Moulin Rouge 1890

An Excerpt from the Chapter:
Potions, Puccini and Pandemics
Milan and Paris 1889 - 1890

The foot of the butte was a Mecca to pleasure seekers and a new Babylon to the censorious. The Pigalle district had a great number of cabarets, taverns, dance halls and other drinking establishments drawing many finer folk who would never consider living there but were happy to frequent for the nightlife pleasures. Living alongside the artists and laborers were a population of characters that at the time I would refer to as strange. But now I know them as prostitutes, thieves, smugglers, tricksters, conjurers, pimps, gypsies and actors. Mother would never approve our being there unescorted. So for our day visit, Endie enlisted some artist friends who were happy to take us to the off-color center of Parisian night life.

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​    Endie’s gentlemen showed me Tabourin on Boulevard de Clichy which gave wall space to van Gogh and where Gauguin was considered a regular; the Cabaret des Quat’z’Arts and the Café des Incohérents/Décadents in Rue Fontaine where Toulouse-Lautrec painted the performers. I saw the Lapin Agile, Chat Noir cabaret, Moulin de la Galette up the hill and the Elysée Montmartre below, the latter having its own newspaper. It was in the Elysée Montmartre where the Quadrille Naturaliste - or French Cancan - was born. What became the most famous nightclub of them all, had opened up on the boulevard Clichy, what we now call the Moulin Rouge. It opened the year before in 1889 with a great red windmill above the entrance.
​      At first, the Moulin Rouge was known as the Jardin de Paris. Behind the mock moulin — designed to evoke the old mills-turned-dancehalls uphill — was a whimsical champagne garden. It was an open air Belle Époque music hall. The proprietors had acquired several set decorations from the now closed Universelle Exposition and though it made no thematic sense, it added to the joie de vivre atmosphere they hoped to create. There was the two-story high plaster elephant said to house an opium den inside, his tail end facing the street. Layers upon layers of frocked and tassled curtains, fabric and ribbon draped about. There were decorative monkeys, birds, and flowers adorning trees strung with hundreds of glowing gas-lit globes alongside all sorts of palms in giant planters. The large stage provided space for magicians, dancers and entertainers to perform. 
     But I only saw this during daylight. Pigalle was commercial and bustling then where Montmartre was still rural with meandering paths, untamed gardens, steep hills and occasional artists around every corner. Endie assured me it was a circus spectacle at night when the inky dark of Paris and gentle glow of streetlights masked the overcast reality of Parisian days.
   We also discovered the Montmartre cemetery, or Cimitière du Nord, under The Pont de Caulaincourt bridge. It was acres full of shade from maple, chestnut, lime and thuja trees perfect for exploring. Beneath the sylvan canopy lay Berlioz, Léon Foucault, Offenbach, and many other notables in their final resting place. Endie was most interested in finding Marie Duplessis, the real life courtesan whose short life ended at twenty-three.  She was the inspiration for the semi-autobiographical Dumas fils novel La Dame aux Camélias (Camille), and later immortalized in Verdi’s opera La Traviata. To Endie, the story of the star crossed lovers was a tragic romance. To many it was a cautionary morality tale of love, suffering and sacrifice. But the real tragedy in the story were the narrow choices available to women and what can befall those who depend financially on men, demimondaine or wife. Or maybe that’s me adding my hindsight lens to the view.
   As she had in Pére Lachaise cemetery, Endie placed small offerings of bluettes or muguet and prayers to love at the grave. This seemed pointless to me as she was out almost every night with a suave suitor who I surmised would have happily returned her love. But what did I know of love? Very little at the time. And I knew even less about death.
    Every day on our return home we would visit our bankers for letters from Father and my brothers to whom we often wrote. I would mark this period as the beginning of my epistolary proclivity. Although my style left a lot to be desired, I think this is the best way to share the rest of this story from Paris. For in 1890 there were no telephones, no airplanes, and telegrams were frightfully expensive. The art of the well written letter was the order of the day. And a letter from Paris would arrive to my Father ten-days after I had posted it. And for some news, this was too late.