Which woman would not wish to be highly desirable? Anyone able to make that dream reality would be well-rewarded. Giovanni Boldini, with his magic brush, made a lucrative career out of injecting voluptuousness into his sitters’ portraits. Everything in his paintings exuded sensuality: not only the woman herself but also her outfit. Jewels gleamed against bare flesh, satins glistened while embracing curves, slick silks slithered, exposing a shoulder, fluffy furs invited a caress.
The Italian painter Giovanni Boldini (born in 1842) settled in Paris in 1872. He died there, a very wealthy man, in 1931
Boldini’s racy paintings touched the extreme limit of convention. His work was the talk of high society dinners. In the last years of the Belle Époque, at the height of his fame, the demand was so high that he chose his sitters. To have a portrait painted by Boldini was a defining sign of eligibility. It was known that the artist did not deign to honor a portrait commission below one million francs – except for a privileged relationship with the model. (For comparison, the wage of a maid was one franc a day.)
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As the Belle Époque sped toward the end of the century, the hefty beauties of the Second Empire gave way to slim, ethereal beings. Not every fashionable woman was able to fit that image. It took the clever brush of a painter to stretch bodies lengthwise and refine features. Boldini was the master of flattery.
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From chubby to lascivious: Alice Regnault, a popular actress, became a red hot item thanks to Boldini’s art
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Madame Wertheimer (1902): One of the daring décolletage portraits that made Boldini’s fortune
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Before Boldini’s time, a high-ranking courtesan’s ambition—when she had a portrait painted—was to look like a grande dame. Now fashionable titled women wanted to look like courtesans. Below are the portraits of two women, coincidentally both named Marthe, who were vastly apart on the social scale. One is a wealthy prostitute, the other a Romanian princess. Which is which?
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Princess Marthe Bibesco and Marthe de(*) Florian
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Boldini’s portrait of Marthe de Florian was recently discovered in her Parisian apartment that had been locked away for seventy years. The story was published in an earlier post here: How the Courtesans Lived – A Time Capsule
(*) Celebrated courtesans often appended the aristocratic particle de to their chosen names.
Eugène Delacroix: Liberty Leading the People, 1830
During the Industrial Revolution, many children and adolescents worked in the suburbs of Paris. When out of work, they evolved in bands. Ragged and hungry, they roamed in the streets of the capital. The titis or gamins of Paris laughed at everything, didn’t hesitate to steal, and were adepts at vulgarity.
The Parisian titi is embodied in the guise of Gavroche, a street child full of banter, mischief, and resourcefulness in Les Miserables. Victor Hugo moreover fondly calls him “this little great soul” when he collapses under bullets, during the barricades of 1830. The child brandishing pistols in Eugène Delacroix’s painting Liberty Leading the People (1830) is often cited as the main source of inspiration for Victor Hugo’s Gavroche.
Today, this heroic figure has been reduced to a kitschy character to charm tourists. Titi’s postcards can be purchased in every souvenir shop. Like all the Parisian fauna, the titi/gamin has been immortalized on film and in songs. Here is the most popular one along with other versions of the tacky art:
When one lives in Paris, nothing is as difficult as staying at home. The city contains so many enticing spectacles, free or paid entertainment, that the temptation often becomes the strongest and that one abandons one’s home, attracted as we are by the charm of the street. We do not know what we are going to see, but we are sure we will see something, and that something will be new. Curiosity is so strong in Paris that the trees themselves undergo it and set themselves in motion.”
ACROSS PARIS by Crafty
So said Crafty, whose real name was Victor Eugène Géruzez (1840 – 1906). This graphic artist, painter, draftsman, and author of literature for youth, authored several picture albums depicting life in Paris in his humorous style. Let’s see how trees moved in Paris (and still do) as well as other spectacles, most of them completely free.
The French have a tendency to elevate the ordinary, to find beauty where there is none, to make insignificance matter. Nothing is too low to deserve contempt. While everybody agrees that every cloud has a silver lining, the French focus on the silver lining, ignoring the rainy side of the matter. That’s part of their savoir vivre.
To start with, open a menu in a French restaurant. Nowhere in the world does food sound so extraordinary. Even a simple dish of peas topped with butter bears the fancy name of Petits Pois Bonne Femme. Naturally, you eat a dish thus named with a proper reverence. And that’s how things should be done, n’est-ce pas? Similarly, a wart becomes a grain de beauté. If you have one, doesn’t it make you feel better? It does, doesn’t it?
