THE waiter of Paris, whose manners are of velvet, whose flittings are bird-like, and whose smile is eternal, is another pronounced type of character. The garçon may be said to have originated at a Paris refreshment-room established in or before the time of Scarron (who celebrates it in verse), by a certain Señor Lopes in association with a certain Señor Rodrigues. This restaurant, in the Portuguese style, was celebrated for a beverage then much in vogue, known as “citrate,” and composed of lemon-juice, cedrat, and sugar in fresh or iced water. It was dispensed to the frequenters of the place by extremely polite servants, who were the first in France to exercise the suave and delicate functions of the waiter. Gradually other restaurants were opened in the capital for the sale, first of lemonade and orgeat, and subsequently of coffee, tea, chocolate, and wines. The waiter, as these houses of refreshment improved and developed, became more and more polished and indispensable, so that to-day, according to a French writer, “He is a personage. He wears shirts of the finest Holland, glazed shoes, white stockings, and a tie which would move the envy of a sub-prefect. But for his vest, which indemnifies itself for not being quite a vest by the fineness of its tissue, he would be mistaken for an ambassador or a tenor. His hair, cut in the latest fashion, exhales {370} sweet odours, and his lips express a perpetual smile of complaisance. The lady at the counter, it should be added, shows him delicate attentions.”
The true Paris waiter, like the true poet, is born, not made. He has hereditary waiter’s blood coursing through his veins. His father was a garçon before him, and from childhood he has been instructed in the family art, learning celerity and grace of movement, with that patience, politeness, and amiability by which he is distinguished. There are exceptions to this rule, all the same; and good waiters have sometimes been made out of men who have failed in the higher walks of life; of bankrupt merchants or ruined gentlemen. A spendthrift who, having run through his fortune, prefers to wait rather than work is already in some degree qualified for the post of garçon. His experience will constitute him an authoritative arbiter in disputes over a game of billiards, or a pretty girl, or dominoes, or cards; he knows how to please men who love to dine or sup as sumptuously as he once did, and the winebibbers excite within him no repulsion, but on the contrary strike a chord of sympathy in his soul.
Whatever his antecedents may be, the Paris waiter invariably becomes fashioned after a certain recognised type. This type is well described by a French writer in the following words: “Vigour of constitution and honesty of soul are two qualities without which the café garçon would not exist. The master’s eye cannot always be hovering over the bottles, the decanters, the cups, and the coffee-pots of the laboratory. Nothing is easier than to divert, in the midst of the gigantic consumption which distinguishes certain establishments, an occasional drop from the ocean of refreshments and liqueurs; a fraction of that total which the proprietor counts every evening, to the great annoyance of the late-staying customer exchanging his last ten-sou piece at midnight for a final petit verre. The garçon is therefore, of necessity, an honest man. From the rising of the sun to the extinction of the gas he is handling the money of others; he is a confidential servant, a cashier on a small scale. As to vigour of constitution, you will soon see how indispensable that is to the garçon. Day dawns, and late as he went to bed the night before, he has to rise betimes. At that hour there is hardly anyone awake in Paris but fruiterers, scavengers, and water-carriers; nevertheless he, the man of eloquence, who passes his time amongst epicures and who forms an indisputable part of the fashionable world, must tear himself from the luxury of repose. Every day the luxury of life surrounds him with its seductions, its perfumes, and its joys, and yet he is condemned to live the hard life of an artizan. His master wishes him to have at once the complaisant elegance of a spaniel and the vigilance of a fox. Well, he wakes up, and stretches his arms; striking, perhaps, with his extended fingers the table-legs between which he has thrown his mattress the night before. For you must quite understand that he is obliged to take his food and to sleep within that space which is the scene of his duties; like the soldier in action, he sleeps on the field of battle. When, thus early, he rises, he is breathing a heavy air, impregnated with the too-familiar emanations from gas, not to mention the odours (hermetically closed in by the café shutters) of that punch, wine, and haricot mutton which the proprietor has shared at midnight with his companions, at table No. 1, the table, that is to say, nearest the counter. The only glimpse of light which cheers the garçon as he opens his eyes proceeds from the inextinguishable lamp which burns in the laboratory with the obstinacy of the vestal fire. As to those matutinal sounds which herald the approach of day, the garçon is quite free to regard as such the mewing of the cat, or the shrill whistlings of Madame’s canaries, which are anticipating a near visit from the chickweed merchant. But suddenly the tread of the master, who, in a room overhead, is searching for his braces and his cravat, shakes the ceiling. In an instant the mattresses of all the waiters are snatched up and bundled behind an old partition, side by side with spoilt billiard cues, watering cans, broken chess-boards, and the antique counter which the proprietor purchased with the original stock. The shutters are taken down, the milkmaid arrives, the principal comes downstairs with a bag of money under his arm, Madame thinks about her toilette, butter pats are distributed on the plates, the stove-tender lights the fire, and all the bees in this hive are in motion. The hour of work has struck.”
