He is about to write it. He knows what he wants to do and he is
collecting the materials. He is arranging the form.
What's it about? Jennings appeared to be interested.
Oh, it's about things. Whiffle told me, I suppose he was joking, that
it would be about three hundred pages.
Richards set down his glass and in his face I recognized the portentous
expression of a man about to be delivered of an epigram. It came: I
dislike pine-apples, women with steatopygous figures, and men with a
gift for paronomasia.
Jennings ignored this ignoble interruption. George Moore has written
somewhere, he said, that if an author talks about _what_ he is going to
write, usually he writes it, but when he talks about _how_ he is going
to write it, that is the end of the matter. I wonder if this is true?
I have never thought much about it before but I think perhaps it is. I
think your friend will never write his book.
Richards interrupted again: Look at that maquereau. That's the
celebrated French actor who went to America after a brilliant career
in France in the more lucrative of his two professions, which ended in
a woman's suicide. His history was well-known to the leading woman of
the company with which he was to play in America, but she had never met
him. At the first rehearsal, when they were introduced, she remarked,
Monsieur, la connaissance est déjà faite! Turning aside, he boasted to
his male companions, La gueuse! Avant dix jours je l'aurai enfilée! In
a week he had made good his threat and in two weeks the poor woman was
without a pearl.
He should meet Arabella Munson, said Jennings. She is always willing
to pay her way. She fell in love with an Italian sculptor, or at any
rate selected him as a suitable father for a prospective child. When
she became pregnant, the young man actually fell ill with fear at
the thought that he might be compelled to support both Arabella and
the baby. He took to his bed and sent his mother as an ambassadress
for Arabella's mercy. Choking with sobs, the old woman demanded what
would be required of her son. My good woman, replied Arabella, dry
your tears. I make it a point of honour never to take a penny from the
fathers of my children. Not only do I support the children, often I
support their fathers as well!
It was sufficiently warm. I lazily sipped my absinthe. The terrasse
was crowded and there was constant movement; as soon as a table was
relinquished, another group sat down in the empty chairs. Ephra
Vogelsang, a pretty American singer, had just arrived with a pale young
blond boy, whom I identified as Marcel Moszkowski, the son of the
Polish composer. Presently, another table was taken by Vance Thompson
and Ernest la Jeunesse, whose fat face was sprinkled with pimples
and whose fat fingers were encased to the knuckles in heavy oriental
rings. I bowed to Ephra and to Vance Thompson. On the sidewalk marched
the eternal procession of newsboys, calling La Pa--trie! La Pa--trie!
so like a phrase at the beginning of the second act of Carmen, old
gentlemen, nursemaids, painted boys, bankers, Americans, Germans,
Italians, South Americans, Roumanians, and Neo-Kaffirs. The carriages,
the motors, the buses, formed a perfect maze on the boulevard. In one
of the vehicles I caught a glimpse of another acquaintance.
That's Lily Hampton, I noted. She is the only woman who ever made
Toscanini smile. You must understand, to appreciate the story, that
she is highly respectable, the Mrs. Kendal of the opera stage, and the
mother of eight or nine children. She never was good at languages,
speaks them all with a rotten accent and a complete ignorance of their
idioms. On this occasion, she was singing in Italian but she was unable
to converse with the director in his native tongue and, consequently,
he was giving her directions in French. He could not, however, make her
understand what he wanted her to do. Again and again he repeated his
request. At last she seemed to gather his meaning, that she was to turn
her back to the footlights. What she asked him, however, ran like this:
Est-ce que vous voulez mon derrière, maestro?
Now there was a diversion, an altercation at the further end of the
terrasse, and a fluttering of feathered, flowered, and smooth-haired
and bald heads turned in that direction. In the midst of this
turbulence, I heard my name being called and, looking up, beheld Peter
Whiffle waving from the impériale of a bus. I beckoned him to descend
and join us and this he contrived to do after the bus had travelled
several hundred yards on its way towards the Madeleine and I had
abandoned the idea of seeing him return. But the interval gave me time
to inform Richards and Jennings that this was the young author of whom
I had spoken. Presently he came along, strolling languidly down the
walk. He looked a bit tired, but he was very smartly dressed, with a
gardenia as a boutonnière, and he seemed to vibrate with a feverish
kind of jauntiness.
I _am_ glad to see you, he cried. I've been meaning to look you up.
In fact if I hadn't met you I should have looked you up tonight. I'm
burning for adventures. What are you doing?
I explained that I was doing nothing at all and introduced him to my
friends. Jennings had an engagement. He explained that he had to talk
at some socialist meeting, called our waiter, paid for his pile of
saucers, and took his departure. Richards confessed that he was burning
too.
