I see you are not disappointed. But Albert permitted a trace of
cynicism to flavour his smile.
It's too perfect, too wonderful. It is more than I felt or imagined.
I'm moving in.
But you haven't seen it....
I've seen enough. I don't mean that. I mean I've seen enough to
know. But I want to see it all, everything, Saint Sulpice, the
Folies-Bergère, the Musée de Cluny, the Nouvelle Athènes, the Comédie
Française, the Bal Bullier, the Arc de Triomphe, the Luxembourg
Gardens....
They close at sundown. My expression was the cue for him to continue,
They'll be open tomorrow and any other day. They're just around the
corner. You can go there when you get up in the morning, if you do get
up in the morning. But what do you want to do tonight?
Anything! Everything! I cried.
Well, we'll eat first.
So we blew out the candles, floated down the dark stairs--I didn't
really walk for a week, I am sure--, brushing on our way against a
bearded student and a girl, fragrant and warm in the semi-blackness,
out into the delicious night, with the fascinating indescribable odour
of Paris, which ran the gamut from the fragrance of lilac and mimosa to
the aroma of horse-dung; with the sound of horses' hoofs and rolling
wheels beating and revolving on the cobble-stones, we made our way--I
swear my feet never touched the ground--through the narrow, crooked,
constantly turning, bewildering streets, until we came out on a broad
boulevard before the Café d'Harcourt, where I was to eat my first Paris
dinner.
The Café d'Harcourt is situated near the Church of the Sorbonne on the
Boulevard Saint Michel, which you are more accustomed to see spelled
Boul' Mich'. It is a big, brightly lighted café, with a broad terrasse,
partially enclosed by a hedge of green bushes in boxes. The hands of
the clock pointed to the hour of eight when we arrived and the tables
all appeared to be occupied. Inside, groups of men were engaged in
games of checkers, while the orchestra was performing selections from
Louis Ganne's operetta, Les Saltimbanques. On the terrasse, each little
table, covered with its white cloth, was lighted by a tiny lamp with
a roseate shade, over which faces glowed. The bottles and dishes
and silver all contributed their share to the warmth of the scene,
and heaping bowls of peaches and pears and apples and little wood
strawberries, ornamenting the sideboards, gave the place an almost
sumptuous appearance. Later I learned that fruit was expensive in Paris
and not to be tasted lightly. Victor Maurel has told me how, dining one
night with the composer of The Barber, he was about to help himself
to a peach from a silver platter in the centre of the table when the
frugal Madame Rossini expostulated. Those are to look at, not to eat!
While we lingered on the outer sidewalk, a little comedy was enacted,
through the dénouement of which we secured places. A youth, with wine
in his head and love in his eyes, caressed the warm lips of an adorable
girl. Save for the glasses of apéritifs from which they had been
drinking, their table was bare. They had not yet dined. He clasped her
tightly in his arms and kissed her, kissed her for what seemed to be a
very long time but no one, except me, appeared to take any notice.
Look! I whispered to Albert. Look!
O! that's all right. You'll get used to that, he replied negligently.
Now the kiss was over and the two began to talk, very excitedly and
rapidly, as French people are wont to talk. Then, impulsively, they
rose from their chairs. The man threw a coin down on his napkin. I
caught the glint of gold. He gathered his arms about the woman, a
lovely pale blue creature, with torrid orange hair and a hat abloom
with striated petunias. They were in the middle of the street when the
waiter appeared, bearing a tray, laden with plates of sliced cucumbers,
radishes and butter, and tiny crayfish, and a bottle of white wine.
He stared in mute astonishment at the empty table, and then picked up
the coin. Finally, he glanced towards the street and, observing the
retreating pair, called after them:
Mais vous n'avez pas diné!
The man turned and shot his reply over his shoulder, Nous rentrons!