This attitude extends to the homeless. There is a certain nobility in a bum who sleeps under the bridge, with an empty bottle at his side, as long as the bridge is in Paris and the empty bottle had held Beaujolais. The Parisian homeless is not a lowly bum. He is called a clochard and he deserves a song, a story, a painting, or even an entire movie. He is as much part of the Parisian folklore as all the midinettes, gigolettes, and grisettes of the previous posts.
Let’s first look at the silver lining before we address the reality. It is true that the clochards, like all the vagrants elsewhere in the world, enjoy a privileged life. They are their own bosses, they have no hours because time is their own, and they are free of mortgage and of monthly bills. Why not celebrate this extraordinary freedom with a popular waltz?
Below are the chorus lyrics to the video that begins this post. Do start the video now.
Sous les ponts de Paris Lorsque descend la nuit, Tout’s sort’s de gueux se faufilent en cachette Et sont heureux d’trouver une couchette Hôtel du courant d’air, Où l’on ne paye pas cher, L’parfum et l’eau c’est pour rien, mon marquis Sous les ponts de Paris.
Translation:
Under the bridges of Paris / When the night begins / All sorts of ragamuffins sneak in / Happy to find a berth
It’s the hotel of cold drafts / Where we don’t pay much / The perfume and water are for free, my marquis / Under the bridges of Paris
Now that we waltzed to the romantic lyrics, we can send a postcard of two vagrants (cheminaux) enjoying a lazy day next to someone’s working tools. Being a bum was not that bad when the warm weather lasted.
Let’s get real. This picture shows a cave, where the homeless gathered for a night in inclement weather. Nothing romantic can be found here. In some shelters of this type, the bums sat secured by a rope that prevented them from falling during sleep.
The poor gather around a heat source during winter
Modern times brought better shelter for the homeless but the problem of people without a fixed address in Paris streets grows instead of going away. Gone is the happy clochard content with a bottle of wine. The city is a target for a new type of homeless: those who come from former colonies after having taken a perilous clandestine journey over the Mediterranean Sea. They come to partake of Europe’s riches and as their dreams fade, they become increasingly angry.
In the earlier posts about the Parisian fauna, we met the grisettesand the gigolettes. The former were independent working-class girls often romantically involved with students. The latter, the equivalent of gangsters’ molls, were mostly full-time prostitutes. Generally speaking, the grisettes centered in the Latin Quarter on the Left Bank, which housed the Sorbonne, the Polytechnic School, and other important educational institutions, while the gigolettes inhabited the working-class neighborhoods on the city periphery.
The Right Bank, around the rue de la Paix, saw a rapidly-growing number of couture houses and luxury accessories workshops employing young and fashion-conscious female workers. At noon -midi – these girls hurried out to take a light meal – dinette – in a cheap restaurant or simply on a public garden bench. The age of the midinette extends from around 1850 to the 1960s, when the haute-couture business began to fade.
The Milliner on the Champs-Elysées by Jean Béraud
Both the grisette and the midinette were steady figures in the romantic imagery of Paris. They acted as the muses for writers and painters. Poems, songs, novels, and later movies, paid homage to them. The tragic Mimi, from the opera La Bohême, immediately comes to mind.
The midinette is painted as she trots the streets delivering a dress or a new hat. She is immortalized dancing in public balls or enjoying a Sunday picnic. Little is said about a 12-hour day and insufficient wages. The girl, who wants to be fashionable, may resort to prostitution to pay for her finery.
The temptation is ever-present. At noon, the predators are waiting. Old men in the pursuit of youth gather at the entrance of the couture houses, offering the treat of a luxury lunch; men with specific intentions roam the public gardens, where the girls rest.
“With no regard for your white hair, you run after the midinettes. Merry Spring finds Winter scary – don’t bother the young girls,” says this postcard
Paris honored her working girls. The washerwomen became queens for a day. As for the midinettes, they participated in a grueling competition known as The Race of the Midinettes.
