Forgotten Paris - the Lapin Agile (Dreamhounds)

 My own memories of Montmartre concentrate in the Lapin Agile. It is a broken-down shanty. Once it was called the Caberet des Assassines. One may roughly translate its current name as the Skittish Rabbit. But in reality it should be called the Lapin a Gill - in reference to the rabbit which Gill, the caricaturist, who was once the owner of the little maison de campagne, before the builder had made modern Montmartre, painted on the door ... Famous as this tiny place has grown, it is not altogether spoilt. Its habitues are still the true Montmartrois, who are just amusing themselves. They drink beer and munch plums soaked in eau-de-vie, and listen to each other's poems and songs. A dog sleeps in the middle of the floor, only wakening at the end of each contribution to bark loudly by way of applause. Within the decaying walls of the Lapin Agile the conspirators, sat on bottomless stools and boxes which served as chairs, planned all the farces at which Paris used to chuckle.    

It's a bit cheeky to call forgotten something that still stands today but I thought it would be interesting to talk about Dreamhounds. The text is from Sisley Huddleston's 1926 work Bohemian Literary and Social Life In Paris, which isn't a bad resource for Dreamhounds assuming that you can find it in a second-hand store somewhere. I got mine for a buck at a house clearance sale. Worth paying attention to, those sales.

Image sourced from Wikipedia

The Lapin was formerly known as the Caberet des Assassines because it had portraits of famous murderers sketched on the wall, some of which probably still existed (faintly) in 1930. Gill's caricature wasn't the only famous art showing the Lapin. Picasso also created a painting of a night at the Caberet, At the Lapin Agile, in 1905. He created it after his friend the Spanish artist Carles Casagemas killed himself during a drinking bout at the Hippodrome, when his lover once again refused to marry him. The painting hung on the wall of the cabaret for many years and is now held by the New York Met. Both Picasso and Casagemas were very young men at the time and Casegemas' lover Germaine Pichot is pictured in the Lapin Agile. She and Picasso would go on to have an affair. 

Steve Martin would later write a play, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, featuring the artist, Albert Einstein and several others, including a time traveler with blue suede shoes.   

Long Wharf Theatre production

With all that in mind:

Strange Rabbits

A new talent, unaffiliated with the surrealists, has captured Breton's attention. This minor painter and photographer, Jacob Burri, has appeared at the Lapin regularly and verbally sparred with Picasso there. Breton wants to know more about this mercurial Swiss and gets the Hounds to check him out.

It's difficult to trace Burri's whereabouts. He must have rooms in Montmartre but nobody knows where they are. The only thing definitely known about him is that he always visits the Lapin from about midday till at least 3pm, sometimes later. He seems to know a great deal about the present and hints at knowing even more about the future. How does he know these things?

Why is he only ever seen at the Lapin?

• Burri is a hollow shell, piloted by a Bulbhead who has learned the trick of navigating from Dreams to Paris as the Surrealists do. The Bulbhead is using this shell to explore the waking world and determine why it is that dreamers have such influence over the dreamlands. It's a bit like using a diving bell to explore the depths, and just as hazardous for the Bulbhead. However, the Bulbead lacks nuance, and its erratic behavior is bound to attract attention.
• Burri is a future dreamer from the 1980s who has found his way to 1930s Paris in an attempt to get to the Lapin of 1904. He gets to that place the same way a blind man plays darts; he makes his shot and hopes for the best. Somehow he keeps ending up in the 1930s which for him is hell, since he's trying to get to the Dreamlands that exists before the Surrealists muck it up and he's having no luck getting past the oneiric walls that the Dreamhounds have built.
• Burri is a would-be cultist, a novitiate of the occult group CS who has gone about as far as they can go, in their current field of study. Burri wants to progress but is being held back by the cult's higher-ups, so Burri is looking for a short cut. Burri thinks that the shortest cut of all would be to infiltrate the surrealists and learn their secrets but is conscious that, if CS were to find out about the risks they are taking, it would all be over. Variant - Burri is actually Liserl Einstein.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Forgotten London - Rag & Bone Shops

 'It's a poor part of our business, but the books and paper takes up little room, and then it's clean and can be stowed anywhere, and is a sure sale. Well, the people as sells waste to me is not such as can read, I think; I don't know what they is; perhaps they're such as obtains possession of the books and whatnot after the death of old folks, and gets them out of the way as quick as they can. I know nothing about what they are. Last week, a man in black - he didn't look rich - came into my shop and looked at some old books, and said 'have you any black lead?' He didn't speak plain, and I could hardly catch him. I said 'no, sir, I don't sell black lead, but you'll get it at No. 27.' 'Not black lead, but black letter,' speaking very pointed. I said 'No,' and I haven't a notion what he meant.  

