Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1

One of the most interesting parts of the New Opera is the foyer, corresponding more or less to the refreshment room of our operatic theatres, but quite incomparable in the way of elegance and splendour. In the accompanying illustration the artist has made a point of introducing, amid well-dressed persons in evening clothes, an English lady in a morning gown and a sea-side hat, accompanied by two of her countrymen in shooting coats and pot hats. It is, indeed, a standing grievance with the Parisians that, whereas at our opera house no one is admitted to the boxes or stalls unless in evening dress, we ourselves, when we visit the Paris Opera, think any description of garment good enough to wear. One of the characteristic sights of Paris has, for nearly two centuries past, been the Masked Ball of the Opera, which, though it has doubtless lost much of its gaiety since the days when it inspired Gavarni with so many subjects for his witty pencil, is still worth seeing, simply as a picturesque display. No one any longer dances there unless paid to do so. It was, in fact, the introduction of hired dancers when the public were just beginning to show a disinclination to take an active part in the revels that put an end to spontaneous dancing altogether. The antics of some of the hired dancers may interest for a time; and the music of the large orchestra, conducted successively by Musard, Tolbecque, Strauss, Métra, and Arban, has always merited a hearing. Throughout the Carnival – that is to say, from Christmas until Lent – a masked and fancy dress ball (the wearing both of masks and fancy dress being optional) is given every week at the Opera, where the great ball of the year takes place on the night of Shrove Tuesday, the day preceding Lent. One other ball of the same kind is given in the middle of Lent —la Mi-carême as it is called – and thenceforward there is no dancing at the Opera until Christmas has once more come and gone.

The Opera Ball dates, like the Opera itself, from the reign of Louis XIV. But the license for musico-dramatic performances had been issued forty years before it occurred to the Chevalier de Bouillon to apply to the King for permission to give masked balls. The King hastened to grant the Chevalier’s request; and was indeed so pleased with it that he assigned to him a pension of 6,000 livres (francs) for the idea, which had simply been borrowed. What is still more remarkable is the fact that an Augustine monk, Nicholas Bourgeois, invented the mechanism by which, in half an hour, the floor of the auditorium could be raised to the level of the stage boards. Although the privilege or patent was given to the Chevalier de Bouillon at the beginning of January, 1713, it was not until January, 1716, that the first opera ball took place. From that year until 1830 no masked or fancy dress ball could be given at any other theatre. On the accession, however, of Louis Philippe, the Opera lost its dancing monopoly, and there are now numbers of Paris theatres at which, during the Carnival, masked balls occur. The receipts at an Opera Ball are said to average 50,000 francs (£2,000).

Close to the Opera lie all the fashionable clubs of Paris, beginning with the Jockey Club at the corner of the Boulevard de La Madeleine. The English Jockey Club is known to be an association of horse-owners and others interested in racing, who frame regulations and decide cases in connection with the Turf. The Jockey Club of Paris, while founded on much the same basis as the English institution of the same name, is also a club in the ordinary sense of the word, and an exceedingly good one. The Jockey Club, which boasts of numbering on its books members of all the reigning families of Europe, is, by its formal title, a “Society of Encouragement for the Amelioration of Breeds of Horses in France.” It was originated in 1833, under the auspices of the Duke of Orleans, eldest son of Louis Philippe, in order to popularise racing, regulate it, and obtain for it subsidies from the State and the Municipalities. A committee of thirteen members is exclusively entrusted with the organisation and superintendence of races. The code of the Jockey Club is adopted as a basis of regulations by nearly all the other racing societies of France. The Jockey Club itself directs the racing of only three courses, those of the Bois de Boulogne, Fontainebleau, and Chantilly. This club, first established at the corner of the Rue du Helder, and then transferred to the Hôtel de Lange on the Boulevard Montmartre, moved in 1857 to the corner of the Rue de Grammont, where the Cercle des Deux Mondes now has its headquarters, and finally, in 1860, to its present abode, for which it pays an annual rental of 100,000 francs. Not one of the Paris clubs seems, like the principal London clubs, to possess its own house. As a rule the annual subscription to the Paris club is high, amounting in some cases to 500 francs. On the other hand, the large sums charged for entrance to the London clubs, ranging from 30 to 40 guineas, are unknown at the clubs of Paris, which consequently find themselves without much available capital.

