PARIS AND PARISIANISM
The exaggerated Parisianism of the foreigners who settle in Paris is
one of the things the French of to-day profess to resent; it is one
of the reasons of the great Nationalist cry, “France for the French!”
as the Chinese yell more murderously, “China for the Chinese!” Such a
feeling of resentment ignores the tribute paid by these foreigners to
the indescribable charm and fascination of Paris. For it is not the
affairs of France that the foreigners meddle with, but exclusively
those of Paris. The provinces are much like other provinces, and you
might live therein a half-century and fail to find out that there was
anything particularly catching in French politics,—anything absorbing
in the questions of the hour. I have known foreigners established for
years in Florence, in Venice, in Rome, who have never once opened an
Italian newspaper; who take not the slightest interest in anything
that concerns Italy beyond that which picturesque Italian peasants and
noble stones may inspire. Not so with this bewitching and exacting
Paris. Everything here combines to force your powers of resistance; and
while you are musing in the Louvre or the Musée de Cluny, behold, the
roar of revolution is heard without, and down the solemn halls must you
hurry into the blithe air,—forgetful of past, of dreams, of historic
associations, of sentimental reveries in front of Leonardo’s “Gioconda,”
to learn the latest whim of a petulant city, to learn the latest black
deed of whichever party you have come to detest as a personal enemy.
Elsewhere will you meet architectural effects more beautiful,—quaint
old streets a thousand times more captivating, reaches of river more
lovely and more strange,—but nowhere else will you find modern life
unrolling in an atmosphere of such beguilement, set in a frame of such
large and harmonious beauty. Nowhere else will you find the very poorest
in a measure to be envied, since even they, with a little good will and
an eye to look about and enjoy, may make something cheerful of their
lives by reason of their environment. The perspective of starvation is
not an agreeable one anywhere on earth, but surely a dry crust may be
not altogether ungratefully munched walking along the quays of Paris,
with those broad sweeps of lines and hues of enchantment upon either
horizon; and something not unlike a step of delight may be danced
along the joyous, noisy “Boul’ Mich’” with an empty pocket, even if
one be the victim of the remorseless term-day, or have no prospect but
the shelter of the doss-house at night. For there is no squalor in
Paris, no griminess, and penury itself is decent, discreet, admirably
self-respecting; and even drunkenness, though of a far more perilous
character, if we are to believe the newspaper reports, than in London,
abstains from the revolting outrages against sight and hearing we are
accustomed to in the cities of the British Isles. To be poor in London is
to be the poorest of poor devils upon the globe, for there life offers
you no compensation. You live in such a slum as the Parisian eye has
never gazed upon; the faces around you are sour or bloated, according to
temperament and habits. There is no lightness of air, no brilliance of
perspective, to distract the eye from the inward contemplation of daily
misery, unless you put on your hat and trudge endless miles to get a
glimpse of the long, bright boulevard of Piccadilly, or the sophisticated
wonders of the Strand. The attractions of these I willingly admit, and
own the Strand, on a wet, lamp-lit winter’s evening, to be a beautiful,
strange vision of grandeur and diversity. But then how far these all are
from the slums, and the way in London is long, and if your pocket is
empty, how are you to get on the top of an omnibus to enjoy a change of
view?
