Daily Life During the French Revolution (33 page)

Some establishments were open 24 hours a day. At a shop in
the rue St. Honoré, for the gaping provincials, the women pretended to be nuns
who had escaped from a convent without having time to put on any clothes as
they recounted bizarre tales of how they were forced to take vows.

Various schemes were put forward, not to totally suppress
prostitution but to control it. The popular writer Restif de Bretonne suggested
that the girls, protected by the state, be accommodated in convenient houses
where a council of 12 citizens of proven morality, such as the notary and the
commander of the National Guard of the town, might watch over them. The council
would select a matron-in-charge and a governess. Various entries between
courtyards and gardens would permit clients to slip into the houses unseen, and
ticket offices would be installed, similar to those at a theater. Presumably,
the client would purchase his ticket and entered the house of his choice.

11 - URBAN LIFE

A ROYAL VISIT TO PARIS

On
the morning of June 8, 1773, as Louis XV lay dying, the dauphin and dauphine,
the future king and queen of France, prepared for their first visit together to
Paris in what was termed the Joyous Entry.

In anticipation of the royal visit, all activities in the
city were suspended, shops closed, livestock banned from the streets, and
peddlers prohibited along the royal route. Babies left at the gate of the
foundling hospital the night before were snatched up by nuns and taken out of
sight. Thousands of beggars were cleared from the route or locked up for the
day so that the royal sensitivities would not be offended by the sight of
tremulous limbs, ragged clothes, and unwashed bodies. The multitude of
prostitutes who plied their trade among the crowds of the Palais Royal were
compelled to seek their livelihood elsewhere, although many could be seen among
the spectators waiting for a glimpse of the royal entourage.

Among the cheering throngs, all the complexities of the
Parisian population were evident: prosperous bourgeois—many of them doctors,
bankers, lawyers, and businessmen—mixed with tradesmen and artisans. Now and
again a colorfully dressed aristocrat appeared, his trailing sword and scabbard
the mark of noble distinction.

Elbowing for room in the front rows were also lower
bourgeois— craftsmen, grocers, vintners, tanners, and a legion of casual
laborers and apprentices—given the day off from their workshops. Water
carriers, street porters, bargemen from the river docks, and chimneysweeps all
were present, the color of their work embedded in their skin. Prettily dressed
embroiderers vied for front places, and fishermen abandoned their nets in the
Seine to catch a view of the royal couple. Nuns and monks strove like the rest
to push through the crowds to a desirable place. There were also pickpockets
and cutpurses, anonymous in the crowd but greedily eyeing the more affluent.
From villages near Paris, peasants had walked throughout the night for a
glimpse of the future rulers.

When the first of the four royal coaches came into view,
the cannon of the Invalides, as well as those of the Bastille and the Hôtel de
Ville, announced their arrival, their discharges echoing across the city as
black smoke rose into the clear, warm sky. The coaches rattled through the gate
of the Porte de la Conférence, where the orchestra added its milder refrains to
the general cacophony. Carriages filled with city officials and soldiers
waiting at the gate fell into line behind the procession. The crowds, cheering
and singing the songs printed on sheets especially for the occasion, drowned out
the orchestra. Police and soldiers forced the people back with whips and the
flat of their swords to keep them from overwhelming the royal coach as it
headed for Mass at Nôtre Dame along the flower-strewn streets. Later, the royal
couple was again mobbed when they went to dine at the Tuileries. Antoinette was
only 17 years of age, and it was the first time she had seen Paris. She was
excited. Little did she or anyone else anticipate the impending events that
soon would overtake them all.

CITY LIFE

A hub of activity, Paris was busy most of the time. At one
or two in the morning, the day began for many farmers living in the outskirts.
Along the main thoroughfares into the city, residents had to contend, long
before daybreak, six days a week, with the plodding hooves of the farmers’
horses and mules, echoing in the cobblestone streets as they pulled
produce-laden carts toward the central market.