Close to the Opera, on the Boulevard des Italiens, at the corner of the Rue de Grammont, is Le Cercle des Deux Mondes; at the corner of the Rue de la Michodière, the Railway Club, or Cercle des Chemins de Fer; on the Boulevard des Capucines, at the corner of the Rue Louis le Grand, the Yacht Club. Just opposite the Yacht Club “Le Cercle de la Presse,” celebrated for its literary and artistic evenings, suggests in the first place that no like institution exists in England, where the newspaper world, though less sharply broken up by political and personal animosities than that of France, is bound together by no such esprit de corps as that which animates the authors and journalists of France. In England not only are we without a Press Club worthy of the name; we have no Société des Gens de Lettres, or Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques. Close to the Cercle de la Presse is the Sporting Club, with its English name. On the Place de l’Opéra is the Franco-American Club called the Washington Club, or Cercle Washington, and at the other corner of the square, the Cercle des Éclaireurs, or Scouts’ Club, a survival from the war of 1870. On the Place de l’Opéra are the offices (as staring titles sufficiently proclaim) of the Daily Telegraph, the Daily News, and the New York Herald. The corner house, separating the Avenue of the Opera from the Rue de la Paix, has been occupied since 1886 by the Naval and Military Club, known as the Cercle des Armées de Terre et de Mer, and founded under the auspices of General Boulanger in the days when he was War Minister, with the eyes of all Europe upon him. Advancing towards the Madeleine, we come first to the Racing Club (Salon des Courses), then to the Union Club (Cercle de l’Union), the most artistic and most exclusive of all these institutions. Close by is the new Cercle de la Rue Royale, formerly known under the familiar name of “Cercle des Moutards;” whilst a little further on we find the Cercle des Mirlitons and Cercle Impérial, now combined, and the Cercle Artistique et Littéraire.

More recently established than the best London clubs, the clubs of Paris possess some slight advantages over ours. There is but one London club at which a member can get shaved or have his hair cut, but at many of the fashionable Paris clubs the hair-cutter and barber play as important a part as at an American hotel. The best Paris clubs have private carriages always in readiness. At a London club members who have not their own private carriage content themselves with a hansom, or, if infirm, with a humble four-wheeler. The Paris clubs, moreover, are in constant communication with the theatres; and each club can command so many tickets for a first representation, which are distributed among the members according to the order of application. Some of the Paris clubs, too, have a box at the Opera or at the Comédie Française. One strange characteristic of the Paris clubs – strange at least to Englishmen – is that every member is supposed to know, more or less intimately, every other member. In Paris the newly-elected member of a club is formally introduced to the other members by his proposer and seconder. Nothing of the kind takes place in London; though a new member of a London club is allowed, if not expected, to invite his proposer and seconder with a few friends to dinner. Though there are still famous restaurants in Paris, dining-houses and cafés have alike suffered by the introduction of clubs, which, though fewer as yet than in London, are yearly increasing their number.