The crowd on the terrasse shrieked with delight. They applauded. Some
even tossed flowers from the tables after the happy couple and we ...
we sat down in the chairs they had relinquished. I am not certain
that we did not eat the dinner they had ordered. At any rate we began
with the cucumbers and radishes and écrevisses and a bottle of Graves
Supérior.
That night in Paris I saw no Americans, at least no one seemed to be an
American, and I heard no English spoken. How this came about I have no
idea because it never occurred again. In fact, one meets more Americans
in Paris than one does in New York and most of the French that I manage
to speak I have picked up on the Island of Manhattan. During dinner I
began to suspect a man without a beard, in a far corner, but Albert
reassured me.
He is surely French, he said, because he is buttering his radishes.
It would be difficult to exaggerate my emotion: the white wine, the
bearded French students, the exquisite women, all young and smiling
and gay, all organdie and lace and sweet-peas, went to my head. I have
spent many happy evenings in the Café d'Harcourt since that night. I
have been there with Olive Fremstad, when she told me how, dressed as
a serpent in bespangled Nile green, she had sung the finale of Salome
to Edward VII in London, and one memorable Mardi-Gras night with Jane
Noria, when, in a long raincoat which covered me from head to foot,
standing on our table from time to time, I shouted, C'est l'heure
fatale! and made as if to throw the raincoat aside but Noria, as if
dreading the exposure, always dragged me down from the table, crying,
No! No! until the carnival crowd, consumed with curiosity, pulled me
into a corner, tore the raincoat away, and everything else too! There
was another night, before the Bal des Quat'z Arts, when the café was
filled with students and models in costume, and costume for the Quat'z
Arts in those days, whatever it may be now, did not require the cutting
out of many handkerchiefs. But the first night was the best and every
other night a more or less pale reflection of that, always, indeed,
coloured a little by the memory of it. So that today, when sometimes I
am asked what café I prefer in Paris and I reply, the d'Harcourt, there
are those who look at me a little pityingly and some even go so far as
to ejaculate, O! that! but I know why it is my favourite.
Even a leisurely dinner ends at last, and I knew, as we sipped our
coffee and green chartreuse and smoked our cigarettes, that this one
must be over. After paying our very moderate addition, we strolled
slowly away, to hop into an empty fiacre which stood on the corner a
block down the boulevard. I lay back against the seat and gazed at the
stars for a moment as the drive began through the warm, fragrant Paris
air, the drive back to the right bank, this time across the Pont Neuf,
down the Rue de Rivoli, through the Place de la Concorde, where the
fountains were playing, and up the Champs-Elysées. The aroma of the
chestnuts, the melting grey of the buildings, the legions of carriages
and buses, filled with happy, chattering people, the glitter of
electricity, all the mystic wonder of this enchanting night will always
stay with me.
We drove to the Théâtre Marigny where we saw a revue; at least we were
present at a revue; I do not remember to have seen or heard anything
on the stage. Between the acts, we walked in the open foyer, at this
theatre a sort of garden, and admired the cocottes, great ladies
of some distant epoch, they seemed to me, in their toilets from
Redfern and Doucet and Chéruit and Callot Sœurs, their hats from the
Rue de la Paix and the Place Vendôme, their exceedingly elaborate
and decoratively artificial complexions. Later, we sipped cassis on
the balcony. It was Spring in Paris and I was young! The chestnut
trees were heavy with white blossoms and the air was laden with their
perfume. I gazed down the Champs-Elysées, surely the true Elysian
Fields, a myriad of lights shining through the dark green, the black,
leaved branches. I do not think I spoke many words and I know that
Albert did not. He may have been bored, but I think he derived some
slight pleasure from my juvenile enthusiasm for, although Paris was old
hat to him, he loved this particular old hat.
