Seven Ages of Paris (75 page)

The demand is only too understandable. Apart from the honour of sharing the last resting place of so many illustrious sons and daughters of France, it would be hard to conceive of a more agreeable place in which to be laid away than Père Lachaise, with its glorious views over Paris and its many tree-lined avenues. There used to be a bistro opposite, on the Rue du Repos, called Mieux Ici Qu’en Face. But that has itself passed on, and—with the exception of the melancholy reminders of the Coin des Martyrs—Death shows few signs of his sting in Père Lachaise today. For mothers and children and laughing couples, the cemetery has become something of a family park. Gossiping nursemaids tether their prams to the tomb railings, to stop their charges accelerating away off down the steep slopes; children climb gaily over the grandest crypts, as soon as the gardiens’ backs are turned; and, just as Love and Death represent but two Janus faces of the same head, lovers sit heedlessly entwined on benches set in the sheltered alleys between the tombs—just as in the times of Père La Chaise himself the courtesans and gallants liked to travel out from seventeenth-century Paris to seek their pleasures on the Mont Louis.

Yet, for all the ephemeral human drama and sadness embraced in those shady avenues of Père Lachaise, rising above it all Paris lives on, grumbling but radiant, evolving but immutable—and eternal. Parisians may suffer perilously from ennui at regular intervals; but can Paris herself ever bore? Thoroughly female, at each age a particular woman or women, good or bad—a Héloïse, a Reine Margot, a Ninon, a Josephine, a Païva, a Sarah Bernhardt or a Piaf—arises to delineate its passing features, but in the end there is always only one: Marianne herself.

NOTES

The following source notes refer to works listed section by section in the Bibliography. I have found these texts outstandingly useful throughout: Bidou, Castelot, Clunn, Cobb (all the listed works), Couperie, Cronin (of the three listed, all provide outstandingly readable contributions to the history of Paris), Dark, Favier, Hillairet (the Dictionnaire historique des rues de Paris is a classic work of reference, and an inseparable companion), Hofbauer, Lavisse (though compiled a century ago, an admirable general history of France), Littlewood, Maurois (though written just after the Second World War, a well-balanced and colourful account that doesn’t date), Sutcliffe (an excellent survey of the development of Paris architecture over the ages), Vallis (three volumes that provide an excellent guide arrondissement by arrondissement).

1 “human genius”: Maurois, p. 78

Age One 1180–1314

Particularly useful and to be recommended here: Baldwin; Druon, Kings and Paris (The Accursed Kings remains an enduring classic); Duby (one of France’s leading experts on the Age of Philippe Auguste sadly recently deceased); Geremek; Gilson; Holmes; Jordan; Lavisse, III; Radice.

1 “rusé comme un renard”: Lavisse, III, i, 119 ff

2 chansons: Maurois, 75

3 “great neurotics”: Druon, Paris, 95

4 “a poor house”: Holmes, 81

5 “All the organs”: Druon, Paris, 99

6 “a bitter thing”: Lavisse, III, ii, 183

Age Two 1314–1643

Babelon, Paris; Briggs, R.; Diefendorf; Garrisson, Henri IV; Greengrass; Lavisse; Ranum; Wolfe.

1 “heart of the kingdom”: Druon, Kings, 11

2 “Those who were left”: Ziegler, 83

3 “deep-rooted certainty”: Maurois, 117, 112

4 “animal violence”: ibid., 142–3

5 “not a woman”: ibid., 164

6 “before Paris”: Garrisson, 157

7 “Mistress, I am writing”: ibid., 164

8 “no meat”: Lavisse, VI, i, 322

9 “very wild place”: Ranum, 19–20

10 “skin and bone”: ibid., ii, 129

11 “the entire populace”: Greengrass, 251–3

12 “less astonishing”: Maurois, 172–4

13 “clip your nails”: ibid., 190

14 “An entire city”: Corneille

Age Three 1643–1795

Briggs; Cronin, Louis XIV (especially good on Fouquet); Mitford, Sun; Mongrédien, Montespan and Vie (especially on the “Affaire des Poisons”); Pevitt; Ranum; Trout; Voltaire.

1 “The civil wars started”: Voltaire, I, 64

2 “Well, it’s all over”: The execution of Brinvilliers and Mongrédien, Vie, 201; Voisin: Sévigné, 196, 240–1; Mongrédin, Montespan, 33, 75, 88

3 “with some pomp”: Mitford, Sun, 95

4 Blondel: Sutcliffe, 26

5 “he is sent forthwith”: Lister, 25

6 “four full dishes”: ibid., 148–68

7 “nothing of worse breeding”: Mongrédien, Montespan, 97, 296

8 “My dominant passion”: from Cronin, Louis XIV, 189

9 “the statue of Victoire”: Ranum, 284

10 “Before being at court”: Mongrédien, Vie, 20

11 “are you not the master?”: Pevitt, 300

Age Four 1795–1815

Out of a gigantic bibliography: Dallas, Horne (inevitably I drew some material from my own two books on Napoleon), Lanzac de Laborie, Robiquet, Willms.

