Chapter IV: Part 4

At last after many delays the opening of the new Moulin Rouge was announced. The public poured in to find one of the handsomest of modern music-halls with a most excellent restaurant. A table d’hôte dinner is served at little tables, glowing in fairy lamps, where one can dine and watch the performance.

Back of this spacious theater for ballets and _revues_ there is a _promenoir_ where all of the old attractions of the Moulin Rouge and many new ones can be seen during the _entr’actes_, including the quadrilles. So that after all the Moulin Rouge did not die—rather let us say that it was born again, and is now all that many of us expected to find it upon our first visit years ago and never did; for the Red Mill was then a tawdry place at best—somewhat of a snare and a delusion.

Montmartre is the kingdom of artistic Bohemia. The Butte is honeycombed with the ateliers of painters and sculptors and the modest sanctums of struggling poets and musicians. This is only one side. The other side, like the degenerate half of some visages, is all that is vicious and criminal. Back of every blaze of light in Montmartre there is a shadow, and from out of many of these dark corners flutter to the lights of the Boulevard de Clichy, like nocturnal moths, scores of gaudy women—too frequently the spiders who dare not venture in the sun and whose claws have been known to have been smeared with the blood of the helpless more than once, crawl from these squalid holes beyond the light.

Montmartre is ablaze after midnight, and the cafés along the Boulevard de Clichy are swarming with women to whom to-morrow is much the same as to-day—women who from one year’s end to the other seldom see the sun, whose days begin at midnight and whose mind, body and soul have long ago passed to the trusty keeping of the devil.

There is always one thought uppermost in the mind of the lady from the rue Blanche: it is that somebody shall pay the waiter as much and as continuously as possible between midnight and daylight.

There is little about human nature that this daughter of Montmartre does not know. Her ears are trained to a marvelous sense of acuteness, and her intuition and perception make the shrewdest mind-reader appear as tame as a fortune-telling horse.

The lady from the rue Blanche not only knows precisely what you are thinking about, but your past, present, and your disastrous future if you continue her acquaintance. During this time she will relieve you with the skill of a magician of your small change, and, if given time, your entire fortune including your watch. She will lead you into the worst traps a fertile brain can invent. Having robbed you of everything else you possessed, including your senses, some fine day she will either hand you over to the police or open fire on you in a jealous rage if only for the satisfaction of peppering away at your useless carcass.

This may seem a fantasy, but it is precisely what has happened, and if you don’t believe it ask the policeman.

These _petites femmes_ of the Butte glide by with the quickness of an area cat. They are reckless, strong, and fearless, these _noctambules_. The eyes of Fanchette burn brilliantly in their sockets. Her lips are scarlet with a hasty dab of rouge. The rest of her visage is as pale as Pierrot’s. When you look at her with your eyes half closed, you seem to see her skull.

Claudine enters the “Abbaye de Thélème” at midnight, the pleats of her white silk petticoat spread out with the pride of a fantail pigeon.

Drawing by Galaniz

UP THE RUE BLANCHE]

She wears a scarlet jacket studded with polished brass buttons that catch the light as she moves. The costume is a _nouveauté_ from the Montmartre bazaar which has excited the envy of every other Mimi and Cora along the Boulevard de Clichy since Wednesday, when Claudine became the duchess of Montana. This title was bestowed upon her by a broad-shouldered cow-puncher of our far West, who insisted upon the title and dressed her according to his ideas of how a duchess “oughter look.” A scarlet hat with a green feather flames upon her head, and her feet are encased in new gray suede slippers whose high heels do good service in elevating the lady to her suddenly exalted position. On her thumb she wears a ruby ring, a gift from her cowboy admirer.

Lélise glides into the “Nouvelle Athénée,” a café whose clientèle is made up of soberer habitués.

She is pretty, this Lélise, a nervous little blonde with the merriest of blue eyes, and the pink of neatness, her clothes being fashioned in the best of Parisian good taste.

“_Dis donc, mon vieux_,” she calls, clapping her hands to the garçon.

“_Un grog bien chaud, et de quoi écrire._”

“_Bien, madame_,” replies the garçon.

“_Un Américain, un!_” he calls, as he hurries for the portfolio and pen and ink, which he lays before Lélise quite ceremoniously, while another waiter brings to her the steaming “_grog Américain_.”

Lélise draws off her gloves with an air of importance and begins a voluminous correspondence. Five letters in all, written in a rapid angular hand like the autographs across the pictures of soubrettes.

Handwriting of this sort has evidently made its impression upon Lélise. She writes with all the extravagant flourish of these souvenirs—she even adds Ys and Ts of her own creation. This often leads to a reckless use of capitals beginning words of importance. Furthermore, she underscores these with savage-looking scratches meant to emphasize the intensity of her feeling about whatever comes into her pretty head. The solemn word, “_L’Amour_,” is often accented by two of these parallel lines drawn with unhesitating decision. Again the tender word, “_Toujours_,” is half ripped from the paper by two formidable underlines, each of them started with a little dig that makes the pen spatter.

“_Immédiatement_,” and words suggesting hate and jealousy are made to glare out from the page like danger-signals.

But you must not think me guilty of overlooking the five letters of Lélise—I can vouch only for the one I received. The aged garçon, François, who brought it over to me hidden in the folds of a fresh napkin, received it through mademoiselle’s gray muff while with the other hand he helped her escort, a dashing young officer of the hussars, on with his night-coat.

The young officer’s tip slid to the bottom of François’s pocket, where it clinked against my own.

