THE FLEA MARKET

Evening Star, Issue 21824, 13 September 1934, Page 11

THE FLEA MARKET

A PARIS 11 BARGAIN COUNTER' 1 Every ■ Paris housewife—unless she does all her shopping in the Avenue Cle I’Opera—Knows the. Flea Market, the “ march© aux puces ” (writes A.W., in an exchange). It is no good for furnishing a whole house; above all, as its name indicates, it is not advisable to buy beds and mattresses there; but it is an excellent place for buying an odd chair, an odd table—often genuinely “ antique ” —an odd mirror, and other odds and ends. The Flea Market -is open on Saturdays and Sundays. It is beyond the Porte de Cliguncourt, just outside Paris, and stretches a good long way towards the west; its other entrance is nearly half a mile away, at the Porte St. Ouen. Just beyond the Porte the Flea Market begins. Its name is not unjustilied. Imagine a labyrinth qf muddy lanes littered with rubbish and with miserable-looking wooden hovels on both sides. The people who carry on trade in the Flea Market look invariably unwashed. They live in these hovels and do' their cooking there and ■carry- on their business. They are longsuffering people, and if they get, rich they have amply deserved it. But business is business, and perhaps they do not really mind this gipsy life. They are mostly good-natured people, and do not take offence if you call them robbers and try to bring down the price. If anyone in the Flea Market paid the price asked for he would cause a sensation. The bargaining is part of the Flea Market code. But to offer a ridiculously low prce —say. ten francs instead of ,100 —is against the rules of flic game,; for the tradesman then becomes ironical, arid tells you to do your shopping in the Calorics Lafayette. If you observe these rules you are all right in the Flea Market, and oh your second visit you will be treated as an old friend. OLD SHOES TO WIRELESS SETS. All things being relative, there are high-class and low-class streets in the Flea Market. In the low-class streets they sell the most incredible rubbish. Old rags, pots and pans with holes in them, mantelpiece statuettes with their heads knocked off, inarticulate pieces of metal, cracked gramophone records, mangy caiskins, some of them in the form of miniature rugs, complete with stuffed heads and beady eyes. Who can want to buy these things is a puzzle. In a better-class part of the Flea Market they sell old clothes, old shoes, and old hats. Still better are the hovels which specialise in gramophones, alarm Hocks. bronze candlesticks, and other household ornaments in the twisted “ macaroni ’’ style of 1900; or which display a chorus of screeching wireless sols, which you can hear almost a mile off. Aul then there arc “ antique ” shops,

the bookshops, and the art shops. Here you have to tise your commonsense, and not be too exacting or pedantic. In the antique shops you may pick up, among a ■ mass of antiques of the Wool worth standard, a good—if slightly cracked —piece of porcelain, any amount of copper, pewter, and brass,or a genuinely old snuff bos, or a handpainted miniature, which might or might not be genuine, or a piece of “ period ” furniture, or an ugly, bub genuine, set of saucers illustrating President Felix Faure-s meeting with the Tsar. THE ART SHOPS. The art shops, which are mostly kept by long-bearded, “ artistic ” looking men, contain a wonderful variety of things. They have framed pictures cut out of the ‘ Graphic ’ of 1912 or the ' ‘ Figaro ' Illustre ’; fly-stained family photographs of the beginning of the century, pictures of tempest-tossed ships suitable for landladies’ sitting rooms; but among all this rubbish of family photographs and family portraits" you are not unlikely to come across "another family portrait which is of more than mere “ family ” interest. It is covered with dust and dirt and is signed neither “ Ingres ’’ nor “ David ” —if.it were, it would be a fake or it probably would not be in the Flea Market—and all you know i* that it Was painted around 1810 by, somebody who knew how to paint. That is the spirit in which one ought to shop at the Flea Market; buy a painting on its own merits and not on the strength of the signature. And if you do that you may some day find thni you have bought’ a Rembrandt. It is the same with bookshops. The main thing is'not to worry whether the set is absolutely complete. The other dav I picked up in a Flea Market bookshop owned by an illiterate little Jew a perfectly preserved 17C5 set of ‘ Montesquieu ’ in seven volumes. The last volume was missing. But what does it matter I may re-read-some day the

: Espris Bcs Lois ’ ; I am not likely ever to read his reflections on the Roman Empire contained in the last, volume. And I Ret as ninth satisfaction out of the gilt leather bindings,' as much eighteenth century “ scent ” from these seven volumes as I would out of eight. And the bibliophile who says that niy seven volumes are not worth half a crown because they" do not contain the • Uejections on llio Tinman Empire ’ can go and drown himself. _