PARIS WITH ITS PANTS DOWN

A DARK AND DIRTY LOOK AT THE CITY OF LIGHT

Street prostitutes hide when the “poulets” or detectives come round. Joseph Hemard, 1950s.

           Those of us who make it our business to show people around Paris are a fairly sociable lot. Rivalry is rare. On the contrary, on meeting a colleague on the street with a group in tow, it’s usual to chat, and drop, of course, a few flattering comments: “you couldn’t ask for anyone better…” etc. And of course we’re equally scornful of the mass-tour operators who occasionally cross our paths, discoursing through a throat mike to ear buds wedged into the heads of twenty or so obviously bored punters.

           The life of the guide was not always so congenial. In 1926, The Paris That’s Not In the Guide Books warned against “the professional guides who infest the boulevards and offer you obscene postcards. Most of them are thieves and all are potential blackmailers. Their business pays in three ways; what you tip them, what they can steal from you, and the commissions on the money you spend in the places they take you too.” (The author of this book, incidentally, is one Basil Woon. Among his fellow scribes at the time were Wambly Bald and Waverley Root –  names that might well drive a sensitive soul to live abroad.)

           Paris With the Lid Lifted of 1929 is equally scathing. “Do not go with a so-called ‘guide’,’ it warns. “These ‘guides’ infest the boulevards from the Rue Royale to the Opera. They sneak up to you, want to sell you NAUGHTY postcards, take you to naughty cinemas, to ‘houses’ and ‘exhibitions’. Walk away from them!” 

Clients making a selection in a Paris brothel, 1917.

This doesn’t stop the author from recommending a visit to a brothel on you own account. “The ‘ladies’ see no harm in your coming, merely to inspect them. They will parade before you in frankest nudity, and dance with one another in a mirror-walled room, so that of their charms you will miss nothing.” He even approves of the  male equivalent. “The gigolo performs an important function in Paris. To keep lovely ladies from being lonely and bored and make their Paris visit all that their hearts desire. Ladies – engage your gigolos, by the dance, day or week.”

           Obviously we are not exploiting the full potential of our profession. The government is talking about re-training winemakers to work in other disciplines; maybe they’ll get around to re-educating we guides to function in the 21^st century.  Dirty postcards…blackmail….hmmm.