Montmartre: a Cultural History [1 ed.] 9781786948113, 9781786940230

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Montmartre A Cultural History

Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures, 45

Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures Series Editors EDMUND SMYTH Manchester Metropolitan University

CHARLES FORSDICK University of Liverpool

Editorial Board JACQUELINE DUTTON University of Melbourne

LYNN A. HIGGINS Dartmouth College

MICHAEL SHERINGHAM University of Oxford

MIREILLE ROSELLO University of Amsterdam

DAVID WALKER University of Sheffield

This series aims to provide a forum for new research on modern and contemporary French and francophone cultures and writing. The books published in Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures reflect a wide variety of critical practices and theoretical approaches, in harmony with the intellectual, cultural and social developments which have taken place over the past few decades. All manifestations of contemporary French and francophone culture and expression are considered, including literature, cinema, popular culture, theory. The volumes in the series will participate in the wider debate on key aspects of contemporary culture.

Recent titles in the series: 30 Andrew Asibong, Marie NDiaye: Blankness and Recognition 31 Celia Britton, Language and Literary Form in French Caribbean Writing 32 Raylene Ramsay, The Literatures of the French Pacific: Reconfiguring Hybridity: The Case of Kanaky-New Caledonia 33 Jane Hiddleston, Decolonising the Intellectual: Politics, Culture, and Humanism at the End of the French Empire 34 Margaret C. Flinn, The Social Architecture of French Cinema, 1929–1939 35 Martin Munro, Writing on the Fault Line: Haitian Literature and the Earthquake of 2010 36 Kathryn A. Kleppinger, Branding the ‘Beur’ Author: Minority Writing and the Media in France

37 Ruth Bush, Publishing Africa in French: Literary Institutions and Decolonization 1945–1967 38 Nicki Hitchcott, Rwanda Genocide Stories: Fiction After 1994 39 Sara Kippur and Lia Brozgal, Being Contemporary: French Literature, Culture and Politics Today 40 Lucille Cairns, Francophone Jewish Writers: Imagining Israel 41 Leslie Kealhofer-Kemp, Muslim Women in French Cinema: Voices of Maghrebi Migrants in France 42 Katelyn E. Knox, Race on Display in 20th- and 21st Century France 43 Bruno Chaouat, Is Theory Good for the Jews?: French Thought and the Challenge of the New Antisemitism 44 Denis M. Provencher, Queer Maghrebi French

N icholas H ewitt

Montmartre A Cultural History

Montmartre: A Cultural History

LIV ER POOL U NIV ERSIT Y PR ESS

First published 2017 by Liverpool University Press 4 Cambridge Street Liverpool L69 7ZU Copyright © 2017 Nicholas Hewitt The right of Nicholas Hewitt to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data A British Library CIP record is available print ISBN 978-1-78694-023-0 cased epdf ISBN 978-1-78694-811-3 Typeset by Carnegie Book Production, Lancaster

For Molly, Martha and Esme

Contents

Contents

List of Illustrations viii Acknowledgements x Introduction 1 1 ‘Montons à la Barrière’

15

2 The Artistic Cabarets

35

3 Music Halls and Mass Culture

64

4 Theatre and the Avant-Garde

86

5 The Bateau-Lavoir and the Lapin Agile

114

6 Wartime and the Années Folles 145 7 The Place of Memory

170

8 The Ecole de Montmartre

203

9 The Occupation: Céline and Aymé

239

Epilogue: Montmartre on Film

267

Bibliography 278 Index 294

Illustrations

Illustrations

Site of Montmartre

xii Plates

1 Vincent Van Gogh: Butte de Montmartre with Stone Quarry (Getty Images) 2 E. La Grange: Paris la nuit. Le Bal du Moulin de la Galette (Roger-Viollet) 3 Le Chat Noir, with Salis declaiming, and Raoul Ponchon, Goudeau, Jules Jouy, Courteline and Willette (Roger-Viollet) 4 The Moulin-Rouge, showing the Elephant (Getty Images) 5 Shadow Play at Le Chat Noir: Pierrot Pornographe, designed by Louis Morin (Musée du Vieux-Montmartre) 6 Adolphe Willette: Parce Domine (detail) (Getty Images) 7 The Théâtre du Chat Noir, 1919: La Marche à l’Etoile (Musée du Vieux-Montmartre) 8 Poster for the Cirque Médrano (Roger-Viollet) 9 Construction of the Sacré-Coeur, 1895 (Roger-Viollet) 10 Pierre Prins: Le Cabaret du Lapin Agile (Roger-Viollet) 11 Demolition in Post-War Montmartre (Roger-Viollet) 12 Charity Christmas Lunch organised by the Commune Libre de Montmartre (Getty Images)

Illustrations

ix

13 German Soldiers in Montmartre during the Occupation (Getty Images) 14 The Liberation: the Revenge of the Petits Poulbots (Getty Images) 15 Maurice Utrillo and his Wife Lucie Valore (Getty Images) 16 Dinner of the ‘Amis de Montmartre’ in the Lapin Agile in 1952: Francis Carco and Jenny Château (Getty Images)

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

This has been a long-term project and I have benefited from the help, support and encouragement of many people and institutions in the course of its elaboration. In particular, my thanks are due to the University of Nottingham, for granting me invaluable resources of both time and finance to enable me to undertake research for this project, and to the British Academy for providing funding for research in Paris. My thanks are also due to the staff of the many libraries and archives who have helped me to complete the research, including: in London, the British Library, the London Library and the library of the Courtauld Institute; in Paris, the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France – including the Département de l’Audio-Visuel, the Département de la Musique and the Département des Arts du Spectacle – the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, the Musée Carnavalet, the Musée du Vieux-Montmartre, the library of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Rue d’Ulm, the Musée-Galerie de la SEITA, the library of the Musée des Invalides and, finally, the now-defunct Bibliothèque du Temple, where this project first began. I am grateful to the Journal of Romance Studies for granting me permission to include in this volume an earlier version of my work on ‘Black Montmartre’, and to the Royal Academy of Arts for authorising the inclusion in Chapter Five of sections from my contribution to the catalogue Paris, Capital of the Arts 1900–1968. I have also benefited immeasurably from the help and advice of numerous friends and colleagues in France and elsewhere, including Alain Cresciucci, the late Jean-Pierre Dauphin, Pascal Fouché, Henri Godard, Colin Nettelbeck and John Flower. My thanks are also due to Sarah Wilson, Simonetta Fraquelli, Susan Davidson, and Maria Luisa Pacelli, and to the late Michael Sheringham, who, by inviting me to participate on collaborative projects on Parisian culture, encouraged this work’s development. I am also very grateful to Charles Forsdick for

Acknowledgements

xi

his encouragement and to Anthony Cond and Liverpool University Press for their commitment to this project, as I am to Stephen Ramsay for the map, Susan Tricklebank for compiling the index and to Rachel Adamson at Carnegie Book Production for her patience and efficiency. Finally, I could not finish these acknowledgements without recording yet again my debt to Helen, who taught me so much about how to look at cities, and without whose care, support and enthusiasm this book would not have seen the light of day.

Site of Montmartre

Introduction Montmartre and its Frontiers

Introduction

The Legend of Utrillo On 5 November 1955, Maurice Utrillo, one of the iconic and unexpectedly longest-surviving figures of Montmartre bohemia, died of lung disease at the age of seventy-two in the five-star Hôtel Splendid in the south-western spa town of Dax. With his death, an important period in the cultural history of Paris, beginning in the early years of the Third Republic, came to an end. The illegitimate son of Suzanne Valadon, Utrillo was born in 1883 and brought up in the bohemian world of the Butte de Montmartre in the Golden Period before the First World War, a world characterised by the artists of the older generation like Renoir, Degas and Lautrec, with their successors among the Fauves and Cubists, and also by a rapidly evolving popular and commercial culture in Bas-Montmartre. Within this close community on the Butte, of which the cabaret Le Lapin Agile was one of the major centres, Utrillo rapidly carved out a unique and equivocal reputation, despite his early antipathy to painting and his ambition to be a writer. On the one hand, as his early biographer Francis Carco records, the Utrillo of the ‘White Periode’, who mixed plaster of Paris and cement into his palate, richly merited the description of ‘un grand peintre’.1 In a major retrospective exhibition on twentieth-century French art at the Royal Academy in London, 2 his Impasse Cottin, of 1910–11, depicting a Montmartre staircase rising up to the top of the Butte, was by no means out of place next to Picasso’s ethereal cubist 1 Francis Carco, La Légende et la vie d’Utrillo (Paris: Grasset, 1928), p. 41. 2 See Sarah Wilson (ed.), Paris: Capital of the Arts 1900–1968 (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2002), pp. 20–2.

2

Montmartre: A Cultural History

Sacré-Cœur of the same year. At the same time, in and out of psychiatric hospitals for most of his life and often imprisoned in his own room on the Butte, his madness and alcoholism came to epitomise the dark side of bohemia, its misères along with its splendeurs. 3 In his sensitive appraisal of Utrillo’s importance as a painter, Carco also records his degradation: On était sûr de le rencontrer là, debout, près du comptoir, ou, quand il avait bu, dehors, devant la porte, couché dans le ruisseau et hurlant quelquefois qu’il était le diable. Moi qui l’ai vu, rue Saint-Vincent, serrer contre son cœur une bouteille vide, la caresser avec amour, puis tout à coup la fracasser, il me faisait pitié. On ne voulait de lui nulle part. On le chassait honteusement et, jusqu’à ce qu’il ne pût plus mettre un pied devant l’autre, on le poussait avec des coups, et il tombait, gémissait et pleurait. You could always count on meeting him in the bistro, standing at the counter or, when he had finished drinking, outside in front of the door, lying in the gutter and sometimes screaming that he was the Devil. I saw him in the Rue Saint-Vincent, holding an empty bottle against his chest, stroking it lovingly and then smashing it. I felt sorry for him. No one wanted him anywhere. They shamefully drove him away and, when he could no longer put one foot in front of the other, they punched him along and he fell, groaning and crying.4

What is instructive about Utrillo, however, is the way in which his impact extends far beyond his intrinsic importance as an artist and he becomes a complex creator and purveyor of the lieu de mémoire which Montmartre became in the national and international consciousness. The painter who created his streetscapes from picture postcards while locked in his room by his mother saw in his own lifetime those same images reproduced as popular prints on the walls of countless homes across the world and as postcards for successive generations of tourists. As such, like Toulouse-Lautrec and his posters of the 1890s music halls, Utrillo is at one and the same time an original creative artist and a component in the process which Steven Moore Whiting identifies as the commercial ‘packaging’ of Montmartre, 5 and which is essential to its success and durability. 3 See Jerrold Seigel, Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 1830–1930 (New York: Viking, 1985). 4 Carco, Utrillo, p. 41. 5 See Steven Moore Whiting, Satie the Bohemian: From Cabaret to Concert Hall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

Introduction

3

This process of marketing Montmartre as a centre of pleasure and artistic creativity raises a number of important issues which serve as the background for the discussions contained in this book. What are the factors, for example, which determine the concentration of leisure activities and the entertainment industry in one or more privileged districts in the modern city, such as Montmartre or Plaisance in Paris, or Soho in London, and what is the relationship between such districts and the city as a whole? Moreover, what are the dynamics which affect and determine the growth and decline of such districts, the flow which confers at least temporary cultural predominance? At the same time, it is important to ask how such districts become not merely powerful centres of popular culture and entertainment, but also manage to attract and work symbiotically with high cultural activities: to what extent, for example, does the popular pleasure centre present at least some of the conditions propitious for a bohemian population and how is it able to maintain that attraction for bohemians who have become established artists? In other words, the issue is both the rise of particular urban centres as the locus of mass culture and the relationship between the mass culture and contemporary production. If Montmartre, like Soho, is an exceptionally fertile subject for investigations on these lines, it also poses important questions concerning the acquisition of a profile which extends beyond the scope of Paris to Metropolitan France, its colonies and the rest of the world, a process which began with the Montmartre cabarets’ advertising in the provinces, reinforced by annual national and international tours, and continued in the print media and, later, sound recording, radio and cinema. The people who hung prints of Utrillo paintings on their walls and who flocked to Montmartre to see the sights for themselves were responding to an idealised image which relied partly on Whiting’s concept of ‘packaging’, but also on a long historical divide between Paris and its provinces and between the sophisticated French and the uncultured rest of the world. Intimately connected with this is Pierre Nora’s concept of the ‘lieu de mémoire’,6 the privileged position of certain locations within the national and international imaginary, of which Montmartre is a striking example: a major component of Walter Benjamin’s ‘Paris: the Capital of the Nineteenth Century’. This, of course, finally raises the question of politics and the highly ambivalent relationship between the pleasure 6 See Pierre Nora (ed.), Les Lieux de mémoire, Vols I–III (Paris: Gallimard, 1984–92).

4

Montmartre: A Cultural History

industry – often pushing the borders of officially sanctioned morality with its anti-establishment entertainment and links to an avant-garde which rejected moral, political and aesthetic conventions – and the governments in power during the Third and Fourth Republics. These are issues which Richard Sonn and Julian Brigstocke perceptively analyse in respect to Montmartre culture during the Belle Epoque,7 but which continue into the interwar years and beyond. This relationship in Montmartre between entertainment, creativity and power is crucial, involving contestation but also assimilation and appropriation. As the contemporary newsreels strikingly show, Utrillo’s funeral was by no means the pauper’s burial which he or his friends from the early days might have expected, but almost a state occasion, with huge crowds accompanying the coffin to the Cimetière Saint-Vincent on that Butte de Montmartre which he did so much to make famous. Montmartre and its Borders As the founder of the cabaret Le Chat Noir, Rodolphe Salis, once rhetorically asked, ‘What is Montmartre?’ While one way of answering the question is to chart the district’s rise and fall as a centre of entertainment and cultural creativity, it is predicated on the more basic and obvious enquiries as to ‘where’ and ‘when’ Montmartre may be usefully identified: what, in other words, are its borders both spatially and chronologically? These are by no means simple questions, of course, and any potential answers are complicated and inflected by movements within the city and by the shifting effects of memory – a lieu de mémoire is, self-evidently, never permanently fixed but constantly recreated. In their Guide de l’Etranger à Montmartre, one of the many guide books which coincide with the 1900 Universal Exhibition and provide a rich source of information on national and international perceptions of Paris at the time, Victor Meusy and Edmond Deplas adopt a relatively restricted definition of their chosen location, which provides a useful starting point. Meusy proposes a triangle whose base line runs from the church of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette to La Fourche to the north-west, one 7 See Julian Brigstocke, The Life of the City: Space, Humour and the Experience of Truth in Fin-de-Siècle Montmartre (Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014); Richard D. Sonn, Anarchism and Cultural Politics in Fin-de-Siècle France (Lincoln, NA and London: Nebraska University Press, 1989).

Introduction

5

side cutting north-east across the Butte to the Boulevard d’Ornano and the third running back south to Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, thus defining ‘a slice of the Parisian cake which foreign visitors owe it to themselves to visit, if they want to know the savour, the “goût de terroir” of the capital’.8 In fact, while the area enclosed is indisputably in Montmartre, it is hardly the whole picture since it excludes the major crossroads of the Place de Clichy, with the iconic Café Wepler and the statue of Maréchal Moncey, the defender of Paris in 1814, and the area stretching south towards the grands boulevards. In fact, a more generous, and useful, definition would encompass the eighteenth arrondissement pointing south from the Rue Ordener, bounded on the east by the Rue de Clignancourt and on the west by the Avenue de Saint-Ouen, and the ninth arrondissement north from the Rue de Châteaudun and bordered on the west by the Rue d’Amsterdam and on the east by the Rue de Rochechouart, incorporating that part of the Faubourg-Poissonnière which constituted the old pleasure district of La Nouvelle-France. More usefully, in fact, Montmartre may be topographically defined by what it is not. North of the Butte, it is distinct from the mainly post-1900 apartment developments stretching beyond the Rue Ordener towards the old fortifications and the present-day Boulevards des Maréchaux, just as, to the south, it does not extend quite as far as the theatres and luxury shops of the grands boulevards. To the east, it is separate from both the historically working-class districts of La Chapelle and Barbès in the eighteenth arrondissement and from the artisanal Quartier Poissonnière in the ninth, while on the west it is adjacent to the more bourgeois Batignolles. In other words, historically Montmartre is an island between the grands boulevards and the northern rim of the city and between the bourgeoisie to the west and the petite-bourgeoisie of Poissonnière and the ‘classes laborieuses, classes dangereuses’9 of La Chapelle to the east. As such, Montmartre is a quintessentially frontier district within the city, operating on several complex levels, and its history – political, social and cultural – is one of subtly shifting borders: initially between Paris and Montmartre, but then within Montmartre itself. While the Mur des Fermiers Généraux, established in 1784 as a customs barrier between 8 Victor Meusy, ‘Présentation’, in Victor Meusy and Edmond Depas, Guide de l’Etranger à Montmartre (Paris: J. Strass, 1900). 9 See Louis Chevalier, Classes laborieuses, classes dangereuses à Paris pendant la première moitié du XIXe siècle (Paris: Plon, 1958).

6

Montmartre: A Cultural History

the city and its outlying districts, was the greatest impetus towards the establishment of certain districts along the wall and, especially, at  the crossing points as pleasure and entertainment centres which sealed the future success of Montmartre, the district itself became laced by an extensive series of subsidiary borders between different, and often porous, communities, which established themselves on geographical, sociological or cultural lines. In other words, while the legacy of the wall was the creation of the petits boulevards – the Boulevard de la Chapelle, the Boulevard Rochechouart and the Boulevard de Clichy – which became the epicentre of the Montmartre entertainment industry, clustered around the Place Pigalle, Place Blanche and Place de Clichy, those same petits boulevards constituted a border between the pleasure zone of Bas-Montmartre and the artisanal, rustic and bohemian Butte. Similarly, as the city expanded northwards in the course of the nineteenth century, absorbing the once-independent communities beyond the wall, the demographic composition of Montmartre was altered, an expanding white-collar class displacing the artisanal population and erecting new barriers, this time more subtle and intangible. In Mort à credit, for example, Céline notes the disappearance of the ébéniste Würzem family at the time of the 1900 Exhibition. The visitor to Montmartre in 1900, therefore, holding Meusy and Depas’s guide book and walking north from the grands boulevards up the Rue Lafitte, would first cross the Rue Lafayette to reach the Rue de Châteaudun and Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, before taking the traditional route up the Rue des Martyrs to the Boulevard Rochechouart, where it meets the Boulevard de Clichy. This short journey would involve a considerable sense of dépaysement, moving from the beaux quartiers to the west of the Opéra, through the comfortable middle-class streets between the Boulevard Haussmann and the Rue de Châteaudun, into a more artisanal, though gentrifying, district in the quartiers of Saint-Georges and Poissonnière, to establishments like the Moulin Rouge on the petits boulevards, and then further north to the provincial Place des Abbesses and the Rue Lepic, leading to the Butte, with its village-like Place du Tertre, its vineyard and Moulin de la Galette, together with the shanty town on the Maquis and the construction site of the Sacré-Cœur. At the same time, the visitor would find little of interest in the middle-class Batignolles district to the west and would be advised to avoid straying too far across the border into La Chapelle, the legendary domain of the ‘Apaches’. As Antoine Blondin remarked in 1956, the crossroads of Barbès-Rochechouart constitutes ‘a sort of frontier post between Pigalle

Introduction

7

and La Chapelle; a district within a ward where the extremes of toil and pleasure meet’.10 At the same time, Montmartre’s status, and image, as a frontier district was bolstered by two factors: the establishment to its west and east of the three passenger stations of the Gare de l’Est, Gare du Nord and Gare Saint-Lazare– all of which, incidentally, have international destinations and, in the case of the Gare de l’Est, an important military role – and the presence of crime. As regards the former, not only do the great Parisian railway stations naturally accompany and nurture existing pleasure centres on the lines of the Mur des Fermiers Généraux – the proximity of the Gare de Lyon to the Rue de Lappe, for example, or the Gare d’Austerlitz and the Boulevard de l’Hôpital, and the Gare Montparnasse and Plaisance – they contain some of the elements important for the creation of a flourishing bohemia: an itinerant and constantly shifting population, often in search of distraction, a newly immigrant community from countries or provinces served by the station in question, and consequent cheap accommodation and catering. What is important, however, is that there is another set of frontiers to be negotiated between these districts immediately surrounding railway stations and centres of bohemia, perhaps because the population and the facilities are too transitory, and that the beneficiaries are likely to be those quartiers close by which have a more concrete sense of community, and constitute a safer place of refuge, freer from surveillance. In the case of Montmartre, the importance of the proximity of three international railway stations is undeniable, not least because it is so tangible: the Sacré-Cœur looms over the Gare du Nord and the Place d’Anvers is only 700 metres away, just as the Place de Clichy is only 700 metres up the hill from the Gare Saint-Lazare. Criminal activity naturally goes hand in hand with major railway stations and their transitory population, especially theft and prostitution, of which one of the major Parisian centres was around the Gare Saint-Lazare. Montmartre itself is vulnerable to the spread of this activity from the immediate vicinity, as it is to more established criminal organisations to the north and east: the presence, or perceived presence, of crime is essential to a frontier culture and is intricately connected with the growth of Montmartre. As Louis Chevalier reminds us,11 from 10 Antoine Blondin, in Patrice Molinard and Jean-Paul Clébert, The Paris I Love (London: Anthony Blond, 1956), unpaginated. 11 See Louis Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime (Paris: Laffont, 1980).

8

Montmartre: A Cultural History

the pègre of the period before the First World War to the milieu of the interwar years, through violence, drugs and prostitution, crime was both the reality which accompanied the Montmartre pleasure industry and the perverse attraction of the district for its middle-class and foreign visitors: clients of the cabarets and music halls derived a frisson from their belief that they were rubbing shoulders with the criminal classes in the caves and that frisson was exploited by the caricaturists, journalists and writers who fostered the myth. In this sense, the tourist who made his way up the Rue des Martyrs from the safety of the grands boulevards was a voyeur who could continue his voyeurism through the print media when at home. If there is some measure of agreement as to the location of Montmartre, with its status as a frontier district at the edge of, and subsequently within, the capital, there is more divergence regarding the chronology of its cultural history. Most commentators concur in recognising the importance of a prehistory, going back to the village and abbey of Montmartre on the hill overlooking Paris, prominent because of its windmills, and to the early insalubrious centres of pleasure and vice in the northern urban quartiers of Les Porcherons and La NouvelleFrance. Thereafter, the overwhelming majority of studies of the cultural history of Montmartre concentrate on the period from 1880 to 1910 and what Charles Rearick calls the ‘Pleasures of the Belle Epoque’,12 from Gabriel Weisberg’s study of Montmartre and the Making of Mass Culture, Phillip Dennis Cate and Mary Shaw’s The Spirit of Montmartre and Barbara Stern Shapiro’s Pleasures of Paris: Daumier to Picasso, to Steven Moore Whiting’s exploration of Satie and the avant-garde, Julian Brigstocke’s discussion of the political implications of cabaret culture, Richard Sonn’s analysis of the role of anarchism in Montmartre and Mariel Oberthür’s extensive work on the cabaret Le Chat Noir.13 Important as these studies are in their depiction and analysis of the 12 See Charles Rearick, Pleasures of the Belle Epoque: Entertainment and Festivity in Turn-of-the-Century France (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1985). 13 See Phillip Dennis Cate and Mary Shaw (eds), The Spirit of Montmartre: Cabarets, Humor and the Avant-Garde, 1875–1900 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996); Gabriel P. Weisberg (ed.), Montmartre and the Making of Mass Culture (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001); Barbara Stern Shapiro (ed.), Pleasures of Paris: Daumier to Picasso (Boston, MA: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1991); Mariel Oberthür, Le Cabaret du Chat Noir à Montmartre (1881–1897) (Geneva: Slatkine, 2007).

Introduction

9

world of Montmartre’s cultural activity before the First World War, its cabarets, music halls and circus contributing to the creation of a new cultural mix, with new techniques and new audiences, and their links with the projects of the avant-garde, this is only half the story. In fact, many Montmartre personalities were, as Marcel Aymé commented as late as the 1950s, prone to prematurely dating the death of the district with their own departure.14 The cultural history of Montmartre did not end in 1914, as many historians of modernism contend, a fact recognised by Jerrold Seigel, whose history of bohemianism ends in 1930, and by Chevalier in continuing his survey of Montmartre du plaisir et du crime up until 1940 and whose elegiac Les Ruines de Subure extends to 1980.15 Indeed, to terminate the history of Montmartre at the end of the Belle Epoque is to omit the vital elements of continuity, change and renewal which shed crucial light on the cultural history of the interwar years in France. Similarly, to attempt an analysis restricted to the period after the First World War, although considerably less well explored, is impossible without constant reference to the early careers of the artists and writers of the interwar years and their enduring and evolving debt to Belle Epoque Montmartre. Thus, in the same way that there is some merit in enlarging the definition of Montmartre topographically beyond the narrow boundaries prescribed by Meusy, it makes sense to set its history more generously between the Siege of Paris and the Commune of 1870–1 and the Algerian War and the collapse of the Fourth Republic in 1958. On this timescale, the rise and fall of Montmartre as a cultural centre are commensurate with the histories of the Third and Fourth Republics, and, just as the topographical terrain is bisected by the petits boulevards at its centre, so chronologically it is split by the borders of the First and Second World War. In this respect, it is difficult to overestimate the importance in French culture within this period of both the trauma of the defeat of 1870, with the deprivations of the siege and the subsequent violence of the Commune, and the physical and moral exhaustion following the First World War and a nagging anticipation of a renewed conflict. Léon Daudet’s L’Entre-deux-guerres, published in 1920, in fact referred to the period between 1870 and 1914, but the term could just as easily be interpreted as an accurate comment on the political realities 14 See Marcel Aymé, ‘Préface’, in Jean Vertex, La Colline inspirée (Paris: Jean Vertex, 1950). 15 See Louis Chevalier, Les Ruines de Subure (Paris: Laffont, 1985).

10

Montmartre: A Cultural History

facing France after 1918. Throughout these two entre-deux-guerres, Montmartre came to fashion and embody a number of apparently contradictory but ultimately reconcilable responses, ranging from the self-confident, ebullient and sentimental to the acerbic, contestatory and defeatist. It is significant that the history of Montmartre is littered with the traces of the army: many of the star performers of the cabarets of the 1880s and their bohemian successors were, like Caran d’Ache or Gus Bofa, sons of army officers, and military service was a constant duty throughout, culminating in action in the two world wars. It is unsurprising, therefore, that the military should constitute a durable target for humour and more extreme criticism in the cabarets, comic magazines and anarchist meetings, nor that it should be counterbalanced by a strong militarist and patriotic sentiment, from the unironic celebration of the Napoleonic epic in the shadow plays at Le Chat Noir to the heroism of the Montmartre bohemians in the First World War and their subsequent pride in their participation. The same ambiguity is to be found in the relationship between Montmartre and the two republican regimes in power during its heyday. In this respect, the activities of the cabarets look forward to their Weimar counterparts of the 1920s, in the same way that the humorous magazines of the Belle Epoque resemble the Munich-based review Simplicissimus and interwar illustrators like Laborde and Bofa have affinities with their German counterparts like George Grosz. While Grosz left Germany in 1933, many of his non-Jewish colleagues on Simplicissimus did not and continued to publish successfully under the Nazi regime; likewise, while many of the Montmartre caricaturists were genuinely horrified at the German occupation, some, like Ralph Soupault, cartoonist for Je Suis Partout, were not. This raises in its turn important issues concerning the relationship between humour and power, and the limits between the two, and between humour and prejudice, in particular the constant thread of anti-Semitism running under the surface of Montmartre culture. Ultimately, one of the most difficult Montmartre frontiers to map is comprised of its shifting political and ideological fault lines, inherent in the concept of bohemianism itself. The Boulevards and the Métro Céline’s dramatic monologue Entretiens avec le professeur Y (1955) introduces what has become a well-known image and device for exploring

Introduction

11

his fiction, that of the métro émotif. The primary meaning of this image is that, in the same way that the métro line underneath the Boulevard de Sébastapol can reach its destination directly and unencumbered by the traffic jams on the surface, so Céline’s musical style can convey the reader to his meaning without detours and distractions.16 It also serves as a reminder that, while it is possible, and indeed necessary, to chart the growth of Montmartre both spatially and chronologically in two-dimensional form, there is an underlying network of connections which need to be explored as well. Hence, initially this study will adopt a chronological approach, extending from the 1880s to the Occupation of 1940–4, with an Epilogue devoted to the reflection of Montmartre in film, especially during the Fourth Republic, when it was unusually prominent. It begins with a discussion of the origins of Montmartre as a lieu de plaisir during the Ancien Régime, culminating in the construction of the Mur des Fermiers Généraux in 1784, which led to the sudden growth of popular entertainment outlets around the wall’s circumference and, especially, at its crossing points, in the form of taverns, dance halls and theatres throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. The book then explores the development of that culture in Montmartre during the Belle Epoque, through four distinct but intertwined phenomena: the artistic cabarets of the 1880s, which pioneered a form of modern entertainment involving a diverse audience and innovative forms of performance; the music halls of the following decade, often building upon the achievements of their British forerunners, exploited and developed constantly renewed forms of mass cultural consumption together with the circus and the nascent cinema; at the same time, the cabarets and the music halls were accompanied by innovations in the legitimate theatre, fuelled by the cabarets’ avant-gardism, the intellectuals and political radicals congregating around La Revue blanche, and their painter friends, in particular the Nabis. Finally, discussion of the pre-First World War period is completed by an analysis of the growth of Upper Montmartre after 1900 as a centre of Bohemianism, centred on the Bateau-Lavoir and Le Lapin Agile, which overlapped with previous generations of artists and drew upon the innovations of the cabarets and the trappings of mass culture. The second half of the book continues to follow these developments during the First World War and in the interwar years, with a discussion 16 See Louis Ferdinand Céline, Entretiens avec le professeur Y, in Henri Godard (ed.), Romans IV (Paris: Gallimard, coll. ‘La Pléiade’, 1984).

12

Montmartre: A Cultural History

of how, despite continued avant-garde activity, significant strands of Montmartre radical culture were mobilised in 1914 in favour of nationalist and patriotic propaganda, shifting the political centre of gravity to the right. It then explores the perception that, as a cultural centre in Paris, Montmartre lost its importance to Montparnasse after the war, a significant proportion of its citizens retreating into nostalgia for the old bohemia in the face of new urban developments and, especially, American tourism. At this point, Montmartre’s culture begins to point in two directions: backwards towards an idealised past, encapsulated in kitsch constructs like the ‘Commune Libre de Montmartre’, and exemplified by the growing trend for memoirs of the heroic days of pre-war bohemia, but counterbalanced by the post-war growth of the district as a major centre of American jazz and the continued activity of the avant-garde, especially in the form of Dada and Surrealism. The juxtaposition of the two currents becomes apparent in a discussion of a distinct corpus of fiction written essentially, though not exclusively, in the interwar years, by the novelists of the ‘Ecole de Montmartre’ – Pierre Mac Orlan, Roland Dorgelès and Francis Carco – who demonstrate the breadth of the spectrum between literary conservatism and innovation. In this context, a final substantive chapter is devoted to the work of Marcel Aymé and Louis-Ferdinand Céline, which concentrates on Montmartre and, especially, the Montmartre of the Occupation, combining one of the most vivid evocations of the historical period with genuine technical experimentation. Finally, an Epilogue is devoted to Montmartre in the Fourth Republic and the way in which it was represented by the cinema of the period. A discussion of the various discrete parts of what makes up Montmartre’s topographical and chronological territory, while revealing in itself, nevertheless needs complementing with an identification of the various traces which underlie them in a series of networks which persist from the 1880s to the end of the Fourth Republic and which will emerge in the course of this study as a series of cultural métro lines, operating under the surface and often following routes out of kilter with the roads, avenues and boulevards above. One of the most obvious routes leads through manifestations of popular culture and mass entertainment, from the cabarets of the 1880s through the continuing popularity of dance, morphing into music hall in the following decade, and leading to cinema, recorded music and the relationship between these phenomena and the print media. Another, as Steven Moore Whiting demonstrates, moves from the cabarets’ technical innovation, including that of some

Introduction

13

of its major protagonists, through an experimentation with new, often absurdist forms of comedy, to the avant-garde manifested in literature, theatre and visual culture, including art and cinema, and which surfaces in events like the première of Jarry’s Ubu Roi or movements like Dada and Surrealism, which exploit Montmartre’s continuing fascination with fantasy: the legacy of the avant-garde theatre of the 1880s passes through Jarry and Dullin to Artaud and the ‘theatre of cruelty’. At the same time, the visual culture of the 1880s, closely allied to the establishment of Impressionism in the district, points both towards the avant-garde Fauvist and Cubist experimentation of the 1900s and towards a continuing tradition of caricature and illustration represented by the artists of the Restaurant Manière of the 1930s, like Gus Bofa and Chas Laborde, while the cultural production of Montmartre, especially in the field of the visual arts and the journals which transmitted them, was inextricably allied to commerce, through media ownership and sponsorship. It is for this reason that much of the major art of the Belle Epoque took the form of commercial advertising, of which Steinlen and Lautrec are obvious examples, and that companies such as the pharmaceutical giant Géraudel were key sponsors through advertising and, sometimes, ownership. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that another cultural métro line, following non-conformism through wit and satire and culminating in anti-militarism and anarchism, should converge with paths of loyal republicanism, support for the regime, reaction, including anti-Semitism, and extreme right-wing politics in the interwar years: the polemical skill of the chansonniers could be turned against the left as well as the right, especially when flavoured by nostalgia and a sense of loss. The purpose of this book, in exploring both the various borders stretching around and within Montmartre and the underlying web of connections between its various cultural activities, is to tell the story of one particular district within a capital city and to come to some understanding of how that quartier could operate as such a multifaceted locus for cultural production and consumption, with an impact extending on such a national and international scale and for so long. One of the – probably unspoken – reactions to Utrillo’s death in 1955 would have been to wonder at how he managed to survive for so long and, against all the odds, achieve such a measure of respectability, wealth and renown that his funeral was a media event. The same is true of the district he came to embody for a short period before the First World War, but which lasted as a prominent cultural site for more than seventy years.

14

Montmartre: A Cultural History

Note on Translation All documentary and secondary quotations from the French have been translated into English, with the exception of authors whose work has been quoted extensively and who figure substantially as subjects of the discussion: namely, Apollinaire, Jules Jouy, Pierre Mac Orlan, Roland Dorgelès, Francis Carco, Gus Bofa, Marcel Aymé and Louis-Ferdinand Céline.

chapter one

‘Montons à la Barrière’

‘Montons à la Barrière’

In the beginning was the Wall. As is well known, the Mur des Fermiers Généraux was constructed in 1784 as a customs barrier which split a Parisian population of some 600,000:1 the mass of the population remained behind the wall, condemned to pay higher taxes, while those who lived in the communes limitrophes, like La Chapelle-Saint-Denis or Montmartre, which had a population of less than 400 in 1790, 2 benefited from relatively light taxation. It was this tax differential which was to be so crucial in the development of pleasure centres on the Parisian periphery. Along the wall there were two sets of roads: the chemins de ronde on the inside and, outside, the boulevards extérieurs. In the north, the wall, with its accompanying roads, followed the route of the future Boulevard des Batignolles, Boulevard de Clichy, Boulevard de Rochechouart and Boulevard de la Chapelle, while in the south it established the line of the Boulevard du Montparnasse. At regular intervals, there were breaks in the wall allowing access to the capital from the communes limitrophes and further afield, and vice versa. Here the Fermiers Généraux established their barrières, crossing points with customs posts where those bringing produce into Paris were obliged to pay duty. It was precisely at these crossing points, however, that the Parisian population had access to cheaper products from the other side of the wall, the most significant of which was wine, which was highly taxed within the capital. It is also significant that, until rail transport made possible the mass importation of wine from the south, the area around Paris had been important for wine production. A document of 1790, referring to Montmartre, reports that ‘it is in 1 See Jacques Hillairet, Evocations du Vieux Paris, III: Les Villages (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1954), p. 9. 2 See ibid., p. 236.

16

Montmartre: A Cultural History

this district, and some others, that there is consumption of wine from the pays François, the region of Mantes, the Gâtinais, the regions of Orléans and Blois and Lower Burgundy’. 3 This relatively local wine, which included that produced in Montmartre itself, was the basis of an extensive pleasure trade which established itself around Paris in the ‘zone situated near the “barriers”, which contained a large number of dance halls, taverns and amusement places’.4 The map of popular Parisian pleasure in the nineteenth century can be charted by the position of the barrières: Montparnasse and the Rue de la Gaîté to the south; the Bal Bullier at the junction of the Boulevard Saint-Michel and the Boulevard du Montparnasse, on the site of La Closerie des Lilas; the Bal Mabille on the Champs-Elysées; and the cabarets and taverns on the Boulevard de l’Hôpital. The near-monopoly of Montmartre as Parisian pleasure centre was in fact only achieved slowly throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. A guidebook to Paris prepared for the 1855 Exhibition makes little reference to Montmartre, situating entertainment in the capital very much on the grands boulevards at that time. 5 Even by 1889, the Guide de l’Etranger dans Paris et à l’Exposition Universelle makes scant reference to Montmartre, listing only one Montmartre bal, the Elysée Montmartre.6 The district enjoyed the same advantages offered by the barrières as Montparnasse, the Quartier Latin and other districts along the line of the wall, but it took time to achieve dominance. Montmartre did, however, have one particular advantage over its rivals: the fact that, in addition to its barrières – on the site of the present-day Place Pigalle, Place Blanche and Place de Clichy – it occupied a privileged position in the collective Parisian memory as ‘the closest village to Paris’.7

3 Quoted in Paul Lesourd, Montmartre (Paris: Editions France-Empire, 1973), p. 395. 4 Hillairet, Evocations du Vieux Paris, III, p. 10. 5 See Guide général dans Paris pour 1855, suivi d’une visite à l’Exposition (Paris: Imprimerie Wiessener, 1855). 6 See Guide de l’étranger dans Paris et à l’Exposition Universelle (Paris: L. Gabillaud, 1889), p. 10. 7 Philippe Jullian, Montmartre (Paris and Brussels: Elsevier Séquoia, 1977), p. 21.

‘Montons à la Barrière’

17

The Origins of Montmartre This collective memory went back a long way. As early as the seventh century, the Merovingian king Dagobert I had instituted a procession, held every seven years, to commemorate the martyrdom of Saint Denis. The procession moved up the Rue du Mont-Cenis to the top of the Butte de Montmartre.8 This cult of Saint Denis was enlarged after 800 to include the other legendary French martyrs Saint Rustique and Saint Eleuthère, and Montmartre was proclaimed ‘le mont des Martyrs’. In the twelfth century, the Butte’s role as a place of pilgrimage was reinforced by the creation of an abbey, run by nuns, around the Eglise Saint-Pierre. Not only did the church and the abbey dominate the skyline of medieval Paris, but they were progressively linked to the capital by a series of new roads. The first and most important followed the route of the present-day Rue Montmartre and Rue du Faubourg Montmartre, before adopting what became the major access to Montmartre in the nineteenth century, the Rue des Martyrs. Two further routes led on from the Rue des Martyrs to the summit: one following the present Rue Ravignan, and the second on the lines of the Rue Lepic.9 Finally, Montmartre’s role as a place of pilgrimage was consecrated by the discovery, in 1611, of a cavern underneath the monument to the martyrs, bearing the ‘MAR CLEMIN DIO’, translated as ‘Martyr, Clément and Denis’. As Pascal Payen-Appenzeller comments, this discovery, commemorated by the creation of a Chapelle des Martyrs, ‘attracted the masses, the first tourists, in fact’.10 In other words, unlike other surrounding communities – like Belleville, for example, which is only three metres lower than the Butte – Montmartre was able to impose itself upon the Parisian consciousness both spiritually, as a place of pilgrimage, and visually, through the Eglise Saint-Pierre and the abbey. And the importance of Montmartre’s skyline is crucial to its establishment as a lieu de mémoire. At the same time, that skyline was reinforced, from the sixteenth century onwards, by another element which had connotations of pleasure: the windmills. The oldest, the Moulin-Vieux, dated from 1591 and, like most of its successors, was on the crest occupied by the 8 See Pascal Payen-Appenzeller, ‘Montmartre c’est le toit de Paris’, Connaissance de Paris et de l’Ile de France, 23, Guide de Montmartre, 1974, p. 9. 9 See ibid., p. 10. 10 Ibid., p. 11.

18

Montmartre: A Cultural History

Rue Lepic. By the eighteenth century, there were twenty-five windmills on the Butte, all working flat out to satisfy the capital’s need for flour. Yet their significance was broader, and essentially visual: ‘From below, the view of Montmartre must have been terribly picturesque, with its twenty-five windmills with their big sails’.11 Yet the windmills were also places of pleasure, a tradition continued, as we shall see, in the nineteenth century with the transformation of the mill called the Blute-Fin into the dance hall Le Moulin de la Galette. As Pierre Dominique points out, by the eighteenth century, Montmartre had become a place for weekend excursions for the Parisian population: on the plain between Paris and the Butte, ‘the Parisians came on Sundays in Spring to pick hawthorn and lilac’,12 while, for Paul Lesourd, the Butte itself ‘was the object of Sunday walks, for every windmill had its own guinguette’.13 Like Grinzing in relation to Vienna, therefore, Montmartre was a wine village in close proximity to Paris, where the expanding urban population could seek relaxation in a countryside setting on weekends and feast days. At the same time as the Butte de Montmartre, with its church, its abbey and its windmills, established itself as a locus for tourism, both religious and secular, under the Ancien Régime, it also had an impact upon districts of Paris much closer to the centre, but which lay on the routes linking the capital with Montmartre: It is … true that, since a very distant period, Montmartre was surrounded by an unbroken ring of taverns and places of pleasure of all sorts, extending from the place known as Les Porcherons (which went from our Place du Havre to the Rue Cadet and from the Rue de Provence to the Rue Saint-Lazare) to La Nouvelle-France (the name once given to the Saint-Laurent/Faubourg Poissonnière quarter because of an inn-sign).14

It is with the growth of Les Porcherons and La Nouvelle-France as pleasure centres that a distinction begins to operate, maintained until the present day, between Upper and Lower Montmartre. As Jacques Hillairet reminds us, in 1789, the population of the Butte was composed mainly of ‘millers, ploughman, wine growers and quarrymen’, while that of Lower Montmartre comprised ‘tavern keepers, and restaurant 11 Pierre Dominique, ‘Histoire de la Butte des origines à nos jours’, Le Crapouillot, 45, July 1959, p. 5. 12 Ibid., p. 5. 13 Lesourd, Montmartre, p. 185. 14 Ibid., p. 391.

‘Montons à la Barrière’

19

owners, lieux de plaisirs, dances and jeux champêtres’.15 Similarly, Lesourd notes the increase in the number of taverns in Montmartre from the seventeenth century onwards, though still subject to the laws of the abbey: in 1729, 125 of 165 businesses were taverns, only nineteen of them on the Butte.16 In 1769, on the Rue des Martyrs alone, out of fifty-eight houses, twenty-five were taverns, and in 1789, along the ‘Chemins de Ronde’ inside the wall, there were twenty-five taverns, ‘not counting bars selling wine and eau-de-vie’.17 Six out of nine municipal councillors representing the district at the first Assembly in 1787 were bar owners.18 The clientele of these establishments was varied: on Sundays, they were frequented by Parisian families on their way to the countryside; on weekdays, however, they served a less respectable public – ‘soldiers, lackeys, vagabonds’, who were frequently in trouble with the police.19 This unsavoury aspect of Les Porcherons and La Nouvelle-France was intimately connected to the rise of prostitution and the sale of alcohol. Lesourd notes that, whereas the early taverns, under the auspices of the abbey, adopted religious names, they gradually became secularised, with inn signs reading ‘Au Caprice des dames’, ‘Au Berger galant’ or ‘La Fontaine d’Amour’, a barely disguised invitation to sexuality. 20 Payen-Appenzeller records that these taverns ‘attracted women called femmes du monde whom we would call femmes de mauvaise vie’, and that a police report of 1767 complained that they ‘caused considerable damage in the corn and rye fields’. 21 Essentially, therefore, even before the wall was constructed in 1784, some of the major and abiding characteristics of Montmartre culture were established: the Butte, with its dominant skyline, signifying both religious pilgrimage and secular pleasure in the rural setting of the windmills; Lower Montmartre, in Les Porcherons and La NouvelleFrance, with its less innocent pleasures entwined in alcohol, prostitution and crime – the beginnings of Louis Chevalier’s ‘Montmartre du plaisir et du crime’. 22 The impact of the Mur des Fermiers Généraux was simply 15 Hillairet, Evocations du Vieux Paris, III, p. 240. 16 See Lesourd, Montmartre, p. 393. 17 Payen-Appenzeller, ‘Montmartre c’est le toit de Paris’, p. 12. 18 See ibid., p. 12. 19 Lesourd, Montmartre, p. 396. 20 See ibid., p. 394. 21 Payen-Appenzeller, ‘Montmartre c’est le toit de Paris’, p. 12. 22 See Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime.

20

Montmartre: A Cultural History

to accentuate these dual characteristics in the first part of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, this period saw a steady displacement of Parisian pleasure districts from the centre to the north. In addition to the barrières of Blanche, Montmartre, Martyrs and Rochechouart, and attracted by them, there were significant developments in the early nineteenth century. The Restoration period saw the rise of amusement parks, such as the Tivoli, opened in 1826 by Robertson23 on the corner of the Boulevard de Clichy and the Boulevard des Batignolles, which lasted until 1841, and the more short-lived Jardin du Delta, situated in the Rue du FaubourgPoissonnière, which ran from 1818 to 1824. 24 These attractions, ‘so dear to our ancestors’, 25 which comprised pleasant gardens with genteel fairground entertainment, were important in that they demonstrated an essential feature of Parisian leisure which Montmartre was able to exploit efficiently: the need for social mixture. As the guide to Paris in 1855 comments, this role was filled before the Revolution by the Colysée, during the Restoration by the Tivoli and later by the Jardin Mabille, with its Château des Fleurs, on the Champs-Elysées: From time immemorial, rich Parisian society has adopted a neutral place where all classes can rub shoulders, see each other, and talk to each other, without however becoming more intimate than demanded by the requirements of pleasure. 26

Musset makes the same point in his description of La Chaumière, in the Latin Quarter, in the short story ‘Frédéric et Bernerette’: La Chaumière is the Tivoli of the Latin Quarter. It is the meeting point of students and grisettes. It is hardly a totally respectable place, but it is a place of pleasure. People drink beer there and they dance. The clientele is suffused with honest good humour, sometimes a little noisy. The elegant women wear round bonnets, and the fashionable men cord jackets …27

23 The pseudonym of the Belgian physicist and entertainer Etienne-Gaspard Robert. 24 See Gilles-Antoine Langlois, Folies, Tivolis et attractions (Paris: Délégation à l’Action Artistique de la Ville de Paris, n.d.), pp. 178, 176. 25 G. Lenôtre, Paris et ses fantômes (Paris: Grasset, 1933), p. 309. 26 Guide général dans Paris pour 1855, p. 128. 27 Alfred de Musset, ‘Frédéric et Bernerette’, Œuvres complètes en prose (Paris: Gallimard, ‘Editions de la Pléiade’, 1960), p. 458.

‘Montons à la Barrière’

21

These early pleasure centres, which were driven out of existence by the increasing development of the boulevards extérieurs beyond the wall, were the precursors of later Montmartre attractions which relied upon a respectable Parisian population visiting the district for what they fondly, and invariably wrongly, imagined to be contact with other, possibly dangerous, classes. As Louis Chevalier points out, it was this which distinguished the ambiguous district of Montmartre from the uniformly popular areas, such as La Chapelle to the east, which were not visited by outsiders at all. 28 The preferred form of social intermingling was dance. In the early nineteenth century Paris had some 250 dance halls, 29 most of them bals de quartier serving exclusively a particular locality, but some had a more varied clientele. Many were to be found just beyond the Mur des Fermiers Généraux, at the barrières. In 1810, Montmartre had sixteen bals, in addition to dancing in taverns, divided between bals régis, or special events, and the bals guinguettes, which were permanent. The Tivoli itself had its own Bal du Tivoli, and it was accompanied by the Elysée Montmartre, on the corner of the Boulevard de Rochechouart and the Rue de Steinkerque, which opened in 1806; the Boule Noire, which dated from 1822;30 and Le Grand Turc, founded by the German Joseph Teiche in 1806. 31 In the early years of the century, these establishments were devoted exclusively to dancing, but later, as we shall see in Chapter Three, they evolved into spectacles, with professional dancers and a clientele which had come to watch as well as participate. At the time, the most famous bal was that of the Moulin de la Galette. Originally called the Blute-Fin and owned by the Debray family, it was the site of one of the most heroic acts of resistance against the invading Cossacks in 1814, which cost the lives of the father and three of his sons. In the Restoration period, the surviving Debray son found it increasingly difficult to make a living, since the Montmartre cornfields were being eroded to make way for the expansion of the city. Building on the traditional link between the Montmartre windmills and tavern keeping, in 1833 he decided to turn his mill into a dance hall, and very rapidly the Bal Debray became known as the Moulin de la Galette, named after 28 See Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime, pp. 68–9. 29 See Jean Barreyre, ‘Les Nuits de Montmartre’, Crapouillot, 45, July 1959, p. 63. 30 See Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime, p. 72. 31 See Barreyre, ‘Les Nuits de Montmartre’, p. 67.

22

Montmartre: A Cultural History

the cakes which were sold there. 32 While other establishments, like the Elysée Montmartre and the Boule Noire, diversified into other forms of entertainment during the nineteenth century, the Moulin de la Galette remained an authentic dance hall, but one which increasingly attracted the painters who moved to Montmartre in the last half of the century and who took it as a subject for their work. At the same time, the northward expansion of pleasure activity within the capital was closely associated with the development of prostitution. In the 1840s, the district around the church of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, including the Quartier Bréda, was such a centre of prostitution that it gave its name to the practitioners of the profession. As the Baron Lafond de Saint-Mür recalls in his memoirs at the end of the century, in 1841 the ‘Lorette’ was ‘a totally new category, a variety of the female species, the product of contemporary civilisation’. 33 By 1867, Jules Vallès’s journal La Rue, which was to excoriate Soho when the author was in exile in London after the Commune, could write: ‘Montmartre is the great factory of Parisian corruption, halfway between the Île-Saint-Ouen and the Bréda Quarter’. 34 This early establishment of Montmartre as a pleasure centre took place against a dramatic expansion of Paris itself. The population of Paris rose from 600,000 at the time of the Mur des Fermiers Généraux in 1784 35 to 785,826 in 1817, 1,053,897 in 1846, 1,696,141 at the time of the annexation of the communes limitrophes in 1860 36 and 2,511,629 in 1896. 37 At the same time, Montmartre itself expanded, changing from a village into what was effectively a small town. With less than 400 inhabitants in the early years of the wall, in 1790, its population grew to 2,200 in 1821, 5,200 in 1832, 7,800 in 1844, 36,000 in 1857 and 57,000 just after the annexation in 1861. 38 Before the integration of Montmartre into Paris, this expansion was largely due to the overcrowding of the capital itself and the need for more housing, together with the 32 See Hillairet, Evocations du Vieux Paris, III, p. 274. 33 Baron Lafond de Saint-Mür, Impressions de voyage dans Paris ancien et moderne (Paris: Nouvelle Librairie Parisienne, Albert Savine Editeur, 1893), pp. 337–8. 34 Article by François Magnard, La Rue, 13, 1867, quoted in Lesourd, Montmartre, p. 165. 35 See Hillairet, Evocations du Vieux Paris, III, p. 9. 36 See ibid., p. 13. 37 See Paris-Hachette 1899 (Paris: Hachette, 1899). 38 See Hillairet, Evocations du Vieux Paris, III, p. 236.

‘Montons à la Barrière’

23

attractions of lower taxes beyond the wall – what Jacques Hillairet calls ‘the flight from taxation’. 39 It can also be explained by the development of industrial activity in the north of Paris, in proximity to Montmartre, particularly in La Chapelle. Describing the Montmartre population, which he estimates at between 40,000 and 50,000, Lesourd notes that ‘the majority of this population, around 1857, was made up of tavern keepers and owners of guinguettes or restaurants, but also of a large number of clerks, workers and modest retirees’.40 This growth of Montmartre in the first half of the nineteenth century was also encouraged by the creation, in 1841, of Thiers’s military fortifications, a further defensive wall built around the capital at a distance of one to three kilometres beyond the Mur des Fermiers Généraux, accompanied by a military road which, in 1860, was to form the new boulevards extérieurs, named after Napoleonic marshals. These fortifications, which were not demolished until 1920–4, became part of Parisian, and particularly Montmartre, folklore as the scene of the settling of accounts between criminals, the legendary ‘Apaches’ of the early years of the twentieth century recounted in the novels of Gustave Aimard.41 Their practical effect, however, was to cut the original communes limitrophes in two, with the result that ‘the narrowest half, the one nearest to Paris, would become the most populated and the richer of the two; the other half, which was actually bigger in size, was nevertheless to become the least important one’.42 In other words, the space between the two walls effectively became a development zone which encouraged accelerated population growth. This process was accompanied by the effects of Haussmann’s redevelopment of Paris, which, by demolishing traditional working-class areas within the inner city and raising property values, effectively forced the 39 Ibid., p. 10. 40 Lesourd, Montmartre, p. 163. 41 Aimard made his name with popular tales of the American Wild West, like Karl May in Germany, and only latterly turned his attention to contemporary Parisian mythology. The popularity of his ‘Apaches’ and the corresponding vogue for tales of the American Wild West is acutely lampooned in an article by James Thurber, ‘The French Far West’. See Vintage Thurber, I (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983), p. 118. Recalling depictions of the Wild West in French comics of the turn of the twentieth century, Thurber quotes captions from French cartoons showing Apache Indians attacking a US cavalryman outside a fort with the words ‘Vous vous promenez très tard ce soir, mon vieux!’ and that of a town sheriff about to confront an outlaw with ‘Alors, je vais demander ses cartes d’identité!’ 42 Hillairet, Evocations du Vieux Paris, III, p. 11.

24

Montmartre: A Cultural History

Parisian proletariat, and the industries in which they were employed, out beyond the Mur des Fermiers Généraux. At the same time, Haussmann’s boulevards ensured efficient communications between all parts of the capital. In particular, the Boulevard de Sébastapol, constructed between 1855 and 1859 43 and running from the Seine to the Gare de l’Est, linked the north, including Montmartre, to the centre of the city. The Annexation of 1860 It is hardly surprising that it was Haussmann who saw the potential for development and expansion in the zone between the Mur des Fermiers Généraux and the military fortifications. As Françoise Choay writes: ‘For Haussmann this land meant a relatively free space for urbanisation to be considered part of the same territorial unit as Paris’.44 Accordingly, he proposed the Law of 26 May 1859, enacted in the following year, extending Paris to the military fortifications and annexing the communes limitrophes. The Mur des Fermiers Généraux was abolished and Montmartre, together with La Chapelle, became part of Paris as the ninth and eighteenth arrondissements. Nevertheless, like the other northern arrondissements derived from the former communes of La Villette and Belleville, it retained the same mixture of population as had existed at the time of the wall. The Butte was still traditional, with all the qualities of a village, while the lower reaches of the district were inhabited by a mixture of workers living close to their factories, people on private incomes and clerical workers driven out of central Paris by rising rents.45 At the same time, along the line of the old wall, the chemins de ronde and the boulevards extérieurs became fused into what were known as the petits boulevards of Rochechouart, Clichy and Batignolles. The tradition of pleasure and entertainment established in the days of the tax differential along the wall remained after the annexation of 1860, as did the entirely different nature of the ‘village’ of Montmartre on the Butte. 43 See André Morizet, Du Vieux Paris au Paris moderne. Haussmann et ses prédécesseurs (Paris: Hachette, 1932), p. 195. 44 Françoise Choay, ‘Haussmann’s Redevelopment of Paris: Last Form of Modern Urbanity’, in Jaroslav Machacek and John Ferris, eds, The European City in the Nineteenth Century (Prague: Institute of Art History, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, 1995), p. 24. 45 See Hillairet, Evocations du Vieux Paris, III, p. 13.

‘Montons à la Barrière’

25

If Haussmann’s boulevards facilitated access to Montmartre by the Parisian population as a whole, that access would have been largely redundant without the massive innovations in street lighting, first through gas and then, at the end of the century, through electricity. It was with gas lighting, brought in during the Second Empire, that nocturnal pleasure activities away from the city centre became possible: the beginnings of what were to become ‘Paris by Night’ and ‘la Ville-Lumière’. The proliferation of gas lighting, followed by electricity, also clearly increased the possibilities offered by centres of entertainment such as dance halls, theatres and cabarets. Even by 1893, the Baron Lafond de Saint-Mür notes that ‘electric lighting tends to replace gas lighting more and more’.46 What assisted Montmartre in its slow rise to the monopoly of pleasure activity in Paris in the course of the nineteenth century was its privileged position ‘between two railway networks, to the east La Chapelle and to the west Batignolles’.47 In other words, Montmartre found itself between the complex of the Gare du Nord and the Gare de l’Est on one side and the Gare Saint-Lazare on the other. Not only did these two railway complexes generate the employment which helped to populate the ninth and eighteenth arrondissements, they also sandwiched Montmartre between two transient populations in search of pleasure. As far as the Gare Saint-Lazare is concerned, it was in the centre of the ninth arrondissement, designated by a Guide de Paris, 1867 as the ‘major centre of finance and prostitution’.48 The station was also important, however, as the major departure point for England and, increasingly, America, and as the suburban connection to the race course at MaisonsLafitte. The Rue d’Amsterdam, in particular, was the site of small bars and hotels frequented by travellers to England, like Huysmans’s Des Esseintes, and jockeys, trainers and gamblers who travelled to MaisonsLafitte. The quarter gradually became one of those meeting points of different classes and professions so essential to both pleasure and bohemia. It was no coincidence, therefore, that Picasso’s famous meeting with Apollinaire in 1900 should have been in the Fox Bar of Austin’s Hotel in the Rue d’Amsterdam.49 The Gare du Nord and the Gare de l’Est similarly served long-distance travellers, to Britain, Belgium and 46 Baron Lafond de Saint-Mür, Impressions de voyage, pp. 363–4. 47 Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime, p. 95. 48 Quoted in ibid., p. 83. 49 See, for example: Jean-Paul Crespelle, La Vie quotidienne à Montmartre au temps de Picasso, 1900–1910 (Paris: Hachette, 1978), p. 112.

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Holland in the case of the former and, in the case of the Gare de l’Est, to Germany, Switzerland and Eastern Europe. They too required the hotels, restaurants and bars essential for a transient population which, on occasions, required more exotic entertainment. In particular, the Gare de l’Est, as the capital’s major military railway station, linking Paris with the great garrison towns of the east, provided a constant supply of ambulant soldiery in search of amusement, a factor which reinforced Montmartre’s reputation as a centre of prostitution. By the time of the establishment of the Third Republic, therefore, Montmartre was a significant, but by no means dominant, centre of pleasure in Paris. This status it owed to a tradition of pilgrimage and excursion going back to the Middle Ages, to the development of Les Porcherons and La Nouvelle-France as centres of entertainment and prostitution under the Ancien Régime and, particularly, to the impact of the Mur des Fermiers Généraux, which contributed significantly to the geography of pleasure of nineteenth-century Paris. As the century progressed, Montmartre benefited from the expansion of the city towards the north, recognised finally by the annexation of 1860, as well as from Haussmann’s redevelopment plans, the growth of the rail network and technological innovation such as gas and electric lighting. At the same time, the Butte de Montmartre retained its village-like character which was to serve it so well in its subsequent career. One event, however, separated the Montmartre of the Third Republic from these solid foundations, and that was the Commune. The role of Montmartre in 1871 is well known. Under its radical mayor, Georges Clemenceau, it was well within the military fortifications in 1870 and thus endured the privations of the Prussians’ siege of Paris. At the end of the siege, it was to the Butte de Montmartre that the National Guard removed the 171 cannons ‘which the people of Paris did not wish to hand over to the Prussians’. 50 When, on 18 March 1871, Thiers decided to take back the cannons, revolution broke out. The troops sent to carry out this operation were battle-weary and considered the National Guards as their comrades in arms: instead of confronting them, therefore, they fraternised. The Montmartre crowd pulled the troops’ commander, General Lecomte, from his horse and captured ‘General’ Clément Thomas, who had commanded the National Guard in 1848 and was held responsible for numerous massacres. The two men were taken to the Rue

50 Dominique, ‘Histoire de la Butte’, p. 8.

‘Montons à la Barrière’

27

des Rosiers and shot. This, in its turn, led to a second siege and the assault on the city by the Versailles troops: the semaine sanglante. As Pierre Dominique notes, ‘the Communards counted greatly on Montmartre, which they thought was impregnable, but which, attacked from the north slope, was captured almost without struggle’. 51 In fact, the Commune was merely the continuation of a history of political radicalism. In 1848, after the June Days uprising, Hippolyte Castille reflected: Montmartre was moved by an insurrectional spirit, while Batignolles, which is right next door, is a little bourgeois town inhabited by modest rentiers and clerks which has no activity other than its numerous restaurants, frequented by petty bankrupts, small-time gamblers and adventurers … This contrast is one of the mysteries of the Parisian microcosm. To what does Montmartre owe its belligerent spirit? It is difficult to say, but you only have to look at the features of the terrain, its strange and ravaged appearance, its quarry entrances as sinister as a lair, its hiding places of all sorts where come to amuse themselves, with the first days of sunshine, prostitutes, vagabonds in silk dresses along with their debauched companions, whom the people have condemned with the hideous nickname of ‘yellow ties’; you only have to look at Montmartre like that, I say, with is fantastic windmills, its dismantled telegraph, its subsidence, its whitewashed walls and its impossible buildings, to feel that there is, on the Butte from where you can see the whole of Paris at a glance, a place for malcontents, dreamers of crimes and déclassés of all sorts. You only have to stamp on the ground to bring up from its depths a cohort of miners, plaster diggers and lime kiln workers [chaufourniers]. 52

Pierre Dominique reminds us that the quarries of Montmartre, the source of plaster of Paris until the late nineteenth century, were also the last refuge of the revolutionaries of June 1848 who were savagely put down by Cavaignac. What is interesting about Castille’s account is not so much its plausibility as the insight it provides into the Parisian perception of Montmartre halfway through the nineteenth century: the epitome of Louis Chevalier’s ‘classes laborieuses, classes dangereuses’, 53 overlaid 51 Ibid., p. 9. 52 Quoted in ibid., pp. 7–8. 53 See Chevalier, Classes laborieuses, classes dangereuses à Paris pendant la première moitié du XIXe siècle.

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Montmartre: A Cultural History

with a melodramatic, even Gothic, sense of landscape and crime. More prosaically, it is possible to attribute Montmartre’s radicalism at the time of the Commune to the presence of its working-class population, particularly on its eastern flank, which had only recently moved out from central Paris. Whatever the reality of this political radicalism, the importance of the Commune for its cultural development lies in the way in which it conferred upon Montmartre a mythology of extremism which undoubtedly played an important part in attracting respectable Parisians to the quarter in the late nineteenth century. And this mythology was reinforced by the anarchist activity of the 1890s and 1900s, even though, as we shall see in Chapter Five, that activity was by no means exclusive to Montmartre. An example of this attempt to unconsciously exploit the cachet of the Commune is to be found in attempts to link the ‘Red Virgin’ Louise Michel with Montmartre, most notably in the character of Lucie Rapin in Roland Dorgelès’s novel of 1932, Le Château des Brouillards. In fact, Louise Michel’s contacts with Montmartre were, literally, only peripheral, since she lived briefly on the fringes of the area at number 117 Boulevard Ornano in 1882 and 1883. 54 There was, however, sufficient reality in the connection between Montmartre and the Commune to exert a powerful attraction, and one fully exploited by the former Communard Colonel Maxime Lisbonne, who set up a cabaret, Le Bagne, in which he harangued his bourgeois clients with threats of class struggle. This is important insofar as it indicates the way in which, as Louis Chevalier suggests, the Commune helped to create a certain style of Montmartre wit and song, based ostensibly on class antagonism, or at the very least on non-conformism. 55 The subsequent history of the cultural life of Montmartre was to show, however, that this non-conformism was not exclusively, or uniformly, left-wing. Art and Montmartre If the events of Montmartre’s prehistory – the barrières, the expansion of Paris throughout the nineteenth century and the Commune – contributed to its importance as a pleasure centre, none of these factors was sufficient 54 See Edith Thomas, Louise Michel (Paris: Gallimard, 1971). 55 See Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime, Part 1, Chapter 3.

‘Montons à la Barrière’

29

to establish the quarter as a centre of bohemianism. Yet, by the time that Van Gogh returned to Paris from Arles in 1886, Montmartre was ‘the artistic and literary centre of Paris’. 56 His brother Théo was already living there, in the Rue Laval, and Van Gogh naturally moved in with him before they took another apartment in the Rue Lepic later that year, and attended classes at the Atelier Cormon in the Rue Constance. In fact, the growth of Montmartre as ‘an artistic and literary centre’ in the first half of the nineteenth century was relatively slow. Horace Vernet lived in the quarter, as did Gavarni. 57 Géricault had a studio in the Rue des Martyrs, but moved to larger accommodation to complete the massive Radeau de la Méduse. As Henri Perruchot records, however, he still retained a financial interest in one of Montmartre’s plaster kilns, a painting of which, Le Four à plâtre de Montmartre, now hangs in the Louvre, and it was while visiting this establishment in 1824 that he fell from his horse and died. 58 Delacroix lived from 1844 to 1858 in the Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, and a letter to George Sand provides an insight into the district’s recent association with prostitution: This new quarter is designed to trouble a young man who is as passionate as I. The first thing which struck my virtuous eyes when I arrived was a magnificent lorette of the highest category, dressed in satin and black velvet, who, as she descended from her cab and with the indifference of a goddess, showed me her leg right up to the navel … 59

In addition, there were two minor painters who specialised in Montmartre landscapes, Georges Michel and Charles Hoguet, ‘the Rembrandt of the windmills’.60 Other artists who lived in Montmartre in the 1840s or 1850s included Jongkind, Troyon and Ziem, 61 while Lesourd records early scenes of Montmartre by J.J. Champin, Canella, Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, Adolphe-Hippolyte Couveley, Féréal, Villeneuve, Honoré Barmont and Théodore Rousseau.62 As Lesourd admits, however, this artistic activity associated with Montmartre in the first half of the century did not 56 Robert Béthencourt-Devaux, Montmartre, Auvers sur Oise et Van Gogh (Paris: Robert Béthencourt, 1972), p. 62. 57 See Henri Perruchot, ‘Les Peintres de Montmartre’, Le Crapouillot, 45, July 1959, p. 19; Lesourd, Montmartre, p. 274. 58 Perruchot, ‘Les Peintres de Montmartre’, p. 20. 59 Quoted in ibid., p. 19. 60 Ibid., p. 20. 61 See ibid., p. 20. 62 See Lesourd, Montmartre, p. 271.

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amount to a great deal. He notes, not quite accurately, that there were no studios in the quarter, since they were all still to be found on the Left Bank and that, even as late as 1847, Montmartre could count only seven resident painters and one sculptor.63 In fact, there was a distinction between painters who lived in Montmartre and, generally, did not use it as a subject for their work, and artists who, like Corot, did not live in Montmartre, but were attracted by its visual qualities.64 In this context, it is worth recalling Philippe Jullian’s description of Montmartre as ‘the closest village to Paris’: not only did it offer the Parisian painter easy access to rustic scenes, it also attracted artists because of the quality of the light, above the smoke of the city in the basin. Alongside this modest artistic activity, Montmartre also began its association with musicians and writers: in 1834 Berlioz lived in a house, which is still standing, on the corner of the Rue du Mont-Cenis and the Rue Saint-Vincent,65 while in literature, Alphonse Karr lived on the Butte in the 1830s and frequented the successor to the Tivoli, Le Poirier sans Pareil.66 Most important for the subsequent image of Montmartre, however, was Gérard de Nerval, who lived on the summit, close to the Château des Brouillards. As Pierre Labracherie notes: First in the literary mythology of Montmartre appears, wearing a stove-pipe hat and a long frock coat, the silhouette of the gentle Gérard de Nerval, who loved the Butte for itself, totally disinterestedly, without wishing to use it as a springboard or as a means of creating groups and movements.67

With Nerval’s suicide in 1855, all the ingredients of the mythology of the ill-starred bohemian associated with Montmartre were complete. With the annexation of Montmartre in 1860, artistic activity accelerated, and the second half of the nineteenth century presents a marked contrast to the first. Louis Chevalier remarks on the attraction during this period of the boulevards extérieurs, 68 part of a general process of the expansion of the city towards the north and, 63 See ibid., p. 277. 64 On, for example, Corot’s Le Moulin de la Galette en 1840, see Perruchot, pp. 20–1. 65 See Lesourd, Montmartre, p. 275. 66 See Pierre Labracherie, ‘Ecrivains de Montmartre’, Le Crapouillot, 45, July 1959, p. 28. 67 Ibid., p. 28. 68 See Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime, p. 141.

‘Montons à la Barrière’

31

in particular, of the movement of artistic and pleasure activity from the grands boulevards to their more recent equivalents along the line of the old barrières. At the same time, Sylvie Buisson and Christian Parisot note that, by 1863, most of the contributors to the Salon des Refusés lived in a district stretching from Batignolles to Saint-Lazare and from Pigalle to the Boulevard de Clichy: in other words, Lower Montmartre. Part of the reason for this displacement was in the newly constructed quartiers, in the wake of Haussmann’s redevelopment, ‘whose apartment buildings kept their top story for artists’ studios’.69 Another reason, as we shall see, was the growing importance of the Rue Lafitte as a centre of art dealers, with businesses such as Bernheim Jeune, Wildenstein and Durand-Ruel.70 With the growth in the number of available studios and the proximity of art dealers, the artistic community of Lower Montmartre expanded rapidly. Lesourd notes that, by the 1860s, there were studios all over Montmartre, but mainly around the Butte and not on it, and lists minor painters such as Diaz, De Dreux, Auguste de Chatillon and Bin, a group which, by 1874, had grown to include Yon, Beauvarie, Cabanel, Damage, Comte, Victor Gilbert, Chiflard, Jean Béraud and Quast.71 However, as Buisson and Parisot emphasise, an artistic community requires more than studios and art dealers. It also depends on cheap catering and accommodation and, in particular, social space. The new studios in the ninth arrondissement were equipped with the latest gas lighting, but even this did not allow the artists to continue painting in the hours of darkness. They left their studios, therefore, to go to the café, ‘the new artistic salon of the second half of the nineteenth century’,72 where the new lighting facilitated extended social gatherings. The development of the artistic café essentially reflects the movement of the artistic centre of gravity of the capital outwards from the grands boulevards. In the 1860s, Manet and his republican friends associated in the Café de Bade, on the Boulevard des Italiens, or in Tortoni and La Maison Dorée close by. Yet already, Constantin Guys, Nadar and Baudelaire were meeting regularly in the Cabaret Dinocheau in the Rue de Bréda (now Rue Henri-Monnier), while Courbet and the young Monet 69 Sylvie Buisson and Christian Parisot, Paris-Montmartre. Les Artistes et les lieux 1860–1920 (Paris: Terrail, 1996), p. 24. 70 See Béthencourt-Devaux, Montmartre, Auvers sur Oise et Van Gogh, p. 101. 71 See Lesourd, Montmartre, p. 278. 72 Buisson and Parisot, Paris-Montmartre, p. 25.

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drank in the Brasserie des Martyrs in the street of the same name.73 Nothing demonstrates this shift in the cultural geography of Paris in the 1860s, however, as well as Manet’s adoption of the Café Guerbois, on the Grande-Rue des Batignolles (now the Avenue de Clichy), as the headquarters of what was known as the ‘Ecole des Batignolles’,74 and what was to become the base for the Impressionists. Manet himself lived in the Boulevard des Batignolles, and came from a highly respectable family: his father was chef de cabinet to the Minister of Justice under the July Monarchy. Interestingly, Perruchot records that Manet himself was perplexed at the furore created by Déjeuner sur l’herbe and Olympia and that he ‘never wanted scandal. What he wanted, on the contrary, was to have a worldly official career, with State commissions, decorations and various honours. He was quite amazed at what had happened to him’.75 In this, he was by no means atypical as a Montmartre artist: as we shall see, many of the personnel of the artistic cabarets of the 1880s and 1890s came from bourgeois families and, despite the apparent subversiveness and, often, violence of their creations, expected, and for the most part received, state honours as semi-official entertainers to the new Republic. The Café Guerbois, the ‘birthplace of the Impressionist Movement’,76 played host to a group which comprised, in addition to Manet himself, Degas, Monet, Pissarro and Fantin-Latour. All of them, like Manet, lived close by. Degas was the most faithful Montmartre inhabitant: he was born in the Rue Saint-Georges and, from 1859 to his death in 1917 never strayed beyond the borders of Montmartre; Pissarro, before moving to countryside of Pontoise, lived in the Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette and other Montmartre addresses;77 and Monet lived in the Rue Pigalle.78 The group also included Zola, ‘the group’s spokesman’,79 Duranty, the poet Zacharie Astruc, Nadar, Frédéric Bazille, Guillemet, Whistler, Alfred Stevens, Constantin Guys and Carolus Duran.80 Cézanne attended infrequently, and was extremely distrustful of the group’s bourgeois 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80

See ibid., p. 25. Perruchot, ‘Les Peintres de Montmartre’, pp. 20–1. Ibid., p. 21. Buisson and Parisot, Paris-Montmartre, p. 44. See ibid., pp. 38, 42. See ibid., p. 25. Perruchot, ‘Les Peintres de Montmartre’, p. 21. Ibid., p. 21.

‘Montons à la Barrière’

33

trappings: ‘All of them are bastards … They are as well-dressed as lawyers’. He carefully insulted the elegant Manet by greeting him in an exaggerated southern accent: ‘I won’t shake your hand, Monsieur Manet, I haven’t washed for a week’.81 The Guerbois group survived both the war and the Commune (although the painter Bazille was killed at Beaune-la-Rolande) and continued meeting until 1876, when a newcomer, Marcellin Desboutin (who appears in Degas’s L’Absinthe) decreed that the café had become too noisy and proposed moving to an establishment on the Place Pigalle, the Café de la Nouvelle-Athènes. Here, the group expanded into a major artistic and literary community, with the Naturalist writers Maupassant, Huysmans, Henri Céard and Léon Hennique, and painters such as Manet, Pissarro and Cézanne, but joined by newcomers such as Renoir, Sisley, Forain and Toulouse-Lautrec. It was here that L’Impressionnisme. Journal d’art was founded by Degas and Manet. As Roger Shattuck comments: ‘The Café Guerbois and the Nouvelle Athènes had nurtured the first artistic movement entirely organised in cafés: Impressionism’.82 Brilliant as this grouping was, the Nouvelle-Athènes by no means had the monopoly: Renoir, Degas and Caillebotte would eat in the restaurant of Le Père Lathuille on the Place de Clichy; the ‘marginal intellectuals of bohemia’ frequented Le Rat Mort on the Place Pigalle, while most artists visited the establishment of Le Père Laplace, at 28 Avenue Trudaine, the first ‘cabaret galerie’.83 By the early years of the Third Republic, therefore, and building upon a long history, Montmartre had achieved the status of a pleasure centre within the capital – though by no means uncontested, as we have seen – building upon a long history in which the barrières played a crucial role. At the same time, with its studios and art dealers, it had established itself as a centre of the avant-garde, a role it shared with Montparnasse. As in the case of its southern counterpart, the link between the two poles of activity is to be found in the social, and residential, space which grew up along the line of the barrières: cheap accommodation and, particularly, cheap nocturnal cafés and restaurants, which enabled the creation of an authentic artistic community. Montmartre, therefore, offered itself to a mass public avid for new forms of entertainment and diversion, a 81 Quoted in ibid., p. 21. 82 Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France to World War I, rev. ed. (New York: Vintage, 1968), p. 11. 83 See Buisson and Parisot, Paris-Montmartre, p. 32.

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bourgeoisie seeking a social mix and possibly dangerous, if temporary, déclassement, and an artistic community receptive to evermore exciting forms of communal expression. Where Montmartre was to score definitively over Montparnasse was in providing a format which satisfied all three needs: what Louis Chevalier calls ‘the event’, 84 the opening of the first artistic cabaret, Le Chat Noir, in 1881.

84 Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime, p. 151.

chapter two

The Artistic Cabarets

The Artistic Cabarets

Le Chat Noir ‘What is Montmartre? – Nothing! What must it be? – Everything!’1 So Rodolphe Salis, self-styled ‘gentleman-cabaret-owner’, began his address to the voters of the eighteenth arrondissement of Paris in the 1884 ­parliamentary elections. At the same time, he boasted: God created the world. Napoleon created the Légion d’Honneur. I made Montmartre. 2

There was more than a little truth in Salis’s claims. In the last two decades of the nineteenth century, Montmartre achieved a pre-eminent position in both the high and popular culture of the capital, a feat due almost exclusively to Salis and the establishment he founded in 1881, the artistic cabaret Le Chat Noir. As the catalogue to the establishment’s centenary exhibition commented: At the foot of the hill of Montmartre, in a quarter that was in full bloom and where artists, writers and young people wished to live more and more, in November 1881 Rodolphe Salis opened Le Chat Noir, a cabaret of a completely new sort, derived from the political, literary and artistic café. 3

Salis had come from his native Picardy to Paris with ambitions to be a painter, but had failed to make his fortune. Bowing to paternal 1 Rodolphe Salis, ‘Electeurs’, Le Chat Noir, 10 May 1884, p. 4. 2 Quoted in Michel Herbert, La Chanson à Montmartre (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1967), p. 13. 3 Centenaire du Chat Noir. Ses pièces d’ombres, ses artistes, ses poètes et ses compositeurs (Paris: Musée de Montmartre, 1981), p. 5.

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pressure to settle down, he married and, in 1880, set up a studio selling religious paintings in the premises of a former post office at 84 Boulevard Rochechouart.4 The following year, in the Grande Pinte, on the Avenue Trudaine, he met the Left Bank bohemian Emile Goudeau, the founder of the Club des Hydropathes, and persuaded him to organise a goguette in his studio. 5 A goguette was a combination of a social evening with a more formal entertainment element, in which participants sang songs, declaimed monologues or recited from their literary work. Its origins go back to the ‘Bock Dinners’ inspired by Manet’s Le Bon Bock, which began in 1875, and which led to the establishment of the Brasserie du Bon Bock in the Rue Dancourt in Montmartre in 1879, but it also rapidly became an important feature of Left Bank culture, associated particularly with the Club des Hydropathes.6 It was in 1878 that Goudeau established his club at 7 Rue Racine, based initially on the simple formula of poets reciting their verse for fellow writers,7 a formula which quickly attracted chansonniers like Mac-Nab and Jules Jouy from other Left Bank goguettes. Before its disappearance in 1880, it moved from the Rue Racine to the Café Rive-Gauche on the corner of the Rue Cujas and the Boulevard Saint-Michel, to the Hôtel Boileau in the Rue Cujas and, finally, to Chez Colson in the Rue Jussieu.8 Its founder members included most of the future stalwarts of Le Chat Noir, such as the artists André Gill and Adolphe Willette, and writers like Alphonse Allais and Charles Cros.9 Under the influence of Allais and Charles Sapeck, the dominant spirit in the Hydropathes was fumisme, less bleak than that other form of Left Bank nihilism called zutisme, which constituted ‘a kind of disdain for everything, an inner spite against creatures and things, that translated itself on the outside by innumerable acts of aggression, farces

4 See ibid., p. 61; Jean Galtier-Boissière, ‘Les Chansonniers de Montmartre’, Le Crapouillot, 45, July 1959, p. 35. 5 See Mariel Oberthür, Montmartre en liesse, 1880–1900 (Paris: Musée Carnavalet, 1994), p. 17. 6 See Cate and Shaw, eds, The Spirit of Montmartre, pp. 2–3. 7 See Whiting, Satie the Bohemian, pp. 34–6; Anatole Jakovsky, Alphonse Allais, ‘Le Tueur à gags’ (Paris: Les Quatre Jeudis, 1955), p. 52. 8 See Jakovsky, Alphonse Allais, pp. 53–5. The meetings of the Hydropathes were immensely popular, audiences often exceeding 100, to the anxiety of the police. 9 See Luc Willette, Adolphe Willette. Pierrot de Montmartre (Précy-sous-Thil: L’Armançon, 1991), p. 31.

The Artistic Cabarets

37

and practical jokes’.10 As Jerrold Seigel comments, ‘Fumisme was meant to express an attitude common to Left Bank students and Bohemians of the 1870s. Less desperate than … zutisme …, it was still a refusal to treat the official world with seriousness and respect’.11 Not only did fumisme become a defining characteristic of Le Chat Noir and its imitators, it also constituted an important link between the popular culture of the Belle Epoque and the French avant-garde in the twentieth century. The formula of the Hydropathes was to become the basis for the entertainment in the early years of Le Chat Noir, which opened in November 1881.12 The establishment’s name was taken from the short story by Edgar Allen Poe13 and its inn sign was painted by Steinlen.14 Above all, it represented, in Goudeau’s words, ‘an invasion of two arts, poetry and music, into the sanctuary of painting, Montmartre’.15 Le Chat Noir became immediately popular, and rapidly attracted the remaining Hydropathes, who were offered the possibility of resuming their traditional Friday night gatherings.16 Their weekly journey from the Latin Quarter to Montmartre on the bus route Halle-aux-VinsPigalle17 took on immense cultural significance, symbolising a wholesale transfer of Left Bank bohemian culture to Montmartre, a process which was to last until the First World War.18 In fact, this annexation of the traditions of Left Bank bohemia was to have durable consequences in evocations of Montmartre in the twentieth century, which are often heavily reliant upon the shameless expropriation by memorialists of Murger and his Scènes de la vie de bohème. Even as respectable a guide 10 Emile Goudeau, quoted in Seigel, Bohemian Paris, p. 221. 11 Seigel, Bohemian Paris, p. 221. 12 The most detailed discussion of Le Chat Noir is by Oberthür, Le Cabaret du Chat Noir. 13 See Henri Marc, Aristide Bruant, le maître de la rue (Paris: Editions FranceEmpire, 1989), p. 41. 14 See Willette, Adolphe Willette, p. 45. 15 Quoted in Whiting, Satie the Bohemian, p. 40. 16 In his biography of his father, Luc Willette speculates that one reason for the decampment of the Hydropathes and other similar Bohemian groupings was the influence exerted by Senator Béranger in his ferocious moral crusade to clean up the Latin Quarter (Willette, Adolphe Willette, p. 43). 17 See Herbert, La Chanson à Montmartre, p. 70. 18 This bus route is also, interestingly, the one taken by Francis Carco in 1913 to leave the Butte for the Quartier Latin, thus marking the closure of one period in the cultural history of Montmartre.

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as the 1974 special number of Connaissance de Paris et de la France refers to number 18 Rue du Mont-Cenis as the ‘site of the house of Mimi Pinson’, and goes on: ‘Before another building of the same period was constructed, Mimi Pinson, the heroine of Murger and his Vie de bohème, grew flowers on her balcony’.19 Not only does this reference wilfully confuse Murger’s character Mimi with the eponymous heroine of Musset’s short story of 1845, ‘Mimi Pinson: profil de grisette’, it also transplants the bohemian mythology of Musset and Murger from the Quartier Latin, in which both works are set, to Montmartre. This annexation is compounded by one of the most prolific memorialists of Montmartre bohemia, Roland Dorgelès who, in Au beau temps de la Butte (1963), rhapsodises: ‘A chaque pas, les souvenirs allaient surgir: rapins aux chapeaux cabossés, muses coiffées à la Joconde, chansons, éclats de rire, et peut-être, comme jadis, la jolie Coccinelle allait-elle me crier bonjour par la mansard de Mimi Pinson’ (‘With every step memories were about to well up: young painters with battered hats, their muses with their hair styled like the Mona Lisa, songs, bursts of laughter and, perhaps, as once before, the pretty Coccinelle would shout hello to me from the attic of Mimi Pinson’), 20 an appropriation which Céline ironically echoes in Féerie pour une autre fois. If the transfer of Left Bank bohemia to Montmartre in 1881 was one of the most significant changes in the cultural topography of the capital in the nineteenth century, it was reinforced by an entirely new factor, which was the way in which bohemian activity suddenly became a popular form of entertainment for the Parisian bourgeoisie. As Seigel comments of Le Chat Noir and its imitators: These were public places of entertainment, and the Bohemians found there were assembled not to segregate themselves from the workaday world outside, but to attract and entertain a clientele that was largely respectable and bourgeois. The new establishments testified to a new kind of symbiosis between la Bohème and the bourgeoisie, and to the existence of a broad public seeking a taste of Bohemia. 21

It was this new clientele which was to transform the goguettes into commercial enterprises, exploited with genius by Salis in Le Chat Noir. 19 France Clément, ‘Le Quartier pas à pas’, Connaissance de Paris et de la France, 23 (1974); Guide de Montmartre, p. 52. 20 Roland Dorgelès, Au beau temps de la Butte (Paris: Albin Michel, 1963), p. 13. 21 Seigel, Bohemian Paris, p. 216.

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The establishment benefited from a new practice adopted by the urban middle classes, that of ‘aperitif time’, from 5 o’clock until 7. 22 Salis, himself dressed in a frock coat, decorated Le Chat Noir in a mock medieval style which, as Steven Whiting suggests, coincided with a general vogue for ‘Gothic taverns’ which ran counter to a competing fashion for American styles. 23 The walls were decorated with paintings and drawings by Montmartre artists, and Le Chat Noir initially offered the general services of a café, with periodic entertainment derived from the Left Bank goguettes, hosted initially by Goudeau but soon by Salis himself. 24 Very quickly, however, he furnished a small room at the back of the premises for his regular clientele, and named it the Institut. 25 It was essentially this clientele which came to constitute the basis of the art exhibitions and entertainment. Artists whose works hung on the walls included Willette, Henri Pille, Uzès, Tiret-Bognet, Steinlen, André Gill and Caran d’Ache, all ‘Montmartre painters and graphic artists who were mostly on the margins of the official Salons’, 26 though Le Chat Noir was also frequented by more established painters like Puvis de Chavannes, La Gandara, Carolus Duran and Signac. 27 Musicians included Albert Tinchant, Charles de Sivry, and Georges Fragerolle, 28 although the powerhouse of the establishment was constituted by the poets, writers and chansonniers. Among these were Goudeau himself; his brother-in-law Léon Bloy; Maurice Mac-Nab, with his ‘phoney Scottish look’29 which inspired Pierre Mac Orlan; Maurice Rollinat, the first real star of Le Chat Noir; 30 Edmond Haraucourt; Georges Lorin; Camille de Saint-Croix; Marcel Legay, who ‘combined the personas of Rouget de l’Isle and Mimi Pinson’;31 the famous actor Coquelin Cadet; Sapeck; Raoul Ponchon; Jules Jouy; Alphonse Allais; Léon Bloy; Marie Krysinska, the sole woman of the group; 32 and, the most famous name on Salis’s repertoire, Aristide Bruant, who joined the team in 1884. At 22 See Oberthür, Le Cabaret du Chat Noir, p. 15. 23 See Whiting, Satie the Bohemian, p. 39. 24 See ibid., p. 40. 25 See Centenaire du Chat Noir, p. 7. 26 Ibid., p. 10. 27 See ibid., p. 10; Willette, Adolphe Willette, pp. 48–9. 28 See ibid., p. 9. 29 Oberthür, Le Cabaret du Chat Noir, p. 20. 30 See Herbert, La Chanson à Montmartre, p. 95. 31 See ibid., p. 101. 32 See Centenaire du Chat Noir, p. 9.

