AT SIXTEEN
The family was abroad for the summer, one of those delightful May-first
to October thirty-first summers when school is missed at both ends. The
itinerary was supposed to be planned by letting each member drop into a
hat slips of paper indicating preferences. Mother was astonishingly good
about considering the wishes of all. But as the trip was undertaken for
education as well as vacation, the head of the family did not intend to
make it aimless rambling. Although, to get full benefit of the
strawberry season, we took our cathedrals from south to north in
England, none were omitted. By the time we reached Edinburg, Roman,
Saxon, Early Norman and Gothic were as mixed up in the head of the
sixteen-year-old member of the party as they were in the buildings
inspected. "Inspected"--just the word for an educational tour! Later
visits to East Coast cathedrals have not conquered the instinctive
desire to avoid going inside. Impressions of places were vivid enough.
But I fear Canterbury meant London the next stop; Ely a place near
Cambridge; Peterborough the view from the top of the tower; Lincoln
tea-cakes that crumbled in one's mouth; York a mean photographer who
never sent me films I left to be developed; and Durham a batch of
long-delayed letters from boys at home.
At sixteen strawberries do not satisfy hunger: cathedrals do not feed
the soul.
No, cathedrals and history and the origin of the political institutions
under which I lived interested me very mildly. At sixteen one is too
young to have love affairs that interfere with the appetite, and too
sophisticated to cling to the dream of a cloistered convent life that
followed giving up the hope of being a chorus-girl. The mental effort of
preparing for college (which the tour abroad was to stimulate) could not
claim me to the exclusion of clothes and an engrossing interest in the
doings of the group of boys and girls who formed my "crowd." The trip
abroad was going to give me something to talk about at dinner-parties
and the advantage of wearing clothes bought in Paris. One never looks
forward to the coming winter with as keen anticipation as during the
sixteen-year-old summer. Hair would be put up, and dances and dinners
were a certainty for every Friday and Saturday evening.
[Illustration: The Madeleine Flower Market]
If you believe in the value of first impressions and are in a mood to
love Paris, plan your introduction to the queen of the world for an
evening in June. Do not worry about your baggage. Send a porter from
the hotel afterwards for your trunks. Find a _fiacre_ if you can. An
_auto-taxi_ is second-best, but be sure that the top is off. _Baisser la
capote_ is a simple matter, done in the twinkling of an eye. Of course
the _chauffeur_ will scold. But handling _cochers_ and _chauffeurs_ in
Paris requires the instinct of a lion-tamer. If you let the animal get
the better of you, you are gone. You will never enjoy Paris. Mastery of
Parisian drivers, hippomobile and automobile, does not require a
knowledge of French. Your man will understand "put down the top"
accompanied by the proper gesture. Whether he puts it down depends upon
your iron will and not upon your French!
Best of all stations for the first entry to Paris is the Gare de Lyon.
But that good fortune is yours only if you are coming from Italy or
Spain or if you have landed at Marseilles. The Dover and Boulogne routes
bring you to the Gare du Nord and the Dieppe and Havre and Cherbourg
routes to the Gare Saint-Lazare. In any case, ask to be driven first to
the Pont-Neuf, then along the _quais_ of the Rive Gauche to the
Pont-Alexandre Trois, then to the Avenue des Champs-Elysées. Only when
you have gone over this itinerary and have passed between the Grand
Palais and the Petit Palais are you ready to be driven to your hotel. It
is the difference between seeing a girl first at a dance or a
garden-party or running into her by accident in her mother's kitchen
when the cook is on a strike.
How often, in the decades that have passed since June, 1899, have I
wished that the return to Paris had included this program, not only
initially but for every June and July evening of our weeks there. But it
did not. The passionate love of Paris, my home city, that was born in me
as a child, that was re-awakened and deepened in maturity, did not
manifest itself when I was a school-girl as it should have done. The
change from regular lessons to the governess-controlled days of
sightseeing was not as amusing at the time as it seems in retrospect.
Madame Raymond and I were not made for each other. It wasn't
incorrigibility on my part or severity in a nasty way on hers. We just
pulled in different directions, and shocked each other. It began on the
first day. She found that I spoke French well enough not to call for the
usual effort she had to make with American girls and that I did not need
to be told the names of _monuments_ and _jardins_ and _avenues_. The
memories of infancy had been carefully kept alive by word and picture.
Mother had seen to that. Paris meant to me my father. Consequently, I
suppose Madame Raymond's conscience stimulated her to lay stress upon
history and art. She wanted to earn her money.
Mutual lack of comprehension began immediately. My first reading under
Madame Raymond's direction was a volume of Guy de Maupassant's stories,
with markers to show which could be read and which were forbidden. Next
day Madame was horrified to see the markers gone and to learn that I had
sat up late reading without censorship. She told me that a well-bred
_jeune fille_ ought to be ashamed of reading certain things, and refused
to argue about it when I asked her why a _jeune fille_ should be ashamed
of reading the stories she had indicated to be skipped.