We must have stopped somewhere for more drinks on the way home, perhaps
at Weber's in the Rue Royale, where there was a gipsy band. I do not
remember, but I am sure that it was nearly four in the morning when
we drove up before the little hotel in the Place de l'Odéon and when,
after we had paid the driver and dismissed him, I discovered to my
astonishment that the door was locked. Albert assured me that this was
the custom and that I must ring for the concierge. So I pulled the
knob, and even outside we could hear the distant reverberations of the
bell, but no reply came, and the door remained closed. It was Joseph's
job to open the door and Joseph was asleep and refused to awaken. Again
and again we pulled the cord, the bell tinkling in the vast silence,
for the street was utterly deserted, but still no one came. At last
we desisted, Albert suggesting that I go home with him. We walked a
few paces until we came to the iron fence surrounding the Luxembourg
Gardens and there, lying beside it, I espied a ladder, left by some
negligent workman.
But my room is on the first floor. The window is open; it looks over
the Place. I can enter with the ladder, I cried.
Albert, amused, helped me carry it back. Set up, it just reached the
window and I swiftly scaled it and clambered into the room, waving
my hand back to Albert, who hoisted the ladder to his shoulder as he
started up the street trying to whistle, Viens Poupoule! but laughing
to himself all the time, so that the tune cracked. As for me, I lighted
one of my candles, undressed, threw the feather-bed off to the floor,
and climbed into bed. Then I blew out the candle and soon fell asleep.
It was the tenth of May, 1907, that I spent my first night in Paris.
_Chapter II_
It must have been nearly noon when I awakened and drew back the heavy
curtains to let the sunlight into my room, as I have since seen so many
French actresses do on the stage. I rang the bell, and when Joseph
appeared, I asked for hot water, chocolate and rolls. Presently, he
returned with a little can of tepid water and my breakfast on a tray.
While I sponged myself, I listened to the cacophony of the street, the
boys calling vegetables, the heavy rumbling of the buses on the rough
pavement, the shrieking and tooting of the automobile sirens. Then I
sipped my chocolate and munched my croissant, feeling very happy. My
past had dropped from me like a crustacean's discarded shell. I was in
Paris and it still seemed possible to live in Paris as I had been told
that one lived there. It was exactly like the books.
After my breakfast, I dressed slowly, and wandered out, past the
peristyle of the Odéon, where I afterwards spent so many contented
hours searching for old plays, on through the now open gate of the
Luxembourg Gardens, gaily sprinkled with children and their nounous,
students and sweet girls, charming old ladies with lace caps on their
heads and lace scarfs round their shoulders, and painters, working
away at their canvases on easels. In the pool in front of the Senate,
boys were launching their toy sloops and schooners and, a little
further away on the gravel walk, other boys were engaged in the more
active sport of diabolo. The gardens were ablaze with flowers but a
classic order was maintained for which the stately rows of clipped
limes furnished the leading note. The place seemed to have been created
for pleasure. Even the dingy statues of the queens smiled at me. I sat
on a bench, dreaming, until an old crone approached and asked me for a
sou. I thought her a beggar until she returned the change from a fifty
centimes piece which I had given her, explaining that one sou was the
price of my seat. There were free seats too, I discovered after I had
paid.
The Luxembourg Gardens have always retained their hold over my
imagination. I never visit Paris without spending several hours there,
sometimes in the bright morning light, sometimes in the late afternoon,
when the military band plays dolent tunes, usually by Massenet,
sometimes a spectator at one of the guignols and, very often in the
autumn, when the leaves are falling, I sit silently on a bench before
the Medici fountain, entirely unconscious of the passing of time. The
Luxembourg Gardens always envelop me in a sentimental mood. Their
atmosphere is softly poetic, old-fashioned, melancholy. I am near to
tears now, merely thinking of them, and I am sure the tears came to my
eyes even on that bright May morning fourteen years ago.
Did I, attracted by the strange name, lunch at the Deux-Magots? It is
possible. I know that later I strolled down the Rue de Seine and along
the quais, examining eighteenth century books, buying old numbers of
l'Assiette au Beurre, and talking with the quaint vendors, most of
them old men. Then I wandered up the Rue de Richelieu, studying the
examples of fine bindings in the windows of the shops on either hand.
