An Englishman in Paris - Notes and Recollections

Albert Dresden Vandam

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• Publié par: zawyar
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 80
• Langue: English

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The Project Gutenberg eBook, An Englishman in Paris, by Albert D. (Albert Dresden) Vandam This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: An Englishman in Paris Notes and Recollections Author: Albert D. (Albert Dresden) Vandam Release Date: May 12, 2010 [eBook #32343] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN ENGLISHMAN IN PARIS*** E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) AN ENGLISHMAN IN PARIS (NOTES AND RECOLLECTIONS) TWO VOLUMES IN ONE NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1892 Authorized Edition. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE The Quartier-Latin in the late thirties — The difference between then and now — A caricature on the walls of Paris — I am anxious to be introduced to the quarter whence it emanated — I am taken to "La Childebert," and make the acquaintance of the original of the caricature — The story of Bouginier and his nose — Dantan as a caricaturist — He abandons that branch of art after he has made Madame Malibran burst into tears at the sight of her statuette — How Bouginier came to be immortalized on the façade of the Passage du Caire — One of the first co-operative societies in France — An artists' hive — The origin of "La Childebert" — Its tenants in my time — The proprietress — Madame Chanfort, the providence of poor painters — Her portraits sold after her death — High jinks at "La Childebert" — The Childebertians and their peacefully inclined neighbours — Gratuitous baths and compulsory douches at "La Childebert" — The proprietress is called upon to repair the roof — The Childebertians bivouac on the Place St. Germain-des-Prés — They start a "Society for the Conversion of the Mahometans" — The public subscribe liberally — What becomes of the subscriptions? — My visits to "La Childebert" breed a taste for the other amusements of the Quartier-Latin — Bobino and its entertainments — The audience — The manager — His stereotyped speech — The reply in chorus — Woe to the bourgeois-intruder — Stove-pipe hats a rarity in the QuartierLatin — The dress of the collegians — Their mode of living — Suppers when money was flush, rolls and milk when it was not — A fortune-teller in the Rue de Tournon — Her prediction as to the future of Joséphine de Beauharnais — The allowance to students in those days — The Odéon deserted — Students' habits — The Chaumière — Rural excursions — Père Bonvin's CHAPTER II. My introduction to the celebrities of the day — The Café de Paris — The old Prince Demidoff — The old man's mania — His sons — The furniture and attendance at the Café de Paris — Its high prices — A mot of Alfred de Musset — The cuisine — A rebuke of the proprietor to Balzac — A version by one of his predecessors of the cause of Vatel's suicide — Some of the habitués — Their intercourse with the attendants — Their courteous behaviour towards one another — Le veau à la casserole — What Alfred de Musset, Balzac, and Alexandre Dumas thought of it — A silhouette of Alfred de Musset — His brother Paul on his election as a member of the Académie — A silhouette of Balzac, between sunset and sunrise — A curious action against the publishers of an almanack — A fulllength portrait of Balzac — His pecuniary embarrassments — His visions of wealth and speculations — His constant neglect of his duties as a National Guard — His troubles in consequence thereof — L'Hôtel des Haricots — Some of his fellow-prisoners — Adam, the composer of "Le Postillon de Lonjumeau" — Eugène Sue; his portrait — His dandyism — The origin of the Paris Jockey Club — Eugène Sue becomes a member — The success of "Les Mystères de Paris" — The origin of "Le Juif-Errant" — Sue makes himself objectionable to the members of the Jockey Club — His name struck off the list — His decline and disappearance CHAPTER III. Alexandre Dumas père — Why he made himself particularly agreeable to Englishmen — His way of silencing people — T h e pursuit he loved best next to literature — He has the privilege of going down to the kitchens of the Café de Paris — No one questions his literary genius, some question his culinary capacities — Dr. Véron and his cordon-bleu — Dr. Véron's reasons for dining out instead of at home — Dr. Véron's friend, the philanthropist, who does not go to the theatre because he objects to be hurried with his emotions — Dr. Véron, instigated by his cook, accuses Dumas of having collaborateurs in preparing his dishes as he was known to 1 24 have collaborateurs in his literary work — Dumas' wrath — He invites us to a dinner which shall be wholly cooked by him in the presence of a delegate to be chosen by the guests — The lot falls upon me — Dr. Véron and Sophie make the amende honorable — A dinner-party at