Great Cities Through Travelers' Eyes Page 26

  But to return again to the noble river Seine: there was building over it when I was in the city a goodly bridge of white freestone, which was almost ended.…

  The Cathedral Church is dedicated to Our Lady…I could see no notable matter in it, saving the statue of St Christopher on the right hand at the coming in of the great gate, which indeed is very exquisitely done, all the rest being but ordinary, as I have seen in other churches. The street which is called la rue de notre Dame…is very fair, being of a great length, though not so broad as our Cheapside in London: but in one thing it exceeds any street in London; for such is the uniformity of almost all the houses of the same street which stand upon the bridge, that they are made alike both in proportion of workmanship and matter: so that they make the neatest show of all the houses in Paris.

  I went…to the King’s Palace, which is called the Louvre. This was first built by Philip Augustus King of France, about the year 1214, and being afterward ruined by time, was most beautifully repaired by Henry II. Therein I observed these particulars: a fair quadrangular court, with goodly lodgings about it four storeys high, whose outside is exquisitely wrought with white free-stone, and decked with many stately pillars and beautiful images made of the same stone.…

  There is a goodly palace called the Tuileries, where the Queen Mother was wont to lie, and which was built by herself. This palace is called the Tuileries, because heretofore they used to burn tile there, before the palace was built. For this French word Tuilerie doth signify in French a place for burning of tile.…

  I observed in Paris a great abundance of mules, which are so highly esteemed among them, that the judges and councillors do usually ride on them with their foot clothes. Also I noted that gentlemen and great personages in Paris do more ride with foot-clothes, even four to one than our English gentlemen do.

  1790 ARTHUR YOUNG

  While undertaking a tour of France in which he commented on agricultural and social conditions, British economist Arthur Young (see page 99) saw Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette in the Tuileries Palace under virtual house arrest at the hands of the revolutionary mob.

  4 January After breakfast, walk in the gardens of the Tuileries, where there is the most extraordinary sight that either French or English eyes could ever behold at Paris. The king, walking with six grenadiers of the milice bourgeoise with an officer or two of his household, and a page. The doors of the gardens are kept shut in respect to him, in order to exclude everybody but deputies, or those who have admission tickets. When he entered the palace, the doors of the gardens were thrown open for all without distinction, though the queen was still walking with a lady of her court. She also was attended so closely by the gardes bourgeoises, that she could not speak, but in a low voice, without being heard by them. A mob followed her, talking very loud, and paying no other apparent respect than that of taking off their hats wherever she passed, which was indeed more than I expected. Her Majesty does not appear to be in health; she seems to be much affected, and shews it in her face; but the king is as plump as ease can render him. By his orders, there is a little garden railed off, for the Dauphin to amuse himself in, and a small room is built in it to retire to in case of rain; here he was at work with his little hoe and rake, but not without a guard of two grenadiers. He is a very pretty good-natured-looking boy, of five or six years old, with an agreeable countenance; wherever he goes, all hats are taken off to him, which I was glad to observe. All the family being kept thus close prisoners (for such they are in effect) afford, at first view, a shocking spectacle; and is really so, if the act were not absolutely necessary to effect the revolution; this I conceive to be impossible; but if it were necessary, no one can blame the people for taking every measure possible to secure that liberty they had seized in the violence of a revolution. At such a moment, nothing is to be condemned but what endangers the national freedom. I must, however, freely own, that I have my doubts whether this treatment of the royal family can be justly esteemed any security to liberty; or, on the contrary, whether it were not a very dangerous step, that exposes to hazard whatever had been gained.

  I have spoken with several persons today, and have started objections to the present system, stronger even than they appear to me, in order to learn their sentiments; and it is evident, they are at the present moment under an apprehension of an attempt towards a counter revolution. The danger of it very much, if not absolutely, results from the violence which has been used towards the royal family.

  1855 QUEEN VICTORIA

  In 1855, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert paid a triumphant visit as guests of Emperor Napoleon III, the nephew of Napoleon I, who had been decisively defeated by Britain just forty years before. The Queen recounted the visit in detail in her diary.

