The Zone: The Underbelly of Paris

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Map of Paris in 1889. In the early 20th century, as the city underwent rapid expansion, the decision was made to demolish the outdated fortifications that encircled the city.

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Paris, with its grand boulevards, iconic landmarks, and rich cultural heritage, captures visitors and residents alike. Yet, beneath its glamorous façade lies a lesser-known aspect of its history—the Zone. The wide boulevards that run in circles were once moats and defensive ditches surrounding the walls. Names such as Porte de Clichy or Porte Saint-Denis, now mere metro stations, recall the former gates to the French capital.

Permanent construction was prohibited within 250 metres (55 yards) of the fortifications. Outside the protective walls, a no-man’s-land emerged, inhabited by those on the fringes of society. Over time, this area became known as the Zone. This was a place where the destitute and outcasts found shelter amidst poverty and squalor. Rag pickers, beggars, and other marginalized groups eked out a living in makeshift dwellings constructed from scavenged materials. These offered little protection from the elements. Urban amenities such as street lighting or running water were missing.

ies such as street lighting or running water were missing

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The Zone was a fertile ground for crime and violence, as gangs and thugs roamed the streets with impunity. It was a lawless wasteland, with little hope for a brighter future. The city’s efforts to maintain order and protect its citizens were constantly challenged by the criminal activities originating from the Zone, making it a significant concern for the overall well-being of Paris. The Zone housed the cheapest eating places, the roughest bars, and was the working domain of prostitution dregs. (See the post The Fortification Whore below.)

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A rag picker

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Crime was not the only danger emerging from the Zone. The activity of rag pickers worried the authorities as they carried and spread various diseases. Rag pickers relied on scavenging for their livelihood, combing through the streets, alleys, and garbage dumps of Paris. They searched for discarded items that could be salvaged, repaired, or sold. They collected everything from rags and bones to metal scraps and discarded furniture, transforming what others saw as waste into commodities. Long hours spent scavenging through garbage heaps, exposure to unsanitary conditions, and the constant threat of illness were part and parcel of their existence. The child mortality rate in these parts was four times that of the healthier parts of the city.

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Sorting the scavenged material

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The Commission for Unsanitary Housing of the Department of the Seine produced a report for 1851 that uses the terms of a report from 1832. The situation does not seem to have changed in twenty years:

Most are busy sorting, during the day, the product of their nocturnal rounds, squatting around this dirty loot. They pile up in every corner, and even under their bunks, bones, old linens soiled with mire, whose fetid miasmas spread in the middle of these hideous garrets, where often a space of less than two square meters serves as shelter to a whole family.

Rag pickers had to be adept at finding solutions to challenges, whether it was repairing broken items, repurposing materials, or devising innovative ways to make ends meet. For instance, they kept records of weddings and other celebrations. After such gatherings, the ground was a source of cigarette butts and cigar stumps. The remaining tobacco was meticulously extracted and recycled. Discarded food, too, could be a source of income. The post Poor and Hungry in Paris: Gambling Eateries and Harlequin Luxury Food describes this industry.

Despite their vital role in recycling and waste management, rag pickers were viewed as social outcasts, relegated to the fringes of society. Their bags could contain stolen items, and they sometimes did. This social stigma only served to further isolate and marginalize them, making it even more challenging to escape the cycle of poverty and deprivation.

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The recycled goods on sale

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The history of the Zone offers a sobering glimpse into the darker corners of Parisian society, where poverty and exclusion were stark realities for many.

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Related posts:

Poor and Hungry in Paris: Gambling Eateries and Harlequin Luxury Food

Parisian Prostitutes (1): The Fortifications Whore

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Why Victorian Paris?

Revolutionaries ransacking the Tuileries Palace in 1848

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The recent unrest across France reminded me why this blog could not be called anything other than Victorian Paris. I remember one reader objecting to the title, asking what had Victoria to do with Paris? Well, the queen visited Paris with her husband and their oldest children, Vicky and Bertie. The family had a fantastic time and bonded quickly with Napoleon III and his wife, Eugenie. Bertie liked them so much that he begged to be adopted. Even though his wish was not granted, Paris became his lifelong playground.

