L’homme le plus avare de Rennes;
S’il est mort la veille de l’an
C’est pour ne pas donner d’étrennes,”
which may be roughly rendered in English thus:—
The miserliest man in Rennes;
If New Year’s Eve he chose for flight,
‘Twas that he need not give étrennes.”
Towards the end of the eighteenth century an edict was published in France forbidding New Year’s gifts; but without avail. The étrennes only became more numerous and more costly as the greed of the recipients grew more and more insatiable; and in the present day the meaning of the word étrenne will be only too well understood by any Englishman who, in Paris at the time of the New Year, may venture to have dealings with the waiters at the cafés, with hair-dressers, drivers, or any other set of men who delight in certain traditional customs.
CHAPTER XI.
THE BOULEVARDS (continued).
The Opéra Comique of Paris—I Gelosi—The Don Juan of Molière—Madame Favart—The Saint-Simonians.
THE Boulevard des Italiens derives its name from the so-called Comédie Italienne, the original Opéra Comique of Paris, which owes its existence to letters patent granted to it as far back as 1676. One of the most celebrated establishments on this boulevard is the Café Cardinal, at the corner of the Rue Richelieu. It justifies its title by exhibiting the bust of the famous political prelate, concerning whom the great Corneille, after receiving, first benefits, then injuries, at his hands, wrote these lines:—
Ni ma prose, ni mes vers n’en diront jamais rien.
Il m’a fait trop de bien pour en dire du mal,
Il m’a fait trop de mal pour en dire du bien.”[A]
[A] “Whether good or evil be spoken of the famous Cardinal, neither my prose nor my verse shall say a word of him. He has done too well by me for me to speak ill of him; he has done too ill by me for me to speak well of him.”
Formerly known as the Café Dangest, the title it now bears has belonged to it only since the year 1830. Just round the corner stands the house of the well-known music publishers, Messrs. Brandus and Co., founded by Moritz Schlesinger, who, as a young man, brought out many of Beethoven’s works, and was indeed one of Beethoven’s first appreciators. During the coup d’État of 1851 M. Brandus’s hospitable residence was the scene of an outrage which threatened to become a tragedy on a large scale. He was entertaining a party of friends, among whom were M. Adolphe Saxe, the inventor of saxophones, and the eminent musical critic of the Times, the late Mr. J. W. Davison. The boulevards and many of the streets leading out of them were full of troops, for the most part in a state of great excitement, and some infantry soldiers at the corner of the Boulevard des Italiens and the Rue Richelieu believed, or affected to believe, that shots had been fired at them from M. Brandus’s windows. Possibly some bullets discharged by the soldiers themselves had glanced back from the house or one of the neighbouring houses, and fallen into the street. The troops, in any case, forced M. Brandus’s door, and his servant, who went downstairs to remonstrate with the invaders, was at once shot dead. The soldiers then made their way into the room where M. Brandus and his guests were at table, arrested them, and brought them down to the boulevard with the intention of shooting them in a formal manner, as if by way of example. Fortunately, the general in command was an amateur of music and a personal friend of Adolphe Saxe: whom he particularly remembered, moreover, as having fought with courage against the insurgents during the sanguinary days of June, 1848. Saxe at once declared that the accusation made by the soldiers was entirely without basis, and the general did not hesitate to accept his assurance. He enjoined him, however, to hurry away as quickly as possible from the boulevard, which was about to be “swept” by a fusillade. Saxe and his friends managed narrowly to escape.
The Opéra Comique Theatre, or Comédie Italienne, as it was more generally called, was founded originally in the Hôtel de Bourgogne; and it was only in 1783 that it was re-established on the boulevard to which the Comédie Italienne was to give its name.
The Opéra Comique of France descends indeed in a straight line from the most ancient dramatic entertainments given in that country. These were introduced in the sixteenth century by natives of the land to which the French owe nearly all the lighter and more ornamental part of their civilisation, from opera and the drama to ices and confectionery: from architecture, pictures, and statues, to gloves, fans, gambling-houses, and masked balls.
In 1576 Henri III. invited from Venice to Paris a company known as “I Gelosi.” The actors were “jealous” or “zealous” to please; and a contemporary writer informs us that after playing at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, where everyone was charged four sous for admission, they took possession of the Hôtel du Petit Bourbon, where such crowds assembled that “the four best preachers in Paris could not together have collected such a congregation.” The same writer adds that on the 26th of June following the Parliament forbade “I Gelosi” to play their comedies any {116} longer, as they taught “nothing but impropriety.” The Italian actors, however, resisted the Parliamentary decree, and they obtained from the king letters patent permitting them to continue their performances, “consisting,” says Mézerai, “of pieces of intrigue, amourettes, and agreeable inventions for awakening and exciting the softest passions.”
The Italian actors presented these letters patent to the Parliament the month following, when the letters were rejected, and they themselves forbidden to present to the Court such documents, under a penalty of ten thousand Paris livres. The Italians, however, appealed once more to the king, when Henri III. granted express permission, in virtue of which they re-opened their theatre in December, 1577. As, however, the country was now agitated by political troubles, “I Gelosi” discreetly returned to their native land. A few years afterwards a second troop of “Gelosi,” and then a third, came to Paris; and later on Henri IV. brought from Pavia a new company, which stayed in Paris for two years.
Cardinal Mazarin (or Mazarini) did much to familiarise Parisians both with Italian operas and Italian plays; and about 1660 one of several Italian companies which had recently visited Paris obtained permission to play at the Hôtel de Bourgogne alternately with the French actors.
But at last, in their love of satire, the Italian actors forgot themselves so far as to turn into ridicule no less a personage than Mme. de Maintenon. “The king,” says the Duke de Saint-Simon, writing {117} on this very subject, “drove out very precipitately the whole troop of Italian actors, and would suffer no others in their place. As long as they restricted themselves to indecency, or even impiety, nothing but laughter was excited.” But they took the liberty of playing a piece called The False Prude, in which Mme. de Maintenon was easily recognised. Accordingly, everyone went to see it; but after three or four representations, the actors were ordered to close their theatre and quit the kingdom within a month.
This caused a great noise; and if the actors lost their establishment by their boldness and folly, the Government which drove them out did not gain by the freedom with which the ridiculous incident was criticised. The Lieutenant of Police, accompanied by an army of commissaries, sergeants, and constables, had invaded and seized the manuscript of The False Prude. Jherardi, the harlequin of the troupe, hurried to Versailles, where he begged and entreated, but without being able to move Louis XIV., who had so many times protected the Italian comedians. “You came to France on foot,” said the king, “and you have gained enough here to go back in carriages.”
During their stay in Paris the Italian actors expelled by Louis XIV. had accustomed themselves to play in French, and the celebrated comedy writer, Regnard, had entrusted them with several of his pieces. This rendered them more than ever disliked by the French actors, with whom they were always in rivalry. The pieces performed by the Italian actors consisted for the most part, and always when they confined themselves to their own language, of mere dramatic sketches, for which dialogue was supplied by the actors themselves.