The last of the boulevards on the western side is that of the Madeleine, with the Church of the Madeleine as its principal edifice. The Place de la Madeleine, in the centre of which stands the beautiful but most unecclesiastical church, becomes twice every week, on Tuesday and Friday, a large flower-market, the finest in Paris. Standing by itself in the place named after it, is the beautiful Greek temple, of which the first stone was laid, in one of his pious moods, by Louis XV. in 1764. But the building was not proceeded with until after a delay of some years. It was begun in its present form only twelve years before the Revolution; and when Napoleon became emperor it was still unfinished. Judging, no doubt, from the character of the architecture, that the edifice could scarcely have been intended for a place of Christian worship, Napoleon had it finished as a Temple of Glory under the direction of the celebrated architect Pierre Vignon. Like the Pantheon, however, which has sometimes been thus named, and at other times called the Church of Sainte-Geneviève, Napoleon’s Temple of Glory was only for a time to be known in that character. Under the Restoration, in 1814, Louis XVIII. determined to restore the building to the Church; and, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene, it was duly consecrated. La Madeleine, as it is called, was, however, still uncompleted when, in 1830, Louis Philippe came to the throne; and it was under his reign that, in 1842, it was opened for public worship in the precise form and with the elaborate ornamentation now belonging to it. The architecture of the Madeleine is partly Roman, partly Greek; or rather it is Greek with Roman adaptations. It is surrounded by Corinthian columns, of which there are eighteen on each side. Sixteen, moreover, enclose the southern portion, and eight the northern. The building is without windows, and is entirely of stone. The niches in the colonnade are occupied by thirty-four statues representing the most venerated martyrs and saints. On the principal façade will be remarked a high-relief of huge dimensions by Lemaire, representing our Lord as Judge of the world. The figure of the Saviour is seventeen feet high. On His right are the Angel of Salvation and the saved; on His left the Angel of Punishment and the condemned, with Mary Magdalene interceding on their behalf. The interior is brilliant with gold and colour. The sanctuary, with its vaulted roof, exhibits a vast fresco by Zugler, representing the history of Christianity. Mary Magdalene, receiving Christ’s forgiveness, is surrounded by the Apostles and Evangelists; and among the illustrious men who in successive ages have protected the Christian Church may be recognised Constantine, Godefroi de Bouillon, Clovis, Joan of Arc, Dante, and Napoleon. The principal altar supports an enormous group in white marble, generally known as the Assumption, though the central figure is that of Mary Magdalene. The Assumption in this case is that of Mary Magdalene into Paradise, whither she is being borne by two angels. Under the organ is the Chapelle des Mariages, with a marble group by Pradier, representing the marriage of the Virgin; and the Chapelle des Fonts, with a group by Rude, the subject being the Baptism of Christ. To the right of the altar we see illustrated the spread of Christianity in the East during the early centuries and the Crusades; and again, in modern times, through the uprising of the Greeks against the Turks. As leading Crusaders, Richard Cœur-de-Lion and Godefroi de Bouillon occupy places. The personages exhibited as having greatly contributed towards the progress of Christianity in the West are the early martyrs, Charlemagne, Pope Alexander III., Joan of Arc, Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Dante. In the centre of the picture stands Henri IV., who, after uttering his celebrated exclamation, “Paris is well worth a mass,” goes over to the dominant religion. Then come Louis XIII., Richelieu, and finally Napoleon I., who not only was crowned by Pope Pius VII. in Notre-Dame, but really deserves credit for having restored Christian worship in France.

In the first chapel, on the right as one enters the church, is a pillar bearing an inscription to the memory of the Abbé du Guerry, curé of the Madeleine, a man of remarkable piety and benevolence, who, with other hostages taken by the Communists, was shot on the 24th of May, 1871, in retaliation for the execution of Communist prisoners by the troops of Versailles.

The Church of the Madeleine is famous for the eloquence of its preachers, the taste in dress of the fashionable ladies whom these preachers attract, and the excellence of the music. At the organ of the Madeleine a sound musician and a perfect player is always to be found.

CHAPTER XIII

PLACE DE LA CONCORDE

Its History – Louis XV. – Fireworks – The Catastrophe in 1770 – Place de la Révolution – Louis XVI. – The Directory.

THE Rue Royale, a continuation of the Boulevard de la Madeleine, leading to the Place de la Concorde, was the scene of some of the most violent outrages on the part of the Communists in May, 1871. Here, as in the neighbouring Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, a number of houses were deliberately set on fire, when some thirty persons perished in the flames. It was said, at the time, that the firemen employed to extinguish the conflagration were bribed by members of the Commune to replace the water in their pumps by petroleum.

The Place de la Concorde, the finest of the many fine squares and open spaces in Paris, covers an area of 400 yards in length, by 235 yards in width. It is bounded on the south by the Seine, on the west by the Champs Élysées, on the north by the Rue de Rivoli (at right angles with the Rue Royale), and on the east by the Tuileries Gardens. From the centre of the Place may be seen the Madeleine at the further end of the Rue Royale; the Palace of the Chamber of Deputies just across the river, which is here traversed by the Pont de la Concorde; the Louvre on the one hand, and on the other, at the end of the Champs Élysées, the Triumphal Arch (Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile).