Other than that, Victoria’s link to Paris is weak, indeed. But consider this: what else is on offer? Given Paris’ tumultuous 19th-century history, what could replace the Victorian period in readers’ minds? At any given time, there were various French monarchs and pretenders exiled in England. They were either taking tea with the queen, or plotting the overthrow of the current regime in France.

Here is a brief overview of Paris during Victoria’s long reign:

1837 (England) – On June 20th, Victoria, aged 18, becomes Queen of England, succeeding her uncle William IV.

1837 (France) After the brief July Revolution in 1830, Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orleans, was proclaimed King. He was the reigning monarch during Victoria’s throne ascent.

1848 (England) Princess Louise Caroline Alberta is born – Queen Victoria’s sixth child.

1848 (France) The February Revolution. After two days’ fighting, Louis Philippe flees to England, and the Second Republic is proclaimed. Crossing the Channel in the opposite direction is Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. He is the son of Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland and the nephew of the brilliant Corsican, the emperor Napoleon. After a successful electoral campaign, financed by an English courtesan, he is elected President of the French Republic.

1852 (England) The queen is pregnant with Prince Leopold George Duncan, her eighth child.

1852 (France) In December, Louis Napoleon stages a coup d’état to be elected emperor by universal suffrage. He adopts the title Napoleon III. A regime known as the Second Empire is established.

1870 (England) The queen actively mourns her husband, Prince Albert, who died of typhoid fever in 1861, aged 42.

1870 (France) The Franco-Prussian war rages. The Second Empire falls after the decisive defeat of the French army in Sedan. The emperor surrenders to the enemy. His wife, Empress Eugenie, flees to England, where she is later joined by her husband and son. The Third Republic is proclaimed. The French feel humiliated as the victorious Prussians celebrate the birth of the German Empire in Versailles, the traditional seat of French royalty. 

1871 (England) The queen still mourns her husband.

1871 (France) Paris is surrounded, shelled, and starved by the enemy army. Unlike France’s legitimate government, seated at Versailles, the city does not accept an armistice. The Commune erupts – the greatest revolution since 1789. In May, while the German army still surrounds Paris, the French government troops storm the city. This is followed by a massacre of thousands. The Commune is defeated.

1901 (England) Queen Victoria dies, aged 81.

1901 (France) The country enjoys a prosperity period known as the Belle Époque.

Paris destroyed by arson during the Commune in 1871. In the foreground is the Palace of Tuilleries

The pension reform that has been at the core of the violent protests in France has to be dealt with by other aging EU countries. Many governments fear the French scenario. They shouldn’t. There is no other nation that enjoys revolutions and stormy protests to this extent.

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Related post:

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The English Courtesan Who Made a French Emperor

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Traveler’s bonus:

You Might Be Able to Swim in Paris’ Seine River by 2024

Paris is taking the plunge to make the Seine River squeaky clean, and if you believe in mermaids like I do, they’re about to get a real upgrade in real estate! But, more importantly, residents and tourists alike will be able to splash around and romanticize their life in the City of Love by 2024. The Seine River, a cherished and well-known natural landmark of Paris, has never been known as an ideal swimming spot, but significant progress has been made to fulfill Paris’s promise of clean water for the 2024 Summer Olympics. The city’s workers have made progress in improving the water quality of the 483-mile-long river, which is a huge undertaking in itself. So, how will the river be cleaned? Paris has developed the Swimming Plan for 2024, using an underground network of pipes, tanks, and pumps to prevent bacteria from entering the river.  With over $1.53 billion from the Games, improved water quality could allow both Olympic swimmers and locals to enjoy the river, but they will have to wait until next year for safe swimming access to approximately 20 designated swimming areas along the Seine.

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Paris Expo 1900: Absolute Splendor

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Welcome to 2023, a year that starts with the war in Ukraine, worldwide skyrocketing prices, and China being hit by a sweeping wave of killer Covid pandemic. Let’s hope that the next twelve months will bring peace and at least a partial return to prosperity. In the meantime, let’s indulge in escapism. This New Year’s post proposes a trip to La Belle Époque, specifically to the turn-of-the-century Paris Expo where technology effortlessly combined with unabashed sumptuousness. Watching these moving images, we get the impression that the world of 1900 lacked nothing – that brilliance, resplendence, magnificence, pageant, and luxury were everyday words.

