SUNDRIES: An eighteenth century newsletter

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ITINERARIES: Paris to Versailles

A long time ago I mentioned Itineraire Complet de la France (1788), a two-volume work that is, in a word, fun: it provides an almost obsessively detailed guide to all the major routes of France (and no doubt some minor ones). While, barring a miraculous bequest, I don't think I'll be adding more regular features to Sundries, I can't resist translating at least one well-known route from this work (and maybe adding others from time to time in the future - any requests?).

So how about a walk from Paris to Versailles?

For those who only know Paris as tourists, this trek begins along the quai by the Tuileries (now a hot sun-bathing spot) to the Place de la Concorde (where the bridge that stands there today, and may contain parts of the Bastille, was being built) across the river from the Invalides, until the Palais de Chaillot (still in an 'amphitheatre' shape), across from the Champ de Mars (meaning, today, the Eiffel Tower) and (far back) the Ecole Militaire, on towards Passy and Auteuil. It is interesting too to note, a year before the Revolution began, that the Queen (Marie-Antoinette) was credited here with building a road (and her own cute little chateau).

Leave Paris by the quai of the Tuileries. At the place Louis XV, & before the new bridge being built. Go along the N. of the Seine & S. of Cours-la-Reine, in passing N. across from the Royal Hotel of the Invalides. At the gate of the Conference & in front of the new Firepump, which provides water to Paris. The Gros-Caillou & the Tripery face from across the water. Below S. of Chaillot & the length of the handsome gardens built as an amphitheater. Go along the wall of the Convent of Bons Hommes & at the new town gate. Facing and about 1/4 l[eague] N. of the Ecole Royale Militaire & of the Champ de Mars, beyond the Seine. Past the street which climbs to the Bons-Hommes & to Passy. Follow the right side of the river passing before the mineral waters of Passy & the handsome garden like that of Chaillot. After Passy can be seen the town of Auteuil and at 1/2 q[uarter] l. N. W. of the road. *Au Point du Jour* ["At Daybreak", a town] 2 l. The acid Factory of M. the Count of Artois & the Javelle mill facing from the other side of the Seine. Leaving the Point du Jour, pass between No 4 of the highway marker & a Justice [a gallows?], & before the new planted and hardened road which goes to St. Cloud, & which one leaves at right. Across a handsome plain from which one discovers in the S. E. the towns of Vaugirard, Issy, Vanvres, Clamart & Meudon. The chateau of Bellevue is S. facing the road. The Royal Glassworks & the town of Sevres ["Seves"] are below on the bank of the Seine. The farm of Billancourt is left of the road. Fork in the road to St.-Denis which goes through the bois de Boulogne. The bridge at Sevres on the Seine river which one crosses. Leaving the bridge one turns right & passes before the post & several inns. Go along by the gate and park of St. Cloud which the Queen has just built, & which goes from St.-Cloud to Bellevue passing before the entry of the Royal Glassworks. Along N. of this building and of the Porcelain Factory. Cross the village of Sevres, which is long, passing before the Church. I l. Before the last houses of this village there is a road at right, which those on foot take, it crosses the little woods, passes to little Montreuil: it shortens the route. Carriages and people on horseback follow the main road which goes uphill until the avenue de Paris, passing Viroflay, the church is a 1/2 q. l. at left. At the avenue of Paris & to Versailles... 1 1/2 l.
(396-397)

THE OLD REGIME POLICE BLOTTER: Prostitution (2)

Mercier's Tableau de Paris includes a long section on common prostitutes (followed by one on courtesans and one on kept women). Mercier repeats much of what was quoted last week from a judicial point of view, but in a tone closer to that of passages in Thackeray or Dickens:

