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_ "THE FAT AND THE THIN," or, to use the French title, "Le Ventre de
Paris," is a story of life in and around those vast Central Markets
which form a distinctive feature of modern Paris. Even the reader who
has never crossed the Channel must have heard of the Parisian
/Halles/, for much has been written about them, not only in English
books on the French metropolis, but also in English newspapers,
magazines, and reviews; so that few, I fancy, will commence the
perusal of the present volume without having, at all events, some
knowledge of its subject matter.
The Paris markets form such a world of their own, and teem at certain
hours of the day and night with such exuberance of life, that it was
only natural they should attract the attention of a novelist like M.
Zola, who, to use his own words, delights "in any subject in which
vast masses of people can be shown in motion." Mr. Sherard tells us[*]
that the idea of "Le Ventre de Paris" first occurred to M. Zola in
1872, when he used continually to take his friend Paul Alexis for a
ramble through the Halles. I have in my possession, however, an
article written by M. Zola some five or six years before that time,
and in this one can already detect the germ of the present work; just
as the motif of another of M. Zola's novels, "La Joie de Vivre," can
be traced to a short story written for a Russian review.
[*] /Emile Zola: a Biographical and Critical Study/, by Robert
Harborough Sherard, pp. 103, 104. London, Chatto & Windus, 1893.
Similar instances are frequently to be found in the writings of
English as well as French novelists, and are, of course, easily
explained. A young man unknown to fame, and unable to procure the
publication of a long novel, often contents himself with embodying
some particular idea in a short sketch or story, which finds its way
into one or another periodical, where it lies buried and forgotten by
everybody--excepting its author. Time goes by, however, the writer
achieves some measure of success, and one day it occurs to him to
elaborate and perfect that old idea of his, only a faint /apercu/ of
which, for lack of opportunity, he had been able to give in the past.
With a little research, no doubt, an interesting essay might be
written on these literary resuscitations; but if one except certain
novelists who are so deficient in ideas that they continue writing and
rewriting the same story throughout their lives, it will, I think, be
generally found that the revivals in question are due to some such
reason as that given above.
It should be mentioned that the article of M. Zola's young days to
which I have referred is not one on market life in particular, but one
on violets. It contains, however, a vigorous, if brief, picture of the
Halles in the small hours of the morning, and is instinct with that
realistic descriptive power of which M. Zola has since given so many
proofs. We hear the rumbling and clattering of the market carts, we
see the piles of red meat, the baskets of silvery fish, the mountains
of vegetables, green and white; in a few paragraphs the whole market
world passes in kaleidoscopic fashion before our eyes by the pale,
dancing light of the gas lamps and the lanterns. Several years after
the paper I speak of was published, when M. Zola began to issue "Le
Ventre de Paris," M. Tournachon, better known as Nadar, the aeronaut
and photographer, rushed into print to proclaim that the realistic
novelist had simply pilfered his ideas from an account of the Halles
which he (Tournachon) had but lately written. M. Zola, as is so often
his wont, scorned to reply to this charge of plagiarism; but, had he
chosen, he could have promptly settled the matter by producing his own
forgotten article.
At the risk of passing for a literary ghoul, I propose to exhume some
portion of the paper in question, as, so far as translation can avail,
it will show how M. Zola wrote and what he thought in 1867. After the
description of the markets to which I have alluded, there comes the
following passage:--
I was gazing at the preparations for the great daily orgy of Paris
when I espied a throng of people bustling suspiciously in a
corner. A few lanterns threw a yellow light upon this crowd.
Children, women, and men with outstretched hands were fumbling in
dark piles which extended along the footway. I thought that those
piles must be remnants of meat sold for a trifling price, and that
all those wretched people were rushing upon them to feed. I drew
near, and discovered my mistake. The heaps were not heaps of meat,
but heaps of violets. All the flowery poesy of the streets of
Paris lay there, on that muddy pavement, amidst mountains of food.
The gardeners of the suburbs had brought their sweet-scented
harvests to the markets and were disposing of them to the hawkers.
From the rough fingers of their peasant growers the violets were
passing to the dirty hands of those who would cry them in the
streets. At winter time it is between four and six o'clock in the
morning that the flowers of Paris are thus sold at the Halles.
