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

Like his counterpart in London, the Bohemian of Paris has usually long to wait for his hour of triumph. He has to pass through years of struggles and privations, to hunger and to thirst. He does not surrender, however; for he has an ardent faith in himself, and never loses the sheet-anchor of hope. The life he leads has, moreover, its seductive side, without which the bravest soul could not support it – hours of delightful illusion, the pleasures of study, the buoyant companionship of others engaged in the same warfare, and a free vent for the explosive gaieties of youth. Then there are the periods of discouragement and anguish, the unkindnesses of friends, the physical frame yielding even whilst the spirit defiantly holds out; then, perhaps, despair or even death. Such things as these constitute the chequered life of the Bohemian. The Bohemia of Paris, according to Henri Mürger, is “the stage of artistic life; it is a preface to the Academy, to the hospital, or to the Morgue.” This inevitably reminds an Englishman of the old Grub Street Bohemian, the man of talent or genius who, in a few exceptional instances, struggled on, like Johnson, to greatness, but who, as a rule, thought Fortune had smiled when he could fill the vacuum in his stomach with four-pennyworth of shin of beef; who, after months of toil in his garret, would take his work to the bookseller’s and return with a pocketful of guineas, only to be penniless again on the morrow, to starve for another twelvemonth, and perhaps to end his career, heartbroken and forgotten, in a pauper’s grave.

The present century has produced two generations of Paris Bohemians who have left their mark upon the history of arts and letters. The first had its cradle in a now demolished house of the Rue du Doyenné. Nothing could have been more sombre or depressing than this street, which was one of the ugliest in Paris. Yet the indomitable spirits who made it their haunt lived within sight of all that the most artistic and delicate imagination could desire. There were the remains of the Hôtel Rambouillet, in which French literature had, in its infancy, been nursed; the façade of the Musée, resplendent with sculptures of the Renaissance; a cluster of trees, which might almost have been called a wood, in the branches of which feathered Bohemians trilled their songs of love and liberty. The walls of the house were old and bare; but the inhabitants soon covered them with decorations of a magnificence scarcely to be found in palaces. There Corot painted his Provence landscapes and Chausserian his bacchants; and there the earliest novels of Arsène Houssaye and the earliest poems of Théophile Gautier were penned. No troop of gipsies, encamped beneath foliage in the midst of a perfumed wood, ever led a more buoyant life. Comedy was played within those artistic walls; masked balls were given; the landlord and the scandalised citizens were defied. Years went by, and at last the Bohemians of the Rue du Doyenné had constrained the public to accept their ideals of art and literature. And now they were petted, fèted, adored by those who had previously taken them for fools. Yet even whilst Fortune was thus smiling, one famous member of the order – one who, in the eyes of posterity, personifies the Bohemians of this period – threw his fellows into mourning. The unhappy Gérard de Nerval – translator of Faust, friend and collaborator of Heine – was found one morning suspended from a street-lamp.

So much for the first generation of Paris Bohemians. The second comprised, among others, Privat d’Anglemont, Auguste Vitu, Schanne, Alfred Delvan, Champfleury, and, above all, Henri Mürger. Their haunt was the Café Momus, in the Rue Prêtres-Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois. This café has, within the last few years, disappeared, and its site is now occupied by a colour-merchant’s warehouse and a pawnbroking establishment. The place no longer resounds with the laughter, the reckless gaiety, the folly of Bohemians such as those just named. At the door of the little temple Death or Glory sometimes came and knocked, to summon one or other of its inhabitants away. Privat d’Anglemont entered the Municipal Maison-de-Santé and died there; Mürger, a few months afterwards, breathed his last in the same retreat. He left behind him a literary monument in the pictures, at once charming and grotesque, of that strange life in which he played so important a part. Every writer of distinction in Paris followed his bier to the grave; and the tomb erected to his memory is worthy of the man who slumbers beneath it. His companion, Privat d’Anglemont, lies near him; but without even a stone to tell his admirers where to cast their wreaths. Of the survivors, one – Schanne – became a toy-merchant in the Rue Saint-Denis and is suspected of having, to the delight of children, invented certain mechanical rabbits which beat a drum at every movement of the car to which they were harnessed.