The video starts slowly with the traffic in Paris, so be patient. It’s worth your time.

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Related post:

A culinary world record was established at the closure of the Expo 1900 with the Banquet of Mayors. Nowadays, French taxpayers would be marching in the streets, shouting protests against such a waste of public funds. But this was Belle Époque when extravagance went unquestioned:

The Belle Epoque Catering Extravaganza

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Christmas During the Siege of Paris

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In the capital of Ukraine, where due to Russian willful destruction there is no power, this year’s Christmas celebrations will be a sad affair. The situation in Kyiv is very similar to what Paris lived under the Prussian siege during the harsh winter of 1870-71. The poignant suffering of Parisians during that period comes from the pen of Francis Sarcey, writer and journalist, who left a bitter report of that year’s festivities.

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We reached the last days of December. How sad were those days, which are ordinarily consecrated to joy! It is true that we had a pale consolation of satisfied revenge, in thinking that the Germans, detained under Paris, would not celebrate their Christmas with their families, and that the traditional Christmas tree would only see around it melancholy faces and crying eyes. But, ourselves, how different this Christmas was for us from those nights of solemn feasts which formerly broke out gaily throughout Paris in honor of this anniversary!

 

Shelling during the Siege of Paris, Francisque Sarcey (1871)

Most churches had closed their doors; through the kerosene-lit streets, plunged in semi-darkness, sounded the rare step of some belated passer-by. A small number of restaurants had remained open, either in the ordinary center of Parisian pleasures, from the Boulevard des Italiens to the Boulevard Montmartre, or in the populous quarters, at Montmartre, at Menilmontant and at Belleville. There, we had, out of dilettantism, gathered for supper around extravagant and bizarre menus. Wolf chops featured alongside roasted elephant trunk and kangaroo en capilotade, all washed down with classic champagne. We were tickling each other to make each other laugh. No one had the heart to have fun.

Menu of December 25, 1870. Cafe Voisin, 261 rue Saint-Honoré. It is featuring stuffed donkey head, leg of wolf, cat surrounded by rats, kangaroo stew, and antelope terrine

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Zoo animals were killed for food

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Meats shops sold dogs, cats, and rats

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A ration ticket

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[The daily wage of an unskilled laborer was around one franc. Women and children seldom earned above fifty cents.]

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The whole month of December was terribly hard to go through. The privations increased as the stock of our supplies diminished. All the food that accompanies bread and meat had risen to exorbitant prices, which rose every day. A pound of oil commonly cost six to seven francs! The butter, it was not necessary to speak of it; they were fancy prices, 40 or 50 francs a kilo; Gruyère was not sold; it would have cost too much; he [the merchant] gave it himself as a gift. I know a very pretty woman who, on New Year’s Day, received, instead of the usual sweets, a bag of potatoes and a piece of cheese. A piece of cheese is a royal present; potatoes were worth 25 francs a bushel; they were much more expensive for small households who bought them by the liter or by the heap. A cabbage was priced at six francs; it was sold leaf by leaf, and such, which in the past one would hardly have dared to offer to one’s rabbits, figured nobly in the horse stew.

Many had bought rabbits, which they fed on peelings, while waiting for the famine to force them to make pies. At the time when I write these lines, I have near me, in my study, two rabbit brothers, crouched in a corner of the room, and who look at me with their big frightened air. The housekeeper brought them to me, claiming that they were bored all alone in their niche, that they were cold there and did not want to eat any more. This last consideration decided me; I received them, and I try to distract them. I will be careful not to read this chapter to them, where their sentence is pronounced; they would only lose weight with grief.

Soup for the poorest was available at the city-run facilities

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The number [of provisions] grew more rare day by day. The bourgeoisie was beginning to see the end of their reserves. I had followed with curious interest the progress of this exhaustion. I belonged to a small society where people met to play either whist or hot water bottle. The betting rate and the way of pushing the game did not change significantly in the first month; from the second, the card fell by half, then by three quarters, and finally towards the end of the last days of the blockade, it was agreed that no more money would be played.

