its value. Most important was the courage it gave me. If I, a stranger,
could do something that a great editor of a great magazine thought good
enough to accept, why, after all, I might work it out. That which moved
me most deeply, gave me joy that made me weep, was that now I should
have something to show to my family. I had felt a deserter. Times were
hard in the Titusville household in these early nineties. My father’s
and brother’s experiences in the oil business—of which I want to speak
later—were more than discouraging; they were alarming. My sister was ill
and in the hospital; my mother’s letters were saturated with anxiety.
And here was I—the eldest child in the family, a woman of years and of
some experience, who had been given an education, whose social
philosophy demanded that she do her part in working out family
problems—here was I across the ocean writing picayune pieces at a fourth
of a cent a word while they struggled there. I felt guilty, and the only
way I had kept myself up to what I had undertaken was the hope that I
could eventually make a substantial return. If any one of the family
felt that I should have been at home there never was a hint of it. From
them I had unwavering sympathy and encouragement.
But if in three months’ time I could do what I had done, and I made the
most of it in my letters home, why, then they would see some hope for
the future. Not only would the story help them to believe in me, it
would give something more imposing to show to inquiring friends than the
newspaper articles which had been their only exhibit.
When the story appeared in the following spring the reverberations in my
Paris circle were encouraging and useful. I even heard of it from “the
other side,” as we called the Right Bank, for Theodore Stanton (at that
time the head of the Associated Press in Paris) came with Mrs. Stanton
to call on me and tell me he liked the story.
The most important fruit was that Mr. Burlingame looked me up when he
made his annual spring visit to Europe. Here was my chance to tell him
about Madame Roland, to ask if he thought his house would be interested
in such a biography if it turned out to be a good piece of work. “The
suggestion would have to be considered in New York,” he replied. But he
promised me it would be considered. And it was, for not long afterwards
he wrote me that the house was interested in my project, certainly
wanted to see the manuscript.
This was enough to settle finally a struggle that had tormented me for
many weeks. I had come to Paris determined to fit myself for magazine
work along historical and biographical lines; but once close to the
world of the scholar, surrounded by men and a few women who lived stern,
self-denying lives in order to master a field however small I was seized
with an ambition to be a scholar. It was a throwback to my old passion
for the microscope. I would specialize in the French Revolution—I would
become a professor.
But Mr. Burlingame’s answer to my inquiry as to whether the Scribner
company would be friendly to a biographical study of my lady settled the
matter; which shows, I take it, how shallow my scholarly ambitions
really were.
The Scribner connection was not the only one putting heart into me.
Among my early trial balloons was one marked for McClure’s Syndicate,
New York City. It carried an article of two thousand words with a catchy
title—“The King of Paris”—cribbed from a French newspaper. It was the
story of Jean Alphand and his services to the city. The balloon reached
its destination. The article was promptly accepted with a promise of $10
when it was published, also a suggestion that they would be glad to
consider other subjects if I had them to offer—which I did. Indeed, I
gave them no time to forget me; not that they took all I hustled across
the Atlantic, but they took enough to make me feel that this might be a
stable and prosperous market for short and timely articles. When
suggestions finally began to come from them I felt the ground firmer on
my feet. One of these suggestions led me into an especially attractive
new field, and in the long run had important bearing on my major
interest, Madame Roland. It was that I try a series of sketches of
French women writers. There was a respectable group of them, and I asked
nothing better than to look them up.
I began with a woman who at that time was introducing leading
contemporary English and American writers to the French through the
_Revue des deux Mondes_—Madame Blanc, her pen name Théodore Bentzon, a
person of rare distinction and of gallant soul. She had been a lady in
waiting at Napoleon III’s court, had made an unfortunate marriage, was
now living on a small income and what she could earn by writing. In her
salon there was a portrait taken in her young womanhood which charmed
me, but when I spoke of it she shook her head as if she did not want to
remember it. “Une femme qui n’existe plus,” she said.