  20 August At ¼ p. 10 we started for Paris, with all our suite. The Emperor has pretty barouches, smaller than ours, & bay horses harnessed just like ours. The liveries are green, black & gold, with red & gold waistcoats. We drove by the Bois de Boulogne, the new Route de l’Impératrice, which is being planted & will be very fine, through that splendid Arc de Triomphe, finished in Louis Philippe’s time – along the Champs-Elysées (our usual road every day) to the Exposition des Beaux Arts, which, together with the Palais de l’Industrie, with which it is connected, stands in it…. The Elysée is very pretty, but the decorations, excepting in one or two rooms are not nearly finished, & it is a small building. Here again, rooms were prepared for us, in which there were many souvenirs of Napoleon, la Reine Hortense, &c. Here, we took luncheon in a room, in which hung portraits of all the contemporary Sovereigns. Our quiet luncheon over, Albert went to put on his uniform, & the Emperor kindly took Bertie out in his Curricle, which he drove himself, with only two servants, taking him all over Paris. It was not the least interesting incident in this most eventful, interesting & delightful visit – showing the confidence that exists between us…. This over, the Emperor took us round the very pretty, shady little garden, & we reentered open carriages & drove along the beautiful Boulevards, the Rue de Rivoli, & quite new, the Emperor having cleared away many streets, making the new ones quite magnificent – by the new part of the Louvre, the whole of which is truly splendid – the Place de la Concorde, very fine, where poor Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette & so many others were guillotined – past the Hotel de Ville – on to the Palais de Justice, from the steps of which the view of the richly decorated streets & enthusiastic assembled thousands was splendid. We visited the adjoining Sainte-Chapelle, which has been most exquisitely restored. It is small, of the purest early Gothic architecture & is celebrated for containing the heart of St Louis (the Chapel was built by him), & for many interesting ceremonies having taken place there. In passing the bridge from which one has a very fine view of the town, one sees the Conciergerie & the Emperor, pointing to it said: ‘voilà ou j’étais en prison’. What a strange, incredible contrast, to be driving with us, as Emperor through the streets – in triumph! We next went to the Cathedral of Notre Dame, the outside of which is magnificent, & were received by the Archbishop of Paris & Clergy. Except the beautiful carving of the Choir there is nothing particularly to admire in the interior. The Hotel de Ville is magnificent & the street leading to it has been much widened & opened out. We passed along the Boulevards, by the Porte St Martin & Porte St Denis, along the Rue de la Paix, Rue Castiglione, full of shops & fine houses, by the Place Vendôme & the Place de la Bastille, where the Colonne de Juillet is placed. – The Fountains of the Château d’Eau, & then home, the usual way, by near 6. Everything, so gay, so bright, & though very hot, the air so clear & light. The absence of smoke keeps everything so white & bright, & this, in Paris, with much gilding about the shops, green shutters, &c. produces a brilliancy of effect, which is quite incredible. On getting home, we visited the dear Empress who received us upstairs for a short while, then we went back to our rooms. Nothing can be kinder, or more agreeable, than the Emperor is, & so quiet, which is such a comfort on occasions like this. – The view of Paris, fr
om our rooms & balcony, lit up by the coming sun, the Arc de Triomphe rising so majestically & beautifully in the distance had a marvellous effect. I sat sketching on the balcony.

  1869 MARK TWAIN

  The American humourist Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835–1910), who wrote under the pseudonym Mark Twain, was sent to Europe by a San Francisco newspaper; his record of this journey was published in The Innocents Abroad (1869); he made a second trip to Europe in the late 1870s, which he published as A Tramp Abroad (1880).

  As nightfall approached we entered a wilderness of odorous flowers and shrubbery, sped through it, and then, excited, delighted and half persuaded that we were only the sport of a beautiful dream, lo, we stood in magnificent Paris!

