Edwards Henry Sutherland
Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1
CHAPTER XX
THE CHAMPS ÉLYSÉES AND THE BOIS DE BOULOGNE
The Champs Élysées – The Élysée Palace – Longchamp – The Bois de Boulogne – The Château de Madrid – The Château de la Muette – The Place de l’Étoile.
BEFORE entering the Champs Élysées, the greatest pleasure thoroughfare in Paris, next to, if not before, the line of boulevards, a brief examination of the frontiers, as approached from the Place de la Concorde, may be advisable. This region of the capital was for a long time one of those marshes by which ancient Paris, the Lutetia of the Romans, was enclosed like a fortress. Then it became cultivable land and passed into the hands of market gardeners, who grew their vegetables in fields by no means “elysian,” until the latter part of the reign of Louis XV.
The ancient marsh was bounded on one side by the Seine, on the other by the Faubourg St. Honoré, which in the eighteenth century was already a favourite locality for mansions of the nobility. The market gardens, more fertile, perhaps, by reason of their marshy origin, were traversed by the Chemin du Roule – so named from the slope called rotulus, in the days of Lutetia, of which the culminating point is now marked by the Triumphal Arch.
At the entrance to the Champs Élysées stands the celebrated marble group known as the Horses of Marly; and close to the entrance is the garden of the Élysée Palace (Élysée Bourbon, to call it by its historical name), whose principal gates open into the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré. Built in 1718 by the architect Mollet on a portion of the St. Honoré marshes which had been given by the Regent to Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne, Count of Evreux, the Élysée Palace passed in 1745 from the count’s heirs to Madame de Pompadour. Her brother, the Marquis de Marigny, inherited it from her, and, holding the appointment of Inspector and Director of Royal Buildings, he embellished the palace and made great improvements in that portion of the neighbourhood known to-day as the Champs Élysées. It was now only that the mansion, called successively Hôtel d’Evreux, Hôtel de Pompadour, and Hôtel de Marigny, received the name of Élysée.
Towards the period of the Revolution, in 1786, the Élysée Palace was purchased by the king, and, according to the terms of a royal decree, was to be reserved for the use of princes and princesses visiting the French capital as well as ambassadors charged with special missions. Almost immediately afterwards, however, the structure was bought by the Duchess of Bourbon, when Élysée Bourbon became its recognised name.
This very appellation was enough to condemn it in the days of the Revolution; and the Duchess of Bourbon having migrated, her property was seized and confiscated. Sold by auction, it was acquired by Mlle. Hovyn, who seven years later ceded it to Murat; and Murat, on leaving Paris to assume the crown of Naples, presented it to the emperor.
Napoleon accepted the gift and took a fancy to his new edifice. He often resided there; and after the defeat of Waterloo it was at the Élysée that he signed his abdication in favour of his son.
In 1814 and 1815 the Élysée was temporarily occupied by Alexander I. of Russia. At the Restoration, the Duchess of Bourbon, returning to France, claimed her property. Her rights were recognised, but she was prevailed upon to accept, in lieu of the Élysée, the Hôtel de Monaco in the Rue de Varennes, which she left by will to the Princess Adelaide of Orleans, sister of Louis Philippe.
Under the Restoration, it was at the Élysée, now called once more Élysée Bourbon, that the Duke and Duchess of Berry resided until 1820, when, after the assassination of the duke, the duchess felt unable to live there any longer.
The duke and duchess were the last permanent tenants of the Élysée, which under the reign of Louis Philippe was utilised, in accordance with the intentions of Louis XVI., as a resting-place for royal guests, or guests of the first importance. In its new character it received Mahomet Ali Pasha of Egypt, and Queen Christina of Spain.
After the 10th of December, 1848, Prince Louis Napoleon, elected President of the Republic, had the Élysée assigned to him as his official place of residence. It was here that the coup d’état of the 2nd of December, 1851, was planned and plotted by the Prince-President, and the Count de Morny, his minister, confidant, and guide, General St. Arnaud, and other accomplices. On proclaiming himself Emperor, Napoleon III. gave up possession of the Élysée, and removed to the more regal, more imperial palace of the Tuileries; the Élysée, being now once more set apart for foreign potentates and other grandees visiting Paris. Under the Second Empire Queen Victoria, the Sultan Abdul Aziz, and the Emperor Alexander II. of Russia, were successively received there.
