29 chapters
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29 chapters
PREFACE
PREFACE
This selection from the writings of the late John F. Macdonald—between 1907 and 1913—finds, naturally, and without any arbitrary arrangement, its unity of character, as the middle volume of the book, in three parts, that it was this author’s ruling desire—rather than his deliberate and predetermined purpose—to spend many years in writing. The first volume of this book was Paris of the Parisians , the last was the posthumous volume recently published, under the title of Two Towns—One City . In or
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I IN THE STREET
I IN THE STREET
In my almost daily perambulations through the brilliant, through the drab, and through the ambiguous quarters of Paris, I constantly come upon street scenes that bring me inquisitively to a standstill. Not that they are particularly novel or startling. Indeed, to the Parisian they are such banal, everyday spectacles that he passes them by without so much as a glance. But for me, familiar though I am with the physiognomy of the Amazing City, these street scenes, amusing or pathetic, sentimental o
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II IN A CELLAR
II IN A CELLAR
Bright things and sombre things, tarnished things and threadbare things, frail things, fast-fading things; things and things, and all of them old things.... The past in this cellar; in every nook and corner of it—the past. Come here through a hole in the wall of a narrow, cobbled Paris street—come down a number of crooked stone steps—I now look curiously about me, and wonder what to do next. No one challenges me: the cellar appears to be uninhabited. Yet above its crude, primitive entrance, on a
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III IN A MARKET-PLACE
III IN A MARKET-PLACE
The market!... We holiday-keepers in Moret-sur-Loing have been looking forward to it, imagining it, scanning the spot where it is held, recalling other French market-places, ever since we first bowed before the amiable patron and patronne of our hotel. Our immediate inquiry was when is the market. “Tell us,” we cried, “when we, like the villagers, may go forth in our newest clothes, in high spirits, as though to some fine ceremony, to view fruits and vegetables, gigots and rôtis if we like, stal
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1. M. Durand at Marie-le-Bois
1. M. Durand at Marie-le-Bois
A French friend, M. Durand, thus writes to me: “To-morrow morning at 11.47 my wife, myself, the three children and our deaf old servant Amélie, all leave for Marie-le-Bois; and to-morrow night, whilst you, mon cher ami , are eating the rosbif and drinking the pale ale of la vieille Angleterre , the Durand family will be dining off radishes, sardines, chicken, and cool salad, in the garden of the Villa des Roses. “I have taken the villa for a month—our holiday. The Duvals and the Duponts occupy v
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2. Pension de Famille. The Beautiful Mademoiselle Marie, who loved Gambetta
2. Pension de Famille. The Beautiful Mademoiselle Marie, who loved Gambetta
As a consequence of the death, in her ninety-third year, of Mademoiselle Marie Rosalie Losset, many a successful French barrister, politician and littérateur is recalling the early, struggling days of the past. He sees the Rue des Poitevins, a narrow little street in the heart of the Latin Quarter. He remembers the board over one of its doorways: “Pension Laveur. Cuisine Bourgeoise. Prix modérés.” He can almost smell the strong evening odour of cabbage and onion soup that assailed him in the dim
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3. Pension de Famille. French and Piano Lessons. Les Saintes Filles, Mesdemoiselles Périvier
3. Pension de Famille. French and Piano Lessons. Les Saintes Filles, Mesdemoiselles Périvier
Three years have elapsed since Henri Rochette, the dashing young French financier with the handsome black beard, fell with a crash. “Le Krach de Rochette. Arrest of the Financier. Millions of Losses. Ruin of Small Investors,” yelled the camelots on the boulevards. It was another affaire , a gigantic swindle reminiscent of Panama, in that the greater part of the victims were small, thrifty people, who now stood in thousands outside Rochette’s closed, darkened offices, weeping, raging, patheticall
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4. The Affair of the Collars
4. The Affair of the Collars
