Paris society had always thrived on new thrills and Tout-Paris thronged to the opening of Le Chat Noir, in 1880. Its founder, the bohemian Rodolphe Salis, collaborated with Emile Godeau, who brought with him from the Latin Quarter its literary spirit and humour, adapting it to the new environment.

The Montmartre genre, with its crude, cocky wit was born. "God created the world, Napoleon the Légion d'honneur, but I created Montmartre!" Salis rightly claimed. Debussy, Steinlen and Willette, who had painted the famous poster for the cabaret, could be seen here, as well as the future Edward VII of England, who seems to have frequented every establishment of Belle-Epoque Paris. However, Le Chat Noir was located next to the Elysée-Montmartre and the Boule-Noire on the Boulevard de Rochechouart, and this was lower-class territory. If a bourgeois wished to come here, he had better keep a low profile. Pestered by the undesirable visitors, Salis eventually moved the cabaret a few blocks south, to the safer environment of rue Victor Massé (see feature on the 9th arrondissement).

Aristide Bruant, who was one of the performers at Le Chat Noir and was immortalised by Toulouse-Lautrec in his black, wide-brimmed felt hat and red neck scarf, took over the old premises on Boulevard de Rochechouart where he operated his own cabaret, Le Mirliton. This time there was going to be no social segregation and the bourgeois rushed in, delighted to be the butt of Bruant's jokes. Night after night, top-hatted, monocled men had their airs and graces dragged in the mud in his verses, while their bejewelled companions were urged to dump their strait-laced gentlemen and instead go after one of the he-men prowling around. When one such woman, with her husband's encouragement, did just that, it ended in a bloodbath: Disgusted both by her husband, who was hoping vicariously to regain his failing virility, and by the common brute, she ended by murdering them both in the beautiful setting of her townhouse.

 1 2 3 Next >