But in Paris, should your pocket be empty and your room sordid, you
need only saunter into the clear, vivacious air to find yourself within
walking distance of every charming point of the radiant city. Between
her broad and winding river, Paris lies, a two-volumed tale of romance;
on every leaf, as you turn it, matters for musing and rapture, life
around you full to overflowing,—the life that has been lived still vivid
to remembrance, not clothed in sadness, but in the gracious gaiety
of tradition. The scenes of dead hours are animated with floating
suggestions. In the Marais, with all these neat, alert workwomen, well
hosed, hair alluringly dressed, contented with their lot, which is
laborious and frugal, so long as they can brighten it with laughter
and the customary joys of beautiful objects which abound here on all
sides,—who is to weep for the days of old, and the great historic dames
who made its ancient glory? You remember the great ladies of yore, and
you are thankful for the sight of the sympathetic workwomen of to-day,
and greet them with a tributary smile. For it is the women of Paris who
create the better part of its living charm, whether in the populous
quarters, where they toss their morning greetings to each other, or to
their swains, along the freshly awakened faubourgs and clean streets,
with their shining runlets of water which you must dexterously jump, by
broad boulevard and acacia avenues; or, later in the day, in the regions
of luxury and millions, where the sirens of fashion, arrayed with a
taste Solomon never dreamed of at the time sacred tradition supposes him
to have envied the lily of the field, corollas emerging from exquisite
sheaths, with the plumage of paradise upon their frivolous heads,
pass and repass on their mission of smiling destruction, of ruthless
rivalry, of scented glory. As well dream of a city of London without its
trousered armies, rushing on the wings of time in pursuit of gold, as
try to imagine a Paris with woman dethroned. She holds all the strong
places; she vivifies the town from the old Place of the Bastille to the
heights of Montmartre, where the texture and trimming of her garments
is the topic of the hour; and men gather on the boulevards at the hour
of absinthe, in devout expectation of seeing her pass by. Whether they
discuss politics or art, be certain she is at the bottom of all their
talk. The talk is assuredly not of the most respectful kind, nor is the
attitude of Parisians to her such as we could with accuracy describe as
clean or chivalrous, but they give to her what she, light-minded as she
is, demands,—their full attention, a consideration of her charms, her
dress, her vagaries, her virtues, her vices,—an attention that never
wanders, the most generous measure of contempt, admiration, eternal
gratitude, and eternal faithlessness that the perversest witch ever
clamoured for. Such is her power that I am tempted to believe that if
her ideal were a high, instead of a low, one, she might invent a type of
Parisian very different from the well-known _boulevardier_ and hero of
French romance. But alas! this is her failing. She has no other ideal
than that of ruling by the senses, and mastering the worst in man by the
worst in herself. The ideal in her is wrecked on the alluring rock of her
own making,—dress, for which she lives, and without which Paris would
not be the Paris we know; and, being frail and human and sadly silly, as
the best of us are,—Heaven be praised!—we admire even when we would fain
deplore.
The finest impression the life of London leaves on memory is that of the
wealthy quarters. The pageant of Rotten Row is unforgetable. The splendid
roll of life and movement along Piccadilly, the bright impressiveness of
Park Lane, of those squares of lofty town palaces, give such a notion
of privilege and purse as may be had on no other spot of the globe. But
the happiest and most lasting impression of Paris lies in the poor and
populous quarters. Who in memory dwells most on the magnificence of the
Champs Elysées? Who in after years, remembering Paris, cares about all
the luxury of the Park Monceau, with its fashionable and expensive
avenues? But what we do remember, with pleasure and surprise, are the
agreeable aspects of labour, of every-day life, of outdoor breathing,
the variety, labour, vivacity, and insistent beauty, at every turn, of
public existence. It is the delights of street study which hold our
imagination enthralled. In Paris we realise that the Revolution has
indeed brought about something very near to human equality, since here
the poorest know and love the feeling of independence, and we understand
the world to be made for them and not exclusively, as in London, for the
privileged few. Here aristocracy is an incident in social existence, and
any attempts at insolence or haughty airs, which thrill to admiration
the soul of the British burgess and small shopkeeper, would in this
democratic Paris speedily bring insult on the head of the offender.
The Parisian workman will “Monsieur-le-Comte” the aristocrat to his
liking, but Monsieur le Comte must mind his manners and be careful
not to trespass. He took his head off once, and he hopes that will
prove enough, not being more bloodthirsty than his own interests and
privileges demand. Who can consistently pity a populace, however hard it
may work, and however ill it may feed, that has the right of way along
such well-kept thoroughfares; that has such fine statuary and elegant
architecture to keep it in good humour! Who is really poor that may
refresh his eye upon the terrace of the Tuileries, across the Concorde
Place, and take his airing along the boulevards, or in the lovely,
old-fashioned Luxembourg Gardens? What point of Paris is dull to look
at? Where are the shop-fronts that do not fascinate? Take even one of
those old aristocratic streets of the noble Faubourg Varenne, or of Saint
Dominique. At first glimpse it looks a long, dull harmony of stone,—a
uniform grey, with high emblazoned gates and closed lodges. But note the
peeps into flowery old courtyards, the charming tufts of garden foliage
lifting their green branches above the high walls. Glance down the sudden
break in the street, where a kind of tall walled terrace runs, trellised,
rich in leafage, as silent as the street of a dead city, where wealth
shelters itself from envy by its tone of subdued and sober elegance. And
yet it is not more trim than are the haunts of commerce, the abodes of
labour. Who would not envy the flower-women of the Quai des Fleurs, with
their glorious vista of stone and waterway? The curving Seine, ribboned
round its beautiful old island, grey-walled, upon the river’s brink; the
spire of the Sainte Chapelle, painted gold, upon a soft or brilliant sky,
and the magnificent gates of the Palace of justice, as much theirs as
are the rich man’s priceless possessions in his own house. The pleasure
of possession alone is lacking in their enjoyments; but they miss its
anxieties, and they have not to pay for the keeping in order of all those
splendours upon which their eyes daily repose.
