louis sebastien Mercier
neighbours and rivals
an eighteenth-century journey between paris and london
edited by
Jonathan Conlin and laurent Turcot
pallas athene
CONTENTS
Introduction p. 9
Acknowledgements p. 41
Neighbours and Rivals, p. 43
Glossary p. 268
References p. 271
References in the text p. 275
List of illustrations p. 276
Opposite: Louis-Philibert Debucourt, Strollers in the Palais Royal (1792)
Introduction
Born on the 6th of June 1740 on the Quai de l’École, between the Pont-Neuf and the Louvre, Louis-Sébastien Mercier grew up in the heart of Paris. He was the son of a swordcutler; the Mercier family’s wealth and income positioned them neatly between the middling and the lower ranks. It was, as Mercier’s biographer has noted, an ideal position from which to view the manners of the city, a city Mercier would immortalize in his wide-ranging survey, the Tableau de Paris (1781-9).1 Jean-Louis Mercier, father of LouisSébastien kept a shop at the sign À la garde d’or et d’argent. The inventory prepared on the former’s death reveals a modest household, consisting of
just two rooms and a kitchen. Though LouisSébastien’s mother died in 1743, when the boy was just three, it seems that the Mercier family could afford the odd luxury, such as a taffeta dress, some jewellery and lace.2
The archives of the Bastille in Paris preserve several other biographical documents, probably penned by Louis-Sébastien himself. A short fragment describes a child ‘devoted to literature from infancy’. ‘Able to read at four, he began studying Latin at seven, wrote a novel at 14, completed his studies at 16 and at 24 already enjoyed a reputation in the literary world.’3 The truth was somewhat different. Jean-Louis Mercier certainly took pains
Previous pages: Louis-Nicholas de l’Espinasse, View of the Seine from the Quai de l’Ecole, c. 1750.
This is the view that Mercier could have seen from his birthplace
Opposite: A portrait of Louis-Sébastien Mercier
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The Memoirs proposed many urban improvements, some of which were later rehearsed in the Tableau. With a best-seller under his belt, Mercier decided to live from his pen. If philosophy was his vocation, writing would be his trade. Early plays such as The Deserter enjoyed considerable popularity in the provinces and abroad, above all in Germany, and Mercier travelled wherever such works were staged. From 1775 to 1777 he served as editor of the Journal des dames, which he filled with descriptions of city life and fashions. This in turn inspired him to conceive of a literary work which would take Paris itself as its subject. For Mercier the city was much more than a convenient framework in which to recount witty anecdotes to satisfy the public’s craving for novelties. His project was rather to capture the essence of the city by laying bare its inner workings and liaisons which kept its countless parts in incessant movement. Mercier would complete this amibitious endeavour in the 1780s; but only after having first honed his skills by means of some preparatory works, the most over his son’s education. At nine he entered him in the Collège des Quatre Nations. Louis-Sébastien secured his degree in 1776 and his masters in 1777. At sixteen he was frequenting the café Procope, whose proximity to the Comédie-Française made it the haunt of actors, playwrights and spectactors alike. It was at the Comédie that the seventeen-year old Mercier first saw Voltaire’s Brutus staged, a play he criticized for its ‘uniformity’ and ‘monotonous form’, ‘which pleased me little’. In 1763 he seized an opening created by the expulsion of the Jesuits to have himself appointed professor in the Collège de la Madeleine in Bordeaux. Little is known of how he passed the next two years, although he certainly began writing verse. Mercier subsequently returned to Paris and became a writer, turning from poetry to plays, a form which clearly played to his strengths. He first shot to fame in 1771, when his Memoirs of the Year 2440 appeared: a utopian novel set in the distant future, but which nonetheless afforded its author ample opportunity to display his gifts as a satirical observer of ancien régime Paris.4
introduction
In the spring of 1780 Mercier travelled to London, where he remained for several months. Without his passport or correspondence it is impossible to provide dates for his stay, although the numerous references to the Gordon Riots suggest that he was still in the city in early June. Like many a traveller before him Mercier probably carried a small notebook or carnet around with him, using it to record fleeting impressions that could be worked up later, back in Paris, into a more polished text. The state of the manuscript reproduced here certainly suggests it was the product of careful thought, rather than a series of notes made on the spot. This manuscript was not published until 1982, when Bernard Cottret et Claude Bruneteau brought out what would remain the only edition for another thirty years.5 In entitling the manu-
* Numbers marked with § refer to the relevant chapter
script Parallèle de Paris et de Londres, the editors were drawing on a suggestion made by Mercier’s biographer, Léon Béclard, in 1903.6 Though the text certainly presents a parallel, the manuscript itself was left untitled by its author. In presenting this, the first English edition, we have chosen Neighbours and Rivals as our title, inspired by Mercier’s own account of London and Paris as ‘voisines et rivales’.
The text we present here was, to repeat, not published in Mercier’s lifetime. Even at a time of Anglomania in France, Mercier may have judged this text to be too anglophile. Or else his enthusiasm for the larger project simply overtook its progenitor. Whatever the reason, this text certainly served as a foundation for the Tableau, the first two volumes of which appeared towards the end of March 1781.7 As Mercier himself notes [§1],* by important of which being the text we present here.
Following pages: William Marlow, St. Paul’s and Blackfriars Bridge, 1770-72, detail. As the party at the lower left shows, new bridges like Blackfriars (opened 1769) had not yet put the London boatman out of business
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waiting city; Paris, 1782-88, published 1933), and particularly Jeremy D. Popkin (The Panorama of Paris, published 1999). 10 Bruneteau and Cottret’s edition of the Parallèle by contrast has been almost completely overlooked. This is regrettable, and sits oddly with renewed scholarly interest in the connections between Paris and London in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 11 Mercier’s text invites further exploration of such connections. In the closing decades of the eighteenth century these connections seemed more numerous and more striking to contemporaries than ever before. The two preceding centuries had admittedly seen English and French travellers document national contrasts with verve and esprit. But a new impulse was making itself felt. Observers still sized each other up from opposite sides of the Channel, but the aim was no longer to present a catalogue of strange facts, amusing anecdotes and descriptions of monuments appropriate for those ‘curious’ in such things. Rather than seeking to describe innate national distinctions with ever greater accuracy looking at London he was able to address certain traits of Paris with a new clarity, and several passages would be cut-and-pasted straight into the Tableau. As soon as the latter was published the police sought to suppress it. Mercier therefore travelled to Switzerland, to the Société typographique in Neuchâtel, which supervised the production of later volumes, from July 1781 to 1785. Whereas he had previously viewed Paris from London, the Swiss Alps now afforded a second observatory, a second chance to view his city at a certain remove.8 Twelve volumes and 1049 chapters later, Mercier finished writing his Tableau in 1788.
Mercier studies have flourished since the publication in 1994 of the Mercure de France edition of all twelve volumes of the Tableau alongside other works, including Du Théâtre, Mon Bonnet de nuit and Le nouveau Paris. Several historians have drawn on such works in studies of Parisian society.9 For their part the Anglophone reader has enjoyed somewhat more restricted access to the Tableau, dependent on abridgments by Helen Simpson (The
John Andrews’ A Comparative View of the French and English Nations (1785) and John Moore’s A View of Society and Manners in France, Switzerland and Germany (1780) are two English examples of this new approach.12 In France we find Pidansat de Mairobert and Jean-Jacques Rutlidge engaged in a similar endeavour.13 London and Paris were moving closer, so much so that Mercier seems willing at least to toy with the idea that Paris and London might represent the same city. At one point [§9] he describes London as ‘another, much vaster Paris, with different inhabitants’, located north of Paris. When discussing the flood of French exiles to London that resulted from the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Mercier asks ‘This would surely make London Paris?’[§7]
introduction uals. As Stéphane Van Damme has noted ‘The London/Paris couple plays a central role in the fixing of a set national character types within the philosophical discourse of the Enlightenment.’14 This certainly was a couple, in the sense of two individuals united by mutual consent, living under the same roof and having all goods in common; except their joint ‘roof’ consisted of the theatres, salons and hôtels particuliers in which Locke, Rousseau, Voltaire and Newton were discussed with scant regard to national distinctions. One is reminded of Montaigne’s account of friendship, in which two individuals ‘mingle and blend with each other so completely that they efface the seam that joined them, and cannot find it again’.15
When the connoisseur and socialite Horace Walpole crossed the Channel to visit his longtime writers sought to emphasize similarities, to locate areas for mutual emulation and improvement.
