Life in 19th Century Paris

by Iva Polansky

  Act Two lasted from midnight to 6:00 AM. It began with one or several cups of tea preceding a turtle soup and featured Indian six-chicken curry, salmon with spring onions, deer cutlets with peppers, sole fillets with truffle sauce, artichokes with Java pepper, rum sherbet, Scottish partridge in whiskey, rum puddings, and strongly spiced English pastries. Drinks served with this session consisted of three bottles of Burgundy and three bottles of Bordeaux for each participant.

  The final part of the food marathon began at 6:00 AM and ended at noon. They started with an extremely peppered onion soup, followed by a quantity of savory pastries and four bottles of champagne per head. Then they passed to coffee with a pousse-café of an entire bottle of cognac, kirsch or rum.

  I will restrain myself from any commentary on the ill effects of overeating. One can only marvel at the extraordinary endurance of the human body under such onslaught of food and drink.

  Food: Not So Good

  The American columnist Charles Carrol Fulton, visited Paris in the summer of 1873. In a series of letters for The Baltimore American he faithfully reported his impressions. With a transparent enthusiasm, he described the beauty and amenities of Paris and his admiration for the efficient way in which the city was run. Of the food alas, he had nothing good to say.

  From Europe Viewed Through American Spectacles by Charles C. Fulton. Text written in 1873.

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  Nearly all American families residing in Paris soon break away from the boarding-houses, hire a suite of furnished rooms, employ servants and go regularly to housekeeping. They endure French cooking and French living until they can stand it no longer, and then start off “on their own hook”. During the five weeks we have been at the French pension two families have already left and gone to housekeeping, and a third is now preparing to follow their example. They are here for the education of their children, and, proposing to remain a couple of years, soon discovered that it would be impossible to endure French living. Still, this house has the reputation of keeping the best table in Paris, but the manner of serving the dishes is so unreasonable that the enjoyment of food is destroyed.

  Think of serving roast beef without potatoes or vegetables, and, when it is masticated, having peas or beans, that would have been so delightful to eat with it, served separately. Then the deserts are always a mélange of some kind, so mixed that it is impossible to tell what you are eating, and would puzzle an Andrews or Coleman and Rogers to analyze them. A lady remarked at the table to-day that she ate everything mechanically, without a thought as to what it was, contenting herself with the reflection that she would relish home food better when she got there.

  “Well, mother,” responded a sharp-witted daughter at her side, who had probably been reading Mark Twain, “you can’t expect to enjoy sweet potatoes and hot corn, with Michael Angelo and Worth the dressmaker, all at one time.”

  Breakfast is served in the rooms to each boarder as soon as it is called for, consisting of coffee and bread and butter. At twelve o’clock a lunch is served, of three or four separate courses, generally fried eggs, then beefsteak, or veal-cutlet, and fruit, after all of which is disposed off, coffee is served. Dinner is ready at six o’clock, requiring an hour and a half to dispose of it, each article being served separately and the plates changed, the vegetables invariably following the meat, but never with it. The food is all good enough, and much more abundant than at the hotel table-d’hôte, and would be very palatable if not served up in this nonsensical way. There is also an abundance of wine at both lunch and dinner.

  “How I long to get home to enjoy a good square meal!” is the constant exclamation of an American wanderer.

  We must not neglect to add that the parties who have gone to housekeeping since our sojourn here reported progress, and are delighted with the experience, viz: muffins, waffles or flannel-cakes for breakfast, with beefsteak and ham and eggs; dinner at two o’clock, with roast chicken and boiled ham, potatoes, peas, and Baltimore pearl hominy, all spread out on the table at once, to the horror of French cooks and servants; supper at eight o’clock, with coffee, cold chicken, and hot rolls from the Boston Bakery, on Boulevard Malesherbes. They are seriously contemplating buckwheat-cakes and pumpkin pie.