"To-day," said Madame Raymond, "I intend to take you to the Cluny
Museum, and then we shall begin the Louvre."
"But," I protested, "I want to go first to Morgan Harjes."
"What for? Madame your mother gave me fifty francs this morning."
"She gave me a hundred and fifty. It isn't for money. I want my
letters."
"If there are any letters for you, Madame your mother will give them to
you if it is good for you to have them!" snapped Madame Raymond.
"Fiddlesticks! My mother doesn't read my letters."
"Letters written to a _jeune fille_ of sixteen years can easily wait.
They are not important. Your education is. Anyway, who would write to
you over here?"
"Well, there is Bill. I'm crazy to know if he passed his examinations
for Yale and how he liked going to the dance at the Country Club with
Margaret when he asked me first. Joe and Charlie went off on a fishing
trip to Canada before I sailed, and I've been waiting a month to know
if they caught anything. Then Harold. He's an older man. You can talk to
him about serious things and his advice is pretty good. Naturally, it
would be--Harold is a member of the bar and knows lots."
"But," said Madame, "you mean to say you write to men and men write to
you?"
"Certainly. Just ask mother. Here, I know how to fix it. You seem to be
in a hurry to go to the Museum. If it interests you, go right along.
I'll take a cab to the bank and follow you later. Meet you at the Cluny
in an hour."
"Alone!" cried Madame; "my conscience would not allow it. Your mother
trusts me."
Madame Raymond hailed a cabby.
"To the Cluny Museum," said she, with finality.
In its setting, the Cluny Museum is one of the most delightful spots in
Paris. On the Boulevard Saint-Michel and the Boulevard Saint-Germain one
has the life of Paris of to-day. Looking out from the little park with
its remains of Roman baths and archæological treasures of old Lutetia
scattered around in the shrubbery, one sees a fascinating _carrefour_ of
the Latin Quarter, noisy, bustling, ever-changing. It is a contrast more
striking than any that Rome affords. On the other side, where one enters
the Museum, you have the atmosphere of the middle ages, with the old
well and the court yard and the fifteenth-century façade. Across the
street, the great buildings of the Sorbonne and Collège de France seem
to be carrying on the traditions of the past. But if you had to go
inside with a governess who insisted on showing you everything in every
room, you would rebel as I did.
Madame Raymond did not have it all in her head. She peered down over the
glass cases and read the descriptions in a high voice, adding pages out
of a guide book from time to time. She was near-sighted. As she droned
along, I plotted a scheme for kidnapping her spectacles. When we left, I
had seen embroideries and laces and carriages and cradles and slippers
of famous people and stolen stained-glass windows to _her_ heart's
content.
We went to Foyot's, opposite the Luxembourg Palace, for lunch. After the
meal was ordered, the waiter brought the _carte de vins_.
"A bottle of Medoc," said Madame. "I prefer red wine, don't you, my
dear?"
"Plain water for me. No mineral water. _Eau fraîche_ out of a carafe,"
said I.
"Extraordinary!" cried Madame.
"I think it is dreadful to drink wine," I protested, half in earnest and
half in joke. "The Bible says strong drink is a mockery. The first thing
I remember about Sunday school is that text."
"Ridiculous," said Madame, "table wine is not alcohol."
"Yes," I continued, "but it is the first steps toward strong drink. You
are going to order a _fine champagne_ with your coffee. You cannot tell
me that brandy is not strong drink."
"Here in France," said Madame, "everybody takes a drink and nobody gets
drunk. You must understand, my dear child, that we have a different
point of view."
"Maybe _you_ don't get drunk," said I, "but how about what one sees in
Brittany?"
"You lack respect," answered Madame. She ignored Brittany. In France,
one is not accustomed to argue with a sixteen-year-old girl. Questioning
the judgment of one's elders is impertinent. Since I have brought up my
own children in France, I am more than half won over to French ideas.
The strong individualism of the American child shocks me now in somewhat
the same way as my "freshness" must have shocked Madame Raymond. I was
ready to contest her belief that American girls had no manners. I have
not taught my children to courtesy--for the simple reason that it is no
longer the fashion in France. But I am far from believing now, as I told
Madame Raymond, that courtesying is affectation. And I fear that my
children have had the example of French children in regard to wine. I am
trying to put down here how I was at sixteen. When, after years in
America, I returned to France, my point of view was different.
But about some things maturity has not changed the opinion of a pert
young American _miss_. French ideas of sex relationship between
adolescents seem to me now as they did then, absurd and false. Nor have
I revised my opinion about high heels and tight corsets, powder and
paint.
It was Madame's duty to take me to the dressmaker's. Before my dress
appeared in the fitting room, I was put into my first pair of corsets.