Since the establishment of the Third Republic the Élysée has been made the official residence of the President; and it has been inhabited, one after the other, by M. Thiers, Marshal MacMahon, M. Grévy, and M. Carnot.
It has been said that the Élysée Palace stands between the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré and the Champs Élysées, with its principal entrance in the street. Between these two thoroughfares stood the ancient Village du Roule, which possessed, as far back as the thirteenth century, an asylum for lepers with a chapel attached to it. This chapel was in 1699 elevated to the rank of parish church, under the invocation of St. Philip. Being now too small it was pulled down; and in place of it was built the present church of St. Philippe du Roule, which underwent a partial transformation in 1845 and 1846.
The principal avenue of the Champs Élysées was planted with trees in 1723; but it was not until the reign of Louis XVI. that the Champs Élysées, or rather that portion of the avenue known as Longchamp, became a haunt of fashion.
The so-called promenade of Longchamp was, towards the end of the eighteenth century, frequented by the most aristocratic society. Gradually after the Revolution it got to be a more miscellaneous resort, to become ultimately, in modern times, a sort of show ground for fashionable milliners and dressmakers, hatters and tailors. The Abbey of Longchamp, whence the promenade derived its name, was founded as a convent in the thirteenth century by Isabelle of France, sister of Louis IX., and pulled down at the time of the Revolution. It was situated close to the Bois de Boulogne, near the village of that name.
“I wish to ensure my salvation,” wrote the Princess Isabelle to Hémeric, Chancellor of the university, “by some pious foundation. King Louis IX., my brother, grants me 30,000 Paris livres, and the question is, shall I found a convent or a hospital?” The Chancellor’s advice was to establish an asylum for the nuns of the order of St. Clara.
In 1260 Isabelle built the church, the dormitories, and the cluster of the Humility of Our Lady; and according to Agnes d’Harcourt, who has written her life, the whole of the 30,000 livres was consumed. The year afterwards, on the 23rd of June, the nuns of the rule of St. Francis took possession of the abbey in presence of Louis IX. and all the Court. The king gave considerable property to the nuns, whom he often visited, and, by his will, dated February, 1269, this sovereign, on the point of undertaking his last expedition to Palestine, left a legacy to the Abbey of Our Lady. Isabelle in this very year ended her days within its walls.
The royal origin and associations of the house which the princess had founded ensured for it the patronage of successive French sovereigns – Marguerite and Jeanne de Brabant, Blanche de France, Jeanne de Navarre, and twelve other princesses, taking the veil there; and it is recorded that Philippe le Long died in it with his daughter Blanche by his side on the 2nd of December, 1321, of complicated dysentery and quartan fever. When he was approaching his end the abbé and monks of St. Denis came in procession to his aid, bringing with them a piece of the True Cross, a nail that had been used at the Crucifixion, and one of the arms of St. Simon. The exhibition and application of these pious relics gained for the king enough time to make his will, after which he expired.
Longchamp had no fewer than forty nuns in residence. Its proximity to Paris, its illustrious origin, its not less illustrious visitors, its aristocratic inhabitants, its vicissitudes during the sanguinary civil wars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, its decline, and, ultimately, its ruin, invested it with extraordinary interest. As regards the history of the abbey, it must be mentioned that, as with all other convents, its discipline gradually became relaxed until at last purity gave way to licence. Henri IV. took from Longchamp one of his mistresses, Catherine de Verdun, a young nun of twenty-two, to whom he gave the priory of St. Louis de Vernon, and whose brother, Nicholas de Verdun, became first President of the Parliament of Paris.
“It is certain,” wrote St. Vincent de Paul, on the 25th of October, 1652, to Cardinal Mazarin, “that for the last 200 years this convent has been gradually getting demoralised until now there is less discipline there than depravity. Its reception rooms are open to anyone who comes, even to young men without relations at the convent. The order of friars (Cordeliers) under whose direction it is placed, do nothing to stop the evil. The nuns wear immodest garments and carry gold watches. When, war compelled them to take refuge in the town the majority of them gave themselves up to all kinds of scandals, going alone and in secret to the men they desired to visit.”