The Republic of Letters evoked by the philosophes of the Enlightenment was not only a literary space, it was a marketplace of ideas itself founded on increasingly frequent contacts between individ-
Rough Crossings
correspondent Madame Du Deffand he found a society of familiar friends waiting for him, with whom he shared countless cultural reference points. His Paris Journals cover the years 1765-66, 1767, 1769, 1771 and 1775 and recount a series of receptions and dinners hardly different from those which filled his days in London.16 From the start of the eighteenth century onwards many English aristocrats would cross the Channel in the other direction in order to take part in the ritual of the Grand Tour. This Tour was as much an exercise in ostentation as it was in education and improvement. In Paris as in Rome and Venice Grand Tourists circulated among an international élite, frequently recording their observations and expenditures in notebooks. Meanwhile the tutors or ‘bear-leaders’ who chaperoned them made somewhat more careful record of their travels, in some Opposite: Pierre Louis Dumesnil the Younger, Card players in a drawing room, 18 th century. For all the specifically French character of the furnishings, this intimate picture shows a way of life that would have been entirely familiar to the élite both sides of the Channel
introduction cases (such as that of Thomas Martyn) publishing them upon their return for the benefit of other travellers.17 Although it is unlikely that the flow of élite travellers from Paris to London ever exceeded that in the opposite direction, London nonetheless had a special appeal as a city of Reason. In his Letters concerning the English nation (1734) Voltaire18 not only confirmed this intellectual allure but added others, hailing the charm, freedom and comfort this nation supposedly afforded foreign visitors.
In the course of the century such exchanges ceased to be an aristocratic appanage. Individuals of middling rank, among them merchants, officers, artists and even some skilled labourers also took the road. They read travelogues and guides, adding their own marginalia as they travelled or in some cases writing their own manuscript travel diaries
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Of the many who made this journey, some stand out as a result of having recorded their observations in published works, some of which went through many editions. The most successful and renowned of these was Pierre-Jean Grosley (1718-1785). upon their return. After 1750 travel titles represented an increasingly large proportion of all books published in Europe. Daniel Roche has calculated that the number of travelogues published in the eighteenth century (3466) was almost double that published in the seventeenth (1566). Whereas 165 such works appeared between 1741-1760, 428 appeared in the following twenty years, and 1036 between 1781 and 1800.19
offered the most frequent cross-Channel services. As both Mercier’s account [§62] and Thomas Rowlandson’s The Paris Diligence (p. 260) indicate, buying a ticket was one thing, squeezing oneself and one’s baggage into the diligence itself was quite another. This was one’s home for three days it took in the 1780s to make the journey from Paris to Boulogne, via Clermont-en-Beauvaisis, Amiens, Abbeville and Montreuil-sur-Mer. The voyage was divided up into thirty stages, each with its inn or auberge. 21 The packet from Boulogne to Dover took around four hours to travel the twelve leagues, or thirty miles. Dover to London was another twenty leagues, or seventy miles.
Those Parisians wishing to travel to London had a wide range of guides to choose from, therefore. But before setting off they also needed to secure themselves a passport from the Bureau des Affaires Étrangères. This document carried the King’s signature as well as that of his foreign minister. It indicated the traveller’s destination as well as the amount of time they intended to pass abroad.20 The next step was to purchase a ticket for the diligence to Calais or Boulogne, the two ports which Opposite: Thomas Rowlandson, The Dance at Amiens, 1809. In this illustration to Sterne, whose Sentimental Journey was published in 1768, the English visitors encourage the servants at the inn to put their best foot forward
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Originally from Champagne, Grosley travelled to England in 1765. His travelogue was published five years later in Amsterdam, entitled simply Londres.22
An English translation appeared two years later, as A tour to London, or, New observations on England and its inhabitants. Grosley’s reputation was made, and his work came to offer a useful foil to authors of other, later travelogues and guides. The ideal travelling companion, Grosley was someone to agree with, criticize and, on occasion, borrow from. Whole passages from Grosley reappear in later accounts, lifted without any acknowledgment whatsoever, even as plagiarists vaunted their accounts as more accurate and up-to-date than Grosley’s tour. Even his translator wasn’t above offering a few criticisms. ‘He must sometimes have had false intelligence, and frequently misunderstood that which was true concerning the detail of particular facts’, the 1772 edition noted, ‘which, though not in themselves very interesting, are yet apt, when misrepresented, to expose a learned writer to censure.’23
If translators felt Grosley sometimes went too far in his criticisms of England, that was partly because Grosley himself had been eager to distance himself from the Anglomania which seized the French élite in the wake of their defeat in the Seven Years War (1756-1763). Like Basset de la Marelle and Fougeret de Monbron, Grosley was concerned at the wave of English tastes and fashions flooding Paris.24 A gentilhomme no longer, the fashionable ‘Gentleman’ went to the races in his redingote (‘riding coat’), a mouchoir à la Wilkes poking out of the breast pocket, then took tea before spending the evening at a Wauxhall 25 (modelled on London’s Vauxhall Gardens) where rounds of whist might compete with displays of English fighting cocks.26 Grosley was unconvinced, though he did not go as far as Fougeret de Monbron in the latter’s Préservatif contre l’anglomanie, which maintained that ‘the only advantages we can grant the English are that they have many excellent horses and very good dogs, and neither monks nor wolves’.27 Both accounts different markedly from Anglophile works
The Treaty of Paris that had brought the Seven Years War to an end in 1763 had left many Frenchmen bitter at having lost so many colonies, notably India and Canada. For their part, even though they had won, many Britons also despised the Treaty, accusing the French crown and its ambassador, de Bussy, of having bribed King George III and his ministers to return certain colonies to France.30 In France even those who fumed against ‘perfidious Albion’ had to acknowledge that they had been roundly defeated by a nation with a worse climate, smaller population, smaller geographic area and an unstable regime. It was clear to both sides in the 1760s and 1770s that France and Britain would fight another war, that the former would seek revenge for their defeat. But it was equally clear to the French that to secure this revenge it was not enough to focus efforts on rearmament and retrenchment. British victory had been the result, not just of tactics, men and equipment, but of the system of taxes and government borrowing which paid for the latter, as well as the legal and written in a consciously Enlightened Voltairean vein, such as the Abbé Coyer’s Nouvelles Observations sur l’Angleterre (1774), which paid little attention to practicalities or to monuments, preferring to describe parliamentary debates and the uproarious 1768 ‘Middlesex Campaign’ of the rabblerousing journalist and Member of Parliament John Wilkes.28 Though there had been French travel guides to England since La Guide des chemins d’Angleterre, published in 1579, all the guides and travelogues published between the Seven Years War and the French Revolution had to take a position on Anglomania, right up to Henri Decremps’ Le Parisien à Londres, ou Avis aux Français qui vont en Angleterre (1789).29 It was impossible to produce a guide to England or London without engaging in a far broader debate on cultural and intellectual exchange. Many supposedly ‘English’ traits or fashions were no longer safely restricted to ‘their’ side of the Channel. Many Parisians were having a taste of London without ever experiencing the queasy joys of an actual crossing.
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This patriotic strength came at a heavy price, however, in the shape of political instability; a price which to some French observers seemed too heavy to contemplate more than cosmetic reforms to their own regime.31 The Wilkite disturbances of 1768 and 1771, the American Revolution of 1776 and the Gordon Riots of 1780 regularly assuaged those of the French élite who expected Britain to self-destruct, a victim of its own contradictions.
‘The English can never destroy each other as much as we would like’, wrote the French Prime Minister the Duc de Choiseul in May 1768, shortly after the ‘St George’s Fields Massacre’, in which Scottish troops had opened fire on Wilkite rioters gathered outside King’s Bench Prison.32 Having started off as laconic lookers-on, by the mid 1770s the French were rather more involved, foreign minister the Comte de Vergennes having hired playwright-
cum-secret-agent Caron de Beaumarchais to run guns to the rebel colonists. War between Britain and France was officially declared in 1778, and each side withdrew its ambassador.
