Frenchmen, especially Parisians, not only eat a great quantity of bread, but they are very particular as to its quality. I have a note showing that, during the years 1868-69, the consumption per head for every man, woman, and child amounted to a little more than an English pound per day, and that very little of this was of "second quality," though the latter was as good as that sold at many a London baker's as first. I tasted it myself, because the municipality had made a great point of introducing it to the lower classes at twopence per quartern less than the first quality. Nevertheless, the French workman would have none of it.[83]
Even in the humblest restaurants, the bread supplied to customers is of a superior quality; the ordinary household bread (pain de ménage) is only to be had by specially asking for it; the roll with the café-au-lait in the morning is an institution except with the very poor.
As for meat, I have an idea, in spite of all the doubts thrown upon the question by English writers, that the Parisian workman in 1870 consumed as much as his London fellow. The fact of the former having two square meals a day instead of one, is not sufficiently taken into account by the casual observer. There are few English artisans whose supper, except on Sundays, consists of anything more substantial than bread and cheese. The Frenchman eats meat at twelve a.m. and at six p.m. The nourishment contained in the scraps, the bones, etc., is generally lost to the Englishman: not a particle of it is wasted in France. Be that as it may, the statistics for 1858 show a consumption of close upon eight ounces (English) of fresh meat per day for every head of the population. Be it remembered that these statistics are absolutely correct, because a town-due of over a halfpenny per English pound is paid on the meat leaving the public slaughter-houses, and killed meat is taxed similarly at the city gates. Private slaughter-houses there are virtually none.
Allowing for all this, it will be seen that Paris was not much better off than other capitals would have been if threatened with a siege, except, perhaps, for the ingenuity of even the humblest French housewife in making much out of little by means of vegetables, fruit, and cunningly prepared sauces, for which, nevertheless, butter, milk, lard, etc., were wanted, which commodities were as likely to fail as all other things. Nor must one forget to mention the ingenuity displayed in the public slaughter-houses themselves, in utilizing every possible scrap of the slaughtered animals for human food. I had occasion, not very long ago (1883), to go frequently, and for several weeks running, to one of the poorest quarters in London. I often made the journey on foot, for I am ashamed to say that, until then, the East End was far more unknown to me than many an obscure town in France, Italy, Germany, and Spain. The clever remark of a French sociologist that "the battle of life is fought below the belt," holds especially good with regard to the lower classes. Well, I may unhesitatingly say that in no country are the poor left in greater ignorance with regard to cheap and nourishing food than in England, if I am to judge by London. The French, the German, the Italian, the Spanish poor, have a dozen inexpensive and succulent dishes of which the English poor know absolutely nothing; and still those very dishes figure on the tables of the well-to-do, and of fashionable restaurants, as entrées under more or less fantastic names. Is the English working man so utterly devoid of thrift and of common sense, is his contempt for the foreigner so great as to make him refuse to take a lesson from the latter? I think not. I fancy it will depend much on the manner in which the lesson is conveyed. A little less board-school work and Sunday-school teaching, fewer Bible classes, and a good many practical cooking-classes would probably meet the case.
The French, though aware of their incontestable superiority in the way of preparing food, did not disdain to take a lesson from the alien. They clearly foresaw the fate in store for the cattle penned in the squares and public gardens, if compelled to remain there under existing conditions, and with the inclement season close at hand; consequently, the authorities enlisted the services of Mr. Wilson, an Irish gentleman who had been residing in Paris for a number of years, and whose experience in the salted-provision trade seemed to them very likely to yield most satisfactory results. Up till then, only thirty head of cattle had been submitted to his process, from that moment the number is considerably increased, and it becomes apparent that, in a short while, there will be few live oxen, sheep, or pigs left in Paris, though, as yet we are only in the beginning of October. Under Mr. Wilson's able management, half a hundred Irishmen are at work for many, many hours a day at the slaughter-house in La Villete, whither flock the Parisians, at any rate the privileged ones, to watch the preliminaries to the régime of salt-junk which is staring them in the face. The fodder thus economized will go to the horses, although there is a whisper in the air that one eminent savant has recommended their immediate slaughter and salting also. Of course, such as are wanted for military purposes will be exempted from this holocaust on the altar of patriotism. M. Gagne, who has already provided the Parisians with amusement for years, in his capacity as a perpetual candidate for parliamentary honours, does not stop at hippophagy; he seriously proposes anthropophagy. "A human being over sixty is neither useful nor ornamental," he exclaimed at a public meeting; "and to prove that I mean what I say, I am willing to give myself as food to my sublime and suffering townsmen." Poor fellow! as mad as a March hare, but a man of education and with an infinite fund of sympathy for humanity. He was but moderately provided for at the best of times; his income was derived from some property in the provinces, and, as a matter of course, the investment of Paris stopped his supplies of funds from that quarter. He was of no earthly use in the besieged city, but he refused to go. He had a small but very valuable collection of family plate, which went bit by bit to the Mint, not to feed himself but to feed others, for he was never weary of well-doing. He reminded one irresistibly of Balzac's hero, "le Père Goriot," parting with his treasures to supply his ungrateful daughters, for the Parisians were ungrateful to him. Mad as he was, no man in possession of all his mental faculties could have been more sublime.
