Life in 19th Century Paris

by Iva Polansky

  Iva Polansky

  Life in 19th Century Paris

  A Collection of Victorian Paris Blog Posts

  Introduction

  The blog Victorian Paris was born from my research for the novel Fame and Infamy set in the early 1870s Paris just after the end of the Second Empire and the murderous uprising that followed its fall. I do like research. I do like it as much as I do like writing. I’d even say that I’m a greedy researcher, an avid collector of research material, a hoarder of facts. After the novel was finished, I was left with a small mountain of books and articles about the period and I decided to put the material to use in a blog.

  Why Victorian Paris? The name of the blog raised at least one eyebrow and the reader criticized my choice. What has Queen Victoria in common with Paris? Perhaps not much, even though her son, the Prince of Wales and the future Edward VII, made Paris his preferred playground. However, during Victoria’s placid reign, France went through one political upheaval after another, from kingdom to republic, to empire and to republic again. There is not one unifying factor in that century to put into a title. Since the blog caters to English-speaking readers interested in the Victorian period, I know of no better name for it.

  This book contains articles authored by me as well as excerpts written in the 19th century. In the majority of cases, I reveal my sources although there are several texts that I collected in the early stages of my research and which I can no longer identify. These texts are marked as Unknown Source. Many of the quoted texts were written by Americans visiting Paris and their reactions give us the advantage of comparing the French lifestyle of the era with the American one. They differed in many aspects.

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  The Guide to Gay Paree

  A Guide for the English and American Traveller in 1869 or How to see PARIS for 5 guineas

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  How to get there

  PARIS! - gay and beautiful Paris - rich in architectural treasures, teeming with historic associations of deepest interest - favoured in its genial climate - replete with endless novelty - the abode and dictator of European fashion - full of all that art and science can contribute to beguile the sense - its people renowned for their wit and daring - in fact, in sum, in total, THE PARADISE OF TOURISTS!

  From London

  Of the different routes available, the speediest is that adopted by the South-Eastern Railway, whose accelerated special tide trains leave regularly from Charing Cross, passing to Paris via Sevenoaks, Folkestone (indifferent refreshment room), and Boulogne. Weather permitting, the entire trip is of a duration c. 10 hours. Return ticket, one month's validity, £3 10s.

  Passports

  Since a French regulation of 1860, English citizens are now exempt from the expense and annoyance of passports; but although by no means absolutely necessary, one of these documents, or a card of identity, is most strongly recommended.

  Customs

  Attention is generally paid only to cigars, on which a levy of 10 centimes per item is payable. Certain books and newspapers, of inflammatory or political tendency, can cause difficulties or embarrassment.

  Money

  25 francs equal £1; 5 francs equal $1.

  Arrival in Paris

  Recent history

  1789 Capture of the Bastille

  1792 Republic proclaimed

  1793 Execution of Louis XVI

  1804 Napoleon Bonaparte proclaimed Emperor.

  At the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789, one-third of Paris had been occupied by ecclesiastical property. Since much of it was subsequently expropriated, and then sold to speculators or retained by the state, Napoleon availed himself of an opportunity to beautify the city, opening the rue de Rivoli, completing the Louvre Palace, and beginning the Arch of the Etoile.

  1814 Abdication of the Emperor. Restoration of the Bourbon Louis XVIII.

  1824 Succession of Charles X

  1830 Three-day revolution. Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orleans, proclaimed King. He completed the Arch of the Etoile, the Madeleine, enlarged the Hôtel de Ville, and repaired many neglected monuments, as well as widening principal thoroughfares. During this reign, Paris was surrounded with the present fortified wall and ditch, and the detached forts erected.

  1848 February revolution. After two days' fighting, Louis Philippe fled, and republic was proclaimed. The words 'Liberté, Egalité, et Fraternité' met the visitor's eyes in every direction; they have now been erased. Louis Napoleon, son of Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland and nephew of the first Napoleon, elected by universal suffrage President of the French Republic.