In keeping with the policy of soft borders observed at the time, it was still possible for Mercier and many others to move between Paris and London, however, something it is hard for us to comprehend today. Although Mercier noted English accusations of dishonest dealing on the part of the French in aiding the rebels, otherwise he claimed that a Frenchman was far less likely than before to be insulted while walking the streets of London [§§3, 12]. In America, French and rebel colonial forces initially struggled to collaborate effectively. But in July 1780, around the time Mercier returned to London, a significant force of troops under the command of the Comte de Rochambeau was sent across the Atlantic, a step-change in France’s commitment to the colonists’ struggle against Britain. In late 1781 French naval and military assistance would play a crucial part in the siege political system which made even the unenfranchised poor who largely manned the Royal Navy feel that they were fighting for something larger than themselves.
of Yorktown, where General Cornwallis surrendered on 19 October, bringing the war to a close.
Writing the City
In the closing decades of the eighteenth century a new form of urban literary discourse emerged which broke with the rigid and by then somewhat hackneyed conventions of travelogue. LouisSébastien Mercier became one of the most important representatives of this shift away from antiquarian and topographical approaches, which treated the city as a collection of monuments, to more reflexive, journalistic and emotive representations of the city as a collection of experiences,
Robert Dighton, The Contrast, c. 1783. A thin, craftylooking Frenchman teases a thick-set Englishman about the progress of the war in America. ‘‘Ve ave beat a you Dammi-na-bly’ he says; ‘You Lye Damnably’ is the response
introduction idea of being directly confronted with the same objects and sympathetically moved to the same emotions as the narrator. This was itself made possible by the sentimental individualism which found expression in all genres of literature. Whether in the street, on a bridge or in a public resort, as we shall see Mercier finds plenty of opportunities in the city to exercise emotions, both his and ours.
Paris became an object of study in its own right, something to be grasped by picking apart its lesser systems and routines, apparently minor parts of the machine which nonetheless provided greater insight into the city as a whole than the bird’s eye perspectives popular in seventeenth-century topographical surveys. In this new genre the twelve volumes of Mercier’s Tableau de Paris represent just the tip of the iceberg. We must add the eight habits and personalities.33 Steeped in the grand principles of Enlightenment and in the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in particular, this new stable of writers documented the city by rehearsing personal experiences of everyday city life, an exercise in which direct observation and creative imagination alike played an important role. Here the writer granted himself an authority greater than that of the philosopher, in so far as he combined judgement and factual information. Echoing Joseph Addison’s Mr Spectator, who sought ‘to bring philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and coffeehouses’, so Mercier’s writings brought philosophy to new audiences eager to combine reflection with observation.34 The new Enlightened pedagogy realised itself in the
Opposite: Jean Huber, Voltaire with his fellow philosophers Adam (2), Maury (3), d’Alembert (4), Condorcet (5), Diderot (6) and La Harpe (7), (c. 1780). Although this imaginary scene is no longer thought to be set at the Café Procope in Paris, where Voltaire was reputed to drink forty cups of coffee a day, it conveys the sociability of Enlightenment philosophizing
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volumes of Nicolas-Edmé Rétif de la Bretonne’s Nuits de Paris as well as the work of the numerous other writers who jumped the Mercier bandwagon, producing their own tableaux.
In the preface to the original Tableau Mercier introduces his project in a passage which cannot help but remind us of the opening chapter of the our earlier text on Paris and London [§1]: ‘I am going to speak of Paris: not of its buildings, its churches, its monuments, its curiosities, etc., since enough has been written about them. I will describe public and private behaviour, dominant ideas, the public mood, and everything that has struck me in this odd assemblage of silly and sensible, but constantly changing, customs.’35
In carrying out his plan, the narrator continues, he has adopted a singular methodology: ‘I have studied every class of Citizen, and I have not forgotten those farthest removed from haughty opulence. These contrasts allow one to better define this gigantic capital’s moral physiognomy.’36 This type of journalistic writing is less common
in English, not least during the 1770s and 1780s. This is odd, as several of its French practitioners drew on English precedents, albeit ones from the beginning of the century. Addison and Richard Steele’s Spectator (1711-12) was by far the most important of these. Although the eponymous Mr Spectator does describe solitary walks across the city, he is one of a group of characters who meet regularly in a London coffeehouse, who debate a wide range of topics (including the relations between city and ‘country’) among themselves, as well as with a range of correspondents (some of them fictional) whose letters are reproduced in full. Mr Spectator and his many English rivals are a literary primer in social interaction, a manual of sociability and politeness, rather than an urban encyclopaedia.37 Though they overlap at points, in their descriptions of urban stock characters or ‘types’, for example, Mr Spectator is not out to distill the essence of the city into a book. Mercier’s project is closer in Enlightened pretension to Denis Diderot’s Encyclopédie (1751-1772). It is also avowedly
introduction
marital happiness and even the last will and testament of a vicar, treated in a manner which occasionally recalls Addison and Steele. Attributes which might normally render it unreadable – incoherence, randomness – lend it an idiosyncratic appeal.
This did not stop French writers from filling this gap in the market. Written by an anonymous Frenchman and published in Paris, Les Nuits Anglaises ou Recueil de traits singuliers d’anecdotes (1770) consists of four large volumes whose form hovers somewhere between a travelogue and the anecdotal collections familiar (in a Parisian context) from the work of Jean-Baptiste Nougaret.39 Miscellaneous pieces in Les Nuits Anglaises are separated into separate ‘nights’, foreshadowing Rétif de la Bretonne’s Nuits de Paris. But Les Nuits Anglaises also mingles items on British history, education,
In making London the pendant of Paris Mercier was guilty of airbrushing out many of the less pleasant aspects of the British capital. Mercier’s Londoners are spotlessly clean, literate, welldressed (without being showy) and hale. In times of war the London artisan willingly fights in his country’s armed forces. During peace he works, not for love of money, but for the love of his craft.
A constable has but to touch him on the shoulder and say ‘Follow me’ and he complies without a murmur [§5]. Even when they do get out of hand and riot, these Londoners continue to behave with scrupulous nicety. Set loose from debtor’s prison, these paragons of honesty immediately write to their debtors to let them know where they are. Mercier seems to have been an eye-witness of the reformist, enthusiastically adopting a bossy tone of the administrative reformer, a tone which the Spectator and Tatler had adopted mainly in parody, to poke fun, say, at those who wanted to regulate the colourful bestiary to be found on signs.38 Even in a print culture as rich in pamphlets as London’s it is hard to find many proposals for urban improvements similar to that penned by the architect John Gwynn in his London and Westminster Improved (1776) (see p. 35).
Gordon Riots of June 1780, the violence of which he greatly downplays, presenting them as a series of surgical strikes. With the exception of a few genuine troublemakers, he would have us believe, the rioters only damaged the property of the individual ministers who had roused their righteous indignation [§27]. Meanwhile Londoners of the middling rank compete with each other to furnish the poor with philanthropic institutions of all kinds, institutions so numerous that the indigent in need of medical attention have a choice of where to go to receive free treatment [§36]. Everything, even the food, it seems, is better in London [§10].
This cannot help but sound rather strange to us today, and Mercier’s final chapter [§64] shows that he himself was aware that he may have exaggerated London’s charms. At the start of the twenty-first century, our stock images of London and Paris
introduction remain those of the late nineteenth, rather than the late eighteenth century. Our London is the London of Charles Dickens: a grubby, unsanitary hive of commercial activity, doomed to play second fiddle to Paris, the city of Charles Baudelaire, what Walter Benjamin would later dub the ‘capital of the nineteenth century’.40 This Paris is that of axial boulevards and wide pavements created in the 1850s and 1860s under the ægis of Napoleon III and the Prefect of the Seine, Baron Haussmann. As Émile Zola’s novel La Curée (1872) showed, Haussmannisation butchered old neighbourhoods, and today’s visitor struggles to find traces of the city of Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau or Robespierre. In reading Mercier we are transported to an earlier, very different urban discourse, one more optimistic, perhaps, than the more familiar nineteenth-century one, with its love of vivid contrasts of opulence and
Opposite: John Collet, Scene in a London street, 1770. Collet’s painting celebrates both a citizen magistracy (the constable, armed only with his staff of office, has arrested the remorseful miscreant) as well as the spectacle of individuals taking justice into their own hands (a brawl outside a ‘bagnio’, or brothel).
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misery. In painting London Mercier depicts a utopian city, a model of what in ancien régime France was called la ville policée (‘the policed city’). To some extent his London is thus a projection of the philosophe imagination, not so much a rounded portrait of the British capital as a reflection of what Paris might become.
La ville policée: lost in translation?
In France the concept of police derived from the idea of policer ses mœurs, ‘policing manners’.
