Hôtel de France

“ My hat, lately purchased in a country town, proving only felt, and softened by rain till it clung to my throat like a black silk handkerchief: rain almost the whole weary day, and the road crossing a wood, thin, stunted and leafless, so affording no shelter. Ere entering Melun, the shoe of Grizzle’s obstinate hind foot, and the two fore shoes of Fanny, were discovered to be loose, and must be put on ere we leave to-morrow. This inn, the Hôtel de France, is a 412 contrast and a foil to its Fontainebleau namesake, being as bad as its masters are uncivil. ”

“ There is a hospitable little inn in the Faubourg Saint-Germain endeared to many of us by memories, joyous or mournful. The Hotel de France et de Lorraine, in narrow Rue de Beaune, just south of the quay, was one of the earliest hotels in Paris, and was an approved resort of the Royalists, before emigration and after Restoration. ”

“ Gawky though this hotel is, and very uncertain in its use of French precedent, contemporaries generally recognized its inspiration as derived from the period of Louis XIV. The complex massing and the broken skyline, with roofs of different heights and pavilion-like towers at the ends, are much more obviously a premonition of the Second Empire mode in the form the world outside France would shortly adopt it than were the London and New York houses of two years earlier. ”

“ Of houses of large dimensions, which in France are termed hôtels, there are also many other fine examples, the best known of which are the hôtel de Jacques Cœur (see Plate II., fig. 7) , at Bourges, and the hôtel de Cluny at Paris (see Plate I., fig. 6) . In the 15th and 16th centuries in France, owing to the value of the sites in towns, the houses rose to many storeys, the upper of which were built in half-timber, sometimes projecting on corbels and richly carved; of these numerous examples exist at Rouen, Beauvais, Bayeux and other towns in Normandy and Brittany. ”

“ The HÔTEL DE VILLE, near the Place de Grève, is rather in the character of the more ancient buildings in France: it is exceedingly picturesque, and presents a noble façade. Being situated amidst the older streets of Paris, nothing can harmonise better with the surrounding objects. Compared with the metropolis, on its present extended scale, it is hardly of sufficient importance for the consequence usually attached to this kind of building ”

“ The ancient palace of the Dukes of Burgundy, long since converted into an hotel de ville, presents to a wide, clean court, paved with washed-looking stones, and to a small semicircular place, opposite, which looks as if it had tried to be symmetrical and had failed, a facade and two wings, characterized by the stiffness, but not by the grand air, of the early part of the eighteenth century. ”

“ During his reign in Aix the people were prosperous, and art and science flourished. From the right of the statue streets lead up to the principal square with a monument to Lodovico XV., the Palais de Justice with statues of the jurists Portales and Siméon, and the church of the Madeleine, built for the perpetual adoration of the host. A little higher up are the Hôtel de Ville, built in 1640; the Halle-aux-Grains, reconstructed in 1760 and adorned with bold and spirited sculpture. Next the Hôtel de Ville is the great clock tower, bearing the date 1512. ”

“ The plumbers' bills would drive them to drink, and even in the present Élysées Palace Hôtel, with all its paint, glass, and glitter, unless one has a large suite one has to walk a distance down the hall to the bath and often wait half an hour. The day may come when Europe will boast the convenience of such hotels as one finds in every American city, but she cannot do so now, and in Berlin it is reported that the Royal Palace has no bathrooms, that his Majesty's tub is behind a curtain at the end of a hall. ”

“ Some of their ornaments are a little meretricious, but the prevalent French features of their architecture are more happy than common. Only one of these edifices belongs to the public, and is now the hotel of the Admiralty, the other having been erected for symmetry, though occupied as private dwellings, and actually private property. The Bourse, or Exchange, is another modern building that has an admirable general effect.
Of the private hotels and private gardens of Paris, a stranger can scarcely give a just account. ”

“ The Hôtel-Dieu in Paris was founded in the year A.D. 660, has been extended at various times, and was entirely rebuilt between 1868–1878. One of the most ancient in France is at Angers, dating from 1153. ”

