There is one circumstance, however, that makes a stroll collapse back into worldly artifice, instead of unveiling the aesthetic essence of streets or countryside. I refer here to the sort of gallant, stylish saunter taken mainly to be seen. Its Parisian symbol is unarguably the Tuileries Gardens, which Corneille referred to as ‘the land of fine folk and gallantry’ (The Liar). Nature is absolutely dominated there: dead-straight, clipped box hedges, rectilinear walks, strictly pruned trees, artificial fountains, lascivious statues.
Originally only high society was allowed in, entry being denied to the rabble and the crowd of cursing lackeys waiting at the entrance for their mistresses to finish playing the sweetie-pie among swooning suitors. Still, ‘milliners’ – working-class good-time girls – were admitted so long as they were well-dressed, pretty or in respectable company. In summer, people stayed there until late, in the orange light and violet reflections, the sweetness of the evening advancing on tiptoe, and the dust thrown up by thousands of footsteps. The trees are still scarred with women’s names, carved by sad lovers.
Allons aux Tuilleries,
Entretenir tantost nos tristes resveries.
(Let’s go to the Tuileries
Soon to pursue our sad fantasies.)
It was a place much favoured by young girls in the flower of beauty, married women on the lookout for adventure, and widows seeking consolation. For it is an unspeakable bore to a woman to have but a single man – her husband – before her eyes. The gardens answered that need as noted by Charles Sorel in his 1648 tale, Polyandre: ‘Most women of spirit greatly loved the Cours and walking in the Luxembourg or the Tuileries, being well content to see new men there every day.’ It was the height of bad taste to go there as a couple, husband and wife.
People dawdled in the wide main walks of the gardens, stopping (or rather striking a pose) from time to time, but not through any political resistance to speed. It was more that only slowness enabled people to ogle at their leisure, display their finery and charms, and show how much wit they had. Of course, meticulous care was lavished on appearance (for nothing could be forgiven, nothing could be got away with: ‘The faces there are masterpieces of art / in which nature has often had not the least part’, according to the Harlequin Evaristo Gherardi), and companions carefully chosen (to avoid tiresome individuals who might spoil gallant encounters), and off they went: Parisiennes in all their glory.
Why did they walk? La Bruyère thought he knew: ‘to show off a beautiful fabric and reap the fruits of their toilette’. The real beauties trailed murmurs of rapture in their wake. But what they did couldn’t really be called walking; it was more a sophisticated gait, a studied swaying. As recommended by a servant addressing her mistress in Gherardi’s 1695 Promenades de Paris:
Like all the beauties, don’t risk a natural approach here. Be you with me in the Broad Walk, for example: you must speak to me while saying nothing, the better to seem witty, laugh for no reason the better to appear playful, draw yourself up at every moment to show your bosom, open your eyes wide to make them bigger, bite your lips to redden them.
So we could start with the Grande Allée, the Great Walk, which is like the main stage on which people fight to see and be seen, judge and be judged:
It’s the quarry of fine society.
It’s there, with great array,
As the sun begins to set,
That both brunette and blonde themselves display,
It’s there they make a show
Of fabrics and ribbons and lace.
It’s there that all the amblers
Come to auction their figure and their face.
It’s there they treat themselves to a public tryst,
That all objects are found
And that all disdain the rest
Because they are all alike.
But there were other small stages, transverse walks each with its own speciality: on the east side was a row of benches where people could ‘slander at their ease’ (the critics’ and curmudgeons’ walk), while other more shadowy walks were known for secret rendezvous, and yet others seemed gentle and sad, welcoming to melancholics.
The variety of showcases made the Tuileries into a play in which all were actors and spectators. As in a theatre, all types could be seen there: the beauty obsessed with her outfit, the ridiculous ladies’ man, the pompous and arrogant magistrate, the strutting officer, the pseudo-intellectual, the bourgeois, the young fop, the former seminarian, the rumour-spreading ‘gossipmonger’ from whom the latest lie could be heard, and then of course a few drunkards. But everyone stood as tall as possible, displayed their wares, meagre or sumptuous, and glanced discreetly about to see what effect they were producing on others. People wore false calves to disguise skinny shanks, put on false faces, flashed their diamonds, raised their voices.
In that permanent merry-go-round people sought, ignored and assessed one another, and strove to have an air (happy or sad: but you had to have one). Behind the differences, as the poem says, they were ‘all alike’. Meaning, once again, that they were all exchanging extravagant compliments while secretly despising one another, mocking one another reciprocally:
A grotesque who sees sideways
Will ridicule a one-eyed man.
An ass laughs at a drunkard, a cuckold at a bastard,
Each woman at her partner.
And in that concert of murmured banter, intrigues were set up: people made appointments, pretended to have met by chance, followed girls they didn’t know, got into conversation; women dropped their gloves, young fellows ran to kneel at their feet … It was the great ‘time of the Tuileries’.