Whilst the city sleeps and its butchers are getting all ready for
its daily attack of indigestion, a trade in poetry is plied in
dark, dank corners. When the sun rises the bright red meat will be
displayed in trim, carefully dressed joints, and the violets,
mounted on bits of osier, will gleam softly within their elegant
collars of green leaves. But when they arrive, in the dark night,
the bullocks, already ripped open, discharge black blood, and the
trodden flowers lie prone upon the footways. . . . I noticed just
in front of me one large bunch which had slipped off a
neighbouring mound and was almost bathing in the gutter. I picked
it up. Underneath, it was soiled with mud; the greasy, fetid sewer
water had left black stains upon the flowers. And then, gazing at
these exquisite daughters of our gardens and our woods, astray
amidst all the filth of the city, I began to ponder. On what
woman's bosom would those wretched flowerets open and bloom? Some
hawker would dip them in a pail of water, and of all the bitter
odours of the Paris mud they would retain but a slight pungency,
which would remain mingled with their own sweet perfume. The water
would remove their stains, they would pale somewhat, and become a
joy both for the smell and for the sight. Nevertheless, in the
depths of each corolla there would still remain some particle of
mud suggestive of impurity. And I asked myself how much love and
passion was represented by all those heaps of flowers shivering in
the bleak wind. To how many loving ones, and how many indifferent
ones, and how many egotistical ones, would all those thousands and
thousands of violets go! In a few hours' time they would be
scattered to the four corners of Paris, and for a paltry copper
the passers-by would purchase a glimpse and a whiff of springtide
in the muddy streets.
Imperfect as the rendering may be, I think that the above passage will
show that M. Zola was already possessed of a large amount of his
acknowledged realistic power at the early date I have mentioned. I
should also have liked to quote a rather amusing story of a priggish
Philistine who ate violets with oil and vinegar, strongly peppered,
but considerations of space forbid; so I will pass to another passage,
which is of more interest and importance. Both French and English
critics have often contended that although M. Zola is a married man,
he knows very little of women, as there has virtually never been any
/feminine romance/ in his life. There are those who are aware of the
contrary, but whose tongues are stayed by considerations of delicacy
and respect. Still, as the passage I am now about to reproduce is
signed and acknowledged as fact by M. Zola himself, I see no harm in
slightly raising the veil from a long-past episode in the master's
life:--
The light was rising, and as I stood there before that footway
transformed into a bed of flowers my strange night-fancies gave
place to recollections at once sweet and sad. I thought of my last
excursion to Fontenay-aux-Roses, with the loved one, the good
fairy of my twentieth year. Springtime was budding into birth, the
tender foliage gleamed in the pale April sunshine. The little
pathway skirting the hill was bordered by large fields of violets.
As one passed along, a strong perfume seemed to penetrate one and
make one languid. /She/ was leaning on my arm, faint with love
from the sweet odour of the flowers. A whiteness hovered over the
country-side, little insects buzzed in the sunshine, deep silence
fell from the heavens, and so low was the sound of our kisses that
not a bird in all the hedges showed sign of fear. At a turn of the
path we perceived some old bent women, who with dry, withered
hands were hurriedly gathering violets and throwing them into
large baskets. She who was with me glanced longingly at the
flowers, and I called one of the women. "You want some violets?"
said she. "How much? A pound?"
God of Heaven! She sold her flowers by the pound! We fled in deep
distress. It seemed as though the country-side had been
transformed into a huge grocer's shop. . . . Then we ascended to
the woods of Verrieres, and there, in the grass, under the soft,
fresh foliage, we found some tiny violets which seemed to be
dreadfully afraid, and contrived to hide themselves with all sorts
of artful ruses. During two long hours I scoured the grass and
peered into every nook, and as soon as ever I found a fresh violet
I carried it to her. She bought it of me, and the price that I
exacted was a kiss. . . . And I thought of all those things, of
all that happiness, amidst the hubbub of the markets of Paris,
before those poor dead flowers whose graveyard the footway had
become. I remembered my good fairy, who is now dead and gone, and
the little bouquet of dry violets which I still preserve in a
drawer. When I returned home I counted their withered stems: there
were twenty of them, and over my lips there passed the gentle
warmth of my loved one's twenty kisses.
And now from violets I must, with a brutality akin to that which M.