The first Bohemians of France must be looked for among her earliest poets. François Villon, for instance, who was publicly whipped, and the vagabond minstrels, one of whom in Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame so narrowly escapes hanging. But these lively, luckless bards were in the position of the warriors who lived before the time of Homer, and whose deeds were destined to remain unsung. The great student and chronicler of Bohemian life (whose “Vie de Bohême,” as translated into German, was classed by a Leipzic bookseller under the head of ethnography) was Henri Mürger, with his four literary and artistic personages and their servant, himself a Bohemian, who lends small sums of money to his masters out of the wages he does not receive, and who, in his love of the picturesque, finds himself unable to interfere with the beau désordre in which they leave their rooms. Highly ingenious are these four typical Bohemians in getting rid of their money when there are funds in hand, and in making both ends meet when their purses are nearly empty. Thus, one of them having obtained a certain sum from a confiding relative, purchases for a young woman to whom he is attached a monkey and a parrot; only to find, a few days afterwards, that the monkey has eaten the parrot and died of indigestion. They have not even a suit of dress-clothes among them; and on one occasion, when the musician wishes to go to a ball, the painter induces a gentleman whose portrait he is taking to divest himself of his evening coat that he may secretly lend it to his pleasure-seeking friend. Varied and original are the devices by which the attention of the puzzled sitter is diverted from his missing garment. The Bohemian who has gone to the ball, and who puts on a pair of white gloves with the view of disguising himself from possible creditors, passes most of his time in the refreshment room; returning to it, when for a moment he has been taken out by one of the dancers, on the plea that if he were to stop away too long his absence would be “remarked.”

There are some Bohemians who seem to have a particular fancy for white kids. In M. Ponsard’s drama of Honneur et Argent the romantic but impecunious hero rushes forward at one critical moment to the front of the stage, exclaiming: Je porte des gants blancs, et je n’ai pas dîné! Hégésippe Moreau, Bohemian and true poet, who for want of a bed slept at times in one of the trees of the Champs Elysées, went one evening to a ministerial party, where, expecting to get something to eat, he was driven to despair at finding nothing to relieve his hunger except jellies and ices. It was probably in view of famished Bohemians that an old French book on etiquette warned persons invited out to dinner not, if the meal was long delayed, to exclaim: On ne aîne jamais dans cette maison. A well-known Bohemian, on being asked by a wealthy friend to take pot-luck with him at a certain hour, is said to have replied: “With pleasure; and you will excuse me if I am rather punctual.”

The Bohemian consoles himself by the thought that the greatest writers have often in their youth been in almost as dire straits as himself. How indeed, without such a reflection, could he from day to day exist? He remembers that when, during the first performance of Hernani, Victor Hugo was called out of the theatre by a bookseller and requested to accept 6,000 francs for the right of publishing the play, he had not more than forty francs in his actual possession. He may even, if he has studied the literary history of a neighbouring country, recall the case of Samuel Johnson, who for years had to live on fourpence a day.

Even in the depths of poverty Bohemians, if there is anything in them, are sure (so Henri Mürger testifies) to make from time to time an impression upon some rich man, who will invite them to dinner, partly from sympathy and admiration, partly in order to have the opportunity of reading to them some poem or drama that vanity has impelled him to compose. On these occasions the Bohemian is said to revenge himself for having been condemned to play the part of listener only —auditor tantùm– by staying late and drinking profusely. Macaulay had such a Bohemian in view when he described a member of this interesting class – a guest at the time in the house of his patron – as “roaring for fresh punch” at four in the morning.

To be suspected, however, of a Bohemianism of which they are innocent is sometimes the fate of eminent and well-conducted authors; and Macaulay’s roarer for punch reminds one of a certain fashionable Parisian novelist who, as Grenville Murray relates, went once to stay at a country house where the host and hostess had very romantic notions of the life usually led by the knights of the pen. Towards twelve o’clock the eminent littérateur, slightly fatigued by his journey, retired to his room, and before long was in bed and fast asleep. In about a quarter of an hour he was awakened by a continued tapping at the door, and, raising his head, wondered for a moment whether the house could be on fire. Then, recovering his presence of mind, he called out “Entrez”; on which two sturdy footmen appeared, bearing between them an ice-pail with a bottle of champagne in it. The novelist had some difficulty in prevailing upon the wine bearers to retire with their well-intended burden. His host and hostess had been under the impression that authors wrote habitually at night, and were unable to get through their work unless well primed with alcoholic liqueur.