Lélise buttoned her gloves, adjusted her veil, picked up her skirt and followed her escort to the door, that François held open, and the two disappeared in the night.

Even in Montmartre there is some discretion.

And there is still another type of _Montmartroise_. The woman in this case is often a model of rational living and rare devotion, sharing the good and ill luck of her lover with the patience, pluck and fortitude of a _bonne fille_ and a good comrade.

If her jealous mate growls in his cups during their dinner in some favorite café, it is she who averts the row, pacifies the offended gentleman at the next table, quiets her _amant_ with a kiss, calls for the bill, sees that it is just, and continues by her alert brain and her intuition to please her quarrelsome lover by distracting his pugilistic mind towards a more peaceful mood.

When he wakes up he will be convinced more than ever that this Parisian demoiselle is, after all, his best friend.

If you wish to see “Mademoiselle of the Butte” in all her war-paint, go to the “Abbaye de Thélème” after midnight, where you will find her ready to eat, drink and be merry upon the slightest provocation. Follow her later to the Capitol among those who consume little suppers at big prices during the hours when the _sergents de ville_, pacing their beats outside, draw up the hoods of their night-cloaks to protect them from the chill of the early morning.

Still later you will find this nocturnal demoiselle, the idol of the generously drunk, picking up her skirts in a bacchanalian revel between the hours of three and four in the restaurant of the Rat Mort. Her eyes shine, her cheeks burn, the champagne and the lights seem to madden her, a madness of sheer ecstasy. Life for the moment is _en rose_. She feels herself a queen, defiant, seductive, dangerously beautiful. Four dancers from the Casino de Paris arrive amid screams and applause. Claudine is dancing on a table; an instant later she is being carried on the shoulders of a howling mob around the room. The music is drowned in the cries of “_bis, bis!_” One see through the whirl and glitter and smoke, flashing gems, the shimmer of silk hose, and the glint of bare arms.

Morning begins to pale. The streets are silent and deserted except for an occasional party of roisterers issuing from some closing café. Occasionally a woman passes coughing in the choking fog of the early morning. The ragpickers begin to make their rounds.

There is still another refuge for this Mademoiselle “Sans Gène.” That is the restaurant of the Tréteaux de Tabarin on the rue Pigalle. Upstairs as in all the others there is a supper room. This one is smaller than the rest and more _intime_.

The settees behind the tables are occupied with those to whom night seems ever too short. A _chansonnier_ before the piano is singing the waltz song “L’Amoureuse;” many at the tables have grown pensive under the spell of the singer. A girl in a décolleté gown at one of the tables is sobbing hysterically.

“It was the Bénédictine,” remonstrates her companion. “You were _imbécile_ to drink so much, _ma chérie_.”

From the low ceiling glow electric lamps shaded with ground glass like those in the cabin of a yacht.

Three women and an old beau are dancing an impromptu quadrille before the tables.

Wisps of tobacco smoke curl lazily up from the little tables. Some of the cigarettes smoulder between lips of décolleté women, others are held shakily between the fingers of hands blue-veined, pallid and weighted with jewels. The scent of a score of perfumes hangs in the reek of smoke. Suddenly there is a scream and a crash of glass. A gentleman in a damaged shirt-front has slipped, dragging with him a table and upsetting the contents of an adjoining one.

He falls with a jar which set the lamp globes in the ceiling to shivering. The wine sweeps over the table and puddles down on the floor, soaking through the silk petticoat and lace stocking of a pretty brunette. Two waiters hurry with napkins to soak up the wet. When this bull in a china shop has sufficiently and substantially apologized, fresh wine bubbles in the glasses for the victims of the flood.

At last the heavy curtains over the windows are flung open and a white light from without floods the room, making the eyes sting. It is broad daylight. Cabs clatter up, are filled, and rattle away.

“By Gad! Charley,” says a portly American at a corner table to his friend, a short thick-set man whose mustache is curled in pomade, “We’d better git along and git some sleep if we’re going to sell Jake any goods before lunch. So long, Flossy,” he adds with a yawn, addressing mademoiselle who had been supping with them.

“_Bonsoir, monsieur_,” replied the girl in a gentle voice looking at him steadily as he sways and relights his cigar, pushing his silk hat in a cooler position on the back of his head. It did not occur to him to raise it.

“Cute gal,” says the portly man to his friend, his patent leather shoes squeaking as he walks ponderously to the door.

“One of them swell _cocottes_, eh?” replied the friend, “she seemed to take quite a shine to you, Bill.”

“Hell,” guffaws the portly one, importantly. “I never give ’em no encouragement.” And the two stumble down the narrow stairs that lead to the rue Pigalle. In the chilly street the portly one fumbles for his cigar case.

“Smoke one of them light ones, Charley,” he says, as the two roll into the cab and the fat one slams the door.

Happily there are other types of _Montmartrois_ than the _noctambules_ and _noceurs_ who frequent the Rat Mort and Tabarin.

Thousands of domestic honest bourgeois live on the Butte whose lives are spent in stores and workshops and in caring for their wives and children. There are many conservative old families besides these whose children are well brought up and well educated, by a rigid economy on the part of parents whose daily bread has been earned by a long and patient fight.

Many of these parents are in the employ of the government; teachers in the public schools and in the bureaus of the administration where they work hard and are but poorly paid. Theirs are the houses which the stranger rarely if ever sees. They remind one of the most domestic and conservative homes of New England. They seem an anomaly in this Latin civilization.

