Studio: international art (35.1905)

Montmartre

city built beside the Seine long ages ago. Along the
boulevards and streets of Montmartre—romantic
Montmartre—passes an ever pictorial and interest-
ing throng. In its narrow alleys, courts, and passages
linger types which Murger knew, and the students
and artists of the Butte have sketched for time out
of mind.

“ Modern Montmartre,” a somewhat cynical
observer has said, “ is dominated by the Basilica
and known for the Moulin Rouge.”

To Rodolphe Salis, the extravagant poet of the
cabarets, is attributed the saying, “What is Mont-
martre ? Nothing. What should it be ? Every-
thing.” Underlying the exaggeration of phrase is
the subtle suggestion of the elements of situation,
character and environment which make the Hill of
Martyrs bulk so large in art, in letters (of a sort),
and in interest for even those
who are neither painters, poets,
antiquarians, nor even deep
students of the types in which
it abounds.

Still, as ever, Montmartre and
its life presents to the observer,
whether he uses brush, pencil,
or pen to record his impressions,
all the attractions which romance
has woven into the fabric of this
district of Paris, and of its pic-
turesque environment. It is not
the Montmartre of old, of course
—some would add alas !—but
it is pregnant with interest and
suggestion of many who have
become famous in French art
and literature.

Old Montmartre, with its
waving grass on the sides of
the Butte falling to the rhj thmic
music of the scythe; with its
market garden, where now is
the parvis of the great white
Basilica; with its little fer?nes,
the last points of long-ago rus-
ticity ; with its quaint old grass-
grown Rue des Saules—is gone.

But some of the “ancients” who
sit and gossip on the benches of
the Place du Tertre still remem-
ber some of these things, and
how, as boys and girls, they played
ball in the little wood which the
modern Rue Caulaincourt has
destroyed for ever.

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The growth of the modern city may be said to
have first enveloped Montmartre, then eroded it,
and now it bids fair to destroy it. Those who
seek the things of ancient times will seek in vain
for aught save fragments, but they are interesting
fragments. And the savour of many memories
will come to all who have known Montmartre
even in the comparatively recent past.

Of the magnificent Benedictine Abbey, founded
by Louis VI. in the middle of the twelfth century,
only the Church of St. Pierre de Montmartre
remains — shabby and inconspicuous beside the
“milk-white and colossal Basilica” of mixed
Romanesque-Byzantine design. But at the back
of the church is a fragment of the old abbey
garden, still known as the “Jardin des Oliviers.”
A quiet spot with lush grass, and hollyhocks in its

STREET IN MONTMARTRE

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY CTIVE HOLLAND