Lucas

E. V. Lucas - Wikipedia

Edward Verrall Lucas, CH (11/12 June 1868 – 26 June 1938) was an English humorist, essayist, playwright, biographer, publisher, poet, novelist, short story writer and editor.

Born to a Quaker family in Eltham, on the fringes of London, Lucas began work at the age of sixteen, apprenticed to a bookseller. After that he turned to journalism, and worked on a local paper in Brighton and then on a London evening paper. He was commissioned to write a biography of Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet. This led to further commissions, including the editing of the works of Charles Lamb.

Lucas joined the staff of the humorous magazine Punch in 1904, and remained there for the rest of his life. He was a prolific writer, most celebrated for his short essays, but he also produced verses, novels and plays. 

The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Wanderer in Paris, by E. V. Lucas

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37937/37937-h/37937-h.htm

Between the Cluny and the river is a network of very old, squalid and interesting streets. Here the students of the middle ages found both their schools and their lodgings: among them Dante himself, who refers to the Rue de Fouarre (or straw, on which, following the instructions of Pope Urban V., the students sat) as the Vico degli Strami. It has now been demolished. The two churches here are worth a visit—St. Severin and St. Julien-le-Pauvre, but the reader is warned that the surroundings are not too agreeable. In the court adjoining St Julien's are traces of the wall of Philip Augustus, of which we saw something at the Mont de Piété.

All these streets, as I say, are picturesque and dirty, but I think the best is the Rue de Bièvre, which runs up the hill of St. Etienne from the Quai de Montebello, opposite the Morgue, and can be gained from St. Julien's by the dirty Rue de la Boucherie, of which this street 186 and its westward continuation, the Rue de la Huchette, Huysmans, the French novelist and mystic, writes—as of all this curious district—in his book, La Bièvre et Saint Severin, one of the best examples of imaginative topography that I know. Let us see what he says of the Bièvre, the little river which gives the street its name and which once tumbled down into the Seine at this point, but is now buried underground like the New River at Islington.

"The Bièvre," he writes, "represents to-day one of the most perfect symbols of feminine misery exploited by a big city. Originating in the lake or pond of St. Quentin near Trappes, it runs quietly and slowly through the valley that bears its name. Like many young girls from the country, directly it arrives in Paris the Bièvre falls a victim to the cunning wide-awake industry of a catcher of men.... To follow all her windings, it is necessary to ascend the Rue du Moulin des Prés and enter the Rue de Gentilly, and then the most extraordinary and unsuspected journey begins."

Inspired by the passage of which these are the opening words, I set out one day to trace the Bièvre to daylight, but it was a cheerless enterprise, for the Rue Monge is a dreary street, and the new Boulevards hereabouts are even drearier because they are wider. I found her at last, by peeping through a hoarding in the Boulevard Arago, with tanneries on each side of her; and then I gave it up.