Hard worker as Madame Blanc was, she found time to start me on my rounds
among the French women writers. I doubt if there was an American writer
of our day who would have had both the kindness of heart and the
sureness of herself to take so much trouble for an unknown woman. She
started me off, and I turned out ten or a dozen little pieces before I
was through. With one of my subjects I had an amusing flirtation—I think
I may call it a flirtation. This was Madame Dieulafoy who with her
husband had done eminent work in archaeology, and who had a roomful of
exhibits in the Louvre to her credit—a very great person indeed. Madame
Dieulafoy was the only woman I had ever seen at that time who wore men’s
clothes. It had been found necessary to put her into trousers for
excavating work, and she liked them so well and Monsieur Dieulafoy loved
her so in them that they had obtained permission from the French
Government for her to wear them in Paris. From more than one source I
heard of the sensation she created among servants when she came to call.
They abandoned their duties to peep from dark places at the woman in
men’s clothes.
Madame Dieulafoy and I grew friendly over the history of the exploits of
women in the world, and it took no time at all for me to decide to write
the history of women from Eve up, as if I had not already enough on my
hands. She applauded my idea, gave me many suggestions, but it never
went any further than my few visits, which as I say were more or less
flirtations. She was such a pretty little man, so immaculate (the best
tailors in Paris did her, I was told), that I could not keep admiring
eyes off her. She used her eyes, too, and loved to pat me on the knee,
partly I suppose because I always blushed when she did it. It was an
amusing acquaintance and a profitable one to me, for she was as
interested in my plans for articles as if I had been one of her own.
Another woman who interested me greatly was Judith Gautier. My interest
was stirred by my indignation that her name had been left off the list
of living women distinguished in French literature sent to the Chicago
Exposition of 1893. There was much speculation among my friends as to
how it happened. My own conclusion was that it was because of her long
and impassioned devotion to the music of Richard Wagner.
The first Wagner opera to be given in Paris was “Tannhäuser.” This was
in the early sixties, when Judith Gautier was about fourteen years old.
She went to the opera with her father—Théophile Gautier—and was
enthusiastic although the house received it coldly. As they were walking
home a little fellow with hollow cheeks, eagle nose, and very bright
eyes joined them. He rejoiced with cheerful violence over the failure of
the opera. The girl, angered, forgot her manners and blurted out, “It is
clear, sir, that you know you have heard a masterpiece, and that you are
talking of a rival.”
“Do you know who that was, saucebox?” her delighted father asked as they
passed on.
“No, who?”
“Hector Berlioz.”
It was the beginning of a lifelong devotion. Wagner was to her not only
the master musician but a species of divinity. In 1882 she published a
volume on him—valuable for its reminiscences.
Early in the winter of 1892 “Lohengrin” was announced for the season of
Grand Opera. I was amazed at the loud and bitter protests. Among the few
lovers of Wagner who had courage to come to the defense of the master
was Judith Gautier. She was abused for it. As this was my first
realization that political hatred ever influences the judgment in
matters of art, I took the incident very much to heart. I could
understand why people might dislike Wagnerian music, but that the
soldiers should be called out to protect the Opera House when one of his
greatest works was to be given shocked me. You could then so hate an
enemy that beauty herself was outraged!
It was easy for me to conclude that Judith Gautier’s name had been left
off the list of writing women sent to the Chicago Exposition because the
committee wanted to punish her for defending the works of a great artist
in whom she profoundly believed.
The opening up of opportunities so much more quickly than I had dared
dream spurred me to longer and harder hours at work. There were few
mornings that I was not at my desk at eight o’clock; there were few
nights that I went to bed before midnight, and there was real drudgery
in making legible copy after my article was written. It was all done by
longhand—careful and painstaking handwriting, it was. I was to find
later that Mr. McClure’s partner in the Syndicate, Mr. J. S. Phillips,
trying to estimate the possibilities in this correspondent bombarding
them with articles and suggestions, set me down from my handwriting as a
middle-aged New England schoolteacher.