We were all dry, and had barely enough to look forward to better days. What about those who had no reserves? It was the vast majority of Parisians, it must be admitted. No, I cannot tell our brothers in the provinces too often with what indomitable courage, with what touching resignation, with what invincible feeling of patriotism this whole population endured the rigors of this long misery. The women especially were admirable.

I don’t pity men too much; most had their thirty sous a day, which many of them drank shamelessly. But women! Poor women! In those abominable December colds, they lined up all day, at the baker’s, at the butcher’s, at the grocer’s, at the lumber merchant’s, at the town hall. None murmured; never have I heard from a single one of those mouths, accustomed to harsh words, an impious word against France.

Balloons provided the only contact with the outside world

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And on the morning of the first of January! No, I will never forget that first morning of the year 1871; when the maid brought me lunch on a small table, and on this feast day, when the whole family is usually gathered together and is joyfully overwhelmed with wishes and kisses, I saw myself all alone, by the fireside, opposite a piece of horse, which was smoking on the plate. I felt my whole being fail and burst into tears! Ah! These tears that others have shed in this cruel hour! Consider that all, or almost all of us, had sent our mothers, our wives and our children away, and that for three months we had lived without news of any kind! It was easy, in ordinary times, not to be bewildered by this solitude; business, conversations, guards to be mounted, the accustomed course of life, and then also this carefree philosophy, which is the foundation of our national character, everything contributed to warding off the memory of these cherished images; noises from outside distracted us from their thoughts.

The solemnity of that day brought them all back to us, and as they looked at us, with sad eyes, and stretching out their arms to us, they seemed to be saying to us: “Call us back! Won’t this cursed war soon be over?”… No, I can’t think of all this without my heart rising with rage. Miserables! Sons of the Huns! Barbarians! You have taken everything from us. We are ruined by you, starved by you, and presently we are going to be bombarded by you, and we certainly have the right to hate you with a cordial hatred.

How very true and very painful would these words sound to millions of Ukrainians whose families have been split apart by the war. Let’s hope the Christmas of 2023 will find them all together again. Slava Ukraine!

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Related post:

How Germany was Born in France

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Père Lachaise: The Solemn and the Bizarre in the City of Death

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Paris’ celebrated Père Lachaise cemetery is the resting place of many world-famous and infamous as well as an outdoor art gallery. This oasis of tranquility and greenery sees one million visitors a year.

The hill, on which the cemetery is established, originally served as a site for the rest and convalescence of Jesuit priests. It was named after the confessor of King Louis XIV, Père de la Chaise.

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History

The Holy Innocents Cemetery

The centrally situated Holy Innocents’ Cemetery, where Parisians buried their dead, was used from the Middle Ages until the late 18th century. It was closed in 1785 when Parisians could no longer bear the repugnant stench emanating from the graves. Serious overcrowding pushed up the price of burial space, and bodies were packed so closely together that many graves collapsed through the cellar walls of surrounding houses. Over the course of six months, day and night, 4,183 bone transports were organized. The transfers were accompanied by a full religious ceremony, complete with chanting Catholic priests. The remains of over six million Parisians were laid to rest in the city’s elaborate catacomb system.

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The bones from the Cemetery of Innocents were stored underground. The Catacombes, where you can see them, are part of the regular tourist itinerary

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The 1789 revolution disrupted the project of new burial places, which was later carried on under the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte, who created the Père Lachaise cemetery in 1804. The idea of a long trek to the city outskirts was not well received as Parisians were used to paying homage to their loved ones in the city center.

The Père Lachaise cemetery had a slow beginning

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To boost interest, the authorities created a brilliant marketing scheme. The remains of prominent dead celebrities were dug up, and reburied in Père Lachaise, starting with the bones of the 12^th century iconic lovers, Héloise and Abélard, followed by other serious celebrities such as the playwright Molière, and writer Jean de La Fontaine. People started buying up plots as it became the height of fashion to spend the eternity amidst the crème de la crème of Parisian society. Today the cemetery is one of the most exclusive places to be buried. To qualify, you must have been born in Paris, lived in Paris, died in Paris, or have an existing family plot.

Some one million people are buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery. It is the largest green space in Paris with over four thousand trees and is home to the most varied species of birds in the city.