About three o'clock, I mounted the impériale of a bus, not even asking
where it was going. I didn't care. I descended before the gate of the
Parc Monceau and passed a few happy moments in the presence of the
marble lady in a dress of the nineties, who reads Guy de Maupassant
in the shadow of his bust, and a few more by the Naumachie, the oval
pool, flanked by a semi-circular Corinthian colonnade in a state of
picturesque ruin.
At a quarter before four, I left the parc and, hailing a fiacre, bade
the driver take me to Martha Baker's studio in the Avenue Victor Hugo,
where I had an appointment. Martha was painting my portrait. She had
begun work on the picture in Chicago the year before but when I went
to New York, she went to Paris. So it was still unfinished and I had
promised to come to her for more sittings. Now, in Chicago, Martha
noted that I grew restless on the model-stand and she had found it
expedient to ask people in to talk to me, so that my face would not
become dead and sullen. There, I usually knew the people she would ask,
but it occurred to me, as I was driving to her door, that in Paris I
knew no one, so that, if she followed her habit, I would see new faces.
The cocher stopped his horse before an old stone house and I entered.
Challenged by the concierge, I asked for Mademoiselle Bahker, and was
directed to go through the courtyard into a back passageway, up the
stairs, where I would find Mademoiselle Bahker, troisième à gauche. I
followed these instructions and knocked at the door. Martha, herself,
opened it.
Oh, Carl, it's you! I'm so glad to see you!
Martha had not changed. She and even her studio were much as they
had been in Chicago. She is dead now, dead possibly of a broken
heart; certainly she was never happy. Her Insouciance, the portrait
of Elizabeth Buehrmann, in a green cloth dress trimmed with fur, and
a miniature or two hang in the Art Institute in Chicago, but during
her lifetime she never received the kind of appreciation she really
craved. She had an uncanny talent for portraiture, a talent which
in some respects I have never seen equalled by any of her coevals.
Artists, as a matter of fact, generally either envied or admired her.
Her peculiar form of genius lay in the facility with which she caught
her sitters' weaknesses. Possibly this is the reason she did not sell
more pictures, for her models were frequently dissatisfied. It was
exasperating, doubtless, to find oneself caught in paint on canvas
against an unenviable immortality. Her sitters were exposed, so to
speak; petty vices shone forth; Martha almost idealized the faults of
her subjects. It would be impossible for the model to strut or pose
before one of her pictures. It told the truth. Sargent caught the trick
once. I have been informed that a physician diagnosed the malady of an
American lady, his patient, after studying Sargent's portrait of her.
Martha should have painted our presidents, our mayors, our politicians,
our authors, our college presidents, and our critics. Posterity
might have learned more from such portraits than from volumes of
psychoanalytic biography. But most of her sitters were silly Chicago
ladies, not particularly weak because they were not particularly
strong. On the few occasions on which in her capacity as an artist
she had faced character, her brushes unerringly depicted something
beneath the surface. She tore away men's masks and, with a kind of
mystic understanding, painted their insides. How it was done, I don't
know. Probably she herself didn't know. Many an artist is ignorant of
the secret of his own method. If I had ascribed this quality to Martha
during her lifetime, which I never did, she might not have taken it as
praise. It may not, indeed, have been her ambition, although truth
was undoubtedly her ambition. Speculation aside, this was no art for
Chicago. I doubt, indeed, if it would have been popular anywhere, for
men the world over are alike in this, that they not only prefer to be
painted in masks, they even want the artist to flatter the mask a bit.
The studio, I observed at once, was a little arty, a little more arty
than a painter's studio usually is. It was arranged, of that there
could be no doubt. There were, to be sure, canvases stacked against
the wall in addition to those which were hanging, but they had been
stacked with a crafty hand, one indubious of its effect. For the rest,
the tables and couches were strewn with brocades and laces, and lilacs
and mimosa bloomed in brown and blue and green earthenware bowls on
the tables. Later, I knew that marigolds and zinnias would replace
these and, later still, violets and gardenias. On an easel stood my
unfinished portrait and a palette and a box of paints lay on a stool
nearby.