It was not until 1716 that the Italian actors re-appeared in France, and they now played at a theatre in the Palais Royal, occupied alternately by them and by the company of the Grand Opera. In time the Italian company varied their pieces, and even introduced songs in the midst of the dialogue. This at once exposed them to attacks from the Opéra, or Académie Royale de Musique, as it was called; and in conformity with the privileges secured to the Opéra, the Italians were forbidden to sing. Soon afterwards they produced a piece in which a donkey was brought on to the stage and made to bray, whereupon one of the actors cried out to the animal, “Silence! singing is forbidden on these boards.” Ultimately, as the result of much opposition and many minatory decrees, an arrangement was made between the Italian actors and a company of French actors and singers which led to the establishment of the French Opéra Comique.
At last the Italian and the French actors played together; but French wit and Italian wit were said not to harmonise, and in order to simplify matters, the Italians, with the exception of one or two who had adopted the French language, were sent out of the country. The theatre now given up to French comic opera continued, however, to be called the Théâtre Italien, to receive afterwards, in memory of Mme. Favart and her husband, the title of Salle Favart, and at a later period, under the Republic, that of Opéra Comique.
The performances of the Italians came permanently to an end in 1783. In spite of the jealousy with which they were regarded by the great bulk of the theatrical profession, the Italian actors had an excellent effect on the development of the French stage, which, when the first troupe of Gelosi arrived in Paris, had no substantial existence. Molière profited much by their performances and borrowed freely from their productions, taking from them, according to his well-known saying, “his property” (that is to say, all that naturally belonged to him through affinity and sympathy) wherever “he found it.” Apart from many other subjects and scenes, Molière borrowed his version of Don Juan from the Italians. Much of it, including most of its philosophy and wit, belongs in the very fullest sense to the great comic dramatist of France. But the very title, Festin de Pierre—an incorrect and, indeed, unintelligible translation of Il Convitato de Pietra—is enough to show the origin of Molière’s admirable work.
The new establishment had been only ten years on the Boulevard des Italiens when its name was altered definitely from Comédie Italienne to Opéra Comique. A few years later the establishment was moved to the Rue Feydeau, where it was destined to enjoy a long life and a merry one. Meanwhile, the house which had given its ancient name to the Italian boulevard remained unoccupied—or but rarely occupied—for some considerable time, until, in 1815, the celebrated Catalani opened it for serious Italian opera.
The Théâtre des Italiens now became the most fashionable theatre in Paris. Here Madames Pasta, Malibran, Grisi, Persiani, MM. Rubini, Tamburini, Lablache, etc., were heard. Here, too, Rossini for a time acted as musical director.{118}
This theatre, like all others, was soon destined to perish by fire; and Italian opera has of late years led a somewhat wandering life in France, to find itself ultimately without any home at all.
The early history of the Opéra Comique, from the middle of the eighteenth until the first days of the nineteenth century, is sufficiently represented by the lives of two of its most distinguished ornaments: Mme. Favart and her successor in parts of the same kind, Mme. Dugazon. Mme. Favart—Duronceray by her maiden name—was the wife of Charles Simon Favart, the well-known dramatist, who for many years supplied the Opéra Comique with all its good pieces. The marriage took place in 1745, and immediately afterwards the Opéra Comique, as an establishment recognised and subventioned by the State, was suppressed. Favart had some time before made the acquaintance of Marshal Saxe, who may be said to have played almost as great a part in connection with the stage as with the camp; and he was now invited by the famous commander to organise a company for giving performances at the head-quarters, and for the entertainment of the army in Flanders generally. Favart hurried to Brussels, where Marshal Saxe was about to arrive; and on reaching the head-quarters, the commander-in-chief gave an entertainment to the ladies whose husbands were serving on his staff, and to the wives generally of the officers. The performance consisted of national dances by the Highland contingent, whose scanty costumes are said to have at once amused and scandalised the ladies. Then a piece of Favart’s was played; and with so much success, that it became the fashion to attend Favart representations as often as they were given. Marshal Saxe told Favart that it was part of his policy to give theatrical entertainments, and the manager soon saw that his musical comedies interested the officers sufficiently to take them away from cards and dice, to which previously they had given themselves up with only too much devotion. The marshal pointed out to Favart, moreover, that a lively couplet, a few happy lines, would have more effect on French soldiers than the most eloquent harangues. Besides amusing his own people and keeping them out of mischief, Marshal Saxe found Favart’s Comic Opera Company useful in promoting his negotiations with the enemy. Having heard of the Favart performances, the enemy desired much to see them; and the representations given in the enemy’s camp had no slight effect in facilitating peace arrangements. Mme. Favart—Mlle. Chantilly, to describe her by her stage name—was a member of the operatic company engaged by the marshal to follow the army of Flanders; and the commander-in-chief—as, with a man of his well-known temperament, was sure to happen—fell in love with the charming prima donna. Mme. Favart was at last obliged to make her escape, and, forsaking the camp, returned to the capital. Here she appeared at the so-called Italian Theatre, which was really the Opéra Comique under another name.
That Mme. Favart was greater as an actress than as a vocalist (which may be said of so many singers who have distinguished themselves at the Opéra Comique of Paris) is beyond doubt. “She is not a singer,” said Grétry, the composer; “she is an actress who speaks song with the truest and most passionate accent.” “What a wonderful woman!” exclaimed Boieldieu, after a representation of his Caliph of Bagdad. “They say she does not know music; yet I never heard anyone sing with such taste and expression, such nature and fidelity.”
Boieldieu, through Auber, his successor, brings us to modern times. With Ambroise Thomas, the composer of Mignon, and Bizet, the composer of Carmen, the Opéra Comique has always been the most French of all the French musical theatres. At the Grand Opéra, or Académie, nearly all the successful works have been composed by foreigners: by Lulli, Gluck, Piccinni, Spontini, Rossini, Meyerbeer, Donizetti, and Verdi. The most popular works at the Opéra Comique have, on the other hand, been composed by Frenchmen. La Dame Blanche, for instance, of Boieldieu; the Fra Diavolo, The Black Domino, The Crown Diamonds of Auber; the Mignon of Ambroise Thomas, and the Carmen of Bizet, have all been due to the genius of Frenchmen.
The Opéra Comique, since its formal separation from all connection with Italy, has itself had strange and tragic adventures. The last of these was its destruction by a terrible fire, in which more than one hundred lives were lost. Since this catastrophe, which took place on the 22nd of May, 1887, the Opéra Comique has been provisionally established in the Place du Châtelet.
To make an inevitable excursion which here presents itself, the Rue Monsigny, deriving its name from one of the most famous composers connected with the Opéra Comique, will always be remembered as the head-quarters of the Saint-Simonians during the first meeting of that {119} strange association, founded by Saint-Simon, lineal descendant of the duke who wrote the famous Memoirs. The aims of the Saint-Simonians, visionary as they may have been, were at least noble; and the society numbered among its members some of the most able and high-minded young men of the day. The truth of this latter assertion is proved by the distinguished part played by many of the Saint-Simonians in very different spheres after the society had come to an end. Michel Chevalier, the political economist, Duveyrier, the dramatist, and Félicien David, the composer, may be mentioned among those Saint-Simonians whose names will be familiar to many Englishmen.
Saint-Simon, founder of the sect named after him, began his self-imposed career with a sufficiently large fortune to enable him to test various modes of existence. His purpose was, after studying society, to reform it. He had resolved to study it thoroughly in all its phases: all those, at least, which offered any special intellectual or physical character. Without apparently having conceived any system beforehand, he was constantly working towards one, making observations and writing down notes. That he might waste no time from sluggishness or sloth, he ordered his servant to wake him every morning with these significant words: “Rise, Count; you have great things to do.” (Levez-vous, Monsieur le Comte, vous avez de grandes choses à faire.) The great political principle that he ultimately adopted was that “all legislation should be for the benefit of the poorest and most numerous class,” which was little more than a variation of Jeremy Bentham’s “greatest good of the greatest number.”
