QUEER TRADES IN PARIS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 5978, 1 November 1890, Page 6 (Supplement)

QUEER TRADES IN PARIS.

There are many trades, professions*, and minor callings in the French capital which strike the English observer who is fresh on the national manners and customs as very curious.. Character and climate are largely at the foundation of these peculiarities, and several modes of getting a living which are practised in Paris would not bear transplantation to England, although the attempt is occasionally made. Still the thing we call here by the foreign name, which properly iii the country of origin describes it, i< a totally' different article from the French prototype. It has the same faint resemblance to the hitter as a reconstructed purified British version .if a boulevard vaudeville does to the rue. piece as produced by the author in Paris without fear of Mrs Grundy before

his eyes

Take the matrimonial agent. In En-land ihi< gentleman is frequently regarded with amazement, if not .suspicion. His profession is certainly not. recognised as absolutely necessary to the human race. In Paris, his office could not very well be dispensed with, rind Thackeray, when he described Mr Love's Temple of Hymen in the Faubourg St. , was not giving reins to his imagination. But the French : Mr Lov" 'of to-day does not content himself with organising table d' /totes and *wV.-V.< daitsantes the better to pair oil' his clients. He advertises laconically in the leading journal-, under the heading ' Marriages,' thus—

' Orphan, 18, has three million francs dot. Young Ladies, widows, IK to ;..., from f.(K.U»O<t francs to 0,000,000. — Address, Foxy, Hue—. Very serious.'

The ' very serious ' is a hint that the announcement, is not a joke. _ Once one of these intermediaries is said to have advertised a young lady with f>o,ooo francs fortune, but with 'one fault.' A marriage was duly arrange.l, and, when the time, came to hand over the capital to the husband, this gentleman asked where were the _>o.'ioit francs.

,\h,' said the mm of business.

was .".,000/ ' But you said .Vl.mm,' rejoined the newly-married man. ' (Mi, yes,' answered the other, • there was a mistake of ono figure. There was a cypher too much. There was the one fault !'

Almost every day one may see monsieur notifying publicly that lie is ready to espouse demoiselle, wid"W, or divorcee —he is not particular which, so long as the lady is under forty and has ,-t dot, or marriage portion : or else you will read of a young woman m fortune who wants to find an officer who i-- • common,'or a gentleman not tied down by professional or business duties. There is the most absolute candour in the whole affair. It is no wonder, then, that alliances managed on such mercantile lines should he followed by a life that, is full of surprises to the English mind. The couple duly married taking all apartment, consisting, .say, ot a salon, a dining room, a kitchen, and two or three bedrooms en stale. The smaller their means the nearer the- sky they go. They don't bill and coo and quarrel and make it up again over furnishing as newly-wedded "folk do in England, but give an order to an upholsterer to do what, is necessary out. of band, and never trouble themselves at all in the matter.

As for servants, they may have a bonne, who can also cook ; or their mtinat/e may consist, of a ujanied couple, a valet who can cook, with his wife as fetntne de cbambre, or a female cook 'with a masculine rale I. tie clmmbve, for in France the sexes exchange duties iv a most, remarkable way.

The flat contains no convenience for washing 10 be done at home, for accumulating dust, or for tho performance of those domestic duties which arc usuallycarried on in London back-yards. In a word, everything has to 'go out.' and, consequently, a number of trades and avocations spring into existence.

The converge, or hall-keeper, is almost unknown in England, but the

system is indispensable iv France, where four or five, families live in one building with an entrance in common.

Where else, than in Paris do we hear of washerwomen striking, but the business of the blanchisseuse is a wellorganised industry, having nothing to recall the humble lot of the British charwoman and ' mangier T

The day's dust is collected very early, and a rare noise it causes. The bonnes every morning put into buckets and boxes all the refuse, and upon these pounces the chijibunior, or rag-picker, who formerly used to be content with a Stick with a'hook at the end, hut now, to save his fingers in mking over the rubbish to find little bits of charcoal and coal, provides himself with a sifter. The ehi/on»ier takes his findings to a dealer in the low quarter, and all the odds and ends are, sooner or later, sold in a special market, whilst the rags are sent away by cartloads to the paper manufacturers.

Of course, not much coal is used. What coal merchants there are expose their samples in plate glass windows in such small quantities as to suggest the belief that coals in France are veritably considered'blackdiamonds.' Numerous, however, are the retailers of logs of wood and charcoal sticks that have been prepared in the forests. The difficulty of obtaining a hot bath at home is got over in a novel manner. It will be brought, to you in a water cart, and the use of a portable bath will be included in the charge. The water is supposed to be hot. but the humorists are never tired of cracking jokes at the travelling bath industry, and they delight to draw the picture of a shivering customer waiting for the bath to arrive to find it chilly when it does come.

Children are born in France as in other countries, but in singular circumstances sometimes, and not under the parental roof, yet legitimately enough. The early days of infancy, too, are frequently in contrast to English notions. There are many fathers whose income is largely supplemented by the earnings of their wives. It follows that madaine cannot stay at home to nurse the baby, which is either sent to a creche or nursery, or a bonne is hired.

Once more the intermediary is employed, in the person of an agent or keeper of a registry oflice. Thero are wet nurses in England, but in Paris they are the rule, and not the exception. It was proposed the other day that an anti-Boulangist should take charge of the police department of inspection, with a view to the selection of bonnes who were opposed to Boulanger. The idea was to infuse into the blood of young France an antipathy to the general. Of course the suggestion was a political skit; but it nevertheless seems remarkable that rich French mothers can complacently see their offspring nurtured by the low peasantry, and often by women who have actually qualified themselves for the post by 'misfortune.'

If children are to lie brought up by the bottle, goats milk can be had daily from the man who drives his flock about the streets, piping as he goes, to call attention to his whereabouts.

Nothing is wasted in France. Parisians eat, generally done into sausages, the flesh of more horses annually than the London General Omnibus Company possesses, and even imileand donkey meat is relished. There are butchers who deal in nothing else.

As to the many herbs which are cultivated, space is wanting to enumerate them ; chicory for instance makes a tasty dish.

Poor children are hired from ."» in the evening until it p.m to collect, from the gutters the ends of half-smoked cigars, which a re're-manufactured'into tobacco. The broken meats of the restaurants are methodically sorted and arranged into plats, and disposed of to persons of small means at a special market.

Cutting the coats of poodle dogs gives employment to many, and there is no end of the variety of small trades and callings.

To name a few : There is the commissionaire, who carries parcels for you on a kind of hod on his back ; the sherbet man, who entagles himself with a water cistern, taps, tubes, and cups, until he resembles a piece of mechanism; the open-air maker of f/aiifres, or lioneyj comb wafers ; the owner of the roulette fable at a sou a turn ; the vendor of sprigs of box on Palm Sunday : the rivetter of broken china ; the sandwich man, who carries his board high up in the air : the street optician, who sells all kinds of jiinee-tiez ; the toy dealer, who gives a choice of knick-knacks at ten centimes apiece ; and the kiosque keeeper, who takes the place of the London street arab, but is not permitted to shout the French equivalent of •spesbu! edtshun,' nor may he exhibit a newspaper contents bill unless duly stamped by the Government.

Every chance of tinning an honest penny is followed up, as, for instance, when' long lines of investors besiege the doors of a bank for hours, and during the interval of waiting chairs are lent to ihem by speculators, or they buy cigars, • nips,' and snacks to keep them in spirits until the time conies for them to reach the counter to tender their applications for shares and bonds.— Cassell's Saturday Journal.