But if life was hard and life was meager, and if down at the bottom of
my heart it was continuously in question to which class of the poor I
would finally belong, life to my surprise was taking on a varied pattern
very different from the drab existence of hard work and self-denial that
I had planned and was prepared to endure to the end. It began at the Rue
du Sommerard, where at the outset we stumbled on what turned out to be
the most colorful, unusual, and frequently perplexing association that
had ever come the way of any one of us.
When we took our rooms from Madame Bonnet she had told us that one room
in the apartment was reserved for an Egyptian Prince who came only for
the week ends. He was _bien comme il faut_, _très riche_, _très_
everything desirable. He would not disturb us, we might never see him.
Upon inquiry we discovered that all Madame Bonnet’s rooms save those we
were taking were occupied by Egyptian students of law or medicine or
diplomacy. The Prince, himself, a cousin of the Khedive, was in the
military school at Saint-Cyr. He kept a room at Madame Bonnet’s to spend
an occasional holiday or Sunday with his compatriots, all of his age and
all of the upper classes.
We all shared the American flutter over titles, and when we caught a
first glimpse of the Prince and his friends we were still more excited.
They were quite the most elegant-looking male specimens so far as
manners and clothes went that any one of us had ever seen. Here was more
in the way of flavor than we had bargained for. We had come to study the
French and had dropped into an Egyptian colony.
We soon discovered that they were as curious about us as we were about
them, for hardly were we settled when Madame Bonnet came to say that the
_messieurs_ were all in her salon. Wouldn’t we come in and make their
acquaintance? Of course we went. They wanted us to dance. Now it was
Sunday, and we had all been brought up under the Methodist discipline.
Sunday was a day of rest and worship and no play, no amusement of any
kind. In my household at least I was supposed to play only hymns on the
piano as we were supposed to read only religious books. My mother and I
compromised at last on Gottschalk’s “Last Hope”; she, being moved by the
story of its composition, thought that it must be religious, but
“Martha” and “Poet and Peasant,” my two other show pieces, were
forbidden.
Indeed, when I was forty years old my father, catching me reading a
volume of a certain Congressional trust investigation on a Sunday
afternoon, reproved me in his gentle way. “You shouldn’t read that on
Sunday, Ida.” I quickly exchanged it for “Pilgrim’s Progress,” which is
not without suggestion for a student of the trust.
My young companions were particularly shocked at the Egyptians’
invitation to dance. I think it had never occurred to them that all
people did not keep Sunday. “No,” we said a little severely, “we don’t
dance on Sunday.” I had the satisfaction of hearing them whisper soberly
to one another, “_très religieuses_.” It was just as well, I thought,
they should have that idea to start with; better than starting with the
degree of intimacy they might see in our dancing in their landlady’s
salon on a first meeting.
But we had what was for us an exciting evening, and when we left and
they all begged “Come again” we promised that we would.
It was the beginning of a weekly party. Madame Bonnet gave the Egyptians
their dinners. We agreed to take dinners once a week with her. We
couldn’t afford more, and besides we wanted to be on the safe side in
our relations. There must be no question in their minds about our entire
respectability—respectability as we understood it. What interested me
particularly was that at once they wanted to understand our conventions,
social and religious and political. Nothing disturbed them more, I
found, than a feeling that perhaps they had not quite understood, that
unintentionally they had infringed on our customs. Once convinced of
this, we could go with entire freedom to our weekly Egyptian evenings.
As I recall them they were happy evenings much like children’s parties
at home, for the Egyptians loved games, tricks, charades, play of any
sort. They laughed and shouted and, if something went wrong, flew into a
rage like children.
The meat of the connection was the talk which sometimes ran far into the
night. All of these young men were in training for some kind of
professional or official position. Two or three of them had taken from
three to four years at German gymnasia or English universities. All of
them spoke three or four languages. The Prince’s English was perfect,
and no one of us could ever hope to approach the French of the group,
learned for the most part in Switzerland as children. They had much more
curiosity and real information about the social customs of other
countries than we had. They were eager to know all about our ways,
particularly the life of women, their relation to men before and after
marriage.
