EASTER IN PARIS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 June 1939, Page 11

EASTER IN PARIS

THE BRIC-A-BRAC FAIR. Six days before Easter a bric-a-brac fair descends from the Porte de Clignancourt to take up its brief week’s abode along a mile of boulevards in the east of Paris. Next to it a pork butchers’ fair offers its samples of ham and sausages and pates. The bric-a-brac is laid out on the pavement, on stalls, and piled up on shelves in sheds like skeleton shops. One of the most remarkable sights of Paris, this annual old iron fair attracts thousands of people, who file slowly by, looking at the junk offered for sale. A strange medley, everything and anything. Here a much-moustached colonel, resplendent in uniform of fifty years ago, looks out fiercely from a faded gilt picture frame, peering past a bronze horse on a massive green marble clock, the horse minus tail and the clock‘minus hands. Close by, a wooden leg that will no more support a limping hop stands next to a rusted gun. A box of surgical instruments lies open appropriately near a skeleton, on whose skull a hat has been stuck sideways. Sewing machines, field glasses, telescopes, walking sticks, teapots, samplers, books, armchairs, everything is here. The model over which the inventor has spent weary hours of hope and. disappointment Is offered for a few francs. Feminine finery in its last stage of bedraggled wear is spread on chairs, and a wheezy photograph, also for sale, adds a pale echo of a distant ball room. English objects have found their way here, one wonders how. A bust of Mr Gladstone next to a bust of Lord Beacon field, both much the worse for wear, at last stand on common ground, staring at each other. A tin box with a portrait of Queen Victoria on the lid, given to soldiers of the South African war, is here, and a picture of Old Bill still seeking for a better ’ole. No one at the old iron fair, ever thinks of paying the price asked. It is merely a starting point of a long wrangle before clock, coffee-pot or faded oil painting is caTriea off.