Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 15, No. 90, June, 1875Various
Science
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 15, No. 90, June, 1875
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
Near by is a café concert. A "Grande Soirée Lyrique" is the
entertainment offered us at the Maison Doucieux, as we learn from the
rudely-written handbill which hangs at the entrance. Through a long,
winding, narrow, dark and dirty passage, up a rickety stone staircase,
through another passage, and we stand in a crowded hall, at whose
lower end a rude stage is erected, on which a ragged man is bawling a
comic song. In the midst of it there is a disturbance: a drunken man
has climbed upon the back of a seat to light his pipe at the
chandelier, and falling thence has enraged the fallen-upon to that
extent that a fight ensues. In a twinkling the tipsy man is dragged
out of the door, to the delight of the audience, who shout "Bravo!"
as he disappears. The concert is not entertaining, and we follow him
out. He is carefully propped up against a wall by those who put him
into the street, and when we come upon him is growling maledictions
upon his enemies, with his hair about his eyes and his hands clawing
the air. Four bareheaded women, roaring with laughter, come marching
abreast along the middle of the street, and picking up the drunkard's
battered hat disappear in the gloomy distance, boisterously thrusting
the hat upon each other's heads in turn.
A café chantant of a more pretentious sort than the Maison Doucieux,
but still the peculiar resort of the blousard--for there are café
chantants of many grades in Paris--may be found in one of the back
streets near the Boulevard St. Martin. Some of the cafés chantants are
patronized by the well-dressed class, and a blousard is no more likely
to be seen in their orchestra fauteuils than in the same division of
the regular theatres. The El Dorado, for example, in the Boulevard
Strasbourg, is as large and almost as elegant as Booth's Theatre in
New York, but it is a café chantant. Keeping still to the favorite
haunts of the blousard, we enter the showiest of the cafés chantants
peculiar to him--as free-and-easy a _beuglant_ as one could wish.
Beuglant, by the way, is the argot name of this sort of place; and as
the word comes from _beugler_, to "bellow," it may easily be seen how
flattering it is as a definite noun for a place where the chief
attraction is the singing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account