George Augustus Sala

Paris Herself Again in 1878-9 George Augustus Sala

"I went to Paris at the end of the first week in July, last year, intending to remain a fortnight in the French capital ; and I returned from Paris to London on the twenty-third of November, on the eve of my birthday: when I was fifty years of age. I mention these dates, and I have kept the circumstance of my fiftieth birthday in mind, for a purpose which I shall afterwards explain. I have rarely enjoyed myself so thoroughly and so heartily; and I am sure that I have not, these many years past, suffered so much physical discomfort as I did during nearly five months' residence in Paris. As to the discomfort, I am not, of course, speaking of old times, when one was young and struggling and desperately poor; nor do I allude to such privations as must be endured now and again when a man is travelling in partially-civilised countries, or abiding in partially-civilised cities, such as Constantinople; and I must frankly own that no inconsiderable proportion of the lack of comfort which I experienced in Paris was altogether of my own choosing. There are many new, spacious, clean, and airy hotels in Paris; and I could have obtained, at no very extortionate rates, comfortable and luxurious apartments at the Grand or at the Louvre, at the Continental or at the Splendide, at the Chatham or at the Lille et Albion. But in July 78 the Paris Universal Exposition was at its flood. Thousands of strangers from all parts of the world were arriving in the capital every week ; and all the hotels in the fashionable quarters, from the Rue de Rivoli to high up in the Champs Elysees, and from the Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin along the Boulevards to the Madeleine, were thronged to repletion with English people." [...] Reprint of the wonderful description of a journey to Paris in the year of the world expo 1878, originally published in 1882.