Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2

by H. Sutherland Edwards

THE Seine at Paris is the scene not of much boating, but of a good deal of swimming. Baths on the Thames have never been successful: they abound on the Seine, and the Parisians, whatever they may be as boatmen—“canotiers,” to use their own word—excel as swimmers.

The French are not naturally a sporting nation. In the first place they have found it necessary to borrow our English word for their pastimes; and their spelling of sportsman as “sportman” is somewhat indicative of their generally unsuccessful imitation of English sports.

The French are themselves conscious of the failure of this imitation. “Sport,” says a French writer, “is an English word which signifies literally relaxation, distraction, and which the English employ, by extension, to designate the pleasures to which powerful aristocrats or opulent citizens abandon themselves as a relaxation from the serious labours of political life or the absorbing occupations of commerce. In “sport” they include large hunts and shooting expeditions such as can be practised on vast estates, together with betting, which involves millions of pounds sterling, riding and driving, fencing, boxing, swimming, skating; everything which calls into play the forces and energy of the body, to the too frequent neglect of mental activity.

“We have adopted the word and attempted the thing. But independently of the fact that our French society lacks some of the fundamental conditions which, in this respect, English society possesses, we have done what imitators generally do: we have diminished, sometimes even travestied the model. Large aristocratic hunts have become impossible on our democratic and parcelled-out soil. Well-bred horses cost a great deal of money, and the instability of fortunes is an obstacle to fine stables. The most reckless of our millionaires only hazard a few thousand francs in the way of bets, and it is now generally understood that when a “louis” is spoken of on the turf, the ambitious word must be translated into the more modest expression, “twenty sous.” ... Even fencing is abandoned to fiction and the stage. Duellists who are at all serious must go beyond the frontier to find a ground which will place combatants and seconds beyond the reach of the French law. The police-court of the nineteenth century is perhaps more dreaded than was the scaffold of Richelieu.”

Parisian summers, this same writer goes on to observe, are on the whole too cold for bathing, and Parisian winters too hot for skating.

Unquestionably horse-racing has taken a certain hold on the French, though it is true that the crowds who frequent the most popular races do not confine their attention, or their conversation, to the horses or the stakes, but regard the event principally as a fête.

It is at the hippodrome of the Bois de Boulogne (or Longchamps, as it is also called) that the most largely attended races occur. A minimum charge of a franc is made for admission, to stand or walk about outside the ropes which mark off the course. For the reserved places higher prices are charged: five francs to the pavilions, twenty francs to the weighing enclosure, fifteen francs for a one-horse carriage, twenty francs for a carriage with more than one horse, and so on. The races of La Marche are in the form of steeple-chases. The Château de La Marche stands in a park at a short distance from Ville d’Avray and Saint-Cloud; and it is in the park that the races take place.

The races of the Bois de Vincennes are less fashionable than those of Longchamps and of La Marche, perhaps because the approach to Vincennes through crowded streets is less attractive than the drive through the Champs Élysées and the Bois de Boulogne.

The races of Chantilly, founded in 1834 under the patronage of the Dukes of Orleans and of Nemours, are run twice a year on the spacious meadows which extend right and left of the magnificent stables of the château of the Condés. The first races are fixed for the second fortnight of May. The later series, those of the autumn meeting, are held in September and October. The last race of the season is for the grand prize of the Jockey Club. The racecourse of Chantilly describes[{255}] an ellipsis measuring some 2,000 metres. Several stands have been erected opposite the stables: prices of admission to the various places as at Paris. At Chantilly are the principal training establishments.

The Versailles races are run on the plain of Satory, where Napoleon III. held some of his most brilliant reviews. They take place in May and June.