The American in Paris; vol. 1 of 2

by John Sanderson

Otherwise—à la barbe près—the French are well enough. It is the same kind of population, nearly, that one meets by the gross in New York, and everywhere else. I looked about for Monsieur Dablancour, but could see nothing of him. In a foreign country a man is always a caricature of himself. The French are here in their own element, and swim in it naturally. One is always awkward from the very sense of not knowing foreign customs; and always ridiculous abroad because everything is ridiculous which departs from common and inveterate habit, and nothing is ridiculous which conforms with it. In a nation of apes, it is becoming to be an ape. If you place a man of sense in a company of fools, it is the man of sense who is embarrassed and looks foolish. If one travelled into Timbuctoo, I presume one would feel very foolish for being white.

But this is not all that is worth your attention on the Boulevard Italien. If you love baths of oriental luxury, here are the Bains Chinoises just opposite. Personal cleanliness is the French virtue par excellence. Bathing in other countries is a luxury, in France a necessity. Hot baths as good as yours at Swaim’s are at fifteen sous. The Bains Vigiers at twenty sous a bath made their proprietor a count. You can have baths here simple and compound, inodorous and aromatic, with cold or warm, or clarified or Seine water; and you have them with naked floors and ungarnished walls, and with all the luxury of tapestry and lounges; baths double and single, with and without attendance, with a whole skin, or flayed alive with friction. And besides these baths ordinary and extraordinary—Russian, Turkish, and Chinese—you have baths specific against all human infirmities; baths alkalic, sulphurous, fumigatory, oleaginous, and antiphlogistic. All the mineral waters of Europe pour themselves at your feet in the middle of Paris. Spa, Seltzer, Barege, Aix-la-chapelle, and Ginsnack; manufactured, every one of them, in the street of the University, Gros Caillou, No. 21. And this is not all; there is the “ambulatory bath,” which walks to your bedside, and, embracing you, walks out again, at thirty sous. “C’est un vrai pays de Cocagne que ce Paris.”

And if you love gew-gaws, gingumbobs, and pretty shop-girls, why here they are at the Bazaar. The French take care, as no other people, to furnish such places with pretty women, and they turn their influence, as women, to the account of the shop. The English, I have heard, put all their deformities into their bazaars, that customers, they say, may attend to the other merchandise. The French way is the more sensible. I have been ruined already several times by the same shop-girl, caressing and caressing each of one’s fingers, as she tries on a pair of gloves one does not want.

Or if you love the fine arts, where are all the print-shops of Paris? Why here. You can buy here Calypsos and Cleopatras all naked, with little French faces; and Scipios and Cæsars, and other marshals of the empire, from any price down to three sous a piece. Finally, if you love the best patés in this world, we will just step over into the Passage Panorama to Madame Felix’s. Sweet Passage Panorama! How often have I walked up and down beneath thy crystal roof as the dusky evening came on, with arms folded, and in the narcotic influence of a choice Havannah, forgotten all, all but that a yawning gulf lies between me and my friends and native country!

Give a sou to this little Savoyard with the smiling face, who sweeps the crossings. “Ah, Madame, regardez dans votre petite poche si vous n’avez pas un petit sou à me donner!” How can you refuse him! If you do, he will make you just the same thankful bow, in the best forms of French courtesy.

We are now on the Boulevard Montmartre. Here are cashmeres and silks from Arabia; merinos veritable barbe de Pacha, chalys, mousseline Thibet, Pondicherry, unis et broché, and pocket handkerchiefs at two sous. Ah, come along! And here are six pairs of ladies’ legs, shewing at the window the silk stockings. How gracefully gartered! And from above, how the white curtain falls down modestly in front almost to the knee. Don’t be in such a hurry! they are twice as natural as living legs! And here are dolls brevetted by the king, and milliners à prix fixe, at a fixed price; and here is M. Dutosq, fabricant de sac en papier, manufacturer of little paper-bags-to-put-sugar-in to his majesty; and Madame Raggi, who lets out Venuses and other goddesses to the drawing-schools, at two sous an hour. And look at this shop of women’s ready-made articles. Here one can be dressed cap-à-pie for four francs and eleven centimes (three quarters of a dollar), frock, petticoat, fichu, bonnet, stockings and chemise! A student, also, can buy here a library in the street from a quarter of a mile of books, at six sous a volume. I have just bought Rousseau in calf, octavo, at ten sous!

