Paris 1870-1935 (Paperback)

PARIS 187O-1935 b e II 3 j PAR 1870-1935 by JULES BERTAUT Translated, into English by R. MILLAR Edited, and brought down to include the events of 1933-5 by JOHN BELL FORMERLY PARIS CORRESPONDENT OF THE DAILY TELEGRAPH D APPLETON CENTURY COMPANY INCORPORATED AUTHORS PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION THIS book is not a history that is to say, it is not a chronological procession of the facts which have occurred during the life of the Third Republic from 1870 to our own times. It is rather an attempt to reconstruct the atmosphere of the successive periods, or, as it is fashionable to say now, the social climates of the last half-century or so. The atmosphere of a period is something so very peculiar to it that it is not at all easy to recapture or define. It may be described as the sum-total obtained by adding together the historical facts, the social occur rences, and the most trivial details of the life of a people at any given moment. All kinds of things must necessarily come into such a microcosm clothes, changes of manners and social habit, ways of thought and turns of phrase, fashions in sentiment, conceptions of life and death, philosophical and religious beliefs, and . material pre occupations of every sort and kind. If fashions in food and clothes reveal the character of an epoch, a zest for pleasure and a contempt for suffering do so no less. We might call the picture obtained by assembling these traits the physiognomy of a period taken over a century or so, it gives us the atmosphere. The reader of this book will not find an explanation of exactly how M Clemenceau got into power for the first time, or just why General Boulanger failed to bring off a coup d itat, nor will he learnhow the Allies won the war of 1914. But he will discover what men were feeling and saying about the Panama crisis what sort of hold Boulanger had over the people and what life was like behind the front during the years 19 14-1 8, and in that VI PARISIAN MEMORIES It will be noticed that the thing which most of all conveys the exact feeling of an epoch is often something very trivial and elusive a certain fact, a certain mani festation of sentiment, not very significant in itself, but cropping up repeatedly in a number of places. It may be just a catchword or a phrase, but it reveals a state of mind. Those words so universally repeated during the war, whenever and wherever the Germans were under discussion, Us ne faster ont fas and On les aura at once created and enshrined the national temper. Among the trivial but characteristic social occurrences which bear and give the hall-mark to their time may be mentioned, among sartorial matters, the appearance of women in bloomers, which survived the bicycling craze and became a symbol of feminine emancipation. The disappearance of the tall hat and the frock-coat after the war similarly marks the coming of less formal and more democratic manners. The atmosphere of every period has something about it which invests all the figures of the time, a kind of uniform tint which colours them all. Everything about the year 1935 reflects the prevailing disquiet. Social, moral, and political unrest agitates every class of society, and it is quite impossible to escape from it. The unrest of the Boulangist period was something quite different there was a gaiety and light-heartedness about the period, and even the unrest found its characteristic outlet instreet-songs. The post-war years reflected a gaiety of a quite different kind, a savage determination to make up for the terrible years just passed, through, the unchaining of discipline and restraint, and few people could resist being caught up in it. One could go on indefinitely citing such examples every page of history bears witness to the climate in which it was written. The authors sole intention in these pages is to recapture these different and successive atmospheres...