The Romance of Pere Lachaise,

Evening Post, Volume LXXVI, Issue 122, 21 November 1908, Page 10

The Romance of Pere Lachaise,

i It is the largest and quite the most interesting of the Ppris cemeteries, and named after the Jesuit confessor of I Louis XIV., whose country seat occupied the site of the present cnapel until the ground was made a cemetery in 1804. ] It covers one hundred and ten acres of ground, is picturesque but quite un1 lovely. Hare wrote about the tbmbs that "weight waa their chief peculiarity, and that all the monuments looked as if each family had tried to pile as much marble as possible on to their deceased relatives." Pere Lachaise has a stormy history. In 1814 the .Russians fought tbe French there, and gave them a beating. During the Commune the Versaillais and Communards fought several pitched battles among the tombstones, and did considerable damage. But it is not so much I with the history of the cemetery as with the people buried in it that we have to deal. A volume might be filled with the mere list of all the celebrated men and women buried in it, for as Victor Hugo j wrote, being buried in Pere Laehaise is like having mahogany furniture — a sign of elegance. In Pere Lachaise the monument which attracts most visitors is that of Abelard and Heloise, the two most famous lovers in the world. Pierre Abelard, the poet and philosopher, was born near Nantes in 1079. His father's name was Beranger. The young man at the age of twenty-two started a school', and became famous as a teacher. \He was at the zenith of his fame when he fell in love with Heloise, one «i his pupils, who was the niece of fche Canon Fulbert. Fulbert hired bravos, who attacked and mutilated Abelard, and He- j loise became the Abbess of the nunnery of Argenteuil. The monument to them in Pere Lachaise was first erected six hundred and thirty-seven years after their death, and Li-ought to Pere Lachaise in 1817 from the museum where it had been during the .Revolution. Another famous lover, Alfred de Musset, lies buried not far from the two willows over the graves of Heloise and Abeiard. David the painter, Rachel the actress, Balzac, Scribe, Michelet, and many other folk lie near at hand. Admiral Sir Sidney Smith, and other wellknown Englishmen are to be found in. other portions of the cemetery, while literature is represented not only by great authors, but by Lesurques, the victim of Dubosc in the famous legal Lyons Mail imbroglio. I But Pere Lachaise has more romance than its tombstones. Chatting one day with one of the old soldiers who are the park keepers oi this grim park, I learned some curious facts about it. " We never have a dull moment," the man said. " You may think that our time here is monotonous, but you are quite wrong if you do so. To begin with, there are the burglars. The demetery is overrun with them. There are three kinds hi burglars, There are the connoisseurs, who often get away with valuable prizes, for you will be surprised at the works of art of small size which people put in their chapels. The window is broken, a stick slipped through the hole, and all sorts of things worth having are fished out. Then the bronze stealers, who take away as much as they can carry in their special pockets and make from ten to fifteen shillings a day until we catch them. * A little while ago a bust weighing forty pounds was taken uut of the cemetery over one of the walls. But the most curious form of robbery is perhaps that of the pearl wreaths. Women are the principal offenders. They select the new ones which are not weather-stained, flatten them with their backs against a tombstone, slip them under their dresses, and when they have got away with them (we have no right to search even suspicious-look-ing customers) sell them to dealers, to whom they tell the well-worn story of a poor workwomen who has need of food. ( We caught a woman a few weeks ago who was at the head of a band of seventeen wreath stealers, and who had organised systematic robbery of pearl wreaths in the twenty cemeteries of Paris. She kept a shop in which she sold them at the very gates of the Pere Lachaise, and did a good business. " You would hardly believe it, but Pere Lachaise," said the keeper, "is a favourite meeting-place for lovers. We get lovers of all ages. And pernaps more schoolboys and schoolgirls than anything else. I remember one couple who used to come here in the dinner hour every day for two years. They are married now, and often come back again to the old place. But the three most curious things we see here in the cemetery are the forlorn widows, the letter-boxes, and the cafe." "The cafe?" I asked. "Yes. There are hundreds of people in Paris who refuse to believe that their dead do not enjoy after death the good things they used to like when they were alive. Mothers bring apples and sweets, and leave them on the tombstones of their children. People bring wine and glasses, and there is one old gentleman who leaves a potato salad 011 . his son's tombstone regularly every Suu- [ day. Of course* the children egon fiud ,

out these things, and we never have been able "to convince the people who bring them of the absurdity of doing so. It is a very harmless superstition, after all." "And the letter-boxes?" I asked. "Lovers' letter-boxes," said the guardian. " There are dozens of them in all parts of Pere Lachaise. Sometimes they are holes in the trunks of trees, sometimes they are little hollows under stones. I remember one couple who used to correspond regularly in this way until they quarrelled through the fault of one of the younger keepers. He found out their letter-box and wrote a letter and a i'eply. The couple met, and each of them reproached the other with my colleague's rudeness, turned their backs on one another, left the cemetery by different gates, and never came again. The inconsolable widow is a frequent visitor. She is a pretty woman, and black suits her. She kneels down by a tombstone, rarely the same one, and when a likely looking mourner of the other sex appears bursts into tears. He consoles her pretty soon, and the two leave the cemetery arm in. arm. One of these widows invited me to, her wedding six months ago, and last month I was called to give evidence about her meetings with her victim. For she had seven other husbands living."— John N. Raphael, in St. James's Budget.