They show themselves after all as they are; they are less at least one vice, hypocrisy: they cannot cause the ravages that a libertine and prudish woman often occasions under false appearances of modesty and love. Unfortunate victims of the indigence or of the abandon of their parents, rarely driven by an ardent temperament, they are offended by neither outrage nor contempt, they are degraded in their own eyes... ..The number of common prostitutes favors only too much the disorder of passions, has given young men a free tone, which they use with the most decent women; so that in this century, so polite, people are crude in love... But the scandal of prostitutes goes too far in the capital. The contempt for decent behavior should not be so visible, so publicly displayed... In Paris are counted thirty thousand common prostitutes; that is, vulgivagues [meaning, who goes with the 'vulgar', the common man], and about ten thousand, less indecent, who are kept, and who change hands from one year to another. Common prostitutes are not in the least in love; and if they are given over to lust, those who frequent them are that much more so. The police seeks spies in this disgraceful body. Its agents put these unfortunate women to work... They show themselves in the end sometimes more horribly corrupted than the most vile prostitute; because the latter earns the right to treat them with contempt, so much do they gain from base behavior. Yes there are beings below these women of ill repute; and these beings are certain police operatives. A police statute forbids merchants to rent to these women, for the price of silver, by the week or by the day, dresses, pelisses, mantlets, and other adornments; which proves on one hand the extreme misery, and on the other the terrible usury which these merchants do not blush to practice on these creatures, who have neither furniture nor clothes, and who feel the need to dress up, in order to be paid a higher price; because a pelisse allows one to ask more than a common jacket. Every week nightly raids are made with a facility which, overdone, would not fail to displease the political speculators, despite the contempt inspired by the species so tr eated.... They are taken to the prison on the rue St. Martin, and the last Friday of the month they pass to the police; that is, they hear on their knees the sentence which condemns them to be locked up in the salpétrière. They have no representation, no lawyers, no defenders; they are judged quite arbitrarily. The next day they are put in a long wagon, which is not covered. They are all standing and crowded together. One cries, another moans; this one hides her face; the boldest bear the look of the populace who harangues them; they respond indecently and brave the jeers which arise as they pass... The most up-scale and the madams, with a little money, obtain permission to ride in a covered wagon. Arrived at the hospital, they are examined, those who are infected are separated, to be sent to Bicêtre, there to find the cure or death... One can estimate at fifty million a year the money spent on prostitutes, in counting them all under this heading. Public charity only amounts to three million; a disproportion which is something to think about. This money goes to dressmakers, jewelers, carriage operators, caterers, inn-keepers, furnished lodgings, etc. And what is terrifying to think about, is that if this prostitution suddenly stopped, twenty thousand girls would perish miserably, the labors of this unhappy sex not sufficing here either to their upkeep or their food. Thus this excess is as if inseparable from a populous city; and an infinity of trades only survives by the rapid circulation of cash which supports libertinage.
Mercier, Tableau de Paris, Chapter 238

-- ROUSSEAU'S NEIGHBOR

It turns out that Rousseau and I had two things in common: we both lived, in Paris, on the fourth floor (fifth floor in American terms, the ground floor not being counted) and we both had prostitutes as neighbors. In my case, they stood outside my building (on the rue des Lombards); in his, one lived right downstairs (on the former rue Platrière, now the rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, first on the right coming from the rue Coquillière, above a shoemaker's). Though not a legal account, this gives a glimpse of how intertwined with daily life prostitution could be. NOTE: This is part of a much longer discussion of exactly what floor Rousseau occupied; I assume anyone whose interest extends that far can read the original French. The building appears on the Turgot map, and was illustrated in the Monde Illustré of February 1889 (Tome 64, 64).

In May 1774, Eymar, of Marseille, the future deputy of Fourcalquier...tells in a letter that...in the said month of May, using the pretext then in fashion, he went, for the first time, to the philosopher's residence, in order to bring him music to copy. And it was... to the fourth floor that he went to knock. This floor was so certainly the fourth that an incident, which he passes over lightly, drew his attention to the floor below, the third. In climbing the stairs, he passed and greeted a woman of the town who, when he came back down, offered him a hospitality which, quite troubled by philosophical enthusiasm, he felt obliged to refuse. He came back, fifteen days later, the 17th, to pick up the music (which he paid ten sols a page)...
Intermédiaire des Chercheurs, 1912 (112-116)

-- THE COURTESAN AND THE CRITIC

Grimm presumably had solid grounds for making the frank (and public) characterization he does here. If so, this shows that a known courtisan could achieve social - if not, in this case, literary - respectability.

