the members are present. Long clay pipes are provided, and a big bowl
of steaming punch, highly seasoned, comes from Madame Annaie's kitchen.
Mutually laudatory speeches and toasts, playing musical instruments,
and singing songs are in order. The Spaniard, with castanets, skilfully
executes the fandango on a table. Bishop does the danse du ventre.
Joncierge gives marvellous imitations of Sarah Bernhardt and other
celebrities, including Giles, whose drawl and stupidity he makes
irresistibly funny. Nor do Gérôme, Bouguereau, and Benjamin Constant
escape his mimicry. Haidor, the Turk, drawls a Turkish song all out of
tune, and is rapturously encored. The Swiss and the Italian render a
terrific duo from "Aida," and the Spaniards sing the "Bullfighters'
Song" superbly. Sketches are dashed off continually. They are so clever
that it is a pity Madame Annaie has to wipe them from the tables.
On Thanksgiving-day the Americans gave the club a Thanksgiving dinner.
It was a great mystery and novelty to the other members, but they
enjoyed it hugely. The turkeys were found without much trouble, but the
whole city had to be searched for cranberries. At last they were found
in a small grocery-shop in the American quarter, on the Avenue Wagram.
Bishop superintended the cooking, M. Annaie serving as first assistant.
How M. Annaie stared when he beheld the queer American mixtures that
Bishop was concocting! "Mon Dieu! Not sugar with meat!" he cried,
aghast, seeing Bishop serve the turkey with cranberry sauce. A dozen
delicious pumpkin-pies that formed part of the menu staggered the old
cook. The Italian cooked a pot of macaroni with mushroom sauce, and it
was superb.
"The Hole in the Wall" eminently deserves its name. It is on the
Boulevard du Montparnasse, within two blocks of the Bal Bullier. A small
iron sign projecting over the door depicts two students looking down
at the passers-by over bowls of coffee, rolls also being shown. It was
painted by an Austrian student in payment of a month's board.
The Hole is a tiny place, just sufficiently large for its two tables and
eight stools, fat Madame Morel, the proprietress, and a miniature zinc
bar filled with absinthe and cognac bottles and drinking glasses.
The ceiling is so low that you must bend should you be very tall, for
overhead is the sleeping-room of Madame Morel and her niece; it is
reached by a small spiral stair.
[Illustration: 0173]
A narrow slit in the floor against the wall, where the napkin-box hangs,
leads down to the dark little kitchen. It is a tight squeeze for
Madame Morel to serve her customers, but she has infinite patience and
geniality, and discharges her numerous duties and bears her hardships
with unfailing good-nature. It is no easy task to cook a halfdozen
orders at once, wait on the tables, run out to the butcher-shop for a
chop or a steak, and take in the cash. But she does all this, and much
more, having no assistant. The old concierge next door, Madame Mariolde,
runs in to help her occasionally, when she can spare a moment from her
own multifarious duties. Madame Morel's toil-worn hands are not bien
propre, but she has a kind heart. For seven years she has lived in this
little Hole, and during that time has never been farther away than to
the grocery-shop on the opposite corner.
Her niece leaves at seven o'clock in the morning to sew all day on the
other side of town, returning at eight at night, tired and listless,
but always with a half-sad smile. So we see little of her. Many nights
I have seen her come in drenched and cold, her faded straw hat limp and
askew, and her dark hair clinging to her wet face. For she has walked
in the rain all the way from the Avenue de l'Opéra, unable to afford
omnibus fare. She usually earns from two to two and half francs a day,
sewing twelve hours.
The most interesting of the frequenters of the Hole is a Slav from
Trieste, on the Adriatic. He is a genius in his way, and full of energy
and business sense. His vocation is that of a "lightning-sketch artist,"
performing at the theatres. He has travelled all over America and
Europe, and is thoroughly hardened to the ways of the world. Whenever
he runs out of money he goes up to the Rue de la Gaieté and gives
exhibitions for a week or two at one of the theatres there, receiving
from fifty to sixty francs a week. The students all go to see him, and
make such a noise and throw so many bouquets (which he returns for
the next night) that the theatrical managers, thinking he is a great
drawing-card, generally raise his salary as an inducement to make him
prolong his stay when he threatens to leave.