It is a popular superstition that amongst the smaller French bourgeoisie one day is like another day, and all days are empty, colourless and banal. None of the joys of life—none of its shocks and surprises—up there in the Durands’ gloomy and oppressive fifth-floor appartement . From morning till night, infinite monotony, relieved only by Madame Durand’s periodical altercations with the concierge, the tradespeople, and deaf and dim-eyed old Amélie, the cook. The family newspaper is the Petit Jour
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1. When it was Dark in Paris
1. When it was Dark in Paris
Eight o’clock at night, and the electric lights burning brightly, and the band playing gaily, and the customers chatting happily in this large, comfortable café. Although it is the “dead” season, business is brisk. Here and there an elegant Parisienne, eating an ice. In corners, groups of card-players. And next to me, three stout, red-faced, prosperous-looking bourgeois, to whom the proprietor of the café pays particular attention. He hopes they are well. He hopes their ladies and their dear chi
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2. Birds of the State at the Post Office
2. Birds of the State at the Post Office
From a very fascinating English girl, domiciled in Yorkshire, I have just received the following request:—“I hear you are having another postal strike in Paris, and that carrier-pigeons are being used. How charming! And what a lucky man you are to be living in such an exciting country! Down here nothing ever happens. So do be a dear and send me a letter by a pigeon—it would be lovely.” Thus news travels slowly to my very fascinating correspondent’s home in Yorkshire. The postal strike, the gener
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3. After the Storm at Villeneuve-St-Georges
3. After the Storm at Villeneuve-St-Georges
Down here at Villeneuve-St-Georges, the sandpit district ten miles away from Paris, there has been a savage collision between the soldiers and the strikers. The sandpit men—some five or six thousand powerful navvies in all—raised barricades in the narrow, cobbled streets. When the dragoons and cuirassiers advanced, they were met with shower upon shower of flints, bottles, bricks. Revolvers, too, were fired at them. From windows, guns were discharged. Rising in his stirrups, an officer at last sh
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VI COTTIN & COMPANY
VI COTTIN & COMPANY
Here, under the shadow of the great Porte St-Martin, congregate old actors and old actresses, who are engaged either at vast, shabby, outlying theatres (Batignolles, Ternes, Belleville, Bouffes du Nord), or who are only awaiting an engagement somewhere, anywhere. Old actors and actresses on the kerbstone, old actors and old actresses in this dingy little café, with the hard benches, grimy windows and dusty floor. Among the old actors, old Cottin. How, as he stands dejectedly on the kerbstone or
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1. Mère Casimir
1. Mère Casimir
After weeks of summer idleness the students of the Latin Quarter return in October to the Boul’ Mich’ more exhilarated, more extravagant, more garrulous than ever. They are delighted to be back; they are impatient to conspuer certain professors; to parade the streets with lanterns and guys; to disturb the sleep of the bourgeois; to run into debt with their landlords, to embrace the policemen—to commit a hundred other follies. Clad in new corduroys, covered with astonishing hats, they call for bi
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2. Gloom on the Rive Gauche
2. Gloom on the Rive Gauche
Sometimes in the Latin Quarter come grave moments, grim and gloomy moments—moments when the students shun the cafés; when their lady friends, Mesdemoiselles Mimi and Musette—Mürger’s daughters, Daughters of Bohemia—look pale and anxious, and whisper together as though alarmed; when the spectator, observing this depression, becomes himself depressed. At such a time the women whose clothes are shabby, whose faces are tragical (the faded Mimis, the Musettes of years ago) come out of those corners t
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3. The Daughter of the Students
3. The Daughter of the Students
The month of July—eleven years ago. The year was one of those dear, amazing years when, in Paris, everybody has a foe, a feud and a fear; everybody a flush on his face and a gleam in his eye; everybody a little adventure with the plain police, the mounted police or the Garde Républicaine. We are on the march, on the run. The Ministry of the moment is—well, who is Prime Minister this morning? Never mind his name; he is sure to be a swindler, a “bandit.” Nothing but “bandits” among the public men.
