Chapter Six
IN THE CABARETS
With the passing away of that most famous of Montmartrois cabarets, the Chat Noir, artistic Bohemia of the Butte met with a serious loss.
The Chat Noir was founded by Salis on the boulevard Rochechouart in 1881. Its beginning was a modest one, and for some time the little place existed in obscurity. Finally a club of bohemians called the “Hydropathie” came over from the Quartier Latin and made the Chat Noir their place of meeting.
They organized weekly reunions where each member of this jolly company recited original verses or sang songs of his own composition.
These reunions soon became open to the public, and so the first singing cabaret of its kind was created.
The small room was filled with a collection of bas-reliefs, busts and drawings, contributed by its artist habitués. It offered nightly a shelter to the budding genius of Bohemia and a place of free license for patriotic and political songs, satires, and parodies upon the current topics of the day.
And so the cabaret that Salis had started became an acknowledged success.
Later Salis moved the Chat Noir to the rue Laval, where it became an organized cabaret with a regular staff of poets, singers, and satirists, who made their appearance no longer in public as amateurs but as professionals.
Many of the lives of these chansonniers have been varied and checkered with vicissitudes. Few, if any, began either as singers or entertainers. They have drifted into their profession through their inherent love of a life steeped in the atmosphere of Bohemia, where things original, beautiful, satirical, or pathetic, find ever the keenest appreciation and the shrewdest criticism.