My lineageChapter I / VIII1801–1858
A street for the English
What crosses from one world to another : the setting
Before the Swanns, there was a street. Cut through under the Consulate between the Tuileries and the place Vendôme, the rue de Castiglione became the address of English and American travellers in the nineteenth century, and of their pharmacies.
A consular cut
On 9 October 1801 — 17 Vendémiaire, Year X — a consular decree ordered a street to be opened on the site of the former Feuillants convent. Around 1802, the rue de Castiglione linked the Tuileries to the place Vendôme. In 1812, La Tynna’s almanac still counted only two houses on it.
The foreigners’ quarter
Hotels, embassies and wealthy travellers gathered around the Meurice and the place Vendôme. English-speaking customers found their suppliers there, among them English and Anglo-American pharmacies. Roberts & Co., on the place Vendôme and later the rue de la Paix, would hold royal warrants from Napoleon III, Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. The English pharmacy was at once a place of care, a business, a network and a service to foreigners.
Number 6, before the pharmacy
From 1834 to 1867, Jean-Baptiste Henri Valton ran a stationery and publishing house at number 6 under the sign “Aux produits des arts”, for a yearly rent of 400 francs. He exhibited at the French industrial exhibitions of 1834 and 1839 and published the Japy catalogue in 1845. When he died in 1867, his son took over the press.
In 1858, the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning headed a letter “6 Rue de Castiglione, Place Vendôme”. The address was already a stopping place for the English in Paris.
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