DOI article:
Holland, Clive: Montmartre: Past and present
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20712#0047
Montmartre
“a rutted road '
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH
BY CLIVE HOLLAND
One of the best known of these spots of “ country
within a town” is the Chateau des Brouillards,
through the iron gates of which tourists peer,
curious at finding so much wealth of herbage and
blossom, and such a rural spot, not five minutes
away from the bustling
boulevard. From this
tree-shaded garden, with
its arbours and geraniums,
hollyhocks and sweetpeas,
yellow-eyed marguerites
and royal blue cornflowers,
many an exquisite vista
of outspread Paris to the
north is possible. Here
poets of the past have
sat composing the songs
they would hear sung
later in the day in the
cabarets of the boulevards
down below. In this
garden, encompassed by
high walls and environed
by trees, at close of day
many a famous Mont-
martrois has talked and
mused of the Montmartre
of the past.
And hard by are other houses, ivy and creeper
grown, set in spacious gardens, where roses
bloom under the eyes of their artist owners.
Houses which have stood in the sun of summer
and defying the winter gales howling across the
summit of the Butte as winter gales can, from
the time when Paris ran red with blood of the
“aristos” and ill-fated Louis XVI. was guillo-
tined on the Place Louis Quinze. These are
approached by a lane as rural as though twenty
miles outside the fortifications. A rutted road,
with on one side a white-thorn hedge gay in
summer with white and tiny mauve convolvulus,
and in autumn productive of blackberries. At
the end is a curious, tower-like, creeper-grown
structure, with quaint excrescences ; once the
hermit-like retreat of an eccentric Montmartrois,
recently a studio.
Across the waste land, a few yards past the
tower, are blocks of modern studios, and between
them at sunset one can catch vistas of the
western sky, the Seine, Bois de Boulogne, and
St. Cloud, all of wonderful beauty.
But a little way further down the Rue Giradon,
hard by where it intersects the Rue Chasseloup-
Laubat, stands one of the few survivals of the old
shops of Montmartre—picturesque, gloomy, and
curious. It is the pride of its proprietor that in
the past many good Bohemians, who were destined
to become celebrated, have patronised his vege-
tables, fruit, and other commodities.
OLD CURIOSITY SHOP, MONTMARTRE
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY CLIVE HOLLAND
29
“a rutted road '
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH
BY CLIVE HOLLAND
One of the best known of these spots of “ country
within a town” is the Chateau des Brouillards,
through the iron gates of which tourists peer,
curious at finding so much wealth of herbage and
blossom, and such a rural spot, not five minutes
away from the bustling
boulevard. From this
tree-shaded garden, with
its arbours and geraniums,
hollyhocks and sweetpeas,
yellow-eyed marguerites
and royal blue cornflowers,
many an exquisite vista
of outspread Paris to the
north is possible. Here
poets of the past have
sat composing the songs
they would hear sung
later in the day in the
cabarets of the boulevards
down below. In this
garden, encompassed by
high walls and environed
by trees, at close of day
many a famous Mont-
martrois has talked and
mused of the Montmartre
of the past.
And hard by are other houses, ivy and creeper
grown, set in spacious gardens, where roses
bloom under the eyes of their artist owners.
Houses which have stood in the sun of summer
and defying the winter gales howling across the
summit of the Butte as winter gales can, from
the time when Paris ran red with blood of the
“aristos” and ill-fated Louis XVI. was guillo-
tined on the Place Louis Quinze. These are
approached by a lane as rural as though twenty
miles outside the fortifications. A rutted road,
with on one side a white-thorn hedge gay in
summer with white and tiny mauve convolvulus,
and in autumn productive of blackberries. At
the end is a curious, tower-like, creeper-grown
structure, with quaint excrescences ; once the
hermit-like retreat of an eccentric Montmartrois,
recently a studio.
Across the waste land, a few yards past the
tower, are blocks of modern studios, and between
them at sunset one can catch vistas of the
western sky, the Seine, Bois de Boulogne, and
St. Cloud, all of wonderful beauty.
But a little way further down the Rue Giradon,
hard by where it intersects the Rue Chasseloup-
Laubat, stands one of the few survivals of the old
shops of Montmartre—picturesque, gloomy, and
curious. It is the pride of its proprietor that in
the past many good Bohemians, who were destined
to become celebrated, have patronised his vege-
tables, fruit, and other commodities.
OLD CURIOSITY SHOP, MONTMARTRE
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY CLIVE HOLLAND
29