We believe that we employ ourselves more usefully at this juncture in setting forth general principles like these than in any attempt, by arbitration as third parties in a special case, to introduce that which the Preston manufacturer declares to be only a fresh element of discord.
THE HALL OF WINES.
If you mount the Belvedere of the Jardin des Plantes, at Paris, there is one particular segment of the panorama which forms a very complete and singular picture. The right-hand wing (theatrically speaking) is formed by Jussieu’s famous cedar of Lebanon, planted by his own hands in seventeen hundred and thirty-five; that on the left hand is a clump of yews, firs, and miscellaneous evergreens. The heights of Montmartre crown the horizon; the middle distance is formed by the line of houses that constitute the quays on the right bank of the Seine, broken in the midst by the cupolas of St. Pol, and a little to the left by the barn-like roof of St. Louis dans l’Île. But the whole central space of the landscape is overspread with what might be a lake of brown mud in a half-dried and crumpled state, but which, after a second look, proves a vast expanse of tiled roofs running in parallel rows, and slightly diversified by the tops of trees and by scarcely visible skylights which break up the gray-brown uniformity. That petrified mud-lake consists entirely of the roofs which cover the famous Entrepôt or Halle-aux-Vins, which Napoleon the First propounded (by imperial decree) in eighteen hundred and eight, on the site of the Abbey of St. Victor, where Abelard had listened to the lessons of Guillaume de Champeaux, and where many good bottles of ecclesiastical wine had made their disappearance down monkish throats.
If your curiosity is sufficiently awakened to pay the Entrepôt a nearer visit, you will meet with much to interest. Suppose you walk down Rue Cuvier,—perhaps one of these days we shall have Owen Street, and Faraday Street, in London,—you will reach the Quai Saint Bernard, with the Seine rushing rapidly to the left and in front. You will encounter an eddying stream of pleasure and of business combined, as if the whole population of Paris were dancing a grand Sir Roger de Coverly together; omnibuses flitting backwards and forwards,—Hirondelles, Favorites, Gazelles, Parisiennes; holiday parties laden with eatables, to be washed down, outside the Barrière, by wine untaxed by octroi duty; students and savans bent on taking notes on botany and comparative anatomy; wine merchants and their customers with mouths in tasting trim, bound either for the Halle itself or for Bercy beyond it; troops of children with their nurses and grandmothers, about to spend the afternoon in watching the monkeys; artisans’ cousins from the interior, with hearts palpitating at the hope of beholding living lions, tigers and boa-constrictors, for the first time in their life; not to mention the man who cuts your portrait in black paper, with the Arab who jumps into the air like a goat and lights on his forefeet like a sportive tomcat, on their way to compete with the giantess, the learned pig, and the fortune-telling pony at the foot of the bridge of Austerlitz. From all these mundane follies the Halle-aux-Vins is secluded, in monastic style, by a light railing covered with stout iron network, which allows it to gaze at the Vanity Fair, while it separates it from too familiar contact with the world. It is in the crowd—without being of it—a convenient, friar-like, differenceless distinction. Exclusiveness, however, of whatever kind, is more apparent than real. At the bottom of Rue Cuvier, turn to your right, and you may enter at once, unless you prefer walking along the Quai to the principal entrance, where there is a letter-box, in case you have a billet-doux to post. The principal restriction imposed upon a stranger is, that he is forbidden to smoke amongst the eaux-de-vie.
Well, now that you are inside it, what do you think of it? Is the wine-market of Paris like any thing else? The name of the establishment puts the London Docks into your head; but, beyond their commercial use and distinction, there is no more analogy between the London Docks, and this little bit of fairy-land, than there was between the caverns of Ætna, where Vulcan made pokers and tongs, and the slopes of Parnassus where the Muses danced. The Halle-aux-Vins is not a building, nor a labyrinthine cellar; it is a complete town, as perfect and unique in its way as Pompeii itself. Once a week, indeed, it resembles the city of the dead; it is silent, solitary, and closed. No business is transacted there on Sundays, save only by the restless spirits which will work unseen, and which contrive to make their escape invisibly, however fast they may be imprisoned.