  1851 2 December. Discretion compels us to pass over the coup d'état which took place on this date. Suffice it to say that exactly a year later, Louis Napoleon was elected Emperor by universal suffrage, and the present regime, known as the Second Empire was established. In 1853 Louis Napoleon married the present Empress, Eugénie de Montijo. Since these events, works of public utility in Paris have proceeded at a pace quite stupendous, throwing into shade everything previously achieved in any city of the world. Picturesque but insalubrious quarters of narrow and crooked streets have been cleared, the boulevards extended, railways constructed.

  Paris today

  Today visitor to Paris will find a population between one and a half and two million. In 1860 the line of fortified walls which surrounds the city was made the municipal boundary; this wall is rather more than 22 miles in circuit and has 66 entrances or gates.

  The city is divided into 20 arrondissements, with their own administrations, over which are placed the Prefect of the Seine, Baron Georges Haussmann, and his municipal council. The modern fashionable quarter comprehends the bright and brilliant rue de Rivoli, Place Vendôme, Boulevard des Italiens and the Champs Elysées. The Palace of the Tuileries is the Paris residence of the Emperor and Empress; on the Ile de la Cité are the law courts, central police office, and the great hospital; there is nothing like 'the City' in London - the Bourse or Stock Exchange being close to the fashionable quarter. In the Faubourg Saint-Germain, on the Left Bank of the river Seine, stand the vast hotels of the nobility, in which some of the traditions of old French society are maintained; in the adjoining Latin Quarter, many thousands of students lead a life of riot and license hardly to be understood by a foreigner. To the East, in the Faubourg S. Antoine, are numerous manufactories and the dwellings of those who work in them, formerly the hotbed of terror and insurrection. On the outskirts, as in the Faubourg S. Victor, Mouffetard, Belleville &c, are to be found the most wretched of the population; but Paris may at least be proud that it possesses fewer dens of misery, filth, and vice than the vicinity of Tottenham Court Road or Drury Lane can exhibit.

  Find a hotel

  Hotels and Accommodations

  Paris contains some 4,000 hotels and lodging houses, many of them bearing in their names the evidence of the entente cordiale - hence the Hotels Chatnam, Bristol, Windsor, Manchester, Brighton, Liverpool, Westminster, Dover, Bedford, Canterbury, Richmond, Lancaster, Clarendon, Nelson, Byron, Walter Scott, Prince Regent and several Albions, Londres, Victorias, Iles Britanniques, and Angleterres. Those on an expansive budget should note:

  Grand Hôtel, Boulevard des Capucines. A new hotel, financed by the Jewish bankers Pereire, of great show and size (not to be confused with its neighboring rival, the Grand Hotel du Louvre against which it has been wrangling a costly and bitter legal suit). Seven hundred rooms, for which one can expect to pay 20 francs per diem. For all the splendour of its public quarters, designed by M. Charles Garnier, do not recon on quiet, prompt attendance. There are few private w.c.s and many damp, dark corridors. More commodious to traveling agents for commercial houses than families seeking cheer and respectabili
ty. A lifting machine, operated by hydraulic press, raises clients to their floor, thus circumventing the fatigue of staircases. Electric bells operate throughout.

  Hôtel Meurice, rue de Rivoli. Much patronized by visiting royalty and aristocracy. Our intelligence has it, however, that standards in this establishment have fallen since it passed out of private hands and into those of a joint stock enterprise, the Paris Hotel Company.

  Hôtel de Calais, rue Neuve des Capucines. Frequented by the elite of American society. American breakfasts served (buckwheat cakes, fishballs &c.). Close to the American banking house.

  Visitors intending to stay for longer periods should not hesitate to take a furnished apartment: a reliable agent can be found in A. Webb, 220 rue de Rivoli, tea dealer and wine and brandy merchant. Many English, Americans, and Russians of more than moderate means prefer the leafy residential stretch of the Champs Elysées.

  Restaurants and Cafés

  Dinner is served between 4.30 and 8 p.m. Very large portions are the rule, and the visitor will find that one French appetite is sufficient for two Anglo-Saxon appetites.

