LETTER II.
GENERAL ACCOUNT OF PARIS.
Paris, April, 1816.
In my last I conducted you, among the intricacies of Gothic architecture, to Paris. I have now to tell you what I have seen in this city, and in two or three places, at no great distance, which I have visited; but before I plunge again into the uncertainties of dates, and the mysteries of round and pointed arches, zigzag ornaments, and trefoils, I am disposed to send you some general observations on Paris and its vicinity, at the risk of repeating what you have heard or read twenty times before; and I will begin by a little of the internal domestic architecture, exemplified in my own bedroom, which I have had plenty of time and opportunity to examine, and which I find to correspond with what I have generally observed elsewhere. In the first place, the rooms are usually papered; and it is very rarely that one sees the lower part of wainscot, or with a dado. It is indeed sometimes papered in a different manner, and with horizontal stripes about three feet from the floor, to indicate surbase mouldings. The floors are of hexagonal tiles, waxed and rubbed, in order to give them a sort of polished surface. We see no lofty double chests of drawers, but all are of a height to serve also as tables, and they are almost universally covered with a marble slab. This is a very handsome arrangement, as the polished stone always looks neat and clean, and it is not injured by a little water accidentally spilt upon it. There is frequently a column at each front angle, and the upper drawer advancing a little before the others, forms an architrave, the whole face of which draws out. The bed I have before described to you. There is no shelf over the chimney, but generally a looking-glass, and frequently a picture. The chamber which I occupy has an open fireplace for burning wood, but a more usual arrangement is to have a large stove, cased with glazed tiles, within the room, which communicates a moderate but lasting warmth at a small expense of fuel. My window looks out into a little garden, and I am almost close to the Boulevards on the one hand, and to the garden of the Tuilleries and the Champs Elysées, on the other. The plan of these boulevards is a noble conception, and one of the proudest monuments of useful magnificence that Paris has to boast. They form a wide street, or rather avenue, lined with trees, round the oldest and most thickly inhabited parts of the town, introducing the country into the city, and providing both for the health and pleasure of its inhabitants. They seem to have been originally planned to surround, and not to divide the city. Those on the north side were cleared and planted in 1660; on the south, not till 1760. They form a pleasant promenade, though not every where equally so, and they are within the reach of a short walk for all the inhabitants of Paris. Places of public entertainment abound, as you may suppose, in this circuit; theatres, coffee-houses, restaurateurs, hotels; indeed, such places are very numerous throughout Paris. The guide books tell you that it contains 3,000 hotels, 2,000 restaurateurs, 4,000 coffee-houses. The estaminets (pot-houses) are very frequent, and wine and spirit shops almost without number. Add to these the traiteurs, patissiers, confiseurs, and epiciers, and you may imagine that Paris is not a place to starve in. In one of my rambles I amused myself, for some distance, with counting the number of houses appropriated to these purposes, and found more than every other applied to one or the other of them.
The garden of the Tuilleries consists of straight walks, in avenues of lime and horsechesnut trees, cut into regular forms. There are beds of flowers near the palace, and in the summer it is further ornamented with rows of fine orange trees. The Champs Elysées is a less ornamented continuation of the same system. Between the two is a large open space called, originally, the Place of Louis Quinze, afterwards of Concord, and of the Revolution; to the south of this one may see, over the Seine, the magnificent portico of the Chamber of Deputies, and to the north, the beginnings of an edifice which was to have been the Temple of Glory, but what its future name will be is very uncertain. Nearer is the Garde Meuble, a building intended to surpass the celebrated façade of the Louvre. It is very beautiful, but why the architect has not fully succeeded I shall endeavour to explain at a future time. A fine avenue, bounded by a double range of trees, continues from the Elysian Fields to the Barrière de Neuilly, and thus we have a straight line from this barrière (begun on a magnificent scale, but not yet completed) to the front of the Tuilleries, which, if mere length could produce the impression, would certainly be very magnificent. To a certain degree it is so, and the elevation of the ground, towards the barrière, is very favourable to it, but the grandeur is not in proportion to the apparent effort.