An earlier riser, strolling through the avenues in 1789 a
little before the 5:00 a.m. Mass, would encounter lines of people already in
front of the bakers’ shops waiting for them to open. Those in line were mostly
servants of the wealthy, poor working women, and the wives of laborers. Mingled
with the pleasant aroma of fresh bread from the bakers’ ovens—loaves of four,
six, or eight pounds—was the scent of hot coffee from the carts of the
streetside vendors.

Suddenly, one’s attention would be captured by the tolling
of bells of the numerous churches and monasteries in the city, each claiming a
voice in the early dawn. The crow of roosters and barking dogs joined in. At
this early hour, agreeable smells emanated onto the streets from the
monasteries in which the monks were already cooking, and from the homes of the
well-to-do, where servants were beginning to prepare the afternoon meal—the
primary one of the day. Between six and seven, the streets were filled with
laborers on their way to the workshops. About nine or ten, the wine shops
opened for business, and workers emerged from their ateliers and shops to have
a little bread and wine after putting in several hours on the job.

The fragrance of fresh apples, pears, peaches, and apricots
filled the street, if the season was right, from a grocer’s store or a corner
market in the heart of the city, but then further on the powerful smell of fish
already too long in the open air would take over, followed by the satisfying
aroma of Brie or goat cheese from a
fromagerie
and, still later, that of
roasting meat and stale beer. From a dark alleyway, the foul odor of urine and
feces, human and animal, assailed the senses. Reaching Les Halles, the central
market, everything combined into one homogenized essence of vegetables, grain,
fruit, herbs, cheese, and fish, along with the odor from the sweat of hundreds
of horses, donkeys, and mules, excrement, and decayed food. The pink carcasses
of skinned hogs, speckled with black flies, hung from hooks above some stalls.
Nearby, the overwhelming stench of rotting bodies from the
Cimetière des
Innocents,
where a little lime covered the corpses decomposing in large
pits, permeated the area. From the slaughterhouses in the city, the blood ran
down the streets into the sewers, some drying on the pavements and giving off
an appalling smell. The air was pungent along the Seine from the great sewers
that flowed into the river, and, even in the lovely gardens of the Tuileries,
by the river, multitudes of people defecated regularly.

The flower market on the bank of the river presented an
enjoyable interruption, radiating perfume and color. Markets specializing in
specific products could be found throughout the city; for instance, on the left
bank of the Seine stood the market of la Vallée, crowded with shoppers buying
cooked or fresh poultry.

When the wind blew from the southeast, it filled the
streets with smells from the distant Montagne Ste. Geneviève and the tiny river
Biève, where breweries processed hops for beer and starch factories emitted
their strong odor along with the rank of drying hides from the tanneries. On
the slope of Ste. Geneviève was the University of Paris, with its faculty of
theology, called the Sorbonne. Around the university were numerous bookshops,
monasteries, and convents. The tomb of the patron saint of Paris, who inspired
the city’s defense against the Huns in 451 A.D., lay in the mausoleum on the
summit. The site was important to Parisians as a place of pilgrimage.

Those people with money frequented the affluent areas of
the western part of the city or the aristocratic faubourg St. Germain or the
faubourg St. Honoré, close to the Tuileries palace. Here, they were ideally
situated to attend the opera and the best theaters. They were also near the rue
St. Honoré, with its shops selling luxury furniture and clothes, and a short
carriage ride from the rue St. Denis and its displays of exquisite lacework and
beautiful cloth.

Visitors and residents alike enjoyed the gothic cathedral
of Nôtre Dame on the Ile de la Cité, an island in the river Seine reached by
bridges. Nearby was the enormous central hospital,
l’Hôtel-Dieu,
and
also on the island stood the ensemble of law courts, the Palais de Justice,
home of the parlement of Paris.