From Henry Mayhew, Mayhew's London, edited Peter Quennell, originally 1851, reprinted Spring Books, London.

Steptoe and Son theme

A rag & bone man is someone who collects and sells pretty much every kind of waste product. It all has its uses, and thus its buyers and sellers. The smallest fish in the trade have just their cart; larger rag & bone merchants have yards or shops of their own. 

The version Mayhew describes is, at best, appalling. 'The stench in these shops is positively sickening. Here in a small apartment may be a pile of rags, a sackful of bones, the many varieties of grease and kitchen-stuff, corrupting an atmosphere which, even without such accompaniments, would be too close. The windows are often crowded with bottles, which exclude the light; while the floor and shelves are thick with grease and dirt The inmates seem unconscious of this foulness - and one comparatively wealthy man, who showed me his horses, the stable being like a drawing-room compared to his shop, in speaking of the many deaths of his children, could not conjecture as to what cause it could be owing.' 

There might have been fewer of these in the 1930s than the 1850s, but even so the examples that remain can't have been significantly better. Moreover they last for a remarkably long time, all things considered; people recognized the archetype in Steptoe and Son, and that was a 1970s show.

You could find literally anything in a rag-and-bone, and as the anecdote from Mayhew points out, anything includes books. The seller will have no idea what they have, whether it's worth anything, where it came from.

In broadest terms what we now think of as a charity shop is what a rag-and-bone used to be. They sell anything to anyone. They make no enquiry as to how you got the things you're selling and they don't care who buys what they have. They exist to be a mercantile middleman.

Examples of this can fit into any setting. They'd do well in Cyberpunk, for example; one man's trash is another man's treasure in any setting where resources are scarce and you have to make do. However, from a Keeper's perspective they'd do best in Bookhounds, Trail, Night's Black Agents - any early modern or semi-modern setting where the characters are assumed to be working behind the scenes, in the shadows, to get things done. 

A rag-and-bone is exactly the kind of place the Hounds might pick up some unconsidered trifle. Lord knows where it came from; certainly the rag-and-bone man doesn't know. Nor did he enquire. 

As for locations a rag-and-bone might be in any part of London but is most likely to be found in the poorer parts, so the East End, Isle of Dogs and similar.

All that said:

A Drunkard's Memory

One of the shop's less reliable Scouts turns up with an interesting piece: a broadsheet chapbook of ballads, early 19th century. It's not in perfect shape but, nestled between its sheets, there's a translation of a letter about the Würzburg witch trials of the early 1600s, from a burgher of Würzburg to an unnamed cousin. They describe the trials in great detail. 

If there is a translation it follows there must be an original out there somewhere, and anything to do with the witchcraft persecutions in Würzburg will find a buyer. Question is, where did the Scout pick up their chapbook?

All the drunken sot can remember is they got it from a rag-and-bone shop in North London. They can'r remember which rag-and-bone, but they do think there's more stuff to be had. The rag-and-bone man said he'd picked up the chapbook and a number of other oddments from 'a fellow.' Not that the Scout can remember who.

Some 1-point spends realize that the translation is printed on cheap paper sold in job lots to medical men; it was torn from a prescription book. Most likely it came from someone in the Royal Free Hospital, if whoever had it was based in North London.

A 0-point spend eventually finds the rag-and-bone, though a 1-point spend finds it in time to stop some of the best bits being sold to other buyers.

The rag-and-bone is an unprepossessing little corner shop, Berrycloth & Sons, that's been at that location since the 1870s and looks every bit of its age. According to the owner, Balthazar Berrycloth, (B.B. to his friends), he got it all from the landlady of a medical student who was clearing out the flat after the student's unexpected death.

Options:

• The student isn't dead and will never die. Not unless someone cuts off their head and burns the body to ash. However, the landlady didn't realize this and unloaded all their prize possessions while the body was still at the coroner's awaiting dissection. Now that student wants their stuff back, and B.B. is first on their list of 'people to take vengeance on.' Shortly to be followed by the Hounds.
• The student was a junior member of one of London's cults and was in possession of some very incriminating documents when they died. All those ended up at B.B.'s shop and are now scattered across London - though if the Hounds spent a point then they have the most valuable items. The cult wants its papers back and will stop at nothing to get them.
• Old B.B. knows more than he's telling. The whole thing, from the Scout onwards, is a confidence scam designed specifically to take in the Hounds with some glorious fakes. The Scout is in on the deal. Why do this? Because B.B. is about to make a transition from rag-and-bone to antiquarian dealer and he wants a bit of capital. If the Hounds go out of business due to a Reverse and B.B. gets to buy their stock for a song to open his own store, so much the better ...

