The Café Guerbois

  In his biography of the writer, Emile Zola, Frederick Brown describes the rich cultural life of the Batignolles in Paris and of the Café Guerbois, which provided a rich environment for the Impressionists and other avant garde figures of the period.

Frederick Brown, Zola: A Life (New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 1995), pp. 138-139.

His [Zola's] life shifted increasingly toward the Right Bank now that he saw more and more painters who inhabited Les Batignolles. Linked to central Paris by omnibuses called "Batignollaises," this urban village, where cottages survived among recently built tenements, became home for people needing cheap digs or wanting asylum from revolutionary turmoil. Its population had swelled after 1848 and continued to swell under Napoleon III, when widespread demolition of slums cast thousands adrift. Pensioned civil servants, retired shopkeepers, down­at-heel spinsters, and unemployed workers made do in an environment that also proved hospitable to young artists. Manet lived on the rue de Saint-Petersbourg (later renamed Leningrad); within hailing distance of him were Bazille, Sisley, Renoir, and Degas.In 1867, Zola, too, found quarters in Les Batignolles. Meanwhile he showed up almost every week at a cafe just off the Place de Clichy where he was sure to find his painter friends assembled, especially on Friday afternoons, when they met in plenary session, knowing that Manet would join them. Until Manet "discovered" it, nothing distinguished  the Cafe Guerbois except  its trellised  garden. Most habitues came for sport, and billiard balls colliding on tables in a dimly lit back room echoed through the saloon, which had mirrors and gingerbread to remind Manet of his beloved Boulevard. Here he matched wits with Degas  while  neighborhood   folk,  perplexed  by their  conversation, looked sideways at what they called "the artists' comer." It was a lively scene, if  not  bohemian  in  the  way  that  the  Cafe Momus  had  been when Charles  Baudelaire,  Gustave  Courbet,  and  Gerard  de  Nerval gathered there during the  1840s. As Monet remembered  years later:

Edouard Manet, The Café Guerbois

"Nothing could have been more interesting than these talks, with their perpetual clashes of opinion. You kept your mind on the alert, you felt encouraged to do  disinterested, sincere research, you laid in sup­ plies of enthusiasm that kept you going for weeks and weeks, until a project you had in mind took definite form. You always left the cafe feeling hardened for the struggle, with a stronger will, a sharpened purpose, and a clearer head."

Consorting with porcupines like Degas and Duranty (a talented novelist who wrote art criticism) sometimes led to egos being punctured, but Monet's enthusiasm was generally shared, and as word of this cenacle spread, the few became more numerous. The Belgian painter Alfred Stevens, the great photographer Nadar, James Whistler all put in occasional  appearances.

 Zola seldom encountered Cezanne at the Guerbois. When Paul did go there he would arrive late, survey everyone warily, open his jacket, hitch up his pants like a cocksure street tough, then shake hands all around, except with Manet, to whom he'd doff his cap and say in the nasal twang of Provence: "I won't offer you my hand, Monsieur Ma­ net, as it's been one week now since I've bathed." Tom between the need for companionship and an aversion to company that made him feel stupid, he frequently sat by himself, shunning the melee. More often than not his departure followed hard on his arrival. A queer look or a remark critical of some idea he cherished was a spark to tinder, and enough to propel him from the cafe without explanation. "They're a lot of bastards, they dress as smartly as solicitors," he told Antoine Guillemet. "Wit bores me shitless [L'esprit m'emmerde]."