A LOO FOR THE FEW.

ENJOYING PARIS AT YOUR CONVENIENCE.

         The newly-renovated Madeleine Lavatory, with office for Madam Pipi.

   "Here I sit, broken-hearted/Paid a penny - only farted." This poignant couplet, once a popular piece of toilet graffiti, came to mind this week when Paris authorities announced the reopening of a belle époque jewel of subterranean art nouveau architecture, the Lavatory de la Madeleine. This bijou addition to the city's attractions boasts varnished mahogany woodwork, stained-glass windows, ornate ceramics, mosaics, brass fittings, floor-to-ceiling tiles, and an elevated chair where you can have your shoes shined.  

            The cost of its fourteen-year refurbishment is reflected in the asking price for a visit, a hefty 2 Euros. But it's many years since relieving oneself- or anything else - in Paris came cheap.  As British industrial wisdom so succinctly articulates, "Where there's muck, there's brass" - a fact grasped as early as the 1st century by emperor Titus Flavius Vespasianus. He taxed the urine from public toilets, formerly collected free by tanners, who used it to prepare leather. In  his honour, French pissoirs are still known as Vespasiennes.

            The Madeleine facility, though now unisex, was, in its time, one of the rare loos reserved for ladies, its former use reflected in the windowed office provided for the traditional madame pipi. In its day (1905) it was the summit of luxury, a contrast with earlier eras, when, if you didn't just find a quiet corner or a convenient wall, you had to rely on a few entrepreneurs who loitered in the city's more elegant quartiers, offering semi-privacy - at a price.         

  For men, there was the traveling commode, a variation on the sedan chair, something like a telephone booth, but with a retractable seat and a chamber pot. Women were less fortunate. As crinolines were too bulky for the former, they had to make do with a receptacle and a capacious canvas cloak that draped them from neck to ground.    

            As visitors from more modest cultures learn to their dismay, public toilets in France are often literally public, and generally unisex. Even when the male-only public urinal or pissoir arrived in the 1830s, it wasn't much more than a trough and a minimal knee-to-neck steel screen, often decoratively perforated.  Henry Miller for one relished its public aspect. He particularly prized the example next to the Luxembourg Gardens, from which he could observe children sailing their toy boats and families enjoying a picnic.        

    Today, only one example remains in Paris. It stands outside the Santé prison, a lonely throwback, supplanted by automated toilets - technically known as Samisettes, I was surprised to discover - that often go wrong, and are only a little better when they work. Each week, a few hapless newbies, ducking in an open door as the last user departs, discover, to their dismay that these robot facilities not only flush after each use but employ high-pressure water to spray the walls and floor.

            I advise visitors to learn from the French and use a café toilet, paying the traditional price of a quick express at the bar. For those alarmed by having to share facilities with a hairy biker or a stiff-necked matron, there are always the luxe accommodations of the Madeleine. But often the matter is too urgent to be delayed by a Metro trip to the other side of the city.

            British comic duo of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore once proposed buying a corner of London's Leicester Square and constructing a public toilet there. "But it would cost millions," observed Dud. "You'd have to charge thousands of pounds a time to use it."  "True," said Pete thoughtfully, "but there'd always be a few people who'd be glad to pay."  

            When it comes to toilet graffiti, incidentally, my favourite was created by New Yorker humorist James Thurber. He wrote it in small letters about eye level on the door of the toilet stall. As you pulled down your pants and lowered yourself into a sitting position, your eyes rested briefly on the bleakly simple statement "Too late."

*

If any of my readers is disposed to turn his or her free subscriptions into a paying one, I’d like to renew my offer to present anyone who does so with copies of Montparnasse. Paris’s District of Memory and Desire, as well as two self-published books, limited to 100 copies each -a memoir of my days in the film industry, Filmstruck, and a collection of non-fiction, The Paris Men’s Salon, all three inscribed, and mailed post-free.