In 1667 King Louis XIV had established the Lieutenance générale de police, which reformed the magistrature and embraced a host of functions and responsibilities, including religion, the policing of morality, health, the construction of roads, the cleaning and paving of streets, public order and security, food, arts and sciences, trade, manufactures, domestic servants and poor relief.41 To a
Parisian the police were an omnipresent, omniscient authority, supported by a network of spies which can give ancien regime Paris something of the feel of life under the GDR or some other twentienth-century totalitarian regime. Hence Mercier’s astonishment at the freedom of speech he encountered in London. ‘The Parisian, they say, neither tells the truth himself nor cares what the truth may be,’ he wrote. ‘Spies are all about him. Two citizens cannot whisper, without a third craning his neck to hear what the conversation is about. The Lieutenant de Police commands a regiment of ears, differing from a regiment of soldiers only in that each of its soldiers changes his uniform daily and completely. In the twinkling of an eye he can and does metamorphose himself.’42
Mercier’s account is as much prescriptive as it is descriptive. Rather than rendering his account less informative, this aspect surely renders it all the more interesting to us today. It allows us to explore this important notion of police, one which British commentators found useful, even if they
introduction sometimes struggled to translate it into English.
‘We are accused by the French, and perhaps but too justly, of having no word in our language, which answers to the word police,’ Walpole wrote in one 1756 number of his periodical The World, ‘which therefore we have been obliged to adopt, not having, as they say, the thing.’43 In the works of the moral philosopher Adam Smith and fellow Scot Patrick Colquhoun ‘police’ embraced sanitation, paving, lighting as well as the regulation of markets for provisions and the policing (in the more familiar, modern sense) of minor infractions of public order.44
‘Police’ had yet to come to denote a city-wide force of uniformed peace officers under a central command structure, although Colquhoun’s Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis (1796, first drafted 1792) did result in the creation of the Thames River Police, the first force in Britain to carry that name. The Metropolitan Police Act (1829) that spawned the London ‘bobby’ was still several decades away. London would have to wait even longer, until the
establishment of the Metropolitan Board of Works (1855) for there to be a single, city-wide authority able to coordinate slum-clearance and sewer construction. In Mercier’s day, therefore, municipal government in London was anything but an exercise in Enlightened administration, being a patchwork of vestry committees, parish paving, lighting and watch committees who levied local rates and were ‘staffed’ (if one can use such an expression in speaking of such ramshackle entities) by individuals with little if any specialized knowledge or training. It is important to bear this in mind as we follow Mercier along the freshly-swept pavements of Utopia-on-Thames.
For Mercier, cleanliness is paramount. Clean bodies and clean streets are healthy bodies and healthy streets.45 Cleanliness depends in turn on circulation. Mercier is obsessed with the circulation of air, and to a lesser extent of water and traffic. He spends whole chapters listing the buildings (usually ecclesiastical) he insists must be torn down in order to improve the circulation of air and traffic, as well
as the bridges that must be widened, both on top, by removing the houses which clung either side of the roadway, and beneath, by removing the millwheels which harnessed the river’s flow even as they obstructed river traffic [§§22, 23, 53]. It was a commonplace to describe the city as a body, and so to equate any such blockage of circulation as deleterious to its health, equivalent to a seizure or heart attack. This connection was founded on William Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of the blood early in the previous century, and was first made explicit by the diarist John Evelyn in his Fumifugium: or the inconveniencie of the aer and smoke of London dissipated (1661).46 It in turn informed the straight avenues and wide marketplaces that feature in plans for the reconstruction of London after the Great Fire (1666), plans prepared by Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke as well as Evelyn himself. Though only a tiny fraction of such visions was realized, post-fire regulations on the height of buildings and street widths did reflect a concern for circulation, as well as a desire to reduce the risk of future fires getting out of control.
Mercier’s love of order rivalled that of Louis XIV himself in its scope, causing the former to poke his nose into many aspects of city life: the regulation of public and private lotteries, of the law courts, of the parlements, of international tariffs, of the press, of theatres, of horses and even stray dogs. There is much to be done, and it is clear to Mercier that it must be done soon. Right now in fact. Mercier’s exasperation with the state of things he sees is palpable, quite literally when he complains of the poor quality of the paper he is writing on ‘at this very moment’ [§48]. At times he sounds like a harried parent driven to distraction by naughty children, threatening them with no more treats until they do their homework. Parisians are thus to have no more
Opposite: Henri Joseph van Blarenberghe, Nocturnal police raid, c. 1780. With little by way of street lighting, Paris by night was dull, except when the police decided to raid a brothel
jonathan conlin & laurent turcot
festivals until they knuckle down, roll their sleeves up and fix their hospitals [§31]. His demands even extend to matters of taste, as when he discusses the embellishment of churches in an iconoclastic spirit, praising the clear glass and bare plastered walls of English churches over the dark, ornate interiors of Parisian churches, where every surface groans under tasteless rococo carving and grotesque scenes of martyrdom. Indeed, Mercier’s preferred style of worship is so stripped-down that it can seem a faith without religion, similar to that of the ‘closet deists’ he finds in London [§19].
But who is behind this ‘police’, whose regulations are to be imposed – or, as Mercier himself puts it, ‘once a problem is recognized and publicized, whose job is it to solve it?’ [§31] In the case of church ornament, Mercier provides an answer: the Académie is to visit every church and decide what should stay and what should go [§39]. In all other
cases, however, the answer is far from clear. When discussing Parisian hospitals Mercier cries in a fit of sanitary self-righteousness that, were he in charge, he would ‘kill himself’, pestering everybody until something was done [§37]. But whom is he pestering? At times Mercier adopts the pose of the obedient subject of the good king Louis XVI, secure in the knowledge that ‘if the king only knew’, everything would be right. This convenient fiction, that the King could do no wrong, could only be ‘surprised’ into a faux pas by this or that minister, helped many a would-be reformer protect himself from charges of sedition.47 Yet we sense that for Mercier Louis XVI is a remote authority. The king who sweeps by in his carriage, unaware of the chaos his cavalcade leaves in its wake [§56] seems a more faithful indication of Mercier’s own views than the king Mercier imagines climbing the staircase of one of the dank firetraps on the pont Notre-Dame
Opposite: John Gwynn, London and Westminster improved, illustrated by plans, 1766. Following on from some of the ideas of Wren, and foreshadowing Haussmann, Gwynn straightens and regularises roads and parks
introduction associations on both sides of the Channel, such as the Société de Médecine and Society for the Encourage-ment of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce [§47], but there is little sense that Mercier sees such activity as a reproach to crown or state as institutions, as a case of outsiders (a rising ‘middling rank’ or bourgeoisie) using such ‘publicspirited’ activities to stake a claim to a role in government.49
To him the bourgeois is steady, honest, reasonable, distinct from the ‘lower sort’ (peuple) or ‘common people’ (populace) beneath, yet not seeking to emulate his superiors (les grands, or les seigneurs) either. Though pleasure gardens or Wauxhalls were known for their mingling of élite and middling ranks in London, for Mercier it is impossible to imagine a single resort accommodating both. As he notes of the Colisée, a Wauxhall which had opened [§51]. Mercier’s references to parlements [§§26, 49], the network of courts charged with registering the laws, indicate that he was on their side in their various struggles with royal authority, which had culminated in the ‘Maupeou Revolution’ of 1771, during which the parlement of Paris was suppressed, replaced and then reinstated.48
Mercier was writing at a time when royal authority was contested, and not only by the parlements, and so a political reading of the text is surely not out of order. His position seems to be that of an Enlightened absolutist: he seeks to reform abuses of royal authority rather than replace that authority, and there is little sense of him appealing to a selfconscious ‘public opinion’. Mercier is critical of the waste of the monarchical regime and what he sees as the pointless expenditure of aristocrats on their palaces. He hails the activities of voluntary Opposite: Jean Bernard Restout, The Recall of the Parlement, c. 1774. Appearing before the Palace of Justice, Louis XVI expels the parliament originally summoned by Maupeou which had been sitting since 1771. He recalls their predecessors and is welcomed by an allegorical figures of Justice – the pomp is in stark contrast with representations of the British monarch
LOUIS-SeBASTIEN MERCIER
neighbours and rivals
1 | paris compared to london
Having roamed all the neighbourhoods which make up Paris it is almost impossible not to cast a glance over its surroundings. How numerous are its ramifications, how widely its branches extend. Distant cities feel its pulse and follow it. They regulate themselves by what one might call the laws of this capital. And I don’t just mean the cities of provincial France. Paris still reigns in Switzerland, in Italy, Germany and Holland. The Cabinet of France holds sway over republicans and petty sovereigns alike.