The course started on the Place de la Concorde and led up the Champs Elysées, and past the Arc de Triomphe, to end after 12 kilometers (approx. 8 miles) in Nanterre. A newspaper describes the event in 1903:
All these young ladies, competing first, in the most varied costumes, some, not all, very successful: then the crowd of relatives, friends, and finally innumerable, thick, the troop of the curious. The departure was laborious. At last, at half – past eleven, a real army sprang from the Place de la Concorde towards the Arc de Triomphe; cars, cabs, bicycles, motorcycles, struggled in the midst of all this and, although preceded by Paris guards on horseback, the Midinettes sometimes had to play fists to make their way. The first arrival was Miss Jeanne Cheminel, a pleasant twenty-four-year-old brunette who shot her 12 kilometers in 1:10, which is meritorious. This sturdy walker is a milliner, and that somewhat upset a few seamstresses, who, behind her, nevertheless obtained the best places. Here, in fact, were the first: Jeanne Cheminel, milliner; Lucie Fleury, seamstress; Marie Touvard, seamstress; Louise Balesta, seamstress; Alice Brard, seamstress; Mathide Mignot, seamstress; Kugel, seamstress; Marguerite Pradel, seamstress; Jeanne Brederie, seamstress.
A competitor in the race offered a pleasant sight: a chic naval hat sitting on freshly curled hair, a dress with a lace collar, the waist squeezed with a corset. A bouquet of fresh flowers pinned at the shoulder completed the outfit
The end of the race shows considerable damage to the appearance. Sport was in its infancy and so was the fashion for the competitors. See how men dressed in Sporting Events and Men’s Fashion
The postcard became a widely popular item during the Universal Exhibition of 1889 when a card representing the Eiffel Tower was sold at 300,000 copies.
A postcard shop near the Louvre
The first postcard made its official appearance in 1869 Austria. The French adopted the idea as an emergency measure one year later, during the Siege of Paris, when mail was sent and received via air balloons and the weight of the envelopes became an issue. In 1872, a law validated the use of the postcard as a permissible means of postal communication. This was not yet the case in some other countries and the French cards contained a warning.
Until 1875, the postcard remained a monopoly of the postal administration. After this date, national or private cards were published with a free side which could contain pictures.
While artistic pictures of Paris monuments and impressive boulevards were among the bestsellers, others were bought and sent: the pictures of Paris without makeup. The one below, titled Rue Mouffetard on a Sunday Morning offers the sight of working-class Parisians enjoying the fresh air that had been denied to them during the weekdays. Sunday in Paris was not, as the Anglo-Saxons tourists expected, spent in church and prayers. The people of Paris were out for fun.
These are not elegant Parisians taking air in open carriages on the Champs Elyseés as you would expect on a postcard from Paris
Someone had found this picture of a lounging middle-class couple of enough interest to purchase it and stick a stamp on it
Curios sold too: At 55-inch width, this was the smallest house in Paris
Shops with character were liked as well
A rag lady was mailed by someone interested in the small entrepreneurs of Paris
But it was no surprise to anyone that seductive ladies figured on lescartes postales de Paris
Even the top courtesans of the Belle Epoque found themselves in the mailbag. Here is the dancer Otéro whose breasts inspired the cupolas of the famous Hotel Negresco in Nice
The postman himself had his purchasers. It seems that everything, even the most ordinary, was of interest to our ancestors
With nearly 600,000 visitors every year, Moulin Rouge is in the top ten must-see items on the Paris tourist’s list. Located at the bottom of a hill in the Montmartre neighborhood—then a semi-rural setting favored by artists—Moulin Rouge opened its doors in 1889 to offer champagne-filled parties at which remarkable dancers and singers performed. Very soon, the establishment became world-famous for a scandalous dance called the can-can. No one has described the can-can in better words than Mark Twain here.
With enough champagne bottles emptied, spectators found themselves willing participants on the dance floor that was installed so they could admire the performers up close. The great painter, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, immortalized these scenes of night-time delirium in some of his most famous works. It is mainly thanks to Toulouse-Lautrec’s posters, that the two most colorful Moulin Rouge dancers remain in our consciousness.
Moulin Rouge’s top star La Goulue with the silhouette of her dance partner Valentin the Boneless
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No less popular is this Toulouse-Lautrec’s poster featuring Jane Avril
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The two women had only one thing in common: they both excelled on the dance floor. La Goulue, low-born and vulgar, was the prototype of the working-class girl found in the dancing halls. Louise Weber—her real name— was born in 1868 and passed to posterity as La Goulue for her greedy behavior: she liked to empty guests’ glasses within her reach. The other dancers did not fare any better in terms of nom d’artiste. There was the Cheese Kid, the Sewer Grid, or Nini the Paws-in-the-Air. This joyful band was not impressed with royalty. “Hey, Wales,” La Goulue harangued the heir to the British throne, “the champagne is in your name so is it you who pays or is your Mama [Queen Victoria] treating us?”
