Studio: international art (35.1905)

Montmartre

Of the old streets of the north side of the Butte
few remain; two of the most interesting and pic-
turesque are the ill-paved Rue des Saules, with its
ancient tumble-down tenements and types of the
Montmartroise still surviving, and the really ex-
quisite old walled-in Rue St. Vincent, overhung
with acacias, beeches, and plane trees, with the
weather-stained and moss-grown walls of fragments
of La Belle Gabrielle’s Chateau and memories of
the romantic Henri IV. and Francis I.; the narrow
Rue Becquerel, and the Rue Fontenelle.

SACRE CCEUR FROM THE RUE FROM A PHOTOGRAPH
DE LA BORNE, MONTMARTRE BY CLIVE HOLLAND

It is at the upper end stands what has become
known as “ Steinlen’s wall ”-—a section of the
black boarded fence which bounds the street on
its northern side. Against this wall, scribbled
o’er with amorous messages and inscriptions,
scarred with pierced hearts, arrows, Cupid’s
bows, and all the paraphernalia of depicted
love; red, white, and yellow—with “Jean a
Susanne,” “Mimi a Jules,” “Jacette aime Georges,”
Steinlen is said to have posed numberless models.
Certain it is that this strip of wall plays an important
part in several of his best known and finest depic-
tions of Montmartre types and life; whilst the
angles and impasses of the Rue des Saules and Rue
Ravignan have afforded him other splendid back-

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grounds for such pictures as Li Amour des Champs
and Le Bouge.

Here, on this northern slope of the Butte, the new
jostles the old, and—the old order changes. Wide
streets of the type of the Rue Caulaincourt are
to replace the old. Even the last vestiges of
Henri IV.’s pleasure-house and the pavilion of La
Belle Gabrielle, it is rumoured, are to come down.
Modern flats are destined sooner or later to dis-
place picturesque, rambling, and sometimes tumble-
down buildings. Steinlen’s wall will go with the
rest, and the narrow by-ways will know the leisured,
meditative steps of the painters and poets of Mont-
martre no more.

Of the several interesting cabarets which were
once to be found on the northern side of the
Butte, the first to be established is the last to
remain. At the carrefour of the Rue St. Vincent
and Rue des Saules the Cabaret des Assassins
(also known as the “ Lapin a Gill,” corrupted by a
wit into “ Lapin Agile”) stands as it did from the
day of its foundation, tree-shaded terrasse and all.
This sinister-looking building, with its shabby,
tumble-down air, founded by one De Salze and a
handful of companions, claims to be “ le premier
cabaret Montmartrois, frequente des artistes et
decore par eux.” It was within its at first equally un-
ornamental interior that for many years foregathered
some of the most noted painters, poets, and singers

THE LAST OF THE OLD FROM A PHOTOGRAPH

MONTMARTRE WINDMILLS BY CLIVE HOLLAND