Only one nation can challenge this power and has staked all her strength and reputation on resisting and opposing French influence: England.
Neighbour and rival, inevitably London furnishes the pendant to the portrait I have painted –the comparison suggests itself. The two capitals are so close and so different, yet bear so strong a resemblance to each other that my study of Paris would be incomplete were I not to consider some aspects of the other.
Opposite: Thomas Rowlandson, A French coffee-house (c. 1780). Thomas Rowlandson is drawing a Parisian coffee house here, but the scene could easily be London In either city, the only women to be found is such places were ‘the idols’, serving coffee from their little thrones
geography and shape of paris and london
There is very little difference between the climate of Paris and that of London; the latter is frequently cushioned from the north winds by the sea fogs that surround the island.
Paris is situated on the continent, around thirtyeight leagues from the sea, surrounded on all sides by fine provinces. Those to the northeast are bounded by the sea, while those fine provinces that lie to the south border on the Mediterranean, which is 169 leagues from Paris. Germany as well as the other, more remote northern powers such as Russia form an infinite hinterland. Switzerland, Hungary, Poland and Prussia form a cordon between Germany and Russia. All these nations appear to press up against France in their haste to
mingle in Paris, the most distinguished city this immense continent has to offer. She is situated on the Seine, which divides her into two almost equal portions; buildings and quais take advantage of this calm river to throng both her banks from one side of the city to the other. This adds to her beauty and represents one advantage she has over London. The Seine is a beautiful woman who disports herself leisurely. The Thames is a hard-working mother with a great many children; she is coarse, often agitated, constantly fussing over her household. If she has any ornaments at all they are those [...] born of necessity, those in which charity, soundness and convenience display her true opulence. She is forever bustling after her many children, supplying their every want and pleasure.
Opposite: Louis-Nicolas de Lespinasse, Two Banks of the Seine, 18 th century, detail. A view of Paris from the pont Notre-Dame, with barges and other river shipping lining the banks
neighbours and rivals
London is situated to the north of the Thames, all along its banks; and this city extends the same distance to the rear, on ground that rises as one travels away from the river. Throughout its full, ever widening extent, which ranges from one to more than two leagues they are building new neighbourhoods, each more immense than the last, so that if this keeps up the city will double in size.
London extends a distance along the Thames double that of Paris and the Seine. Paris has four bridges, three of which are a disgrace. London has three, of great magnificence and utility. The strong tides, which carry the largest sea-going vessels right up to London make her a maritime city, and rob her banks of that gentle breeze and climate one finds in Paris.
London is situated in a large fertile island that Samuel Scott, Tower of London, 1771. Working in the style of Canaletto, Scott shows international shipping in the Pool of London, just downstream of London Bridge. The Monument and St Paul’s can be seen in the distance
extends one hand to Ireland and the other to Scotland. Her happy position on the Thames close to the Channel seems to have been designed to make her mistress of the seas, in defiance of all the northern powers. Her position secures her freedom by means of a strong navy, while her maritime trade means that she feels a closer connection to all countries than she does to Paris. A ship arrives from China along with the packetboat from Calais. London dreams more of the Indies than of Paris.
London can be seen to be three cities in one: that is, the district of Westminster, which is the cleanest and has the finest buildings, housing foreigners, the nobility and the king; the City, which is the richest, largest and most commercial; the third is the port together with its innumerable vessels and sailors, which runs the length of the
Thames from the Tower and its neighbouring district to [...].
The great defect of London is its lack of quais, grand monuments or open spaces on the Thames such as might allow one to admire the river, which can only be enjoyed from its bridges. It is true that its banks are coarse and muddy, not wholesome like those of the Seine; everything is given over to trade, to the port and its warehouses. The mist and coal fumes lend her banks a greyish cast far from brilliant, and the absence of sunlight often robs them of light, colour and effect.
Paris has the boulevards, dressed with lines of trees, which afford an ornament not to be found in London. All London is surrounded by wellmaintained roads with pavements, so that by whatsoever route one leaves the city one is spared the
Opposite: Edward Dayes, engraved by Robert Pollard and Francis Jukes, View of Hanover Square, 1781. Livestock and carts were still to be seen in London’s squares, but unlike Paris, bollards and gutters protected pedestrians, who were thus encouraged to enjoy strolling in the streets. In this image, a tall and racy Phaeton (mentioned by Mercier in §61) is centre stage; the name suggests how dangerous these could be
mud one encounters in the faubourgs, as well as the vile custom barriers and villages to be found on the edges of Paris. Long terraces of buildings with gardens in front and behind form the faubourgs of London; one sees rich green meadows full of lifestock at every turn. The guinguettes outside Paris are disgusting, the surrounding villages dirty and illkept; their inhabitants and their children wallow in villainy. All the environs of London and her guinguettes have an air of cleanliness, which extends to the houses as well as to their inhabitants; and the villages are generally speaking better-kept.
The prodigious number of churches, convents and religious foundations of all kinds which burden Paris with large structures without any matching increase in population; the layout of streets, most of them narrow and twisting; and the height of the houses mean that one frequently loses one’s
and rivals
way. Whereas in London the relatively low houses, the width of the roads, most of them long and straight mean that one orientates oneself easily. The streets are graced at intervals with broad squares, some of them with a statue in the middle of a bowling green, a pond or trees, everything well maintained so as to form a promenade for the inhabitants. These squares are immense and of great beauty, they are to be found at regular intervals, without number. New neighbourhoods are always laid out square by square, each formed of four ranges of houses.
Paris is neatly divided into two parts along her length by the Seine, and has the added advantage of having the Tuileries on one side and the Luxembourg on the other, as well as the gardens of the Palais Royal, the king’s garden, that of the Arsenal and others, such as those of the Soubise
Opposite: Augustin de Saint-Aubin, engraved by Pierre Francois Courtois, Walking on the Paris ramparts, c. 1761.
“How I love to stray on these charming boulevards,” run the verses accompanying Augustin de Saint-Aubin’s engraving: the perfect place to observe “the caprice of the day and the men of the hour.”
glossary
allée A straight garden path, gravelled and lined with trees, on which one strolls, either on foot or in a carriage.
ariette A short song or aria.
arrêt A royal ordinance or decree.
bégueule An affected prude.
berline A type of carriage, in which the cabin was suspended on leather belts (an improvement on chains, but not as advanced as English models, with metal leaf springs), rather than forming an integral part of the chassis.
bosquet A wood. Normally used to refer to a formal arrangement of trees of the sort found in the parks of châteaux and other carefully-planned gardens.
bourgeois 1. A resident of a city. 2. All those without a noble title. LSM uses this term in the second sense, but seems to exclude those at the very bottom of society, those without skills, property or security of any kind (those he lumps together as the peuple or populace).
cabaret A house where drinks can be purchased.
cabaretier traiteur Someone who operates a cabaret
where food may be purchased as well as wine and other beverages.
château A castle or palace, usually surrounded by extensive gardens and a large feudal estate.
Comédien An actor working at the Comédie Francaise. Such positions were limited in number and offered a privileged job for life.
demi-septier A unit of measurement for liquids and grain, equivalent to 4 pints.
décroter/décrotteur To clean and polish boots/A boot cleaner and polisher. The notoriously muddy streets of Paris supported large numbers of décrotteurs, each of whom had his pitch on the side of bridges or major streets.
diligence The long-distance coach used in France, pulled by four or more horses, carrying upwards of fourteen passengers and their luggage. Relatively cheap compared to transport available in Britain, t could cover six to seven miles an hour, often to the melody of bells attached to the horses.
faubourg A parish located outside the old defensive walls of the city.
garde A member of the gardes françaises, armed with a gun.
grisette A cheap grey fabric popular among poor women. Also used to refer to the poor or lower middle-class women who wore clothing made of this fabric.
guet The police guard which patrolled Paris, under the direction of the Lieutenant-Générale de Police.
guinguette A cabaret located outside the tax wall, hence offering cheaper wine, as well as food and dancing. A summer-time resort for the lower sort, they usually consisted of flimsy wooden sheds or tents.
hôtel A city mansion for a noble household. The principal residence was set well back from the street, with a garden at the back and a paved courtyard in front, itself hidden from the street by a high wall or gateway housing the servants.