La Goulue’s sensual, provocative body corresponded to the taste of the time that appreciated generous femininity.
La Goulue entering the Moulin-Rouge. 1892. Lautrec painted her with a smirk on her face that is difficult to interpret: is it the arrogance of a diva or simple tiredness?
Toulouse-Lautrec remained La Goulue’s friend well after her triumphs. In this picture, they sit side by side with La Môme Fromage (the Cheese Kid) opposite
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Soon, La Goulue ceased to please and turned to her painter-friend for help. Now self-employed, she would sell her renown in the fairgrounds. To recall her prestigious past, Lautrec painted two large panels exposed on the front of her fairground hut. A few years later, when in debt, she had to sell these panels and they were cut into smaller canvasses by a greedy merchant. In 1929, they were bought and restored by the Louvre and they can now be seen at the Musée d’Orsay.
La Goulue’s fairground hut with panels painted by Toulouse-Lautrec
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The next adventure began in 1900 when La Goulue married. With her husband, a magician by trade, she learned to tame wild beasts. Unfortunately, he was assaulted during a show.
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By that time, La Gouloue’s life was on a sharp downward slide. Her husband was shot in 1914, the victim of a German bullet in WW1. Her son, who she claimed was fathered by a prince, died at 27.
La Goulue with her son Simon
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She lived miserably in a caravan, caring for ailing circus animals, and she returned to the Moulin Rouge for financial support. She was allowed to sell peanuts and cigarettes on the sidewalk. Now and then, she’d get drunk and shout: “I’m La Goulue! Can’t you see it? I was the greatest star here!”
The newspapers announced La Goulue’s death in 1929.
Jane Avril by Edgar Chahine
Jane Avril, charcoal sketch by Picasso
Born near Paris, but seemingly coming from another planet, was Jane Avril, the other celebrated Moulin Rouge star. Strange and mysterious, she did not need the raw sensuality of La Goulue to seduce her audience. She’d come and go as she pleased –no salaried employment for her—and simply danced with every nerve in her body. Except for that, she had nothing in common with the other dancers who did not understand her and did not like her. For them, she was Mad Jane. But Mad Jane did not care. She found her friends and lovers in intellectual circles. She could marry if she wanted to for there were willing takers, but she loved her freedom.
Toulouse-Lautrec: Jane Avril Leaving the Moulin Rouge, a lonely, mysterious figure
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Her story of an enfant-martyre explains a lot. Born Jeanne Beaudon, in 1868, to a Second Empire courtesan, and fathered by an Italian aristocrat, to whom she was an embarrassment, she was first brought up by her maternal grandparents. Her life took a turn for the worse when her sadistic mother decided that Jane should live with her in Paris. She was nine when she entered hell. Nowadays, Jane’s mother would be identified as a dangerous psychopath, but the science in Jane’s childhood had not yet reached that stage. Nor did the social services function as they do today. The children, then, were the property of their parents. Several people knew that Jane was beaten at least twice a day for invented offenses, but no one reported the abuse to the police. It was just not done. The constant stress had to show somewhere and Jane developed a chorea minor, then referred to as Saint Vitus Dance. It is a nervous disorder characterized by rapid, involuntary jerking movements. At fourteen, she ran away from home. At the end of this adventure, she found herself in a insane asylum and happy as a lark. One can fully appreciate the degree of her suffering when a child finds the madhouse a step above her home.
In her biography, Jane relates that during a musical entertainment at the hospital, she suddenly got up and began to dance. In front of her audience’s eyes, she changed from a timid, shivering nonentity into a graceful nymph. Her condition improved and, soon, she was released to her mother’s care. She ran away—for good— at sixteen to live with a student. She gave all of herself to this first love, only to find herself betrayed. This was too heavy a load for her fragile constitution. Immediately after the discovery of her lover’s infidelity, she ran toward the Seine to jump from a bridge. A prostitute talked her out of the idea. Jane spent that night in a brothel. The next day, the prostitutes went to a public ball, taking their new protégé with them.
