Montmartre by John Baxter

Author:John Baxter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-02-25T05:00:00+00:00

A poet recites at the Lapin Agile, 1920s. (Frank Reynolds)

12

THE GHOST CABARETS

HEAVEN, HELL, AND NOTHINGNESS

FOR THE FIRST QUARTER OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, NO nocturnal tour of Montmartre was complete without visits to its “ghost cabarets,” Cabarets du Ciel et d’Enfer (Cabarets of Heaven and Hell) and the Cabaret du Néant (Cabaret of Nothingness). All were on Boulevard de Clichy, the first two sharing adjacent buildings at Nos. 53 and 55, the third at No. 34. The same entrepreneur designed all three, financed by music hall star Georges-Henri Dordane, aka Dorville, who owned the site of Heaven and Hell, where he had previously operated a café-concert.

The ghost cabarets were a response to the growing numbers of foreign tourists to whom the comic songs and recitations of most cafés-concerts meant nothing. Dordane, borrowing from the circus and the carnival, imported elements of the fun house and the ghost train, and made creative use of the crypts and tunnels beneath the boulevard. Since the buildings themselves provided most of the entertainment, he could economize on staff. The only food served was sandwiches, so he needed no kitchen or chef, and as there was no dancing, he could get by without a full band.

Pigalle, not easily surprised, had seen nothing like these cabarets and their eye-catching facades. Plaster figures of gods and monsters leered and gaped, a motif carried on in the grotto-like interiors, where reliefs of either angels in ecstasy or souls in torment decorated the walls.

Customers who pushed through the black velvet curtains barring inquisitive passersby had to endure, in the style of Aristide Bruant, an insulting welcome from a master of ceremonies who, at the Néant, wore the costume of a croque-mort or undertaker. Most visitors took it with good humor, although British journalist Ellsworth Douglas suggested that anyone “touchy, thin-skinned or squeamish, [who] holds death in awe, or understands French too well,” should look elsewhere for entertainment.

Having run the gauntlet of abuse, customers entered the Salle d’Intoxication, where chandeliers of human bones cast a feeble light on tables made from coffins. A waiter arrived to take drink orders. “Robed and cowled in black,” wrote Douglas, “he will ask in lugubrious tones whether you will have Arsenic, Cholera, the Pestilence, or merely some fresh Sighs-of-the-dying.” (“Cholera” was vermouth, “Pestilence” absinthe, and “Sighs-of-the-dying” a plate of sandwiches.)

Once everyone had a glass, the master of ceremonies dimmed the lights and lectured the customers about some paintings hanging around the room. All appeared innocuous until lamps were switched on behind them to reveal devils and other horrors menacing their nymphs and shepherds.

Following this, clients were offered, for a small extra payment, a visit to the Chamber of Disintegration. As sepulchral organ music droned, they filed down a tunnel into a dank crypt where a magician performed feats of transformation on volunteers from the audience. Wrapped in a shroud and placed in a coffin, a man was, it seemed, reduced in seconds to a skeleton. Other men who joined the magician onstage were made to

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