Rue Caumartin, opened 1779, records the name of the Prévôt des Marchands of the day. It was a short street then, lengthened later by the old adjoining streets Ste-Croix and Thiroux, the site erewhile of the famed porcelaine factory of la Reine. (Marie-Antoinette). No. 1 dates from 1779 and was noted for its gardens arranged in Oriental style. No. 2, to-day the Paris Sporting Club, dates from the same period. No. 2 bis and most of the other houses have been restored or rebuilt. The butcher Legendre, who set the phrygian cap on the head of Louis XVI, is said to have lived at No. 52. No. 65 was built as a Capucine convent (1781-83). Sequestered at the Revolution, it became a hospital, then a lycée, its name changed and rechanged: Lycée Buonaparte, Collège Bourbon, Lycée Fontanes, finally Lycée Condorcet, while the convent chapel, rebuilt, became the church St-Louis d’Antin. Rue Vignon was, till 1881, Rue de la Ferme des Mathurins, as an inscription on the walls of No. 1 reminds us. Rue de Provence, named after the brother of Louis XVI, was opened in 1771, built over a drain which went from Place de la République to the Seine near Pont de l’Alma. No. 22 is an ancient house restored. Berlioz lived at No. 41. Meissonier at No. 43. Nos. 45 to 65 are on the site of the mansion and grounds of the duc d’Orléans which extended to Rue Taitbout. We see a fine old hôtel at No. 59. Cité d’Antin, opening at No. 61, was built in 1825, on the site of the ancient hôtel Montesson. Liszt, the pianist, lived at No. 63. The Café du Trèfle claims existence since the year 1555. The busy, bustling Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin was an important roadway in the twelfth century, as Chemin des Porcherons. The houses we see there are mostly of eighteenth-century date, others occupy the site of ancient demolished buildings. Many notable persons lived here. No. 1, where we see the Vaudeville theatre (there since 1867), was of old the site of two historic mansions. No. 2, now a fashionable restaurant, dates from 1792, built as Dépôt des Gardes Françaises. Rossini lived there for one year—1857-58. Where Rue Meyerbeer was opened in 1860 stood, in other days, the hôtel of Mme d’Épinay, whose walls had sheltered Grimm, and for a time Mozart. A neighbouring house was the home of Necker, where his daughter, Mme de Staël, grew up and which became later the possession of Mme Récamier. The graveyard of St-Roch stretched, till the end of the eighteenth century, across the site of Nos. 20-22. No. 42 belonged to Mme Talma. There Mirabeau died in 1791; his widow in 1800. Joséphine de Beauharnais, not yet Empress, dwelt at No. 62. Gambetta at No. 55. No. 68, hôtel Montfermeil, was rebuilt by Fesch, Napoléon’s uncle. Rue St-Lazare was, before 1770, Rue des Porcherons, from the name of an important estate of the district over which the abbesses of Montmartre had certain rights of jurisdiction. Passage de Tivoli, at No. 96, recalls the first Tivoli with its jardins anglais stretching far at this corner. Its owner’s head fell, severed by the guillotine, and his folie became national property. Fêtes were given there by the Revolutionist authorities till its restoration, in 1810, to heirs of the man who had built it. Avenue du Coq records the existence in fourteenth-century days of a Château du Coq, known also as Château des Porcherons, the manor-house of the Porcherons’ estate. The Square de la Trinité is on the site of a famous restaurant of past days, the well-known “Magny,” which as a dancing-saloon—“La Grande Pinte”—was on the site till 1851. The church is modern (1867). No. 56 is part of the hôtel Bougainville where the great tragedienne, Mlle Mars, lived. At No. 23, dating from the First Empire, we find a fine old staircase and in the court a pump marked with the imperial eagle. Rue de Chateaudun is modern. The brasserie at the corner of Rue Maubeuge stands on the site of the ancient cemetery des Porcherons. Rue de la Victoire, in the seventeenth century Ruellette-au-Marais-des-Porcherons, was renamed in 1792 Rue Chantereine, referring to the very numerous frogs (rana = frog) which filled the air of that then