been floundering in uncertainty. Liberated, it rushes gaily, hopefully,
to the charting of a new course. I had no sooner resolved to strike out
on my own than my mind was bubbling with plans. I forgot that I was
thirty-three years old and, according to the code of my time and my
society, too old for new ventures; I forgot that outside of my very
limited experience on _The Chautauquan_ I knew nothing of the writing
and publishing world, had literally no acquaintance among editors; I
forgot that I was afraid of people, believed them all so much greater
and more important than they often turned out to be that it cost me
nervous chills to venture with a request into a stranger’s presence.
Dismissing all these real handicaps, I plunged gaily into planning for a
career in journalism, self-directed, free-lance journalism. Surely I
could find subjects enough in Paris to write about, subjects that would
interest American newspapers. We were in the thick of a great agitation
over the condition and the conduct of American cities. _The Chautauquan_
had touched it occasionally. How did Paris keep house? I planned a
syndicate of my own which would answer all questions. Out of my
newspaper work might not articles grow for magazines? I thought so, and
books, beginning of course with my study of Madame Roland. So long as I
told nobody about my plans, they worked beautifully, carried me upward
and onward into a new and happier, more profitable, more satisfying
world. But when I announced my decision, laid out what I proposed to do,
all the glow and confidence went out of me, all the weaknesses in my
venture came again to the top. There were friends who said none too
politely: “Remember you are past thirty. Women don’t make new places for
themselves after thirty.” There were friends who resented my decision as
a reflection on themselves. A woman whose friendship I valued said
bluntly: “You are one of us. Aren’t we good enough for you?” My act was
treason in her eyes. The whole force of the respectable circles to which
I belonged, that respectable circle which knew as I did not the value of
security won, the slender chance of replacing it if lost or abandoned,
was against me and so out of friendliness.
When I told my editor-in-chief I was leaving, going to Paris to study,
he was shocked. “How will you support yourself?” he asked, really
anxious, knowing that I must depend on my own efforts.
“By writing,” I said.
“You’re not a writer,” he said. “You’ll starve.”
He had touched the weakest point in my venture: I was not a writer, and
I knew it. I knew I never should be one in the high sense which I then
and still more now give to that word. I had neither the endowment nor
the passion nor the ambition to be a writer. I was rather a student,
wanting to understand things quite regardless of how I could use that
understanding if I reached it. There was much selfishness in my wanting
to know for the sake of knowing, much of a dead scholar in me; and that
dead scholar has always hung, more or less a weight, about my neck.
But if I was not a writer I had certain qualifications for the practice
of the modest kind of journalism on which I had decided. I counted no
little on my habit of planning in advance what I was going to do, and I
had a strong conviction that a plan of my own was worth more than any
plan which was made for me. Again, if I could not write, I did have a
certain sense of what mattered in a subject and a strong conviction that
it was my sense of what mattered, and not somebody else’s, that would
give my work freshness and strength if it was to have any.
Then there was my habit of steady, painstaking work—that ought to count
for something. And perhaps I could learn to write. If I were to do so,
could I do better than soak myself in French prose? I had read French
steadily from my school days; I had done not a little translating of
articles from the big reviews for _The Chautauquan_. If I could live
with the language, might I not master something of what seemed to me its
essential qualities, those which gave it both body and charm? These
qualities were the soundness of structure, the way it held together, and
the beautiful clarity of expression. At least I could try for them.
But when I tried to explain all this to my critical friends they
continued frankly skeptical, indignant. It was my father and mother who
backed me up, though I think they were both puzzled and fearful. “I
don’t know what you can do, Ida,” my father said, “that’s for you. If
you think you can do it, try it.” But in the end it took all the grit I
had to go ahead.
Breaking up established relations is not easy. You begin by pulling up
deeply rooted things, rooted in your heart; you abandon once cherished
purposes. When I left _The Chautauquan_ I was no longer the eager and
confident young woman who ten years before had started out for herself
in Poland, Ohio; I was ten years older, and I was keenly conscious that
I had in those ten years accumulated a fairly complete collection of
shattered idols. That I could forget them as quickly and as completely
as I did, I owe to the Paris of the nineties. I had scarcely passed her
gates before I had fallen under her spell. At once I was experiencing
all the amazing rejuvenation that comes from falling in love, whatever
the object. It was not to be “See Paris and die,” as more than one
friend had jeered. I knew with certainty it was to be “See Paris and
live.”