The public ball was Jane’s second awakening. From then on, her life became divided into two: a day job to keep her from hunger and a night life to keep away her demons. Her talent led to prestigious theatrical engagements when an exceptional dance number was needed and, for a time, she was the ambassador of French can-can in London and in Madrid. Her poise, grace, and intelligence made her a welcome guest at dinner parties. A friend of novelists, dramatists, artists, philosophers, and scientists, she also captured the heart of Toulouse-Lautrec who saw in her a sister soul. He, too, had an unusual childhood. He too was a victim of physical suffering. They remained friends until the painter’s premature death.
Such was Jane Avril’s status in the world of entertainment that her presence in the audience recommended any show (poster by Toulouse-Lautrec)
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In her forties, Jane finally settled down to sixteen years of quiet married life. She died in 1943 at the age of seventy-five.
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Spending time in a café “en famille” was not a sin in France. Elsewhere, women seen in cafés risked their reputation
I would have a hard time trying to find the exact source of this anonymous text, but the writing style points to the early Victorian times. No doubt, the author was one of the American tourists appreciating France’s unabashed joie-de-vivre and the lack of remorse for having good time – a remorse which was so ingrained in the Anglo-Saxon soul.
An American is made for indoors, but a Frenchman’s home is the outside half of his house. It is for the street he sacrifices domestic comfort. He eats and drinks in the street; he reads his newspaper and takes his dram in the street. To appear like ladies or gentlemen in public one day in the week, either sex will economize their personal wants the remaining six to a condition bordering almost on penury, to save sufficient money to hire, if they cannot purchase, the necessary garments. More can be made of a small capital in Paris than in any other city. There is no occasion to buy anything. Whatever is needed of clothing, domestic utensils, or any article whatever, even to a newspaper, can be hired at moderate rates for any period of time.
One of the most striking contrasts between the French and Americans is in their physical appearance. Both sexes of the former look healthy and robust. Their countenances are full and florid, and have an expression of sensual ease and contentment, as if they were on good terms with themselves and the world. They have none of the care-worn, haggard American physiognomy, which gives youth the air of age, and betokens a race in which labor and thought are paramount to all other considerations. On the contrary, the French when old, look young. The pleasures of this life oil the joints of age, so that time slips smoothly by. If any class belie their years it is the children, to whom overdress and physical restraint give an expression of premature gravity or unnatural heaviness. No doubt the outdoor, and “care not for to-morrow,” life of the French, combined with their passion for amusements, has much to do in their fine state of preservation. Something must be put down to their superior toilets. For the English, with perhaps a higher condition of health, look beside them, to use a comprehensive term in the female vocabulary, like frights, or in other words, there is about as much difference of exterior between the two races as between a buffalo and a blood horse. This applies more particularly to the women. I verily believe an English lady to be incorrigible in matters of taste; or else it has become a point of honor with her to make herself as unattractive as possible. If both nations would divide equally their respective pride and vanity, the result would be a decided improvement in each. Add to this composition the go-ahead principle of brother Jonathan, and the world would have a specimen of a race that would soon distance all national competition in the essential points of order, beauty, and energy.
For a man whose passions are his slaves, whose sentiments are obedient to his will, whose emotions are made so many sources of epicurean pleasure, who lives only to extract the greatest amount of happiness from the sensual world, regardless of a spiritual life, Paris affords resources which are not to be found elsewhere. It is emphatically the home of the man of the world. All that the head can covet is at his option ; but if he has the faintest suspicion of possessing a heart in which dwells the love of the true and natural, he had better withdraw it from the vortex of Parisian life, before it is sucked in too deep to escape.
Encounter of the Apaches with the police on the Place de la Bastille
Tourist traps were not invented yesterday. The Parisians have got the hang of it very early on. One of the tourist attractions in the past was the glimpse of the redoubtable Apaches, the vicious gangs that terrorized Paris. (More about them in The Gangs of Paris.) Like other tourists, the American author and humorist Irvin S. Cobb followed this fashion of playing with the fire. We first came in contact with his caustic humor in Jacques Takes a Bath where he questions the local hygiene. In the following text, Cobb explores the Paris underground hoping for an adrenaline high in mingling with the Apaches:
Knowing from experience that every other American who lands in Paris will crave to observe the Apache while the Apache is in the act of Apaching round, the canny Parisians have provided a line of up-to-date Apache dens within easy walking distance of Montmartre; and hither the guides lead the round-eyed tourist and there introduce him to well-drilled, carefully made-up Apaches and Apachesses engaged in their customary sports and pastimes for as long as he is willing to pay out money for the privilege.