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The Crematorium

Père Lachaise houses a neo-byzantine style crematorium, the first in France. The first cremation in 1889 was quite controversial. While the Protestant faith allowed cremation as of 1888, the Catholic Church did not support the concept until 1966.

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Funeral Sculpture

The cemetery is an open-air museum of funeral sculpture best represented by Albert Bartholomé’s stunning Monument for the Dead inaugurated in 1899.

 

 

The Monument for the Dead (Monument aux Morts)

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Along with the solemn, the pious, and the serious, there are original and sometimes bizarre creations celebrating the dead.

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One who doesn’t seem to like his final resting place, it’s Georges Rodenbach, a 19th-century Belgian novelist. We see him extracting himself from his grave.

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Another unusual grave belongs to journalist Victor Noir assassinated in 1870. The sculptor froze him in time as he fell in the street after the shooting. The sculpture brought him post-mortem glory as Père Lachaise’s fetish of fertility.

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Visitors bring tributes to the dead. They leave potatoes on the tomb of Antoine-Augustin Parmentier (1737-1813), an agronomist, best remembered for promoting  the potato as a food source for humans

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The Communard’s Wall (Mur des Fédérés)

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The Père Lachaise cemetery was not always a haven of peace. During the Commune of Paris, the place saw hand-to-hand combat among the graves, where the Communards took their last stand. At the end of the “Bloody Week”, on May 28, 1871, one hundred and forty-seven Communards were taken prisoner and were shot against the east wall of the cemetery. Their bodies, and thousands more taken from the streets of Paris, were buried in a mass grave. Every May 28, for 150 years, a ceremony takes place by the wall as workers endeavor to remember the tragic event.

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A ceremony by the Communard’s Wall marking the 150-year anniversary of the Paris Commune in 2021

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Related posts:

The Dead of Paris

The Bloodbath of the Paris Commune

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Victorian Paris in Motion: Time Travel Extraordinary

Thanks to Denis Shiryaev and his video-enhancing work, we can visit Paris in the last decade of the 1800s and feel like we’re traveling in time. With their heightened authenticity, Shiryaev’s videos bring us a world we know only from low-quality footage. It was always difficult to identify with the ghostlike images of that era but with sound and color, the ghosts revive, as in this video.

Since the video does not provide guidance here is a brief description with links to Victorian Paris posts:

0:00 The Parvis of Notre Dame

1:09 Paris-Expo 1900

1:49 The Bois de Boulogne Parade (see Bois de Boulogne: The Rendezvous of Wealth and Opulence )

2:44 Place de la Concorde

3:34 Firefighters to the rescue

4:07 Fountain in the Tuilleries Garden (see Géo: The Painter of French Childhood)

4:58 Back to the Expo 1900: A moving sidewalk

5:37 The Eiffel Tower (see The Eiffel Tower Story)

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Les Halles: The Belly of Paris

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Les Halles were the commercial heart of Paris, a place of exchange and supply to the abundant life that had developed over the centuries. An entire chapter in Paris history was closed in 1971 with the destruction of this central market. Author Emile Zola closely described this anthill of human activity in his 1873 realistic novel Le Ventre de Paris (The Belly of Paris). It is a must read for researchers of this period, as are all Zola’s novels. (All twenty of them in one e-volume are available on Amazon for the ridiculous price of US 2.99).

A close look at the famous marketplace before it disappeared forever is provided by the 1950s documentary Twelve Hours in Halles posted below. No English translation is available, so here is what we see:

At midnight, when the Halles open, the first delivery trucks arrive. The merchandise is displayed, awaiting auctions. Around 4:00 AM, the Paris elite drops in for the famous onion soup, to rub shoulders with the market workers after having drunk champagne at some glitterati party. At 9:00 AM the market opens for shoppers. Old people from the neighborhood rummage through the organic garbage to gather ingredients for their soup. At noon, following a feverish trading, the market closes for cleaning, to be reopened again at midnight.  In the twelve hours of the never-changing routine, thirty thousand tonnes of merchandise have changed hands. Let the pictures talk and enjoy the forever-gone local color:

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Since the first video is no longer available, here is a replacement:

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The History

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The marketplace supplied Paris for 800 years before it closed down. In medieval times, it housed a pillory. Convicts, mostly crooked traders using false weights, pimps, and blasphemers, were exposed there, and passers-by could throw all kinds of garbage at them. The executioner had his accommodation on the ground floor.

