THE PARIS ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS IN THE TWO SIEGES.
Here is an odd scene in the Jardin des Plantes at the end of April 1871. The communards were defending the ramparts, and a steady rain of shells had been pouring in from the Versaillist batteries for a week. Every one in Paris was “stale” from continued siege and bombardment. War had lost all its excitement, and nothing relieved its squalid discomfort. An order to impress all citizens for the National Guard had just been issued, and one of these, M. Henri de Goncourt, an author, a man of taste, and a man of peace, had wandered into the Jardin des Plantes, partly from sheer ennui, partly, as he would have us believe, in the hope that he might find an empty loose box of a deer or antelope, in which he could sleep, and escape the réquisition militaire of the omnipotent M. Pipe-en-Bois. He found a party of National Guards sauntering round the Gardens, conducted by a philosophical Republican, who halted his squad in front of the kangaroos’ cages, and gravely took for his text the maternal virtues of “Citoyenne” Kanguroo, begging them, “with emotion,” to observe the contrast of the animal, which always carried its infant in its pocket, with the indifference of “les femmes aristo” to their babies! The republican zeal for improving the occasion is typical of the frame of mind to which the average Parisian can always bring himself and his audience over any political or patriotic question, on the most trifling occasion, a kind of conscious insincerity which his hearers agree to share in order to enjoy the sentiment of the moment. But the time and occasion are not often so comical. The observer of the scene, M. de Goncourt, a writer steeped in the literary life of Paris, a life which the siege had starved and crushed, leaving the poor man in a state of acute mental starvation very curiously shown in his journal of the siege, declared that the animals which had survived the first siege, or had been introduced to the Gardens after the Prussian occupation, were almost as bored by the loss of their “public” as he was at the loss of his. “The animals,” he says, “are silent. The elephant, abandonné de son public, leaning indolently against the wall, was eating his hay with the air of a man compelled to dine alone.
In the first siege, the animals of the Paris Zoo which could by any means be classed as “game” or venison early found their way into the butchers’ and game-dealers’ shops. As early as October 3 two large stags were exposed for sale; at the same time big tame carps, which had adorned the fountains in the Gardens, were rubbing their purple noses against the sides of a baby’s bath, set upon the counter, and a young bear, freshly killed, its broad paws clenched in death, was hanging like a sheep from the hooks above, destined for auction by hungry Parisians on the following day. On the last night of the old year, in the shop of the butcher Roos, in the Boulevard Haussmann, far less appetizing viands were the subject of a sale, which for the moment was invested with an interest equal to that attending an auction of masterpieces of art at Christy’s. The last batch of animals from the Jardin d’Acclimatation was on offer, to supply the materials for a New Year’s dinner. The trunk of “Pollux,” a young elephant, was the central attraction, and among a number of unfamiliar heads and horns, a shopman was pointing to a pile of camel steaks.
The butcher was concluding his speech, in the centre of a circle of women—
“It is forty francs a pound, for the filet or the ribs. Yes—forty francs. Dear, you say? Not at all; I do not see my way to making a penny on it. I counted on 3000 lbs., and he (the elephant) has only cut up into 2300 lbs. The feet—you ask the price of the feet?—are twenty francs; the other portions eight francs to fourteen francs a pound. Allow me to recommend the elephant sausage; there is onion in my sausage, ladies and gentlemen!”
De Goncourt was able to purchase two larks for his breakfast—like the toasted mice of the hero of Bulwer Lytton’s Parisians, “dainty, but not nutritious.” That evening he found, at Voisins, the famous elephant sausage, and he dined on it.
The rarer animals from the Jardin d’Acclimatation in the Bois de Boulogne were transferred before the siege to the Jardin des Plantes. These were mostly bought by the proprietor of the English butcher’s shop, M. Debos; he also bought the elephants of the Jardin des Plantes for 27,000 francs. “Personally, I have eaten the flesh of elephants, wolves, cassowaries, porcupines, bears, kangaroos, rats, cats, and horses,” says the author of the Englishman in Paris. His views on these creatures as articles of food are only given at length in the case of the dog, cat, and horse. The last was supposed to have become a recognized part of the food supply of Paris in the year before the siege, but it never acquired any popularity. “It is very curious, but a positive fact nevertheless, that I have heard Parisians speak favourably afterwards of dog’s and cat’s flesh, even of rats baked in a pie; I have heard them say, that for once in a way, and under ordinary circumstances, they would not mind partaking of those dishes; I have never heard them express the same good-will towards horse-flesh. One thing is certain. At the end of the siege, the sight of a cat or dog was a rarity in Paris, while by the official reports there were thirty thousand horses left.”
The same writer records the opinion of an officer who was most successful in “siege cookery” on the subject of the dog as food. This gentleman, aided by a soldier servant, had made an excellent dish of “larks,” which turned out to be field-mice, slightly flavoured with saffron to disguise their musky taste. “You may disguise anything with saffron except dog’s flesh. His meat is oily and flabby; stew him, fry him, do what you will, there is always a castor-oil flavour remaining, which cannot be got rid of. The only way to minimize that flavour, to make him palatable, is to salt or rather pepper him; to cut him up into large slices and leave them a fortnight, bestrewing them very liberally with peppercorns. Then before cooking them, put them into boiling water for a time, and throw the water away.”
All palates do not seem to have disliked dog so greatly. At Brebant’s, where M. Renan and other leading writers dined regularly during the siege, a “saddle of mutton” was brought in. “We shall have the shepherd served up to-morrow,” said M. Hébrard. It was explained that it was a “très belle selle de chien,” and that this was the third time they had eaten dog.
“No, no,” exclaimed M. Saint-Victor, horrified. “M. Brebant is a respectable man—he would have told us—horse, not dog.”
“Dog or mutton,” said Nefftzer, his mouth full, “I have never eaten a better rôti. If Brebant would give you rat, it is excellent, a mixture of pork and partridge.”
During this dissertation poor M. Renan, who appeared preoccupied and thoughtful, grew pale, then green, threw his five francs on the table, and left hurriedly.
The result of the compulsory experiments in food during the siege will not be much assistance to guide the work of acclimatization, or to aid in the discovery of a new meat, either from the menageries of the Zoological Gardens, or our beasts of burden, though all the needful accessories of good cooks, good wines, and good company were available to secure success.