6
I FALL IN LOVE
Falling in love with Paris at first sight—a _coup de feu_, it was—in no
way dimmed the energy and the care with which on the day of my arrival I
began to put into operation the cautious and laborious Plan for
self-support I had brought along. It rather intensified it. As I must
begin at the bottom to build up contacts with strangers on the other
side of the ocean, and as there was but $150 in my pocket, there was no
time to waste.
In the ten years I had been trying to support myself I had learned that
the art of spending money is quite as important in a sound financial
program as the art of earning it. I had been going on the theory, as I
still am—practice is another story—that what I earned must cover my
expenses and leave a surplus for emergencies and expansion. I had
applied my principles to my small salary on _The Chautauquan_—never over
$100 a month—well enough to get myself to Paris and have this little
reserve to care for myself while I was proving or disproving that I
could convince a few American editors whom I had never seen that my
goods were worth buying.
The first step, obviously, in carrying out my program was cheap living.
Luckily for me, two of my associates on _The Chautauquan_, excited by my
undertaking, had decided to join me. One, Josephine Henderson, was a
friend of Titusville days and like myself a graduate of Allegheny
College. Jo, as we called her, was a handsome woman with a humorous look
on life—healthy for me. I have never had a friend who judged my balloons
more shrewdly or pricked them so painlessly. With us was a beautiful
girl, Mary Henry, the daughter of one of the militant W.C.T.U. workers
of that day, a neighbor and a friend as well as a co-worker of the great
temperance leader Frances Willard. At the steamer a friend of Mary’s
appeared, announcing that she, too, was going along. This meant four of
us to share rent and food.
Back in Titusville I had picked on the Latin Quarter as at once the
cheapest and the most practical place in Paris for one to live who must
go on the cheap. Then, too, the University was in the Latin Quarter, and
we were all planning to take lectures. I was even flirting with the idea
that I might find time to take a degree.
So on arrival, putting our bags in the little room of the cheap hotel on
the Right Bank to which we had gone, we headed at once for the Latin
Quarter. I had picked on the neighborhood where I wanted to settle, near
the Musée de Cluny. Not that I knew a thing about the Musée or what was
in it; simply Cluny was one of the words that had always pulled me. This
magic was largely responsible for our settling in the Rue du Sommerard
almost next door to the spot in the city which save one was to have the
greatest fascination as well as the deepest consolation for me.
But finding these quarters was no easy task. My friends gulped as I did
at the stuffiness, the dinginess, the primitive sanitation, the obvious
fleas, and the suspicion of other unmentionable pests in the places at
which we looked. But settle I would, and so with groans they consented
finally to the taking of two tiny bedrooms, a salon, along with the use
of a kitchenette in one of the four apartments controlled by a Madame
Bonnet. Our selection was not as unwise as it looked at the moment.
Indeed, as it turned out, Madame Bonnet remained my landlady throughout
the coming three years.
As quickly as we had found our lodging we established relations with the
little shops in the neighborhood where one could for a few sous buy all
the makings of a meal. You bought exactly what you needed and no more—a
single egg, one roll or croissant, a gill of milk, two cups apiece of
café au lait, never having a drop left in the pot. Brought up as we had
all been at loaded tables, the close calculation shocked us at first as
something mean, stingy. “Why, the very scraps from a meal at home would
feed us here.” And that was true—more shame to our bringing up. But we
learned to buy as our thrifty neighbors did and to like it, and we
learned how to order at the cheap and orderly little restaurants of the
Quarter so as to get a sufficient meal of really excellent food for a
franc (then nineteen cents or, as we carelessly reckoned it, twenty-one
hundred centimes to a franc). Only on grand occasions did we allow
ourselves two francs.
