PENSION PERSONALITIES
At first I had no companionship and very little recreation, beyond the
ever fresh wonder and delight of the Paris streets as I saw them in my
daily constitutional. One day I went with a girl friend to visit her
_atelier_. I wrote to my mother:
"We spent a long time in the life-class room--nude, (not us but the
model). It was a mixed class. A large oblong room, filled with I should
think over a hundred students, mostly men. They sat in a circle facing
the model throne. The floor is not raised, but the effect of an
amphitheatre is produced by rush bottom stools of different heights.
They rest their pads or drawing portfolios on a railing in front of
them. The room is intolerably hot because of the model. What struck us
most was the intense silence and atmosphere of earnestness; no one
speaks and there is only the gentle rub-rub of the charcoal, crayon, or
pencil against the paper. The students look quickly up and down and
never move their glance except from their sketch to the model and back
again. She was a very pretty young girl and took graceful half-hour
poses. The one interruption was a quiet voice at the end of a half-hour,
'_C'est l'heure_'; and they stopped for a few minutes' rest. We went
into another room, where a picturesque old wretch with long black curls,
red velvet waist-coat, long blue cape, well thrown back, black, grimy
hands clasped around his knee, and clumsy, rusty boots stuck out in
front of him, was seated."
Later one of these old models used to come to my brother. He had a card
on which was printed the list of poses he was prepared to take.--"The
twelve Apostles," "The Eternal Father" and "The God Jupiter."
I found a little English tea-room about a mile away, and often went
there for tea and muffins which in those days were hardly procurable in
French places. The tea-habit is only about ten years old in France. The
people in the shop soon knew me by sight, which was just as well, as I
would begin going over the words of some part in my head and walk out
serenely, quite forgetting to pay for my tea. I still go there
occasionally when I am in Paris and remind them of that. I sometimes
went to the two operas and to the theatre, but not nearly often enough,
as I could spare neither time nor money, and the late hours made a
concentration on the next morning's work more difficult. The concert
world was a great disappointment to me. I think I longed for nothing so
much that year, as to hear great orchestral music well performed; but
the Lamoreux and Chevillard concerts did little to satisfy this craving,
and I was amazed at the roughness of the strings and the narrow scope of
the programs. Many of the great artists avoided Paris in their tours,
the reason given being lack of suitable concert halls.
On the other hand, a whole new school of composition was opened to me
that winter by a fellow _pensionnaire_. Charles Loeffler and Henry
Hadley spent part of the winter in our pension, and Mr. Loeffler
introduced me to the French modernists. Later in the winter we often
talked over their works together. He used to stroll into my room about
tea time, saying he liked to watch me make tea for I had such attractive
fingers. He used to take me to the odd corners of his beloved Paris,
_cafes_ haunted by long-haired _Sorbonne_ students, and _cafes
chantants_, where the frank improprieties of the ditties were for me so
impenetrably disguised by the _argot_ in which they were written that I
did not understand a word of them. "When your French gets more
colloquial," he used to say, "I shan't be able to bring you here any
more. Oh! if you were only a man!" He always ended with this
exclamation, and I never knew why, for my woman-hood did not seem to
disturb him particularly. Perhaps he felt the want of a sort of Fidus'
Achates to confide in. He took me to two famous places, and this is my
description of them in a letter to my mother:
"We went first to the famous 'Noctambules' in the Quartier Latin. It is
where the wittiest men of their _genre_ are to be found. They are many
of them decorated by the government. One hears witty topical songs,
_chansons d'amour_, and absurdities telling of the eels and fishes in
amorous conversation, such extravagances as the French love. There is no
vulgarity. Their diction is marvellous, and of course they sacrifice,
entirely, their tone to their words. All around the walls are posters
and drawings of famous artists and caricatures of Parisians. The
performers are called on in turn by the master of ceremonies, and take
their stand on a little platform in front of the piano half way up the
room. When they have finished, if they have been popular, we are all
called on to join in the _doublement_ for Monsieur so and so. This
consists of clapping to a certain rhythm, which is thumped on the piano:
1 2 3 4 5,--1 2 3 4 5,--1 2 3 4 5--1 2 3--and over again."
In those days Charles Fallot was still at the "Noctambules" and used to
arise, very black and white and thin, and gaze at himself in the big
mirror opposite, while he gestured with his long, skinny arms and
thoroughly French hands, and delivered himself of his witty _double
entendre chansons_. Another night we went to a famous Montmartre place,
Boite a Fursy, but it was not at all the same thing, and we neither of
us liked it.
Henry Hadley had the room above me, and often told me my hours of
playing "Carmen," etc., nearly maddened him. I always studied in bed or
at the piano, without singing, and rarely used my voice when committing
roles to memory. Hadley often had Cyril Scott, the English composer, in
his rooms, and I used to listen with joy to Scott's imaginative playing.
It was like birds sweeping and swooping, all keys and intervals were
interwoven. He always said, one hand on his forehead, "I have no
understanding for limitations of harmony or rules of tempo." And indeed
why should one have? He liked nothing older than Debussy and was
unspeakably bored by Gluck or Beethoven and their ilk, though he loved
"Carmen." Hadley still retained a strong admiration for Wagner and
respect for the old school, though he much appreciated the moderns and
the modern orchestra. I first saw Mary Garden as _Melisande_ with him.
We both sat rapt and spellbound to the end, transported by what was to
me a perfect revelation as to scoring for modern orchestra, the
intangible operatic form, and most of all the subtle imaginative acting
of Mary Garden. Her power of suggestion in those days was capable of
conveying any shade of thought or delicate mood to the spectator. That
performance has always been and will always be an inspiration to me.