To talk of taste in connection with Paris seems as unnecessary to-day as
to speak of coals in Newcastle. And yet it is the prevalence of taste
everywhere that perpetually surprises inhabitants of less privileged
places. Whatever these people do, whatever they make, whatever they
wear, the result is pleasing to the eye. If the picturesque is not
always achieved, be sure neatness is. Give a poor woman an old skirt or
bodice, and instantly will she go home, take it to pieces, and make a
new skirt or bodice out of it that will gladden the eye, once upon her.
So in her modest way will she improve the general view, and freshen up
a porter’s lodge or little doorway. It is by the united action of all
those various devices of a race of unerring taste and an indestructible
sense of neatness, that Paris, in all its open corners, and byways, and
thoroughfares, is, by outward manifestations, the home of permanent and
unchequered grace and suavity.
It is a particularly pleasant feature of Parisian life that people of
small means can live both decently and economically there. Of course,
economy is the chief virtue of the race; and though it would be difficult
to name a less attractive one, because of its close alliance to
avarice and meanness, it deserves our respect because of its national
significance. To it do we owe the exterior neatness of person and home,
the tidiness of the poorest interior of Paris. Where else but in Paris
will you find a _concierge_ living with her family in one small room and
a kitchen just large enough to turn in, and able to preserve that space
scrupulously clean, inoffensive to sight and smell, with not so much as
an article of clothing hanging about, nor a speck of dust visible, nor an
ornament or chair disturbed? I have not penetrated into the ragpicker’s
City of the Sun, about which Maxime du Camp wrote so eloquently in the
_Revue des deux Mondes_ some years ago; but I have no doubt that even
in that elemental nest of humanity I should find orderliness, as far
as it is compatible with the ragpicker’s trade, to be the general law.
Does not M. de Haussonville, in his _Enfance à Paris_, assure us, after
repeated visits to the doss-houses of London and Paris, that the striking
difference between these fugitive shelters for the refuse of mankind in
both capitals is a certain dim striving towards cleanliness and taste
noticeable in the Parisian outcast, and utterly lacking in the London
pariah? The impartial traveller, who knows little of France and French
characteristics, will have no difficulty in believing this when he
crosses the Channel, and the first thing his eye encounters in London
is the frowsy female, with horrid bonnet or atrocious hat and feathers
askew, hateful alcoholic visage, and sordid frippery all in tatters.
Need one follow the squalid and ghastly vision to its lair to guess
the conditions of its dwelling, the habits of its home? There are many
blessings France might fittingly borrow of England and be the better for
them, but we cannot deny that England, the mightiest empire of the world,
would be improved by imitation of French exterior decency. It would
brush from English public life many a brazen horror. The love-making of
the masses would then be relegated to the privacy of four walls, and we
would not see at every turn of our path Harry and his girl with their
arms round each other’s waist, or giggling girls in omnibuses sitting on
soldiers’ knees, or sights far worse than these, that scare the virtuous
and make foreigners stare.
It is a settled thing that Paris is the home of vice. French novels of
the day attest this fact; so do the lyrics of the halls of pleasure,
where that decadent songstress, Yvette Guilbert (admired of decadent
London), offers the strangest entertainment that ever delighted mankind
in search of distraction; so, above all, do the songs of the unpublished
poets of Montmartre, who fondly and seriously take themselves for
misprized genius in the lump, and pose as so many Verlaines. Yet nothing
in Paris offends the eye of the casual lounger through its streets as
the eye is offended constantly in London. In Paris you have to look for
manifestations of wickedness, and then it is known that you will find
them in abundance, but they are not thrust under your nose at every
street corner. You may walk the streets and boulevards at the small hours
of the morning, or in the full glare of evening gas, or in the gathering
gloom of midnight, when the lights are being put out, and if nobody
assassinates you, you risk no evil sight or sound. There are quarters,
we know from the daily papers, where vile creatures of both sexes
group themselves for the peril of the passer-by, where blood is shed,
and hideous language befouls the air, but these lie off the travelled
highways of the city; and if you never read a newspaper, you might live
for fifty years in Paris and never suspect that such a thing as crime
took place within its fortifications.