The pleasantest and most profitable part of the experience was the
acquaintances we made with the women who kept the little shops, the
little restaurants. As soon as they were convinced of our financial
responsibility and our social seriousness, they became friendly—a
friendliness not based on the few sous we were spending so carefully but
on interest and curiosity. We were new types to them; but, once
convinced we were what we pretended to be, they treated us with a
deference quite different from the noisy greetings they gave the people
of the neighborhood or their rather contemptuous familiarity with the
occasional cocotte who strayed in. That is, we were very soon placed by
the shopkeepers of the vicinity. It was my first lesson in the skill,
almost artistry with which all classes of the French people classify
those with whom they are thrown in contact, notably foreigners. Later I
was to observe this in the more highly developed classes where I
established professional relationship.
I was a stranger seeking information—an American journalist, a student,
so I told them. But what kind of person was I? What was there in me they
could tie to, depend upon?
Obviously I was not rich. If I had been, there would have been quickly
gathered around me a group to offer entertainment as well as treasures
to buy; but it was clear I had little money, so that was out of the
question. There are other things by which the French label you, a woman
particularly—charm, beauty, chic, _l’esprit_, seriousness, capacity to
work, intelligence, _bonté_. Those with whom I had dealings for any
length of time hit perfectly on my chief asset. I was a worker. “A
_femme travailleuse_,” they said to one another, and if they passed me
to an acquaintance that was the recommendation. No people believe more
than the French in the value and dignity in hard work. I was treated
with respect because of my working quality. It was not saying that I
should not have gone farther and faster if I had been a beauty, if I had
had what they call charm and the fine secret of using it, but they were
willing to take me for what I had. Being a worker, the chances were I
was serious. I might or might not prove intelligent, but here they gave
me the benefit of the doubt and waited for a final answer. That which
they were slowest in making up their minds about was goodness—_bonté_.
They were not willing to accept anything but natural unconscious
goodness, and it takes time to make sure about that.
While we were finding our way about, I was at work. If I did not have
the documents to prove it I would not believe today that just a week
after arriving, and in spite of the excitement and fatigue of settling,
I had written and mailed two newspaper articles.
Enamored as I was of the city, no work could have been more satisfying
than that I had laid out for myself. My little self-directed syndicate
concerned itself with the practical everyday life of the city. One is
always keen to know all the common things about the thing or person one
loves. How did Paris keep herself so clean? What did she eat and drink,
and where did she get it? How much did it cost her? Where did she go for
fun? How did she manage it that even her very poor seemed to know how to
amuse themselves, that her beggars were a recognized institution? There
were a multitude of things I thirsted to know about her. And if I could
get my bread and butter in finding out, what luck! What luck!
At once I became an omnivorous reader of the newspapers, and I found to
my joy that many of them felt as I did about the Parisian scene. They
carried paragraphs as captivating as those that our _New Yorker_
unearths for its fascinating editorial department on the city to which
it belongs. Another discovery which surprised me was that my best source
for illustration was the illustrated catalogues of the French Salons of
recent years. I wanted pictures of markets, of rivers, of beggars, of
marriages, of all the things that people were doing as they went about
their business. And what rejoiced me was that many French artists seemed
to love the streets and what went on there in much the same way that I
did. They loved to see Paris at her daily toil, meeting her daily
problems, and every year they turned out pictures showing her at it.
Later I was to discover that this daily life of the Parisians of
different classes has always been material for able artists. The best
illustrations I found for my Madame Roland in her youth were those of
Chardin in the Louvre.
My manner of living, the contacts and circumstances attending the
gathering of my material for my newspaper articles brought me for the
first time in my life into daily relations with that greatest segment of
every country’s population—those whom we call the poor, and of whom if
we are well-to-do or if we are rich we are so curiously unconscious. I
had belonged all my conscious life to the well-to-do, those who spent a
dollar without seriously weighing it. Society had seemed to me to be
chiefly made up of such people. Of course there were the rich, but they
were so few in number as to be negligible—at least they had never
counted in my life; nor had the poor counted as a permanent class. I had
the American notion that the chief economic duty of the poor was to
become well-to-do. The laborer, the clerk, the man who worked for others
should save his money, put it into the business, or start out for
himself, no matter how hard, how meager the return. Dignity and success
lay in being your own master, owning your own home—I am sure my father
would rather have grubbed corn meal and bacon from a piece of stony land
which was his own than have had all the luxuries on a salary. One of his
complaints against the great oil trust was that it was turning the men
of the Oil Region into hired men—mighty prosperous hired men, some of
them, but nevertheless taking orders, even orders as to what to say, for
whom to vote.
