ON THE WAY TO MONTMARTRE
Rue de Clichy was once upon a time the Roman road between Paris and
Rouen, taking in its way the village Cligiacum. For long in later days
it was known as Rue du Coq, when the old château stood near its line. It
was in a house of Rue de Clichy, inhabited by the Englishman Crawford,
that Marie-Antoinette and her children had a meal on the way to
Varennes. The three successive “Tivoli” were partly on the site of No.
27, in this old street. There too was the “Club de Clichy,” whose
members opposed the government of the Directoire. The whole district
leading up to the heights of Montmartre was then, as now, a quarter of
popular places of amusement, the habitation of _artistes_ of varying
degree, but we find here few old-time vestiges. Where Rue Nouvelle was
opened in 1879 the prison de Clichy, a debtor’s prison, had previously
stood. No. 81 is the four-footed animals’ hospital founded in 1811. Zola
died at No. 21 Rue de Bruxelles. Heine lived from 1848-57 at No. 50 Rue
Amsterdam. Rue Blanche was Rue de la Croix-Blanche in the seventeenth
century. Berlioz lived at No. 43. Roman remains were found beneath Nos.
16-18. Rue Pigalle has been known by six or seven different names, at
one time that of Rue du Champ-de-Repos, on account of the proximity of
the cemetery St-Roch. No. 12 belonged to Scribe, who died there (1861).
No. 67 is an ancient station for post-horses. Place Pigalle was in past
days Place de la Barrière de Montmartre. The fountain is on the site of
the ancient custom-house. Puvis de Chavannes and Henner had their
studios at No. 11, now a restaurant. Rue de la Rochechouart made across
abbey lands, the lower part dating from 1672, records the name of an
abbess of Montmartre. Gounod lived at No. 17 in 1867. Halévy in 1841.
The Musée Gustave Moreau at No. 14 was the great artist’s own _hôtel_,
bequeathed with its valuable collection to the State at his death in
1898. Marshal Ney lived at No. 12. In Rue de la Tour des Dames a
windmill tower, the property of the nuns of Montmartre, stood
undisturbed from the fifteenth century to the early part of the
nineteenth. The modern mansion at No. 3 (1822) is on land belonging in
olden days to the Grimaldi. Talma died in 1826 at No. 9. Rue la Bruyère
has always been inhabited by distinguished artists and literary men.
Berlioz lived for a time at No. 45. Rue Henner, named after the artist
who died at No. 5 Rue la Bruyère, is the old Rue Léonie. We see an
ancient and interesting house at No. 13. No. 12 hôtel des Auteurs et
Compositeurs Dramatiques, a society founded in 1791 by Beaumarchais.
Rue de Douai reminds us through its whole length of noted literary men
and artists of the nineteenth century. Halévy and also notable artists
have lived at No. 69. Ivan Tourgueneff at No. 50. Francisque Sarcey at
No. 59. Jules Moriac died at No. 32 (1882). Gustave Doré and also Halévy
lived for a time at No. 22. Claretie at No. 10. Edmond About owned No.
6.
The old Rue Victor-Massé was for long Rue de Laval in memory of the last
abbess of Montmartre. At No. 9, the abode of an antiquarian, we see
remarkably good modern statuary on the Renaissance frontage. No. 12
till late years was l’hôtel de Chat Noir, the first of the artistic
_montmartrois cabarets_ due to M. Salis (1881). At No. 26 we turn into
Avenue Frochot, where Alexandre Dumas, _père_, lived, where at No. 1 the
musical composer Victor Massé died (1884), and of which almost every
house is, or once was, the abode of artists. Passing down Rue
Henri-Monnier, formerly Rue Breda, which with Place Breda was, during
the first half of the nineteenth century, a quarter forbidden to
respectable women, we come to Rue Notre-Dame de Lorette. It dates from
the same period as the church built there (1823-37), and wherein we see
excellent nineteenth-century frescoes and paintings. This street, like
most of those around it, has been inhabited by men of distinction in art
or letters: Isabey, Daubigny, etc. Mignet lived there in 1849. Rue
St-Georges dates from the early years of the eighteenth century. Place
St-Georges was opened a century later on land belonging to the Dosne
family. Mme Dosne and her son-in-law lived at No. 27. The house was
burnt down in 1871, rebuilt by the State, given to l’Institut by Mlle
Dosne in 1905, and organized as a public library of contemporary
history. Nos. 15-13, now the _Illustration_ office, date from 1788.
Auber died at No. 22 (1871). The _hôtel_ at No. 2 was owned by Barras
and inhabited at one time by Mme Tallien.
The three busy streets, Rue Laffitte, Rue le Peletier, Rue Drouot, start
from boulevard des Italiens, cross streets we have already looked into,
and are connected with others of scant historic interest.
Rue Laffitte, so named in 1830 in memory of the great financier who laid
the foundation of his wealthy future when an impecunious lad, by
stooping, under the eye of the commercial magnate waiting to interview
him, to pick up a pin that lay in his path. Laffitte died Regent of the
Banque de France. So popular was he that when after 1830 he found
himself forced to sell his handsome mansion No. 19--l’hôtel de la
Borde--a national subscription was got up enabling him to buy it back.
Offenbach lived at No. 11. At No. 12 we find an interesting old court.
The great art lover and collector, the Marquis of Hertford, lived at No.
2, the old hôtel d’Aubeterre. No. 1, once known as la Maison Dorée, now
a post office, was the old hôtel Stainville inhabited by the Communist
Cerutti who, in his time, gave his name to the street. Mme Tallien also
lived there. For some years before 1909 it was the much frequented
Taverne Laffitte.
In Rue Le Peletier, the Opera-house burnt down in 1783, was from the
early years of the nineteenth century on the site of two old mansions:
l’hôtel de Choiseul and l’hôtel de Grammont. On the site of No. 2,
Orsini tried to assassinate Napoléon III. At No. 22 we see a Protestant
church built in the time of Napoléon I.
Rue Drouot, the Salle des Ventes, the great Paris “Auction-rooms” at No.
9, built in 1851, is on the site of the ancient hôtel Pinon de Quincy,
subsequently a Mairie. The present Mairie of the arrondissement at No. 6
dates from 1750. In the Revolutionary year 1792 it was the War Office,
then the Salon des Étrangers where masked balls were given: les bals des
Victimes. No. 2 the _Gaulois_ office, almost wholly rebuilt at the end
of the eighteenth century and again in 1811, was originally a fine
mansion built in 1717, the home of Le Tellier, later of the duc de
Talleyrand, and later still the first Paris Jockey Club (1836-57). The
famous dancer Taglioni also lived here at one time.
Rue Grange-Batelière was a farm--_la grange bataillée_--with fortified
towers, owned in the twelfth century by the nuns of Ste-Opportune. At
No. 10 we see the handsome _hôtel_ with fine staircase and statues,
built in 1785 for a gallant captain of the Gardes Françaises. There in
the days of Napoléon III was the Cercle Romantique, where Victor Hugo,
A. de Musset and other literary celebrities were wont to meet.