He lived in aristocratic society a life of pleasure, studied science among scientific men, and finally, occupying himself with books and newspapers, made himself the centre of all kinds of literary gatherings. When, however, he had, according to his own previously formed conception, completed his knowledge of life, he had exhausted his means of living, and was quite unable to turn to account his accumulated experience. The descendant of the proud duke could only keep himself alive by copying manuscripts and by doing clerk’s work in the Government Pawn Office, or Mont-de-Piété. At last his misfortunes were too great for him, and he endeavoured to commit suicide. But the bullet with which he had intended to blow his brains out glanced along the frontal bone and destroyed one of his eyes, without inflicting any mortal wound. The unhappy experimentalist had now had a bitter experience of poverty, which may or may not have been in his general programme. His enthusiasm ended in any case by inspiring a few rich men who possessed the money necessary for carrying out his ideas.
Saint-Simon’s mantle fell upon Le Père Enfantin, who presided over the Saint-Simonian family in the Rue Monsigny, until pecuniary embarrassments caused the learned and venerable father to give up the publication of the admirably written Saint-Simonian journal, The Globe, and to retire from a house for which, unhappily, rent had to be paid, to a house and garden of his own at Ménilmontant. Here he collected around him forty disciples, determined to work together under Le Père Enfantin’s direction. “Poets, musicians, artists, engineers, civil and military,” says a writer, fully in sympathy with the Saint-Simonians, even if he was not himself a member of their body, “applied themselves by turns to the hardest and rudest labours.
“They repaired the house, regularly swept and kept in order the rooms, offices, and courtyard, cultivated the grounds, covered the walks with gravel, which they procured from a pit they had themselves with much toil opened, and so on. To prove that their ideas upon the nature of marriage and the emancipation of women were not founded upon the calculations of a voluptuous selfishness, they imposed upon themselves the law of strict celibacy. Every morning and evening they refreshed their minds with the discourses of Le Père Enfantin, or sought in the life of one of the Christian saints, read aloud by one of them to the rest, examples, precepts, encouragement. Hymns, the music to which had been composed by one of their number, M. Félicien David, served to exalt their souls, while soothing their labour. At five o’clock the horn announced dinner. The workmen then piled their tools, ranged the wheelbarrows round the garden, and took their places, after having chanted in chorus the prayer before meat. All this the public were admitted to see: a spectacle in which a sneering, jesting nation only marked the singular features, by turns simple and sublime, but which was assuredly deficient in neither broad aim nor in abstract grandeur. For in this practice of theirs the apostles of Ménilmontant went far beyond their own theories, and were sowing around them unconsciously the seeds of doctrine which were destined one day to throw their own into oblivion.”
It was on the 6th of June, amidst the roar of the cannon in the Rue {120} Saint-Méry, and not far from the bloody theatre whence arose the cries of the combatants—it was on this very 6th of June that for the first time since they had entered it, the Saint-Simonian family threw open the doors of their retreat. “At half-past one,” writes M. Louis Blanc, “they were assembled, standing in a circle in front of the house, while outside a second circle, formed of those whom the inmates of Ménilmontant termed the exterior family, was a small group of spectators, attracted by the curiosity of the thing.”
No sooner had the Government suppressed the formidable insurrection, which was finally stamped out in its last retreat at the corner of the Rue Saint-Méry, than, as if to assert the authority it had gained, it commenced proceedings against the Saint-Simonians, a noble-minded, highly moral body of men, who were accused, nevertheless, of spreading immoral doctrines. In his defence, Le Père Enfantin admitted, while rejecting with indignation the charge of immoral teaching, that one of the main objects of Saint-Simonianism was the reorganisation of property. “The misery,” he said, “of the working classes and the wealth of idle men are the main causes of the evils we seek to remedy. But when we say that there ought to be an end to that hereditary misery and hereditary idleness which are the results of the existing constitution of property, founded, as it is, on the right of birth, our opponents charge us with an intention of overturning the State.
“It is of no use for us to urge that this transformation of property can only be effected progressively, pacifically, voluntarily: that it can be effected much better than was the destruction of feudal rights, with every imaginable system of indemnity, and with even greater deliberation than you apply to the expropriations which you now effect for purposes of public utility: we are not listened to; we are condemned off-hand as reckless disturbers of order. Unweariedly we seek to show you that this transformation is called for by all the present and future wants of society: that its actual progress is marked out in the most palpable manner by the creation of the code of commerce, by all the habits of industry which have sprung up on every side, encouraging the mobilisation of property, its transference from the idle and incapable to the laborious and capable hand; we show you all this, but still you cry out, shutting your eyes, ‘Your association is dangerous!’”
In the end Enfantin, Duveyrier, and Michel Chevalier were condemned to a year’s imprisonment and a fine of a hundred francs each, other less prominent members being let off with smaller degrees of punishment. Simonianism, as an organised thing, was now extinct, but its principles did not die with the organisation, and in the best forms of socialism and of democracy were soon to show themselves anew.
The Rue Marivaux, another of the most interesting outlets from this part of the Boulevards, commemorates the witty and agreeable comedy writer who invented the half bantering, half complimentary style of dialogue to which the name of “marivaudage” is given.
THE 6TH OF JUNE: THE LAST OF THE INSURRECTION.
CHAPTER XII.
THE BOULEVARDS (continued).
La Maison Dorée—Librairie Nouvelle—Catherine II. and the Encyclopædia—The House of Madeleine Guimard.
AT the corner of the Rue Marivaux stands the Café Anglais, now the only one remaining of the historical Paris restaurants, which for the most part date their reputation from the years 1814 and 1815, when the European Allies had their head-quarters in the French capital. The invasions which restored the French Monarchy, and which had been undertaken with no other object, brought defeat, but at the same time prosperity and gaiety to Paris; whereas the invasion of 1870 and 1871 caused nothing but misery to the vanquished. During the early days of the Restoration such houses as Les Trois Frères Provençaux, in the Palais Royal, La Maison Dorée, the Café Riche, and the still extant Café Anglais, did a magnificent trade, thanks to the number of Prussian, Russian, Austrian, and English officers who frequented them, and who, after the toils of war, abandoned themselves willingly to some of the joys of peace.
Most of these famous restaurants sprang from wine-shops; for it is a fact that every celebrated dining-place in Paris has owed its reputation primarily to the quality of its wine. The three brothers from Provence who started the restaurant known under their name were simply three young men who, having vineyards of their own and a connection with other wine-growers, maintained an excellent cellar. But when people came in to taste its contents it was absolutely necessary, in order to render appreciable the flavour of the wine, to give them something to eat. Then, as they spent their money freely, it was found possible and even desirable to engage a first-rate cook; until at last the reputation of the cellar was equalled by that of the kitchen.
Who has not read of Les Trois Frères Provençaux in Balzac’s “Scenes from Paris Life”? It was in one of their upstairs rooms, moreover, facing the garden of the Palais Royal, that the hero of Alfred de Musset’s “Enfant du Siècle” had his last sad interview, his last sad meal, with the young woman from whom he was about to separate for ever.