To his way of thinking this was failure for an American. I suspect his
philosophy working in me was at least partially responsible for my
revolt against the kind of security I had achieved on _The Chautauquan_.
I was a hired girl.
But in the society where I found myself in Paris there was no such
contempt for the fixed job. On the contrary, it was something for which
you were responsible, to which you owed an obligation. Serious workers
in Paris seemed to me to give to the job the same kind of loyalty that
serious men and women in America gave to the businesses they owned. You
respected yourself and were respected in proportion to your fidelity to
it. You might be advanced, but more probably not. Opportunity did not
grow on every bush as at home, and if it came a Frenchman’s way he
weighed it—at home you seized it, trusting to luck. Here luck seemed to
me to have little or no standing in a business enterprise, big as it
counted in the lotteries in which everybody took part. To my surprise I
found these people, working so busily and constantly, were not restless
like the Americans; nor were they generally envious. I had a feeling
that my concierge, who never had been across the Seine to the Right
Bank, who lived in a room almost filled by her huge bed and its great
feather puffs, who must have looked long at a sou before she spent it,
would not have changed places with anybody in Paris. Were not the
lodgers on whom she kept so strict a watch kind, generous, and regular
with fees? Had she not friends in the street? Might she not win a slice
of a fortune one day from the fraction of a lottery ticket which she
annually found a way to buy? And who had so magnificent a cat? The pride
of the House. What more could she ask?
Certainly there was more interest in the tasks, less restlessness, less
envy, than in the same class in America. Was it my father’s philosophy
which made the difference? Was it your duty if you were poor to struggle
to be well-to-do, and if well-to-do struggle to be rich? It meant you
were always trying to be somebody else. If it was your duty to be
discontented, could you escape envy? Was it not necessary, if you were
to keep yourself up to the effort, to feed yourself on envy as in war
men must be fed on hate if they are to kill with vigor and gusto?
It was too much to believe that the content, the fidelity to the job
were universal. Nevertheless, it was sufficient to cement the laborious
poor into a powerful and recognized class, a class with traditions,
customs, recognized relations to other classes, having its own manner of
homes, amusements, worship; a class self-respecting, jealous of its
prerogatives, and able in need to protect itself.
But the multitude of hard-working and fairly satisfied men and women
were not all the poor with whom I came close. There were those who could
find no work; there were many of them, for the long world depression of
the nineties was on its way. The winter of ’91 and ’92 was a cruel one,
and the museums, libraries, lecture rooms, churches where I went about
my daily duties were swarmed with poor souls trying to deceive the
guardians into thinking that they had come to study pictures, read
books, listen to lectures, to confess their sins or listen to mass. The
guardians only saw them when they became a crowd or attempted to camp
for the day. Most pathetic to me were their efforts to make furtive
toilets, taking a comb from a pocket to smooth tangled hair, scissors to
cut the fringe from a frayed cuff.
There were soup kitchens to keep them from starving, though many a one
starved or froze or ended his misery in the Seine that winter. At one of
these kitchens I officiated for a brief time. It was run by the McAll
Mission in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. I was not there as a Samaritan
but as a reporter looking for copy. What could I do for them but tell
Americans what a few Americans were doing in Paris to ease the vast
misery? It might bring a few sous for soup. I believe it did.