But he is too thoroughly a Bohemian to remain long in a place. Last week
he suddenly was taken with a desire to visit Vienna. Soon after he had
gone four pretty Parisiennes called and wanted to know what had become
of their amant.
D------, another of the habitués of the Hole, is a German musical
student. Strangers would likely think him mentally deranged, so odd is
his conduct.
[Illustration: 8175]
He has two other peculiarities,--extreme sensitiveness and indefatigable
industry. He brings his shabby violin-case every evening, takes out
his violin after dinner, and at once becomes wholly absorbed in his
practice. If he would play something more sprightly and pleasing
the other habitués of the Hole would not object; but he insists on
practising the dreariest, heaviest, and most wearing exercises, the most
difficult études, and the finest compositions of the masters. All this
is more than the others can bear with patience always; so they wound
his sensibilities by throwing bread and napkin-rings at him. I hen he
retires to the kitchen, where, sitting on the cooler end of the range,
he practises diligently under Madame Morel's benevolent protection. This
is all because he has never found a concierge willing to permit him to
study in his room, so tireless is his industry. If I do not mistake,
this strange young man will be heard from some day.
Then there is W------, a student in sculpture, with exceptionally fine
talent. He had been an American cowboy, and no trooper could swear more
eloquently. He has been making headway, for the Salon has given him
honorable mention for a strong bronze group of fighting tigers. His
social specialty is poker-playing, and he has brought the entire Hole
under the spell of that magic game.
Herr Prell, from Munich, takes delight in torturing the other habitués
with accounts of dissections, as he is a medical student at the Académie
de Médecine. The Swede, who drinks fourteen absinthes a day, throws
stools at Herr Prell, and tries in other ways to make him fight; but
Herr Prell only laughs, and gives another turn of the dissection-screw.
The glee club is one of the features of the Hole. It sings every night,
but its supreme effort comes when one of the patrons of the Hole departs
for home. On such occasions the departing comrade has to stand the
dinner for all, after which, with its speeches and toasts, he is
escorted to the railway station with great éclat, and given a hearty
farewell, the glee club singing the parting song at the station. Bishop
is leading tenor of the glee club.
LE CABARET DU SOLEIL D'OR
IT is only the name of the Cabaret of the Golden Sun that suggests
the glorious luminary of day. And yet it is really brilliant in its own
queer way, though that brilliancy shines when all else in Paris is dark
and dead,--at night, and in the latest hours of the night at that.
[Illustration: 8177]
My acquaintance with the Golden Sun began one foggy night in a cold
November, under the guidance of Bishop.
Lured by the fascinations of nocturnal life in the Quartier Latin, and
by its opportunities for the study of life in its strangest phases,
Bishop had become an habitual nighthawk, leaving the studio nearly every
evening about ten o'clock, after he had read a few hours from treasured
books gleaned from the stalls along the river, to prowl about with a
sketchbook, in quest of queer characters and queer places, where strange
lives were lived in the dark half of the day. His knowledge of obscure
retreats and their peculiar habitués seemed unlimited. And what an
infinite study they offer! The tourist, "doing" Bohemian Paris as he
would the famous art galleries, or Notre-Dame, or the Madeleine, or
the _café_s on the boulevards, may, under the guidance of a wise and
discerning student, visit one after another of these out-of-the-way
resorts where the endless tragedy of human life is working out its
mysteries; he may see that one place is dirtier or noisier than another,
that the men and women are better dressed and livelier here than there,
that the crowd is bigger, or the lights brighter; but he cannot see,
except in their meaningless outer aspects, those subtle differences
which constitute the heart of the matter. In distance it is not far from
the Moulin Rouge to the Cabaret du Soleil d'Or, but in descending from
the dazzling brilliancy and frothy abandon of the Red Mill to the smoke
and grime of the Golden Sun, we drop from the summit of the Tour Eiffel
to the rat-holes under the bridges of the Seine; and yet it is in such
as the Cabaret of the Golden Sun that the true student finds the deeper,
the more lastingly charming, the strangely saddening spell that lends to
the wonderful Quartier Latin its distinctive character and everlasting
fascination.
