3-034-680 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Fair of St. Cloud, near Paris, 1871. View of '...the annual Fair of St. Cloud, a famous resort of Parisian festivity and social vanity...Cafes, tiny shooting-galleries, bagatelle-tables, and stalls in which sweetmeats are sold are extemporised in shady angles...There is...the incessant din of the bands inviting the pleasure-seeker to examine for himself the fattest of women or the strangest of animals from the Eastern Archipelago concealed within...a combination of sights, sounds, and impressions such as this nation alone could have invented...mirlitons...are a specialty of the fair, and consist of long pipes which are gaudily painted...A bright, laughing crowd throng the long street of tents, at the end of which are a number of merry-go-rounds, ball-tents, panoramic exhibitions, booths of fortune-tellers, performing dogs, and theatrical exhibitions. One of these theatres sought to draw an audience by the inscription, "Garibaldi under the walls of Dijon, and by the sounds of a brass band, to the tune of which a file of Prussian soldiers and French Francs Tireurs were marching amicably upon a platform." The dancing-tents, as well as the theatres, drinking-booths, and bazaars, were more crowded than had ever been known...in former years'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.