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the same time, as with the artists, Le Chat Noir attracted a number of figures from the literary mainstream, including the Naturalists and, from 1884 onwards, the exiles from the salon of Nina de Villars: Charles Cros, Verlaine and Mallarmé. 33 Maupassant, Bourget and Mistral all read their work at Le Chat Noir in this early period, 34 as did Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Jean Richepin, Willy and Jean Lorrain. 35 Le Chat Noir became phenomenally popular, helped by its novelty, by the quality of its programme and also by Salis’s innate talent as a showman: he excelled in spectacular publicity stunts, such as his spoof funeral, organised by Signac in 1884, and his election campaign the same year. 36 In its number of 12 January 1884, the journal Le Chat Noir could justifiably claim that: The cabaret of Le Chat Noir is a creation which is unique in the world; situated in the middle of Montmartre, the modern capital of wit and intelligence, this cabaret is the meeting point of the most famous poets, painters and sculptors; it is something absolutely curious in the most pure Louis XII style. 37

By then the format had become so successful, with both participants and the general public, that Salis decided to expand by acquiring the premises next door and commissioned Adolphe Willette to provide a giant painting to decorate it. The result, Parce Domine, which now hangs in the Musée du Vieux-Montmartre, is an extraordinary example of fin-de-siècle pessimism, depicting a vast crowd of revellers being led by a sinister Pierrot over the roofs of Montmartre towards an ill-defined fate, an image evoked by Céline in the ‘cavalcade des morts’ episode in Voyage au bout de la nuit. It remains an interesting reminder that, if Montmartre was well on the way to becoming the prime lieu de plaisir of Paris, there was a dark underside to that pleasure, full of anxiety and foreboding, a preoccupation which coincides with the taste for the Gothic and the occult at the end of the century, reflected in the Louis XII décor of Le Chat Noir itself. One more immediate reminder of mortality, however, was presented by the increasing friction between Salis’s establishment and clientele 33 See ibid., p. 10. 34 See Whiting, Satie the Bohemian, p. 40. 35 See Willette, Adolphe Willette, pp. 48–9. 36 See Centenaire du Chat Noir, pp. 10, 11. 37 Le Chat Noir, 12 January 1884, p. 4.

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and the local criminals who frequented the Elysée Montmartre and turned up late at Le Chat Noir to disrupt proceedings 38 – an interesting example of Montmartre as a series of frontiers-within-frontiers, beginning with the boundaries between the district and Paris itself, but infinitely capable of being subdivided between different communities. The confrontations became so violent that on one occasion Salis accidentally killed one of his own waiters. It was this which led him to look for new premises, further away from the dangerous frontier territory with La Chapelle, and on 10 June 1885, at midnight, the entire team of Le Chat Noir processed solemnly through the streets, bearing all the furniture and fitments of the old building, led by Parce Domine. The old premises were taken over by Bruant, who established his cabaret Le Mirliton there. The Chat Noir’s new site was in the Rue Laval, now the Rue Victor-Massé, just south of the Place Pigalle and the Boulevard de Rochechouart, in a sumptuous townhouse which had belonged to the painter Alfred Stevens. 39 The new ‘Hostellerie du Chat Noir’ occupied the entire building, with, downstairs, ‘Le Perron des Suisses’, ‘La Salle François-Villon’ and ‘La Salle des Gardes’ and, upstairs, ‘La Salle des Fêtes’, ‘La Salle du Conseil’, ‘L’Oratoire’ and the ‘Loge du Président de la République’.40 The décor was undertaken by Henri Pille and designed to create the effect of an old-fashioned tavern, while, in contrast, outside a sign exhorted: ‘Passant, sois moderne!’ (‘Passer-by, be modern!).41 In addition to Parce Domine, the dominant feature was a new painting by Willette, Te Deum Laudamus. This work, depicting a huge golden calf, expressed the painter’s growing exasperation, shared by Goudeau and Steinlen, with Salis’s increasing arrivisme and greed. All three parted company from Salis with the move to the Rue Laval and, while Henri Rivière remained with Le Chat Noir, he contributed a tableau on the same subject to the shadow plays. The charge of arrivisme may well have been confirmed by the inaugural banquet of the new Chat Noir, whose guests included Maupassant, Delibes, Théodore de Banville, Jules Lemaître, WaldeckRousseau, eleven députés and two mayors:42 at any rate, it certainly 38 See Whiting, Satie the Bohemian, p. 43; Willette, Adolphe Willette, p. 43; Galtier-Boissière, ‘Les Chansonniers de Montmartre’, p. 35. 39 See Galtier-Boissière, ‘Les Chansonniers de Montmartre’, p. 35. 40 See Jakovsky, Alphonse Allais, p. 80. 41 See ibid., p. 80. 42 See Whiting, Satie the Bohemian, p. 45.

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demonstrated how close Le Chat Noir had become to the official culture of the Third Republic. In the new premises the entertainment was altogether more lavish than it had been on the Boulevard Rochechouart. The waiters were dressed in Academician’s uniform43 and Salis, wearing his military jacket, addressed his clients with exaggerated politeness, referring to them as ‘Princes et gentilshommes’ or ‘Vos Altesses Electorales’,44 an only half-ironic recognition of the clientele’s place in the republican hierarchy. In addition to the original chansonniers, Salis hired new performers, such as Xavier Privas, Gabriel Montoya, Pierre Trimoillat, Jehan Rictus, Vincent Hyspa, the future Academician Maurice Donnay and the young Yvette Guibert,45 and in 1887 he appointed Erik Satie as chef d’orchestre.46 At the same time, the larger premises allowed for a variety of activities and entertainment, and the possibility of satisfying both the general public and the habitués who, including Verlaine and Debussy, dined with Salis every Tuesday in the Salle des Gardes and constituted a real salon. The greatest innovation, however, came about on Friday evenings, formally the preserve of the Hydropathes and their goguettes, and transformed into the jour de gala with theatrical performances, initially in the form of guignol,47 which began at 9.30 in the evening. These performances were organised by the painter Henri Rivière, who one evening spontaneously decided to illustrate one of Jules Jouy’s songs, ‘Les Sergots’, with a shadow play. This new form of entertainment, in which Henri Pille collaborated, rapidly became hugely popular and, under Rivière’s direction, highly sophisticated: the characters and scenery were cut out of zinc and designed by Rivière himself, Fernand Fau, Willette 43 Ironically, two pillars of Le Chat Noir, Maurice Donnay and Jean Richepin, were later to become genuine members of the Académie Française. 44 See Galtier-Boissière, ‘Les Chansonniers de Montmartre’, p. 35. 45 See Cententaire du Chat Noir, p. 15. 46 Satie introduced himself to Salis as a ‘gymnopédiste’, to which Salis, never wishing to admit ignorance, replied: ‘It’s a very fine profession’ (Quoted in Mariel Oberthür, ‘Erik Satie et les cafés de Montmartre’, in Erik Satie à Montmartre. Exposition, décembre 1982–avril 1983, Musée de Montmartre (Paris: Musée de Montmartre, 1982), p. 11. 47 See Whiting, Satie the Bohemian, p. 47; Herbert, La Chanson à Montmartre, p. 160. As we shall see in Chapter Four, guignol, along with other forms of puppet theatre, was very popular in Montmartre and was important in the development of Jarry’s Ubu and Dada performances.

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and Caran d’Ache; the music was composed by Debussy, Charles de Sivry and Fragerolle; and complex sound effects were supplied by Alphonse Allais, Georges Auriol and Caran d’Ache.48 Initially, the texts were supplied by Maurice Donnay and D’Esparbès,49 but very soon Salis himself revealed an extraordinary talent for spontaneous commentary. 50 The most famous of these shadow plays was L’Epopée, a dramatic reconstruction of the Napoleonic epic by Caran d’Ache, a gifted caricaturist and grandson of one of Napoleon’s cavalry commanders, who was born in Moscow and took his pseudonym from the Russian word for pencil, karandach. 51 L’Epopée won enthusiastic reviews from major critics such as Francisque Sarcey, with whom Allais had a long-running and inexplicable feud, Jules Lemaître and Jules Claretie, 52 but in fact was only one of a whole series of productions, including L’Age d’or by Willette; the five-act tragedy Phrymé, by Maurice Donnay, accompanied by a complicated musical score; Morin’s revealingly-titled Pierrot pornographe; and the most popular piece, Somm’s L’Eléphant, performed at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. 53 The effect of the shadow plays on Le Chat Noir was instant. As Michel Herbert comments, ‘Henceforth, Le Chat Noir ceased to be a literary circle and became a fashionable theatre’, 54 and plays were performed nightly. However, conscious of this transformation, as a counterweight Salis set up weekly goguettes on Sunday evenings on the lines of the original Hydropathes meetings. Organised by Jules Jouy, these occasions ushered in a new generation of chansonniers, of which Vincent Hyspa and Jehan Rictus were the most distinguished. 55 The fame of Le Chat Noir rapidly spread far beyond Paris, due to two factors: its touring company and its journal. The first visit outside 48 See Herbert, La Chanson à Montmartre, p. 163; Jakovsky, Alphonse Allais, p. 82. 49 See Jakovsky, Alphonse Allais, p. 82. 50 See Galtier-Boissière, ‘Les Chansonniers de Montmartre’ (p. 35), which includes an extract of Salis’s commentary for Caran d’Ache’s L’Epopée. 51 See Thierry Groensteen, ed., Les Annés Caran d’Ache (Angoulême: Musée de la Bande Dessinée, 1998), pp. 3–4. 52 See Herbert, La Chanson à Montmartre, p. 163. 53 See ibid., p. 161; Achille Astre, Quelques artistes de mon temps (Carcassonne: Editions d’Art Jordy, coll. ‘A la Porte d’Aude: Collection des Ecrivains Audois’, n.d.), p. 25; Whiting, Satie the Bohemian, p. 48. 54 Herbert, La Chanson à Montmartre, p. 164. 55 See Whiting, Satie the Bohemian, p. 49.

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Paris took place in 1892, to Rouen, where Salis followed the example of François Trombert and his Cabaret du Lyon d’Or. 56 Thereafter, the team from Le Chat Noir toured the provinces every summer, venturing as far afield, in 1895, as Algeria and Tunisia. 57 This was a deliberate attempt to export ‘Parisianism’ and, specifically, the spirit of Montmartre to the provinces, but it would not have succeeded as spectacularly as it did had the provinces not been already aware of Le Chat Noir through its journal. The tradition of artistic cabarets launching their own humorous journals was begun by Goudeau, with L’Hydropathe in 1880, and was particularly facilitated by the Loi sur la Presse of 1881, which effectively removed censorship. In its wake, there sprang up a host of comic and satirical journals, some attached to individual cabarets, like Le Chat Noir and Le Mirliton, others independent, like the radical L’Assiette au beurre; Le Rire, established in 1894, and its rival Le Sourire, five years later;58 Le Journal, La Caricature and La Chronique parisienne. 59 These journals became an important means of expression for late nineteenth-century writers and caricaturists, and were the starting point for the careers of the illustrators of the interwar years around Gus Bofa and Chas Laborde who met in the Restaurant Manière. They were also ideally suited to the format of the cabarets, which already had their walls decorated by cartoons and whose chansonniers delivered humorous monologues. It was possible, however, for the process to operate in reverse, and one of the most influential journals, Le Courrier français, sponsored by an important commercial patron, the pharmacy company Pastilles Géraudel, supported in its turn L’Elysée Montmartre, Le Rat Mort and L’Abbaye de Thélème.60 The journal Le Chat Noir was launched on 14 January 1882, soon after the inauguration of the cabaret, 61 with a masthead designed by Henri Pille. It appeared every Saturday, edited by Goudeau until 1887 and then by Allais, 62 with a print run of between 12,000 and 20,000.63 56 See Herbert, La Chanson à Montmartre, p. 172. 57 See Whiting, Satie the Bohemian, p. 51. 58 See Jakovsky, Alphonse Allais, p. 133. 59 See Groensteen, Les Annés Caran d’Ache, p. 17. 60 See Oberthür, Montmartre en liesse, p. 48. 61 See Centenaire du Chat Noir, p. 22. 62 See Whiting, Satie the Bohemian, p. 43. 63 See Oberthür, Montmartre en liesse, p. 47; Jean-Claude Carrière, ed., Humour 1900 (Paris: J’ai Lu, 1963), p. 291.

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Initially free, it later sold at 15 centimes an issue.64 It included regular illustrations by Willette, Steinlen and Caran-d’Ache, with an editorial usually written by Allais, articles by Goudeau, Léon Bloy and Salis, usually in mock-medieval style, poems by Catulle Mendès and Laurent Tailhade, and comic pieces by Jules Jouy, Coquelin Cadet and other regular performers at the cabaret. The number for 5 January 1884 is representative of the tone. Its front page carried the ‘Bulletin littéraire du Chat Noir’, written by Goudeau and devoted to Zola, the ‘hermit of Médan’. Pages two and three were taken up with a cartoon by Willette, ‘Nana et Sahib’; the following page carries the text of the story, by Pierre Willette, and a savage attack on Richepin by Léon Bloy, ‘L’Homme aux tripes’, which a mock disclaimer from the editors: ‘We should like to remind our readers that M. Léon Bloy is entirely responsible for his violent pieces of writing. We could not change one word of his articles without exposing ourselves to the danger of being murdered or at least atrociously tortured’. The same page carried a piece by Jules Jouy, ‘Le Cache-nez. Dialogue-omnibus’, and a ringing plea for ‘poetry and young ideas’. The following week’s issue began with an editorial by Goudeau on ‘L’Age d’or du cochon’ and a poem by Fernand Icres, ‘Une Conquête’. Page two was devoted to another polemic by Bloy, ‘La Frénésie du médiocre’, and George Auriol’s ‘Fête des rois. Histoire fantastique’. Page three carried one of Willette’s most famous drawings, on the death of a Montmartre grisette: ‘Les Oiseaux meurent les pattes en l’air’, and the number concluded with a poem on the same subject by Pierre Willette, a monologue by Coquelin Cadet, ‘L’Entomologiste’, and publicity for the cabaret and L’Elysée Montmartre. As the catalogue for the centenary exhibition of the journal comments, 65 graphically Le Chat Noir was more interested in social themes than politics, unlike L’Assiette au beurre, although it did share the prevailing Anglophobia of the time: on 27 December 1884, Willette produced a cartoon on ‘John Bull au Congo’. The major preoccupation of the journal, however, was literary and cultural, as evidenced by its early defence of ‘poetry and young ideas’, and it defended groups such as Impressionism; the Incohérents; the ‘Mouvement Synthétique’ of the anarchist Félix Fénéon, the future editor of La Revue Blanche; and the vogue for Japanese culture, championed by Henri Rivière.66 64 See Herbert, La Chanson à Montmartre, p. 65. 65 See Centenaire du Chat Noir, p. 11. 66 See Centenaire du Chat Noir, p. 23.

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Salis, by now tired and ill, sold Le Chat Noir in 1893 to Emile Boucher, who contrived to run it down.67 He also tried to rid himself of the Hostellerie the same year, but the company to which he sold it went bankrupt, and Salis had to take it back in 1895. It finally closed two years later. Salis meanwhile retired to the château he had purchased in 1892, and died there of tuberculosis on 19 March 1897, the same day as the funeral of Jules Jouy.68 Even at the end, however, he still had new projects, including the opening of a third Chat Noir, this time on the grands boulevards. ‘We shall leave Montmartre, the brain of France, in order to move close to its heart, Paris!’, 69 he wrote, with characteristic bombast, but perhaps also with an intuition that, by the end of the century, Montmartre was coming to the end of a particular phase. Imitators and Successors Nevertheless, the impact of Le Chat Noir was considerable in the domains of both high and popular culture. In his acceptance speech at the Académie Française, Melchior de Voguë praised it as ‘one of the first to discredit gloomy naturalism … At the same time, Le Chat Noir contributed to the reawakening of idealism’.70 In more concrete terms, it set a fashion in forms of popular entertainment which led to the establishment of a whole series of imitators which in many cases outlived the original. The first wave of these came with the move of the Chat Noir to the ‘Hostellerie’ in 1885 and fed upon growing discontent with Salis among his collaborators and performers. Yet the most famous rival to Le Chat Noir was the one which replaced it in the premises in the Boulevard Rochechouart, Aristide Bruant’s Le Mirliton. Bruant, the son of a businessman in the département of the Loiret, had worked as a lawyer’s clerk, an apprentice jeweller and railway clerk before starting a career in café-concerts, and joined Le Chat Noir in 1884, where his first popular song included the lines:

67 See Whiting, Satie the Bohemian, p. 52; Herbert, La Chanson à Montmartre, p. 180. 68 See Whiting, Satie the Bohemian, p. 52; Herbert, La Chanson à Montmartre, p. 183. 69 Quoted in Herbert, La Chanson à Montmartre, pp. 180–1. 70 Quoted in Herbert, La Chanson à Montmartre, p. 183.

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Je cherche fortune Autour du ‘Chat Noir’ Au clair de la lune A Montmartre, le soir.

I am seeking my fortune Around Le Chat Noir By moonlight In Montmartre, in the evening.71

It was at Le Chat Noir that he adopted the costume which was to become his trademark, and made familiar through Toulouse-Lautrec’s posters: his black corduroy suit, with short boots, broad-brimmed hat and flowing red scarf,72 and where he perfected his repertoire of songs evoking the poor quarters of Paris and their inhabitants. It was at Le Mirliton, however, that he perfected the formula, derived from Salis, which was to make his fortune. The appeal of Le Chat Noir was in its ability to ‘épater les bourgeois’ 73 with exaggerated compliments and technical innovation, while giving the audience the impression of mixing both with bohemians and the representatives of Parisian low life – in Jules Lemaître’s words, the ‘illusion that they are slumming’.74 It was this formula which enabled Salis to attract, not merely the Parisian and provincial bourgeoisie, but also distinguished visitors like General Boulanger, the Prince of Wales and Russian grand dukes.75 Bruant discovered, almost by accident, that this same bourgeois and aristocratic audience enjoyed, not merely being amazed, but being actively insulted. As he announced: ‘You like being shouted at, do you … Well, you’ll get your money’s worth!’ 76 Henri Marc, Bruant’s biographer, concludes: ‘They seemed delighted … to be treated like rotting fish, as in the olden days at the dances at the Opéra’.77 Bruant even set his insults to music: if he spotted a

71 Quoted in Galtier-Boissière, ‘Les Chansonniers de Montmartre’, p. 37. 72 See ibid., p. 37. 73 Centenaire du Chat Noir, p. 5. 74 Quoted in ibid., p. 28. 75 See Seigel, Bohemian Paris, p. 224. 76 Quoted in Herbert, La Chanson à Montmartre, p. 249. 77 Marc, Aristide Bruant, p. 49.

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particularly respectable visitor making his entrance, he would start up the refrain, to which the entire audience joined in: Oh! là là! C’te gueule! C’te binette! Oh! là là! C’te gueule qu’il a!

Oh dear, oh dear! What a face, what a mug! On dear, oh dear! What a face he has!78

As one contemporary commentator records: ‘Fashionable Parisian society came in coach-loads: famous prostitutes and honest noblewomen rushed there, less for the pleasure of applauding excellent songs than in the hope of slumming and being insulted by Bruant, who, in his red shirt, walked among the tables sparing his clients neither crude insults nor name-calling’,79 a description confirmed by Jean Roman: ‘It became the craze among the “upper crust” to go bumming in Montmartre, and they found no thrill to equal the perverse joys of the Mirliton, a cabaret where Aristide Bruant held forth nightly’.80 As Laurent Tailhade commented, this equivocal social mixture had its historical precedents: ‘it was both very working-class and very fashionable, probably like Les Porcherons in the eighteenth century’.81 Bruant, like Salis, was the very image of Montmartre. Jean Roman quotes the Montmartre playwright Courteline: ‘Passers-by stop and stare: “Who the devil is that fellow?” The answer’s simple, he is Montmartre, Montmartre personified, Montmartre alias Aristide Bruant’.82 This personality cult was enshrined in the change of name which made Le Mirliton Le Cabaret Aristide Bruant in 1895, and diffused through the cabaret’s journal, Le Mirliton, edited by Courteline, under the pseudonym of Georges Moineaux, with the help of Allais, Léon Xanrof, Jehan Rictus, Toulouse-Lautrec and Steinlen.83 Other publishing ventures followed, including the weekly 78 79 80 81 82 83

Quoted in Galtier-Boissière, ‘Les Chansonniers de Montmartre’, p. 37. Quoted in ibid., p. 37. Jean Roman, Paris fin-de-siècle (Paris: Robert Delpire, 1960), p. 58. Quoted in Marc, Aristide Bruant, p. 52. Quoted in Roman, Paris fin-de-siècle, p. 59. See Marc, Aristide Bruant, p. 77.

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La  Lanterne de Bruant and a series of popular novels produced by a team of ghostwriters.84 So powerful was Bruant’s personality cult, and so anxious French culture to maintain Montmartre as a place of memory, that he was hauled out from retirement just before his death, in 1924, to give a final series of concerts. In fact, like Salis, Bruant embodied not merely Montmartre bohemianism, but also its inherent inauthenticity. His songs, which, like those of many Montmartre chansonniers, acquire an exaggerated proletarian status due to their non-classical transcription, were less about the working class than about the poor, the miséreux, 85 and their political message ambiguous. Bruant himself, who wrote many songs on the notorious military penal battalions, the ‘Bats d’Af’, was fiercely militarist, and his son, who died in 1917, attended Saint-Cyr and was a career army officer. His songs on the Parisian poor, which owed everything to observation rather than first-hand experience, increasingly contrasted with an affluent lifestyle: at the height of his fame he demanded 500 francs (a huge sum at the time) for each provincial tour, and insisted on travelling first class;86 he owned two houses in Montmartre, one in the Rue Cortot and a ‘farm’ in the Rue des Saules as a summer residence.87 Here he had a manservant, François, who was not permitted to address his master as ‘Monsieur’ but, instead, as ‘Chansonnier populaire’.88 Finally, the result of a long-standing ambition, he purchased the château in the village of Courtenay where he had been brought up, and, like Salis, died a local squire.89 More important, like many Montmartre figures, Bruant’s non-conformism, which appeared deceptively left-wing, was in fact firmly anchored on the right: he had supported Boulanger and was against Dreyfus; in 1898, another echo of Salis, he stood as what was effectively a nationalist candidate, under the label candidat du peuple, in the parliamentary elections in Belleville; 90 84 See Galtier-Boissière, ‘Les Chansonniers de Montmartre’, p. 37. 85 See Seigel, Bohemian Paris, p. 237. 86 See Galtier-Boissière, ‘Les Chansonniers de Montmartre’, p. 37. 87 See Marc, Aristide Bruant, pp. 56, 72. 88 Ibid., p. 65. 89 See ibid., pp. 67, 85, 131. 90 He received only 502 votes against the winning candidate, the Socialist V. Dejeante. See Marc, Aristide Bruant, pp. 107–11. This would appear to indicate that the political stances of the cabaret performers were not necessarily a reflection of the views of the immediate Montmartre population, which remained broadly left-wing.

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finally, like most of his Montmartre colleagues, he was strongly anti-Semitic.91 Other establishments opened in 1885, in the wake of Salis’s departure to the Rue Laval and his periodic spats with collaborators, included the Cabaret du Chat Botté, founded by Goudeau in the Rue de Bellefond; Marcel-Legay’s Cabaret de la Franche-Lippé at 38 Rue des Abbesses; and, most interestingly, La Taverne du Bagne, directed by Maxime Lisbonne.92 Lisbonne, a friend of Willette’s, was, as we have seen, a former Communard colonel, who had shown real heroism during the semaine sanglante and still dressed with a red sash around his waist – the same Communard insignia sported by André Gill’s rabbit on the inn sign of the Lapin Agile.93 Exiled after 1871 and then amnestied, he became, with Salis and Bruant, one of the great showmen of Montmartre, founding Les Bouffes-du-Nord before setting up La Taverne du Bagne, in which his bourgeois customers were served by waiters dressed in convict costumes and treated to even greater violence than in Bruant’s establishment.94 As a contemporary observer, Pierre Weber, put it, ‘bourgeois customers in search of amusement need to drink and to feel disorientated. In Salis’s establishment the consumer is surprised, in Bruant’s he is insulted, in Lisbonne’s he is terrorised, and I am waiting for a place where he is whipped’.95 As the patron of Montmartre ‘theme cabarets’, Lisbonne subsequently went on to found the Casino des Concierges and, in 1888, his most innovative project, Les Frites Révolutionnaires, which not only provided in-house service with waiters wearing Phrygian bonnets, but also delivered fried potatoes to customers’ homes.96 A second wave of Montmartre artistic cabarets, modelled to a greater or lesser extent on Le Chat Noir, began in 1888 with Le Divan Japonais, which exploited the vogue for Japanese décor, had its own journal, La Lanterne japonaise, and grouped together Satie, Allais, George Auriol, 91 See Marc, Aristide Bruant, pp. 123–4. 92 For a more detailed account of Lisbonne and his links with Montmartre anarchism, see Richard D. Sonn, Anarchism and Cultural Politics in Fin-de-Siècle France, pp. 62–9. 93 See Georges Montorgueil, La Vie à Montmartre (Paris: Baudet, 1898), p. 181. 94 For a more detailed account of Lisbonne’s career in Montmartre after the Commune, see Sonn, Anarchism and Cultural Politics, pp. 62–9. 95 Quoted in Centenaire du Chat Noir, p. 18. 96 See Herbert, La Chanson à Montmartre, p. 271.

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Bac, Rafaelli, Willette, Toulouse-Lautrec and Yvette Guibert.97 This was accompanied by L’Auberge du Clou, in the Avenue Trudaine, which opened in 1891 and was run by Tomaschet. It was here that Satie first met Debussy, among other refugees from Salis and Le Chat Noir, including Vincent Hyspa, Willette and Courteline. Like Le Chat Noir, L’Auberge du Clou staged shadow plays, notably Noël, in 1892, with music by Satie and décor by Miguel Utrillo.98 The most important establishment of this period was the Cabaret des Quat’z’Arts, at 62 Boulevard de Clichy, directed by François Trombert, which opened in December 1893.99 This cabaret, in the premises of the artists’ Café du Tambourin, frequented by Van Gogh, and which played host to many familiar Montmartre chansonniers, including the new music hall artist Henri Fragson,100 was significant for two reasons. Firstly, it was established in the wake of the furore following the second Bal des Quat’z’Arts, held in the Moulin Rouge in 1893, and which had led to the organisers and one of the participants, Sarah Brown, being prosecuted for indecency on the orders of Senator Béranger: thereafter the Bal became an annual, and increasingly scandalous, event. Secondly, it was at the Café du Tambourin, in 1896, that Willette and Goudeau conceived the idea of the ‘vachalcade’: a Montmartre bohemian carnival based on the phrase manger de la vache enragée (‘to be famished’), whose committee included such notably un-hungry dignitaries as Alphonse Daudet, Zola, Anatole France, Rochefort, Raoul Ponchon, the Goncourts and the Rothschilds.101 It was this ceremony, with its ‘Crowning of the Muse of Montmartre’ from among the prettiest models and grisettes, which was depicted by Gustave Charpentier in his Montmartre opera Louise. Like other similar establishments, the Cabaret des Quat’z’Arts had its own humorous journal, edited by Goudeau from 1887 until his death in 1906.102 It was also significant for reinforcing links with the literary avant-garde by staging a marionette version of Jarry’s Ubu Roi.103 Finally, even at the turn of the century the vogue for artistic cabarets on the lines of Le Chat Noir continued, with Henri Fursy’s Boîte à Fursy, 97 98 99 100 101 102 103

See Oberthür, ‘Erik Satie et les cafés de Montmartre’, p. 11. See ibid., p. 11. See Whiting, Satie the Bohemian, p. 53. See Herbert, La Chanson à Montmartre, p. 317. See Willette, Adolphe Willette, p. 94. See Whiting, Satie the Bohemian, p. 56. See ibid., p. 57.

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established in December 1899; Le Trétau de Tabarin, in the Rue Pigalle, in 1895; and L’Ane Rouge, L’Abbaye de Thélème and Bonnaud’s La Lune Rousse, of 1903. At the same time, these cabarets were accompanied at the end of the century by ‘theme bars’, such as L’Enfer, its sister establishment Le Ciel and Le Néant, all on the Boulevard de Clichy and which lasted well into the post-war period.104 The Cabarets and the Republic It is difficult to overestimate the importance and impact of Montmartre culture in the last two decades of the nineteenth century in terms of both cultural and social history. Above all, it is important to see it as a youth culture, and the word ‘youth’ recurs repeatedly in descriptions of Montmartre activity. In his study of Van Gogh, for example, Robert Béthencourt-Devaux describes Montmartre after the annexation: ‘In this vibrant atmosphere, a young generation attracted more by the games of a literary and artistic intellectuality than by the search for wealth was destined to give to the Butte Montmartre a prestige which it still possesses’.105 Similarly, recalling Le Chat Noir, Maurice Donnay comments: you could not imagine how much, in 1881, in a Louis XII-style cabaret in Montmartre, the word ‘artist’ could convey in terms of youth, gaiety, courage, lyricism, fantasy, nihilism, poverty, certainty in the uncertainty of tomorrow, subversive themes, practical jokes, the whiff of fame, the whiff of tobacco, thirst, beards and long hair.106

In fact, in both its communal artistic activity and the public interest which that activity awakened, Montmartre in the 1880s and 1890s looks forward to that other period of youth culture and effervescence in Saint-Germain-des-Près in the aftermath of the Liberation. Not only did Saint-Germain-des-Près have its master of ceremonies, in the person of Boris Vian, it was also, like Montmartre sixty years earlier, the product of a generational cultural shift. In his study of Allais, Jakovsky refers to the Montmartre humourists of the 1880s as ‘the sons of 104 See Herbert, La Chanson à Montmartre, pp. 394–5. 1 05 Robert Béthencourt-Devaux, Montmartre, Auvers sur Oise et Van Gogh (Paris: Robert Béthencourt, 1972), pp. 88–9. 106 Maurice Donnay, quoted in Jakovsky, Alphonse Allais, pp. 65–6.

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the defeat’,107 and refers to his subject as ‘this lucid man, too lucid and as if lost in the mists of the dying nineteenth century’,108 a factor to which he attributes Allais’s appeal to the generation of 1940. In other words, like the zazous during the Occupation, who formed the core of Vian’s ‘cellar rats’ in 1946, the humourists of Montmartre in the 1880s had been marked by the national defeat in 1870, and their disillusionment struck a chord with a later generation similarly marked by an inexplicable national disaster, represented by the ‘Hussards’.109 At the same time, Allais and his colleagues fell victims to one of the essential features of cultural ‘generations’, their short time span. In the same way that ‘l’Age d’or de Saint-Germain-des-Près’ lasted from the Liberation to the Korean War, Allais’s massive popularity was already past when Mac Orlan was learning his trade. Asked by Jakovsky to record his impressions of Alphonse Allais, he replied: When I was nineteen or twenty, Alphonse Allais was unknown by the men of my generation. He belonged to the generation of Le Chat Noir, which preceded us by several years. We were probably influenced by the spirit of Mark Twain, whom I read long before I read the books by Alphonse Allais.110

As in the 1940s, this disillusionment took the form of a new type of humour, derived from British and American writing. Allais’s own exploitation of comedy of situation was variously compared to O. Henry and Mark Twain,111 while Mariel Oberthür refers to the influence of ‘cold and macabre Anglo-Saxon humour’.112 A further influence was English nonsense verse, developed by many of the Chat Noir habitués, who even went so far as to adopt English or Irish-sounding names, at variance, as we shall see, with the prevailing Anglophobia of the period: the chansonniers included Lord Cheminot, Géo-Blackmussel and O’Phthalmas.113 Central 107 Jakovsky, Alphonse Allais, p. 65. 1 08 Ibid., p. 90. 109 See Nicholas Hewitt, Literature and the Right in Postwar France: The Story of the ‘Hussards’ (Oxford and Washington DC: Berg, 1996). Interestingly, one of Allais’s early texts was entitled Nuit blanche d’hussard rouge. 110 Quoted in Jakovsky, Alphonse Allais, p. 153. 111 See Jakovsky, Alphonse Allais, p. 76. Roger Shattuck refers to Allais possessing the ‘mixed talents of Poe and Mark Twain’. See Shattuck, The Banquet Years, p. 22. 112 Oberthür, ‘Erik Satie et les cafés de Montmartre’, p. 24. 113 See Carrière, Humour 1900, pp. 313–44.

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to Montmartre culture at the end of the century, however, was black humour: ‘humour which consists of laughing at death’,114 which was ‘perhaps the most important element of 1900s humour’,115 and was recuperated in the Collège de Pataphysique and Breton’s Anthologie de l’humour noir.116 Despite its superficial optimism and frivolity, the taste for the sinister permeated Montmartre: from the Gothic style of its taverns, culminating in L’Enfer, to the work of artists like Willette, such as Parce Domine or Enfin voilà le Choléra!,117 and ‘obsessed by the macabre’.118 It is also allied to an interest among Montmartre figures in the occult and the supernatural: in the entourage of Le Chat Noir was the Rosecrucian ‘Sâr’ Pelladan, who influenced Satie to such an extent that Allais called him ‘Esotérik’ Satie.119 Finally, the cult of the macabre constitutes a further link between Montmartre culture and the betterknown mainstream: the prophets of décadence, Huysmans and Villiers de l’Isle-Adam were also habitués of Le Chat Noir. In a less dramatic, but equally revealing way, scepticism among Montmartre figures regarding the achievements of civilisation and progress at the end of the century was translated by a highly ambiguous attitude to science and, particularly, invention. As Jean-Claude Carrière reminds us, many of the Montmartre humourists were genuine inventors: the chansonnier Léon Xanrof, composer of the popular song ‘Le Fiacre’, patented the first suitcase with castors,120 while the poet Charles Cros, who became famous with his nonsense-song ‘Le Hareng saur’, invented the phonograph eight months before Edison.121 Yet, in most cases, this fascination with invention, so typical of the time, and reflected in a figure like Courtial des Perreires in Céline’s Mort à crédit, takes the 114 Ibid., p. 409. 1 15 Ibid., p. 410. 116 See, for example, François Caradec, ‘Avertissement’, in Alphonse Allais, Tout Allais, I: Œuvres anthumes (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1964), p. viii. 117 This design appeared in Le Chat Noir in its number of 28 June 1884. 118 Achille Astre, Quelques artistes de mon temps, p. 32. Philippe Jullian also refers to the taste for the decadence and the occult in the 1890s. See Jullian, Montmartre, ch. 15. 119 Oberthür, ‘Erik Satie et les cafés de Montmartre’, pp. 3, 23. 120 See Herbert, La Chanson à Montmartre, ch. VI, ‘La Grande équipe de Montmartre’. 121 See ibid., ch. IV, ‘L’Ecole poétique de Montmartre’; Christophe Arnaud, ‘« Moi, je vis la vie à côté », Charles Cros. Inventeur et poète (1842–1888)’, Le Vieux Montmartre, 85, January 2016, pp. 4–15.

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form of fantastical and absurd creations, which simply take invention to the extent of its logical limits, in the manner of the English artist Heath Robinson. Writers who excelled at this genre were Allais, who made it a central aspect of his repertoire and whose later work veered towards science fiction,122 and Gaston de Pawlowski, ‘incontestably the most extraordinary of the 1900s inventors’,123 creator, for example, of the ‘new French boomerang, whose wood is carved in such a way that, once it is thrown at the enemy, it does not come back to the person who threw it, thus avoiding all risk of accident’.124 We have already seen that establishments like Le Chat Noir and its imitators grouped together artists and writers who had a separate identity from those in the cultural mainstream, not merely in their inspiration and training, but also in their means of production. It is significant, for example, that Willette, perhaps the most representative of Le Chat Noir’s artists, although he had studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts (where, incidentally, he was bullied by Salis),125 trained only in drawing and not in painting,126 and rarely exhibited in the official salons. Like Steinlen, he essentially made his career in the newly created comic press and in advertising. In the same way, the Montmartre humourists were predominantly journalists, professional writers earning their living by contributions to a wide range of publications. This commercialisation of the artist and artistic activity was one of the principal factors in the success of Le Chat Noir: even serious aspiring poets were obliged to take recourse to performing their works in the cabarets in order to make ends meet. Seigel quotes Rachilde: ‘Without the platform provided by the beer hall, without histrionics, society will not listen’, and concludes: ‘Any poet who desired to live from his writing had no choice but to participate in the cabaret system’.127 To a certain extent, it is this commercialisation which contributed to the oblivion to which most of the Montmartre figures of the late nineteenth century were consigned, in addition to the generational effects outlined above. At the same time, however, as we have seen, Montmartre culture, especially its literary culture, was not isolated from the mainstream at the time, and Le Chat Noir 122 See Jakovsky, Alphonse Allais, p. 137. 123 Carrière, Humour 1900, p. 356. 124 Quoted in ibid., p. 357. 125 See Willette, Adolphe Willette, p. 24. 126 See ibid., p. 24. 127 Seigel, Bohemian Paris, p. 229.

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brought together the major figures in both the Naturalist and Symbolist movements. In fact, as the presence of Jarry, and Satie, indicates, the culture of the Montmartre cabarets may be seen as constituting a ‘missing link’ between the high cultural activity of the Belle Epoque and the avant-garde, which exploited the absurdity, black humour and word play of the chansonniers and humourists. This process of commercialising culture coincided precisely with the glory days of the Third Republic. As Michel Herbert comments, the period 1875–95, ‘between Jules Grévy and the Dreyfus Affair’, which saw the rise and fall of Le Chat Noir, constituted the real Belle Epoque,128 an important additional chronological frontier in Montmartre’s history and a reminder that, despite the material prosperity of the first years of the twentieth century, the shadow of impending conflict was never far away – hence the macabre quality of much of its cultural activity. At the same time, despite threats on the horizon, Carrière makes the same connection between Montmartre culture and the new regime, which had ushered in ‘a long period of peace’: ‘It was from the establishment in France of the Third Republic that French humour, which had been seeking an identity for forty years, finally took off’.129 Similarly, the practitioners of this new humour presented a clearer social identity, with origins overwhelmingly in the middle and lower middle classes and in the provinces. For Serge Dillaz: ‘the Montmartre movement was beyond any doubt the expression of the French middle classes at the end of the nineteenth century’.130 It is true that there are exceptions to this categorisation, especially among the caricaturists: André Gill was the illegitimate son of the Comte de Guines;131 Caran d’Ache was, as we have seen, the grandson of a cavalry commander and was brought up in Moscow;132 and Willette was the son of a colonel who had fought in Mexico.133 Yet the overwhelming majority of those associated with the cabarets were from the provincial middle or lower middle classes: Bruant was the son of a small financier; Allais, like Gabriel Montoya, 128 Herbert, La Chanson à Montmartre, p. 10. 129 Carrière, Humour 1900, p. 10. 130 Serge Dillaz, La Chanson sous la IIIe République 1870–1940 (Paris: Tallandier, 1991), p. 67. 131 See Charles Fontaine, Un Maître de la caricature. André Gill 1840–1885 (Paris: Editions de l’Ibis, 1927), p. 1. 132 See Groensteen, Les Annés Caran d’Ache, p. 3. 133 See Willette, Adolphe Willette, p. 11.

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was the son of a pharmacist; Dominique Bonnaud’s father was a civil servant in the Grande Chancellerie of the Légion d’Honneur, while Léon Xanrof’s was a doctor.134 Similarly, Salis came from the département of the Vienne, Allais and Satie from Honfleur, Goudeau from the Périgord, Bruant from the Loiret, Rollinat from the Berry, Alfred Capus, like Vincent Hyspa and Gabriel Montoya, from Provence, and Xavier Privas from Lyon.135 Some chansonniers, like Maurice Donnay, Dominique Bonnard or Paul Delmet, were Parisians; some, like Gaston Dumestre, whose father was an operatic baritone, or Jehan Rictus, whose mother was an actress, came from bohemian backgrounds; and Jules Jouy was the son of a butcher at Bercy,136 yet in terms of both class and geographical origin, was very much an exception. Maurice Le Blond was surely incorrect to state that Montmartre culture was the greatest expression of ‘the plebeian genius of the nation’:137 essentially, that culture was the expression of a middle class which was both socially and geographically mobile, even though it often chose to package itself in proletarian wrappings. It was no coincidence, therefore, that many of the architects of the ‘Montmartre Renaissance’ were overwhelmingly members of the professional classes, and in particular white-collar workers – specifically civil servants. Among the first generation of Montmartre chansonniers, Maurice Rollinat worked in the Mairie of the seventh arrondissement, Mac-Nab worked for the post office, Maurice Haurancourt was also a fonctionnaire and Bruant, as we know, a clerk for the railways.138 The personnel of the Hostellerie du Chat Noir included Léon Xanrof who, after an early career as a lawyer, became attaché de cabinet in the Ministry of Agriculture; Gabriel Montoya, who was a doctor; Courteline, who was a civil servant in the Ministère des Cultes;139 and, most spectacular of all, Maurice Boukay, who taught at the Lycée Arago before becoming a député in 1896 and later becoming a minister.140 Nor did either the Montmartre institutions or artists go without official 134 See Herbert, La Chanson à Montmartre, ch.VI, ‘La Grande équipe de Montmartre’. 135 See ibid., ch. VI; Jakovsky, Alphonse Allais, p. 68. 136 See Herbert, La Chanson à Montmartre, p. 85. 137 Quoted in G. Lenôtre, Paris et ses fantômes (Paris: Grasset, 1933), p. 310. 138 See Herbert, La Chanson à Montmartre, pp. 95, 109, 115. 139 See Carrière, Humour 1900, p. 246. 140 See ibid., ch.VI, ‘La Grande équipe de Montmartre’.

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protection and recognition. As Richard Sonn points out, while theoretically censorship of cabarets was strict, all establishments being required to submit their repertoires to the Office of Theatre Inspection, by tacit agreement the Montmartre entertainments were effectively immune due to their level of political protection.141 On rare occasions when the authorities did intervene and Le Chat Noir was threatened with legal action, Salis had access to General Pittié, the Secretary-General of the Elysée Palace, often beginning his letters, ‘Pitié, Pittié!’142 At the same time, most of his collaborators received the Légion d’Honneur, initially for their administrative work, but increasingly for their contributions to the artistic life of the nation: Rollinat, Jacques Ferny, Vincent Hyspa, Dominique Bonnaud, Eugène Lemercier, Léon Xanrof (who was an Officier of the Légion d’Honneur), Jules Moy, and Xavier Privas (the first chansonnier to receive the Légion d’Honneur solely for services to entertainment).143 Even as early as 1889, Mac-Nab, who died in the Lariboisière Hospital the same year, received the Palmes Académiques,144 but this was modest compared to the Légion d’Honneur awarded to that most contestatory of chansonniers, Jehan Rictus, or the entry into the Academy of Jean Richepin or Maurice Donnay, Commandeur of the Légion d’Honneur. In fact, the periodic attempts of Salis and Bruant to get elected to the Chambre des députés were only half publicity stunts, just as Salis’s address of his clients as ‘Altesses électorales’ was only half-mockery, and they reinforced a close relationship with the republican establishment, for which the chansonniers were increasingly perceived as official entertainers and jesters. This, in its turn, is connected to the symbiotic relationship, already observed, with the audience of the cabarets. Steven Whiting refers to the cunning merchandising of Montmartre by Salis and Bruant: ‘The cabaret artistique packaged bohemian Montmartre for Parisian consumption typically in décor meant to evoke scenes from Villon and Rabelais. It made wry obeisance to art, to youth, to social concern, and to a romanticised past, all the while exploiting their profit-making potential’.145 For Salis had concluded that ‘the fortunes of his cabaret depended on selling Montmartre, a seedy if picturesque quarter, as 141 See Sonn, Anarchism and Cultural Politics, pp. 72–3. 142 See Herbert, La Chanson à Montmartre, p. 176. 143 See ibid., ch.VI. 144 See ibid., p. 111. 145 Whiting, Satie the Bohemian, p. 34.

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a locus of romantic appeal unscathed by the building projects of Baron Haussmann (although it was precisely Haussmann’s straight and spacious boulevards that eased Parisians’ access to an outlying district like Montmartre)’.146 Similarly, ‘Bruant, no less than Salis, succeeded in packaging Montmartre for bourgeois consumption’.147 In other words, not only did the performers in late nineteenth-century Montmartre come from a newly mobile bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, they were able to package themselves in such a way that they appealed to their own class in a moment of apparently justified self-celebration: the bourgeois who recognised their own identity in the new republican regime and who were confident enough in the spirit of republican unity to attempt to rub shoulders with those they fondly believed to be the ‘laborious and dangerous classes’. At the same time, the packaging and selling of Montmartre to Parisians, which relied upon the myth of an exotic yet safe bohemian underworld, was accompanied by a pitch to the provincial bourgeoisie, by which Montmartre was sold as the height of Parisian chic and daring. This essentially commercial ploy was to become central to Montmartre culture ever after and, following actual personal experience of the quarter, was to feed into its pictorial and literary representation: Montmartre as lieu de mémoire began in the astute packaging put together by Salis and Bruant. It is this close relationship with the Republic which accounts for the ambiguous politics of Montmartre culture in this and subsequent periods. The packaging of this culture depended upon at least the illusion of radicalism, which in some cases was entirely authentic: Jules Jouy’s Le Temps des crises, sung to the tune of Le Temps des cerises, for example, began: Vous regretterez le beau temps des crises Quand pauvres sans pain et riches gavés Nous serons aux prises …148

And L’Assiette au beurre kept up a constant struggle against oppression and exploitation, supporting strikers and attacking lawyers, the military and colonialism. In 1901, it ran a campaign, bolstered by a special album, against a scandal involving cheap manufactured milk which turned out to be diluted, to which Willette, Caran d’Ache, Kees Van 146 Ibid., p. 42. 147 Ibid., p. 46. 148 Quoted in Galtier-Boissière, ‘Les Chansonniers de Montmartre’, p. 38.

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Dongen and Camille Lefèvre contributed. Willette’s cartoon showing a milk cart containing the doctored milk running over a helpless child was particularly effective.149 At the same time, journals like L’Assiette au beurre, and the artists who contributed to them, shared the same enemies as the Republic in terms of foreign policy: its 9 May 1901 number carried a cartoon supporting the Boers against the British; in October 1911 it devoted two numbers to the conflict between Greece and Turkey, showing considerable sympathy to Greece and a fierce denunciation of Turkish war crimes;150 and from then onwards was strongly anti-German. Nowhere was this ambiguity more visible than in the attitude of Montmartre culture towards the army. Some of its figures, including Willette – who, although the son of an army officer and a patriot, was staunchly anti-militarist151 – maintained a pacifist stance. Indeed, they often used the army as an easy target for humour, from the apocryphal legend of Allais’s greeting to his draft board: ‘Bonjour, Messieurs, dames!’152 to the military comedies of Courteline, which exploited the end of a professional army and the introduction of conscription, which led to an ‘extraordinary wave of enthusiasm’ in the café-concerts around 1900, ‘populated by nurses and soldiers on leave’.153 The extent to which this pacifism was skin-deep, however, can be gauged by the resilience of militarism in the Montmartre community, as evidenced by Bruant. The same ambiguity was to persist after the First World War, as we shall see, among those Montmartre writers and caricaturists who returned from the front, and the same ambiguity will be found in Montmartre anarchism, which, in one direction, leads us to a radical assault on the bourgeois state, yet in another finds common cause with the extreme right in its hatred of the Republic and the Jews. In fact, it is in its anti-Semitism that Montmartre culture is both closest to the prevailing ideology of the Third Republic and at its most xenophobic. Montmartre culture in the late nineteenth century, and, indeed, long afterwards, was profoundly anti-Semitic. Salis included attacks on Jews in his patter, such as: ‘In the Rue Lafitte … you see rich 149 See L’Assiette au beurre, 2, 11 April 1901; special album Les Empoisonneurs patentés. Falsifications de lait (Paris, 1901). 150 See L’Assiette au beurre, 549 and 550, October 1911. 151 See Willette, Adolphe Willette, pp. 85ff. 152 See Jakovsky, Alphonse Allais, p. 39. 153 Carrière, Humour 1900, p. 209.

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dealers, with prominent noses, whose nationality I will not even attempt to identify …’,154 as did Bruant.155 In L’Assiette au beurre anti-German sentiment became allied to anti-Semitism, with articles and cartoons on, for example, ‘La Pénétration pacifique’, denouncing the infiltration into France of Jewish traders and financiers: ‘Au Carreau du Temple, les Juifs allemands’. Along with the Jews, however, Montmartre culture also excluded women. Luc Willette recalls that there were few women around Le Chat Noir, except for artists’ models, and, as we have seen, there was only one woman chansonnier – Marie Krysinska. Moreover, the repertoire of the cabarets exploited the theme of sexuality to the point of pornography. Georges Villa’s anthology of pieces from the repertoire of Le Chat Noir is revealing in terms of its obsession with sexuality, with Edmond Haraucourt’s ‘Dame du ciel’, Maurice Boukay’s ‘Fermons nos rideaux’, the ‘Chanson-Gavotte’ by Montoya and André, Eugène Lemercier’s ‘Le Baiser libertin’, Victor Meusy’s ‘Si tu savais ma chère’, ‘Une conquête’ by Fernard Icres, and Maurice Donnay’s ‘L’Eros vanné’.156 As Mary Shaw concludes, ‘a preoccupation with unbridled sexuality, with feminine evils and ills, and with the confusion of the sexes is consistent throughout Montmartre’s literature and journalism, and prevalent in every genre’,157 a preoccupation which was exemplified in books such as Rachilde’s Monsieur Vénus, and La Marquise de Sade and Jean Lorrain’s Monsieur de Phocas. Certainly, along with the macabre, women are the staple of Montmartre humour, and even during the First World War, in Le Rire Rouge, a stereotypical character was the empty-headed society hostess deceiving her husband with a handsome aviator while he was at the front. It is hardly surprising in this essentially misogynistic culture that the cabarets should have accompanied the rise of prostitution in Montmartre: we have already seen that Bruant’s Le Mirliton played host to the most famous horizontales of the day; L’Abbaye de Thélème, with its Rabelaisian motto, ‘Faics que voudras’, was widely suspected of containing an overt invitation to sexual licence; and the invention 1 54 Quoted in Herbert, La Chanson à Montmartre, p. 177. 155 See Marc, Aristide Bruant, pp. 123–4. 156 See Georges Villa, Au Temps du Chat Noir, Montmartre a chanté (Paris: Les Bibliophiles du Cornet, 1934), non. pag. 157 Mary Shaw, ‘All or Nothing? The Literature of Montmartre’, in Cate and Shaw, eds, The Spirit of Montmartre, p. 136.

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dating from the 1860s of brasseries à femmes, bars staffed by waitresses and women behind the counter, as in Manet’s Bar des Folies-Bergère, increased the ‘opportunities for prostitution’.158 In fact, Scott Haine records that ‘in the 1880s, the cabaret Arabi in Montmartre was a preserve of “the most heterogeneous and bizarre clientele, … a tower of babel of debauchery of the nocturnal type”’ and, revealingly, that ‘the “real workers”, whether male or female, “looked askance at the women and the men who finished the night in this smoky place”’.159 In other words, while Montmartre attracted the Parisian and provincial bourgeoisie out for a good time, the effect was by no means reciprocal, and the ‘Montmartre du plaisir et du crime’ was inimical to the genuine inhabitants of the quarter. Be that as it may, the combination of the bohemian avant-garde, slumming and the offer of unbridled sexuality was a winning one and Montmartre prospered. As Haine reports: Such café fortunes as were realized in the 1880–1900 era tended to be made in areas such as Montmartre, where an active night life provided much opportunity. In some cases, an investment of 25,000 francs to transform a bar into a nightclub, as happened on rue Pigalle, for example, could yield receipts of 150,000 francs in the first year, 180,000 in the second, and 260,000 in the third. No wonder Montmartre became a Mecca for innovations in café style during the Belle Epoque.160

The problem was that such innovations and such commercialisation could not occur without considerable impact upon the cultural ecology of the quarter, and, as Mariel Oberthür concludes: When the public, which had come from the rich quarters and the salons, and when fashionable Parisian society in search of pleasure, believed that they could become integrated among the artists and participate in their shows and the spirit of Montmartre, which was essentially popular and which infused those who were the very soul of Montmartre, that spirit was dead. And when, in 1901, Yvette Guibert, conscious of the ‘spirit of Montmartre’, decided to go off on a tour of Europe with her poet and chansonnier friends, Montmartre already belonged to the past.161 1 58 W. Scott Haine, The World of the Paris Café. Sociability among the French Working Class, 1789–1914 (Baltimore, MD and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 191. 159 Ibid., p. 190. 160 Ibid., p. 128. 161 Oberthür, Montmartre en liesse, p. 84.

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And the veteran cabaret star Vincent Hyspa lamented: ‘Alas! Little by little, the clientele of the cabarets changed. They no longer went to laugh, but to “have a good time”’.162 As we shall see, announcements of Montmartre’s death were always premature, but it is undoubtedly true that the popularity of Montmartre contributed, if not to its demise, at least to a profound transformation. One of the key elements in this transformation, and one of the major manifestations of Montmartre as a centre for mass popular entertainment was the successor to the cabaret, the music hall.

162 Quoted in Herbert, La Chanson à Montmartre, p. 196.

chapter three

Music Halls and Mass Culture

Music Halls and Mass Culture

Essentially, the lifespan of the artistic cabarets was remarkably short, lasting little more than twenty years from 1881 to the turn of the century. Popular and mass entertainment in Montmartre proved much more durable, predating the cabarets, running alongside them and eventually outlasting them. At the same time, music hall was able to expropriate some of the major features of cabaret entertainment and assimilate many of the major stars. It is necessary initially, however, to distinguish between two forms of this popular entertainment, which intermingle but nevertheless present different characteristics. In Le Piéton de Paris, Léon-Paul Fargue recalls that Willette frequently pointed out to journalists that ‘like Jesus between the two thieves, the Sacré-Cœur stood flanked by the Moulin de la Galette and the Moulin Rouge’.1 In fact, the two windmills represent two separate traditions of popular entertainment: the dance halls, or bals, of which the most famous examples are the Moulin de la Galette itself and the Elysée Montmartre, and the music halls, represented by the Moulin Rouge, Folies Bergère and Casino de Paris. Both traditions inevitably intermingle, but together they contribute massively to the establishment of Montmartre as a Parisian pleasure centre and, as an important subject for painting, to its artistic activity. The Dance Halls According to Jean Barreyre, ‘in 1810, Montmartre had sixteen bals régis, or authorised dance halls, in addition to a large number of bals guinguettes (from the name of the founder of a cabaret Pierre Guinguet) 1 Léon-Paul Fargue, Le Piéton de Paris (Paris: Gallimard, 1939), p. 34.

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run by café owners and dependant on the availability of musicians. The bals régis opened most often on Sundays, Mondays and holidays’. 2 The most famous of these official dance halls was, as we have seen in Chapter One, the Moulin de la Galette on the Rue Tholozé, which evolved from a working windmill that also dispensed wine and – its speciality – home-made cake (the galette which gave the establishment its name), to a fully fledged dance hall, the Bal Debray, with the collapse of the Montmartre flour mills in the 1830s. 3 Very rapidly, the Moulin de la Galette attracted a less localised clientele, including artists, peasant girls from the outlying suburbs, maidservants and other female workers.4 At the same time, the Debray family were at pains to keep pace with fashion: gas lighting was installed outside in 1868 to attract clients; in the 1880s, Auguste Debray redecorated the facade and employed the finest professional dancers from rival establishments like the Elysée Montmartre and the Bal Mabille on the Champs-Elysées. 5 By 1900, the Moulin de la Galette opened four nights a week, with a carefully segregated clientele: regular customers included the usual mix of artists and working-class girls, while on Tuesdays the establishment was invaded by the ‘Tout Paris’ of ‘famous actresses, sports stars, and representatives from high society and the demi-monde’.6 In other words, like the cabarets, dance halls such as the Moulin de la Galette became part of that social mixture and process of slumming which was a crucial feature of Montmartre culture. Where the Moulin de la Galette was unusual, however, as we shall see, was in its relative respectability. Fargue refers to its prudishness, contrary to its reputation,7 and Barreyre emphasises the efforts of Auguste Debray to ‘exclude an overly criminal clientele’ – ‘prostitutes and those who live off them’, 8 a feature also recalled by Renoir, who regularly used the dancers as models.9 However, the 1900 Guide de poche provides a more jaundiced picture, describing the clients as: ‘office and shop workers, with a smattering of onlookers and white-bearded Don Juans … The women belong to the

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Barreyre, ‘Les Nuits de Montmartre’, p. 65. See ibid., p. 63. See ibid., p. 63. See ibid., p. 64. Ibid., p. 64. See Fargue, Le Piéton de Paris, p. 35. Barreyre, ‘Les Nuits de Montmartre’, p. 64. See ibid., p. 64.

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world where “you have a good time”, and come from the neighbouring districts of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, Bréda, Larochefoucauld, Pigalle, etc.’,10 and noting that ‘working-class women rarely come’ because of the prostitutes and their pimps.11 The Moulin de la Galette, the sole survivor of the windmills on the Butte, therefore provides an example of a particular kind of Montmartre entertainment: dance halls where customers came essentially to dance, but also to watch famous exponents of more daring forms. In fact, the Moulin de la Galette was symptomatic of the shift from dance-as-participation to dance-as-spectacle. Initially, everyone joined in the quadrille, which, at the Moulin de la Galette, was ‘a sort of disorganised amateur chorus line’,12 and even attempted the chahut, the high-kicking part of the quadrille, when skirts were lifted high. However, ‘the best dancers quickly acquired a reputation and a following of fans’, and ‘moved on to clubs that paid them’:13 among future dance hall stars who began their careers at the Moulin de la Galette were La Goulue, La Môme Fromage and Valentin le Désossé. At the same time, the nature of the dance itself changed and became more daring, moving from the quadrille réaliste to the quadrille naturaliste and, finally at the Elysée Montmartre, the quadrille érotique.14 This rise of the professional dancer as performer was crucial to the subsequent transformation of the dance hall into the music hall, an evolution which left the Moulin de la Galette in a category of its own. As J. Davray comments in 1890, ‘The only place where you can dance is the Moulin de la Galette. The real dancer … has taken refuge on the heights of Montmartre’.15 Already, the Elysée Montmartre on the Boulevard Rochechouart had shown the way, and was to prove exemplary in its attempts to adapt to changes in fashion. As Barreyre points out, the establishment was already recorded in 1807,16 but it grew slowly throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. In 1840, however, came its first success. The Parisian winter dance halls (grands bals d’hiver) had closed down, 10 Guide de poche 1900, p. 464. 11 See ibid., p. 466. 12 Julia Frey, Toulouse-Lautrec: A Life (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1994), p. 189. 13 Ibid., p. 189. 14 See ibid., pp. 190–3. 15 J. Davray, L’Amour à Paris (Paris: J.-B. Ferreyrol, 1890), p. 122. 16 See Barreyre, ‘Les Nuits de Montmartre’, p. 65.

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and the star of the Bal Mabille, Céleste Mogador, came to the Elysée Montmartre, introducing the polka and the cancan (not to be confused with the ‘French cancan’, which was invented, contrary to Jean Renoir’s depiction in his film of 1954, in 1928 by Sandrini at the Tabarin).17 In the wake of this new popularity, as Barreyre records: ‘“Parisians” settled around the Butte and the owner of the Elysée Montmartre, Mme Serre, decided, in the wake of this new influx of inhabitants and visitors, to transform her dance hall’.18 The result was a massively expensive refurbishment, but also, under the direction of Mme Serre’s son, Adrien, the engagement of the finest popular composer and orchestra leader in Paris, Olivier Métra, who was poached from the Bal Mabille. Under Métra’s direction, the Elysée Montmartre became one of the dominant Parisian dance halls in the last years of the Second Empire, owing its reputation both to the quality of the music and, like the Moulin de la Galette, to professional dancers specialising in the cancan and the quadrille. After the Commune, when it was requisitioned to serve as the Club de la Révolution, the Elysée Montmartre reopened, initially as a café-concert, but from 1874 onwards as a dance hall as well. In this period, it was known as a haunt of prostitutes and their pimps but, by 1881, had regained its pre-war reputation. Barreyre comments: this was the high point of the bal guinguette. Grille d’Egout pranced around in red stockings and lacy bloomers, and La Goulue moved about dressed as a milkmaid, banging her milk can. Forty musicians made a huge noise, and Nini Patte-en-l’Air, Miss Rigolette, and later Môme Fromage and Môme Caca, shaking with excitement, but still too young, dreamed of equalling them.19

The identification of the entertainers by name clearly confirms the creation within the dance halls of a ‘star system’ by which accomplished professional dancers became personalities in their own right, increasingly important in attracting clients: La Goulue, for example, was the undisputed star of Parisian dance halls in the period 1890–5. 20 This was to prove a vital ingredient in the creation of the music halls. 17 See Lesourd, Montmartre, p. 411, and Barreyre, ‘Les Nuits de Montmartre’, p. 70. 18 Ibid., p. 65. 19 Ibid., p. 66. 20 See Oberthür, Montmartre en liesse, p. 78.

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Significantly, however, the dance halls were highly vulnerable to shifts in fashion, and the public began to tire of the cancan and seek other sources of entertainment. By 1890, J. Davray complained wearily: At the Elysée Montmartre, the show is always the same. There was in addition for a few months the famous quadrille which brought to light Grille-d’Egout and La Goulue. It was only a flash in the pan. Today, the foreign tourist is shown a Grille-d’Egout with broken joints and a fake La Goulue. 21

At the Elysée Montmartre, this trend was temporarily reversed by the intervention of Jules Roques, an advertising agent who worked for the Géraudel pharmaceutical company22 and for nearly ten years, until 1893, organised spectacular balls under the aegis of the Courrier Français. 23 As we have seen, advertising in general played a major role in the funding of Montmartre culture and Pastilles Géraudel sponsored, not merely the Courrier Français itself, but also the Elysée Montmartre, Le Rat Mort and L’Abbaye de Thélème. 24 These fêtes costumées were organised around a theme, such as the ‘Fêtes d’Olympe’, the ‘Bal Mystique’, the ball devoted to ‘children over eighteen’, the one which took as its subject: ‘How will we be dressed in a hundred years’ time?’, and, as we have seen, the most notorious one, the Bal des Quat’z’Arts, held on 23 April 1892. 25 These spectacular occasions, all of which took place under the close observation of the police vice squad, brought together major artistic figures, journalists, members of high society and the demi-monde. Yet even these events were not sufficient to stem permanently the tide away from the dance halls. The public simply tired of dancing and wanted to listen to singers instead. As Barreyre records, in 1892, not long after the Bal des Quat’z’Arts, the new owner of the Elysée Montmartre, Dupré, turned it into a skating rink, but to no avail. Similarly, attempts in 1894 to compete with the Moulin Rouge as a café-concert failed, and in 21 Devray, L’Amour à Paris, pp. 120–1. 22 The role of commercial advertising is important in the evolution of Montmartre culture in the late nineteenth century. Willette, Steinlen and other habitués of the cabarets derived much of their income, as we have seen, from their advertising posters, and this art form was to be a key element in the career of Toulouse-Lautrec. 23 See Barreyre, ‘Les Nuits de Montmartre’, p. 67. 24 See Oberthür, Montmartre en liesse, pp. 48, 69. 25 See ibid., p. 67.

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1897 the establishment became the Trianon-Théâtre-Concert-Bal, with a dance hall separate from its major activity as a café-concert. In 1900, the building burned down, and its successor was rapidly turned into a cinema, the fate of a large number of Parisian theatres. Nevertheless, a part of the premises reverted to the original name, but devoted itself, not to dance, but to boxing and wrestling. The Montmartre dance halls, which numbered, in addition to the Moulin de la Galette and the Elysée Montmartre, establishments such as La Boule Noire, the Château Rouge and the Reine Blanche, were always morally ambiguous. François Magnard denounced them in an article in Jules Vallès’s La Rue in 1867: Montmartre is the great factory of Parisian corruption, halfway between the Île Saint-Ouen and the Bréda district. Its dingy hotels ensure the transition from the innocent young locksmith to the flashy criminal. It has four packed and dusty dance halls: the Reine Blanche, the Elysée, the Boule Noire and the Château Rouge prepare the young people for the splendours of the Bal Mabille. 26

Nevertheless, Paul Lesourd laments their passing as representatives of a more innocent age: ‘The guinguettes are closed, the lilacs have been cut down, the hedges have been replaced by bricks and the gardens have been turned into construction sites’. 27 Not only is this complaint a traditional response by Montmartre bohemians to social change, as we shall see, it is also significant for highlighting the way in which the guinguettes and dance halls disappeared towards the end of the nineteenth century, the victims of both changing fashion and technical innovation in entertainment. The beneficiaries were initially, undoubtedly, to be the music halls, and the Moulin Rouge was constructed on the site of the old Reine Blanche. The Music Halls Initially, there was no great distinction to be made between the dance halls and the music halls, to the extent that, on one level, the latter can be said to have evolved from the former. Lesourd, for example, quotes a scathing contemporary description of the Moulin Rouge: ‘It is not 26 Quoted in Lesourd, Montmartre, p. 165. 27 Ibid., p. 165.

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absolutely identical to those dance halls in Belleville where the dancers leave their clogs in the cloakroom, but it is only one level above’. 28 As we have seen, dance itself was not an entirely participatory activity and already involved a measure of spectacle: everyone could dance the polka, but it took skilled professionals to show off the chahut and the cancan. At the same time, Montmartre music hall had very precise origins in the changes in popular performance between 1888 and 1909. As Steven Moore Whiting points out, there was considerable chronological overlap between the various forms of popular entertainment: the cabarets continued to operate, but increasingly as semi-private gatherings of bohemians after 1900, while others became théâtricules: small elegant theatres which produced short plays and performances by chansonniers. 29 While the cabarets and their offspring could coexist happily with the new music halls, however, the real victim, squeezed between the two, was the café-concert, a form of performance which dated back to the eighteenth century and normally involved both vaudeville and short dramatic pieces. The café-concerts, which were subject to government licensing, normally provided a programme consisting of comic recitations, male and female singers, patriotic and realist songs, on the model of Bruant, and, after 1867, one-act plays. 30 One such café-concert was the Folies Bergère, on the Rue Richer in the ninth arrondissement, which opened in 1869 but transformed itself into the first Parisian music hall in 1872, when its director Léon Sori offered circus attractions and ballets copied from the Alhambra music hall in London. 31 By 1879, and despite the imposition of an entrance fee, the Folies Bergère still attracted nearly half a million visitors, composed of bourgeois and tourists. 32 A further stage was reached in 1886, when the new owners, the Allemand family, introduced the revue à grand spectacle, under the influence of Edouard Marchand. The first such revue was entitled Place aux jeunes. This innovation was encouraged by a trend in café-concerts, accelerated by theatre legislation following the fire at the Opéra Comique in 1887, to play down the serving of alcohol in favour of bringing in more spectators. 33 At the same time, the new genre 28 29 30 31 32 33

Ibid., p. 166. See Whiting, Satie the Bohemian, p. 10. See ibid., pp. 11–22. See ibid., p. 23. See Shapiro, ed., Pleasures of Paris: Daumier to Picasso, p. 13. See ibid., p. 28.

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exploited the vogue for American popular culture, in particular motifs derived from the Wild West; dance crazes such as the Cakewalk, popular in 1902; American songs, such as Henry Sayers’s ‘Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay’; and black entertainers. The Folies Bergère launched a revue called Joyeux nègres, 34 inaugurating a tradition in Parisian popular entertainment which would culminate with Josephine Baker and Adelaide Hall in the 1920s and the Black Montmartre jazz clubs. After 1900, such spectacular performances were immeasurably enhanced by electric lighting. At the same time, the format began to change, the music halls preferring to structure their programmes around one major star, who would receive top billing. A guidebook of 1900 commented: When at night the Parisian takes the direction of the heights of Montmartre, that membrane of the capital which appears to be a separate city because of its customs and its freedom, if he takes the Rue Blanche, when he reaches the Boulevard de Clichy he sees on his left the front of a music hall suddenly looming up. 35

That music hall was the Moulin Rouge, founded in 1889 and constructed on the site of the dance hall La Reine Blanche, by the Ollier brothers, who joined forces with a former butcher’s boy turned theatre impresario, Charles Zidler, who owned the Jardin de Paris on the Champs-Elysées and the Montagnes Russes. 36 More than the Allemand family at the Folies Bergère, it was the Olliers and Zidler who created the modern French music hall. Victor Meusy and Edmond Depas commented in 1900 that ‘a fairy’s magic wand has given birth to a land from the Thousand and One Nights and placed there a temple to Terpsichore’. 37 For the external design, they commissioned Willette, who produced the bright red and totally false windmill on the corner of the Place Blanche, 38 thereby indelibly reinforcing Montmartre’s love affair with kitsch. There was a garden dominated by ‘an enormous metal elephant, 34 See ibid., p. 23–9. 35 Guide de poche 1900. Paris la nuit (Paris: S. Schwarts, n.d.), p. 289. 36 See Barreyre, ‘Les Nuits de Montmartre’, p. 68. 37 Meusy and Depas, Guide de l’étranger à Montmartre, p. 9. 38 See Willette, Adolphe Willette, p. 91. Willette developed quite a specialism in theatre and music hall design. In addition to the Moulin Rouge, he designed La Cigale (the successor of La Boule Noire), the Bal Tabarin and the Taverne de Paris.

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with negresses performing a belly dance in it. The stairs were in each leg; further on, a carefully placed stage was set up for singing …’. 39 It was this stage which was to take to stardom Yvette Guibert, who had begun her career at the Chat Noir under Salis. Nevertheless, as the 1900 guidebook recognised,40 in its early years, the Moulin Rouge remained a dance hall as well as providing other forms of entertainment; in addition to Guibert, its stars included professional dancers like Jane Avril, Nini Patte-en-l’Air, Sauterelle, la Mélinite, Cha Hu Kao, Trompe la Mort and Cricri,41 in addition to Valentin Le Désossé, so called because of his extraordinarily supple limbs. This formula, adopted by all the Montmartre music halls, such as the Folies Bergère, the Casino de Paris and the Jardin de Paris, which included in the 1899–1900 season entertainments like performing seals, ‘adorable ballets’ and Colombino the ‘human chameleon’,42 to say nothing of the ‘Pétomane’, who starred at the Moulin Rouge, proved extraordinarily attractive, particularly to Parisian high society. Meusy and Depas congratulate themselves: ‘The decentralisation of the “smart” people has had effects on Montmartre and we now have nothing to envy the most famous night-time establishments of the old Parisian boulevards’.43 Similarly, the 1900 Guide de poche comments on the attraction of wrestling matches, the great music hall fad of the winter of 1889: ‘the “smart set” arrange to meet there and all the most elegant women put on their best dresses to be in attendance’.44 Similarly, Barreyre records that: The change in fashion works in favour of music hall directors. A new demi-monde wants more elegant entertainment and it knows how to let itself go. They come up from the centre, they come up from Maxim’s, either to dance themselves or to watch the great specialists of the chahut and the nude reviews. The air is heavy with the perfume of Lenthéric or Ylan Ylan. The horizontales wear vast fashionable hats and are wrapped in feather boas which fall like wisteria from their shoulders. And an

39 Barreyre, ‘Les Nuits de Montmartre’, p. 68. 40 See Guide de poche 1900, p. 289: ‘To tell the truth, the Moulin Rouge is more of a public dance hall than a music hall’. 41 See ibid., p. 68. 42 Ibid., p. 286. 43 Meusy and Depas, Guide de l’étranger, p. 56. The original French term is ‘décentralisation du smart’. 44 Guide de poche 1900, p. 285. The word used is smarteux.

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entire aristocracy of impurity – Emilienne d’Alençon, Liane de Pougy, Yane d’Argent – feeds the publicity.45

The culmination of this heady social mix between the smarteux, the demi-monde, entertainers and ordinary clients was the second Bal des Quat’z’Arts, poached from the declining Elysée Montmartre in 1893, and which provoked an even greater scandal46 when, as we have seen, the indefatigable Senator Béranger complained to the police that a dancer, Sarah Brown, had appeared naked, and the Moulin Rouge was prosecuted, bringing much welcome publicity.47 By 1907, under the direction of Max Maurey, the transformation into music hall was complete and the ambiguous mingling of dancers and spectators gave way to pure performance, with Mistinguett and Max Dearly opening their show on 25 July.48 And, as with the cabarets, the fashion for music halls developed quickly: the Casino de Paris opened between the Rue de Clichy and the Rue Blanche, and Auguste Bosc, former orchestral conductor at the Moulin de la Galette, set up the Tabarin in the Rue Victor-Massé.49 The evolution from dance hall to music hall was now complete. It was no coincidence that the Moulin Rouge opened its doors in 1889. As Louis Chevalier demonstrates, the Exhibition of 1889 did not merely launch the Moulin Rouge, but consecrated Montmartre as a pleasure centre for tourists, as did the Exhibition of 1900, 50 which also, incidentally, celebrated the introduction of electric lighting. The entry in the Guide de poche 1900 concerning ‘Les Concerts instrumentaux des cafés’ is revealing of the extent to which the Exhibitions changed the forms of Parisian entertainment: ‘The Universal Exhibition of 1889 had already caused a curious transformation in many of our great cafés … These establishments organised, from that period onwards, orchestral concerts which aimed at recuperating a clientele enticed away every day by the bicycle and the café-concert’. 51 In fact, by 1900, Montmartre, once limited as an entertainment centre to the Place Blanche, now extended to

45 Barreyre, ‘Les Nuits de Montmartre’, p. 68. 46 See ibid., p. 68. 47 See Herbert, La Chanson à Montmartre, p. 309. 48 See ibid., p. 68. 49 See Barreyre, ‘Les Nuits de Montmartre’, p. 69–70. 50 See Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime, p. 165. 51 See Guide de poche 1900.

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the Place Clichy52 and dominated the Boulevard de Clichy with theatres, cafés and – an innovation – all-night restaurants. 53 At the same time, access to establishments like the Moulin Rouge was facilitated in 1901–2 by the construction of the overhead métro which ran above the Boulevard de la Chapelle, 54 and by the nord–sud line, opened in 1915. In other words, with the beginning of the new century, Montmartre was able to benefit from its solid status as an entertainment and tourist centre, consecrated by the two international exhibitions, and from the electricity which powered the new métro trains and provided the lighting for the new music halls and the streets themselves. This provision of mass popular entertainment in Montmartre was supplemented by other activities, notably the circus, and, later, the cinema. Phillip Dennis Cate, identifying an ‘unofficial cult of the circus that permeated Parisian society at the end of the century’, 55 records that in 1888 Le Courrier Français deplored the demise of the French theatre, recognising that all its vitality had fled to the circus: ‘Vive le Cirque!’56 At the time, Paris had only three circuses: the Cirque d’Eté on the ChampsElysées, the Cirque d’Hiver on the Boulevard des Filles du Calvaire, and the Cirque Fernando, established in Montmartre in 1873 on the corner of the Boulevard Rochechouart and the Rue des Martyrs. First owned by the Belgian acrobat Fernando, it was taken over by the clown Geronimo Médrano in 1893 and became the Cirque Médrano. 57 It was immensely popular throughout the first half of the twentieth century and, under the Fratellini family in the 1920s, extremely fashionable: Cocteau and his friends were frequent visitors. The Cirque Fernando/Médrano was particularly popular with artists, who – from Degas, Seurat and Lautrec to members of the avant-garde such as Rouault, Van Dongen and Picasso – appreciated its relatively small scale: with a capacity of only 2,500 in 1875, it ‘created an intimacy and a rapport between performers and audience’58 denied the larger American circuses. For this reason, ‘in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the circus acquired a high level 52 See ibid., p. 227. 53 See ibid., p. 233. 54 See ibid., p. 270. 55 Phillip Dennis Cate, ‘The Cult of the Circus’, in Shapiro, ed., Pleasures of Paris: Daumier to Picasso, p. 38. 56 ‘Vive le Cirque!’, Le Courrier Français, 27 May 1888, quoted in ibid., p. 38. 57 See Barreyre, ‘Les Nuits de Montmartre’, p. 70. 58 Ibid., p. 39.

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of social and professional acceptability among the literary and artistic communities in Paris and even among members of the social elite’. 59 Later, the Hippodrome, built in 1900 in time for the Exhibition on the junction of the Boulevard de Clichy and the Rue Caulaincourt, provided lavish horse riding displays, together with a circus, pantomimes and epic spectacles such as Vercingétorix.60 Its owner, the American lion tamer and impresario Bostock, went bankrupt, despite an epic ju-jitsu match in 1905 in which a Russian giant was pitted against an imitation Japanese, 61 and, in 1907, it became one of the largest Parisian cinemas, the Gaumont-Palace, the model for Céline’s Tarapout in Voyage au bout de la nuit. As Montmartre grew as an entertainment centre, new fashions and new technology tended to squeeze out older or smaller establishments. Nevertheless, when the going was good, it was very, very good, and there were fortunes to be made. Scott Haine’s comments in Chapter 2 on the fortunes to be made in Montmartre entertainment62 are supported by the contemporary observer Ernest Alfred Vizetelly, who recorded that, within an overall context of receipts from all forms of entertainment rising from £784,000 in the period 1873–7 to £2,738,080 in 1913, 63 receipts from Montmartre entertainment outlets in 1912 were as follows: the Folies Bergère £76,500; the Moulin Rouge £42,870, plus £9,000 from the dance hall; the Cirque Médrano £22,700; La Cigale (formerly the Boule Noire) £39,560; and, heading the list of all Parisian dance-halls, the Bal Tabarin with receipts of £13,400.64 These compare with figures of £130,600 for the Opéra, £104,180 for the Comédie Française, £40,230 for the Odéon, £67,400 for the Théâtre du Châtelet and £54,100 for the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt. Moreover, the Folies Bergère out-performed the non-Montmartre music halls, like the Olympia (receipts of £64,133) and the Alhambra (£57,000). In other words, by the outbreak of the First World War, entertainment in Montmartre had become big business. 59 Cate, ‘The Cult of the Circus’, p. 38. 60 See Guide de poche 1900, p. 469. 61 See Barreyre, ‘Les Nuits de Montmartre’, p. 70. 62 See Haine, The World of the Paris Café, p. 128. 63 Ernest Alfred Vizetelly, Paris and her People under the Third Republic (New York: Kraus Reprint Co., 1971), p. 24. He notes that in Exhibition years, the receipts were far higher: £1,224,000 in 1878, £1,284,000 in 1889 and £2,317,000 in 1900 (as an indication, £784,000 in 1873 was worth £62,000,000 in 2014 currency and £2,738,080 £240,600,000. See www.measuringworth.com). 64 See Vizetelly, Paris and her People, p. 25.

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Prostitution The theme of sexuality runs throughout the history of Montmartre, from the district of Les Porcherons in the pre-Revolutionary era to the Place Pigalle in the twentieth century. As we have seen in Chapter One, the mid-nineteenth century saw the rise of the modern prostitute around Notre-Dame-de-Lorette65 and sexuality constituted a staple ingredient of the repertoire of the Chat Noir and other cabarets. It was also the raison d’être of most of the humorous magazines of the Belle Epoque, from Le Rire to La Vie Parisienne. Moreover, if commentators like Jean Barreyre or Léon-Paul Fargue felt the need to emphasise the relative innocence of the Moulin de la Galette, the implication is clearly that other dance halls, like the Elysée Montmartre, were more dedicated to casual sex and prostitution. Barreyre reports a contemporary witness at the Elysée Montmartre: ‘Shameless, provocative prostitutes try blatantly to pick you up, dare to ask you for a drink, call you chéri, and, if you refuse, shout: “You’re not paying anything, you’re not generous!”’66 In the music halls, the connection was more explicit still. On one level, as J. Davray pointed out in 1890, the appeal of the café-concerts, dance halls and early music halls was essentially voyeuristic. Of the café-concert, he wrote: as long as the woman has an accentuated figure and a relative beauty, her voice is irrelevant, which is just as well given the inanities she is given to sing! … the great attraction is the woman and what she reveals of her flesh; the more suggestive, even obscene her gestures, the greater will be her success, and she may even become a star.67

Similarly, the popularity of the quadrille naturaliste, then in vogue in the dance halls, was due simply ‘the woman’s underwear … exciting the desires of an entire theatre by the display of semi-nudity’.68 As Barbara Stern Shapiro notes, this development culminated in the American import of striptease, which ‘originated in the 1890s and became immensely popular’, as indicated by Picasso’s Les Plastrons (1901), before undergoing its modern revival in the 1950s.69 At the same time, as 65 See, for example, François Gasnault, Guinguettes et Lorettes, bals publics et danse sociale à Paris Entre 1830 et 1870 (Paris: Aubier, 1992). 66 Barreyre, ‘Les Nuits de Montmartre’, p. 65. 67 Davray, L’Amour à Paris, p. 82. 68 Ibid., p. 126. 69 Shapiro, Pleasures of Paris, p. 149.

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Mariel Oberthür comments, the great feature of the music hall was that it ‘allowed men from high society to go slumming in complete safety and to meet working-class girls’.70 That this social mixture was by no means innocent is indicated in the coy description of the garden of the Moulin Rouge by Meusy and Depas, in their Guide de l’étranger à Montmartre (1900): ‘the gardens, where a thousand lights are shining, throw a delicate veil of foliage over groups of lovers …’.71 Not for nothing was the Moulin Rouge known as the ‘free market of love’ 72 Similarly, the anonymous author of another 1900 guidebook notes that the female clients of the Folies Bergère ‘are nothing but courtesans’.73 The two key spaces in the music halls were the promenade and the bar. The promenade, which ran alongside the dance hall, allowed the male visitor to observe the dancers and to accost, or be accosted by, available women. It is for this reason that Vizetelly, who was connected with the Folies Bergère in the 1890s and became disillusioned with the police des mœurs, ‘became cognizant of several cases of flagrant blackmailing on the part of the plain-clothes men who frequented the promenade’.74 The bar was equally interesting: not only did it offer a social space which facilitated encounters between bourgeois men and working-class women, it was also likely to be, like the Folies Bergère in Manet’s painting of 1881, a derivative of the brasserie à femmes – a bar run by women, which, as we have seen, began in the 1860s, when ‘café owners started to hire large numbers of female waitresses’.75 According to Vizetelly, in the Latin Quarter in the 1860s: Their customers (largely but by no means entirely of the student class) were plied with drink by the more or less attractive girls who served them: girls often of a very uncertain age and of no particular virtue, who endeavoured to enhance their charms by means of ‘coquettish’ costumes – often Alsatian ones and at times of a somewhat eastern description. Not only was it the fille de brasserie’s business to make each customer imbibe freely, but, in order to extract from him as much money as possible, the terms of her engagement required that she should ‘invite herself’ to drink with him.76 70 Oberthür, Montmartre en liesse, p. 75. 71 Meusy and Depas, Guide de l’étranger, p. 46. 72 Frey, Toulouse-Lautrec, p. 262. 73 Guide de poche 1900, p. 265. 74 Vizetelly, Paris and her People, p. 179. 75 Haine, The World of the Paris Café, p. 191. 76 Vizetelly, Paris and her People, p. 178.

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In other words, the brasserie à femmes sought to encourage a male clientele by providing attractive women serving behind the bar and as waitresses, and to maximise profits by using them as the equivalent of nightclub hostesses. This formula was readily adopted by the music halls in the 1880s and 1890s and led to a semi-official form of prostitution in districts such as Montmartre. Davray considered the employees of the brasseries à femmes ‘prostituées clandestines’.77 Davray also notes the existence of ‘Brasseries à hommes’ with male prostitutes, like Francis Carco’s Jésus-la-Caille, often situated in the heart of female prostitution districts, like Notre-Dame-de-Lorette,78 and ‘Brasseries lesbiennes’, the most famous of which was on the Place d’Anvers in the 1890s.79 In fact, by the turn of the century prostitution in Montmartre took two distinct forms: as Georges Montorgueil comments in 1898, the influx of the demi-monde into Montmartre in the wake of the new music halls coexisted peacefully with traditional forms of prostitution: ‘High society in search of pleasure was able to flock to Montmartre without disturbing from their pavements the prostitutes who worked there. The street girl witnessed the approach of the courtesan, attracted by the red sails of the Moulin Rouge, and was neither surprised nor offended’.80 Prostitution in Montmartre was consolidated by the two exhibitions of 1889 and 1900. In the first place, as we have seen, the 1889 Exhibition had a profound impact on popular entertainment; in addition, both, but especially that of 1900, 81 massively increased prostitution. As Jules Lemaître commented: ‘The Universal Exhibition is a land flowing with milk and honey for prostitutes’.82 At the same time, as Chevalier has so compellingly demonstrated, and as many of the eyewitness accounts testify, prostitution was automatically associated with the growth of crime. After 1900, therefore, Montmartre became associated in the popular imagination with both extravagant entertainment and sexuality. Yet, 77 Davray, L’Amour à Paris, p. 99. 78 See ibid., p. 109. 79 See ibid., p. 110. 80 Georges Montorgueil, La Vie à Montmartre (Paris: Baudet, 1898), pp. 252–3. 81 The great star of the Folies Bergère, the American Loië Fuller, had her own building at the 1900 Exhibition, where ‘she danced through beams of electric light coloured by moving cellophane filters’ (Shapiro, Pleasures of Paris, p. 15). 82 Quoted in Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime, p. 177.