Though Bishop spoke to me very little of his midnight adventures, I
being very busy with my own work, I began to have grave apprehensions
on the score of his tastes in that direction; for during the afternoons
ridiculous-looking, long-haired, but gentlemannered persons in shabby
attire, well-seasoned with the aroma of absinthe and cigarettes, would
favor our studio with a call, undoubtedly at Bishop's invitation. They
brought with them black portfolios or rolls of paper tied with black
string, containing verses,--their masterpieces, which were to startle
Paris, or new songs, which, God favoring, were to be sung at La Scala or
the Ambassadeurs, and thus bring them immortal fame and put abundant fat
upon their lean ribs! Ah, the deathless hope that makes hunger a welcome
companion here!
Bishop would cleverly entertain these aspiring geniuses with shop talk
concerning literature and music, and he had a charming way of dwelling
upon the finish and subtlety of their work and comparing it with that
of the masters. It usually ended with their posing for him in different
attitudes of his suggesting. Why waste money on professional models? As
Bishop's acquaintances became more numerous among this class, we finally
set aside Tuesday afternoons for their reception. Then they would come
in generous numbers and enjoy themselves unreservedly with our cognac
and biscuits. But ah, the rare pleasures of those afternoons,--as much
for the good it did us to see their thin blood warmed with brandy and
food as for their delightful entertainment of us and one another.
The studio was warm and cheerful on the night when Bishop invited me
to accompany him out. I had been at work, and presently, when I had
finished, I flung myself on the divan for a rest and a smoke, and then
became aware of Bishop's presence. He was comfortably ensconced in the
steamer-chair, propped up with pillows.
"Aren't you going out to-night?" I inquired.
"Why, yes. Let's see the time. A little after eleven. That's good. You
are finished, aren't you? Now, if you want a little recreation and wish
to see one of the queerest places in Paris, come with me."
I looked out the window. A cold, dreary night it was. The chimney-pots
were dimmed by the thick mist, and the street lamps shone murkily far
below. It was a saddening, soaking, dripping night, still, melancholy,
and depressing,--the kind of night that lends a strange zest to in-door
enjoyment, as though it were a duty to keep the mist and the dreariness
out of the house and the heart.
But the studio had worn me out, and I was eager to escape from its
pleasant coziness. And this was a Saturday night, which means something,
even in Paris. To-morrow there would be rest. So I cheerfully assented.
We donned our heaviest top-coats and mufflers, crammed the stove full of
coal, and then sallied out into the dripping fog.
Oh, but it was cold and dismal in the streets! The mist was no longer
the obscuring, suggestive, mysterious factor that it had been when seen
from the window, but was now a tangible and formidable thing, with a
manifest purpose. It struck through our wraps as though they had been
cheesecloth. It had swept the streets clear, for not a soul was to be
seen except a couple of sergents de ville, all hooded in capes, and
a cab that came rattling through the murk with horses a-steam.
Occasionally a flux of warm light from some _café_ would melt a tunnel
through the monotonous opaque haze, but the empty chairs and tables upon
the sidewalks facing the _café_s offered no invitation.
[Illustration: 0181]
In front of one of these _café_s, in a sheltered corner made by a glass
screen, sat a solitary young woman, dressed stylishly in black, the
light catching one of her dainty slippers perched coquettishly upon a
foot-rest. A large black hat, tilted wickedly down over her face, cast
her eyes in deep shadow and lent her that air of alluring mystery which
the women of her class know so well how to cultivate. Her neck and chin
were buried deep in the collar of her sealskin cape. A gleam of limp
white gauze at her throat lent a pleasing relief to the monotone of
her attire. Upon the table in front of her stood an empty glass and two
saucers. As we passed she peered at us from beneath her big hat, and
smiled coquettishly, revealing glistening white teeth. The atmosphere
of loneliness and desolation that encompassed her gave a singularly
pathetic character to her vigil. Thus she sat, a picture for an artist,
a text for a moralist, pretty, dainty, abandoned. It happened not to be
her fortune that her loneliness should be relieved by us.... But other
men might be coming afterwards.... All this at a glance through the cold
November fog.