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Forgotten London - Whittington's House of Ease

Yes, I know, I missed last week - Charlie was kind enough to give us a three-day weekend and I used it wisely but too well. 

Second, a quick heads-up: I've been working on some Ravenloft stuff that will go up on DTRPG (DMG) fairly soon. Brief one-shot horror adventures with one simple rule: no more than four pages.

Now, on with the show.

Whittington's Longhouse and Almshouse was built in Cheapside, London, in 1421 and lasted, in one form or another, till at least the 19th Century and possibly the 20th. That may or may not make it the longest-lived public toilet in human history; nobody keeps records of that kind of thing.

Sir Richard Whittington, to give him his proper title, was thrice Mayor of London and a very rich man, but died childless and spent his fortune on charitable works, the Longhouse among them. It could seat 64 women and 64 men and was distinct for having a division between the sexes. One long house, with a dividing privacy wall between the 64 men and 64 women. 

The Almshouse was directly above. If you were desperate and had nowhere else to go, you could go there. Records are a little spotty on this one, and it may well be that the almshouse was used for storage at some point in the Longhouse’s career.

The 128-hole original burnt in the Great Fire but was replaced soon thereafter by a much smaller public toilet that lasted till at least 1851, and probably longer than that. 

‘In 1660,’ says Liza Picard, ‘The usual practice was to nip into an inn, or a friend’s house. But there was always a convenient corner or accepted ‘pissing place.’’ 

Whittington was famous in his day for his charitable works. He must have been a clever gent to think outside the usual church-and-benevolent-fund malarkey and build something that everyone would have found useful regardless of status. Of course, in his day while there would have been division between the sexes there was no division between neighbors; your hole was next to the other’s, which was next to the other’s after that. Given that there were 64 holes per, that suggests a remarkable coming and going in the busy periods.

Whittington is probably better known for his famous, fictitious cat which earned him his fortune – at least so goes the story. There’s nothing to suggest the real-life Whittington had a cat, but stories seldom match. The cat as helper has a very long folkloric tradition, though Whittington’s version has very little in common with its more famous adaptation, as Puss In Boots.

But! Baghdad-By-The-Thames has a long memory, and if Whittington’s Longhouse survived in one form or other until at least the 20th century – which seems possible – then it would be of interest to Bookhounds and Megapolisomancers alike.  

Incidentally there’s all kinds of stories about death on the toilet, from peculiar spiders crawling up the dunny to the legendary (and all too hideous) Erfurt Latrine Disaster. Birth on the toilet too; as Liza Picard notes, there are several instances of babies being found abandoned in toilets and brought up by the Church.

All of which leads to:

The House That Is (And Isn’t) There

Freddy ‘Inkwell’ Rummage, a notoriously sticky-fingered book scout, has lost a commission. Or at least that’s his story and he’s sticking to it.

According to Inkwell he picked up a rather choice copy of [insert interesting text] and was on his way to the Hounds’ shop to negotiate a price when he was accosted by some Rough Lads who wanted a word with him about unpaid gambling debts. 

Inkwell was about to give himself up for lost when he saw a public convenience. Thinking to outwit, or at least outlast, the Rough Lads, Inkwell nipped in and found himself in a very peculiar hiding place. 

It was, says Inkwell, a very long and remarkably smelly convenience, with holes rather than the more comfortable compartments he’s used to. He had the feeling there was someone else in there with him but saw no one. 

After waiting what seemed like a short enough time Inkwell risked an escape, only to discover that it was midmorning of the next day! Moreover he no longer had the valuable package; Inkwell thinks he must have put it down for a moment and never picked it up again.

Preliminary investigation suggests that wherever this place is it’s somewhere in Cheapside, but exactly where is anyone’s guess.

Options:

• The grimoire is protected by [something] and it was that [something] that opened a temporary hole in space & time. However, the grimoire is now stuck in that alternate dimension until someone comes to collect it. A Hound roaming Cheapside at the same hour of night that Inkwell got himself into trouble might find their way into the Longhouse.
• Inkwell stumbled onto a long-forgotten secret Fane, protected by Isis and her servants, the cats of London. The real prize is upstairs, in the Almshouse, where Isis keeps a kind of temple – or at least her cats do. Some megapolisomancers know about this secret haven.
• Inkwell stumbled into a Haunting and while he was able to get away with his life others might not be so lucky. By leaving that book behind Inkwell inadvertently created a kind of link that allows the Haunting greater power/longevity than usual. So long as that book is there, the link to the Longhouse is open …

That's it for this week. Enjoy!