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as Paul Lesourd points out, with some nostalgia and a certain amount of special pleading, this ‘exaggerated reputation’ had something of a boomerang effect: which contributed to the development of the shamelessness and debauchery of Montmartre. It was due to the fact that, following the 1889 Exhibition, in every capital around the world, there grew up like poisonous toadstools replica Chat Noirs, Moulin Rouges and imitation Montmartres, where the supposedly Montmartre nights were deformed and amplified by real vice. In order to live up to its reputation, Lower Montmartre unconsciously evolved into what it is now around the Place Pigalle and the Place Blanche, where it took over the artists’ studios.83

What Lesourd has highlighted, however, is an important element in the evolution of Montmartre: that of tourism, consciously recruited for the first time in 1889, which ever since has produced a dialectic effect, involving ever greater expectations of daring and debauchery. The map of Parisian pleasure provided by a document like the Guide secret de l’étranger célibataire à Paris, probably written in 1900, is revealing in that, at this time, Montmartre still does not occupy an unassailable position. The ninth and eighteenth arrondissements account for eleven ‘restaurants, brasseries and cabarets’ against twelve in the tenth and eight in the fifth arrondissements. With twelve ‘theatres, concerts and circuses’ between them, the same two arrondissements only equal the score of the eighth arrondissement (Champs-Elysées) and come just ahead of the tenth (Gare du Nord), with eleven. In terms of ‘Maisons spéciales’ (brothels), with only eight, they come far behind the second arrondissement, which has fourteen, and are on an equal footing with the fifteenth (eight) and the nineteenth (Ménilmontant), with seven.84 In other words, when the 1900 Exhibition took place, Montmartre by no means had a dominant position in the world of Parisian pleasure and entertainment: the same guidebook, for example, tends to privilege other districts, like the eighth arrondissement and the Latin Quarter, in the categories ‘Spectacles, bals, concerts, etc.’, as it does in the category ‘Bouges, Cabarets, Guinguettes, Auberges, Restaurants et Bouchons Célèbres’, where it singles out the Lac Saint-Fargeau, Les Halles, the Latin Quarter and the Boulevard de l’Hôpital. It was undoubtedly 83 Lesourd, Montmartre, p. 405. 84 Guide secret de l’étranger célibataire à Paris/Secret Guide of the Foreign Bachelor in Paris, ‘Adresses par arrondissement’.

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the 1900 Exhibition, however, which gave to the Montmartre pleasure industry its unstoppable momentum, which concentrated entertainment on the Right Bank and drove into oblivion the establishments near the Gare d’Austerlitz and the Hôpital de la Salpêtrière on the Boulevard de l’Hôpital. Even before that definitive transformation, however, Montmartre had become a clearly gendered landscape, subject to a bourgeois male gaze reflected, as we shall see, in its visual art and in its literature. A guide to the 1889 Exhibition written by Edmond Deschaumes singles out Pigalle and the ninth arrondissement as having a ‘special population: a tribe of artists’ models, men and women’,85 and refers admiringly to the ‘young artists and beautiful girls’.86 More explicitly, Victor Meusy and Edmond Depas recommend a day on the Butte, beginning at the Opéra, on the Chausée d’Antin, where ‘you will pass on your way all the pretty girls of Batignolles and Montmartre going to their workshops … Do not be diverted from your journey, because you will see them this evening in Montmartre’.87 As the tourist walks up from Trinité along the Rue Blanche and the Rue Pigalle, he will see ‘groups of beautiful girls, in the fashion trade’, 88 and, on the Place Pigalle, there is the market for artists’ models, where ‘the group of women is often picturesquely draped in transparent gowns’.89 Even before the music halls and brasseries à femmes opened their doors, therefore, Montmartre was seen as a district of female sexual availability. The journalist Jean Lorrain began and ended his collection of essays Femmes de 1900 with a comment on the window of the Chat Noir, designed by Willette and depicting Salome. He concluded: ‘Salome, as depicted in a famous Montmartre window through the macabre fantasy of Willette is the saucy star of the palais and the music hall … She is triumphal and sovereign prostitution’.90 Not only did Willette’s window record a considerable truth about Montmartre in 1900, it also introduced the element of aesthetic representation. By the turn of the 85 Edmond Deschaumes, Pour bien voir Paris. Guide Parisien pittoresque et pratique (Paris: Maurice Dreyfouss, 1889), p. 201. 86 Ibid., p. 202. 87 Meusy and Depas, Guide de l’étranger, p. 72. 88 Ibid., p. 73. 89 Ibid., p. 75. 90 Jean Lorrain, Femmes de 1900 (Paris: Editions de la Madeleine, 1932), p. 229.

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century Montmartre was not merely the locus of entertainment and pleasure, it had also become a subject – the Montmartre of painters. Painting In terms of the visual arts, as we have seen, the artistic cabarets like the Chat Noir were closely bound up with the cartoonists and caricaturists, who shared their development of humour and worked in the periodical press which they fostered. Painters, from the Café Guerbois group onwards, showed far more interest in the spectacle, artificial lighting and sexual ambiguity of the places of mass entertainment: the brasseries à femmes, the dance halls and the music halls. In a body of work spanning the last thirty years of the nineteenth century, painters made an indelible contribution to the establishment of Montmartre in the public imagination and memory. As such, they constitute an invaluable visual chronicle of the rise of the district to the prominent position of pleasure centre for the capital. As we have seen, Manet’s Un Bar aux Folies Bergère, shown at the 1881 Salon and the last large painting he finished, fixes the Folies Bergère itself as an important place of entertainment: ‘A barmaid stands behind the bar and in front of a large mirror which reflects a customer, the spectators in the cabaret, and even the legs of a performer high up on a trapeze’.91 At the same time, the customer reflected in the mirror – for whom ‘it has often been suggested that the spectator of the painting becomes a kind of substitute’92 – introduces an element of sexual ambiguity through his, and the spectator’s, gaze at the availability of the barmaid: the ambiguity essential to the brasseries à femmes. Degas, who lived in the Rue Fontaine, 93 reflected this same ambiguity in his paintings of ballet dancers backstage. As Eunice Lipton writes: By disclosing these private moments and myriad others, Degas gave the spectator access to a world that was beyond his reach, the world accessible only to men of privilege … To see what others could not see was to have power. In other words, Degas’ acts of disclosure in these paintings, the ‘look’ that he gave to the spectator, permits the latter to 91 Anne Coffin Hanson, Edouard Manet 1832–1883. Catalogue (Philadelphia, PA: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1966), p. 185. 92 Ibid., p. 187. 93 See Frey, Toulouse-Lautrec, p. 166.

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Montmartre: A Cultural History share that power. Degas essentially was titillating his bourgeois audience by showing it a world to which its members did not have access but which they yearned to possess.94

While this was true for the world of the dancers at the Opéra, who could be visited backstage only by the most privileged, the rise of mass entertainment in the last two decades of the century effectively began to democratise this power relationship. While the stars of the music halls may still have been the preserve of their wealthy, and often aristocratic, protectors, public participation in the dancing, and the close and informal contact offered by the promenade, removed the mystique of the Opéra, and Degas’s later pictures of the Cirque Fernando portray an altogether more popular access to pleasure. The same process is at work in the dance halls, and Renoir’s Le Moulin de la Galette (1876) captures ‘the “good-natured” character of the Parisian people in its entertainments’.95 Nevertheless, while the scene itself may represent that ‘freedom which is never criminal’ and ‘that pleasure which is never sordid’, 96 the painting was not directed at the gaze of the innocent revellers themselves, but at that of the same bourgeois who came up to the Moulin de la Galette on Tuesday evenings. In other words, Manet’s Un Bar aux Folies Bergère and Renoir’s Moulin de la Galette both chronicle the way in which Montmartre provided access for the newly affluent bourgeoisie of the young Third Republic to pleasures hitherto reserved for members of the Jockey Club. The great painter of Montmartre pleasure at the end of the nineteenth century, however, was undoubtedly Toulouse-Lautrec. With Utrillo, he was the most important agent in creating the visual mythology of the quartier. He studied initially under the fashionable portrait painter Léon Bonnat, in his studio in the Impasse Hélène, 97 and then moved in 1882 to the Atelier Cormon at 10 Rue Constance, where he was joined, in 1886, by Vincent Van Gogh.98 Initially, Lautrec was intrigued by the cabarets: he 94 Eunice Lipton, Looking into Degas: Uneasy Images of Women and Modern Life (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1986), p. 99. 95 Yvon Taillandier, ‘Le Pays de Renoir: puissance et douceur’, in Auguste Renoir (Paris: Hachette, coll. Génies et Réalités, 1970), p. 118. 96 Auguste Renoir, quoted in ibid., p. 118. 97 See Buisson and Parisot, Paris-Montmartre, p. 73; Frey, Toulouse-Lautrec, pp. 130ff. 98 See Perruchot, ‘Les Peintres de Montmartre’, p. 23; Béthencourt-Devaux, Montmartre, Auvers sur Oise et Van Gogh, p. 102. Van Gogh’s paintings of

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wrote to his mother about the Chat Noir: ‘We had set up a band and we made the workers dance: it was very amusing’.99 Very quickly, however, he was captivated by the dance halls and the music halls. His friend François Gauzi, who met Lautrec at the Atelier Cormon, recalled an evening when they both visited Le Mirliton, but only with the intention of asking Aristide Bruant to provide them with a complimentary pass for the Elysée Montmartre next door.100 Thereafter, Lautrec became the privileged illustrator of popular Montmartre: the dance halls of the Moulin de la Galette and the Elysée Montmartre, and, especially, the Moulin Rouge, to which he returned as a subject throughout the rest of his career and which he helped to publicise, through paintings like Le Quadrille au Moulin Rouge and large panels such as La Danse mauresque and La Danse au Moulin Rouge. As well as choosing the popular Montmartre establishments for the subjects of his paintings, he was also among the first to focus on the new cabaret and music hall stars: La Goulue and Valentin le Désossé; the singer Yvette Guibert, who rose to fame in Jean Sarrazin’s Divan Japonais; and the dancer Jane Avril. Like Willette and Steinlen, he also rapidly discovered both the commercial and artistic potential of the publicity poster. His Divan Japonais (1892); his poster for the Moulin Rouge (1891) featuring La Goulue and Valentin le Désossé, later highlighted in John Huston’s film Moulin Rouge (1952); and, perhaps most famously, Aristide Bruant dans son cabaret (1892), which stylised the chansonnier as a bohemian, typecast in his famous broad-brimmed velvet hat, flowing cape, stick and trademark red scarf, became icons of Montmartre culture for generations. The constant rate of commercial sales of reproductions of these posters up to the present day testifies not merely to their aesthetic power, but also to their ability to fix in time the quintessence of what was to become the major tourist attraction of Paris. Interestingly, the Bruant poster was not at all appreciated at the time by the man who commissioned it, Pierre Ducarre, the proprietor of the Ambassadeurs on the Champs-Elysées, and was only accepted, and displayed all over Paris, at the insistence of Bruant himself.101 Montmartre were spectacularly different from those of Lautrec, concentrating on open-air scenes such as Butte de Montmartre with Stone Quarry, La Guinguette, the exterior of Le Moulin de la Galette and the Boulevard de Clichy. See Perruchot, ‘Les Peintres de Montmartre’, p. 23. 99 Quoted in Centenaire du Chat Noir, p. 5. 100 See François Gauzi, Lautrec et son temps (Paris: David Perret, 1954), pp. 67–8. 101 See Frey, Toulouse-Lautrec, p. 303.

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What is interesting about Lautrec’s portrayal of Montmartre is its overt sexuality, always present in the music hall scenes; the circus pictures, such as Au Cirque Fernando, l’écuyère (1888); brothel pictures like Au Salon de la rue des Moulins (1894); or lesbian scenes, like Les Deux amies (1894–5), inspired from his visits to lesbian brasseries – La Souris in the Rue Breda, or Le Hanneton in the Rue Pigalle.102 A comparison between Renoir’s Un Bal au Moulin de la Galette and Lautrec’s Au Bal du Moulin de la Galette, thirteen years later, in 1889, is highly instructive in this respect. Renoir’s painting is, as we have seen, careful to emphasise the innocence and good-naturedness of the dance, even though there is an implicit viewer, spotted by the two central dancers, whose presence introduces an important element of social and sexual ambiguity. Lautrec, however, relegates the dancers themselves to a shadowy background, and foregrounds instead a seated male spectator, close to a row of unattached women, one of whom is looking out of the corner of her eye at the viewer. In other words, the Lautrec treatment of the Moulin de la Galette concentrates upon the speculative, predatory male and upon the available woman – available, not merely to the bowler-hatted man in the picture, but also to the viewer of the painting itself. In the tradition of Manet, Degas and, perhaps involuntarily, Renoir, Lautrec’s work is the culmination of a process of the sexualisation of Montmartre, which reached its height at the end of the nineteenth century. If the Impressionists and their successors chose Montmartre as a privileged site of Parisian pleasure, they also increasingly elected to both work and live there, thus creating a definable artistic community. Not merely a quarter of artists’ studios, Montmartre also became a place in which artists could live, providing cheap accommodation, like the dilapidated old mansion at number 12 Rue Cortot, once owned by the actor Roze de Rosimond, a member of Molière’s troupe, and which, in the last years of the nineteenth century and later, successively housed Renoir, Emile Bernard, Van Gogh and Gauguin, Maximilien Luce, André Utter, Suzanne Valadon, Utrillo, Léon Bloy, the theatre director Antoine, Almeyreda, Dufy and Francisque Poulbot.103 At the same time, before the onset of mass tourism, Montmartre provided those other indispensable ingredients for a flourishing bohemia – cheap cafés and restaurants and a vibrant and congenial nightlife. An explosive mixture of high and popular society, high and popular culture, a frontier area 102 Perruchot, ‘Les Peintres de Montmartre’, p. 23. 1 03 See Clément, ‘Le Quartier pas à pas’, p. 48.

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both socially and culturally which, in the years leading up to the First World War, was to give rise to the most productive activity of Parisian bohemia. At the same time, it was no coincidence that, in the wake of the artistic cabarets and mass culture of the Montmartre boulevards, there was growth in high cultural avant-garde activity, with the Naturalist director Antoine’s Théâtre Libre and Lugné-Poe’s Théâtre de l’Oeuvre. Both were closely allied to the Nabi painters and the influential Revue Blanche, which Lautrec publicised in a famous poster, in addition to his important sketch of the proprietor’s wife, A Table chez M. et Mme Thadée Natanson the following year.

chapter four

Theatre and the Avant-Garde

Theatre and the Avant-Garde

If the cabaret culture of the 1880s, following the line of the old Mur des Fermiers Généraux along the border between the ninth and eighteenth arrondisssements, pointed towards the development of Belle Epoque Montmartre as the pre-eminent locus of the capital’s popular entertainment industry, with its dancing, music halls, circus, ballet and, later, cinema, it was also the origin of an equally significant innovation in legitimate theatre, which would shape French theatrical practice throughout the twentieth century. Already, as Lucien Farnoux-Reynaud reminds us, the same forces which encouraged dance halls and taverns to proliferate along the lines of the chemins de ronde also led to the establishment at the beginning of the nineteenth century of the théâtres de la barrière which avoided the Napoleonic regime’s restrictions in force within the city1 and which, by the birth of the Third Republic, had established an embryonic theatrical culture in Montmartre. In addition to this, the cabarets, as we have seen, pioneered a new form of entertainment which combined the popular with the intellectual and privileged the performance of the spoken word through dramatic monologues, often cultivating a refined and sophisticated sense of the absurd. At the same time, Henri Rivière’s shadow plays for Le Chat Noir combined with a contemporary vogue for puppet theatre to create what was simultaneously a new, protocinematographic, and a primitive, age-old theatrical experience, which would have connections with non-European drama and some of the Cubists’ interests in masks. In addition, the natural symbiosis between cabaret performance and other forms of expression – in particular the publications and comic journals which accompanied them and which gave work to illustrators, artists and writers – was naturally extendable 1 Lucien Farnoux-Reynaud, ‘Les Trétaux sur la Butte’, Le Crapouillot, numéro spécial: ‘Montmartre’, 45, July 1959, p. 60.

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in the field of legitimate theatre through set design, scenery decoration, posters and the production of printed programmes which would be illustrated by some of the major artists of the period. In short, the development of theatre in Montmartre, like that of cabaret and popular entertainment, followed Salis’s injunction to be ‘modern’. Essentially, the history of Montmartre theatre in the Belle Epoque is confined, like that of the cabarets and music halls, to the ninth arrondissement and the southern fringes of the eighteenth, and centres on the role of three innovative theatre directors – André Antoine, Aurélien Lugné-Poe and Charles Dullin. All three were instrumental in developing a new concept of the theatre, diametrically opposed to the classical practice of the Comédie Française or the dominant popular theatre of the boulevards on Montmartre’s southern border, and in emphasising the primacy of the theatrical experience as an aesthetic, and not a social, event, derived in part from Wagner’s experiments in Bayreuth with the theatre director as the primary moving force. While the théâtre de boulevard constituted an inherently social event, with house lights undimmed and a technically slick but intellectually undemanding repertoire, the Comédie Française relied upon a limited menu of classics both ancient and modern, declaimed in a traditional manner by established actors like Mounet-Sully (who, incidentally, had started out at the Théâtre Moncey on the Avenue de Clichy). The effect was to reinforce the power and position of established authors at the expense of the younger generation. As the Administrator of the Comédie Française proudly admitted, ‘I don’t need any new authors. One year I do Dumas, the next Sardou, a third year Augier. That’s enough for me’, 2 leading Antoine to comment: ‘Never, at any time, did we see a more curious situation, with members of the older generation out of breath but still loyally supporting each other, leaving a powerless and frustrated younger generation’. 3 Lugné-Poe later recalled this undemanding era: ‘in the theatre the years 1900, 1901, 1902, were relaxed and contented for the average Frenchman. The newspapers were full of theatre anecdotes or stories’,4 but the medium was dominated by the conventional. The younger generation, which participated in or was formed by the Chat Noir, was to find its voice in the creation of theatrical modernity in Montmartre in 2 André Antoine, ‘Mes Souvenirs’ sur le Théâtre Libre (Paris: Fayard, 1921), p. 6. 3 Farnoux-Reynaud, ‘Les Trétaux sur la Butte’, p. 60. 4 Aurélien Lugné-Poe, Ibsen (Paris: Editions Rieder, 1936), p. 12.

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the 1880s, drawing on technical innovations like stage lighting, collaboration with young painters, including Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec but especially the Nabis – Bonnard, Vuillard and Maurice Denis – and the works of the writers who constituted the performers and part of the audience of the cabarets, especially the Naturalists and Symbolists, but also the ‘Absurdist’ comic authors of the dramatic monologues. Antoine and the Théâtre Libre The first revolutionary act in this new theatre was the inauguration of the Théâtre Libre on 30 March 1887 in the Passage de l’Elysée des Beaux-Arts, now the Rue André Antoine, between Rue des Abbesses and Boulevard de Clichy. Antoine was born in Limoges in 1858, but was brought up in modest circumstances in Paris, in the Marais, and left school early. In his memoirs he recalls early theatrical experiences of being taken by his mother to the cabaret Ba-Ta-Clan on Boulevard Voltaire and the Théâtre Saint-Antoine on Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, where he saw the famous actor Taccva in Duvert et Lausanne.5 Antoine was also introduced at that time to the veteran actor Paul Félix Taillade’s performances from the repertoire of Frédérick Lemaître, including melodramas and Richard III. His first practical experience of the theatre was working as an assistant prompter at the Théâtre de la Gaîté, to which he later attributed the origins of his fascination for mise-enscène.6 With no opportunity to enter secondary education, Antoine was sent to work early, first as a messenger for an agent d’affaires and then as an assistant in a bookshop, the Librairie Firmin-Didot on Rue Jacob, near the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.7 At the same time, he maintained his interest in theatre by serving as a member of claques at the Comédie Française during what he remembered as one of its great periods, with the actor Coquelin Aîné.8 This early period of Antoine’s career came to an end in 1878 with his failure to gain admission to the Conservatoire and his conscription for military service.9 5 Antoine, Mes Souvenirs, p. 9. 6 See Farnoux-Reynaud, ‘Les Trétaux sur la Butte’, p. 60. 7 See Antoine, Mes Souvenirs, p. 11. 8 See ibid., pp. 13–14. 9 See Jean Chothia, André Antoine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 189.

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It was only on returning from military service in Tunisia in 1881 that the more familiar aspects of Antoine’s itinerary become apparent. In 1886 he became a clerk at the Campagnie du Gaz, working thirteen to fourteen hours a day for 150 francs per month, supplementing his pay with work for the Palais de Justice.10 He was living on Rue de Dunkerque, near the Gare du Nord, on the border of the ninth and tenth arrondissements.11 He thus formed part of that army of low-paid whitecollar workers with artistic ambitions who provided a large part of the personnel and audience of the Montmartre cabarets, and whose English Edwardian equivalents are celebrated in the novels of H.G. Wells. That artistic ambition was fuelled by Antoine’s introduction by a gas company colleague to an amateur theatrical group, the Cercle Gaulois, which held its gatherings in premises in the Passage de l’Elysée des Beaux-Arts, near the Elysée Montmartre dance hall, which was still active at the time. In fact, amateur dramatics became a popular pastime during the Belle Epoque, and there were many similar groups in Paris, although Antoine recalls that the atmosphere of the Cercle Gaulois, while congenial, was aesthetically a trifle boring,12 especially compared with its main Montmartre rival, the more bourgeois Cercle Pigalle, whose productions were even reviewed in Le Temps by the most famous theatre critic of the day, Francisque Sarcey. Typically, these amateur theatre groups – which also numbered Les Joyeux, Les Estournaux, Le Théâtre des Jeunes, Le Théâtre Indépendant, Le Cercle des Mathurins, Le Basoche and Le Young-Club, whose names indicate the same cultivation of the faux-medieval and youth culture developed by the cabarets13 – offered performances that often comprised a number of one-act plays and, in order to limit the costs, there was considerable competition to obtain unpublished works. At the Cercle Gaulois, a friend of Antoine, Arthur Byl, introduced him to Jules Vidal who, in turn, presented him to the Naturalist author Paul Alexis, one of the contributors to Les Soirées de Médan and an habitué of the Chat Noir, who donated an unpublished one-act play.14 With one foot in the Naturalist circle, Antoine met Léon Hennique, who gave them a rejected one-acter 10 See ibid., p. 15. 11 See ibid., p. 313. 12 See ibid., p. 16. 13 See Jacques Robichez, Le Symbolisme au théâtre. Lugné-Poe et les débuts de l’œuvre (Paris: L’Arche, 1957), p. 54. 14 For this and subsequent details, see ibid., p. 17.

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based on a short story by Zola, Jacques Damour, and the subsequent performance was reviewed by Alexis in the left-wing weekly Le Cri du Peuple. Alexis also extended Antoine’s relationship with the artistic life of Montmartre by introducing him to the artists’ group La Butte, which met on Rue Ravignan. This association with Naturalism and the publicity it generated proved too much for the members of the Cercle Gaulois and for Krauss, the owner of the premises where they rehearsed in the Passage de l’Elysée des Beaux-Arts, and Antoine was forced to go independent: he rehearsed in a billiard hall in the Rue des Abbesses and now paid Krauss 100 francs for the hire of the room in the Passage de l’Elysée des Beaux-Arts. He also had a name for his independent troupe: dubbed the Théâtre Libre by Arthur Byl it was in place for the première on 30 March 1887, which was attended by Zola, Daudet, Hennique and the rest of the Naturalist leadership and enthusiastically reviewed in Le Figaro, as well as by the theatre critics La Pommeray and Denayrouze.15 The troupe’s second première, that of Emile Bergerat’s La Nuit Bergamesque on 26 May 1887, was an even greater success,16 with ample press coverage, including from the drama critic for Les Débats Jules Lemaître, and a distinguished first-night audience, including a former minister, Edouard Lockroy.17 Like the cabarets, this apparently contestatory and shocking entertainment was able, paradoxically, to appeal to the very sections of society it was ostensibly attacking. After this spectacular launch, the Théâtre Libre became somewhat the victim of its own success. It had to leave the Passage de l’Elysée des Beaux-Arts, no longer due to moral or political qualms on the owner’s part, but because Antoine’s performances had become too regular and threatened to monopolise the premises. The troupe was obliged, like many Parisian theatre companies, to move to a succession of different premises, such as the Théâtre Montparnasse in 1887–8 and the Théâtre des Menus Plaisirs 15 See Farnoux-Reynaud, ‘Les Trétaux sur la Butte’, p. 59. 16 Bergerat came accompanied to rehearsals by a friend, the actor Coquelin Cadet, who epitomised Antoine’s pet hatreds in contemporary theatre, with his ‘mines de pâtissier, des cocasseries charmantes sans doute, mais qui devraient, à mon sens, rester au second plan’ (‘His pastry-cook’s gestures, his comical appearance, which is no doubt charming but should, in my view, remain secondary’; Antoine, Mes Souvenirs, p. 95). In fact, Coquelin Cadet’s role in Montmartre culture was more complex: one of his specialities was declamations of humorous monologues originating from the cabarets, including Mac Nab and Charles Cros, and he was an astute collector of contemporary art, especially work by the Nabi painters. 17 See ibid., p. 59.

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on the Boulevard de Strasbourg.18 Antoine, who had resigned from his post in the gas company to devote himself full-time to the theatre, took over a large workshop space at 96 Rue Blanche for rehearsals and as an office, while setting up his headquarters in the nearby Café de la Place Blanche.19 The company also embarked on tours – to Brussels, the French provinces and Italy – before Antoine relinquished control of the Théâtre Libre and embarked on a career as an actor, from 1895 to 1897, and as a manager, taking on the directorship of the Théâtre de l’Odéon in 1896 and again from 1906 to 1914, while setting up the Théâtre Antoine, based in the Théâtre des Menus Plaisirs from 1897 to 1906. 20 Although Antoine is chiefly associated with the development and promotion of Naturalist theatre in the 1880s, his revolutionary effect was much broader and his repertoire more eclectic. As Robert Pignarre comments, ‘the Théâtre Libre constituted the first attempt to renew the theatre by starting from the use of the stage’. 21 Antoine’s impact was threefold: on authors, whom he encouraged to observe rather than indulging in verbal or theatrical virtuosity; on actors, who were drilled in the art of ensemble performance based on a profound psychological study of their characters; and on directors, who were urged to evoke the atmosphere of the text rather than relying on effects of décor, and to ‘direct the cast’s movements in relation to a centre of interest located on the stage (even if the actor had to turn his back)’, rather than playing to the audience. 22 As noted earlier, one of the prime techniques which Antoine borrowed from Bayreuth was the extinguishing of the house lights which immeasurably intensified the power of the theatre as illusion, while effectively eliminating the possibilities for social interaction among the audience once the performance had begun and focusing all attention on the action on stage. While this new concept of theatre, developed in tandem with a lack of resources, was perfectly adapted to the performance of Naturalism on stage (Antoine even carried furniture on a hand-cart from his mother’s apartment for the opening night of March 1887), 23 it formed 18 See Jean Chothia, André Antoine, p. 193. 19 See ibid., pp. 59–60. 20 See ibid., pp. 193–5. 21 Robert Pignarre, Histoire du théâtre (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, coll. « Que sais-je ? », 1959), p. 101. 22 Ibid., pp. 101–2. 23 See Farnoux-Reynaud, ‘Les Trétaux sur la Butte’, p. 59.

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only a minor part of his overall output. As René Lalou points out in his classic history of modern French theatre, even the first period of the Théâtre Libre was marked by a considerable eclecticism. Alongside the Naturalist plays by Hennique and Zola, Antoine’s early repertoire contained two plays from the théâtre d’idées by François Curel – L’Envers d’une sainte and Les Fossiles – together with Porto-Riche’s romantic comedy La Chance de Françoise, 24 which launched its author’s career. Antoine’s Montmartre credentials were maintained by his staging in April 1893 of Boubouroche, by its major dramatist, Georges Courteline, and that in March 1888 of Paul Margueritte’s mime Pierrot assassin de sa femme, which exploited a rich source of Montmartre sentimentality cultivated notably by Willette, 25 together with a vogue for pantomime. He was also, for obvious reasons, attracted to the contemporary Scandinavian Naturalist dramatists, especially Ibsen, although, as we shall see, his production of Ghosts led to the defection of his most brilliant collaborator, Lugné-Poe. However, even though Lugné-Poe castigated his mentor for his overly Naturalist interpretation of Ibsen, this by no means implied that Antoine was irreducibly closed to a more ethereal concept of theatre, or vice versa: when both Lugné-Poe and Antoine bid for the rights to stage Maeterlinck’s La Princesse Maleine, the arch-Symbolist dramatist decided in favour of the latter. Although he did not favour painted scenery, as a concession to the conventions of boulevard theatre, one final legacy of Antoine that was to have an important impact on Montmartre artistic life was the use of contemporary avant-garde painters to illustrate the programmes for his productions. Inaugurated in April 1894 with Toulouse-Lautrec’s designs for the programme of Le Missionnaire, Antoine himself recalled that ‘the series I was able to continue for several years would prove unique. All the artists of the time contributed: Forain, Willette, Raffaelli, Henri Rivière, Vuillard, Steinlen, Auriol, Signac, Luce, Charpentier the sculptor and many more’. 26 This device, later adopted by Lugné-Poe and crucial in the development of Montmartre as a centre of deluxe collectible illustrations, brought together artists and illustrators closely associated, like Lautrec, with the cabarets, especially Le Chat Noir, 24 See René Lalou, Le Théâtre en France depuis 1900 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, coll. « Que sais-je ? », 1961), p. 8. 25 See Jean Chothia, André Antoine, pp. 90–1. 26 Antoine, Mes Souvenirs, p. 303.

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and was to play an important role in the development of Montmartre theatre, especially under the Théâtre de l’Œuvre. Lugné-Poe and the Théâtre de l’Œuvre One of Antoine’s fellow actors in the Cercle Gaulois was Aurélien Lugné-Poe, eleven years his junior and from a quite different social milieu. Lugné-Poe (despite Symbolist mythology, the ‘Poe’ probably has less to do with the author of ‘The Raven’ than a common surname in the area of the Forez, in the Loire, where his family came from)27 was born on 27 December 1869 into the family of a bank official on Rue Montholon on Montmartre’s southern frontier in the ninth arrondissement.28 Thus, with Lugné-Poe, we encounter a new aspect of Montmartre culture in the Belle Epoque, the presence of a liberal bourgeois intellectual and artistic elite which overlaps with the political ascendancy of the early Third Republic. Unlike Antoine, Lugné-Poe’s childhood memories did not include the deprivations of the siege and the Commune: he was brought up in a bourgeois neighbourhood and educated at the Lycée Condorcet, on the Rue du Havre, the privileged nursery of so many influential figures of the Third Republic’s elite, with prestigious teachers like Mallarmé, who taught English to the lower years. Among Lugné-Poe’s contemporaries, with whom he was to work closely at the beginning of his theatre career, were Georges Bourdon, who shared his passion for drama, Thadée Natanson, one of the brothers who founded the Revue Blanche, and the Nabi painter Vuillard. After failing his baccalauréat, Lugné-Poe founded the amateur dramatic group Les Escholiers with Bourdon. Its members congregated at the Café Gutenberg on the Boulevard Poissonnière, 29 a major political and cultural meeting-place frequented by anarchists and chansonniers and the team of Art et Critique, edited by the neo-realist dramatist Jean Jullien whose play Le Maître was directed by Antoine at the Théâtre Libre in March 1890. 30 Described as a ‘Carrefour du jeune Paris’, 31 27 See Richard Dupierreux, Lugné-Poe, homme de théâtre (Paris: Odette Lieutier, n.d), p. 6. 28 See Robichez, Le Symbolisme au théâtre, p. 53. 29 Listed in Emile Goudeau, Paris qui consomme (Paris: Henri Beraldi, 1893). 30 See Dupierreux, Lugné-Poe, p. 10. 31 See ibid., p. 10.

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this highly intellectualised and politicised cultural community on the southern border of Montmartre, through the Revue Blanche, encompassed figures such as Proust and Léon Blum, and constituted both an antidote and a complement to the fumisme of the cabarets. At the same time, the studied faux-medievalism of the theatre company’s name, ‘Escholiers’, is part of the same vogue for an ill-defined Gothic past apparent in the names of other amateur theatre groups, Maeterlinck’s theatrical atmosphere and the gothic decor of Le Chat Noir. Lugné-Poe joined the Théâtre Libre in October 1888 as a stage manager, but left soon after. The reasons for this apparent break were both practical and professional. In November 1888, he was admitted to the Conservatoire d’Art Dramatique and was awarded a 50 franc grant which allowed him some independence. At the same time, much as he admired Antoine as an actor and indispensable factor in the renewal of French theatre, he was about to strike out in a different direction which would lead to the foundation of the Théâtre de l’Œuvre in 1893. Despite their shared belief in the holistic nature of the theatrical experience, Antoine represented what, for Farnoux-Reynaud, was ‘un théâtre à doctrine, qui pourra devenir engagé’ (‘a doctrinal theatre, which could become committed’), whereas Lugné-Poe constituted ‘le Théâtre de la Découverte, le véritable théâtre d’avant-garde’ (‘the theatre of discovery, the true theatre of the avant-garde’). 32 The young director himself only really became aware of this on his return from military service in 1891, when he recognised that the theatrical landscape had changed in his absence under the huge and unpredictable impact of Ibsen. He had already registered the coup de tonnerre of the performance of Ghosts at the Théâtre Libre on 20 May 1890, which marked the arrival of the Norwegian dramatist’s work in Paris, 33 but became progressively conscious of the inadequacies of Antoine’s methodology to convey the essence of this kind of drama. He recalled that, in the Théâtre Libre’s mounting of The Wild Duck the following year, apart from Antoine’s own performance, the staging was ‘incoherent’ from an Ibsenist point of view. 34 This was not merely an individual directorial failure, but the failure of an entire aesthetic. Commenting on the long-term consequences for Zola of the première of Ghosts at the Théâtre Libre, Lugné-Poe asked: ‘Eût-il pu prévoir alors qu’un soir cet Ibsen rallierait 32 Ibid., p. 60. 33 See Lugné-Poe, Ibsen, p. 11. 34 See ibid., p. 23.

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les Symbolistes et les poètes dans une ruée contre le Théâtre Libre et le naturalisme?’ (‘Could he foresee then that one evening this Ibsen would unite the Symbolists and the poets against the Théâtre Libre and Naturalism?’)35 He appeared to be confirmed in this opinion by Ibsen’s own decision in April 1891 to distance himself from Antoine and recognise Lugné-Poe as his French ‘manager’. 36 In fact, the Ibsen question and the road to Lugné-Poe’s concept of Symbolist theatre were more complex and reflected earlier divergences in the reception of Wagner in France between the justification for theatrical realism and ‘the example of a total art concerned to suggest the inaccessible’. 37 As we have seen, interpretations of Ibsen were often more questions of nuance than commitment and Antoine and Lugné-Poe vied with each other to secure the rights to stage him in France. Antoine mounted Ghosts and The Wild Duck in 1890 and 1891, while Lugné-Poe went on to dominate Ibsen performances, presenting La Dame de la mer in a translation by Thadée Natanson in 1892, Rosmersholm in 1893, followed rapidly by An Enemy of the People (1893), The Master Builder (1894), Le Petit Eyolf and Brand (both in 1895), Peer Gynt (1896), John Gabriel Borkman (1897) and A Pillar of Society (1898). 38 If Lugné-Poe was thus able to secure a quasi-monopoly of Ibsen productions in France, it was in large part due to the patronage of Paul Fort, the precocious Left Bank ‘Prince des Poètes’, who had founded the Théâtre d’Art in opposition to what he saw as the dominance of Naturalism and in favour of a truly poetic theatre. 39 In this, his chief inspiration was Maeterlinck, whose L’Intruse he had staged in 1891. When Maeterlinck approached Fort with the text of Pelléas et Mélisande in 1893, recognising his own limits, Fort entrusted it to Lugné-Poe, who launched dual productions in Paris and Brussels.40 A celebratory banquet was duly held at the Café Gutenberg during which, at the suggestion of Vuillard and Camille Mauclair, the Théâtre de l’Œuvre was founded.41 Like the Théâtre Libre, the Théâtre de l’Œuvre tended to be peripatetic, having no fixed base until 35 Ibid., p. 13. 36 See Dupierreux, Lugné-Poe, p. 20. 37 Robichez, Le Symbolisme au théâtre, p. 38. 38 See ibid., p. 21. 39 See ibid., p. 15. 40 See ibid., pp. 15–16. 41 See Lugné-Poe, Ibsen, p. 36.

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1913, when it moved into the Salle Berlioz on the Rue de Clichy,42 but its impact on French theatrical history was as great as Antoine’s. Its legacy lay in its ability to ‘créer des spectacles’ (‘create spectacles’) and ‘réaliser des fantaisies artistiques’ (‘make real artistic fantasies’),43 and here, more than Antoine’s unflinching recreation of reality, Lugné-Poe was close to the essence of Montmartre culture, which runs through Rivière’s shadow plays and the absurdist monologues of the cabarets, the spectacular make-believe of the Moulin Rouge and looks ahead to Mac Orlan’s fantastique sociale, Marcel Aymé’s fairy tales of Montmartre during the Occupation and Céline’s Féerie pour une autre fois of the 1950s. Crucial to this project – which included, as with Antoine, the darkened auditorium, supplemented by an often deliberately unrealistic, quasi-religious psalmodic delivery influenced by Maeterlinck, the use of a sloping stage, later adopted by Max Rheinhardt, and flirtation with theatre in the round44 – was decor, produced in conjunction with his friends from Condorcet, Vuillard and Maurice Denis, who had rented a studio at 28 Rue Pigalle 45 with Pierre Bonnard, whom Vuillard had known at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. In fact, it was the young Nabi painters, especially Maurice Denis, who had been influential in ‘liberating him from realism’46 and had originally introduced Lugné-Poe to Paul Fort and the Théâtre d’Art.47 As Jacques Robichez comments, Paul Fort’s and Lugné-Poe’s theatrical ventures coincided precisely with the ambitions of the Nabis ‘où les Nabis réclamaient de grandes surfaces, cherchaient à s’évader des limites restreintes du portrait, du paysage ou de la nature morte’ (‘when they needed large surfaces and were attempting to escape the restraints of the portrait, the landscape and the still life’).48 For five years (from 1891 to 1896), the Nabis, especially Vuillard, were closely involved in the theatre, working especially, but not exclusively, with Lugné-Poe on set design, scenery and programmes. Set painting introduced Vuillard to the techniques 42 See Dupierreux, Lugné-Poe, p. 31. 43 Ibid., p. 33. 44 See Lugné-Poe, Ibsen, p. 35; Dupierreux, Lugné-Poe, pp. 34–5. 45 See Dupierreux, Lugné-Poe, p. 34. Vuillard rented a studio in October 1891 at 24 Rue Pigalle. 46 See Robichez, Le Symbolisme au théâtre, p. 106. 47 See ibid., p. 109. 48 Ibid., p. 247.

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of painting with distemper,49 which had a lasting influence on his technique. Although the sets were painted over at the end of each play’s run, it is known that Vuillard began in 1891 with L’Intruse for Paul Fort, followed by Maeterlinck’s Les Aveugles and Rette’s Berthe au grand pié, and Ranson’s avant-garde adaptation of La Farce du pâté et de la tarte in 1892. With the foundation of the Théâtre de l’Œuvre in 1893, he designed programmes and sets for Ibsen’s Rosmersholm and An Enemy of the People and Hauptmann’s Ames solitaires, and in 1894 worked on Au-dessus des forces humaines, Une Nuit d’éveil à Céas, L’Image and The Master Builder. Vuillard’s theatrical activity declined after this, though in 1896 he designed numerous programmes, including that for A Pillar of Society, and, memorably, the sets for L’Œuvre’s première of Jarry’s Ubu Roi in collaboration with Bonnard, Sérusier and Toulouse-Lautrec. 50 It was this performance which constituted the culmination of Montmartre avant-garde theatre in the pre-First World War period, bringing together key elements of contemporary avant-garde, and specifically Montmartre, culture: the theatre, represented by Lugné-Poe himself, but also by the current vogue for puppet theatre; painting, in the form of the Nabis and post-Impressionists like Toulouse-Lautrec; the absurdist humour, word play, fantasy and verbal aggression against the audience embodied in the cabarets; and the more cerebral, anti-Establishment wing of Symbolism conveyed in La Revue Blanche. In other words, in addition to his importance in the history of French theatre, Lugné-Poe and his entourage brought to the history of Montmartre three new elements: the intellectual, artistic and political currents transmitted by La Revue Blanche; the Nabi painters; and the growing community of art dealers in the ninth arrondissement, especially in the Rue Lafitte and surrounding streets. La Revue Blanche was founded in December 1889 by the elder brother of Thadée Natanson, Louis-Alfred, with young Belgian and French colleagues. It had its headquarters in Liège and offices on the Avenue des Champs-Elysées, in the apartment of two of its French founders, 49 See Paul-Henri Bourrelier, La Revue Blanche. Une génération dans l’engagement (Paris: Fayard, 2007), p. 343. 50 See Mathias Chivot, ‘Chronology’, in Guy Cogeval, ed., Edouard Vuillard (London: Royal Academy, 2004), pp. 475–6. Vuillard remained attached to Montmartre. In 1913 he moved into an apartment at 26 Rue de Calais, overlooking the Place Vintimille.

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Paul and Charles Leclercq. 51 In 1891, the review moved to Paris, and offices on the Rue des Martyrs in the ninth arrondissement, and then at 1 Rue Lafitte from late 1893. The two other Natanson brothers, Alexandre and Thadée, were actively involved, and together they built up a strong editorial team, including Romain Coolus, Tristan Bernard, Léon Blum, Eugène Morel, Camille Mauclair and Pierre Louÿs, and positioned themselves as the major publishers of Symbolist work, with texts by Ménard, Verlaine, Mallarmé and Heredia. 52 In 1893, the review expanded by merging with Le Banquet, established a year earlier by another group of former students at Condorcet, including Marcel Proust, and added a humorous supplement called Le Chasseur des chevelures, directed by Tristan Bernard with Pierre Veber, Coolus, Toulouse-Lautrec, Félix Valloton and Jules Renard, 53 and which exploited Montmartre’s tradition of verbal and visual humour. In the same year, La Revue Blanche began publishing an original illustration with each number, mainly produced by the Nabi painters Maurice Denis, Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, Kerr-Xavier Roussel and Paul Ranson, joined the following year by Toulouse-Lautrec, Odilon Redon and Félix Valloton. These painters were also, and by no means coincidentally, the favoured set designers and programme illustrators for the Théâtre de l’Œuvre, whose director, Lugné-Poe, had known most of them at Condorcet 54 and whose pioneering development of Symbolist theatre coincided with and had been influenced by the review’s own interests. While the Revue Blanche represents what may be termed the high end of the Montmartre avant-garde in the last decade of the nineteenth century, it was also important as a conduit of radical political ideas, famously taking up a strident and courageous Dreyfusard position from 1897 to 1899, and an important voice of fin-de-siècle anarchism, especially through the role of Félix Fénéon, a key figure of the Left Bank Mercure de France, as secrétaire de la rédaction from 1894 to the end of the review in 1903. 55 Fénéon, who secretly wrote for libertarian and anarchist publications in the early 1890s, including Zo d’Axa’s L’Endehors, 56 and was one of the defendants in the famous ‘Procès des Trente’ in 1894, established a 51 52 53 54 55 56

See Bourrelier, La Revue Blanche, p. 52. See ibid., p. 53. See ibid., p. 53. See ibid., p. 53. See ibid., p. 199. See ibid., p. 193.

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link between the high point of French anarchism of the 1890s which was active on the Butte in the following decade. 57 The Nabi painters are an important and often neglected part of the cultural history of Montmartre. As we have seen, Vuillard, Denis and Roussel were students at the Lycée Condorcet (Bonnard, who is often assumed to have been a student at Condorcet, in fact came from Fontenay-aux-Roses in the south of Paris and studied at the Lycée de Vanves and the Lycée Henri IV in the Latin Quarter before meeting Vuillard at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts), and the ninth arrondissement remained important to them: in 1891 and for some time afterwards, as we have seen, Bonnard, Vuillard, Maurice Denis and Lugné-Poe shared a studio at 28 Rue Pigalle. 58 Even as late as the 1920s, Vuillard, who had worked particularly closely with Lugné-Poe and had been brought up in the neighbouring Faubourg Saint-Honoré, returned to the ninth arrondissement and moved with his mother into an apartment in the Place Vintimille, just south of the Place de Clichy. 59 This theatrical, intellectual and artistic activity in the ninth arrondissement in the 1880s and 1890s was accompanied by the growth, already apparent earlier, of the area around the Rue Laffitte as a major centre of the Parisian art market – some of the most influential dealers were operating from the streets north of the Boulevard Haussmann and east of the Gare Saint-Lazare. In this respect, the transfer of the offices of La Revue Blanche in 1893 from the Rue des Martyrs to 1 Rue Laffitte was highly significant, bringing the review closer to the capital’s financial centre and its lucrative art market while retaining links with the arrondissement’s broader theatrical and popular cultural activities. On the corner of the Rue Laffitte and the Boulevard des Italiens, the Revue Blanche offices were close to the Salle Drouot and the major dealers Bing, on the Rue Chauchat, and Boussod et Valadon, on the Boulevard Montmartre, of which Théo Van Gogh had been the director.60 The influential dealers Bernheim, Durand-Ruel and Moline 57 For a more detailed discussion of Fénéon, see Richard D. Sonn, Anarchism and Cultural Politics in Fin-de-Siècle France; Joan Ungersma Halperin, Félix Fénéon: Aesthete and Anarchist in Fin-de-Siècle Paris (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989). 58 See Bourrelier, La Revue Blanche, p. 274. 59 See Guy Cogeval, ‘Backward Glances’, in Guy Cogeval, ed., Edouard Vuillard (London: Royal Academy, 2003), pp. 2–3. 60 See Bourrelier, La Revue Blanche, p. 353.

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were on the Rue Lafitte itself, as was the recently installed Ambroise Vollard, who initially specialised in albums of prints by individual Nabi painters, like Bonnard’s Quelques aspects de la vie de Paris, Paysages intérieurs, by Vuillard, and Paul Denis and Redon’s L’Apocalypse, which inaugurated Montmartre’s entry into the luxury book market.61 Earlier, le Père Tanguy, who died in 1894, had established a modest art shop at 9 Rue Clauzel, towards the north of the arrondissement, which specialised in unrecognised young modern painters and was, for a time, the only place in Paris where it was possible to see paintings by Cezanne.62 In fact, as their merchandise became more popular, and more profitable, many of these dealers, like Georges Petit, Durand-Ruel and Bernheim (later Bernheim-Jeune), moved in the 1900s to more prestigious locations on the Grands Boulevards, preceded in 1899 by the Revue Blanche, which relocated to 23 Boulevard des Italiens.63 This was the culmination of an inexorable move south from the Rue des Martyrs which reflected the progressive embourgeoisement of Montmartre bohemia and the avant-garde, which had always been incipient in Montmartre culture, as we have already seen with the cabarets and Salis’s unfulfilled ambition to move Le Chat Noir to the Boulevards. Jarry and Ubu Roi As is well known, the première of Ubu Roi took place on 10 December 1896 in the Nouveau Théâtre (now the Théâtre de Paris) on the Rue Blanche and was immediately perceived as constituting ‘une bataille d’Hernani entre les jeunes écoles et la critique bourgeoise’ (‘a replay of the Battle of Hernani between the young artists and the bourgeois critics’).64 Jarry became aware of Lugné-Poe towards the end of 1894, when the Théâtre de l’Œuvre was at the peak of its career, through his acquaintance with Paul Fort and a mutual devotion to Symbolism. The twenty-one-year-old Jarry had been brought up in Brittany, where he had studied at the Lycée of Rennes, before coming to Paris and the Lycée Henri IV, where he was taught by Henri Bergson and became a close 61 See ibid., p. 353. 62 See ibid., p. 353. 63 See ibid., p. 353. 64 Laurent Tailhade, writing in Pataphysique, quoted by Farnoux-Reynaud, ‘Les Trétaux sur la Butte’, p. 60.

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friend of Léon-Paul Fargue. After several failed attempts at admission to the Ecole Normale Supérieure, 65 he instead became a precocious Left Bank bohemian, a descendant of the previous generation of Hydropathes and – thanks to the influence of the writer and critic Remy de Gourmont,66 whom he met in 1894, and the friendship of Fénéon – rapidly penetrated the intellectual and artistic coterie around Mercure de France, dominated by its editor Alfred Vallette and his wife Rachilde, who remained a close friend throughout his life. At this time, the founder of Pataphysics – the ‘science of imaginary solutions’, which was by no means out of place among the vogue for the esoteric during the Belle Epoque or the mock-scientific half-absurd creations of the Montmartre humourists – was beginning a career as a published writer, first as a prize-winner in the literary supplement of L’Echo de Paris, edited by Catulle Mendès and Marcel Schwob, 67 and later in the Mercure itself, with the Gothic narrative Haldernablou. At the same time, Jarry had become a visitor to Montmartre, especially Le Chat Noir, which he frequented with Lord Alfred Douglas in 1895 at the time of Oscar Wilde’s trials68 and in 1896 at the time of Lugné-Poe’s production of Salome, 69 and with which he was familiar, especially through its shadow plays and its periodical. He was even planning a performance of his own at the cabaret but it was forestalled by Salis’s retirement and subsequent death in 1897.70 Jarry and Lugé-Poe shared many approaches to modern drama, in particular their admiration for Ibsen and Shakespearean theatre, including Elizabethan theatre in the round, and especially their devotion to theories of theatrical autonomy, devoid of any pretence of representation and derived in part from their mutual interest in puppet theatre. In fact, Belle Epoque Paris as a whole saw something of a vogue for what Patrick Besnier terms ‘théâtres d’à côté’ (‘parallel theatres’),71 which became a Montmartre speciality, from the théâtre d’ombres of Le Chat 65 See Alastair Brotchie, Alfred Jarry: A Pataphysical Life (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2011), pp. 37–8. 66 For a detailed discussion of Remy de Gourmont, see Garnet Rees, Remy de Gourmont: Essai de biographie intellectuelle (Paris: Boivin, 1940). 67 See ibid., p. 49. 68 See Brotchie, Alfred Jarry, p. 104. 69 See Patrick Besnier, Alfred Jarry (Paris: Fayard, 2005), p. 232. 70 See ibid., p. 263. 71 Ibid., p. 86.

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Noir to the Grand Guignol on the Rue Chaptal and the Théâtre des Pantins at 6 Rue Ballu.72 In fact, the first version of Ubu, staged at the self-styled Théâtre des Phynances while Jarry was a student at the lycée in Rennes, was a glove puppet play and, his apartment in Paris on the Boulevard Saint-Germain had ‘a closed curtain [which] covered one wall; Jarry had cut a hole through it to his bedroom so as to make a puppet theatre, in which he presented Ubu Roi to invited audiences’.73 Rachilde was by no means wide of the mark when she advised Lugné-Poe to ‘emphasise the puppet aspect as much as possible, and if need be, and if it’s possible (I’ve had this idea in mind as long as I’ve known the play), attach your actors to the theatre borders with strings or ropes, since they are meant to be even bigger buffoons than everyone else’.74 Jarry’s formal collaboration with Lugné-Poe dates from June 1896, when, briefly secure with his father’s inheritance, he could take on the virtually unpaid job of general factotum at the offices of L’Œuvre in the Rue Turgot.75 With his employer on holiday in Brittany for the summer, Jarry took on responsibility for publicising the 1896–7 programme, the company’s most ambitious yet, with Aglavaine et Selsette by Maeterlinck, Verhaeren’s Les Aubes, Beyond our Power by Björnson, Marlowe’s Edward II and Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, although not all of these made it to the stage.76 Jarry also managed to persuade Lugné-Poe, after considerable badgering, to add Ubu Roi to the programme and immediately threw himself into preparations, with an intensive publicity campaign, including the publication of the text by the Mercure de France. On his return from Brittany, however, Lugné-Poe was preoccupied by the forthcoming production of Peer Gynt, judged to be the culmination of Ibsen’s Nordic Symbolism and, perhaps for that reason, practically unstageable. Although, following Jarry’s and Lugné-Poe’s precepts, the costumes and staging were minimalist, the production as a whole was by no means frugal, retaining the Grieg overture with sixty musicians and with programme and poster designs by Edvard Munch, who also advised on the scenery.77 The programme is notable for revealing the casting against type of Jane Avril, the famous dancer from the Moulin Rouge, 72 See Bourrelier, La Revue Blanche, pp. 287–9. 73 Brotchie, Alfred Jarry, p. 84. 74 Quoted in ibid., p. 152. 75 See ibid., p. 133; Besnier, Alfred Jarry, pp. 232–3. 76 See Brotchie, Alfred Jarry, p. 141. 77 See ibid., p. 147.

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as Andrea, and of the clown Kobold as the Troll-King, with Jarry himself as a Troll, although it is possible that Kobald desisted at the last minute and was replaced by Jarry.78 This overlap between popular entertainment in the form of music hall, the circus and the avant-garde also looks ahead to Jarry’s original intention to cast the clown Footit (from the duo Chocolat et Footit) as the character Bordure in Ubu.79 We know that the character of Père Ubu dates from 1888, a schoolboy caricature of the physics teacher at the Lycée of Rennes, Félix Hébert, constructed by Jarry and his friends Charles and Henri Morin, and brought to life by the Théâtre des Phynances, the make-believe theatre, part théâtre d’ombres, part glove puppets, set up in Jarry’s or the Morins’ apartments.80 What is interesting is that Jarry should remain so attached to what is ostensibly a piece of juvenilia, employing its very ephemeral and unpolished nature as the basis for an almost self-destructive and suicidal assault upon, not merely the politics and culture of the Third Republic, but ultimately on Symbolism itself. Whatever the precise motivation, Jarry undoubtedly prepared the ground as carefully as he could, even though, after the struggle to stage Peer Gynt, Lugné-Poe had left himself little time for Ubu before its opening. Jarry had left his director in no doubt as to his precise requirements for the production, which included: a mask for the principal character, who would also carry a cardboard horse’s head round his neck during riding scenes, as practiced in Elizabethan theatre; one set, with captions indicating locations, as was common in puppet plays, such as ‘The Polish army marching through the Ukraine’; the abolition of crowd scenes; the adoption of a special voice by the principal (modelled on Jarry’s own stylised ‘mechanical’ way of speaking); and non-specific costumes.81 Alastair Brotchie comments that: It seems unnecessary to stress just how radical these proposals were for a theatrical culture dominated by ‘realistic’ melodramas and drawingroom farces. Such stage practices, although commonplace now, were still considered inflammatory half a century later. Yet Jarry’s ideas also have a continuity with Symbolist theatre practice: the single set, suggestions of eternity, and so forth.82 78 79 80 81 82

See ibid., pp. 147–8. See Besnier, Alfred Jarry, p. 263. See ibid., pp. 61–9. See Brotchie, Alfred Jarry, p. 125. Ibid., p. 126.

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With increasing trepidation, Lugné-Poe did his best to cope with this onslaught of demands and reluctantly paid the bills for Jarry’s order of a wickerwork belly for Ubu and a wickerwork horse, the ‘Phynance Charger’.83 He also commissioned a composer, Claude Terrasse, the organist at La Trinité, recently arrived from Arcachon and the brotherin-law of Pierre Bonnard, 84 and the two principal actors: Firmin Gémier, who was to ‘become one of the most celebrated actor-directors of his generation’85 as Ubu, and Louise France, whom Jarry may have met at Le Chat Noir, ‘where she was disposed to too much absinthe’, 86 as Mère Ubu. As we have seen, Lugné-Poe and Jarry also arranged for the Nabis and Toulouse-Lautrec to paint the sole backdrop, following Jarry’s design, which ‘contrived to combine Symbolist ideas of the universal, the Nabis’ conceptions of spatial deformation and synthesis, [Lugné-Poe’s] own ideas of non-realist stage production, and the actual country where Les Polonais, a schoolboy skit at the expense of a physics teacher, was set’.87 Jarry himself designed the poster and programme and kept up an unremitting press campaign following the publication of the text and ensuring that the first night would be not merely reviewed, but an instant cause célèbre. To this end, he organised a claque of his own supporters, and a counter-claque, drawn from the clientele of his favourite cafe on the Left Bank, Chez Ernest, to guarantee the required fracas: ‘The scandal must be greater than even that of Phèdre or Hernani. The performance must not be allowed to reach its conclusion, the theatre must explode’.88 The result of such preparations was that the first night was sold out, such that even Colette was reduced to seeking help from Vallette and Rachilde: ‘I beg you to find me any way to get in, even if it’s only in the Gods’.89 This first night, technically the répétition générale, or public dress rehearsal, on 9 December 1896 in the Nouveau Théâtre, brought together an extraordinary collection of theatre goers, bohemians, the counter-claque from Chez Ernest, the fine fleur of contemporary French literature, including, in addition to Colette, who did eventually gain entry, Heredia, Rostand, Jean Lorrain, Jules Renard, Valéry, Gide, Willy 83 Ibid., p. 155. 84 See Besnier, Alfred Jarry, pp. 261–2. 85 Brotchie, Alfred Jarry, p. 152. 86 Ibid., p. 152. 87 Ibid., p. 156. 88 Quoted in ibid., p. 160. 89 Quoted in Besnier, Alfred Jarry, p. 266.

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and Courteline, and the drama critics Catulle Mendès, Jules Lemaître and Francisque Sarcey.90 Even W.B. Yeats was present. As was the custom at L’Œuvre, the performance was prefaced by a lecture by the author himself, although Rachilde had presciently advised Lugné-Poe against it. Once the house lights had dimmed, two workmen carried a desk on stage and Jarry appeared, dressed in a clown’s or Pierrot’s costume. According to Georges Rémond, the tenor of this proto-Expressionist performance anticipated that of Berlin nightclubs in 1925.91 Jarry spoke for barely ten minutes, in a dead-pan delivery which was almost unintelligible: as Patrick Besnier concludes, ‘the lecture was subverted by Jarry in several ways: an extreme theatricalisation, a deliberate unintelligibility, and the wretched appearance of the lecturer’.92 It was ‘a misplaced one-man show’, although one fondly recalled by Gide: ‘I remember hearing him give a lecture … disguised as a fool in a circus, wishing to play the clown. It was a wonderful sight: Jarry in pumps, with an enormous white bow tie and made up beyond belief, absolutely a circus clown’.93 While Gide may have appreciated it, the audience as a whole did not. As Marguerite Moreno recorded, ‘it is impossible to imagine the uproar which shook the theatre in the Rue Blanche, the insults hurled at the author’, who had dared to mock the seriousness of the writer.94 After this, however, and contrary to expectations – and Jarry’s hopes – the performance proceeded without serious interruption. As Gémier recalled, the deliberately provocative first word – ‘Merdre … !’ – was welcomed with relative good humour and all the expected pitfalls were circumvented safely, until disaster threatened from an unexpected angle: You will remember that Père Ubu, who has been king for five days, goes to see Captain Bordure, whom he holds prisoner. In place of the door of his cell, an actor stood on stage with his left arm outstretched. I placed the key in his hand as if it were the lock. Then I made the creaking sound of a lock turning and I moved his arm as if opening the door. At this point, the public, no doubt thinking that the joke had gone on long enough, began to howl, a tempest broke out on all sides …95 90 91 92 93 94 95

See ibid., p. 268. Quoted in ibid., p. 269. Ibid., p. 269. Quoted in ibid., p. 270. Quoted in ibid., pp. 269–70. Quoted in Brotchie, Alfred Jarry, p. 162.

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Among the mayhem and the catcalls, Antoine could be heard whistling, while Montmartre’s very own Courteline, whose Boubouroche had been performed by the Théâtre Libre, could be heard bellowing: ‘Can’t you see they’re making bloody fools of us!’96 The reaction to the dress rehearsal from a largely well-informed audience was intellectual and professional and divided along aesthetic lines, as were the subsequent reviews.97 The second performance, the official opening night, conformed to Jarry’s expectations, with uproar breaking out from Gémier’s first ‘Merdre … !’, with ‘such violent invective … exchanged between supporters and detractors that the play came to a complete halt for some fifteen minutes’.98 When it finally continued, so loud was the tumult that the one-man orchestra, Terrasse, was unable to follow the action and ‘was reduced to striking the cymbals now and again more or less at random … “zing, zing, bada-zing, boom, boom”’, wrote the critic for La Patrie,99 in a transcription which unwittingly looks forward to Dada p ­ erformances and the later fiction of Céline. Ubu Roi marks a turning point in the careers of Lugné-Poe, who subsequently drifted away from Symbolism, and, indeed, Symbolist theatre itself, which was beginning to move into different dramatic expressions. Not that this implied a rejection on Lugné-Poe’s part of the avant-garde as such for he later directed both Dadaist and Surrealist works. As for Jarry, in Ubu, consciously or not, he ‘sabotaged his own play’100 and created a supreme example of the avant-garde work as auto-destruction. In so doing, he exploited the familiar characteristics of Montmartre popular entertainment in recreating the worlds of the shadow and puppet theatre and the circus, injecting into them the cultivated absurdism and word play of the cabarets, and the chansonniers’ device of insulting the audience, perfected by Bruant – all with a dose of anarchism and the deliberately superficial tenor of the schoolboy spoof. As such, with its use of teamwork, comprising literary text, theatrical direction, contemporary music and modern painting, Ubu constitutes a bridge to the avant-garde of the following decades and works such as Apollinaire’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias and the collective multimedia Parade, involving Cocteau, Picasso and Satie. 96 Quoted in ibid., p. 163. 97 See Besnier, Alfred Jarry, pp. 273–6. 98 Brotchie, Alfred Jarry, p. 163. 99 Ibid., p. 164. 100 Ibid., p. 170.

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While Ubu exemplifies the unity of Montmartre culture, inclusive of both the popular and the progressive, the reactions to it show the fault lines present in that culture between the conservative bohemians and the avant-garde. Antoine’s dismissal of Ubu as ‘completely idiotic’101 and Courteline’s outrage at being taken for a ride prefigure the incomprehension and, in the case of Dorgelès, outright hostility towards Picasso and Cubism ten years later. Despite, or perhaps because of, their earlier scandals, both Antoine and Lugné-Poe fulfilled the bohemian dream of entering and then dominating the theatrical Establishment. Antoine, as we have seen, went on to take over the Théâtre de l’Odéon, one of the capital’s most prestigious theatres, and in the interwar years branched out into film directing, while Lugné-Poe, who abandoned L’Œuvre and its Symbolist mission in 1899, relaunched the company in 1912 with Claudel’s L’Annonce faite à Marie and dominated French non-realist theatre until his retirement in 1929. They were joined at the pinnacle of Parisian theatre in the interwar years by another director from a later generation whose bohemian origins in Montmartre were more squalid and spectacular: Charles Dullin. Dullin and L’Atelier At the foot of the Butte de Montmartre, at the end of the Rue des Abbesses, in what was once the village square of the community of Orsel and then became the Place Dancourt, stands the district’s oldest theatre, the Théâtre Montmartre. It was built in 1822 by the actor and dancer Pierre-Jacques Sevestre, who had opened one of the first Tivolis, the Nouveau Ranelagh, in 1808,102 and subsequently set up theatres beyond the barrières, including the Théâtre Montparnasse, the Théâtre des Batignolles and the Théâtre de Belleville. In the 1900s, Roland Dorgelès recalled walking past the theatre with a newly arrived actor from the provinces: Un soir, devant le Théâtre Montmartre chichement éclairé, il m’a dit en me serrant le bras: ‘J’en ferai mon théâtre!’ Il se voyait, ce fou, arrivant place Dancourt dans une charrette anglaise qu’il conduirait ganté. Eh

101 Ibid., p. 170. 1 02 See Farnoux-Reynaud, ‘Les Trétaux sur la Butte’, p. 60.

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bien! il l’a eu, le théâtre! Il l’a eue, la voiture. Devenu célèbre, il a triomphé dans toute l’Europe, constitué des troupes, formé des élèves, ranimé des scènes qui périclitaient, créé au cinéma des personnages inoubliables … One evening, when we were walking past the brightly lit Théâtre de Montmartre, he grasped my arm and said: ‘I will make that my theatre!’ This madman saw himself arriving at the Place Dancourt, driving an English pony and trap in gloves. Well, he got the theatre! He got the horse! He became famous and triumphed throughout Europe. He set up theatrical companies, trained students, saved theatres on the verge of destruction, created unforgettable characters in the cinema …103

Charles Dullin was born in 1885 in a small village in the Savoie, the son of a local magistrate and the last of seventeen children.104 After secondary school in a Catholic seminary, Dullin abandoned his studies and moved to Lyon, where he worked as a draper’s assistant. There, he became fascinated by the theatre and met the future right-wing journalist Henri Béraud,105 with whom he frequented anarchist circles and joined a poets’ club, the Pot-Au-Feu. Finding the intellectual and artistic life of Lyon too constrictive, Dullin and Béraud, together with their friend Albert Londres, who was to become the greatest French journalist of the interwar years, took the train to Paris on 20 September 1905 and took up residence in the Hôtel de l’Univers in the Cité Bergère, in the ninth arrondissement,106 on the borders between Montmartre and the boulevards. While his friends set off in pursuit of their journalistic careers, Dullin began his own laborious apprenticeship in the Parisian theatre, beginning in a play called Les Aventures du Capitaine Corcoran performed in the local théâtres de quartier of Grenelle, Montparnasse and Gobelins.107 This early period in repertory theatre, which also included the Théâtre de Belleville, taught Dullin the basic skills of communicating to a mass popular audience, which were to serve him well when he became a director in his own right. At the same time, Dullin was careful to cultivate a wider cultural audience and, in 1906, began frequenting the Lapin Agile, which – as we shall see in Chapter Five – had become the successor to the Chat Noir 1 03 Dorgelès, Au Beau temps de la Butte, pp. 76–7. 104 See Monique Surel-Turpin, Charles Dullin (Louvain-La-Neuve: Arts du Spectacle. Cahiers Théâtre Louvain, 1985), p. 14. 105 See ibid., p. 21. 106 Ibid., p. 22. 107 Ibid., pp. 23–4.

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on the Butte and a meeting place for Montmartre bohemia in the 1900s. He reported to his sister Pauline: Yesterday evening, with fire in my belly, I performed at the Lapin Agile until the early hours: Baudelaire, Villon and our dear Verlaine. Antoine was in the audience and came up to me and said: ‘Young man, you’ve got something, you’ll make it. Come and see me’. I was so overcome that I couldn’t open my mouth to reply. When he left, he waved to me very amicably …108

Antoine’s patronage was to prove important in Dullin’s career – the director of the Odéon shortly afterwards cast him as Cinna in Julius Caesar109 and offered him film roles after the war – and the Lapin Agile provided a headier mixture of writers, artists and anarchists than that offered by the Pot-au-Feu in Lyon. Dorgelès evokes this period in Dullin’s career in his typical romantic style: Quand il arrive, ventre creux, rue des Saules, il passe d’abord par la cuisine où Berthe, la bonne hôtesse, lui prépare une tartine de pâté. Mais ce n’est pas pour cette pitance qu’il vient chaque soir dire des vers, ni pour les gros sous de la quête, c’est pour tromper sa passion du théâtre. Il a besoin d’un public, besoin d’arracher des bravos aux faux étudiants du samedi, de faire frémir les filles qu’il regarde dans les yeux en déclamant Une Charogne. When he arrived at the Rue des Saules with an empty stomach, he went straight to the kitchen where Berthe, the good hostess, prepared him a piece of bread and pâté. But he did not come every evening to recite his poetry for this pittance, nor for the coins he was able to beg. He came to satisfy his passion for the theatre. He needed a public, he needed to win the applause of the phoney students on Saturday nights, he needed to make the girls tremble when he looked them in the eyes and declaimed Une Charogne.110

Yet, as Monique Surel-Turpin confirms, Dullin ‘met all sorts of people there: poets, painters, writers, theatre directors. He made youthful friendships which filled him with enthusiasm, Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Picasso’,111 although Dorgelès asserts that Picasso, on the whole generous in his evaluation of his fellow bohemians, had a low 108 Ibid., pp. 26–7. 1 09 See ibid., p. 27. 110 Dorgelès, Au Beau temps de la Butte, pp. 76–7. 111 Surel-Turpin, Charles Dullin, p. 26.

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opinion of Dullin and always expressed astonishment at his subsequent success.112 In this early period in Paris, like many bohemians, Dullin frequented Montmartre anarchist circles, especially at meetings in the Elysée Montmartre, which resulted in his arrest and interrogation at the station on the Rue Dancourt. In the course of these meetings, he also met the anarchist poet and polemicist Laurent Tailhade, whom he greatly admired and who was involved in a serious case in 1905, possibly the notorious counterfeiters’ plot aiming at bringing down the capitalist system by flooding the market with false coins – the basis of both Gide’s Les Faux-Monnayeurs and Dorgelès’s Le Château des Brouillards. Dullin himself was caught trying to pass off a false 40 centime coin on the Boulevard de Clichy.113 The second major turning point in Dullin’s early theatrical career came when, in 1908, tiring of Antoine’s brutal rehearsal techniques, he set up his own company with a former student from the Conservatoire, Saturnin Fabre, at the Théâtre de la Foire in Neuilly,114 where their first production was a ‘Parade’ based on texts by Alexandre Arnoux. This experiment, which was a financial disaster, gave rise to a certain mythology attached to Dullin and propagated principally by Dorgelès, according to which the impoverished actor was reduced to earning ‘his money by reciting Baudelaire in schools or Rollinat in the lions’ cage at the Foire de Neuilly’.115 A more accurate record is provided by Dullin’s collaborator, who stated soberly in his memoirs that ‘in 1908, Dullin and I got together to found the Théâtre de la Foire, at the “fête de Neu-Neu”. The sole aim of this mission of artistic decentralisation was to gain money’,116 an aim in which it failed lamentably. Another result of Dullin’s continuing performances at the Lapin Agile was his meeting with the director of the Théâtre des Arts, Robert d’Humières, who gave him a part in Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan. When Jacques Rouché took over the company in 1910, he gave Dullin what became his first major role, that of Smerdiakov in The Brothers Karamazov, adapted by Jean Croué and the man who was to have a crucial influence on French theatre by founding the Théâtre du

1 12 See Dorgelès, Au Beau temps de la Butte, pp. 76–7. 113 See Surel-Turpin, Charles Dullin, p. 26. 114 See ibid., p. 27. 115 Dorgelès, Au Beau temps de la Butte, pp. 76–7. 116 Quoted in Surel-Turpin, Charles Dullin, p. 27.

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Vieux-Colombier, Jacques Copeau.117 Dullin was to work closely with Copeau in the establishment and early years of the Vieux-Colombier, during which he created one of his most memorable roles, that of Harpagon in Molière’s L’Avare. After the war and an American tour in 1919, he broke with his collaborator and worked with Firmin Gémier, now in charge of the Théâtre Antoine, with whom he not only extended the range of his repertoire but also took on responsibility for Gémier’s rival to the Conservatoire Nationale, the Conservatoire Syndicale, which became the Ecole d’Art Dramatique Firmin Gémier, and whose students included Marguerite Jamois, Lucien Arnaud and Antonin Artaud.118 Dullin left Gémier in 1922 but retained links with the Ecole, and established his own company, L’Atelier, which was based initially on the Left Bank, on the Rue Honoré Chevalier, and then the Rue des Ursulines, before transferring definitively to the Théâtre Montmartre on the Place Dancourt in April 1922. In his biography of Dullin, Paul-Louis Mignon gives an atmospheric description of the company’s new home, where Dullin had already performed in his early days as an actor: He knew this old local theatre well, a fine object set on the slopes of the Butte, at the end of a shady square, the Place Dancourt … At the back, on the Rue d’Orsel, a large gateway opened on to a picturesque farmyard with a stable, where Dullin could keep his donkey, Gitane, along with the sets, the scenery and the masks. Beside the stable was a shed. A worm-eaten staircase led to the hay loft … In 1920s Paris, where the quartiers looked like villages, the Théâtre Montmartre gave the artist the opportunity to mix the company of poets with the ‘silent communication of animals and plants’.119

This is an interesting reminder that the rural, village-like character of Montmartre had not been swept away by the war, despite the fears of its more conservative inhabitants. Initially, the new Théâtre de l’Atelier proved to be just too far from Montmartre’s familiar theatre district to attract a public which associated the Boulevard de Clichy with music halls and the area north of the boulevard with danger. The legend dwells on details like Dullin’s wife’s frequent visits to the pawnbrokers, the stove bought at the flea market which provided more smoke than heat, the frequent visits from 117 See ibid., p. 28. 1 18 See ibid., pp. 37–8. 119 Paul-Louis Mignon, Charles Dullin (Paris: La Manufacture, 1990), p. 71.

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the bailiff, with his cheery cry: ‘Me again, Mr Dullin!’,120 penniless actors furnishing their rooms with the stage sets,121 or the cast eating the food used as stage props, like the stale bread in the prison scene in Huon de Bordeaux.122 As Farnoux-Reynaud comments, this was all part and parcel of the Atelier’s mission: ‘Everything was important except the box office. Nothing was more in tune with the spirit of Montmartre than this obstinate effort and contempt for financial concerns. Dullin was the only member of the Cartel who was able to work in this way’.123 In fact, it was the constant financial crises which led to Dullin’s film career: in 1925, when he confessed to Antoine that he needed 30,000 francs, Antoine offered him the role of Louis XI in Le Miracle des Loups, which was so successful that he also starred in Le Joueur d’échecs, and his film work kept the theatre company roughly solvent.124 At the same time, Dullin’s company became one of the most important theatre troupes in Paris in the interwar years: his trademark was the revival of Elizabethan playwrights and it was his performance of Volpone in 1928 which finally brought the theatre financial security, but he also brought to the stage contemporary authors like Alexandre Arnoux, Francis de Miromandre, Marcel Achard, Alexandre Salacrou, Bernard Zimmer and Steve Passeur.125 From this brief survey of Montmartre theatre in the Belle Epoque, it is possible to further fill in the cultural topography of the district. The area which was to become the ninth arrondissement had been popular under the Ancien Regime for its drinking establishments and brothels in Les Porcherons and La Nouvelle-France, before the Mur des Fermiers Généraux established a pleasure zone along the chemins de ronde and, especially, at the barrières. In the nineteenth century, this border territory saw the development of dance halls and, after 1880, the creation of truly modern forms of popular entertainment in the form of the cabarets. These were accompanied, and in many cases survived, by the growth of music halls along the Boulevard de Clichy and south from the Place de Clichy, and of new theatre companies which profited from both the bohemian qualities of Montmartre and the proximity to the théâtres 120 121 122 123 124 125

Ibid., p. 40. See Farnoux-Reynaud, ‘Les Trétaux sur la Butte’, p. 60. See Surel-Turpin, Charles Dullin, p. 41. Farnoux-Reynaud, ‘Les Trétaux sur la Butte’, p. 60. See Surel-Turpin, Charles Dullin, pp. 40–1. Ibid., p. 61.

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de boulevard to the south. These experimental avant-garde theatres fed upon the programme content of the cabarets, including absurdist monologue and shadow plays, as well as the new aesthetic doctrines of Naturalism and Symbolism. They also forged a close alliance with avant-garde painting in the ninth arrondissement, especially the Nabis, and derived support and inspiration from the quartier’s intellectual life, embodied particularly in the team around the Revue Blanche, with its radical and – in Fénéon and Tailhade – anarchist tendencies. There is therefore a straight trajectory from the cabarets, through the Théâtre Libre and Théâtre de L’Œuvre, to Ubu and the later avant-garde creations of Dada, Parade and Apollinaire’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias, continued in Dullin’s L’Atelier and the career of Artaud, the Art et Action group of Edouard Autant and Louise Lara (the parents of Claude Autant-Lara) in their studio in the Rue Lepic,126 or the Soirées de Paris, organised by Etienne de Beaumont at the Cigale, where Cocteau’s Roméo et Juliette was first performed. There is also a similar trajectory from the caricaturists and illustrators of Le Chat Noir and the other cabarets, with the comic magazines which employed them, through poster artists like Steinlen and Lautrec, to the graphic artists and their literary colleagues who frequented the Restaurant Manière in the interwar years. At the same time, although Antoine, Lugné-Poe, Dullin and the avant-garde represent one important side of Montmartre culture, in their rejection of Jarry, dramatists like Courteline point in another direction which would prove dominant in the years after the war, when the dual enemies were perceived as cosmopolitan avant-garde culture and international commercialism. In fact, although the Montmartre of the 1900s is chiefly remembered as the birthplace of Cubism in the Bateau-Lavoir, many of the fault lines were already visible in those same gatherings in the Lapin Agile where Dullin declaimed his verse.

126 See ibid., p. 61.

chapter five

The Bateau-Lavoir and the Lapin Agile

Montmartre: A Cultural History

The Bateau-Lavoir and the Lapin Agile

On 2 February 1900, Gustave Charpentier’s opera Louise was performed for the first time. The opera recounts ‘the love between a young poet and a working-class girl’1 who is lured away from her respectable artisanal family by her lover Julien to become the ‘muse de Montmartre’ in the bohemian’s ‘cortège du plaisir’. 2 While Charpentier’s depiction of working-class life is sympathetic – Louise’s mother is described as ‘le fantôme de la souffrance’ (‘the ghost of suffering’)3 – and critical of bohemia – the mother cries to Louise: ‘tu la connais maintenant la vie de bohème, tu sais ce que c’est: de la misère en chansons!’ (‘you now know what bohemia is: poverty with songs!’)4 – the opera nevertheless refuses to renounce the bohemian ideal: Louise leaves her grief-stricken parents to return to the Montmartre bohemians, while her father, in a Rastignac-like gesture of rage at the capital, can only utter: ‘O Paris!’5 As Jean-Claude Yan suggests, while Louise is anchored in a literary and operatic tradition, Charpentier, who was helped on the libretto by Saint-Pol Roux, stalwart of the Chat Noir, nevertheless manages to subvert that tradition: ‘Gustave Charpentier places his libretto in the tradition of an old repertoire and stereotypes which he plays upon’.6 The opera is clearly grounded in nineteenth-century evocations of Parisian bohemia, notably Musset’s ‘Mimi Pinson. Profil de grisette’ 1 Seigel, Bohemian Paris, p. 338. 2 Gustave Charpentier, Louise. Roman musical en quatre actes et cinq tableaux (Paris: Heugel, 1901), p. 149. 3 Ibid., p. 149. 4 Ibid., pp. 212–13. 5 Ibid., p. 239. 6 See Jean-Claude Yan, ‘Louise, du stéréotype à la subversion’, in Gustave Charpentier, Louise, L’Avant-Scène Opéra, 197, 2000, p. 75.

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of 1845, and Murger’s Scènes de la vie de bohème, and also in late nineteenth-century operatic derivatives, like Puccini’s La Bohème and Offenbach’s La Vie parisienne. What is interesting, however, is that, while the bohemian relationship between artist and grisette ends in tears in Murger’s depiction, by the turn of the century, bohemia is now dominant and successful in Montmartre – at least against its workingclass rivals. In other words, Louise marks a progression over Scènes de la vie de bohème and La Bohème in its celebration of the victory of bohemia over ‘civilian’ life, cruel as that may be, and it is this which constitutes Jean-Claude Yan’s ‘subversion’ of the genre. At the same time, Louise represents a significant victory for Montmartre through its annexation of a fictional and operatic domain long considered the preserve of the Left Bank: bohemia depicted by Musset and Murger. This mythology, however, was firmly anchored in reality, and Léon-Paul Fargue recognised Charpentier’s opera as ‘a topographical chef-d’œuvre, a musical military map which contained everything that Montmartre possessed in the way of sentimentality, charm, boredom, frivolity, ridicule, femininity and perversity’.7 By 1900, Montmartre, and especially the Butte, had all the preconditions for a flourishing bohemia. As Jean-Paul Crespelle notes, artists came to live in Montmartre from 1900 onwards ‘because they had discovered there unbelievable facilities for accommodation, a free atmosphere and a population which numbered many unusual personalities who were also very welcoming’8 – similar to conditions which pertained in Montparnasse to a certain extent in the 1900s, but more noticeably after the First World War. More precisely, Montmartre provided the incoming young bohemian with not merely cheap accommodation and congenial company, but also a whole range of cafés and restaurants which stayed open long into the night. While Lower Montmartre was beginning to become swamped by tourists and visitors from Paris and beyond, the Butte was still relatively primitive and agricultural, with real farms and fields and a ‘peaceful population which was typically French, with a large portion of smallholders, agricultural labourers, horticulturalists and market gardeners – who lived practically separated from Paris’.9 This rural population was also surrounded to the north and east – on the Rue Custine, the Rue Labat and the Rue Ramey – by working-class districts, which made the area 7 Fargue, Le Piéton de Paris, p. 34. 8 Crespelle, La Vie quotidienne à Montmartre, p. 8. 9 Ibid., p. 21.

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one of the poorest in Paris: while in the eighth arrondissement the figure for serious poverty stood at only 1.78% of the population, it was 7.5% in the eighteenth.10 An example of the district’s poverty was the Maquis, a shanty town on the summit of the Butte which extended east down to the Château des Brouillards and north as far as the Rue Caulaincourt. This bidonville was the haunt of ‘ragpickers, scrap metal merchants, rabbit-skinners, street vendors and chair menders’,11 who were joined by drug dealers (there was a wave of opium dealing in Montmartre before 1914, organised by ‘Baron’ Pigeard, the founder of the Union Marine de la Butte Montmartre),12 criminals and artists – Poulbot, Steinlen and Modigliani all lived there at one point in their careers. Although the demolition of the Maquis began as early as 1902 to make way for the extension of the Rue Caulaincourt and the construction of the Avenue Junot, it took twenty years for the process to be completed, thus maintaining the post-war mythology of the threat of the gratte-ciel, and it retained a powerful influence on writers of the 1920s, like Mac Orlan, in Le Quai des brumes (1927). Bohemians who were not reduced to the Maquis lived either in hotels, like the Hôtel du Poirier on the Rue Ravignan, run by Madame Excafier (inhabited by Mac Orlan, Georges Delaw, Jules Depaquit and Courteline), and the Hôtel Bouscarat on the Place du Tertre, or in studios, often grouped into colonies d’artistes, such as 12 Rue Cortot; La Villa des Arts on Rue Hégésippe-Moreau; the Villa Les Fusains on Rue Tourlaque; the Impasse de Guelma, where Braque, Severini, Dufy and Utrillo lived; and, in Lower Montmartre, the artists’ colony in the Rue du Delta, established by a young intern at the Hôpital Lariboisière, Dr Alexandre, which was occupied by Modigliani and his group.13 Other Montmartre figures lived in the Château des Brouillards, an eighteenthcentury folly built by the Marquis Lefranc de Pompignan, whose kitchen gardens became the Maquis. The house itself was inhabited by Nerval in 1846 and, at the turn of the century, by a medley of ‘artists’ models, counterfeiters, artists and anarchists’,14 including such figures as the sculptor Wasley, the painter Pirola and the historian Octave Charpentier. 10 11 12 13 14

See ibid., p. 22. Ibid., pp. 127–8. See ibid., p. 133. See ibid., ch. III. Clément, ‘Le Quartier pas à pas’, p. 50.

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Renoir lived in one of the houses adjoining the main building before 1895.15 The most famous collection of artists’ studios, however, was to be found on the Rue Ravignan in the building known as ‘la Maison du Trappeur’, or the Bateau-Lavoir, inhabited by Picasso and other avant-garde painters and poets. This growth of bohemia was matched by the provision of cheap restaurants and cafés. La Mère Catherine, La Mère Coconnier, the Restaurant des Lettres et des Arts and Aux Enfants de la Butte all served meals for less than one franc. In a slightly higher category, with meals between 1.50 and four francs, came two restaurants much frequented by the Cubists, Vernin on the Rue Cavalotte, conveniently placed near a pawn shop, and Azon, together with Le Vieux Chalet, run by Adèle, the former owner of Le Lapin Agile, La Bonne Franquette and Devais, favoured by Mac Orlan and Jehan Rictus.16 The Place du Tertre contained many cafés and bistrots, particularly the Bouscarat, which was a major meeting place for artists at lunchtime17 and Spielmann’s Au Clairon du bataillon des chasseurs à pied,18 while L’Ami Emile, at the bottom of the Rue Ravignan, was much patronised by the Cubists from the Bateau-Lavoir, who also joined the anarchists and criminals in the bar Le Zut on the Place Jean-Baptiste Clément, owned by the future patron of Le Lapin Agile, Frédé. Finally, the painters in Montmartre benefited from the continued activity of the art dealers in the Rue Laffite, ‘the only “souk” for paintings at the time’,19 now including Ambroise Vollard, who bought Picasso’s early paintings in the period 1901–6, and Berthe Weil, on the Rue Victor-Massé, who supported both the Fauves and the Cubists, together with shops selling artists’ materials around the Place Pigalle, like the Père Soulié and the Père Thomas, who also exhibited paintings. Similarly, they profited at the beginning of their careers from the close links between Montmartre culture and the humorous weekly magazines, where they published illustrations alongside more traditional figures such as Willette, Depaquit, Delaw and Poulbot:20 Picasso contributed to Le Frou-Frou and Marcel Duchamp and Mac Orlan appeared in Le Rire and Le Courrier Français, while 15 See ibid., p. 50. 16 See Crespelle, La Vie quotidienne, ch. VIII. 17 See Lesourd, Montmartre, p. 283. 18 See Labracherie, ‘Ecrivains de Montmartre’, p. 31. 19 Crespelle, La Vie quotidienne, p. 216. 20 See ibid., p. 52.