Laborie provided me with one of the great finds of this book. Its eight volumes were published between 1900 and 1913, only for the onset of the First World War leave the sequence unfinished. I came across a copy, its pages still uncut, in the London Library. It is a marvellously well-researched work, amusing and packed with marginal information about Napoleon’s Paris.

1 “ruinous castles”: Horne, Austerlitz, 18

2 “You are barbarians”: Robiquet, 63

3 “talk about politics”: Willms, 94, n. 234

4 “The Paris of the rich”: Willms, 96

5 “church flummery!”: Robiquet, 46

6 “Goodbye to the Republic”: Jack, 22

7 “without over-excitement”: Laborie, III, 57–61

8 “I am not the lover …”: ibid., VI, 34, 37

9 warned
Mme.
de Staël: ibid., VI, 42

10 “comes from God”: Lefebre, 7

11 “Today’s fête”: Laborie, III, 11

12 “One must leave”: ibid., II, 170

13 “The French Republic”: ibid., VIII, 234–5

14 “What statue?”: ibid., II, 180–2

15 decrepit mammoth: Hugo, 179

16 King of Württemberg: Laborie, II 290

17 “Napoléonville”: ibid., 91, 191

18 Versailles: ibid., 191–2

19 “be ruined”: Robiquet, 174

20 “endless begging”: Reichardt, I, 25

21 “extreme overcrowding”: Willms, 118

22 impressionable German: Reichardt, I, 227 ff

23 prepare a gigot: Robiquet, 95

24 “je tremble”: Laborie, VII, 207–8

25 “People are determined”: ibid., 147 ff

26 “I am very dissatisfied”: ibid., VIII, 10, 16–17

27
Mlle.
Aubery: ibid., 16–17

28 “the popular Empress”: Horne, Austerlitz, 257

29 “Crying like a a child”: Bruce, 436

30 “Iphigenia”: Maurois 339

31 “I swear to you”: West, 186

32 “We counted”: Horne, Austerlitz, 292

33 “I have become blasé”: Keats, 126

34 “in general terror-stricken”: Bruce, 463–4

35 “We women”: Maurois, 342

36
Mme.
de Coigny: Laffont, 172

37 “Bois de Boulogne”: Gallienne, 77

38 “well-dressed people”: Denon, L’Oeil, 11

39 “bare walls”: ibid.

40 “some big losses”: Denon, Correspondance, 3518

Age Five 1815–1871

Balzac; Chastenet; Flaubert; Gautier; Goncourt; Haussmann; Horne, Fall (inevitably I have drawn on my own The Fall of Paris for material on both the Second Empire and the Siege and the Commune of 1870–1); Sutcliffe (especially for analysis of the impact of Haussmann); Willms.

1 “a submissive bigot”: Maurois, 357–62

2 “a place one avoids”: Lewald, VI, 57

3 “pale spectre”: Bidou, 354

4 “that illustrious valley”: Balzac, Père Goriot, 1–3, 8, 14

5 “remain lying there”: Alphonse, 8ff

6 “are like children”: Rambuteau, 269

7 “the post-chaise”: Laver, 174

8 “hurling itself down”: Dark, 115

9 “a special dirty glove”: Willms, 200

10 “breaking glass”: Guedalla, 54

11 “a small aristocracy”: Willms, 243

12 “a carnival-like exuberance”: Flaubert, 325

13 “Nine hundred men”: ibid.

14 “vulgar-looking man”: Horne, Fall, 20

15 “We ripped open”: Haussemann, 54ff

16 “bobbing manes”: Vallois, I, 10

17 “art elbowed”: Horne, Fall, 4

18 “MacMahon’s defeat”: Baldick, 169

19 “Europe’s heart”: Horne, Fall, 73

20 “the animals observed”: ibid., 178

21 “it is all over”: ibid., 266

22 “your profession?”: ibid., 337

23 “des candides”: Cobb, Tour, 128–31

24 “we saw the insurgents”: Horne, Fall, 381, 383

25 Communard prisoners: ibid., 405–7

26 “A silence of death”: ibid., 420

Age Six 1871–1940

Baldick; Cronin, Eve and City; Dallas, 1918; Flanner, American and Yesterday; Pryce-Jones (a valuable British contribution to the story of the Occupation); Rose (for details of the entrancing Josephine Baker); Shattuck; Thurman (an outstanding recent biography of Colette).

