PARIS AND ITS CAFES

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 3609, 14 October 1924, Page 7

PARIS AND ITS CAFES

BENEFITS OF OPEN-AIR SYSTEM. When you explain to a Frenchman that Prohibition in America forbids the consumption of both wine and beer —if he does not already know this sad fact—he will ask in an amazed tone, “What, then do the people drink? ” Both these beverages are regarded here as much in the light of food as bread is (writes the Paris correspondent of the Melbourne ‘ Age ’), and therefore the idea of a country passing a law to exclude the use of both strikes a nation like the French as being beyond all comprehension.

When you engage a maid in Prance yon either have to add so much a month on to her wages for her wine or beer (whichever she is in the habit of drinking), or else stipulate to allow her so much of either a day. This is generally half a litre of red wine (the vin ordinaire) or the same quantity of beer. The working classes nearly all drink red wine in preference to white, as the red variety is supposed to contain nourishing and blood-making properties, whilst the white is merely stimulating, and apt to excite. The people of the upper classes drink white wine preferably, and finish off with a red dessert wine. If they drink water at all, it is in the form of one or other of the many mineral waters with which France abounds. They look at you in horror if they see you going to drink a glass of ordinary water, tell you it is very bad for the stomach, and beg you to put some wine or syrup into it, or even a lump of sugar. Anything in the shape of a hot drink, with the exception of coffee or a herb infusion, such as lime flower, verbena, or camomile, drunk at the end of a meal, they never dream of taking. It is not surprising, therefore, that French people open their eyes in amazement when, they learn how drastic and! far-reaching are the effects of Prohibition, in America, and ask what the people there drink. And, yet, with the possibility of obtaining probably every fonn of intoxicating liquor that the ingenuity of man has yet invented, there is probably less drunkenness in France than in any other country in the world, certainly less than there is in Prohibition America.

The reason for this is, to my mind, the open-air cafe system. Because of this system, drinking is merely the means to an end, the end being to meet congenial friends in a congenial atmosphere and exchange opinions; to spend an hour or so in a cheery spot reading the newspapers that are always kept on file; to have a quiet game of dominoes or backgammon with a friend ; or to while away an evening listening, either alone or with one’s family, to the strains of an orchestra. In all of those cases the actual drink that is ordered is the excuse for making use of the cafe to indulge these mild forms of pleasure. And, aa likely as not, although the shelves of the bar part of the establishment are stacked with a hundred-and-one different bottles bearing a hundred-and-one different labels, and the cellar is bursting with enough alcohol to make an American bootlegger’s fortune in a week, the drink ordered will be coffee, syrup and seltzer, an ioe cream if it is summr, or hot chocolate if it is winter; occasionally one will see glasses, or “bocks,” of light French beer, which is infinitely lighter than our lager; but if you ever see anyone drinking a liqueur (brandy comes under this heading) or causing a sensation in the smaller cafes by ordering champagne, you can be quite certain that he is an Englishman or an American.

There is on© hour, however, when the French unite as though in the performance of a solemn rite, one hour when old! and young, rich and poor, unite in a common brotherhood, of which Bacchus is the presiding god. This da the “Green Hour,” the hour of the aperitif. At this time of day you will see the terrasses of the bigger cafes crowding up with a cheerful, talkative crowd, who have put the cares of the day on one side, and who are looking forward to the leisure and relaxation of the evening. In the smaller cafes and in the poorer districts you will see similar crowds, from the bank clerk down to the laborer still wearing his working clothes and begrimed with the signs of his toil. All, almost without exception, will be drinking a vermouth or one of the many aniseed imitations of absinthe that have been concocted and put on the market since General Gallieni, during his term as Military Governor of Paris during the war, prohibited the use of this deadly drink. But vermouth andl aniseed aperitifs are mild beverages compared to the strong beer and the whiskies and sodas with which Australians poison their systems, and, in any case, it is rare for a man to take more than one aperitif. This gives him the right to sit on the terxasse of some cafe, if it is summer, or to enjoy the comforting warmth of the interior if it is winter; to chat with friends, usually habitues of the same cafe, or to watch the passing crowds on the boulevards; and this is really the relaxation he is seeking after the day’s work, nob the actual drink, so why should he order a second, much loss a third, one? The open-cafe system not only entails so little drinking on the part of the customers that one wonders how the keepers thereof make a living (it is the commonest sight to see a man order a glass of coffee or a “bock” of beer, for which he will pay 60 centimes, that is about twopence, and sit the whole evening over it reading the papers, chatting or playing dominoes with a friend), but such a system must be of tremendous social value to a country an well, for the cafes provide harmless relaxation at little cost for a vast majority of people who might easily get into mischief if left to their own devices. I never realise this so strongly as when I cross over to London ( and see the sordid wretchedness of conditions brought about by the closed-bar system. It is only there that you will see unhappy-looking men and women hanging round hotel doors waiting for opening time to rush in andl absorb ar little temporary heat and companionship; it is only there that you will see them staggering out at closing time, drugged with the amount of alcohol they have been obliged to consume in order to be allowed to remain in the social circle, elbowing each other round the counter. It is only there that you will see an entrance reserved specially for children. Then, too, the cafes in France are in a measure unofficial clubs. All over Paris are scattered cafes, big and little, which are recognised as being the haunts of cort&in men, of cortjiiii cls-sscs oi high, of certain associations. They are clubs in the real sense of being rendezvous where men with ideals and views in common may meet to discuss questions of mutual interest, yet they are not clubs in the worst sense of being bound by limitationa of class pejudices and social snobbery and costly membership fees. How many of France’s famous men of letters have developed their genius in the warmth of one of her cafes, expounding their theories to some boon companions across marble-topped tables, it would be hard to calculate. How many of them, perhaps, would have been lost to France and the world if a less sociable system had condemned them to drunkenness or solitude . Some of the older cafes still stand, sturdy sclios of a glorious past. One of the most famous is the old Cafe Procope, celebrated for its 300 years of standing and the fact that Beaumarchais, Yoltaire, and, later, Verlaine, Baudelaire, and others equally famous, used to forgather beneath its hospitable roof. The Cafe Procope figured prominently in the French devolution, and is still to be seen standing near the Place Danton, the spot where the fiery revolutionary of that name used to harangue the mob, although the character of it has changed, and, from being the rendezvous of literary men, it has become a restaurant where the medical students attending the medical school close by forgather. In the eame vicinity is the Gale Vol-