Paris is one of the easiest places in the world in which to empty one’s pocket, and one of the most difficult in which to earn an honest penny. It is the want of money among Parisians and the difficulty of earning it which in late years has deadened much of the extravagant gaiety which once existed. Parisians are content to adapt their pleasures to their purses.

There are scores of men in Montmartre who began life talented beyond the average in the arts, and who have sunk by idleness into poverty and oblivion. Talent alone is not sufficient; one must improve it and drive it, and many of these long-haired velvet-cloaked geniuses of the Butte are too lazy by nature to do this. Instead, they adopt a _genre_ of their own, and despise all other schools of art, never departing from their methods in spite of the fact that their incomprehensible creations seldom bring them a sou. So they wrap themselves up self-satisfied in their cloaks, go through life without a hair-cut, tell you all other art is rot—and starve.

This afternoon I followed one of these dream painters to his studio. The way led up a crooked street, down a narrow alley, into a court full of rubbish, up a flight of dingy stairs, down into another court (this one as dark as the stairs), up another rickety flight, and so to his door.

A feeble light struggled through the cobwebbed panes of the studio skylight, and the room was in a state of dirt and disorder. Tumbled in one corner were a lot of unfinished canvases, and dumped in another was a pile of unwashed dishes. A dirty divan canopied after the fashion of the Roman emperors served as a bed of state for the great man.

That he was once a genius was unquestionable from the evidence of some of his early works. He had been a masterly draftsman and a painter of virility and great richness of color. That is, when he painted, but this he never did so long as he possessed a sou. Many of his subjects I now found difficult to understand, even when he turned them right side up for me.

Some of them seemed prehistoric. Wan wisps of maidens floated dimly through heavy fogs, guided by symbols and illuminated by sacred fires. Some of them had no eyes and trailed their feet along the ground.

This artist was only one of many who cursed the public for their financial appreciation of popular modern art, which he termed “_des petites cochonneries_!”

There is a large class of poets, painters, sculptors and musicians for whom the wheel of fortune spins capriciously. Their idle hours are spent among their comrades in the cabarets and the little _boîtes_ tucked away in odd corners of Montmartre, where they breakfast and dine, accompanied by their sweethearts.

Of the latter they are a type unto themselves and wholly aloof from the life and night types of the rue Blanche.

Gaston the painter is a disciple of Botticelli, and you find the influence of dress and coiffure of that period asserting itself in the style of clothes and arrangement of hair of his sweetheart, Mariette. With her locks in _bandeaux_ she looks as saintly as a church picture.

Jacques the musician, a composer of sixteenth century pavans and minuets, has dressed the fair Amélie in an old-fashioned frock, cut low about the throat; her pretty face is framed in two curls, and there is a rose in her hair.

Sing, dance and be merry, ye children of the Butte! Ye who have inherited the Paradise of Bohemia, ye who know its every nook and corner, its bright and its dark days, its poverty and its riches! The love and the wealth of _camaraderie_ is yours. To you the rest of the world counts for naught.

To you, Gaston, a health to Mariette. To you, Jacques, a toast to “la Petite Amélie.”

Chapter Six

IN THE CABARETS

With the passing away of that most famous of _Montmartrois_ cabarets, the Chat Noir, artistic Bohemia of the Butte met with a serious loss.

The Chat Noir was founded by Salis on the boulevard Rochechouart in 1881. Its beginning was a modest one, and for some time the little place existed in obscurity. Finally a club of bohemians called the “Hydropathie” came over from the Quartier Latin and made the Chat Noir their place of meeting.

They organized weekly reunions where each member of this jolly company recited original verses or sang songs of his own composition.

These reunions soon became open to the public, and so the first singing cabaret of its kind was created.

The small room was filled with a collection of bas-reliefs, busts and drawings, contributed by its artist habitués. It offered nightly a shelter to the budding genius of Bohemia and a place of free license for patriotic and political songs, satires, and parodies upon the current topics of the day.

And so the cabaret that Salis had started became an acknowledged success.

Later Salis moved the Chat Noir to the rue Laval, where it became an organized cabaret with a regular staff of poets, singers, and satirists, who made their appearance no longer in public as amateurs but as professionals.

Many of the lives of these _chansonniers_ have been varied and checkered with vicissitudes. Few, if any, began either as singers or entertainers. They have drifted into their profession through their inherent love of a life steeped in the atmosphere of Bohemia, where things original, beautiful, satirical, or pathetic, find ever the keenest appreciation and the shrewdest criticism.

The various occupations to which Fate had so cruelly destined these bohemians with the sacred fire of art burning unceasingly within their breasts, could not long be borne with patience. Many had been doomed by practical and unsympathetic parents to become bank clerks, merchants, accountants in gas companies, engineers or architects. All of these sordid careers were regarded as an unbearable present and an impossible future by inspired bards whose lyres were tuned to a higher key than the humdrum of business.

Within these singing poets the sacred fire of genius smoldered, but not for long. Like a live coal in the ashes it burst into gentle flame when breathed on by approbation. Soon the flicker became a blaze of glory; the names of those who had left their distasteful situations in the commercial world were heralded with praise by thousands.

These bards of the Butte thenceforth consecrated the remainder of their lives to the Muses. Nightly they sang to the listening throng. All of intellectual Paris came to applaud them, and their stuffy little cabaret of the Chat Noir was jammed nightly to the doors.

Salis by the advice of Emile Goudeau published a paper called the “Chat Noir,” in which appeared sketches and poems of authors like Armand Masson, Rollinat, Haraucourt, and other members of the club, illustrated by now celebrated artists, such as Steinlen, Caran d’Ache, Henri Rivière, and Willette, with drawings and cartoons in an original style hitherto unknown.