Martha herself wore a soft, clinging, dark-green woolen dress, almost
completely covered by a brown denim painter's blouse. Her hair was her
great glory, long, reddish gold Mélisande hair which, when uncoiled,
hung far below her knees, but today it was knotted loosely on top of
her head. Her face, keen and searching, wore an expression that might
be described as wistful; discontent lurked somewhere between her eyes
and her mouth. Her complexion was sallow and she wore eye-glasses.
There was some one else present, a girl, sitting in a shadowy corner,
who rose as I entered. A strong odour of Cœur de Jeannette hovered
about her. She was an American. She was immediately introduced as Miss
Clara Barnes of Chicago, but I would have known she was an American
had she not been so introduced. She wore a shirt-waist and skirt. She
had very black hair, parted in the middle, a face that it would have
been impossible to remember ten minutes and which now, although I have
seen her many times since, I have completely forgotten, and very thick
ankles. I gathered presently that she was in Paris to study singing
as were so many girls like her. Very soon, I sized her up as the kind
of girl who thinks that antimacassars are ottomans, that tripe is a
variety of fish, that Così Fan Tutte is an Italian ice cream, that the
pope's nose is a nasal appendage which has been blessed by the head
of the established church, that The Beast in the Jungle is an animal
story, and that when one says Arthur Machen one means Harry Mencken.
Well, we'd best begin, said Martha. It's late.
Isn't it _too_ late? I was rather surprised when you asked me to come
in the afternoon.
Martha smiled but there was a touch of petulance in her reply: I knew
you wouldn't get up very early the morning after your first night in
Paris, and I knew if I didn't get you here today there would be small
chance of getting you here at all. If you come again, of course it will
be in the morning.
I climbed to the model-chair, seated myself, grasped the green book
that was part of the composition, and automatically assumed that
woebegone expression that is worn by all amateurs who pose for their
portraits.
That won't do at all, said Martha. I asked Clara to come here to amuse
you.
Clara tried. She told me that she was studying Manon and that she had
been to the Opéra-Comique fifteen times to hear the opera.
Garden is all wrong in it, all wrong, she continued. In the first place
she can't sing. Of course she's pretty, but she's not my idea of Manon
at all. I will really _sing_ the part and act it too.
A month or two later, while we munched sandwiches and drank
beer between the acts of Tristan und Isolde in the foyer of the
Prinzregenten Theater in Munich, Olive Fremstad introduced me to an
American girl, who informed me that a new Isolde had been born that day.
I shall be the great Isolde, she remarked casually, and her name,
I gathered, when I asked Madame Fremstad to repeat it, was Minnie
Saltzmann-Stevens.
But on the day that Clara spoke of her future triumphs in Manon, I had
yet to become accustomed to this confidence with which beginners in
the vocal art seem so richly endowed, a confidence which is frequently
disturbed by circumstances for, as George Moore has somewhere said,
our dreams and our circumstances are often in conflict. Later, I
discovered that every unsuccessful singer believes, and asserts, that
Geraldine Farrar is instrumental in preventing her from singing at the
Metropolitan Opera House. On this day, I say, I was unaware of this
peculiarity in vocalists but I was interested in the name she had let
slip, a name I had never before heard.
Who is Garden? I asked.
You don't know Mary Garden! exclaimed Martha.
There! shrieked Clara. There! I told you so. No one outside of Paris
has ever even heard of the woman.
Well, they've heard of her here, said Martha, quietly, pinching a
little worm of cobalt blue from a tube. She's the favourite singer of
the Opéra-Comique. She is an American and she sings Louise and Manon
and Traviata and Mélisande and Aphrodite, especially Aphrodite.
She's singing Aphrodite tonight, said Miss Barnes.
And what is she like? I queried.