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L’Assiette au beurre, with its radical libertarianism, attracted work from François Kupka, Juan Gris, Marcoussis, Van Dongen and Galanis. 21 Yet the Montmartre bohemia of the 1900s was many-faceted and differed from its counterpart of the 1880s and 1890s. In fact, as we have seen, as one generation succeeded another, some of the pioneers of the pre-war period, who had helped to lay the foundations for the Montmartre avant-garde of the 1900s, like Allais, were momentarily forgotten. While 1900 Montmartre represented a generational divide between the new avant-garde and its predecessor – although figures like Jarry and Satie continued to be influential – this new bohemia was by no means as cohesive as that of the 1880s. In particular, at its centre was an increasing rift between the avant-garde and the Montmartre traditionalists who, like Willette, retreated into both a non-innovative style and technique and an increasingly rosy image of Montmartre in the Belle Epoque. Before the First World War, this current was essentially in a minority, though significant, and it was to come into its own during the interwar years. For the moment, modernity was all and Salis’s injunction ‘Sois moderne’ still held sway. The Bateau-Lavoir and Modernism The history of the avant-garde in Montmartre in the 1900s is essentially that of Fauvism, which lasted from 1905 to 1908, and Cubism, which, together with Futurism and Orphism, proved more durable and extended into the post-war period. Montmartre was actually a minority shareholder in Fauvism, which was essentially a Left Bank phenomenon, while also being associated with the Ecole de Chatou of Derain and Vlaminck. It was the younger recruits to the Fauvist group, Braque, Dufy and Van Dongen, who lived on the Butte in the years before the war. The Fauves did, however, make use of Montmartre’s mass entertainment for their subject matter: Rouault, who was also represented at the 1905 Salon d’Automne where the Fauves were first exhibited together, was inspired by the circus and the quarter’s prostitutes, as was Van Dongen, while Vlaminck’s and Derain’s paintings of the Danseuse au ‘Rat Mort’ (1906) testify to the continuing allure of the cabaret and music hall 21 See Serge Fauchereau, ‘Paris 1905–1915’, in Iwona Blazwick, ed., Century City. Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis (London: Tate Modern, 2001), p. 170.

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chronicled by Lautrec. Lautrec’s influence on the early work of Derain can be seen in his illustrations for Vlaminck’s novel D’un lit dans l’autre (1902), and Van Dongen’s work for L’Assiette au beurre, which included typically Montmartre subject matter. 22 Fauvism was never a highly theorised movement (the label itself was invented by the critic Louis Vauxcelles), and the group never possessed the same ‘common style that can be plotted rationally, as is the case with Cubism’. 23 The movement depended upon the relationship between Matisse and Derain, and when that ended, Fauvism disappeared. Moreover, unlike Cubism, it was never a Montmartre movement: Matisse spent much of the early 1900s in the south of France, in Collioure and L’Estaque, and when in Paris lived after 1906 on the Left Bank in the old Couvent du Sacré-Cœur on the corner of the Rue de Varenne and the Esplanade des Invalides, in what is now the Musée Rodin, before moving to Issy-les-Moulineaux in 1909; 24 and Derain and Vlaminck lived outside of Paris, in Chatou. Despite its lack of abstract theory, however, Fauvism did possess considerable coherence, which, as John Elderfield suggests, lay: initially in an attempt to recreate, in an age dominated by Symbolists and literary aesthetics, a kind of painting with the same directness and anti-theoretical orientation that the art of the Impressionists had possessed, but one created in cognizance of the heightened colour juxtapositions and emotive understanding of painting that were the heritage of Post-Impressionism … [while Fauvism] can be conveniently described by way of the principal Post-Impressionist influences on its development. The year 1904–5 saw the Fauves working under the inspiration of Seurat and to a certain extent of Van Gogh. This produced the broken-touch and then mixed technique Fauvist styles in which Matisse and Derain 22 See John Elderfield, The ‘Wild Beasts’: Fauvism and its Affinities (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1976), p. 23. 23 Ibid., p. 15. 24 See John Richardson, A Life of Picasso, Volume II 1907–1917: The Painter of Modern Life (London: Pimlico, 2009), p. 287; Hilary Spurling, The Unknown Matisse: A Life of Henri Matisse. Volume One: 1869–1908 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1998). The title of Sue Roe’s In Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse and Modernism in Paris 1900–1910 (London: Fig Tree, 2014) is slightly misleading. Apart from living on the Rue de Chateaudun just after his marriage, visiting – like all Parisians – landmarks like the Moulin de la Galette and making occasional journeys to the Bateau-Lavoir, Matisse’s real connection with Montmartre was patchy.

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worked during this period, with the other Fauves following them. The year 1906–7 was the time of flat-color Fauvism and of Gauguin’s primary influence, with the decorative and Nabiesque affecting the adventurous members of the group. In 1907–8 Cézanne was rediscovered and Fauvism as such went into demise. 25

In fact, Fauvism increasingly pointed in two directions: on the one hand, it manifested a concern with the contemporary world, ‘a picture of life that exactly matches the immediacy of its depiction’, 26 which coincided with the Fauves’ appreciation of Jarry’s vitality and iconoclasm 27 and their flirtation with anarchism in the early 1900s, a flirtation which led the critic Louis Lormel to refer to the Salon d’Automne as ‘le Salon de l’art anarchiste’ as late as 1908. 28 On the other hand, works such as Matisse’s Luxe, calme et volupté and Bonheur de vivre, Derain’s L’Age d’or and the Fauves’ series of bathers produced in 1907 and 1908 testify to both a nostalgia for a lost golden age and a movement towards classicism. 29 In this, they were strongly influenced by Gauguin, the discovery of primitive sculpture and a reappraisal of Cézanne. Fauvism was effectively already moving towards Cubism: Derain’s ‘sculptural’ Bathers of 1907 looks ahead to Les Demoiselles d’Avignon of the same year, and Braque’s View from the Hôtel Mistral, L’Estaque, also 1907, is a ‘clear presentiment of Cubism’30 announcing the ‘first Cubist landscapes that Braque made the following year’. 31 In 1908, Gertrude Stein recalled that ‘Derain and Braque had become Picasso-ites and were definitely not Matisse-ites’, 32 and the Parisian avant-garde was polarised, with Matisse now isolated. In contrast to Cubism, Fauvism not only drew upon a wide range of sources, it also, viewed in retrospect, ‘seems to have belonged as much to the nineteenth century as to the twentieth’. 33 Cubism, except for 25 Elderfield, The ‘Wild Beasts’, pp. 14, 117. 26 Ibid., p. 97. 27 See ibid., p. 42. 28 Quoted in ibid., p. 39. For a detailed discussion of the links between anarchism and the avant-garde, see Patricia Leighton, The Liberation of Painting: Modernism and Anarchism in Avant-Garde Paris (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013). 29 See ibid., p. 97. 30 Ibid., p. 124. 31 Ibid., p. 124. 32 Quoted in ibid., p. 132. 33 John Golding, Cubism: A History and an Analysis 1907–1914 (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1968), p. 16.

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the influence of Cézanne and African sculpture, which it shared with Fauvism, ‘was remarkably self-contained’34 and completely new: ‘the most important pictural revolution since the Renaissance’. 35 Its birthplace was the Bateau-Lavoir, which in the first decade of the twentieth century played host to most of the major figures of the Parisian avant-garde. It was in his studio in the Bateau-Lavoir that Picasso, in 1907, showed Les Demoiselles d’Avignon to Derain and Braque, who, even though they had been working along similar lines, were nevertheless bewildered. 36 Picasso’s first visit to Paris dates from 1900. In spite of advice from his Spanish friends to rent a studio in the Rue Campagne-Première in Montparnasse, he chose to take up the offer of a friend from Els Quatre Gats in Barcelona, Isidro Nonell, who passed on his studio in the Rue Gabrielle in Montmartre. During this first visit, Picasso was strongly influenced by Lautrec, and painted scenes at Le Rat Mort and the Moulin Rouge. In a crucial encounter already noted, he also met Apollinaire in the Fox Bar of Austin’s Hotel on the Rue d’Amsterdam, 37 on the frontier of Montmartre and the grands boulevards. He quickly returned to Barcelona, however, and did not settle again in Paris, apart from short visits, until 1904, when he moved into the studio of the ceramicist Paco Durio in the Bateau-Lavoir. 38 This former piano factory had also belonged to locksmith François-Sébastien Maillard 39 and, as late as the turn of the century, still bore a sign reading ‘Sorieul, Cultivateur’, testifying to the persistence of agriculture on the Butte.40 A typical example of bohemian colonisation of industrial or artisanal buildings on the Butte, it presented one single storey on the Place Ravignan (now Place Emile-Goudeau), yet three stories on the other side, and inside was a labyrinth. Its name was changed from ‘La Maison du Trappeur’ 34 Ibid., p. 17. 35 Albert Gleizes, ‘Avant-propos’, in Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger, Du Cubisme (Paris: Eugène Figuière, 1912), p. 21. 36 Reported, in the case of Braque, in Fernande Olivier, Picasso et ses amis (Paris: Stock, 1933), p. 120. Quoted in Golding, Cubism, p. 19. 37 Roger Shattuck disputes the generally accepted version of the meeting between Picasso and Apollinaire in the Fox Bar, situating it instead in the Criterion, similarly on the Rue d’Amsterdam, brokered by Apollinaire’s secretary, ‘Baron’ Mollet. See Shattuck, The Banquet Years, p. 262. 38 See Crespelle, La Vie quotidienne, pp. 74, 112. 39 See Jeanine Warnod, ‘Le Théâtre d’une révolution artistique: le Bateau-Lavoir’, Connaissance de Paris et de la France, 23, Guide de Montmartre, 1974, p. 29. 40 See Labracherie, ‘Ecrivains de Montmartre’, p. 30.

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to ‘Bateau-Lavoir’ by either Max Jacob, who was struck by the washing drying there when he first moved in, or by André Salmon, who compared it to the laundry boats on the Seine.41 Throughout the pre-war period, it was home to some of the major figures of the Parisian avant-garde: Picasso himself, Van Dongen, Juan Gris, Modigliani, and the poets and critics Max Jacob, André Salmon and Pierre Reverdy.42 Mac Orlan also lived there briefly, as did the German painter Karl-Heinz Wiegels, whose suicide in 1908, transposed by Mac Orlan in Le Quai des brumes, led Picasso to move to 11 Boulevard de Clichy in September 1909.43 Picasso and Mac Orlan differed considerably in their memories of the building. While Jeanine Warnod notes that Picasso looked back to the period with some affection – ‘I was a painter then and not a curious beast’ – she recalls a conversation with Mac Orlan which was less sentimental: C’était la pire période de ma vie! J’ai toujours détesté cet endroit dont on a fait une légende. La vérité, un cauchemar pour tous ceux qui y mettaient les pieds! J’y ai connu la faim, le froid, l’humiliation et je vous jure que ça ne s’oublie pas. J’occupais alors au sous-sol l’atelier le plus misérable et le plus sombre et je dormais sur un tas de journaux … It was the worst period of my life! I’ve always hated that place which people made into a legend. The truth is that it was a nightmare for everyone who set foot in it! I knew hunger, cold, humiliation and I swear that you don’t forget that. At that time, I lived in the most miserable and darkest studio in the basement and I slept on a pile of newspapers …44

Picasso’s return to Paris was marked by the melancholy pictures of the Blue and Pink periods, based in part upon the clowns and circus figures of the Cirque Médrano, and influenced by the work of Steinlen.45 It is a measure of the prestige which Picasso had already achieved before the production of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon that it was he, and not the less well-known Braque who was credited with the foundation of 41 See Warnod, ‘Le Théâtre d’une révolution artistique’, p. 29. 42 Reverdy moved into the Bateau-Lavoir in 1912, replacing Max Jacob, who had moved to the Rue Gabrielle, but left the following year for 11 Rue Cortot, to an apartment beneath that occupied by Suzanne Valadon, André Utter and Utrillo (see Hubert Juin, ‘Reverdy 13 Rue Ravignan’, Magazine Littéraire, June 1982, pp. 30–1. 43 See Richardson, A Life of Picasso, pp. 86–7, 137. 44 Quoted in Jeanine Warnod, ‘Le Bateau-Lavoir’, Le Vieux Montmartre, 85, January 2016, p. 37. 45 See Crespelle, La Vie quotidienne, pp. 46–7.

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the movement. Yet, as John Golding reminds us, it was Braque, who lived close to Picasso in Montmartre, who produced the first Cubist paintings and, indeed, was the first to exhibit them in a public salon.46 Moreover, it was Louis Vauxcelles, the critic for Gil Blas who had also coined the term ‘Fauves’, who gave Cubism its name, by referring to Braque’s paintings at an exhibition in Kahnweiler’s gallery in 1908 as ‘cubes’, and using the term ‘bizarreries cubiques’ in a review of his paintings at the Salon des Indépendants the following year.47 Picasso and Braque, however, who had been introduced by Apollinaire in early 1907, continued to work together closely until Braque’s departure for the front in 1914. At the same time, the movement expanded, incorporating figures such as Derain, Léger, Juan Gris, Robert Delaunay, Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Le Fauconnier, Archipenko and the DuchampVillon brothers. Like Fauvism, Cubism was by no means the exclusive preserve of Montmartre, even though it was dominated by Braque and the inhabitants of the Bateau-Lavoir: Le Fauconnier lived on the Left Bank on the Rue Visconti; Gleizes had his studio out in Courbevoie; and the Duchamp-Villon brothers lived nearby in Puteaux. Cubism also differed from Fauvism in that it was highly theorised. Not only was it very conscious of its origins in Courbet’s realism and its successors, Impressionism and Cézanne,48 it also specifically invoked the artists of the Renaissance, in particular Leonardo da Vinci, in its defence: We know clearly, said Leonardo, that sight, through rapid operations, discovers in one point an infinity of forms; nevertheless, it only understands one thing at a time. Let us take the case of you, the reader: in one glance you can see this entire printed page and will know immediately that it is full of various letters, but you will not simultaneously know what those letters are nor what they mean. You will have to go from word to word and line by line if you want to have knowledge of these letters; just as, in order to reach the summit of a building, you have to climb step by step. If you do not, you will not reach the summit.49

46 See Golding, Cubism, p. 20. 47 Louis Vauxcelles, Gil Blas, 14 November 1908 and 25 May 1909, quoted in Golding, Cubism, p. 20. Matisse, on the jury of the Salon d’Automne of 1908, is also alleged to have described Braque’s paintings as being made up of ‘petits cubes’ (Golding, Cubism, p. 21). 48 See, Gleizes and Metzinger, Du Cubisme, p. 39. 49 Quoted in ibid., pp. 66–7.

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Similarly, Metzinger admiringly cites Apollinaire’s familiarity with German Gestalt theory, 50 while a major influence on Cubism derived from mathematics: ‘all the Duchamp brothers were at this time passionately interested in mathematics’, 51 and the mathematician Maurice Princet, who worked for an insurance company and was to become a stalwart of the Restaurant Manière in the interwar years, was an important guide. In particular, they sought to apply the principles of non-Euclidian geometry. As Gleizes and Metzinger prescribe: ‘If you wanted to connect the use of space by painters to a geometrical system, you would have to refer to non-Euclidean mathematicians, and read certain theorems by Riemann’. 52 It was for this reason that the most important Cubist exhibition, held in October 1912 at the Galérie de la Boétie, was entitled ‘La Section d’Or’, a reflection of the movement’s mathematical credentials. This high level of theorisation undoubtedly led to an extremely cerebral form of art: as Apollinaire wrote in 1912, ‘Picasso studies an object in the same way that a surgeon dissects a corpse’. 53 This led to the essentially flat tones of paintings by Braque and Picasso, from which Delaunay diverged by introducing high colour: an approach immediately baptised ‘Orphism’ by the enthusiastic Apollinaire. At the same time, as the mask-like features of three of the Les Demoiselles d’Avignon indicate, the Cubists continued the Fauves’ interest in art nègre, an interest, incidentally, which coincided with the growing vogue for black American music hall performances, like the review Joyeux nègres at the Folies Bergère. 54 Not only did this interest in ‘primitive’ art encompass contemporary popular culture, it also included Iberian, African and Pacific sculpture and the work of the former customs official on the Mur des Fermiers Généraux, Henri ‘Douanier’ Rousseau, a guest of honour at a banquet in Picasso’s studio on the Bateau-Lavoir in 1908 and the subject of a number of articles by Apollinaire. These articles, which contain a certain amount of affectionate and good-humoured mockery, 50 Jean Metzinger, Le Cubisme était né (Chambéry: Editions Présence, 1972), p. 42. 51 Golding, Cubism, p. 31. 52 Gleizes and Metzinger, Du Cubisme, p. 49. 53 Guillaume Apollinaire, ‘Sur la peinture’, reprinted in Pierre Caizergues and Michel Décaudin, eds, Apollinaire. Œuvres en prose complètes (Paris: Gallimard, coll. ‘La Pléiade’, 1991), p. 10. 54 See Whiting, Satie the Bohemian, pp. 23–9.

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also express a genuine admiration for Rousseau’s work. Commenting on the douanier’s faults, he adds: what qualities he has! And it is highly significant that the young generation of artists have spotted them! The Douanier went to the very limits of his pictures, which is something very rare today. There is no mannerism in his work, no technique, no system. Hence the variety of his work. He no more distrusted his imagination than he did his hand. Hence the gracefulness and richness of his decorative compositions. 55

A similar homage to Rousseau, who lived on the other side of Paris from Montmartre, in Plaisance, and who had been a close friend of Alfred Jarry, is to be found in Delaunay’s La Ville de Paris, which reproduces the prow of the boat in Rousseau’s Moi-même: portraitpaysage (1890). What is remarkable about the Parisian, and especially Montmartrois, avant-garde of the pre-war period is the close association between painters, sculptors and writers, particularly poets. 56 Figures such as Apollinaire, in his review Soirées de Paris, André Salmon in Montjoie! and, later, Pierre Albert-Birot in the Left Bank Sic and Pierre Reverdy in Nord-Sud, acted as impresarios and publicists for the avant-garde, whose principles they illustrated through their own work. 57 As Gleize and Metzinger’s quotation from Leonardo da Vinci reminds us, and as Serge Fauchereau admirably demonstrates, 58 one of the best introductions to the practice of Cubism and Simultaneism is through the work of the Cubist poets, in which ‘concision and the visual aspect [were] essential

55 Apollinaire, Œuvres en prose complètes, p. 638. 56 I am grateful to the Royal Academy of Arts for permission to include this material from my contribution to the catalogue of the Paris, Capital of the Arts 1900–1968 exhibition. 57 It is interesting that the avant-garde poets Apollinaire, Reverdy and Max Jacob all converted to Catholicism, a creed which, possibly in the wake of the modernising Pope Leo XIII, they considered by no means incompatible with the avant-garde, and, indeed, the epitome of it. It is also worth bearing in mind that, according to Braque and the dealer Kahnweiler, Apollinaire and Salmon were ‘completely lacking in artistic discernment’, making up for their lack of knowledge with enthusiasm and privileging innovation above all. It was this, for Crespelle, which made them blind, for example, to the importance of Utrillo (See Crespelle, La Vie quotidienne, p. 90). 58 See Serge Fauchereau, La Révolution cubiste (Paris: Denoël, 1982), ch. 11, ‘De la poésie plastique’.

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concerns’. 59 Apollinaire, in Alcools, dispenses with punctuation and, in ‘Zone’ provides a Simultaneist evocation of modern Paris, with its mass cultural artefacts and even allusions to art nègre. The later collection Calligrammes, originally entitled Moi aussi je suis peintre, exploits modern typographical possibilities to move from the lyricism of Alcools to ‘plastic poetry’, which regresses towards the state described by Leonardo in which the individual letters must be constantly reinterpreted to provide both syntactical meaning and a plastic image. Reverdy, in his Poèmes en prose(1915), or his novel Le Voleur de Talan, worked on similar lines, as did Max Jacob in Le Cornet à dès (1917). Not only do these prose poems, through their concision and juxtaposition, reflect the attempts of the avant-garde painters to capture simultaneous action and various perspectives on one surface, they use typography in order to both create the poem as a visual image in its own right and to destroy any primacy of point of view. Reverdy placed on the page a number of blocks of print which may be read in any order, 60 while Albert-Birot, on the Left Bank, experimented with the typography of modern advertising to produce his ‘Poèmes-affiche’.61 Unsurprisingly, this close relationship between poets, publicists and artists led to collaboration, notably through illustrations in journals, like Nord-Sud or Sic, or collections of poetry, of which possibly the most significant example was Cendrars’s ‘simultaneist’ La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France (1913) – ‘a poem over six feet in length, which was printed in letters of different colours and sizes on an abstract coloured background designed by Sonia Delaunay’.62 If Cubism constituted a movement which was remarkably coherent both in its theory and practice and in its membership, it shared similar concerns with other avant-garde movements or individuals operating in Montmartre: Modigliani and his bande from the Rue du Delta, which rivalled the ‘Bande à Picasso’; Gino Severini, who had lived on the Butte since 1906 and who became one of the founders of Futurism in 1909; and Jules Pascin, who arrived on the Orient Express from Munich on Christmas Day 1905 and lived in the Hôtel Beauséjour at the bottom of the Rue Lepic and then in the Impasse Giradon.63 What is noteworthy 59 Ibid., p. 173. 60 See ibid., p. 173. 61 See ibid., p. 181. 62 Golding, Cubism, p. 37. 63 See Buisson and Parisot, Paris-Montmartre, pp. 158–72.

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is the intensely international nature of this avant-garde, painters from all over Europe and beyond, who constituted the ‘Ecole de Paris’:64 a cosmopolitanism which was about to run foul of a deeply ingrained Montmartre conservatism and xenophobia. The same was true of attitudes towards the modern. The avant-garde artists and writers in the 1900s were acutely conscious of living in a new century and celebrated all aspects of the modern world with considerable enthusiasm. The changing skyline of Paris, for example, resisted and derided by traditionalists and aesthetes, was warmly welcomed by the Cubists and other avant-garde groups. The Eiffel Tower, that much-derided survivor of the 1889 Exhibition, made frequent appearances in their work, as in Delaunay’s La Tour Eiffel, La Ville de Paris and L’Equipe de Cardiff, while Braque’s Paysage de Montmartre (1910), features the still unfinished, and widely despised, Sacré-Cœur – a reminder that Montmartre’s love affair with kitsch was not restricted to the popular domain. The avant-garde also enthusiastically embraced new technology, in particular its relationship to speed. The Futurists celebrated the train and, especially, the motor car and aeroplane, a theme also adopted by the Cubists: an aeroplane, for example, flies over other symbols of modernity, the Eiffel Tower, the advertising hoarding and the rugby players in L’Equipe de Cardiff. Similarly, Apollinaire celebrates the modernity of the aircraft in his poem ‘Zone’: Tu en as assez de vivre dans l’antiquité grecque et romaine Ici même les automobiles ont l’air d’être anciennes La religion seule est restée toute neuve la religion Est restée simple come les hangars de Port-Aviation C’est le Christ qui monte au ciel mieux que les aviateurs Il détient le record du monde pour la hauteur.

You have had enough of living in the ancient world of Greece and Rome Here even the automobiles look old Only religion has remained quite new religion Has remained simple like the hangars at Port-Aviation

64 See Gladys Fabre, ‘Qu’est-ce que l’Ecole de Paris?’, in L’Ecole de Paris 1904–1929. La Part de l’autre (Paris: Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 2000), pp. 25–40.

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It is Christ who has soared into the sky better than the aviators He holds the world altitude record65

Significantly, Picasso, fully conscious of his and Braque’s pioneering role as inventors of a new art, frequently wrote to his colleague as ‘Vilbure’ – a homage to the Wright Brothers,66 but also an assertion of the painter as artisan and engineer, a feature central to the use of the raw materials of the artisan in their collages.67 The fascination with invention among the chansonniers of the Belle Epoque thus developed into serious avant-garde art a generation later. At the same time, while continuing a nineteenth-century fascination with forms of popular entertainment such as the circus and the music hall, the twentieth-century avant-garde embraced those new forms of mass culture, the cinema and sport. Not only did Apollinaire, Salmon, Reverdy and Cendrars experiment with film, 68 but it is possible to see a painting such as Gino Severini’s Suburban Train Arriving in Paris (1915) as not merely an expression of dynamism and ‘Simultaneism’, but also as an allusion to the first Lumière Brothers film, A Train Entering the Station of La Ciotat. Similarly, Delaunay’s L’Equipe de Cardiff celebrates the phenomenon of popular, and international, spectator sport, among other icons of modernity. Yet the players in Delaunay’s painting are less the product of eyewitness observation than the reflection of a poster for a match, or a newspaper photograph, and they remind us that, not only was the avant-garde more interested in the artefacts of modern mass culture than in its activities per se, but that these artefacts had themselves become part of the twentieth-century cityscape. As Kirk Varnedde and Adam Gopnik comment, in their evocation of a turn-of-the-century artist returning from the Louvre to his studio: Beside, beneath and behind him in that stroll, in the apparently trivial and marginal things taken for granted along his path – in the cheap reproductions he brushed past on his way out of the museum, in the brightly colored commercial posters along the boulevard and in the 65 Guillaume Apollinaire, Alcools (Paris: Gallimard, coll. ‘Poésie’, 1966), pp. 7, 9. 66 See Douglas Cooper, The Cubist Epoch (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 39. 67 In this appeal to the role of inventor, they join the Bohemians of the Chat Noir, like Cros. 68 See Fauchereau, La Révolution cubiste, pp. 109–13.

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shop windows of the department stores, in the newspapers and cartoon journals of the morning, stacked up in kiosks along the quay, and even in the mean scrawlings on the walls of the darkened side streets – was an alphabet for art’s new language. There, in germ, lay another telling power of the coming age – modern urban culture, a phenomenon as vulgar and polyglot in its energies as the modern artist seemed cloistered and exclusive in his meditations.69

This invitation to a new language took the form of incorporating allusions to posters and hoardings (as in Delaunay’s L’Equipe de Cardiff ), métro tickets, wine bottle labels and newspapers in avant-garde painting, and, again in ‘Zone’, Apollinaire approvingly saw newspapers and advertising as the new culture. In Cubist painting, Braque and Picasso rapidly moved from the use of newspapers as ‘accessories’,70 to the incorporation, in the summer of 1912, during a spell in Avignon, of decorators’ materials, such as faux-bois wallpaper, and pieces clipped from newspapers. Juan Gris, meanwhile, was working independently towards the same conclusion, so that, by the time Braque departed for the war in 1914, all three artists had produced a large number of papiers collés ‘that seemingly rerouted the printed ephemera of the café table and the city streets into the studio and onto the easel’.71 This incorporation of the ephemera of mass culture into the visual arts was reflected in literature, with the massive popularity among the avant-gardists of science fiction and crime writing, like the Fantômas series, which perhaps served as an engaging metaphor of the subversive operating deep within bourgeois Parisian society, and in music, where composers like Satie borrowed the rhythms and harmonies of popular music. Similarly, as Varnedde and Gopnik demonstrate, advertising and window displays, which effectively isolated familiar objects in unfamiliar circumstances, fed into the later experiments of Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia and Dada, as well as looking back to the humourists of the 1890s. Within this general enthusiasm among the avant-garde for the activities and artefacts of modern urban culture, Montmartre, as one of the privileged centres of that culture, played a vital role. At the same time, however, the Butte was also the home of a bohemia which did not look at all kindly either upon the encroachment of the modern city or upon those artists 69 Kirk Varnedoe and Adam Gopnik, High and Low: Modern Art and Popular Culture (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1991), p. 15. 70 Ibid., p. 23. 71 Ibid., p. 23.

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who celebrated it. The two groups came together in an uneasy truce in the most famous meeting place on the Butte, the Lapin Agile on the Rue des Saules. Le Lapin Agile As Jean-Paul Crespelle comments of the Lapin Agile, ‘from 1905 to around 1910, this squalid bar was a real magnet for the artists of the Butte, a sort of bohemian maison de la culture’.72 Like so much of the history of Montmartre, including the myth of Mimi Pinson, the story of the Lapin Agile is extremely difficult to disentangle, many commentators identifying the caricaturist André Gill as one of its owners. It seems more likely, however, that Gill came across the establishment when it was a humble tavern owned by a former clerk in the Mairie of the ninth arrondissement, Louis Salze, and named A ma Campagne in honour of his wife, who was an excellent cook. André Gill, who frequented the Montmartre cabarets, discovered the tavern and particularly appreciated Mme Salze’s lapin au gibelotte, and produced an inn sign for her: a rabbit clad in a green frock coat, with the red sash of the Commune around his waist, leaping with agility from a copper saucepan – the perfect image for a radical cartoonist under the Second Empire, a member of the Communard Commission Fédérale des Artistes in 1871,73 who had somehow managed to leap ‘out of the frying pan …’ and which gave rise to typical Montmartre word play. The ‘Lapin A. Gill’ became the ‘Là peint A. Gill’, before becoming the most apposite: the ‘Lapin agile’, the agile rabbit of the sign. It is indeed probable that Gill performed songs and recitations there in the manner adopted by Bruant, but it is unlikely, as some commentators allege, that he was ever the owner. Always a man of the Left Bank, he retained his studio on the Rue d’Enfer, near the present-day Place Denfert-Rochereau. Subsequently, A ma Campagne was taken over by the wife of Jules Jouy, Adèle, and renamed Le Cabaret des Assassins, after the décor which featured lurid pictures of nineteenth-century murderers like Tropmann, Papavoine and Lacenaire.74 Until his death in 1895, Gill, like other members of the group from Le Chat Noir, participated in the 72 Crespelle, La Vie quotidienne, p. 150. 73 See Fontaine, Un Maître de la caricature, pp. 90, 122. 74 See Labracherie, ‘Ecrivains de Montmartre’, p. 31.

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supper club organised by Jouy called La Soupe et le Bœuf, which met in this establishment,75 now known as the Lapin Agile or its variants, and which played host to Courteline, Caran d’Ache, Verlaine, Paul Arsène, Renoir, Forain and Alphonse Allais.76 Under Adèle and Jules Jouy, the tavern became a cabaret, along the lines of the famous establishments in Lower Montmartre in the 1880s and 1890s, and continued until 1903, when Adèle moved to her restaurant, Le Chalet, on the Rue Norvins. At this point, Bruant, who lived nearby, bought Le Lapin Agile and handed over the management to Frédéric Gérard, bequeathing it to him on his death in 1925. ‘Frédé’, with his donkey Lolo, or Aliboron, had been an itinerant fishmonger, ‘disguised as a Breton fisherman’.77 Before Bruant put him in charge of the Lapin Agile, he had been the owner of the sinister little bar Le Zut on the Place Jean-Baptiste Clément, which played host to an odd mixture of artists, locals and anarchists from Zo d’Axa’s headquarters of Le Libertaire on the Rue d’Orsel before it was closed down by the Prefecture as an ‘anarchists’ hideout’.78 Once in charge, Frédé altered the décor, bringing in a huge plaster Christ by the sculptor Wasley and encouraging clients to donate paintings: notably one by Suzanne Valadon, three by Utrillo, work by Girieud and Poulbot, and, most important, Picasso’s self-portrait Au Lapin Agile (Arlequin au verre) (1905).79 It was also Frédé’s idea to revive the bohemian entertainment which had dominated in the cabarets in the 1880s and in the early years of the Cabaret des Assassins, in which young poets and singers would perform their own work: the young Francis Carco made his début performing songs by Félix Mayol, and ‘the absurd stories and pre-dadaist songs of Jules Depaquit were equally successful’.80 After the war, Depaquit went on to become a bastion of ‘old Montmartre’, as we shall see, as founder and first mayor of the Commune Libre. Though René Fauchois organised a serious forum for young poets, the ‘studium’, 81 none of the major names like Apollinaire, Salmon, Max Jacob, or Reverdy, performed their work there.82 75 See Herbert, La Chanson à Montmartre, p. 88. 76 See Clément, ‘Le Quartier pas à pas’, p. 56. 77 Crespelle, La Vie quotidienne, p. 155. 78 See ibid., pp. 155, 157. 79 See ibid., p. 161. 80 Ibid., pp. 151–2. 81 See Labracherie, ‘Ecrivains de Montmartre’, p. 31. 82 See Crespelle, La Vie quotidienne, p. 150.

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In its clientele, the Lapin Agile was a microcosm of Montmartre as a whole in the years before the First World War. Picasso liked it because it reminded him of Els Quatre Gats83 and, in addition to his self-portrait as Arlequin, in which Frédé may be glimpsed in the background, he also painted Frédé’s daughter Margot, who later married Mac Orlan, as La Femme à la corneille.84 He brought with him the rest of his bande, notably Max Jacob, who composed a short poem for the Lapin’s commonplace book. This book, known as the livre de bord or ‘ship’s log’, fostered the notion of the Lapin Agile as a vessel on the stormy seas of Montmartre, a conceit picked up by Jacob in his poem: A bord! Piano! A bord Livre de bord Paris, la mer qui passe apporte Ce soir au coin de ta porte O tavernier du Quai des Brumes Sa gerbe d’écume … All aboard! Piano! All aboard! Ships log Paris, the sea which passes brings This evening to the corner of your door O tavern-keeper of the quayside of mists Its wreath of foam …85

The poem is interesting, not only because it provides the title for Mac Orlan’s novel of 1927 and Marcel Carné’s film, transposed to Le Havre, but also for the way in which it perpetuates the idea of Montmartre as a port, embodied in ‘Baron’ Pigeard’s Union Maritime, and singled out for comment by Francis Carco, in his memoire of Utrillo: N’avions-nous pas tous, à Montmartre, la sensation de vivre à bord de quelque bâtiment? Il roulait sur une mer difficile, tanguait, se soulevait et, tandis que certains d’entre nous regardaient du gaillard d’avant les lourds brouillards derrière lesquels se cachait leur destin, Utrillo, seul, à fond de cale, mâtait, gréait son œuvre, attendait le vent. Did we not all have the sensation of living on some ship in Montmartre? It rolled on a difficult sea, pitched and rose up again and, while some of 83 See ibid., p. 163. 84 See ibid., p. 163. 85 Quoted in Labracherie, ‘Ecrivains de Montmartre’, p. 32.

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us looked from the fo’castle at the heavy fog hiding our destiny, Utrillo alone, in the deepest hold, put up the mast and rigged his work while waiting for the wind.86

The image points both to parallels between Montmartre and the quartiers réservés of the great sea ports, with their crime, drinking and prostitution, and to a certain cultivated imprecision in Montmartre culture which contrasts with the intellectualism of the Left Bank: the two great evocations of pre-war Montmartre bohemia in the fiction of the interwar years – Mac Orlan’s Le Quai des brumes and Dorgelès’s Le Château des Brouillards – both use the same image. The bande à Picasso, sometimes accompanied, as we have seen, by would-be actor and theatre director Charles Dullin, coexisted in the Lapin Agile with more traditional Montmartre artists like the caricaturist Francisque Poulbot, creator of the eponymous Montmartre street urchins; the self-styled ‘imagier de la reine’, Georges Delaw;87 Zo d’Axa’s anarchists and the counterfeiters from the Château des Brouillards. The artistic company also numbered the future novelists of the ‘Ecole de Montmartre’,88 Pierre Mac Orlan, Roland Dorgelès and Francis Carco, who remained within the realist tradition, even though Carco had been a co-founder of the Ecole Fantaisiste and Mac Orlan, inspired by German Expressionism, developed his own concept of le fantastique social. During the week the clientele was local; at weekends the Lapin Agile, like the cabarets before it, was invaded by bourgeois visitors from Paris who came up to the Butte to ‘rub shoulders with the artists’.89 Like the cabarets of the 1880s and 1890s, Le Lapin Agile rapidly fell victim to this influx, many of the early stalwarts decamping to other, less popular cafés and bars. A more pressing danger, however, was the incursion of criminals from the neighbouring districts of La Goutte d’Or, La Chapelle and Le Château Rouge, who threatened to do the same damage to the Lapin Agile as a previous generation had inflicted on Le Chat Noir, and probably for the same reasons – territorial disputes, particularly concerning prostitution.90 Frédé fought gamely against these criminal 86 Carco, La Vie et la légende d’Utrillo, pp. 47–8. 87 See Robert Rey, ‘Quelques dessinateurs et humoristes montmartrois’, Le Crapouillot, 45, 1959, p. 55. 88 See Armand Lanoux, ‘Trois personnages en quête d’une bohème’, Magazine Littéraire, 185, June 1982, p. 16. 89 Crespelle, La Vie quotidienne, pp. 161–2. 90 See Seigel, Bohemian Paris, pp. 344–5.

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interlopers, leading on one occasion to a full-blown siege, transposed in Le Quai des brumes, which trapped Léon-Paul Fargue and the Spanish painter Manolo inside the tavern.91 The danger was very real: in 1911, Frédé’s stepson Victor was murdered behind the bar. Like the cabarets of the 1880s, Le Lapin Agile built up a solid reputation as a centre of Parisian bohemia, both internationally and in the French provinces. Francis Carco, for example, turned up at the tavern in 1910 clutching a voucher for a free drink which he had found as part of a subscription offer in a provincial newspaper. One unusual example of this connection with the provinces was the founding by Julien Callé of the Auberge de l’Œuf Dur et du Commerce in the village of Saint-Cyrsur-Morin, south-east of Paris in the region of Meaux. Callé, like many Montmartre bohemians, worked as a civil servant, specifically as a clerk in the law courts, but was also a talented humourist and writer. He rapidly established this traditional country inn, discovered initially by Georges Delaw, as a weekend and holiday venue for his fellow bohemians, which had considerable success until the First World War, after which it became, in the words of Jean-Paul Crespelle, merely an annex of ‘the permanent folkloric feast of Montmartre’ 92 – though this did not prevent Mac Orlan from buying a cottage in the village. The antagonisms in Le Lapin Agile were not confined to clashes between bohemians and tourists or bohemians and criminals, they were at the centre of bohemian life itself, specifically between the avant-garde and the traditionalists. This particular conflict became public in 1910, when Dorgelès, the most traditional of the future novelists of the Ecole de Montmartre and who cordially detested Picasso, unlike Mac Orlan and Carco, perpetrated the ‘Boronali’ hoax: Dorgelès disliked abstract painting, believing that once artists stopped trying to reproduce the objective world in some recognizable form, no way to judge art was left. For him, the content of Cubist and Futurist work was identical to the surface gestures that created their styles and manifestos. To reproduce the appearance was to produce the object.93

In an inspired piece of fumisterie, Dorgelès, aided by art critic André Warnod and witnessed by a lawyer, tied a paintbrush to the tail of Frédé’s donkey Aliboron. The resulting non-representational picture was then 91 See Labracherie, ‘Ecrivains de Montmartre’, pp. 31–2. 92 Crespelle, La Vie quotidienne, p. 147. 93 Seigel, Bohemian Paris, p. 347.

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named Coucher de soleil sur l’Adriatique, the work of an invented Italian painter, ‘Boronali’ (an anagram of Aliboron), a member of a dissident Futurist school called ‘Excessivisme’. The painting was exhibited in the 1910 Salon des Indépendants, where ‘it received commentary not unlike that of other modernist works and was sold for a good price’.94 The significance of the hoax, however, lies not merely in the continuation of a Montmartre tradition of fumisme, but in the fact that the practical joke was now turned resolutely against Modernism, in the name of tradition, and against the foreign, in the name of nationalism. In this respect, Montmartre culture was already at a turning point which was to determine its future activity throughout the First World War and beyond, and which built upon a solid base of xenophobia, particularly anti-Semitism, prevalent from the cabarets onwards. The Ecole de Paris, with its substantial personnel of non-French artists, was not universally popular with the Ecole de Montmartre. This tension in Montmartre culture on the eve of the First World War is no better illustrated than by what appear to be two diametrically opposed phenomena: the continuing role of the Butte as a centre of anarchist activity and the construction on its skyline of one of the two great visual icons of the Third Republic, the Sacré-Cœur. Anarchism and the Sacré Cœur The final volume of Zola’s Les trois villes, Paris, deals with anarchist activity in the capital, culminating in a plot to blow up the Sacré-Cœur, and, as such, encapsulates the duality of Montmartre as a whole at the end of the Belle Epoque. On the one hand, it was a centre of both aesthetic and political contestation, the seat of the artistic avant-garde and a hotbed of anarchist activity. At the same time, however, the growing dominance of the Parisian skyline by the basilica of the Sacré-Cœur heralded an intellectual and artistic fixity which was to prove c­haracteristic of Montmartre in the years after the First World War. Interestingly, apart from the anarchist group La Panthère des Batignolles, active in 1887, Montmartre did not figure prominently in the ‘terrorist epidemic which developed in France’95 in the 1890s, which 94 Ibid., p. 346. 95 Jean Maitron, Le Mouvement anarchiste en France, I: Des origines à 1914 (Paris: Maspéro, 1975) p. 212.

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saw the execution of Ravachol in 1892 and the bomb attack by Vaillant on the Chambre des Députés in 1893, and culminated in the assassination of President Sadi Carnot by the Italian anarchist Caserio. In the following decade, however, the Butte became a major centre of anarchist activity, probably for the same reasons it attracted young artists: cheap accommodation, including the unregulated area of the Maquis, and a marginal society which contained a criminal element. The Rue d’Orsel was the base for one of the most important anarchist journals, Sébastien Faure’s Le Libertaire, which recruited, among others, the pamphleteer and chansonnier Zo d’Axa,96 and Richard Sonn records that ‘with the important exception of La Révolte, every major anarchist journal was edited and published in Montmartre’, and ‘political journalism of a leftist or antiparliamentarian nature peaked in Montmartre between 1889 with the appearance of Pouget’s Le Père Peinard and 1895’.97 During this ‘golden age of Montmartre as a cultural focal point’, the period 1885–95 ‘saw the birth on average of seven newspapers per year for this one Parisian neighbourhood’.98 Nor did this burgeoning anarchist activity neglect to attempt to forge alliances with the artistic avant-garde: the group La Sentinelle de Montmartre was ‘eager to enlist the support of the many artists living on the Butte’, going so far as to set up a meeting addressing the relationship between art and politics in the Brasserie Franco-Russe on the Boulevard Rochechouart.99 This outreach to the Montmartre artists tended to diminish after 1895, so ‘anarchism left the cafés of bohemia for the workplace’.100 Among the visitors to Le Libertaire was the legendary figure of the tramp ‘Libertad’, whose doctrine, as Louis Chevalier comments, ‘illustrates well the connection between Montmartre and anarchism’.101 ‘Libertad’, also known as ‘Albert’, was born in Bordeaux on 24 November 1875, to unknown parents. He came to Paris in August 1897 and in 1902 founded a series of anarchist lectures and debates, called the Causeries Populaires, held on the Rue Chevalier-de-la-Barre.102 Three years later, on 13 April 1905, he brought out the first issue of his own journal, L’Anarchie, the 96 See Crespelle, La Vie quotidienne, p. 22. 97 Sonn, Anarchism and Cultural Politics in Fin-de-Siècle France, p. 78. 98 Ibid., p. 79. 99 See ibid., p. 79. 100 Ibid., p. 79. 101 Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime, p. 300. 102 See Maitron, Le Mouvement anarchiste, p. 421.

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organ of ‘anarchist individualism’, produced by a team which included A. Lorulot, Juin (the alias of E. Armand), Mauricius, the scientist Paraf-Javal, Armandine, his mistress Anna Mahé and, most notably, Victor Serge, known then as ‘Kibaltchine’.103 Severely disabled, Libertad was a violent figure who once attacked a priest giving a sermon in the Sacré-Cœur.104 He died in the Hôpital Lariboisière in 1908 after being dragged down one of Montmartre’s iconic flights of steps by the police.105 The ‘anarchist individualism’ which Libertad preached denied the necessity of waiting for the revolution before becoming free men and recommended instead the assertion of freedom through acts of expropriation. As such, it was roundly condemned by the revolutionary syndicalists of Jean Grave’s Les Temps nouveaux.106 It was this doctrine of illegal activity which led to the last, and most dramatic, phase of Montmartre anarchism in the Belle Epoque: the bandits tragiques, also known as the ‘bande à Bonnot’. As Jean Maitron recounts, ‘one evening in December 1911, in a small apartment in Montmartre, there was a meeting of a number of proponents of illegal activity, including Callemin, Garnier, Carouy’, together with Bonnot.107 Although Bonnot himself was from Lyon and not known among the Parisian anarchist circles, the group as a whole was closely associated with Montmartre and, indeed, it was in Montmartre that their first crime was committed: an attack on a messenger for the Société Générale bank in the Rue Ordener on 21 December 1921, followed by an escape by car. Similarly, it was upon Montmartre that police suspicions automatically fell. As Victor Méric observes: ‘it was noticed that those arrested, or merely suspected, lived for the most part in Montmartre and frequented shady figures in this district so beloved by artists’.108 One other manifestation of ‘anarchist individualism’ was forgery. As Méric comments: ‘the art of counterfeiting was very much in fashion and practised with enthusiasm’,109 and would provide the subject of novels by both Gide and Dorgelès, in addition to involving Félix Fénéon, 1 03 See ibid., p. 423. 104 See ibid., p. 421. 105 See Victor Méric, Les Milieux anarchistes. Les Bandes tragiques (Paris: Kra, 1926), p. 99. 106 See ibid., p. 435. 107 Maitron, Le Mouvement anarchiste, p. 425. 108 Méric, Les Milieux anarchistes, p. 21. 109 Ibid., p. 104.

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whose career demonstrated the very real links between anarchism and the artistic avant-garde. As we have seen, most of the Fauves went through an anarchist phase in the early years of the century. Vlaminck in particular, the most fervent Fauvist anarchist, recalls visiting the offices of Le Libertaire, where he met ‘Sébastien Faure, Malato, the tramp on crutches Libertad, Almereyda, Zo d’Axa, Laurent Tailhade, my friend Georges Pioch and other figures of lesser importance’.110 Similarly, as we have seen, the Montmartre Cubists frequented both the Restaurant Azon on the Place Ravignan, and Frédé’s Le Zut, which also had an anarchist clientele, as did the Lapin Agile. And while Serge Fauchereau refers to the Left Bank figure Mécislas Golberg as one of the theoreticians of Cubism,111 he does not mention the fact that Golberg was also the founder of the anarchist journal Sur le trimard and, incidentally, the father of an anarchist executed for a brutal robbery on the Marseille express.112 In the years immediately preceding the First World War, Montmartre played host to a political movement which seriously challenged the political assumptions and aspirations of the Third Republic, just as the avant-garde assaulted its aesthetic orthodoxy. If the chansonniers and the humourists of the 1890s were perfectly in tune with the Republic, and, indeed, copiously rewarded by it, the Montmartre avant-garde and anarchists created a powerful countercurrent. Some caution is advisable, however, and while James Joll reminds us that what attracted artists and intellectuals to anarchism in France in the 1880s and 1890s was that ‘they hated pompous hypocrisy; they were reacting against imperialist wars (the French were fighting in Indochina in the 1880s); they had a genuine sympathy for the victims of the capitalist system in a time of economic recession’.113 Even though Neo-Impressionists like Pissaro, Signac and Maximilien Luce were sympathetic to anarchism, it would be inaccurate to assume that ‘any art that challenged existing aesthetics and social conventions’, such as Lautrec’s espousal of Japonisme, were specifically anarchist, rather than generally anti-Establishment.114 Similarly, while there are undoubted connections between Symbolism 110 Maurice Vlaminck, Tournant dangereux. Souvenirs de ma vie (Paris: Stock, 1929), p. 74. He confesses, however, that ‘I was too anarchist by temperament to accept the conventional discipline of the libertarian phalanstary’. 111 See Fauchereau, La Révolution cubiste, p. 76. 112 See Dorgelès, Au Beau temps de la Butte, pp. 90–2. 113 James Joll, ‘Art and Anarchy’, New York Review of Books, 23 November 1989. 114 Ibid.

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and anarchism, both on a personal and theoretical level, not all Symbolist art could be construed as politically loaded.115 At the same time, after 1914 the libertarian tradition in Montmartre was susceptible to mutation, retaining its anti-republican credentials, but combining them with the nationalism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism of chansonniers like Bruant. Some manifestations of libertarianism in the interwar years, in the form of a virulent non-conformism, were to assume markedly right-wing characteristics. More than anything else, it was the Sacré-Cœur which both symbolised the enemy and physically defined Montmartre as a lieu de mémoire. As Maurice Agulhon comments, it joined an élite group of iconic buildings which crystallised the city in collective memory, often through extreme trivialisation and commercialism: the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe (and Notre-Dame) … all but monopolise the market for trinkets, for great monuments reduced to the size of paperweights. This quartet is noteworthy for the way in which it combines the attractions of the unusual (the Eiffel Tower, obviously, but also the Sacré-Cœur, owing to its height, its whiteness and its distinctive style) with reassuring values of religion and patriotism.116

In fact, in its conception the Sacré-Cœur predates the Eiffel Tower, which was built for the 1889 Exhibition, though it took much longer to complete. There is a certain mythology regarding the decision to build the Sacré-Cœur which sees it as an act of expiation for the Commune. Although this aspect became important as the project advanced, the scheme was already germinating in 1870, and was bound up with the nineteenth-century cult of the Sacred Heart. The French defeat by Prussia in 1870 coincided with the loss of the Pope’s temporal power in Rome, making him a virtual prisoner in the Vatican; in the course of the same year the Jesuit Père de Boylesve’s pamphlet Le Triomphe de la France par le Sacré-Cœur de Jésus called for the building of a national ‘expiatory temple’117 – expiation, that is, for the humiliating military defeat. Three hundred and thirty-three thousand copies of this pamphlet 1 15 For an interesting discussion of Symbolism and anarchism, see Benjamin Williams, ‘Sexual Freedom and Anarchist Individualism in French Symbolism’s Ivory Tower’, French Cultural Studies, 26.1, 2015, pp. 17–31. 116 Maurice Agulhon, ‘Paris: A Transversal from East to West’, in Pierre Nora, ed., Realms of Memory, The Construction of the French Past, III: Symbols (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), p. 524. 117 Lesourd, Montmartre, p. 199.

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were distributed in 1870 alone, and the citizens of Lyon decided to reconstruct the basilica of Notre-Dame-de-Fourvière, suggesting that the Parisians make a similar gesture. Two separate petitions circulated in Paris, resulting in eventual agreement on the national commitment to the Sacred Heart of Jesus ‘to obtain the deliverance of the Supreme Pontiff and the salvation of France’.118 By the end of 1871 – in other words, after the Commune – the project had 200,000 subscribers. It remained to find a location for the new church. The original plan had been to convert Garnier’s still unfinished Opéra, but the Archbishop of Paris, Monsignor (later Cardinal) Guibert, wanted the Sacré-Cœur to dominate Paris. The Assemblée Nationale, which had approved and underwritten the project in 1871, proposed Chaillot and Belleville, but Guibert opted for Montmartre, because of its early Christian connotations and its more recent association with the Commune in which his predecessor, Archbishop Darboy, had been killed:119 ‘On the summit of the hill where Christianity was born – among us – in the blood of our first apostles, there must rise the monument to our religious regeneration’.120 At the very birth of the Third Republic, therefore, the Sacré-Cœur had become highly politicised: seen as a reactionary project, especially after the accession to power of Marshal MacMahon, it was vigorously opposed by the Radicals, some of whose leaders, like Clemenceau, had represented Montmartre. An architectural competition was held from 1 February to 30 June 1874 and attracted 78 entrants. In July the prize, and the commission, were awarded to Paul Abadie, who had worked with Viollet-Le-Duc and was responsible for the restorations of the Saint-Front Cathedral in Périgueux, Angoulême Cathedral and the Tour Saint-Martin in Bordeaux. The Byzantine influence in the Saint-Front Cathedral, an example of the vogue for Byzantine ecclesiastical architecture in France in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, was to be crucial in his design for the Sacré-Cœur.121 The foundation stone was laid by Cardinal Guibert on 16 July 1875 in a muted ceremony due to fierce 1 18 Ibid., p. 203. 119 See Pascal Payen-Appenzeller, ‘Le Lieu le plus visité de l’Ile-de-France: La Basilique du Sacré-Cœur’, Guide de Montmartre, Connaissance de Paris et de la France, 23, 1974, p. 20. 120 Quoted in Lesourd, Montmartre, p. 208. 121 See Banister Fletcher, A History of Architecture on the Comparative Method (London: University Press, 1961), p. 1080.

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anti-clerical opposition, but construction was slow, impeded by both practical and political factors. The Butte was a rabbit warren of caverns from which plaster of Paris had been quarried, and Abadie needed to sink massive columns of concrete in order to sustain the structure. Abadie had chosen a stone from Souppes, near Château-Landon, which was as tough as granite and hardened and whitened in contact with the air.122 With no use of wood or iron in the construction, and a work-force of only sixty-seven, the Sacré-Cœur progressed slowly and soon exceeded its budget. This coincided with a fall in subscriptions from 1877 onwards, due in part to the rising tide of anti-clericalism in the young Third Republic.123 Abadie was never to see his work completed: he died, exhausted, in 1884. Nevertheless, the building continued: on 19 November 1886, a mass could be celebrated in the Sacré-Cœur; on 5 June 1891, the interior, except for the unfinished dome, was inaugurated; on 17 October 1899, the cross on top of the dome was blessed; and the campanile, begun in 1905, was completed on 6 April 1912. The whole building was completed in July 1914, nearly forty years after the laying of the foundation stone, but the consecration planned for 17 October 1914 had to be postponed until the end of the First World War and did not happen until 16 October 1919.124 Nevertheless, by the mid-1880s, the Sacré-Cœur had come to dominate the Parisian skyline to the north, just as Montmartre had always done with its windmills and the Eglise Saint-Pierre, which, incidentally, the new basilica both overshadowed and momentarily threatened. As we have seen, progress on the Sacré-Cœur was slowed down by anti-clerical opposition. At the same time, the project was violently criticised on aesthetic grounds, opponents deploring its sheer size, its unnatural whiteness and its bizarre style: ‘a cream cake hovering over the grey roofs of Paris’.125 Nevertheless, it is perhaps what Agulhon diplomatically calls its ‘distinctive’ style which contributes so dramatically to the increasing kitsch element in Montmartre culture. Unsurprisingly, the Sacré-Cœur attracted most opposition from Montmartre inhabitants. The anarchists attacked it vehemently: Libertad, as already noted, assaulted a priest as he gave a sermon in the basilica, and another anarchist group began work on a Maison du peuple alongside it. The 122 123 124 125

Payen-Appenzeller, ‘Le Lieu le plus visité’, p. 20. See Lesourd, Montmartre, pp. 220–1. See ibid., pp. 226–7. Payen-Appenzeller, ‘Le Lieu le plus visité’, p. 20.

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chansonnier Jules Jouy composed ‘Chanson de Montmartre: Su’ la Butte’, which dismissed this new excrescence and ended with a thinly veiled warning: Depuis qu’ d’un temple on l’a chargé, Not’ vieux Montmartre est bien changé, Grâce aux travaux qu’on exécute Su’ la Butte. Autrefois des mains et des pieds, Fallait grimper sans escaliers. On s’embêtait pas un’ minute Su’ la Butte. Quoique l’ pays soy’ transformé, Du peuple il est toujours aimé. Je n’ crois pas qu’ personne me réfute Su’ la Butte. Je sais bien qu’ils ont planté d’ssus Leur s’rin d’ Sacré-Cœur de Jésus, Mais l’ populo n’est pas un’ brute Su’ la Butte. Et quand ils chant’ront dans leur chœur Les cantiques du Sacré-Cœur Tout l’ monde leur z-y-répondra flûte Su’ la Butte. A Montmartre, on est décidé; Chacun, dans son cœur, a gardé Le Souv’nir de la dernière lutte Su’ la Butte.

Since they have put a temple on top of it our old Montmartre is quite changed Thanks to the building which is being carried out On the Butte. Once, with our feet and our hands We had to climb up without stairways we were not bored for a minute On the Butte. Although the district has been transformed It is still loved by the people

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I do not think anyone will refute me On the Butte. I know that they have planted on top of it Their stupid Sacré-Cœur de Jésus But the people are not brutes On the Butte. And when they sing in their choir The canticles of the Sacré-Cœur Everyone will reply: ‘Rubbish’ On the Butte. In Montmartre, we are all decided Everyone, in his heart, has kept The Memory of the last struggle On the Butte.126

The origins of the Sacré-Cœur may have become entangled with reactionary anti-Communard politics, but the Communard spirit was still alive. Contestatory as it may have been, that Communard spirit was by no means unambiguous and presented affinities with the radical libertarian right. Opposition to the Sacré-Cœur after the war was more likely to take the form of cultural, and political, conservatism than a re-enactment of the Commune or, for that matter, Cubism. In fact, many of the members of the avant-garde were about to decamp, even before the war. After the briefest of stays in Montmartre, the restless Apollinaire moved out to Passy and then to Saint-Germaindes-Près. Following Wiegels’s suicide, Picasso moved to the Boulevard to Clichy and then across the river, like Van Dongen, to that other centre of artistic life, Montparnasse. Others would leave Paris altogether, like Max Jacob or Reverdy, both for religious institutions – the former in Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, the latter in Solème. Even the members of the future Ecole de Montmartre left as soon as they could: ‘Mac Orlan, married, left Montmartre; Roland Dorgelès was never seen there except between two taxis … Carco, committed to his work, had exchanged the Rue Caulaincourt for the Latin Quarter’.127 Montmartre was in a sense doubly the victim of its own success: on the one hand, its growing stature as a pleasure and tourist centre in the capital drove up prices while rendering the district less congenial for genuine artists and writers; on 126 Jules Jouy, Su’ la Butte. Chanson de Montmartre (Paris: Maillard, n.d.). 127 Labracherie, ‘Ecrivains de Montmartre’, p. 32.

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the other, once they achieved a little financial success, those very same artists and writers preferred to move to more comfortable quarters. The process was accelerated by the First World War, which conscripted numerous artists and writers, many of whom were never to return to Montmartre, and in whose wake came the mass tourism which was to change the atmosphere of the Butte definitively. At the same time, the nature of Parisian bohemianism itself had changed entirely by the end of the war, to the extent that it was largely extinct, at least in the terms by which it was recognisable from 1880 to 1914. As Paul Lesourd comments, the First World War sounded the ‘death knell for the “artists’ Mecca”’, in view of the ‘absolute impossibility of continuing to live a bohemian existence’.128 It is easy to exaggerate the artistic migration from Montmartre just before and during the war, but what was left in 1918 was undoubtedly very different from the previous population: a mixture of genuinely progressive artists and aging bohemians who remained dedicated to maintaining the sacred flame; those, like Carco and Dorgelès and, to a lesser extent, Mac Orlan, who, despite having left the Butte, nevertheless fondly cultivated the memory of pre-war bohemia; and a new generation of figures still attracted to the Butte. However, if the avant-garde, now departed for Montparnasse and the Côte d’Azur, showed few pangs of nostalgia for their earlier bohemian apprenticeship, those who remained faithful to Montmartre adopted an increasingly reactionary position, both aesthetically and politically. There is considerable irony in the title Reverdy adopted for his avant-garde review of 1917, Nord-Sud. Named after the new nord–sud métro line which linked Montmartre with Montparnasse, and initially conceived as a celebration of an avant-garde which spanned the two artistic centres of the city, as a concept it was dated before it even began: in terms of the Parisian avant-garde, the nord–sud line operated in one direction only, draining Montmartre of its Modernist talent into Montparnasse. Montmartre was almost ready to take on its role as lieu de mémoire.

128 Lesourd, Montmartre, p. 295.

chapter six

Wartime and the Années Folles

Wartime and the Années FollesCHANGE THIS

The War Years By the eve of the First World War, Montmartre, like the Third Republic to which it owed much and whose career it shadowed, was at the pinnacle of its success. It had achieved an unrivalled position as the major pleasure centre of the capital, and a wide international reputation. The music halls of Lower Montmartre were world-renowned for being at the centre of Parisian popular culture and the Butte was the undisputed centre of Parisian bohemia, although, as we have seen, this position was already being contested by Montparnasse. There is general agreement, however, that the declaration of war in August 1914 marked a definitive turning point in Montmartre’s privileged position. For Louis Chevalier, ‘With the declaration of war, brutally and in just a few hours, the Montmartre of Pleasure just faded away, with its lights and its shadows, its population of partygoers, its cohorts of prostitutes and pimps, its bandits and even its anarchists. The party was over and another one was about to begin’.1 In contrast with the ‘drôle de guerre’ of 1939–40 (the term was, incidentally, invented by Dorgelès in a grand reportage from the Maginot Line), 2 the impact of the First World War on France and, especially, its capital, was immediate: the rapid German advance through Belgium and northern France brought the enemy within thirty kilometres of Paris, entailing the declaration of a state of siege, painfully reminiscent of 1870, the evacuation of the government to Bordeaux and the disorderly flight of many Parisians to the provinces, in scenes which anticipated 1940: ‘Paris deprived of its men of military age, Paris deserted by those 1 Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime, p. 307. 2 Roland Dorgelès, La Drôle de guerre (Paris: Albin Michel, 1940).

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who had fled, Paris silent and reflective … Paris is no longer Paris’. 3 The capital was indeed eerily silent and empty. Pierre Darmon notes that a census conducted in September 1914 showed that the overall population had fallen to 1,807,000, a loss of a million compared with 1911 – 950,000 women, 585,000 men and 272,000 children.4 Movement of the population was seriously limited, with reduced métro and bus services and draconian restrictions on the movement from the banlieue to the capital. With the declaration of a state of siege on 2 August, the ‘ville-lumière’ ceased to exist: ‘streets were empty after 9 p.m., the cafés were in darkness and Paris began to look like a provincial town which had gone to sleep early’. 5 Theatres and cinemas were closed by decree on 3 August and the colonnes-Morris, which normally advertised entertainments, were handed over to the military government for posting administrative or military information.6 With the closure of the entertainment industry, the conscription of men of military age and restrictions on movement, there was a marked decrease in crime and prostitution: the ‘Apaches’, the pimps and their clients were at the front, although Louis Chevalier’s conclusion that ‘after the curtain came down on Montmartre, this population was not heard of for months, even years’ 7 is perhaps over-optimistic. Dramatic as the early period of the war was for Paris, heightened by the first aerial bombing raids from the light German Taube aircraft, it was short-lived and a kind of normality was restored by the Battle of the Marne, which removed the immediate German threat to Paris and established the long trench war on the Western Front. On 28 November the Préfet de Police authorised the resumption of theatres, music halls and cinemas until 11 p.m., and the entertainment industry of Lower Montmartre re-emerged in the course of December, although the Moulin Rouge did not benefit for long due to a serious fire in February 1915, which kept it closed until 1921.8 Its rivals, especially the Casino de Paris and the Folies Bergère, did a roaring trade, however, often judiciously 3 Pierre Darmon, Vivre à Paris pendant la Grande Guerre (Paris: Fayard, 2002), p. 24. 4 See ibid., p. 24. 5 Ibid., p. 25. 6 See ibid., p. 25. 7 See Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime, p. 308. 8 See Manon Pignot, 1914–1918. Paris dans la Grande Guerre (Paris: Parigramme, 2014), pp. 130–1.

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packaging the traditional programmes with patriotic titles and décor. By the end of 1914, therefore, Paris had settled into a multifaceted and often paradoxical lifestyle, which combined deprivation, in the form of food and fuel shortages, and personal grief and loss as the toll of the war-wounded and war dead mounted, with the frivolity and indifference behind the lines frequently recorded by soldiers on leave. Not only did the capital have a sizeable and comfortable bourgeoisie which, to outside eyes, appeared dedicated to preserving its pre-war lifestyle, it was also the headquarters of the General Staff and, essentially, the major transit camp for the Western Front. Because of the centralised nature of the French railway system, and the relative proximity of the front, most troops heading into combat or returning from it did so through Paris, in particular the Gare Saint-Lazare, the Gare du Nord and the Gare de l’Est, whose networks constituted, as we have seen, the boundaries of Montmartre. With the introduction of statutory military leave in July 1915, extended in 1916 to three weeks a year, ‘Paris saw a constant flow of troops on leave … who became a feature of the Parisian streets, especially around the railway stations and on the boulevards’.9 While troops from the métropole were considered to be in transit and expected to spend their leave in their home provinces, those from the Occupied Territories in the north and from the colonies were allowed to remain in Paris, creating a significant temporary population. At the same time, they were joined by Allied troops from Britain and her empire – who embarked and disembarked in Paris through the Gare Saint-Lazare – and, after 1917, by the Americans. While the authorities attempted to channel this population into approved lodgings and entertainment, through foyers de soldats for the French, the YMCA in the Avenue Montaigne for the Americans and special performances at the music halls,10 it is hardly surprising that these troops should also be attracted by the more traditional and less wholesome forms of leisure offered by districts such as Montmartre. In this respect, as we have seen, assessments such as Louis Chevalier’s perception of the decline of crime and prostitution in Montmartre during the war may be exaggerated and reflect instead the effects of paper rationing and press censorship, which limited the reporting of faits divers. Similarly, prostitution did not so much disappear as change its nature during the war: the domination of the souteneur was temporarily replaced by the independent prostitute, 9 Ibid., p. 111. 10 See ibid., p. 113.

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the authorities’ reliance on the licensed brothels and more informal sexual encounters. In this context emerged the ambiguous nature and mythology of the marraine: the semi-official pen pal network between troops at the front and women behind the lines, which became a staple of wartime innuendo, present in popular fiction and caricature.11 Thus, after what appeared to be a cataclysmic disruption of Montmartre’s role as a pleasure centre from August to December 1914, it rapidly bounced back from 1915 onwards, albeit with that ever-present reminder of mortality, already present in the paintings and cartoons of Willette, and signalled by the whistles of the trains departing for the front and the shadows of deserters, victims of that cafard and nostalgia,12 which permeate Mac Orlan’s Le Quai des Brumes of 1926. It is hardly surprising that cultural production in Montmartre during the war was severely disrupted. Most of the writers and artists on the Butte were conscripted or volunteered, like André Warnod and Pierre Mac Orlan, who joined the 269th Infantry Regiment, which recruited heavily from Montmartre.13 Despite fighting throughout the conflict, the Montmartre bohemians had something of a charmed life and, apart from the sculptor John Wasley, the creator of the huge plaster Christ which dominated the Lapin-Agile, who died in 1917 at Verdun, and Apollinaire, who succumbed to Spanish influenza after the war, they suffered remarkably few fatalities. This did not, however, prevent the experience from profoundly marking their post-war careers, in which their potent memories of the front, combined with an often highly romanticised nostalgia for the pre-war era, became a crucial factor in their perceptions and production in the interwar period. The experience of the war had the effect of reinforcing that underlying current of conservatism so strong in Montmartre culture. The chansonniers from the cabarets rapidly fell into line behind the Union Sacrée: ‘they turned out massed-produced patriotic songs, both in their cabaret performances and in the lavish vulgar shows in the music halls’.14 These included figures like the ‘ex-antimilitarist’ Gaston Montéhus; Lucien Boyer, the future composer of the ‘Madelon de la Victoire’; and 11 See Susan R. Grayzel, ‘Mothers, Marraines and Prostitutes: Morale and Morality in First World War France’, The International History Review, 18.1, 1997, pp. 66–82. 12 See Pignot, 1914–1918, p. 113. 13 See André Warnod, Fils de Montmartre (Paris: Fayard, 1955), p. 132. 14 Galtier-Boissière, ‘Les Chansonniers de Montmartre’, p. 43.

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Théodore Botrel, who was commissioned by President Millerand to ‘recite and sing patriotic poems to the troops’, including ‘Ma Mitrailleuse’, a celebration of his machine gun set to the tune of ‘Ma Tonkinoise’.15 If the chansonniers were proud to fly the flag, the comic journals were not far behind. Le Rire, for example, changed its title to Le Rire rouge during the conflict and, despite its apparently revolutionary title, adopted an increasingly chauvinistic line. Although the editorial in its first number, of 21 November 1914, recalled ‘the favourable reception accorded to truly French satirical newspapers during the Franco-Prussian War’,16 the emphasis was less on satire and more on a particular view of what was ‘truly French’. The journal subsisted on a menu of violently anti-German cartoons by artists like Steinlen, Willette and Poulbot, together with drawings dispatched from the front by figures such as Pierre Falké, Delaw and Chas Laborde, and a return to its pre-war fascination with mild pornography, now justified through cartoons depicting empty-headed society women having affairs while their husbands or fiancés are at the front – another variation on the marraine. Most of the drawings from the front were anodyne and contributed to the prevailing propaganda image of the cheery poilu, while the political cartoons were essentially sentimental and crude: in 1915 a cover by Poulbot, who specialised in drawings of Montmartre street urchins, showed two brutal German soldiers grabbing a little French girl, with the rubric: ‘I wanted to kiss her, but she bit me!’ ‘These French kids are already barbarians!’17

Later that year Willette contributed a gruesome cover of his own, entitled ‘Comme l’Empereur’, depicting the rape of a French woman by German soldiers while her terrified child looks on, with the caption, spoken by one of the Germans: ‘What’s the matter? The Boss raped Belgium!’18 This political ambiguity continued with the magazine Le Crapouillot, which was founded during the war by Jean Galtier-Boissière and retained strong relations with Montmartre throughout the 1920s despite being based in the Place de la Sorbonne: the Crapouillot dinners, which included a 15 Ibid., p. 44. 16 ‘A nos lecteurs’, Le Rire rouge, 21 November 1914. 17 Le Rire rouge, 17 April 1915. As we shall see, Poulbot was also behind one of the more intriguing cultural phenomena of the war years, the popular secular cult of Nénette and Rintintin (see Pignot, 1914–1918, p. 82). 18 Le Rire rouge, 26 June 1915.

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number of non-conformist journalists like Henri Béraud, were all held on the Butte.19 Named after the heavy mortar which blasted out shrapnel indiscriminately over the enemy, Le Crapouillot continued the tradition of Montmartre libertarianism by attacking the Republic, but from a position which increasingly presented close affinities with the extreme right, as in, for example, a special number, Les Juifs, which appeared in September 1936 at the height of the Popular Front government. In this respect, Le Crapouillot was indicative of an important political evolution in Montmartre culture during the interwar years which saw a significant shift to the right in the centre of gravity, in reaction to developments after the war, whose impact was more often perceived than real, in the interconnected areas of population growth and movement, mass-tourism and crime. These changes were also apparent in the cultural sphere, in the evolution of the avant-garde and in domains of popular culture such as the music hall, the cinema and the popularity of jazz. Urban Growth, Tourism and Crime One of the recurrent complaints of the Montmartre memorialists in the interwar years was the perceived erosion of the pre-war villagelike communities which made up the district by the inexorable encroachment of the city as a whole, with a consequential transformation of both population and urban landscape. But the reality is more ambiguous. The population of the city of Paris did indeed grow after the annexation of the communes limitrophes in 1861, rising gradually to a peak of nearly 3 million in 1921, 20 but this evolution was not evenly distributed across the capital, with the beginnings of the depopulation of the inner arrondissements to the benefit of the outer ones. In this context, Montmartre reflected the unequal distribution of the Parisian population: the ninth arrondissement, between the Boulevard de Clichy, the Gare Saint-Lazare and the grands boulevards – the centre of popular entertainment but also, crucially, of the clothing industry – saw its numbers, which had already peaked before the war, severely cut by the effects of the conflict itself, the ninth, tenth and eleventh arrondissements 19 See Jean Galtier-Boissière, Mémoires d’un Parisien (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1961). 20 See Jean-Luc Pinol and Maurice Garden, Atlas de Paris. De la Révolution à nos jours (Paris: Parigramme, 2009), p. 45.

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losing 200,000 inhabitants between them. 21 At the same time, the outer arrondissements, which had ‘diversified their activities and modernised their industries’, 22 saw their population grow by 60,000, an increase which affected Montmartre and La Chapelle which, during the war, had become a major location of the armaments industry, and which did not begin to decline until 1931. 23 Conservative commentators on post-war Montmartre were therefore justified in pointing to changes in the area’s population. However, it is important to emphasise that the population increase between the 1911 and 1921 censuses was hardly dramatic and that it did not entail major building works: Montmartre was relatively untouched by both aerial and artillery bombardment and the much-feared gratte-ciel were a figment of the interwar chroniclers’ imagination. In fact, the major building projects which affected the Butte – the Sacré-Cœur, the destruction of the Maquis and the construction in its stead of the Avenue Junot – had all been accomplished before the war started, although this did not diminish the sense that the post-war quartier was different from its Belle Epoque predecessor. Tourism, however, was a different matter, and posed a very real threat to the quartier’s infrastructure of cafés, restaurants and accommodation. Despite some reservations on Chevalier’s part, Montmartre appears to have effortlessly resumed its importance as a pleasure centre and tourist attraction immediately after the war. In his book Montmartre en 1925 – part history, part guidebook and aimed at the American tourist24 – Jean Gravigny trumpets the irresistible charm of Pigalle through the amazement of a provincial visitor: ‘But every night is the Fourteenth of July in Montmartre!’, 25 and the quartier’s ‘féerie’ cast the same spell on French and international tourists alike, through dance halls like the Moulin Rouge, ‘établissements eccentriques’ like Le Ciel, l’Enfer and Le Néant, which survived from the 1880s, the ‘cabarets de chansonniers’ and ‘les grands établissements de nuit’, like the Impérial, the New Monico, the Normandy and the Savoy, accompanied by late-night clubs such as the Capitole or Pigall’s. In this respect, Montmartre was again the victim of its own success and its international reputation. Looking back on the 1930s, an acerbic Vlaminck, whose flirtation with 21 22 23 24 25

See ibid., p. 47. Ibid., p. 47. See ibid., p. 45. Jean Gravigny, Montmartre en 1925 (Paris: Editions Montaigne, 1925), p. 42. Ibid., p. 13.

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Montmartre had been very brief, commented that ‘the coaches picked up the recently arrived tourists and headed for Montmartre to show off the Sacré-Cœur, and to acquaint them with bohemia and the criminals so dear to Francis Carco’. 26 And Joseph Kessel wrote of Lower Montmartre and the années folles: There is a place which people dream of at the same time when they are harassed by work, grief or riches, and whether they be a banker in his New York office, an Argentine landowner in his hacienda, a German industrialist in his factory, a People’s Commissar in his cell or a Chinese opium smoker on his mat. That place, which distance, memory, and an unusual and magnetic renown decorate with all charms and all lights, is called Montmartre. 27

Léon-Paul Fargue commented in the same vein: ‘An Englishman said to me recently that he now knew why Parisians don’t travel: they have Montmartre. Because you travel to get to Montmartre. Canadians, South Americans on holiday, Germans or Slavs bought suitcases and applied for passports in order to come to Montmartre: the homeland of nocturnal homelands’. 28 Fargue’s reference to South Americans or Kessel’s to Argentine landowners are by no means coincidental. As Louis Chevalier notes, Argentinean tourists had occupied Montmartre as early as 1910, 29 and remained throughout the war, as reflected in Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit. The Argentineans were accompanied by Brazilians but, for Chevalier, there was a difference: whereas ‘the Brazilian had money, the Argentinean was rather a professional dancer’. 30 By far the greatest impact, however, came from the United States. American tourism had begun before the First World War and Barreyre records that the Americans particularly liked establishments like Le Tabarin: The American fresh off the boat enjoyed this noisy dance hall, but preferred to its long counter the little bars surrounding it, which were more intimate and where women would sip from their glasses while waiting for him. The American was a good customer, with his pockets

26 Maurice Vlaminck, Paysages et personnages (Paris: Flammarion, 1953), p. 25. 27 Joseph Kessel, Nuits de Montmartre. Années folles (Paris: Plon, 1971), p. 11. 28 Fargue, Le Piéton de Paris, p. 32. 29 See Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime, p. 235. Jean Gravigny concurs: Montmartre en 1925, pp. 44–6. 30 Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime, p. 326.

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full of dollars, which he intended to spend as quickly as possible. He drank a lot and became drunk too quickly. As a precaution, the owners chose former boxers for their barmen: they dispensed whisky, but frowned on customers who became more and more aggressive and brutal. 31

Interestingly, he notes after the war that ‘the Americans are numerous in the Rue Pigalle, but are well-behaved and meet up in the Train Bleu or the Eléphant, where they drink beer rather than whisky, or go to quiet brasseries where they put 100 francs into the juke box for twenty minutes of jazz’, 32 an image at variance with Elizabeth de Gramont’s recollection that ‘in 1919, it was impossible to cross the Place Pigalle after midnight without hearing the revolver shots of drunken Americans’, 33 and with regular newspaper accounts of bloody battles in Montmartre between US sailors and Black Americans. 34 Post-war American tourism, fuelled by a powerful US economy and a strong dollar, profoundly affected Montmartre, although the incidence followed closely the economic cycles of the interwar years. In a satirical article in Marianne in 1933, ‘L’Age d’or’, Marcel Aymé evoked the golden age of international tourism before the Wall Street Crash. He began by recording: Tandis que je me rangeais sur le trottoir pour laisser passer un autocar ‘Paris la nuit’ qui dévalait la pente du Sacré-Cœur, le patron d’un cabaret montmartrois, considérant avec mélancolie ce lourd symbole des prospérités enfuies, soupira derrière moi: ‘Voilà le dollar qui descend … maintenant, il ne s’arrête plus’. As I stood back on the pavement to let pass a ‘Paris by Night’ coach going down the road from the Sacré-Cœur, the owner of a Montmartre cabaret, looking sadly at this symbol of vanished prosperity, sighed behind me: ‘There is the dollar going down … it won’t stop now’. 35

He adds, ‘aujourd’hui, il faut travailler douze et quinze ans pour gagner une fortune’ (‘nowadays, you have to work for twelve or fifteen years to make a fortune’). This bar owner is now reduced to serving those whom 31 Barreyre, ‘Les Nuits de Montmartre’, p. 70. 32 Ibid., p. 71. 33 Quoted in Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime, p. 323. 34 See ibid., p. 323. 35 Marcel Aymé, ‘L’Age d’or’, Marianne, 31 May 1933, in Œuvres romanesques complètes, I (Paris: Gallimard, coll. ‘La Pléiade’, 1989), p. 1213.

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he terms ‘foreigners’ – in other words, Parisians – and laments the days of mass tourism of the 1920s: Ah! Si vous aviez connu Montmartre autrefois … mais vous êtes trop jeune … c’était avant la crise, il y a des années … Toute la rue grouillait d’étrangers. Ils arrivaient en taxis, à pied, à cheval, en voiture, ils débarquaient des autocars par cinq cents à la fois: des Américains, des Sud et des Nord, des Anglais, et riches plein les poches. Ils tiraient leur mouchoir, monsieur, leur mouchoir ou leur chewing-gum, et c’était la pluie des dollars et des sterling sur le pavé. Ah! If you had known Montmartre before … but you are too young … it was before the Crash, years ago … The whole street was packed with foreigners. They came by taxi, on foot, on horseback or in cars, they arrived in coaches, five hundred at a time: Americans, North and South, and English, and rich with it. They pulled out their handkerchief, Monsieur, their handkerchief or their chewing-gum, and it was a shower of dollars or pounds on the pavement. 36

The problem, however, was that this influx of tourism profoundly altered Montmartre itself, turning the former centres of bohemia into something inherently artificial, rooted, as Vlaminck suggests, in a parody of the district’s pre-war originality. In other words, Montmartre was no longer the epitome of modernity, as it had been from the Chat Noir to the Lapin Agile, and was fast becoming something of a cultural theme park in which tourists gawped at replicas from a vanishing past. The sophisticated tourists, especially from the United States, congregated on the Right Bank, whose cultural epicentre was the Carrefour Vavin in Montparnasse, with the Art Déco cafés and dance halls represented by the Coupole, the Dôme and the Sélect, where they could rub shoulders with the post-war avant-garde, although Gravigny is at pains to remind his reader that some of the Montparnasse establishments, ‘created from a formula which was so successful in Montmartre, have failed one after the other’. 37 The combination of popular entertainment, tourism and demographic change points undoubtedly towards an accentuation of Montmartre’s criminal reputation. Yet, as with urban renewal and tourism itself, the issue is more nuanced and complicated by the district’s ability to mythologise its role as a centre of crime, going back to the ‘Apaches’ of 36 Ibid., pp. 1213–14. 37 Gravigny, Montmartre en 1925, p. 11.

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the Belle Epoque. What is certain is that Montmartre, and especially Pigalle, remained an important criminal centre in the interwar years, although, as Chevalier reminds us, this may be more an impression than historical fact38 fuelled by journalistic and fictional accounts, such as those of Francis Carco. In one sense, the 1920s saw a return to the activities of the pre-war era, but carried out by a new generation of criminals replacing predecessors who had lost their grip on the area’s crime in their four-year absence at the front. 39 These young Montmartre criminals were joined by immigrants from the provinces, described by Julien Blanc and Auguste Le Breton, who had been through the correction system in their own towns and, like the young girls who accompanied them, had dreamed of making a career in Paris. As Chevalier comments: ‘the future aristocracy of the Milieu is there … with its leaders, its laws, its beliefs and its Heaven which is Pigalle’.40 This community of Montmartre criminals, provincials and inhabitants from other districts of Paris carried out the well-rehearsed stock in trade of their pre-war counterparts, based on relatively petty crime, prostitution and drugs, although in prostitution Pigalle played second fiddle to the Faubourg Montmartre, especially regarding the operation of the white slave trade, and its drug trafficking, closely allied to prostitution, tended to specialise in cocaine.41 This rather cosy return to pre-war normality was shaken by the Depression, which swelled Montmartre’s criminal community and coincided with a ‘great change: the seizure by the Corsicans of the Pigalle milieu, by which Montmartre and the pleasure industry would be utterly transformed, to the extent of becoming, to some at least, unrecognisable’.42 While the criminals in Montmartre were predominantly Parisian in the 1920s, by the 1930s there was a significant and increasing infiltration of Marseille gangsters, especially those of Corsican origin,43 leading to the public prominence of figures like Carbone, 38 See Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime, p. 376. 39 See ibid., p. 379. 40 Ibid., p. 380. The young provincial criminal succumbed to the same attraction of Montmartre as that exerted on the would-be bohemians. 41 See ibid., pp. 385–7. One of the major sources of drugs in the post-war period was Germany, which is reflected in Mac Orlan’s version of the Faust myth, in Marguerite de la nuit, in which Mephistopheles is a drug dealer. 42 Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime, p. 425. 43 See ibid., p. 428.

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Spirito, Stefani and Marini and their no-less-public vendettas, which received considerable coverage in the contemporary press, especially Joseph Kessel’s Détective. As Chevalier points out, the MarseilleCorsican milieu in Pigalle was also linked to the Stavisky Affair, through the investigation of both by Inspector Bonny, later notorious as the head of the French Gestapo on the Rue Lauriston.44 However, while this publicity did much to restore and maintain Montmartre’s image as an edgy frontier district, Blaise Cendrars guiding his readers around known Marseille-run gangster bars, like L’Ange Bouffareo on the Place Blanche, and the area being known as ‘Pigalle, capitale Marseille’,45 it was much exaggerated. In terms of prostitution and drug trafficking, it was much less important than Marseille itself, and served rather to showcase the southern city’s wares, a task to which it was ultimately less well-suited than the ultimate shop window, the Champs-Elysées, which, for Cendrars, had become the ‘real Parisian gangland’.46 In the public imagination, however, Montmartre retained that heady mixture of crime, sexuality and show business which continued into the Fourth Republic in films like Becker’s Touchez pas au grisbi. Entertainment in the Interwar Years Although the dance bands in the cafés around the Carrefour Vavin catered for many of the tastes of their American and Americanophile clients, there was one popular cultural area in which Montmartre excelled and dominated, that of musical spectacle in the lavish shows offered by the music halls. These, like the Left Bank cafés, owed much to the vogue for American jazz,47 which appeared from the first days of peacetime and proved remarkably durable throughout the interwar years, giving rise to a new community within the multicultural population of the area. Thus, not only did Montmartre have the greatest concentration 44 See ibid., p. 432. 45 Ibid., pp. 434, 435. 46 Quoted in ibid., p. 439. 47 For a detailed and comprehensive account of the development of jazz in France, see Colin Nettelbeck, Dancing with De Beauvoir Jazz and the French (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2004); Jeffrey H. Jackson, Making Jazz French: Music and Modern Life in Interwar Paris (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2003).

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of music halls in the capital, it was also the natural meeting place for performers, not only the ‘gens du spectacle’ – actors, dancers, extras – but also musicians: ‘It was on the Place Pigalle that the musicians’ fair took place, here that, on Saturday evenings … the musicians from the bands of the café-concerts, night clubs and cinemas came for a drink with their colleagues, to look for work or to be employed’.48 Further up the Boulevard de Clichy, at the brasserie Chez Graff on the Place Blanche, Mistinguett’s regular after-show suppers were ‘as important as the bal of the Moulin Rouge’.49 In the course of the war, the recognisably French character of the café-concert or the music hall had been usurped by a more American model employing lavish dance routines and centred on one star performer, like Mistinguett or Maurice Chevalier, and leading to Maurice Sachs’s conclusion that ‘the success of the Parisian cafés-concerts and music halls was due more to foreign visitors’, since ‘the French were never very keen on these lavish empty shows … Mistinguett, Chevalier, the Casino de Paris and the Moulin Rouge shared the top billing. The Folies Bergère put their nudes on show. Oh, my dear American friends, you trotted off to a Montmartre brightly lit with promises!’, adding however: ‘Perhaps you were disappointed. New York burlesque shows are far raunchier’. 50 In this context, it is interesting that, as we have seen, the cancan as a chorus routine was only introduced into France in 1928, and has an interesting circular history. The popular, and athletic, dance performed by stars like La Goulue or Valentin le Désossé at venues like the Moulin Rouge, known as the quadrille or the chahut, was adopted by British and American music halls and modified into a chorus line entertainment known as the ‘French cancan’. In this form, typically accompanied by Offenbach’s ‘Galop Infernal’, it was subsequently reimported into Paris by the choreographer Pierre Sandrini for his revue French Cancan at the Moulin Rouge, which subsequently transferred to his own Le Tabarin in 1928, thus becoming a staple of post-war entertainment, but one far removed from its popular French origins. Nevertheless, if the Montmartre music halls became an integral part of the inherent artificiality of the district’s post-war theme park, some traces of the pre-war contestatory culture survived in the continued devotion to the chanson réaliste by performers such as Fréhel, Damia and the young Edith Piaf, and, as we have seen, the aged Aristide 48 Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime, p. 358. 49 Ibid., p. 360. 50 Quoted in ibid., pp. 324–5.

