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CHAPTER VII.
WAYS AND MEANS OF COMMUNICATION

The means of communication in and about Paris in former days was but a travesty on the methods of the “Metropolitain,” which in our time literally whisks one like the wings of the morning, from the Arc de Triomphe to the Bois de Vincennes, and from the Place de la Nation to the Trocadero.

In 1850 there were officially enumerated over twenty-eight hundred boulevards, avenues, rues, and passages, the most lively being St. Honoré, Richelieu, Vivienne, Castiglione, de l’Université, – Dumas lived here at No. 25, in a house formerly occupied by Chateaubriand, now the Magazin St. Thomas, – de la Chaussée d’Antin, de la Paix, de Grenelle, de Bac, St. Denis, St. Martin, St. Antoine, and, above all, the Rue de Rivoli, – with a length of nearly three miles, distinguished at its westerly end by its great covered gallery, where the dwellings above are carried on a series of 287 arcades, flanked by boutiques, not very sumptuous to-day, to be sure, but even now a promenade of great popularity. At No. 22 Rue de Rivoli, near the Rue St. Roch, Dumas himself lived from 1838 to 1843.

There were in those days more than a score of passages, being for the most part a series of fine galleries, in some instances taking the form of a rotunda, glass-covered, and surrounded by shops with appartements above. The most notable were those known as the Panoramas Jouffroy, Vivienne, Colbert, de l’Opera, Delorme, du Saumon, etc.

There were more than a hundred squares, or places– most of which remain to-day. The most famous on the right bank of the Seine are de la Concorde, Vendome, du Carrousel, du Palais Royal, des Victoires, du Châtelet, de l’Hôtel de Ville, Royale, des Vosges, and de la Bastille; on the left bank, du Panthéon, de St. Sulpice, du Palais Bourbon. Most of these radiating centres of life are found in Dumas’ pages, the most frequent mention being in the D’Artagnan and Valois romances.

Among the most beautiful and the most frequented thoroughfares were – and are – the tree-bordered quais, and, of course, the boulevards.

The interior boulevards were laid out at the end of the seventeenth century on the ancient ramparts of the city, and extended from the Madeleine to La Bastille, a distance of perhaps three miles. They are mostly of a width of thirty-two metres (105 feet).

This was the boulevard of the time par excellence, and its tree-bordered allées– sidewalks and roadways – bore, throughout its comparatively short length, eleven different names, often changing meanwhile as it progressed its physiognomy as well.

On the left bank, the interior boulevard was extended from the Jardin des Plantes to the Hôtel des Invalides; while the “boulevards extérieurs” formed a second belt of tree-shaded thoroughfares of great extent.

Yet other boulevards of ranking greatness cut the rues and avenues tangently, now from one bank and then from the other; the most splendid of all being the Avenue de l’Opéra, which, however, did not come into being until well after the middle of the century. Among these are best recalled Sébastopol, St. Germain, St. Martin, Magenta, Malesherbes, and others. The Place Malesherbes, which intersects the avenue, now contains the celebrated Dumas memorial by Doré, and the neighbouring thoroughfare was the residence of Dumas from 1866 to 1870.

Yet another class of thoroughfares, while conceived previous to the chronological limits which the title puts upon this book, were the vast and splendid promenades and rendezvous, with their trees, flowers, and fountains; such as the gardens of the Tuileries and the Luxembourg, the Champs Elysées, the Esplanade des Invalides, and the Bois de Boulogne and de Vincennes.

Dibdin tells of his entrée into Paris in the early days of the nineteenth century, having journeyed by “malle-poste” from Havre, in the pages of his memorable bibliographical tour.

His observations somewhat antedate the Paris of Dumas and his fellows, but changes came but slowly, and therein may be found a wealth of archæological and topographical information concerning the French metropolis; though he does compare, detrimentally, the panorama of Paris which unrolls from the heights of Passy, to that of London from Highgate Woods.

On the contrary, his impressions change after passing the barriers. “Nothing in London,” says he, “can enter into comparison with the imposing spectacle which is presented by the magnificent Champs Elysées, with the Château of the Tuileries en face, and to the right the superb dome of the Invalides glistening in the rays of the setting sun.”

Paris had at this time 2,948 “voitures de louage,” which could be hired for any journey to be made within reasonable distance; and eighty-three which were run only on predetermined routes, as were the later omnibuses and tram-cars. These 2,948 carriages were further classified as follows; 900 fiacres; 765 cabriolets, circulating in the twelve interior arrondissements; 406 cabriolets for the exterior; 489 carrosses de remise (livery-coaches), and 388 cabriolets de remise.