! taire, mentioned by Du Maurier in ‘Trilby’ , as being tie place where the “wine was j not too blue,” where the musketeers of the | brush used to wander at times. Not far 1 away is the Cafe d’Haroourt, where etuI dents of all nationalities gather together of I an evening, and stir up the surrounding ! neighborhood with their merry laughter' and student songs, accompanied by the or- ; chestra.

Farther u<p the Boulevard Saint Michel is the Cafe des Lilas, the haunt of poets imbued with the spirit of modernism, and where at one time Stephane Mallarra© and a hand of disciples founded the Sym--1 bolist movement in modern literature. I Aug«t John used to be an habitue of this cafe, too, during the years he spentin Baris. Following down the Boulevard l Montparnasse, there is the extraordinary I Cafe de la Eotonde, where congregate ! throughout the day and night probably the most cosmopolitan crowd of artists in the world, not excluding Chinese, Japanese, and Hindus. On a corner of the Boulevard Saint Germain, facing the old church of Saint Germain des Pres that Alphonse Daudet has immortalised so often in his writings, there is the Cafe des Magots, also a (rendezvous of literary men, and where, know-alls will tell . you, . “ Czechoslovakia was made.” All these ! cafes are in the Latin quarter of Paris, I but there are others equally well known I in other parts, notably the Cafe Napolitain in the heart of busy, cosmopolitan . Paris, on the Boulevard des Italiens. This is the unofficial journalist club, where you 1 are likely to ’ find any member of that : profession you may be looking for during 1 the “ Green Hour,” sipping his aperitif in ■ company with a fellow-scribe. It was here : that Jaures was assassinated on that fatal day following the declaration of war. j In the heart of the busy wholesale I jewellers’ part of the city there is a cafe known popularly as the “ Bourse des Yoleurs” (the Robbers’ Exchange). This is a place where men with precious gems -and pieces of jewellery they want to sell come to transact whatever business they can pick up. Some are genuinely honest, but the majority are shady enough customers who would be hard put to it to account for the shining wares they have in their possession; hence the name given to this cafe, the habitues of which can be seen any day overflowing out into the street in a black-hatted, hook-nosed, ges- 1 ticulating mass. \ 1 And last, but not least, there is the Cafe de la Paix, the cafe on the corner of Place de I’Opera and the Boulevard des Capucines that someone has called the “centre point of the civilised world.” This cafe has no special clique, belongs to no special class or nationality; it belongs to everybody, to every class and to every nationality. Old boulevardiers who have sipped their aperitif daily through a; period! of years still frequent its spacious terrasse, tourists from every part of the world mingle in a cosmopolitan crowd the while deft waiters glide in between, balancing trays of drinks as different in national origins as are the people who have ordered them, and varying from the powerful cocktails that Parisian, barmen have learned to make to stir up the jaded palate of Americans suffering from an addiction to the wood alcohol of their country, to the vermouth a I’eau of the Parisian, or the pale orangeade of the flapper tourist. If only that mysterious, invincible force known as "Vested Interests” could be appeased, and the closed bar be replaced by the openair cafe system in Australia, one cannot help thinking what a difference it would, make to this and future generations.