marshy district with their croaking. Buonaparte lived there at one time, hence the name given in 1798, taken away in 1816, restored by Thiers in 1833. By a curious coincidence, an Order of Nuns, “de la Victoire,” so called to memorize a very much earlier victory—Bouvines 1214—owned property here. On the site of No. 60, now a modern house let out in flats, stood in olden days the chief entrance to l’hôtel de la Victoire, a remarkably handsome structure built in 1770, sold and razed in 1857—alas! At the end of the court at No. 58 we see the ancient hôtel d’Argenson, its salon kept undisturbed from the days when great politicians of the past met and made decisive resolutions there. The Bains Chantereine at No. 46 has been théâtre Olymphique, théâtre des Victoires Nationales, théâtre des Troubadours, and was for a few days in 1804 l’Opéra Comique; No. 45, with its busts and bas-reliefs, dates from 1840. Rue Taitbout, begun in 1773, lengthened by the union of adjoining streets, records the name of an eighteenth-century municipal functionary. Isabey, Ambroise Thomas and Manuel Gracia lived in this old street, and at No. 1, now a smart café, two noted Englishmen, the Marquis of Hertford and Lord Seymour, lived at different periods. No. 2 was once the famous restaurant Tortoni. No. 30, as a private hôtel, sheltered Talleyrand and Mme Grand. We see interesting vestiges at No. 44. The Square d’Orléans is the ancient Cité des Trois Frères, in past days a nest of artists and men of letters: Dumas, George Sand, Lablache, etc.
CHAPTER XXXV
ON THE WAY TO MONTMARTRE
RUE DE CLICHY was once upon a time the Roman road between Paris and Rouen, taking in its way the village Cligiacum. For long in later days it was known as Rue du Coq, when the old château stood near its line. It was in a house of Rue de Clichy, inhabited by the Englishman Crawford, that Marie-Antoinette and her children had a meal on the way to Varennes. The three successive “Tivoli” were partly on the site of No. 27, in this old street. There too was the “Club de Clichy,” whose members opposed the government of the Directoire. The whole district leading up to the heights of Montmartre was then, as now, a quarter of popular places of amusement, the habitation of artistes of varying degree, but we find here few old-time vestiges. Where Rue Nouvelle was opened in 1879 the prison de Clichy, a debtor’s prison, had previously stood. No. 81 is the four-footed animals’ hospital founded in 1811. Zola died at No. 21 Rue de Bruxelles. Heine lived from 1848-57 at No. 50 Rue Amsterdam. Rue Blanche was Rue de la Croix-Blanche in the seventeenth century. Berlioz lived at No. 43. Roman remains were found beneath Nos. 16-18. Rue Pigalle has been known by six or seven different names, at one time that of Rue du Champ-de-Repos, on account of the proximity of the cemetery St-Roch. No. 12 belonged to Scribe, who died there (1861). No. 67 is an ancient station for post-horses. Place Pigalle was in past days Place de la Barrière de Montmartre. The fountain is on the site of the ancient custom-house. Puvis de Chavannes and Henner had their studios at No. 11, now a restaurant. Rue de la Rochechouart made across abbey lands, the lower part dating from 1672, records the name of an abbess of Montmartre. Gounod lived at No. 17 in 1867. Halévy in 1841. The Musée Gustave Moreau at No. 14 was the great artist’s own hôtel, bequeathed with its valuable collection to the State at his death in 1898. Marshal Ney lived at No. 12. In Rue de la Tour des Dames a windmill tower, the property of the nuns of Montmartre, stood undisturbed from the fifteenth century to the early part of the nineteenth. The modern mansion at No. 3 (1822) is on land belonging in olden days to the Grimaldi. Talma died in 1826 at No. 9. Rue la Bruyère has always been inhabited by distinguished artists and literary men. Berlioz lived for a time at No. 45. Rue Henner, named after the artist who died at No. 5 Rue la Bruyère, is the old Rue Léonie. We see an ancient and interesting house at No. 13. No. 12 hôtel des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques, a society founded in 1791 by Beaumarchais.