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Bruant was lured out of retirement for one last performance in 1924. At the same time, the absurdist comic tradition of the cabarets remained buoyant in the interwar years, with new establishments, such as La Lune Rousse, on the Rue Pigalle, Les Deux Anes, which took over the former premises of the Théâtre des Marionnettes at 100 Boulevard de Clichy, and the Théâtre de Dix Heures, together with a new generation of performers led by Auguste Martini and René Dorin. 51 Like their pre-war predecessors, these equally successful performers benefited from an ambiguous relationship with the republican establishment: a cartoon by one of the most versatile and famous chansonniers of the period, Noël-Noël, entitled ‘Election d’un prince des chansonniers’, shows some of the stars of the genre, including Dominique Bonnaud, Henri Fursy and Vincent Hyspa, climbing the steps to the laureates’ podium while Prime Minister Edouard Herriot hovers above as a pipe smoking angel with a hoard of decorations to be dispensed. 52 In one sense, this recognition was amply justified by the continued popular appeal of the chansonniers, which, like that of the circus, proved more durable than that of the music halls, which were heavily dependent on tourist audiences and vulnerable to competition from rival establishments on the Champs-Elysées or the Boulevards (although there is evidence that Parisian audiences preferred Montmartre). At the same time, the cinemas were a constant threat: the Cigale, for example, was transformed into a cinema in 1928, the Gaîté-Rochechouart and the Moulin Rouge the following year53 and big cinemas like the Gaumont-Palace, on the Place Clichy, took over the music halls’ role by inserting variety acts into their programmes, a custom depicted in Céline’s evocation of the cinema ‘Le Tarapout’ in Voyage au bout de la nuit). In contrast to the woes of the music halls, the dance halls, like Le Coliseum on the Rue Rochechouart, the circus, especially Montmartre’s Cirque Médrano, and the shows featuring chansonniers, remained buoyant even during the Depression. 54 Despite competition from Montparnasse and the boulevards, Montmartre also retained the advantage in one crucial area of interwar culture: the importation and imitation of American jazz, which gravitated 51 See Michel Perrin, ‘Les Chansonniers de Montmartre, II: De « La Lune Rousse » à « La Tomate », ou quarante ans d’esprit montmartrois (1919–1959)’, Le Crapouillot, 45, July 1959, p. 45. 52 Reproduced in ibid., p. 45. 53 See Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime, p. 443. 54 See ibid., pp. 442–3.

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naturally to the area at the end of the war and prospered there because of its unique combination of cheap lodging and catering, a vibrant and active entertainment industry and a congenial late-night leisure culture – precisely the elements which had acted as a magnet for would-be bohemians during the Belle Epoque. 55 Thus, when the poet of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes, jumped ship in the port of Amsterdam in February 1924, he did not just head for France: at the Belgian-French border he purchased a visa and continued on to Paris; from the Gare du Nord he went to the tourist sites of the Opéra and the Arc de Triomphe before asking directions for Montmartre from the black doorman at the American Express offices on the Rue Scribe. And, once in Montmartre he came across a ‘covey of American blacks at a little café and installed himself in a cheap hotel room in the Rue Nollet near the corner of Rue Pigalle and Rue de la Bruyère’. 56 His initial reactions were far from rosy. He wrote to his friend and fellow poet Countee Cullen: Kid, stay in Harlem. The French are the most franc-loving, sous-clutching, hard-faced, hard-worked, cold and half-starved set of people I’ve ever met in life. Heat – unknown. Hot water – what is it? You even pay for a smile here. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is given away. You even pay for water in a restaurant or the use of the toilette. And do they like Americans of any color? They do not!!! Paris – old and ugly and dirty. Style, class? You see more well-dressed people in a New York subway station in five seconds than I’ve seen in all my three weeks in Paris. Little old New York for me! But the coloured people here are fine, there are lots of us. 57

That black community’s presence was the result of a combination of two potent drivers: the music halls and the night clubs. What linked them was jazz; and jazz meant black entertainers. There had been a modest vogue for black entertainers in Paris before the First World War: one of the star turns of the circus was the clown duo of Chocolat and Footit, and pre-war music hall bills featured reviews such as Les Heureux Nègres of 1902, which introduced the cakewalk to Paris; Joyeux Nègres, at the Folies Bergère; and vaudeville acts 55 An earlier version of this section appeared as ‘Black Montmartre: American Jazz and Music Hall in Paris in the Interwar Years, Journal of Romance Studies, 5.3, Winter 2005, special issue: Black Paris, Ed. Sam Haigh and Nikki Hitchcott, pp. 25–32. 56 See Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes, 1: 1902–1941. I, Too, Sing America (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 84. 57 Quoted in ibid., p. 85.

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like ‘The Coloured Girls’, who performed at the Moulin Rouge. 58 In 1918, however, the French entertainment industry was rocked by the arrival, not just of American troops, but especially by one of the units which accompanied them. The black 15th New York Infantry Regiment, known as the ‘Harlem Hellfighters’, was formed in 1916 and shipped to Saint-Nazaire in December the following year. On 12 February 1918, the regimental band, under the direction of the bandleader James Reece Europe, gave a memorable concert in the Théâtre Graslin in Nantes, widely recognised as the first authentic jazz performance by American musicians in France. 59 Very rapidly, jazz, in its widest and most vague sense, came to dominate French music hall and extended its influence into high culture. By the end of 1917, the Casino de Paris was showing the review Laissez-les tomber! (Let them Fall!, a reference to Parisian contempt for the Gotha aerial bombardments) with Harry Pilcer and Gaby Deslys, which embodied sanitised, ‘white’ jazz rhythms, an experiment followed up later by such reviews as Mistinguett’s Paris qui jazz of 1920. At the same time, in more rarified circles, Comte Etienne de Beaumont mounted in 1918 a fête nègre, which brought jazz to the fashionable Parisian avant-garde, including Cocteau.60 In the wake of this initially home-grown vogue for jazz-based entertainment, the big Parisian music halls moved to the next logical step, which was the importation of lavish black American reviews, the most famous of which were the Revue Nègre, of 1925, which launched both Josephine Baker and Sidney Bechet, and Lew Leslie’s Blackbirds starring Adelaide Hall, transferred from Broadway to the Moulin Rouge in 1929.61 This importation of black American music hall performance had a significant impact upon both French popular culture and Parisian cultural topography. Commercial artists such as Paul Colin pioneered an iconography of black American entertainers and dancers which influenced both popular and high culture, through writers such as Paul Morand, Céline and Cocteau. More specifically, the jazz musicians who 58 See Bernard Gendron, Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club: Popular Music and the Avant-Garde (Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002), pp. 103–4. 59 For a full account of the immediate impact of James Reece Europe’s band, see Nettelbeck, Dancing with de Beauvoir, pp. 16–30. 60 See ibid., pp. 87, 109. 61 See Iain Cameron Williams, Underneath a Harlem Moon: The Harlem to Paris Years of Adelaide Hall (London and New York: Continuum, 2002), p. 175.

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accompanied the American reviews found Europe in general, and Paris in particular, a congenial place to live and work, and they settled there for much of the interwar years, joining with other black Americans to develop a black expatriate cultural community in Montmartre. The crucial link between the music halls and the wider black community was the night clubs, and here the availability of space and the presence of a highly talented pool of entertainers coincided. As we have seen, the decline of the artistic cabarets from 1900 had released a large number of relatively small venues unsuited for large-scale entertainment on the level of the music halls, but well-suited to more intimate events. At the same time, the black musicians who serviced the music halls constituted a pool of entertainers who had a considerable amount of time on their hands and were available for additional work, which catered for a sustained demand for dance and jazz music from the Parisian bourgeoisie and foreign, mainly American, tourists. A pattern rapidly developed by which black American expatriates, who had established reputations, mainly through the music halls, and sufficient income, set up night clubs to respond to this growing demand. One such figure, though not involved in music hall, was Eugene Bullard, a former foreign legionnaire who became the first black American combat pilot, fighting with the Lafayette Flying Corps, where he was known as the ‘Black Swallow of Death’, and who celebrated the Armistice by founding the night club L’Escadrille, before moving to the more famous Le Grand Duc on the Rue Pigalle in 1924.62 It was in Bullard’s night club that Langston Hughes worked as a plongeur for most of his short stay in Paris.63 In fact, very shortly, Bullard’s establishment was merely one of a whole cluster of fashionable black-run night clubs in Lower Montmartre, including Josephine Baker’s Chez Joséphine on the Rue Fontaine, Adelaide Hall’s The Big Apple on the Rue Pigalle and, most famously, Bricktop’s on the same street.64 In most cases, the pattern was similar: black American entertainers who had made sufficient income from their starring roles invested their money in night clubs which both fostered their own profile and used it to generate trade. At the same time, successful black 62 See William A. Shack, Harlem in Montmartre: A Paris Jazz Story between the Great Wars (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2001), pp. 22–4, 29; John Chilton, Sidney Bechet; The Wizard of Jazz (New York: Da Capos, 1996), p. 82. 63 See Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes, p. 85. 64 See, for example, Williams, Underneath a Harlem Moon, p. 312.

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American entertainment impresarios from Chicago or Harlem, such as Ada Smith, best known as ‘Bricktop’, were lured to Paris by the vogue for black American culture, an already established community, and, crucially, the opportunity to escape the strictures of prohibition. What this led to, and what Hughes himself experienced, was an established black American community in Paris, specifically in Montmartre, similar to the population of Harlem and constituting those ‘fine coloured people’ whom he found so attractive in an otherwise unwelcoming city. As Sidney Bechet recognised, this was a village within a village: Any time you walked down the streets you’d run into four or five people you knew – performers, entertainers, all kinds of people who had real talent in them … you’d start to go home, and you’d never get there. There was always some singer to hear or someone who was playing. You’d run into some friends and they were off to do this or to do that and you just went along. It seemed like you just couldn’t get home before ten or eleven in the morning.65

In his autobiography he continued: We musicianers, the ones I knew the most about, we’d meet when we were off work. We had regular places where we could expect to find one another. Mostly it was one little café off rue Fontaine. We’d sit in the back room of this café and we’d joke, play a few cards, or someone would take out his instrument, or we’d just talk. Pretty soon you’d begin to see those saucers piling up.66

Nor was it an entirely American village: it took to its own Francophone black personalities like the Senegalese boxer Battling Siki, who also briefly owned a bar in Montmartre, along with the American Panama Al Brown.67 Unsurprisingly, the community celebrated German Max Schmelling’s defeat by Joe Lewis for the Heavyweight Championship of the World in 1938.68 This community, of course, was highly volatile and by no means immune from either internal violence or external racism. Bechet himself recalled that, while Montmartre was far removed from the legal 65 Quoted in Shack, Harlem in Montmartre, p. 33. 66 Sidney Bechet, Treat it Gentle: An Autobiography (New York: Da Capo, 1978), p. 150. 67 See Shack, Harlem in Montmartre, pp. 38–9. 68 See ibid., pp. 100–1.

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restrictions imposed by Prohibition, it experienced the same level of lawlessness, the crucial pole of Chevalier’s ‘plaisir’ and ‘crime’: That’s the way it was in Montmartre in 1928, except that there wasn’t any need to be making your own gin. And just like there was the Prohibition … mobs in New York, there was that kind of mob around Montmartre too … So what happened as a result of things like that, nearly everybody, he carried a gun … There was tough times back there. 69

It was this that led to the famous incident in which Bechet, then working at Chez Florence in the Rue Blanche, fired at fellow ‘musicianer’ Mike McKendrick, hit a French pedestrian by mistake, and was imprisoned for a year. As an example of the Montmartre black community’s powerful links with the ‘Tout Paris’, however, Bechet was helped in his defence by Eugene Bullard and McKendrick was supported by Nancy Cunard and Louis Aragon.70 This raises a wider question regarding relations between the black community in Montmartre and the Parisian population as a whole. On one level, the black jazz musicians were lionised by the Parisian bourgeoisie, and not merely its bohemian fringe represented by Nancy Cunard and Aragon. As Jeffrey H. Jackson observes: The bourgeoisie again came to this part of Paris, but now, far from being the source of ridicule, evening dress was expected or even required as people rolled up to the clubs in limousines or taxicabs that were replacing the horse-drawn carriages in the city’s streets after the war. Montmartre in those days, with champagne flowing in all the night spots, was for many ‘a party every night’ …71

The Big Apple, which incidentally hired Django Reinhard’s Quintette du Hot Club de France in 1937, played host to international celebrities like the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Barbara Hutton, Leslie Howard and Cole Porter, and to French stars such as Charles Boyer, Mistinguett, Josephine Baker and Maurice Chevalier.72 In fact, the black musicians in the night clubs enabled Montmartre to continue a tradition it had enjoyed, and astutely marketed, since the 1880s, when the artistic cabarets were the haunt of European aristocrats, including the Russian grand dukes who gave their name to Bullard’s club, and French republican grandees. 69 Bechet, Treat it Gentle, p. 150. 70 See Chilton, Sidney Bechet, pp. 83–4. 71 Jackson, Making Jazz French, p. 55. 72 See Williams, Underneath a Harlem Moon, p. 349.

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In other words, Montmartre’s popularity both before and after the war was founded upon the opportunities it offered to the Parisian bourgeoisie and their international counterparts to go slumming and in this respect it played the same role within the broader context of Paris as did Harlem in the New York of Prohibition, with many of the same personalities involved as clients and entertainers: it was no coincidence that one of the most popular Montmartre establishments was the Cotton Club.73 Nor was it surprising that, following the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927, the rioters targeted not only the United States Embassy and Consulate, and entertainment establishments on the Champs-Elysées, but also, led by the communists, the Montmartre music halls and nightclubs, symbols of both American cultural colonialism and French aristocratic and bourgeois hedonism.74 The expatriate Black community in Montmartre was actually by no means integrated into the wider population and they benefited rather less from France’s alleged colour-blindness than was complacently claimed. William Shack refers correctly to an ‘outbreak of racial attacks on black Americans and Frenchmen of color by white American visitors in France’,75 but then sketches in a hinterland of French prejudice as well: the traditional Bal Tabarin’s white-only policy; a racially motivated libel case concerning Eugene Bullard; and the racist novel Magie Noire by the right-wing Paul Morand, in which the body of a murdered black is brought back to the Rue Fontaine in Montmartre.76 More generally, Jackson rightly recognizes a widespread conservative resentment in Paris at what was perceived as a cultural expropriation by the black Americans of Montmartre’s indigenous culture.77 This coincides with a wider xenophobia, which intensified as the interwar years progressed. Langston Hughes recalls that when ‘searching for a job for himself in depressed Paris, where foreign laborers were very unpopular, he was chased (‘Sale étranger!’) from 73 See ibid., p. 336. 74 For accounts of the anti-American rioting, see Brooke L. Blower, Becoming American in Paris: Transatlantic Politics and Culture between the World Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 127–8; Sascha Bru and Gunther Martens, The Invention of Politics in the European Avant-Garde (1906–1940) (Amsterdam, Brill/Rodopi, 2006), p. 195; Moshik Temkin, The Sacco and Vanzetti Affair: America on Trial (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011). 75 Shack, Harlem in Montmartre, p. 67. 76 See ibid., pp. 68–75. 77 See Jackson, Making Jazz French, pp. 53, 56.

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one construction site by irate Frenchmen’,78 and, in his biography of Adelaide Hall, Iain Cameron Williams refers to ‘a certain fraction of the community [who] complained bitterly to local authorities that the sudden influx of Senegalese into the city had caused a worrying increase in burglaries and disease’.79 A more specific threat to the Montmartre black community was the ‘Parisian municipal law stating that no more than 10 percent of musicians on stage could be foreigners’, 80 and the French musicians union took up the call, asking ‘whether they would be condemned to death by hunger while foreigners received jobs even better than those they asked for’.81 The Paul Colin caricatures of black American entertainers in the 1920s, for all their vibrancy, reinforce, and indeed help to create, a racist and xenophobic stereotype which underpins both a fascination and a fear. Appropriately enough, of all Montmartre’s black American community, it was only Langston Hughes, the militant and poet, who established links with black Francophone intellectuals. In particular, he met René Maran, the author of the recently published Goncourt winner Batouala, and the future founders of the Revue du Monde Noir and Légitime Défense, and was invited to submit poems to the review Les Continents. In general, however, the Montmartre black community remained in its village, ready and willing to be visited by the outside world, but essentially isolated from it. The black American community in Montmartre lasted until the outbreak of the Second World War, though its numbers diminished as the Depression took effect. Even Adelaide Hall and the Blackbirds failed to save the Moulin Rouge which, like many music halls, was converted into a cinema in 1929 before bouncing back yet again. In the course of the 1930s, with the decline in US tourism, the Paris entertainment industry as a whole was seriously hit, and many of the famous black nightclubs closed, including Bricktop’s. It is also arguable that, like all popular cultural phenomena, the vogue for jazz in Paris, or what was then labelled as jazz, was to a certain extent ephemeral and gave way to new forms of music, often, like Ray Ventura’s Collégiens, without black musicians. Clearly, however, the relationship between Paris and black Americans was not over and recovered after the Second World War with 78 Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes, p. 84. 79 Williams, Underneath a Harlem Moon, p. 201. 80 Jackson, Making Jazz French, p. 144. 81 Quoted in ibid., p. 145.

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a new influx of black American expatriates, most notably the writers James Baldwin, Richard Wright and Chester Himes, and a new (and, in the case of Bechet, old) generation of jazz musicians, who colonised the Left Bank under the auspices of, among others, Boris Vian and the son of Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Charles. The Avant-Garde Despite later protests by Montmartre residents like Aymé,82 there is little doubt that the quartier ceased to be the principal centre of avant-garde cultural activity in the capital from the beginning of the First World War: Sue Roe, for example, is not alone in ending her study of Montmartre and Modernism in 1910, 83 although, as always, the chronological borders are not cleanly demarcated and it is more a question of predominance within coexistence. The artistic topography of Paris in the 1920s is often skewed by the presence of immigrant artists in Montparnasse, like Miró or Brancúsi who helped constitute the Ecole de Paris, 84 and the accounts of high-profile American authors like Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, which is often used to imply the terminal decline of Montmartre. Yet the reality is more complicated, even though the international aspect of Left Bank culture became an important theme in Montmartre in the interwar years. One of the key forces in Modernist art, especially music, but also literature and theatre, was jazz in all its forms, of which Montmartre was the major centre in the capital, and popular entertainment like the circus and the music hall continued to be central to the Modernist aesthetic, as were eroticism and crime. If there was a shift in the centre of gravity in the avant-garde back to the Left Bank and, especially, to Montparnasse, before and during the First World War, there was also considerable overlap between the two communities, in terms of both practitioners and audiences. The same consumers of Modernist culture among the ‘Tout Paris’ in the 1920s who frequented the Coupole or the Dôme also flocked to the black jazz clubs and, as the title of Reverdy’s Nord-Sud indicates, the connection 82 See Marcel Aymé, ‘Préface’, in Jean Vertex, Le Village inspiré (Paris: L’Auteur, 1950). 83 See Roe, In Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse and Modernism in Paris 1900–1919. 84 See Simonetta Fraquelli, ‘Montparnasse and the Right Bank: Myth and Reality’, in Sarah Wilson, ed., Paris, Capital of the Arts 1900–1968, p. 110.

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was always open between Montmartre and Montparnasse. At the same time, although the immediate pre-war years are notable for the defection of many leading figures in the Montmartre avant-garde, often because they could now afford more congenial accommodation, many chose to remain. For example, while Picasso had famously left the Butte after the suicide of Wiegels and Modigliani had moved to Montparnasse on his return from Livorno in 1909, some of the major figures from the pre-war era continued to live and work in Montmartre: in addition to Vuillard on the Place Vintimille, Bonnard lived in the quartier until 1925, and Dufy until 1938, while Pascin, who had moved to America before the war in 1914, returned to the Boulevard de Clichy in 1920 and remained there until his suicide in 1930, although, like many prominent artistic figures, he was also well-known in Montparnasse.85 If the Montmartre cartoonists and humourists often veered away from their radical origins and towards conservatism both aesthetically and politically with the declaration of war, the avant-garde was still active in the ninth and eighteenth arrondissements. This was particularly true of the theatre, where Dullin’s Atelier, as we have seen, continued its mission of theatrical innovation throughout the interwar years, including the premiere of Cocteau’s Antigone with décor by Picasso.86 Similarly, while the avant-garde ballet Parade, performed by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes with music by Satie, décor by Picasso and text by Cocteau, had its première in May 1917 at the Théâtre du Châtelet, it was immediately followed on June 24 by Apollinaire’s surrealist drama Les Mamelles de Tirésias, directed by the Cubist and editor of Sic, Pierre Albert-Birot, with décor by Serge Férat and costumes by Irène Lagut, at the Conservatoire Maubel on the Rue de l’Armée de l’Orient, in the centre of the Butte. Yet, with Parade, the shift of the avant-garde outside of Montmartre to mainstream theatre land and the establishment of the performance as a social event scandalous for what went on off-stage rather than on (‘making love in the boxes during Parade is the height of fashion’), 87 marked a progression in subversive Montmartre culture towards social acceptability, at least by the progressive ‘Tout Paris’, represented by Comte Etienne de Beaumont and his friends. It was for this reason that the most important avant-garde movements of the wartime and post-war years, Dada and Surrealism, while walking 85 See Warnod, Fils de Montmartre, pp. 272–87. 86 See Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime, p. 329. 87 Darmon, Vivre à Paris, p. 306.

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a shaky tightrope between subversion and fashionability, maintained close ties with Montmartre. As early as 1916, Tzara had corresponded with Max Jacob, Apollinaire and Reverdy while still based in Zurich, 88 and when he moved to Paris in 1920, staying first in Francis Picabia’s apartment89 before commissioning Adolph Loos to design a house next door to Poulbot’s at 15 Avenue Junot, he was active on the Butte and its environs. The English journalist Sisley Huddleston recalls a Dada performance in ‘a little theatre in Montmartre’90 and Tzara drew on an established tradition of absurdist Montmartre performance going back to the cabarets of the 1880s and developed in Jarry’s Ubu plays. On his arrival in Paris, he initially collaborated closely with the Surrealists, participating in the mock trial of Maurice Barrès in May 1921 and organising various Dada events in the following months. In 1922 and 1923, he fell out with Breton and the Surrealists, although they would be reconciled in 1929. Surrealism was always strongly implanted in Montmartre, although there were important groupings on the Left Bank around Joan Miró and André Masson, who had studios on the Rue Blomet, near the ‘fashionable venue Le Bal Nègre’.91 Breton himself lived for most of his adult life in an apartment at 42 Rue Fontaine and in the 1920s the Surrealists met regularly in the Café Cyrano on the Place Blanche to ‘avoid the “tout Paris scene” of Montparnasse’.92 In fact, the Surrealists’ relationship with Montmartre was more ambiguous. At the time, some of the Surrealists, notably Aragon, were members of the ‘Tout Paris’, and Louis Chevalier was at pains to dismiss their fascination with Montmartre as merely an example of the continuing perverse presence of high society in the quartier during the interwar years.93 What is certainly true is that, 88 See Henri Béhar, Tristan Tzara (Paris: Oxus, 2005), p. 239. 89 See ibid., p. 240. 90 Sisley Huddleston, Bohemian Literary and Social Life in Paris: Salons, Cafés, Studios (London, Bombay, Sydney: Harrap, 1928), p. 273. 91 Fraquelli, ‘Montparnasse and the Right Bank, p. 110. 92 Ibid., p. 110. 93 See Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime, p. 331. In fact, there was considerable overlap between the fascination exerted by Montmartre on both what remained of high society and the Surrealists, who often came together at establishments such as Le Bœuf sur le Toit: the Surrealists’ liking for popular entertainment, like the circus or the puppet theatre, and their celebration of the world of crime were in a sense an aesthetic counterpart to the aristocracy’s fondness for ‘slumming’.

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in the same way that the Surrealists’ fondness for the Café Certa in the Passage de l’Opéra satisfied their flâneur’s taste for the curiosities of the Parisian landscape, their presence in the Café Cyrano brought them into an at least vicarious proximity to the worlds of crime and sexuality present in Pigalle on which their work was based. At the same time, they were in the former territory of Le Chat Noir and its humourists whose work was showcased in the Anthologie de l’humour noir. The war years and the 1920s show a diversification of the cultural geography of Paris and a significant displacement of activity, already visible before the war, from Montmartre to the Left Bank, especially Montparnasse. However, there is no clear-cut transition and, despite the popularity of Montparnasse in the 1920s, Montmartre retained its importance in the capital’s leisure industry, from show business to prostitution and drugs. As such, many figures from the pre-war bohemian community continued to live and work there, and the presence of popular entertainment, especially American imports in the form of jazz, and new cultural technologies, fed into a continuing and renewed avant-garde, which would continue in Montmartre fiction of the interwar years, particularly in the work of Mac Orlan, Aymé and Céline. What is also true, however, is that Montmartre, like the rest of Paris, was not the same in the 1920s as it had been during the Belle Epoque, whose very name implies nostalgic retrospection, and many of the pre-war bohemians found it more difficult to come to terms with the Paris of the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs of 1925 than with its predecessor, the Paris of the Exposition Universelle of 1900. It is this uneasy relationship between the present and the recent past which drove not only Montmartre fiction of the interwar years, but also a major feature of its culture in the same period, a cultivation of the past and memory.

chapter seven

The Place of Memory

The Place of Memory

The response of the inhabitants of the Butte to the dual threat posed by modernisation and tourism was typically ambiguous, involving an apparently robust assertion of isolation combined with an astute commercial sense. In a tradition going back to Salis and his election campaigns, it took the form of spoof political entities: the ‘Commune Libre de Montmartre’ and the ‘République de Montmartre’, which both combined a serious purpose with fumisme. At the same time, it betrayed an acute wariness of the post-war world, which translated into both a retreat into nostalgia and a continued technical innovation most clearly represented by a flowering of caricature and illustration. The Commune Libre and the République The Commune Libre de Montmartre was founded on 11 April 1920 by Jules Depaquit, Maurice Hallé and Roger Toziny. Its first elections, held the same year, involved three competing lists: the Liste antigrattecieliste (‘anti-skyscrapers’), led by Depaquit himself; the Liste sauvagiste, whose manifesto included a proposal for ‘the transformation of the Sacré-Cœur into a municipal swimming pool’;1 and, significantly, a Liste dadaïste. Depaquit won and was elected maire, Hallé and Toziny serving as his two adjoints. To be sure, as Georges Charensol reminds us, these activities were by no means commercially disinterested: describing the municipality’s conception, he comments: ‘Some amiable drunkards and clever café proprietors had the idea of making Montmartre into a Commune Libre’, 2 1 See Herbert, p. 404. 2 Georges Charensol, D’une Rive à l’autre (Paris: Mercure de France, 1972), p. 14.

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and the Commune Libre certainly bore witness to a continuation of traditional Montmartre cabaret activity. Paul Yaki is right to characterise it as a ‘joke municipality’3 and, indeed, much of its activity took the form of elaborate practical jokes and bogus organisations, like the Alpinistes de la Butte, which go back to a tradition of Montmartre humour of the Belle Epoque. In fact, the Commune’s founders come precisely from the tradition of the Montmartre cabarets. Toziny, who came to Montmartre in 1903 as a singer and songwriter, founded the journal La Vache enragée in 1917 with Maurice Hallé, Bernard Lecache and Jack Mercereau, and opened the cabaret of the same name in 1920.4 Moreover, he was clearly heavily influenced by Willette, often performing dressed as Pierrot and writing Pierrot poems, such as ‘Pierrot pleure’ (1918). 5 Jules Depaquit, older than Toziny, was even more deeply rooted in the Montmartre cabaret culture of the Belle Epoque. He was born in 1869 in Sedan, the son of an engineer, and came to Montmartre in 1893 with his compatriot Georges Delaw, one of those provincial hopefuls attracted by Salis’s publicity for Le Chat Noir. He performed as a chansonnier at Le Chat Noir, most famously in a sketch involving a suspicious husband confronted with his wife’s lover and which produced the couplet of alexandrines: Tiens, tiens, tiens, tiens, tiens, tiens, Tiens, tiens, tiens, tiens, tiens, tiens. 6

Like Delaw, however, he also drew cartoons for the humorous press of the period, particularly Le Rire. The cartoon was a genre in which he excelled, to the extent that Yaki describes him as ‘the real father of modern caricature’,7 and Robert Rey comments: ‘Perhaps one day people will notice that Depaquit invented almost the whole aesthetic of present-day humorous drawing, as well as that of the modern poster’.8 A further link with the 1900 humourists was his interest in inventions, which, as we have seen, also links him with Cubism: his experiments 3 Paul Yaki, Le Montmartre de nos vingt ans (Paris: Tallandier, 1933), p. 164. 4 See Roger Toziny, De Balades en ballades, ou les veillées de Montmartre (Dreux: Editions Loussert-Toziny, 1990), pp. 10–11. 5 See ibid., pp. 22–3. 6 Quoted in Herbert, p. 406. 7 Yaki, Le Montmartre de nos vingt ans, p. 164. 8 Rey, ‘Quelques dessinateurs et humoristes montmartrois’, p. 53.

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with waterskis nearly led to his death by drowning in a mill race near Sedan. In the years before the war, he was completely anchored in the Montmartre community, moving from the Hôtel du Poirier, on the Place Ravignan, to the Hôtel Bouscarat, on the Place du Tertre, where one of his co-tenants was Mac Orlan. He later moved to the Lapin Agile. At the same time, Depaquit had close links with the avant-garde: he was a close friend of Max Jacob and of the pre-Dadaist Georges Braindinbourg, and his work was greatly admired by the Dadaists after the war. From the foundation of the Commune Libre until his death in 1924, Depaquit continued this humorous tradition of the Belle Epoque with its openings to Dada and Surrealism: the municipality took over publication of Toziny’s and Hallé’s La Vache enragée and subsidised the cabaret; and Depaquit opened his own cabaret, Chez Monsieur le Maire, on the Place du Tertre. Depaquit was succeeded as maire by Toziny and then, in 1929, by the journalist and humourist Pierre Labric, who had already organised stunts in the Depaquit tradition, such as the ‘slow race’ in the Rue Lepic in 1921, and organisations like the Fédération Française de Marche with its Bol d’Or de la Marche and a race, the Paris-Strasbourg.9 An accomplished sportsman, Labric was also famous for having ridden a bicycle down the steps by the Montmartre funicular, a feat he followed up by riding down the 347 steps of the first level of the Eiffel Tower.10 Innocuous as its activities were, and despite their undoubted commercial motivation, the Commune Libre itself had important implications for Montmartre culture as a whole during the interwar years. The implied secession from the rest of Paris betrays a very real disaffection with the capital and the modernity it represented: indeed, further signs of retrenchment and beleaguerment can be detected in the fact that, by the election of Labric in 1929, the Commune Libre de Montmartre had become the ‘Commune Libre du Vieux-Montmartre’, the Butte abandoning the modern developments of the lower slopes. At the same time, the emphasis on humour in the activities of the Commune Libre denotes not merely continuity with the pre-war cabaret culture, but also a conscious demarcation from the intellectualism and high seriousness of the Left Bank. 9 See Pascal Payen-Appenzeller, ‘Un Etat dans l’Etat? La Commune libre du vieux Montmartre’, Guide de Montmartre, Connaissance de Paris et de la France, 23, 1974, p. 36. 10 See ibid., p. 36.

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A similar tension can be detected in the activities of that other organisation founded just after the war, the République de Montmartre, whose major purpose was charitable. As France Clément notes: 1921 … A good time for Montmartre! People were having fun. The bohemian lifestyle remained possible for the artists, whose motto was ‘create without constraint’. Life was certainly hard for them, but it was full of charm and fun. However, this good humour sometimes disguised poverty which was scarcely bearable and much physical and psychological pain. The Social Security had not yet been invented and, on the Butte, people were often impoverished, especially the poulbots, the children of Montmartre. Montmartre citizens therefore decided to fight against this poverty and to help the poor. A philanthropic society was organised. Nevertheless, it was unthinkable that Montmartre should lose its sense of humour, even in these circumstances, and the society adopted the pompous name of ‘Republic of Montmartre’.11

As with the Commune Libre the previous year, the République held elections and three presidents were elected, all illustrators and cartoonists: Willette, Forain and Poulbot. Subsequently, a clinic was set up, staffed by a doctor and nurse who provided their services for nothing. Francisque Poulbot, who was very much the driving force behind the République, had been brought up in Montmartre12 and was one of the most important contributors to its identity as a lieu de mémoire in the popular imagination. He was particularly influenced by Willette, to whom he attributed his ambition to become a cartoonist. As Luc Willette records, Poulbot met his father in the Quat’z’Arts and confessed: ‘Master, it was looking at your cartoons in the Chat Noir, in the Courrier Français and the Pierrot that made me want to draw as well’.13 In the same way that Willette made the Pierrot figure his trademark, Poulbot rapidly specialised in pictures of the, perhaps apocryphal, Montmartre street children – sanitised Gavroches – to the extent that, as we have seen, often through even more sentimental imitations, they have become an integral part of the visual memory of the Butte.14 In his early years, 11 France Clément, ‘Pour abattre la misère, la République de Montmartre’, Guide de Montmartre, Connaissance de Paris et de la France, p. 38. 12 See Francis Carco, Les Humoristes (Paris: Ollendorff, 1921), p. 174. 13 Luc Willette, Adolphe Willette, Pierrot de Montmartre (Précy-sous-Thil: L’Armançon, 1991), p. 98. 14 Interestingly, Chevalier denies ever having seen any ‘enfants de Montmartre’,

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Poulbot was by no means as sentimental as in his later work and that of his imitators. A collection of his cartoons published in 1908, in the series Les Maîtres humoristes, for example, shows that before the war he was using his street-wise urchins as a means of exploiting that staple of the humorous press of the Belle Epoque, sexual innuendo. One cartoon shows two children talking in a bedroom: ‘Yes, I sleep in that bed’. ‘And your father?’ ‘In the maid’s bed’.

Another depicts a naked artist’s model complaining: ‘When I posed on the Champs-Elysées, I got 100 francs … It’s true that it was for a photographer and that there were two of us’.15 As with many of his colleagues, however, the war served to blunt and sentimentalise Poulbot’s humour. In 1918, he wrote a play with Paul Gsell, published with his illustrations the following year, called Les Gosses dans les ruines,16 which depicted children playing in the ruins of their village, just destroyed by the retreating Germans. Amidst accounts of German atrocities, the children’s play mimics resistance to the Germans and the rebuilding of their village. Poulbot was also behind one of the more intriguing cultural phenomena of the war years: the popular secular cult of Nénette and Rintintin,17 two typical caricatural street urchins created in 1913 as porcelain knick-knacks and which reappeared in cartoons during the war, in journals like La Baïonnette. Adopted by the Parisian population as lucky charms against the threat of German Gotha bombers, they were often present in the form of knitted dolls in the deep métro stations on the nord–sud line which doubled at night as air-raid shelters. Towards the end of 1918, an American soldier stationed in Lorraine found a litter of German Shepherd puppies and kept two, which he called Nénette and Rintintin. On his return to California, he trained the male dog Rintintin to perform tricks and introduced him to the film industry, creating another legend, that of the movie wonder dog raising the possibility that the ‘Poulbots’ may be as imaginary as the ‘Apaches’. See Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime, p. 354. 15 See Francisque Poulbot, Les Maîtres humoristes, 12, Poulbot (Paris: Librairie Félix Juven, 1908). 16 Paul Gsell and Poulbot, Les Gosses dans les ruines (Paris: L’Edition Française Illustrée, 1919). 17 See Pignot, 1914–1918. Paris dans la Grande Guerre, p. 82.

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Rin Tin Tin, who subsequently returned to French popular culture as an international star – a circular process similar to the reintroduction of the ‘French cancan’ in the same period and the striptease in the 1950s. By the end of the war, Poulbot had become a Montmartre institution, and the re-enactment of his wedding an annual event.18 However, although one of its most important manifestations was the Dispensaire des Petits Poulbots, Paul Yaki reminds us that the République was not solely a charitable institution but, like the Commune Libre, was concerned with the identity of the Butte itself. It was formed initially to resist change, and its headquarters were in Poulbot’s house, where ‘the resistance to the vandals was organised’. This half-serious secession from the rest of the capital was accompanied by the instant creation of ‘traditions’ which aimed at the establishment of Montmartre as a misplaced outpost of rural France, la France profonde, to which it was increasingly drawn ideologically: Depaquit created the posts of garde-champêtre (rural bailiff) and capitaine des pompiers (fire chief),19 and in 1934 Labric, accompanied by the President of the Republic and the Minister of Agriculture, inaugurated the first Montmartre wine harvest, from the last remaining vineyard on the Butte, 20 which still exists – another example of the close relationship between Montmartre and the Establishment. As we shall see, this spurious rural identity was crucial to Montmartre’s self-perception during the interwar years and after, and was an important factor in the political orientation of its cultural figures. Nor, of course, was it at all alien to the commercial considerations of the Butte. In fact, the Commune Libre and the République, with all their phoney pseudo-rural trappings, were merely a prolongation of that cultural and commercial ‘packaging’ of Montmartre identified by Whiting in his descriptions of Salis and Le Chat Noir. At the same time, however, they betray a very real distrust of contemporary urban society and a desire to take refuge in the comfort of the past. It is for this reason that one of the most prevalent forms of literary expression in Montmartre during the interwar years, and even after, was reminiscence about the Belle Epoque. Not only had Montmartre become a lieu de mémoire, a place of memory, it had become a lieu de mémoires – a place of memoirs.

18 See Jean-Paul Crespelle, Montmartre vivant (Paris: Hachette, 1964), p. 54. 19 See Herbert, p. 413. 20 See Payen-Appenzeller, ‘Un Etat dans un Etat?’, p. 36.

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Memory and Memoirs In 1928, Sisley Huddleston wrote: ‘Once the centre of literary and artistic life was at Montmartre. Montmartre has changed. Even the old-world village on the topmost heights has been invaded by pleasure-seekers. Montmartre is becoming a memory – when it is not a glaring, blaring inferno’. 21 In fact, the transition of Montmartre from centre of bohemia to place of memory can be dated slightly earlier, to the centenary of Murger’s birth in 1922. As Jerrold Seigel comments, ‘the Murger centennial was followed by a wave of valedictory nostalgia’, 22 which translated into a flood of memoirs that continued unabated from the early 1920s to the 1970s. Some of these memoirs were written by major figures from pre-war bohemia who had gone on to make a considerable name for themselves as novelists or poets in the interwar years, and they tended to return to the subject on more than one occasion. Dorgelès, for example, was highly prolific on the subject and wrote Montmartre, mon pays as early as 1925, following it up with Quand j’étais montmartrois in 1936 and L’Esprit montmartrois avant la guerre in 1939. After the Second World War, he produced two further volumes of memoirs in rapid succession: Bouquet de Bohème in 1947 and, the following year, Au Beau Temps de la Butte. Finally, in 1960, he produced Promenades montmartroises. Francis Carco was no less assiduous in evoking the great days of the Butte. In the 1920s he edited a series for Grasset entitled ‘La Vie de Bohème’, the first volume of which was his own La Légende et la vie d’Utrillo, published in 1927. His volumes of memoirs include Scènes de la vie de Montmartre (1919), De Montmartre au Quartier Latin (1927), Mémoires d’une autre vie (1934), Montmartre à vingt ans (1938) and Bohème d’artiste (1940). André Salmon devoted the third volume of his memoirs Souvenirs sans fin – L’Air de la Butte – to Montmartre. Even Mac Orlan, who had lived in the Bateau-Lavoir with Salmon and the Cubists and whose memories of pre-war Montmartre were of an earlier period, and for that reason both more jaundiced and more realistic, produced Montmartre in 1946, a volume of memoirs of the Butte in Rue Saint-Vincent, a chapter devoted to Montmartre in Villes (1929) and occasional reminiscences in La Petite Cloche de Sorbonne, of 1959. 21 Huddleston, Bohemian Literary and Social Life in Paris: Salons, Cafés, Studios, p. 149. 22 Seigel, Bohemian Paris, p. 367.

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Less well-known figures also contributed to the vogue for memoirs about Belle Epoque Montmartre. Paul Yaki’s Le Montmartre de nos vingt ans dates from 1933, and there is a considerable corpus of memoirs from the period after the Second World War, coinciding with an upsurge in film production with Montmartre locations during the Fourth Republic: Jean Vertex produced Le Village inspiré in 1950; art critic and journalist André Warnod wrote two volumes: Fils de Montmartre (1955) and Drôle d’époque (1960); Géo Cim wrote Montmartre mon vieux village and Souvenirs 1900–1914 in 1964, the same year that Jean-Paul Crespelle’s Montmartre vivant appeared. The journalist Georges Charensol’s D’une Rive à l’autre appeared as late as 1973. Indeed, journalism may well be one of the keys to this proliferation of Montmartre memoirs, especially during the interwar years. It is useful to bear in mind the proximity of Montmartre to the Parisian press on the boulevards and in the second arrondissement around the Bourse, since most of the Montmartre writers made their living before they were established, and often long afterwards, as journalists. Charensol himself was literary editor of L’Intransigeant, Warnod wrote for Comœdia, as did Carco and Dorgelès initially for Clemenceau’s L’Homme libre. Along with journalists like Albert Londres and Joseph Kessel, the Ecole de Montmartre novelists Mac Orlan, Carco and Dorgelès pioneered the grand reportage: extended investigations, often in exotic locations, which appeared initially in serial form in the press and subsequently in book form. Mac Orlan, for example, who was L’Intransigeant’s correspondent in Mainz after the war and who wrote reports on Jack the Ripper’s London, produced a full-length account of the disciplinary battalions in North Africa in Le Bataillon de la mauvaise chance (1933); and Dorgelès, as a reporter for Les Annales politiques et littéraires, travelled in Egypt, Syria and Palestine in 1927, and in 1936 visited Germany, Austria, Hungary, Russia, the United States, Italy and North Africa, like Mac Orlan for L’Intransigeant. In 1939 and 1940 he reported from the front as correspondent for Gringoire and, as we have seen, coined the term drôle de guerre (phoney war). It was only natural, therefore, that these writers who were also experienced journalists should turn their attention to their own past in the Montmartre of the Belle Epoque, particularly since, in the troubled France of the interwar years, there was both an interest in and nostalgia for the period before the war, of which Montmartre itself was a powerful symbol. In this context of the creation of a mythology, it is hardly surprising that the memoirs themselves are not necessarily entirely accurate. Both Carco and Dorgelès, for example, produce graphic accounts of Picasso in

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the Lapin Agile, but the painter rarely went there after 1907. 23 Similarly, Carco gives detailed descriptions of Montmartre in the early years of the century, but he did not arrive in Paris until 1910. Painter Edmond Heuzé’s recollections explain this: ‘I invited Carco dozens of times to my home … He got me talking and afterwards we would wander around Montmartre looking up the sites of my memories. Those are what enabled him to write his books on Montmartre, because he had hardly known anything: he came too late’. 24 Nevertheless, despite, or perhaps because of, their tenuous veracity, the Montmartre memoirs present a remarkably coherent set of preoccupations. Not only do the same stories appear in most of the accounts – Bruant and his valet, battles in the Lapin Agile, Mécilas Golberg and his son – but the themes retain a considerable commonality. Most writers go to great lengths to perpetuate the myth of bohemia derived from Musset, Murger and Charpentier with artists, writers and grisettes in a frenetic and self-congratulatory celebration of youth culture. Dorgelès, for example, begins his account in Au Beau temps de la Butte with a semi-humorous account of a walk which he takes later in life past the Maison Rose, the subject of numerous paintings by Utrillo: En passant devant la fameuse Maison Rose si souvent peinte par Utrillo, j’eus une apparition. Un visage radieux, encadré de cheveux blonds, se penchait à la fenêtre et me souriait. — Bonjour, printemps! m’écriai-je, ébloui, en tendant le bras. Bonjour, ma jeunesse! Cet élan insolite ne parut pas surprendre la jeune inconnue. — Bonjour, monsieur Dorgelès, me répondit-elle gentiment. J’en restai interdit et sottement un peu flatté. — Comment? Vous me connaissez? — Oh, non! Mais maman vous connaît très bien. As I was passing by the famous Maison Rose, so often painted by Utrillo, I suddenly had a vision. A radiant face, framed with blond hair, looked out of the window and smiled down at me. ‘Hello, spring!’ I cried, delighted, stretching out my arms. ‘Hello, my youth!’ This unusual excitement did not seem to surprise the young stranger. ‘Hello, Monsieur Dorgelès, she replied kindly’. This left me amazed and, foolishly, a little flattered. 23 See Crespelle, La Vie quotidienne à Montmartre, p. 164. 24 Quoted in Crespelle, La Vie quotidienne à Montmartre, p. 62.

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‘What, you know me?’ ‘Oh no! But my mother knows you very well’. 25

Not only does this typify a prevalent idealisation of youth bound up with Montmartre before the war, it also has precise cultural connotations. The cry ‘Bonjour jeunesse!’ is an echo of the exclamation of Murger’s hero Jacques at the funeral of his mistress Francine: ‘O ma jeunesse! c’est vous que l’on enterre!’ (‘Oh my youth, it is you who are being buried!’), 26 and serves to situate Dorgelès’s own memoirs within the tradition of bohemia: his own latter-day Scènes de la vie de bohème. While such idealisation is common in the memoirs of Montmartre, there are nevertheless dissenting voices. In particular, Pierre Mac Orlan, who came to Montmartre earlier than his fellow bohemians – in 1900 – and who experienced real poverty, offers an important corrective to the celebration of the Butte during the Belle Epoque. In Villes, he writes: Montmartre, avec ses guinguettes et son apparence spécieuse d’ancien petit village communard, distillait le poison subtil de la paresse et de l’insomnie. Les éléments les plus connus de la déchéance physique et cérébrale s’y promenaient en pantoufles. Il y avait la fille, le maquereau, le couteau et l’alcool associés sous une tonnelle garnie de chèvrefeuille et de vigne vierge. Montmartre, with its guinguettes and its specious appearance of a little old Communard village, distilled the subtle poison of laziness and insomnia. The best-known elements of physical and intellectual decline walked through it in slippers. There, the prostitute, the pimp, the knife and alcohol came together under a bower decorated with honeysuckle and wild vine. 27

Of the Lapin Agile he remembers only: ‘la triste association de paresseux dont je faisais partie et qui m’a laissé de Montmartre un dégoût indiscutable’ (‘the sad association of idlers of whom I was a member and which has left me with an undeniable disgust for Montmartre’). 28 While Mac Orlan’s dissent is invaluable and provides easily the most reliable account of Montmartre before the First World War. It is 25 Dorgelès, Au Beau temps de la Butte, pp. 9–10. 26 Henry Murger, ‘La Manchon de Francine’, in Scènes de la vie de bohème (Paris: Nilsson, 1851), p. 221. 27 Pierre Mac Orlan, Villes: Rouen, Montmartre, Brest, Londres, Villes Rhénanes, Rome (Paris: Gallimard, 1929), p. 64. 28 Ibid., p. 92.

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unusual, and his fellow memorialists continue to idealise the Butte and to deplore its loss. In fact, one theme common to most of the memoirs is the belief that ‘old’ Montmartre died during the First World War and is definitively irretrievable. Léon-Paul Fargue, for example, entitles one of the chapters of Le Piéton de Paris (1939) ‘Feu Montmartre’ (‘The Late Montmartre’), and in a later chapter asserts: ‘The Montmartre cafés are dead. They have been replaced by bars and grill rooms’. 29 Paul Yaki concludes his memoirs with the lugubrious chapter ‘Montmartre aux fantômes’ (‘Montmartre of the Ghosts’), and celebrates the ‘Montmartre when we were twenty, mutilated by the war and the architects’. 30 Carco, in a volume on Montmartre humourists, joins in with a similar eulogy: ‘Old Montmartre, a land of paradox and fantasy which the modern houses, alas! the foreigners and the hoardings invade more and more each day, without the slightest decency’. 31 The threats to this idealised Montmartre were, as we have seen, modernity, commercialism and cosmopolitanism, a demonology embodied by the hated rival, Montparnasse, though, as we have seen, this dichotomy was exaggerated and both centres retained their share of international artists. From the heights of Montmartre, Montparnasse came to represent all the inauthenticity of the modern world. Initially, there was more than a hint of resentment and envy in the memoirs. Yaki, for example, claims that: ‘Today Montparnasse has a monopoly of the fashion among foreigners looking for famous taverns and hidden vices, and among young artists seeking recognition’. 32 Yet these doubts are immediately turned on their head, for it is Montmartre, and not Montparnasse, which is the authentic expression of French culture. André Warnod reassures himself: ‘Montparnasse is transitory, Montmartre permanent’, 33 for ‘Montparnasse, unlike Montmartre, did not have essential elements which could survive anything’. 34 Hence, ‘Montmartre continues to live cheerfully’. 35 The reason for the fragility of Montparnasse is its cosmopolitanism and, at this point, the memorialists give reign to the xenophobia which was always an element in Montmartre 29 Fargue, Le Piéton de Paris, p. 47. 30 Yaki, Le Montmartre de nos vingt ans, p. 175. 31 Carco, Les Humoristes, p. 174. 32 Yaki, Le Montmartre de nos vingt ans, p. 174. 33 André Warnod, Drôle d’époque (Paris: Fayard, 1960), p. 95. 34 Ibid., p. 95. 35 Ibid., p. 96.

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culture. Géo Cim, writing on Modigliani, concludes on a note of blatant racism and anti-Semitism: ‘After an evening’s drinking at the Lapin Agile, completely disgusted, he left the Butte like most of the half-breeds. No longer hiding his Jewish origins, he went off to join the “Bicots du Montparno” [the wogs of Montparnasse]’. 36 More restrained, but in the same vein, Paul Yaki follows his disparaging comments on ‘fashionable’, cosmopolitan Montparnasse with the familiar evocation of Montmartre as a rural village: ‘So, we start to dream of rubbing shoulders with other Frenchmen in a Montmartre on the summit: a small area, certainly, but one where the last gardens and some old dwellings have still been saved’. 37 Where the Montmartre memorialists are really torn is in the case of Pascin, who committed suicide in his studio on the Boulevard de Clichy in 1930. As Yaki reminds his readers, Pascin was a Bulgarian whose real name was Pinkas and was naturalised as an American citizen in 1915. 38 This, for Warnod, made him an automatic candidate for Montparnasse: ‘the most representative character of Montparnasse was Pascin, even though he lived in Montmartre. He was the epitome of the man from everywhere and nowhere, which made him naturally suited to be a citizen of Montparnasse’. 39 The problem is that Pascin, who had been a gifted artist for the Munich-based review Simplicissimus before coming to Paris in 1905, was one of the glories of the Montmartre art world in the interwar years, one of the founders, as Yaki reminds us, of the Ecole de Montmartre,40 an habitué of the Restaurant Manière, and his studio was a regular meeting place for Montmartre stalwarts like Salmon, Carco and Marcel Aymé.41 His inexplicable suicide provides the solution to the paradox, and Pascin became a martyr, not merely to Montmartre painting, but to his own cosmopolitanism and the decline of the années folles into disillusionment and despair – what Warnod calls ‘Le Cafard après la fête’ (‘depression after the party’)42 – from which true Montmartre, as a representative of la France profonde in the capital, is strangely immune. 36 Géo Cim, Montmartre mon vieux village. Souvenirs 1900–1914 (Paris: Grassin, 1964), p. 56. 37 Yaki, Le Montmartre de nos vingt ans, pp. 174–5. 38 Ibid., p. 153. 39 Warnod, Fils de Montmartre, p. 272. 40 Yaki, Le Montmartre de nos vingt ans, p. 153. 41 See Vertex, Le Village inspiré, pp. 131–2. 42 Warnod, Fils de Montmartre, pp. 282–7.

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The Restaurant Manière This commercialisation, while providing ammunition for the memorialists of the Belle Epoque, had a quite specific concrete impact upon the style of Montmartre bohemia. The major victims were the traditional artistic cafés, so central to bohemian activity, although their demise was not immediate. Writing in 1938, Léon-Paul Fargue notes that the modern Montmartre dwellers, who have had so many illustrators, have not yet found their real painter. I am thinking of Chas Laborde, Dignimont or Utrillo, who all confined themselves to the immediate post-war period. Then, the café seemed to be reserved, at least in Montmartre, for an elite section of the artistic community or frequenters of the boulevards. Today, the zinc bars and the velvet or leather seats have been taken over by representatives of all sections of the French people, beginning with the owners of those small second-hand Renaults, who one day decided that they had had enough of being kept at arm’s length from the pleasures of the café. A real Montmartre café, in 1938, lives under the dual sign of overcrowding and banality.43

Although Fargue exaggerates the negative impact of the democratisation of French leisure after the Front Populaire, he is accurate in identifying the decline of the Montmartre artistic café, which accelerated after the early 1920s, to the extent that many Montmartre artists or writers, like the engraver Jean-Gabriel Daragnès, often preferred to socialise in Montparnasse, while still living on the Butte. On the Butte itself, the impact of tourism and visits from the Parisian population had the effect of displacing the social centres of the artistic community further north from the Place du Tertre, towards the Rue Caulaincourt, the Restaurant Manière and the tiny bar Au Rêve. Alternatively, Montmartre writers and artists met in each other’s studios, like that of the painter Gen-Paul, in the Impasse Girardon. The composition of that community, however, was very different in the interwar years from that of pre-war bohemia, the international avant-garde having decamped to Montparnasse or further afield and even the more traditional bohemian writers, like Dorgelès, Carco or Mac Orlan, moving away and visiting the Butte infrequently.44 Those 43 Fargue, Le Piéton de Paris, p. 46. 44 One exception to this pattern is Mac Orlan who, despite his move to Passy and his house in Saint-Cyr-sur-Morin, could never totally break with Montmartre, and kept returning to apartments there.

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who remained in Montmartre had made a conscious choice and were effectively asserting their marginality in relation to the mainstream of Parisian cultural life, now dominated by the Left Bank. Similarly, younger writers, like Marcel Aymé or Louis-Ferdinand Céline, who moved into Montmartre in the 1920s when it was no longer artistically fashionable, were making a statement about the nature of their work and social perceptions. In the interwar years, Montmartre culturally became the centre for a non-conformism which, as we have seen, often took the form of extreme conservatism and artistic deviance from what was perceived as the mainstream. Montmartre fiction parted company with the quasi-philosophical and politically engaged writing associated with the Left Bank in the 1920s and 1930s and, while the presence of painters and sculptors was sustained in the interwar years, the important and innovative activity in the visual arts was carried out by humourists, illustrators and caricaturists, especially Gus Bofa and Chas Laborde, who assumed an ascendancy not seen since Allais’s domination of bohemia in the 1880s and 1890s. Most, as we shall see, had started their careers before the First World War, and went on to make their name during the interwar years through the press, and particularly through expensively produced volumes. Working closely with contemporary authors associated with Montmartre and engravers like Daragnès, they were instrumental in founding the French luxury book trade, the livre d’art or livre de luxe. The centre of this new Montmartre community was the Restaurant Manière in the Rue Caulaincourt, on the north slope of the Butte, which is as important to the cultural and intellectual life of Paris in the interwar years as the better-known Café Cyrano of the Surrealists, the Dôme and the Coupole of the Montparnasse avant-garde or the Flore, the Deux-Magots and the Brasserie Lipp on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. In Drôle d’époque, André Warnod describes the establishment as one of the most famous restaurants in Paris, in which ‘Maurice Princet, the mathematician of Cubism, and Chas Laborde … lunched every day at the same table, directing their ferocity at all the clients’.45 Similarly, ‘Anatole France and Steinlen … discussed the illustrations for Cranquebille’,46 while figures from pre-war bohemia, like Mac Orlan, called in on visits from the country. They were joined in the 1930s by younger caricaturists like Jean Oberlé and Ralph Soupault and writers like Aymé and Céline. 45 Warnod, Drôle d’époque, p. 15. 46 Ibid., p. 15.

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A late arrival, just before the Second World War, incidentally, was the Swedish Consul-General Raoul Nordling, who went on to broker the relatively peaceful liberation of Paris in August 1944.47 In other words, the Restaurant Manière was able to group together representatives of successive generations of Montmartre culture: Steinlen from the days of Le Chat Noir, Princet from the heyday of Cubism and Mac Orlan from the ‘magnifique Bohème de 1910’. There was no doubt, however, as to who was the master of ceremonies in this repository of the tradition of Montmartre wit: the illustrator and caricaturist Chas Laborde, described by Paul Yaki as ‘the soul’ of the Restaurant Manière.48 As Dorgelès recalls, Laborde s’était lié, comme nous tous, avec le sympathique patron du café-restaurant de la rue Caulaincourt, réputé pour son Vouvray, pourtant il ne pouvait résister au plaisir de lui décocher des rosseries. Ce brave homme s’étant enrichi acheta un château sur les bords de la Loire et, tout fier de son changement de situation, n’en finissait pas de décrire les beautés de sa demeure, la haute toiture d’ardoises, la tourelle seigneuriale, les pelouses, la pièce d’eau; un vrai château, enfin. — En somme, interrompit Laborde, il ne te manque plus qu’un châtelain. had become friendly, like all of us, with the amiable owner of the café-restaurant in the Rue Caulaincourt, which was famous for its Vouvray. However, Laborde could not resist the pleasure of teasing him. This excellent man had grown rich and had bought a manor house on the banks of the Loire. So proud was he of this change in his situation that he never stopped describing the beauties of his new house: the high slate roof, the aristocratic turret, the lawns, the pools – a real manor house. ‘So in fact’, interrupted Laborde, ‘all you need is a lord of the manor’.49

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of this group of writers and artists in the Restaurant Manière because they not only constitute an important, and often absent, element in the cultural history of the period, but also enable Montmartre to face in two directions at once: looking backwards with the memorialists and traditionalists to the lost golden era of Belle Epoque bohemia, 50 and forwards, armed with the irreverence, 47 See Jean Oberlé, Vie d’artiste (Paris: Denoel, 1956), p. 219. 48 Yaki, Le Montmartre de nos vingt ans, p. 151. 49 Dorgelès, Au Beau temps de la Butte, p. 20. 50 For a study of Belle Epoque Montmartre caricaturists, see Frank L. Emanuel, The Illustrators of Montmartre (London: A. Siegle, 1904).

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subversion and invention of the humourists of the Belle Epoque, to renewal. For, if Montmartre became a dominant centre for caricature in the interwar years, it owed its role to both the humorous tradition of cabarets like the Chat Noir, with figures such as Abel Faivre, Pierre Falké, Steinlen, Willette and Poulbot, which remained active into the 1920s, and to the proximity of the commercial press immediately to the south. At the same time, as we have seen, the Montmartre avant-garde had already contributed significantly to the comic press of the immediate pre-war period, particularly through the graphic work of Picasso, Van Dongen, Jacques Villon, Juan Gris, Galanis, Marcoussis or Pascin, who brought his experience of working with Simplicissimus to Montmartre. However, a younger generation of caricaturists came to the fore in the interwar years, most of whom had been marked by the First World War, including Gus Bofa, Chas Laborde, André Dignimont, Zyg Brunner, Jean Oberlé and Ralph Soupault. As Georges Charensol records, these figures had come back sickened from the war they had fought courageously. However, as patriots, they did not allow people to talk about the war lightly. Because he had allowed himself an innocent joke, Pascin was beaten by the engraver Daragnès. They hated the war, but they spoke about it endlessly, proud of the courage they had shown and of the cunning which had allowed them to survive. Only Gus Bofa, who had been deeply wounded physically and psychologically, remained silent. 51

Among this large and often neglected group there were two figures of outstanding influence and importance: Gus Bofa and Chas Laborde, who remained crucial figures for Montmartre culture in the interwar years through their development of its approach to caricature and the close relationship between caricaturists and writers. Gus Bofa Despite claims in favour of Depaquit, Gus Bofa was probably the greatest influence on French caricature during the interwar years, both through the example of his own work and his role as an intermediary and impresario. He was born Gustave Blanchot in 1883 in the garrison town of Brive-la-Gaillarde, where his father was a high-ranking officer. 52 51 Charensol, D’une rive à l’autre, p. 223. 52 See Georges Charensol, ‘Gus Bofa et ses amis’, in Gus Bofa et les illustrateurs de l’entre-deux-guerres: Catalogue, (Paris: Musée-Galerie de la Seita, 1983), p. 5.

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Unlike many of his fellow bohemians of the 1900s, therefore, who came from a more modest white-collar background, Bofa, like some of the humourists in Allais’s circle, like Caran d’Ache or the ex-Condorcet students around Lugné-Poe, came from a privileged, even patrician, background. As Mac Orlan commented: ‘l’éducation sentimentale et sociale du jeune dessinateur fut parfaitement différente de celle des autres artistes de sa génération’ (‘the sentimental and social education of the young caricaturist was completely different from that of the other artists of his generation’). 53 Bofa was educated, like Bonnard, at the Lycée Henri IV, where one of his fellow students was the son of Aristide Bruant, who was killed during the war, 54 and at one point he considered going to the Ecole Polytechnique. 55 He was already interested in drawing, however, and attended Luc-Olivier Merson’s studio at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where he became friendly with Dunoyer de Segonzac. 56 Eventually he decided on the career of an engineer and began work in an aluminium foundry in the suburb of Puteaux, while also embarking on his artistic work in earnest, moving into a studio in the Rue Lafayette and enrolling at the Académie Cormon in Montmartre, where Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec and Jacques Villon had been students before him. His presence at Corman’s studio did not last long: when the class was set the task of tackling the subject of Noah’s Ark in the grand manner, Bofa irreverently produced a minute picture showing a tiny earth abandoned by the Ark, leaving only a small dog trying to catch it up57 – the cartoonist had already taken over from the classical painter. As Dorgelès summed up: Si aujourd’hui, au lieu de peindre d’immenses toiles dans la manière de son maître, représentant Vulcain forgeant pour Jupiter ou le Président de la République en tenu de gala, Gus Bofa dessine tout simplement des hommes, avec leurs vices, leurs ridicules, leurs manies, c’est donc bien, comme je l’ai avancé, à un chien que nous le devons. If, today, instead of painting immense canvasses in the style of his master representing Vulcan forging weapons for Jupiter or the President of the 53 Pierre Mac Orlan, Gus Bofa (Paris: Les Editions de la Belle Page, 1930), p. 12. 54 See Bernard Baritaud, Pierre Mac Orlan, sa vie, son temps (Geneva: Droz, 1992), p. 368. 55 See Mac Orlan, Gus Bofa, p. 11. 56 See Charensol, ‘Gus Bofa et ses amis’, p. 5. 57 See Pierre Mornand, Vingt-deux artistes du livre (Paris: Le Comptoir Graphique Albert Cymboliste, 1948), pp. 25–6.

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Republic in full evening dress, Gus Bofa merely draws people, with their vices, their silliness and their obsessions, it is all due to a little dog. 58

The cartoonist, who, like many Montmartre figures, had adopted a pseudonym, had already begun to submit drawings to Alphonse Allais’s Le Sourire, and had designed some successful advertisement posters – a staple of Montmartre art and a medium in which Bofa excelled. Mac Orlan wrote that ‘dans les affiches de Bofa, une impression domine toutes les autres: une grande tendresse pour tous les personnages dessinés’ (‘in Bofa’s posters, one impression dominates all others: an immense tenderness for all the characters depicted’). 59 So successful did Bofa become in this dual career as magazine cartoonist and poster artist that he was able to give up his work as an engineer, and was rapidly, and precociously, rewarded. In 1910 (and not 1909, as Mac Orlan recalls), the magazine proprietor Félix Juven offered Bofa the editorship of Le Rire, one of the most successful humorous magazines, with a print run of 150,000.60 Le Rire offered Bofa immense opportunities. In the first place, he took over a team of the most outstanding cartoonists of the day: Abel Faivre, Léandre, Albert Guillaume, Marcel Capy, Joseph Warnod, Georges Delaw and Poulbot,61 and also devoted himself to recruiting new younger talent, like Mac Orlan, Paul Iribe, Yves Mirande, Curnonsky, Sennep and Marcoussis.62 At the same time, he contributed to the journalistic side of the review, in particular taking over the role of drama critic in the column ‘Le Rire au théâtre’, which he also illustrated – often without having seen the plays in question.63 He also acted as Director of the Office de l’Art et de Publicité, to which, notably, he recruited the young engraver Jean-Gabriel Daragnès.64 As if this were not enough, Bofa also tried his hand at music hall, writing the review Complet à l’impérial in collaboration with Max Aghion, which became a box office success. By 1912, however, Bofa’s relationship with Juven began to sour. Juven was more concerned with sales figures than the quality of his imprints and when Joseph Pelpel offered Bofa the editorship of Le 58 Dorgelès, ‘Préface’, in Gus Bofa, Synthèses littéraires et extra-littéraires (Paris: Mornay, 1923), p. 15. 59 Mac Orlan, Gus Bofa, p. 21. 60 See Charensol, ‘Gus Bofa et ses amis’, p. 5. 61 See Oberlé, Vie d’artiste, p. 57. 62 See Charensol, ‘Gus Bofa et ses amis’, p. 6. 63 See ibid., p. 6. 64 See Mac Orlan, Gus Bofa, p. 22.

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Sourire, which had gone downhill since the death of Alphonse Allais, he readily accepted.65 Not only was Bofa temperamentally sympathetic to Le Sourire, more intellectual and subtle than the mass-circulation Le Rire, the move also offered him the opportunity to build up a new team which would reshape the production of French humour. As Mac Orlan wrote: ‘c’est avec la revue humoristique Le Sourire, un peu avant la guerre, qu’il put réellement travailler comme il le voulait’ (‘It was with the humorous review Le Sourire that, just before the war, he was really able to work just as he wanted’.66 At Le Sourire he built up a team he could trust, including Dorgelès, Robert Dieudonné, Gabriel de Lautrec, Pierre Falké, Georges Delaw, Roubille, Mirande, André Foy, and, with Laborde, ‘voyaient déjà la route à suivre, tout au moins celle qui devait conduire à cette espèce d’expressionnisme qu’ils ont créé’ (‘already saw the road which had to be followed, at least the one which would lead to the type of Expressionism they created’).67 In other words, even before the war, Bofa and Laborde were moving towards the form of graphic art exemplified by German Expressionism, represented by Grosz and Simplicissimus. The First World War marked a profound change in Bofa’s career – as Mac Orlan reported: ‘Cette épreuve permit à quelques artistes de mûrir vite. Les grands dessins de Bofa parurent quand, après avoir été blessé, il abandonna l’hôpital’ (‘This experience allowed some artists to mature quickly. Bofa’s great drawings appeared when he left hospital, after being wounded’).68 Bofa was conscripted into the 346th Infantry Regiment in 1914 and, at the end of the year, was seriously wounded at Le Bois-le-Prêtre, receiving the Médaille Militaire with a citation.69 A keen swimmer and boxer before the war, he was permanently affected physically and psychologically, and his injuries had an effect on his post-war work. His wounds necessitated a long convalescence, during which he met his first wife, who was the owner of a number of Parisian music halls, including the Eldorado on the Boulevard de Strasbourg, where Bofa met Mistinguett and Dranem and drew their portraits. The war also signalled a permanent change in the direction of Bofa’s professional work. Invalided out of the army, he contributed 65 66 67 68 69

See Charensol, ‘Gus Bofa et ses amis’, p. 6. Mac Orlan, Gus Bofa, p. 22. Ibid., p. 23. Ibid., p. 27. See ibid, p. 30.

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to the pacifist, though relatively anodyne, magazine La Baïonnette, which published his Les Toubibs and La Guerre de Cent Ans in serial form, and the more radical and subversive Le Crapouillot, from 1915 onwards. Le Crapouillot was much more hostile to the war than La Baïonnette: founded in the trenches, as we have seen, by GaltierBoissière, it originally carried first-hand impressions of the front by figure such as Georges Duhamel, François Aman-Jean and Michel de Brunhoff, together with drawings from Jean-Loup Forain, Luc-Albert Moreau and Dunoyer de Segonzac.70 At the same time, Bofa began his career in book illustration, starting with Les Gaités du Chat-Noir in 1912, and continuing during the war with Les Poissons morts, U713, ou les Gentilshommes d’infortune and Le Chant de l’équipage, all produced in collaboration with Mac Orlan. After the war, Bofa became a major cultural figure in the new Paris. His work with Le Crapouillot blossomed when the magazine expanded to include contributions from figures as diverse as Drieu la Rochelle, Henri Béraud, Paul Poiret, Carco and Claude Roger-Marx.71 Bofa did not fully join Galtier-Boissière’s team until 1922, at which point he took over the book reviews section, where he later revealed a considerable critical perception, singling out writers such as Céline, Malraux, Saint-Exupéry, Giono and Bernanos.72 His gift for literary criticism in non-verbal form can be seen in the volume of Synthèses littéraires et extra-littéraires, published in 1923, in which he summed up an author’s work in a single drawing: nineteenth-century classics like Dostoyevsky, Dickens and Poe, and contemporaries like Mac Orlan, Morand, Giraudoux and, as we shall see, Dorgelès crippled under the weight of his huge wooden cross. In 1919, Bofa founded the Salon de l’Araignée, as a riposte to the Salon des Humoristes which ‘grouped all that was worse by magazine illustrators’ 73 and as an attempt to show that caricature was a serious art form. The first salon was held in 1920 at the Galerie Devambez, under a management committee which included Daragnès, Chas Laborde, Pierre Falké, André Foy and Jean Oberlé, all of whom exhibited, alongside Forain, Abel Faivre, Galtier-Boissière, Dignimont, H.P. Gassier, Don, Lucien Boucher and younger cartoonists like Serge, Roger Wild, 70 See Roger Bouillot, Gus Bofa l’incendiaire (Paris: Futuropolis, 1980). 71 See ibid. 72 Ibid. 73 Charensol, ‘Gus Bofa et ses amis’, p. 7.

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Touchagues and Carlo Rim.74 The early Salons de l’Araignée were mainly devoted to the work of these figures, many of whom had been discovered by Bofa when he was editor of Le Sourire, but he quickly expanded the scope of the exhibitions to include avant-garde artists like Chagall, Pascin, Dunoyer de Segonzac, Van Dongen and Jean Cocteau, along with the women painters Hermine David, Germaine Labaye, Madeleine Luka, Marie Wassilieff and the sculptor Chana Orloff.75 The 1925 salon took place in Marseille, and, the following year, back in Paris, was devoted to book illustration, with work by Marie Laurencin, Hermine David, Goerg, Boussingault, Vertès, Albert Marquet, Raoul Dufy, André Lhote, Gromaire and Vlaminck’s lithographs for Radiguet’s Le Diable au corps. The 1926 salon also included an important section on German Expressionism, in particular the first collection of work by George Grosz to be exhibited in France. Characteristically, Bofa was conscious of the way in which the Salon des Humoristes had rapidly become ossified, and began to worry that the Araignée was in danger of suffering the same fate; he decided to end the experiment before it became a fixture. As he wrote later, ‘Nous avons torpillé l’Araignée en 1927 parce qu’elle avait fourni toute sa carrière utile et épuisé jusqu’au bout son esprit d’aventure. Elle était morte en beauté, pavillon haut’ (‘we scuttled the Araignée in 1927 because it had served its purpose and exhausted its spirit of adventure. She went down in beauty, with her flag flying high’.76 A final salon was held in 1930 at the Galerie Manuel, with sections devoted to poster art, work by Carlu, Loupot, Paul Colin and Francis Bernard, and to photography, including Atget, André Kertesz, Sougez, Moholi-Nagy and Germaine Krull, in addition to the usual contributors. It was also notable for exhibiting one of the first mobiles by Alexander Calder.77 What was remarkable about the Araignée was not merely its attempt to bring caricature and line drawing into the mainstream of modern art, with its emphasis upon the importance of poster art and book illustration, but its showcasing of women artists, an area in which Montmartre culture was often conspicuously deficient. Thanks to the success of the Salon de L’Araignée, Bofa also withdrew from the production of cartoons in the press and concentrated on his book illustration, particularly of his own texts. As early as 1919, he had 74 75 76 77

See ibid., p. 7. See ibid., p. 7. Quoted in ibid., p. 8. See ibid., p. 8.

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produced both the text and the illustrations for Roll-Mops 78 and during the interwar years he went on to publish Malaises, Le Cirque, Zoo and La Symphonie de la peur. During the Occupation, he brought out two volumes, Slogans and the autobiographical Solution zéro, and continued into the Fourth Republic with works such as La Croisière incertaine, La Voie libre and Déblais. Many of the early volumes were marked by an acerbic social satire directed at the rich and powerful: the Médecin-chef, for example in Chez les Toubibs, which bore the caption: ‘Le médecin-chef appartient matériellement à l’hôpital. Mais son âme est ailleurs’ (‘The chief doctor belongs materially to the hospital, but his soul is elsewhere’),79 or the nouveau riche financier in Le Cirque confiding to a wounded soldier: ‘Ah oui … c’était le bon temps!’ (‘Ah, yes … it was a good time!)’80 – an ironic echo of the recurrent refrain at the end of Dorgelès’s Les Croix de bois – ‘c’était le bon temps’. Bofa excelled in dissecting the vanity of human passions. As Pierre Mornand comments: He surveys the ridiculousness of human passions with an implacable gaze and, in one incisive line, he noted their effects: in turn grotesque, tragic or lamentable. In the presence of the human comedy and drama, his emotion, extremely sensitive and delicate, was translated into a vengeful drawing, both satirical and biting, the strength of which we see being born and developing until it achieved that mastery which has now earned admiration from everyone and has given him his current renown. 81

It was this sense of human ridicule, allied to a strong feeling for social context and historical evolution, which created such a close affinity with Mac Orlan, who commented on Le Cirque’s ‘vision contemporaine d’une Europe quotidiennement secouée par l’horreur des révolutions, des fusillades impromptus avec des intermèdes curieusement réglés par des clowns indescriptibles’ (‘contemporary vision of a Europe which is shaken daily by the horror of revolutions, of impromptu firing squads, curiously separated by intermissions organised by indescribable clowns’).82 It is hardly surprising, therefore, that Mac Orlan should choose to describe Bofa in the terminology of the fantastique social: 78 Gus Bofa, Roll Mops, le dieu assis (Paris: Société Littéraire de France, 1919). 79 Gus Bofa, Chez les Toubibs (Paris: La Renaissance du Livre, n.d.). 80 Gus Bofa, Le Cirque (Paris: Editions de la Renaissance du Livre, n.d.), p. 24. 81 Mornand, Vingt-deux artistes du livre, p. 25. 82 Pierre Mac Orlan, ‘Préface’, in Bofa, Le Cirque, pp. vi–vii.

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‘c’est, à mon avis, un des rares dessinateurs européens qui soit bon conducteur des forces secrètes de son temps’ (‘in my opinion, he is one of the rare European cartoonists who is a good conductor of the secret forces of his time’), 83 and, more specifically: ‘Gus Bofa est certainement le meilleur interprète du fantastique social dans l’illustration’ (‘Gus Bofa is certainly the best interpreter of the fantastique social in the world of illustration’).84 For Charensol, Bofa elaborated a privileged expression of ‘the feelings which disturbed that era, once the euphoria of a false victory had passed’.85 Bofa’s supporters were unclear as to which artistic tradition he belonged. Charensol saw him as indebted to eighteenth-century English humour, exemplified by Defoe’s Advice to Servants and Gulliver’s Travels, which he illustrated, 86 while Mac Orlan emphasised the ‘cerebral’ quality of his humour87 and claimed that ‘la qualité comique de Bofa est plus philosophique, à la manière du XVIIIe siècle, qu’anglaise’ (‘Bofa’s comic quality is more philosophical, in the eighteenth-century tradition, than English’).88 Where they agree is in recognising the affinity of Bofa, like Laborde, with German Expressionism, especially the work of Grosz. More nuanced, Charensol recognises that, ‘while very different from the German Expressionism of Otto Dix or George Grosz, his world, like theirs, was strange and full of portents’.89 In fact, much of Bofa’s comedy came directly from the Montmartre humourists of the Belle Epoque, and the founders of the journals for which he worked. Like them, he was a master of practical jokes and cultivated a vein of black humour which, as Charensol suggests, merited a place in Breton’s Anthologie de l’humour noir.90 In the preface to a late work, La Croisière incertaine (1950), for example, he notes: ‘J’ai fait ces dessins pour accompagner des histoires que j’avais écrites. A la réflexion, j’ai supprimé les histoires qui étaient très compliquées, et tenaient beaucoup de place’ (‘I made these drawings to accompany some stories I had written. On reflection, I cut out the 83 Mac Orlan, Gus Bofa, p. 17. 84 Ibid., p. 39. 85 Charensol, ‘Gus Bofa et ses amis’, p. 8. 86 See Charensol, ‘Gus Bofa et ses amis’, p. 7. 87 See Mac Orlan, ‘Préface’, p. xi: ‘He is among the most “cerebral” illustrators of our era’, akin in this respect to Pascin. 88 Mac Orlan, Gus Bofa, p. 19. 89 Charensol, ‘Gus Bofa et ses amis’, p. 8. 90 See ibid., p. 8.

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stories, which were very complicated and took up too much space …’).91 A typical drawing depicts the ‘Rêveur héroïque’: Le chevalier avait un esprit noble, brave et généreux. Ses nuits étaient remplies de rêves d’exploits étonnants, où il dépensait une vaillance surhumaine affrontant les pires dangers avec insouciance, endurant les plus dures fatigues, recevant, en souriant, pour le service des dames, mille coups et blessures. Tout le jour d’après, il en restait rompu, tremblant, et malade de peur rétrospective. The knight had a noble, courageous and generous spirit. His nights were filled with dreams of amazing exploits, in which he expended a superhuman courage in confronting the gravest dangers with sangfroid, receiving with a smile thousands of blows and wounds in the service of maidens. All the following day, he remained shattered, trembling and sick with retrospective fear.92

‘Le Captif malchanceux’ depicts the sad fate of the prisoner ‘Bug’: La bonne fée avait fait parvenir à Bug, par des voies mystérieuses, une lime pour scier les barreaux de sa prison et une échelle de soie pour s’évader. Malheureusement, il était enfermé dans une oubliette, à deux cents pas sous terre, et qui n’avait pas de fenêtre. The good fairy had sent to Bug, through mysterious ways, a file to saw through the bars of his prison and a silk ladder to escape with. Unfortunately, he was shut in a dungeon two hundred feet below ground which had no windows.93

Even this collection, however, reveals a grim undercurrent in which Bofa returns to his pessimistic view of human folly. In ‘L’Inventeur imprudent’, Le Professeur Swan avait inventé une machine, grande comme une maison, qui fabriquait, à volonté, selon la nourriture qu’on lui donnait, des chapeaux de feutre, des canons, des bibles, ou des enfants motorisés, en grande quantité. Ses concitoyens furent remplis d’admiration. Toutefois, par mesure de prudence, ils cassèrent la machine et pendirent le professeur.

91 Gus Bofa, La Croisière incertain (Paris: Librairie des Champs-Elysées, 1950), preface. 92 Ibid., plate v. 93 Ibid., ch. x.

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Professor Swan had invented a machine which was as big as a house and which made whatever one desired, and depending on what one fed into it, felt hats, guns, bibles, or motorised children, in huge quantities. His fellow citizens were full of admiration. However, out of prudence, they broke the machine and hanged the professor.94

As Roger Bouillot writes, Bofa’s ‘work was dominated by an extraordinary presence of Death and terror at universal stupidity’.95 One of his last works, Déblais (1952) moves, in verse which echoes Prévert’s Paroles, from the Montmartre humour of ‘Doléances’: Les savants ont désintégré l’atome C’était facile. Il s’agit maintenant de la réintégrer.

Scientists have split the atom That was easy. Now all we have to do is to put it back together.96

to the bleak ‘Démission’: Nous en avons assez d’être des Hommes, des créatures d’exception à l’image des dieux … Nous voulons hurler avec les loups, mordre, ruser, déchirer, tuer comme eux vivre libre comme eux, mais sans savoir que nous le sommes … La Race humaine a fait faillite: monstrueuse hypothèse de vie, cimentée, au long des millénaires, par le sang de rêveurs ingénus qui cherchaient Dieu, et les calculs patients des Bâtisseurs d’Illusions Profitables Auxquelles nous avons fini par croire. 94 Ibid., ch. xxxiv. 95 Bouillot, Gus Bofa l’incendiaire, p. 183. 96 Gus Bofa, Déblais (Paris: Textes Prétextes, 1952), p. 13.

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We have had enough of being Men, exceptional creatures in the image of gods … We want to howl with the wolves, bite, trick, tear, kill like them to live free like them, but without knowing that we are doing it … The human race is bankrupt: a monstrous hypothesis of a life, cemented, throughout the centuries, through the blood of naive dreamers who were seeking God, and the patient calculations of the Builders of Profitable Illusions In whom we have ended up believing.97

The final stage of Bofa’s career, following the Second World War, was marked by a sense of his own old age, explored in the memories of Solution zéro (1943) and a recognition that the declaration of war in 1939 marked a definitive watershed: ‘De cette époque imprecise et périmée d’avant-guerre, il reste à chacun de ceux qui l’ont vécu une petite fortune de souvenirs, en billets de banque qui n’ont, provisoirement, plus cours’ (‘From that imprecise and outdated era of the pre-war period, there remains for all of us who lived through it a small fortune of memories, in banknotes which, for a time, are no longer in currency’).98 A tradition which had begun with the Montmartre humourists of Le Chat Noir

97 Ibid., pp. 124–6. 98 Gus Bofa, La Voie libre. Notes de tourisme syncopé (Paris: Au Moulin de Pen Mur, 1947), p. 9. The same point was made by Vercors who, as the young illustrator Jean Bruller, was taken up by Bofa in the interwar years before they allegedly fell out over Bofa’s jealousy at his protégé’s success. See Vercors, Les Occasions perdues (Paris: Plon, 1982), pp. 9, 99–100. Looking back from the 1980s, Vercors reflected ruefully: ‘I have the feeling that after the break constituted by the war, my style no longer seduced anyone. The period changed taste. My great colleagues of the pre-war period, Pierre Falké, Chas Laborde and Lucien Boucher, have died. Gus Bofa is still alive, but no one talks about him: like me, he is in his own living purgatory’ (see Vercors, Les Nouveaux jours [Paris: Plon, 1984], p. 189), and: ‘Today, as I write, Gus Bofa and I and the excellent cartoonists of the pre-war Salon de l’Araignée have all disappeared through the trap door of purgatory …’ (Vercors, Les Occasions perdues, p. 101).

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and had survived the trauma of the First World War found it difficult to outlive the more extreme experience of the Occupation. Chas Laborde In contrast to Bofa, whose presence in Montmartre was increasingly restricted to his regular lunchtime visits, Chas Laborde was a genuine Montmartre citizen, not merely the ‘soul of the Restaurant Manière’ but ‘a real Montmartrois of the Butte. He remained there throughout his life, in his studio on the Rue des Saules and then in the Rue Caulaincourt’.99 As Le Crapouillot wrote: ‘Chas had a home port, a central point from which he worked: Montmartre. And, in Montmartre, that studio “from where you can see Pontoise and Argenteuil”’.100 Nevertheless, as we have already seen, he worked closely with Bofa on reviews like Le Rire and Le Sourire and at the Araignée, and his impact on French illustration and literature of the interwar years was strikingly similar. Charles Laborde was born in 1886 in Buenos-Aires, the son of a wealthy interior designer, Adolphe-Silvestre Laborde, who came from the Béarn.101 Two years later, the family moved back to the Pyrénées, to the Château d’Escaut, six kilometres from Oloron Sainte-Marie, where, as Laborde later recalled, ‘Nous avons une si grande propriété que le train passe au bout de notre allée qui a deux kilomètres’ (‘we have such a large property that the train passes by the end of our driveway, which is two kilometres long’).102 In other words, Laborde, like Bofa, came from a privileged background which set him apart from most of the Montmartre bohemians of the 1900s. Nevertheless, this idyllic childhood was marred by the death of his mother in 1888, the year the family returned to the Béarn, and that of his father eleven years later.103 During a period spent in England, he adopted the name ‘Chas’, the English diminutive of Charles – thus joining, like Bofa, a tradition going back to the vogue for mock-English names in the 1880s cabarets. He then 99 Oberlé, Vie d’artiste, p. 59. 1 00 Rey, ‘Quelques dessinateurs’, p. 57. 101 See Guy Laborde, ‘Introduction’, in Chas Laborde, Théodore ou le petit Chinois (Paris: Lacourière, 1943), pp. 13–14. 102 Laborde, Théodore ou le petit Chinois, p. 25. 103 See Guy Laborde, Ecole de patience, la guerre vue par Chas Laborde (Monaco: Editions de la Voile Latine, 1951), p. 6.

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began a precocious career as a cartoonist, his first drawings accepted by Le Rire when he was only fifteen.104 Yet, as Oberlé comments, though these early cartoons for Le Rire, Le Sourire and Frou-Frou were ‘witty and well-observed, [they] did not yet announce the masterful strokes of the pen, both light and strong at the same time, which ten years later would turn Laborde into the heir of Gavarni’.105 Like Bofa, he subsequently attended the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and enrolled at a private academy, this time the Académie Jullian.106 By the early 1900s, he was already part of the bohemian community of Montmartre: Mac Orlan recalls meeting him in 1903 or 1904 in the Rue Saint-Vincent with his friends Poulbot, Mirande, Pierre Falké and Rodo Pissaro.107 Subsequently, it was Laborde who suggested that Mac Orlan approach Bofa at the offices of Le Rire in 1910. As in Bofa’s case, it was the war which forged Laborde’s mature style. He was seriously gassed at Verdun and Mac Orlan believed that his subsequent ‘amère philosophie était un héritage de la Champagne et de Verdun’ (‘his bitter philosophy was the legacy of Champagne and Verdun’).108 Like Bofa, he contributed to both Le Rire rouge and La Baïonnette,109 and similarly abandoned the press and devoted himself to book illustration after the war. It was also in the immediate post-war period that Laborde, unsmiling and often compared to a ‘clergyman’, acquired his reputation for English phlegm, which added to his fame as ‘the wittiest man in Paris’.110 Like Bofa, Laborde began by illustrating the work of other writers: classics, like Montesquieu, Erasmus and Perrault,111 but more usually contemporary authors with whom he felt a special affinity. He began with Carco’s Jésus-la-Caille, followed by Bob et Bobette, Les Innocents

104 See Gus Bofa et les illustrateurs de l’entre-deux-guerres, p. 26. 1 05 Oberlé, Vie d’artiste, pp. 58–9. 106 See Baritaud, Pierre Mac Orlan, p. 375. 107 Pierre Mac Orlan, ‘Chas Laborde’, in Laborde, Ecole de patience, reprinted in Pierre Mac Orlan, Masques sur mesure, II, Œuvres Complètes, 12 (Geneva: Cercle du Bibliophile, 1970), p. 180. 108 Mac Orlan, ‘Chas Laborde’, p. 180. 109 See E. Bénézit, Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs dessinateurs et graveurs (Paris: Grund, 1976). The entry on Laborde was written by André Salmon (see Baritaud, Pierre Mac Orlan, p. 375). 110 Oberlé, Vie d’artiste, p. 59. 111 See Baritaud, Pierre Mac Orlan, p. 375.

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and L’Homme traqué, a choice which was by no means coincidental. As Mornand comments: .