Rents in Paris are comparatively high, and space is precious; hence the
exiguity of the average home of the middle and lower classes. Spare rooms
are unknown, and closets and presses must be packed with the nicest
precision. But it is surprising how soon one becomes reconciled to want
of room in a French flat, and in how short a time one learns to pity the
London householder—above all his wife and servants—for his superfluity
of chambers. Once you have climbed up the stairs of your flat, there
is no more climbing, no futile running up and down stairs. Everything
is at hand. You walk from your dining-room into your salon and across
a level floor into your bedroom; and it needs no excessive labour to
keep all things straight, and polished, and spotless. If you are fond
of experimental cooking and light housework, you can dispense with the
trouble and cost of a servant; avail yourself of the services of a _femme
de ménage_, in a land where women of the people are admirably competent
and honest, and potter about your doll’s-kitchen to your liking. Fuel
you will find much cheaper than in London, thanks to the little charcoal
furnaces in enamel fireplaces, which can be lit and extinguished at will,
at a nominal expense. And so a poor lady, a teacher, or a student, can
live respectably and agreeably in Paris on an income that would mean
squalor and misery in London. A flat consisting of three bright rooms,
a kitchen, several presses, a closet large enough to stow away endless
boxes in, and serve as well as a hanging-clothes closet, plenty of water,
and excellent sanitary arrangements may be had in an enviable spot,
with pleasant outlook and good entrance, for six hundred francs a year
(£24); a _femme de ménage_ who will cook, market, mend, and clean up as
a French woman knows how, for six sous (threepence) an hour; and if you
treat her fairly well and secure her loyalty, she will give you devotion
and friendship, as well as excellent service and amazingly intelligent
speech. For here you need never be at the expense or trouble of cooking
complicated dishes. These are sold at the pastry-cook’s or the baker’s
for considerably less than they will cost you at home; so that you can
live well and keep your household bills within your means, even if meat
in Paris be dear. And then, when you want amusement, should your income
not permit of frequent theatre-going what need to open your purse? You
have but to open your house door, and emerge upon the public Place. On a
summer afternoon or evening a ride on the top of an omnibus or tram is
better entertainment than that offered by many a theatre in London. A
walk through old Paris, or along the ever lovely quays, is refreshment
enough for eye and fancy. Three sous will take you from the Madeleine
to the Bastille; and where is it you may not go from the Bastille for
another three sous? If the chestnuts are in bloom, on foot, or on the
_impériale_ of a public vehicle, in imagination you are wandering through
your own avenues; and you really have little envy for the rich in their
cushioned victorias. This is why I contend that the philosopher of either
sex, whose purse is light and whose tastes are frugal, can make shift
with less in Paris than elsewhere; can live and be infinitely happier
there on small means than in London. So much beauty is provided for him
gratis, that he must be a churl who can spend his time in moaning and
whining because his private walls are undecorated, or costly carpets
do not cover his floors. Let him go to the Louvre or Cluny Museum when
the fit takes him, and count himself a king without the cost and care
of sovereignty. Let him sit in the Tuileries, and call them his private
gardens while he feeds the sparrows; let him loaf among the book-stalls
of the Seine, and leisurely turn the pages of books he means not to buy.
