Vie de Bohème: A Patch of Romantic ParisWilliams, Orlo
History
Vie de Bohème: A Patch of Romantic Paris
Williams, Orlo
Paris (France) -- Intellectual life; Paris (France) -- Social life and customs
The left bank has changed no less than the right. The luxurious quarter
of the Faubourg Saint-Germain has spread immeasurably, and even where
old streets remain, as many do in the Quartier Latin, their houses have
been rebuilt. Many a Bohemian could probably have told a parallel to
Champfleury's touching story of how, long after his mistress had left
him, he witnessed by chance the demolition of an old wall of a house in
the quarter, and there on the topmost story was laid bare the room, with
its very wallpaper unchanged, where they spent so many happy months of
youth and love. In particular, this part of Paris was cleared and aired
by the construction of those two very important thoroughfares, the
Boulevard Saint-Germain, which broke through a host of little streets,
including the rampageous Rue Childebert, and the Boulevard Saint-Michel,
which replaced and widened the straggling old Rue de la Harpe. Before
these were made, the Quartier Latin had not a single main street, though
it was not quite so uncivilized as the Halles quarter, nor so large.
Southwards by the gardens of the Luxembourg it soon became comparatively
_bourgeois_ and spacious with pleasant houses and gardens, built
originally for rich nobles and prelates, but relinquished at the
dictation of fashion to prosperous tradespeople and officials like the
Phellions and Thuilliers of Balzac's "Les Petits Bourgeois." Searches
for vestiges of Bohemia in general on either side of the Boulevard
Saint-Germain are fruitful enough; many an _hôtel garni_ recalls that in
which Lucien first hid his diminished head, or the early home of Arsène
Houssaye, when Nini Yeux Noirs was his divinity and revolution his
creed. Specific quests, however, are apt to be disappointing. The Rue
des Quatre Vents, the headquarters of d'Arthez' _cénacle_, in Balzac's
time "one of the most horrible streets in Paris," remains blamelessly
near Saint-Sulpice as dull and decent as the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne;
and the Rue Vaugirard, where the second _cénacle_, headed by Pétrus
Borel, held its frantic orgies round the punch-bowl and where Murger
wrote his "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," is devoid of any spark of
romance. On the other hand, a visit to the delightful Cour de Rohan,
just off the Boulevard Saint-Germain, will land you _en pleine Bohème_,
as will certain streets leading up towards the Church of Saint-Etienne
du Mont, or the narrow passages by the Church of Saint-Séverin. It is
just too late to see another unmistakable relic of Balzac's Paris, for
the Maison Vauquer of "Père Goriot" has just been pulled down. Yet to
make a pilgrimage to its site gives a very good impression of the
gloominess which Bohemian high spirits had usually to combat. The
Maison Vauquer stood near the junction of the Rue des Postes and the Rue
Neuve Sainte-Geneviève, now the Rue Lhomond, and the Rue Tournefort,
south of the Panthéon. I have walked down the Rue Lhomond at three on a
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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