It is evident from this letter that there were intimate relations between the Abbey of Longchamp and Paris. It had been the custom, moreover, since the fifteenth century, to go to Longchamp to hear the friars of the order of Cordeliers preach during Lent.
“In 1420,” says the journal of Charles VII., “Brother Richard, a Cordelier, lately returned from Jerusalem, preached such a fine sermon that the people from Paris who had been to hear it made more than one hundred fires on their return – the men burning tables, cards, billiard-tables, billiard-balls, and bowls; while the women sacrificed head-dresses, and all kinds of body ornaments, with pieces of leather and pieces of whalebone, their horns and their tails.”
A great many miracles were said to take place through invocations addressed to the Princess Isabelle, whom Pope Leo X., by a bull dated January 3, 1521, had canonised; while he, at the same time, granted to the nuns of Longchamp the privilege of celebrating annually, in her honour, a solemn service on the last day of August. From the early days of the reign of Louis XV. date those regular pilgrimages to Longchamp during Holy Week, which were soon to degenerate into mundane promenades.
At one time the singing of the nuns had been found attractive. In 1729 a vocalist from the Opera, Mlle. Lemaure, sang with the choir, and “all Paris” went to hear her. The nuns profiting by her lessons, and studying her style, sang the “Tenebræ” during Holy Week with so much success that in order to make the choir perfect the abbess applied to the Opera for some additional voices. The abbey was now more than ever besieged. People crowded round the walls, filled the churchyard, and, according to one writer, stood on the tombstones. If the chorus-singers from the Opera were not converted to piety by the nuns, the nuns underwent the influence of the professional vocalists. At last, one Wednesday in Holy Week, a brilliant gathering of fashionable people arrived at the church of Longchamp only to find it closed. The Archbishop of Paris had ordered the doors to be locked.
The original object of the Longchamp promenade was now at an end. But the promenade continued all the same; and it was at Longchamp every Holy Week that the first spring fashions were to be seen. This lasted for many years, until at last, as already set forth, the Longchamp Promenade became a medium for the exhibition of such articles of dress as the leading dressmakers, milliners, and tailors wished to see adopted during the approaching season.
Meanwhile, at the time of the Revolution, the old convent of Longchamp was brought to the hammer, and not only knocked down but pulled down. The tombs in the church were broken up, and the ashes of the pious founder, Jeanne de Bourgogne, wife of Philippe le Long, of Jean de Navarre, and of Jean II., Count of Dreux, were dispersed. Of Longchamp nothing remained but the name.
To many the Champs Élysées are chiefly interesting as leading to the Bois de Boulogne with its picturesque scenery and its romantic lake, suggestive, in a small way, of the beautiful Loch Katrine. The Bois de Boulogne owes its name to the church of Notre Dame de Boulogne, built in the year 1319, under Philip, surnamed the Long. He gave permission to the citizens of his good town of Paris who had been on a pilgrimage to visit the Church of Nostre Dame de Boulogne-sur-le-mer, to build and construct a church, and there to institute a religious community. The new church became itself an object of pilgrimage, like the original church of Notre Dame at Boulogne-sur-mer, founded, according to the legend, in memory of the landing on the coast of the Holy Virgin accompanied by two angels.
Up to the time of the Revolution the Bois de Boulogne was little more than a wilderness. Napoleon I. cut walks and avenues through it, and caused trees to be planted, so that it was already one of the most agreeable places in the neighbourhood, when, in 1815, after the Waterloo campaign, the soldiers of the Duke of Wellington and of the Emperor Alexander I. encamped beneath its groves; which they are said to have mutilated and ravaged.
The Bois de Boulogne was considerably diminished when, in 1840, the fortifications of Paris were being constructed, the wood being traversed by the lines of brickwork. Soon afterwards, in 1852, under the Second Empire, it was made over to the town of Paris, and converted by the municipality into a park after the English model, with all the agreeable delightful features it now possesses.