In 1885 Salis moved the Chat Noir to the rue Victor Massé. The cabaret was redecorated with rare taste and became a popular rendezvous for the _haut monde_. So great was the crush that the club was forced to place a guardian before the door and permit only twenty persons to enter at a time.

Henry Somm organized the first theatrical performance given at the Chat Noir. Before this there had been only the performances of singers and satirists.

Somm erected a Punch and Judy where he played a burlesque of his own, entitled “Berline de l’Emigré.”

The performance was found to be much too short. To lengthen it, the painter Henri Rivière stretched a napkin over the toy proscenium and passed in defile a procession of policemen cut in cardboard and silhouetted in shadow against the napkin. As the cardboard policemen advanced in file, Jules Jouy sang his popular satire on the police entitled, “Les Sergots.”

Photo by F. Berkeley Smith

SOME OF THE CHANSONNIERS IN THE CABARET QUAT-Z’ARTS]

This was the beginning of the shadow shows which made for years the Chat Noir famous. Here appeared the famous creations of Rivière and Flagerolle, the March à l’Etoile and l’Enfant Prodigue.

Later an ingenious shadow stage with intricate mechanism was installed and a series of shadow plays followed. Many of the puppets for these exist to-day in the cabaret of the Quat-Z’Arts, some of which are the work of Caran d’Ache.

Much of what once made the Chat Noir famous exists to-day in the best known of all the _Montmartrois_ cabarets, the Quat-Z’Arts. Here sing the best of the _chansonniers_, and there is seldom a night when the back room of the cabaret in which this “smoker” occurs is not obliged to close its doors because there is literally no place for one more chair. The accompanist at the piano has hardly room for his elbows, and the singer just enough space to stand in. The walls of the low-ceiled room are hung with the inimitable caricatures by Léandre and with sketches by celebrated artists.

The front room by which you enter and which is used as a café is a picturesque interior filled with busts and bas-reliefs, and more of Léandre’s clever drawings.

A rustic stairway leads to a rambling gallery above.

The whole resembles the interior of some quaint, half-timbered tavern filled with artistic productions of men of genius. The interior of the Quat-Z’Arts was not made to order; it grew, and it walls are hung with souvenirs gathered from its clientèle of comrades whose work as sculptors and draftsmen is known the world over.

The singers whose songs and satires have made the Quat-Z’Arts famous are men of rare genius and fine intellect, and by no means the idle bohemians you might expect to find.

Dominique Bonnaud is such a man. As a singing satirist, a polished writer and the most subtle of humorists, he stands preeminent. Bonnaud was at one time secretary to Prince Bonaparte, and in eleven years of travel made several voyages around the world. His experiences at foreign courts and among foreign potentates have supplied him with themes for many of his satires. These deal with politics and current topics, and hit at nobility in general and some noblemen in particular.

To the _chansonnier_ Jean Bataille is due an interesting revival of the old songs of France. Songs like “Monsieur le Curé” and the “French Grenadier” Bataille sings with rare charm. He is essentially an entertainer, and outside of his nightly appearance at the Quat-Z’Arts has made a success in several _revues_ of his own invention. In these he has played at regular theaters, the Mathurins and the Capucines. There is nothing of the type of a bohemian singer in the personality of Monsieur Bataille. This polished man of the world passed through a brilliant career as a member of the bar and was at one time secretary to the Minister of Interior.

Georges Tiercy is not only a singer but the most inimitable of comedians. His creations are unique. Sometimes he requires the accompaniment of the piano, and sometimes he does not, but, whichever way it is, he keeps his audience at the Quat-Z’Arts in roars of laughter.

It is Tiercy who sings his “Banquet to Monsieur Loubet,” “The Humbert Family,” and the “Train de Marchandises,” the latter ending with an imitation of grand opera which I can assure you is quite as complete as the grand opera itself and five times as amusing. “Come and see me,” said Tiercy one day as we sat chatting in the Quat-Z’Arts. He opened his wide gray eyes at me and passed his hand thoughtfully over his short-cropped forehead. Then he added in a hoarse whisper:

Photo by F. Berkeley Smith

CARICATURES OF CHANSONNIERS BY LÉANDRE]

“I live in a forest! It is at Bois Colombes. Ah! my friend, you shall see a little house at the very edge of the real country. Come out and have a _petit verre_ with me.” Then he frowned as he took out his watch and hurriedly left me to catch his train.

A few days later I went out to Bois Colombes to see him. The place did not look very woodsy as I got out of the train. There were no dark fastnesses or wild ravines; in fact, Bois Colombes was, if anything, sadly lacking in verdure. The town itself was quite a practical little place built up with modern houses.

Finally I came to the villa of my friend, the last of a pretty group of houses enclosed by a hedge. The author of the “Train de Marchandises” came out to greet me. He seemed worried and preoccupied and explained to me he was much fatigued, having just returned from a hard journey to Brussels where he had sung the day before.

“And where is the forest?” I asked.

“Ah!” he replied, as if saving a surprise, “you shall see. Come into the house and we will have a bottle of stout.”

Photo by F. Berkeley Smith

GEORGES TIERCY IN HIS GARDEN AT BOIS-COLOMBES]

I found the home of this serious humorist filled with interesting souvenirs of his life as a comedian and a _chansonnier_, and we sat chatting until late. My friend with the mysterious air told me many interesting incidents of his career which, in its early days, was one of mingled failure and success. Having played for many years in _revues_ and operettas, Tiercy founded in 1893 his cabaret, the Carillon, where, with his creations, “The Clown Badaboum” and “Opéra Maboul,” he achieved a triumph—“_a succés fou_!”