Zola himself displays in some of his transitions, pass to very
different things, for some time back a well-known English poet and
essayist wrote of the present work that it was redolent of pork,
onions, and cheese. To one of his sensitive temperament, with a muse
strictly nourished on sugar and water, such gross edibles as pork and
cheese and onions were peculiarly offensive. That humble plant the
onion, employed to flavour wellnigh every savoury dish, can assuredly
need no defence; in most European countries, too, cheese has long been
known as the poor man's friend; whilst as for pork, apart from all
other considerations, I can claim for it a distinct place in English
literature. A greater essayist by far than the critic to whom I am
referring, a certain Mr. Charles Lamb, of the India House, has left us
an immortal page on the origin of roast pig and crackling. And, when
everything is considered, I should much like to know why novels should
be confined to the aspirations of the soul, and why they should not
also treat of the requirements of our physical nature? From the days
of antiquity we have all known what befell the members when, guided by
the brain, they were foolish enough to revolt against the stomach. The
latter plays a considerable part not only in each individual organism,
but also in the life of the world. Over and over again--I could adduce
a score of historical examples--it has thwarted the mightiest designs
of the human mind. We mortals are much addicted to talking of our
minds and our souls and treating our bodies as mere dross. But I hold
--it is a personal opinion--that in the vast majority of cases the
former are largely governed by the last. I conceive, therefore, that a
novel which takes our daily sustenance as one of its themes has the
best of all /raisons d'etre/. A foreign writer of far more consequence
and ability than myself--Signor Edmondo de Amicis--has proclaimed the
present book to be "one of the most original and happiest inventions
of French genius," and I am strongly inclined to share his opinion.
It should be observed that the work does not merely treat of the
provisioning of a great city. That provisioning is its /scenario/; but
it also embraces a powerful allegory, the prose song of "the eternal
battle between the lean of this world and the fat--a battle in which,
as the author shows, the latter always come off successful. It is,
too, in its way an allegory of the triumph of the fat bourgeois, who
lives well and beds softly, over the gaunt and Ishmael artist--an
allegory which M. Zola has more than once introduced into his pages,
another notable instance thereof being found in 'Germinal,' with the
fat, well-fed Gregoires on the one hand, and the starving Maheus on
the other."
From this quotation from Mr. Sherard's pages it will be gathered that
M. Zola had a distinct social aim in writing this book. Wellnigh the
whole social question may, indeed, be summed up in the words "food and
comfort"; and in a series of novels like "Les Rougon-Macquart,"
dealing firstly with different conditions and grades of society, and,
secondly, with the influence which the Second Empire exercised on
France, the present volume necessarily had its place marked out from
the very first.
Mr. Sherard has told us of all the labour which M. Zola expended on
the preparation of the work, of his multitudinous visits to the Paris
markets, his patient investigation of their organism, and his keen
artistic interest in their manifold phases of life. And bred as I was
in Paris, a partaker as I have been of her exultations and her woes
they have always had for me a strong attraction. My memory goes back
to the earlier years of their existence, and I can well remember many
of the old surroundings which have now disappeared. I can recollect
the last vestiges of the antique /piliers/, built by Francis I, facing
the Rue de la Tonnellerie. Paul Niquet's, with its "bowel-twisting
brandy" and its crew of drunken ragpickers, was certainly before my
time; but I can readily recall Baratte's and Bordier's and all the
folly and prodigality which raged there; I knew, too, several of the
noted thieves' haunts which took the place of Niquet's, and which one
was careful never to enter without due precaution. And then, when the
German armies were beleaguering Paris, and two millions of people were
shut off from the world, I often strolled to the Halles to view their
strangely altered aspect. The fish pavilion, of which M. Zola has so
much to say, was bare and deserted. The railway drays, laden with the
comestible treasures of the ocean, no longer thundered through the
covered ways. At the most one found an auction going on in one or
another corner, and a few Seine eels or gudgeons fetching wellnigh
their weight in gold. Then, in the butter and cheese pavilions, one
could only procure some nauseous melted fat, while in the meat
department horse and mule and donkey took the place of beef and veal
and mutton. Mule and donkey were very scarce, and commanded high
prices, but both were of better flavour than horse; mule, indeed,
being quite a delicacy. I also well remember a stall at which dog was
sold, and, hunger knowing no law, I once purchased, cooked, and ate a
couple of canine cutlets which cost me two francs apiece. The flesh
was pinky and very tender, yet I would not willingly make such a
repast again. However, peace and plenty at last came round once more,
the Halles regained their old-time aspect, and in the years which
followed I more than once saw the dawn rise slowly over the mounds of
cabbages, carrots, leeks, and pumpkins, even as M. Zola describes in
the following pages. He has, I think, depicted with remarkable
accuracy and artistic skill the many varying effects of colour that
are produced as the climbing sun casts its early beams on the giant
larder and its masses of food--effects of colour which, to quote a
famous saying of the first Napoleon, show that "the markets of Paris
are the Louvre of the people" in more senses than one.