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VIII MONSIEUR LE ROUÉ
VIII MONSIEUR LE ROUÉ
Wonderful, O most wonderful M. le Roué—who could fail to admire him for the constant, anxious endeavours he makes, the innumerable secret devices he employs to appear juvenile and sprightly! That his figure may be elegant, he wears stays. That the crow’s feet may not be conspicuous he (or rather his valet) covers them over with a subtle, greasy preparation. That his moustache may not droop, he has it waxed to the extremest degree of rigidity. And that people may not say: “Old le Roué is a wreck”
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1. M. Paul Bourget, the Reactionary Playwright, and M. Pataud, who put out the Lights of Paris
1. M. Paul Bourget, the Reactionary Playwright, and M. Pataud, who put out the Lights of Paris
In a boulevard café, over his favourite, strange mixture of strawberry syrup and champagne, a well-known Paris journalist recently called my attention to the profusion of playwrights of high, indisputable ability now writing for the French stage. “There are not enough theatres to accommodate them all,” he said. “The papers inform us that X—— has just finished a new chef-d’œuvre , but often four, six, even ten months will elapse ere the masterpiece can be produced. Why? Because there is no room f
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2. M. Alfred Capus. “Nôtre Jeunesse” at the Française
2. M. Alfred Capus. “Nôtre Jeunesse” at the Française
Through a novel published some years ago, under the title of Qui Perd Gagne , I made the acquaintance of a number of Parisians who committed all manner of faults and follies, got into all kinds of dilemmas; and yet compelled a certain sympathy by reason of their good-heartedness and good humour. Never a dull moment in this novel; never, indeed, a moment when there was not some anxious situation to face, some formidable difficulty to overcome. The leading personages were a retired blanchisseuse a
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3. M. Brieux, “La Déserteuse,” at the Odéon
3. M. Brieux, “La Déserteuse,” at the Odéon
“Brieux at the Odéon? Brieux passing from the grim playhouse of M. Antoine, to the calm, placid, highly respectable Odéon?” Such must have been the startled exclamations of hundreds of playgoers when it was announced that the “Second Theatre of France” had “received,” and was actually rehearsing, a new drama by the author of Les Avariés and Maternité . Amazing tidings, certainly. And especially amazing, even alarming, to the regular mature patrons of the Odéon, whose peaceful way of life, whose
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4. Paris, M. Edmond Rostand, and “Chantecler”
4. Paris, M. Edmond Rostand, and “Chantecler”
Six years have elapsed since a Paris newspaper announced that M. Constant Coquelin—dear, wonderful Coquelin aîné —had suddenly taken train to the south-west of France in the following circumstances:— “Yesterday morning the greatest of our comedians received a telegram urging him to proceed without delay to Cambo, the tranquil, beautiful country seat, in the Pyrenees, of M. Edmond Rostand. No sooner had he read the message than M. Coquelin bade Gillett, his devoted valet, pack a valise, hail a fi
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X AFTER CHANTECLER
X AFTER CHANTECLER
More than a fortnight has passed since I witnessed the dress rehearsal of Chantecler : and what an odd, what an exhausting fortnight it has been! First of all dreams—or rather nightmares. Strangely, preposterously, I am majestic, cock-crowing “Chantecler” himself. A few minutes later, with wild, delirious rapidity, I turn into the Blackbird. M. Rostand’s Blackbird can hop in and out of his cage, and mingle with the hens, the ducks, the fluffy little chicks, and the other feathered creatures in t
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XI AU COURS D’ASSISES. PARIS AND MADAME STEINHEIL
XI AU COURS D’ASSISES. PARIS AND MADAME STEINHEIL
It was not by reason of baccarat losses, duels, matrimonial disputes, nor because of the aches of indigestion nor of the indefinable miseries of neurasthenia, worries and ailments common enough in French Vanity Fair—it was not, I say, for any of these reasons that fashionable and financial Paris, sporting and theatrical Paris, certain worldly lights of literary and artistic Paris, and the extravagant, feverish demi-monde of Paris, woke up on the morning of the 3rd November [5] in an exceedingly
