Cabaret de Madame Arthur, anc. Le divan du monde
Le Divan japonais
Lithographie, Toulouse-Lautrec, 1893
Maxime Lisbonne
Maxime Lisbonne (1839 - 1905) was both a soldier, a colonel in the Commune, and a man of the theatre, an acrobat.
He joined the navy at the age of fifteen and took part in the Crimean campaign, followed by campaigns in Italy and Syria. A difficult character, he was sent to Africa in a disciplinary company.
On 18 March, he was on the Place du Château-d'Eau (now the Place de la République) and at the Hôtel de Ville. As head of the Xth legion, he fought at Fort d'Issy and then on the ramparts of the Porte de Versailles. During Bloody Week, he organised the defence of the Panthéon on 23 May and, on 25 May, commanded the barricades in and around the Place du Château-d'Eau. He was wounded in the thigh on 26 May. Sentenced twice to death, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in the penal colony of New Caledonia, where he refused to apply for a pardon and was punished several times for "arrogance" and sending "unseemly letters" to the administration.
After the general amnesty of July 1880, Maxime Lisbonne, the "d'Artagnan of the Commune" first became a theatre director and at the Bouffes du Nord staged Nadine by Louise Michelin 1882.
He also opened a restaurant called "La taverne du Bagne" at 2, boulevard de Clichy. Three years later, he opened the Brasserie des Frites révolutionnaires.
He also ran the "Café du divan japonais", now the "Divan du monde", which shared premises at 75 avenue des Martyrs with Madame Arthur's Cabaret. Ruined, he ended his life as a tobacconist in La Ferté-Alais where he died in 1905.
Maxime Lisbonne
Revolutionary Chips
For further information:
Marcel CerfLe d'Artagnan de la Commune (le Colonel Maxime Lisbonne), Le Pavillon Éditeur, 1967.
Didier DaeninckxLe Banquet des affamés (novel), Gallimard, 2012.