Hadley was always starting off on impossible journeys to Egypt and the
Orient, in search of "material." His talk was filled with the strangest
scraps of out-of-the-way information, like bright-coloured rags in a
dust heap. Bauer lived a door or two away, and I used to hear him
practising and then hear his concerts. A wordy war would rage at our end
of the table at dinner, while old Madame, from her seat of honour in the
centre, would cry, "_Mais francais, parlez francais, mes enfants!_ You
crush my ears with your English!" Of course, no attention was paid to
her. Joining passionately in the discussions, though not themselves of
the _metier,_ were two American girls, living on the top floor, who were
supposed to be writing a play together. One or another of the composers
was usually more or less in love with one or other of the girls, and
they took sides accordingly, for and against the recognized masters of
the past. The two were amusing, always doing something eccentric.
At one time they had an incubator in their room, the gift of a passing
admirer, and we engaged passionately in raising chickens. The machine
was heated by a huge kerosene lamp, and they were always turning it too
high and having it fill the room with blacks and smoke, or letting it go
out altogether. However, two or three chicks, more strenuously
determined to live than the rest, managed to struggle out at length, and
their advent was heralded by the whole pension. We had marked our
initials on the eggs, one egg each, and when mine showed the first signs
of life, I held it in my hand till it was partly hatched. The little
pecks inside the shell were fascinating to feel in one's palm. As soon
as the chicks could walk, they were taken downstairs into the _cite_,
and their attempts to scratch gravel were hailed by the assembled
inhabitants of the garden in a rapture of several languages. One
Englishman wanted to make them little jackets, so he could take them for
walks in the _Bois_.
Discussion was meat and drink to all these people. Their cry was
"Sensations, sensations! Let the artist experience everything in his own
person!" This doctrine sounded rather a menace to conduct, but talking
endlessly about sensations seemed to be equivalent in most cases to
experiencing them. Nevertheless, some of them indulged in desperate
orgies of black coffee and cigarettes as an invocation to their muse;
and one of the composers assured me that the great symphonic poem on
which he was at work, had been inspired by breaking a bottle of
Houbigant's _Ideal_ in a closed cab and driving for hours in the _Bois_,
inhaling the perfume. They loved to recount these Gargantuan excesses,
and were extravagant in praise of midnight oil, attic windows, and the
calm inspiration of early dawn after nights of frantic toil. They were
dreadfully sincere, and very amusing to watch, but it seemed to me that
there was a great deal of stage setting for very little play. They
tended the green shoot of their artistic development with such fantastic
care, that it was in danger of dying from too much consideration.
Personally, I was too busy, either for sensations or the analysis of
them, though I used to wonder what this Paris could be like into which
they journeyed and from which they returned full of tales of affairs and
lovely women and gorgeous houses. It all seemed most romantic and
interesting to me.
The other end of the dinner table represented staid conventionality in
contrast to our anarchism. In the centre sat Madame and beside her her
life-long friend, the editor of one of the Paris newspapers. Some hinted
that he was something more than a friend, in spite of Madame's seventy
years. Opposite her, was Madame M----, once an American in the days of
long ago, but with no trace of it left except in her persistent accent.
She was reputed to possess one hundred dresses, and certainly the
variety of her costume was amazing; but as she was at least fifty-five
and had preserved every gown for the last thirty years, her annual dress
expenditure, after all, was probably not extravagant. Her old husband
was never allowed a word when she was present, so he revenged himself
for the privation by interfering with every game started after dinner in
the _salon_--bridge, poker, patience, no matter what it was, he always
insisted that the players were quite wrong and that he could show them
how it was done in the clubs.
There was a young Russian girl with a pretty face and pretty clothes,
whose hands, however, betrayed her peasant origin. Her beautiful sister
was engaged at the Grand Opera, so she was an object of great interest
to me. There were some Swedes, and nondescript Americans, and a charming
French family, a mother and two daughters, bearers of an historic name,
who had come up from their _chateau_ in the South of France that the
girls might have masters in various "accomplishments," and were living
in the _pension_ from motives of economy. On Sundays their brother, a
young naval officer, used to dine with them. With his pale, aristocratic
face, and with little side-whiskers, the high stock of his uniform, his
strapped trousers and narrow, arched feet, he was like a John Leech
drawing come to life. Then there was a large Frenchwoman, Madame la
Marquise de Quelquechose, who lent the lustre of her title and her
ancestral jewels to our _bourgeois_ board. At least, she said her jewels
were heirlooms, but her ancestors must have had a prophetic taste in
jewelry, as I often saw replicas of her ornaments in the shops of the
rue de Rivoli. An old Englishwoman completed our list of permanencies.
In spite of twenty years' residence in Paris, she would still ask for
"oon petty poo de pang" in a high, drawling voice. There were transients
of many nationalities, but these were our regular inmates.
An interesting man sometimes dined with us. Writing my mother about him
I say:
"Last night Mr. H---- dined here and told us many yarns about Sarah
Bernhardt. He said once when he was in California he was asked to meet
her and they all went on a hunting picnic together. She dropped her robe
when she got to the island where they had _dejeuner_, undoing a wide,
heavy, Egyptian gold and precious-stone belt, and appeared attired in a
man's velvet hunting-suit. He says she adores to talk _cancan_, and
referred to the manager as 'that _cochon_.' After breakfast, she threw
the champagne bottles far into the lake and shot them to pieces at the
first shot. The only posey thing she did was when she undid her belt and
threw it far across the road, and when he asked her if that was the way
she treated such beautiful things, she said that the man who gave it to
her was domestic!... It is colder than charity here at present, at least
I feel it so in the house. I shall start my fire today for the first
time. Yesterday I bought a bunch of violets, and do you know why? To
keep myself from buying chestnuts, which are bad for the voice. You see,
if I spent my _sous_ for violets I could not afford more for chestnuts.
Thus prevented I myself."