When they were laced up, I rebelled, took a long breath, and stretched
them out again. Madame Raymond and the fitting woman shook their heads
and assured me that my dress would not fit. My governess sided with the
girl, when she remonstrated against my stretching the lacings. I showed
little interest, too, in Madame Raymond's suggestion concerning the
purchase of a box and a pretty puff with a silk rose-bud for a handle,
which was to contain pink powder.
"I never make up," I declared. "If you put powder and other stuff on
your face when you are young, you are not far-sighted. Ugh! I loathe
pink powder."
One day we went to a _foire_, one of those delightful open-air
second-hand markets that never cease to fascinate Parisians. A man
darted out from a booth and offered to sell me a wedding gown.
"How much is that dress?" I inquired.
"Two hundred francs, Mademoiselle."
"Let me see. I wonder if it is big enough for me. I'm getting married
next week. This would save me the bother of having one made, _n'est-ce
pas?_"
"Certainly, Mademoiselle," cried the merchant delighted.
He pulled out his tape-line and was preparing to measure me when Madame
dragged me away.
"It is not _convenable_, what you are doing," she exclaimed heatedly.
"You must not speak lightly of marriage."
"Oh, it comes to us all like death or whooping-cough."
I must not give the impression that my mind at sixteen was absolutely
insensible to historical sight-seeing and the art treasures of Paris. I
always have loved some of the things in the Louvre, and after the Great
War broke out, I discovered what a privation it was not to be able to
drop in when I passed to look at something in the Luxembourg or the
Louvre. But I did not like overdoses. And I have never gotten accustomed
to crowds of pictures all at once in the field of vision or cabinets and
glass-covered cases filled with a bewildering variety of _bibelots_. How
I came to enjoy the Musée du Louvre will be told in a later chapter of
the decade after Madame Raymond. Why should I not confess frankly that
at sixteen I was more interested in the Magazin du Louvre, even though I
knew I could no longer hope to purchase what I wanted there "for a
song"? The best thing I took away from Paris in 1899 was an
evening-dress with a low neck--my first to go with hair put up. It was
in the middle tray of my trunk, packed with tissue paper and sachet. I
can see now the different colored flowers woven into the soft cream of
its background in such a way that, according to the girdle you chose to
put on, your color effect in night light could be lavender, blue or
rose.
Ten years before my father had taught me to love to ride on the top of
an omnibus, on the _impériale_, as the French called it. Alas that I
should have to use the past tense here. _Impériales_, still the fashion
on Fifth Avenue and Riverside Drive, disappeared from Paris before the
war. I shall tell later of the last horse-driven omnibus. The auto-buses
started out with _impériales_, but banished the upstairs in 1912 and
1913. They were still the vogue in 1908. Madame Raymond objected to the
_impériale_. She hated climbing up and down the little stairs,
especially when carrying an umbrella prevented proper circumspection in
regard to gathering in skirts. And by riding inside one avoided a
_courant d'air_.
On a sunshiny day with a long ride ahead of us, I could not bear the
thought of submitting to my governess's whim. I forgot my manners and
jumped on first. With this advantage I was able to climb quickly to the
top. There was nothing else for Madame Raymond to do but slip the
guide-book hastily into her black silk bag and climb up after me. A man
in uniform came along and stopped in front of me. I was reading, and
did not look up when I offered him the necessary coppers. He took my
money and sat down beside me. Then he laughed and handed it back to me.
He was a sous-lieutenant of the French army. I was not confused by my
mistake, for he gallantly took it as an opening. We chatted in English.
Madame Raymond plucked at my sleeve, whispering admonitions. I was deaf
on that side. Finally she told me that we had reached our destination,
got up and started down. Naturally I followed. I found that we were
still several blocks away from where we were going. We both held our
tempers until we got off. Then the fur began to fly. That night my
adventure was retailed to Mother at the hotel in the Rue de la
Tremoille. Mother sided with the governess.
But the next week, when we were at the Opéra one night, I met my officer
on the Grand Escalier. He came right up to me, and I didn't have it in
my heart to turn my back or treat him coolly. When my governess turned
around, she recognized him. I did not bat an eyelash. I introduced him
to Mother and to her and he managed to get an invitation from Mother to
call on us. This is the only time I was ever glad about the long
intermission--the interminable intermission--between acts at the Paris
Opéra. Afterwards, nothing I could say would convince Madame Raymond
that the second meeting was pure hazard. She told me that she knew he
had slipped me his address and I had written to him to arrange the
rendez-vous. This did not make me mad. What did make me furious was her
condemnation of the supposed intrigue solely on the ground of my age and
my unmarried state. When does a girl cease being too young to talk to
men in France? And why should it not be worse for a married woman than
for an unmarried woman to encourage a little attention?
These questions interested me later as much as they did then. Was the
Old World so different from the New World or was I taking for granted
both a latitude and an attitude at home different from what I was going
to meet? Little did I realize that I was destined to live in Paris as a
bride and to bring up my children there to the age when I should have
these problems to face from the standpoint of a mother of three girls.
1908