Expatica France is pleased to offer a historical and cultural tour of Paris from City of Light expert Thirza Vallois. We continue our tour in the nineteenth arrondissement, to revisit the decadent past of La Villette.

Before 1986,when thesite of the main slaughterhouse and the premises of the livestock market of Paris were metamorphosed into, respectively, a science museum and a multipurpose entertainment hall, as part of the new 35-hectare Parc de la Villette, the only reason for a bourgeois from western Paris to come all the way to these remote infamous parts of north-eastern Paris was the prospect of a gastronomic meal at Le Cochon d'Or, Au Boeuf Couronné or Dagorno on Avenue Jean Jaurès. Such establishments took pride in the quality of their meat, freshly supplied from the slaugherhouse of La Villette, on the other side of the canal, which they served in copious chunks.

It was the 'in' thing to savour Gargantuan portions, especially during the Third Republic, when the consumption of food was a respectable occupation, a daily ritual celebrated around the dining table, the altar of a family townhouse in the beaux quartiers of western Paris, as described by Emile Zola. Zola's memory, incidentally, was honoured here in 1930, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the gatherings that used to take place in his home in Médan, les rencontres de Médan, as they came to be known. 

Excursions to La Villette, however, were not a family affair but an all-male experience — this was no neighbourhood for honest middle-class wives or daughters. On the other hand, potbellied lawyers, doctors, politicians and entrepreneurs of all sorts, as well as artists, writers and actors, thoroughly enjoyed themselves here over a meal that could consist of ten courses and took several good hours to absorb. How many people today could face a meal consisting of five different meat specialities such as ris de veau normand, queue de boeuf limousin or veine de boeuf charolais preceded by a consommé and followed by the inevitable salade de saison and plateau de fromages, and still be able to tackle a tarte aux fruits?

The writer Francis Carco and the Gastronome Escoffier seemed to cope all right when they gathered here in 1935 with other members of the Académie du Goût, for a feast presided over by Curnonsky, le prince des gastronomes. Needless to say, those feasts were always accompanied by an assortment of wines of the best vintage, as well as by vintage Calvados, which is known to help the digestion.

The guests hardly noticed, let alone cared about the surrounding poverty, the shrieking hunger, the mass carnage of cattle, sheep and especially pigs (the pork section of the market  was dubbed l'Enfer...). Chewing away in a Belle-Epoque setting, which exuded self-confidence and prosperity, they ignored the fact that the 19th arrondissement was the headquarters of the feeding and evacuation industries of the capital and resembled a gigantic sewer, although the municipal dump had by then been transferred to the forest of Bondy, east of Paris. Even the headquarters of the Pompes Funèbres were set up in the 19th arrondissement, at 104 rue d'Aubervilliers, on the site of the early municipal slaughterhouse as it happened. The rag warehouses too were set up here, debouching the clothing waste of the capital to the ragpickers who operated in the 'zone' — the slum belt of Paris, now the stretch between the Boulevards des Maréchaux and the Boulevard Périphérique — and were referred to as 'zonards'. Also near by, but beyond the diners' attention, were sugar refineries and gasworks which belched their noisome fumes into a steel-tainted sky hanging heavy above.

And while they were titillating their palates with a full-bodied scarlet Bourgueil or Chinon, they were hardly aware that a few blocks away, at 'le Bistro des Miracles', less distinguished customers were gobbling down a translucid, vinegary wine known as rouquet.  Not unlike the tenants of La Cour des Miracles, after which the bistro was nicknamed,  these wretched clients did not take off morning coats and top hats as they walked in. Instead, they shed a stick or a pair of crutches, the working tools with which they hoped to arouse pity among charitable passers-by, as they hung around the elevated Métro stations of northern Paris.

This was the best case scenario. Often one resorted to crime in this Dickensian wasteland. The victims were often the neighbourhood's young females whom the men would round up and offer as game to their fellow men. The brutality and callousness of these pimps was notorious and once caught in their noose, the girls had little hope of escape: those who put up a resistance could be stubbed, and other working women were also vulnerable when loaded with their scanty weekly wage. Violence thrived among the butchers too, notoriously hot-tempered, and fights between trigger-happy pimps and butchers, knife at the ready, were not uncommon. Who knows how many victims ended up in the oozing waters of the Bassin de La Villette, now a place of water sports and festivities? As many as seven criminals from La Villette were sentenced to death between 1872 and 1900.

"The last time I saw him
He was stripped to the waist
And had his neck trapped in the guillotine
At the prison of La Roquette"

wrote Montmartre's celebrated chansonnier, Aristide Bruant.

 

This is an excerpt from Thirza Vallois's Around and About Paris series (volume 3 - New Horizons: Haussmann's Annexation).     Around and About Paris (volume 1, 2 and 3) is published by Iliad Books, UK
For more information, and to order Thirza Vallois's titles, go to Link: www.thirzavallois.com
 

 

(expatica June 2008)