The reader will bear in mind that the period dealt with by the author
in this work is that of 1857-60, when the new Halles Centrales were
yet young, and indeed not altogether complete. Still, although many
old landmarks have long since been swept away, the picture of life in
all essential particulars remained the same. Prior to 1860 the limits
of Paris were the so-called /boulevards exterieurs/, from which a
girdle of suburbs, such as Montmartre, Belleville, Passy, and
Montrouge, extended to the fortifications; and the population of the
city was then only 1,400,000 souls. Some of the figures which will be
found scattered through M. Zola's work must therefore be taken as
applying entirely to the past.
Nowadays the amount of business transacted at the Halles has very
largely increased, in spite of the multiplication of district markets.
Paris seems to have an insatiable appetite, though, on the other hand,
its cuisine is fast becoming all simplicity. To my thinking, few more
remarkable changes have come over the Parisians of recent years than
this change of diet. One by one great restaurants, formerly renowned
for particular dishes and special wines, have been compelled through
lack of custom to close their doors; and this has not been caused so
much by inability to defray the cost of high feeding as by inability
to indulge in it with impunity in a physical sense. In fact, Paris has
become a city of impaired digestions, which nowadays seek the
simplicity without the heaviness of the old English cuisine; and,
should things continue in their present course, I fancy that Parisians
anxious for high feeding will ultimately have to cross over to our
side of the Channel.
These remarks, I trust, will not be considered out of place in an
introduction to a work which to no small extent treats of the appetite
of Paris. The reader will find that the characters portrayed by M.
Zola are all types of humble life, but I fail to see that their
circumstances should render them any the less interesting. A faithful
portrait of a shopkeeper, a workman, or a workgirl is artistically of
far more value than all the imaginary sketches of impossible dukes and
good and wicked baronets in which so many English novels abound.
Several of M. Zola's personages seem to me extremely lifelike--Gavard,
indeed, is a /chef-d'oeuvre/ of portraiture: I have known many men
like him; and no one who lived in Paris under the Empire can deny the
accuracy with which the author has delineated his hero Florent, the
dreamy and hapless revolutionary caught in the toils of others. In
those days, too, there was many such a plot as M. Zola describes,
instigated by agents like Logre and Lebigre, and allowed to mature
till the eve of an election or some other important event which
rendered its exposure desirable for the purpose of influencing public
opinion. In fact, in all that relates to the so-called "conspiracy of
the markets," M. Zola, whilst changing time and place to suit the
requirements of his story, has simply followed historical lines. As
for the Quenus, who play such prominent parts in the narrative, the
husband is a weakling with no soul above his stewpans, whilst his
wife, the beautiful Lisa, in reality wears the breeches and rules the
roast. The manner in which she cures Quenu of his political
proclivities, though savouring of persuasiveness rather than violence,
is worthy of the immortal Mrs. Caudle: Douglas Jerrold might have
signed a certain lecture which she administers to her astounded
helpmate. Of Pauline, the Quenus' daughter, we see but little in the
story, but she becomes the heroine of another of M. Zola's novels, "La
Joie de Vivre," and instead of inheriting the egotism of her parents,
develops a passionate love and devotion for others. In a like way
Claude Lantier, Florent's artist friend and son of Gervaise of the
"Assommoir," figures more particularly in "L'Oeuvre," which tells how
his painful struggle for fame resulted in madness and suicide. With
reference to the beautiful Norman and the other fishwives and gossips
scattered through the present volume, and those genuine types of
Parisian /gaminerie/, Muche, Marjolin, and Cadine, I may mention that
I have frequently chastened their language in deference to English
susceptibilities, so that the story, whilst retaining every essential
feature, contains nothing to which exception can reasonably be taken.
E. A. V. _
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