A Wanderer in Paris

by E. V. Lucas

The Champs-Elysées were planned and laid out by Marie de Médicis in 1616, and the Cours la Reine, her triple avenue of trees, still exists; but Napoleon is the father of the scheme which culminates so magnificently in the Arc de Triomphe. The particular children's paradise of Paris is in the gardens between the main road and the Elysée, where they bowl their hoops and spin their Diabolo spools, and ride on the horses of minute round-abouts turned by hand, and watch the marionettes, with the tired eyes of Alphonse Daudet, who sits for ever, close by, in very white stone, watching them. Here also are the open-air cafés, the Ambassadeurs and the Alcazar, while on the other, the river, side are the Jardin de Paris, a curiously Lutetian haunt, and Ledoyen's, one of the pleasantest of restaurants in summer.

Just above this point we ought to turn to the left to visit the Petit Palais and cross the Pont Alexandre III., but since we are on the way let us now climb to the Etoile, and on to the Bois, first, however, just turning off the Rond-Point for a moment to look at No. 3 Avenue Matignon, where Heine (beside whose grave we are to stand on Montmartre) suffered and died.

The Place de l'Etoile might be called a kind of gilt-edged Seven Dials, since so many roads lead from it. Aristocratic Paris comes to a head here. On the right runs from it the Avenue de Friedland, leading to the Boulevard Haussmann, which meets with so inglorious an end at the Rue Taitbout, but is perhaps to be cut through to join the Boulevard Montmartre. Next on the right is the Avenue Hoche, running directly into the Parc Monceau, a terrestrial paradise to which good mondaines certainly go when they die. A little appartement overlooking the Parc Monceau—there is tangible heaven, if you like!

The Parc itself is small but perfect, elegant and expensive and verdant. The children (one feels) are all titled, the bonnes are visibly miracles of distinction and the babies masses of point lace; the ladies on the chairs must be Comtesses or Baronnes, and the air is carefully scented. That is the Parc Monceau. It needed but one detail to make it complete, and that was supplied a few years ago: a statue of Guy de Maupassant, consisting of a block of the most radiant marble to be procured, with the novelist as its apex, and at the base a Parisienne reading one of his stories. Other statues there are: of Ambroise Thomas the composer, to whom Mignon offers a floral tribute; of Pailleron the dramatist, attended by an actress; of Gounod surrounded by Marguerite, Juliet, Sappho and a little Love; and of Chopin seated at the piano, with the figures of Night and Harmony to inspire him. These are only a few; but they are typical. Every statue in the Parc has a damsel or two, according to his desire. It is the mode. There is also a minute lake, on the edge of which have been set up a number of Corinthian columns; and before you have been seated a minute, an old woman appears from nowhere and demands twopence for what she poetically calls an armchair, the extra penny being added as a compliment to the two uncomfortable wires at the side which you had been wishing you could break off. Such is the Parc Monceau, the like of which exists not in London: the ideal pleasaunce of the wealthy. Through it, I might add, you may drive; but only at a walking pace—au pas. If the horse were to trot he might shake some petals off.

At the western gate is the Musée Cernuschi, containing a collection of oriental pottery and bronzes. I am no connoisseur of these beautiful things, but I advise all readers of this book to visit both this museum and the Guimet in the Place d'Iéna, which is a treasury of Japanese and Chinese art.

Returning to the Etoile, the next avenue is the Avenue de Wagram, running north to the Porte d'Asnières, while that which continues the Avenue des Champs-Elysées in a straight line west by north is the Avenue de la Grande Armée, running to the Porte Maillot and Neuilly. On the left the first avenue is the Avenue Marceau, which leads to the Place de l'Alma; the next the Avenue d'Iéna, leading to the Place d'Iéna; the next, the Avenue Kléber, running straight to the Trocadéro (into which I have never penetrated) and Passy, where the English live; the next, the Avenue Victor Hugo, which never stops; and finally the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, the most beautiful roadway in new Paris, along which we shall fare when we have examined the Arc de Triomphe.

This trophy of success was begun, as I have said, by Napoleon to celebrate the victories of 1805 and 1806; Louis-Philippe finished it in 1836. Why Louis XVIII. did not destroy it or complete it as a further memorial of the Restoration, I cannot say. Napoleon's original idea was, however, tampered with by his successors, who allowed a bas-relief representing the Blessings of Peace in 1815 to be included. The sculptures are otherwise wholly devoted to the glorification of war, Napoleon and the French army; but they are not to be studied without serious inconvenience. My advice to the conscientious student would be to buy photographs or picture postcards, and examine them at home: the Arc de Triomphe is too great and splendid for such detail. From the top one can see all round Paris, and though one cannot look down on it all as from the Eiffel Tower, or see, beneath one, such an interesting district as from Notre Dame, it is yet a wonderfully interesting view.

The Avenue du Bois de Boulogne has the finest road in what is, so to speak, the Marais of the present day; that is to say, in the modern quarter of the aristocratic and wealthy. We have seen riches and rank moving from the Marais to the Faubourg St. Germain and from the Faubourg St. Germain to the Faubourg St. Honoré, and now we find them here, and here they seem likely to remain. And indeed to move farther would be foolish, for surely there never was, and could not be, a more beautiful city site than this anywhere in the world—with its wide cool lawns on either side, and its gay colouring, and the Bois so near. Here too, on the heads of the comfortable complacent bonnes, are the most radiant caps you ever saw.

The Bois de Boulogne, which takes its name from the little town of Boulogne to the south of it, now a suburb of Paris, began its life as a Paris park in the eighteen-fifties. Before that it was a forest of great trees, which indeed remained until the Franco-Prussian war, when they were cut down in order that they might not give cover to the enemy. That is why the present groves are all of a size. I cannot describe the Bois better than by saying that it is as if Hyde Park, Sandown Park, Kempton Park, and Epping Forest were all thrown together between Shepherd's Bush, Acton and the river. London would then have something like the Bois; and yet it would not be like the Bois at all, because it would rapidly become a desert of newspapers and empty bottles, whereas, although in the summer populous with picnic parties, the Bois is always clean and fresh.

There are several gates to the Bois, but the principal ones are the Porte Maillot at the end of the Avenue de la Grande Armée, and the Porte Dauphine at the end of the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, and it is through the latter that the thousands of vehicles pass on their way to the races on happy Sundays in the spring and autumn. Most English people visiting the Bois merely drive to the races and back again; it is quite the exception to find any one who really knows the Bois—who has walked round the two lakes, Lac Inférieur, which feeds the cascade under which one may walk (as at Niagara), and Lac Supérieur; who has seen a play in the Théâtre de Verdure, or an exhibition at Bagatelle, the villa of the late Sir Richard Wallace, who gave the Champs-Elysées its drinking fountains and London the Wallace Collection. Bagatelle now belongs to Paris. Every English visitor, however, remembers the stone animals, dogs and deer, in the lawn of the Villa de Longchamp on the right as one approaches the race-course, and the windmill on the left, one of the several inoperative windmills of Paris, which marks the site of the old Abbey of Longchamp, founded by Isabella, the sister of Saint Louis.