JULY 1765 - 'The Philosopher by love, or letters of two passionate and virtuous lovers', two volumes in-12, this is the title of a new novel said to be by Mlle Mazarelli, today Mme the marquise of Saint-Chamond: because in this century of decency, there are people whose birth does not prevent them from marrying in legitimate nuptials courtesans whose charms have long been public merchandise, exposed and abandoned everyday to the highest bidder. This trade is more lucrative than that of bad novels...
Grimm, Correspondance Littéraire, T6, 1764-1766 (313-314)

-- THE JEWELER AND THE WOMAN OF THE WORLD

Under the Old Regime, the words "actress" and "dancer" were not quite synonomous with "prostitute", but the words were often associated. While most mentions of such performers "moonlighting" refer to courtisans or kept women, it is not surprising to find some at the lower end of the hierarchy. In this case, the woman was treated by the police as any common prostitute. It is not clear from context if her being "wrong" to insult a merchant was because she was a prostitute, or simply because of the circumstances. Adélaide Dusseault was in the famous troupe of Nicolet, who founded the Theatre de la Gaité. Compardon's main entry for her says that she was driven from the troupe for her "bad conduct".

The French term translated here and in one item above as "woman of the town" is fille du monde ("woman" - literally girl - "of the world"). By the nineteenth century, this had a far more respectable meaning, as will be discussed next week.

Saturday, March 11, 1775, two in the afternoon Laurent Bourbon, jewelry merchant, living in Paris, rue Bourg-l'Abbé, and Adélaide Dusseault, dancer at Nicolet's, living in the rue Boucherat, brought by Louis-François Fernet, corporal of the Paris guard, of the Enfans-Rouges post, for having mutually insulted each other in a cabaret, at the corner of the rue Charlot and having fought. Given that the said Dusseault seems to be a woman of the town and that she was very much in the wrong to insult the said Bourbon, we have sent her to Saint Martin for the police.
Compardon, Spectacles de la Foire (I, 1

-- NOT SO PENITENT

It is not clear how this note ended up in the Bastille archives, but it gives one glimpse at the system of sending women to convents for "penitents". Prévost is never quite described as a prostitute, but her being sent to such a convent argues for her having been considered as one, or the near equivalent.

Pontchartrain to the Superior of the Penitents of Anger
October 25, 1695

The King sends to your house the Prévost, woman of ill repute, to be kept like the others you already have; her pension will be paid to you on the basis of 140 francs a year. December 8, 1695 The king is willing to pay 200 francs for the pension of the Prévost; when the year is up you have only to let me know, I will have you paid.

The same to M. de Mirosmesnil
February 17, 1695

Some time ago the King had transferred to the convent of the Penitents of Anger, a very pernicious woman, named Prévost, who had lived in licentiousness with members of the clergy who had gone so far as to oblige her to accuse of the crime of lèze-majesté M. Vigier, lawyer, who was found completely innocent, she wrote a short while back that she had something of importance to say regarding the King's service, and which had nothing to do with Vigier, and she notes that having on her conscience what she wanted to say before leaving, she asked the opinion of the confessor at the house of the Penitents, who told her she was obliged to declare it, she asks that some trusted person from Angers be instructed to listen to her and assures that she will tell it simply. Upon which the King ordered me to write you to go hear this woman and tell me what she has to say. March 8, 1696 The Prévost, who is at the Penitents of Angers, is a very pernicious woman who cannot have anything to say worth hearing. There are two other women in the same house, of the same character; thus there is nothing more to ask her, and I am writing to the Superior to separate her from the two others, to prevent, as much as possible, her causing trouble. The same to the Superior of the Penitents of Angers September 15, 1697 The King does not at all want the Prévost to change quarters, your house was established to hold women of this sort, you must put her in such a state as to fall no more into the violence she has done, by punishing her and locking her up in a safe place.
Ravaisson, Archives de la Bastille (Tome 10, 1693-1702, 49-50)

A later note (from 1704) says she has escaped.

LINKS: The "French language" site

Magasin Pittoresque: No 48 - 1880