La Maison Dorée, too, was a famous house. The scene of many an orgie, it kept its doors open continuously. Here it was that M. de Camors, in Octave Feuillet’s novel of that name, at the end of an extremely late supper threw a gold piece into the mud and told a ragpicker who happened to be passing that if he would pull it out with his teeth he could have it for himself; and who does not remember how, so soon as the chiffonnier had performed this feat, the dissipated but not altogether degraded gentleman begged the poor man to knock him down in return for the insult offered to him.
La Maison Dorée used to be kept by a proprietor named Hardy, and the fact that the neighbouring café and restaurant, of almost equal celebrity and dearness, belonged to a Monsieur Riche, whose name it bore, gave rise to the saying that a man must be “très riche pour dîner chez Hardy, et très hardi pour dîner chez Riche.”
The Café Riche used to be the favourite dining place of Jules Janin on evenings of first performances. Here on these interesting occasions he was always to be seen; and the usual genial tone of his criticisms was possibly attributable to the excellence of M. Riche’s chef. Not, however, that Janin wrote his notices of new plays the same night. He published them week by week in the feuilleton of the Journal des Débats, afterwards to be corrected and published under the title of “Questionable History of Dramatic Literature.”
The Café Riche was never such a late house as La Maison Dorée, which went on day by day and year by year, never closing, regardless of the clock. Thus it was at once the earliest and the latest of Paris taverns; and if it was possible to get supper there at 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning after a dull evening party, a traveller was equally sure that the place would be open when, arriving at Paris by train at, say, 6 in the morning, the vacuum in his stomach demanded an immediate breakfast.
A story is told of a gentleman who, living immediately opposite the side entrance of La Maison Dorée, dedicated to this famous hostelry all the time he did not spend in bed. Rising extremely late, he turned into {123} the Maison Dorée towards four in the afternoon to look at the papers, converse with some of the frequenters, take a preparatory glass of absinthe, and finally dine—this being, of course, the great event of his well-spent day. His dinner began at an advanced hour of the evening, and lasted well into the night. Then he was joined by friends from the theatre bent on supping; and it was not till towards sunrise that he returned to his apartments over the way.
Unlike the Temple of Janus, which was never shut in time of war, the Maison Dorée could only keep its doors open in time of peace. Such war, at all events, as the Prussians brought to the gates of Paris and to Paris itself in 1870 and 1871 was fatal to its existence. Since those terrible years Paris has lost something of its gaiety and frivolity. The Café Anglais still exists; but even at this celebrated supping-place of former years supper is now an unknown meal. Nothing is served in the Café Anglais after nine o’clock. This café, oddly enough, seems to have been named after a nation which in the year 1815 can scarcely have been popular among the French. Its origin, or at least its name, dates from the year of the Waterloo campaign, and, strangely enough, it is the only great restaurant of that period which to this day survives. Possibly the establishment was not called Café Anglais merely by way of invitation to the English portion of the occupying forces. The title may have been meant to indicate that the service of the table was conducted after the English rather than the French fashion. The French, it must be admitted, preceded us in the matter of napkins, and also, if their boast on the subject can be admitted, in the earlier use of four-pronged forks, made by preference of silver. But in the year 1815 the French knew nothing of salt-spoons; and though plates were changed frequently enough, the same knife and fork served throughout the various courses, the diner cleaning on a piece of bread a knife which did duty for every dish which came on the table. It replaced the salt-spoon, and was frequently used for conveying food to the mouth. Not only English dining-places, but English hotels were highly esteemed in 1815; and Dr. Véron, in his “Mémoires d’un Bourgeois de Paris,” speaks of cleanliness as an English invention unknown to the French until the peace which followed the Napoleonic wars.
In the art of living the French have generally been considered by the rest of Europe to have reached the greatest proficiency; and their methods and customs have accordingly been more imitated than those of any other nation. Of their cookery there is but one opinion; for every man in Europe who can afford a great table keeps either a French cook or a cook educated in the French school. The variety given by French cooks to the very simplest dish is too well known to require emphasis; and even Macaulay quotes the story of that Parisian chef who could make twelve different dishes out of a poppy-head.
In the matter of table as of drawing-room etiquette the French in Arthur Young’s time seem to have been both superior and inferior to the English. It is true that the French artisan would not dine without a clean napkin on his knee; but it is equally true that the French aristocrat would sometimes spit about the floor in presence of a duchess with a freedom which would be resented in any English tap-room.
If Paris be really “the Tavern of Europe,” the Café Anglais is at this moment the Tavern of Paris. Scarcely any foreigner of distinction visits the French capital without dining, perhaps even by special arrangement supping, at the Café Anglais, which is now under the management, not of an enterprising landlord, but of a well-regulated Limited Liability Company.
At the corner of the Rue de Grammont, separated from the Café Anglais by the Theatrical Bureau, or “Office de Théâtre,” which supplies tickets for every playhouse in Paris, is the Librairie Nouvelle, where, exhibited for sale, may be seen all the latest novels in vogue and most of the standard works which, in spite of, or perhaps in consequence of, their ancient fame, still find readers. Books are published at much lower prices in Paris than in London. Lending libraries are now quite out of date in the French capital, and persons really interested in a new work do not get it to read at so much a volume or a subscription of so much a year, but buy it once and for all. Forty or fifty years ago the circulating library system had been pushed further in Paris than any point it has yet reached in London. Novels by popular authors were issued in six or eight volumes with from eighty to one hundred words in each page; a sore temptation to the Belgian pirates, who, in the days before International Copyright Conventions, vexed the soul of every French author by reproducing his works at so low a price that he had no more chance of selling his editions in Belgium than has an English {124} author of to-day of vending his in the United States. Instead, however, of being separated from France as America is from England by thousands of miles of sea, Belgium was conterminous with the country it loved to despoil. It was impossible to prevent the fraudulent imitations of Belgium entering France; and to put an end at once to Belgian piracy and to the absurd circulating library system, a spirited and intelligent Paris publisher, Charpentier by name, introduced the novel at three and a half francs—a price which, as originally fixed, or at a reduction of half a franc, is still maintained. Copyright affairs between France and Belgium are now regulated under the clauses of the same International Convention which binds all other countries, with the exception of Russia and Holland on one side of the Atlantic, and the United States of America on the other.
To offer new books for sale in London at the strangely high prices fixed for the benefit of the circulating libraries would be out of the question; but at the Librairie Nouvelle all the latest works produced in Paris may be seen, partially read, and finally, if such be the desire of the reader, purchased. Many a Parisian, however, or visitor to Paris, whether from love of literature or merely to pass the time, strolls into the Librairie Nouvelle and looks through book after book without buying a single volume. Some day such an institution as this will possibly exist in London; not, however, until the prices of our new books are considerably lowered. But although the frequenters of the Librairie Nouvelle are not called upon, or even expected, to make purchases, only a small fraction of them leave the establishment without doing so; and it is as astonishing as it is interesting to see with what rapidity copies of a new novel of genuine popularity will sometimes go off.
No trade has made such progress in France since the Great Revolution as that of bookselling. This result is due alike to the increase in the number of readers through cheap, gratuitous, and obligatory education, and to the liberty of the Press enjoyed by the French, with some interruptions (as under the First Empire and a few years of the Restoration), for an entire century. “How I should like to have Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot writing for me in one of my garrets,” a French bookseller is represented as saying in Mercier’s “Tableau de Paris,” published only a few years before the Revolution. “I would feed them well, but, by Heaven, I would make them work! Why is one of them too rich, and the others too independent to write at so much per sheet?”
