PARIS WEEK BY WEEK.

Waikato Times, Volume 114, Issue 19065, 2 October 1933, Page 5

PARIS WEEK BY WEEK.

EXODUS TO THE COUNTRY.

FAMLIES PUT UP SHUTTERS.

(From a Correspondent). PARIS, August 5. Periaps the long summer holiday Is les long than it used to be lor lathes of families who have to work, thougi the three-months school vacation itill sends the mothers and the childien away for the full time. But when the month of August 'comes the upper and middle-class quarters of Paris are almost incredibly deserted. The 'act that the windows of French hous;s and flats all have exterior shuters, and that these shutters are now closed, adds to the effect of empiness. Besides, not only have thos shops whose business depends on jeneral activity fastened their dooß and pasted up little notices to say hat they will be back in September, but even the butcher’s and the milk, shop (where you also buy vegeables) are only half open for an hour or so in the morning. As for the mncierges, even of "highly desirable’ flats, they are sitting on chairs on he pavement every evening, he in his shirt sleeves reading the paper, and she in something closely rescinding a dressing gown, while the servants go for walks in the Bois de Boiiogne in their mistresses’ best dreses. The actors seem to be the onl) people still in town; for though thelheatres are almost all closed, and rehearsals for the autumn productions are still far ahead, actors now work for the cinema also, and the cinema stuiios are at full pressure..

A Private Circus. Ji the last few days we have lost thrie minor personalities, all of whom ■vveje in their different ways typical. Erisst Molier represented the boulevarl and the Bois de Boulogne of befori the war, when to ride a horse witi elegance was one of the surest pasports to social distinction. It waj as long ago as 1880 that he gave the first annual performance In that private circus which he had built out of it little riding school in a street offthe Avenue du Bois, and it was as reently as July that he made his halite ecole entrance for the fortyninh and last time before a public which then, as always, was exclusively iomposed of invited guests. All the peformers were amateurs —the acrobat, the clowns, the animal trainers (eten including a lion-tamer one yea-). So were the young men dresed in faultless pink, who showed peiple into their seats, and the whole thiig had as aristocratic an air as the priate theatricals which, in the period wfen the circus was started, rich and cuiivated people used to give in the pemanent little theatres which they hat sometimes built into their houses.

i The Country Fair. ijelmakc., the tight-rope walker, win has just been killed in an aocidsnt while still pursuing his professioi at the age of seventy-six, -was as faaous In his own world, and for as loig, as Molier was in his. That wrld was also of the circus, but the chcus of the country towns of France, thi professional circus, which has alwlys been dear to the heart of the FEnch peasant and workman, the cicus which Molier and his genteel frends were merely imitating. In sjite of the foreign sounding narrit tilt he had assumed, this long-haired acobat was really as genuine a French peasant as any member of the numerous audiences who had so long applauded him all over the country. He vbs part of the country fair, which, eii I have so often remarked in these cilumns, is even a permanent feature o the life of Paris, for it is always tc be found in some suburb or other.

A Post-War Figure. Raymond Roussel, who has just died ir Italy, was, on the other hand, a pjst-war figure. He was a wealthy yiung man, who convinced himself, aid a few others as well, that he p>ssessed literary and dramatic genius, bit whom most people believed to be timing out wilfully paradoxical and pbposterous Jargon which was much mare Insane than original. He wrote siveral books, and published them a* his own expense. He composed a pay, and engaged a leading theatre aid a cast of well-known actors for ifc production. At the repetition gnerale a critic rose in his seat and potested against responsible artists pirforming what he described as such nmsense. He was answered from the sage by an appeal to allow the actors ti earn their salary and from the aidience by the enthusiastic cheeis o' the play’s supporters. Even now tie surrealists still claim Roussel to ]-Rve been a pioneer of the literature o’ the future, and Marcel Prevost bought the authority of the Academy P his description of the young writer ai possessing a “prodigious poetic equipment.” 2000 More Cafes?

You probably know that a bistrot t a small cafe, or wine-shop, though tie word is hardly academic: but you lave probably not heard that the (overnment has proposed lo open tvo thousand new bistrots in France, aid that the Bill has passed the Cham■j?r and is now awaiting the decision o’ the Senate. The policy of a severe rtstriction of liquor licences has never bund favour in France, which has ilways tended towards many small <afes" rather than few large ones; hit this suggestion of a wholesale hcrease has aroused vigorous protest, Especially in the medical profession, t is denounced not only as a designate expedient to raise new revenue, jut as a shameless largesse to elecoral supporlers of the Ministry; and tie “Esprit Medical,” in an appeal to he Senate to throw out the project, nys that the drink peril, which has ]cen kept at bay in France by the node rate habits of the people, will bcemc very real if competition In scljng is thus to be fomented.

And More Casinos. At the same time I think it will take a lot of cafes to turn Hie sober French into a nation of drunkards, just as it will take a lot of roulette tables to turn them into a nation of gamblers. The “Journal Officiel” has just published the new decree, which adds roulette and trente-et-quarante to the games which may be authorised in the casinos of watering places, but I do not see the average thrifty and Indeed parsimonious Frenchman taking to heavy play for all that. No doubt all the little casinos will want to include roulette in their attractions, and 1 understand ttiat lire Minister of the Interior is arcady overwhelmed with demands from the small watering places, which arc afraid that their customers will all flock to the halfdozen largo ones if the latter alone are given the permission, as had at first been intended.