[Manuscript Journal of a Residence in Paris. by HUBBARD, William.

Large 4to (274 × 210 mm), pp. 190, [1], with c. 125 small engravings pasted in, most with original tissue guards (one or two missing prints from the text, plus another 18 removed from 9 blank pages in the middle of the book). Very fully completed in manuscript, in English with a brief table of contents on rear endpapers. Original green buckram, rebacked. Rubbed, board edges a little more worn. Inscribed ‘Wm Hubbard 1830’ on front free endpaper.

The first 140 pages here provide a very full manuscript account of an Englishman’s residence in Paris, mainly during the year 1826, with the last 50 pages recording his return to England, some travels there, and a return to France. In the course of just over a year, Hubbard visited all the major sights of Paris and its region, including Notre Dame and other churches, the Louvre, Versailles and other palaces, as well as observing public monuments, museums, squares, gardens and bridges. He took a special interest in the theatre, attending several plays (including Rochefort’s Jocko at the Théâtre Porte-Saint-Martin) of which he generally approves. Public life was illuminated in 1826 by the anniversary of the accession of Charles X the previous year, and Hubbard records public rejoicing and other celebrations of the French monarchy, such as the laying of the foundation stone for a new monument to Louis XVI. Like many an Englishmen he cannot resist comparisons between France and England, calling Versailles ‘the French Windsor’, Les Invalides, the equivalent of Chelsea Hospital and the newly-erected Passage Colbert ‘like our Burlington Arcade but infinitely more tastefully fitted up & decorated more extravagantly with us’. He provides an excellent account of the amusements of the Palais Royale, colourfully listing several of its famous cafés and describing roulette tables, noting the crowds of young working girls and the regulations which governed their profession. He seems especially struck by all this, waxing lyrical and concluding: ‘To close this long and uninteresting account of this sink of vice perhaps infamy, the flaunting depravity that walks forth at night and seeks shelter from the blessed light of day, yet this place is to Paris what Paris is to every other metropolis in the world a combination of Pleasure & Vice of delight & depravity. In the little Word of the Palais Royale every thing to improve or debase the mind to excite the admiration of the ingenuity of Man, on the one hand while on the other is weakness and folly, all these opposite positions so strangely assembled and perplexing contrast [del] may be compared to a kaleidoscope in which all the various colours & hues of human life are displayed in a thousand ever changing and fanciful forms.’

The object of Hubbard’s Paris residence is never quite clear, but it appears to have been imposed upon him rather than a voluntary sojourn, and he seems ever grateful of the prospect of return to a beloved home in Sydenham (Kent). He does make clear that he was joined by at least three other young men, all equally unable to communicate in French, and that he mixed with English society in Paris, including several young ladies (’fair Ellen’ and ‘fair Helen’ included). His entries tend to be confined to the last days of each week, suggesting he was occupied for some of the weekdays, but he nonetheless seems to have had plenty of leisure time to explore. The English-printed engravings inserted into the text are mainly from Pugin and Heath’s Paris and its Environs Displayed in a Series of Picturesque Views (1830-1) also indicated that he was able to obtain them readily in Paris, or that he already had them on hand, to paste in has he ticked off Paris monuments from his bucket-list.

He returns to England after a year and travels in southern England before making a return to France, and the cities of Northern France, recounted in the last quarter of the manuscript, before a second return to England in 1830.