  The carte: nothing can be more bewildering to the stranger than to have this printed list, of some hundred dishes, placed in his hand, and he soon begins to feel uncomfortable at the contempt that his ignorance must inspire in the waiter. We, therefore, recommend - for reasons of as much economy as of personal dignity - that the visitor favours the fixed price menu of the day, available at all but the very smartest establishments.

  For those who do not wish to risk the possibility of digestive contretemps, plain, wholesome English fare is offered by Lucas, in the rue Madeleine (ham or roast beef, with boiled cabbage and mashed potatoes, 1 fr. 20 c. English cheeses; half portions available); also by the well-established Byron's Tavern, rue Favart, Taverne Britannique, rue Richelieu, and His Lordship's Larder, rue Royale. Beware signs in windows advertising 'Veritable Warranted Cheddar' or 'Stakes from London, Day and Night'.

  The stranger should not as a rule venture below third class, but he may safely patronize a new form of eating house, the crémerie or bouillon, in which simple dishes and collations are constantly ready for instant purchase and consumption. These places do not minister to the refinement or romance of dining out in Paris; no ceremony beyond eating and paying is attached to them; but they do have the advantage of the utmost convenience.

  For those who wish to sample the full glory of Parisian cuisine, with expense no object, we would single out Café des Anglais, Boulevard des Italiens. Obtaining a table is not easy; there are times when those without réclame or a title seem to be tacitly excluded. The restaurant upstairs (in which smoking is not permitted) has long been the haunt of la jeunesse aristocratique - the Duc de Rivoli, Prince Paul Demidoff, the Marquis de Modena &c. A beefsteak costs 1 fr. 75c. The cellars, which contain over 200,000 bottles of wine, including some of the Château Lafitte dating from the previous century, make a faery dining hall. The ground-floor café is but plain and typique, and open all night. Beware cocottes. Véfour, Galerie Valois. Salmon mayonnaise (the receipt a closely guarded secret), 2fr. 50c. The 36-page menu here lists twenty hors d'oeuvres, thirty-three soups, forty-six dishes of beef, thirty-four of game, as well as forty-seven of vegetables and seventy-one fruits en compote. Trois Frères Provençaux, Galerie Beaujolais (not to be confused with its pallid imitator, the Deux Frères Provençaux, rue Dauphine), has four salons and eighteen private rooms; fine wine, cod with garlic a speciality.

  Note: Ordinary red table wine is usually drunk mixed with aerated water - this precaution is especially recommended in inferior restaurants.

  Paris boasts at least twenty thousand cafés. The more salubrious of them present the visitor with a sprightly scene. Around are luxurious couches for your accommodation; mirrors, gilding, and tasteful adornments of decorative skill enrich the walls; whilst every art that can be used to attract and retain the visitor is brought into operation - the daily journals, draughts, chess, dominoes, cribbage, and billiards. Excellent coffee, chocolate, and liqueurs are supplied at reasonable prices. Ladies are at perfect liberty to frequent these saloons and are numerously found there. The utmost decorum prevails, and the freedom and ease of conversation carried on in a low tone, form an additional attraction to these popular places of resort. Smoking is generally prohibited until the evening.

  Coffee is served either as a demi-tasse (strong, black), or as a mazagran (in a glass, with an accompanying carafe of water), or as capuchin, with milk. Never tip, even for a single cup of coffee, less than 10c. Should you give less, you risk the embarrassment of an ironic shout of 'Un sou pour le garçon!'

  Tortoni, Boulevard des Italiens. Renowned for its ices and sorbets. Café du Helder, Boulevard des Italiens. Open after the theatre; food, at a price (half a chicken, 4 fr.!!) Well known for its absinthe, a spirituous liquor which, if taken in any quantity, can be ruinous to both moral and physical well-being. Café Leblond Favre, Passage de l'Opéra. Stockjobbers from the Bourse breakfast there. Sherry cobbler, mint julep, American grog, and other Yankee potations purveyed. Café de Suède, Boulevard Montmartre. After-theatre suppers of goose aux marrons, sauerkraut and potato salad, served in private cubicles. Literary and journalistic clientele, of a radical political nature. A famous habitué is Le Guillois, the eccentric editor of the newspaper Le Hanneton. To publicise this he adopted the ludicrous habit of taking out the copy in public places, pretending to read it, and gasping loudly: 'This newspaper is remarkable! The critics are excellent, the drawings clever! And so much for a ridiculously low price! Truly, this Le Guillois the editor is an astonishing man who deserves to succeed!'