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE PARIS WAITER

The Garçon – The Development of the Type – The Garçon’s Daily Routine – His Ambitions and Reverses.

THE waiter of Paris, whose manners are of velvet, whose flittings are bird-like, and whose smile is eternal, is another pronounced type of character. The garçon may be said to have originated at a Paris refreshment-room established in or before the time of Scarron (who celebrates it in verse), by a certain Señor Lopes in association with a certain Señor Rodrigues. This restaurant, in the Portuguese style, was celebrated for a beverage then much in vogue, known as “citrate,” and composed of lemon-juice, cedrat, and sugar in fresh or iced water. It was dispensed to the frequenters of the place by extremely polite servants, who were the first in France to exercise the suave and delicate functions of the waiter. Gradually other restaurants were opened in the capital for the sale, first of lemonade and orgeat, and subsequently of coffee, tea, chocolate, and wines. The waiter, as these houses of refreshment improved and developed, became more and more polished and indispensable, so that to-day, according to a French writer, “He is a personage. He wears shirts of the finest Holland, glazed shoes, white stockings, and a tie which would move the envy of a sub-prefect. But for his vest, which indemnifies itself for not being quite a vest by the fineness of its tissue, he would be mistaken for an ambassador or a tenor. His hair, cut in the latest fashion, exhales sweet odours, and his lips express a perpetual smile of complaisance. The lady at the counter, it should be added, shows him delicate attentions.”

The true Paris waiter, like the true poet, is born, not made. He has hereditary waiter’s blood coursing through his veins. His father was a garçon before him, and from childhood he has been instructed in the family art, learning celerity and grace of movement, with that patience, politeness, and amiability by which he is distinguished. There are exceptions to this rule, all the same; and good waiters have sometimes been made out of men who have failed in the higher walks of life; of bankrupt merchants or ruined gentlemen. A spendthrift who, having run through his fortune, prefers to wait rather than work is already in some degree qualified for the post of garçon. His experience will constitute him an authoritative arbiter in disputes over a game of billiards, or a pretty girl, or dominoes, or cards; he knows how to please men who love to dine or sup as sumptuously as he once did, and the winebibbers excite within him no repulsion, but on the contrary strike a chord of sympathy in his soul.

Whatever his antecedents may be, the Paris waiter invariably becomes fashioned after a certain recognised type. This type is well described by a French writer in the following words: “Vigour of constitution and honesty of soul are two qualities without which the café garçon would not exist. The master’s eye cannot always be hovering over the bottles, the decanters, the cups, and the coffee-pots of the laboratory. Nothing is easier than to divert, in the midst of the gigantic consumption which distinguishes certain establishments, an occasional drop from the ocean of refreshments and liqueurs; a fraction of that total which the proprietor counts every evening, to the great annoyance of the late-staying customer exchanging his last ten-sou piece at midnight for a final petit verre. The garçon is therefore, of necessity, an honest man. From the rising of the sun to the extinction of the gas he is handling the money of others; he is a confidential servant, a cashier on a small scale. As to vigour of constitution, you will soon see how indispensable that is to the garçon. Day dawns, and late as he went to bed the night before, he has to rise betimes. At that hour there is hardly anyone awake in Paris but fruiterers, scavengers, and water-carriers; nevertheless he, the man of eloquence, who passes his time amongst epicures and who forms an indisputable part of the fashionable world, must tear himself from the luxury of repose. Every day the luxury of life surrounds him with its seductions, its perfumes, and its joys, and yet he is condemned to live the hard life of an artizan. His master wishes him to have at once the complaisant elegance of a spaniel and the vigilance of a fox. Well, he wakes up, and stretches his arms; striking, perhaps, with his extended fingers the table-legs between which he has thrown his mattress the night before. For you must quite understand that he is obliged to take his food and to sleep within that space which is the scene of his duties; like the soldier in action, he sleeps on the field of battle. When, thus early, he rises, he is breathing a heavy air, impregnated with the too-familiar emanations from gas, not to mention the odours (hermetically closed in by the café shutters) of that punch, wine, and haricot mutton which the proprietor has shared at midnight with his companions, at table No. 1, the table, that is to say, nearest the counter. The only glimpse of light which cheers the garçon as he opens his eyes proceeds from the inextinguishable lamp which burns in the laboratory with the obstinacy of the vestal fire. As to those matutinal sounds which herald the approach of day, the garçon is quite free to regard as such the mewing of the cat, or the shrill whistlings of Madame’s canaries, which are anticipating a near visit from the chickweed merchant. But suddenly the tread of the master, who, in a room overhead, is searching for his braces and his cravat, shakes the ceiling. In an instant the mattresses of all the waiters are snatched up and bundled behind an old partition, side by side with spoilt billiard cues, watering cans, broken chess-boards, and the antique counter which the proprietor purchased with the original stock. The shutters are taken down, the milkmaid arrives, the principal comes downstairs with a bag of money under his arm, Madame thinks about her toilette, butter pats are distributed on the plates, the stove-tender lights the fire, and all the bees in this hive are in motion. The hour of work has struck.”