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Les Halles at the beginning of the 1800s

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Around 1850, the cramped conditions and lack of hygiene forced the city council to vote for a reconstruction. At the same time, Napoleon’s ambitious nephew, Louis-Napoleon, seized power and crowned himself an emperor. With Napoleon III came the forceful “hausmanization” of Paris described in this post.The emperor had a look at the building plans and halted the project of heavy stone pavilions. Inspired by the Crystal Palace in London, and enthusiastic about the recently built spacious Gare de l’Est, he said to Prefect Haussmann: “I need large umbrellas, nothing more!”

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Architect Victor Baltard’s light-weight pavilions won the emperor’s approval. The construction started in 1854, and took 15 years to complete. The market covered an area of 135 thousand square feet

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The airy cast iron and glass interior

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Each pavilion had its specialty: number 3 for meat, number 9 for fish, and so on. Fruits and vegetables were also sold in the covered alleys and on the surrounding streets. The volume of the merchandise was enormous. As an example, each day, the butter, egg, and cheese pavilion took in a delivery of one hundred wagonloads of eggs, each wagon carrying seventy crates. Each of these cases contained 1,440 eggs.

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Inspecting eggs with the help of candlelight in the Dairy Pavillion cellar. The City of Paris employed one hundred egg inspectors to guarantee freshness. They were sworn in and placed directly under the supervision of the Prefecture de Police. 

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A postcard shows the feverish morning activity at Les Halles

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Someone had to move all this merchandise, and not just anyone. The task was performed by the Forts. These strongmen were easily identifiable thanks to their large hat, the coltin, with a built-in lead disc helping to support heavy loads carried on the head. The Forts formed a famous brotherhood, created under the reign of Louis IX during the 13th century.

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Two Forts wearing their coltin hats 

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The organization was hierarchical. The chiefs were recognized by their silver medal, while the simple Forts wore a copper one. Their motto was Strength and Honor. Not everyone could become a Fort. The hiring conditions were strict and the applicant had to fulfill all five of them:

• To be of French nationality
• To have done military service
• To have a clean criminal record
• To measure at least 1.67 meters (5,5″)
• To be able to carry a load of 200 kg (circa 450 pounds) over a distance of 60 meters (65 yards)

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The Forts at work

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With the constantly growing population, Paris suffered circulation problems. Around 1960, it became clear that the current food distribution had to be changed to ease the cramped conditions. It no longer made sense to bring all the food into the city to be redistributed afterwards. The decision to transfer the market to two suburban locations, Rungis and La Vilette, became official in 1962.

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This photo by Pierre Doisneau, taken after the destruction of Les Halles, fits the mood of the place at the end of an era in the city’s history

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Related posts:

Camel Steak, Anyone? Shopping for Food in Paris

Extreme Food Recycling Caution: Not for weak stomachs!

Paris Markets in Victor Gilbert’s Paintings

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Old Paris in Color Photographs

In 1909, a French banker Albert Khan sent several photographers around the world to take polychrome images on all continents. The project was called The Archives of the Planet. These twenty pictures of Paris are a part of that project. They were taken in 1914 at the beginning of the WW1.

17 more pictures…

More about Paris history:

The Guide to Gay Paree 1869 – Part 7: Sightseeing

Parisians at Home and the Secrets d’Alcôve

 

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1890s Terror in Paris: History Repeating Itself

As terror stalks the streets of Paris these days, one is forced to remember the 1890s when the situation was similar; when men and women infected with extreme ideas and with no regard for human life carried out deadly attacks on innocent people. While the Islamists work for the ideal of the Caliphate—a worldwide state where everyone will be either Muslim or dead—the anarchists advocate a government-free, self-managed society. 

 

Related posts:

The Policeman’s Work Is Never Done

The Gangs of Paris

Saint-Lazare: Women in prison 

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Jacques Takes a Bath

 

Taking a bath was considered a dangerous undertaking in the not so distant past. It was generally believed that, subjected to a prolonged contact with water, body organs would liquefy and therefore a proper rest was needed to restore them to their normal consistency. We all know the good Queen Bess would bathe once a month “whether she needed it or not”. Her contemporary, the French king Henri IV, having summoned his Minister of Finance, and upon learning that the man had just taken a bath, exclaimed: “Then I must go to him for he must not leave his bed!”