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XII THE LATE JULES GUÉRIN AND THE DEFENCE OF FORT CHABROL
XII THE LATE JULES GUÉRIN AND THE DEFENCE OF FORT CHABROL
The month of May, 1899—how long ago it seems! At that time, up at Montmartre, in a large house, overlooking a garden, resided M. Jules Guérin, most savage of Anti-Dreyfusards, and chief of the Anti-Semitic party. A fine house, but an unlovely garden. A gaunt tree or two; four or five gritty, stony flower-beds; in a corner, a dried-up, dilapidated old well. But this waste of a garden suited M. Guérin’s purposes,—which were sinister. “If my enemies attack me here, I shall shoot them dead and bury
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XIII DEATH OF HENRI ROCHEFORT[6]
XIII DEATH OF HENRI ROCHEFORT[6]
It is with mixed emotions that I record my own personal recollections of the late Henri Rochefort. They go back fourteen years, to the lurid, delirious summer of 1899, when Jules Guérin, the leader of the Anti-Semites, evaded arrest by shutting himself up in Fort Chabrol; when Dreyfus, bent, shattered, almost voiceless, was enduring the anguish of a second court-martial; when the boulevards were being swept of tumultuous manifestants every night by the Republican Guard. Rochefort was living in a
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XIV ROYAL VISITS TO PARIS
XIV ROYAL VISITS TO PARIS
Whenever France is shaken by a scandal, convulsed by a crisis, the voice of the undiscerning prophet is to be heard proclaiming the doom of the Republic. The Affair of the Decorations in President Grévy’s time, the Panama Affair, the Dreyfus Affair, the Steinheil Affair, yesterday’s Rochette-Caillaux-Calmette Affair; each of these delirious dramas excited the assertion that the French people, disgusted and indignant at so much political corruption, were ready and eager for the restoration of the
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1. M. Loubet and Paul Déroulède
1. M. Loubet and Paul Déroulède
On 16th February 1899, President Faure (known familiarly and gaily in Paris as “Félix”) died suddenly. Two days later the Upper and Lower Chambers, solemnly assembled at Versailles, proclaimed M. Émile Loubet his successor. And now, after seven years in the Élysée, M. Loubet makes way for the eighth President of the Third French Republic and retires into a tranquil, simple appartement . Seven years ago! But it seems only yesterday that I found myself, one cold, misty afternoon, before the St-Laz
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2. M. Armand Fallières. Morocco and the Floods
2. M. Armand Fallières. Morocco and the Floods
A day or two ago, in the Presidential palace of the Élysée, M. Armand Fallières celebrated his seventy-second birthday. I do not know whether there were gifts, flowers, a birthday cake, champagne and speeches: but, according to an incorrigible gossip in a boulevard newspaper, M. le Président stated that this was the blithest birthday he had known for seven years. “I breathe again,” he is reported to have said. “This time next year, I shall pass my anniversary, not in a frock coat and varnished b
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3. M. Raymond Poincaré and the Record of M. Lépine
3. M. Raymond Poincaré and the Record of M. Lépine
Last February (1913) must be accounted an important month in the history of the Third French Republic. Away, after his seven years’ official tenancy of the Élysée, went M. Armand Fallières to a comfortable bourgeois appartement , there, no doubt, to recall, in dressing-gown and carpet slippers, the rare joys and successes and the many shocks and miseries of his Septennat, and to speculate upon the destiny reserved for his successor, ninth President of the Republic, M. Raymond Poincaré. No common
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XVI MADAME LA PRÉSIDENTE, M. GEORGES CLEMENCEAU AND THE UNFORTUNATE M. PAMS
XVI MADAME LA PRÉSIDENTE, M. GEORGES CLEMENCEAU AND THE UNFORTUNATE M. PAMS
There is an important reason for the popularity of M. le Président: there is Madame la Présidente. Less than a month ago Madame Raymond Poincaré, wife of the President of the French Republic, was the hostess, in Paris, of King George and Queen Mary; to-day, as I write, she is helping to entertain, with almost similar brilliancy, their Majesties Christian and Alexandrine of Denmark. In the interval between these two Royal visits, Madame Poincaré has spent a few days on the Riviera, but it wasn’t
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