It is noticeable that not one of these three authors whose works sold {125} so largely was able to publish in France everything he wrote. Even the volume in which the above story is told was published in London. Many of Voltaire’s works were brought out in London or Amsterdam. More than one of Rousseau’s books were prohibited in France; and the publication of the “Encyclopédie,” to which Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot all contributed, was not only prohibited, but cast materially into the Bastille, where the volumes were found on the destruction of the building; which gave the despotic, but in regard to literature, liberal-minded Catherine II. an opportunity of offering to continue the publication of the work in Russia.
PARIS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
Until the time of the Revolution nearly the whole of the book trade was in the hands of hawkers. “The business of these people,” says a writer of the 18th century, “is to be the itinerant beasts of burden of literature, as the booksellers are its caterpillars. Illiterate, and hardly able to read, the hawkers may be said to deal in a ware as perfectly foreign to them as the business of mixing up colours would be to the blind. They only know the price of each book they offer for sale. They are haunted everywhere by police-runners, and such is their apprehension of falling under the censure of the despotic magistrate, and, altogether, their ignorance, that some sell even prayer-books under the cloak with as much care and circumspection as if it were an immoral or political pamphlet. These poor harmless hawkers, who give circulation to the clandestine works of the writers of every denomination without being able to read a single line; who, though far from suspecting it, are the asserters of public freedom, and with no other view than to procure to themselves a scanty subsistence—these are the first to feel the resentment of the offended great. It would be, perhaps, if not dangerous, at least impolitic, to attack the author himself; but a hawker sent to the Bastille or fastened in the public market by an iron {126} carcanet is a matter of too little importance to be noticed by the public.”
The very method employed to prevent the spread of ideas amongst the French people helped to overthrow the despotism by which it had been devised. This is well shown by Arthur Young, writing about the same time as the author whose account of the persecution in France of literature in all its forms has just been quoted. Such ignorance in Young’s time was imposed on the French nation by a tyrannical censorship that, for aught the country knew to the contrary, their representatives were in the Bastille; and the mob was accustomed to pillage, burn, and destroy from sheer want of knowledge. Even in the large provincial towns Young could not see a newspaper. At the cafés there was nothing to read but the Gazette de France, a sheet in which the professed “news” was so dished up that “no man of common-sense” would attempt to digest it. The consequence was that the frequenters of cafés and restaurants could be heard gravely discussing news a fortnight old.
On the first floor of the house of which the ground-floor is occupied by the Librairie Nouvelle, we find the Club of the Two Worlds, or “Cercle des Deux Mondes,” established in an abode which was occupied for some time by the Jockey Club, until this latter, after deserting the mansion built by the Farmer-General de Lange on the Boulevard Montmartre, continued its western progress, to reach ultimately the domicile it at present inhabits on the Boulevard des Capucines.
At the corner of the Rue de Choiseul is the well-known establishment of Potel and Chabot, who keep what, in London—for want of a better name, and probably in virtue of some tradition on the subject—is called an “Italian warehouse.” This firm, however, does not confine itself to the lighter description of comestibles and dainties. In these it deals largely enough; and among the tempting delicacies offered to the passer-by are early vegetables, fruit, olives, ham, sausages of rare manufacture, and game pies. But besides selling stray articles to the chance epicure, the house of Potel and Chabot undertakes the supply of dinners on a very large scale, and employs a number of chefs, sous-chefs, scullions, roasters, pastry-cooks, and other functionaries of the kitchen. It was the firm of Potel and Chabot which, in July, 1888, supplied in the Champ de Mars the banquet offered to 10,000 mayors from all parts of France, furnishing it hot, so that many of the guests declared they had never before been anywhere so well served. The dinner was simple, but it is said to have been excellent. The ten thousand guests had one glass and two plates apiece; 500 waiters flitted about with the wines and the dishes.
The end of the Boulevard des Italiens is marked by a circular pavilion, which has lost something of its original shape through the repairs necessitated by the ravages of time; though it still bears a number of sculptural ornaments which are much admired, including certain masks, reputed to be masterpieces. It is called the Pavilion of Hanover, and is so named from having been erected and adorned by the architect Cheveautel for the Duc de Richelieu at the end of the garden attached to his mansion, after the campaign of Hanover, in 1757, which he terminated by securing the capitulation of Closterseven. Under the Directory and the Consulate, in the first years of the Empire, the Pavilion of Hanover and a portion of the grounds belonging formerly to the Duc de Richelieu were the scene of public assemblies, balls, and concerts; and it was here that Tortoni established his famous ice-shop and café in partnership with another Italian, named Velloni. The latter is now forgotten; but Tortoni, who continued the business on his own account, is, in the world of cafés, an historical figure.
Let us not hurry past the former Hôtel Choiseul, where, during the Reign of Terror, Pace, Minister of War, resided; where, under the Directory, the staff of the Army of Paris was established; and where Murat afterwards lived in the capacity of Governor. When the Restoration came to pass it was turned into the headquarters of the National Guard. Finally it was put up for sale, when, after the assassination of the Duc of Berri on the steps of the Opera House in the Rue Richelieu, it was determined to pull down the lyric temple and erect another on the site occupied by the Hôtel Choiseul. We shall see in the proper place that the demolition of the Opera House of the Rue Richelieu was due to the representations of the Archbishop of Paris, who refused to allow the last sacrament to be administered to the dying prince unless he received a promise that the profane building, in which so holy an act had to be performed, should immediately afterwards be destroyed. The Hôtel Choiseul was bought by the City of Paris, and close to what remained of the ancient mansion rose the new Opera House, opening on to the Rue Le Pelletier, where, between the years 1821 and 1823, so many great works were brought out, including Rossini’s Guillaume Tell, Auber’s {127} Masaniello, as it is called in England, Donizetti’s Favorite, Verdi’s Vêpres Siciliennes, and Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable, Prophète, and Africaine. On the night of Tuesday, October 20, 1873, the eve of the hundredth representation of Ambroise Thomas’ Hamlet, flames burst out in the wardrobe, and the next day the Opera House was a heap of ruins.
It is a curious fact, not hitherto noticed, that the destruction by fire of the Opera House in the Rue Le Pelletier took place precisely two hundred years after the production of Lulli’s earliest opera, the first lyrical piece ever performed in Paris under the royal patent which authorised the establishment of a regular opera house. Lulli has been represented, in a famous picture, receiving his “privilege” from the hands of Louis XIV. as a reward and encouragement for services rendered. It can scarcely be said, however, that Lulli, though he established opera in Paris, was the first to introduce it. Cardinal Mazarin brought Italian opera to Paris in 1645, when Lulli was but a child; and the French opera named Akébar, Roi de Mogol, written and composed by the Abbé Mailly, was represented the year afterwards in the episcopal palace of Carpentras under the direction of Cardinal Bichi. A public performance, moreover, was given of Pomone, words by Perrin, music by Cambert, in 1671; but though Pomone was the first French opera offered in Paris to a general audience, Lulli’s Cadmée was the first of that long series of lyrical productions given at the State Opera House which extended, with but two short breaks, from 1673 to 1873.