  What excellent order they kept about that vast depot! There was no frantic crowding and jostling, no shouting and swearing, and no swaggering intrusion of services by rowdy hackmen. These latter gentry stood outside – stood quietly by their long line of vehicles and said never a word. A kind of hackman general seemed to have the whole matter of transportation in his hands. He politely received the passengers and ushered them to the kind of conveyance they wanted, and told the driver where to deliver them. There was no ‘talking back’, no dissatisfaction about overcharging, no grumbling about anything. In a little while we were speeding through the streets of Paris and delightfully recognizing certain names and places with which books had long ago made us familiar. It was like meeting an old friend when we read Rue de Rivoli on the street corner; we knew the genuine vast palace of the Louvre as well as we knew its pictures; when we passed by the Column of July we needed no one to tell us what it was or to remind us that on its site once stood the grim Bastille, that grave of human hopes and happiness, that dismal prison house within whose dungeons so many young faces put on the wrinkles of age, so many proud spirits grew humble, so many brave hearts broke.

  We secured rooms at the hotel, or rather, we had three beds put into one room, so that we might be together, and then we went out to a restaurant, just after lamplighting, and ate a comfortable, satisfactory, lingering dinner. It was a pleasure to eat where everything was so tidy, the food so well cooked, the waiters so polite, and the coming and departing company so moustached, so frisky, so affable, so fearfully and wonderfully Frenchy! All the surroundings were gay and enlivening. Two hundred people sat at little tables on the sidewalk, sipping wine and coffee; the streets were thronged with light vehicles and with joyous pleasure-seekers; there was music in the air, life and action all about us, and a conflagration of gaslight everywhere!

  After dinner we felt like seeing such Parisian specialties as we might see without distressing exertion, and so we sauntered through the brilliant streets and looked at the dainty trifles in variety stores and jewelry shops. Occasionally, merely for the pleasure of being cruel, we put unoffending Frenchmen on the rack with questions framed in the incomprehensible jargon of their native language, and while they writhed we impaled them, we peppered them, we scarified them, with their own vile verbs and participles.…

  We adjourned to one of those pretty cafés and took supper and tested the wines of the country, as we had been instructed to do, and found them harmless and unexciting. They might have been exciting, however, if we had chosen to drink a sufficiency of them.

  To close our first day in Paris cheerfully and pleasantly, we now sought our grand room in the Grand Hotel du Louvre and climbed into our sumptuous bed to read and smoke – but alas!

  It was pitiful,

  In a whole city-full,

  Gas we had none.

  No gas to read by – nothing but dismal candles. It was a shame. We tried to map out excursions for the morrow; we puzzled over French ‘guides to Paris’; we talked disjointedly in a vain endeavor to make head or tail of the wild chaos of the day’s sights and experiences; we subsided to indolent smoking; we gaped and yawned and stretched – then feebly wondered if we were really and truly in renowned Paris, and drifted drowsily away into that vast mysterious void which men call sleep.

  1891 ANTON CHEKHOV

  Russian playwright Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) travelled to Italy in 1891. On his return, he went to Paris and visited the site of the 1889 Exposition Universelle, held to commemorate the centenary of the storming of the Bastille, and for which the Eiffel Tower was the symbol. While enjoying ‘Gay Paree’ he also witnessed the political turmoil in the aftermath of a miners’ strike that was put down by force, as he described in letters to his sister Maria Chekhova (1863–1957).

  21 April Today is Easter. Very well, then. Christ is risen! This is the first Easter I’ve ever spent away from home.

  I arrived in Paris on Friday morning and went straight to the Exposition. Yes, the Eiffel Tower is very, very high. The rest of the Exposition buildings I saw from the outside only, because the cavalry was stationed inside in case of disturbances. Riots are expected for Friday. Crowds of highly agitated people walked up and down the streets yelling and whistling, and the police kept dispersing them. About ten policemen are enough here to break up a big crowd. The police all attack together, and the crowd runs like crazy. I was deemed worthy of being caught in one of the attacks: a policeman grabbed me by the shoulder and began shoving me in front of him.

  The city is very crowded. The streets swarm and seethe with people. Every street is like a torrent. The noise and hubbub are constant. The sidewalks are filled with tables; at every table there sit Frenchmen who feel completely at home on the street. They’re wonderful people. But Paris is indescribable, so I’ll put off describing it until I get home….

