THE FIRST TIME I visited Paris (France) was with my parents in 1968. We travelled there and back on the Silver Arrow (sleeper) train, which was loaded on to a ferry that plied between Dover and Dunkirk. We tried to sleep in our berths while the train was on board the ship, but I found that difficult mainly because I wanted to watch our train being loaded and unloaded at the channel ports. After returning from Paris, we disembarked from the train at London’s Victoria Station. Immediately after stepping on to the platform, my mother pointed excitedly at a lady exiting the carriage next to ours – our fellow passenger was Sir Winston Churchill’s wife.

During that first visit to Paris, my father pointed out something that sparked my interest. Painted dark green, it was a drinking fountain covered with a decorative dome, which was supported by four sculptures of ladies (caryatids) with bare arms. It was a Wallace Fountain, and after having it pointed out to me, I began spotting them in many parts of Paris,

In 1872 following the Siege of Paris (1870). Sir Richard Wallace paid for 50 of the so-called Wallace Fountains (as described above) to be installed in the city. Each of the drinking fountains is of the same design They were designed by Charles-Auguste Lebourg (1829-1906).

In 1959, a late cast of the of the Wallace Fountain was presented by the London Borough of Shoreditch to Hertford House in London’s Manchester Square. Hertford House is the home of the huge art collection that was established by Sir Richard Wallace, and is now a public art museum – The Wallace Collection.  So, it is appropriate that a cast of one of Wallace’s fountains stands close to the Collection’s main entrance.

A website (www.londonremembers.com/memorials/wallace-drinking-fountain)  revealed something of the history of London’s Wallace Fountain:

“c. 1904 four ornate fountains were installed in Shoreditch. This was done through the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association … Artistically designed water fountains were required and Dudley Fortescue found four designs that he liked, including this Wallace design, which he had seen and liked in Paris. The fountain was made and installed at The Oval, Windsor Terrace, EC1, on 19 July 1904. A newspaper report named an anonymous donor, ‘E. F. F.’.  Philanthropic men would sometimes give the name of a close female relative, rather than their own but, still, we cannot find an E. F. F. for Dudley Francis Fortescue, his wife being Lady Camilla Eleanor Fortescue, and the marriage having no issue. Perhaps the ‘E.’ was a misprint for ‘D.’? In 1959, when the fountain had ceased to function, the Wallace Collection asked Shoreditch Council if they could have it for Hertford House and it was installed in its current location in 1960.”

The fountain in Manchester Square bears the place name “Val d’Osne”. Another website (https://wallacefountains.org/fabrication-of-the-fountains/) explained:

“During the past 150 years there have been few changes to the methods used to manufacture Wallace Fountains. The decorative cast iron process was invented in France by Jean Pierre Victor André who established a successful, award-winning art foundry in 1835 and set up Val d’Osne, a workshop foundry in the Haute Marne region. The Val d’Osne foundry manufactured the first Wallace Fountains in 1872 and Val d’Osne markings can be found on the oldest fountains still operating in Paris.”

Today, the London’s Wallace Fountain is no longer functional, but every time I see it at Manchester Square, it brings back memories of my first of many visits to “The City of Light”.