Within working sections of the city, the residents were
familiar with the sounds of cobblers hammering at their benches, lathes humming
in the workshops of the woodworkers, and the raucous cries of the street
vendors offering for sale tobacco, brandy, ribbons, religious objects,
bracelets, earrings, necklaces, and sundry bits of food. Tables were set up for
this purpose on busy corners. Even a deaf resident who lived close to the river
would feel the vibrations of the blows of the 2,000 or so washerwomen hammering
the linen with wooden batons. On the bridges over the Seine, musicians and
ballad singers congregated, and makeshift outside theaters often drew a crowd.
Sometimes citizens might amuse themselves tormenting the prisoners in the
market pillories, where convicted criminals were forced to spend two hours a
day in the stocks for all to mock.

Shops that lined the poorer streets accommodated various
tooth pullers, sellers of poultices and ointments, shoe menders, bakeries, and
secondhand dealers of everything, including clothes, paintings, and books. The
urban lower classes comprised laborers in building construction, carpenters,
street cleaners and vendors, shop assistants, servants, water or wood carriers,
street performers, men and women of the market stalls, factory workers,
stagehands, laundry women, and a host of other poorly paid people with no
skills and little or no education. They lived in the impoverished sections of
the cities and were the first to suffer when food shortages led to higher
prices, rents went up, or a cold spell increased the price of firewood.

To the east, beyond the huge fortress of the Bastille, lay
the faubourg St. Antoine, where many thousands of artisans worked and lived.
There, dingy workshops crowded into narrow streets; much of the city’s
manufacturing took place in neighborhoods seldom visited by most people, native
or tourist. To leave the main thoroughfares and venture into the labyrinth of
back streets was always a challenge for the uninitiated. Only those people who
had lived in the area for many years could find their way around.

People in the city who were not employed in some kind of
paid work often spent time on the streets of their neighborhoods. Women
gossiped while waiting in line to collect water at fountains (about one-third
of houses had wells, and the affluent had water delivered) or sat on chairs
outside their doors, embroidering or sewing. Some kept an eye on their small
children as they played in the street. The women of the quarter saw one another
again and again at the fruit market, the baker’s, the grocer’s, or the pastry
shop, where, for a couple of sous, they could indulge in a small cake.

The chatter would certainly have been about such things as
the price of bread, who was pregnant, who had lost a baby, the plight of the
woman whose husband had suffered an injury at work, who was unemployed, and who
had found a job. The young lady down the street was seen with a soldier; she
must be a whore, or she could have the pox. Women seldom ventured beyond the
limits of their districts alone, and often it was with neighbors that they went
to the big markets or down to the laundry boats on the river to wash clothes.

The neighborhoods were not unlike villages. Everyone knew
everyone else’s business, habits, daily activities, movements, and moods.
Residents knew who was profiting, who was not, who was courting whom, and what
progress was being made. Thin walls and narrow streets allowed for little
privacy. Who drank too much, which couples fought all the time, when people
went to bed, what time they got up—all was common knowledge in the quarter.

Quarrels and complaints between neighbors were often aired
in the street, drawing a crowd that listened to the curses and insults and
passed judgment. A neighbor had borrowed some firewood and never returned the
equivalent. A young girl had snatched the doll of another and tried to keep it.
The couple in the apartment above was always falling about drunk, causing great
thumps in the night. The washing hanging from a window obstructed someone
else’s view of the street. Sometimes the arguments went on for years. The
onlookers were often amused by the wrangling, but they were also ready to
prevent physical encounters that might lead to injury.

In their leisure time, men could generally be found playing
a card or board game at the local wine shop or spending time with the family
sitting by the fire, but, with the price of wood, this could be more expensive
than drinking with the boys. Some days, time might be spent visiting friends
and relatives to dine and play cards, dominos, or backgammon or just to talk
and catch up with the latest news. On holy days, they strolled along the avenues
or beside the river with their wives or girlfriends. On Sundays, residents,
especially courting couples, liked to leave the city for the villages a little
beyond the customs houses, where prices in taverns were cheaper and the air and
surroundings more pleasant. Neighborhood groups often went out together to the
vineyards and open fields and enjoyed the quiet and serene environment.