  The only boarding house in Paris which serves meals in American style is Madame Dejon’s, No. 29 Rue Caumartin, but their table has become so popular that more than a hundred Americans from the Grand and other hotels in the vicinity dine there daily. They have literally turned this once-quiet boarding-house into a refectory, much to the discomfort of the home-guests. We should not wonder if some of these American ladies who have just started housekeeping on a small scale would ultimately develop into American boarding-house-keepers, and revolutionize the mode of eating in all these establishments. To an American it seems contrary to reason and common sense to be eating peas and beans as a separate dish, and meats without vegetables. Their guests are all American or English, and the sooner the revolution is commenced the better.

  The Scarcity of Water

  “You must not drink water,” is the constant cry of the hotel-keepers in Paris, and the addition of ice to it, we are assured, makes it rank poison. It is pretty much the same all over the Continent, water being regarded as of no manner of importance except for fountains, cascades, and to drive water-wheels. If at dinner you tell the waiter that you do not wish any wine, he looks at you aghast, and repeats the question two or three times to be sure that he has properly understood you. He reports the fact to the headwaiter, and he, confident that the stupid fellow has misunderstood, comes himself to inquire, “What wine will monsieur have?”

  The wine furnished at the hotels is so horrible in quality that it is not fit to be drunk. They evidently export all their best wines, and keep the common kinds for home consumption. The prices are also exorbitant, and it is evidently the large profit that the hotel-keeper makes which occasions so much anxiety that all his guests should have large wine-bills, and that all shall dine at the table-d’hôte, where it would be rank heresy for any one to fail to call for wine. When water is called for it is brought so warm as not to be drinkable, and it requires a half-hour’s notice to obtain a few small lumps of ice to cool it. […] If water is called for in a store or private house, they bring the sugar-dish with it, the idea being that water is unhealthy without being mixed with something else.

  French Bread, French Teeth

  The next most deleterious article to cold water, in the estimation of a Frenchman, is bread that is eaten before it is twelve hours out of the oven. It is then nearly all crust, and requires the best of masticators to chew it. Most elderly French men and women have their teeth worn down to stumps, probably from long service on the very hard bread universally eaten by rich and poor.

  Those who expect to find superior cakes in the confectionery stores will be greatly mistaken, as they all seem to be made out of greasy pie-crust. Nothing can be more beautiful than the display of cakes and condiments in the stores, but to an American fond of home-made cakes they are both unpalatable, and unwholesome. If an ice-cream is called for they serve it with a tasteless kind of wafer-cake so thin as to be curled up in little rolls, and so brittle that it will break to pieces with the slightest pressure. This is the only cake that can be had in the ice-cream saloons. The cost of small wineglass of ice-cream is twenty cents, and it is much inferior in quality to our American cream. Ice-water is served with it, the ice being frozen by chemical process. This may possibly be costly, and adds to the price of the cream.

  Extreme Food Recycling

  The story of Père Fabrice, who amassed a fortune in Paris, is told in Paris with Pen and Pencil by David W. Bartlett, published in 1854. Caution: Do not read this before or immediately after a meal.

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  Fabrice had always a turn for speculation, and being a private soldier he made money by selling small articles to his fellow soldiers. When his term of service had expired, he entered the employ of a rag-merchant, and in a littl
e while proposed a partnership with his master, who laughed at his impudence. He then set up an opposition shop, and lost all he had saved in a month.

  He then became a porter at the halles where turkeys were sold. He noticed that those which remained unsold, in a day or two lost half their value. He asked the old women how the customers knew the turkeys were not fresh. They replied that the legs changed from a bright black to a dingy brown. Fabrice went home, was absent the next day from the halles, and on the third day returned with a bottle of liquid. Seizing hold of the first brown-legged turkey he met with, he forthwith painted its legs out of the contents of his bottle, and placing the thus decorated bird by the side of one just killed, he asked who now was able to see the difference between the fresh bird and the stale one? The old women were seized with admiration. They are a curious set of beings, those dames de la halle; their admiration is unbounded for successful adventurers—witness their enthusiasm for Louis Napoleon [Napoleon III]. They adopted our friend's idea without hesitation, made an agreement with him on the principle of the division of profits; and it immediately became a statistical puzzle with the curious inquirers on these subjects, how it came to pass that stale turkeys should have all at once disappeared from the Paris market? It was set down to the increase of prosperity consequent on the constitutional régime and the wisdom of the citizen-king. The old women profited largely; but unfortunately, like the rest of the world, they in time forgot both their enthusiasm and their benefactor, and Père Fabrice found himself involved in a daily succession of squabbles about his half-profits. Tired out at last, he made an arrangement with the old dames, and, in military phrase, sold out.