  24 April Imagine how pleased I was to visit the Chamber of Deputies during the very session at which the Minister of Internal Affairs was being called to account for the violence the government resorted to while putting down the workers in revolt at Fourmies (many people killed and wounded). It was a stormy and highly interesting session.

  People girding themselves in boa constrictors, ladies kicking their legs up to the ceiling, flying people, lions, cafés chantants, dinners and lunches are beginning to disgust me. It’s time to go home, I feel like working.

  1907 GERTRUDE STEIN

  American novelist and art collector Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) made Paris her home from 1903. Her memoir of these years – including her long friendship with Picasso, in whose studio she saw his unfinished, seminal Les Demoiselles d’Avignon – was written in the voice of her partner, Alice B. Toklas (The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, 1933).

  Gertrude Stein and I about ten days later went to Montmartre, I for the first time. I have never ceased to love it. We go there every now and then and I always have the same tender expectant feeling that I had then. It is a place where you were always standing and sometimes waiting, not for anything to happen, but just standing. The inhabitants of Montmartre did not sit much, they mostly stood which was just as well as the chairs, the dining room chairs of France, did not tempt one to sit. So I went to Montmartre and I began my apprenticeship of standing. We first went to see Picasso and I then we went to see Fernande. Picasso now never likes to go to Montmartre, he does not like to think about it much less talk about it. Even to Gertrude Stein he is hesitant about talking of it, there were things that at that time cut deeply into his Spanish pride and the end of his Montmartre life was bitterness and disillusion, and there is nothing more bitter than Spanish disillusion.

  But at this time he was in and of Montmartre and lived in the rue Ravignan.

  We went to the Odeon and there got into an omnibus, that is we mounted on top of an omnibus, the nice old horse-pulled omnibuses that went pretty quickly and steadily across Paris and up the hill to the place Blanche. There we got out and climbed a steep street lined with shops with things to eat, the rue Lepic, and then turning we went around a corner and climbed even more steeply in fact almost straight up and came to the rue Ravignan, now place Emile-Goudeau but otherwise unchanged, with its steps leading up to the little flat square with its few but tender little trees, a man carpe
ntering in the corner of it, the last time I was there not very long ago there was still a man carpentering in a corner of it, and a little café just before you went up the steps where they all used to eat, it is still there, and to the left the low wooden building of studios that is still there.

  We went up the couple of steps and through the open door passing on our left the studio in which later Juan Gris was to live out his martyrdom but where then lived a certain Vaillant, a nondescript painter who was to lend his studio as a ladies dressing room at the famous banquet for Rousseau, and then we passed a steep flight of steps leading down where Max Jacob had a studio a little later, and we passed another steep little stairway which led to the studio where not long before a young fellow had committed suicide, Picasso painted one of the most wonderful of his early pictures of the friends gathered round the coffin, we passed all this to a larger door where Gertrude Stein knocked and Picasso opened the door and we went in.

  He was dressed in what the French call the singe or monkey costume, overalls made of blue jean or brown, I think his was blue and it is called a singe or monkey because being all of one piece with a belt, if the belt is not fastened, and it very often is not, it hangs down behind and so makes a monkey. His eyes were more wonderful than even I remembered, so full and so brown, and his hands so dark and delicate and alert. We went further in. There was a couch in one corner, a very small stove that did for cooking and heating in the other corner, some chairs, the large broken one Gertrude Stein sat in when she was painted and a general smell of dog and paint and there was a big dog there and Picasso moved her about from one place to another exactly as if the dog had been a large piece of furniture. He asked us to sit down but as all the chairs were full we all stood up and stood until we left. It was my first experience of standing but afterwards I found that they all stood that way for hours. Against the wall was an enormous picture, a strange picture of light and dark colours, that is all I can say, of a group, an enormous group and next to it another in a sort of a red brown, of three women, square and posturing, all of it rather frightening. Picasso and Gertrude Stein stood together talking. I stood back and looked. I cannot say I realized anything but I felt that there was something painful and beautiful there and oppressive but imprisoned.…