However pretty the winding walks of our English gardens may be, they are not at all suited for a place of public resort, where any impression of magnificence is intended. They never show the people, which is a point of great consequence. The disposition of the objects in straight lines, has in itself an imposing, or to use a term more English, an impressive effect, but this has its limits, and I suspect not very extended ones. The too great length of the line makes the individual parts appear little, and the mind is not satisfied with the general impression of sublimity, unless it find the character supported by the objects in its immediate neighbourhood. Beyond a certain point almost any additional length is nearly lost, and, in proceeding along it, we feel its want of variety, without any compensation. I am persuaded that, if a man were placed at the point where two narrow avenues meet, one of them a mile in length, and the other two, he would not readily distinguish the difference. By extending the line too much, also, in places of public resort, it becomes impossible to fill it with people, and this deficiency is more sensible than the length of the avenue.
One of my first employments at Paris was to ramble over it and take a general view of the city. I crossed the Seine at the Pont Louis Quinze, and walked along the noble quays as far as the Island, admiring, on the opposite side, the vast extent of the united palaces of the Tuilleries and Louvre, which, whatever may be the defects and incongruities of their architecture, must always, from their long continued lines, communicate to a stranger the idea of great magnificence. The quays themselves are also an object well worthy of attention, they form a wide street on each side of the river, which is embanked in stone throughout its whole course, in Paris; and whether I looked up the river, towards the Pont Neuf and Nôtre Dame, or downwards, to the Chamber of Deputies, the Pont Louis Seize, the Champs Elysées, and Mount Valerian, I had always a noble scene before me. The narrow quays and crowded shores of the Thames, in London, do not permit any scene of this sort. The completion of this design is due to Bonaparte, and it certainly is an honour to him. Some writers have complained of the want of variety, and that the Parisians are thus shut out from the natural banks of the river, but the natural banks of a river, running through a city, are merely mud and rubbish.
I continued my walk to Nôtre Dame, and afterwards, returning to the south shore, proceeded to the Jardin des Plantes, or du Roi, as you please. I then crossed the Pont Austerlitz, one of the new bridges built by Bonaparte. This is of iron, as is also the Pont des Arts, or du Louvre, but the latter is for foot passengers only. The Parisians boast of their bridges, but without great reason; this Pont d’Austerlitz is fine for an iron bridge;[[5]] the Pont Neuf has little pretension to beauty; the Pont des Arts is a light, not to say a slight construction of iron, for foot passengers; the Pont Royal is a well-constructed bridge, but hardly a handsome one; the Pont d’Jena is a caricature of flat elliptical arches, and apparent lightness; and its merit is confined to some ingenuity in the construction, in order to obtain this effect; which, nevertheless, is certainly a blemish. Nothing is of more importance in a bridge than an appearance of solidity.
In this tour I did not by any means confine myself to a direct course, but turned off to the right or the left, if I saw any building of more consequence than ordinary, or if the ancient aspect of the houses near gave me reason to consider the general character of the street deserving of notice.
The streets on the south side of the river, within the ancient walls, are, I think, still more narrow and winding than those on the north. But all Paris abounds with crooked dirty lanes. We complain of the obscure situation of many of the principal buildings in London; nothing can be worse placed than some of those in Paris. However detrimental this may be to the appearance of the building, considered individually, I do not know whether it may not, occasionally, heighten the general impression of magnificence. The apparent waste of architecture gives an idea that the means are abundant, and that the objects have been produced without effort; and the notion of painful exertion is always highly prejudicial to the sentiment of sublimity.
The Palais Royal is an immense building, inclosing a large court, or garden, containing not only shops, but splendid coffee-houses and great salles-à-manger. Nothing in London can give you any idea of this place; from its immense extent, the variety and splendour of its exhibitions, and the constant crowd to be met with. “The number of arches is 113; the ground floor of each, in shops and coffee-houses, &c., lets for 3,000 francs per annum, the first floor for 1,200, and the third and fourth for 500 each, thus making the annual produce of each division, comprising one arch, and the parts above it, 6,000 francs, or 240l., and, consequently, that of the whole, to 27,120l., to which an addition is to be made for the Galerie de Bois, the shops of which produce each 1,200 francs per annum, but of their number I am ignorant.”[[6]] The architecture is not good, yet the great extent of the garden, and the continuity of the surrounding buildings, decorated with a uniform style of ornament, produce a rich and striking coup d’œil; and it must be observed, that this uniformity consists in the repetition of parts, which, though not perfect, yet when compared with the London rows of brick-houses, or the almshouse Gothic of the House of Lords, may justly be esteemed magnificent.