Henri Pol – Le Charmeur d`oiseaux

The silver Honda had seen better days. Battered and forlorn, trundling its way along the park`s entry road, the dents and rust allowing not a second glance, but for the hundred plus gawking, squawking pursuing crows. A Hitchcockian retinue full of sparkling energy; a cascading ball of anticipation, aggression and anger. The car parks up, the doors squeak open and disgorge an equally arthritic aging couple and variously logoed supermarket bags. The cascade proceeds into hyperdrive, a mass of inky black wings and bodies vying for first dibs. I`m absolutely mesmerised by this sensory compellment. At once physically drawn into the high volume visuals whilst mentally pondering the relationship strands tying together this wild engagement.

These highly intelligent birds had learnt that the colour and sound of this car equated to an uber open air delivery of food. Their enthralment had become so habituated that any newcomers to the party learnt their cues from more experienced members, their motivation and reward being a straightforward feeding frenzy, pumped up on an adrenalin based corvidian intoxicant. The motivations for the couple, however, were more opaque; a hotchpotch of anthropocentric and aviancentric ingredients; altruism, control, companionship, nurture, and that multi-layered component, pleasure, seasoned with a soupçon  of spirituality. Such complexity within such a simple act. Furthermore this public practice of bird feeding was so very private, a play performed for the couple in which the birds are willing participants, yet ignorant to their star status, whilst the couple occupied their own covert bubble. In this rather extreme example of wild bird feeding, the performance is accidental to the participants, it is only when the observer is observed that this public feeding becomes a show.

For Henri Pol, Le Charmeur d`Oiseaux, the beginnings of his outdoor relationship with birds was a similarly insular practice, a very private activity within a public space, albeit on a more humble scale. The simple act of sitting on a park bench dispensing crumbs of bread broke up the walk to work and provided a welcome distraction from the days travails….a chance of being proximate to nature and a brief respite from the mundane and onerous workings of everyday life. Little did he know that this was the beginnings of a nigh on forty year relationship that developed into performance art.

Henri was a senior clerk at the central bureau de télégraphe in Paris and as a young man in the 1880`s his walk to work from his home on the right bank of the Seine, took him through the Tuileries Garden at around 8 in the morning where his custom was to sit and read his newspaper, relaxing before another kilometre took him fifteen minutes, over the river on the Pont de Solferino to work at the postal telegraph complex at 103 Rue de Grenelle in the 7th arrondisement. The telegraph building still stands, recent renovations have retained the wonderfully imposing 19<sup>th</sup> century industrial façade whilst the Tuileries are now reached by the footbridge Passerelle Léopold-Sédar-Senghor which replaced, in the 1960`s, the boat damaged Solferino.

Similar scenes would have been experienced in Victorian London, with increased leisure time and the parallel growth in the number of urban parks through the 1870`s, an acceleration in wild bird feeding was experienced, particularly during the very cold winters of the 1890`s. Where once the squalling urban gulls and pigeons would have faced the barrel of a gun they now were receiving titbits from workers sharing their lunch. It became such a common pastime in London that there would be rows of people providing pre-prepared food from the central London bridges.

However the prime recipient of this largesse was the House Sparrow, a bird that has been historically associated with human settlement since the bronze age. Its scientific name, Passer Domesticus, was first coined by Conrad Gessner, a Swiss naturalist, in 1555, demonstrating the link that this species has to humans and its sedentary lifestyle, rarely moving outside a radius of a hundred metres during its entire life cycle. Predominantly granivorous, food was everywhere in rural France and England, barns, kitchens and fields all providing the necessary seeds and nutrition for survival. Their ubiquity, opportunism and perceived boldness often landed them in trouble yet equally gave rise to charming nicknames such as spadger, spuggy and chummy.

This ubiquity prevailed as urbanisation advanced. Horse drawn transport dominated in both London and Paris until 1912 providing plenty of feeding opportunities for these granivores, from horses feed and faeces, whilst the numerous inner city parks and gardens supported the necessary insect life for the chicks during breeding season. It is this continuum of pervasiveness that allowed the Sparrow to have an exalted emotional status, and although potentially a nuisance it provided an important link, across both cultures, to the rural past, a nostalgic reminder of a simpler, less hectic time, creating a bucolic romantic vision,  triggering deep-seated memories of an era when our relationship with nature was much closer.

The cheeky cockerney sparrer became an endearing colloquial urban London name for this captivating, bright, sparky, likeable chap an anthro-avian nick which continues to this day. Similarly in Paris the charming soubriquet, Le Pierrot, is a nod to a famous 17^th century Italian pantomime troupe, Comedie-Italienne. In both cultures these names intimated performance and showmanship, music hall in London and the stage in Paris where the touring Pierrots were famed and feted. This anthropomorphic behaviour and naming projected our desires and aspirations, Sparrows were perceived as little people, they had two legs, an upright stance with bright staring eyes; small bundles of sparkly mannerisms and nervous energy with the added bonus of being able to provide aeriel acrobatic tricks.

In Paris Henri soon realised that by displaying patience and gentleness he could coax the birds closer, to the point that he would regularly have them eating from his hand and alighting on his arms, hands and head. It was at this juncture that Henri traversed the divide from private to public…..he was now perceived as a one man circus, an open air ringmaster,  labelled `Le charmeur`, not only a performer but a magician encompassing elements of mysticism, exoticism, a la snake charmer, and magic, a thaumartage working with nature to create wonder and awe amongst the growing crowds.