Impériale The top of a carriage.
libelle An anonymous scurrilous pamphlet printed without the permission of the contrôle de la librairie and circulated secretly among the élite. Libelles rehearsed
slanderous rumours of romantic and political intrigue at court. LSM occasionally uses the word in an English context to refer to a pamphlet (though there was no censorship in London, and hence no distinction between ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ publications).
louis A gold coin minted by the French monnaie or royal mint, named after the king. Of high value, it was equivalent to 20 livres. Each livre was equivalent to 20 sous. maitrise The status enjoyed by a master within one of the many guilds of Paris, who regulated who could and could not practice a vast number of trades within the city. The number of qualified practitioners was deliberately kept down, ostensibly in order to ensure that only apprentices who had mastered a given trade were able to establish their own businesses, but also in order to limit competition.
maréchaussée One of the cavalry companies established in each district (or généralité), under the command of a prévôt général. They patrolled the roads in rural areas. The Parisian maréchaussée guarded the outskirts of Paris.
nouvelles à la main Handwritten news-sheets that were passed secretly from one person to another.
nouvelliste Those addicted to reading newspapers,
269 glossary
nouvelles à la main and libelles, who gathered in public places to discuss them.
pension A house where one is lodged and fed for a certain fixed price.
petit bourgeois A pejorative way of referring to the bourgeois. petit maître A dandy. Like the contemporary English equivalent of the macaroni, these men were exquisitely dressed and accessorized.
philosophe A man of letters, a philosopher. In LSM’s day the term was used to refer to the coterie of advanced Enlightened thinkers (such as Voltaire, Diderot and D’Alembert) who met in salons and contributed to the Encyclopédie.
poisson (or posson) A unit of measurement of liquids and grains, equivalent to 2 pints.
porte cochère A covered entryway to a noble hôtel, allowing those travelling by carriage to descend from their vehicle without being incommoded by rain or mud.
quai A paved road or footway running along the river.
quartier A city parish or neighbourhood.
reverbère A new form of street lighting introduced in the 1760s under a system of franchises. They consisted of oil lamps suspended on ropes over the middle of the street.
seigneur A nobleman, a man with a title of nobility, either inherited or acquired by purchasing an office carrying noble status.
sol A coin worth a twentieth of a livre, or twelve deniers. See louis.
turgotine The name given to the lumbering diligences operated by the Messageries royales, the royal post service.
1 Léon Béclard, Sébastien Mercier, sa vie, son œuvre, son temps (Zurich & New York, Georg Olms Verlag, 1982 [1903]), p. 4.
2 Ibid., p. 32.
3 Geneviève Bollème, Dictionnaire d’un polygraphe, textes de L.S. Mercier (Paris, Union générale d’éditions, 1978), p. 21.
4 Béclard, Sébastien Mercier, p. 4.
5 Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Parallèle de Paris et de Londres, introduction et notes de Claude Bruneteau et Bernard Cottret (Paris, Didier Éruditions, 1982).
6 Léon Béclard, Sébastien Mercier, sa vie, son œuvre, son temps, Zurich & New York, Georg Olms Verlag, 1982 [1903]), p. ix.
7 Michel Schlup and Caroline Calame, ‘Histoire du texte, études pour un tableau’, in Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Tableau de Paris, op. cit., lxxiii-cxlviii.
8 Louis-Sébastien Mercier, ‘Chapitre DCLXXV, Vue des Alpes’, Tableau de Paris, tome 2, op. cit., pp. 496-497.
9 Jean-Claude Bonnet (dir.), Louis-Sébastien Mercier: 1740-1814: un hérétique en littérature (Paris, Mercure de France, 1995), Daniel Roche, People of Paris: an essay in popular culture in the 18th century, translated by Marie references
Evans in association with Gwynne Lewis (Leamington Spa, UK; New York, USA: Berg, 1987); Arlette Farge, Fragile lives: violence, power and solidarity in eighteenth-century Paris, translated by Carol Shelton (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1993); and Enrico Rufi, LouisSébastien Mercier, (Paris et Rome, Memini, 1996).
10 Helen Simpson (ed.), The waiting city; Paris, 178288, being an abridgement of Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s ‘Le tableau de Paris’ (Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott, 1933).
Jeremy D. Popkin (ed.), Panorama of Paris, Selections from ‘Tableau de Paris’, (Pennsylvania State Univ Pr, 1999).
Extracts from the Tableau were translated and published by Joseph Parkyn Macmahon, as Paris in miniature: taken from the French picture at full length, entitled Tableau de Paris: interspersed with remarks and anecdotes: together with a preface and a postface by the English Limner (London, Printed for G. Kearsley, 1782).
11 Vanessa Harding, The dead and the living in London and Paris, 1500-1670 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002); Claire Hancock, Paris et Londres au XIX e siècle: représentations dans les guides et récits de voyage (Paris, Éditions du CNRS, 2003), Frédéric Ogée (ed.), ‘Better in France?’: the circulation of ideas across the Channel in
list of illustrations
Cover: Thomas Rowlandson, Place des Victoires, Paris, c. 1783, watercolour in pen and black ink over graphite on medium, moderately textured, cream antique laid paper, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven CT
p. 4: Louis Philibert Debucourt, The Public Promenade, Palais Royal, etching, engraving, and aquatint printed in color, 36.5 x 59.1 cm, 1792, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
pp. 6-7: Chevalier Louis Nicolas de Lespinasse, View from the quai de l’école, drawing, pen and Indian ink, watercolour, c. 1750, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
p. 8: Benoît-Louis Henriquez, Portrait of Louis-Sébastien Mercier, engraving, c. 1801, (Néologie; ou, Vocabulaire de mots nouveaux, a renouveler, ou pris dans des acceptions nouvelles),Wikimedia Commons
pp. 12-23: William Marlow, St Paul’s and Blackfriars Bridge, oil on canvas, 1770-72, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven CT
p. 16: Pierre Louis Dumesnil the Younger, Card Players in a Drawing Room, oil on canvas, 18 th century, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
p. 19: Anon. , The Dance at Amiens, Private collection
p. 23: Robert Dighton, The Contrast, pen and black ink and watercolour, heightened with touches of bodycolour, on laid paper, c. 1783, British Museum, London
p. 24: Jean Huber, Voltaire Presiding at a Dinner of Philosophers, pen and black ink, black wash, on paper prepared with a blue ground; framing lines in pen and black ink, 18 th century, The Morgan Library and Museum, New York
p.28: John Collet, Scene in a London street, oil on canvas, 1770, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven CT
p. 32: Henri Joseph van Blarenberghe, Nocturnal police raid, graphite, pen and gouache, c. 1780, RMN / Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts graphiques, Paris
p. 35: John Gwynn, London and Westminster improved, illustrated by plans : to which is prefixed, a discourse on public magnificence ; with observations on the state of arts..., 1766, Royal Collection Trust, London
p. 36: Jean Bernard Restout, The recall of the Parlement, eau-forte, 22 x 30 cm, c. 1774, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
p. 39: Carington Bowles(pub.), Margaret Nicholson
attempting to assassinate his Majesty King George III, handcoloured mezzotint, 9 November 1786, National Portrait Gallery, London – Wikimedia Commons
p. 44: Thomas Rowlandson, A French coffee-house, pen and ink with watercolour on paper, 1780, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
p. 47: Louis Nicolas de Lespinasse, View of the Two Banks of the Seine, pen and brown ink and watercolour, heightened with white, over preliminary drawing in graphite, 32.6 x 63 cm, 18 th century, The Morgan Library and Museum, New York
pp. 48-49: Samuel Scott, A View of the Tower of London, oil on canvas, 101 x 193 cm, 1771, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven CT
p. 51: Robert Pollard and Francis Jukes after Edward Dayes, View of Hanover Square, etching and aquatint on moderately thick, moderately textured, cream, laid paper, 37.5 x 53.3 cm, 1781, Royal Collection, London
p. 52: Pierre Francois Courtois after Augustin de SaintAubin, Walking on the Paris rampart, engraving with etching, 28.9 x 38.6 cm, c. 1761, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
p. 56: James Gillray, Politeness, hand-coloured etching, 18 x 23 cm, 1779, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, Farmington CT
p. 60: Louis-Marin Bonnet, A Fine Place to stay, ‘In Paris at
list of illustrations
