury of the river. The very skill that added to the material
comfort and well-being of the city made Paris vulnerable when the
unexpected and unprecedented happened.
The Jardin des Plantes, set apart originally for botanical purposes as
its name indicates, has gradually become the Paris "Zoo." Many American
tourists go there because it is the place where Cuvier worked and do not
realize that it is the home of wild animals also. The Jardin
d'Acclimatation in the Bois de Boulogne is more visited, and I have
often heard my compatriots express surprise at the paucity of what they
think is the Paris "Zoo." The Jardin des Plantes is less fashionable but
much richer in its variety of animals. As it is on the river, it was
invaded by the flood. In the first days, before we realized the calamity
of the rising waters, the Jardin des Plantes was thronged with visitors.
Interest centered around the bear-pits. The polar bears alone seemed to
enjoy splashing in the icy waters. The climbers were soon treed. It was
an engineering feat to rescue them with planks and prod them into
portable cages. The non-climbers narrowly escaped drowning. We watched
them lifted out by cranes, caught in sturdy nets. This was the only
means of rescue as they tore with their claws the bands that were first
placed around them by men whose only experience had been lifting horses
and cows from pits.
When the river broke all records, the whole garden was flooded. Many
keepers were prevented from reaching their posts. The police took
charge. Food supplies were lacking, and the few keepers on hand did not
dare to let their dangerous charges loose. The furnaces were flooded and
there was no heat. In the monkey-houses the shivering animals, perched
high, scolded and growled with chattering teeth. We saw them form a
swinging bridge to lift out of the water's reach one of their number who
seemed unable to climb. Lions and tigers, cold and hungry, roared and
dashed themselves against their bars until the belated order arrived to
shoot them. The hippopotamus, contrary to tradition, drowned. Only the
birds, proud possessors of the secret of aviation, were superior to the
calamity. Here was the occasion for a new Noah. But alas, not even an
ark arrived, and it took Paris many years to restock the garden. Even
now there are no giraffes like those that used to look at us from their
sublime heights.
On the River Droite, the Gare de Lyon was an island. Nearer the flood
took possession of the Quai des Grands Augustins with its famous book
shop, and, on the other side of the Place Saint-Michel, the quaint old
streets up to the Place Maubert. A depression there, where the walls of
old Paris once stood, brought the flood up to the roofs of some little
houses.
In the Rue Servandoni we escaped the flood: for the ground rises
steadily from the Boulevard Saint-Germain to Montparnasse. This put us
considerably above the reach of the river. On Friday afternoon, when we
were facing a danger that stupified all, the flood was at its height. We
conceived the idea of viewing it from the top of Notre-Dame. It was a
long process for us, as hundreds of others thought of the same thing,
and we could not both go up together. I waited with the baby in the taxi
while Herbert _faisait la queue_ (if you do not know what this
expression means it would be well to learn it before visiting Paris!)
After he came down I had my turn. I was cold enough to enjoy the climb.
The view from the top of the tower was unique. The next day would have
been too late. We caught the flood at its flood. Paris was swimming. On
both sides the cathedral had become an angry, menacing rush of water.
Debris and wreckage was choked against the bridge piers. One realized
that habit had given us a sense of proportion to the cityscape. The
effect of diminished ground-floors and abbreviated lamp-posts and trees
was sinister. It was as if elemental forces, subdued and imprisoned when
the earth's surface cooled, had escaped. As I looked down on the scene,
I felt that abysmal water was breaking forth. Where would it end?
After leaving Notre-Dame we rode up one side of the river to Auteuil and
down the other, frequently forced to make long detours. Our remorseless
enemy was making sad inroads upon the Ile-Saint Louis, and it seemed as
if it would soon sweep away the Cité. The Sainte-Chapelle was almost
afloat, as were the Conciergerie and the Tour de l'Horloge. The river
surpassed the parapets. The arches of most of the bridges had vanished.
The colossal statues of the Pont de l'Alma were submerged to their
chins. At the Pont d'Auteuil the water reached the wreath around the
letter N. Although the newspapers warned us that they might be swept
away, the bridges were crowded with sightseers. Curiosity is stronger
than fear. The current carried every conceivable object. At the Pont
d'Arcole the calamity was forgotten in the sport of watching huge
barrels sucked one by one under an arch and jumping high in the air as
they came out on the other side.
Returning from Auteuil as darkness was falling, we had to pass above the
Trocadéro, the Rue de Bassano and the Champs-Elysées. Newsboys were
crying extras: "The river still rises!" We were in darkness. No lights
on the Avenue des Champs-Elysées. An engineer regiment was fighting the
water in the Place de la Concorde by the light of acetylene lamps. The
wheezing of an old pump taking water out of the cellar of Maxim's was
the only sign of life on the gay Rue Royale. To return to the Rive
Gauche we had to go down to the Pont-Neuf. The other bridges were now
barred. Does it not speak eloquently for the genius of our ancestors
that, with bridges every few hundred feet, the only one that could be
trusted--the sole link between Rive Droite and Rive Gauche--was the work
of Henri IV at the end of the sixteenth century?
Our _chauffeur_, keeping up a running comment in which the hint as to
his expectation of a substantial _pourboire_ was uppermost, picked his
way as best he could back to the Rue Servandoni. We saw strange sights
that night, wooden paving-blocks floating in a messy jumble; a few
restaurants endeavoring to dispel the gloom with candles; soldiers with
fixed bayonets guarding the inundated quarters. It was bitter cold and
the glare of their fires was weirdly silhouetted in the rising waters,
mingled with the shadows of deserted houses.
The river reached thirty-one feet seven inches at midnight Friday.
During the rest of the night and Saturday it remained stationary.
Saturday evening it began to fall slightly, and on Sunday all Paris was
out in gay holiday attire to view the damage and to celebrate the
retreat of the enemy. Lightheartedness returned immediately. Why worry
about what was over? This is the credo of Paris. But we had seen during
the dark week of flood-fighting a prophetic revelation of the real
character of the people among whom we lived. Little did we dream that
the precious qualities shown in the flood crisis were to be brought out
more than once again in future years. In 1914 we were not surprised at
the courage, persistence, unflagging energy and solidarity with
suffering of the Parisians. The flood, as I look back on it, did more
damage to Paris than was done during the war by German bombs. It was a
more formidable enemy than the Germans. I remember the comment of my old
Emilie: "_Mon Dieu_, this thing is worse than fire. You can fight fire
with water, but with what can you fight water?"
When the newspapers Sunday morning assured us that the danger was over,
I realized how wonderful had been the struggle of civilians and soldiers
against the elemental. It was a manifestation of their love for their
city. And in the quick and generous relief given on all sides--and
unostentatiously--to those who were driven from their homes was the
proof that hearts beat fast and firm to help fellow-citizens as well as
to save the historic monuments that line the banks of the Seine. That is
why, when Herbert went out to preach in the Rue Roquépine church, I gave
him his text from the Hebrew songster: "Many waters cannot quench love;
neither can the floods drown it."