Where will he better such luxuries, even at his own price, if fortune
stepped his way? In London, poverty is galling because there is no escape
from its meannesses and its miseries. That is why the poor in London
may be pardoned for taking to drink. That seems the only door, for it
would need that a poor man living in a London slum should be very drunk
indeed to find beauty of any kind in his environment. But poverty in
Paris may be found both amusing and instructive. I am not sure that it
is not the poor, the needy, the small clerk, the overworked teacher, the
shop-girl, the underfed student, who do not get the best of Paris; feel
to the fullest measure its common joys, which lie not in wait for the
rich and worldly. These are in too great a hurry between their amusements
and frivolities, their dress, their precarious triumphs, their fugitive
passions and idle loves, the consuming cares of social ostentation and
rivalry, to understand Paris, to seize the thousand-and-one delights of
its streets and squares and river-bends, to realise how much enjoyment
may be got out of an hour in the Luxembourg or Tuileries Gardens, of a
penny run down the river to Auteuil, and from Auteuil to Suresnes. When
I read a fashionable Parisian novel, where the titled heroine, doubly
veiled, is invariably driving in a fiacre to a perfumed and luxurious
bachelor’s _entresol_, in a house with two exits; and the hero, when he
is not in an elegant “smoking” costume, is making most fatiguing love to
his neighbour’s wife in evening dress, I am always very sorry for these
misguided creatures, and think how much better employed they would be,
how much happier and high-spirited they might be, if they only went down
the river in a penny boat, or watched the children play, and fed the
sparrows in some dear nook of the enchanting public grounds of Paris.
[Illustration: THE PARDON OF SAINT ANNE (BRITTANY)
_Guillou_]
Another source of pleasure are the markets of Paris. The great Halles
Centrales one generally visits once, and no more, as a truly wonderful
sight; but the flower-markets of the quays, of the Madeleine, and St.
Sulpice are scenes of perpetual delight. There are many markets in the
different quarters of Paris, where your servant may go in search of
vegetables, fruit, eggs, and fowls for the national _pot-au-feu_. It is a
small luxury, however, which I do not recommend, though widely practised
by the bourgeois, who has a positive genius for the slow and ingenious
saving of sous.
It is for all these reasons, and thousands more that creep into the
blood and the brain beyond the range of analysis, that Paris takes such
a grip of the foreigner, and becomes the birth-town of his maturity. In
other towns you sojourn as a stranger or a contemplator. You live apart,
either in your own world of dreams, among old stones, ruins, and faded
pictures, amid the dim aisles of Gothic poems, or else you form part of a
foreign coterie, and give and go to afternoon teas, living like invaders,
in insolent indifference to the natives around you, except in your
appreciation of them should they be courteous enough to lend themselves
to your notion of the picturesque, or treat you with the consideration
and kindness you naturally deem yourself entitled to expect along the
highways of Europe. But Paris will have none of this patronage. If you
settle there it is inevitable that you will become Parisianised. I do not
say anything so flattering as that your taste in dress, if you happen
to be a woman, will, of necessity, become that of your adopted sister,
but there will be a chance that her eye for colour will modify your
barbaric indifference to it, and the cut of her gown and shape of her
hat will insensibly beguile you into altering yours. Nor, in the case of
the young gentlemen of Great Britain, would I imply that long residence
in Paris will affect their excellent tailoring, or turn them into the
overdressed popinjays of the boulevards. The Englishman and the Parisian
woman will always remain the best-dressed of their kind wherever they
may live; and, while the Frenchman, in morals and manners, can descend
to odious depths unsuspected by the blunt and open-minded Saxon, he can
also, when the race shows him at his best, reveal virtues of subtler
and more captivating quality. I know no form of young man more charming
than a good young Frenchman, and can never understand why he figures so
little in French fiction. There is nothing of the prig about him. He does
not spend his days in being shocked at his neighbour; he is under no
compulsion to be narrow and dull; he does not quote the Bible, nor does
he desire, like the British virtuous youth, to mould all humanity upon
his own stiff and starched effigy. His wisdom is woven with a great deal
of gaiety; and when he happens to be dull, he carries off his dulness
with an imperturbable amiability. This type of Frenchman a woman will
never find offensive. He can oblige her with simplicity, and courtesy and
gentleness are the most distinctive features of his character.