There were would-be reformers of Egyptian marriage customs among them;
especially did they resent the convention which prevented them looking
at the face of the bride before the marriage ceremony. One of the group
had made a vow never to marry as long as that custom existed and was
urging his compatriots to join him. Nearly all of them insisted that
they would never marry more than one woman. They asked with a frankness
startling to our ears about the way monogamy worked in the United
States. They were curious to know the position of the mistress, and when
we were shocked and insisted that a good man never had a mistress they
were frankly incredulous. It would never work out, they insisted. One
wife they understood; but one wife and no mistress seemed entirely
impractical.
Politics interested them profoundly. Particularly did they hate
England—how deeply and bitterly I did not realize until in January of
’92 news of the death of the Khedive, Tewfik Pasha son of Ismail Pasha,
great-grandson of Mehemet Ali, came to the Rue du Sommerard. Madame
Bonnet came in at once to tell us how sorrowful our friends were and to
ask that we dine with them that night. We found them very grave. “He was
a good man,” they insisted, “our friend.” What was going to happen now?
I took it they feared changes in government which might make their own
futures uncertain. They were uneasy, frightened and wanted us to
understand the reason behind their anxiety.
After dinner a large number of their compatriots filed into the room. We
were begged to stay. They evidently wanted us to understand better their
suspicion of what England might do in this crisis. The longer the talk,
the more bitter they grew.
“Down with England!” they began to cry.
Indignation and enthusiasm are qualities as contagious as disease.
Before I realized it, I shared their anger and was drinking repeatedly
in _l’eau sucrée_—good Mohammedans that our Egyptians were, they never
touched wine—drinking repeatedly to loud and angry roars of “A bas
l’Angleterre!”
The Egyptians were not only a picturesque and enlivening feature in our
life: they had a social value which they never suspected. We used them
rather shamelessly to impress wandering Americans who looked with badly
concealed scorn on the Latin Quarter and particularly on our narrow and
stuffy rooms. “A Prince was our neighbor,” we said loftily, and to prove
it we could show an autographed photograph which the Prince on his own
notion had given me. I kept it on the mantel in the little salon. When
we felt particular need of asserting ourselves we told of our weekly
dinners and they lost nothing of their gaiety and interest in our
telling. There was so much more flavor in them, we always assured those
who tried to high-hat us, than ordinary sightseeing offered!
I have always felt rather proud of the way we handled ourselves in that
year, keeping the entire respect of our Egyptians. It was not always so
easy. It fell into my awkward hands to handle one rather violent love
affair. A pretty and vivacious young girl had joined our party at the
request of her brother: “Will you look after her?” The Egyptians were
delighted with her, and she treated them as she might a group of
American boys, could see no reason why she should not go out with them.
Only our combined disapproval, our insistence that if she did she soon
would be classed in the Quarter as little better than the gay little
girls who swarmed about, and with whom we occasionally out of the corner
of our eyes saw our Egyptians: she must not run that risk. But while
that was managed the inevitable stir of youth could not be managed, and
it was not long before I had one of the nicest of the boys begging me on
his knees to let him pay his addresses to my little friend, insisting
that he would marry her, never take another wife. He wept and pleaded,
but I held my ground until finally the young girl who loved his suit but
not the boy was safely on the ocean.
A long time afterwards I had proof that we did look after ourselves.
When a couple of our party were going to Italy one of these young men
gave them a letter of introduction to an Egyptian friend in Milan. The
letter was not presented, and not opened until two or three years later,
when my friend showed me the postscript. It read: “Surtout soyez
convenable avec ces dames.”
After the Egyptians came our French professor, a woman of forty, buxom,
competent, gay-hearted, an able teacher. I have never known man or woman
more shrewd in gauging character or more expert in turning the qualities
she found to her own advantage. If she respected or admired them she
took no more than she gave—frequently, as in my case, much less. But if
she found a pupil lazy or dishonest or stingy or rich and irresponsible,
she took mercilessly. “Such people deserve nothing—nothing,” she
declared once when I protested.