Like Dignimont and Vertès, he immortalised the male and female fauna of Montmartre, then that of Montparnasse, which unseated the Butte of Montmartre in order to take over young men and women of a new type, hybrid flowers which had flourished on the dung heap of a rotting humanity. he was the portraitist of certain characteristic types and, especially, the painter of a certain category of social class which moved in similar troubled waters. Consequently, his favourite author could only be Francis Carco, the discoverer of the shady Parisian world.112

As we shall see, Laborde’s allegiance to Carco was by no means exclusive, however, and he shared many of the preoccupations of Mac Orlan, whose L’Inflation sentimentale he illustrated and whose dissection of ‘the universal obsession with sex’113 makes it one of his most characteristic works. In addition to earlier authors, like Anatole France, with Jocaste et le chat maigre, and Charles-Louis Philippe, with Bubu de Montparnasse, and the English and American novels High Wind in Jamaica and Tom Sawyer, he also illustrated Tendres Stocks by Paul Morand and Jean Fayard’s Dans le monde où l’on s’abuse. His most important work, however, was perhaps to be found in a number of albums which he created in the late 1920s, on which he collaborated with major authors. Laborde loved travelling, and devoted his albums to studies of four European cities. The first was Rues et visages de Paris, published in 1926, with text by Valèry. It was followed by Rues et visages de Londres (1928), in collaboration with Mac Orlan, Rues et visages de Berlin, with text by Giraudoux, and a final study, Rues et visages de Moscou.114 The work on contemporary European urban streets was the core of Laborde’s output, and merited, far more than Bofa, comparisons with Grosz, with whom he shared both a similar realism in line-drawing and common targets.115 As Pierre Mornand comments, ‘the anatomy of 1 12 Mornand, Vingt-deux artistes du livre, pp. 195–6. 113 Ibid., p. 197. 114 See Laborde, ‘Introduction’, p. 9. 115 See Rey, ‘Quelques dessinateurs’, p. 57. Laborde once met Grosz, disastrously, at a lunch organised by Mac Orlan at the Restaurant Manière. Unable to contain his visceral anti-Germanism, Laborde launched in a toast ‘à la Prussienne … « Hoch, Hoch, Hoch! »’. See Warnod, Fils de Montmartre, p. 274.

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the three capitals was laid out with the precision and punctiliousness of a surgeon’.116 Like Grosz, Laborde was fascinated by the urban crowd: for Mac Orlan, he was ‘l’un des peintres les plus authentiques de la rue’ (‘one of the most authentic painters of the street’), in the tradition of Lautrec and Steinlen:117 ‘Chas Laborde, comme tous les solitaires, aimait les foules pittoresques et toujours distinguées de ce Montmartre populaire où le marché de la rue Lepic apparaissait plus gai qu’une fête foraine’ (‘Chas Laborde, like all solitary people, liked the picturesque and always distinguished crowds of working-class Montmartre, where the market in the Rue Lepic seemed more lively than a fairground’).118 Similarly, Carco wrote that ‘Chas Laborde ne va pas au théâtre … Je préfère le suivre dans les bars où les filles ont cet air exotique si contemporain de nos fièvres et de nos désirs’ (‘Chas Laborde does not go to the theatre … I prefer to follow him into the bars where the prostitutes have that very contemporary exotic look which comes from our fevers and our desires’).119 However, again like Grosz – and, indeed, Bofa – Laborde’s importance lies in his ability to transcend that exoticism and to detect the way in which it is symptomatic of a decaying Europe about to confront another conflagration. Once again, it is Mac Orlan, that most reliable barometer of the social and cultural tensions of the interwar years, who detects Laborde’s true significance: L’œuvre peinte, dessinée et gravée par Chas Laborde constitue la chronique la plus vivante de ce qui fut le pittoresque sentimental et plastique des années assez troubles qui précédèrent la guerre de 1939. Le drame futur se dissimulait sous tous les visages. The work of Chas Laborde in painting, drawing and engraving constitutes the most lifelike chronicle of the plastic and sentimental picturesque of the turbulent years which preceded the war of 1939... [when] the future drama was hidden under everyone’s faces.120

It is this ability to transform the casual notes of the quotidian into an historical document which prompted comparisons with Grosz, the English humourists (which, as in Bofa’s case, linked him with the 116 Mornand, Vingt-deux artistes du livre, p. 200. 1 17 Mac Orlan, ‘Chas Laborde’, p. 182. 118 Ibid., p. 181. 119 Francis Carco, L’Ami des filles, ou Chas Laborde commenté par Francis Carco (Paris: R. Davis, 1921), p. 16. 120 Mac Orlan, ‘Chas Laborde’, p. 185.

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Montmartre cabarets of the 1880s), nineteenth-century caricaturists like Constantin Guys,121 Daumier and Gavarni,122 and contemporaries such as Pascin. Philippe Jullian writes in his study of Montmartre that ‘in the 1920s, there were … two very brilliant artists who specialised in night spots, Chas Laborde and Pascin. The first was, with less ferocity, the French Grosz …’,123 perpetuating, incidentally, a conventional approach to Montmartre caricaturists according to which, despite their ‘surgical’ dissection of society’s ills, they retain a heart of gold. Hence, like Bofa, ‘Laborde was malicious and good’,124 and ‘despite appearances, his entire artistic creation was motivated by pity, an immense pity, for human weakness and their multiple consequences, be they tragic or lamentable, in all circumstances of life’.125 Laborde’s last years were unhappy. He was profoundly unsettled by the events of 1936, both in France and in Spain,126 which led him to resume his newspaper work. He also produced a volume of reportage, Visages de la Révolution Espagnole, prefaced by Paul Morand, which presented a remarkably even-handed description of events in the north of Spain in July 1936, despite a transparent hatred of the Guardia Civil, ‘ces excellent fonctionnaires de la mort’ (‘those excellent functionaries of death’).127 He was also deeply and permanently affected by the French defeat of 1940 and the Occupation of Paris, where he died, of cancer, in 1941 and, like his contemporaries Bofa, Falké and Dignimont, was largely forgotten.

121 See Pierre du Colombier, ‘Chas-Laborde historien des mœurs’, Comœdia, 10 January 1941. 122 See Marcel Espian, ‘Chas-Laborde et ses amis à « la Girafe »’, Paroles Francs, 8 December 1947. 123 Jullian, Montmartre, p. 195. Jullian concludes that Pascin was ‘both more gifted and less adroit than Chas Laborde’, while Oberlé agrees that Laborde’s style was ‘as solid as that of Grosz and as sensitive as that of Pascin’ (see Oberlé, Vie d’artiste, p. 61). 124 Pierre Mac Orlan, ‘Chas Laborde, par Pierre Mac Orlan’, Comœdia, 16 November 1941. 125 Mornand, Vingt-deux artistes du livre, p. 206. 126 See Laborde, Ecole de patience, p. 9. 127 Chas Laborde, Visages de la révolution Espagnole (Paris: Editions de la Chronique Filmé du Mois, 1936), p. 13.

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Daragnès The careers of Bofa and Laborde clearly demonstrate the way in which Montmartre in the interwar years became the birthplace of the luxury book market, the livre d’art or livre de luxe, which depended upon the expensive production of limited issues of books combining a literary text of merit with illustrations by a well-known artist. These artists could be major painters in their own right or, like Bofa, Laborde and their colleagues, figures known initially as caricaturists in the popular press and became specialists in book illustration.128 The crucial feature in this new trade was, as we have seen, the close collaboration between artist and writer and led to a renaissance in Montmartre culture in the interwar years. The central figure in this renaissance was Jean-Gabriel Daragnès, ‘one of the sages of Montmartre’129 from the First World War until his death in 1950, who frequented both the Restaurant Manière and the studio of Gen-Paul, and who single-handedly created the French luxury book. He was born in 1886 and, like Laborde, came from the south-west, retaining a permanent affection for the sea, which he shared with his close friend Céline. His marriage in August 1913 to the daughter of Paul Fort was one of the last great artistic events in Montmartre before the First World War,130 in which he served courageously and from which he retained, as we have seen, a robust patriotic pride. After the war, he became an important book illustrator, producing a phenomenal volume of material from his studio in the Boulevard Rochechouart.131 The bibliography of his illustrations from 1917 to 1935 numbers over fifty volumes, with authors ranging from classics like Baudelaire, Defoe, Goethe, Nerval, Perrault, Poe, Shaw, Stevenson, Verlaine and Wilde, to contemporary authors like Carco, Claudel, Gide, Giraudoux, Mac Orlan, Morand, Salmon and Valéry.132 He soon decided to become a printer of art books in his own right, using illustrations from artists like Dunoyer de Segonzac, Boussingault and Frelant133 and, as Mac Orlan 128 See, for example: W.J. Strachan, The Artist and the Book in France (London: Peter Owen, 1969). 129 Crespelle, Montmartre vivant, p. 180. 130 See ibid., p. 180. 131 Pierre Mac Orlan, ‘Daragnès et ses livres’, Comœdia, 16 November 1924. 132 See L’Œuvre de J.-G. Daragnès, Catalogue (Paris: Musée des Arts Décoratifs, 1935). 133 See ‘Daragnès, Jean-Gabriel’, in Bénézit, Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs.

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records, sold his entire collection of his own illustrated books in order to buy a print works.134 Subsequently, he became what the book specialist Pierre Mornand calls ‘the most accomplished example of the perfect book artisan’.135 Montmartre in the interwar years was, therefore, in many ways very different from the bohemian community which had flourished in the pre-war period. Lower Montmartre had lost the originality, and the social cachet, of the artistic cabarets, and its criminal population had lost its romantic veneer, if it had ever really existed. The Butte had lost most of the avant-garde, and even those most wedded to the memory of the pre-war era tended not to live there. Nevertheless, as Montmartre weighed the costs and the benefits, both commercial and cultural, of becoming a lieu de mémoire, it was able to renew itself through a highly productive symbiosis between writers and caricaturists, based not merely on the humorous magazines, but upon the luxury print and book market. In this respect the Restaurant Manière constitutes an important, and often missing, piece of the jigsaw of interwar Paris’s cultural history, a link between the caricaturists and humourists of the 1880s and the interwar years. For the Montmartre writers and illustrators not only shared a common perspective and common means of production, they also used similar techniques: a process which began with realism but which evolved into Expressionism, fantasy and ‘magic realism’ developed in literature by the two most important Montmartre writers of the interwar years, Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Marcel Aymé, and, before them, the writers of the Ecole de Montmartre, Roland Dorgelès, Francis Carco and Pierre Mac Orlan.

134 Mac Orlan, ‘Daragnès et ses livres’. 1 35 Mornand, Vingt-deux artistes du livre, p. 91.

chapter eight

The Ecole de Montmartre

The Ecole de Montmartre

In his preface to Les Veillées du Lapin Agile (1919), Francis Carco refers to ‘une génération qui, après celle du Chat Noir, a contribué pour beaucoup à donner à la jeune littérature actuelle un caractère original’ (‘a generation, which, after that of the Chat Noir, has greatly helped to give to contemporary young literature an original character’):1 the writers of what Armand Lanoux called the ‘Ecole de Montmartre’. The three main figures were the novelists Roland Dorgelès, Carco himself and Pierre Mac Orlan, followed, as we shall see in Chapter Nine, by Marcel Aymé and Louis-Ferdinand Céline. These three writers produced a body of fiction, essentially in the realist tradition, which adds to our knowledge of the literary history of the interwar years, and wielded considerable influence on the literary establishment, especially through their membership of the Académie Goncourt. It is interesting, however, that while they are prolific, even obsessive, memorialists of pre-war bohemia, their fictional accounts of Montmartre are remarkably few in number, as if the subject matter of the memoirs does not present the same possibilities for fictional transposition. Nevertheless, their major novels on Montmartre – Carco’s Jésus-la-Caille (1914), Mac Orlan’s Le Quai des brumes (1927) and Dorgelès’s Le Château des Brouillards (1932) – provide important contrasting images of the Belle Epoque which resonated in different ways in the interwar years and complement the work of the non-fictional memorialists and the caricaturists of the Restaurant Manière. All three came to the Butte at the height of its fame as a centre of Parisian bohemia – Mac Orlan in 1899, Dorgelès in 1906 and Carco in 1910 – and their fictional treatment of Montmartre before 1 Francis Carco, ‘Préface’, in Les Veillées du Lapin Agile (Paris: Editions Françaises Illustrées, 1919), p. xii, quoted in Roland Dorgelès, De Montmartre à l’Académie Goncourt (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1978), p. 17.

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the First World War constitutes an important element in the literary history of the interwar years. Technically, unlike the avant-garde, and younger writers like Céline and Aymé, these writers are not primarily innovators, rejecting self-consciousness and operating largely within a recognisable realist tradition. Although Mac Orlan is by far the most conscious of his literary context and has the greatest intellectual scope, his novels nevertheless follow well-established narrative patterns like the folk tale or the pirate story. Similarly, they are all expert in that same ‘packaging’ of Montmartre identified by Whiting in Salis’s activities and central to subsequent Montmartre culture: Dorgelès retails the bohemian myth of pre-war Montmartre, with copious debts to Murger; as early as 1914, Carco breaks away from that myth in order to portray the criminal pègre of Lower Montmartre, but in so doing merely exploits another one, that of the ‘Montmartre du plaisir et du crime’, already rendered commercially attractive through Aimard’s ‘Apaches’. Despite the undoubted originality in Mac Orlan’s depiction of Montmartre, Le Quai des Brumes is no less a ‘marketing’ of the Butte, albeit using the eerie romanticism of the sea port. At the same time, Dorgelès, Carco and Mac Orlan share not merely a formal conservatism in their work, but also a social and political one. Like Montmartre culture in general, their work is strongly gendered, with women appearing as subordinate to the male protagonists, and often as their victims. The triumph of Nelly in Le Quai des Brumes is implicitly contrasted unfavourably with the death of the hero, Jean Rabe, and is in itself one of the origins of post-war malaise. Similarly, Dorgelès and Mac Orlan, like many of their Montmartre peers, adopted a conservative political stance as the interwar period progressed, which led them to a modest level of collaboration during the Occupation, an activity which Carco, who had friends on the left, like Aragon and Elsa Triolet, was able to avoid. Finally, it is significant that all three writers became members of the Académie Goncourt: Dorgelès in 1929, Carco in 1937 and Mac Orlan in 1950. Indeed, Gisèle Sapiro reports that members of the Académie were becoming so concerned at the influx of Montmartre writers that they vetoed Dorgelès’s proposal to elect Mac Orlan in 1938, on the grounds that it would become an ‘Académie du Lapin-Agile’. 2 Their

2 See Gisèle Sapiro, La Guerre des écrivains (Paris: Fayard, 1999), p. 337.

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membership is important, however: not only did it give them institutional power, it also typified them as a certain category of writer. The Académie Goncourt was essentially middle-brow in its membership, but this did not prevent it from making occasional adventurous choices in its awards. It found itself, therefore, at that meeting point of high culture and commercial production which had always been the domain of Montmartre’s culture itself: for example, Carco and, particularly, Mac Orlan wrote popular songs. 3 Nor is it coincidental that all three were among the first generation of authors to see their work adapted for a mass cinema audience: Carné’s version of Mac Orlan’s Le Quai des brumes in 1938 and Duvivier’s La Bandera (1935) both starred Jean Gabin; Raymond Bernard adapted Les Croix de bois in 1932; Robert Bibal filmed Carco’s L’Homme traqué in 1947; and André Pergament made M’sieur la Caille in 1955 with Jeanne Moreau. It is also true, however, that, while the Académie Française, under the guidance of its Secrétaire Perpétuel Georges Duhamel, unexpectedly asserted its independence during the Occupation, the more populist Académie Goncourt, which also included Courteline among its members, lurched towards collaboration. In the 1930s and 1940s, there was not only a recognisable house style among the members of the Académie Goncourt, there was also a definable, if variegated, political and social stance which made it a welcoming home for the descendants of the avant-garde non-conformism of the Belle Epoque cabarets. In reality, the writers of the Ecole de Montmartre did not burst upon the French literary stage in one single moment: it took over ten years for them all to be recognised, from the pre-war publication of Carco’s Jésus-la-Caille in 1914 to Dorgelès’s Les Crois de bois in 1919, and finally Mac Orlan’s Le Quai des Brumes, which appeared in 1925. Francis Carco and Jésus-la-Caille Paradoxically, it was the last member of the trio to arrive in Montmartre, Francis Carco, who was the first to achieve public recognition, with his principal fictional study of Montmartre, Jésus-la-Caille. Set among the bars, brothels and cheap hotels of Lower Montmartre and praised by Chevalier as ‘pour Montmartre, le livre par excellence’,4 it appears to belong to a different universe from the idealised pre-war bohemia 3 See Pierre Mac Orlan, Chansons pour accordéon (Paris: Gallimard, 1953). 4 Chevalier, Les Ruines de Subure, p. 28.

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of the Butte in Dorgelès’s Le Château des Brouillards. The novel’s eponymous hero is a male prostitute, (a ‘Jésus’ in contemporary Parisian criminal slang) whose partner, Bambou, has just been arrested by the police. Subsequently, La-Caille finds himself caught between the sinister police informer Pépé-la-Vache and the powerful criminal overlord of the district, M. Dominique, also known as ‘Le Corse’. As the plot progresses, M. Dominique is denounced by Pépé-la-Vache and arrested, and La-Caille begins an affair with his mistress Fernande. Later, Fernande begins a resigned liaison with La-Vache, who dies at the end of the novel, murdered by the vengeful Corsican, just out of prison. In a final twist, Le Corse turns his heels on Fernande without a word, leaving her to atone by claiming responsibility for the murder herself: ‘Allez prévenir les agents. Moi … la Fernande … Oui … Oui … Moi, j’ai crevé mon homme!’ (‘Go and get the police. I … Fernande … Yes … yes … I, Fernande, have killed my man!’). 5 In addition to a classical tragic plot structure deriving from Phèdre, the novel depends for much of its effect upon a realist evocation of the décor of Lower Montmartre: Le boulevard de Clichy plaquait, sur un ciel bas d’octobre dont les nuages crevaient, ses rangées d’arbres. Des flaques d’eau brillaient et, sur l’étroit trottoir du milieu, se hâtaient des passants tardifs. Contre les devantures fermées, battait un triste flot d’ombres éveillées et méfiantes. Deux agents surveillaient les filles qui tournaient … Parfois, à la lueur d’un bec de gaz, elles apparaissaient avec de si tragiques visages qu’on eût dit des mortes soulevées par le vent. Et, très loin, au fond de ce large boulevard, la place Blanche étageait ses lumières. The Boulevard de Clichy pinned is rows of trees against a low October sky, whose clouds were dying. Puddles of water were shining and, on the narrow pavement in the middle of the boulevard, late passers-by were hurrying on. Against the closed shop fronts there was a sad flow of awakened and distrustful shadows. Two policemen watched the prostitutes walking their beat … From time to time, in the light of a gas lamp, they came into view, with faces so tragic that you would have taken them for dead bodies raised up by the wind. And, in the far distance, at the end of this broad boulevard, the Place Blanche displayed its lights.6

5 Francis Carco, Jésus-la-Caille (Paris: Albin Michel, 1914), p. 252. 6 Ibid., p. 10.

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It opens in a definable and, at the time, unfamiliar location: the junction of the Rue Lepic and the Boulevard de Clichy, with its cafés La Palme and Le National.7 While this apparent realism seems to stand in stark contrast to Dorgelès’s Le Château des Brouillards – and, for that matter, Carco’s own memoirs – it is in fact deceptive and relies upon a similar process of packaging, except that here the Montmartre exotic derives from the topographical and sexual exoticism of the artificial pègre of Gustave Aimard’s ‘Apaches’ rather than from a romanticised bohemia. In this way, realism serves as a bridge between the slumming of polite society in the cabarets of the 1880s and the increasingly lavish press coverage of crime in Pigalle, which reached its peak in magazines like Détective in the 1930s. Francis Carco was born François Carcopino-Tusoli in 1886 in Nouméa, New Caledonia, where his father was a senior colonial civil servant. When his father returned to France, the family followed him to his various postings in the provinces: Châtillon-sur-Seine, to which Carco, the indefatigable memorialist, devoted a volume of reminiscences, Mémoires d’une autre vie (1934); Villefrance-de-Rouergue; Rodez; Nice; Agen; and Grenoble.8 Carco failed his baccalauréat on the first attempt, but was nevertheless employed as a teaching assistant at the lycée in Agen, where he met the young poets Robert de la Vaissière and Tristan Derème.9 Later, in Grenbole, he met Jean Pellerin and together they established a poetic movement, the ‘Ecole Fantaisiste’, heavily influenced by Paul-Jean Toulet and Francis Jammes, comprising Pellerin, with whom he also founded the review Les Feuilles, La Vaissière, Derème, Jean-Marc Bernard, and Léon Vérane.10 This poetic ambition was automatically linked to the desire to move to Paris and, naturally enough, to Montmartre itself, which had attracted many ambitious artistic provincials with publicity for the Lapin Agile and a voucher for a free drink in La Nouvelle Plume.11 Carco arrived aged twenty-four in January 1910, in the middle of a snow storm: 7 See ibid., p. 11. 8 See Robert Sabatier, ‘Francis Carco et la romance de Paris’, in Francis Carco, La Bohème et mon cœur (Paris: Albin Michel, 1951), p. 5. 9 See ibid., p. 6. 10 See Bernard Delvaille, ‘Oh M’sieur Francis!’, Magazine Littéraire, June 1982, p. 28. 11 See Jean-Jacques Bedu, Francis Carco. Au Cœur de la bohème (Paris: Editions du Rocher, 2001), p. 97.

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J’ai découvert Montmartre, un soir de neige, au début de 1910, en sortant du métro, Place Clichy. Tout était blanc: les flocons voilaient les lumières … Nulle part au monde je n’ai été moins dépaysé en ces parages que ce premier soir. I discovered Montmartre on a snowy evening at the beginning of 1910 from the métro at the Place Clichy. Everything was white: the snowflakes masked the lights … Nowhere in the world was I less out of my depth in this district than that first evening.12

This epiphany was followed by an important rite de passage in the Lapin Agile itself. In Le Crapouillot, Pierre Labracherie provides a vivid, if lurid, description of Carco’s first appearance: Introduced to the Lapin by his friend the witty and melancholic poet Edouard Gazanion, with whom he shared lodgings in the Rue Caulaincourt, Carco, an adolescent in a black jacket, with a black quiff over his forehead and doe eyes, appeared before the jury whose influential members, Mac Orlan, Max Jacob, Picasso, Julien Callé and Utrillo, lorded over it through a cloud of pipe smoke. It was a tough group whose members, who understood each other’s innuendos, deployed a cold sense of humour based on sarcastic analogies. Invited to show off his talents, Carco climbed up on to a table and bravely proceeded to imitate Mayol. This was scandalous in this milieu which despised singers and elevated hatred of the café-concert to the level of dogma. Anyone else would have paid dearly for this assault on the clan’s principles, but a sort of aura revealed that the young man was a poet. Frédé suddenly put down his guitar and pronounced the ritual phrase: ‘What will you have?’ The unknown singer was adopted. Carco leapt down from the table into the kingdom of Montmartre and began his apprenticeship as a novelist in the little bars on the Place Pigalle, among the villains and the doomed prostitutes.13

What is interesting about Labracherie’s account is not merely the story of Carco’s rapid acceptance into Montmartre’s bohemian community, but the way in which it contributes to a powerful but inherently inaccurate Montmartre mythology: at twenty-four, Carco was by no means an ‘adolescent’ and Picasso and Utrillo are unlikely to have been present, but all are essential elements of the mythology of pre-war bohemia. In fact, Carco’s period of residence in the ‘kingdom’ was remarkably brief and, as he recalls, one evening in 1914 he ran out of a Montmartre 12 Quoted in Delvaille, ‘Oh M’sieur Francis!’, p. 28. 13 Labracherie, ‘Ecrivains de Montmartre’, p. 32.

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bar straight on to a waiting ‘Place Pigalle-Halle-aux-Vins’ bus and moved to the Latin Quarter:14 an interesting symmetrical reflection of the original bohemian migration from the Latin Quarter to Montmartre in the 1880s and a reminder of the volatility of the capital’s cultural geography. Nevertheless, he had used his time on the Butte well and was beginning to forge a solid career as a journalist, as a poet – the collection La Bohème et mon cœur was published in 1912 – and as an apprentice novelist. He began an affair with Katherine Mansfield which lasted until 191515 and had also established a durable relationship with Montmartre painters: unlike the conservative Dorgelès, he was essentially modern and eclectic in his tastes, as evidenced by the essays in the volume L’Ami des peintres (1953), which includes reminiscences about Picasso, Utrillo, Modigliani, Vlaminck, Derain, Dufy, Bonnard and Suzanne Valadon among others.16 In particular, he got on well with Picasso and recounts, in De Montmartre au Quartier Latin, a moving episode at Modigliani’s funeral in Montparnasse in January 1920, in which the body was unexpectedly accompanied to the cemetery by a huge crowd: Ce fut Picasso, comme toujours, qui tira de ce spectacle le sens qu’il renfermait car, se tournant vers moi et désignant le corbillard où Modigliani reposait sous les fleurs, puis les agents au garde à vous, il me dit doucement: — Tu vois … Il est vengé! It was Picasso who, as always, teased out the inner meaning of this spectacle. Turning to me, and pointing to the hearse where Modigliani lay under the flowers and to the policemen at attention, he said gently: ‘You see … He has been avenged!’17

Carco’s fictional output was considerable, ranging from early works like Jésus-la-Caille (1914), Les Innocents (1916) and L’Homme traqué (1922) to later novels and collections of short stories, like Brumes, L’Homme de minuit, La Belle Amour, Rien qu’une femme and La

14 See Francis Carco, De Montmartre au Quartier Latin (Paris: Albin Michel, 1927), p. 109. In fact, as Carco admits, he never actually lived in Montmartre, preferring to keep his distance and observe the Butte from a studio in the Latin Quarter. 15 See Russell King, ‘Francis Carco’s Les Innocents and Katherine Mansfield’s Je ne parle pas français’, Revue de Littérature Comparée, 47, 1973, pp. 427–30. 16 See Francis Carco, L’Ami des peintres (Paris: Gallimard, 1953). 17 Carco, De Montmartre au Quartier Latin, p. 247.

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Dernière chance. Within this impressive literary corpus, however, Carco – like Dorgelès and Mac Orlan – devotes relatively little space to Montmartre, which appears as a setting only in Scènes de la vie de Montmartre (1919) and Rue Pigalle (1928). While he is undoubtedly more successful than Dorgelès in reinventing himself within the fictional form, Carco nevertheless experiences the same problems with Montmartre. In fact, even Jésus-la-Caille is not exclusively set in Lower Montmartre: a substantial episode takes place in Belleville, the locus of one of the most famous legends of popular crime, Casque d’Or, made into a film by Jacques Becker in 1952. What becomes apparent from a reading of Carco’s fiction, however, is that, even from the beginning, it is less the particular location of Lower Montmartre which interests him than its metonymic importance as a representative of the exotically marginal: the novels are set in a variety of Parisian locations, ranging from Lower Montmartre to Belleville, Grenelle, Les Gravilliers and Plaisance,18 and his most famous work, L’Homme traqué, based on a famous crime which in fact took place in Montmartre in the Rue Lepic, is set in the Rue Saint-Denis and Les Halles and centres on the murder of a prostitute by a baker.19 In other words, Carco’s self-proclaimed realism is always subordinate to literary artifice. He describes one of his favourite locations thus, for example: C’est toujours le boulevard de la Chapelle que je revois lorsque j’évoque mes nuits passées. Son souvenir a conservé sur moi le pouvoir d’un philtre. Tout le quartier, d’ailleurs, avec ses filles de la rue de la Charbonnière, est peuplé d’ombres. Vous n’avez pas connu le coin quand ces dames vous appelaient d’en bas, sous terre, à travers les soupiraux des caves. C’était hallucinant. Entre le grondement des trains de la ligne du Nord et les rames du métro … I always see the Boulevard de la Chapelle when I talk about my nights in the past. Its memory still has an effect on me like a magic potion. In fact, the whole quarter, with its prostitutes in the Rue Charbonnière, is inhabited by ghosts. You didn’t know the area when those women called you from below, from underground, through the cellar railings. It was unbelievable. Between the rumbling of the trains coming out of the Gare du Nord and the noise of the métro carriages overhead …20

18 See Delvaille, ‘Oh M’sieur Francis!’, p. 29. 19 See Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime, p. 383. 20 Quoted in Delvaille, ‘Oh M’sieur Francis!’, p. 30.

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The imagery is derived from an essentially non-realist tradition, already present in his foundation and membership of the Ecole Fantaisiste and reflected in the writers who influenced him: Paul Bourget, who was a close friend and to whom L’Homme traqueé is dedicated, Maurice Barrès and Pierre Loti, in addition to Russian and German authors. 21 Eventually, however, it is possible to detect this highly successful formula flagging, and Carco begins to blur the boundaries between novel and collection of short stories, as in La Belle amour (1952), or novel and reportage, as in La Dernière chance (1935), which is set in the Athens underworld and whose first-person narrator, with no pretence of Modernist narration, makes no distinction between himself and the author Carco. He also experiments with ‘biographies romancées’, all on the theme of bohemia: La Légende et la vie d’Utrillo, Verlaine and Le Roman de François Villon. It could be argued that Carco’s fiction, despite its apparent dissimilarity to that of Dorgelès, is by no means so different, since both use exoticism and stereotypes to provoke a predictable response from the bourgeois reader. Indeed, Carco’s cultivation of the Parisian pègre of the Belle Epoque and the early post-war years becomes as repetitive, inauthentic and outmoded as Dorgelès’s evocation of bohemia. The waspish Paul Léautaud recorded his irritation at a visit from Carco to the offices of the Mercure de France in the 1930s: This morning Carco was in Valette’s office. He recounted to Valette, Dumur, Bernard and me stories about Montmartre nightclubs, with their pederasts and policemen, which he visits often. Once Carco had left, we all agreed that these stories were quite lacking in interest, and we were amazed that he could still get pleasure from frequenting such places. 22

Later, he took to frequenting the dance halls and bars of the Rue de Lappe near the Bastille, in which he took a similar perverse pleasure, 23 although he lacked Mac Orlan’s ability to introduce into his narratives a genuine sense of anxiety. After the success of Jésus-la-Caille and L’Homme traqué, Carco became, like Dorgelès after Les Crois de

21 See Huddleston, Bohemian Literary and Social Life in Paris. Salons, Cafés, Studios, pp. 292–3. 22 Paul Léautaud, Journal littéraire, I (Paris: Mercure de France, 1928), quoted in Bedu, Francis Carco, p. 301. 23 For a detailed study of the Bastille, see Keith Reader, The Place of the Bastille (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011).

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bois, a precociously established writer and public figure. His military experience had initially been comfortable behind the lines in Besançon 24 but, like Dorgelès, he was later transferred to the air force, where he was slightly wounded in a training accident. 25 After the war, like Dorgelès and Mac Orlan, and most of their Montmartre predecessors of the Belle Epoque, he was rewarded by the Republic with decorations and prizes, such as the Prix du roman of the Académie Française.26 His post-war career, again like those of Dorgelés and Mac Orlan, was diverse, and shared between novels, poetry and grands reportages – in particular on prostitution (L’Amour vénal), foreign exoticism (Printemps d’Espagne, Palace-Egypte and Heures d’Egypte), prisons (Prisons de femmes, Les Hommes en cage and La Route du Bagne) and exotic Paris (Paname and Traduit de l’argot) – together with his memoirs. Carco was elected to the Académie Goncourt in 1937, 27 and became a highly influential member on its left wing, subsequently instrumental in repositioning it after its collaborationist stance during the Occupation by securing its first post-Liberation award, in 1944, for Elsa Triolet’s Le Premier Accroc coûte 200 francs. 28 Unlike his cousin, Jérôme Carcopino, who preceded Abel Bonnard as Vichy Minister of Education, Carco had nothing to do with the Collaboration and lived in the south of France and Switzerland, whilst joining the Resistance-based Comité National des Ecrivains. 29 At the same time, his official success as a writer by no means precluded overtures to popular and commercial culture. Huddleston records that, in the 1920s, just after receiving the Académie Française prize, Carco wrote a number of songs for a music hall review at the Cigale in Montmartre: Many people were shocked when it was announced that Carco, winner of the Prix of the Académie Française, should condescend to write for a music hall, and should permit his songs to be interpolated in senseless scenes such as attract people – and particularly foreigners – to Montmartre. But there is no reason why a more literary turn should not be given to the chansons which enjoy a brief vogue. 30 24 See Bedu, Francis Carco, p. 166. 25 See ibid., p. 184. 26 See Huddleston, Bohemian Literary and Social Life, p. 292. 27 See Sapiro, La Guerre, p. 324. 28 See ibid., p. 632. 29 See Bedu, Francis Carco, pp. 325–6. 30 Huddleston, Bohemian Literary and Social Life, p. 293.

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In fact, Carco was simply reaffirming a tradition of symbiosis between high and low culture in Montmartre which goes back to the Chat Noir and the 1880s and had been an important element of the Third Republic. Roland Dorgelès and Le Château des Brouillards In his preface to Gus Bofa’s Synthèses littéraires, Dorgelès recounts his visit to the Araignée exhibition in 1922: En arrivant à l’exposition de l’Araignée, j’aperçus le petit portrait symbolique qu’il avait fait de moi – un infortuné Dorgelès écrasé sous le poids d’une croix de bois trop lourde pour ses maigres épaules – Gus Bofa ne crut pas un instant que cela pouvait me vexer. Il s’avança vers moi, tout souriant, et il me dit, avec un désarmant candeur : — Ça vous amuse, hein? Au fait, cela m’amusait tout de même… When I arrived at the Araignée exhibition, I noticed a little symbolic portrait which [Bofa] had drawn of me – an unfortunate Dorgelès crushed under the weight of a wooden cross which was too heavy for his thin shoulders. Not for an instant did Bofa think that it might annoy me. He walked towards me, all smiles, and he said with disarming candour: ‘It’s funny, isn’t it?’ And, actually, I did find it funny. 31

The reference, of course, is to Dorgelès’s classic war novel of 1919, Les Croix de bois, which was, with Barbusse’s Le Feu, one of the ‘two most impressive novels written in France under the immediate impact of the war’, 32 and nearly won the Prix Goncourt of 1919, narrowly beaten by Proust’s A l’Ombre des jeunes filles en fleur. 33 The novel became an immediate bestseller and, despite his large body of fiction extending into the 1950s, established Dorgelès in the public imagination exclusively as a war novelist. He did little to correct this image by publishing in the same year as Les Croix de bois a collection of episodes clearly derived 31 Roland Dorgelès, ‘Préface’, in Bofa, Synthèses littéraires et extra-littéraires, p. 17. 32 John Cruickshank, Variations on Catastrophe: Some French Responses to the Great War (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982), p. 93. 33 See Albert Dubeux, Roland Dorgelès. Son œuvre. Portrait et autographe (Paris: Editions de la Nouvelle Revue Critique, coll. ‘Célébrités contemporaines’, 1930), p. 29.

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from the same source, Le Cabaret de la Belle Femme, and by accepting the presidency of the literary ex-servicemen’s association, Les Ecrivains Combattants, in 1927. 34 Although stereotyped as a one-book author, Dorgelès had a prolific and varied literary career, including his many volumes of Montmartre memoirs, numerous grands reportages and an imposing body of non-war fiction which never achieved either the quality or the success of Les Croix de bois. At the beginning of Au Beau temps de la Butte, Dorgelès rhapsodises about Montmartre: ‘C’est ici que j’ai vu le jour, entre le Moulin et le Sacré-Cœur, vingt ans plus tard que ne l’indique mon bulletin de naissance’ (‘I was born here, between the Moulin and the Sacré-Cœur, twenty years later than it says on my birth certificate’). 35 More prosaically, he was born in Amiens in 1885, the son of a commercial traveller who soon moved to the suburbs of Enghien, Bezons and finally Clichy. His real name was Roland Lécavelé, and he adopted the pseudonym Dorgelès in 1907 from the town of Argelès, which his mother visited frequently. 36 His family originally wanted him to become an architect and in 1902 he studied briefly at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs, where he came into contact with artists for the first time. The following year he discovered Montmartre, ‘un délicieux village tel qu’on les décrit dans les contes, avec de vieux moulins, des venelles bordées de lilas, des cerisiers en fleurs, des potagers, des carillons de couvent’ (‘a delicious village straight out of a fairy tale, with old windmills, alleyways lined with lilacs, cherry trees in blossom, kitchen gardens and monastery bells’). 37 In fact, despite the lyrical evocations of Montmartre bohemia in the memoirs, Dorgelès was never a true bohemian. It is true that ‘he liked red waistcoats and wide-brimmed hats’38 and ‘wore long hair and wrapped himself in a romantic cloak to superb effect’, 39 but, of all 34 For a detailed chronology of Dorgelès’s career, see the exhibition catalogue Roland Dorgelès. De Montmartre à l’Académie Goncourt (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1978), pp. xiii–xvi. 35 Dorgelès, Au Beau temps de la Butte, p. 10. 36 As we have seen, the adoption of pseudonyms was a practice common in the world of Belle Epoque entertainment and popular writing and more prevalent on the Right Bank than on the Left. 37 Roland Dorgelès, ‘Né à Paris’, Courrier des messageries Maritimes, May– June 1964, quoted in Roland Dorgelès. De Montmartre à l’Académie Goncourt, p. 11. 38 Carco, De Montmartre au Quartier Latin, p. 51. 39 Ibid., p. 45.

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the habitués of the Lapin Agile, he was the most comfortably off, and had his own apartment in the Rue Victor-Massé from 1906, opposite the former premises of Le Chat Noir, and, as he himself admitted, his place was always laid for dinner at his parents’ house in nearby Clichy.40 He also had a job: first as a journalist in the telegraphic service of the Agence de la Presse Nouvelle, and subsequently with Messidor, Fantasio, Le Journal, Paris-Journal, Comœdia, Le Sourire, where he wrote a weekly column for Gus Bofa, and Clemenceau’s L’Homme libre. At the same time, he was the first member of the Ecole de Montmartre to have a modicum of literary recognition, initially in the theatre: a one-act play, At Home, was performed at the Théâtre de l’Astrée in 1910, and Merci d’être venue appeared at the Théâtre Impériale in 1913, followed by Pour faire son chemin at the Théâtre de la Renaissance the following year. A two-act play, La Corde au cou, was accepted by Antoine for the Odéon for the 1911–12 season, but never performed.41 In other words, due to his financial well-being and his precocious literary success, Dorgelès was in a different category from most of the pre-war Montmartre bohemians. As the catalogue to his centenary exhibition concedes: ‘He probably did not experience, like some of his friends, the insecurity of the real “vie de bohème”, but he did observe and judge it’,42 and as he himself recognised in Bouquet de Bohème, he had ‘un pied sur le boulevard et l’autre sur la Butte’ (‘one foot on the boulevard and another on the Butte’).43 Thus, ‘like a number of his youthful companions, one day in 1914 Roland Dorgelès left Montmartre, but Montmartre did not leave him’.44 In one respect, however, Dorgelès was a genuine bohemian, and that concerns the Montmartre tradition of fumisme, in which he excelled. We have already seen his most elaborate practical joke in the form of the Boronali hoax, but there were others, often directed at artistic officialdom in the form of the Louvre. On one occasion, in contrast to the theft of the Mona Lisa, he installed in the ‘Galerie des Antiques’ in the Louvre a bust which he had taken from the studio of a sculptor friend and which he had sworn to make all Paris talk of. This created a scandal, because the bust remained 40 See Dorgelès, Au Beau temps de la Butte, p. 66. 41 See ibid., p. xiii; Dubeux, Roland Dorgelès, p. 16. 42 Roland Dorgelès. De Montmartre à l’Académie Goncourt, p. 11. 43 Dorgelès, Bouquet de bohème (Paris: Albin Michel, 1947), p. 254. 44 Ibid., p. 41.

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exhibited among the greatest works of art until Dorgelès in person and the sculptor went to reclaim it.45

On another occasion, he elaborately shaved in the Louvre, using the glass covering a Rembrandt as a mirror. Another hoax, which echoes Mark Twain’s famous telegram to the most prominent citizens of a small town – ‘Flee: all is discovered’ (some left immediately) – concerned an advertisement which Dorgelès placed in a daily newspaper: ‘Strong man required for a delicate and well-remunerated task’, which elicited fifty replies. The next day, Dorgelès put in another advertisement: ‘Particularly strong man required for a task which is particularly delicate and particularly well-remunerated’. This narrowed the field down to six, all of whom were informed that they would have to kill a wealthy aunt and were asked to appear at a designated spot wearing a white scarf: they all turned up.46 Like Carco and Mac Orlan, Dorgelès had a distinguished war career. Declared unfit for military service in 1907 due to a lung disease, he volunteered on 21 August 1914, together with Chas Laborde, with whom he served in the 74th Infantry Regiment, before transferring to the 39th. In June 1915, he was wounded in the attack on Neuville-Saint-Vaast, promoted to corporal and awarded the Croix de Guerre. In September 1915, due to lobbying by his mistress Mado, he was transferred to the air force, and, after a serious crash in 1916, finished the war as a sergeant instructor and inspector. It was his early experience of trench warfare, however, which formed the basis of Les Croix de bois and Le Cabaret de la Belle Femme. These two works rely on a formula which has since become common in war fiction, but at the time was relatively new, and based on the formula established in the United States by Stephen Crane in The Red Badge of Courage and, in France, by Barbusse in Le Feu (1917), adopted later by Remarque in All Quiet on the Western Front (1929): the construction of a relatively free narrative centred upon a small cast of recognisable and slightly two-dimensional characters grouped in a platoon through whom the experience of the battle is transmitted – the ebullient and irrepressible Sulphart, for example, who owes a debt to René Benjamin’s Gaspard,47 or the wise ‘Père’ Hamel. The novel gives a remarkably intense and 45 Carco, De Montmartre au Quartier Latin, p. 48. 46 See Labracherie, ‘Ecrivains de Montmartre’, p. 32. 47 See Cruickshank, Variations on Catastrophe, p. 93.

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moving picture of a group of ordinary French infantrymen on the Western Front, and their resilience and ability to survive. What is important about Les Croix de bois, however, is the way in which it differs from Le Feu. John Cruickshank makes a convincing case for its less strident and more understated denunciation of the military folly in the West, but it is inescapable that Dorgelès’s novel does not have, nor wish to have, the global political vision of Barbusse. Le Feu presents a clear image of the war as the symptom of a general economic system which can only be eradicated by a revolution on the lines of Russia in 1917. In contrast, Les Croix de bois, while poignantly aware of the victimisation of ordinary Frenchmen in the trenches – to the extent of shooting deserters in the chapter ironically titled ‘Mourir pour la patrie’, which fell foul of the censors – stops short of any systemic analysis and condemnation. The conclusion of the novel is that, despite everything, ‘c’était le bon temps’, effectively portraying the war as a natural disaster to which nations are prone but which nevertheless permits a certain heightened sense of comradeship. This is reinforced by the construction of a perspective which is resolutely Montmartre-centred. At the beginning of the novel, the first-person narrator meets a new recruit for whom he feels an immediate affinity: Le nouveau s’est présenté à moi: — Gilbert Demachy … Je faisais mon droit … Et je me suis fait connaître: — Jacques Larcher. J’écris … Dès son arrivée, j’ai compris que Gilbert serait mon ami, je l’ai compris à sa voix, à ses mots, à ses manières. Tout de suite je lui ai dit « vous » et nous avons parlé de Paris. Enfin, je trouvais quelqu’un avec qui m’entretenir de nos livres, de nos théâtres, de nos cafés, des jolies filles parfumées … The newcomer introduced himself. ‘Gilbert Demachy … I was studying law …’ And I introduced myself: ‘Jacques Larcher. I’m a writer …’ As soon as he arrived, I knew that Gilbert would be my friend. I knew it because of his voice, the words he used, his behaviour. I immediately called him ‘vous’ and we talked about Paris. At last I had found someone with whom I could talk about our books, our theatres, our cafés and our pretty perfumed girls …48

48 Roland Dorgelès, Les Croix de bois (Paris: Albin Michel, 1919), p. 13.

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The use of the second person plural and the repetition of ‘our’ establishes the new arrival as both someone to be respected and as a member of an exclusive club from which the rest of the platoon, ordinary Frenchmen all, are rigorously excluded. This is a novel about Montmartre bohemians at war, and, to those in the know, Gilbert’s name – Demachy – echoes Mac Orlan’s real name, Dumarchey. Nor is it coincidental that, when Gilbert dies in an attack, his last words are those of a popular song: En revenant de Montmartre, De Montmartre à Paris, J’rencontre un grand prunier qu’était couvert de prunes. Voilà l’beau temps.

As I was coming back from Montmartre From Montmartre to Paris I came across a big plum tree which was covered with plums That was a good time.49

While Le Feu is consciously subversive, Les Croix de bois remains patriotic and does not depart too much from the caricatural image of the resilient poilu of Le Rire rouge. Not only is it a long way from the political perspective of Le Feu, it is also clearly in a different category from the subversiveness of the war episodes in Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit. Dorgelès concluded his war writing with a potentially interesting novel, Le Réveil des morts (1923), set in the immediate post-war period in the regions which had been devastated on the Western Front and depicting a young architect, Jacques Le Vaudoyer, who is working on the reconstruction of the shattered landscape and marries a young war widow with whom he had begun an affair while her husband was at the front. Promising as the subject is, in dealing with the dual themes of the reconstruction of the régions sinistrées and the ghostly presence of the dead former husband, the novel nonetheless shows Dorgelès’s limitations in stretching to over three hundred pages a narrative appropriate to a short story of the kind in which Henri Troyat excelled in his collections of the 1930s, like La Clef de voûte (1937) or La Fosse commune (1939). Bofa’s cartoon was essentially correct, and Dorgelès was never to regain the intensity of fictional expression that he achieved in Les Croix de bois. 49 Ibid., p. 408.

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If any confusion arose from the apparent similarity between Le Feu and Les Croix de bois, it was dispelled very quickly, on the political level at least. Barbusse included Dorgelès’s name in the Clarté group’s manifesto against the Treaty of Versailles, ‘Contre la paix injuste’, published in L’Humanité on 22 July 1919. Further attempts to mobilise Dorgelès on the left failed, however, since, ‘having noted the existence in the group of political tendencies to which he could not subscribe, he rapidly resigned’. 50 In fact, early on Dorgelès had taken to styling himself as a ‘Catholic anarchist’, or ‘Christian anarchist’. 51 Before the war, this stance appears to have been genuinely radical, and led to Dorgelès’s arrest for participating in an anti-military protest outside the Gare de l’Est in 1913. 52 Subsequently, however, like much of Montmartre anarchism, Dorgelès’s credo became more ambiguous. On one level, it translated itself into a sincere and genuine, if unpoliticised, antipathy to wealth and capital: as early as 1917, for example, he published a satirical novel with Régis Gignoux, La Machine à finir la guerre, a savage indictment of war profiteering and the luxury of life behind the lines. After the war, however, he condemned genuinely subversive works like Radiguet’s Le  Diable au corps, 53 and channelled his self-styled anarchism into a series of ‘moralistic’54 texts, most of them fiction, which effectively failed to engage with real political or economic issues. These texts range from Saint-Magloire (1922) and Si c’était vrai (1934) to post-Second World War works like A Bas l’argent (1955), Tout est à vendre (1956) and the Lettre ouverte à un milliardaire (1967). In fact, Dorgelès’s ‘Christian anarchism’ masks a deep conservatism which is also implicitly strongly anti-republican. Replying to a questionnaire on writers and politics in Candide in 1928, he wrote: Le suffrage universel, c’est en somme le triomphe de tous ces chienlits et je suis bien décidé à demeurer partisan de l’abstention intégrale, programme que nous défendions à vingt ans, mes camarades et moi … D’autre part, je ne saurais voter puisqu’il ne se présente pas de candidats anarchiste chrétien, parti peu encombré auquel j’appartiens depuis l’âge de raison. 50 ‘Roland Dorgeles et la défense des libertés’, in Roland Dorgelès. De Montmartre à l’Académie Goncourt (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1978), p. 187. 51 See Dubeux, Roland Dorgelès, p. 9. 52 See Cruickshank, Variations on Catastrophe, p. 94. 53 See ‘Roland Dorgelès et la guerre de 1914–18’, in Roland Dorgelès. De Montmartre à l’Académie Goncourt (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1978), p. 72. 54 See ibid., p. 127.

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Universal suffrage is in fact the triumph of all these bastards [politicians] and I’m determined to remain in favour of complete abstention, the programme which my friends and I defended when we were twenty … Anyway, I couldn’t vote because there are no candidates representing Christian Anarchism, an un-crowded party to which I have belonged since the age of reason. 55

However, by 1928, the Christian anarchist is making a reluctant defence of the British and French mandates in Palestine and Lebanon in La Caravane sans chameaux, and, in Sous le Casque blanc, published under the Occupation in 1941, the former anti-militarist provides a ringing endorsement of the French colonial army. Nor is it at all coincidental that the war reporting from the front lines in 1940 which led to La Drôle de guerre was published in the extreme right Gringoire. During the Occupation, Dorgelès moved with Gringoire to Marseille, before resigning in September 1941 because of its collaborationism and anti-Semitism. Nevertheless, he remained both nationalist and Pétainist and wrote a number of articles in support of the Marshal. 56 As Gisèle Sapiro writes: The apolitical nature of this writer who called himself a ‘Christian anarchist’ and long refused to vote, coupled with a fervent patriotism, a certain moral conservatism and a growing backward-looking attitude, led him to adopt positions which were occasionally compromising and often ill-suited to the issues of the time. 57

Aware of the territory into which his political naivety was leading him, Dorgelès was able to distance himself from collaborationist policies to such an extent that, despite some criticism on the left, he came out of the war, like Carco, as a member of the Resistance-based Comité National des Ecrivains (CNE). His subsequent account of his life in Vichy France, published with the obvious idea of clearing his name in 1945, Carte d’identité. Récit de l’Occupation, emphasises his isolation in the department of the Haute-Garonne, where he and his guest Raoul

55 Quoted in Dubeux, Roland Dorgelès, p. 64. 56 See Sapiro, La Guerre, p. 345; Jean Galtier-Boissière, ‘Roland Dorgelès’, Le Crapouillot, 8, Dictionnaire des Contemporains, 1950. Galtier-Boissière emphasises Dorgelès’s collaborationist politics and his public support for Pétain. See also Micheline Depray, Roland Dorgelès. Un Siècle de vie littéraire française (Paris: Presses de la Renaissance, 1986). 57 Sapiro, La Guerre, p. 345.

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Dufy were threatened by the Gestapo. 58 He subsequently became a pillar of the CNE and of the ‘Left Wing’ of the Académie Goncourt. Despite this adroit repositioning, however, Dorgelès conforms to an increasingly visible pattern in the interwar years, by which Montmartre non-conformism, tempered by the experience of the front in the First World War, moved to the right during the interwar years and Occupation. Within his considerable body of fiction, Dorgelès only devoted one novel to his pre-war experiences in Montmartre. Yet that novel, Le Château des Brouillards (1932), is an important work, if only because it presents a revealing stereotype of bohemia when viewed from the interwar years. The hero of the novel, poet and dramatist Paul-Gérard Clair, is a thinly disguised self-portrait of the author, though Dorgelès reveals himself at the very end of the novel as the narrator. Le Château des Brouillards proceeds to follow the well-worn path through Parisian bohemia traced by Murger, Puccini and Charpentier, with its apprentice artists, writers and musicians and their ambitions and romances. Typically, Paul-Gérard Clair has an affair with a grisette, Marie-Louise, and frequents the Lapin Agile, where he comes into contact, not only with other bohemians, but with a band of anarchists who live with the ex-Communard bookbinder Lucie Rapin in the eponymous Château des Brouillards, which, before it was demolished to make way for the Maquis at the beginning of the twentieth century, ‘was taken over by various tenants: models, counterfeiters, artists and anarchists, who left the interior in a terrible state. The sculptor Wasley, who created the Christ in the Lapin Agile, the painter Pirola and the historian Octave Charpentier lodged there’. 59 In the Lapin Agile, Clair also meets François de Grandpré, also known as ‘Le Marquis de la Dèche’ (‘the Marquis of Penury’), a Micawber-like character not dissimilar to Céline’s Courtial des Pereires in Mort à credit, who offers to guide the young bohemian through the mysteries of Paris, while relieving him of his money. Despite an affair with a rich American who helps raise the money to put on his first play, Clair is increasingly drawn to the anarchists and the mysterious Lucie Rapin. The anarchists themselves are involved in an elaborate counterfeiting operation, based on the aforementioned real-life case involving figures like Dullin and Fénéon and exploited earlier in Les Faux-monnayeurs. The dénouement of the novel is precipitated 58 See Roland Dorgelès, Carte d’identité. Récit de l’Occupation (Paris: Albin Michel, 1945), pp. 28–9. 59 Clément, ‘Le Quartier pas à pas’, p. 50.

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by the outbreak of war, which produces in the Montmartre bohemian community the same ‘Union Sacrée’ as experienced by the nation as a whole. Old enmities are buried in favour of the national purpose, and even the anarchists decide to enlist, with one exception – the extremist Sauvageon, who confronts his comrade Carolus: Comment, tu fais cela? Tu as donc peur de leurs conseils de guerre, maintenant que c’est sérieux. Hein, c’est bien par frousse que tu prends le chemin de la caserne avec tout le troupeau. Allons, avoue-le … Il lui parlait dans le nez, provocant. Gérard s’interposa: — Tout est changé, mon vieux. Il ne peut plus être question d’opinions politiques. La France est attaquée … ‘What? How can you do this? So you’re afraid of their court martials, now that it’s serious. It’s out of fear that you’re heading off to the barracks with the rest of the flock. Come on, admit it …’ He spoke to him close up, provocatively. Gérard intervened: ‘Everything has changed, old man. Political opinions don’t matter any more. France has been attacked …’60

Fittingly, before departing for the front, Paul-Gérard Clair spends his last night of peacetime with Lucie Rapin. The novel ends with an epilogue entitled ‘Où l’auteur évoque les ombres’ (‘In which the author evokes the shades of the past’), and which describes the funeral of the art collector Père Gouttenoire, modelled on Le Père Tanguy. Unlike most of their real-life counterparts, Dorgelès’s young bohemians, including Clair, have been killed in action, and the remainder of the cast are reassembled as so many ghosts of a now-dead era. Le Château des Brouillards makes clear the limitations in Dorgelès’s skill as a novelist. While Les Croix de bois was the product of both imagination and personal experience, 61 Le Château des Brouillards is essentially a fictionalised volume of memoirs, the characters often transparently modelled on real figures. Zyg Brunner’s illustrations for the 1948 luxury edition make the point: Paul-Gérard Clair is portrayed as Dorgelès, Philippe Soyer as Mac Orlan, and Chas Laborde and Frédé are easily recognisable.62 Similarly, the opening pages of the epilogue, under the signature of ‘the author’, are indistinguishable from Dorgelès’ 60 Roland Dorgelès, Le Château des Brouillards (Paris: Albin Michel, 1932), p. 281. 61 See Dubeux, Roland Dorgelès, p. 42. 62 See Roland Dorgelès. De Montmartre à l’Académie Goncourt, p. 43.

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memoirs themselves. What is important is that the novel provides a template for a stereotypical representation of Montmartre bohemia, heavily reliant, as we have seen, on the bohemian tradition, unquestioning on its values, and elegiac in tone in recognition of its passing. In fact, both Carco’s exploitation of the mythology of the ‘Montmartre du plaisir et du crime’ and Dorgelès’s continuing packaging of an ultimately comfortable nostalgia for pre-war bohemia serve to highlight the originality of Mac Orlan’s fictional treatment of the same subject matter in Le Quai des Brumes. Pierre Mac Orlan and Le Quai des Brumes Mac Orlan was by far the most interesting and significant member of the Ecole de Montmartre. He was the first of the group to come to the Butte and had an influence which extended beyond that exerted by either Carco or Dorgelès. Born Pierre Dumarchey in the Picard town of Péronne, where his father was an infantry lieutenant, 63 he was brought up by his uncle, an Inspecteur d’Académie in Orléans after the death of his parents. Dumarchey soon rejected this bourgeois upbringing and abandoned his studies at the Ecole Normale d’Instituteurs in Rouen to make his fortune as an artist in Montmartre, where he arrived in December 1899.64 This first visit was blighted both by his acute poverty and the crime which was the reality under the bohemian veneer: ‘A Montmartre régnaient la fille et le couteau’ (‘In Montmartre reigned the prostitute and the knife’),65 a reminder of the subtle differences a short interval can make in the chronology of bohemia. In October 1901, he accordingly returned to Rouen, where he worked as a proof corrector for the Dépêche de Rouen until his military service in 1905. After another brief stay in Montmartre in 1906, Dumarchey embarked on a long tour of 63 For biographical details on Mac Orlan, see Baritaud, Pierre Mac Orlan. Sa Vie, son temps; Roger W. Baines, ‘Inquiétude’ in the Work of Pierre Mac Orlan (Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1994); Gilbert Signaux, ‘La Vie et l’œuvre de Pierre Mac Orlan’, in Œuvres complètes, 1 (Geneva: Cercle du Bibliophile, 1969), pp. xxi–xxxvi; Francis Lacasin, ‘Une Vie longue et bien remplie’, La Quinzaine Littéraire, 367, 16–31 March 1982, pp. 12–13. 64 See Pierre Mac Orlan, Le Mémorial du petit jour (Paris: Gallimard, 1955), p. 214. 65 Pierre Mac Orlan, ‘Montmartre’, in Villes (Paris: Gallimard, 1929), p. 62.

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Italy and Belgium before returning to the Butte for a longer period from 1908 to 1912 and adopting the alias Mac Orlan, following the vogue for mock-English or Scottish names in the cabarets of the 1880s established by performers like Mac Nab, and dressing in a Tam O’Shanter and plus fours. The period from 1908 to 1912 in Montmartre was crucial in Mac Orlan’s development as a writer. Like Carco, but unlike Dorgelès, he was able to maintain good relations with the two Montmartre ‘clans’, the Bande à Picasso and the Bande à Poulbot, living for a time in the Bateau-Lavoir, where he formed close relationships with Max Jacob, Salmon and Apollinaire, and frequenting the Lapin Agile. In 1913, he married Marguerite Luc, the daughter of Frédé’s mistress, and later moved, as we have seen, to a cottage in Saint-Cyr-sur-Morin, the site of Julien Callé’s Hôtel de l’Œuf Dur et du Commerce. His early ambition, like so many bohemians, was to become an artist, an activity in which he had little talent. It was Gus Bofa, ultimately, who came to Mac Orlan’s salvation, recognising that the young man who had submitted rather banal cartoons was better suited to writing than to illustration.66 Mac Orlan himself recorded: C’est Laborde, je crois, qui me donna, sans toutefois s’exalter, le conseil d’aller voir Bofa qui, à cette époque, en 1909, si j’ai bonne mémoire, était directeur artistique du Rire … Il regarda froidement mes dessins, m’offrit une cigarette, et me proposa tout de suite de lui écrire des contes. It was Laborde, I think, who advised me, without great enthusiasm, to go and see Bofa who, at that time, 1909, if I remember correctly, was artistic director of Le Rire … He looked coldly at my drawings, offered me a cigarette and immediately asked me to write stories for him.67

The encounter with Bofa radically altered the course of Mac Orlan’s life. While retaining a deep interest in painting and book illustration, which would lead him to join with Daragnès as one of the founders of the French luxury book market after the war, he turned his professional attention to writing: first, short whimsical pieces for Le Rire, Le Sourire and Le Journal, and then books: Les Pattes en l’air (1911), La Maison du retour écœurant (1912) and Le Rire jaune (1914). In 1912, his early success in journalism enabled Mac Orlan to finally escape from Montmartre, which he always associated with his early poverty, and to 66 See Charensol, ‘Gus Bofa et ses amis’, p. 6. 67 Mac Orlan, Gus Bofa, pp. 10–11.

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move to the Rue du Ranelagh in Passy, inhabited at the time by Bofa. Mac Orlan took a perverse delight in this district, which he called ‘le paysage le plus triste de Paris’ (‘the most miserable landscape in Paris’)68 and fascinated visitors like Apollinaire with the bizarre views of huge gas holders which completely blocked the landscape. Mac Orlan, like most of the Montmartre bohemians, had a distinguished war record; he served in the 269th Infantry Regiment, reaching the rank of corporal, and was seriously wounded in 1916 near his birthplace of Péronne, for which he received the Médaille Militaire, and was invalided out of the army. His serious literary career now began, with a number of illustrated albums highly critical of the war published in 1917: Les Bourreurs de crâne, which he himself illustrated, U-713 ou les gentilshommes d’infortune and Les Poissons morts, both illustrated by Bofa. In 1918, he collaborated with Le Crapouillot, for which he continued to write throughout the interwar years, and also began to publish full-length novels, beginning with the latter-day pirate story, Le Chant de l’équipage (1918), inspired by one of the major figures of the Revue Blanche, Marcel Schwob, which firmly established him as a serious writer. What distinguishes Mac Orlan from both Carco and Dorgelès is an immeasurably greater range of cultural reference, mainly the result, as in Céline’s case, of his autodidacticism. The pirate literature, of which Le Chant de l’équipage is merely the first of a long series extending to L’Ancre de miséricorde (1941), is heavily indebted to British and American writers, from Stevenson to Conrad, via Jack London, Poe and Lafcadio Hearn. At the same time, Mac Orlan’s experience as a reporter for L’Intransigeant in the Rhineland from November 1918 to April 1919 had given him powerful experience, not merely of the contemporary German socioeconomic situation at the height of inflation, but also of German Expressionist cinema and Romantic writing, in particular the works of E.T.A. Hoffmann, Adelbert von Chamisso and Achim von Arnim. Similarly, unlike his colleagues in the Ecole de Montmartre, Mac Orlan wielded a considerable influence on a younger generation of French writers: not only was he on good terms with the Cubists, but younger writers like Malraux, Aragon, Pascal Pia and Marcel Arland also appeared in his apartment in the Rue Ranelagh, 69 and Céline singles 68 Pierre Mac Orlan, ‘Aux Lumières de Paris’, in La Lanterne sourde (Paris: Gallimard, 1953), p. 11. 69 See Nino Frank, ‘Portrait d’un irrégulier’, Magazine Littéraire, June 1982,

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him out for particular praise in Bagatelles pour un massacre: ‘Et Mac Orlan! Il avait tout prévu et tout mis à musique, trente ans d’avance!’ (‘And Mac Orlan! He had foreseen everything and put everything to music, thirty years in advance!’).70 Like Dorgelès and Carco, Mac Orlan uses Montmartre sparingly as a locus for his novels. In Marguerite de la nuit (1925), he exploits the same criminal world of Lower Montmartre as Carco in Jésus-la-Caille, but, while Carco uses the model of Phèdre, Mac Orlan produces a contemporary transposition of the Faust myth and reduces Faust himself to an old Montmartre scholar; Mephistopheles to a cocaine dealer, Monsieur Léon; and Gretchen to Marguerite, a prostitute on the Place Pigalle. La Bandera (1931), blends the themes of adventure and criminality in a tale of the Spanish Foreign Legion in which the hero, Pierre Gilieth, is a Montmartre gangster on the run who embodies the same stereotypical code of honour as the characters in Carco’s novel, but is original in exhibiting ‘les pistes, quelquefois secrètes, de la mauvaise chance’ (‘the sometimes secret trails of bad fortune’).71 This notion of the sign of bad luck looks forward to Mac Orlan’s reportage of 1933, Le Bataillon de la mauvaise chance, in which he described his visit to North Africa and the army units which specialised in conscripting soldiers with a criminal record, and linked them specifically to Montmartre. As André Salmon commented in L’Air de la Butte, Mac Orlan was an expert at detecting among the Montmartre criminals who surrounded him before the war those signs of mauvaise chance which would lead its victims, be they petty thieves or caïds, into the penal regiments in Africa, the ironically named ‘Joyeux’. In other words, for him the milieu holds no romanticism and its inevitable outcome in the colonial army no exoticism. Mac Orlan’s best-known novel, however, Le Quai des Brumes (1925), is one of the most powerful evocations of pre- and post-war Montmartre and provides a clear demonstration of his narrative range. The title, borrowed from Max Jacob’s poem in the Livre de bord of the Lapin Agile, indicates the way in which Montmartre, with its proximity to and separateness from the city, its quartier réservé of criminals and prostitutes and its itinerant population, possessed many of the qualities of a major port. Mac Orlan’s description of Rouen’s Rue des Charettes p. 22. 70 Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Bagatelles pour un massacre (Paris: Denoël, 1937), p. 216. 71 Ibid., p. 63.

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in Villes, for example, reveals the same qualities which he detects in Montmartre. It is for this reason that the transposition from Montmartre to Le Havre in Prévert’s scenario for Carné’s film adaptation is not entirely inappropriate, though Mac Orlan always resented it.72 The novel opens with a young man, Jean Rabe, walking penniless through the wintry landscape of nocturnal Montmartre in 1910. As the blizzard intensifies, he makes for the now deserted Lapin Agile and is welcomed inside by Frédé. There they are joined by three visitors, an artist, Michel Kraus, an anonymous soldier who has deserted from the colonial army, and Nelly, a prostitute, each of whom tells their story. This peaceful scene is shattered by the arrival outside of a band of criminals and a gun battle. When the shooting dies down, Nelly explores outside and discovers the man the criminals were looking for: ‘un petit homme court et trapu, déjà chauve. Il portrait toute sa barbe, une barbe brune peu soignée où brillaient quelques poils blancs’ (‘a short stocky little man, already bald. He had a full beard, an unkempt brown beard in which a few white hairs stood out’).73 Once inside, this half-ridiculous, half-sinister figure, who orders ‘une bonne bouteille de vin rouge, un vin rouge un peu tiède, à la temperature du sang’ (a good bottle of red wine, a red wine which is a bit warm, at blood temperature’),74 introduces himself as Monsieur Isabel, known as Zabel, a butcher and junk dealer in the Maquis. The group rapidly dissolves, Jean Rabe and Nelly going to a hotel room, Zabel returning to the Maquis, Michel Kraus to his studio and the colonial soldier to look for a new identity. Mac Orlan then proceeds to follow the career of each of his protagonists in turn. Zabel, we learn, has murdered a fellow inhabitant of the Maquis – Norbert, who had amassed a fortune by dealing in postage stamps – and was surprised by the gang outside the Lapin Agile while trying to dispose of the body. Mac Orlan laconically concludes: ‘Isabel 72 Nino Frank records Mac Orlan’s outrage at Gaëtan Picon’s Panorama de la littérature contemporaine, in which he comments on Le Quai des Brumes and ‘the facile picturesqueness of ports’, which led Mac Orlan to exclaim: ‘You know, he’s only seen the film, a paraphrase of the novel, and he thinks he’s read the novel itself’. Subsequently, of course, he only called the brilliant essayist by the name ‘Gaëtan P’tit-con’ (see Frank, Portrait d’un irrégulier, p. 24). 73 Pierre Mac Orlan, Le Quai des Brumes (Paris: Gallimard, coll. Folio, 1972), p. 66. 74 Ibid., p. 66.

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fut condamné à mort, son recours en grâce fut rejeté. Il mourut sur la guillotine de mort violente, en avance de quelques mois sur une grande partie de ses contemporains’ (‘Isabel was condemned to death, his appeal rejected. He died a violent death on the guillotine, a few months ahead of a large number of his contemporaries’).75 The colonial soldier fares little better. He assumes a new identity, Jean-Marie Ernst, but ends up leading a civilian existence even more miserable than the one he had known in the army. He drifts south to Marseille, hovers around the Fort Saint-Jean and eventually joins the Foreign Legion. The artist Michel Kraus, who has the terrifying supernatural gift of seeing the fate of his subjects, hangs himself: an echo of the painter Wiegels’s death in 1909 in the Bateau-Lavoir, which precipitated Picasso’s departure from the Butte. While Kraus’s second sight leaves him in no doubt as to the fate of Zabel and the soldier, he is less clear about Rabe and Nelly: ‘je ne sais me prononcer. Après tout, ceux-là possèdent un cœur relativement pûr. J’aurais pu peindre les portraits de Rabe et de Nelly sans danger et sans inquiétude’ (‘I couldn’t say. After all, those two have a relatively pure heart. I could have painted the portraits of Rabe and Nelly without danger and without anxiety)’.76 In fact, Rabe’s destiny is as depressing as those of the other men. He leaves Paris for Rouen but, like the colonial soldier, finds no escape from the poverty which tormented him in Montmartre. Called up for military service in Toul, in what is clearly a rehearsal for the mobilisation of 1914, he coldly opens fire on the autocratic captain who victimises him and is shot down. The only survivor is Nelly, and it is significant that the novel ends with a description of her as a triumphant and powerful prostitute in a Paris nightclub in 1919: C’est Nelly et c’est la seule femme dans cette salle dont la chevelure ne soit pas coupée sur la nuque. Elle règne dans le dancing telle la divinité de la rue, mais de la rue enrichie par les prodigalités les plus folles de tous les échappés du massacre. L’odeur secrète du dancing, comme celle de l’année 1919, est encore l’odeur doucereuse et fade du sang. Nelly est belle, d’une beauté nettement parisienne. C’est vraiment une fille de la rue élevée au grand pouvoir. It was Nelly and she was the only woman in the room not to have bobbed her hair. She reigned over this dance hall like the goddess of the streets, 75 Ibid., p. 125. 76 Ibid., p. 113.

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but from streets enriched from the most crazy extravagances of all those who had escaped the massacre. The secret odour of the dance hall, like that of 1919, was still the sickly stale smell of blood. Nelly was beautiful, with a distinctly Parisian beauty. She was utterly the girl of the streets raised to supreme power.77

Clearly, Mac Orlan has adopted the format of the folk tale, with its tavern, its visitors trapped by the elements and the stories of their individual destinies. What is important, however, is that this format allows Mac Orlan to both situate Montmartre itself in a legendary context, and to demonstrate a range of preoccupations which extend far beyond the Butte and Bas-Montmartre and coalesce around three major interlocking themes: the fantastic, adventure and eroticism. One of the most disturbing features of Le Quai des Brumes is the portrayal of Zabel, the murderous butcher. Throughout his career, Mac Orlan was fascinated by great murderers, particularly Jack the Ripper, who dominates his reportages of London, and Haarmann, the ‘butcher of Hanover’, whose ghostly presence hovers over ‘Filles et ports d’Europe’ (1950).78 The importance of the great murderer for Mac Orlan is allied to the significance of Michel Kraus’s curse of second sight, in that he (for the great murderer in Mac Orlan’s work is always male) represents that layer of barbarism which lies close to the surface of modern, civilised society, just as Stevenson’s Mr Hyde is the terrifying alter ego of Dr Jekyll. This perception is rendered more complex, however, by both its clear allusion to the war itself and a recognition of the inherent mysteriousness of post-war Western society – a combination which creates what Mac Orlan terms ‘le fantastique social’. For Mac Orlan, the post-war world has witnessed a major realignment in the concept of the fantastic, akin to Hannah Arendt’s later formulation of the ‘banality of evil’: Maintenant que le fantastique traditionnel perd chaque jour et chaque nuit le meilleur de ses spectacles, maintenant que le diable Mullin et son compère Léonard [a reference to the Flemish fairy tale behind his novel Le Nègre Léonard et Maître Jean Mullin] ne troublent plus le sommeil des sangliers et des villageois aux abords des clairières et des lieux-dits aux noms évocateurs, les hommes savent toujours utiliser les voies

77 Ibid., p. 146. 78 See Pierre Mac Orlan, ‘Londres’, in Villes; Pierre Mac Orlan, ‘Filles et ports d’Europe’, in Mademoiselle Bambu (Paris: Gallimard, 1950).

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récentes que le merveilleux leur offre afin de peupler d’images les heures des veillées solitaires. Now that the traditional notion of the fantastic loses every day and every night the best of its spectacles, and now that the Devil Mullin and his companion Léonard no longer trouble the sleep of the wild boars and the villagers on the edge of clearings and places with evocative names, people are still able to use the recent channels offered by the marvellous in order to fill their lonely evenings with images.79

Among these new vectors of modern mystery, Mac Orlan singles out such twentieth-century phenomena as radio waves, electric lighting and mechanical music. Writing in 1953, he referred to the ‘nouveaux meneurs du jeu, qui président au climat sentimental et inquiétant des veillées de notre temps: le poste de radiodiffusion, le poste de télévision et, plus rarement, le phonographe’ (‘new leaders, which preside over the sentimental and disturbing climate of our contemporary evenings: the radio set, the television set and, more rarely, the gramophone’)80 – all components of Walter Benjamin’s means of mechanical reproduction and, notably, of German origin. One striking feature of Le Quai des Brumes is that most of the characters have, or adopt, German or German-sounding names. Isabel is more commonly known on the Butte by the Germanic-sounding contraction Zabel; the artist Michel Kraus is German; the colonial soldier adopts the name of Jean-Marie Ernst; and Jean Rabe’s surname means ‘raven’ in German, establishing a connection with Poe. Mac Orlan’s extended stay in the Rhineland in 1918 and 1919 had brought him into contact with both Romantic and contemporary German culture, in addition to showing him the disturbing effects of defeat and inflation on German society. Among the Romantics, he is particularly attracted by Chamisso’s Peter Schlemihl and Achim von Arnim, rather than Hoffmann. From Chamisso’s tale, Mac Orlan borrows the presence of the Devil and the theme of the double – present also, of course, in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, a work he 79 Mac Orlan, Chansons pour accordéon, p. 20. The reference to Mullin and Léonard is to a specifically Flemish legend of the Devil, portrayed in Mac Orlan’s early novel Le Nègre Léonard et Maître Jean Mullin (1920). The banality of evil in this case takes the form a general collapse in the community in traditional beliefs in the Devil, with Mullin becoming an employee of a grocer’s store and Léonard joining the Ballets Russes. That removal of the traditional icons of evil, however, merely paves the way for a more subtle and more pervasive sense of anxiety. 80 Ibid., p. 21.

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especially admired. It is Arnim’s Mandrake to which he is most drawn, however, which he considered ‘plus essentielle à mon goût que toutes les figurines humaines d’Hoffmann’ (‘more essential to my mind than all the human figurines of Hoffmann’): On dénichait cette mandragore à la nuit. Et pour qu’elle fût consacrée, il fallait qu’elle naquît de la semence d’un pendu. A l’époque où la mandragore exerçait toute son influence sur la littérature du temps, les pendus n’étaient point si rares que chacun ne pût espérer s’approprier ce navet diabolique. You dug up the mandrake at night. And for it to be authentic, it had to come from the semen of a hanged man. In an age when the mandrake exerted all its influence on the literature of the time, hanged men were not so rare that people could not hope to obtain this diabolical root for themselves.81

The privileged means of portraying a real sense of evil in modern society, however, is German Expressionist cinema, of which Mac Orlan had extensive knowledge, singling out particularly Karl Grune’s La Rue, starring Egede Nissen, as ‘le film le plus représentatif du fantastique social de notre époque’ (‘the most representative film of the social fantastic of our time’).82 In his contribution ‘Le Fantastique’ to L’Art cinématographique (1926), Mac Orlan gives a revealing list of the elements which go to make up the ‘les éléments du romantisme actuel dont le cinéma a été sinon le créateur, mais du moins le révélateur le plus puissant’ (‘the elements of the present-day romanticism of which cinema has been, if not the creator, at least the most powerful illustration)’,83 and which overlap with some of the concerns of the avant-garde: 1. Les lumières – publicité lumineuse – lampes à arcs dans le Bois – avec association d’idées sur le dévergondage de nos contemporains. Il suffira de descendre la rue Pigalle vers minuit pour concevoir une organisation inscrite comme un cancer doré dans les tissus même de la ville; 2. la misère, avec ses éléments pittoresques. Le peuple de l’ombre. Ses hommes, ses femmes et ses enfants; 3. les filles cérébrales et lettrées; 4. le vent,

81 Pierre Mac Orlan, Rhénanie (Paris: Emile-Paul Frères, 1928), p. 73. 82 Pierre Mac Orlan, ‘Le Fantastique’, in Œuvres complètes, 20 (Geneva: Cercle du Bibliophile, 1971), p. 336. The essay was originally published in Pierre Mac Orlan, André Beucher, Charles Dullin and René Allendy, L’Art cinématogaphique, I (Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan, 1926). 83 Ibid., p. 341.

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la pluie, la disparition du soleil en France; 5. l’instabilité du change; 6. les écarts de la sensualité; 7. le mysticisme (adoration du sou percé – du chiffre 7 – de l’Eléphant blanc à trompe baissée – de saint Christophe, etc.). Tendance vers une création de religion personnelle; 8. la campagne immobilisée, pour les citadins mobilisés, sous son aspect de guerre; 9. la dépréciation du mot ‘mort’; 10. la peur – si l’on veut une peur de poche, facilement transportable avec soi et qui n’est peut-être qu’un développement subit et prodigieux de l’instinct; 11. la vitesse. 1. Lights – illuminated advertising – arc lamps in the Bois de Boulogne – associated with the debauchery of our contemporaries. You merely need to walk down the Rue Pigalle around midnight to conceive of an organisation embedded within the tissue of the city like a golden cancer; 2. Poverty, with its picturesque elements. The people of the shadows, its men, women and children; 3. Intellectual and cultivated prostitutes; 4. Wind, rain and the disappearance of the sun in France; 5. The instability of currency exchange; 6. Acts of sensuality; 7. Mysticism (adoration of the pierced coin, the number 7, the White Elephant with lowered trunk, Saint Christopher, etc.); 8. The motionless countryside, for conscripted city-dwellers, during wartime; 9. The depreciation of the word ‘death’; 10. Fear – or, if you will, a pocket-sized fear which is easily portable and is perhaps only a sudden and prodigious development of the instinct; 11. Speed.84

The combination of even some of these elements provides the most powerful impact of Expressionist cinema, which is constituted by fear: Car la peur est la rançon de l’intelligence. L’intelligence est comme une dentelle: elle laisse tout passer. C’est elle qui fait hurler l’enfant enfermé dans la cave … Personne n’est là pour mettre au point l’effroyable film que son imagination déroule dans l’ombre. En ce moment, nous sommes quelques-uns à la porte de la cave … et personne ne sera là pour tourner le film et en tirer profit. For fear is the ransom of the intellect. The intellect is like lace: it lets everything through. It is the intellect which makes the child locked up in the cellar scream … No one is there to make the terrifying film which his imagination projects in the darkness. At the moment, there are a few of us at the door of the cellar … and no one will be there to make the film and profit from it.85

In other words, the character of Zabel in Le Quai des Brumes is grounded in a solid reflection on the aesthetics of horror and their social 84 Ibid., pp. 341–2. 85 Ibid., p. 342.

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derivation, within a strongly German context. It is no coincidence, therefore, that one of Mac Orlan’s most powerful novels, Malice (1923), the subject of Malraux’s first review for the Nouvelle Revue Française,86 should be set amidst the inflation and corruption of the occupied Rhineland, with allusions to both contemporary cinema and German Romantic fiction. If Zabel and Michel Kraus reflect Mac Orlan’s development of the concepts of inquiétude and the fantastique social, the colonial soldier who finally adopts the name of Jean-Marie Ernst illustrates the impossibility of escape, even through those most popular literary forms in the 1920s, exoticism and adventure. The soldier’s tale is one of unrelieved pessimism, of a life in the North African desert dominated by ‘le cafard’ and immune to the transcendental power of adventure. In fact, Mac Orlan’s theorisation of the elements which go to make up ‘le fantastique social’ is accompanied and reinforced by his work as a theoretician and practitioner of adventure literature. In a review for the Nouvelle Revue Française in 1921, he noted a rise in interest in adventure in France since the war, 87 and he became one of the most formidable analysts of the phenomenon of post-war adventure literature in France. His review of Conrad’s Almayer’s Folly not only demonstrates an unusual knowledge of Conrad’s work, but also emphasises the importance of the genre of adventure fiction: En France, on pense communément qu’un roman d’aventures est écrit pour les enfants. C’est une erreur, les vrais romans d’aventures ne peuvent être que dangereux et demandent un grand équilibre intellectuel pour être lus impunément. In France, it is commonly believed that adventure novels are written for children. That is a mistake: real adventure novels can only be dangerous and require a considerable intellectual equilibrium to be read with impunity.88 86 André Malraux, ‘Malice, par Pierre Mac Orlan’, Nouvelle Revue Française, 116, May 1923. 87 Pierre Mac Orlan, ‘Alexandre-Olivier Oexmelin, Histoire des aventuriers, des flibustiers et des boucaniers d’Amérique’, Nouvelle Revue Française, LXXXIX, 1921, pp. 245–6. 88 Pierre Mac Orlan, ‘La Folie-Amlayer et les aventuriers dans la littérature’, Nouvelle Revue Française, LXXXI, 1920, p. 931. Mac Orlan’s role in bringing Conrad to a wide French audience was certainly as great as that of Gide, who translated Typhoon and dedicated Voyage au Congo to the Polish novelist.

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The inherent danger in adventure writing is the core to Mac Orlan’s theory, expressed in the short essay Le Petit manuel du parfait aventurier (1920), were he makes a crucial distinction between the ‘aventurier actif’ (active adventurer), often totally absorbed in his own project and lacking in interest, and the ‘aventurier passif’ (‘passive adventurer’), who ‘n’existe qu’à la condition de vivre en parasite sur les exploits de l’aventurier actif’ (‘exists only as a parasite on the exploits of the active adventurer’).89 The passive adventurer is the novelist himself, who has the duty to explain this mystery and to retain the decorative elements and the inquiétude.90 In other words, far from being an antidote to post-war malaise, adventure and its literary cultivation are an important constituent part of it. This is seen clearly in Mac Orlan’s first full-length novel, Le Chant de l’équipage (1918). Set during the First World War, it depicts a retired Dutch millionaire, Joseph Kruhl, who lives in a small Breton fishing village. Kruhl is obsessed by books about piracy and falls easy prey to Montmartre confidence trickster Samuel Eliasar, 91 who forges a map purporting to show the spot where the treasure of the pirate Edward Low is buried. Kruhl immediately charters a ship and sets sail, the Jolly Roger on the mast, only to be abandoned with the luckless Eliasar on a desert island by the captain of their ship. The novel is a disturbing reminder of the dangers of transforming dreams and fantasies into reality, of moving from the domain of the ‘passive adventurer’ to that of action. In the same way that Mac Orlan details the elements essential to the cinematographic depiction of ‘le fantastique social’, he also lists crucial features of adventure writing: ‘La Mer. Le Soldat. Le Matelot. Un cabaret. Quelques types de navire’ (‘The sea. The soldier. The sailor. A tavern. Various types of boat’), 92 together with the journeys which an adventure novelist may profitably take – Brittany, the Mediterranean coast, Holland93 – and towns which form the central basis of adventure novels – Antwerp, Rouen, Le Havre, Honfleur, Rochefort, Florida 89 Pierre Mac Orlan, Petit manuel du parfait aventurier, Œuvres complètes, XIV (Geneva: Cercle du Bibliophile, 1970), p. 389. 90 Ibid., p. 931. 91 Not only does Montmartre reappear in this tale as the origin of manipulation and inauthenticity, but Eliasar, a confidence trickster Jew, himself clearly conforms to an anti-Semitic stereotype. 92 Mac Orlan, Le Petit manuel du parfait aventurier, p. 398–9. 93 Ibid., p. 409.

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and ‘L’Ile de la Tortue’.94 Finally, he insists on the importance of the tavern: ‘l’importance du cabaret dans le roman d’aventures est capitale’ (‘the importance of the tavern in the adventure novel is capital’), 95 exemplified by the Admiral Benbow which opens Treasure Island. In this context, the title of Le Quai des Brumes and its setting in the tavern of Le Lapin Agile help to situate the novel in the ambiguous context of the work of adventure fiction and reinforce the intimate connection between adventure and inquiétude. As with the German influences on the fantastique social, Mac Orlan’s concept of adventure writing is consciously based upon a tradition, deriving from Marcel Schwob’s cultivation of pirate lore and American and British sources. In addition to Conrad, whom Mac Orlan claimed, erroneously, to have met in the port of Rouen,96 he was strongly influenced by Jack London, whose Martin Eden he reviewed for the Nouvelle Revue Française, Lafcadio Hearn and, especially, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, which he copied in Les Clients du Bon Chien Jaune, and Rudyard Kipling’s Plain Tales from the Hills, Soldiers Three and Barrack Room Ballads, and, particularly, The Light that Failed. If Zabel and Michel Kraus demonstrate the twin features of le fantastique social, and the colonial soldier represents the bankruptcy of adventure and exoticism, it is the prostitute Nelly who introduces the final element in Mac Orlan’s evocation of post-war Europe, which is eroticism. Clearly, as Mac Orlan is well aware, the exotic and the erotic go together: he notes in the Petit manuel du parfait aventurier that ‘l’érotisme est une des bases du roman d’aventures’ (‘eroticism is one of the bases of the adventure novel’),97 which is why adventure fiction is so dangerous. As he comments in his review of Almayer’s Folly, adventure novels ‘sont comparables aux livres érotiques et agissent violemment sur la façon de juger les hommes et les choses’ (‘are comparable to erotic books and act violently on one’s way of judging people and things’).98 94 See Ibid., ch. 10. 95 Ibid., p. 417. 96 See Pierre Mac Orlan, ‘Rouen’, in Villes, p. 16. Mac Orlan recalls meeting Conrad when the latter was a sea captain from Blyth in Rouen in the early 1900s. However, Conrad never sailed out of Blyth and he ended his sailing career, albeit in Rouen, in January 1894. 97 Mac Orlan, Petit manuel du parfait aventurier, p. 420. 98 Mac Orlan, ‘La Folie Almayer et les aventuriers dans la littérature’, Nouvelle Revue Française, LXXXI, 1920, p. 932.

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Both the exotic and the erotic work upon the reader’s imagination in ways that can remove him from the safe context of his everyday life to zones where he is confronted with the full force of modern inquiétude. In this context, it is no coincidence that Mac Orlan’s early writing before the First World War formed part of a considerable body of Montmartre production devoted to pornography, including the stock-in-trade of the comic journals and their cartoonists, and works by figures like Apollinaire or Pascin. His pornographic writing comprised twelve volumes for the publisher Jean Fort, under a number of pseudonyms, including ‘Pierre de Bourdel’, ‘Jusange’, ‘Sadie Blackeyes’ and, bizarrely, his own birth name, ‘Pierre Dumarchey’.99 This sheer volume of pornographic writing cannot be totally explained by Mac Orlan’s desperate need to earn a living in the years of poverty before the war. While the bulk of his pornography was published before the war, four additional works were published between 1919 and 1926, when he was at the height of his fame and respectability. In fact, far from being a necessary and temporary sideline to Mac Orlan’s literary career, eroticism is an integral part of it and a major feature of his definition of post-war inquiétude: the ‘acts of sensuality’ which he includes as one of the key features of le fantastique social. Mac Orlan’s eroticism derives in large part from sexual violence. The pornographic novels themselves demonstrate a considerable interest in sadomasochism, particularly flagellation, and his post-war writing continues this preoccupation. Jack the Ripper, the murderer of prostitutes, becomes a recurrent reference, while from La Vénus internationale (1923) to Filles et ports d’Europe, via La Nuit de Zeebrugge (1934), the figure of the executed woman revolutionary or spy is endowed with powerful erotic force. As in his adventure fiction, Mac Orlan’s eroticism manipulates and exploits the reader’s taste for voyeurism, the very model of the ‘passive adventurer’, just as, incidentally, the streets, music halls, striptease shows and brothels of Lower Montmartre play to the voyeurism of the male passer-by. At the same time, the portrait of Nelly at the end of Le Quai des Brumes, a woman who has risen to power through the corruption of the post-war period – the economic and sexual inflation of the années folles – is an integral part of his general topography of post-war malaise, just as prostitutes and their clients dominate the depiction of post-war German society in the work of Mac Orlan’s friend George Grosz. In other words, with its emphasis on fantastique social, adventure and 99 See Baines, ‘Inquiétude’ in the Work of Pierre Mac Orlan, p. 207.