  Possessed now of about double the capital with which he entered, he recollected his old friend, the rag-merchant, and went a second time to propose a partnership. 'I am a man of capital now,' he said; 'you need not laugh so loud this time.' The rag-merchant asked the amount of his capital; and when he heard it, whistled Ninon dormait, and turned upon his heel. 'No wonder,' said Fabrice afterward; 'I little knew then what a rag-merchant was worth. That man could have bought up two of Louis Philippe's ministers of finance.' At the time, however, he did not take the matter so philosophically, and resolved, after the fashion of his class, not to drown himself, but to make a night of it. He found a friend, and went with him to dine at a small eating-house. While there, they noticed the quantity of broken bread thrown under the tables by the reckless and quarrelsome set that frequented the place; and his friend remarked, that if all the bread so thrown about were collected, it would feed half the quartier. Fabrice said nothing; but he was in search of an idea, and he took up his friend's.

  The next day, he called on the restaurateur, and asked him for what he would sell the broken bread he was accustomed to sweep in the dustpan. The bread he wanted, it should be observed, was a very different thing from the fragments left upon the table; these had been consecrated to the marrow's soup from time immemorial. He wanted the dirty bread actually thrown under the table, which even a Parisian restaurateur of the Quartier Latin, whose business it was to collect dirt and crumbs, had hitherto thrown away. Our restaurateur caught eagerly at the offer, made a bargain for a small sum; and Master Fabrice forthwith proceeded to about a hundred eating-houses of the same kind, with all of whom he made similar bargains. Upon this he established a bakery, extending his operations till there was scarcely a restaurant in Paris of which the sweepings did not find their way to the oven of Père Fabrice. Hence it is that the fourpenny restaurants are supplied; hence it is that the itinerant venders of gingerbread find their first material. Let any man who eats bread at any very cheap place in the capital take warning, if his stomach goes against the idea of a réchauffé of bread from the dust-hole. Fabrice, notwithstanding some extravagances with the fair sex, became a millionaire; and the greatest glory of his life was—that he lived to eclipse his old master, the rag-merchant.

  The French Art of Drinking without Getting Drunk

  English and American visitors to France marveled at the quantities of alcohol consumed in public places and the lack of visible consequences. Here are some personal observations written between 1870 and the end of the century:

  “The extreme instances of French sociable habits in their full development are the men, who, on getting up in the morning, go straight to a café for a glass of white wine, which means half a bottle, or sometimes a bottle. Whilst drinking this, or immediately after, they smoke one or two pipes or cigars. The conversation lasts some time, they take a little turn, or if they have anything to do before déjeuner, perhaps they may decide to do it. It is possible (we are supposing an extreme case) that absinthe may be considered needful to prepare the system for the work of digestion, which is a reason for returning to the café.

  The déjeuner itself is a great gastronomical piece of business, if the man is an epicure; and during the course of it he will drink his bottle of wine. Then he will return to the café for his cup of coffee and little glass of pure cognac. After that he smokes, talks, lounges, does a little business of some kind, is surprised to find that it is already four o’clock to meet his friends at the café again to drink beer, or absinthe, or bitters. Dinner comes next, and during dinner, another bottle of wine is absorbed. After that meal, our friend returns to the café, and talks, or plays billiards, cards, or dominoes till eleven, smoking most of the time and drinking Strasburg beer.