  Shopping

  The visitor should note that Paris is the most expensive city in Europe. English sovereigns and half-sovereigns are generally accepted in lieu of native currency.

  Much to be marveled at are the grands magasins or magasins de nouveautés, huge emporia divided into several floors and departments. These stores offer a wide range of dry goods, drapery, haberdashery, clothing, and furnishing. They are rigorously managed and quite respectable. Among smaller shops, American citizens may like to note the pharmacist Swann, rue Castiglione, by appointment to the American Embassy and the American Cracker Manufactory, Boulevard Malesherbes. Novel gifts 'for the folk back home' may be found at the establishment of M. Paul Morin, Boulevard Poissonière, whose jewellery is forged in that wonderful new metal, aluminium, which so impressed the Emperor at the recent International Exhibition that he commanded a dinner service made of the same. The Maison Violet, newly opened on the rue Scribe, occupies a vast insular salon, ornamented with frescoes and a superb chandelier of one hundred jets. The tone is essentially aristocratic. Inner boudoirs sell the paraphernalia of the toilette, notably the house's own exclusive 'Reine des Abeilles', or Queen Bee, cosmetic preparations, by appointment to the Empress.

  Entretainment

  Paris, the City of Light, is a veritable charivari of pleasures after nightfall; the visitor must only beware of not regretting the effects of a too-eager readiness to yield to the siren calls of its temptations and intoxications.

  Theatres, cafés chantants and dancing halls

  The Grand Opéra, rue Pelletier. Properly the French Opera, run up in a hurry in 1821(to replace a building in the rue de Richelieu, at the door of which the Duc de Berri was stabbed and which was pulled down in consequence). In front of the portico, three dastardly Italians tried to assassinate the Emperor and the Empress in 1858, and now this building is being replaced too, by a splendid edifice designed by M. Garnier, due to open in 1871. The government provides 900,000 francs of annual subsidy. Peformances on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and often Sunday.

  The Opéra Comique, Place des Italiens. In this handsome hall are presented lighter works, by modern composers such as Aber, Halévy, etc.

  The Théâtre Italien, Place Boildieu. Here a select audience listens to Italian Opera, in a season which lasts from November to April (after which the singers generally r
epair to London).

  The Théâtre Français, rue Richelieu. The seat of the French regular drama - classic works and modern alike, with a government subsidy of 240,000 francs. Molière was once its manager; in later years it has been the scene of triumphs of Talma and Rachel. The manager is allowed to withdraw an actor from any other theatre to the Comédie-Française (as it is also known) on one year notice.

  The Odéon, near the Luxembourg. A minor Théâtre Français, but not an inferior one. Here Beaumarchais' play Le Mariage de Figaro was first produced in 1784; nine years later, the entire troop of actors was arrested by order of the Revolutionary tribunal. It has several times been burnt down.

  Théâtre des Variétés, Boulevard Montmartre. A neat and much-frequented house, in which the amusing musical vaudevilles of M. Offenbach can be seen.

  The infamous Boulevard du Temple, or 'Boulevard du Crime', on which the smaller theatres played the most lurid and distasteful melodrama, has now been destroyed to make way for the regime's march of progress.

  The Théâtre Gymnase-Dramatique, Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle, is respectable. The plays are moral and the performers are all married.

  Note Ladies do not patronize the pit, or parterre, of any theatre; gentlemen admitted here should in the interval ensure their places by tying a handkerchief around the banquette. Be also warned that at the Grand Opéra, the claque sit here. This disagreeable cohort, paid by the management in this and other theatres to respond favourably to the entertainment in question, should on no account be shushed or silenced in their mercenary activities. An attempt to abolish the claques in 1853 proved totally unsuccessful after a fortnight.