After this first tug at his collar, it is a relief to find that the garçon enjoys a brief period of repose, and, whilst awaiting custom, tears the wrappers off the newspapers and studies the European situation. In the morning he is occupied entirely with dispensing café-au-lait. This first service is productive of very few “tips,” as the customers who breakfast at the cafés are usually employées, or old bachelors, or provincial visitors lodging in the small hotels of the neighbourhood; people more or less pledged to a discreet economy. From noon, however, till two o’clock black coffee and alcoholic liqueur absorb the waiter’s energies. It is between those hours that gay consumers, with hearts already warmed by a visit to the neighbouring restaurant, arrive in troops and pay without counting their change. This, however, is not a wise proceeding if we are to be guided by a certain M. Vidocq, who, in his “Arch Thief (Paravoleur); or, The Art of conducting oneself prudently in all countries and especially at Paris,” a book at once curious and rare, does not, like a beforementioned writer, rely on the universal integrity of the garçon, and whose advice to his readers is as follows: – “At the café you must not, from a sense of false shame or from misplaced confidence, put in your pocket without counting it the change which the garçon gives you when the piece of money you have tendered in payment exceeds the charge you have incurred. This is particularly to be avoided in the cafés-jardins, where the crowd presses on all sides, and where twenty panting waiters seem hardly sufficient to serve the customers. You have come with some friends, and have taken ices, punch, liqueurs, etc. When you are about to depart you tell the waiter that you wish to settle. You call in vain for him five or six times, getting no reply but – ‘Coming, sir; coming.’ At length he arrives, scared, bewildered, and staring right and left as though anxious to despatch you and rush off to someone else. You tell him to reckon what you owe. He gabbles certain words about ices, punch, liqueurs, which you cannot understand, and then distinctly mentions a certain sum-total. If you pay on the spot, without any explanation, you are pretty sure to have been charged fifteen or twenty sous too much. If you have calculated your debt beforehand, with the aid of the tariffs posted up at these places, you will easily perceive, before parting with your money, what errors have been committed. If, however, you have failed to take this precaution, do not be imposed upon by the distracted air of the garçon, but make him enumerate each separate item of your account, and it will be a wonder indeed if you do not gain by this recapitulation.” Yet another ingenious device on the part of the garçon is made by M. Vidocq a subject of admonition to his readers. “When a party of friends,” he writes, “have run up rather a heavy bill, it often happens that the gentleman who is doing the honours finds amongst the change he receives a piece of ten or twenty sous from which the image and superscription have been almost entirely effaced; and he ultimately throws it to the waiter, saying that it is for him. This coin has not been introduced without intention. It has already been frequently presented to customers and frequently thrown back to the waiter. You would give the garçon two or three sous if you received good money, and you give him ten or twenty because he tenders a piece of money which you are afraid you cannot pass.”