The Carillon failed after a short existence, for this man of humor, this generous son of Bohemia, was unsuited to the ways of close-fisted managers. Tiercy lost twenty thousand francs in the enterprise. He went back to his profession and sang in the Sans-Souci. Since then he has been a success as a mimic in nearly all the cabarets of Montmartre and the Latin Quarter.

“And now,” said my host seriously, “a glimpse at my woodland.” He opened the curtains of his sanctum. A spare group of trees hardly hid the next villa from view.

“My friend,” I said, “it is as you say, a veritable _pays sauvage_.”

And I hurried for my train with Tiercy’s laugh ringing in my ears.

_Drawing by_ CARDONA]

While the back room of the Quat-Z’Arts is crowded nightly, the front room is filled with bohemian habitués; groups of painters, poets, and musicians sit chatting at the tables, some of them writing, others playing cards or dominoes.

In one corner Bonnaud, having finished his song, is engrossed in a manuscript. At another table a poet singer is correcting the verses of a new song with a fellow bard.

Next to these a girl, quite as _Montmartroise_ as Marcelle, is in earnest conversation with a “type” in a black broad-brimmed hat and a stock wound about his throat. Perhaps it is the beginning of a romance, more likely the aftermath of an ended one. The girl had been crying.

“_Toujours l’amour!_” mutters an old bohemian in a rusty velvet coat, as he glances from his corner at the pair. He trickles a little fresh water into his absinthe and bends again over his writing.

The door opens and the singer, Gabriel Montoya, enters, hastily shaking hands with those about him and rushing to the back room, where his arrival is greeted with thunderous applause.

Monsieur Montoya’s poetic locks that crown his noble brow are mussed as if he had just escaped from a panic. He is invariably introduced as “Monsieur le Docteur” to his audience, his early life having been devoted to the study of medicine. He is a man of wide experience, having at one time made a tour around most of the world as a ship’s surgeon.

In personality Montoya is a mixture of a Chesterfield and the generous, open gallantry of a Don Quixote. Together with these qualities he possesses a tenor voice of rare charm. Besides all this he is a _bon garçon_ and one of the most popular _chansonniers_ of Montmartre.

At one time during his career his health broke down and he was ordered south. Here he remained for some time away from Paris, and the report was current of his death. He was eulogized in several lengthy obituaries by leading journalists. These he had the rare opportunity of reading. During his convalescence he wrote “The Posthumous Author” and “The Verses of One who did not Die.” He took his degree of medicine in Montpellier. Hardly twenty-four hours after passing his degree he came across some of his old comrades from Montmartre in the street, who were then making a concert tour in the south of France. Their joy at seeing their old friend risen, as it were, from the grave, knew no bounds, and they insisted upon his accompanying them. This he did, abandoning his career of medicine to sing again.

He made his début at the Chat Noir in 1890. It was there that an incident occurred which illustrates Montoya’s remarkable memory.

“Phryné,” the shadow play by Maurice Donnay, was performing when its author became involved in a duel with Catulle Mendes. Donnay was wounded, and therefore he was unable to return to the Chat Noir to recite the play. Salis in this extremity turned to Montoya for aid. The latter in one afternoon learned the twelve hundred lines of “Phryné” and recited them the same evening without a mistake.

To Paul Delmet Paris owes many of her popular songs. This veteran _chansonnier_ has composed volumes of exquisite ballads, parodies and satires. His songs, such as “Stances à Manon,” “Brunette aux Yeux Doux,” and his amusing “L’Escalier,” every Parisian knows. They are sung everywhere.

The late _chansonnier_, Aristide Bruant, was as extravagant and impractical as the great Balzac. He lived like a prince through good and bad luck in his château outside of Paris, and, dressed in black velvet, drove daily to and from his cabaret in Montmartre in a smart turnout. De Bercy, his friend, tells the following anecdote of Bruant:

He came banging at De Bercy’s door early one morning. “I have just been chosen as a candidate for election at Belleville Saint Fargeau,” cried Bruant excitedly, waking up the sleepy De Bercy. “Get into your clothes in a gallop; you will have to make my speech for me and we have just time to catch the train. We will breakfast at Belleville. I have accepted an invitation for both of us. We’ll breakfast first and you will have time to write your speech afterwards.”

Bruant could sing all night, but speech-making was not in his line.

The two hurried to Belleville and breakfasted, and afterwards De Bercy wrote madly for three hours and finished the address. Bruant knew that if he would ingratiate himself in the hearts of the Bellevillians he must do so by expressions indicating his sympathy with the current wrongs of the community. He must touch upon the rights of the widows and orphans, the wrongs of the working man, and other kindred topics.

It happened that Bruant had in his repertoire a lot of songs upon these very topics, none of which the good people of Belleville had ever heard.

The hour arrived and before a large and enthusiastic audience De Bercy launched into his speech. Each time he finished a portion of his discourse upon the widows or orphans, Bruant would burst into a song relative to the subject. He had one ready upon every question upon which his confrère spoke. The Bellevillians cheered and Bruant was elected by an overwhelming majority amid a furor of good-fellowship and an outpouring of the red wine of Belleville Saint Fargeau!

The “Treteau de Tabarin,” familiarly known as the “Boîte à Fursy,” is a unique mixture of cabaret and theater in the rue Pigalle. Its owner and manager, Henri Fursy, is the author of the celebrated “Chansons Rosses.” These rough and ready satires are sparkling with wit. To invent a new type of songs is the achievement of an epoch, and this is what Fursy has done. He tells me he is not a poet, that his rhymes are often very poor.