The first improvement introduced was the river with its picturesque islands and the lake with its wooded banks and its Swiss cottages. The waterfalls or “cascades” give their name to the celebrated restaurant and café constructed by their side; and for the last thirty or forty years the Bois de Boulogne has possessed spacious avenues, with grass borders and endless rows of lamps. The grass plots in every direction, and here and there wide lawns, give a softness to the general picture which has not its equal in any European capital.
In the Bois de Boulogne stood formerly the Château de Madrid, said to have been erected by King Francis I. in memory and on the pattern of the one where, after the defeat of Pavia, Charles V. had held him captive. In spite of the recollections which it must have evoked, and which it is said to have been intended to evoke, Francis I. often visited his castle in the wood. It was turned to questionable use by various kings of France, and Henry III. varied the diversions of which it was so often the scene by introducing combats between wild beasts and bulls. One night, however, this depraved and sanguinary monarch dreamt that his animals wished to devour him, and the next morning he gave orders that they should all be killed and replaced by packs of little dogs. What remains of the ancient château is now a fashionable restaurant. Close by is the delightful Bagatelle, built in sixty-four days by the Count of Artois, and called at one time Folie d’Artois. Above the principal entrance the Count (afterwards Charles X.) had inscribed the words, Parva sed apta. Under the Revolution this “small but suitable” structure was used for public festivals; and it was here, at the time of the Restoration, that the Duke of Bordeaux, posthumous son of the Duke of Berry, was brought up.
The Duke of Bordeaux (who afterwards took the title of Count of Chambord) was the last representative of the elder branch of the Bourbons, a house which is said to have produced since the fourteenth century some six hundred remarkable men, chiefly soldiers, and which, apart from their feats of war, founded thrones in all the Latin countries of Europe – in France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy. It has been said that the duke was brought up as a child at Bagatelle in the Bois de Boulogne; and many were the speculations and suspicions of which he was at that time the subject. When, indeed, after the Revolution of 1830 Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, assumed the crown, and was thereupon accused by the partisans of the dethroned Charles X. of violating his promise to act as Regent until the majority of the Duke of Bordeaux, a paper was issued, apparently by the Orleanists, denying that the Duke of Bordeaux was the legitimate son of the assassinated Duke of Berry, eldest son of Charles X. The Courrier Français, a journal devoted to the new dynasty, now published a letter which had first appeared ten years before in the Morning Chronicle of London, asserting the illegitimacy of the Count of Chambord.
“The proposals,” said the Courrier Français, “which the Duke of Mortemart has just made to the Chamber of Peers in favour of the Duke of Bordeaux will naturally recall attention to a subject which at last may be freely examined and discussed. We shall confine ourselves to publishing a document inserted in the English papers of the time, and which has never appeared in France. Its publication is perfectly opportune; it completes the parallel that has been drawn until now between the Stuart and the Capet families.” The Courrier Français then reproduced a document entitled “Protest of the Duke of Orleans,” which ran as follows: “His Royal Highness declares by these presents that he protests formally against the procès-verbal dated 29th September last, which document professes to establish the fact that the child named Charles Ferdinand Dieudonné is the legitimate son of Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Berry. The Duke of Orleans will produce in fit time and place witnesses who will make known the origin of the child and of its mother, and he will point out the authors of the machination of which that very weak princess has been the instrument.”
The Morning Chronicle, in publishing the document about six weeks after the Count’s birth, denied its authenticity, adding, however, that it was being industriously circulated in every part of France, and that a copy of it had been addressed to the ambassador of every Power represented at Paris. It was not, of course, under Charles X. published in any Paris newspaper; and when at last, in Louis Philippe’s reign, it found its way into the columns of the Courrier Français it was impossible not to notice that the journal which first printed it was one devoted to the interests of the new king.
The Château de la Muette, another of the remarkable edifices in the Bois de Boulogne, was originally a hunting-box where Charles IX., the hero of the St. Bartholomew Massacre, used to shoot stags and boars from a box before giving himself the royal pleasure of shooting Huguenots from the balcony of the Louvre.
The Avenue Marigny has a greater number of frequenters among the Parisian public than the more distant Bois de Boulogne.