The Halle is the very concentration and impersonation of French vinous hilarity. It would not do for port and sherry, which require a more solid and stately residence; nor is it sufficiently whimsical and mediæval to serve as a rendezvous for Rhenish, Austrian, and Hungarian volunteers in the grand army of Jean Raisin. Rudesheimer, Voeslan, Gumpoldskirchen, or Luttenberg, could not well sojourn comfortably in any place that had not a touch of a ruined castle in its architecture. But the Entrepôt, whose first stone was laid little more than forty years back, no more pretends to an elderly and dignified mien than does the Bal Mabille (by daylight) or the Château des Fleurs. It is as tasteful and as elegant as if intended to serve as a suburban luncheon-place, where you might call for any known wine in the world, to be sipped under the shade of flowering shrubs, to the accompaniment of sandwiches, sausage-rolls, and ices, handed to you by white-aproned waiters or rosy-cheeked and smart-capped damsels.
Great part of this town consists of houses—summer-houses, dolls-houses,—of one story, with one door, one window, and one chimney; with room in each, for exactly one more than one inmate. An extra apartment is sometimes contrived, by means of a bower, which serves instead of a garden—there is none—though a great deal of gardening is done in the Halle, in tubs, flower-pots, and mignonette-boxes, wherein luxuriant specimens of the culture are observable; myrtles, oleanders, lilacs, orange-trees, bay-trees, and pomegranates, all a-growing and a-blowing. Favoured mansions possess a garden—sometimes as much as three or four mètres square—bedecked with roses, dwarf and standard, lilies of the valley, violets double and single, irises displaying some of the colours of the rainbow, hollyhocks, gilliflowers, blue-bells, and oyster-shells all in a row. There is an abundant supply of excellent water; of course to serve no other purpose whatever than the refreshment of the aforesaid favourites of Flora, though people say more wine is drunk in Paris than ever comes or came into it.
The Halle-aux-Vins houses, which put you in mind of Gulliver’s box in Brobdingnag, are raised from the ground on separate blocks of stone, to keep them dry, which suggests the further idea of the possibility of their being flown away with by an eagle or roc, if they had only a convenient ring in the roof. Of course, the houselings,—detached and separate; no quarrelling with next-door neighbours, nor listening to secrets through thin partition walls,—are ranged in streets, the perusal of whose simple names is sufficient to create a vinous thirst. What do you say to walking out of Rue de Bordeaux into Rue de Champagne, thence traversing Rue de Bourgogne, to reach Rue de la Côte-d’Or, and Rue de Languedoc, before arriving at Rue de Touraine! The Barmecide’s guest would have been in ecstacies, in defiance of the koran, at such a feast.
Moreover, to make things still more pleasant, every one of the euphonious alleys and streets is planted with trees of different ornamental species,—the lime, the horse-chesnut, and other arboreal luxuries. It is a pity that the climate does not permit the growth of cork-trees, bearing crops of ready-cut corks, including bungs, long clarets, and champagne-stoppers. The happy mortal to whom each little lodge belongs, is indicated by a legible inscription giving not only the number of his isolated square counting-house, according to its place in the alley which it lines, whether in single or in double row, but also bearing the town-address of its tenant, and specifying the special liquors in which he deals; thus:—“21, Mossenet, Senior, & Cie.; Quai d’Anjou, 25. Fine wines of the Côte-d’Or cellar, Rue de Champagne, 17.” Similar biographical sketches are given of other lords of other summer-houses which wink at you with their Venetian blinds behind their fences of trelliswork covered with creeping plants.
The ground-plan of the Halle-aux-Vins is formed of square blocks, consisting of magazins, divided at right angles by the streets we have traversed. The magazins are appropriately named after the rivers of France along whose banks are the most famous vineyards. The Magazin du Rhone, Magazin de L’Yonne, Magazin de la Marne, Magazin de la Seine, and Magazin de la Loire, will serve as guides to the nomenclature of the rest of the establishment. Five principal masses of building are thus divided by clean-swept streets, whose most conspicuous ornaments, besides the little thrifty fir-trees, arbor-vitæ, and junipers in tubs, are groups of all sorts of casks lying about in picturesque attitudes, as if they had purposely arranged themselves in tableaux for the sake of having their portraits drawn; and drays, which are simply long-inclined planes balancing on the axle of the wheel, on which the casks are held by a rope tightened by a four-handled capstan. The elevation of the Halle-aux-Vins is pyramidal in principle. The ground-floor of the blocks is crossed by galleries from which you enter cobwebby rather than mouldy cellars, whose more apt denomination would be the Bordeaux word chais. Each gallery, a sort of rectangular tunnel some three hundred and fifty metres long, is lighted by the sunshine from a grating above, and is traversed by a wooden railway for tubs to roll on straight and soberly. Great precautions are taken against fire. The galleries are closed at each end by double doors of iron grating. The sapeurs pompiers, in various ways, make their vicinity if not their presence felt.