“My style is not always good,” he said to me; “my songs are satires written upon the spur of the moment, and precisely in this crude state I present them to the public. If I worked over them they would lose much of their freshness.”

There is nothing of the bohemian _chansonnier_ in Monsieur Fursy. He is a dapper, smartly dressed, alert, courteous, clean-cut man of business. By his wits, push and energy, he has made a success of his theater.

Photo by F. Berkeley Smith

HENRI FURSY IN THE FOYER OF HIS THEATER]

Perhaps he has seen too much of the Parisian method of transacting a business deal. This consists in taking four weeks to think about the proposition, several more of leisurely indecision, and a corresponding length of time to settle the matter. The Frenchman is astonished if in the meantime some other fellow with a little Anglo-Saxon hustle in him has seized the opportunity and signed the contract.

The quaint, rambling, half-timbered interior of the foyer to the Boîte à Fursy is exceedingly picturesque. Rare drawings and etchings line the walls. The foyer has an ancient air about it of having been used as a hostelry during the Middle Ages. The walls are done in rough plaster and quartered beams. In one corner a primitive staircase leads to a rambling gallery, and the audience passes into the quaint auditorium through rough wooden doors running under a low rustic shed.

All of smart Paris goes to the Boîte à Fursy. It is the smallest and one of the most expensive theaters in Paris, but the performance upon the small stage is sparkling with wit from beginning to end. Here short satirical _revues_ are given by Fursy and other famous _chansonniers_, with Odette Dulac in the principal rôle.

Caricature by Cappiello

ODETTE DULAC]

Mademoiselle Dulac is Parisian from the butterfly in her cadmium orange hair to the points of her satin slippers. This inimitable artiste is made up of two parts deviltry and one part champagne. She handles the most risqué situations with a delicious delicacy, humor, and the tact of a finished comedienne. She is the life of the _revue_ at the Boîte à Fursy. If you have heard Odette Dulac sing “Je Suis Bête,” in long years to come the memory of it will serve to lift you out of the blues. You will recall the daintiness of this piquant and chic _divette_, her silk stockings, her frou-frou skirt, the glitter of her bodice, and the irresistible merriness of her eyes as she winked at you over the tip of her impudent little nose.

But all this is the art of the comedienne. At her home I found Mademoiselle Dulac a very gracious and charming woman, unspoiled by the applause that nightly rings in her little ears.

It took the genius of Capiello to caricature Odette Dulac and to give in a few clever lines all of this amusing artiste’s personality. When Dulac laughs, her eyes close like tiny half-moons through which the pupils sparkle—very small windows to a big merry soul.

There are some women who never seem to grow old and to whom youth seems ever constant. To be merry yourself and to make others merry is surely one secret of keeping young.

The homes of artists of the Parisian stage differ from the domiciles of others in the artistic world. The tumbled rattle-trap of a dusty studio does not appeal to great actors or divas. The homes of many of the latter are models of luxury and cleanliness.

Much of the perfection of the Parisian actress’s _ménage_ is due to her faithful bonne, who is companion, cook, waitress, lady’s maid, and who, in a thousand ways, protects and watches over the interests of her mistress.

Perhaps the most typical cabaret audience is that in the “Noctambules,” in the rue Champollion. It is an unpretentious little place of the old type, where nightly appear some of the best singers of Montmartre: Tiercy and Montoya, Charles Fallot, Paul Delmet, Bréville, Marinier and Madame Laurence Deschamps. The last is an artiste of rare charm, who possesses a voice sweet, pure and flexible, and whose interpretation of scores of exquisite _ballades_ and _berceuses_ have won for her the truest of all criticism: sincere applause. But I must not forget the veteran of them all, the bard of bards, Marcel Legay.

Photo by F. Berkeley Smith

MLLE. ODETTE DULAC AT HOME]

When you hear Legay you will have heard an artist whose stirring songs, like his “Mon Cheval” and “Les Pieds Devant,” create a furor wherever he sings them. Legay has a faculty of making you feel the roar of battle. He sings with fire and virility, and his personality fills the room.

In many of the cabarets it is the custom to give gala matinées and gala evenings with more celebrities than usual on the program. A grand tombola or lottery takes place at the close of the performance, the receipts being given as a testimonial benefit to one of the singers. It is needless to say the prizes offered by these good bohemians were purchased for as little as possible: a two-franc bottle of champagne, their own posters tied up with a ribbon, copies of their songs, etc., etc. Yet the rollicking spirit in which these things are praised by the poet auctioneers, and the fact that the proceeds are doing good to one of their number in need, amply repay the loss to one’s pocket.

Besides these gala matinées, classic evenings are given, classic poems are read, and the ancient songs of Provence and ballads of the sixteenth century are sung by the same _chansonniers_ who the night before may have amused you with the “Voyage of Madame Humbert” and other parodies.

Pastel by Léandre

Photo by F. Berkeley Smith

THE POET JEHAN RICTUS]

The poet Jehan Rictus has been known for years in the cabarets of the Butte and in those of the _rive gauche_.

Pale, lean and stooping, as he rises to speak he resembles some sad, nocturnal crane. He seems like one who nursed his melancholy and lived during his waking hours in the moonlight.

As a young man he descended nightly from the heights of Montmartre, where he lived, to join a circle of bohemians at the Cabaret de la Bosse. Here he came into recognition by the recitations of his poems and soliloquies.