The new Opera House, which was to replace the one burnt down in 1873, had already, on a scale of unprecedented magnificence, been designed, constructed, and all but finished under Napoleon III. But 1873, scarcely more than two years after the disasters of the siege and Commune, was not the time at which to complete and inaugurate a sumptuous Opera House; and it was not until 1875 that the famous edifice, which may challenge comparison with any other of the kind in Europe, threw its doors open to the public.
Another celebrated building in this neighbourhood, at the corner of the Rue Taitbout, is the former Hôtel de Brancas, built by the architect Bélanger, a devoted friend of the famous Sophie Arnould, to whom he was faithfully attached until her death. His endeavours to obtain for her, in default of a pension that was never paid, a portion of the large sum due to her from the directors of the Théâtre Français show him to have been a man of energy as well as heart. It was in the character of architect that Bélanger first became acquainted with the brilliant and witty actress; and when he made her an offer of marriage, which she did not accept, she at once observed that no one was better fitted than an architect to build up her damaged reputation. From the family of Brancas the mansion erected by Bélanger passed to the wife of General Rapp, then to the Marchioness of Hertford, to her son Lord Seymour, and to Sir Richard Wallace. Under Napoleon III. magnificent entertainments were given there by the late Khalil Pasha. On the ground-floor of the edifice appeared and disappeared the Café de Paris, celebrated in the reign of Louis Philippe, and for some years afterwards, as the rendez-vous of celebrities in literature, art, and the world of fashion. It was in time to be followed by other excellent restaurants, now vanished, but not forgotten.
The last house on the Boulevard des Italiens, at the corner of the Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin, occupies the site of the old Military School, founded, for 200 officers’ sons, under the name of Dépôt des Gardes Français; where for twenty years of his life Rossini lived on the first floor, and whence he moved to the villa at Passy offered to him by the City of Paris. It was in this retreat that he ended his days.
The Chaussée d’Antin, formerly a high road leading from the boulevards into the open country, is full of interesting associations. In the Chaussée d’Antin, or close to that thoroughfare in its present form, stood the celebrated Temple of Terpsichore built for Madeleine Guimard, the dancer; which so excited the jealousy of Sophie Arnould, the vocalist, that she insisted on having a mansion of equal magnificence side by side with that of her operatic friend and rival. Madeleine Guimard, according to one of her biographers, excited as much admiration and scattered as many fortunes as any woman that ever appeared on the stage. She was, nevertheless, ugly, thin, of sallow complexion, and marked with the small-pox. She is said to have preserved, in a marvellous manner, her youth and a certain indescribable charm which constituted her chief attractions. She possessed, moreover, such a perfect acquaintance with all the mysteries of the toilet that by the arts of dress and adornment alone she could still make herself look young when age had crept upon her. Queen Marie Antoinette would often {128} consult her about matters of dress, and especially the arrangement of her hair; and once when, for her rebellious attitude at the theatre, she had, in accordance with the strange customs of the times, been ordered to prison, she is reported to have said to her maid: “Never mind, I have sent a letter to the queen telling her that I have discovered a new way of doing the hair. We shall be out before the evening.” But to return to the Temple of Terpsichore, which, built in the finest architectural style, and magnificently furnished, was decorated internally by Fragonard, one of the most famous painters of that day. In his wall-pictures he never failed to introduce the face and figure of the light-footed divinity of the place: until at last he became enamoured of his model, and, presuming on one occasion to show signs of jealousy, was promptly discharged, to be replaced by the most unsuitable artist that can be conceived—by David, the painter of heroic figures, of Republican subjects, and of Napoleon in all his glory. The celebrated painter of the Consulate and the Empire was, in Madeleine Guimard’s time, a very young man—a mere student, in fact. But he was a stern {129} Republican, and when the luxurious but sympathetic dancer saw that the work of decorating her voluptuous palace did not accord with his lofty aspirations, she gave him the sum he was to have received for covering her walls with fantastic designs, in order that he might continue his studies in the style which best suited him.
Mont Valérien and the Arc de Triomphe.———Church of St.
Augustine.
VIEW FROM THE ROOF OF THE OPERA HOUSE.
The house built by Sophie Arnould next door to Madeleine Guimard’s Temple of Terpsichore bore no distinctive name. But it was of the same size as the “Temple,” and on the portico, which was supported by two Doric columns, could be seen the figure of Euterpe with the features of Sophie Arnould. The first floor contained the reception rooms, with spacious ante-chambers for the servants. On the second floor were the bedrooms of the children, who, at a later period, were acknowledged by their father, Count Brancas de Lauragais, and bore his name. In the National Library of Paris several drawings and plates are exhibited of the different portions of Sophie Arnould’s house; and the representation of the façade bears this inscription:—“Façade of a projected house for Mlle. Arnould in the Chaussée d’Antin. To be constructed side by side with that of Mlle. Guimard, and of the same dimensions.—Bélanger.”
So much care did the amorous architect of the new house bestow on his work, and so agreeable did he make himself to the lady for whom it was being built, that he was asked to share it with the owner; and there was at one time a serious prospect of Sophie Arnould becoming Mme. Bélanger. To serve some purpose of her own she spread the report that she was married to the architect, who showed himself quite disposed to give reality to the fiction. He was a merry man, and pleased Sophie as much by his ready wit as by his agreeable manners. After a time she got tired of him, and having formed an attachment for the actor Florence, wrote Bélanger a letter of dismissal, at the same time addressing to Florence an avowal of her love. Bélanger, however, found an opportunity of changing the envelopes, so that Florence the actor received the letter intended for Bélanger the architect. The next time Florence saw Sophie he was naturally somewhat cold in his demeanour towards her, and this coldness was naturally resented by Sophie, who had written to him with much warmth. Bélanger triumphed, and his triumph was of long duration; Sophie, indeed, remained attached to him throughout her life. Of all her former friends the only ones who showed genuine solicitude for her in her latter days of poverty and sickness were Bélanger and Lauragais.
Many years afterwards, in the gloomiest and most sanguinary days of the Revolution, when Bélanger was poor and Sophie Arnould still poorer, the architect begged the actress and singer to accept, as from an old friend, a piece of two louis which he at the same time forwarded to her. Sophie replied that she did not desire his money, but that she was deeply obliged to him for such thoughtfulness, and in memory thereof would wear the gold piece next her heart. When she was on her death-bed, the famous architect, himself without means, wrote to the Minister of Fine Arts a letter in which he reminded him that a considerable sum of money was due to Mlle. Arnould from the Opera; of which, now that she was in the greatest distress, it was impossible for her to obtain payment, even to the extent of a few louis. “This unhappy woman,” he continued, “of whom Gluck said, ‘Without the charm of the accent and declamation of Mlle. Arnould my Iphigenia would never have been accepted in France,’ finds herself without even the means of prolonging her life.”
In October, 1802, Sophie Arnould died, after receiving absolution from the curé of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, the parish in which she was born.
Another remarkable personage who lived in, or rather close to, the Chaussée d’Antin, was that devoted lover of Mdlle. Clairon, Monsieur de S——, who succeeded in inspiring the famous actress with esteem, but not with any warmer feeling; and who, according to her belief, as {130} well as that of several of her friends, paid her visits of complaint and menace after his death. “His humour,” writes Mlle. Clairon, in her “Memoirs,” “was gloomy and melancholy. ‘He was too well acquainted with men,’ he would say, ‘not to despise and shun them.’ His desire was to live only for me, and that I should live only for him. This last idea particularly displeased me. I might have been content to be restrained by a garland of flowers, but could not bear to be confined by a chain. I saw from that moment the necessity of destroying the flattering hope which nourishes attachment and of disallowing his frequent visits. This determination, which I persisted in, caused him a serious indisposition, during which I paid him every possible attention; but my constant refusal to indulge the passion he entertained for me made the wound still deeper.”
