A Wanderer in Paris

by E. V. Lucas

I attended early mass at the Sacré-Cœur church on January 1st, 1908. It was snowing lightly and very cold, and as I came away, at about eight, and descended the hill towards Paris, I was struck by the spectacle of the lame and blind and miserable men and women who were appearing mysteriously from nowhere to descend the hill too, groping and hobbling down the slippery steepnesses. Such folk are an uncommon sight in Paris, where every one seems to be, if not robust, at any rate active and capable, and where, although it eminently belongs to the poor as much as to the rich, extreme poverty is rarely seen. In London, where the poor convey no possessive impression, but, except in their own quarters, suggest that they are here on sufferance, one sees much distress. In Paris none, except on this day, the first of the year—and on one or two others, such as July 14th—when beggars are allowed to ask alms in the streets. For the rest of the year they must hide their misery and their want, although I still tremble a little as I remember the importunities of the Montmartre cripple of ferocious aspect and no legs at all, fixed into a packing-case on wheels, who, having demanded alms in vain, hurls himself night after night along the pavement after the hard-hearted, urging his torso's chariot by powerful strokes of his huge hands on the pavement, as though he rowed against Leander, with such menacing fury that I for one have literally taken to my heels. He is the only beggar I recollect meeting except on the permitted days, and then Paris swarms with them.

Standing on the dome of the cathedral one has the city at one's feet, not as wonderfully as on the Eiffel Tower, but nearly so. From the Buttes-Chaumont we see Montmartre: here we see the Buttes-Chaumont, which, before it was a park, shared with Montmartre the gypsum quarries from which plaster of Paris is made. Beyond the Buttes-Chaumont is Père Lachaise, a hill strangely mottled by its grave-stones, while immediately below us is the Cimetière du Nord, which we are about to visit for the sake of certain very interesting tombs.

One realises quickly the strategical value of this mountain. Paris has indeed been bombarded from it twice—by Henri IV., and again, only thirty-eight years ago. It was indeed on Montmartre that the Communard insurrection began, for it was the cannon on these heights that the rebel soldiers at once made for after the assassination of their officers. They held them for a while, but were then overpowered and forced to take up their quarters in the Buttes-Chaumont and Père Lachaise, which were shelled by the National Guard from Montmartre until the brief but terrible mutiny was over.

The great dome, close by us on the left, which might be another Panthéon, crowns the Maison Dufayel. Who is Dufayel? you ask. Well, who is Wanamaker, who was Whiteley? M. Dufayel is the head of the gigantic business in the Boulevard Barbès, a northern continuation of the Boulevard de Magenta. His advertisements are on every hoarding. I think the Maison Dufayel is well worth a visit, especially as there is no need to buy anything: you may instead sip an apéritif, listen to the band or watch the cinematoscope. One also need have none of that fear of what would happen were there to be a sudden panic which always keeps me nervous if ever I am lured into the Magasins du Louvre or the Galeries Lafayette; for at Dufayel's there is space, whereas at those vast shopping centres there is a congestion that, in a time of stress would lead to perfectly awful results. The Maison Dufayel is not so varied a repository as Wanamaker's or Whiteley's: but in its way it is hardly less remarkable. Its principal line is furniture, and I never saw so many beds in my life. It was M. Dufayel who brought to perfection the deposit system of payment, and his agents continually range the otherwise pleasant land of France, collecting instalments.

Since I had wandered into this monstrous establishment, which may not be as large as Harrod's Stores but feels infinitely vaster, I determined to buy something, and decided at last upon a French picture-book for an English child. Buying it was a simple operation, but I then made the mistake of asking that it might be sent to England direct. One should never do that in a bureaucratic country. The lady led me for what seemed several miles through various departments until we came late in the day to rows and rows of Frenchmen and Frenchwomen each in a little glass box. These boxes were numbered and ran to hundreds. We stopped at last before, say, 157, where my guide left me. The Frenchman in the box denied at once that the book could go by post. It was too large. It must go by rail. For myself, I did not then care how it went or if it went at all: I was tired out. But feeling that such an act as to abandon the parcel and run would be misconstrued and resented in a home of such perfect mechanical order, I waited until he had written for a quarter of an hour in a fine flowing hand with a pen sharper than a serpent's tooth, and then I paid the required number of francs and set out on the desperate errand of finding the street again. The book was a week on its journey. Go to Dufayel's, I say, most certainly, for it is quite amusing; but go when you are young and strong.

To me the most interesting thing on Montmartre is the grave of Heinrich Heine in the Cimetière du Nord, a strange irregular city of dead Parisians all tidily laid away in their homes in its many streets, over which a busy rumbling thoroughfare has been carried on a viaduct. I had Heine's Salon with me when I was last in Paris, and I sought his grave again one afternoon with an increased sense of intimacy. A medallion portrait of the mournful face is cut in the marble, and on the grave itself are wistful echoes of the Buch der Lieder. A little tin receptacle is fixed to the stone, and I looked at the cards which in the pretty German way visitors had left upon the poet and his wife; for Frau Heine lies too here. All were German and all rain-soaked (or was it tears?)

LA PROVENDE DES POULES
TROYON
(Louvre: Thomy-Thierret Collection)

Matthew Arnold in his poem called Heine's grave black: the present one is white. How do the lines run?