Foreigners in Paris seem to be very much swayed in their judgments and
adoption of French politics by the mental and moral atmosphere they
breathe, as well as by their own natural tendencies. The average Briton
far too rarely stoops to consider the question of Republicanism, but
condemns it beforehand on aristocratic principles. Mr. Bodley, who wrote
a singularly pretentious work on France, frequented Bonapartist circles,
and sat at the feet of the Comte de Mun, and sundry other political
noblemen of the same mind; and the consequence is two tomes to prove
that what France wants is another Napoleon—the very thing that nearly
ruined her. The daughter of a sister Republic carries her millions into
France by marriage with some needy nobleman, who has already figured
in no estimable light in the pages of contemporary history written by
fashionable romancers, under the guise of fiction, and she perhaps
brandishes her parasol at the head of a band of miscreants, called _La
Jeunesse Royaliste_, in enthusiastic admiration of its mission to batter
the hat of a guest, an old man, the Head of the State, the Representative
of France before the world. Mr. Bodley’s ideal appears to be not the
good of France, but the triumph of the ideal of the archbishops and
owners of castles. The Republic is bad form, and he would fain see it
overthrown for the pleasure of his good friend, the Comte de Mun. What
the Parisianised, ennobled American subject wants is to see her admirable
and chivalrous husband Court Chamberlain, or something of the sort;—she,
too, yearns for the life which every other countess in Paris wants, a
Court to confer a forgotten dignity upon herself, and if she longs for
the re-establishment of the old privilege, it is in order to patronise
and protect those she fondly deems her inferiors. Other rich or needy
foreigners in Paris wish for a Court to shine at, a monarchy or an
empire, to be able to boast of their powerful relations. And what none
of them will see is that France, in her several experimental moods, is
seriously labouring to discover the form of government best suited to her
needs, and that the elect of the people still hope, through trial and
blunder, to reach the ideal of a progressive liberality. But the passion,
the earnestness, of all these Parisianised foreigners in their adoption
of the several prejudices and aspirations of Paris prove the truth of
my assertion, that Paris absorbs us in her furnace of ardent sentiments
and theories as no other place does. We can not stand by and view the
spectacle of her follies and furies like a philosopher. Needs must we go
down into the fray, which in reality does not concern us, and brandish
the stick or parasol of revolt, whatever our nationality. Needs must we
adopt a party in the land which regards us mistrustfully as foreigners,
and rewards our generous enthusiasm for its multiple causes by calling
us “Sans-patrie,” “Jews,” and “Traitors from Frankfort,” subsidised
by a mythical syndicate, like the Czar, the Emperor of Germany, the
King of Italy, and the Pope of Rome. Needs must we fret and fume, grow
irritable and ill, perhaps long to hear the tocsin ring for another St.
Bartholomew’s, if we are on one side,—that of the large, unenlightened,
and foolish majority; yearn to people the Devil’s hole with sundry
scoundrels we have come to hate if on the other side, that of the elect
and liberal minority, with a passion of hatred no public men in our own
country have ever inspired. What is the meaning of it? Is there some
subtle magnetism in the air of Paris which makes us see French rascals
as so different from other rascals, French tragedy as more poignant
and intense than any other? I know I could cheerfully get through the
remainder of my days in Spain or Italy without giving a thought to either
government or caring a straw whether Sagasta or Crispi were in or out of
office. I never see much difference between the gentlemen who in turn
manage the affairs of England; in fact, I never have the ghost of an idea
who is at the head of each department, and could not for the life of me
distinguish between Mr. Codlin and Mr. Short. Not so in this brilliant,
variable, light-headed, light-hearted, graceless, and bewitching Paris.
I am burningly anxious to know all there is to be known about each
minister of war, and take their repeated defections almost as a personal
grievance. I eagerly examine the interpellations and their consequences,
count majorities and minorities in the turbulent Chamber, follow the
fortunes of the Senate, applaud, disapprove of all that happens with the
ferocity of a citizen who pays to keep the machine going. I know well
that I am a fool for my pains, and that I would be far better employed
in minding my own business. But it is all the fault of Paris for being
so abominably, so mischievously interesting. She it is who will not let
you let her alone. She is like a vain woman; she must have all attention
concentrated upon herself. She clamours for your notice, and despises you
for giving it. If you stand aside with folded arms and look elsewhere,
she will get into a passion, create a frightful scene to attract your
attention, and when you obey her and give it in unstinted fashion, she
turns on you and sneers and rails at you for a foreign spy and busybody.
Poor Mr. Bodley, all ignorant of the fretful indignation he often roused
in France by his thirst for information, was for long regarded by many an
honest Frenchman as a spy.