The verses of Rictus dwell in misanthropic bitterness upon the misery of poverty. They are filled with the soliloquies of a pessimist and a misanthrope. The bitter misery of his earlier years through which he was forced to struggle, has no doubt taken the sunlight out of his heart, and yet beneath the varnish of a crude and bourgeois vocabulary lies the timber of true genius. What if the grain is fantastically distorted by a weird imagination! It is prized all the more by the connoisseurs.

Poster by Dillon

JEHAN RICTUS]

Another veteran of the cabarets is Louise France.

There is something suggestive of old Paris in this short, squat woman with her puffy haggard face and her tangled hair.

In the days of the Terror just such a one might have headed a mob gathered by her songs and her verses. It requires very little make-up to transform Louise France into her rôle of Frochard in “The Two Orphans” or into “Eva la Tomate” in “Mademoiselle Fifi.” Paris has not yet forgotten her famous characterization of the _concierge_ in “La Voix du Peuple.”

Louise France has played at the Théâtre Libre, at the Porte St. Martin, and the Grand Guignol, the characters _she knew_, and she played them to the life with wonderful skill.

Later she abandoned the stage to become editor of “La Fronde.” She has written many parodies, this _gamine_, this _bonne femme_; many of her verses are in the memory to-day of thousands.

Later in life she came as a _chansonnière_ and _récitateuse_ to the cabarets. It was at Eugénie Buffet’s cabaret “La Purée” that I heard her recite her verses.

From an Etching

Photo by F. Berkeley Smith

LOUISE FRANCE]

Many of these her brain had created years ago, before her gray hairs came. Some were new and all of them were true. Within the heart of Louise France lie tenderness and pity. Hear her recite “Les Grues,” and you will realize how human she is and how much she knows of life and forgives.

To-day she seems happy among her old comrades in Bohemia whom she has been with so many years.

Dear old soul, would that the whole world had been as human and understanding as you, and as free from meanness, pettiness, and the haggling over that which in the end counts for naught! All through your life your brain has been busy producing much that is beautiful and pure. Come, then, give us “Les Petits Soldats,” we will listen quietly to the very end. Some of us, I fear, will cry, and when your song is ended, all of us will give you a _double-ban_ of applause and drink your health.

To Pierre Trimouillat is due a whole volume of clever parodies and satires. He is a modest little man with no enemies and a host of friends who know that back of his satires lies kindly good-fellowship. From year to year, ever since his success as a singing satirist was assured among the founders of the “Chat Noir,” he has sung in a quiet voice the words which his satirical wit has invented.

Caricature by Léandre

Photo by F. Berkeley Smith

THE CHANSONNIER PIERRE TRIMOUILLAT]

Many of Trimouillat’s satires and parodies have been interpreted by the most talented men and women of the French stage.

In Trimouillat, Xavier Privas found a right-hand man for his new cabaret La Veine.

Xavier Privas is not at all the type of poet one would expect to find among the bards of the Butte. Tall, of powerful physique, with the voice of a Falstaff and a genial hospitable manner, he looks much more like a big, blustering, gallant cavalry officer, and this is precisely what he once was.

It is Privas who wrote the delicate fantasy full of color, of lightness, and of pathos, “Le Testament de Pierrot,” and it is he who has written others upon a hundred themes on love and war under the titles of “Chanson de Révolte” and “Chanson d’Aurore.”

His verse is musical and his song contains that which is finished and beautiful.

Some of these bards are tall and thin, wearing their hair long as did the troubadours and the minstrels of the Middle Ages; others are dapper and business-like, wear sensible modern clothes, and get their hair cut regularly.

The _chansonnier_ of to-day in Montmartre is not the velvet-coated, long-haired poet that one could have seen two score of years ago, muffled in his cloak, with his verses beneath his arm, wending his way to some cozy corner of this Bohemia to join his fellow poets and recite his couplets, returning to his garret singing at the break of dawn. Those were the poet-singers of the time of Henri Murger.

To-day the cabarets of Montmartre are regarded for the most part as purely business ventures, and it is the ambition of many of these _chansonniers_ to own and direct their own cabaret, make their fortune, and retire in comfort before old age. Many of them are married men with families to support. There is every inducement for them to lead domestic lives. Singing night after night in the smoke and often vitiated air of the cabarets is fatiguing work.

Even the best _chansonniers_ are paid but little for their work. Ten francs a night is the regular price, and many women sing for less.

The price charged for admission varies from one franc and a half up to three francs, which sum includes your drink. The seating capacity of these cabarets is limited, and the profits are in proportion. These low salaries are not confined to the cabarets alone.

There are women whose names appear in startling big letters on the bills of concert-halls who get nine francs a night for a turn of three songs with encores and three matinées a week, not including extra performances on fête days.

Out of this they are obliged to provide effective gowns, and these must be replaced by fresher ones before they become too familiar to the audience. Besides, the singers are obliged to pay their dresser, for few can afford a maid, and the dressing-room attendant and the hair-dresser attached to the establishment. They must even pay for the orchestration of their songs, and for their own posters. Many of these women are well supported, but there are many more to whom an honest life is a hopeless struggle for existence.

Should they accept a position in the big cafés-concerts like those of the Champs-Élysées, they will be paid more for their services, but the expenses extorted from them will be increased in proportion.

“Did you walk again to-day, Mademoiselle D.?” asked a manager of a leading open-air music-hall of one of his most attractive artistes. “You know it does not look well for you to be seen arriving on foot.”

His manner was polite, but his tone suggested to this hard-working little singer, “Forever after at least a _fiacre_!”

