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

by H. Sutherland Edwards

At Fontainebleau the races are run on a course cut through the part of the forest known as the Valley of the Solle. From various woody heights the spectator, well protected from the sun, can obtain an excellent view of the running. Shooting is practised at a club in the little town of Argenteuil, close to Paris, where the society of Parisian Riflemen is established. Candidates duly proposed and seconded are put up for election, and, if admitted, pay ten francs entrance money and an annual subscription of fifty francs. The organ of the society is the well-known sporting paper, the Journal des Chasseurs.

The canotiers and canotières of the Seine are counted by thousands. They all seem to row more for amusement than for exercise and pace. The principal ports of the Parisian navy are Charenton above bridge, and Asnières below. Charenton may be reached by the Lyons Railway: the charming Asnières (famous for its balls) by the Saint-Germain and Versailles line. The water-side restaurants are organised in view of the canotiers, and appeal specially to this floating population.

If the Seine is remarkable for its swimming baths and, at some little distance on each side of Paris, for its innumerable boats with rowers and rowed in gay fantastic costumes, one bank of the Seine, the left, is celebrated for its stalls of second-hand books. It was at a curiosity shop on one of the quays of the left bank that Balzac’s “Peau de Chagrin” or “Chagreen Skin” was offered for sale. It was at a neighbouring bookstall that the poor student in the “Vie de Bohème” sold his Greek books for little more than the price of waste paper in order to buy medicine for the dying mistress of his friend. It is not at the bookstalls of the Quai d’Orsay that one would look for the rarest editions, though rare editions may here be found. There are connoisseurs who seem to spend every day and all day long at the bookstalls of the quay; resembling the celebrated English bibliophile, Lord Spencer, who remained an entire year at Rome, visiting neither St. Peter’s, nor the Coliseum, nor the Vatican, but only the old bookshops. When he had once found the Martial of Sweynheym and Pannartz dated 1473 he went straight back to London. Such a passion looks like insanity; but it is at least a respectable, innocent kind of madness. To have a genuine passion for books is to care neither for cards, nor for good living, nor for useless luxury, nor for racehorses, nor for political intrigues, nor for ruinous love affairs. The bibliophile is never troubled by the storms of political life. Pixéricourt, the author of thirty amusing or terrible novels, would be forgotten in France but for the rare editions that he collected in his library, and which after his death did more for his reputation, at the sale of his books, than all his works of fiction had done. Few writers of the day grudged him his talent or his success; but many envied him his “Imitation of Jesus Christ,” given to the monk Laurence “by his very humble servant, Pierre Corneille.” His Elzevirs and Baskervilles, for which Holland and China had furnished their rarest paper, England and France their best engravers, Russia and Morocco their incomparable leather, filled amateurs with enthusiasm. A great French book-collector, Grolier, had adopted this motto, “For myself and my friends.” Charles Nodier wrote for Pixéricourt an epigraph to be inscribed inside his books which, if somewhat selfish, was at least true:

Tel est le triste sort de tout livre prêté,
Souvent il est perdu, toujours il est gâté.[D]

[D] This is the sad lot of every book that is lent: often it is lost, always spoilt.

The bookstall-keeper acquires gradually a knowledge of the finest or, if not the finest, the most curious editions; and he would be but a poor dealer were he unable to judge of their value. At one time the Pont-Neuf was full of bookshops; and the second-hand dealers in books had their stalls in the Cité, close to Notre Dame and to the Palace of Justice, as well as on the Place de Grèves. But they are now nearly all to be found on the parapets of the left bank.

The picture-dealers, at one time numerous on the quays of the left bank of the Seine, have for years past been gradually disappearing. It was in the curiosity shop already mentioned in connection with Balzac’s “Peau de Chagrin” that a certain Christ, by Raphael, was supposed to be kept hidden away like a treasure. That, however, was more than sixty years ago; and no masterpieces by Raphael are now to be found in the curiosity shops[{256}] of the left bank. The one place for buying and selling pictures is the Hôtel Drouot, on the other side of the river. Here pictures are sold by auction at the hands of official auctioneers and authorised brokers. In addition to the purchase-money five per cent. must be paid in the way of fees and for the cost of the sale. This charge is thought exorbitant, and it has not been forgotten that at the sale of Marshal Soult’s pictures, when Murillo’s “Conception” was purchased by the Government for the Square Room of the Louvre, nearly 30,000 francs commission had to be paid independently of the 586,000 francs, which was the adjudicated price. The sales about to take place are announced on the walls of the Hôtel Drouot; also in the columns of certain journals, such as the Moniteur des Ventes or the Chronique des Arts.

SECOND-HAND BOOKSTALLS.