As we proceeded up the Boul' Mich' the _café_s grew more numerous and
passers-by more frequent, but all these were silent and in a hurry,
prodded on by the nipping cold fangs of the night. Among the tables
outside the _Café d'Harcourt_ crouched and prowled an old man, bundled
in ill-fitting rags, searching for remnants of cigars and cigarettes
on the sanded sidewalk. From his glittering eyes, full of suspicion, he
turned an angry glance upon us as we paused a moment to observe him, and
growled,--"_Allons, tu n' peux donc pas laisser un pauv' malheureux?_"
Bishop tossed him a sou, which he greedily snatched without a word of
thanks.
[Illustration: 8183]
At the corner, under the gas-lamps, stood shivering newspaper venders
trying to sell their few remaining copies of la dernière édition de la
presse. Buyers were scarce.
We had now reached the Place St.-Michel and the left bank of the river.
We turned to the right, following the river wall toward Notre-Dame,
whose towers were not discernible through the fog.
Here there was an unbounded wilderness of desolation and solitude. The
black Seine flowed silently past dark masses that were resolved into big
canal-boats, with their sickly green lights reflected in the writhing
ink of the river. Notre-Dame now pushed its massive bulk through the
fog, but its towers were lost in the sky. Near by a few dim lights shone
forth through the slatted windows of the Morgue. But its lights never go
out. And how significantly close to the river it stands! Peering under
the arches of the bridges, we found some of the social dregs that sleep
there with the rats. It was not difficult to imagine the pretty girl in
black whom we had passed coming at last through dissipation and wrinkles
and broken health to take refuge with the rats under the bridges, and
it is a short step thence to the black waters of the river; and that the
scheme of the tragedy might be perfect in all its parts, adjustments,
and relations, behold the Morgue so near, with its lights that never go
out, and boatmen so skilled in dragging the river! And the old man who
was gathering the refuse and waste of smokers, it was not impossible
that he should find himself taking this route when his joints had grown
stiffer, though it would more likely end under the bridges.
The streets are very narrow and crooked around Notre-Dame, and their
emanations are as various as the capacity of the human nose for evil
odors. The lamps, stuck into the walls of the houses, only make the
terrors of such a night more formidable; for while one may feel a
certain security in absolute darkness, the shadows to which the lamps
lend life have a baffling elusiveness and weirdness, and a habit of
movement that makes one instinctively dodge. But that is all the trick
of the wind. However that may be, it is wonderful how much more vividly
one remembers on such a night the stories of the murders, suicides, and
other crimes that lend a particular grewsomeness to the vicinity of the
Morgue and Notre-Dame.
We again turned to the right, into a narrow, dirty street,--the Rue du
Haut-Pavé,--whose windings brought us into a similar street,--the Rue
Galande. Bishop halted in front of a low arched door-way, which blazed
sombrely in its coat of blood-red paint. A twisted gas-lamp, demoralized
and askew, depended overhead, and upon the glass enclosing it was
painted, with artistic flourishes,--"Au Soleil d'Or."
This was the cabaret of the Golden Sun,--all unconscious of the mockery
of its name, another of those whimsical disjointings in which the
shadowy side of Paris is so prolific. From the interior of the luminary
came faintly the notes of a song, with piano accompaniment.
The archway opened into a small court paved with ill-fitted flint
blocks. At the farther end of it another gas-lamp flickered at the head
of a flight of stairs leading underground. As we approached the steps a
woman sprang from the shadow, and with a cry, half of fear and half of
anger, fled to the street. At that moment memories of the cosiness
of our studio became doubly enticing,--one cannot always approach
unfamiliar underground Paris with perfect courage. But Bishop's coolness
was reassuring. He had already descended the steps, and there was
nothing left for me but to follow.
At the foot of the stairs were half-glass doors curtained with cheap red
cloth. A warm, thick, suffocating gust of air, heavy with the fumes of
beer, wine, and tobacco, assailed our cold faces as we pushed open the
doors and entered the room.
For a moment it was difficult to see clearly, so dense was the smoke.
It was packed against the ceiling like a bank of fog, diminishing in
density downward, and shot through with long banner-like streamers of
smoke freshly emitted.