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eroticism, Mac Orlan’s work provides a tight, coherent worldview, which he shares with painters like Grosz, and from which there is no obvious escape, particularly in the light of an approaching further military conflict. It is this which renders him one of the most important of the writers of the interwar years whose vision is intimately connected with Montmartre itself. Such a worldview, however, does not come without certain social and political implications. We have already seen that his celebration of Northern Europe, which he shares with Kipling, has certain racist connotations, reinforced by indications of anti-Semitism, and novels like Le Rire jaune, La Vénus internationale and La Cavalière Elsa betray a fear of invasion from the East, which predates Céline’s anti-Soviet writings of the 1930s and hallucinations of a Chinese occupation of Paris in the 1950s. La Bandera constitutes a strong endorsement of the Spanish Foreign Legion and its charismatic leader General Millan Astray, and ends with the police spy Lucas rejoining the Legion and reading the proclamation of the Republic, a prelude to the Civil War. It is unsurprising, therefore, that Mac Orlan supported Franco and went on to contribute to the collaborationist press during the Occupation, notably Jean Luchaire’s Les Nouveaux Temps, for which he had a regular column, ‘Les Belles Lettres’; La Gerbe; Je suis partout and Combats, the publication of the Milice.100 None of these contributions was explicitly political and Mac Orlan was merely one of a large number of French writers who used collaborationist publications to diffuse their work: hence his escape from serious questioning after the Liberation. Nevertheless, like Dorgelès, and unlike Carco, his role as an established Montmartre writer was translated into a profound political conservatism, which is as recognisable a feature of Montmartre culture as the exploration of fantasy, adventure and sexuality. Though they range widely in their subject matter, the novelists from ‘la Bohème de 1910’ provide a vivid picture of pre-war Montmartre based largely on their own differing personal experiences which fits comfortably in a recognisable realist format, largely untroubled by the technical formal innovations being explored the Surrealists, or Gide in his adaptation of the anarchist forgers of the Château des Brouillards. Even Mac Orlan retains a relatively traditional narrative mode, despite Céline’s identification of his ‘musical’ technique, but differs from Carco and Dorgelès in his concern with a sinister fantasy life beyond reality, 100 See Baritaud, Pierre Mac Orlan, p. 271.

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which harks back to some of the deeper preoccupations of Montmartre culture in the Belle Epoque and looks forward, if not stylistically, then at least thematically, to both Céline and Aymé.

chapter nine

The Occupation Céline and Aymé

The Occupation

In his account of Laborde’s last years, Mac Orlan describes how: Un jour, au matin, en compagnie de Zyg Brunner il avait entendu les fifres et tambours plats dans une avenue qui accède à l’Arc de Triomphe. Les deux hommes bouleversés étaient rentrés à pied chez eux à Montmartre. Ils ne parlèrent jamais de ce qu’ils avaient vu. One morning, with Zyg Brunner he heard fifes and drums coming from an avenue leading to the Arc de Triomphe. Overwhelmed, the two men walked back to their homes in Montmartre. They never spoke about what they had seen.1

On his return to the Butte, Laborde and a few friends at Au Rêve, like Brunner, Marcel Aymé and Ralph Soupault, tried in vain to come to terms with the ‘débâcle’. 2 Instead, he ‘let his beard grow, a beard of almost religious renunciation, shortly before dying of grief’. 3 It was a typical, if extreme, reaction to the German Occupation of Paris, in which, of course, the enemy’s presence was not confined to march-pasts on the grand avenues of the centre, but extended to all corners of the capital, not least its pre-eminent pleasure centre. Obviously, like during the First World War, Montmartre was subject to general conditions which applied to the capital as a whole, notably stringent rationing and limitation of movement, particularly through the curfew. Robert Aron notes that from September 1940 the German ration 1 Mac Orlan, ‘Chas Laborde’, Masques sur mesure, II (Geneva: Le Cercle du Bibliophile, 1970), p. 185. 2 See Laborde, Ecole de patience, p. 11. 3 Mac Orlan, ‘Chas Laborde’, p. 179. In fact, more prosaically, Laborde died of cancer.

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for French adults amounted to only 1,800 calories, despite the Germans’ own calculations that 3,000–3,500 constituted the bare minimum for a man leading a sedentary existence, 4,000–4,500 for an active worker and 1,700 was ‘a slow famine regime leading to death’.4 This was compounded by fuel shortages: ‘in the winter of 1940–1, one of the harshest that France had known for a long time, fuel rations were hardly adequate to allow a family to heat one room poorly and intermittently for a few weeks: eleven degrees was considered a luxury’. 5 The situation deteriorated badly after the Occupation of the Southern Zone in November 1942. Georges Delarue had been a police officer during the Occupation and seen the effects at close hand: This time, France was bled white. Official food rations diminished regularly … In 1943, the food ration corresponded to 1,500 calories per day … and the rations were not always delivered … In Lyon, from 1939 to 1943, infant mortality rose by 50%; in Paris, death from tuberculosis between 1939 and 1943 rose by 69% for adults, 87% for old people and 104% for adolescents.6

It was hardly surprising that the urban populations as a whole, and especially Paris, should have recourse to unofficial and technically illegal means of surviving. As Aron comments: ‘If this rationing had not been mitigated by necessary frauds on the part of some people, it would have led to the slow death of the entire population’,7 and this fraudulent activity could take the relatively innocent form of receiving, and subsequently bartering, goods from the countryside, or the more ambiguous, but no less necessary, participation in the black market. The ethical problem was compounded by the fact that, as Delarue and Jacques Debû-Bridel point out, the black market was effectively Germanmanaged, through organisations like the Abwehr’s ‘Bureau Otto’, whose network of spies and criminals constituted an important element of the Occupation’s demi-monde.8 It is hardly surprising, therefore, that a district like Montmartre, with a long-established criminal population, which had close links with Marseille by 1940, should have played a 4 Robert Aron, Histoire de Vichy (Paris: Fayard, 1954), p. 192. 5 Ibid., p. 193. 6 Georges Delarue, Trafics et crimes sous l’Occupation (Paris: Fayard, 1968), pp. 91–2. 7 Aron, Histoire de Vichy, p. 193. 8 See Delarue, Trafics et crimes, p. 20; Jacques Debû-Bridel, Histoire du marché noir 1939–1947 (Paris: La Jeune Parque, 1947), ch. III.

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privileged role in the black-market activities of the capital, chronicled in fiction by Jean Dutourd, in Au Bon Beurre, and by Marcel Aymé in Le Chemin des écoliers and ‘Traversée de Paris’. At the same time, as Louis Chevalier recalls in Les Ruines de Subure, many Montmartre ‘truands’ gravitated naturally to working for the Germans and their allies in Bonny and Lafont’s ‘Bande de la Rue Lauriston’. Indeed, legend has it that it was in the café Les Deux Maronniers, on the corner of the Boulevard Rochechouart and the Rue de Clignancourt that, the day after the Normandy landings, ‘Lafont, at the counter, had a fit of rage or madness … and, half drunk … shouted out: “The Krauts are finished, Kaputt! The comedy’s over!” and vanished into the night’.9 If its criminal history predisposed Montmartre to higher than average participation in the organisation and operation of the black market, together with active collaboration, its working-class history and one facet of its non-conformism placed it prominently in the Resistance. The first act of armed resistance, the assassination of the German naval officer Alfons Moser by the future communist Colonel Fabien on 21 April 1941 at the métro station Barbès-Rochechouart, was followed in December by the murder of two German soldiers in a Montmartre restaurant.10 Céline, possibly not disinterestedly, also emphasises that a Resistance group, which numbered Roger Vaillant among its members, met in the apartment below his in the Rue Girardon throughout the Occupation without suffering any denunciation.11 The murders and subsequent attacks on Germans accentuated the effects of one of the most pervasive and unsettling aspects of the Occupation, the curfew, which brought back memories of the first autumn of the First World War but, as Chevalier reminds us, this was immeasurably more threatening, in both the possible consequences of non-compliance and the sheer arbitrary nature of its application. As with food shortages and rationing, the curfew was of course a phenomenon which affected the entire capital, and the consequences of missing the dernier métro and being arrested by a German patrol for any Parisian were all too clear. In Montmartre, however, with its reliance on the entertainment and pleasure industry, 9 Chevalier, Les Ruines de Subure, p. 43. The story was originally in Philippe Aziz’s Tu trahiras sans vergogne (Les Tortionnaires français de la Gestapo) (Paris: Fayard, 1970). 10 See Chevalier, Les Ruines de Subure, p. 33. 11 See Frédéric Vitoux, Céline: A Biography, trans. Jesse Browner (New York: Marlowe, 1994), p. 390.

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the effects were multiplied. The dangers of going to the theatre or a concert in Montmartre were palpable, and some establishments cannily sold tickets and hotel reservations in one package,12 a practice which did not prevent overcrowding from panic-stricken theatre goers who fought their way in from the streets. Once the curfew came into effect, there was total silence: ‘you could have been in a quiet hotel in the depths of a provincial town’.13 Part of the problem was that the time and conditions of the curfew were subject to arbitrary change: after the Barbès attack, the curfew, which had previously begun at eleven-thirty, was imposed from nine in the evening until five in the morning; and the killing and wounding of the soldiers in the restaurant in December led to the imposition of a curfew at 5.30 in a large part of the eighteenth arrondissement, with an additional embargo on Parisians from other districts travelling to Montmartre.14 If Laborde and Zyg Brunner were so affected by the sight of German soldiers on the Place de l’Etoile, they would have been even more distressed by the Occupants’ presence in Montmartre itself. The Germans were omnipresent in Paris but, like the Eiffel Tower, Notre-Dame and the Arc de Triomphe, the Sacré-Cœur was a tourist magnet and, unlike its competitors, the district exerted an attraction at night as well as during the day. The German presence in Montmartre was felt acutely. Not only did flocks of German troops visit the sites on the Butte and the attractions of the Place Pigalle, but the Café Wepler on the Place de Clichy was requisitioned as a German Soldatenheim, to which privileged collaborationist colleagues were often invited.15 At the same time, while ‘French’ Montmartre later ‘went dark, emptied out, sunk into silence, the night clubs … streaked the night with their lights and heaved with life, noise and music, invaded by a clientele which you could tell was powerful: German officers, the friends of Germans, criminals working for the Germans’.16 Chevalier notes that ‘the law stated that after 23.30, clients without an Ausweis had to go home’, leaving ‘the Germans and their friends to themselves … behind doors carefully closed and veiled in thick curtains’.17 The Germans were also 12 13 14 15 16 17

See Chevalier, Les Ruines de Subure, p. 35. Ibid., p. 35. See ibid., p. 33. See ibid., p. 47. Ibid., p. 56. Ibid., pp. 66, 68.

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regular clients at the neighbourhood’s brothels, most notably the 106 and Panier Fleuri, both on the Boulevard de la Chapelle.18 In other words, the Occupation saw the creation of a parallel society, built to some extent upon the duality of the pre-war era, between the ordinary, ‘civilian’ population, the population ‘which no longer went out dancing’,19 and the Occupation forces, especially the officer class, and their French collaborators – a society only partly displaced by the Liberation, as witnesses such as Dutourd and Aymé attest. Montherlant may have witnessed, on the Boulevard Rochechouart, ‘among the routed Germans and the refugees in transit, the cortège of petits poulbots in the uniform of the other Revolution’, 20 but the post-Liberation regime rapidly reverted to the status quo, often with the same personnel and the same criminal, and black market, activities. It was not entirely the same, however: Chevalier notes that the Occupation was marked by the deaths of some of the great figures from the golden age of Montmartre – Lucien Boyer in 1942, Antoine in 1943 and Yvette Guibert in 1944. 21 Given the quartier’s history as a centre for pleasure and crime, it is unsurprising, therefore, that Montmartre, especially along the boulevards, enjoyed a boom during the années noires and its inhabitants found themselves in unusually close proximity to the Occupier, for whom they were on occasion well-placed to act as intermediaries, an ambiguous relationship explored in Aymé’s cycle of novels and short stories from Travelingue to Le Chemin des écoliers, via Le Passe-muraille and Le Vin de Paris, which constitute an extensive exploration of the constraints, fantasies and ambiguities of the period through an evocation of the tight topography of the Butte and its surrounding areas. At the same time, Céline, whose first novel Voyage au bout de la nuit constitutes the most accurate evocation of Montmartre in the interwar years, devoted the two volumes of Féerie pour une autre fois to the past of Montmartre bohemia and celebrated its explosive end.

18 See ibid., p. 49. 19 Ibid., p. 55. 20 Henry de Montherlant, Fichier Parisien (Paris: Gallimard, 1952), quoted in Chevalier, Les Ruines de Subure, p. 76. 21 Ibid., p. 53.

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Céline and Aymé on the Butte In comparison with Mac Orlan, Dorgelès and even Carco, Céline and Aymé were relatively late in arriving on the Butte. Born in 1894, Céline was thirty-three when he briefly established himself as a general practitioner at 5 Rue des Saules in the autumn of 1927. 22 After a brief spell in Clichy, where he had set up another surgery which failed, in 1929 he moved into an apartment on the top floor of 98 Rue Lepic, where he stayed, firstly with the American dancer Elizabeth Craig and later with Lucette Almansor, whom he met in Montmartre, until 1939, when he moved temporarily to Saint-German-en-Laye. In March 1941, on the suggestion of his friend, the painter Gen-Paul, he moved back to Montmartre, into the Rue Girardon, where he remained until the summer of 1944, when he went into exile in southern Germany and then Denmark. 23 Brought up in Paris, Céline already had fond memories of Montmartre. According to Pascal Fouché, as early as the age of four, he had spent ‘six months … in the Rue Ganneron, next to the Cemetery of Montmartre’, 24 and Henri Godard records that ‘when Céline came to live in Montmartre, he chose a district with which he had links since his childhood’. 25 In particular, Céline had been a frequent visitor to the Hippodrome in his childhood and, when he had started work, he often had to call in to the cabinet makers Brézin on the Rue Caulaincourt, the model for the Wurzem family in Mort à crédit. As Céline recalled in the early version of Féerie pour une autre fois, Maudits soupirs pour une autre fois, ‘je regarde la voûte du 76 … c’est pas d’hier que je la connais … ça va bientôt faire un demi-siècle’ (‘I looked at the vault of number 76 … I didn’t come across it only yesterday … it’ll soon be a half-century’). 26 Later, he also visited the workshop of the engraver and printer Delâtre on the Rue Tourlaque, whom he ‘got to know … in the period 1917–18, 22 See François Gibault, Céline, I, 1894–1932: Le Temps des espérances (Paris: Mercure de France, 1977), pp. 290–1. 23 See ibid., pp. 290–1; François Gibault, Céline, II: Délires et persécutions (Paris: Mercure de France, 1985), p. 131; Pascal Fouché, ‘Féerie pour un autre Montmartre’, Magazine Littéraire, June 1982, pp. 32–6. 24 Fouché, ‘Féerie pour un autre Montmartre’, pp. 32–6. 25 Henri Godard in Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Maudits soupirs pour une autre fois, ed. Henri Godard (Paris: Gallimard, 1985), p. 71, n. 2. 26 Céline, Maudits soupirs, p. 180.

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when he was working for Eurêka and, perhaps, other publications owned by Paul Laffitte’. 27 Marcel Aymé, without Céline’s Parisian upbringing, had no such memories to guide him to Montmartre, but he did have the recent experience of living and working in Paris intermittently from 1923 onwards, and, more important, a burning ambition, as strong as that of a Carco or Dorgelès, to be a part of the community on the Butte. As his widow later recalled: ‘when Marcel was still living in the Jura, he came frequently to Paris and promised himself that, if he ever moved there, he would choose Montmartre’.28 This ambition was finally realised when, after the success of Brûlebois (1926), Aller-Retour, Les Jumeaux du Diable and, especially, La Table-aux-crevés, which won the Prix Théophraste-Renaudot in 1929, he moved into an apartment on the eighth floor of 9 Rue du Square-Carpeaux, 29 where he stayed until 1934. That year, he moved with his wife to 9 Rue Paul-Féval, 30 where he was to remain until 1961, before moving finally to the apartment on the corner of the Rue Norvins and the Rue Girardon, where he died in 1967. 31 As for Céline, Pascal Fouché writes that: he rapidly came to be perceived as the typical Montmartre citizen. You could believe that he had always lived there. People helped him to identify with it, because they wished him to be seen as the ‘doctor of Montmartre’, the ‘writer of Montmartre’, the representative of Montmartre bohemia. He probably became caught up in the process because the seduction of this image was very strong. 32

In fact, both Céline and Aymé fell victim to the ongoing process of Montmartre ‘packaging’, to the extent that they rapidly identified with the Montmartre personas with which they were associated: Céline’s shabby dress from the Occupation onwards, in sharp contrast to his 27 Godard in Céline, Maudits soupirs, p. 33, n. 1. 28 Quoted in Louis Nucéra, ‘Marcel le bienheureux’, Magazine Littéraire, special number: Les Ecrivains de Montmartre, June 1982, p. 37. 29 See Yves-Alain Favre, ‘Chronologie’, in Aymé, Œuvres romanesques complètes, I, p. xxxvi. 30 See Michel Lécureur, ‘Chronologie’, Marcel Aymé, Œuvres romanesques complètes, II (Paris: Gallimard, coll. ‘La Pléiade’, 1998), p. xxiii. 31 See Pascal Payen-Appenzeller, ‘Qui est qui: Mme Marcel Aymé: dans le souvenir du grand homme de théâtre’, Connaissance de Paris et de la France, special number, Guide de Montmartre, 23, 1974, p. 41. 32 Fouché, ‘Féerie pour un autre Montmartre’, p. 33.

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elegant image in the 1930s, was not merely an ostentatious display of (totally fictitious) poverty and, later, victimisation, it was also in part the bohemian uniform of the non-conformist. However, although Céline was a stalwart of bohemian life on the Butte until his flight into exile in June 1944, he was, initially at least, very attracted by the underworld of Lower Montmartre. Through his acquaintance with Joseph Garcin – who, like him, had frequented the London underworld during the First World War, and provided important information subsequently used in Guignol’s Band – he also met the Montmartre figure Marcel Lafaye, a friend of Mac Orlan, Gen-Paul and Foujita, whose career seemed to prefigure that of Bardamu in Voyage au bout de la nuit. 33 The sex industry of Lower Montmartre also gave Céline plenty of opportunities to indulge his taste for music hall and burlesque shows, in addition to classical ballet studios, like the studio of Madame d’Alessandri on the Rue Henri-Monnier, where he met Lucette Almansor. 34 Much of Céline’s idealisation of ‘dancers’ is anchored in the same sexual ambiguity as that present in Degas and refers much less to classical ballet than to burlesque, as in the cases of some of the most important women in his life, Elizabeth Craig and Karen Marie Jensen. His friend Max Descaves recalled meeting Céline in a former music hall on the Place Blanche which had become a cinema, when Céline confessed: ‘Tonight, I haven’t come to see the film, I’ve come to see the dancers’. 35 Aymé, for his part, became no less a Montmartre stereotype, but one which emphasised the village-like image of the Butte. His widow told Louis Nucéra: ‘Every morning, he went out at 11 o’clock. Sometimes, he went to bistros like Le Clairon36 to play at either 421, dominoes or belote with his friends: the painter d’Esparbès, whose father was curator of the Musée de Fontainebleau; Guyot the animal sculptor; Dédé Coste the art dealer from the Rue Lepic; or Chervin, who had a gallery on the Rue du Chevalier de la Barre …’. 37 This routine also depended on Aymé’s compulsive gambling: ‘gambling had him by the throat and did not let go until he died. He gambled at cards, 421, dominoes – anything 33 See Nicholas Hewitt, The Life of Céline: A Critical Biography (Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999), pp. 99–101. 34 See Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime, p. 368. 35 Quoted in Fouché, ‘Féerie pour un autre Montmartre’, p. 37. 36 The Clairon des Chasseurs à Pied, the bar of the Hôtel Bouscarat, behind the Place du Tertre. 37 Quoted in Nucéra, ‘Marcel le bienheureux’, p. 37.

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which seemed like a match. He had many ports of call: the Clairon and La Bohème, the Cadet de Gascogne and the wine seller on the Rue d’Orchampf, the Grenier as well … His wife often had to come and fetch him at 2 o’clock for the family lunch’. 38 Nevertheless, if Aymé adopted the role of the village gambler, he would also head further afield when he was writing: ‘When Marcel was writing a book, his itinerary changed. He went towards Belleville, La Chapelle, La Goutte d’Or. He went slumming’, 39 a reminder of the subtle gradations of Montmartre’s territorial frontiers and that montmartrois could indulge in ‘slumming’ very close to home. Both writers rapidly established links with Montmartre’s bohemian culture. Céline became a close friend of both Gen-Paul and Daragnès, as well as with music hall figures like Max Revol, the musician Jean Noceti, the ceramicist Paco Durio, the dramatist René Fauchois, the actor Le Vigan and the right-wing cartoonist Ralph Soupault.40 Gen-Paul’s studio in the Impasse Giradon, like the Restaurant Manière, was a key meeting place. Eugène Paul, to give him his full name, was described on his death at the age of eighty in 1975 as: the last monstre sacré of the Butte,41 and also the last great Montmartre painter. An authentic montmartrois, born at 96 Rue Lepic, he had known and been influenced by André Utter, Suzanne Valadon and Utrillo, as well as Juan Gris, Vlaminck and Derain. He could also remember seeing Toulouse-Lautrec and the Bande à Bonnot.42

A volunteer in September 1914, Gen-Paul was wounded in June 1915 and lost a leg. Subsequently, he worked as a newspaper seller and only began painting, with the help of André Warnod, when he was kept indoors one winter because of the snow.43 He went on to become a successful artist, retaining a fiercely independent style which reflected a similar independence in politics. In the 1930s, he played host in his studio every Sunday to a group of close friends which included Céline, Aymé, Daragnès, Jean Anouilh, Le Vigan44 and, later, Ralph Soupault, 38 Payen-Appenzeller, ‘Qui est qui’, p. 41. 39 Ibid., p. 37. 40 See Fouché, ‘Féerie pour un autre Montmartre’, p. 33; François Gibault, Céline, II, p. 107. 41 ‘Gen-Paul est mort’, Arts, 3 May 1975. 42 See Crespelle, Montmartre vivant, p. 227. 43 See ibid., pp. 231–3. 44 See ibid., p. 235.

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who published cartoons for Je suis partout. Both Céline and Marcel Aymé transposed these meetings in their work, Aymé in the short story ‘Chez Gen-Paul’, and Céline, disastrously, in Bagatelles pour un massacre (1937). In this, the first of Céline’s anti-Semitic pamphlets, he introduces an interlocutor, ‘Popaul’, who essentially converts the narrator Ferdinand to anti-Semitism. The obvious transparency of the disguise caused Gen-Paul considerable problems, particularly at the Liberation, and he turned bitterly against his former friend, accusing him of, among other things, extreme avarice.45 With his reputation in tatters at the Liberation, largely due to Céline, Gen-Paul showed himself to be unbowed by organising noisy brass band processions, called chignoles, which marched through Montmartre with the painter at their head. Eventually, however, he was forced to move for a time to America. Céline and Aymé also became frequent clients of the Restaurant Manière. The bohemian Breton painter Henri Mahé, who also joined the Sunday morning sessions at Gen-Paul’s studio, describes a dinner in the restaurant when a girlfriend of Céline brought him a letter from a woman who confessed that she was poisoning her husband in order to be able to live with her. Céline passed the letter to Giraudoux, who has having dinner at the next table as a suggestion for his ‘théâtre d’amour’.46 As we have seen, he also greatly respected Mac Orlan, another of the restaurant’s clients. Aymé similarly immersed himself in the Montmartre culture of the survivors of the bohemia of the Belle Epoque, frequenting notably Roland Dorgelès and the painters Gen-Paul, Suzanne Valadon and Derain, then living in the artists’ Cité des Fusains.47 Chas Laborde illustrated the luxury edition of La Jument verte published in 1936,48 and in 1953 Gus Bofa provided the illustrations for a collection of his short stories.49 There was considerable overlap within the Montmartre community in the 1930s, and Aymé and Céline became close friends, though each 45 See ibid., p. 236: ‘the very model of a miser’. 46 Henri Mahé, La Brinquebale avec Céline (Paris: la Table Ronde, 1969), pp. 20–2, quoted in Fouché, ‘Féerie pour un autre Montmartre’, p. 33. 47 See Nucéra, ‘Marcel le bienheureux’, p. 37. Aymé was also close to Vlaminck who, despite his deep antipathy to the Butte, visited Montmartre from time to time. 48 See Marcel Aymé, La Jument verte, illustrations de Chas Laborde (Paris: Gallimard, 1936). 49 See Marcel Aymé, Contes et nouvelles, avec trente-deux aquarelles de Gus Bofa (Paris: Gallimard, 1953).

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had their own circle of acquaintances. The relationship was hardly easy, however, since Céline constantly bullied Aymé, whose taciturnity was legendary. Lucette Almansor recalled to Frédéric Vitoux: Louis would say very unpleasant things to him. He needed to. He had to have someone to bawl out. Marcel kept silent, he listened to Louis talk. Céline would lay into him, like he did with the Jews, like Marcel was his whipping boy. He’d say to him: ‘You’re a filthy pig’ and the like. Overhearing him, I’d ask: ‘Why do you call him all those names?’ He’d answer: ‘Because he doesn’t say a word and he knows that he has skeletons in his closet!’ It was childish. Marcel would stay away for a couple of weeks. Louis would phone him and say: ‘Why don’t you come over?’ Marcel Aymé understood Louis, that’s why he put up with it all. He loved him. 50

Come the Occupation, however, Aymé was able to get his own back by more subtle means. His short story ‘Avenue Junot’, which appeared in Je suis partout, depicted an emotional Céline in full anti-Semitic flow in Gen-Paul’s studio, a point which Céline was careful to mention in Maudits soupirs pour une autre fois. In his classic story of Montmartre during the Occupation, ‘En attendant’ in Le Passe-Muraille, Aymé also playfully presents a brief appearance by Céline in a food queue, complaining about the Jews. Nevertheless, the two writers remained close friends, and their friendship outlived the Sunday morning gatherings at Gen-Paul’s studio, where, incidentally, they established a sort of amateur choral society:51 during Céline’s exile in Denmark after the Liberation and following his return to Meudon, Aymé remained one of his closest allies. The significance of the presence of Céline and Aymé in Montmartre in the 1930s lies in the fact that it was the result of conscious choice. In the interwar years, most aspiring writers and intellectuals headed automatically for the Left Bank, particularly the Latin Quarter, while, as we have seen, ambitious painters from France and overseas gravitated to Montparnasse, as did the expatriate literary community. In addition, the Left Bank was the centre of the Republic’s intellectual and literary institutions, a point deftly made by Marcel Aymé in an interview with Gilbert Ganne in 1952: ‘I even lived on the Left Bank, once’, declared Marcel Aymé. ‘Why “even”?’ 50 Vitoux, Céline: A Biography, p. 275. 51 See Nucéra, ‘Marcel le bienheureux’, p. 37.

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‘I’m slightly biased against the Left Bank’. ‘Because it’s not very interesting?’ ‘Because it’s the publishers’ quarter’. 52

To move to Montmartre in the interwar years was a choice which flew in the face of fashion and which stemmed from other motives. In the first place, for a certain type of cultural figure, Montmartre retained its aura from the bohemia of the Belle Epoque, from Salis and Bruant to the Impressionists, Nabis and the avant-garde. In this context, it is important to recall Céline’s constant affection for the Belle Epoque, present in his work from Mort à credit, with its Proustian palimpsest, to the nostalgic evocation of the old bateaux-mouches in D’un Château l’autre, and which serves as a focal point for both his political and aesthetic decisions. At the same time, writers and artists who adopted Montmartre in the interwar year were embracing what had become a tradition of marginality and non-conformism which made a virtue of defying contemporary fashion. It is for this reason that, as we have seen before, the adoption of Montmartre as a place of residence and activity simultaneously signified a choice of political and social attitudes which continued the Montmartre anarchist tradition of the Belle Epoque and embraced the more radical conservative derivatives of libertarianism. With their circle of friends among the caricaturists, novelists and memorialists, both Céline and Aymé fit comfortably into the Montmartre antagonism towards the Republic and all the forces of modernity and internationalism. Céline published two anti-Semitic pamphlets in 1937 and 1938 and another in 1941, at the height of the Occupation. Despite his subsequent denials, he was also an enthusiastic collaborator, contributing throughout the Occupation to the right-wing press, and he had powerful contacts within the Vichy government and the German administration. Aymé’s political stance during the Occupation was more nuanced, and more prudent, which is why he never figured on any of the blacklists established by the Comité National des Ecrivains after the Liberation. In fact, the Jew waiting outside the grocer’s shop in ‘En attendant’ who adds his voice to the litany of complaints from the rest of the queue – ‘“Moi”, dit un juif, “je suis juif”’ (‘“I”’, said a Jew, “am a Jew”’)53 52 ‘Pol Vandromme, Entretien avec Gilbert Ganne’, in Marcel Aymé (Paris: Gallimard, coll. ‘La Bibliothèque Idéale’, 1960), p. 271. 53 Marcel Aymé, ‘En attendant’, Le Passe-muraille (Paris: Gallimard, 1943).

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– constitutes one of the few public testimonies by a French writer during the Occupation to the fate of the Jews. Nevertheless, like Mac Orlan, Aymé regularly published his novels and short stories in ultracollaborationist weeklies like Brasillach’s Je suis partout or Alphonse de Châteaubriant’s La Gerbe. At the same time, the adoption of Montmartre as a place of work and residence implies also an aesthetic choice. In their work, both Céline and Aymé draw upon the Montmartre tradition of fantasy, humour and caricature which had defined its culture throughout the Belle Epoque and into the interwar years. Céline’s satirical description of the French colonial administration and the French medical establishment in Voyage au bout de la nuit, for example – or Aymé’s depiction of the impotence of the government at the end of the Third Republic in Travelingue – fits comfortably into a corpus of humorous writing and political caricature which goes back to the cabaret culture of the 1880s and continues to the illustrators of the Restaurant Manière. That tradition implied not only a subversion of realism and the positivist base which underpinned it, but also a profound anti-intellectualism which demarcated their production from that of the Left Bank: neither Céline nor Aymé are men of ‘idéâs’, 54 and their fiction hovers above the frontiers between reality, dream and artificiality. In fact, much of their work is indebted to the Montmartre painters. Aymé, who was a gifted amateur painter himself, remained close to the Fauves throughout his career, while Céline, though not an artist himself, drew upon a wide knowledge of visual culture in his fiction. It is interesting that Céline and Aymé were not only imbued with certain key aspects of Montmartre culture from the Belle Epoque onwards, including the work of contemporaries, but chose to depict Montmartre in their fiction in such a way that their work transcends the realism – however mitigated in the work of Mac Orlan – of the generation of 1910, and produces a Modernist image of the Butte, an image clearly visible in Céline’s first work of fiction, Voyage au bout de la nuit.

54 See Céline, Entretiens avec le Professeur Y: ‘Je laisse les ‘idéâs aux camelots’ (I leave ideas to street sellers), p. 498.

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Céline and Voyage au bout de la nuit It is not always sufficiently realised to what extent Voyage au bout de la nuit is a Montmartre novel. Pascal Fouché, for example, asserts that ‘in Voyage au bout de la nuit, [Céline] describes Montmartre very little: the action takes place elsewhere’. 55 On the contrary, the novel is so anchored in Montmartre that in one sense it never extends beyond it. It opens on the Place de Clichy, with the hero Bardamu and his fellow medical student Arthur Gannat, typical members of pre-war Montmartre bohemia, sitting on the terrace of a café – probably the Wepler, as depicted by Bonnard in his painting of 1912, La Place Clichy56 – and also ends there. When Bardamu, Robinson, Sophie and Madelon57 go into Paris to visit the little fair on the Boulevard des Batignolles, they are unable to find a taxi to take them back to the asylum and have to walk to the Place de Clichy. It is during this final taxi ride that Robinson is killed by Madelon. The Place de Clichy reappears throughout the novel with disconcerting regularity. When Bardamu is abandoned by Robinson in the depths of the African jungle, all he finds in the deserted cabin is a stock of canned meat and a box containing a ticket for the nord–sud métro line and a ‘carte postale, en couleurs, de la Place Clichy’ (‘colour postcard of the Place de Clichy’). 58 Later, when Bardamu returns from his travels in Africa and America, he recalls that ‘j’ai tourné encore pendant des semaines et des mois autour de la Place Clichy, d’où j’étais parti’ (‘I spent weeks and months roaming around the Place de Clichy, where I had come from’). 59 When he abandons his post as doctor in La Garenne-Rancy, he works as an actor in reviews at the Tarapout on the Place de Clichy, a transposition of the Gaumont-Palace. This recurrence of references to the Place de Clichy seriously challenges the presumed realist, or even naturalist, credentials of the novel. The regiment with its band which whisks Bardamu away from the café terrace just before the First 55 Fouché, ‘Féerie pour un autre Montmartre’, p. 33. 56 See Hewitt, The Life of Céline, p. 119. 57 As we have seen, the song ‘La Madelon de la guerre’ was written by the Montmartre composer Lucien Boyer, who incidentally also wrote the Second World War ‘Chant des FFI’. 58 Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Voyage au bout de la nuit, in Romans, I (Paris: Gallimard, coll. ‘La Pléiade’, 1981), p. 167. 59 Ibid., p. 237.

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World War, implicitly alludes to the Pied Piper of Hamelin, employed to exterminate vermin, and by extension removes him and his fellow anarchists from bourgeois society. It also functions, however, in a way similar to the White Rabbit in that favourite text of the Surrealists, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, who ensures a transition to the dreamworld which becomes the novel’s space. In other words, Bardamu may either be presumed to be ‘dead’ – in which case the novel employs the format of the ghost story – or undertaking an ‘imaginary voyage’ in which the episodes of the war, Africa, America, Rancy, Toulouse and Vigny-sur-Seine are all projections forward into a dream, generated from the Place de Clichy and the original conversation with Arthur. Not for nothing did Céline carefully preface his novel with the warning that ‘Hommes, bêtes, villes et choses, tout est imaginé. C’est un roman, rien qu’une histoire fictive. Littré le dit, qui ne se trompe jamais’ (‘People, animals, towns and things, everything is imagined. It’s a novel, just a fictional tale. Littré says so, and he’s never wrong’), 60 and, more specifically: ‘Voyager, c’est bien utile, ça fait travailler l’imagination … Notre voyage à nous est entièrement imaginaire. Voilà sa force’ (‘To travel is very useful, it makes the imagination work … Our journey is entirely imaginary. That is its strength’).61 Not only is Céline asserting the work’s conscious status as a novel, but he suggests that, as a novel, it falls into a particular category, the eighteenth-century voyage imaginaire (‘imaginary journey’), whose most famous example is Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and its many derivatives, the ‘Robinsonades’.62 The status of Voyage au bout de la nuit as a ghost story is reinforced not only by the recurrent references by Bardamu to himself as a ‘ghost’, but also by the initial description of Robinson, likened to the dead infantry major they encounter lying in a river.63 The ghost theme climaxes on All-Saints Eve, when Bardamu and Tania, a fellow performer at the Tarapout, walk up to the Place du Tertre and witness the extraordinary, and patently fantastical, spectacle of the ‘cavalcade des morts’ – all the past characters in the novel, transformed into ghosts and flying over the Montmartre skyline.64 Not only does this episode 60 Ibid., p. 5. 61 Ibid., p. 5. 62 See Philip Babock Gove, The Imaginary Voyage in Prose Fiction (London: The Holland Press, 1961). 63 See Céline, Voyage au bout de la nuit, p. 46. 64 See ibid., pp. 366–7.

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encapsulate the novel’s essentially non-realist characteristics, it is also heavily indebted, as we have seen, to Willette’s Parce Domine in Le Chat Noir. In this way, Voyage au bout de la nuit constitutes a conscious homage to the Montmartre bohemia of the 1880s. It also adopts the preferred political expression of that bohemia, namely anarchism. Early reviews of the novel showed some considerable difficulty interpreting the political perspective of Voyage au bout de la nuit, though most critics, fuelled by highly misleading and downright inaccurate statements by Céline himself in interviews, were happy to situate the novel, and its author, on the left. 65 In fact, a careful reading of the text should have picked up that, while the protagonist Bardamu was clearly opposed to war, colonialism and the assembly-line capitalism represented by the Ford factory in Detroit, he was also highly scathing about the communist administration of the industrial suburb La Garenne-Rancy, in the ‘banlieue rouge’, whose grand street names, such as the ‘Place Lénine’ and ‘Coin de la Révolte’, 66 cannot hide the appalling conditions in which its population is living. Not that Bardamu ever attempts to disguise his political position: in the opening conversation with Arthur, he proclaims himself an anarchist – ‘Tu l’as dit, bouffi, que je suis anarchiste!’ (You’re right, pal, I’m an anarchist!)67 and recites his ‘Prière vengeresse et sociale’ (‘Vengeful and social prayer’) which introduces the notion of the capitalist god as a golden pig and an echo of Henri Rivière’s depiction of Salis worshipping a Golden Calf.68 Not only does this prayer, and the subsequent allegory of rival capitalist states as warring slave galleys, help to generate the fictional text which follows – notably the theme of gold throughout the novel and the slave galley, the Infanta Combitta, which takes Bardamu from Africa to New York – it also clearly identifies him as a member of the ‘miteux’ (‘social vermin’)69 seeking to undermine the bourgeois state and ripe for ­extermination in the war. At the same time, Bardamu’s status as an anarchist and his revolutionary prayer place him in that tradition of Montmartre contestation 65 Two notable exceptions were the communists Trotsky and Paul Nizan, who, despite admiring the novel’s critique of bourgeois society, saw in its pessimism a barrier to progressive left-wing politics. 66 Céline, Voyage au bout de la nuit, pp. 247–8. 67 Ibid., p. 8. 68 See ibid., p. 9. 69 See ibid., p. 8.

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of the Belle Epoque, represented by the radical chansonniers Jehan Rictus and Jules Jouy, poets like Jean Richepin and polemicists like Léon Bloy, as well as the specifically anarchist activity of Zo d’Axa, Libertad and the Bande à Bonnot. It is no coincidence that Lola’s black anarchist servant manufactures his bombs to the cry of ‘Liberta!’,70 nor that Céline should include the Bande à Bonnot in his pantheon of anti-bourgeois heroes in Mea Culpa (1937),71 and that one of the major characters of Guignol’s Band should be the anarchist bomber Borokrom. However, Céline’s own anarchism rapidly revealed itself to be typical of that strain of Montmartre libertarianism, which often contained a strong element of anti-Semitism and was liable to move to the radical right. The transition from Bardamu’s anarchist prayer to the anti-Semitic pamphlets Bagatelles pour un massacre, L’Ecole des cadavres and Les Beaux draps is neither as difficult nor illogical as it may appear and is easily recognisable within a tradition dating from Salis and the chansonniers of the 1880s. Finally, in Voyage au bout de la nuit and even more so in his subsequent works, Céline is clearly exploring techniques of transcribing the language of protest which had exercised chansonniers since the days of Le Chat Noir – in particular Jehan Rictus, Jules Jouy and Aristide Bruant. Céline’s style, his ‘petite musique’, evolved slowly and was influenced by many different sources,72 but his efforts to convey the vibrancy and inventiveness of French popular speech had important precursors in the Montmartre cabarets and their publications. Marcel Aymé: from Travelingue to En arrière Aymé’s forty-year literary career began with the publication of Brûlebois in 1926. This novel, about a small-town drunk who had once been a sous-préfet, initiated a whole series of novels set in the provinces, including Le Moulin de la Sourdine (1936) and La Vouivre (1943). The huge commercial success of La Jument verte in 1933 appeared to 70 See ibid., p. 217. Since ‘Libertà’ is Italian, the war cry is also probably an allusion to the Italian-American anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, executed in 1926. 71 See Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Mea Culpa (Paris: Denoël, 1936): ‘Vive Pierre Ier, Vive Louis XIV!, Vive Fouquet! Vive Gengis Khan! Vive Bonnot! La Bande! Et tous autres!’ 72 See Henri Godard, Poétique de Céline (Paris: Gallimard, 1985).

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confirm Aymé’s reputation as a provincial novelist with a specialism in Rabelaisian depictions of the peasantry. Nevertheless, beneath Aymé’s undoubted gifts as a provincial novelist, there was that same fascination with the disturbing undercurrents of modern life which lies at the centre of Mac Orlan’s concept of fantastique social. The novel Maison Basse, published in 1935, ends with the death, from terror, of a little girl trapped in the stairway of an apartment building at night: that same ‘film’ which Mac Orlan invokes in ‘Le Fantastique’. At the same time, a novel like La Vouivre – constructed on an old legend from the Jura about a beautiful, but deadly, sorceress who moves through the countryside accompanied by a hoard of snakes – plays upon a coexistence between provincial realism and fantasy, just as Uranus (1946), transports the mathematics teacher Wattrin on a nightly journey from the bombed town of Blêmont to the planet Uranus in a device which looks forward to the planet Trafalmagor in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5.73 This juxtaposition of intense realism with fantasy is a crucial feature of Aymé’s fictional representation of Montmartre during the Occupation.74 The introductions to the short stories Aymé wrote during the Occupation reveal an immediate confrontation between precise realistic geographical locations and a disconcerting introduction of fantasy. ‘Le Passe-muraille’, for example, begins: Il y avait à Montmartre, au troisième étage du 75 bis de la rue d’Orchampf, un excellent homme nommé Dutilleul qui possédait le don singulier de passer à travers les murs sans être incommode. In Montmartre, on the third floor of 75b Rue d’Orchampf, there was an excellent man called Dutilleul who had the amazing gift of being able to walk through walls without difficulty.75

while in the same collection, ‘Les Sabines’ is introduced in exactly the same way: ‘Il y avait à Montmartre, dans la rue de l’Abreuvoir, une jeune femme prénommée Sabine, qui possédait le don d’ubiquité’ (‘In Montmartre, on the Rue de l’Abreuvoir, there was a young woman 73 See Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5 (New York: Delacorte, 1969). 74 See, for example, Charles Scheel, ‘D’Anatole France à Marcel Aymé: le réalisme magique’, in Alain Cresciucci, ed., Marcel Aymé (Paris: Klincksieck, coll. ‘Littératures Contemporaines’, 1998), pp. 75–90; Yves-Alain Favre, ‘Préface’, in Marcel Aymé, Œuvres romanesques compètes, I (Paris: Gallimard, coll. ‘La Pléiade’, 1989), p. xxii. 75 Marcel Aymé, ‘Le Passe-Muraille’, in Le Passe-Muraille, p. 7.

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called Sabine, who had the gift of ubiquity’).76 Similarly, ‘La Bonne peinture’, in the collection Le Vin de Paris, starts: A Montmartre, dans un atelier de la rue Saint-Vincent, demeurait un peintre nommé Lafleur, qui travaillait avec amour, acharnement, probité. Lorsqu’il eut atteint l’âge de trente-cinq ans, sa peinture était devenue si riche, si sensible, si fraîche, si solide, qu’elle constituait une véritable nourriture, et non pas seulement pour l’esprit, mais bien aussi pour le corps. In Montmartre, in a studio on the Rue Saint-Vincent, there lived a painter called Lafleur, who worked lovingly, persistently and honestly. When he was thirty-five, his painting had become so rich, so sensitive, so fresh and so solid that it constituted a veritable nourishment, not just for the mind, but also for the body.77

The clash between the almost exaggerated detail, which goes so far as to situate the ‘Passe-muraille’ Dutilleul’s apartment at precisely 75b Rue d’Orchampf, and the matter-of-fact announcement of the protagonists’ supernatural gifts is the means employed by Aymé to introduce the reader into a shifting landscape in which fantasy becomes commonplace. What is interesting, however, is that, despite living in Montmartre for thirty-seven years, during most of which he remained highly productive, Aymé’s fictional representations of Montmartre are mainly confined to the period of the Occupation. With the exception of the short humorous article ‘L’Age d’or’, published in Marianne in 1933 – which, as we have seen, mocks the greed of Montmartre café-owners and the exaggerated nostalgia of the memorialists – and the short stories ‘Le Mariage de César’, in Le Nain (1934), and ‘Le Temps mort’, in Derrière chez Martin, the presence of Montmartre is restricted to a number of works which appeared during the Occupation or just after: the collections of short stories Le Passe-muraille (1943), Le Vin de Paris (1947) and En Arrière (1950) – mainly composed, incidentally, of works like ‘Avenue Junot’, published earlier – and the novels La Belle image (1941), Travelingue, published the same year after serialisation in Je suis partout, and Le Chemin des écoliers (1945). Before these publications, if Aymé chose to situate his novels in Paris, he chose anonymous industrial suburbs, as in La Rue sans nom (1930), and the closest he came to 76 Marcel Aymé, ‘Les Sabines’, in Le Passe-Muraille, p. 23. 77 Marcel Aymé, ‘La Bonne peinture’, in Le Vin de Paris (Paris: Gallimard, coll. ‘Folio’, 1983), p. 173.

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Montmartre was Maison basse – set in the Quartier des Epinettes in the seventeenth arrondissement, and which opens with a walk from the Lycée Condorcet through the Place de Clichy78 – and the short story ‘Rue de l’Evangile’ in Derrière chez Martin, which takes place in the quarter of La Chapelle. Thus, within a remarkably defined period and number of texts, Aymé makes considerable use of the topography of Montmartre. In Travelingue, Bernard climbs up to the Place du Tertre79 and the boxer-poet Milou is murdered on the Rue Simon-Dereure, while Raoul Cérusier, the hero of La Belle image, lives on the Rue Caulaincourt, close to the Restaurant Manière and the bar Au Rêve. In Le Chemin des écoliers, published after the Liberation, the Michauts’ apartment is on the Rue Berthe, while Yvette’s apartment is on the Rue Durantin and the Tirecelins’ bar is near Place Blanche. References to Montmartre multiply in the short stories. ‘Le Passe-muraille’, as we have seen, is set in the Rue d’Orchampf, ‘Les Sabines’ in the Rue de L’Abreuvoir, while ‘La Carte’ moves around the quarter80 and ‘Le Décret’, in the same volume, alternates between Montmartre, specifically the Rue Lamarck, 81 and Auteuil. Meanwhile, the mysterious junk shop in ‘Les Bottes des sept lieues’ is located on the Rue Elysée-des-Beaux-Arts, while the crowd of Parisians waiting to be served in ‘En attendant’ stands outside a grocery store in the Rue Caulaincourt.82 Similarly, ‘La Traversée de Paris’, in Le Vin de Paris, provides an extraordinarily precise description of the itinerary followed by the two protagonists from the basement on the Rue Poliveau, just off the Boulevard de l’Hôpital, to the studio of the artist Grandgil on the Avenue Trudaine, before ending with the arrest of Martin on the Rue Pigalle. ‘L’Indifférent’ also takes place in Lower Montmartre – the Boulevard Rochechouart, the Boulevard de la Chapelle and the Place Pigalle – while the hero of ‘La Grâce’ lives on the Rue Gabrielle. The hero of ‘La Bonne peinture’, lives on the Rue Saint-Vincent, while the plot of ‘Faux-Policier’ mainly takes place on the Avenue Junot, the setting of Aymé’s depiction of Gen-Paul’s studio, published in the collection En Arrière (1950). 78 See Marcel Aymé, Maison Basse, in Œuvres romanesques complètes, I, pp. 170, 176. 79 See Favre, ‘Préface’, p. xviii. 80 See Marcel Aymé, ‘La Carte’, in Le Passe-muraille, p. 75. 81 See Marcel Aymé, ‘Le Décret’, in Le Passe-muraille, pp. 101, 118. 82 See Marcel Aymé, ‘En attendant’, in Le Passe-muraille, p. 247.

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It is not difficult to see why Aymé chose to create what amounts to a ‘Montmartre cycle’ during the Occupation. On one level, Montmartre for Aymé is the locus of fantasy and magic – Jean Vertex’s ‘village inspiré’ – which offers the possibility of escape from the constraints of reality. The repetitive use of the introduction ‘Il y avait à Montmartre …’, which opens ‘Le Passe-muraille’ and ‘Les Sabines’, goes back to ‘Le Mariage de César’ in Le Nain. The introduction ‘Il y avait à Montmartre un bougnat vertueux qui s’appelait César’ (‘In Montmartre there was a virtuous wine seller called César …’)83 automatically establishes Montmartre as the site of a fairy tale, the urban equivalent of the rural settings of the Contes du chat perché. This escape to the world of fairy tale was a powerful temptation under the German occupation of the capital: with the curfew in force, and the dire consequences of missing the dernier métro, the ability to pass through walls was not without its attractions, and, in a France dominated by the need for an Ausweis in order to travel, and split by the Ligne de Démarcation, seven-league boots took on a deeper significance. Similarly, for a Parisian population starving under German rationing, as portrayed in ‘En attendant’, ‘la bonne peinture’ – a painting which could physically nourish anyone who looked at it – was full of symbolism. At the same time, Aymé’s concentration on Montmartre during the Occupation represents, at a fictional level, a deliberate retreat into a well-known and welcoming terrain, just as many French people reacted to the privations of life by taking refuge in comforting familiarity. In particular, by choosing Montmartre as the setting for his novels and short stories, Aymé designates it as a privileged place of memory, the quintessence of Frenchness in a political landscape menaced by forces from the outside world. The problem, however, is that fairy tales are not simply about escape, they also reveal deep fears and the darker side of humanity. Montmartre in Aymé’s wartime fiction is not just the landscape of escape through dreams, nor merely a positive lieu de mémoire reinforcing the continuity of French history at a moment of crisis. Through the realist strain of Aymé’s writing it serves also as a laboratory in which he can analyse and dissect the behaviour of the French population as a whole during the Occupation and Liberation. In other words, the corpus of Aymé’s Montmartre fiction from 1940 onwards constitutes the equivalent of Jean-Louis Bory’s Mon Village à l’heure allemande (1945), which looked 83 Marcel Aymé, ‘Le Mariage de César’, in Œuvres romanesques complètes, II, p. 94.

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dispassionately at the activities of the rural population under German rule. ‘En attendant’, as we have seen, deftly reflects the privations of Parisians, as well as the persecution of the Jews. In ‘La Carte’ and ‘Le Décret’, Aymé alludes to the arbitrary restrictions which the French had to bear throughout the Occupation. In ‘La Traversée de Paris’, he depicts one of the most prevalent, and most ambiguous, features of Occupation life in the capital, the black market to which most Parisians had recourse and which had uneasy connotations of collaboration and, at the very least, lack of solidarity. Le Chemin des écoliers develops this theme further by using the familiar setting of Lower Montmartre to establish the collaborationist connections between the black market, the Occupying powers and traditional crime – the ‘Montmartre du plaisir et du crime’ at war – and also by showing how the black market shows up the frailty and inauthenticity of traditional liberal humanism. The property manager Michaud spends most of the novel resisting his colleague Lolivier’s attempts to enrol him in black market activity but, by the end, he has become corrupted and a millionaire in the days of easy money following the Liberation. In fact, the issue is not one of morality, but of class. As Lolivier remarks to Michaud when they have both become rich: ‘Il t’arrive une aventure insignifiante. Tu étais un bourgeois de gauche et tu es devenu un bourgeois de droite’ (‘Your story is quite banal. You used to be a left-wing bourgeois. Now you’re a right-wing bourgeois’).84 The short story ‘L’Indifférent’, in Le Vin de Paris, also contrives to puncture official morality, by showing a mass murderer, Médéric, hiding behind the almost sacrosanct image of Marshal Pétain. At one point, he congratulates himself: ‘Ma récompense, c’est quand le maréchal nous cause à la radio’ (‘My reward is listening to the Marshal talking to us on the radio’).85 Finally, the eponymous hero of ‘Faux-policier’ highlights the extraordinary predilection of the French for denunciation during the Occupation and after, mercilessly dissected by Jean Dutourd in Au Bon beurre. Aymé’s work during this period provides a fascinating picture of the informers, criminals, black marketeers, murderers and collaborators who swam in the murky waters of Occupied Paris. The footnotes to Le Chemin des écoliers alone, which serve to highlight often marginal characters and spell out their arbitrary and mostly hideous fate, 84 Marcel Aymé, Le Chemin des écoliers (Paris: Gallimard, coll. ‘Folio’ 1977), p. 252. 85 Marcel Aymé, ‘L’Indifférent’, in Le Vin de Paris, p. 15.

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constitute an important document on France during the Occupation and Liberation. In this context, the rare presence of people of principle and courage, like Frédéric, Michaud’s résistant son in Le Chemin des écoliers, because of their scarcity and weakness, reinforce the bleakness of the picture. Céline: Féerie pour une autre fois Céline’s depiction of Montmartre extends from the central role accorded it in Voyage au bout de la nuit to more tangential references such as the transposition of Gen-Paul into Popaul in Bagatelles pour un massacre, and the crucial role, in Entretiens avec le Professeur Y (1955), of the Boulevard de Sébastopol, the main artery to Lower Montmartre from the capital. Montmartre remained an important source of fictional inspiration for Céline, informing his first novel when he had recently moved to the Butte and suffusing Féerie pour une autre fois with the sense of loss he felt when he was obliged to go into exile. Although he never returned to Montmartre after 1944, his house in Meudon, where he lived from 1952 until his death in 1961, and where he wrote the second volume of the novel, offered him tantalising views of the Sacré-Cœur. By the time Céline came to write Féerie pour une autre fois, his circumstances had changed drastically and he was cut off definitively from the Montmartre he loved so much. He began work on the novel in 1945, when he and Lucette Almansor were living clandestinely in Karen Marie Jensen’s apartment in Copenhagen. Correspondence to his secretary Marie Canavaggia contains references to a ‘short memoir’ called La Bataille du Styx, dealing with his flight from Montmartre in June 1944 and his journey through Germany to presumed safety in Denmark.86 Even at this stage, the presence of the Styx in the title indicates an uncrossable barrier between two worlds, and this feature was accentuated in the final version of the novel. It was Céline’s arrest and imprisonment in December 1945, with the very real threat of extradition to France, which led him to conceive of the project as a major novel. On the one hand, it was imperative for Céline to attempt to restore his fading literary reputation with a new work, and not the 86 Céline, Letter to Marie Canavaggia, 15 September 1945, quoted by Henri Godard, in ‘Notice’, in Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Romans, IV (Paris: Gallimard, coll. ‘La Pléiade’, 1993), p. 1113.

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third volume of Guignol’s Band which he had been planning hitherto. In addition, prison and exile had increased his nostalgia for his home in Montmartre, and the fictional recreation of life on the Butte became a major concern. La Bataille du Styx now became a full-length project, variously titled Du côté des maudits, Au vent des maudits, Au vent des maudits soupirs pour une autre fois, before becoming definitively Féerie pour une autre fois.87 The first volume was not published until 1952, and is, as Henri Godard comments, ‘from start to finish, a novel written in prison’88 – the Vester Faengsel in Copenhagen – which constitutes an insuperable barrier between the trapped and ‘maudit’ Céline and the idealised, and lost, world of the Butte. Accordingly, no less precise than Aymé in his descriptions of the topography of Montmartre in his Occupation writing, Céline lovingly recreates the familiar landscape throughout both volumes of Féerie: street names and métro stations, particularly Lamarck,89 where the novel ends; landmarks like the Moulin de la Galette, from which Jules signals to the RAF bombers; bohemian meeting places like the Restaurant Manière (‘Beaunière’ in the text) and the bar Au Rêve; and a whole cast of thinly disguised Montmartre personalities, including Marcel Aymé (‘Marc Empième’), Daragnès (‘Lambrecaze’), Max Revol, Jean Noceti (‘Ottavio’) and, especially, the actor Le Vigan (‘Norbert’) and Gen-Paul, transposed into the diabolical legless ‘Jules’.90 At the same time, in both the final version and its earlier drafts, Céline shows himself to be remarkably conscious of the bohemian tradition of Montmartre, of which he is one of the last representatives and about which he remains both affectionate and lucid. Thus, in the early version Maudits soupirs pour une autre fois, he writes: 87 See ibid., pp. 1117–18. 88 Ibid., p. xviii. 89 The choice of the métro station Lamarck is interesting. One of the main stations on the nord–sud line, it serves as an echo of the bohemian past of the Butte. It also looks back to the novel’s dedication to Pliny the Elder, who famously died on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. Not only does this dedication herald the apocalyptic destruction of the Butte at the end of the novel, but there is a more subtle allusion: Pliny’s work as a scientist was on the adaptability of plants, a subject which looks forward to Lamarck’s theory of natural selection through acquired characteristics. The destruction of both in fire and brimstone appears to rule out any sense of natural or human progression. 90 See ibid., p. 1187.

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Y a quatorze cents ans que la Butte pleure … ça peut pas s’arrêter d’un coup … Je les ai jamais vu manquer de pive ni de perlo, d’un peu de fond de gniole … ça ça serait la Révolution … Personne est pauvre sur la Butte … ça chantonne en mineur voilà. C’est le passé des rapins, c’est tout … la vigne … les moineaux … Catherine … ’Les Temps des cerises’, la dèche, Utrillo, la Galette, l’impasse Traînée, l’air de Louise … le gouffre à Bruant … tout énorme noir en bas, tout Paris, la peur des choses … la maison … des fantômes … les trois réverbères à pendus, les derniers à manchon qui sifflent … l’en-haut des marches, la rampe en fer … c’est du lieu sacré pathétique, le promontoire, les ombres, le tertre, le sémaphore qui s’avance … Y a qu’à demander à Labric, Clemenceau etc. Tous ceux qu’ont été maires le savent. Dignimont aussi … Daragnès qu’a pas été maire mais tout comme. Enfin on me comprend … The Butte has been weeping for fourteen hundred years … it’s not likely to stop just like that … I’ve never seen them lack for wine [pive] or apéritifs [perlo], or even for a few dregs of spirits … That would cause a revolution … No one is poor on the Butte … they just sing in a minor key, that’s all. It’s the past, the young painters, everything … the vineyard … the sparrows … Catherine … Les Temps des cerises, poverty, Utrillo, La Galette, the Impasse Traînée, the tune from Louise … Bruant’s pit … all the enormous blackness down below, all of Paris, the fear of things … the house … the ghosts … the three lamp posts with sleeves that whistled, from which people were hanged … the top of the steps, with the iron handrail … it’s a moving sacred place, the promontory, the shadows, the Place du Tertre, the semaphore advancing … You only have to ask Labric, Clemenceau, etc. Everyone who was mayor knows about it. Dignimont as well … Daragnès, who was never actually mayor but it was as if he was … Anyway, you get my drift …91

Céline’s evocation of Montmartre is thus solidly anchored in his recent encounters with grandees on the Butte, like Pierre Labric, Dignimont and Daragnès, but also in his knowledge of the bohemian tradition of the Belle Epoque, with the references to Charpentier’s Louise, Utrillo, Bruant and the restaurant La Mère Catherine. This awareness of the origins of Montmartre culture is reinforced in the final version by references to nineteenth-century operas and operettas, such as La Périchole, La Chanson de Fortunio, Werther, Manon, On ne badine pas avec l’amour, Véronique and Rip Van Winkle.92 The second volume, originally known 91 Céline, Maudits soupirs, pp. 147–8. 92 See Godard, in Céline, Romans, IV, p. 1199.

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as Normance, introduces two characters called ‘Rodolphe’ and ‘Mimi’, who sing snatches from Puccini’s La Bohème in the middle of the bombardment of the Butte. It is this idyllic evocation of the bohemian life and tradition on the Butte which explains the use of the word féerie in the novel’s title. The meaning is complex and has privileged connotations in Céline’s work. As he himself explains at the beginning of the first volume, féerie denotes a ‘confusion of place and time’, 93 associated particularly with Shakespearean comedy. At the same time, it is connected in Céline’s work with the move towards musicality in his later style, which begins, paradoxically, in the anti-Semitic pamphlets: the ballet La Naissance d’une fée which opens Bagatelles pour un massacre, and ‘la musique des fées’ (‘the music of the fairies’) which closes Les Beaux draps.94 In addition, the féerie had the more precise meaning of a ‘dramatic diversion’ in seventeenth-century theatre,95 which took the form of a ballet, like Céline’s own, in which words are either replaced by movement of the human body or conscripted into a primarily musical function, as also occurs in opera and operetta. In other words, in Féerie pour une autre fois, Céline chooses to evoke the lost world of bohemian Montmartre by using one of its most cherished forms and exploiting the musical potential of language. His féerie, no less than Charpentier’s Louise, is a roman musical, just as his bagatelles are in the same theatrical category as the ‘parade’: a warm-up act for the main spectacle and part of the fairground barker’s patter. At the same time, however, it is ‘pour une autre fois’, and the Célinian narrator is acutely aware that the Montmartre he is describing is no more. By the eighteenth century, the féerie was a distinct literary subgenre, linked both to the ‘imaginary voyage’ which underpins Voyage au bout de la nuit, and to the ‘utopia’.96 Yet the ‘utopian’ Montmartre which figures so prominently in the first volume is doomed to disappear in the second, most important part. As Marie-Christine Bellosta perceptively emphasises, apart from its Shakespearean and musical connotations, the 93 Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Féerie pour une autre fois, I, in Romans, IV (Paris: Gallimard, coll. ‘La Pléiade’, 1993), p. 15. 94 Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Les Beaux draps (Paris: Denoël, 1941), p. 221. 95 See Marie-Christine Bellosta, ‘Féerie pour une autre fois 1 et 2: un spectacle et son prologue’, Revue des Lettres Modernes, ‘L.-F. Céline, 3’ (Paris: Minard, 1978). 96 See Gove, The Imaginary Voyage, pp. 116–24.

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féerie, as a dramatic diversion, had a precise function as the introduction to a major play. In other words, Féerie I serves as the introduction, and enticement, to the second volume. It is the second volume, however, which brings about the literal destruction of the Butte. In fact, the apocalyptic bombing scene in Féerie II is a conflation of three separate events: the bombings of the Renault works at Boulogne-Billancourt in March 1942 and April 1943, which Céline could see from his apartment on the Rue Girardon, and the raid on the goods yards at nearby La Chapelle on the night of 21–22 April 1944, during which some bombs fell on Montmartre itself.97 As Louis Chevalier recounts: In April, there was the bombing of the marshalling yards at La Chapelle. Some bombs fell on the eighteenth and nineteenth arrondissements. The eighteenth was the most affected: especially around the Sacré-Cœur. The young people from Barbès who climbed up there recounted what they saw in one of the most damaged streets: houses blown apart, inhabitants buried in the cellars. In one of the houses at the top of the Butte the people remained buried for three days.98

And he records that 235 Montmartre inhabitants died in the bombing, with 251 wounded.99 This transposition, however, goes further than Céline’s familiar practice of exaggeration and inaccuracy. In Féerie II he is actively orchestrating the destruction of the utopia so lovingly evoked in the first volume, just as surely as Jules guides the enemy bombers to their target. Not for nothing is the novel dedicated to Pliny the Elder, who died on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius during the eruption of AD 79 which destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum. Nor is a coincidence that, after the Wagnerian scenes of Götterdämmerung, the maudit narrator is confronted in the basement of his ruined apartment block by an impassive commandeur of the Legion of Honour: La Bohème has, as Bellosta observes, turned into Don Giovanni. There is always an element of self-destruction in Céline’s fiction: in Mort à crédit (1936), the narrator confesses that he likes to tell stories: ‘J’en raconterai de telles qu’ils reviendront, exprès, pour me tuer, des quatre coins du monde. Alors, ce sera fini et je serai bien content’ (‘I will tell such stories that people will come back from the four corners of the world purposefully 97 See Godard in Céline, Romans, IV, pp. 1178–9. 98 Chevalier, Les Ruines de Subure, p. 72. 99 See ibid., p. 73.

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to kill me. And it will then be over and I’ll be happy’).100 At the end of Féerie pour une autre fois, it is as if he has moved on from the nostalgia and grief which inform the first volume to taking events into his own hands: if Montmartre is subsequently to be denied him, then he will destroy it, along with its bohemian mythology. Féerie pour une autre fois constitutes a powerful, dramatic and remarkably well-informed elegy for a Montmartre culture which survived from 1881 to the end of the Second World War. Like Aymé’s work on Montmartre during the Occupation, however, it demonstrates a technical virtuosity and sophistication absent from the work of the Ecole de Montmartre. In describing what was to prove the last period of authentic bohemian culture in Montmartre, Céline and Aymé raise that cultural production to an unprecedented level. As such, they provide a knowing commentary on a culture which was fast outliving its time and was becoming increasingly self-parodic. After Céline and Aymé, there was no way for Montmartre culture to go except repetition, which is why, from the 1950s onwards, it lived on, not in literature or painting, but in the mechanical means of reproduction of photography and film.

1 00 Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Mort à crédit, in Romans, I (Paris: Gallimard, coll. ‘La Pléiade’, 1981), p. 512.

Epilogue Montmartre on Film

Epilogue

It is fitting that one of the first, and most comprehensive, overviews of the cultural history of Montmartre should be the special number of Le Crapouillot which appeared in 1959. Not only did it bring together some of the veterans of Montmartre culture from the Belle Epoque and the interwar years – not least its editor and founder, Jean Galtier-Boissière, who had been a frequent visitor to the bals at the Moulin de la Galette before the First World War – but it embodied that spirit of Montmartre non-conformism, which was one of its defining characteristics. At the same time, its appearance in 1959, in the transition between the Fourth and Fifth Republic. constitutes what may be considered a final chronological frontier in the district’s history as a cultural centre, which had been in apparently irreversible decline since the Liberation. This erosion was due to a number of factors: shifting patterns of cultural activity which benefited other areas, just as Montmartre in the 1880s had profited from transfers from the Latin Quarter; legislative changes, most notably the Loi Marthe Richard of 1947 closing the brothels – Louis Chevalier notes wryly that the 106 on the Boulevard de la Chapelle was turned into a Salvation Army hostel;1 transformations in the city’s economic, demographic and urban profile, culminating in the creeping gentrification of all the arrondissements in the 1980s and following increased availability of home loans; and, finally, technical innovations which, like television, altered public taste in entertainment, and affected the closeness and sociability of intellectual and cultural groupings while tending to fragment them physically. While the Latin

1 See Chevalier, Les Ruines de Subure, p. 49 and illustrations pp. 192–3.

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Quarter and the Left Bank may have shown more durability as centres of intellectual activity, due to the presence of the university and the publishing industry, they were no more immune to technological and sociological advances than Montmartre. Herbert R. Lottman 2 concludes his study of the Rive Gauche by attributing the decline of the district as a cohesive intellectual centre in the 1960s to elements, like the proliferation of the telephone, banal in themselves, which rendered face-to-face encounters redundant, a process clearly continued by the rise of information technology. The proud distinction between Montmartre and the Latin Quarter made by Jean Vertex in 1950 – ‘the representatives of Existentialism were walking about in front of us, all dressed in their uniform, of a type unknown in Montmartre. Serious intellectuals wearing spectacles were in deep discussion on the edge of the pavement’3 – was, ten years later, no longer so true and the cultural sociology of both Left and Right Banks had already been permanently altered. On a global scale, Paris as a whole after the Second World War was viewed as having been successively overtaken as a capital of the visual arts by New York, London and Shanghai. This change in status is immediately recognisable in the way in which Montmartre was represented. Apart from Aymé’s and Céline’s post-war works, Montmartre all but ceases to be a locus for fiction after the Occupation. The focus shifts, for example, to Antoine Blondin’s evocation of the quartier behind the Quai Voltaire, or to Daniel Pennac’s Belleville, the most noteworthy exceptions being the crime novels Maigret au ‘Picratt’s’ by Simenon (1951),4 and Albert Simonin’s Touchez 2 See Herbert R. Lottman, La Rive Gauche: du Front Populaire à la guerre froide, histoire de l’engagement intellectuel à Paris (Paris: Seuil, 1984). 3 Vertex, Le Village inspiré, p. 184. 4 Maigret au ‘Picratt’s’ is not the Commissaire’s only excursion to Montmartre, which mostly occurred in the post-war years, when Simenon was in exile, in the United States and Switzerland. Montmartre first makes a significant appearance in Signé Picpus (1944), followed by Maigret et l’inspecteur malchanceux (1947), which has a brief reference to Chez Manière, Maigret tend un piège (1955), Maigret et le client du samedi (1962), Maigret et le fantôme (1964) and Maigret et l’homme tout seul (1971). See Joe Richards, ‘In the Footsteps of Chief Superintendent Jules Maigret in Montmartre’, www.trussel.com/maig/richards.htm. What interests Simenon is either the reputation of Bas-Montmartre as a readily available lieu du plaisir et du crime or as a tightly knit, almost provincial community, interchangeable with any other similar locus. It is interesting in this respect that, in the same way that Carco transposes a well-known Montmartre crime to Les Halles

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pas au grisbi two years later. In this context, it is interesting that one of the major experiments in French crime fiction of the Occupation and Fourth Republic, the fifteen volumes of Léo Malet’s Nouveaux mystères de Paris, scrupulously avoids Montmartre, coming no nearer than the southern frontier of the ninth arrondissement in Boulevard … ossements (1957). 5 Moreover, neither Touchez pas au grisbi nor Maigret au ‘Picratt’s’ could be said to be deeply rooted in Montmartre, since Simonin, mainly associated with La Chapelle, was more interested in a general elegy to the vanishing old-fashioned milieu and its customs, reflected in Jacques Becker’s film of 1955, and Simenon uses Maigret in his familiar role as investigator of a tight, closed community. In this case, Maigret explores the world of the small tawdry night club Picratt’s and the dense locality of the quartier Saint-Georges on the Rue Fontaine and the Rue Pigalle which surrounds it. Attractive as it is, the picture derives less from an intuitive understanding of the thematic importance of Bas-Montmartre than from the same meticulous planning and topographical research which characterise Simenon’s fiction as a whole. However, this lack of fictional coverage in the post-war years is compensated by a corresponding peak in interest on the part of French, and occasionally Hollywood, cinema. Under the Fourth Republic, Montmartre’s presence is felt more in the domain of celluloid than in its previous territories of literature, painting and illustration, and it is through film that it continued its relationship with a mass audience and consumer culture. It is not widely known that Montmartre had its own film studios, at 6 Rue Francœur, which leads from the Rue Caulincourt to the Rue Marcadet on the northern slope of the Butte. Formerly the premises of a builders’ merchants, it was taken over in 1926 by Bernard Natan as the headquarters of his company Rapid-Films before merging with Pathé in 1929 as Films Pathé-Natan, under Natan’s presidency. The company survived until 1938, when it went bankrupt, and Natan, in to write L’Homme traqué, Jean Delannoy’s 1958 film adaptation of Maigret tend un piège, with Jean Gabin in his staple role of the 1950s, is set, not in Montmartre, but in the Marais. 5 In fact, Malet’s series avoids the outer northern arrondissements (the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth). In the case of Montmartre, it is possible that, after the Second World War, the area was too well-known and had lost its sense of mystery, in ways that the underground reservoirs of the Parc Montsouris in Les Rats du Montsouris, for example, had not.

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prison awaiting trial on fraud charges, was handed over to the Germans in 1942 and deported to Auschwitz, where he died in 1943. The studios, however, continued to function well into the 1990s, producing films including Grémillon’s La Petite Lise (1930), Bresson’s Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (1944), Carné’s Les Enfants du paradis (1944) and Les Portes de la nuit (1946), Becker’s Falbalas (1944) and Rendez-vous de juillet (1947), Cocteau’s Les Parents terribles (1948), Renoir’s French cancan (1954) and Autant-Lara’s Le Rouge et le noir (1954). Accompanying this significant production, Montmartre was a favourite theme for both French and foreign films, right from the medium’s invention: it first appeared in the American short Moulin Rouge Dancers as early as 1898, followed in 1913 by Victorin Jasset’s La Bouquetière de Montmartre and, a year later, by Louis Feuillade’s Manon de Montmartre. It is possible to identify some forty-seven feature films from the beginning of the silent era to the present day which are set on the Butte or in Lower Montmartre and its environs, not counting films like Becker’s Casque d’Or (1952), situated in Belleville, or Albert Lamorisse’s Le Ballon rouge (1956), which takes place in Ménilmontant. Roughly one quarter of these films are set in the Moulin Rouge alone, and ten, made between 1913 and 1928, date from the silent era, four of which were directed by Germans or Austro-Hungarians – Ernst Lubitsch’s Die Flamme (1922), Michael Curtiz’s Célimène, la poupée de Paris (1925), Friedrich Zelnik’s Die Venus von Montmartre (1925) and Willy Reiler’s Le Joueur de dominos de Montmartre (1927) – a fact which reinforces Mac Orlan’s linking of Montmartre with German Expressionist cinema and the fantastique sociale. The 1930s and early Occupation period saw eleven feature films set in Montmartre, not including the Carné-Prévert version of Mac Orlan’s Le Quai des Brumes (1938), which, as we have seen, moves the location to Le Havre. These films are roughly divided between Chevalier’s twin poles of plaisir and crime. Alberto Cavalcanti’s Montmartre qui tourne. Revue Montmartroise (1932), brings Montmartre spectacle to the big screen, as does Roger Capellani’s Voilà Montmartre (1934), which, using a rudimentary plot set in an école de chansonniers, allows some of the major contemporary cabaret stars, like Marguerite Moreno, Pierre Dac, Robert Goupil and Celine’s friend Max Revol to showcase their acts, a format continued in André Hugon’s 3 Argentins à Montmartre (1940, though not released until 1941), which follows a trio of South American musicians’ quest for stardom. Similarly, Léo Sevestre’s Montmartre village d’amour (1932) and Georges Lacombe’s Montmartre sur Seine

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(1941), starring Edith Piaf and Jean-Louis Barrault, continue to exploit the lucrative association of Montmartre with romance dating from the Belle Epoque and going back to the stories of Mimi Pinson and Louise, the subject itself of a film by Abel Gance in 1943. A more realist counterpoint to this commercial idealism is found in two films of 1932, Raymond Bernard’s Faubourg Montmartre, with Charles Vanel, Gaby Morlay and Antonin Artaud, and Renoir’s La Chienne, set on the Butte in a narrative heavily indebted to Wedekind, with Michel Simon as a gifted amateur painter who falls in love with the calculating Lulu and subsequently murders her before ending up as a tramp: a dénouement which looks forward to Boudu sauvé des eaux. Mid-way between the realism of these two films of 1932 and the unashamedly commercial exploitation of Montmartre as spectacle is Henri-Georges Clouzot’s comedy crime thriller L’Assassin habite … au 21 (1941) with Pierre Fresnay and Suzy Delair, a French tribute to Hollywood’s The Thin Man (1934) with William Powell and Myrna Loy. In this film, Fresnay plays a police detective investigating a series of murders in Paris with his girlfriend led by an anonymous tip off (which looks forward to his bleaker Le Corbeau) to Les Mimosas, a residential hotel at 21 Avenue Junot on the Butte de Montmartre. Eventually, the culprit is revealed as not one serial killer, but three, working together so that they always have alibis for each crime committed. In this film, incidentally produced by the German company Continental Films, Montmartre serves as the basis for sheer eccentricity and escapism, far removed from the bleak provincial setting of Le Corbeau (1943), which subsequently caused Clouzot so much trouble after the Liberation. The golden years of Montmartre in cinema, however, were undoubtedly those which coincide broadly with the Fourth Republic, in which we notice a huge spike of eighteen films between 1946 and 1959, almost as many as the combined production from 1913 to 1941 and accounting for more than a third of the feature films in which Montmartre is the setting. Among this body of work are two well-known American films – Vicente Minnelli’s An American in Paris (1951), part of which takes place on the Butte, and John Huston’s Moulin Rouge (1952) – and four adaptations from well-known Montmartre novels: one from Carco, André Pergament’s M’sieur La Caille (1955, an adaptation of L’Homme traqué by Robert Bibal had appeared in 1946); and three from Aymé’s Occupation fiction – Jean Royer’s Le Passe-Muraille, starring Bourvil (1951), Claude Autant-Lara’s La Traversée de Paris, starring Jean Gabin (1956), and Michel Boisrond’s Le Chemin des écoliers (1959). As with

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the Montmartre films from the 1930s and early Occupation, the generic breakdown is again roughly divided between pleasure and crime, although Truffaut’s Les 400 Coups (1958), introduces a new theme of tortured childhood into an otherwise familiar mix. Henri Verneuil’s short film Cuba à Montmartre (1948) showcases Cuban musicians in Paris after the war, but feature films more often choose to use the world of post-war Montmartre entertainment as a backdrop or location for a criminal plot. Becker’s Touchez pas au grisbi and Pierre Franchi’s Les Nuits de Montmartre (both 1955) situate their criminal plots in the same half-sleazy, half-glamorous world of night clubs depicted by Simenon in Maigret au ‘Picratt’s’, a milieu still able to attract members of the bourgeoisie and the tout Paris dressed in formal evening clothes: Rose, the patronne of Picratt’s, confides proudly to Maigret that one evening they had a party which included the wife of a minister. Yet, while these films provide an invaluable trace of a form of culture about to disappear – Picratt’s, for example, has replaced the traditional format of singers, dancers and bands by the American reimport of striptease 6 – the focus in the films shifts from the spectacle to the crime and, in Becker’s case, to something much more profound. In Les Nuits de Montmartre, the hero Bobby, an amiable confidence trickster and burglar, and a regular customer in a fashionable Montmartre night club where his girlfriend works as a singer, is framed for the murder of the wife of a businessman who frequents the club and who committed the crime himself. With a sympathetic police inspector aiding the two lovers, the film retains an essentially light-hearted tone and the film ends with the exonerated Bobby leaving for a new career in the colonies – a solution which, one year after Dien Bien Phu and the beginning of the Algerian War, shows a considerable measure of optimism. In general, however, Montmartre crime films were bleaker, represented by Duvivier’s L’Homme à l’imperméable (1957), and three films by Gilles Grangier: Meutre à Montmartre and Reproduction interdite (both 1957) and 125 Rue Montmartre (1959), starring Lino Ventura, who had already appeared as Angelo in Touchez pas au grisbi and played Tiercelin in Le Chemin des écoliers the same year as 125 Rue Montmartre. In the same way that the character of Angelo in Becker’s film heralds the rise of a new, unromantic generation of gangsters, Ventura himself marks a departure from the prevailing 6 Barthes’s famous essay on striptease was written in the mid-Fourth Republic. See Roland Barthes, Mythologies (Paris: Seuil, coll. ‘Points’, 1957), pp. 147–50.

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cosiness of Montmartre crime on film.7 Indeed, the significance of Becker’s Touchez pas au grisbi lies in its exploration of a dying breed of criminal, intimately associated in the popular imagination with Montmartre itself. The film opens with a slow pan of the northern Parisian skyline, which gradually focuses on the Sacré-Cœur and the Moulin de la Galette before descending to the Moulin Rouge. The opening sequences feature a small Montmartre restaurant patronised by old-fashioned Montmartre gangsters, of whom the most prominent is Max-le-Menteur, played by Jean Gabin. The restaurant’s patronne, Madame Bouche, gently diverts a party of revellers from the civilian world, the caves, towards a more appropriate venue, leaving the gangsters to eat before moving on to a night club owned by Max’s friend Riton. The subsequent narrative concerns the attempts of a new band of gangsters, led by Lino Ventura’s Angelo, to steal the proceeds of Max’s and Riton’s latest robbery (the grisbi of the title) and, by implication, eventually to supplant them. The real story, however, is that of the end of an era and the end of a generation, of two aging gangsters at the end of their careers, and the most memorable scene shows the two friends hiding out in Max’s bourgeois apartment near the Porte des Ternes, donning pyjamas after a cosy meal of pâté and wine.8 Max’s return to Madame Bouche’s restaurant towards the end of the film, where he has to use spectacles to read the telephone directory, reinforces the association between Montmartre and aging, an association highlighted by the ambiguous status of Gabin, the former working-class hero of the 1930s and, until French Cancan and Grisbi, all but forgotten, as the protagonist.9 Despite the ambiguities of Touchez pas au grisbi, the prevailing cosiness in depictions of Montmartre in the 1950s still finds a home in the 7 A bare eleven years later, Ventura suffers the same fate himself as the aging gangster Gu Minda in Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Deuxième soufflé, being brought down by the Young Turk Antoine. 8 For a more detailed analysis of the film and the novel, see Nicholas Hewitt, ‘Gabin, Grisbi and 1950s France’, Studies in French Cinema, 4.1, 2004, pp. 65–75. 9 Becker was initially very reluctant to cast Gabin as Max, preferring Daniel Gélin. When Gélin, unable to take the role, proposed Gabin, Becker’s response was dismissive: ‘Gabin? But no one is interested in Gabin’. See G. Colin, Jean Gabin (Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1983), p. 114. Similarly, David Thompson reports that the producers’ first choice for the role of Danglard in French Cancan was Charles Boyer. See David Thompson, ‘Paris by Night’, Sight and Sound, September 2011, pp. 32–3.

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acceptable, non-transgressive retailing of the mythological Montmartre in the two Hollywood treatments, which play in different ways to established American popular perceptions of Paris, the one contemporary, the other historical. In An American in Paris, featuring Gene Kelly as a demobilised soldier spending his GI Bill allocation to launch a career as a painter in Paris,10 Montmartre features simply as a visual and geographical shorthand for art, when he goes to a stylised Butte to sell his work by hanging it on a suitably Utrillo-esque wall: one more piece in the jigsaw that goes to represent American Paris, along with his studio in the Quartier Latin, the Left Bank jazz club, the suite in the Ritz and the jeweller’s shop on the Avenue de l’Opéra – a filmic equivalent of those prints of Paris in which all the tourist sites figure in one single panorama. Huston’s Moulin Rouge, on the other hand, pays tribute to the same romantic myth of the artist, but this time through a long drawn-out film biography of Toulouse-Lautrec, allowing Jose Ferrer a starring role as the artist, supported by Zsa Zsa Gabor as an improbably voluptuous Yvette Guibert. The Moulin Rouge, which serves as the location for the early scenes of the film, when Lautrec is seen sketching the performers, and is also the basis for his long-running project – the famous poster of La Goulue and Valentin le Désossé – is depicted as a music hall like any other, defined merely by the ‘cancan’. The grandeur, innovation and ambition of the original project, embodied by the elephant in the garden, are absent. In Renoir’s homage to the Moulin Rouge in French Cancan (1954), there is a very real attempt to capture and pay tribute to the Parisian music hall of the 1890s, although the elephant still remains disappointingly absent. The first film made by Renoir in France since the Liberation, and filmed, as we have seen, in the Studios Francœur, French Cancan is a film made in and about Montmartre and follows the attempts of the impresario Danglard (a thin and possibly unnecessary disguise for Zidler), played by Gabin a year before Grisbi, to establish a new concept of entertainment: the cultivation of the taste for the modern through the rebranding of a traditional dance in American packaging as ‘French’ cancan and the wooing of a mass audience, drawn from all social classes and all types of tourist, by the illusion of momentary access to a luxurious fantasy world. This is an interesting if chronologically unsound approach, but apart from the spectacularly choreographed finale and some stunning 10 For a detailed discussion of the film, see Sue Harris, An American in Paris (London: British Film Institute, 2015).

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cinematography, which captures the colours and textures of some of the iconic painters of Belle Epoque Montmartre, especially the director’s father, the film has all the hallmarks of a museum piece without, as in the case of Touchez pas au grisbi, the realism and self-awareness. The problem is not so much the highly stylised artificial décors, which were the subject of considerable criticism when the film came out,11 as the storyline, written by Renoir himself without the help of Prévert, with whom he had collaborated on Le Crime de Monsieur Lange. It sets up a clumsy series of love triangles converging unconvincingly on the middle-aged Gabin, who has grown older and put on weight since his last outing with Renoir in La Grande illusion – perfect for the role of the avuncular Maigret which he made his own in the 1950s, but less convincing as the man to be fought over by Françoise Arnoul and Maria Félix. Nor are the cameo performances by Edith Piaf and Patachou as Eugénie Buffet and Jane Avril sufficient to forge links between the Belle Epoque and the 1950s: Danglard’s ultimate profession of faith may well be to ‘Show Business’ as ‘the most wonderful profession in the world’ – behind which, as David Thompson reminds us, lies Renoir’s own ‘homage to a trade’12 , including his own and that of his painter father – but it is all very nostalgic, looking back to Auguste Renoir’s career as a painter as well as to the director’s own past accomplishments, and unquestioningly using the same Montmartre ‘packaging’ which was now the quartier’s sole stock-in-trade. French Cancan, alongside Touchez pas au grisbi one year later, constitutes, whether it likes it or not, the final affectionate death knell of Montmartre culture. The story of Montmartre on film might well have ended with French Cancan but in 2001 two films appeared which, in their separate ways, constitute an innovative reflection and appraisal of the significance of Montmartre – Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge – which tap into different deep currents of its cultural history. Amélie, which, with its recordbreaking US box office receipts of over $33 million, resonated with viewers in France and overseas through its quirky, mildly supernatural 11 See, for example, Bernard Chardère, in Positif, who commented on the ‘phoniness of the Rue Lepic, with its vegetable carts and artificial stones’, and described the dance rehearsals as ‘Degas all right, but the kind that appears on Post Office calendars’. Quoted in Jean Douchet, French New Wave (New York: DAP, 1998), p. 27. 12 See Thompson, ‘Paris by Night’, pp. 32–3.