Although everywhere very much on the same pattern, the Paris garçon varies somewhat in his manners, customs, and general bearing according to the establishment in which he exercises his functions. There are cafés on the Boulevard des Italiens where he deviates somewhat from his traditional amiability, and, when a customer complains of the café-au-lait with which he has been served, raises his eyes to the ceiling, sighs, places a fresh cup on the table, and filling it from the self-same coffee-pot, exclaims, “I know you will like that, sir.” The waiter of the Boulevard Saint-Martin is a man of letters, particularly conversant with dramatic literature. He picks up his education from the eminent actors and dramatists who frequent the establishment, and knows everything that is going on behind the scenes. At one time the garçon of the Café Desmares was an eminent authority on military matters. He knew all the superior officers of the Royal Guard, and everything that was whispered in the barracks. In course of time – after 1830 that is to say – he lost his martial tint, and became highly aristocratic; speaking in measured tones and looking exceedingly bored. Now, however, like the café itself, he is no more. The body-guards were accustomed under the Restoration to assemble at the Café Valois; whilst the Bonapartists had their headquarters at the Café Lemblin. Challenges were sent from one café to the other, swords were drawn and duels were fought by the dim light of some street lamp. The weapons, it is said, were confided to the waiters of the belligerent cafés, together with the pipes of the frequenters. The intending duellist called for them as he would have called for a newspaper, and the waiter sometimes replied: – “They are all in use, sir.”

The garçon aspires to wealth and greatness. Sometimes, in his vaulting ambition, he o’erleaps himself. Says a French student of his manners and customs: “He takes a wife and a new house, puts frills on his shirt, and inscribes his name in the National Guard. Become, in his turn, a master, he puts a hundred thousand francs’ worth of gilding, pictures, and mirrors (obtained on credit) into the establishment which he opens with unusual éclat. The public rush to his doors, and all goes well until some neighbouring café, more sumptuous still, draws the crowd away again. Then the time has arrived for him to make up his balance-sheet and pay two and a half per cent. to his creditors. What becomes of him after that? If he has protected his wife’s dowry he takes refuge in his native country, between two cabbage beds with a pond for his ducks. One day the malady of dethroned kings seizes him, and he dies of ennui in the midst of an inconsolable family. Heaven take pity on his soul! Many café waiters die without having fulfilled their dream of having an establishment of their own. The life of fatigue which they lead kills them, as a rule, towards their thirtieth year. It is thus that we have seen the greatest of them all vanish from our midst – that waiter of the Café de la Rotonde, whose ‘baoum!’ uttered in a far-resounding voice, has found so many imitators. We see him still, coffee-pot in hand, saying in a voice profound, ‘Pas de Crême?’ Alas, alas, he is dead. He died of consumption, and when he was about to expire the nurse still offered him a mixture of cod-liver oil and milk, which his doctor had prescribed. He exclaimed with his last gasp, ‘Pas de Crême?’”

CHAPTER XXVII

THE PARIS COOK

Brillat-Savarin on the Art of Cooking – The Cook and the Roaster – Cooking in the Seventeenth Century – Louis XV. – Mme de Maintenon.

FROM the Paris waiter to the Paris cook the transition is, in literary phrase, “easy and natural.” There is probably no prouder personage in the world than this artist, who knows that mankind cannot dispense with him, and who, if one were to ask him whether the revolution of his spit or of the earth on its axis were the more important, might hesitate to decide.

In that excellent comedy from the combined pens of Émile Augier and Jules Sandeau, entitled Le Gendre de M. Poirier, we see an illustration of the solemn importance which is attached by the French cook to a well-ordered menu. M. Poirier, an aspirant for social position, has married his daughter to a ruined marquis, Gaston de Nesle, whom he soon finds to be a magnificently expensive son-in-law. One day, determined to retrench, he sends for his chef and asks what he intends to prepare for dinner that day. The chef enumerates a list of some twenty costly and exquisite dishes; to which M. Poirier replies: “You will replace all that by soup, roast meat, salad, and a fruit tart.” The cook feels like a soldier required to chop wood with the sword with which he has been accustomed to cut his way to glory, and who prefers to snap that sword in two. “I resign!” exclaims the cuisinier. “No man will cook for you!” “Then I will engage a woman,” is the economist’s base rejoinder.