Henri was certainly not the first `charmeur`, in 1868 Charles Yriate wrote Les celebrités de la rue  where he spoke of over ten charmeurs performing around the Tuileries area. He noted that most were `retired gentlemen` yet Mademoiselle Henriette (in his words) `surpassed all her predecessors with her special influence on the Wood Pigeons.` At this time the Tuileries Garden had the formidable backdrop of the ill fated Tuileries Palace which stood until 1871 when destroyed during the uprising of the Paris Commune.  The gardens however still act as a tourist attraction in their own right and provide a pedestrian connection to La Louvre.

A `charmeur` from the Celebrities de la Rue

Henri, twenty years later, however, became the stand out `charmeur` benefiting from his persistence and the rapid social changes of the late Victorian / Edwardian period. He developed more sophisticated catering, preparing small dough balls by soaking bread in the gardens pools, supplying millet seed and even, it was noted, gooseberries. Henri would name the Pierrots and female Pierrettes often after famous people or topical events; Le Petit Boer, Rougel de l`Isle  (A French soldier and writer of the La Marseillaise, Garibaldi, Nicolas (after the Russian Tsar) or used colloquial phrases; La Belle Etoile (beautiful star), Quat’sous (five centimes, equivalent to our thruppenny bit), Poil aux pattes (Hair on the legs),  Tape-à-l’oeil (Flashy) and Coeur de fer (heart of fire) to name but a few. With the increase in European tourism his fame transcended mere local renown, stories of his avian delights were recorded in Parisien papers and magazines, French provincial papers as well as articles in the broadsheets of England, Ireland and Germany.

Aiding the spread of his reputation was the rapid growth in the use of postcards. They became the hip communication channel of the period with cheaper translation of photos to print, allied to increased social mobility and leisure time fuelling their success. They were a comparatively rapid form of pictoral communication, the Instagram of their day; with up to six postal collection and deliveries a day a card could reach London from Paris within twenty four hours. Henri developed his own cottage industry, of producing cards with various images of feeding birds in the Tuileries, often with a backdrop of an audience. In 1897 the Lumiere Brothers feature Henri in one of their classic social history movie shorts whilst Henri is mentioned in the famed semi-autobiographical novel of Rainer Maria Rilkes `The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge` published in 1910, Rilkes expressionistic style lending itself to influence Sartre`s existential writings. Henri received an award from the French institute for aviculture for his services to birds before passing away in his 80`s, on June 17^th 1918 at a retirement home in Chardon-Lagache in central Paris.

During Henri`s time animals were increasingly being used within the circus and street theatre and birds did not escape this captive exploitation. Victorian London had many such acts including one wag who dressed small birds as soldiers, the show culminating in one bird lighting a toy cannon whilst the rest of the troupe pretended to play dead, completely unedifying and verging on the grotesque. Latterly in the 2000`s Don Crown, the Budgieregar man, was a regular feature amongst the South Bank buskers plying their trade between Waterloo and Westminster bridges in London, whilst the most famous Budgieregar exponent was Norman Barrett who was actually awarded an MBE for his ringmaster and budgieregar skills in 2010……….only twelve years ago. It was not until January 2020 in England that the use of wild animals in circuses was banned under the Wild Animals in Circuses Act 2019. And before I get off my high prancing horse we must remember that in watching circus animals we were all party to that exploitation, willing participants reinforcing the prejudice, against, and the spiritual distance, from, nature.

So for Henri receiving an award from the equivalent of our caged bird society is somewhat telling of our historical perception of birds and animals. Henri would have been viewed in some quarters as no different to the more overt examples of showmanship described, suggesting a fine line between altruism and exploitation.

Can we ever be truly altruistic? After all there`s always some gain even if the advantage is purely spiritual with the most benefactory philanthropists seeking a profit. Did Henri cross the rubicon into abuse?  The definition of wild vs domesticated provides the answer. After the lights go down, the curtains are closed and the greasepaint wiped, performing animals were caged and utterly dependent on their captors for food and drink. For our urban birds they are wild and utterly dependent on their own instincts, for better or worse. No doggie beds, cages in warm parlours, or vets for them but completely reliant on their own capacity to survive, whether the night be cold, wet or both, the benefit is freedom, free to fly and able to act on their own volition. Indeed Henri was never fully in control of their perceived performances, the movements being natural and random. We now know that supplementary feeding has the potential to effect the natural processes and compromise the lifestages of birds but Henri was innocent to this modern day science any negative outcomes were more than made up for him providing a channel to access to the wonder and mysticism of nature to thousands of Parisians and tourists.

Our current epoch has been described as the 6^th extinction a time when our domination and destruction of natural processes and life leads ultimately to human downfall. E. O. Wilson the eminent US biologist recognised our continued distancing from nature and had his own description for this current period, the Eremocine – the age of loneliness, where we have lost our primal instinct (driver) to link with nature. Our Honda couple, and our charmeurs may indeed be lonely, eccentric or perceived as just plain mad but they have recognised the need to bridge this divide. To be close to nature is special, to touch nature is very special; a recognition that we all should have to inscend nature and not to control, damage or extinguish. We all need to stare more into the fountain and flames of nature for this inscendence to be fixed.

In Henri`s self penned pamphlet describing his relationship with birds, he stated:

`They love me because they trust. To please is to be supported. The art of charming birds is to be happy with them. They are good little servants of agriculture, and without them the most beautiful landscape would be of great sadness`

He showed us that exhibitionism does not have to lead to exploitation indeed he provided a tool for us to retain a link with nature, an enabler, a catalyser using awe and wonder to inspire. He might have made a few centimes along the way but there was no swishing of tops n tails for Henri more squashy fedoras, trenchcoats and cardies, all fusty bonhomie and battered old Honda.

As I watched the couple and the crows in the local park I was that lucky lad in the postcard, all arms akimbo, flat cap and short trousers, all big round eyes, full of awe. Guess what I saw today.