Monday, April 25, 2016

Café culture

With a dinner break:

By the end of the nineteenth century the café represented a ritual which could absorb the better part of the day. “In the old days,” wrote Jean Moréas, one of the great habitués and lion of the Vachette, “I arrived around one in the afternoon . . . stayed till seven, and then went to dine. About eight we came back, and didn’t finally leave untll one in the morning.” It was a life into itself.

Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France, 1885 to World War I , rev. ed. (New York: Vintage, 1968).
[Jean Moréas, poet (1856–1910). In 1913 the Café Vachette was nearing the end of its life.]

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