At night the views from the Place de la Concorde are more striking even than by day; the Avenue of the Champs Élysées, more than a mile in length, leading in a straight line from the Place de la Concorde to the Triumphal Arch, presenting, with its seemingly interminable rows of lamps, a fairy-like spectacle.

The history of the Place de la Concorde is quite modern. Its present name dates only from the Revolution; its creation from no further back than the year 1748.

Louis XV., called le bien-aimé, had fallen ill at Metz, and the people regarding him, after the ruinously extravagant reign of his predecessor, Louis XIV., as a merciful sovereign, hurried in crowds to the churches, imploring heaven for the King’s recovery. “What have I done to be thus beloved?” asked the young monarch, with astonishment; and his eyes moistened with tears – “the only ones,” says an apparently well-informed historian, “he ever let fall.”

Louis XV. recovered and came back to Paris; and it was then that the Town Council voted with enthusiasm an equestrian statue to the sovereign whom it had pleased heaven to spare. The King, on his side, presented to the city a large open piece of ground at the end of the Tuileries Gardens, and in the centre of this plain the first stone was laid of the monument which was to celebrate the virtues of Louis the Well-beloved. This statue, according to the fashion of the time, represented the King in Roman costume with a crown of laurels on his head; and, among other devices, personifications of Strength, Wisdom, Justice, and Peace were made to figure at the corners of the pedestal, which gave rise to the following epigram: —

“Oh! la belle statue! oh! le beau piédestal!Les vertus sont à pied, le vice est à cheval;”

which may be thus turned into English: —

“Fit statue, fitter pedestal! with laughter burst your sides,The virtues all below on foot, while vice triumphant rides!”

Another satirist wrote: —

“Il est ici comme à Versailles;Il est sans cœur et sans entrailles.”

or, to give something like an equivalent in English: —

“Here have set up the builders with their trowelsA King of brass who’s neither heart nor bowels.”

A philosopher who seems to have foreseen what he fancied was by no means apparent to Louis XV. – that the ancient régime was coming to an end – placed a bandage round the eyes of the statue with these words inscribed on it: —

“Have pity on a poor blind man!”

This, however, is inconsistent with the tradition which attributes to him the saying, more generally believed to have been Metternich’s, “Après moi le déluge!”

The open space was now to be marked in by ornamental limits; and the architects were working at the railings and walls, when, on the night of the 30th of May, 1770, a frightful catastrophe took place. To celebrate the marriage of the Dauphin, afterwards Louis XVI., with the Archduchess Marie Antoinette of Austria, the town of Paris had prepared a magnificent fête, of which the principal attraction was to be a display of fireworks under the direction of the famous Italian pyrotechnist, Ruggieri, perfecter of an art first introduced into France (like so many others) by his ingenious countrymen. Three centuries earlier, in 1465, it should be said, when fireworks were for the first time seen in France, much excitement and some accidents, though no fatal ones, were in like manner caused. After the battle of Montléhry, when the troops of Louis XI. retired to Corbeil, and the great noblemen who had been leagued against him to Étampes, the Duke of Berri and the Comte de Charolais took their places at the window of a house in the last-named town and looked out together on the soldiers and the mob who filled the streets. Suddenly a dart of fire was seen flashing and curling in the air, which, taking the direction of the window where the prince and the count were seated, struck against it with a violent explosion. The two noblemen were filled with alarm, and the Comte de Charolais in his fright ordered the Seigneur Contay to call out all the troops of the household, the archers of his body-guard, and others. The Duke of Berri gave like orders to all the troops under his command; and in a few minutes two or three bodies of armed men, with a great number of archers, were seen in front of the residence, making every endeavour to find out whence the marvellous and terrible apparition of fire could have proceeded. It was regarded as a diabolical device magically directed against the persons of the Comte de Charolais and the Duke of Berri. After close investigation it was discovered that the author of the marvel productive of so much alarm was a Breton known as Jean Boute-Feu, otherwise Jean des Serpents, so called from his having invented the kind of firework which still bears the name of “serpent.” Jean threw himself at the feet of the princes, confessed to them that he had indeed fired rockets into the air, but added that his intention had been to amuse, not injure, them. Then, to prove that his fireworks were harmless, he let off three or four of them in presence of the princes, which quite destroyed the suspicions formed against him. Everyone now began to laugh. Much trepidation had meanwhile been caused by a very trifling incident.

