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

by H. Sutherland Edwards

Jugglers at one time abounded in the city of Paris, together with public exhibitors of all kinds; men, for instance, whose stock-in-trade consisted of a dromedary and an ape—which rode through the boulevards on the dromedary’s back. These adventurers so obstructed the traffic that a series of restrictive ordinances were passed on the subject. That of February 28th, 1865, which was based on all the preceding ordinances, provides that every individual wishing to take up the profession of juggler, organ-grinder, singer, or perambulating musician, must be provided with an authorisation from the Préfecture of Police. To obtain this, the applicant must be a Frenchman, must have resided for a year past in the jurisdiction of the Préfecture, and must bear a fair moral character. This authorisation has to be renewed every three months, and the holder must carry on him a numbered metal badge. It is expressly forbidden to mendicants of this class to take with them those of their children who are under sixteen years old, to lend their badge, to divine, prophesy, or interpret dreams, or to perform in public any operation which infringes on the profession of the manicure or the dentist.

The profession of organ-grinder has declined in Paris. The street was his domain, and he was often accompanied by assistants in queer costumes, who grinned, gesticulated, and sang as he played beneath the windows of the well-to-do. Towards 1830 one of these wanderers was well known to Parisians as “the Marquis,” from the costume he wore. Although upwards of fifty years of age, he was extremely nimble, and he excelled in throwing into an open window, on the fourth or fifth floor, a two-sou piece wrapped up in a small book of songs. His customer would thereupon throw him down double the amount. It was asserted by some that he belonged to the secret police, and he, in any case, rendered it important services.

A new organ costs from four hundred to five hundred francs, a second-hand one, with an occasional flat note, one hundred or a hundred and fifty. This is a great expense, and necessitates beforehand a capital such as few of the mendicant class possess. Most organ-grinders, therefore, hire their instrument by the day, paying for a small organ between fifty centimes and a franc; or for a big Cremona organ, which imitates an entire orchestra, ten francs, with another two francs for the hire of the assistant in charge.

These better kind of organ-grinders generally earn a good deal of money; it is no uncommon thing for them to return to their squalid homes with a profit of fifty francs.

Some of the humbler kind of organ-grinders were at one time accustomed to supplement their income in an ingenious fashion. They quitted the city under pretext of playing in the suburban pleasure-gardens, and when they passed the barrier on their return they had replaced the pointed cylinder of their instrument with another cylinder similar in appearance and hollow, which was filled with brandy. Many of them thus evaded the octroi duty, though occasionally they were seized by the authorities and severely punished.

Among the Parisian street-musicians we must not forget the orchestra-man, with a cap of bells on his head, a flute of reeds beneath his lips, cymbals between his legs, a drum on his back, and a triangle one hardly knows where. His gymnastic musical exertions seem to keep him in a state of perpetual drought, for as soon as he[{328}] has received a little money he adjourns to the nearest wine-shop.

In London we occasionally see disinherited viscounts turning barrel-organs in the street, or repudiated younger sons on the perch of the hansom cab. This may result either from sheer necessity or from a desire on the part of the discontented youth to make things a trifle awkward for his sire; and we distinctly remember an earl’s son who was a cab-driver taking a huge delight in plying for hire just outside the paternal mansion.

In Paris there have been a good many instances of well or highly connected persons becoming street-musicians either from want or in virtue of an instinct. Quite recently there was a lady vocalist, nearly related to an influential Parisian, who took to the streets and could not be persuaded by her friends to resume the comforts of private life which were freely offered to her. Two or three times she was induced to quit the streets for a day or two, but each time she found existence intolerable till she returned to the public pavement. For those in distress there is always a living, no matter what the age of the performer, to be got out of street-singing. A few years ago an old man of eighty went about Paris singing with a voice which was almost extinct and scarcely exceeded a whisper, but which, nevertheless, brought him in regularly forty-five francs a month. As to the rest, street-singing is to many paupers not merely a trade, but an hereditary tendency, handed down from father to son.

The largest section of the Paris street-musicians consists, probably, of the little Italian boys who overrun public places and who are to be found at night asleep under the seats of the boulevards, against the parapets of the quays, or upon some doorstep. They are as difficult to suppress and as persistent as ants: the very police get tired of trying to clear the streets of them.

Whence do they chiefly come? We will let M. Ducamp reply:—“One result,” he says, “of the expedition led by Garibaldi in 1860 was that the kingdom of the two Sicilies entered into the habits of civilised nations. Formerly, at the time of the Bourbons, as it was held that any individual demanding a passport for abroad could only be a Jacobin, permission to travel was never given. It is no longer so; everyone can go and come at pleasure. The inhabitants of the southern provinces have quickly profited by this new right in order to get rid of their children and disperse them over the whole earth. It is the Basilicate which to-day furnishes nine-tenths of these unhappy little creatures.