But they pulled less strongly on my sympathy than a class of the poor
which I found to be in our Quarter—men and women no longer young, past
the employing age, who lived alone on tiny incomes, sometimes the fruit
of their own past thrift, sometimes an inheritance, again the gift of a
friend. I watched and speculated about how they did it, the more
seriously because I asked myself if the day might be coming when I
should belong to this class. If I ever did, I hoped I could carry it off
with as much dignity as the one called the Countess on our street. She
lived _sous les toits_ in a high house opposite me, a tall, erect,
white-haired woman in a gown and cape of faded and patched silk which
still showed its quality as did its wearer. More than once I watched her
stop late at night at the garbage can on the sidewalk opposite, turning
over its contents. Many of the tradespeople seemed to feel that she
honored them when she came in to buy an occasional egg or apple. She was
so gracious, so completely _grande dame_. One day I heard the woman from
whom I bought my café au lait say: “Will not Madame honor me by trying
my coffee? It is still hot.” She was pouring out a cup as she said it,
and the Countess with a benignant smile said, “If that will give you
pleasure, my good Marie.” She needed it. Marie knew that, but Marie was
more than paid by that smile. “It is a great honor,” she told me lest,
being a foreigner, I did not understand the Countess, “to have so great
a lady come into one’s shop.” There it was again, another standard than
money, the standard of class, breeding, cultivation, the grand manner.
The more I saw of the gallant poor of Paris, the more convinced I was if
they could get on so could I, learning to live on what I could make. And
I was going to make something. My doubt about that was set at rest some
six weeks after my arrival when I received a check for my first
syndicate article—$5.00. It was quickly followed by checks from two more
of the six papers to which I had submitted my syndicate proposition—50
per cent was not a bad percentage and they were good papers, the
Pittsburgh _Dispatch_, the Cincinnati _Times-Star_ and the Chicago
_Tribune_. These three papers remained faithful to me until the election
of 1892 compelled them to give all their space to politics, so they
explained. I believed them, for they had all written me kind letters
about my stuff and the _Times-Star_, unsolicited, raised my pay to
$7.50!
Then the unbelievable happened. In December, a little less than three
months after my arrival in Paris, _Scribner’s Magazine_ accepted a
story—a grand Christmas present indeed, that news. Fiction was not in
the Plan, but one of the first pieces of work that I did after arriving
in Paris was a story born of a delightful relationship with an old
French dyer of Titusville, Monsieur Claude. As soon as I had finally
determined that I would burn all bridges and go to Paris for study, I
had set about my preparation in thorough fashion. There was the
language. I had read it fluently for years—but speak it? No. Could I
master enough in the few months I had before sailing to find my way
about? If so, I must have some one to talk with. The best the town
afforded was Monsieur Claude and his mouselike wife. They were flattered
by my request. Three times a week I went, and we talked and studied
until they both were sure I could make myself understood in common
matters. In this delightful association I discovered that the passion of
Monsieur Claude, the longing of his heart, was to see France before he
died. He had insisted that I learn and almost daily repeat Béranger’s
“France Adorée.” Once in Paris, I understood him, wrote his story, sent
it—a trial balloon—to _Scribner’s Magazine_.
The selection was made on a principle which young writers too rarely
consider when they attempt to place their wares, and that is
understanding of the tastes and prejudices and hobbies of periodicals.
Useless in 1890 to send a story on “France Adorée” to a magazine which
was interested purely and simply in realistic literature; but the
inexperienced writer frequently does not realize that. Naturally I had
learned in my work on _The Chautauquan_ something of the pet interests
of the leading publishing houses. I knew that _Scribner’s_ enjoyed
French cultivation, French character, French history. I hoped my
sentimental title “France Adorée” would not antagonize the editor of
_Scribner’s Magazine_.
But I had expected nothing from it, being in that state of mind where I
had ceased to expect, only to accept. So that when I received a friendly
letter from Mr. Burlingame, the editor of the magazine, saying that he
liked the story, that he accepted it, I felt as one must who suddenly
draws a fortune in the sweepstakes.
In due time a check for $100 arrived. What excitement in our little
salon when I showed my companions that check! “Now,” declared our
beautiful Mary, “we can move to the Champs Elysées.” And she would have
done it, for she was one of those who always see spring in a single
sparrow. We stayed where we were, I requiring a whole flock of sparrows
to convince me that it was spring.