Only at the beginning of the 19^th century did the idea of taking a regular bath as a part of personal hygiene begin to take shape. It made a slow progress in the upper classes, but the common people remained blissfully dirty.  The appearance in the mid-century of moneyed American tourists and their constant complaints about the lack of hygienic facilities accelerated the pace.

Irvin S. Cobb (1876-1944), the American author, humorist and columnist, was one of the loud critics of European shortcomings in the matter. Having found the British bathroom arrangements lacking in comfort, he endeavored to compare the situation on the Continent. It must be said that none of the countries he visited met with his American standards, but his lashing tongue was especially sharp when describing the French approach to cleanliness:

I can offer no visual proof to back my word, but by other testimony I venture the assertion that when a boulevardier feels the need of a bath he hangs a musk bag round his neck and then, as the saying is, the warmer the sweeter. His companion of the gentle sex apparently has the same idea of performing daily ablutions that a tabby cat has. You recall the tabby-cat system, do you not? Two swipes over the brow with the moistened paw, one forward swipe over each ear, a kind of circular rubbing effect across the face – and call it a day! Drowning must be the most frightful death that a Parisian sidewalk favorite can die. It is not so much the death itself – it is the attendant circumstances.

Across the river, in the older quarters of Paris, there is excitement when anybody on the block takes a bath – not so much excitement as for fire, perhaps, but more than for a funeral. On the eve of the fatal day the news spreads through the district that tomorrow poor Jacques is going to have a bath! A further reprieve has been denied him. He cannot put it off for another month, or even another two weeks. His doom is nigh at hand; there is no hope – none!

On the morrow the condemned man rises early and sees his spiritual adviser. He eats a hearty breakfast, takes an affectionate leave of his family and says he is prepared for the worst. At the appointed hour the tumbrel enters the street, driven by the paid executioner and bearing the dread instrument of punishment, a large oblong tin tub.

The rumble of the heavy wheels over the cobbles seems to wake an agonized chord in every bosom. Today this dread visitation descends upon Jacques, but who can tell—so the neighbors say to themselves—when the same fate may strike some other household now happily unconscious! All along the narrow way sorrow-drooped heads protrude in rows; from every casement dangle whiskers, lank and stringy in sympathy – for in this section every true Frenchman has whiskers, and if by chance he has not his wife has; so that there are whiskers for all.

From the window of the doomed wretch’s apartments a derrick protrudes – a cross arm with a pulley and a rope attached. It bears a grimly significant resemblance to the gallows tree. Under the direction of the presiding functionary the tub is made fast to the tackle and hoisted upwards as pianos and safes are hoisted in American cities. It halts at the open casement. It vanishes within. The whole place resounds with low murmurs of horror and commiseration.

Ah, the poor Jacques – how he must suffer! Hark to that low, sickening thud! ‘Tis the accursed soap dropping from his nerveless grasp. Hist to that sound – like unto a death rattle! It is the water gurgling in the tub. And what means that low, poignant smothered gasp? It is the last convulsive cry of Jacques descending into the depths. All is over! Let us pray!

The tub, emptied but stained, is lowered to the waiting cart. The executioner kisses the citizen who has held his horse for him during his absence and departs; the whole district still hums with ill-supressed excitement. Questions fly from tongue to tongue. Was the victim brave at the last? Was he resigned when the dread moment came? And how is the family bearing up? It is hours before the place settles down again to that calm which will endure for another month, until somebody else takes a bath on a physician’s prescription.

Even in the sanctity of a Paris hotel a bath is more or less a public function unless you lock your door. All sorts of domestic servitors drift in, filled with morbid curiosity to see how a foreigner deports himself when engaged in this strange, barbaric rite. On the occasion of my first bath on French soil, after several of the hired help had thus called on me informally, causing me to cower low in my porcelain retreat, I took advantage of a comparative quiet to rise drippingly and draw the latch. I judged the proprietor would be along next, and I was not dressed for him.

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