Bonnet rue Saint Jacques’, engraving, 30.4 x 22.2 cm, 1772, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
p. 61: Thomas Rowlandson, A London citizen and his wife taking a walk, pen and grey ink and watercolour over traces of pencil, 18 th century, Private Collection
p. 65: Anna Maria Garthwaite, Design for a woven silk, watercolour on paper, 45.1 x 26.1 cm, 1752, Victoria & Albert Museum, London
p. 67: Carington Bowles (pub.), The Double Attack, or French Politeness not a Match for English Assurance, handcoloured mezzotint, 35.2 x 24.9 cm, c. 1770, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, Farmington CT
p. 69: William Marlow, Whitehall, paint on canvas, 71 x 91 cm, c. 1775, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven CT
pp. 70-71: Jacques Rigaud, The Bastille seen from the porte Saint-Antoine, watercolour, pen and Indian ink on laid paper, 1720, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
p. 73: W. Darling (engraver), A French cook making a fricassée, etching, 23 x 16 cm, 1771, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, Farmington CT
p. 74: Paul Sandby, London cries: A Muffin Man, watercolour, pen and brown ink, graphite on medium, cream, slightly textured, laid paper, 19.7 x 13.7 cm, c. 1759, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven CT
list of illustrations
p. 77: Paul Sandby, London Cries: A Girl with a Basket on Her Head, watercolour, pen and brown ink, and graphite on medium, cream, slightly textured laid paper, 14.9 x 19.7
cm, c. 1759, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven CT
p. 78: J. Wicksteed, Animated Nature, or Lady en famille, etching and hand-coloured, 27.6 x 17.8 cm, 1786, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, Farmington CT
p. 80: Anon., The Contrast: a French prisoner in England; an English prisoner in France, etching, 27 x 37 cm, 1758, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, Farmington CT
p. 82: Charles White after John Collet, The Frenchman in London, etching and engraving, hand-coloured, 36 x 26.2 cm, 1770, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, Farmington CT
p. 83: James Caldwell after John Collet, The Englishman in Paris, etching and engraving, 30.3 x 24.8 cm, 1770, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, Farmington CT
p. 85: Thomas Rowlandson, Crowd by a gibbet, watercolour with pen and brown ink, over graphite on medium, smooth, beige, wove paper, mounted on heavy board, 15.2 x 21.3 cm, 18 th century, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven CT
p. 86: Esnauts and Rapilly (pub.), Execution of Derues, 1777, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
p. 89: Henry William Bunbury, The Paris Shoe Cleaner, engraving, 14.9 x 10.9 cm, 1771, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, Farmington CT
p. 92: Thomas Malton, Front of the Bank of England, handcoloured etching on slightly textured, medium, gray wove paper, 38.7 x 52.2 cm, 1790, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven CT
p. 95: Attr. to Gabriel-Jacques de Saint-Aubin, Theatrical divertissement at a gala evening party, pen and brown ink, watercolour and gouache, 20.2 x 26 cm, c. 1770, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Therese Kuhn Straus, in memory of her husband Herbert N. Straus, New York
p. 96: Thomas Rowlandson, Dressing for a masquerade, hand-coloured etching and stipple, 34.2 x 45.7 cm, 1790, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
p. 99: Anon., Tattersall’s Training School, Pen, in gray ink, brown ink, graphite and gray wash on medium, moderately textured, cream, laid paper, 20.3 x 25.2 cm, 1771, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven CT
pp. 102-103: Anon., Vauxhall Gardens, hand-coloured etching with engraving, 44.5 x 33 x 4 cm, c. 1750, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
p. 104: Gabriel-Jacques de Saint-Aubin, A Fête in the Colisée, drawing, black chalk, ink, watercolour and bodycolour
on paper, 1772, Wallace Collection, Londres
p. 108: Thomas Rowlandson, Figures sketches from a window at Paris, gray wash and graphite with pen and brown ink; verso: watercolour on medium, moderately textured, blued white laid paper, 15.9 x 25.1 cm, 1786, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven CT
pp. 110-111: Claude-Louis Desrais, Trades and Cries of Paris, drawing, pen and Indian ink, retouched with watercolour on medium, pink paper, 10 x 33 cm, c. 1700, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
p. 114: Henry William Bunbury, View on the Pont-Neuf, 1771, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, Farmington CT
p. 117: Jean-Baptiste Lallemand, Porte Saint-Martin, pen and Indian ink wash, 23 x 37,5 cm, 18 th century, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
p. 121: Louis Bretez, Detail of the Pan Turgot: the HôtelDieu, gravure, 1734-39, Kyoto University Library
p. 122: Antoine Meunier, Performance at the Comédie Française (interior), pen and Indian ink wash, watercolour, 17.4 x 24 cm, 18th century, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
pp. 124-125: Thomas Rowlandson, An audience watching a play at Drury Lane Theatre, watercolour with pen and black ink over graphite on moderately thick, moderately textured, blued white, laid paper, 23.8 x 36.4 cm, 1795, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven CT
list of illustrations
p.126: Robert Delaunay, after Jean Michel Moreau, Le Monument du Costume, 41 x 31 cm, 1777, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
p. 128: Anon., Sunday, 1809, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, Farmington CT
p. 131: Thomas Rowlandson, Englishmen in November, Frenchmen in November, hand-coloured etching, 40 x 61 cm, 1788, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
p. 133: Anon., The gates of Paris, or Brandy-rumps detected, 1786, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, Farmington CT
p. 136: Anon., No Popery or Newgate reformer, etching, 18.7 x 25.1 cm, 1780, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, Farmington CT
p. 139: Thomas Rowlandson, Mrs Morland and infant, graphite with pen and brown ink on moderately thick, moderately textured, cream laid paper, 18.1 x 12.7 cm, 1780, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven CT
p. 141: Charles Grignion after Michel Vincent Brandoin, A French Petit Maître and his valet, etching, 36 x 26 cm, 1771, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, Farmington CT
p. 143: Paul Sandby, James Gandon and Family, Brown wash and brown ink over graphite on medium, cream, slightly textured wove paper, 14.6 x 19.4 cm, 1780, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven CT
list of illustrations
p. 145: Gabriel-Jacques de Saint-Aubin, Scene in the Tuileries: The Water Cart, etching second state, 10.5 x 19.4 cm, 1760, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
p. 146: John Feary, One Tree Hill, Greenwich, with London in the Distance, oil on panel, 69.9 x 121.9 cm, 1779, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven CT
pp. 148-149: Thomas Rowlandson, Hyde Park Corner, pen and black ink and gray wash over graphite on medium, moderately textured, blued white, laid paper, mounted on thick, slightly textured, cream, wove paper, 62.1 x 22.7 cm, 18 th century, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven CT
p. 152: Hubert Robert, The Demolition of Houses on the Pont-au-Change, oil on canvas, 80 x 55 cm, c. 1788, Neue Pinakothek, Munich copyright Pierre André
p. 155: Elias Martin, The Happy News, 1778, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven CT
p. 156: Gabriel-Jacques de Saint-Aubin, The Newsmongers, etching, 9.8 x 14.3 cm, 1752, Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Elisha Whittelsey Fund 1939), New York
p. 158: Balthasar Anton Dunker, Reading newspapers in the Palais Royal, extract de “Costumes des moeurs et de l’esprit françois avant la grande révolution à la fin du dix-huitième siècle, planches gravées en carricature par un habile maître ; pouvant servir d’appendice au Tableau de Paris de Louis-Sébastien Mercier”, 1701-1788, Bibliothèque
nationale de France, Paris
p. 159: Anon. after S. H. Grimm, The Politician, 1771, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, Farmington CT
pp. 164-165: Jacques Chereau (pub.), View of the Canal, Chinese Building, Rotondo and in Ranelagh Gardens, with the Masquerade, engraving, 25 x 39 cm, 1790, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
p. 167: Pierre-François Basan after Gabriel-Jacques de Saint-Aubin, The Guinguette, etching, 1761-62, National Galley of Art, Washington, DC
p. 168: Anon., Fire of Hôtel-Dieu, drawing with pen and Indian ink wash, lightly tinted with watercolours, 15 x 21.5 cm, 1772, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