It dates from the reign of Louis XV., until which time it formed part of the historic marsh, and it owes its name to its designer. After the cession of the Champs Élysées to the town of Paris in 1828, the Avenue Marigny became the scene of the fêtes given every year in honour of the successor of the monarch who made the cession. On the 27th, 28th, and 29th of July, the anniversaries of the Revolutionary days of 1830, two theatres were put up in the Avenue Marigny, on whose boards military spectacles were represented, while their orchestras played dance music for the exhilaration and physical recreation of the general public. Booths for acrobats and tight-rope dancers were also established; wild beasts were shown, and wrestling matches took place. One of the first acts of the Emperor Napoleon III. in 1852 was to change all this. The town of Paris gave back to the State, by a perpetual lease, the whole of the Champs Élysées, where it had been determined to construct an edifice which should serve for national exhibitions, and other civil and military festivals, the building to be after the model of the English Crystal Palace. In two years the Palace of Industry was finished; and in 1855 it became the scene of a universal exhibition opened in the course of the Crimean War, and honoured by the visit of Queen Victoria. The second and third universal exhibitions at Paris were held in a larger building constructed for the purpose, and the fourth (1889) in a larger building still. The Palais de l’Industrie of 1855 is now used for annual exhibitions of agriculture, horticulture, horses and fat cattle; also for the annual exhibition of painting, sculpture, and engraving.
The Champs Élysées form a pleasure resort for all classes of the Parisian population; and the number of lightly constructed booths for the sale of cakes and toys show that among the frequenters of the Avenue Marigny there are a good number of children, many of whom may be seen driving about in little goat-chaises.
The Avenue Marigny, with its interminable files, at every hour of the day, of horsemen, horse-women, and carriages, leads directly to the Triumphal Arch, known as the Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile, from which a magnificent view may be obtained of the whole line of the Champs Élysées from its commencement as marked by the Obelisk of the Place de la Concorde.
The Place de l’Étoile, in which stands the arch of the same name, is so called from the star of avenues of which it forms the centre. The idea of a monument on this spot dates from the reign of Louis XV., when it was proposed to place on the present site of the arch a colossal elephant. The animal in question found for a time a resting place not on the Place de l’Étoile but on that of the Bastille. At last, in 1806, Napoleon determined to erect on the spot once threatened with an elephant the triumphal arch in commemoration of victories gained under his command, of which the first stone was laid on the 15th of August, the Emperor’s birthday.
By the year 1810 the cornice of the first storey had been reached. Then Chalgrin, the original architect of the construction, died, to be replaced by his inspector, Goust; and the work was continued until 1814, when, Napoleon having been defeated and sent to Elba, all question of completing a monument in honour of his victories was at an end.
Under the Restoration, when endeavours were being made by official historians to suppress the Napoleonic period, or, at least, to represent it as a natural link of connection between the old monarchy and the monarchy now re-established, the Triumphal Arch was gone on with and dedicated to the glory of the Duke of Angoulême, who had intervened at the head of a large army in the affairs of Spain. Finally King Louis Philippe, who claimed to represent, not only the ancient monarchy, but also in some measure the Revolution and the Empire, restored the arch to its original purpose. The works were hurried to completion, and on the 29th of July, 1836, it was formally inaugurated. The dimensions of the arch, twice as large as those of the Porte St. Denis, may be called colossal. The frieze around the four sides (which are themselves arched) represents the departure and the return of the French armies. Comparatively small as the figures in the frieze appear, they are scarcely less than six feet high. On either side of the different arches the capture of Aboukir, the funeral of Marceau, the battle of Austerlitz, the capture of Alexandria, the bridge of Arcola, and the battle of Jemappes, are shown in low relief. The names of French victories are engraved all over the interior surfaces of the large and small arches, these inscriptions being completed and illustrated by allegorical figures. Nothing, however, is finer in the ornamentation of the arch than the four immense groups on the external sides of the two great façades. On the eastern side, looking towards Paris, one sees to the right the departure of the troops in 1792 beneath the Genius of War, which, with outstretched wings and open mouth, seems to protect and inspire them. On the left side, looking towards the south, is the apotheosis of the Emperor, in which Napoleon, attired in a chlamys, is being crowned by Victory, while Renown proclaims his lofty exploits, and History engraves them on her tablets.
The two groups towards the west represent, on the right, Resistance to Invasion, and, on the left, Peace crowned by the figure of Minerva. Broad staircases lead to a higher platform which commands a magnificent view of central Paris.