Since the last Revolution, commerce has taken a new spirit; the bourgeois blood has got uppermost. The greatest barons now are the Rothschilds, and the greatest ministers the Lafittes. The style, too, has risen to the level of the new bureau-cratic nobility. The shopkeeper of these times is at your service, a commerçant, his “boutique” is a magazin, his “contoir” his bureau, and his “pratique” his clientelle. Even the signs, as you see, speak a magnificent language. It is the “Magazin du Doge de Venise,” or “Magazin du Zodiaque—des Vépres Siciliennes,” or “Grand Magazin de Nouveauté.” And if the Doge of Venice is “selling out cheap,” the language is of course worthy of a Doge—it is “au rabais par cessation de commerce.” The Bourse is now a monument of the capital, and disputes rank with the Louvre. The “petit Marquis” is the banker’s son, and the marshals of the empire are sold “second hand” in the frippery market. I intended to write you in English, but the French creeps on in spite of me.

This is one of the prettiest of the Boulevards, and you will see here a great many fine women en promenade of a morning about twelve. When a French lady walks out, she always takes on one side her caniche by a string, and at the other, sometimes, her beau without a string. In either way she monopolizes the whole street, and you are continually getting between her and the puppy, very much to your inconvenience; for if you offend the dog the mistress is, of course, implacable, and you will very likely have to meet her gallant in the Forest of Bondy the next morning. But you can turn this evil sometimes to advantage. If you see, for instance, a pretty woman alone, with her curly companion, you can just walk on, “commercing with the skies” till the lady gets one side of you and the dog the other; this will give you the opportunity of begging her pardon, of patting and stroking the dog a little,—it may break the ice towards an acquaintance, or, if the place be convenient to fall, you had better let her trip you up, and then she will be very sorry. If you think it is a little thing to get a pretty woman’s pity on your side, you are very much mistaken.

Let me introduce you to this shoe-black. He has, as you see, a little box, a brush or two in it, and blacking, and a fixture on the top for a foot; this is his fond de boutique, his stock in trade. He brushes off the mud to the soles of your feet, and shews you your own features in your boots for three sous. This one has just dissolved an ancient firm; and his advertisement, which he calls a “prospectus,” standing here so prim upon a board, announces the event. The partnership is dissolved, but the whole “personnel,” he says, of the establishment remains with the present proprietor; and M. Badaraque, ex-partner, has also the honour to inform us, that he has transported the “appareil de son établissement” to the “Place de la Bourse, une des plus jolies locations de la ville.” The “Decrotteur en chef” at the Palais Royal, and other places of fashion, has his assistants, and serves a dozen or two of customers at a time. He has a shop furnished with cloth-covered benches in amphitheatre, as at the Chamber of Deputies, with a long horizontal iron support for the foot, and pictures are hung around the walls. “On dit, monsieur, que c’est d’après Teniers—celui, monsieur? c’est d’après Vandyke.” And there are newspapers and reviews; so that to polish a gentleman’s boots and his understanding are parts of the same process.

There is a variety of other little trades and industries, which derive their chief means of life from the wants and luxuries of this street, which I may as well call to your notice en passant: I mean trades that are “tout Parisiennies”; that is to say, unknown in any other country than Paris. You will see an individual moving about, at all hours of the night, silent and active, and seeing the smallest bit of paper in the dark where you can see nothing, and, with a hook in the end of a stick, picking it up, and pitching it with amazing dexterity into a basket tied to his left shoulder; with a cat-like walk, being everywhere and nowhere at the same time, stirring up the rubbish of every nook and gutter of the street, under your very nose—this is the chiffonnier. He is a very important individual. He is in matter what Pythogoras was in mind; and his transformations are scarcely less curious than those of the Samian sage.