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optimism. It is not coincidental, however, that the film should be set on the Butte since the unorthodox heroine, played by Audrey Tautou, discovers the same quasi-magical powers for good as some of the protagonists of Aymé’s short stories of the Occupation period, notably ‘Les Bottes de sept lieues’. As such, she reconnects with the fantastical and sentimental tradition of Montmartre culture going back to Willette’s Pierrots and grisettes of the Belle Epoque which resurfaced after the First World War in the fiction of Mac Orlan, Céline and Aymé. It was always a formula which proved effective – hence the film’s massive box office success – but underneath the sentimentality and sometimes irritating quirkiness, Amélie recalls a very real element of the culture of the quartier in which it is set and shows that the magic of Montmartre is still active. Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge follows a parallel route and manages to capture the essence of Lower Montmartre for a modern audience, in all its vulgarity, brashness and self-consciousness, with – finally – the appearance of the iconic elephant in the establishment’s lavish gardens. The viewer is sucked into the film through a faux-gothic archway, like the entrance to a lurid Chinatown, inscribed with the legend ‘Montmartre’, along stylised streets lined with representations of the old cabarets like L’Enfer and Le Ciel, before coming face to face with the subject and locus of the film, the Moulin Rouge itself, presided over by the almost diabolically larger-than-life ‘Harold’ Zidler, played by Jim Broadbent with a nod towards Peter Ustinov’s ringmaster in Max Ophuls’s Lola Montès. The intrigue, such as it is, follows the tragic love affair between Ewan McGregor’s bohemian poet Christian and the lovely but dying star Satine, played by Nicole Kidman, and the threat posed by the Duke of Montroth, who owns the deeds to the Moulin Rouge. The lovers’ deception involves the staging of a mock-Indian play, written by Christian in association with fellow bohemians Toulouse-Lautrec, Erik Satie and ‘the Narcoleptic Argentinian’, which depicts a beautiful princess forced into marriage with an aged maharajah being wooed by a young sitar player. In the ensuing chaos, the duke’s bodyguard tries to kill Christian, Satine dies and order is restored, with Christian finally completing his account of the love story. What makes the film so successful as an evocation of 1889 Montmartre is not merely the sets and the décor, which capture the sheer extent and splendour of the Moulin Rouge at its height – its capacity to ‘shock and awe’ – nor even the adroit use of twentieth-century popular music, from ‘Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend’ to Elton John’s ‘Your Song’ or Madonna’s ‘Like a Virgin’, to

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convey both the popular vibrancy of the music hall and its superficiality, in the same way that Luhrmann later successfully used a rap soundtrack for The Great Gatsby. It is, above all, the knowingness which the film displays towards Belle Epoque Montmartre culture which powers it on: Christian and the myth of the love-sick bohemian poet; the anarchy of the avant-garde, even if labelled with reassuring names like Lautrec and Satie; and, from a distinguished opera director, Satine’s lingering consumption, which echoes that most famously hijacked Montmartre myth, Mimi from La Bohème. In its spectacular conscious bad taste, Luhrmann’s film finally restores to Montmartre its cultural essence. For this, finally, is the uniqueness of Montmartre culture, what distinguishes it from the Left Bank and Montparnasse: the shifting frontiers between Bas-Montmartre and the Butte, between – as Varnedoe and Gopnik suggest – the affects of ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, the tacky tourist attractions with groundbreaking artistic invention, the ‘place of pleasure’ and the ‘place of innovation’, all within one ‘place of memory’.

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4. Other works cited in the text Agulhon, Maurice, ‘Paris: A Traversal from East to West’, in Pierre Nora, ed., Realms of Memory, III: Symbols, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). Aimard, Gustave, Les Peaux-rouges de Paris (Paris: Dentu, 1888). Antliff, Mark, Avant-garde Fascism: The Mobilisation of Myth, Art and Culture in France 1909–1939 (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2007). Antoine, André, ‘Mes Souvenirs’ sur le Théâtre Libre (Paris: Fayard, 1921). Apollinaire, Guillaume, Alcools (Paris: Gallimard, coll. ‘Poésie’, 1966). ——, Œuvres en prose complètes, ed. Pierre Caizergues and Michel Decaudain, (Paris: Gallimard, coll. ‘La Pléiade’, 1991). Arnaud, Christophe, ‘« Moi je vis la vie à côté »: Charles Cros inventeur et poète (1842–1888)’, Le Vieux Montmartre, 85, January 2016. Arnaud, Lucien, Charles Dullin (Paris: L’Arche, coll. ‘Le Théâtre et les jours’, 1952). Aron, Robert, Histoire de Vichy (Paris: Fayard, 1954). Astre, Achille, Quelques artistes de mon temps (Carcassonne: Editions d’Art Jordy, coll. ‘A la Porte d’Aude: Collection des Ecrivains Audois’, n.d.). d’Axa, Zo, Endehors (Paris: Chamuel, 1896). Aziz, Philippe, Tu trahiras sans vergogne (Les Tortionnaires français de la Gestapo) (Paris: Fayard, 1970). Baines, Roger W., ‘Inquiétude’ in the Work of Pierre Mac Orlan (Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 2000). Baritaud, Bernard, Pierre Mac Orlan. Sa Vie, son temps (Geneva: Droz, 1992). Barreyre, Jean, ‘Les Nuits de Montmartre’, Le Crapouillot, 45, 1959, numéro spécial: Montmartre. Barthes, Roland, Mythologies (Paris: Seuil, coll. ‘Points’, 1957). Bechet, Sydney, Treat it Gentle: An Autobiography (New York: Da Capo Press, 1978). Bedu, Jean-Jacques, Francis Carco, au cœur de la bohème (Paris: Editions du Rocher, 2001). Béhar, Henri, Tristan Tzara (Paris: Oxus, 2005). Bellosta, Marie-Christine, ‘Féerie pour une autre fois 1 et 2: un spectacle et son prologue’, Revue des Lettres Modernes, ‘L.-F. Céline, 3’ (Paris: Minard, 1978). Bénézit, E., Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs (Paris: Grund, 1976). Besnier, Patrick, Alfred Jarry (Paris: Fayard, 2005). Béthencourt-Devaux, Robert, Montmartre, Auvers sur Oise et Van Gogh (Paris: Robert Béthencourt, 1972).

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Montorgueil, Georges, La Vie à Montmartre (Paris: Baudet, 1898). Morizet, André, Du Vieux Paris au Paris moderne. Haussmann et ses prédécesseurs (Paris: Hachette, 1932). Mornand, Pierre, Vingt-deux artistes du livre (Paris: Le Comptoir Graphique, Albert Cymboliste, 1948). Murger, Henri, Scènes de la vie de Bohème (Paris: Nilsson, 1851); repr. ed. Loïc Chotard (Paris: Gallimard, 1988). Musset, Alfred de, ‘Frédéric et Bernerette’, Œuvres complètes en prose (Paris: Gallimard, coll. ‘La Pléiade’, 1960). Nettelbeck, Colin, Dancing with De Beauvoir: Jazz and the French (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2004). Nora, Pierre, ed., Les Lieux de mémoire, I: La République (Paris: Gallimard, 1984). ——, Les Lieux de mémoire, II: La Nation (Paris: Gallimard, 1986). ——, Les Lieux de mémoire, III: Les France (Paris: Gallimard, 1992). Nucéra, Louis, ‘Marcel le Bienheureux’, Magazine Littéraire, June 1982. Oberlé, Jean, Vie d’artiste (Paris: Denoël, 1956). Oberthür, Mariel, ‘Erik Satie et les cafés de Montmartre’, in Erik Satie à Montmartre. Exposition, décembre 1982-avril 1983, Musée de Montmartre (Paris : Musée de Montmartre, 1982). ——, Montmartre en liesse, 1880–1900 (Paris: Musée Carnavalet, 1994). ——, Le Cabaret du Chat Noir à Montmartre (1881–1897) (Geneva: Slatkine, 2007). L’Œuvre de J.-G. Daragnès, Catalogue (Paris: Musée des Arts Décoratifs, 1935). Olivier, Fernande, Picasso et ses amis (Paris: Stock, 1933). Payen-Appenzeller, Pascal, ‘Montmartre c’est le toit de Paris’, Connaissance de Paris et de la France, 23, 1974, numéro spécial: Le Guide de Montmartre. ——, ‘Un Etat dans l’Etat? La Commune libre du vieux Montmartre hier et aujourd’hui’, Connaissance de Paris et de la France, 23, 1974, numéro spécial: Guide de Montmartre. ——, ‘Qui est qui’, Connaissance de Paris et de la France, 23, 1974, numéro spécial: Guide de Montmartre. Perrin, Michel, ‘Les Chansonniers de Montmartre, II: De « La Lune Rousse » à « La Tomate », ou quarante ans d’esprit montmartrois (1919–1959)’, Le Crapouillot, 45, 1959, numéro spécial: Montmartre. Perruchot, Henri, ‘Les Peintres de Montmartre’, Le Crapouillot, 45, 1959, numéro spécial: Montmartre. Picon, Gaëtan, Panorama de la littérature française contemporaine (Paris: Gallimard, 1949). Pignarre, Robert, Histoire du théâtre (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, coll. ‘Que sais-je?’, 1961).

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Warnod, André, Fils de Montmartre (Paris: Fayard, 1955). ——, Drôle d’époque (Paris: Fayard, 1960). Warnod, Jeanine, ‘Le Théâtre d’une révolution artistique: le Bateau-Lavoir’, Connaissance de Paris et de la France, 23, 1974. ——, ‘Le Bateau-Lavoir’, Le Vieux Montmartre, 85, January 2016. Weisberg, Gabriel P., ed., Montmartre and the Making of Mass Culture (New Brunswick, NJ and London: Rutgers University Press, 2001). Whiting, Stephen Moore, ‘Music in Montmartre’, in Philip Davis Cate and Mary Shaw, eds, The Spirit of Montmartre: Cabarets, Humor and the Avant-Garde, 1875–1900 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996). ——, Satie the Bohemian: From Cabaret to Concert Hall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). Willette, Luc, Adolphe Willette. Pierrot de Montmartre (Précy-sous-Thil: L’Armançon, 1991). Williams, Benjamin, ‘Sexual Freedom and Anarchist Individualism in French Symbolism’s Ivory Tower’, French Cultural Studies, 26.1, 2015, pp. 17–31. Williams, Iain Cameron, Underneath a Harlem Moon: The Harlem to Paris Years of Adelaide Hall (London and New York: Continuum, 2002). Wilson, Sarah, ed., Paris Capital of the Arts 1900–1968 (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2002). Yaki, Paul, Le Montmartre de nos vingt ans (Paris: Tallandier, 1933). Yan, Jean-Claude, ‘Louise, du stéréotype à la subversion’, in Gustave Charpentier, Louise (Paris: L’Avant-Scène Opéra, 197, 2000). 5. Films situated entirely or significantly in Montmartre 1898 Moulin Rouge Dancers 1 & 2 (anon.) 1913 La Bouquetière de Montmartre (Victorin Jasset) 1914 Manon de Montmartre (Louis Feuillade) 1922 Die Flamme (Montmartre) (Ernst Lubitsch) Queen of the Moulin Rouge (Ray C. Smallwood and Peter Milne) 1924 Faubourg Montmartre (Charles Burguet) 1925 Célimène, la Poupée de Paris (Michael Curtiz)

292

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Die Venus von Montmartre (Cœur de joujou/ Vénus de Montmartre) (Friedrich Zelnik) Le Fantôme du Moulin-Rouge (René Clair) 1927 Le Joueur de Dominos de Montmartre (Willy Reiler) 1928 Moulin Rouge (Ewald André Dupont) 1931 Faubourg Montmartre (Raymond Bernard) [with Gaby Morlay] La Chienne (Jean Renoir) 1932 Montmartre qui tourne. Revue Montmartroise (Alberto Cavalcanti) Montmartre village d’amour (Léo Sevestre) 1934 Voilà Montmartre (Roger Capellani) Moulin Rouge (L’Etoile du Moulin-Rouge) (Sidney Lanfield) 1937–38 La Chaste Suzanne (André Berthomieu) 1940 3 Argentins à Montmartre (André Hugon) (released February 1941) 1941 Montmartre sur Seine (Georges Lacombe) L’Assassin habite au 21 (Henri-Georges Clouzot) Louise (Abel Gance) 1945 La P’tite Femme du Moulin Rouge (Benito Perojo) 1946 L’Homme traqué (Robert Bibal) 1948 Cuba à Montmartre (Henri Verneuil) 1951 An American in Paris (Vincente Minelli) Le Passe-muraille (Jean Royer) 1952 Moulin Rouge (John Huston)

Bibliography 1954 French Can-Can (Jean Renoir) 1955 Touchez pas au grisbi (Jacques Becker) M’sieur La Caille (André Pergament) Les Nuits de Montmartre (Pierre Franchi) 1956 La Traversée de Paris (Claude Autant-Lara) 1957 Meurtre à Montmartre (Gilles Grangier) L’Homme à l’imperméable (Julien Duvivier) Reproduction interdite (Gilles Grangier) Une Nuit au Moulin Rouge (Jean-Claude Roy) 1958 Les 400 coups (François Truffaut) 1959 125 Rue Montmartre (Gilles Grangier) Le Chemin des écoliers (Michel Boisrond) 1963 La Chaste Suzanne (Luis César Arnadori) 1991 Vincent (Maurice Pialat) 1992 Les Arpenteurs de Montmartre (Boris Eustache) 2001 Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain (Jean-Pierre Jeunet) Moulin Rouge (Baz Luhrman) 2010 La Rafle (Rose Bosch) 2015 Le Syndrome de Montmartre (Daniel Petitcuenot)

293

Index

Abadie, Paul 140, 141 Abbey 17, 19 absurdism 106, 113, 158 Académie Française 205, 212 Académie Goncourt 203, 204–5, 212, 221; see also Prix Goncourt Achard, Marcel 112 Adèle (Adèle Decerf) 117 advertising 13, 55, 129; see also posters Aghion, Max 187 Agulhon, Maurice 139, 141 Aimard, Gustave 23 Albert (tramp) see Libertad Albert-Birot, Pierre 125, 126, 167 Alessandri, Madame d’ 246 Alexandre, Dr 116 Alexis, Paul 89, 90 Aliboron (Lolo) (Frédé’s donkey) 131, 134–5 Allais, Alphonse 36, 39, 43, 44, 48, 50, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56–7, 60, 118, 131 Allemand family 70 Almansor, Lucette 244, 246, 249, 261 Almeyreda, Miguel 84, 138 Alpinistes de la Butte 171 Aman-Jean, François 189 American army 160 American popular culture 71, 169 amusement parks 20 Anarchie, L’ (journal) 136–7

Index

anarchism 60, 98–9, 106, 110, 113, 117, 131, 135–6 anarchist individualism 137–8 artists and 138–9 Causeries Populaires 136 in Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit 254 Dorgelès and 219 opposition to Sacre Coeur 141 see also non-conformism Anglophobia 45 Annales politiques et littéraires, Les (journal) 177 Anouilh, Jean 247 anti-clericalism 141 anti-Semitism 10, 13, 135, 139, 150 Bruant, Aristide 49–50 Céline, Louis-Ferdinand 248, 249, 255, 264 Dorgelès, Roger 220 Mac Orlan, Pierre 237 Modigliani, Amedeo 181 Salis, Rodolphe 60–1 Antoine, André 84, 85, 88–92, 93, 95, 106, 107, 109, 110, 112, 113, 243 ‘Apaches’ 6–7, 23, 145, 154–5, 204 Apollinaire, Guillaume 25, 109, 123, 124, 125, 143, 148, 167, 224 Alcools 126 Calligrammes 126

Index conversion to Catholicism 125n57 and film 128 on Henri ‘Douanier’ Rousseau 124–5 Les Mamelles de Tirésias 106, 113, 167 on Picasso 124 ‘Zone’ 126, 127–8, 129 Aragon, Louis 163, 168, 225 Arc de Triomphe 139 Archipenko, Alexander 123 Arland, Marcel 225 Armand, E. see Juin Armandine 137 army 10, 60 Arnaud, Lucien 111 Arnim, Achim von 225, 230 Mandrake 231 Arnoux, Alexandre 110, 112 Aron, Robert 239–40 Arsène, Paul 131 art 28–34 art nègre 124, 126 commercialisation of 55; see also advertising ‘primitive’ 124 art dealers 31, 97, 99–100, 117 Art et Critique (journal) 93 art galleries Galérie de la Boétie 124 Galerie Devambez 189 Galerie Manuel 190 Kahnweiler 123 Louvre 215–16 Artaud, Antonin 111, 113, 271 artists’ materials 117 artists’ models 80 Assiette au beurre, L’(journal) 44, 45, 59–60, 61, 117, 119 Astruc, Zacharie 32 Atelier Cormon 29, 82, 83 Atget, Eugène 190 Auberge du Clou 51 Auriol, Georges 43, 45, 50, 92 Autant, Edouard 113

295

Autant-Lara, Claude 113, 270, 271 avant-garde 12, 37, 51, 56, 62, 85, 94, 100, 106, 113, 118, 120, 125, 127, 166–9, 172 and romanticism 231–2 and technology 127–8 and theatre 13, 94, 97, 167 see also Dada; Surrealism Avenue de Clichy 32 Avenue de Saint-Ouen 5 Avenue des Champs-Elysées 97 Avenue Junot 116, 151, 167, 258, 271 Avenue Montaigne 147 Avenue Trudaine 33, 51, 258 Aymé, Marcel 9, 169, 181, 183, 202, 239, 243, 246–7, 248, 249–50, 262, 266 Aller-Retour 245 ‘Avenue Junot’ 257 Brûlebois 245, 255 ‘Chez Gen-Paul’ 248 Derrière chez Martin 257, 258 En Arrière 257, 258 ‘En attendant’ 249, 258, 260 fairy tales 96 ‘Faux-Policier’ 258 film adaptations 271 La Belle image 257, 258 ‘La Bonne peinture’ 257, 258 ‘La Carte’ 258, 260 ‘La Grâce’ 258 La Jument verte 248, 255–6 La Rue sans nom 257 La Table-aux-crevés 245 ‘La Traversée de Paris’ 258, 260 La Vouivre 255 ‘L’Age d’or’ 153–4, 257 Le Chemin des écoliers 241, 257, 258, 260–1 ‘Le Décret’ 258, 260 ‘Le Mariage de César’ 257, 259 Le Moulin de la Sourdine 255 Le Nain 257, 259 ‘Le Passe-muraille’ 256, 257, 258, 259 ‘Le Temps mort’ 257

296

Montmartre: A Cultural History

Le Vin de Paris 243, 257, 258, 260 ‘Les Bottes de sept lieues’ 258, 276 Les Jumeaux du Diable 245 ‘Les Sabines’ 256–7, 258, 259 ‘L’Indifférent’ 258, 260 Maison basse 256, 258 ‘Préface’ 166 ‘Rue de l’Evangile’ 258 Travelingue 251, 257, 258 ‘Traversée de Paris’ 241 Uranus 256 Bac, Ferdinand 51 Baïonnette, La (magazine) 174, 189, 197 Baker, Josephine 71, 160, 161, 163 Bal des Quat’z’Arts 51, 68, 73, 173 Baldwin, James 166 ballet 70, 72, 86, 246 Ballets Russes 167, 230n79 La Naissance d’une fée 264 Parade 167 bals see dance halls Bande à Bonnot (bandits tragiques) 137, 247, 255 Bande à Picasso 224 Bande à Poulbot 224 Banquet, Le (journal) 98 Banville, Théodore de 41 Barbès-Rochechouart 6–7 Barbusse, Henri: Le Feu 213, 216, 217, 218, 219 Barmont, Honoré 29 Barrault, Jean-Louis 271 Barrès, Maurice 168, 211 Barreyre, Jean 64–5, 66, 67, 68, 72–3, 76, 152–3 barrières 15, 16, 20, 21, 28, 31, 33, 112 bars Au Rêve 182, 262 Bar Zut 117, 131, 138 Bouffes-du-Nord 50 Cadet de Gascogne 247 Clairon des Chasseurs à Pied 246

Criterion 121n37 Fox Bar 121 gangster 156 Grenier 247 La Bohème 247 and prostitution 77 ‘theme’ 52, 54, 151 see also bistrots; brasseries Barthes, Roland 272n6 Bas-Montmartre 1, 6, 18–19, 31, 79, 114, 116, 152, 161, 202, 269 Bateau-Lavoir 113, 117, 121–3, 124, 224, 228 Batignolles 5, 6, 27 ‘Bats d’Af’ 49 Battling Siki (Louis Mbarick Fall) 162 Baudelaire, Charles 31 Bazille, Frédéric 32, 33 Beaumont, Etienne de 113, 160, 167 Beauvarie, Joseph 31 Bechet, Sidney 160, 162, 163 Becker, Jacques 270 Casque d’Or 210, 270 Touchez pas au grisbi 156, 269, 272 Belle Epoque advertising 13 amateur dramatics 89 café style 62 Céline and 250 culture 3–4, 8–9, 37, 56 film and 271, 275–7 humourous press 174 humourous tradition 172 in literary expression 175, 203–4, 250 magazines 10, 76 memoirs of 177–9, 182, 184 and nostalgia 169 theatre 86–8, 89, 101–12 and Third Republic 89, 93 traditions 185, 192, 251, 263 Belleville 17, 24, 49, 70, 210, 268, 270 Bellosta, Marie-Christine 264–8 Benjamin, Walter 3, 230

Index Béranger, Senator 37n16, 73 Béraud, Henri 108, 150, 189 Béraud, Jean 31 Bergerat, Emile 90 Bergson, Henri 100 Berlioz, Hector 30 Bernanos, Georges 189 Bernard, Emile 84 Bernard, Francis 190 Bernard, Jean-Marc 207 Bernard, Raymond 204 Bernard, Tristan 98, 271 Bernheim, Alexandre (Bernheim-Jeune) 31, 99–100 Besnier, Patrick 101, 105 Béthencourt-Devaux, Robert 52 Bibal, Robert 204, 271 Bin, Emile 31 bistrots 117; see also bars Björnson, Bjørnstjerne 102 black entertainers 71, 72, 159–60 black market 240–1, 243, 260 black writers 166 Blanc, Julien 155 Blondin, Antoine 6–7, 268 Bloy, Léon 39, 45, 84, 255 Blum, Léon 94, 98 Bofa, Gus 10, 13, 44, 183, 185–96, 224, 225, 248 book illustration 189, 190–5 as a cartoonist 186–7 portrait of Dorgelès 213 Synthèses littéraires et extralittéraires 189 bohemians 10, 29, 30, 37–8, 85, 100, 109, 113–14, 117–18, 121, 134, 143, 169, 182, 208, 223, 262–4, 266 Boisrond, Michel 271 Bonnard, Pierre 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 167, 209, 252 Bonnat, Léon 82 Bonnaud, Dominique 52, 57, 58, 158 Bonnot, Jules 137 Bonny, Pierre 156, 241

297

book illustration 201 Bofa, Gus 189, 190–5 Laborde, Chas 197–8 book trade, luxury 183, 201–2, 224 bookshops: Librairie Firmin-Didot 88 ‘Boronali’ hoax 134–5 Bory, Jean-Louis: Mon Village à l’heure allemande 259–60 Bosc, Auguste 73 Bostock, Franck 75 Botrel, Théodore 149 Boucher, Emile 46 Boucher, Lucien 189 Bouillot, Roger 194 Boukay, Maurice 57, 61 Boulevard de Clichy 6, 15, 24, 51, 52, 71, 74, 110, 111, 112, 122, 157, 158, 167, 181, 206–7 Boulevard de la Chapelle 6, 15, 74, 210, 243, 258, 267 Boulevard de l’Hôpital 7, 16 Boulevard de Sébastapol 11 Boulevard de Strasbourg 91, 188 Boulevard des Batignolles 15, 24, 32, 252 Boulevard des Italiens 100 Boulevard d’Ornano 5 Boulevard du Montparnasse 15 Boulevard Haussmann 6 Boulevard Poissonnière 93 Boulevard Rochechouart 6, 15, 24, 36, 66, 136, 201, 243, 258 Boulevard Saint-Germain 183 Boulevard Saint-Michel 36 Boulevards des Maréchaux 5 boulevards extérieurs 21, 23, 24, 30 Bourdon, Georges 93 Bourget, Paul 40, 211 Bourvil, André 271 Boussingault, Jean-Louis 190, 201 Boyer, Charles 163 Boyer, Lucien 148, 243, 252n57 Boylesve, Père de: Le Triomphe de la France par le Sacré-Coeur de Jésus 139–40

298

Montmartre: A Cultural History

Braindinbourg, Georges 172 Brancúsi, Constantin 166 Braque, Georges 116, 118, 121, 123, 124, 125n57, 128, 129 Paysage de Montmartre 127 View from the Hôtel Mistral, L’Estaque 120 brasseries 79, 153 Brasserie des Martyrs 32 Brasserie du Bon Bock 36 Brasserie Franco-Russe 136 Brasserie Lipp 183 brasseries à femmes 62, 77–8, 81 ‘Brasseries à hommes’ 78 ‘Brasseries lesbiennes’ 78, 84 Chez Graff 157 Bréda quartier 22 Bresson, Robert 270 Breton, André 168 Anthologie de l’humour noir 54, 192 Brézin (cabinet makers) 244 ‘Bricktop’ (Ada Smith) 162 Brigstocke, Julian 4, 8 Broadbent, Jim 276 Brotchie, Alastair 103 brothels 79, 243, 267 Brown, Al 162 Brown, Sarah 51, 73 Bruant, Aristide 39, 41, 46–8, 49–50, 56, 57, 58, 61, 83, 106, 131, 139, 157–8, 178, 255 Bruller, Jean see Vercors Brunhoff, Michel de 189 Brunner, Zig 185, 222, 239 Buffet, Eugénie 275 Buisson, Sylvie 31 Bullard, Eugene 161, 163, 164 bus routes 37, 145 Butte, La (artists’ group) 90 Butte de Montmartre 1, 4, 5, 6, 17, 18, 19, 24, 26, 27, 52, 80, 99, 114–15, 118, 121, 129–30, 141, 143, 172, 173, 180, 182, 202, 204, 271, 274;

see also Commune Libre de Montmartre; République de Montmartre Byl, Arthur 89, 90 Cabanel, Alexandre 31 cabarets 11, 12–13, 28, 35–63, 70, 79, 86, 97, 112, 118–19, 161 Abbaye de Thélème 44, 52, 61, 68 Ane Rouge 52 Arabi 62 army influence 10 Assassins 131 Bagne 28 Boîte à Fursy 51–2 censorship of 58 de chansonniers 151 Chat Botté 50 Chez Monsieur le Maire 172 Commune Libre de Montmartre and 171 Deux Anes 158 Dinocheau 31 Franche-Lippé 50 journals 44, 51, 86; see also Chat Noir, Le; Mirliton, Le Lune Rousse 25, 158 Lyon d’Or 44 Mirliton 41, 46, 47, 48, 61, 83 and prostitution 76 Quat’z’Arts 51 and the Republic 52–63 and social identity 56–7 Tabarin 52, 67 ‘theme’ 50 Toulouse-Lautrec and 82–3 see also Chat Noir; Lapin Agile; taverns ‘cabarets galleries’: Le Père Laplace 33 café-concerts 60, 67, 68, 69, 73, 76, 79, 157 Café Guerbois group 81 cafés Ami Emile 117 Au Clairon 117

Index Bade 31 Bouscarat 117 Certa 169 Chez Colson 36 Chez Ernest 104 Coupole 183 Cyrano 168, 169, 183 de la Place Blanche 91 demise of 182 Deux-Magots 183 Deux Maronniers 241 Dôme 183 Flore 183 Guerbois 32, 33, 81 Gutenberg 93–4, 95 Maison Dorée 31 Nouvelle-Athènes 33 Rive Gauche 36 Tambourin 51 Tortoni 31 Wepler 1, 5, 242, 252 Caillebotte, Gustave 33 Calder, Alexander 190 Callé, Julien 134, 208 Callemin, Raymond 137 Candide (journal) 219–20 Canella, Giuseppe 29 Capellani, Roger 270 Capus, Alfred 57 Capy, Marcel 187 Caran d’Ache (Emmanuel Poiré) 10, 39, 43, 45, 56, 59–60, 131 Carbone, Paul 155–6 Carco, Francis 12, 37n18, 78, 131, 134, 143, 155, 177–8, 180, 181, 182, 189, 202–5 and Laborde 197–8, 199 literary corpus 209–12 De Montmartre au Quartier Latin 209 film adaptations of 271 grands reportages 212 Jésus-la-Caille 203–4, 205–7, 210, 226 La Belle amour 211

299

La Bohème et mon coeur 209 La Dernière chance 211 La Légende et la vie d’Utrillo 1–2, 132–3, 211 L’Ami des peintres 209 Le Roman de François Villon 211 Les Veillées du Lapin Agile 203 L’Homme traqué 205, 210, 211, 269n4, 271 memoirs 176, 207 Rue Pigalle 210 Scènes de la vie de Montmartre 210 Verlaine 211 songs for La Cigale music hall 212 Carcopino, Jérôme 212 caricature 8, 10, 13, 44, 56, 60, 113, 148, 165, 170, 171, 189 Caricature, La (journal) 44 caricaturists 56, 81, 113, 183, 185, 200, 202, 251 Carlu, Jean Georges Léon 190 Carné, Marcel 132, 204, 270 carnival 51 Carouy, Edouard 137 Carrefour Vavin 156 Carrière, Jean-Claude 54, 56 Carroll, Lewis: Alice in Wonderland 253 cartoonists 81, 167, 187, 197 cartoons 149, 171, 174 Casino de Paris 64, 72, 73 Casino des Concierges 50 Castille, Hippolyte 27 Cate, Phillip Dennis 8, 74 Cavalcanti, Alberto 270 Céard, Henri 33 Céline, Louis-Ferdinand 96, 160, 169, 183, 189, 202, 225–6, 241, 244–6, 247, 248–9, 250 anti-Semitism 248, 249, 255, 264 ‘Avenue Junot’ 249 Bagatelles pour un massacre 226, 248, 261, 264 D’un Château l’autre 250

300

Montmartre: A Cultural History

‘En attendant’ 250–1 Entretiens avec le professeur Y 10–11, 261 Féerie pour une autre fois 38, 243, 244, 261, 264–5, 266 Guignol’s Band 246, 255, 261 La Bataille du Styx 261, 262 Les Beaux draps 264 Maudits soupirs pour une autre fois 249, 262–3 Mea Culpa 255 Mort à crédit 6, 54–5, 244, 250, 265–6 Normance 264 Voyage au bout de la nuit 40, 75, 158, 243, 244–5, 251, 252–5, 264 ‘cellar rats’ 53 Cendrars, Blaise 128, 156 La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France 126 censorship 44, 58, 147 Cézanne, Paul 32–3, 100, 120 Cha Hu Kao (dancer) 72 Chagall, Marc 190 Chamisso, Adelbert von 225, 230 Champin, J.J. 29 Champs-Elysées 16, 20, 71, 79, 156 chansonniers 13, 36, 43, 44, 49, 51, 53–4, 56, 57, 58, 61, 106, 128, 136, 138, 139, 142, 148–9, 158, 171 chansons réalistes 157 Chapelle des Martyrs 17 Chapelle-Saint-Denis 15 Chardère, Bernard 275n11 Charensol, Georges 170–1, 177, 185, 192 Charpentier, Gustave 92, 178 Louise 51, 113–14, 264 Charpentier, Octave 116, 221 Chat Noir 4, 8, 10, 34, 35, 37, 38–47, 52, 55–6, 58, 61, 72, 80, 83, 86, 92, 94, 101–2, 113, 169, 171, 175, 185 at ‘Hostellerie’ 41–6, 57

Chat Noir, Le (journal) 40, 43, 44–5, 173 Château des Brouillards 116–17, 221 Château Rouge 69 Chatillon, Auguste de 31 Chaumière, La 20 Chausée d’Antin 80 chemins de ronde 19, 24, 112 Chervin, Louis 246 Chevalier, Louis 7–8, 9, 19, 21, 27, 28, 30, 34, 73, 78, 136, 145, 147, 152, 155, 168, 173n14, 205, 241, 242, 243, 267 Chevalier, Maurice 157, 163 Chiflard, Samuel 31 chignoles 248 children 173–4 Choay, Françoise 24 Chocolat (clown) 159 Chronique parisienne, La (journal) 44 Cim, Géo 177, 181 Cimetière Saint-Vincent 4 cinema 74 First World War 145 Gaumont-Palace 75, 158 German Expressionist 231 as a threat to music hall 158, 165 see also film circuses 74–5, 79, 82, 106, 118, 166 Cirque d’Eté 74 Cirque d’Hiver 74 Cirque Fernando 74 Cirque Médrano 74, 75, 122, 158 Cité des Fusains 248 Claretie, Jules 43 Clarté group 219 classicism 120 Claudel, Paul 107 Clemenceau, Georges 26, 140 Clément, France 173 Clouzot, Henri-Georges: L’Assassin habite … au 21 271 clowns 74, 103, 159 Club des Hydropathes 36

Index Cocteau, Jean 74, 106, 113, 160, 167, 190, 270 Colette (Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette) 104 Colin, Bernard 190 Colin, Paul 160, 165 Collège de Pataphysique 54 Colombino the ‘human chameleon’ 72 colonies d’artistes 116 colonnes-Morris 145 ‘Coloured Girls, The’ 160 Colysée 20 Combats (journal) 237 comedy of situation 53 comic press 185 Comité National des Ecrivains (CNE) 212, 220, 250 commercialism 2, 55–7, 62, 113, 139, 175, 182 Commune 26–8, 139, 140, 143 Commune Libre de Montmartre 170–2 communes limitrophes 22, 23, 24 Comoedia (journal) 177 Complet à l’impérial (review) 187 Comte (artist) 31 Connaissance de Paris et de la France (journal) 38 Conrad, Joseph 235 Almayer’s Folly 233 Conservatoire Maubel 167 Conservatoire Syndicale (later Ecole d’Art Dramatique Firmin Gémier) 111 Continents, Les (review) 165 Coolus, Romain 98 Copeau, Jacques 111 Coquelin, Benoît-Constant (Coquelin Aîné) 88 Coquelin, Ernest Alexandre Honoré (Coquelin Cadet) 39, 45, 90n16 Corot, Jean-Baptiste-Camille 30 Coste, Dédé 246 Courbet, Gustave 31–2 Courrier français, Le (newspaper) 44, 68, 74, 117, 173

301

Courteline, Georges 48, 51, 57, 60, 105, 107, 113, 116, 131, 205 Boubouroche 92, 106 Couveley, Adolphe-Hippolyte 29 Couvent du Sacré-Coeur (now Musée Rodin) 119 Craig, Elizabeth 244, 246 Cranquebille (journal) 183 Crapouillot, Le (magazine) 149–50, 189, 196, 208, 225, 267 Crespelle, Jean-Paul 114, 125n57, 130, 134, 177 Cri du Peuple, Le (journal) 90 Cricri (dancer) 72 crime 7–8, 154–6, 166, 223, 243, 260 in film 268–9, 270, 271, 272–4 First World War 145, 147 and prostitution 78 see also drugs; forgery crime writing 129, 268–9 criminals 41, 117, 133–4, 136, 137, 155–6 Cros, Charles 36, 40, 54, 90n16 Croué, Jean 110 Cruickshank, John 217 Cubists/Cubism 1, 13 and anarchy 138 and art dealers 117 birth of 113 and Catholicism 125n57 durability of 118 and Fauvism 120–1, 123 hostility towards 107 and masks 86 meeting places of 117 use of newspapers 129 origin of term 123 and Paris skyline 127 poetry 125–6 restaurants 117 style of 119, 134 and technology 127 Cullen, Countee 159 cultural studies 8–9 Cunard, Nancy 163

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Curel, François 92 curfew 241–2 Curnonsky (Edmond Maurice Saillard) 187 Curtiz, Michael 270 Dac, Pierre 270 Dada 12, 13, 42n47, 106, 113, 129, 167–8, 172 Damage (artist) 31 Damia (Marie-Louise Damien) 157 dance cakewalk 71, 159 cancan 67, 68, 70, 157, 174, 274 chahut 70, 157 polka 67 quadrille 66, 67, 76 see also ballet dance halls 82, 112, 186 Bal Bullier 16 Bal de Tivoli 21 Bal Mabille 16, 67, 69 Bal Nègre 168 Bal Tabarin 71n38, 73, 75, 152–3, 157, 164 bals de quartier 21 bals guinguettes 21, 64–5, 67, 69 bals régis 21, 64, 65 Boule Noire (later La Cigale) 21, 22, 69, 71n38, 75 Château Rouge 69 Cigale (formerly La Boule Noire) 75, 113 Coliseum 158 Elysée Montmartre 16, 21, 22, 40, 41, 44, 45, 64, 66–7, 68, 69, 76, 83, 89, 110 Grand Turc 21 Moulin Rouge 72, 83 prostitution 76 Reine Blanche 69, 71 sponsorship 44, 68 Trianon-Théâtre-Concert-Bal (formerly Elysée Montmartre) 69

winter 66 see also Moulin de la Galette dancers 65, 66, 67, 68, 246 Daragnès, Jean-Gabriel 182, 183, 187, 189, 201–2, 224, 247, 262 Darboy, Archbishop 140 Daudet, Alphonse 51, 90 Daudet, Léon: L’Entre-deux-guerres 9–10 Daumier, Honoré 200 David, Hermine 190 Davray, J. 68, 76, 78 Dearly, Max 73 Débats, Les (journal) 90 Debray, Auguste 65 Debray family 21, 65 Debû-Bridel, Jacques 240 Debussy, Claude 42, 43, 51 décadence 54, 54n118 Defoe, Daniel 192 Robinson Crusoe 253 Degas, Edgar 1, 32, 33, 74, 81–2 Delacroix, Eugène 29 Delair, Suzy 271 Delannoy, Jean 269n4 Delarue, Georges 240 Delâtre, Eugène 244 Delaunay, Charles 166 Delaunay, Robert 123, 124, 125, 127, 128, 129 Delaunay, Sonia 126 Delaw, Georges 116, 117, 124, 133, 134, 149, 171, 187, 188 Delibes, Léo 41 Delmet, Paul 57 Denayrouze, Louis 90 Denis, Saint 17 Denis, Maurice 96, 98, 99 Denis, Paul 100 Depaquit, Jules 116, 117, 131, 170, 171–2, 175 Derain, André 118, 119–20, 121, 123, 209, 247, 248 Derème, Tristan 207 Desboutin, Marcellin 33

Index Descaves, Max 246 Deschaumes, Edmond 80 Deslys, Gaby 160 Détective (magazine) 207 Diaghilev, Sergei 167 Diaz, Narcisse Virgilio 31 Dieudonné, Robert 188 Dignimont, André 182, 185, 189 Dillaz, Serge 56 Divan Japonais, Le 50–1, 83 Dominique, Pierre 18, 27 Don (artist) 189 Donnay, Maurice 42, 42n43, 43, 52, 57, 61 Dorgelès, Roger (Roland Lécavelé) 12, 107, 109, 133, 137, 143, 182, 188, 202–5, 212, 248 as an anarchist 219 anti-Semitism 220 Araignée exhibition (1922) 213 on Bofa 186–7 ‘Boronali’ hoax 134–5 and fumisme 215–16 on Laborde 184 literary corpus A Bas l’argent 219 At Home 215 Au Beau temps de la Butte 38, 176, 178, 214 Bouquet de Bohème 215 Carte d’identité. Récit de l’Occupation 220–1 La Caravane sans chameaux 220 La Corde au cou 215 La Drôle de guerre 145, 220 La Machine à finir la guerre 219 Le Cabaret de la Belle Femme 214, 216–17 Le Château des Brouillards 28, 110, 133, 203, 221–3 Les Crois de bois 205, 213, 216–19, 222 Lettre ouverte à un milliardaire 219 memoirs 176

303

Merci d’être venue 215 Pour faire son chemin 215 Réveil des morts, Le 218 Scènes de la vie de bohème 179 Sous le Casque blanc 220 as a reporter 177–8, 215 war record 216 Dorin, René 158 Dostoyevski, Feodor: The Brothers Karamazov 110–11 Douglas, Lord Alfred 101 Dranem (Armand Ménard) 188 Dreux, Alfred de 31 Drieu la Rochelle, Pierre 189 drugs 8, 116, 156, 169; see also opium Ducarre, Pierre 83 Duchamp, Marcel 123, 124, 129 Duchamp-Villon, Raymond 123, 124 Dufy, Raoul 84, 116, 118, 167, 190, 209, 220–1 Duhamel, Georges 189, 205 Dullin, Charles 107, 113, 133 Dumestre, Gaston 57 Dunoyer de Segonzac, André 186, 189, 190 Dupré, Henri 68 Duran, Carolus 32, 39 Durand-Ruel, Paul 31, 99–100 Duranty, Louis Edmond 32 Durio, Paco 121, 247 Dutourd, Jean 243 Au Bon Beurre 241, 260 Duvivier, Julien 204, 272 Echo de Paris, L’ (journal) 101 Ecole d’Art Dramatique Firmin Gémier 111 Ecole de Montmartre 12, 133, 143, 177, 181, 202, 203, 223, 225 Ecole de Paris 127, 135, 166 Ecole des Batignolles 32 Ecole Fantaisiste 133, 207, 211 Ecrivains Combattants 214 Eiffel Tower 127, 139, 172 Elderfield, John 119

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Elysée Montmartre 16, 21, 22, 40, 41, 44, 45, 64, 66–7, 69, 76, 83, 89, 110 Emilienne d’Alençon (Emilienne Marie André) 73 Endehors, L’ (journal) 98 entre-deux-guerres 9–10, 54n118 ephemera 129 Erasmus, Desiderius 197 eroticism 166 Esparbès, Georges d’ 43, 246 Eurêka (journal) 245 Europe, James Reece 160 ‘Excessivisme’ 135 Existentialists 268 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs (1925) 169 Expressionism 188, 190, 192, 231, 270 extremism 28 Fabre, Saturnin 110 Faivre, Abel 185, 187, 189 Falké, Pierre 149, 185, 188, 189 fantastique social 133, 228–9, 231, 236–7, 270 Fantin-Latour, Henri 32 Fargue, Léon-Paul 65, 76, 101, 114, 134, 152, 182 Le Piéton de Paris 64, 180 Farnoux-Reynaud, Lucien 86, 94 Fau, Fernand 42 Fauchereau, Serge 125, 138 Fauchois, René 131, 247 Faure, Sébastien 136, 138 Fauves/Fauvism 1, 117, 119–20, 138 Fayard, Jean 198 Fédération Française de Marche 172 féeries 264–5 Fénéon, Félix 45, 98, 101, 113, 137–8 Férat, Serge 167 Féréal (artist) 29 Ferny, Jacques 58 fêtes costumées 68 Feuillade, Louis 270 Feuilles, Les (review) 207

fiction writing 268 adventure 233–6 crime 129, 268–9 science fiction 55, 129 Figaro, Le (newspaper) 90 film 128, 132, 156, 267–77 adapted from books 204 Occupation 270 see also cinema film studios 269–70 Films Pathé-Natan (later Rapid-Films) 269–70 Studios Francoeur 275 First World War 9–10, 60, 75, 115, 134, 135, 144, 145–50, 174, 180, 185 Folies Bergère 64, 70–1, 72, 75, 77, 81, 146–7, 157 Joyeux nègres review 124, 159 Manet’s painting of 82 food rationing 239–40 Footit (clown) 103, 159 Forain, Jean-Loup 33, 92, 131, 173, 189 forgery 137–8 Fort, Paul 95, 96, 100 Fouché, Pascal 244, 252 Foujita, Tsuguhara 246 Foy, André 188, 189 foyers de soldats 147 Fragerolle, Georges 39, 43 Fragson, Henri 51 France, Anatole 51, 183, 198 France, Louise 104 France profonde 175, 181 Franchi, Pierre, Les Nuits de Montmartre 272 Frank, Nino 227n72 Fratellini family 74 Frédé (Frédéric Gérard) 117, 131, 133–4, 208, 222 Fréhel (Marguerite Boulc’h) 157 Frelant, Jean 201 Fresnay, Pierre 271 Frites Révolutionnaires 50

Index Frou-Frou (journal) 197 Fuller, Loië 78n81 fumisme 36, 37, 134–5, 170, 215 Fursy, Henri 51–2, 158 Futurism 126, 127, 134; see also ‘Excessivisme’ Gabin, Jean 204, 269n4, 271, 274 Gabor, Zsa Zsa 274 Galanis, Demetrios 118, 185 Galtier-Boissière, Jean 149, 189, 220n56, 267 Gance, Abel 271 gangsters 156 Ganne, Gilbert 249 Garcin, Joseph 246 Garnier, Octave 137 Gassier, H.P. 189 Gauguin, Paul 84, 120 Gauzi, François 83 Gavarni, Paul 29, 200 Gazanion, Edouard 208 Gémier, Firmin 104, 105, 111 Gen-Paul (Eugène Paul) 182, 246, 247–8, 258, 261, 262 Géo-Blackmussel (chansonnier) 53 Gérard, Frédéric see Frédé Gérard, Margot 132 Géraudel (pharmaceutical company) 13, 68 Gerbe, La (journal) 237, 251 Géricault, Théodore 29 Gestalt theory 124 Gestapo 156, 221 Gide, André 104, 105, 137, 233n88 Les Faux-Monnayeurs 110, 237 Gignoux, Régis 219 Gil Blas (journal) 123 Gilbert, Victor 31 Gill, André 36, 39, 50, 56, 130–1 Giono, Jean 189 Giraudoux, Jean 198, 248 Girieud, Pierre 131 Gleizes, Albert 123, 124, 125 Godard, Henri 244, 262

305

Goerg, Edouard 190 goguettes 36, 38, 43 Golberg, Mécislas 138, 178 Golding, John 123 Goncourt brothers 51; see also Académie Goncourt; Prix Goncourt Gopnik, Adam 128–9, 274 Goudeau, Emile 36, 37, 39, 41, 44, 45, 50, 51, 57 Goupil, Robert 270 Gourmont, Remy de 101 Gramont, Elizabeth de 153 Grande-Rue des Batignolles (now Avenue de Clichy) 32 grands boulevards 31 Grangier, Gilles 272 Grave, Jean 137 Gravigny, Jean: Montmartre en 1925 151 Grémillon, Jean 270 Grieg, Edvard 102 Grille d’Egout (dancer) 67, 68 Gringoire (journal) 177, 220 Gris, Juan 118, 122, 123, 129, 185, 247 Gromaire, Marcel 190 Grosz, George 10, 188, 190, 192, 198, 236 Grune, Karl: La Rue (film) 231 Gsell, Paul and Poulbot, Francisque: Les Gosses dans les ruines 174 Guerbois group 33 Guérin, Pierre-Narcisse 29 Guibert, Joseph Hippolyte, Cardinal 140 Guibert, Yvette 42, 51, 62, 72, 83, 243, 274 guidebooks Guide de l’Etranger à Montmartre (Meusy and Deplas) 4–5, 6, 71, 72, 77, 80 Guide de Paris (1867) 25 Guide de poche (1900) 65–6, 71, 72, 73

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Guide secret de l’étranger célibataire à Paris 79–80 Montmartre en 1925 (Gravigny) 151 Universal Exhibition (1889) 80 guignol 42 Guillaume, Albert 187 Guillemet, Antoine 32 Guinguet, Pierre 64 Guyot, Georges Lucien 246 Guys, Constantin 31, 32, 200 Haarmann, Fritz (‘butcher of Hanover’) 229 Haine, Scott 62, 75 Hall, Adelaide 71, 160, 161, 165 Hallé, Maurice 170, 171 Haraucourt, Edmond 39, 61 ‘Harlem Hellfighters’ 160 Hauptmann, Gerhart 97 Haurancourt, Maurice 57 Haussmann, George, Baron 23–4, 59 Hébert, Félix 103 Hemingway, Ernest: A Moveable Feast 166 Hennique, Léon 33, 89–90, 92 Henry, O. 53 Herbert, Michel 43, 56 Heredia, Jose Maria 98, 104 Heureux Nègres, Les 159 Heuzé, Edmond 178 Hillairet, Jacques 18, 23 Himes, Chester 166 Hippodrome 75, 244 Hoffmann, E.T.A. 225 Hoguet, Charles 29 Homme libre, L’ (journal) 177, 215 hotels Austin’s Hotel 121 Hôtel Beauséjour 126 Hôtel Boileau 36 Hôtel Bouscarat 116, 171 Hôtel de l’Univers 108 Hôtel du Poirier 116, 172 Howard, Leslie 163 Huddleston, Sisley 167, 176, 212

Hughes, Langston 159, 161, 162, 164–5 Hugon, André 270 Humanité, L’ (journal) 219 Humières, Robert d’ 110 humour 10, 54, 173, 174 Anthologie de l’humour noir 169 see also comedy of situation; comic press humourists 52–3, 54–5, 56, 60, 138, 167, 169, 172, 183, 202, 251 ‘Hussards’ 53 Huston, John: Moulin Rouge (film) 83, 271, 274 Hutton, Barbara 163 Huysmans, Joris Karl 33, 54 Hydropathe, L’ (journal) 44 Hydropathes 37, 42, 101 Hyspa, Vincent 42, 43, 51, 57, 58, 63, 158 Ibsen, Henrik 92, 94–5, 97, 102 Icres, Fernand 45, 61 idealism 46 illustrators 183 immigrants 7 Impasse de Guelma 116 Impasse Girardon 126, 182, 247 Impasse Hélène 82 Impressionism 32, 45, 84; see also Neo-Impressionists Impressionnisme. Journal d’art, L’ 33 Incohérents 45 innovation 170; see also technology Intransigeant, L’ (journal) 177, 225 invention 54–5, 171 Iribe, Paul 187 Jack the Ripper 177, 229, 236 Jackson, Jeffrey H. 163 Jacob, Max 109, 122, 125n57, 126, 132, 143, 167, 172, 208, 224 Jakovsky, Anatole 52–3 Jammes, Francis 207 Jamois, Marguerite 111

Index Jane Avril (Jeanne Beaudon) 72, 83, 102–3, 275 Japanese culture 45, 50, 138 Jardin du Delta 20 Jardin Mabille 20 Jarry, Alfred 56, 118 Ubu Roi 13, 42n47, 51, 97, 100, 102–7, 113, 168 Jasset, Victorin 270 jazz 156, 158–9, 160–1, 163, 165, 166, 169 jazz clubs: Black Montmartre 71 Je suis partout (journal) 10, 237, 248, 249, 251, 257 Jensen, Karen Marie 246 Jeunet, Jean-Pierre: Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain (film) 275–6 Jews see anti-Semitism Joll, James 138 Jongkind, Johan 29 Journal, Le 44 journalism 136, 149–50, 177; see also comic press; magazines Jouy, Adèle 130, 131 Jouy, Jules 36, 39, 42, 43, 45, 57, 131, 255 ‘Chanson de Montmartre: Su’ la Butte’ 142–3 Le Temps des crises 59 Joyeux Nègres, Les 71, 159 Juin (E. Armand) 137 Jullian, Philippe 30, 54n118, 93, 200 Juven, Félix 187 Kahnweiler, Daniel-Henry 125n57 Karr, Alphonse 30 Kelly, Gene 274 Kertesz, André 190 Kessel, Joseph 152, 156, 177 ‘Kibaltchine’ see Serge, Victor Kidman, Nicole 274 Kobold (clown) 103 Krull, Germaine 190 Krysinska, Marie 39, 61 Kupka, François 118

307

La Chapelle 5, 6–7, 21, 23, 24, 151 La Gandara, Antonio 39 La Goulue (Louise Weber) 66, 67, 68, 83, 157, 274 La Mélinite (dancer) 72 La Môme Fromage (dancer) 66, 67 La Pommeray, Henri 90 la Vaissière, Robert de 207 Labaye, Germaine 190 Laborde, Chas 10, 44, 149, 182, 183, 184, 185, 188, 189, 192, 196–200, 216, 222, 224, 239, 248 Labracherie, Pierre 30, 208 Labric, Pierre 172, 175 Lacenaire, Pierre François 130 Lacombe, Georges 270–1 Lafaye, Marcel 246 Lafond de Saint-Mür, Guy, Baron 22, 25 Lagut, Irène 167 Lalou, René 92 Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de 262n89 Lamorisse, Albert 270 Lanoux, Armand 203 Lanterne de Bruant, La (journal) 49 Lanterne japonaise, La (journal) 50 Lapin Agile 1, 50, 108–9, 113, 117, 130–5, 138, 172, 178, 179, 208, 221, 224, 226 Lara, Louise 113 Latin Quarter 20, 77, 79, 209, 267–8 Laurencin, Marie 190 Lautrec, Gabriel de 188 Lautrec, Henri de Toulouse- see Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de Le Blond, Maurice 57 Le Breton, Auguste 155 Le Fauconnier, Henri 123 Le Vigan, Robert 247, 262 Léandre, Charles Lucien 187 Léautaud, Paul 211 Lecache, Bernard 171

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Leclercq, Charles 98 Leclercq, Paul 98 Lecomte, Claude, General 26–7 Lefèvre, Camille 60 Lefranc, Jean-Jacques, Marquis de Pompignan 116 Left Bank 30, 36–7, 38, 111, 115, 118, 126, 130, 133, 166, 172, 249–50, 268 Legay, 39, 50 Légitime Défense (journal) 165 Lemaître, Frédérick 88 Lemaître, Jules 41, 43, 47, 78, 90, 105 Lemercier, Eugène 58, 61 Leonardo de Vinci 123 Leslie, Lew 159 Lesourd, Paul 18, 19, 23, 29–30, 31, 69–70, 79, 144 Lewis, Joe 162 Lhote, André 190 Liane de Pougy (Anne Marie Chassaigne) 73 Libertad (Albert) (tramp) 136–7, 138, 141, 255 Libertaire, Le (journal) 131, 136, 138 lighting 31, 71, 73 street 25, 65, 74 Lipton, Eunice 81–2 Lisbonne, Maxime, Colonel 28, 50 Lockroy, Edouard 90 Loi Marthe Richard 267 Londres, Albert 108, 177 Loos, Adolph 167 Lord Cheminot (Patrice Contamine de Latour) 53 Lorin, Georges 39 Lormel, Louis 120 Lorrain, Jean 40, 61, 104 Femmes de 1900 80 Lorulot, A. 137 Loti, Pierre 211 Lottman, Herbert R. 268 Loupot, Charles 190 Louvre 215–16 Louÿs, Pierre 98

Lubitsch, Ernst 270 Luc, Marguerite 224 Luce, Maximilien 84, 92, 138 Luchaire, Jean 237 Lugné-Poe, Aurélien 85, 92–7, 98, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 113 Luhrmann, Baz: Moulin Rouge (film) 275, 276–7 Luka, Madeleine 190 Lumière Brothers 128 MacMahon, Patrice de, Marshal 140 Mac-Nab, Maurice 36, 39, 57, 58, 90n16, 224 Mac Orlan, Pierre (Pierre Dumarchey) 12, 39, 53, 117, 143, 172, 182, 183, 184, 203–5, 208, 212, 248 on adventure fiction 233–5 and anti-Semitism 237 on Bofa 186, 187, 188, 191–2 and collaboration 237 on Daragnès 201–2 and eroticism 236–7 and fantastique social 96, 228–9, 231, 236–7 German influences on 230 and grand reportage 177 as an illustrator 224 influence of 169, 225–6 and inquiétude 228, 233, 234, 235, 236 on Laborde 197, 199 literary corpus Chansons pour accordéon 230–1 La Bandera 226, 237 La Maison du retour écoeurant 224 L’Ancre de miséricorde 225 L’Art cinématographique 231 Le Bataillon de la mauvaise chance 226 Le Chant de l’équipage 225, 234 ‘Le Fantastique’ 256

Index Le Nègre Léonard et Maître Jean Mullin 229–30 Le Petit manuel du parfait aventurier 234 Le Quai des brumes 116, 122, 132, 133, 134, 148, 203, 204, 205, 222, 226–9, 230, 232–3, 236, 270 Le Rire jaune 224 Les Bourreurs de crâne 225 Les Pattes en l’air 224 Les Poissons morts 225 L’Inflation sentimentale 198 Malice 233 Marguerite de la nuit 155n41, 226 memoirs 176 Rues et visages de Berlin 198 U-713 ou les gentilshommes d’infortune 225 and pornography 236 as a reporter 225 war record 225 macabre 54 McGregor, Ewan 274 McKendrick, Mike 163 Maerson, Luc-Olivier 186 Maeterlinck, Maurice 92, 95, 97, 102 magazines 10, 117–18; see also journalism Magnard, François 69 Mahé, Anna 137 Mahé, Henri 248 Maillard, François-Sébastien 121 Maison du Trappeur 117; see also Bateau-Lavoir Maison Rose 178–9 Maitron, Jules 137 Malato, Charles 138 Malet, Léo: Nouveaux mystères de Paris 269 Mallarmé, Stéphane 40, 93, 98 Malraux, André 189, 225 Manet, Edouard 31, 33 Déjeuner sur l’herbe 32

309

Le Bon Bock 36 Olympia 32 Un Bar aux Folies Bergère 62, 77, 81, 82 Mansfield, Katherine 209 Maquis 6, 116, 136, 151 Maran, René 165 Marc, Henri 47 Marcel-Legay (Joseph Arthur Jacques Legay) 39, 50 Marchand, Edouard 70 Marcoussis, Louis 118, 185, 187 Margueritte, Paul 92 Marianne (journal) 153–4, 257 Marini, Joseph 156 Marlowe, Christopher 102 Marquet, Albert 190 marraines 148, 149 Martini, Auguste 158 mass culture 64, 128–9 Masson, André 168 Matisse, Henri 119–20, 123n47 Mauclair, Camille 95, 98 Maupassant, Guy de 33, 40, 41 Maurey, Max 73 Mauricius (Maurice Vandamme) 137 Mayol, Félix 131 Médrano, Geronimo 74 Melville, Jean-Pierre 273n7 memoirs 176–81 Ménard, Emile-René 98 Mendès, Catulle 45, 101, 105 Mercereau, Jack 171 Mercure de France (journal) 98, 101, 102, 211 Méric, Victor 137–8 Merson, Luc-Olivier 186 Métra, Olivier 67 métro 11, 74, 144, 145, 174, 241, 262 Metzinger, Jean 123, 124, 125 Meusy, Victor 61 Meusy, Victor and Deplas, Edmond: Guide de l’Etranger à Montmartre 4–5, 6, 71, 72, 77, 80

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Michel, Georges 29 Michel, Louise 28 Mignon, Paul-Louis 111 Minnelli, Vicente: An American in Paris (film) 271, 274 Mirande, Yves 187, 188, 197 Mirliton, Le (journal) 44, 48 Miró, Joan 166, 168 Miromandre, Francis de 112 Miss Rigolette (dancer) 67 Mistinguett (Jeanne Florentine Bourgeois) 73, 157, 160, 163, 188 Mistral, Frédéric 40 modernisation 170 Modernism 166 modernity 118, 127, 172 Modigliani, Amedeo 116, 122, 126, 167, 181, 209 Mogador, Céleste 67 Mohali-Nagy, László 190 Moineaux, Georges see Courteline, Georges Moline (art dealers) 99–100 Mollet, ‘Baron’ 121n37 Môme Caca (dancer) 67 Moncey, Bon-Adrien Jeannot de, Marshal: statue 5 Monet, Claude 31–2 Montagnes Russes 71 Montéhus, Gaston 148 Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de 197 Montherlant, Henry de 243 Montjoie! (journal) 125 Montmartre borders 5–6 as a cultural centre 9 definitions of 4–5 demographic composition 6 as a frontier district 6–7, 8 as a gendered landscape 80 as a lieu de mémoire 2, 3, 4, 17, 49, 59, 139, 144, 173, 175, 176, 202, 259; see also nostalgia

origins 17–24 as a port 132–3 prehistory 8 see also Bas-Montmartre; Butte de Montmartre Montorgueil, Georges 78 Montoya, Gabriel 42, 56–7, 61 Montparnasse 12, 16, 33, 34, 115, 121, 143, 144, 145, 154, 166–7, 169, 180, 198, 249 Morand, Paul 160, 191, 200 Magie Noire 164 Tendres Stocks 198 Moreau, Jeanne 204 Moreau, Luc-Albert 189 Morel, Eugène 98 Moreno, Margaret 105, 270 Morin, Charles 103 Morin, Henri 103 Morin, Louis 43 Morlay, Gaby 271 Mornand, Pierre 198–9, 202 Moulin de la Galette 6, 18, 21–2, 64, 76, 82, 83, 84, 262 Moulin Rouge 6, 64, 71–2, 73, 75, 77, 78, 83, 121, 145, 151, 157, 160, 165 in film 270, 271, 274–5, 276–7 ‘Mouvement Synthétique’ 45 Moy, Jules 58 Munch, Edvard 102 Mur des Fermiers Généraux 5–6, 11, 15, 23, 24, 26, 112 Murger, Henri 176, 178 Scènes de la vie de bohème 37, 38, 115 Musée Rodin 119 music halls 11, 112, 118–19, 145 Alhambra 75 American performers 124 black entertainers 159–62 Casino de Paris 64, 72, 73, 146–7, 157, 160 Cigale (formerly La Boule Noire) 212

Index cinemas’ threat to 158 Eldorado 188 First World War 146–7 Folies Bergère 64, 70–1, 72, 75, 77, 81, 82, 124, 146–7, 157 inter-war years 156–7 Jardin de Paris 71, 72 jazz 160 lighting 71, 74 and Modernism 166 Olympia 75 origins 70 painters and 81 and prostitution 76–7, 78 ‘star system’ 67 see also Moulin de la Galette; Moulin Rouge Musset, Alfred de ‘Frédéric et Bernerette’ 20 ‘Mimi Pinson: profil de grisette’ 38, 114–15 Nabis 85, 90n16, 96, 97, 98, 99, 104, 113 Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon) 31, 32 names communist 254 faux-medieval 94 foreign 53, 196, 224, 230 taverns 19 Natan, Bernard 269–70 Natanson, Alexandre 98 Natanson, Louis-Alfred 97 Natanson, Thadée 85, 93, 98 nationalism 139 Naturalism 40, 46, 56, 89, 90, 91–2, 95, 113 Nénette, cult of 149n47, 174 Neo-Impressionists 138 Nerval, Gérard de 30, 116 Nettelbeck, Colin M. 159n47, 160n59 newspapers 129, 136; see also journals; magazines night clubs 151, 161, 163–4, 165

311

nihilism 36 Nini Patte-en-l’Air (dancer) 67, 72 Nissen, Egede 231 Nizan, Paul 254n65 Noceti, Jean 247, 262 Noël-Noël (Lucien Édouard Noël) 158 non-conformism 28, 139, 183, 267; see also anarchism; nihilism Nonell, Isidro 121 Nora, Pierre 2, 3 Nord-Sud (journal) 125, 126, 144, 166 Nordling, Raoul 184 nostalgia 12, 120, 143, 148, 169, 170, 175, 176, 177, 257 Notre-Dame-de-Lorette church 4, 5, 6, 22, 76, 78 Nouveaux Temps, Les (journal) 237 Nouvelle-France 5, 8, 18, 19, 26, 112 Oberlé, Jean 183, 185, 189, 200n123 Oberthür, Mariel 8, 53, 62, 77 occult 54 Occupation 204, 205, 239–41, 250, 256, 259–60, 270 Offenbach, Jacques 114, 157 Ollier Brothers 71, 276 O’Phthalmas (chansonnier) 53 opium 116, 152 Orloff, Chana 190 Orphism 118, 124 Panthère des Batignolles (anarchist group) 135–6 pantomime 92 Papavoine, Louis-Auguste 130 Parades 106, 110, 113 Paraf-Javal, Georges Mathias 137 ‘Parisianism’ 44 Parisot, Christian 31 Pascin, Jules 126, 167, 181, 185, 190, 200 Passage de l’Elysée des Beaux-Arts (now Rue André Antoine) 88, 89, 90 Passage de l’Opéra 169

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Passeur, Steve 112 Pastilles Géraudel (pharmacy company) 44 Patachou (Henriette Ragon) 275 Pataphysics 101 Patrie, La (journal) 106 patriotism 148 Paul, Eugène see Gen-Paul Pawlowski, Gaston de 55 Payen-Appenzeller, Pascal 17, 19 Pelladan, Joséphin, ‘Sâr’ 54 Pellerin, Jean 207 Pelpel, Joseph 187 Pennac, Daniel 268 Père Peinard, Le (journal) 136 Pergament, André: M’sieur la Caille (film) 204, 271 Perrault, Charles 197 Perruchot, Henri 29, 32 Petit, Georges 100 ‘Pétomane’ 72 Philippe, Charles-Louis 198 phonographs 54, 230 photography 190 Pia, Pascal 225 Piaf, Edith 157, 271, 275 Picabia, Francis 129, 167 Picasso, Pablo 106, 109–10, 209 ‘accessories’ 129 and Bateau-Lavoir 117, 122 and Cirque Fernando/Médrano 74 graphics 178, 185 and invention 128 and Lapin Agile 132 meeting with Apollinaire 25 at Modigliani’s funeral 208 move to Montparnasse 143, 167, 228 works Au Lapin Agile (Arlequin au verre) 131, 132 Les Demoiselles d’Avignon 120, 121, 124 Les Plastrons 76 Sacré-Coeur 1–2

Picon, Gaëtan: Panorama de la littérature contemporaine 227n72 Pierrot (journal) 173 Pigalle 6–7, 80, 151, 155, 156, 169 Pigeard, ‘Baron’ 116 Pignarre, Robert 91 Pilcer, Harry 160 Pille, Henri 39, 41, 42, 44 Pioch, Georges 138 Pirola, René 116, 221 Pissarro, Camille 32, 33, 138 Pittié, General 58 Place Blanche 6, 71, 73–4, 79, 156, 157, 168, 258 Place Clichy 74, 158 Place Dancourt 111 Place d’Anvers 7, 78 Place de Clichy 5, 6, 7, 33, 112, 252, 258 Place des Abbesses 6 Place des Porcherons 76 Place du Tertre 6, 116, 117, 172, 182, 258 Place Jean-Baptiste Clément 117, 131 Place Pigalle 6, 33, 76, 79, 80, 117, 153, 157, 258 Place Ravignon (now Place Emile-Godeau) 121, 138, 172 Place Vintimille 99, 167 Plaisance 7, 125, 210 pleasure: and industry 3–4 Pliny the Elder 262n89, 265 Poe, Edgar Allen 37 poets/poetry 126 Cubist 125–6 and performance 55 Poiret, Paul 189 Poirier sans Pareil 30 Poissonnière quartier 5, 6 police des moeurs 77 Ponchon, Raoul 39, 51 population 15, 18–19, 22–3, 24, 150–1 Porcherons quartier 8, 18, 19, 26, 48, 112

Index pornography 61, 149, 236 Porter, Cole 163 Porto-Riche, Georges de 92 Post-Impressionists 97 posters 83, 113, 129, 171, 187, 190 Poulbot, Francisque 84, 116, 117, 131, 133, 149, 173–4, 175, 185, 187 poverty 115, 173 Prévert, Jacques 194, 270, 275 Princet, Maurice 124, 183, 184 Privas, Xavier 42, 57, 58 Prix Goncourt 213 Prix Théophraste-Renaudot 245 prostitution 8, 19, 22, 26, 27, 76–81, 133, 155, 156, 169, 223, 236 cabarets 61–2 Carco on 210 dance halls 65, 66, 67, 76 Delacroix on 29 First World War 145, 147–8 as inspiration of Fauves 118 male 78 music halls 72–3, 76, 77, 78 railway stations 7, 25 Proust, Marcel 94, 98 A l’Ombre des jeunes filles en fleur 213 Puccini, Giacomo: La Bohème 114 Puvis de Chavannes 39 quarries 27 Quast, Pieter Jansz 31 Quintette du Hot Club de France 163 Rachilde (Marguerite Valette-Eymery) 55, 61, 101, 102, 104, 105 racism 162, 164–5, 181, 237; see also anti-Semitism; xenophobia radicalism 28, 59, 140 Radiguet, Raymond: Le Diable au corps 190, 219 Raffaelli, Jean-François 51, 92 railway stations 7, 25, 79, 146–7 railways 74 Ranson, Paul 97, 98

313

realism magic 202 theatre 95 realists 133 Rearick, Charles 8 Redon, Odillon 98, 100 Reiler, Willy 270 Reinhard, Django 163 Rémond, Georges 105 Renard, Jules 98, 104 Renoir, Auguste 1, 33, 65, 117, 131, 275 Un Bal au Moulin de la Galette 82, 84 Renoir, Jean 67, 270, 271 French Cancan (film) 274–5 ‘République de Montmartre’ 170, 173–5 Resistance 241 restaurants 74, 79, 114 Aux Enfants de la Butte 117 Azon 117, 138 Bonne Franquette 117 Chalet 131 Chez Manière 44, 113, 124, 182, 183–5, 201, 202, 247, 248, 262, 268n4 Devais 117 Mère Catherine 117 Mère Coconnier 117 Père Lathuille 33 Rat Mort 33, 44, 68, 118, 121 Restaurant des Lettres et des Arts 117 Vernin 117 Vieux Chalet, Le 117 Rette, Adolphe 97 Reverdy, Pierre 122, 125, 126, 128, 143, 144, 167 reviews 70, 71, 160 Revol, Max 247, 262, 270 Revue Blanche, La (journal) 11, 45, 85, 93, 94, 97–8, 100, 113 Revue du Monde Noir (journal) 165 Rey, Robert 171 Rheinhardt, Max 96

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Richepin, Jean 40, 42n43, 45, 255 Rictus, Jehan (Gabriel Randon) 42, 43, 48, 57, 117, 255 Right Bank 80, 154, 214n36, 268 Rim, Carlo 190 Rin Tin Tin (film star) 175 Rintintin, cult of 174 riots (1917) 164 Rire, Le (journal) 44, 76, 117, 149, 171, 187, 196, 197, 224 Rire Rouge, Le (journal) 61, 149 Rivière, Henri 41, 42, 45, 86, 92, 254 Robichez, Jacques 96 Robinson, W. Heath 55 Rochefort, Henri 51 Roe, Sue 166 Roger-Marx, Claude 189 Rollinat, Maurice 39, 57, 58 Roman, Jean 48 Roques, Jules 68 Rosimond, Roze de 84 Rostand, Edmond 104 Rothschild family 51 Rouault, Georges 74 Roubille, Auguste Jean-Baptiste 188 Rouché, Jacques 110 Rousseau, Henri ‘Douanier’ 124–5 Rousseau, Théodore 29 Roussel, Kerr-Xavier 98, 99 Roux, Saint-Pol (Paul-Pierre Roux) 113 Royer, Jean 271 Rue, La (journal) 22, 69 Rue André Antoine see Passage de l’Elysée des Beaux-Arts Rue Ballu 102 Rue Berthe 258 Rue Blanche 71, 73, 80, 91, 100, 163 Rue Blomet 168 Rue Breda 84 Rue Caulaincourt 116, 182, 183, 196, 208, 258 Rue Cavalotte 117 Rue Chaptal 102 Rue Clauzel 100 Rue Constance 29, 82

Rue Cortot 49, 84, 116, 122n42 Rue Cujas 36 Rue Custine 114 Rue d’Amsterdam 5, 25, 121 Rue Dancourt 36 Rue de Bellefond 50 Rue de Bréda (now Rue Henri-Monnier) 31 Rue de Châteaudun 5, 6 Rue de Clichy 73, 96 Rue de Clignancourt 5, 241 Rue de Dunkerque 89 Rue de la Gaîté 16 Rue de Lappe 7, 211 Rue de l’Armée de l’Orient 167 Rue de Rochechouart 5 Rue des Abbesses 50, 107, 108–12 Rue des Martyrs 6, 8, 17, 19, 29, 32, 98 Rue des Saules 49, 109, 196, 244 Rue d’Orchampf 257, 258 Rue d’Orsel 131, 136 Rue du Chevalier de la Barre 246 Rue du Delta 116, 126 Rue du Faubourg Montmartre 17 Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière 20 Rue du Mont-Cenis 17, 38 Rue du Square-Carpeaux 245 Rue Durantin 258 Rue Elysée-des-Beaux-Arts 258 Rue Fontaine 81, 161, 168, 269 Rue Francoeur 269 Rue Gabrielle 121, 122n42, 258 Rue Ganneron 244 Rue Girardon 241, 244, 245 Rue Hégésippe-Moreau 116 Rue Henri-Monnier 246; see also Rue de Bréda Rue Jacob 88 Rue Jussieu 36 Rue Labat 114 Rue Lafayette 6 Rue Lafitte 6, 31, 60–1, 97, 98, 99, 100, 117, 172 Rue Lamarck 258

Index Rue Lauriston 156, 241 Rue Laval (now Rue Victor-Massé) 29, 41, 50 Rue Lepic 6, 17, 29, 113, 126, 207, 210, 244, 247, 275n11 Rue Montmartre 17 Rue Nollet 159 Rue Norvins 131, 245 Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette 29, 32 Rue Ordener 5, 137 Rue Paul-Féval 245 Rue Pigalle 32, 52, 80, 84, 96, 153, 158, 161, 258, 269 Rue Poiliveau 258 Rue Racine 36 Rue Ramey 114 Rue Ravignan 17, 90, 116, 117, 122n42 Rue Richer 70 Rue Rochechouart 158, 241 Rue Saint-Georges 32 Rue Saint-Vincent 258 Rue Simon-Dereure 258 Rue Tholozé 65 Rue Tourlaque 116, 244 Rue Victor-Massé (formerly Rue Laval) 73, 117, 215 Sachs, Maurice 157 Sacré-Coeur Basilica 6, 7, 64, 127, 135, 139, 140, 141, 151, 170, 242 Saint-Croix, Camille de 39 Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de 189 Saint-Georges quartier 6 Saint-Germain-des-Près 52, 53 Saint-Pierre, Eglise 17, 141 Salacrou, Alexandre 112 Salis, Rodolphe 4, 35–6, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 55, 57, 58, 58–9, 60–1, 118, 170, 175, 254 Salmon, André 122, 125, 128, 181, 224 L’Air de la Butte 176, 226 Salome 80 salons 123 Salon d’Automne (1905) 118, 120 Salon d’Automne (1908) 120, 123n47

315

Salon de l’Araignée 189–90 Salon des Humoristes 189, 190 Salon des Indépendants 123, 135 Salze, Louis 130 Sandrini, Pierre 67, 157 Sapeck, Charles (Eugène François Bonaventure Bataille) 36, 39 Sapiro, Gisèle 204, 220 Sarcey, Francisque 43, 89, 105 Satie, Erik 42, 50, 51, 54, 56, 57, 106, 118, 129, 167, 274 Sauterelle (dancer) 72 Sayers, Henry 71 Schmelling, Max 162 Schwob, Marcel 101, 225 sculpture 121, 124, 183 Seigel, Jerrold 9, 37, 55, 176 ‘Sennep’ (Jean Pennes) 187 Sentinelle de Montmartre (anarchist group) 136 Serge (cartoonist) 189 Serge, Victor (Victor Lvovich Kibalchich) 137 Serre, Adrien 67 Serre, Mme 67 Sérusier, Paul 97 Seurat, Georges-Pierre 74, 119 Severini, Gino 116, 126 Suburban Train Arriving in Paris 128 Sevestre, Léo 270–1 Shack, William 164 shadow plays 2, 42, 43, 51, 86, 106, 113 Shapiro, Barbara Stern 8, 76 Shattuck, Roger 33, 121n37 Shaw, Mary 8, 61 Sic (journal) 125, 126 Signac, Paul 39, 40, 92, 138 Simenon, Georges Maigret au ‘Picratt’s’ 268, 269, 272 Maigret tend un piège 269n4 Simon, Michel 271 Simonin, Albert: Touchez pas au grisbi 268–9

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Montmartre: A Cultural History

Simplicissimus (German review) 10, 181, 188 Simultaneism 125–6 Sisley, Alfred 33 Sivry, Charles de 39, 43 skyline 127, 135, 141 slumming 47, 48, 62, 65, 77, 164, 247 Soirées de Médan, Les (journal) 89 Soirées de Paris (journal) 113, 125 Somm, Henri 43 Sonn, Richard 4, 8, 58, 136 Sori, Léon 70 Sougez, Emmanuel 190 Soulié, Père 117 Soupault, Ralph 10, 183, 185, 239, 247–8 Sourire, Le (journal) 44, 187–8, 196, 197 Spirito, François 156 sport 128 Stavisky Affair 156 Stefani, Jean-Paul 156 Stein, Gertrude 120 Steinlen, Théophile Alexandre 13, 37, 39, 41, 45, 48, 55, 68n22, 92, 113, 116, 149, 183, 184, 185 Stevens, Alfred 32, 41 Stevenson, Robert Louis: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde 228, 230–1 striptease 76, 174, 272 studios 31, 116–17, 121–2, 182 supernatural 54 Sur le trimard (journal) 138 Surel-Turpin, Monique 109 Surrealism 12, 13, 106, 167–9, 172 Symbolism 56, 95, 97, 98, 100, 103, 113, 139 Taccva (actor) 88 Tailhade, Laurent 45, 48, 110, 113, 138 Taillade, Paul Félix 88 Tanguy, Père 100 Tautou, Audrey 276 taverns 11, 18, 19, 23, 86, 235 ‘Gothic’ 39, 54 Taverne de Paris 71n38

Taverne du Bagne 50 see also cabarets technology 169; see also innovation Temps, le (journal) 89 Temps nouveaux, Les (journal) 137 Terrasse, Claude 104, 106 theatre groups 89 Atelier 111 Cercle Gaulois 89, 90 Cercle Pigalle 89 Escholiers 93, 94 Théâtre Libre 85, 90–3, 94, 106, 113 theatres 79, 86, 87–113 artists and 87 avant-garde 13, 94, 97, 167 and circuses 74 Comédie Française 75, 88 First World War 145 Nouveau Théâtre (now Théâtre de Paris) 100 Opéra 75, 80, 82 Opéra Comique 70 ‘parallel’ 101–2 puppet 86, 97, 101, 102, 106; see also guignol in the round 101 Théâtre Antoine 91, 111 Théâtre d’Art 95, 96, 110 Théâtre de Belleville 108 Théâtre de Dix Heures 158 Théâtre de la Foire 110 Théâtre de la Gaîté 88 Théâtre de la Renaissance 215 Théâtre de l’Astrée 215 Théâtre de l’Atelier 111–12, 113, 167 Théâtre de l’Odéon 75, 91, 107, 109, 215 Théâtre de l’Oeuvre 85, 93, 94, 95–7, 97, 98, 100, 113 Théâtre de Paris see Nouveau Théâtre Théâtre des Menus Plaisirs 90–1 Théâtre des Pantins 102 Théâtre des Phynances 102, 103

Index théâtre d’idées 92 théâtre d’ombres see shadow plays Théâtre du Châtelet 75, 167 Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier 110–11 Théâtre Impériale 215 Théâtre Montmartre 107–8, 111 Théâtre Montparnasse 90 Théâtre Saint-Antoine 88 Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt 75 théâtres de boulevard 113 théâtres de la barrière 86 Thiers, Adolphe 26 Thomas, Clément, ‘General’ 26–7 Thomas, Père 117 Thompson, David 275 Tiret-Bognet, Georges 39 Tivoli amusement park 20 Tomaschet, ‘Papa’ 51 Touchagues, Louis 190 Toulet, Jean-Paul 207 Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de 1, 33, 82–4, 85, 247 at Académie Cormon 186 and circuses 74 and Derain 119 and Japonisme 138 and journals 48, 51, 98 Moulin Rouge (film) 274 posters 2, 13, 47, 68n22, 83, 85, 113 and theatre 92, 97, 104 tourists/tourism 8, 18, 25, 73, 79, 134, 143, 151–4, 170 ‘Tout Paris’ 65, 163, 166, 167, 168 Toziny, Roger 170, 171, 172 ‘traditions’ 175 Trianon-Théâtre-Concert-Bal (formerly Elysée Montmartre) 69 Trimoillat, Pierre 42 Triolet, Elsa 204, 212 Trombert, François 44, 51 Trompe la Mort (dancer) 72 Trotsky, Leon 254n65 Troyat, Henri 218 Troyon, Constant 29

317

Truffaut, François: Les 400 Coups (film) 271 Twain, Mark 53, 216 Tzara, Tristan 167 Union Marine de la Butte Montmartre 116, 132 Universal Exhibition (1885) 16 Universal Exhibition (1889) 16, 73, 78, 80 Universal Exhibition (1900) 4, 78, 79–80, 169 Utrillo, Maurice 82, 84, 116, 122n42, 125n57, 131, 182, 208, 209, 247 Carco’s memoir of 1, 132–3, 176 death 13 funeral 4 Impasse Cottin 1–2 Utrillo, Miguel 51 Utter, André 84, 122n42, 247 Uzès (artist) 39 Vache enragée, La (journal) 171, 172 Vaillant, Roger 241 Valadon, Suzanne 1, 2, 84, 122n42, 131, 209, 247, 248 Valdès, Manolo 134 Valentin le Désossé (dancer) 66, 72, 83, 157, 274 Valéry, Paul 104, 198 Vallès, Jules 22 Vallette, Alfred 101, 211 Vallette, Rachilde see Rachilde (Marguerite Valette-Eymery) Valloton, Félix 98 Van Dongen, Kees 59–60, 74, 118, 119, 122, 143, 185, 190 Van Gogh, Théo 29, 99 Van Gogh, Vincent 29, 51, 52, 82, 84, 119, 186 Vanel, Charles 271 Varnedoe, Kirk 128–9, 274 vaudeville 159–60 Vauxcelles, Louis 119, 123

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Ventura, Lino 272–3 Ventura, Ray, et ses Collégiens 165 Vérane, Léon 207 Vercors (Jean Bruller) 195n98 Verhaeren, Emile 102 Verlaine, Paul 40, 42, 98, 131 Vernet, Horace 29 Verneuil, Henri: Cuba à Montmartre (film) 271 Vertès, Marcel 190 Vertex, Jean: Le Village inspiré 177, 259 Vever, Pierre 98 Vian, Boris 52, 53, 166 Vidal, Jules 89 Vie Parisienne, La (journal) 76 Villa, Georges 61 Villa des Arts 116 Villa Les Fusains 116 Villars, Nina de 40 Villeneuve, Julien Vallou de 29 Villiers de l’Isle Adam, Jean-MarieMathias-Philippe-Auguste 40, 54 Villon, Jacques 123, 124, 185, 186 Vizetelly, Ernest Alfred 75, 77 Vlaminck, Maurice de 118–19, 138, 151–2, 190, 209, 247 Voguë, Melchior de 46 Vollard, Ambroise 100, 117 Vonnegut, Kurt 256 Vuillard, Edouard 92, 93, 95, 96–7, 98, 99, 100, 167 Wagner, Richard 95 Waldeck- Rousseau, Pierre 41 walls see Mur des Fermiers Généraux Warnod, André 134, 148, 181, 247 memoirs 177, 180, 183 Warnod, Jeanine 122 Warnod, Joseph 187 Wasley, John 116, 131, 148, 221 Wassilieff, Marie 190 Weber, Pierre 50 Weil, Berthe 117

Weisberg, Gabriel 8 Wells, H.G. 89 Whistler, James Abbott McNeil 32 Whiting, Steven Moore 2, 8, 12–13, 39, 58, 70, 175 Wiegels, Karl-Heinz 122, 228 Wild, Roger 189 Wilde, Oscar 101, 110 Wildenstein, Nathan 31 Willette, Adolphe 36, 39, 42, 55, 56, 61, 64, 92, 117, 118, 148, 185 Chat Noir window 80 and La Lanterne japonaise (journal) 51 and L’Assiette au beurre 59–60 and Le Chat Noir (journal) 45 and Le Rire rouge (journal) 149 literary corpus Enfin voilà le Choléra! 54 L’Age d’or 43 Parce Domine 40, 41, 54, 254 Pierrot poems 171 Te Deum Laudamus 41 posters 68n22 and programme for Le Missionnaire 92 and République de Montmartre 173 and theatre and music hall design 71 and ‘vachalcade’ 51 Willette, Luc 37n16, 61, 68n22, 173 Willette, Pierre 45 Williams, Iain Cameron 165 Willy (Henri Gauthier-Villars) 40, 104 windmills 8, 17–18, 65 window displays 129 Windsor, Duke and Duchess of 163 wine production 15–16, 175 women as artists 190 as artists’ subjects 81 as bar staff 62, 77–8 as dance hall clients 65, 66 and gendered landscape 80 as performers 66, 67, 68, 72, 82 treatment of 61, 204

Index wrestling 72 Wright, Richard 166 Xanrof, Léon 48, 54, 57, 58 xenophobia 135, 139, 149, 159, 164–5, 180; see also anti-Semitism; racism Yaki, Paul 171, 175, 184 Le Montmartre de nos vingt ans 177, 180, 181 Yan, Jean-Claude 113, 114 Yane d’Argent 73 Yeats, W.B. 105

319

YMCA 147 Yon, Edmond Charles Joseph 31 youth culture 52, 178–9 zazous 53 Zelnik, Friedrich 270 Zidler, Charles 71, 274, 276 Ziem, Félix 29 Zimmer, Bernard 112 Zo d’Axa (Alphonse Gallaud de la Pérouse) 98, 131, 136, 138, 255 Zola, Emile 32, 45, 51, 90, 92, 94–5 Les trois villes, Paris 135 zutisme 36–7

1  Vincent Van Gogh: Butte de Montmartre with Stone Quarry (Getty Images)

2  E. La Grange: Paris la nuit. Le Bal du Moulin de la Galette (Roger-Viollet)

3  Le Chat Noir, with Salis declaiming, and Raoul Ponchon, Goudeau, Jules Jouy, Courteline and Willette (Roger-Viollet)

4  The Moulin-Rouge, showing the Elephant (Getty Images)

5  Shadow Play at Le Chat Noir: Pierrot Pornographe, designed by Louis Morin (Musée du Vieux-Montmartre) 6  Adolphe Willette: Parce Domine (detail) (Getty Images)

7  The Théâtre du Chat Noir, 1919: La Marche à l’Etoile (Musée du Vieux-Montmartre)

8  Poster for the Cirque Médrano (Roger-Viollet)

9 Construction of the Sacré-Coeur, 1895 (Roger-Viollet)

10  Pierre Prins: Le Cabaret du Lapin Agile (Roger-Viollet)

11  Demolition in Post-War Montmartre (Roger-Viollet) 12  Charity Christmas Lunch organised by the Commune Libre de Montmartre (Getty Images)

13  German Soldiers in Montmartre during the Occupation (Getty Images)

14  The Liberation: the Revenge of the Petits Poulbots (Getty Images) 

15  Maurice Utrillo and his wife Lucie Valore (Getty Images)

16  Dinner of the ‘Amis de Montmartre’ in the Lapin Agile in 1952: Francis Carco and Jenny Château (Getty Images)