Oddly enough, I hold that the pleasure side of Paris, its fashionable
world, is the least of all to be envied. If I were a millionaire, I
think I should prefer London, with its larger public life, its more
varied hospitalities, for the investing of my millions in the thing
called experience. Even a British ass, with time on his hands, and
millions to squander, can discover an original method of going to the
dogs and casting his millions into the bottomless pit. But what can the
French idiot do after he has sent his shirts to London to be washed, and
invested in an automobile? He is such a superlative dandy and humbug—I
would fain use a hideous word, which describes him still better in
three letters, if it were not for its inexcusable offensiveness—that he
cannot bring sincerity to bear upon his imaginary passion for sport, and
looks ten times more absurd when he is playing the athlete than when
he is contentedly playing the fool. He is “the sedulous ape,” not to
literature, like Stevenson in his young days, but to the Anglo-Saxon; and
the folly lasts on to the brink of age.
The Faubourg holds itself more aloof than ever. It is now not even on
saluting terms with the Republic. Still its life must be lived after a
fashion, and it must give balls, if for no other reason than the ignoring
of ministers and their wives. It cannot be said that the country at large
is much affected by its doings; and if we are to judge the inhabitants by
the fiction of the day,—the dialogue novels of Gyp, of Lavedan, of Abel
Hermant, the psychological studies of MM. Bourget, Hervieu, Prévost,—the
sane and intelligent person may thank his stars that he is still free
to choose his society, and is not condemned by an accident of birth to
tread such a mill of vaporous frivolity and futility, of intellectual
blankness and arrogance, and of senseless corruption. I do not presume
to say that these clever writers are invariably accurate in their
delineation of fashionable Paris, nor do I deny that there may be a good
deal of exaggeration in their sombre and revolting pictures,—for what
lies under the sparkling effervescence of the brightest and wittiest of
Gyp’s earlier work if it is not a dead-level of inanity and perversity?
But their singularity consists in the fact that all are unanimous in
their conclusions, in the general tenor of the life they portray. Pride
of birth is the only sort of pride this class seems to possess, and for
a nod the heroines of all those heraldic pages fall into the arms of
the first comer and the last alike. When you make the acquaintance of
a viscount, you may be sure he has an _entresol_ somewhere for varied
clandestine loves, and passes his time between encounters here, _le
boxe_, and his “circle.” One solid, useful action never seems to be
entered to his account. His days and nights are devoted to accomplished
idleness and seduction, and his busiest hours are those spent on his
toilet. And the women of this dreary and monotonous fiction,—how shall
we qualify them? They have all the frailty of the wicked, red-heeled,
minuetting eighteenth century without any of its charm, its wit, and real
intellect. For if the marquise of the old school, passed into perfumed
memory, were a rake, she was not a fool, she was not a rowdy, and she had
a feeling for great deeds and great thoughts. She stands on a picturesque
eminence in the history of her land. We cannot say the same for the
titled rake of to-day. It is the fashion to treat her as a _détraquée_,
because she subsists mainly upon excitement. But what needs altering
is her standard; what should be overthrown is the altar upon which she
sacrifices her futile existence. Not that she is the only example of
her class, but somehow the novelists have not thought fit to present us
with any other. The strange thing about it is, that she and her mate in
the game of battledore and shuttlecock with reputation and morality,
the incorrigible viscount, have been brought up under a supervision and
care exceeding northern conception. Neither was permitted a moment of
licensed childhood. Priest and nun were at the side of each, in constant
attendance upon their minds and manners and morals. The male cherub lost
his wings when the abbé made his last bow and retired, leaving his charge
alone on the brink of temptation, a youth with a budding moustache. The
maid ceased to be an angel before the honeymoon had well begun; and,
if we are to believe polite fiction, was already one of the pursued of
snaring sinners before she was a week a bride.
The Paris of this class is not the Paris that charms and holds you in
its spell. The fast, luxurious, and expensive Paris belongs to it;
the cosmopolitan Paris, kept going by the millions of the foreigners
who come here to amuse themselves. Theirs is the Rue de la Paix, the
Concours Hyppique, the Arménonville Restaurant, the Bois, the avenues
of the Champs Elysées and the Parc Monceau, the race-courses, the
Théâtre Français “Tuesdays,” the charity bazaars, the flower feasts and
exhibitions, the automobile competitions, the “five-o’clocks,” and M.