Véron's — A curious lawsuit in connection with Weber's "Freyschutz" — Nestor Roqueplan, who became the successor of the defendant in the case, suggests a way out of it — Léon Pillet virtually adopts it and wins the day — A similar plan adopted years before by a fireman on duty at the opéra, on being tried by court-martial for having fallen asleep during the performance of "Guido et Génevra" — Firemen not bad judges of plays and operas — They were often consulted both by Meyerbeer and Dumas — Dumas at work — How he idled his time away — Dumas causes the traffic receipts of the Chemin de Fer de l'Ouest to swell during his three years' residence at Saint-Germain — M. de Montalivet advises Louis-Philippe to invite Dumas to Versailles, to see what his presence will do for the royal city — Louis-Philippe does not act upon the advice — The relations between Dumas and the d'Orléans family — After the Revolution of '48, Dumas becomes a candidate for parliament — The story of his canvass and his address to the electors at Joigny — Dumas' utter indifference to money matters — He casts his burdens upon others — Dumas and his creditors — Writs and distraints — How they are dealt with — Dumas' indiscriminate generosity — A dozen houses full of new furniture in half as many years — Dumas' frugality at table — Literary remuneration — Dumas and his son — "Leave me a hundred francs" CHAPTER IV. Dr. Louis Véron — The real man as distinguished from that of his own "Memoirs" — He takes the management of the Paris Opéra — How it was governed before his advent — Meyerbeer's "Robert le Diable" underlined — Meyerbeer and his doubts upon the merits of his work — Meyerbeer's generosity — Meyerbeer and the beggars of the Rue Le Peletier — Dr. Véron, the inventor of the modern newspaper puff — Some specimens of advertisements in their infancy — Dr. Véron takes a leaf from the book of Molière — Dr. Véron's love of money — His superstitions — His objections to travelling in railways — He quotes the Queen of England as an example — When Queen Victoria overcomes her objection, Véron holds out — "Queen Victoria has got a successor: the Véron dynasty begins and ends with me" — Thirteen at table — I make the acquaintance of Taglioni — The woman and the ballerian — Her adventure at Perth — An improvised performance of "Nathalie, la Laitière Suisse" — Another adventure in Russia — A modern Claude Du-Val — My last meeting with Taglioni — A dinner-party at De Morny's — A 43 comedy scene between husband and wife — Flotow, the composer of "Martha" — His family — His father's objection to the composer's profession — The latter's interview with M. de Saint-Georges, the author of the libretto of Balfe's "Bohemian Girl" — M. de Saint-Georges prevails upon the father to let his son study in Paris for five years, and to provide for him during that time — The supplies are stopped on the last day of the fifth year — Flotow, at the advice of M. de Saint-Georges, stays on and lives by giving piano-lessons — His earthly possessions at his first success — "Rob Roy" at the Hôtel Castellane — Lord Granville's opinion of the music — The Hôtel Castellane and some Paris salons during LouisPhilippe's reign — The Princesse de Lieven's, M. Thiers', etc. — What Madame de Girardin's was like — Victor Hugo's — Perpetual adoration; very artistic, but nothing to eat or to drink — The salon of the ambassador of the Two Sicilies — Lord and Lady Granville at the English Embassy — The salon of Count Apponyi — A story connected with it — Furniture and entertainments — Cakes, ices, and tea; no champagne as during the Second Empire — The Hôtel Castellane and its amateur theatricals — Rival companies — No under-studies — Lord Brougham at the Hôtel Castellane — His bad French and his would-be Don Juanism — A French rendering of Shakespeare's "There is but one step between the sublime and the ridiculous," as applied to Lord Brougham — He nearly accepts a part in a farce where his bad French is likely to produce a comic effect — His successor as a murderer of the language — M. de Saint-Georges — Like Molière, he reads his plays to his housekeeper — When the latter is not satisfied, the dinner is spoilt, however great the success of the play in public estimation — Great men and their housekeepers — Turner, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Eugène Delacroix CHAPTER V. The Boulevards in the forties — The Chinese Baths — A favourite tobacconist of Alfred de Musset — The price of cigars — The diligence still the usual mode of travelling — Provincials in Paris — Parliamentary see-saw between M. Thiers and M. Guizot — Amenities of editors — An advocate of universal suffrage — Distribution of gratuitous sausages to the working man on the king's birthday — The rendezvous of actors in search of an engagement — Frédérick Lemaître on the eve of appearing in a new part — The Legitimists begin to leave their seclusion and to mingle with the bourgeoisie — Alexandre Dumas and Scribe — The latter's fe