“ Protoplasm maturing into perfect humanity is as nothing to them. See how, through many gradations, the primeval well has become the well-stocked bar-room of to-day; the antique hovel is now the luxurious Windsor, the resplendent Palace, the Grand Hôtel du Louvre; the uncouth barbarian, who showed to each comer his own proper corner to lie in, has blossomed into the smiling and gentlemanly proprietor or clerk, who greets you as a man and a brother ”

“ The multitude of apartments, the richness of their decorations, and tasteful manner with which they are arranged, are only to be equalled by the careful attention which has been devoted to their distribution with regard to convenience and comfort. As Louis-Philippe justly observed when he recently inspected the exterior of the whole building, that it should no longer be called the Hôtel-de-Ville, but for the future the City Palace, as the splendour within it is not exceeded in any of the other palaces in Paris. ”

“ There are grander hotels in the world than the Grand Hotel of Paris,—but it is only in Paris that the Grand Hotel is matched and fronted in every direction by houses which in style and architecture correspond with the hotel. ”

“ The triple tiers of windows seem to have absorbed the solid wall-work of the building. Balustrades of varied quatrefoils run round the aisles and body; and the centre-tower, which is wholly composed of open arches and tracery, terminates, like the south-tower of the cathedral, with an octangular crown of fleurs-de-lys. The armorial symbol of France, which in itself is a form of great beauty, was often introduced by the French architects of the middle ages, amongst the ornaments of their edifices: it pleases the eye by its grace, and satisfies the mind by its appropriate and natural locality. ”

“ The builders of les jours d’antan loved their craft; every single house gave scope for some artistic trait. The roofs offered a fine field for architectural ingenuity: wonderfully planned windows, chimneys, balconies, gables are to be seen on the roofs often in most unexpected corners, in every part of the Vieux Paris. Look up!—I cannot urge this too strongly. And within every old hôtel—the French term for private house or mansion—examine each staircase. In the erection of a staircase the architect of past ages found grand scope for graceful lines, and exquisite workmanship. ”

“ At the grand Hotel du Louvre, near the Tuileries, where I lived, I noticed that the [473] number of arrivals kept up pretty well for the season. It is the St. Nicholas of Paris, and a stupendous structure, far exceeding anything of the kind in Europe as a hotel, for its style of architecture, decoration, magnificent marble staircases, luxuriant dining and reading rooms; the former has splendid crystal candelabra and six hundred gas lights at the six o’clock table d’hôte. ”

“ Before the revolution, Paris contained 46 parish churches, and 20 others answering the same purpose, 11 abbeys, and 133 monasteries or convents of men and women, 13 colleges, 15 public seminaries, and 26 hospitals. To these must be added the three royal habitations, the Louvre, the Tuileries, and the Luxembourg, also the Hôtel des Invalides, the Palais Royal, the Palais Bourbon, and a great number of magnificent hotels, inhabited by titled or wealthy persons. ”

“ The Hôtel de Paris is the public dining-place par excellence, the best vantage-ground from which to watch the passing show, but it is no easy matter to secure a table at the Hôtel de Paris during the height of the season. ”

“ The square, dome-crowned building opposite you to the left is the modern Tribunal de Commerce; beyond it leftward lie the Marché-aux-Fleurs and the long line of the Hôtel-Dieu, above which rise the towers and spire of Notre-Dame. In front, to the right, the vast block of buildings broken by towers forms part of the Palais de Justice, the ancient Palace of the French kings, begun by Hugues Capet. ”

“ This first Hôtel de Ville, however (a handsome Renaissance building) , was unfortunately burned down during the internal struggles of 1871. The present edifice was erected shortly after, in much the same style, but on a larger scale; a walk round the exterior will help to piece out the visitor’s conception of Renaissance Paris. Note here once more the pavillons at the angles, and other features which recall the Louvre. A visit to the interior is quite unnecessary for any save those hardened sight-seers who desire to inspect the decorations and arrangements of purely contemporary buildings. ”