The human atmosphere of the place could not be caught at once. A
stranger would not have known for the moment whether he was with thieves
or artists. But very soon its distinctive spirit made its presence and
character manifest. The room--which was not a large one--was well filled
with an assortment of those queer and interesting people some of whom
Bishop had entertained at the studio, only here their characteristics
were more pronounced, for they were in their natural element, depressed
and hampered by no constraints except of their own devising. A great
many were women, although it could be seen at a glance that they were
not of the nymphs who flitted among the glittering _café_s, gowned in
delicate laces and sheeny sculptured silks, the essence of mignonette
pervading their environment. No; these were different.
[Illustration:0187]
Here one finds, not the student life of Paris, but its most
unconventional Bohemian life. Here, in this underground rendezvous, a
dirty old hole about twenty feet below the street level, gather nightly
the happy-go-lucky poets, musicians, and singers for whom the great
busy world has no use, and who, in their unrelaxing poverty, live in
the tobacco clouds of their own construction, caring nothing for social
canons, obeyers of the civil law because of their scorn of meanness,
injustice, and crime, suffering unceasingly for the poorest comforts of
life, ambitious without energy, hopeful without effort, cheerful under
the direst pressure of need, kindly, simple, proud, and pitiful.
All were seated at little round tables, as are the habitués of the
_café_s, and their attention was directed upon a slim young fellow with
curling yellow hair and a faint moustache, who was singing, leaning
meanwhile upon a piano that stood on a low platform in one corner of
the room. Their attention was respectful, delicate, sympathetic, and, as
might be supposed, brought out the best in the lad. It was evident that
he had not long been a member of the sacred circle. His voice was a
smooth, velvety tenor, and under proper instruction might have been
useful to its possessor as a means of earning a livelihood. But it was
clear that he had already fallen under the spell of the associations to
which accident or his inclination had brought him; and this meant that
henceforth he would live in this strange no-world of dreams, hopes,
sufferings, and idleness, and that likely he would in time come to
gather cigar-stumps on the sanded pavement of the Café d'Harcourt, and
after that sleep with the rats under the bridges of the Seine. At this
moment, however, he lived in the clouds; he breathed and glowed with
the spirit of shiftless, proud, starving Bohemianism as it is lived in
Paris, benignantly disdainful of the great moiling, money-grubbing world
that roared around him, and perhaps already the adoration of some girl
of poetic or artistic tastes and aspirations, who was serving him as
only the Church gives a woman the right.
There was time to look about while he was singing, though that was
difficult, so strange and pathetic a picture he made. The walls of the
room were dirty and bare, though relieved at rare intervals by sketches
and signs. The light came from three gas-burners, and was reflected by a
long mirror at one end of the room.
No attention had been paid to our entrance, except by the garçon, a
heavy-set, bull-necked fellow, who, with a sign, bade us make no noise.
When the song had finished the audience broke into uproarious applause,
shouting, "_Bravo, mon vieux!" "Bien fait, Marquis!_" and the clapping
of hands and beating of glasses on the marble-topped tables and pounding
of canes on the floor made a mighty din. The young singer, his cheeks
glowing and his eyes blazing, modestly rolled up his music and sought
his seat.
We were now piloted to seats by the garçon, who, when we had settled
ourselves, demanded to know what we would drink. "_Deux bocks!_" he
yelled across the room. "_Deux bocks!_" came echoing back from the
counter, where a fat woman presided--knitting.
Several long-haired littérateurs--friends of Bishop's--came up and
saluted him and shook his hand, all with a certain elegance and dignity.
He, in turn, introduced me, and the conversation at once turned to art,
music, and poetry. Whatever the sensational news of the day, whatever
the crisis in the cabinet, whatever anything might have been that was
stirring the people in the great outside commonplace world, these men
and women gave it no heed whatever. What was the gross, hard, eager
world to them? Did not the glories of the Golden Sun lend sufficient
warmth to their hearts, and were not their vague aspirations and idle
hopes ample stimulants to their minds and spirits? They quickly found a
responsive mood in us, and this so delighted them that they ordered the
drinks.
The presiding genius at the piano was a whitehaired, spiritual-looking
man, whose snowy locks gave the only indication of his age; for his face
was filled with the eternal youthfulness of a careless and contented
heart. His slender, delicate fingers told of his temperament, his thin
cheeks of his poverty, and his splendid dreamy eyes of the separate life
that he lived.