After this first tug at his collar, it is a relief to find that the garçon enjoys a brief period of repose, and, whilst awaiting custom, tears the wrappers off the newspapers and studies the European situation. In the morning he is occupied entirely with dispensing café-au-lait. This first service is productive of very few “tips,” as the customers who breakfast at the cafés are usually employées, or old bachelors, or provincial visitors lodging in the small hotels of the {371} neighbourhood; people more or less pledged to a discreet economy. From noon, however, till two o’clock black coffee and alcoholic liqueur absorb the waiter’s energies. It is between those hours that gay consumers, with hearts already warmed by a visit to the neighbouring restaurant, arrive in troops and pay without counting their change. This, however, is not a wise proceeding if we are to be guided by a certain M. Vidocq, who, in his “Arch Thief (Paravoleur); or, The Art of conducting oneself prudently in all countries and especially at Paris,” a book at once curious and rare, does not, like a beforementioned writer, rely on the universal integrity of the garçon, and whose advice to his readers is as follows:—“At the café you must not, from a sense of false shame or from misplaced confidence, put in your pocket without counting it the change which the garçon gives you when the piece of money you have tendered in payment exceeds the charge you have incurred. This is particularly to be avoided in the cafés-jardins, where the crowd presses on all sides, and where twenty panting waiters seem hardly sufficient to serve the customers. You have come with some friends, and have taken ices, punch, liqueurs, etc. When you are about to depart you tell the waiter that you wish to settle. You call in vain for him five or six times, getting no reply but—‘Coming, sir; coming.’ At length he arrives, scared, bewildered, and staring right and left as though anxious to despatch you and rush off to someone else. You tell him to reckon what you owe. He gabbles certain words about ices, punch, liqueurs, which you cannot understand, and then distinctly mentions a certain sum-total. If you pay on the spot, without any explanation, you are pretty sure to have been charged fifteen or twenty sous too much. If you have calculated your debt beforehand, with the aid of the tariffs posted up at these places, you will easily perceive, before parting with your money, what errors have been committed. If, however, you have failed to take this precaution, do not be imposed upon by the distracted air of the garçon, but make him enumerate each separate item of your account, and it will be a wonder indeed if you do not gain by this recapitulation.” Yet another ingenious device on the part of the garçon is made by M. Vidocq a subject of admonition to his readers. “When a party of friends,” he writes, “have run up rather a heavy bill, it often happens that the gentleman who is doing the honours finds amongst the change he receives a piece of ten or twenty sous from which the image and superscription have been almost entirely effaced; and he ultimately throws it to the waiter, saying that it is for him. This coin has not been introduced without intention. It has already been frequently presented to customers and frequently thrown back to the waiter. You would give the garçon two or three sous if you received good money, and you give him ten or twenty because he tenders a piece of money which you are afraid you cannot pass.”
Although everywhere very much on the same pattern, the Paris garçon varies somewhat in his manners, customs, and general bearing according to the establishment in which he exercises his functions. There are cafés on the Boulevard des Italiens where he deviates somewhat from his traditional amiability, and, when a customer complains of the café-au-lait with which he has been served, raises his eyes to the ceiling, sighs, places a fresh cup on the table, and filling it from the self-same coffee-pot, exclaims, “I know you will like that, sir.” The waiter of the Boulevard Saint-Martin is a man of letters, particularly conversant with dramatic literature. He picks up his education from the eminent actors and dramatists who frequent the establishment, and knows everything that is going on behind the scenes. At one time the garçon of the Café Desmares was an eminent authority on military matters. He knew all the superior officers of the Royal Guard, and everything that was whispered in the barracks. In course of time—after 1830 that is to say—he lost his martial tint, and became highly aristocratic; speaking in measured tones and looking exceedingly bored. Now, however, like the café itself, he is no more. The body-guards were accustomed under the Restoration to assemble at the Café Valois; whilst the Bonapartists had their headquarters at the Café Lemblin. Challenges were sent from one café to the other, swords were drawn and duels were fought by the dim light of some street lamp. The weapons, it is said, were confided to the waiters of the belligerent cafés, together with the pipes of the frequenters. The intending duellist called for them as he would have called for a newspaper, and the waiter sometimes replied:—“They are all in use, sir.”
The garçon aspires to wealth and greatness. Sometimes, in his vaulting ambition, he o’erleaps himself. Says a French student of his manners and customs: “He takes a wife and a new house, puts frills on his shirt, and inscribes his name in the National Guard. Become, in his turn, a master, he puts a hundred thousand francs’ worth of gilding, pictures, {372} and mirrors (obtained on credit) into the establishment which he opens with unusual éclat. The public rush to his doors, and all goes well until some neighbouring café, more sumptuous still, draws the crowd away again. Then the time has arrived for him to make up his balance-sheet and pay two and a half per cent. to his creditors. What becomes of him after that? If he has protected his wife’s dowry he takes refuge in his native country, between two cabbage beds with a pond for his ducks. One day the malady of dethroned kings seizes him, and he dies of ennui in the midst of an inconsolable family. Heaven take pity on his soul! Many café waiters die without having fulfilled their dream of having an establishment of their own. The life of fatigue which they lead kills them, as a rule, towards their thirtieth year. It is thus that we have seen the greatest of them all vanish from our midst—that waiter of the Café de la Rotonde, whose ‘baoum!’ uttered in a far-resounding voice, has found so many imitators. We see him still, coffee-pot in hand, saying in a voice profound, ‘Pas de Crême?’ Alas, alas, he is dead. He died of consumption, and when he was about to expire the nurse still offered him a mixture of cod-liver oil and milk, which his doctor had prescribed. He exclaimed with his last gasp, ‘Pas de Crême?’”
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE PARIS COOK.
Brillat-Savarin on the Art of Cooking—The Cook and the Roaster—Cooking in the Seventeenth Century—Louis XV.—Mme de Maintenon.
FROM the Paris waiter to the Paris cook the transition is, in literary phrase, “easy and natural.” There is probably no prouder personage in the world than this artist, who knows that mankind cannot dispense with him, and who, if one were to ask him whether the revolution of his spit or of the earth on its axis were the more important, might hesitate to decide.