Well, Clara began dubiously, she is said to be like Sybil Sanderson
but, of course, Sanderson had a voice and, she hurried on, you know
even Sanderson never had any success in New York.
I recalled, only too readily, how Manon with Jean de Reszke, Pol
Plançon, and Sybil Sanderson in the cast had failed in the nineties at
the Metropolitan Opera House, and I admitted as much to Clara.
But would this be true today? I pondered.
Certainly, advanced Clara. America doesn't want French singers. They
never know how to sing.
But you are studying in Paris.
The girl began to look discomfited.
With an Italian teacher, she asseverated.
It delighted me to be able to add, I think Sanderson studied with
Sbriglia and Madame Marchesi.
Your face is getting very hard, cried Martha in despair.
I think he is very rude, exclaimed the outraged and contumacious
Miss Barnes, with a kind of leering acidity. He doesn't seem to know
the difference between tradition and impertinent improvisation. He
doesn't see that singing at the Opéra or the Opéra-Comique with a lot
of rotten French singers would ruin anybody who didn't have training
enough to stand out against this influence, singing utterly unmusical
parts like Mélisande, too, parlando rôles calculated to ruin any voice.
Maeterlinck won't even go to hear the opera, it's so rotten. I wonder
how much Mr. Van Vechten knows about music anyway?
Very little, I remarked mildly.
O! wailed Martha, you're not entertaining Carl at all and I can't paint
when you squabble. Carl's very nice. Why can't you be agreeable, Clara?
What is the matter?
Miss Barnes disdained to reply. She drew herself into a sort of sulk,
crossing her thick ankles massively. The scent of Cœur de Jeannette
seemed to grow heavier. Within bounds, I was amused by her display
of emotion but I was also bored. My face must have showed it. Martha
worked on for a moment or two and then flung down her brushes.
It's no good, no good at all, she announced. You have no expression
today. I can't get behind your mask. Your face is completely empty.
And, I may add, as this was the last day that Martha ever painted on
this portrait, she never did get behind the mask. To that extent I
triumphed, and the picture still exists to confuse people as to my real
personality. It is as empty as if it had been painted by Boldini or
McEvoy. Fortunately for her future reputation in this regard, Martha
had already painted a portrait of me which is sufficiently revealing.
I must have stretched and yawned at this point, for Martha looked
cross, when a welcome interruption occurred in the form of a knock
at the door. Martha walked across the room. As she opened the door,
directly opposite where I was sitting, I saw the slender figure of a
young man, perhaps twenty-one years old. He was carefully dressed in
a light grey suit with a herring-bone pattern, and wore a neck-scarf
of deep blue. He carried a stick and buckskin gloves in one hand and a
straw hat in the other.
Why, it's Peter! cried Martha. I wish you had come sooner.
This is Peter Whiffle, she said, leading him into the room and then, as
he extended his hand to me, You know Clara Barnes.
He turned away to bow but I had already caught his interesting face,
his deep blue eyes that shifted rather uneasily but at the same time
remained honest and frank, his clear, simple expression, his high brow,
his curly, blue-black hair, carefully parted down the centre of his
head. He spoke to me at once.
Martha has said a good deal, perhaps too much about you. Still, I have
wanted to meet you.
You must tell me who you are, I replied.
I should have told you, only you just arrived, Martha put in. I had no
idea that Peter would come in today. He is the American Flaubert or
Anatole France or something. He is writing a book. What _is_ your book
about, Peter?
Whiffle smiled, drew out a cigarette-case of Toledo work, extracted a
cigarette from it, and said, I haven't the slightest idea. Then, as if
he thought this might be construed as rudeness, or false modesty, or a
rather viscous attempt at secrecy, he added, I really haven't, not the
remotest. I want to talk to you about it.... That's why I wanted to
meet you. Martha says that you know ... well, that you _know_.
You really should be painting Mr. Van Vechten now, said Clara Barnes,
with a trace of malice. He has the right expression.