Brunetière’s lectures on Bossuet. This is the rowdy, reactionary Paris,
ever on view, which disapproves of the Pope, and would assuredly array
itself in garments of gaiety if M. Loubet were assassinated. This is
the Paris which sneers at _rasta-quouères_, and is ever on the lookout
for American heiresses for its needy titled sons, which is rabidly
anti-Semitic, and supports its prestige upon Jewish millions. Quite
recently, when anti-Semitism was raging in France, and we were informed
in every tone of fury and contempt that no self-respecting Catholic
could possibly regard a Jew as an honest man or a French subject, an
authentic French marquis married the daughter of a Hebrew millionaire,
and to console themselves for the obligation of profiting by their noble
comrade’s good fortune, his friends summed up the young lady’s qualities
in three amusing lines:—
“Belle comme Vénus,
Riche comme Crœsus,
Innocente comme Dreyfus.”
The raillery did not prevent “tout Paris” from being present at the
splendid marriage ceremony, and inscribing its best names upon the
wedding gifts. It could not do less, seeing that its king and master,
Philip of Orleans, the _digne_ (for alas! there is no English equivalent
of that indescribable French word as applied to a man) representative of
the House of France, is said to have accepted a million from the bride’s
anti-Semitic Hebrew mother.
There is another side, less known, of aristocratic Paris. This is the
quiet, exclusive, genuinely religious side, that of old-fashioned, rigid
noblewomen, who live apart in their dull, old houses of the Faubourg,
given up to prayer and good works. There is a charming distinction
about them, a musty, conventual odour, as you enter the halls of their
faded hotels. They preside over _ouvroirs_, where ladies of their like
meet to make church articles and decorate altar pieces. Sometimes they
carry piety and good-will to the poor to excess, for I know of one, a
baroness, who neglected her children to make perfume and soap of her own
invention, which she sold for the benefit of the poor. The instinct of
trade so developed that she ended by opening a shop, on which she duly
bestowed a saint’s name; and here, if you are willing to pay exorbitant
prices, you may find wherewithal to wash and scent yourself with the
labours of aristocratic hands, and tell yourself you are doing so for
the good of mankind. Not that I would laugh at those ladies, who are the
salt, the redemption of their class. I once lodged in the dismantled
hotel of such a countess, and was edified by the stately, chill dignity
of her austere existence. Her private rooms were furnished with a
touching simplicity. Even in winter there was not a carpet anywhere, no
sign of luxury or comfort; but in her private chapel, where Mass was
celebrated every day, the vestments and ornaments were both beautiful
and precious. She herself had nothing whatever to do with the frisky
countesses of French fiction. She was in every sense of the word a great
lady,—handsome, with aquiline features, and with hair worn high off a
noble forehead, reserved, possibly too haughty in bearing and expression
for her reputation of piety, but essentially one of the elect of this
earth, the kind of woman that an aristocrat should be, and too rarely
is, to justify her privileges and pretensions.
Here, far off from the roar of reaction and the rumble of revolt,
such women dwell amidst the dim splendours of an impoverished house,
unfamiliar to the frequenters of routs and races; whose names never
appear in the society columns of the _Figaro_; who are chiefly known
to the poor and the priests of their neighbourhood; and they it is who
preserve some charm for the Faubourg, who help us to regard it with some
indulgence and sympathy in its futile discontent. For what can be the
benefit to itself or to France of this fine attitude of disdain? Every
part of a nation should go with the times, and the Faubourg would have
served its own cause as well as its country’s in abandoning its belated
ambitions, and making the best of its existing circumstances. It feeds
its pride on its absurd exclusiveness; and who is the better for this? It
is largely due to this insane vanity, that Paris has become the centre of
rowdy cosmopolitanism, the pleasure-ground of the entire world, for it
is the titled malcontents who attract the class they are pleased, with
signal ingratitude, to call, contemptuously, _rastas_, instead of looking
after the affairs of their country. Since they will not earn their right
to live, they must be amused, and amusement is the costliest thing in
the world. Not having enough money for this profession, they needs must
set themselves out for the capture of alien millions; and then when the
foreign millions fall into their laps, by way of Frankfort, or New York,
or South America, they mourn and lament because the foreigners take root,
Parisianised by the sorceress Paris, and cry out that France no longer
belongs to the French, and that Paris is sold to a band of cosmopolitan
miscreants.
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