She respected me because I worked, but she always told me frankly that
although I read French easily and wrote it _pas mal_ I should always
speak it with the “detestable” English accent. “No ear—too old.”
However, I could be made more fluent, my vocabulary enlarged, my grammar
perfected. And to that end she bent all her efforts, establishing
several useful exchange relations. The chief of these was her most
intimate friend, Monsieur X, a man who I suppose had been for many years
her lover.
Monsieur X had no superior intelligence; but he was industrious and _bon
enfant_, and partly at least through the help of Madame A had come to
hold an excellent official position. She kept him busy improving his
chances. At the moment she took me on she had him translating a big
volume on the English system of handling the unemployed and the
helplessly poor, an acute problem for France in the early nineties. As
she already had pried out of me full information of all I was trying to
do, she saw at once the possibility of a trade. If I would help him in
translating, he would secure reports and information on subjects in
which I was interested. It seemed a good thing for me at any rate, and
the arrangement was made.
I continued to help with the book until it was published. It was well
received, even _couronné_ by the Academy of Science. To my astonishment
I found then that Madame A’s interest in this book and its success was
that it would help her in making a more profitable marriage for Monsieur
X. They had settled on a wife—that, I knew—but, as she told me, his
position was so much improved by the success of his book that he was
worth a much larger dot. Therefore, she set out with his help, I
suppose, to find another wife. They succeeded, and the affair was
arranged.
I was deeply disturbed by the matter. I believed, as I still do, that
the only safe basis for a happy marriage is a compound of physical
harmony, capacity for companionship combined with understanding and
acceptance of each other’s ideals. I could see little chance where it
was a matter chiefly of balanced income. But Madame A had no sympathy
with my idealistic attitude towards marriage.
Of course it left her high and dry. The little dinners which the three
of us had shared almost every week became dinners _à deux_. The first
night I was torn with sympathy.
“Will you never see him again?” I asked.
“Of course, not now, later perhaps. These things arrange themselves,
mademoiselle.”
But I noticed she ordered a double cognac that night.
Madame A rendered one very great service to our group, one which we
could never repay. We had been but a short time in Paris before we
realized that one of our duties was to be helping out American girls and
women who had come to Europe to study a little, sight-see a little,
travel a little, expecting easily to form congenial relations with the
people of the country, and who for one reason or another had never been
able to do this. They were disappointed and unhappy. The four of us
standing together made a nucleus they envied. We made it a rule to do
our best to help them out; but at least in one case it involved us in
serious trouble.
Among those who had attached themselves to us was a woman of some forty
or more years with a curiously repellent personality. I have never known
a person to produce a more melancholy effect on strangers. I have seen
our little salon empty itself if she dropped in on our evening at home.
Even Madame Bonnet’s little black dog Riquet, who had adopted us, would
slink around the edge of the room and beg to be let out if she came in.
What was the matter? We could not imagine. More than once she threw
herself into my arms and sobbed that she was unhappy, in great trouble,
of which she could not speak.
Miss C had been some three months in the house when we came home from a
week-end trip to be met by an outraged Madame Bonnet. Miss C, she told
us, had been arrested, arrested for stealing at the Bon Marché and the
Louvre. She was in Saint-Lazaire. There was a note for me. I must do
something. Think of the disgrace to her establishment!
The note told me only where she was, that she had engaged a lawyer,
asked me to see him. I did, and found him of the type which I suppose
hangs around all prisons into which great cities dump women of the
street and petty criminals. His only interest was in a possible
retainer. How much would I pay him for taking the case? Nothing, I
assured him, until I had talked to the American authorities. I went to
the consulate, where an irate and worried official swore loudly at the
faculty of American women for getting into trouble in France.
“Here I am,” he said, “saddled with a girl who is going to have a baby
and who swears she’ll kill herself if I don’t arrange for her to have it
so her family will never know.
“I was afraid she would do it too, and then there would be another nasty
scandal to hush up, so I got the man here and told him he must put up
the money to see her through.