The Ladies' Paradise
INTRODUCTION
I certainly have no desire to frighten the female readers to whom this free rendering of one of M. Zola's best books so largely appeals, – it is indeed a book with a good sound moral, fit for every thoughtful woman to peruse – but, in endeavouring to point out its scope and purport, I must, in the first instance, refer to some matters in which women, as nowadays educated, take as a rule but the scantiest of interest. Still many of them may have heard that in the opinion of various fin-de-siècle seers and prophets the future of the human race lies in collectivism, a prediction which I do not intend to discuss, but respecting which I may remark that during the last half century in this country there has certainly been a tendency in the direction indicated, even amongst classes which profess to hold every form of socialism in horror.
This tendency towards collectivism has manifested itself notably in certain trades and industries by the introduction of various forms of co-operation, by the amalgamation, too, of rival businesses, and even by the formation of quasi-monopolies which, evil and unjust as they may appear to some, nevertheless rejoice the heart of many Socialists who consider that the fewer the individual interests to be overthrown, the easier will be their task of conquest when the time shall come for olden society to give up the ghost. And, further, a tendency towards collectivism is also to be traced in the establishment of those great "universal providing" concerns which we know by the name of "stores", and which many a Socialist will tell you are but the forerunners of the colossal "magazines of distribution" which will become necessary when collectivism shall have attained its ends.
On all sides nowadays the small trader and the small manufacturer are assailed, and in many instances can barely hold their own; for cheapness is the god of the hour, and in cheapness they cannot hope to compete with those who operate upon a colossal scale. Whether they will ultimately be obliged to give up the contest, whether the passion for individuality is destined to depart from the human race, these and the many other questions which the problem suggests, I will leave to the Collectivist prophets and to those who oppose their doctrines in our reviews and newspapers. I have merely desired to call the reader's attention to this problem and to the tendencies previously referred to, because he – or she – will find that they constitute no small portion of the subject of the present volume of M. Zola's works.
In "Au Bonheur des Dames" M. Zola has taken as his theme a particular phase of the amalgamation and "universal providing" tendencies, as they have presented themselves in France; and the phase in question is certainly one of the most interesting, if only for the fact that it is so closely connected with the desires and needs of women. In a word the work deals with those huge drapery establishments, like the "Bon Marché" and the "Louvre", which are renowned throughout the world.
We have no doubt several very large draper's emporiums in London, but I do not think that any one of them can claim to rival either in dimensions, extent of business, or completeness of organisation the great French establishments to which I have referred above. I can myself well remember the growth of the "Bon Marché" and the "Louvre". Transferred, when my education was but half-completed, from the solitude of the Sussex downs to the whirling vortex of Paris, I grew up amongst those Haussmannite transformations which virtually made the French capital a new city – a city which became my home for well nigh twenty years. Even now I am but a stranger in my own land, among my own kith and kin; and my memory ever dwells on those years when I saw Paris develop, opening her streets to air and light and health, increasing her wealth and her activity, on the one hand multiplying her workshops, ever busy, thanks to the taste and dexterity of her craftsmen, and on the other, by the attraction of a thousand pleasures, becoming the caravanserai of Europe. And my fanatical admiration for M. Zola and for all his works, the passion which has induced me to translate so many of them, arises mainly from the fact that they deal so largely with Paris and her life at a period which I so well remember, with scenes and incidents which I can so readily recall and which carry me back to the days when the heart was light and buoyant, and sorrow was a thing unknown. And when, now and again sundry supercilious English critics, qualified by a smattering of French and a few months' residence in France, presume to sneer at M. Zola's pictures of French manners and customs in the days of the Second Empire, I merely shrug my shoulders at their ignorance. For my own part I believe, for like St. Thomas I have seen.
Among the subjects dealt with by M. Zola in the Rougon-Macquart series, that of the present work, – the development of the great magasins de nouveautés– is to me one of the most familiar, for the reason that I have always taken a keen interest in the attire and adornment of women, and in my salad days wrote some hundreds of columns of fashion's articles for English newspapers. And my duties in those days took me not only to the salons of M. Worth, M. Pingat and other faiseurs à la mode, but also to the great drapers', for if, on the one hand, I learned in the former establishments what would be worn by royalty, aristocracy and fashionable depravity, on the other, in the huge bazaars similar to "Au Bonheur des Dames", I ascertained what would be the popular craze of the hour, the material which would be seen on the back of every second woman one might meet, and the one or two colours which for a few months would catch the eye at every street corner. All this may seem to be frivolity, but it is on such frivolity that a goodly portion of civilized humanity subsists. I find M. André Cochut, a well informed writer, holding an official position, stating in 1866 – a year which comes within the period I am referring to – that there were then 26,000 shops and work-shops in Paris which sold or made (almost exclusively) articles of female attire; and these 26,000 establishments (many, of course, very small) gave employment to nearly 140,000 persons of both sexes, among whom there were 1500 designers. Moreover, the trade of Paris in materials and made-up goods was estimated at 570 millions of francs, or £22,800,000! Under these circumstances that Paris should have claimed the sovereignty of fashion is, I think, not surprising.
Nowadays the number of establishments selling or making goods for feminine attire has undoubtedly decreased, but the trade is greater than ever. Well nigh the only alteration one can trace, is that many of the smaller houses have been swallowed up by their big rivals in accordance with the usual conditions of the struggle for life. The big establishments did not, however, step into the arena, huge like Goliaths and armed cap-à-pié. As M. Zola relates in the following pages, they likewise had humble beginnings, and would never have expanded as they did, but for the commercial genius of their founders. I remember the "Bon Marché" having but one entrance (in the Rue du Bac, near the corner of the Rue de Sèvres) and ranking, in the opinion of the women of the neighbourhood, far below the "Petit St. Thomas" which it has since altogether outstripped. In the same way the huge block of building now occupied by the "Magasins du Louvre" comprised some forty different shops held by different tenants. Indeed the pile had originally been erected for an hotel, the Grand Hôtel du Louvre, and the shops, even those bearing the name of the Louvre, were at the outset, only a secondary consideration. But gradually a transformation was effected; the drapery emporium became larger and larger, secured the adjoining shops, and ultimately invaded the hotel itself.
Certainly all this was not easily brought about. Many neighbouring tenants refused to give way to the monster and clung stubbornly to their leases, fighting the unequal battle with the utmost obstinacy, – an obstinacy such as that which the Baudus, and old Bourras, the umbrella maker, will be found displaying in M. Zola's pages. In the case of the "Louvre", the last of these stubborn antagonists was, if I recollect rightly, a stationer whose shop fronted on the Place du Palais Royal, and I believe that he held out until his lease fell in. At the "Bon Marché" too, the Boucicauts had to contend against similar obstacles; and, there, the enlargement of the premises was attended by difficulties akin to those which M. Zola describes; for many of the adjoining houses were decrepit, tumble-down vestiges of olden Paris; and each time the "Bon Marché" gained a few yards of frontage expensive building operations had to be carried out.
In his present work M. Zola has, of course, not taken as his theme the actual history of either of the great establishments to which I have been referring. But from that history and from the history of other important magasins de nouveautés he has borrowed a multitude of curious and interesting facts, which he has blended into a realistic whole. Curiously enough the site which he has chosen for "Au Bonheur des Dames" was really the site of a fairly large drapery emporium, which became the "Grands