Villa des Roses is set in a modest boarding house in Paris in the early years of the twentieth century. The reader comes to know its inhabitants, their quirks and their personal tragedies. The establishment is run by Mme Brulot with her spineless husband and pet monkey which suffers a terrible and gruesome fate at the hands of Mme Gendron, the oldest guest at the Villa.


The Flemish writer Willem Elsschot wrote this masterpiece of black humour in 1910, although it was not published until four years later. In fact, Elsschot had to wait until the 1930s for full recognition as a writer. Villa des Roses stands out from other Flemish fiction of the time because of its urban setting and its candid depiction of the disturbing side of human nature, but above all for its treatment of the subject matter. These sad characters are conjured up with so few words, and although they are drawn with humour and irony, this is never at their expense.


The characters themselves, however, do treat one another cruelly and this culminates in the senile Mme Gendron being publicly shamed by Mr Brulot for stealing four oranges. She gets her revenge on the poor monkey, though. The new chambermaid, Louise, is presented to the reader in her own chapter in just five telling lines. ‘She did not make much fuss, but it was clear from the sound of her voice that she took things seriously.’ And it is somehow clear that the reader’s sympathy will be with Louise who is cynically enticed into a love affair by the unscrupulous Richard Grünewald. The novella shifts from black humour to tragedy as Louise becomes pregnant and visits an abortionist. She survives the ordeal, Grünewald disposes of the foetus on the way to see his new girlfriend, and abandons her.


True to his spare style, Elsschot avoids all sentiment and the book moves to its close in a business-like fashion. ‘When finally nothing had come, no Richard and no letter, she packed up her things and went back to her village.’

The old woman was left behind with the corpse. Silence descended on the room, where one heart had stopped and the other was scarcely beating.

Finally Madame Gendron rose from her chair, went over to the washstand, rubbed some potato-flour into her cheeks and approached the bed. She was trembling, as she had done on that evening long, long ago when she had been alone with a man for the first time.

‘Hello,’ she whispered.

As Brizard did not reply, she pulled the sheet off the corpse with cumbersome movements, so that the light, which had previously shone on the sheet, now fell on the white face and black beard. The eyes were open.

When Brizard had been brought in, she had not been able to see him clearly and the mention of his name had not registered with her, as the only names she knew were Brulot and Gendron. But now that she was standing so close to him and staring into his face, she remembered that she had met him at table.

‘Aren’t you the one who always has two helpings of meat?’ she asked amiably.

Brizard said nothing.

‘I shan’t keep you waiting,’ the old women went on.

She managed to drop on to one knee without falling over, and tried to take off her slippers, which were done up with buckles for the convenience of the maids. She pushed and tugged at them in vain, but could not undo them, and the effort of bending over made the two veins in her temple bulge.

When she was convinced that all her sweating and straining was useless, she grabbed the sheet and pulled herself upright again.

‘I don’t know what’s wrong, but I can’t undo the things,’ she confessed, ‘would you mind helping me?’

This time it struck her how obstinate his silence was. (p. 41-2, tr. Paul Vincent)