  We will leave out of consideration for the present the gastronomical part of such an existence, which is not the least anxiously cared for. The reader perceives that the habits just described keep a man in a state of perpetual alcoholic stimulus. One drink has not exhausted its effect before it is succeeded by another, and this from eight or nine in the morning till eleven o'clock at night. A series of small customs have so arranged themselves as a tradition from other bonvivants who have gone before, that by simple conformity to these a man may be constantly alcoholized.

  The reader is not to suppose for a moment that such a Frenchman as I am now describing, is ever drunk, in any degree perceptible to other people. He has always so perfectly the control of his reason that it even becomes doubtful whether he feels any pleasure from his drinking. Perhaps he feels no other sensations than those of the normal physical life, but the white wine, absinthe, red wine, coffee, cognac, beer, bitters, red wine again, beer again till bed-time, have become necessary to prevent him from sinking into mental dejection or physical prostration. The effect upon health, provided only that the slave of these habits does not smoke incessantly, and does not take absinthe more than once a day, is imperceptible in strong men for many years, and at the worst only seems to necessitate an annual trip to take some kind of waters.” Philip Gilbert Hamerton

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  “Intoxication is almost unknown in the better cafés; their patrons may sear their oesophagi with hot chartreuse, derange the nerves with absinthe, stimulate themselves hourly with their little cups of black coffee and brandy; but they never get drunk. Frenchmen are temperate, even in their intemperance. An English gin-mill and probably an American bar causes more drunkenness than a dozen French cafés.” George H. Heffner

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  “One may, in fact, pass a whole year in a large French city, even in Paris itself, and still not witness a single case of insobriety.” The Cunard Souvenir Guide

  The Belle Epoque Catering Extravaganza

  Who do you call when you need to throw a party for the Queen of England or an international summit? There is only one caterer that will do. The firm has a list of experiences reaching as far as 1856 on the occasion of the Prince Imperial’s baptism celebration. Potel et Chabot satisfied the demands of Napoleon III and since then they have been firmly established as the best in the world. In 1900, Potel et Chabot reached a culinary record that remains unsurpassed to this day. The legendary feast is known as the Banquet des Maires. Twenty-one thousand French mayors, including those from the colonies, responded to President Émile Loubet’s invitation to celebrate the success of th
e Exposition Universelle.

  The area of the banquet in the Jardin des Tuileries covered 10,000 acres. 24,000 meals were served by the staff of 3,600. One car and six bicycles circulated between the tables to transmit orders. Over 6 miles of table-cloth was needed as well as 125,000 plates, 55,000 forks, 55,000 spoons and 60,000 knives. The nine-part menu was washed down with 39,000 bottles of quality wine including champagne. 3,000 bottles of gros-rouge were allotted to the perspiring staff.

  I don’t know who paid the bill, but I bet that in today’s economic situation the question would be on every taxpayer's lips.

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  Public Works and Services

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  The Government of Paris: A Success Story

  The American columnist Charles Carrol Fulton, visited Paris in the summer of 1873. In a series of letters for The Baltimore American he faithfully reported his impressions. With a transparent enthusiasm, he described the beauty and amenities of Paris and his admiration for the efficient way in which the city was run:

  It may be of interest to our City Fathers to know in what way the means for carrying on the expensive city government of Paris are obtained. Everything that is brought into Paris in the shape of food for sale must pay an octroi, or entrance duty, at the gates of the city, or, if by boats, at the wharf before it is landed. The receipts from this source last year amounted to 102,286,000 francs, or $20,448,000; market dues, $2,000,000; weights and measures, $21,020; supply of water, 1,028,000; slaughter houses, $600,000; rents of stands in the public ways, 90,060; dues on burials, $140,000; sales of lands in cemeteries, $139,000; taxes for pawing, lighting, etc., $2,100,000; trade-licenses, $3,500,000; dog tax $90,000; sale of night-soil, $132,000: total receipts, $39,556,410.