THE VARIETY THEATRE ABOUT 1810
From a sepia of the period (Carnavalet Museum)
With the Variety Theatre began what was called, without epithet, The Boulevard. For idlers, saunterers, wits, clubmen, writers, journalists, under the second Empire, it was a sort of sacred ground. Grammont-Caderousse, the Prince of Orange, Khalil-Bey, Paul Demidoff, Aurélien Scholl, Roqueplan, Aubryet, Jules Lecomte, Auguste Villemot were kings there. The Café Anglais, the Maison Dorée, Tortoni's were frequented by the fashionables of society and literature. The gas flared, champagne corks flew, and one had only to open pianos for them to play automatically the Evohe of Orpheus in Hades! An apropos witticism stopped a quarrel. The princes of intelligence held their own with princes of the blood or of money; as, for instance, on the day when, at Tortoni's, the Duke de Grammont-Caderousse flung a packet of goose-quills in the face of Paul Mahalin, who, the day before, in a small newspaper had severely animadverted on the diva S——, she being under the Duke's protection.
"From Mademoiselle S——," said the Duke.
Making his grandest bow, Mahalin retorted: "I was aware, Monsieur, that Mademoiselle S—— feathered her lovers, but I did not dare hope it was for my benefit."
THE BOULEVARDS, THE HOTEL DE SALM, AND WINDMILLS OF MONTMARTRE
View taken from the hanging gardens of the Rue Louis-le-Grand
Water-colour of the eighteenth century (Carnavalet Museum)
Since the dark days of 1870, the elegant Boulevard has become more democratic. The old dwellings themselves have changed their uses; and electro-plate is sold in the beautiful pavilion built by Marshal de Saxe—after the Hanoverian wars—at the corner of the Boulevard and the Rue Louis-le-Grand. In the eighteenth century, some one took it into his head to decorate with flowers the roofs of the houses in the vicinity of this fine mansion; so that it was possible to dine merrily—under the shade of hornbeams—while watching the windmills of Montmartre turn in the distance. The example has been imitated in our own times—people cried that it was an innovation; this is only another error; there is nothing new under the sun. What is done is merely a modification, and generally the alteration is for the worse! Tortoni's flight of steps has disappeared. Taverns, with their onion soup and their sourcrout and sausage, replace the aristocratic restaurants of yore. The features are different; but still it is a Paris nook, really gay, amusing, and original. A walk in it is delightful, though nothing, alas! can be said to vividly recall the past, since the terrible fire of 1887 destroyed the Comic Opera of our fathers; the Opera of Grétry, Dalayrac, Méhul, Boïeldieu, and Hérold; the Opera whose façade does not open on the boulevard, according to the desire formally expressed in 1782 to Heurtier, the architect, by the King's Comedians refusing to be confused with the "Boulevard Comedians"; the Opéra-Comique where, every evening, in the spacious foyer adorned with busts of dead musical celebrities and composers that had contributed to the theatre's fame, the habitués met whose attendance was a protest against modern music: Auber, Adam, Clapisson, Bazin, Maillard; later, and with another æsthetic doctrine, G. Bizet, Léo Delibes, V. Massé, J. Massenet, Carvalho, Meilhac, Halévy, and old Dupin, the last an astonishing centenarian who, one evening, with rancorous eye looked at Hérold's bust and grumbled: "How that urchin used to rile me!" In presence of the general bewilderment he explained: "I was his school companion, in 1806, at Saint-Louis' College!" we were then in May 1885! This was the obstinately reactionary Dupin who once drew from a contradictor the threatening retort: "We missed you in '93. When the next Revolution comes, we'll take good care not to!"