The préfet de police, Count Anglès, had received from one Godot, an entrepreneur, – a sort of early edition of what we know to-day as a company promoter, – a proposition to establish a line of omnibuses along the quais and boulevards. Authorization for the scheme was withheld for the somewhat doubtful reason that “the constant stoppage of the vehicles to set down and take up passengers would greatly embarrass other traffic;” and so a new idea was still-born into the world, to come to life only in 1828, when another received the much coveted authority to make the experiment.

Already such had been established in Bordeaux and Nantes, by an individual by the name of Baudry, and he it was who obtained the first concession in Paris.

The first line inaugurated was divided into two sections: Rue de Lancry – Madeleine, and Rue de Lancry – Bastille.

It is recorded that the young – but famous – Duchesse de Berry was the first to take passage in these “intramural diligences,” which she called “le carrosse des malheureux;” perhaps with some truth, if something of snobbishness.

There seems to have been a considerable difficulty in attracting a clientèle to this new means of communication. The public hesitated, though the prices of the places were decided in their favour, so much so that the enterprise came to an untimely end, or, at least, its founder did; for he committed suicide because of the non-instantaneous success of the scheme.

The concession thereupon passed into other hands, and there was created a new type of vehicle of sixteen places, drawn by two horses, and priced at six sous the place. The new service met with immediate, if but partial, success, and with the establishment of new routes, each served by carriages of a distinctive colour, its permanence was assured.

Then came the “Dames Blanches,” – the name being inspired by Boieldieu’s opera, – which made the journey between the Porte St. Martin and the Madeleine in a quarter of an hour. They were painted a cream white, and drawn by a pair of white horses, coiffed with white plumes.

After the establishment of the omnibus came other series of vehicles for public service: the “Ecossaises,” with their gaudily variegated colours, the “Carolines,” the “Bearnaises,” and the “Tricycles,” which ran on three wheels in order to escape the wheel-tax which obtained at the time.

In spite of the rapid multiplication of omnibus lines under Louis-Philippe, their veritable success came only with the ingenious system of transfers, or “la correspondance;” a system and a convenience whereby one can travel throughout Paris for the price of one fare. From this reason alone, perhaps, the omnibus and tram system of Paris is unexcelled in all the world. This innovation dates, moreover, from 1836, and, accordingly, is no new thing, as many may suppose.

Finally, more recently, – though it was during the Second Empire, – the different lines were fused under the title of the “Compagnie Générale des Omnibus.”

“La malle-poste” was an institution of the greatest importance to Paris, though of course no more identified with it than with the other cities of France between which it ran. It dated actually from the period of the Revolution, and grew, and was modified, under the Restoration. It is said that its final development came during the reign of Louis XVIII., and grew out of his admiration for the “élégance et la rapidité des malles anglaises,” which had been duly impressed upon him during his sojourn in England.

This may be so, and doubtless with some justification. En passant it is curious to know, and, one may say, incredible to realize, that from the G. P. O. in London, in this year of enlightenment, there leaves each night various mail-coaches – for Dover, for Windsor, and perhaps elsewhere. They do not carry passengers, but they do give a very bad service in the delivery of certain classes of mail matter. The marvel is that such things are acknowledged as being fitting and proper to-day.

In 1836 the “malle-poste” was reckoned, in Paris, as being élégante et rapide, having a speed of not less than sixteen kilometres an hour over give-and-take roads.

Each evening, from the courtyard of the Hôtel des Postes, the coaches left, with galloping horses and heavy loads, for the most extreme points of the frontier; eighty-six hours to Bordeaux at first, and finally only forty-four (in 1837); one hundred hours to Marseilles, later but sixty-eight.

Stendhal tells of his journey by “malle-poste” from Paris to Marseilles in three days, and Victor Hugo has said that two nights on the road gave one a high idea of the solidité of the human machine; and further says, of a journey down the Loire, that he recalled only a great tower at Orleans, a candlelit salle of an auberge en route, and, at Blois, a bridge with a cross upon it. “In reality, during the journey, animation was suspended.”

What we knew, or our forefathers knew, as the “poste-chaise,” properly “chaise de poste,” came in under the Restoration. All the world knows, or should know, Edouard Thierry’s picturesque description of it. “Le rêve de nos vingt ans, la voiture où l’on n’est que deux … devant vous le chemin libre, la plaine, la pente rapide, le pont.” “You traverse cities and hamlets without number, by the grands rues, the grande place, etc.”

