Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Years (2) -- Paris as Theater
Paris at the time was like no other place in the world. Even in retrospect her physical presence demands the feminine gender. The Seine, no mere frontier, as today, separating left and right banks, was a central artery carrying bateaux-mouches for suburban commuters, bateauxlavoirs for the city's washer-women, heavy traffic of brightly painted and planted barges, and a fleet of light fishing skiffs. The Champs-Elysées was still a bridle path flanked by elegant hôtels particuliers. In the Bois de Boulogne, the rich and well born had their domain in which to parade in their carriages during the morning and in whose restaurants they dined and danced and made love at night. More cows and goats and chickens thrived on the open slopes of Montmartre among the windmills than artists lived in its steep village streets. Montparnasse lay quiet and far away across the river beyond the fashionable residences of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. Through the middle of Paris like an equator ran les grands boulevards, a busy and still fashionable quarter devoted to theaters, newspaper offices, and crowded cafes.
Most important of all, Paris had just had her face lifted. Baron Haussmann's ambitious plans for opening up the constricted city had been executed by 1880- except for his own unfinished Boulevard Haussmann, which came to a stop halfway through the eighth arrondissement. (It became the standard music-hall joke of the eighties.) The magnificent new Opera, commanding its own avenue to the Louvre and the Théâtre-Français, the refurbished city hall, and wide tree-lined boulevards slicing through the most clogged quarters--these were more than architectural renovations. Paris now had the space to look at herself and see that she was no longer a village clustered about a few grandiose palaces, nor merely a city of bustling commerce and exchange. She had become a stage, a vast theater for herself and all the world. For thirty years the frock coats and monocles, the toppers and bowlers (chapeaux hauts de forme and chapeaux melon) seemed to be designed to fit this vast stage-set, along with the ladies' long dresses and corsets and eclipsing hats. Street cleaners in blue denim, gendarmes in trim capes, butchers in leather aprons, coachmen in black cutaways, the army's crack chasseurs in plumes, gold-braid, and polished boots-everyone wore a costume and displayed himself to best advantage.
It is this theatrical aspect of life, the light-opera atmosphere, which gave la belle époque its particular flavor. Since Offenbach's era, living had become increasingly a special kind of performance presided over by fashion, innovation, and taste. History provides its own reasons for the gaiety of the era: economic prosperity following rapid recovery from the defeat in 1871, the unexpected stability of this third try at republican government, and innocence of any world conflict of the kind that would put a stop to it all. But such reasons do not explain why almost every book of reminiscences about the period indulges an unashamed nostalgia about a charmed way of life now lost. One suspects the attitude of being pure sentimental illusion until one perceives how truly different life was in Paris in the nineties and in the early years of this century. More than its debated public issues, the rarely challenged truisms of the age gave it its character. Without them the city's boulevards and walled gardens, its salons and boudoirs might long since have been forgotten. These truisms were simple and, in their own way, wise. Everyone loves a crowd; everyone has a right to privacy. Equality is a word reserved for public declarations and must not be allowed to pervert justice and social distinctions. Politics is a game played for fun or profit; business is a game best mixed with pleasure. Love cannot last, but marriage must; any vice can be forgiven except lack of feeling. The histrionic gifts of the French, concentrated in one city, enacted these themes with passion and conviction. Paris was a stage where the excitement of performance gave every deed the double significance of private gesture and public action. Doctor and ragpicker alike performed their professional flourishes, and the crime passionnel was practiced as a fine art. . . .
Fashion influenced every domain of life. Just after 1890 the velocipede had been introduced with little success. A few years later, the Prince de Sagan, the most prominent and dashing nobleman in Paris, pedaled through the Bois on a "little steel fairy," wearing a loud striped suit and specially designed straw boater. The city was delighted, and women 's fashions changed immediately to allow them to ride astride. The bicycle, symbolizing everything democratic and modern (and supporting two weekly papers and a daily), led the way to an upsurge of sport which culminated in the revival of the Olympic games in 1894. After the bicycle, but without public participation, came the airplane. Blériot designed and stubbornly flew eight successive models before he finally drifted across the English Channel in 1909 in a ship that looked like a bicycle with fins. He was deliriously mobbed during the welcome-home parade in Paris.
Honor was still something out of a Corneille tragedy, and dueling perfectly suited the mood of the times. "On the field of honor" one could go beyond words to settle personal differences by serious dramatics. The papers carried announcements of each day's affaires d'honneur, with lengthy procès-verbaux drawn up by the seconds to establish how settlement had or had not been made. Engagements were fought until the first blood flowed, and afterward the combatants sometimes walked off the field arm in arm. Fatal encounters were rare. When an important duel was to be fought, numbers of spectators tried to follow the participants to the chosen spot on the outskirts of Paris. Journalists, who outdid one another in writing slanderous articles, constantly had their friends up at dawn to serve as seconds, and many doctors began their day by dressing a sword wound. Catulle Mendès almost lost his life defending Sarah Bernhardt's right to play the role of Hamlet. Duels were fought on the slightest provocation, and no effective attempt was made to outlaw the custom, so typically exhibitionistic, until after World War 1.