Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1

by H. Sutherland Edwards

The “arts and crafts,” until the time of the Revolution, formed close corporations of their own. The origin of these unions and guilds was very remote. In the middle ages the rules on the subject of {301} apprenticeship were most severe; and after seven years’ subjection to a master the artisan became only a “companion” or varlet, and could still work only under the direction of a full member of the guild. To pass as master it was necessary for a “companion” to produce a masterpiece and to pay, moreover, certain dues, onerous for a mere workman; which forced a great number of these varlets to remain in their original condition. The corporations of arts and crafts were governed by a number of edicts which regulated not only the quality and quantity of the work to be done, but prescribed methods of manufacture, and provided for the settlement of disputes between artisans and merchants, or artisans and private persons engaging their services. These strange organisations had the worst effect in an economical sense, and many endeavours were made long before the Revolution to destroy the monopolies they created. In 1776, thirteen years previously to the Revolution, the corporations of arts and crafts were abolished by the famous Minister, Turgot. But the edict was evaded, and it was not until the Revolution, when things that were abolished were abolished for ever, that the French guilds finally disappeared.

The “Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers,” established soon after the Revolution, had no direct connection with the “arts and crafts,” whose organisation into guilds and close corporations had been suppressed. It was thought desirable, however, to form a central depôt where newly invented machines, together with machines whose utility had been tested, might be placed together for public inspection. Vaucanson, chiefly remembered by his ingenious automatic contrivances, had formed a collection of machines, which during his lifetime he threw open to working men, and at his death bequeathed to the monarchical government. Thus the nucleus of the important collection formed by the Republic {302} already existed under Louis XVI.

That the exhibition of machines, as superintended during the last days of the monarchy by M. Vandermond, was a sight worth seeing is shown by Arthur Young having gone to see it when he was making, throughout France, that tour of inquiry which was destined to become famous. “I visited,” he writes in 1789, just one month before the taking of the Bastille, “the repository of royal machines, which M. Vandermond showed and explained to me with great readiness and politeness. What struck me most was M. Vaucanson’s machine for making a chain which, I was told, Mr. Watt, of Birmingham, admired very much, at which my attendants seemed not displeased. Another for making the cogs intended in iron wheels. There is a chaff-cutter from an English original; and a model of the nonsensical plough to go without horses. These are the only ones in agriculture. Many ingenious contrivances for winding silk, etc.”

The Convention took steps for keeping the Vaucanson machines when so many treasures of one kind and another were being dispersed, and it seized the earliest opportunity of enlarging the collection, to which, from 1785 to 1792, 500 new machines were added. In 1792 a commission had been appointed to “catalogue and collect in suitable places books, instruments, and other objects of science and art in view of public instruction”; and a few months later in the same year the Convention published a new decree constituting the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers on a solid basis, and assigned to it the buildings of the former “abbey of Saint-Martin.”

At present this Conservatoire is under the authority of the Minister of Commerce. Fifteen courses of lectures, public and gratuitous, are delivered within its walls on subjects connected with the application of art to manufactures; and for these, three amphitheatres, the largest of which can accommodate an audience of 750, have been provided. The ancient abbey of Saint-Martin is still represented by two edifices connected with the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, and containing the library of the institution. One of these buildings was formerly the chapel, the other the refectory of the abbey.

At the corner of the Rue Saint-Martin and the Rue de Vertbois is an ancient tower in pepper-caster form, which once marked the junction of the fortified part of the abbey and its prison. This tower, bearing the name of Vertbois, was given, in 1712, to the City of Paris on condition that a public fountain should be constructed there; and the fountain, adorned with the arms of Paris, still exists, bearing a somewhat enigmatic inscription, thus: “This tower, which formerly constituted part of the fortified enclosure of the abbey of Saint Martin-in-the-Fields, constructed about the year 1150, and the fountain erected in 1712, have been preserved and restored by the town and the State on the demand of the Parisian archæologists, 1880.” There was, in fact, a question of destroying both tower and fountain in 1877 in view of certain architectural improvements, or at least changes, then projected. The lovers of antiquity protested, and Victor Hugo is said to have exclaimed, in the very words likewise attributed to him in connection with the proposed destruction of the tower of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, “Demolish the tower? No! Demolish the architect? Yes!” The architect in the case of the tower of Vertbois was the poet’s own nephew. Like the tower, however, he was not demolished.

In front of the principal entrance to the Conservatoire a large square was made in 1860; its sides being formed by the Rue Saint-Martin, the Boulevard Sebastopol, the Rue Solomon de Caus, and the Rue du Caire. On the south side of the square, in the Rue du Caire, is seen the façade of the Théâtre de la Gaieté, which less deserves its title than our own Gaiety Theatre in London. Originally known by the name of Nicolet, its founder, and afterwards called, during the influence of Mme. du Barry, the Theatre of the King’s Dancers, it at length received, towards the end of the last century, the inappropriate title which still belongs to it. There was a time, it must be presumed, when at the Gaieté gay pieces were performed. But since the beginning of the century this house has been chiefly associated with spectacular and melodramatic productions. Here the famous fairy piece, Le Pied de Mouton, was produced with striking success in 1806. Some twenty years ago it was revived at the Porte Saint-Martin, where it ran nearly a year.

Reconstructed in 1808, the Gaieté was burnt to the ground in 1835. No sooner had it been built up again than it was pulled down to make way for the Boulevard du Prince Eugène. The Gaieté, which now, as already mentioned, stands on the southern side of the square of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, is one of the four theatres belonging to the Town of Paris. Here were produced some of the best pieces {303} of Auguste Maquet, the most renowned of Alexandre Dumas’ numerous collaborateurs, and one of the very few who have shown themselves able, unaided, to produce first-rate work.

Since its removal to the square of the Arts et Métiers, the Théâtre de la Gaieté has confined itself to no particular style. Here were represented Sardou’s drama La Haine; Jules Barbier’s Jeanne d’Arc, with music by Gounod; Offenbach’s operettas revived on a large scale, with Orphée aux Enfers prominent among them; Victor Massé’s Paul et Virginie, Saint Saën’s Timbre d’Argent, and the Dmitri of Joncières. The last strikingly successful piece produced at this theatre was a dramatic version of Alphonse Daudet’s Tartarin sur les Alpes.