Afterwards, when the young man had partly recovered, Mlle. Clairon, convinced that his absence from her would be to his advantage, constantly refused his letters and his visits. “Two years and a half,” continues Mlle. Clairon, “passed between our first acquaintance and his death. He entreated me to assuage the last moments of his life by repairing to his bed-side. My engagement prevented me from complying with this request, and he expired in the presence of his domestics and an old lady whom he had alone for some time suffered.”
The house in which M. de S—— died was the one previously referred to in the Chaussée d’Antin; and at eleven o’clock the same night Mlle. Clairon, who was living far off in the Rue de Bussy, near the Rue de Seine, was startled—as were also, she declares, several friends in company with her at the time—by “the most piercing cry” she had ever heard. “Its long continuance and piteous sound,” she continues, “astonished everyone. I fainted away, and was nearly a quarter of an hour insensible.” Every night at the same hour Mlle. Clairon heard the same bitter wail. “All of us in the house,” she writes, “my friends, my neighbours, the police even, have heard this very cry repeated under my windows at the same hour, and appearing to proceed from the air.” She was recommended by an incredulous acquaintance to invoke the phantom the next time it announced its presence. She did so, when “the same cry was uttered thrice in succession, with a degree of rapidity and shrillness terrible beyond expression.” Poor Mlle. Clairon was persecuted in this manner at an hour before midnight for days at a stretch; until, at length, in lieu of a piercing cry, she heard every night, and always at eleven o’clock, the explosion of a gun. Fearing there might be some design upon her life, she communicated with the Lieutenant of Police, who, accompanied by proper officers, carefully examined the house next door, but without discovering any ground for suspicion. “The following day,” says Clairon, “the street was narrowly watched; the officers of police had their eyes upon every house; but, notwithstanding all their vigilance, there occurred the same discharge, at the same hour, and against the same frame of glass for three whole months, though no one could ever discover from whence it proceeded.” “This fact,” she adds, “is attested by all the registers of police.”
One day a lady called on Mlle. Clairon and made herself known as the best friend of the late Monsieur de S——, and the only person he had suffered to be with him during the last moments of his life.
“To condemn you,” she said, “would be unjust ... but his passion for you overcame him, and your last refusal hastened his end. He counted every minute till half-past ten, when his servant positively informed him that you would not come to him. After a moment he took my hand in a paroxysm of despair which terrified me, and exclaimed, ‘Cruel woman! but she shall gain nothing. I will pursue her as much after my death as I have during my life.’ I endeavoured to calm him, but he was no more.”
The words had a terrible effect on the unhappy Mlle. Clairon; and the cries and threats from her distressed lover gradually ceased to afflict her, and in time this excellent woman—who could scarcely be expected to love by order—became pacified.
The first building on the Boulevard des Capucines at the opposite corner of the Chaussée d’Antin is the Vaudeville Theatre, built to replace the old playhouse on the Place de la Bourse, and opened to the public on the 1st of October, 1867. Anciently this theatre seemed to be placed beneath the auspices of Collé des Augiers and Scribe, whose names mark different phases of the Vaudeville style, once exclusively cultivated by this theatre. Of later years, however, especially since the production of the younger Dumas’ Dame aux Camélias, some forty years ago, it has often thrown gaiety on one side for the pathetic and dramatic. The Vaudeville, like all the Paris theatres, has frequently changed its habitation, though it has always retained its original name. Founded in 1792, when {131} the Revolution was approaching the Terrorist period, at a building in the Rue de Chartres, between the Place du Carrousel and the Palais Royal (since pulled down), the Vaudeville was, after a life of half a century, driven from its first abode by the usual fire. In 1838, the year of the conflagration, it sought a temporary refuge on the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, to move in 1840 to the Place de la Bourse, where it took possession of the house previously occupied by the Opéra Comique. Here, where it remained from 1840 to 1867, it changed its style, and instead of comedies and comediettas interspersed with songs, produced with immense success a series of dramas of the most moving kind, such as the already named Dame aux Camélias, Octave Feuillet’s Dalila and Roman d’un jeune Homme pauvre, Barrière’s Filles de Marbre, Sardou’s Nos Intimes and Maison neuve. It is not indeed at the Théâtre Français, but at the Vaudeville and the Gymnase, that in modern times the masterpieces of French dramatic literature have been produced. The first representation of La Dame aux Camélias forms a turning point in the history of the Vaudeville Theatre. The play—which was soon to become celebrated throughout France, and in its operatic form, set to music by Verdi, throughout Europe—was not produced without serious objections on the part of the censorship; and it was only through the intercession of the Duke de Morny, Napoleon III.’s unacknowledged brother and chief adviser, that permission to represent the piece was obtained. When the performance at last took place, the success of the drama, owing a good deal to the pathetic acting of Mme. Doche in the part of the heroine, was marvellous; and it was made the occasion of innumerable articles in all the French journals at this period, not only on the play and on the novel from the same pen whence the play was derived, but on the unhappy young woman whose life and death the author had more or less faithfully depicted in the leading character. To show that light-minded Frenchmen were not alone capable of being moved by the tragic end of the fascinating Marie Duplessis, it may be mentioned that our own Charles Dickens was as much touched by it as the numerous French writers, who, more or less perfectly, have put their feelings on the subject into literary form. “Not many days after I left,” writes Mr. Forster, in his “Life of Dickens,” under date of 1847, “all Paris was crowding to the sale of a lady of the demi-monde, Marie Duplessis, who had led the most brilliant and abandoned of lives, and left behind her the most exquisite furniture and the most voluptuous and sumptuous bijouterie. Dickens wished at one time to have pointed the moral of this life and death, of which there was great talk in Paris while we were together. The disease of satiety, which, only less often than hunger, passes for a broken heart, had killed her. ‘What do you want?’ asked the most famous of the Paris physicians, at a loss for her exact complaint. At last she answered, ‘To see my mother.’ She was sent for, and there came a simple Breton peasant woman, clad in the quaint garb of her province, who prayed by her bed until she died.”
The Dame aux Camélias called into existence a whole series of pieces, produced either at the Vaudeville or at the Gymnase, in which the true character of women in certain difficult positions was treated controversially, with examples in support of arguments; and at this moment the last kind of play one would expect to see at the Vaudeville is precisely that to which the theatre owes its name. The situation of this theatre in the most fashionable, most frequented part of the boulevard renders it, apart from its own special attractions, the favourite resort of foreigners living at the excellent hotels in this neighbourhood. The house, with its 1,300 seats, is only of moderate size, but it is much more commodious than the old theatre of the Place de la Bourse.
The theatres of Paris, generally, are, indeed, far less commodious than those of London. The Parisians will go anywhere and submit to any discomfort in order to see good acting and a good play. In England we are much more particular; and the narrow ill-ventilated theatres of Paris would certainly be objected to by English audiences. The Paris theatres, however, are steadily improving, as one by one they get burnt down; and the new ones springing from the ashes of the old are often attractive without and convenient within. In the ancient days before the Great Revolution, the Parisians were as passionately fond of the theatre as they are now, but their playhouses, according to the author of “Le nouveau Paris,” were abominable.
