From the 2nd of August the Palace Hotel, which is the supremely
characteristic, fashionable, and snobbish hotel of the whole Engadine
in general, and the two St. Moritzes in particular (_le Palace_, as the
French said, with an accent of reverence as if they were mentioning
Olympus, _the Peles_, as the English said rapidly and simply, _the
Pelesh_, as the American ladies pronounced it, with rich accent), was
filled with its many-souled, multiform, and original _clientèle_, and
was not failing its great tradition, that of providing everybody, great
or small, cause for gossiping, or mere tittle-tattle. Certainly on
some days the second cause, the little one, was lacking, and on others
the tittle-tattle; but, nevertheless, the tradition was maintained
intact, the causes for daily gossip had scarcely ever been less than
two, and each day that waned had always had its great news. Generally,
when the weather was very fine, and everyone had left their rooms to
sally forth in the open air, if only to descend on foot to the Bad and
return by the tram, when even the soft and lazy Egyptian women, with
their magnificent black eyes, pale faces, and intensely rich, though
sometimes tasteful, dresses, were outside the hotel, although only at
the door, making a pretence of coming and going, the daily scandal had
been but one, which was born and prospered at lunch, was most robust
at dinner, and flourished the rest of the evening, only to perish at
night. But on the days of the 9th and 10th of August, on which it had
rained, and on the 11th, on which it had snowed slightly, when even
the most intrepid pedestrians like the Comtesse Fulvia Gioia and Donna
Carlotta Albano had remained at home in the hotel, when neither Madame
Lawrence, nor Madame Lesnoy, nor the Marquise d'Allart had been able to
play golf, when even all the men had stayed at home, to drag out the
time in chatting, smoking, and playing poker, bridge, and billiards,
in these three days of closure the scandals had been three new ones
every day, after even those of the preceding day had been revived.
And every day the clients of the Palace Hotel, each in their own set,
when they met in the morning or later at lunch, after some vague words
about health or the weather, took up at once the usual, unchangeable
question and answer: "_Chère amie, connaissez vous le potin de ce
matin?_"--"_Oh, ma chère, mais je ne sais rien du tous, dites-le moi
donc._"
However, not all the women and men, old and new clients of the Palace
Hotel, were gossips. Some of the women, if not many, kept decidedly
aloof from all this scandalmongering, and despised it secretly. Very
many of the men, through refinement of spirit and education, had the
most complete indifference, even insensibility to scandal. But the
serenest women who, because of the beauty of their interior life were
accustomed to keep their minds free from everything trivial, allowed
themselves to be taken by the slight, childish deceit which the
curiosity of friend or enemy offers to women. Even the most insensible
of men consented, through cold courtesy and polite condescension, to
become worldly and pretend an interest in the first, second, or third
scandal of the day. The Marquise di Vieuxcastel, most exquisite, of a
delicate beauty, through a double elegance, moral and material, through
a lively taste for art and letters, fascinating in every grace of mind
and person, was not a gossip. The Comtesse Pierre de Gérard and the
Baronesse de Gourmont, two sisters, could not be gossips, both were of
a classic though different beauty, both were dowered with characters
full of energy and sweetness; each of the great ladies showed pride in
every expression, especially the first, the famous Comtesse Pierre,
a perfect and conscious pride. The Duchesse de Langeais, for whom
the care of her beauty and an amiable desire of pleasure hindered
every other expression of mind, was not a gossip. Nor was the Gräfin
Durckeim, the eccentric Hungarian, whose life was a romance, though
completed. Nor was the Duchesse d'Armaillé, who was goodness herself.
These and other ladies could not be soiled by the pitch of scandal,
but involuntarily, through curiosity, through politeness, or so as
not to be accused of prudishness, they listened but heard not in the
presence of the really powerful scandalmongers--the Comtesse de Fleury,
all beautiful without and unclean within, Frau von Friedenbach, an old
lady of the Court at Berlin who had been dismissed for her political
indiscretions, which, in the main, had fed the German socialistic
press, the terrible old Baronesse de Tschudy, who had travelled for
forty years and knew four million scandals about four thousand people
she had met. Everywhere, before all the scandalmongers, these proud,
quiet, frank, good women could but yield for a moment, allowing
themselves to be seized for an instant by a childish and always
illusive curiosity, and by a sacrifice to worldly politeness.