In April, 1837, Stendhal quitted Paris under exactly these conditions for his tour of France. He bought “une bonne calèche,” and left via Fontainebleau, Montargis, and Cosne. Two months after, however, he returned to the metropolis via Bourges, having refused to continue his journey en calèche, preferring the “malle-poste” and the diligence of his youth.

Public diligences, however, had but limited accommodation on grand occasions; Victor Hugo, who had been invited to the consecration of Charles X. at Reims, and his friend, Charles Nodier, the bibliophile, – also a friend of Dumas, it is recalled, – in company with two others, made the attempt amid much discomfort in a private carriage, – of a sort, – and Nodier wittily tells of how he and Hugo walked on foot up all the hills, each carrying his gripsack as well.

More than all others the “Coches d’Eau” are especially characteristic of Paris; those fly-boats, whose successors ply up and down the Seine, to the joy of Americans, the convenience of the Parisian public, and – it is surely allowable to say it – the disgust of Londoners, now that their aged and decrepit “Thames steamboats” are no more.

These early Parisian “Coches d’Eau” carried passengers up and down river for surprisingly low fares, and left the city at seven in the morning in summer, and eight in winter.

The following is a list of the most important routes:

All of these services catered for passengers and goods, and were, if not rapid, certainly a popular and comfortable means of communication.

An even more popular journey, and one which partook more particularly of a pleasure-trip, was that of the galiote, which left each day from below the Pont-Royal for St. Cloud, giving a day’s outing by river which to-day, even, is the most fascinating of the many petits voyages to be undertaken around Paris.

The other recognized public means of communication between the metropolis and the provincial towns and cities were the “Messageries Royales,” and two other similar companies, “La Compagne Lafitte et Caillard” and “Les Françaises.”

These companies put also before the Parisian public two other classes of vehicular accommodation, the “pataches suspendues,” small carriages with but one horse, which ran between Paris and Strasburg, Metz, Nancy, and Lyons at the price of ten sous per hour.

Again there was another means of travel which originated in Paris; it was known as the “Messageries à Cheval.” Travellers rode on horses, which were furnished by the company, their bagages being transported in advance by a “chariot.” In fine weather this must certainly have been an agreeable and romantic mode of travel in those days; what would be thought of it to-day, when one, if he does not fly over the kilometres in a Sud – or Orient – Express, is as likely as not covering the Route Nationale at sixty or more kilometres the hour in an automobile, it is doubtful to say.

Finally came the famous diligence, which to-day, outside the “Rollo” books and the reprints of old-time travel literature, is seldom met with in print.

“These immense structures,” says an observant French writer, “which lost sometimes their centre of gravity, in spite of all precaution and care on the part of the driver and the guard, were, by an Ordonnance Royale of the 16th of July, 1828, limited as to their dimensions, weight, and design.”

Each diligence carried as many spare parts as does a modern automobile, and workshops and supply-depots were situated at equal distances along the routes. Hugo said that the complexity of it all represented to him “the perfect image of a nation; its constitution and its government. In the diligence was to be found, as in the state, the aristocracy in the coupé, the bourgeoisie in the interior, the people in la rotonde, and, finally, ‘the artists, the thinkers, and the unclassed’ in the utmost height, the impériale, beside the conducteur, who represented the law of the state.

“This great diligence, with its body painted in staring yellow, and its five horses, carries one in a diminutive space through all the sleeping villages and hamlets of the countryside.”

From Paris, in 1830, the journey by diligence to Toulouse – 182 French leagues – took eight days; to Rouen, thirteen hours; to Lyons, par Auxerre, four days, and to Calais, two and a half days.

The diligence was certainly an energetic mode of travel, but not without its discomforts, particularly in bad weather. Prosper Merimée gave up his winter journey overland to Madrid in 1859, and took ship at Bordeaux for Alicante in Spain, because, as he says, “all the inside places had been taken for a month ahead.”

The coming of the chemin de fer can hardly be dealt with here. Its advent is comparatively modern history, and is familiar to all.

Paris, as might naturally be supposed, was the hub from which radiated the great spokes of iron which bound the uttermost frontiers intimately with the capital.

There were three short lines of rail laid down in the provinces before Paris itself took up with the innovation: at Roanne, St. Etienne-Andrézieux, Epinac, and Alais.