“I shall say nothing of the nastiness,” he writes, “that distinguishes these places of general resort, because I would not wish to injure the property of the comedians; nor shall I inveigh against the insolence of the box-keepers, and other servants of our theatres, as it would give {132} to the world a bad opinion of the proprietors themselves, to whom some censorious readers might apply the proverb, ‘Like master like man,’ and think it a truism. I intend to confine myself to those points that more materially concern the spectator when he has once got in and has the good fortune to procure a clean seat. First let us survey the pit. Here everybody stands. You will imagine that its inhabitants are the formidable umpires of taste and dramatic productions; this may or may not be, just as it suits the caprices of the police, or the Lords of the Bedchamber, who, from making the master’s bed, have raised themselves by degrees to judge of things which they hardly understand. Hence an actress is palmed upon the public. Whether she is good or bad is not the question, but whether she has had the good fortune to please one or the whole of those gentlemen; and everyone knows what price she has paid for her admission. Not a play is represented here without a guard of thirty men with a few rounds each to quiet the spectators. This internal guard keeps the frequenters of the pit in a kind of passive condition; and whether you are tired, crowded, or bruised, beware of giving any sign of uneasiness or discontent. Yet the unfortunate public pays to take, not what they desire, but what is given them. Surrounded with armed men, they must neither laugh too loud at a comedy nor express their feelings at a tragedy in too pointed a manner. Hence the pit, except in some fits of a transient excitement, is mournfully dull. If you venture to give any sign of your existence, you are collared by one of the guards and carried pro formâ before a Commissionaire. I say for form sake, because everyone in the play-house is really under martial law; the civil magistrate is only there to hear and approve the sentence passed upon the culprit by the officer of the guard; who upon the report, seldom exact, but often groundless, of the soldier, orders the accused party to prison; and the Commissionaire, without inquiring into the merit of the charge, or so much as daring to hint at the least objection, signs the mittimus.”
Entrance to Rue du Quatre-Septembre.——Avenue de
l’Opéra.——Entrance to Rue de la Paix.
VIEW FROM THE BALCONY OF THE OPERA.
The Boulevard des Capucines seems on both sides entirely new; its houses are white, bright, and in perfect condition. If the crowd one sees on the Boulevard Montmartre is a Parisian crowd, that which animates the Boulevard des Capucines is a cosmopolitan one. It touches what in the artistic, if not in the general, sense must be looked upon as the heart of Paris—the New Opera, that is to say, standing in the centre of the place which bears its name and the streets called after those operatic {133} celebrities, Scribe, Auber, Halévy, and Meyerbeer; one librettist and three composers.
The Place de l’Opéra is, indeed, the heart of Paris, communicating by great arteries with all the most important organs of Parisian life. The magnificent Avenue of the Opera leads straight to the Louvre; in another direction the Rue du Quatre-Septembre goes to the Place de la Bourse. Look along the Rue de la Paix; at the end you will see La Place Vendôme, with its column in memory of the Grand Army standing out in its dark bronze against the fresh green of the Tuileries Gardens. Here all that is most Parisian in Paris may be seen: the finest shops, the most brilliant equipages, with all the glitter of fashionable life. The expensive jeweller and the exorbitant milliner here have their establishments side by side with hotels, restaurants, cafés, and clubs.
The Opera in France had much to go through before it attained its present artistic development, or, as regards the French form of grand opera, found its present capacious and splendid home. It is the proud boast of Frenchmen that Le Nouvel Opéra—as the existing Grand Opéra in Paris has been called for the last sixteen years, and as it will probably be called for a long while to come—covers thirteen times as much ground as the Royal Opera House of Berlin. It is, indeed, superior by its commodiousness as well as its magnificence to every other opera house in Europe; though what above all distinguishes it is its admirable site, and the wide open space in which it stands. In many capitals the theatres, even the finest, are only portions of a street. At Moscow, it is true, the Great Theatre stands by itself in a vast square—a square which, compared with the Place de l’Opéra, is a desert space. From its very origin the Opera in France has always been regarded as an institution of the first importance. It enjoyed special privileges from the Crown, it was managed like a department of the State, and an attack {134} upon the Opera was punished like a treasonable offence.
“Before I tell you,” wrote Rousseau towards the end of the eighteenth century, “what I think of this famous theatre, I will state what is said about it. The judgment of connoisseurs may correct mine if I am wrong. The Opera of Paris passes in the capital for the most pompous, the most voluptuous, the most admirable spectacle that human art has ever invented. Its admirers declare it to be the most superb monument of the magnificence of Louis XIV., and one is not so free as you may think to express an opinion on such an important subject. Here you may dispute about everything except music and the Opera; on these topics alone it is dangerous not to dissemble. French music is defended, too, by a very rigorous inquisition, and the first thing intimated as a warning to strangers who visit this country is that all foreigners admit there is nothing in this world so fine as the Opera of Paris. The fact is, discreet people hold their tongues, and dare only laugh in their sleeves.”
Rousseau then, speaking in the person of St. Preuz, the hero of “La nouvelle Héloise,” describes the performance as it took place at the Opera. “Imagine,” he says, “an enclosure fifteen feet broad, and long in proportion; this enclosure is the theatre. On its two sides are placed at intervals screens, which are crudely painted with the objects which the scene is about to represent. At the back of the enclosure hangs a great curtain, painted in like manner and nearly always pierced and torn that it may represent at a little distance gulfs on the earth or holes in the sky. Everyone who passes behind this stage or touches the curtain produces a sort of earthquake which has a double effect. The sky is made of certain bluish rags suspended from poles or cords, as linen may be seen hung out to dry in any washerwoman’s yard. The sun, which is here sometimes seen, is a lighted torch in a lantern. The cars of the gods and goddesses are composed of four rafters squared and hung on a thick rope in the form of a swing or see-saw; between the rafters is a cross plank on which the god sits down, and in front hangs a piece of coarse cloth, well dirtied, which acts the part of clouds for the magnificent car. One may see, towards the bottom of the machine, two or three stinking candles, badly snuffed, which, while the great personage dementedly presents himself swinging in his see-saw, fumigate him with an incense worthy of his dignity. The agitated sea is composed of long angular arrangements of cloth and blue pasteboard strung on parallel spits, which are turned by little blackguard boys. The thunder is a heavy cart rolled over an arch, and is not the least agreeable instrument one hears. The flashes of lightning are made of pinches of resin thrown on a flame; and the thunder is a cracker at the end of a fusee.
“The theatre is, moreover, furnished with little square traps, which, opening at need, announce that the demons are about to issue from their cave. When they have to rise into the air little imps of stuffed brown cloth are substituted for them, or sometimes real chimney sweeps, who swing about suspended on ropes till they are majestically lost in the rags of which I have spoken. The accidents, however, which not unfrequently happen are sometimes as tragic as farcical. When the ropes break, the infernal spirits and immortal gods fall together, and lame or occasionally kill one another. Add to all this the monsters which render some scenes very pathetic, such as dragons, lizards, tortoises, crocodiles, and large toads, who promenade the theatre with a menacing air, and display at the Opera all the temptations of St. Anthony. Each of these figures is animated by a lout of a Savoyard who has not even intelligence enough to play the beast.