1 “You are young”: Baldick, 193–5

2 “painter called Degas”: ibid., 206

3 “I regret”: Horne, Fall, 427

4 “wholesale copulation”: Baldick, 307

5 “ ‘The swine!’ ”: ibid., 398

6 “Nobody can imagine”: Gosling, 70, 112

7 “an ill-made beast”: Cronin, Eve, 250

8 “was still Athenian”: Maurois, 470

9 “A dark resentment”: Guedalla, 138

10 “You are weary”: Laffont, 244

11 “beautiful to fight”: Gillet, 289, 299

12 “much nervous excitement”: Bertie, I, 3–11

13 “strong measures”: Cronin, Eve, 442

14 “Paris will be burned!”: Tuchman, August, 374

15 “destruction, ruins”: Galliéni, 59–64

16 “two foreign countries”: Horne, Price, 190

17 “People are getting away”: Bertie, II, 291

18 “a vivid impression”: Dallas, 1918, 348

19 “Paris is a bitch”: Wiser, 66

20 “entirely nude”: Flanner, Yesterday, xx

21 Josephine Baker: Rose, 97ff

22 “qu’il était beau”: Rearick, 94

23 “I understand”: Miller, 148, 166

24 “Paris! Viens avec nous”: Weber, Hollow, 161

25 “a frightful place”: Shirer, 125

26 “la masse de manoeuvre”: Churchill, II, 42

27 “France deprived of Paris”: Horne, Lose, 562

Age Seven 1940–1969

Aron, Elusive; Beevor and Cooper (excellent on the immediate aftermath of the Second World War); Collins and Lapierre (still reads well); Dulong (an engaging account of life in the Elysée under de Gaulle); Flanner (all four works); Giles.

1 “I wish I had not come”: Shirer, 321–4

2 “The German genius and I”: Pryce-Jones, 62

3 “a position of impotence”: ibid., 168

4 “an unconsciousness shared”: Thurman, 444

5 “For over four years”: de Gaulle, Guerre, II, 289

6 “Paris outraged!”: ibid., 308

7 “The effect was fantastic”: Muggeridge, 211–12

8 “forty FFI”: Courtin, 57, 66, 74

9 “Hélas! Hélas! Hélas!”: Flanner, 1944–1965, 479; Horne, Savage, 455

10 “Since the Liberation”: Flanner, 1944–1965, 275

11 “Everything always has an end”: Flanner, 1965–1970, 211

12 “One fighting speech”: Aron, Elusive, 157

13 “a French affair”: Barrault, 51

14 “What struck me most”: Aron, Elusive, 232

15 “I am ceasing”: Dulong, 229

1 “Most of the cemeteries”: Laborie, III, 368

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Given that works on Napoleon are reputed to number some 600,000, books on Paris must easily run into seven figures. For any author to assemble anything like a complete bibliography would be a lifetime’s task. Here, after a great amount of pruning, I have included books only that particularly aided me in writing this book.

GENERAL

Aulard, F. A., Paris sous le Premier Empire: recueil des documents pour l’histoire de l’esprit public à Paris. Paris, 1912.

Beevor, A., and Cooper, A., Paris After the Liberation. London, 1994.

Belloc, H., Paris. London, 1920.

Bidou, H., Paris. London, 1939.

Bredin, J.-D., The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus. New York, 1986.

Briggs, R., Early Modern France, 1506–1715. Oxford, 1977.

Castelot, A., Paris the Turbulent City. London, 1962.

Castries, Duc de, The Lives of the Kings and Queens of France. London, 1979.

Champigneulle, B., Paris: architectures, sites et jardins. Paris, 1973.

Clunn, H., The Face of Paris: The Record of a Century’s Changes and Developments. London, 1933.

Cobb, R., Promenades. Oxford, 1980.

———, The Streets of Paris. London, 1980.

———, Tour de France. London, 1976.

Cole, R., A Traveller’s History of Paris. Gloucester, 1944.

Couperie, P., Paris Through the Ages. London, 1971.

Dark, S., Paris. London, 1926.

Dill, M., Paris in Time. New York, 1975.

Ehrlich, B., Paris on the Seine. London, 1962.

Evenson, N., Paris: A Century of Change, 1878–1978. New Haven, 1979.

Favier, J., Nouvelle Histoire de Paris. Paris, 1974.

Franklin, A., La Vie privée d’autrefois. Paris, 1973.

Gallienne, R. le, From a Paris Garret. London, 1943.

Harvey, P., and Heseltine, J. E. (eds.), The Oxford Companion to French Literature. Oxford, 1959.

Hillairet, J., Dictionnaire historique des rues de Paris (2 vols.). Paris, 1957–61.

Hofbauer, M. F., Paris à travers les ages: aspects successifs des monuments et cartiers historiques de Paris depuis le troisième siècle jusqu’au même jour. Paris, 1989.

Laffont, R., Paris and Its People. Paris, 1958.

Landes, A. and S., Paris Walks. Washington, D.C., 1979.

Laver, J., The Age of Illustration: Manners and Morals, 1750–1848. London, 1972.

Lavisse, E., Histoire de France jusqu’à la Révolution (9 vols.). Paris, 1901–11.

Lefrançois, P., Paris à travers des siècles. Paris, 1948.

Littlewood, I., Paris: A Literary Companion. London, 1987.

Magne, E., Images de Paris sous Louis XIV. Paris, 1948.

Maurois, A., History of France. Paris, 1949.

Michelet, J., Histoire de France (17 vols.). Paris, 1901–11.