Rue de Douai reminds us through its whole length of noted literary men and artists of the nineteenth century. Halévy and also notable artists have lived at No. 69. Ivan Tourgueneff at No. 50. Francisque Sarcey at No. 59. Jules Moriac died at No. 32 (1882). Gustave Doré and also Halévy lived for a time at No. 22. Claretie at No. 10. Edmond About owned No. 6.
The old Rue Victor-Massé was for long Rue de Laval in memory of the last abbess of Montmartre. At No. 9, the abode of an antiquarian, we see remarkably good modern statuary on the Renaissance frontage. No. 12 till late years was l’hôtel de Chat Noir, the first of the artistic montmartrois cabarets due to M. Salis (1881). At No. 26 we turn into Avenue Frochot, where Alexandre Dumas, père, lived, where at No. 1 the musical composer Victor Massé died (1884), and of which almost every house is, or once was, the abode of artists. Passing down Rue Henri-Monnier, formerly Rue Breda, which with Place Breda was, during the first half of the nineteenth century, a quarter forbidden to respectable women, we come to Rue Notre-Dame de Lorette. It dates from the same period as the church built there (1823-37), and wherein we see excellent nineteenth-century frescoes and paintings. This street, like most of those around it, has been inhabited by men of distinction in art or letters: Isabey, Daubigny, etc. Mignet lived there in 1849. Rue St-Georges dates from the early years of the eighteenth century. Place St-Georges was opened a century later on land belonging to the Dosne family. Mme Dosne and her son-in-law lived at No. 27. The house was burnt down in 1871, rebuilt by the State, given to l’Institut by Mlle Dosne in 1905, and organized as a public library of contemporary history. Nos. 15-13, now the Illustration office, date from 1788. Auber died at No. 22 (1871). The hôtel at No. 2 was owned by Barras and inhabited at one time by Mme Tallien.
The three busy streets, Rue Laffitte, Rue le Peletier, Rue Drouot, start from boulevard des Italiens, cross streets we have already looked into, and are connected with others of scant historic interest.
Rue Laffitte, so named in 1830 in memory of the great financier who laid the foundation of his wealthy future when an impecunious lad, by stooping, under the eye of the commercial magnate waiting to interview him, to pick up a pin that lay in his path. Laffitte died Regent of the Banque de France. So popular was he that when after 1830 he found himself forced to sell his handsome mansion No. 19—l’hôtel de la Borde—a national subscription was got up enabling him to buy it back. Offenbach lived at No. 11. At No. 12 we find an interesting old court. The great art lover and collector, the Marquis of Hertford, lived at No. 2, the old hôtel d’Aubeterre. No. 1, once known as la Maison Dorée, now a post office, was the old hôtel Stainville inhabited by the Communist Cerutti who, in his time, gave his name to the street. Mme Tallien also lived there. For some years before 1909 it was the much frequented Taverne Laffitte.
In Rue Le Peletier, the Opera-house burnt down in 1783, was from the early years of the nineteenth century on the site of two old mansions: l’hôtel de Choiseul and l’hôtel de Grammont. On the site of No. 2, Orsini tried to assassinate Napoléon III. At No. 22 we see a Protestant church built in the time of Napoléon I.
Rue Drouot, the Salle des Ventes, the great Paris “Auction-rooms” at No. 9, built in 1851, is on the site of the ancient hôtel Pinon de Quincy, subsequently a Mairie. The present Mairie of the arrondissement at No. 6 dates from 1750. In the Revolutionary year 1792 it was the War Office, then the Salon des Étrangers where masked balls were given: les bals des Victimes. No. 2 the Gaulois office, almost wholly rebuilt at the end of the eighteenth century and again in 1811, was originally a fine mansion built in 1717, the home of Le Tellier, later of the duc de Talleyrand, and later still the first Paris Jockey Club (1836-57). The famous dancer Taglioni also lived here at one time.
Rue Grange-Batelière was a farm—la grange bataillée—with fortified towers, owned in the twelfth century by the nuns of Ste-Opportune. At No. 10 we see the handsome hôtel with fine staircase and statues, built in 1785 for a gallant captain of the Gardes Françaises. There in the days of Napoléon III was the Cercle Romantique, where Victor Hugo, A. de Musset and other literary celebrities were wont to meet.