In 1854, two years after the proclamation of the Second Empire, a “place” was designed around the arch, which now forms the centre of twelve avenues, darting out from the Arc de l’Étoile like the rays of a star. The open-air entertainments of which the Champs Élysées and Bois de Boulogne are the scene possess as much importance as the entertainments taking place within the walls of the innumerable Paris theatres. Of the races which find so much favour in France the most celebrated is that of the Grand Prix, run on the course of Longchamp early in June, just after the English Derby, and the second Sunday after the so-called Derby of Chantilly. It was founded only in 1863 (until 1856 the racing ground of the Parisians had, for twenty-five years previously, been the Champ de Mars) though it has long been regarded as one of the national institutions of the country.
The prize is of the value of 100,000 francs, of which half is furnished by the Town of Paris and half by the five great railway companies of the North, the West, Lyons, Orleans, and the South. The sight, as one approaches the course, suggests Ascot and Goodwood rather than Epsom; and the great majority of the sightseers seem to take more interest in the carriages and the costumes than in the racing, or even the betting, though the betting plague has settled upon Paris, where it replaces the lotteries and the gambling-houses suppressed by law. In a publicly organised form, betting is illegal, but the evil is a difficult one to deal with, and it is now tolerated in France, if not formally permitted. Every now and then an example is made of some unhappy offender; but these rare instances serve simply to excite the spirit of betting already so wide-spread amongst the community at large.
The amusements of the Champs Élysées, although of a much more trifling kind than that royal one of racing reserved for the Bois de Boulogne, have from the earliest times been as remarkable for their variety as for their originality. The Parisians were always great lovers of public amusements, even from the days of Charles V. and Charles VI., when tight-rope dancers, whom it would be difficult to equal in the present day, walked down a rope stretched from the towers of Notre Dame to the Palais de Justice. One acrobat who excelled in performing this feat was so agile and so rapid that he seemed to fly, and was called the “flying man.” One day he stretched a rope from the summit of one of the towers of Notre Dame to a house on the Exchange Bridge, danced as he came down it, holding, meanwhile, in one hand a flaming torch, and in the other a wreath, which, just as Queen Isabeau de Bavière passed across the bridge, in making her entry into Paris, he placed on her head, and immediately afterwards re-ascended to the point whence he had started.
Another tight-rope dancer, named Georges Menustre, performed similar feats under the reign of Louis XII.
The most popular entertainments of those days were representations of mysteries. These religious dramas were played when the king entered Paris, and on other joyful occasions. Some of the subjects were taken from the Old, some from the New Testament, others from the Lives of the Saints. They were treated either in prose, in verse, or even occasionally in pantomime.
In the year 1425 the game of climbing the greasy pole is said to have been for the first time introduced. On St. Giles’s Day inhabitants of the parish under the invocation of that saint invented “a new diversion.” They planted a long pole perpendicularly in the Rue aux Ours opposite the Rue Quincampoix. They fastened to the top of the pole a basket containing a fat goose and six small coins. Then they oiled the pole, and promised goose, money, basket, and pole itself, to anyone skilful enough to climb to the top. But the most vigorous were unable to complete so slippery an ascent; and at last, after a succession of ludicrous failures, the goose was given to the one who had got the highest; though he received neither the pole, the money, nor the basket. The same year the Parisians invented a still more remarkable entertainment. They formed at the Hôtel d’Armagnac in the Rue St. Honoré an enclosure into which they introduced a pig and four blind men, each of them armed with a stick. The pig was promised to whichever of the four could beat it to death. The enclosure was surrounded by numerous spectators impatient to see the conclusion of this “comedy,” as Dulaure calls it, though the pig might have described it by a different name. The blind men all rushed towards the spot where the animal, by its cries, proclaimed itself to be, and then struck away with their sticks, hitting, as a rule, one another, and not the pig; which, says a contemporary writer, caused infinite mirth to the assembly. They renewed the attack again and again, but never with any success; and although they were covered with armour from head to foot, they exchanged amongst themselves blows so severe that, despairing at last of the pig, they retired from a game which was pleasant only to the spectators.
