The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-11-06 00:00:00

THE FESTIVAL OF ALL SAINTS.

The Paris Correspondent of The Times, writing under date
the Ist inst., referring to this popular festival of the French
people, says :
To-day is one of the four great fetes of the Catholic
world—a fête, however, really secular as well as reli-
gious, for the Feast of All Saints announces that the
majority of the Parisians are leaving the country and
returning to Paris. Putting aside political classifica-
tions, Paris is divided into five very distinct classes.
First of all, there are the people who never go
into the country, the people whose employments
continue on Sunday—the factory hands and masons
who work during Sunday morning, the small dealers
in daily provisions—the grocers, fruiterers, milk.
sellers, and the butchers hairdressers, cabmen,
tobacconists, and restaurateurs, for whom no Sun-
day exists. These only know the country by hear-
say, and because from time to time they take a suburban
train to attend a fête in the environs of Paris, where
the country appears to them under the guise of a place
invaded by the crowd, filled with stalls, where the dust
is blinding, the noise of a dozen bands deafening,
where everything is to be seen except a blade of grass
in its natural state, and where the trees are replaced ,
by black wooden stands supporting oil-lamps, which
drip on the passers-by. Next there are the small
shopkeepers of back streets who hire in the out-
skirts of the city a cottage with a garden as long as
a thread and as narrow as a corridbr, where their
families live summer and winter, not for the sake
of the air and light, but because such a residence
is more economical, because it is outside the octroi
because the wife has no need to dress smart to keep up
the husband's credit, and because the children, in
ragged clothes and boots the worse for wear, can roll in
the dust without their mother being blamed for not
attending to them, or their father for being too
poor to clothe them. Those who inhabit these little
houses, small tradesmen, clerks, and subaltern
emplob, is, take the 7 or 8 a.m. train to Paris, and come
back by'the evening trains starting at eight, nine, or
ten. These see nothing of the country but the thick
veil of night, and at dawn, at the moment when the
sun begins to gild the tree-tops, they leave it, taking
into their dim offices, their scarcely-lighted shops,
the reflection, as it were, of the morning land-
scape, the recollezt.on of which cheers them
during their day's work. After these are the
richer shopkeepers who have a country house of their
own, which they see only on Sundays, which they
decorate for 10, 12, or 15 years, which is in their,
thoughts during the long years of labour, which
receives them every Sunday, to which they carry
their most constant anxieties, and which smiles on
them as the dream of Paradise whenever their
prosperous business allows of their retiring with
6,8, or 10,000 f. a year, to enjoy without interrup-
tion the occasional grandeur which now begins with
the end of the week and finishes with the beginning.
These are the large Boulevard tradesmen, the great
milliners or dressmakers, a few superior enzptoyes,
architects beginning to make their way in the world,
manufacturqrs who have just opened or bought a
factory; all those, in short, who can at once live
without pinching, devote some money to their hobby,
and cultivate the thrift so dear to the Frenchman
which leads to independence. Above these, the banker,
the successful manufacturer, the Ministers, chef de
division, the insurance manager, the magistrate,
the shopkeeper living on his income, or lastly the
rentier of the Faubourg St. Honore, has a real
country residence, where he passes four or five
months of the year. Rising above all these is the
real grand seigneur, who only leaves Paris in
August after the Grand Prix and the Great Re-
view, who goes to Rome, to the Plombibres or
Vichy baths, who only returns to his chAteau for
the opening of the chasse, and does not leave it till
after the Christmas festivities. Outside these five
classes and escaping all classification are the actor,
painter, sculptor, musician, who live at Asnieres,
Noisy-le-Sec, Courbevoie, Charenton, Fontenay-aux-
Roses, Enghien, and Fontainebleau, who come to
Paris in the evening and return after midnight by
what are called the theatre trains, bringing to the great
city their humour, talent, and vivacity, and seeing its
noise at the hour when that noise is stilled. Out of
all these classes it is the fourth which returns to town
on All Saints' Day. The first three never leave Paris
the fifth only comes back later, the sixth only passes,
the evening here. The Paris of All Saint' Day is,
therefore, the Paris of winter, saving thefleur superfine,
the aristocracy, or the banking princes who conceal
their absence of cats of arms under a heavy bag of gold
pieces.