As for the men, who for the most part, and far more so than the women,
were immune from scandalmongery, they gave way, not only because of
the obligations of social life, not only so as not to be singular and
to show themselves complacent, but perhaps to please certain ladies
of the Palace Hotel or ladies outside, which they could not succeed
in doing except by gossiping with more or less wit. It was impossible
to pay court to Madame Lawrence--the lovely professional beauty of
the year--a useless court, as a matter of fact, in results, but which
deceived only in its appearance, without telling her all the scandals
which had been invented and were passing to and fro about her. It was
impossible to see her interested or smile unless they repeated all
the grotesque and perverse things which the other women had invented
or were inventing about her. It was impossible to enter the circle of
Madame d'Aguilar, the rich and munificent Brazilian--who every day had
ten people to lunch and fifteen to dinner, had three carriages always
at the disposal of her friends, and gave _cotillons_, with gifts of
great value--without being mettlesome, or a witty chronicler of the
rarest scandal. It was impossible to accompany on a walk the little
Marquise d'Allart, pale and pink like fragile Dresden china, but greedy
and hungry and thirsty for _potins_. She would exclaim peevishly:
"_Mais n'en savez vous pas un d'inédit, de potin? Rien que les vieux,
les usès? Allons, cherchez, cherchez!_" Giorgio Galanti, an Italian
gentleman from Bologna, whose wit was as fine as a hair, very quick,
a fascinating _conteur_, had found a method, the secret of which he
offered to those who had no other, of conquering the feminine spirit.
He used to go day and night outside the "Palace," into the other hotels
of the Dorf and Bad, wherever he had discovered a beautiful woman or
a pretty girl, and after a conversation on vague subjects, he would
say: "_Madame, connaissez vous le dernier potin du 'Palace'? Il est
épatant, je vous assure._" The effect was certain. Immediately seized
by curiosity, tickled in her latent snobbishness, wishing to know all
the little mysteries of Olympus--the "Palace"--the lady from the Grand
Hotel, the "Schweizerhof," the Hôtel du Lac, the "Victoria," would
turn her beautiful eyes to Giorgio Galanti, which told him that not
only were they questioning him, but were promising him the reward of
indiscretion.
But if the tittle-tattle--first, second, and third class--of every day
of the extremely _chic_ society of the "Palace" was sometimes vulgar
or frankly cruel in substance, it was always light, witty, graceful,
and diverting in form. The most terrible things, true or fairly true,
were said with such a _brio_, such ingenuousness, and often with such
profound humour, that not only did they cause no horror, but they
even caused the whitest and tenderest souls to smile. The ineffable,
invincible, inimitable French language lent itself for this purpose,
that language in which everything is rounded, garlanded, and shines.
It is true that Paul Fry, the Bohemian, was a player of extraordinary
strength and fortune at every game, who always tried to play with
millionaires and millionairesses; but the great _potin_, with which
Giorgio Galanti attracted the most Catholic and snobbish Spaniard,
Donna Mercédès de Fuentes, was when Fry, bold and cool, began to play
with Signora Azquierda, an immensely rich Argentinian, who lived at
Paris, and having tried conclusions with her, she won from him three
thousand francs at poker--she, the woman, from him, Paul Fry, the
invincible! Was not this _potin_ told attractively, delicious in its
perversity? Then there was another scandal, that about Lady Hermione
Crozes, the Englishwoman divorced from Lord Crozes, tall, thin, ruddy
of countenance, with dazzling eyes, who disappeared directly after
lunch and dinner, and whom everyone believed to have shut herself up
in her room to receive a lover, till at last it was discovered that
she went to drink all alone twice a day, consuming the most terrible
mixtures, and her maids had to help her in her furies, or take care
of her like a baby in her torpors that seemed like death. Said with
good grace, did not this atrocious happening lose all its atrocity?