By la loi du 9 Juillet, 1835, a line was built from Paris to St. Germain, seventeen kilometres, and its official opening for traffic, which took place two years later, was celebrated by a déjeuner de circonstance at the Restaurant du Pavillon Henri Quatre at St. Germain.

Then came “Le Nord” to Lille, Boulogne, and Calais; “L’Ouest” to Havre, Rouen, Cherbourg, and Brest; “L’Est” to Toul and Nancy; “L’Orleans” to Orleans and the Loire Valley; and, finally, the “P. L. M.” (Paris-Lyon et Méditerranée) to the south of France. “Then it was that Paris really became the rich neighbour of all the provincial towns and cities. Before, she had been a sort of pompous and distant relative” – as a whimsical Frenchman has put it.

The mutability of time and the advent of mechanical traction is fast changing all things – in France and elsewhere. The Chevaux Blancs, Deux Pigeons, Cloches d’Or, and the Hôtels de la Poste, de la Croix, and du Grand Cerf are fast disappearing from the large towns, and the way of iron is, or will be, a source of inspiration to the poets of the future, as has the postillon, the diligence, and the chaise de poste in the past. Here is a quatrain written by a despairing aubergiste of the little town of Salons, which indicates how the innovation was received by the provincials – in spite of its undeniable serviceability:

 
“En l’an neuf cent, machine lourde
A tretous farfit damne et mal,
Gens moult rioient d’icelle bourde,
Au campas renovoient cheval.”
 

The railways which centre upon Paris are indeed the ties that bind Paris to the rest of France, and vice versa. Their termini – the great gares– are at all times the very concentrated epitome of the life of the day.

The new gares of the P. L. M. and the Orleans railways are truly splendid and palatial establishments, with – at first glance – little of the odour of the railway about them, and much of the ceremonial appointments of a great civic institution; with gorgeous salles à manger, waiting-rooms, and – bearing the P. L. M. in mind in particular – not a little of the aspect of an art-gallery.

The other embarcadères are less up-to-date – that vague term which we twentieth-century folk are wont to make use of in describing the latest innovations. The Gare St. Lazare is an enormous establishment, with a hotel appendage, which of itself is of great size; the Gare du Nord is equally imposing, but architecturally unbeautiful; while the Gare de l’Est still holds in its tympanum the melancholy symbolical figure of the late lamented Ville de Strasbourg, the companion in tears, one may say, of that other funereally decorated statue on the Place de la Concorde.

Paris, too, is well served by her tramways propelled by horses, – which have not yet wholly disappeared, – and by steam and electricity, applied in a most ingenious manner. By this means Paris has indeed been transformed from its interior thoroughfares to its uttermost banlieu.

The last two words on the subject have reference to the advent and development of the bicycle and the automobile, as swift, safe, and economical means of transport.

The reign of the bicycle as a pure fad was comparatively short, whatever may have been its charm of infatuation. As a utile thing it is perhaps more worthy of consideration, for it cannot be denied that its development – and of its later gigantic offspring, the automobile – has had a great deal to do with the better construction and up-keep of modern roadways, whether urban or suburban.

“La petite reine bicyclette” has been fêted in light verse many times, but no one seems to have hit off its salient features as did Charles Monselet. Others have referred to riders of the “new means of locomotion” as “cads on casters,” and a writer in Le Gaulois stigmatized them as “imbéciles à roulettes,” which is much the same; while no less a personage than Francisque Sarcey demanded, in the journal La France, that the police should suppress forthwith this eccentricité.

Charles Monselet’s eight short lines are more appreciative:

 
“Instrument raide
En fer battu
Qui dépossède
Le char torlu;
Vélocipède
Rail impromptu,
Fils d’Archimède,
D’où nous viens-tu?”
 

Though it is apart from the era of Dumas, this discursion into a phase of present-day Paris is, perhaps, allowable in drawing a comparison between the city of to-day and that even of the Second Empire, which was, at its height, contemporary with Dumas’ prime.

If Paris was blooming suddenly forth into beauty and grace in the period which extended from the Revolution to the Franco-Prussian War, she has certainly, since that time, not ceased to shed her radiance; indeed, she flowers more abundantly than ever, though, truth to tell, it is all due to the patronage which the state has ever given, in France, to the fostering of the arts as well as industries.

And so Paris has grown, – beautiful and great, – and the stranger within her gates, whether he come by road or rail, by automobile or railway-coach, is sure to be duly impressed with the fact that Paris is for one and all alike a city founded of and for the people.