“ It lifts and lightens the severe dignity of the façade. And, in the court—its centre not unworthily held by the bronze statue of Louis XIV., remarkable in its exquisite details, found in the old Hôtel de Ville—we linger in joy before the graceful flowing curves and the daylight directness of the Seasons of this French Phidias. The figures on the wings are from a feebler chisel than his. Of all the crowding memories of this spot, those of the Marquise de Sévigné and of Jean Goujon are the most vivid and the most captivating. ”

“ On one side of us is the King’s Head, whose steep tiled roof and square front has just that air of respectable importance that one expects to find in an old-established English hotel. It looks across the cobbled space to the curious block of buildings that seems to have been intended for a church but has relapsed into shops. ”

“ It is one of the strangest features of French hotels that dressing-tables are not included in any suite of bedroom furniture; there are looking-glasses by the score, there are handsome marble slabs bearing ornate clocks that do not go, there are gorgeous armoires à glace, but never a good, commonplace, useful dressing-table. French people seem to do without them in the same simple, uncomplaining way that they do without baths.
We cannot pretend to say we slept well in our opera-box. Everything in the hotel seemed to stay up{23} ”

“ One remembers Compiègne gratefully after visiting these towns through which the Germans passed, for it tugs less at the strings of pity in our hearts. It still has an air of prosperity. The palace is no longer visited by tourists; the best hotel no longer serves a precious dinner to those irregular couples motoring out from Paris for a holiday. The antiquity-shops have bars across the doors. ”

“ All Paris appeared to be on the Boulevards, and looking as if the great end of this life was enjoyment.
Anxious to see as much as possible of Paris in the limited time I had to stay in it, I hired a cab yesterday morning and commenced with the Hotel des Invalids, a magnificent building, within a few minutes' walk of the National Assembly. On each side of the entrance gate are figures representing nations conquered by Louis XIV., with colossal statues of Mars and Minerva. The dome on the edifice is the loftiest in Paris—the height from the ground being 323 feet. ”

“ Germain, which the space employed, and, as it were, lost, make so vast. A modern house might, with ease, be contained in the limits devoted to the staircase of one of these palaces, and a whole quarter might be built in the extent they occupy.
About nine o'clock in the evening of this day the two vast folding-doors of this hôtel opened on the arrival of a magnificent chariot, which, after having taken a dashing turn in the spacious courtyard, stopped before the large covered flight of steps which led to the first antechamber. ”

“ Nothing really thrives here; man and vegetables have but an artificial life, like flowers stuck in a little mould, but never taking root. I am quite tired of Paris, and long for a home more than ever.
MARSEILLES. Hotel d'Angleterre, January 15th.—On Tuesday morning, (12th) we took our departure from the Hotel de Louvre. It is a most excellent and perfectly ordered hotel, and I have not seen a more magnificent hall, in any palace, than the dining-saloon, with its profuse gilding, and its ceiling, painted in compartments ”

“ These decorations were continued from the portal along the beautiful gallery that led to the palace. The palace itself, whose apartments had been adorned and furnished with royal magnificence, was entered by a very elegant porch. The grand feasting-hall, with its Gothic architecture, its colored glass, its high chimney-piece covered with escutcheons and surmounted by a statue of Saint-Remi, its portraits of all the kings of France, was resplendent. Three tables were to be set in the royal feasting-hall,—that of the King, that of the Dauphiness, and that of the Duchess of Berry. ”

“ We forget its horrid memories in the sight of the new Hôtel de Ville, of no memories, good or bad, to dash our delight in this most nearly perfect of modern structures; perfect in design, execution, and material, a consummate scheme carried out to the last exquisite detail by architects, sculptors, and decorators, all masters of their crafts.
Our direct road takes us through the Halles, their huge iron and glass structures the lineal descendants of those heavy stone Halles, started in the twelfth century here in the fields, when the small market on the island no longer sufficed. ”