Another scandal which lasted more than a day, a most important one,
concerned Frau van der Claes, a Hamburg lady, who had a poor lover and
a son of twenty, both of whom had cost her much money, and how one
day Frau van der Claes, when Lina Cavalieri had arrived at the Hôtel
du Lac, had seen her son, which did not matter, and her lover, which
was a serious business, fall head over ears in love with the beautiful
Italian singer, and her mad anger and the money she squandered on her
son to make him a rival to her lover so that he might miss the goal
and return to her, and the useless courting of the Cavalieri by son
and lover--this intensely complicated scandal, how well it circulated,
how sketchy in its disgusting particulars, how graceful in its brutal
circumstances!
About Annie Clarke and her daughter Mabel, during their sojourn
there of three weeks, there had been at least ten large scandals and
twenty little ones. Their milliard, their eight hundred, or hundred,
or hundred and fifty, or fifty, or thirty millions had formed an
accidental variation to the scandals, and the birth and life of the
very placid Mrs. Annie Clarke, so like a dumb and patient idol, had
been time after time related in bizarre terms, telling how she had
been an opera singer, or a nurse, or the daughter of a shepherd in the
Far West, or an Italian foundling, and finally the widow of another
millionaire, whom Mr. Clarke, on losing his wife, had ruined and forced
to commit suicide.
And what an amount of _potins_, inside and outside the hotel, about
the excellent Mr. Clarke, who remained on the other side of the ocean,
in his palace on Fifth Avenue, and every two days sent a cablegram
to his ladies, to tell them he was well and that all was well,
and every two days received a very short telegram in reply--which
simplified correspondence. What _potins_ of the first order about Mr.
Clarke, who was declared to be enormously rich or stupidly poor, an
undeserving thief or a philanthropist, a king of rubber, an emperor
of gutta-percha, a father eternal of aluminium for cooking utensils!
What little _potins_ every evening about the solitary jewel of the
day of Mrs. Clarke--the pearl collar, the emerald pin, the ruby ring,
the diadem of diamonds; and all of them enormous, colossal--pearls,
emeralds, ruby, sapphire, diamond. What _potins_ these were, and
the principal _potin_ of all that these jewels, too unique, too
enormous, too colossal, were perfectly imitated from the real, that
they were false: "_Oui, ma chère, du toc, pas autre chose; du toc
splendide, mais du toc!_" And about Mabel Clarke,--so beautiful, so
full of every grace, so amiable, so frank, the image and symbol of a
race vibrant with youth, the image and symbol of a new femininity,
different and differently graced and attractive--what a daily exercise
of scandalmongers, whom her simplicity and loyalty did not succeed in
disarming, created especially by mothers blessed with daughters; and
how her virtue and her dowry suffered tremendous oscillations from one
day to another. She was very rich, richer than Anna Gould or Gladys
Vanderbilt; she was poorest of the poor; she had refused the Duke of
Sairmeuse, because she wished to be a Serene Highness; she had had an
intrigue with a tenor of the Manhattan theatre; she had been engaged
to a son of a king of tinned goods; she was a cold flirt; she adored
Italy, and would have married even a dandy of Lucca; she had been
converted to Catholicism; she was making a fool of Vittorio Lante; she
loved him. All this kept increasing towards the decline of the season,
the more so as all the other _potins_ had been consumed and some were
threadbare; the more so as the now open love of Vittorio and Mabel
exasperated so many people--hunters after dowries for silent, sad
daughters who never found a husband, mothers of eligible young men--all
were annoyed at another's fortune, another's love, another's happiness.
On the evening of the great _cotillon de bienfaisance_ at the Palace
Hotel, with tickets at twenty francs, the night of the 25th of August,
the last great ball at the "Palace," the _chic_ night of _chic_
nights, the love-making, engagement, and marriage of Mabel Clarke and
Vittorio Lante, the no love, no engagement, the no marriage, were the
greatest and most multiform source of gossip of the day, evening, and
night.