A few days later he continued:

“Don’t you think you had better put on a new gown, mademoiselle? The public gets tired of seeing the same dresses.”

“But, monsieur, that is the third one I have had in six weeks and I can not manage, with my salary, to have a new gown every week.”

“Well, then,” said the manager, “let me arrange matters for you. You please the public and I am ready to make as fair a proposition to you as I do to the others. I will give you an engagement for three seasons on the condition that you shall dine at least three nights a week in the restaurant upstairs.”

“Monsieur,” answered mademoiselle, indignantly, “when that becomes my _métier_, I shall manage it myself.”

Among the _bons garçons_ and _braves filles_ of the _vie de Bohème_, on the Butte, this good Parisienne would have been held in respect and esteem.

Drawing by Léandre

MLLE. DESCHAMPS]

There are few marriages among these bohemians of the Butte, but love they hold sacred, and woman as the ideal of all creation. Among scores of these _petits ménages_ exist peace, happiness and fidelity. Many are the most domestic of homes. Sometimes these _bons garçons_ and _braves filles_ do marry, just as they tell you Pierrot really did in the end, beneath the trembling organ and the tolling bell; but these instances are rare. When one does happen, the quarter speaks of it as of some unusual incident in the lives of friends, such as a voyage to China.

Beneath an undulating haze of incense from a dozen gurgling pipes a song floats through the cabaret. Listen!

“_Viens! mon amour, la route est claire,
Et tout en fleurs est le chemin;
Et lon lon laire la route est claire,
Pierrot!—Donne moi donc ta main._”

Chapter Seven

CIRCUSES AND FÊTES FORAINES

Fifteen years ago all of idle Paris applauded “La Goulue,” a can-can _danseuse_ whose beauty and abandon made her notorious. In every sense of the term “La Goulue” was of the kind of quadrille dancers which were to be found at the old Mabille when it was at the height of its blaze and glory.

She had jewels in those days, and lingerie of Valenciennes lace. She was the incarnation of all that was reckless and extravagant. She elevated her toes where she pleased, tipping off the silk hats of the well-fed old _roués_ who chanced to crowd too near the magic circle while she danced.

She had a ready wit, too, and a vocabulary interlarded with the _argot_ of the _gamine_ and _gigolette_ of the _barrière_. All of leisure Paris patted her approvingly upon her bare shoulders and threw her their louis. But those were the days when La Goulue was younger. Now time has flown away with youth, her fervor and her grace.

She became stout—almost portly. One blue Monday this famous _danseuse_ packed up her frills and her furbelows, folded carefully what was left of her Valenciennes lace, and said good-by to her old-time _métier_. It was a little sad—for La Goulue loved to dance.

She took another step in her career, perhaps the most daring and the most dangerous of all. She became a lion tamer, bought from a stranded menagerie some green “cat stock,” to use the vernacular of the circus world, moved from her Parisian residence to a wagon on wheels, and so became sole proprietor, manager and trainer of an animal show in a _fête foraine_.

In the dull season I found La Goulue in February beyond the fortifications of Paris, where in addition to her gipsy wagon on wheels she kept in her back yard screened from the curious eyes of the town children half a dozen cages—the cramped homes of four lions, one laughing hyena, two slinking panthers and a sad-looking bear.

The roof of her salon on wheels was interesting. The ribs supporting the ceiling were decorated with narrow fringe which had evidently served at one time to trim some circus paraphernalia. A bunk spanned one end of the barrack, and several trunks containing La Goulue’s effects occupied most of the remaining floor space.

It was a sunny morning, and a black and white kitten lay on its back upon the tumbled quilts of the bunk, playing with its tail, the tip of which the sunbeams streaming through the little square window over the bunk occasionally illumined.

Some cauliflower simmered on the stove for dinner.

In another corner sat “Monsieur La Goulue,” the lion tamer. He is a man about forty, tall, well-built, blond, with a determined jaw, and cool and collected in his manner, as befits his profession. He wore a blue flannel shirt, water-proof _sabots_, and four diamond rings.

La Goulue unearthed for me from the bottom of a trunk some of her past glory: a set of photographs taken by a smart photographer during the time of her favor, and a framed certificate of a first prize for dancing bearing the date 1889, and the seal of the judges of the award.

She also brought to light a contract to dance for three thousand seven hundred and fifty francs a week. The document bore the signature of a notary and the stamp of the French government.

Meanwhile the lions in the fourth cage roared, and the sad bear, made happy with his morning ration of mush and milk, buried his nose in the pail, muzzle and all, and forgave his mistress for changing her _métier_.

Next to the panthers’ cage the week’s wash hung drying in the sun. Some of it was coquettish.

Ah! my friend, if you complain of the responsibility of having a family on your hands, remember it is not a patch to having a menagerie on your hands, even without the cumbersome elephant.

“To show” inside the fortifications costs dearly—six hundred francs rental for a place in any of the _fêtes foraines_. The law prohibits single exhibitions which are not a part of the regular _fêtes foraines_, and these take place only at stated intervals in the different quarters of the city. They are the Foire aux Pain-d’Epices, the Fête de Neuilly, the Fête des Invalides, the one surrounding the bronze lion of Belfort, and other smaller ones along the Boulevards Vaugirard, Pasteur, Garibaldi, Grenelle, and Rochechouart, and the Fête of La Chapelle. The still smaller fêtes outside of Paris do not pay well. Meanwhile the animals have to be fed, pay or no pay.

Photo by F. Berkeley Smith

BEHIND THE SCENES]