Being forewarned of this I naturally desired to see the genuine article. I took steps to achieve that end. Suitably chaperoned by a trio of transplanted Americans who knew a good bit about the Paris underworld I rode over miles of bumpy cobblestones until, about four o’clock in the morning, our taxicab turned into a dim back street opening off one of the big public markets and drew up in front of a grimy establishment rejoicing in the happy and well-chosen name of the Cave of the Innocents.
Alighting we passed through a small boozing ken, where a frowzy woman presided over a bar, serving drinks to smocked marketmen, and at the rear descended a steep flight of stone steps. At the foot of the stairs we came on two gendarmes who sat side by side on a wooden bench, having apparently nothing else to do except to caress their goatees and finger their swords. Whether the gendarmes were stationed here to keep the Apaches from preying on the marketmen or the marketmen preying on the Apaches I know not; but having subsequently purchased some fresh fruit in that selfsame market I should say now that if anybody about the premises needed police protection it was the Apaches. My money would be on the marketmen every time.
Beyond the couchant gendarmes we traversed a low, winding passage cut out of stone and so came at length to what seemingly had originally been a wine vault, hollowed out far down beneath the foundations of the building. The ceiling was so low that a tall man must stoop to avoid knocking his head off. The place was full of smells that crawled in a couple of hundred years before and had died without the benefit of clergy, and had remained there ever since. For its chief item of furniture the cavern had a wicked old piano, with its lid missing, so that its yellowed teeth showed in a perpetual snarl. I judged some of its important vital organs were missing too – after I heard it played. On the walls were inscribed such words as naughty little boys write on schoolhouse fences in this country, and more examples of this pleasing brand of literature were carved on the white oak benches and the rickety wooden stools. So much for the physical furbishing.
By rights—by all the hallowed rules and precedents of the American vaudeville stage!—the denizens of this cozy retreat in the bowels of the earth should have been wearing high-waisted baggy velvet trousers and drinking absinthe out of large flagons, and stabbing one another between the shoulder blades, and ever and anon, in the mystic mazes of dance, playing crack-the-whip with the necks and heels of their adoring lady friends; but such was not found to be the case. In all these essential and traditional regards the assembled Innocents were as poignantly disappointing as the costers of London had proved themselves.
According to all the printed information on the subject the London coster wears clothes covered up with pearl buttons and spends his time swapping ready repartee with his Donah or his Dinah. The costers I saw were barren of pearl buttons and silent of speech; and almost invariably they had left their Donahs at home. Similarly, these gentlemen habitués of the Cave of the Innocents wore few or no velvet pants, and guzzled none of the absinthe. Their favorite tipple appeared to be beer; and their female companions snuggled closely beside them.
We stayed among them fully twenty minutes, but not a single person was stabbed while we were there. It must have been an off-night for stabbings. Still I judged them to have been genuine exhibits because here, for the first, last and only time in Paris, I found a shop where a stranger ready to spend a little money was not welcomed with vociferous enthusiasm. The paired-off cave-dwellers merely scowled on us as we scourged past them to a vacant bench in a far corner. […]
For the sake of the conventions I tried to feel apprehensive of grave peril. It was no use. I felt safe – not exactly comfortable, but perfectly safe. I could not even muster up a spasm of the spine when a member of our party leaned over and whispered in my ear that any one of these gentry roundabout us would cheerfully cut a man’s throat for twenty-five cents. I was surprised though at the moderation of the cost; this was the only cheap thing I had struck in Paris. It was cheaper even than the same job is supposed to be in the district round Chatham Square, on the East Side of New York, where the credulous stranger so frequently is told that he can have a plain murder done for five dollars – or a fancy murder with trimmings, for ten; rate card covering other jobs on application. In America, however, it has been my misfortune that I did not have the right amount handy; and here in Paris I was handicapped by my inability to make change correctly. By now I would not have trusted anyone in Paris to make change for me – not even an Apache. I was sorry for this, for at a quarter a head I should have been glad to engage a troupe of Apaches to kill me about two dollars’ worth of cabdrivers and waiters. For one of the waiters at our hotel I would have been willing to pay as much as fifty cents, provided they killed him very slowly. Because of the reasons named, however, I had to come away without making any deal, and I have always regretted it.
