Often described as "At the Beach", the actual title is "au bord de la mer" - or "at The Sea Shore", and it is a set of six cards. However, the cards are actually all of named beaches, ours being Boulogne S/Mer - or Boulogne on Sea (sur Mer). The complete set comprises :
- Boulogne S/Mer
- Cabourg
- Dieppe
- Etretat
- Trouville
- Villers S/Mer
If you look closely at the whole series, you will discover that some of the children appear on more than one card. This is one of those cards which you could look at repeatedly, and always find something new. It is also a great evocation of what it was like to go to the beach, and have a jolly good adventure.
Beneath the picture and the frame is a very faint line of text, which is often unreadable on the cards - however it says "LITHOGRAPHIE ARTISTIQUE J. MINOT a CIE. EDITEURS, 5 RUE BERANGER - PARIS". Minot moved about a bit, and was only at No.5 rue Béranger until about 1900, moving to No. 34 rue des Martyrs in 1901, and to No.47 rue Lacordaire some time in 1910.
The first thing that we need to clear up is that actually the "Au" in the title is French for "at", and it is used to advertise that these things are "at" a place called Bon Marche, which in itself means "Good Market" or "Good Store". It was founded in 1838, as a department store (though there were only four departments), by two brothers, Paul and Justin Videau, and it sold what used to charmingly be called "Novelties and Notions" - haberdashery, materials. and household requirements.
This was all changed when a man called Aristide Boucicault entered on to the scene; he had worked in a nearby shop selling ladies fashions, starting as a salesman and working his way to the top. When that closed he walked over to Bon Marche and talked his way into becoming a partner. This turned out to be a very good thing for the business, because he revolutionised it, and selling in general, with special advertising and marketing campaigns, window displays, and also buying bulk and end of line stock cheaply, then selling it off at just a little more than he had paid in seasonal sales. He also offered to refund or exchange goods that did not fit, or were unsuitable in any way. It seems like he pretty much took over, and the Videau brothers must have thought so too, for they sold him the entire store in 1851.
The original store was now much too small, so a new building was designed and opened in 1869, then that was expanded in the early 1870s. Sadly he died in December 1877, but it turned out that he had a wife, and she took the business over, proving herself equally skilled at attracting customers from far and wide, and also employing even more female staff, so much so that they eventually outnumbered the male sales staff. She seems to have been quite a character, having met him in the mid 1830s, and moving more or less straight in with him, despite his family`s objections. They even had a son, but he died young. They were eventually married in 1848, which could possibly have been the year his unforgiving parents died.
Sadly his wife died in the year that the largest store yet opened (1887). Because she had no children she left most of the money they had amassed to charity, specifically to build a hospital, specialising in tuberculosis, perhaps the cause of her son`s early death. It opened in 1897, and carried the family name.