p. 171: C. Grignion and P. C. Canot after Samuel Wale, Hôpital des enfants-trouvés, Holborn, London: a perspective view looking north-west at the main building, happy children dancing round a statue of Flora, engraving, 1749, Wellcome Collection, London
p. 174: Thomas Rowlandson, The Maniac, watercolour and graphite with pen and black ink on medium, moderately textured, cream laid paper, 19.8 x 22.4 cm, 1787, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon, New Haven CT
p. 177: François Antoine Vassé, Design for the chapel of the Virgin, Notre-Dame, pen and Indian ink, Indian ink wash, watercolour; 61.7 x 48.5 cm, 1718, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
p. 179: Elias Martin, Reading Lesson at a Dame School, Graphite, pen and ink, and watercolor on moderately thick, slightly textured, cream wove paper, 18.4 x 24.8 cm, 18 th century, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven CT
p. 180: Elias Martin, Two Schoolboys, watercolour and graphite on medium, slightly textured, cream laid paper, 17.8 x 14.1 cm, 18 th century, Yale Center for British Art,
Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven CT
p. 181: Paul Sandby, British, London Cries: Boy with a Donkey, Gray wash, brown ink, and graphite on medium, slightly textured, cream laid paper, 17.8 x 14.3 cm, c. 1759, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven CT
p. 183: Thomas Rowlandson, Kick Up at a Hazard Table, hand-coloured etching and aquatint, 40.9 x 54.4 cm, c. 1787-90, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
p. 184: Gabriel-Jacques de Saint-Aubin, Interior view of the Colisée, 1771, Wallace Collection
p. 185: N. C. Goodnight after J. H. O’Neale, The Fortunate Ticket, etching, 18.2 x 11.2 cm, c. 1770, The British Museum, London
p. 187: Thomas Rowlandson, A Grub Street poet, pen and black, gray, and brown ink with gray wash over graphite; verso: graphite on medium, slightly textured, blued white, wove paper, 24.8 x 17.9 cm, 18 th century, Yale Center for
list of illustrations
British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven CT
p. 188: Jean-Michel Moreau (designer), Charles-Nicolas Cochin (painter), Charles-Étienne Gaucher (engraver), Coronation of the bust of Voltaire at the Comédie Française, 30 Marh 1778, engraving, 25,2 x 28,5 cm, 1782, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
p. 191: Chevalier Louis Nicolas de Lespinasse, View of the Wheat Quay, Plume et aquarelle, 1782, Musée Carnavalet / Roger-Viollet, Paris
p. 192-193: Robert Pollard d’après Edward Dayes, Bloomsbury Square, etching, 1787, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
p. 195: Robert Sayer, Tit for Tat, etching with stipple, 24 x 18.8 cm, 1786, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, Farmington CT
p. 196: Henri Joseph van Blarenberghe, Street scene, graphite, pen and gouache, c. 1780. RMN / Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts graphiques
p. 198-199: Louis Nicolas de Lespinasse, The Château de Versailles seen from the gardens, pen and black ink, watercolour, heightened with white, over traces of graphite, 20.4 x 30.4 cm, 1779, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Susan Dwight Bliss, 1966, New York
p. 200-201: Julius Caesar Ibbetson, Skaters on the Serpentine in Hyde Park, watercolour, pen and black ink on medium, laid paper, 22.2 x 30.1 cm, 1786, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
list of illustrations
p. 203: Gabriel-Jacques de Saint-Aubin, The Shop of M.Périer, Ironwork Merchant, Etching and drypoint, reworked with pen and brown ink, 15.5 x 23.5 cm, 1767,The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York p.204: S. W. Fores (pub.) after Henry Kingsbury, A milliner’s shop, etching and hand-coloured on paper, 38.7 x 51.1 cm, 1787, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven CT
p. 205: Carington Bowles (pub.) after Robert Dighton, A real scene in St Pauls Church Yard, on a windy day, mezzotint, hand-coloured, 35 x 25 cm, 1782-84, The British Museum, London
p. 206: James Gillray, The liberty of the subject, handcoloured etching , 26.3 x 37.5 cm, 1779, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, Farmington CT
p. 208: Carington Bowles (pub.) after Robert Dighton, An English Man of War taking a French Privateer, hand-coloured mezzotint, 35.5 x 25.5 cm, 1781, The British Museum, Londres
p. 209: Carington Bowles (pub.) after Robert Dighton, The True British Tar, hand-coloured mezzotint, 35 x 24.9 cm, 1785, The British Museum, London
p. 210: James Caldwall after Michel Vincent Brandoin, A French physician with his retinue going to visit his patients, etching with engraving, 20 x 25 cm, 1771, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, Farmington CT
p. 213: William Humphrey (pub.), The Quacks, etching, 24.7 x 34.7 cm, 1783, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, Farmington CT
p. 215: Page from Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s manuscript, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal
p. 217: Anon., The Paris Parlement, etching and engraving, 31 x 19.8 cm, after 1723, The Trustees of the British Museum, London
p. 218: James Fittler, after Edward Pugh, The House of Commons, hand-coloured engraving, no dimensions, 1804, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven CT
p. 221: Pietro Antonio Martini, after Johann Heinrich Ramberg, The Exhibition of the Royal Academy, etching, 37.5 x 53 cm, 1787, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
pp. 224-225: Hubert Robert, Demolition of the Houses on the Pont-au-Change, in 1786, oil on canvas, 81 x 54 cm, 1787, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe
pp. 226-227: Canaletto, The City of Westminster from Near the York Water Gate, Pen, brown ink and gray wash on thick, slightly textured, cream laid paper, 38.7 x 71.8 cm, 1746-47, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven CT
p. 229: Thomas Whitcombe, The Thames at Chelsea, oil on canvas, 78.4 x 153 cm, 1784, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven CT
p. 232: Anon., The Grand Châtelet, pen and Indian ink wash, brown ink highlight, 33.8 x 49.5 cm, c. 1800, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
p. 235: Fielding and Walker (pub.), The Burning and Plundering of Newgate and Setting the Felons at Liberty by the Mob, engraving with etching, no dimensions, 1780, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven CT
p. 236: Carington Bowles (pub.), The cook in the white sheet, or, The pantry apparition, mezzotint, 35.5 x 25.3 cm, 1771, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, Farmington CT
p. 239: Henry Bunbury, The Compliment of the Season, etching, c. 1785 Library of Congress, Washington, DC
p. 242: James Sayers, The Chamber of Commerce, or L’Assemblée des Notables Anglois, etching, 23.3 x 28.5 cm, 1787, The Trustees of the British Museum, London
p. 250: John Hamilton Mortimer, A Caricature Group including Members of the Howdalian Society, oil on canvas, 83.8 x 106.7 cm, c. 1766, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven CT
p. 253: William Humphrey (pub.) after Pierre Louis Dumesnil the Younger, Sr. Epicure Guzzle enjoying his bottle after dinner, mezzotint, 35.5 x 25 cm, 1773, The British Museum, London
p. 254: Anonymous, A good bottle of wine merchant sign,
list of illustrations
painting, 98 x 66 cm, c. 1790, Carnavalet Museum, Paris
p. 255: James Bretherton (pub.), after Henry William Bunbury, John Jehu L’Inghilterra, etching on medium, moderately textured, blued white laid paper, 22.3 x 16.3 cm, 1772, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven CT
p. 256: Thomas Rowlandson, Miseries of London, hand-coloured etching, 29.2 x 40 cm, 1807, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, Farmington CT
p. 259: Paul Sandby, A Carriage and Pair, with Coachman, Gray wash, brown wash, white gouache and graphite on thin, slightly textured, beige, laid paper; mounted on, medium, slightly textured, beige, laid paper, 10.3 x 12.5 cm, 1774, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven CT
p. 260: Thomas Rowlandson, The Paris Diligence, watercolour with pen and black, gray and red-brown ink over graphite, 23.3 x 35.9 cm, 18 th century, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven CT
p. 261: Thomas Rowlandson, A Visit to the Tombs, Gravure à l’eau forte colorée à la main et aquatint, 39 x 29.1 cm, 1789, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Neighbours and Rivals by Louis-Sébastien Mercier
translated and edited by Jonathan Conlin and Laurent Turcot
Transcription, editing, translation and introduction © 2025 Jonathan Conlin and Laurent Turcot Layout © 2025 Pallas Athene (Publishers) Ltd
First published 2025 by Pallas Athene (Publishers) Ltd, 2 Birch Close, Hargrave Park, London n19 5xd
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Design and layout: Alexander Fyjis-Walker and Anaïs Métais
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isbn 978 1 84368 270 7