But let us return to the year 1770 and the fête on the Place Louis XV. All was going well, when suddenly a gust of wind blew down among the crowd some rockets only partially exploded. Fireworks, like so many inventions of Italian origin, were still, to the mass of the French public, a comparative novelty; and this, together with the positive inconvenience and even danger of a fall of blazing missiles in the midst of thousands of excited and closely-packed spectators, was quite enough to account for the terrible confusion, resulting in many hundreds of fatal accidents, which now ensued.

There was, in the first place, a general rush towards the Rue Royale, far too narrow to receive such an invasion; and in the crush numbers of women fainted, fell, and were trampled to death. To make matters worse the stream of persons pressing into the Rue Royale was met by a counter-stream, advancing, in ignorance of what had taken place, to the Place de la Concorde. Even these, who were not in imminent peril, were now affected by a panic which soon became universal. In the midst of shrieks and groans some desperate men drew their swords and endeavoured to cut for themselves a passage through the dense mass by which they were surrounded. “I know many persons,” says Mercier, in his “Tableau de Paris,” “who thirty months after these frightful scenes still bore the marks of objects which had been crushed into them. Some lingered on for ten years and then died. I may say without exaggeration that in the general panic and crush more than twelve hundred unfortunate persons lost their lives. One entire family disappeared; and there was scarcely a household which had not to lament the death of a relative or friend.” On the other hand the official returns put down the deaths at 133, already an immense number.

Seven years later, in 1777, the Place Louis XV. was the scene of a further mishap. Certain strolling players, jugglers, and other mountebanks had established in the open space an annual fair known as the Fair of St. Ovid, which became such a nuisance to the aristocratic residents in the neighbourhood that a petition was presented to the Government for its suppression; when suddenly one evening the booths and theatres took fire. The conflagration became general, and the Fair of St. Ovid perished in the flames.

The next incident of importance which took place on the great Place was important indeed. It was nothing less than the destruction of Louis XV.’s statue, which on the 11th of August, 1792, the day after the capture of the Tuileries, was removed by order of the Legislative Assembly, melted down, and converted into pieces of two sous. The statue of the king was replaced by a statue of Liberty, which, being made in terra-cotta, was called by the anti-Revolutionists the “Liberty of Mud.” The Place was now named Place de la Révolution. Place de la Guillotine it might more fitly have been called, for it was here that the instrument of punishment, of vengeance, and often of simple hatred, was erected, to begin its horrid work, on the 21st of January, 1793, by the decapitation of Louis XVI.

The unhappy monarch had been brought along the whole line of boulevards from the prison of the Temple, close to the Place de la Bastille, at one extremity, to the Place de la Révolution at the other. These two opposite points mark in a certain way the beginning and the end of the Revolution. Its first heroic act was the taking of the Bastille; the cruel deeds which marked its close had for their scene the former Place Louis XV., which the Revolution had now named after itself.

The last moments of Louis XVI. have often been described, but never in so simple, touching, and direct a manner as by the Abbé Edgeworth, who accompanied the king to the scaffold, and at the fatal moment was by his side. He afterwards wrote in the French language an account of what he had witnessed, from which some of the most striking passages may here be reproduced.

“The fate of the king,” he says, “was as yet undecided, when M. de Malesherbes, to whom I had not the honour of being personally known and who could neither ask me to his house nor come to mine, requested me to meet him at Mme. de Senosan’s house, where I accordingly waited on him. There M. de Malesherbes delivered to me a message from the king signifying the wish of that unfortunate monarch that I should attend him in his last moments, if the atrocity of his subjects should be contented with nothing less than his death. This message was conveyed in terms which I should have thought it my duty to suppress if they did not demonstrate the excellence of the prince whose end I am going to relate. He carried the delicacy of his expressions so far as to ask as a favour the services he had a right to demand from me as a duty. He claimed them as the last proof of my attachment. He hoped that I would not refuse him. He added that if the danger to which I must be exposed should appear to me too great he would beg me to name another clergyman. This was not to be thought of, and on being admitted to the prison I fell at the king’s feet without the power of utterance. The king was much moved, but soon began to answer my tears with his own.”