Whatever the question of human flesh as food may have been to the Parisians, that of horseflesh was by no means new to them. Since '66, various attempts had been made to introduce it on a large scale, but, for once in a way, they were logical in their objections to it. "It is all very well," wrote a paper, devoted to the improvement of the humbler classes,—"it is all very well for a few savants to sit round a well-appointed table to feast upon the succulent parts of a young, tender, and perfectly healthy horse, especially if the steaks are 'aux truffes,' and the kidneys stewed in 'Madeira;' but that young, tender, and perfectly healthy horse would cost more than an equally tender, young, and perfectly healthy bullock or cow. So, where is the advantage? In order to obtain that advantage, horses only fit for the knacker's yard, not fit for human food, would have to be killed, and the hard-working artisan with his non-vitiated taste, who does not even care for venison or game when it happens to be 'high,' would certainly not care for a superannuated charger to be set before him. You might just as well ask an unsophisticated cannibal to feast upon an invalid. The best part of 'the warrior on the shelf' is his wooden leg or his wooden arm; the best part of the superannuated charger is his skin or his hoof, with or without the shoe; and no human being, whether cannibal or not, can be expected to make a timber-yard, a tanner's yard, or an old-iron and rag store of his stomach, even to please faddists."
As a consequence, only two millions of pounds of horseflesh were "produced" during the first three years succeeding the publication of that article (1866-69); but it is more than doubtful whether a sixteenth part of it was consumed as human food—with a knowledge on the part of the consumers. And during those three years, as if to prove the writer's words, the public were being constantly fortified in their dislike with official reports of the seizure of diseased horses on their way to the four specially appointed slaughter-houses. I remember, that in one week, twenty-four animals were thus confiscated by the sanitary inspectors, "the flesh of which," added the Moniteur, "would have probably found its way to the tables of the better class Parisians, in the shape of Arles, Lorraine, or German sausages. These commodities," it went on, "are never offered by the manufacturer to the experienced proprietors of the ham and beef shops (charcutiers), but to fruiterers, grocers, vendors of so-called dainties, and dealers in preserved provisions." The article had the effect of arousing the suspicion of the better classes as well as of the poorer.
The number of "horse-butchers" had decreased by four during the four years that had elapsed since their first establishment with the Government's sanction, and the remaining eighteen were not very prosperous when the siege brought the question to the fore once more. The public could not afford to be positively hostile to the scheme, but the assertion of the rare advocates of the system, that they were enthusiastic, is altogether beside the truth. They had to make the best of a bad game, that was all. It is a very curious, but 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, even under ordinary circumstances, they would not mind partaking of those dishes: I have never heard them express the same good will toward horseflesh. Of course, I am alluding to those who affected no partisanship, either one way or the other. One thing is very certain, though: 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.
Meanwhile, the Académie de Sciences is attracting notice by the reports of its sittings, in which the question of food is the only subject discussed. Professor Dorderone reads a paper on the utilization of beef and mutton fat; and he communicates a new process with regard to kidney fat, which, up till then, had withstood the attempts of the most celebrated chefs for culinary purposes. He professes to have discovered the means of doing away with the unpleasant taste and smell which have hitherto militated against its use, he undertakes to give it the flavour and aroma of the best butter from Brittany and Normandy. M. Richard, the maire of La Villette, attempts similar experiments with animal offal, which M. Dumas, the great savant, declares highly satisfactory. M. Riche, one of the superior officials of the Mint, transforms bullock's blood into black puddings, which are voted superior to those hitherto made with pig's blood. The nourishing properties of gelatine are demonstrated in an equally scientific manner, and the Académie des Sciences gradually becomes the rendezvous of the fair ones of Paris, who come to take lessons in the culinary art.
"Mais, monsieur," says one, "maintenant que nous avons du beurre, veuillez nous dire d'où viendront nos épinards?"[84]