“One of the characteristics of the people of Paris, for which they are known the world over, is their politeness,” wrote David W. Bartlett, an American author, who visited Paris during the Second Empire (1852-1870). Reading this, the immediate reaction of today’s visitors would be an utter disbelief since Parisians are known world-wide for their unpleasant behavior. The only consolation for the foreigner is that they don’t treat each other any better. During my last visit, my Parisian friend was called “une conne” (and a few more choice words) because of a tiny parking mistake she had made. The aggressor was a middle-class, middle-aged man. Things are looking up though. Well-aware of their bad reputation, Parisians are trying to soften their manners. In my experience (compared to ten, twenty years ago) there is a noticeable improvement.
David W. Bartlett
Yet if we are to believe Mr. Bartlett, present-day Parisians come nowhere close to their ancestors’ civility. “I noticed this politeness in all circles and in all places,” he writes, and goes on: “In England John Bull stares at your dress if it differs from his own, and hunts you to the wall. Or if anything in your speech or manners pleases him, he laughs in your face. But in Paris, the Frenchman never is guilty of so ill-bred an action as to laugh at anybody in his presence, however provoking the occasion. If you are lost and inquire the way, he will run half a mile to show you, and will not even hear of thanks. The only time that I ever experienced anything but politeness in Paris, was when in a great hurry I chanced to hit a workman with a basket upon his head. The concussion was so great that the basket was dashed to the pavement. He turned round very slowly, and with a grin upon his countenance said, “Thank you, sir!” This was politeness with a little too much sarcasm. It was spoken so finely that I burst into a laugh, and the Frenchman joined me in it.”
The Boarding House transports you back to Paris during the enchanting Belle Époque period with a diverse ensemble of players: young and old, servants and socialites, French and foreign, polite and ill-mannered. It’s delicious, devious, and delightful. Iva Polansky writes with a style and authenticity you might wonder if she was there in another life.
NEW!
One for All
Madelon-la-Belle left Paris twenty years ago to escape her damaged reputation. She abandoned her infant daughter, Louise, in the care of her sister. Now she is back, a wealthy widow, and she plans to be a caring mother. Her idea of caring motherhood is to make Louise a high-born heiress. It only needs a little deception.This does not sit well with Louise’s father, Captain d’Artagnan of the Royal Musketeers, who finds Madelon’s plan unsound. He wants to see Louise married as soon as possible, before she becomes a slut like her mother, and has already found a good husband for her. Unfortunately, the formidable Madelon does not agree with d’Artagnan’s choice. A battle of wills ensues, involving d’Artagnan’s long-lost friends, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. A comedy based on Alexandre Dumas’s classic novel The Three Musketeers.
Fame and Infamy / Adventures of an American Maid in Paris
Otto von Bismarck, German secret police, celebrated French artists and Miss Nelly McKay of Butte, Montana, come together in this lively mystery set in 1870’s Paris.
Print or ebook, 410 pages
He was right. She was right. Together they were wrong
THE WAR OF THE TOLSTOYS
Leo Tolstoy’s last days: In 1910, newspapers around the world reported the tribulations of Russia’s most famous writer. The War of the Tolstoys tells it all.
Screenplay, 110 pages
Passion and Wit and Ménage à Trois ( a true story)
Our Divine Emilie
Two of the brightest minds of the French Enlightenment, Voltaire and Emilie du Châtelet, meet the poet Saint-Lambert in a dangerous liaison. Court intrigue, conspiracy, and betrayal are in abundance in this comedy/drama. (A Screenplay)
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The public ball was Jane’s second awakening. From then on, her life became divided into two: a day job to keep her from hunger and a night life to keep away her demons. Her talent led to prestigious theatrical engagements when an exceptional dance number was needed and, for a time, she was the ambassador of French can-can in London and in Madrid. Her poise, grace, and intelligence made her a welcome guest at dinner parties. A friend of novelists, dramatists, artists, philosophers, and scientists, she also captured the heart of Toulouse-Lautrec who saw in her a sister soul. He, too, had an unusual childhood. He too was a victim of physical suffering. They remained friends until the painter’s premature death.
Victorian Paris 