What shall we do? asked the artist.
There's plenty to do, announced Peter, confidently; almost too much for
one night. But let's hurry over to Serapi's, before he closes his shop.
We asked no questions. We paid our saucers, rose, and strolled along
with Peter across the Place in front of the Opéra and down the Rue de
la Chaussée-d'Antin until we stood before a tiny shop, the window of
which was filled with bottles of perfume and photographs of actresses
and other great ladies of various worlds and countries, all inscribed
with flamboyant encomiums, relating to the superior merits of Serapi's
wares and testifying to the superlative esteem in which Serapi himself
was held.
Led by Peter, in the highest exuberance of nervous excitement but
still, I thought, looking curiously tired, we passed within the portal.
We found ourselves in a long narrow room, surrounded on two sides by
glass cases, in which, on glass shelves, were arranged the products of
the perfumer's art. At the back, there was a cashier's desk without
an attendant; at the front, the show-window. In the centre of the
room, the focus of a group of admiring women, stood a tawny-skinned
Oriental--perhaps concretely an Arabian--with straight black hair and
soft black eyes. His physique was magnificent and he wore a morning
coat. Obviously, this was Serapi himself.
Peter, who had now arrived at a state in which he could with difficulty
contain his highly wrought emotion--and it was at this very moment that
I began to suspect him of collecting amusements along with his other
objects--, in a whisper confirmed my conjecture. The ladies, delicately
fashioned Tanagra statuettes in tulle and taffeta and chiffon artifices
from the smartest shops, in hats on which bloomed all the posies of
the season and posies which went beyond any which had ever bloomed,
were much too attractive to be duchesses, although right here I must
pause to protest that even duchesses sometimes have their good points:
the Duchess of Talleyrand has an ankle and the Duchess of Marlborough,
a throat. The picture, to be recalled later when Mina Loy gave me her
lovely drawing of Eros being spoiled by women, was so pleasant, withal
slightly ridiculous, that Richards and I soon caught the infection
of Peter's scarcely masked laughter and our eyes, too, danced.
We made some small pretence of examining the jars and bottles of
Scheherazade, Ambre, and Chypre in the cases, but only a small pretence
was necessary, as the ladies and their Arab paid not the slightest
attention to us.
At length, following a brief apology, Serapi broke through the ranks
and disappeared through a doorway behind the desk at the back of
the room. As the curtains lifted, I caught a glimpse of a plain,
business-like woman, too dignified to be a mere clerk, obviously the
essential wife of the man of genius. He was gone only a few seconds
but during those seconds the chatter ceased abruptly. It was apparent
that the ladies had come singly. They were not acquainted with one
another. As Serapi reentered, they chirped again, peeped and twittered
their twiddling tune, the words of which were Ah! and Oh! In one hand,
he carried a small crystal phial to which a blower was attached.
He explained that the perfume was his latest creation, an hermetic
confusion of the dangers and ardours of Eastern life and death, the
concentrated essence of the unperfumed flowers of Africa, the odour of
their colours, he elaborated, wild desert existence, the mouldering
tombs of the kings of Egypt, the decaying laces of a dozen Byzantine
odalisques, a fragrant breath or two from the hanging gardens of
Babylon, and a faint suggestion of the perspiration of Istar. It is
my reconstruction, the artist concluded, of the perfume which Ruth
employed to attract Boaz! The recipe is an invention based on a few
half-illegible lines which I discovered in the beauty-table book of an
ancient queen of Georgia, perhaps that very Thamar whose portrait has
been painted in seductive music by the Slav composer, Balakireff.
The ladies gasped. The fascinating Arab pressed the rubber bulb and
blew the cloying vapours into their faces, adjuring them, at the same
time, to think of Thebes or Haroun-Al-Raschid or the pre-Adamite
sultans. The room was soon redolent with a heavy vicious odour which
seemed to reach the brain through the olfactory nerves and to affect
the will like ether.
He is the only man alive today, whispered Peter, not without reverence,
who has taken Flaubert's phrase seriously. He passes his nights
dreaming of larger flowers and stranger perfumes. I believe that he
could invent a new vice!
Serapi went the round of the circle with his mystic spray, and the
twitterings of the ladies softened to ecstatic coos, like the little
coos of dismay and delight of female cats who feel the call of
pleasure, when suddenly the phial fell from the Arab's unclasped hand,
the hand itself dropped to his side, the brown skin became a vivid
green, all tension left his body, and he crumbled into a heap on the
floor. The ladies shrieked; there was a delicious, susurrous, rainbow
swirl and billow of tulle and taffeta and chiffon; there was a frantic
nodding and waving of sweet-peas, red roses, dandelions, and magenta
bell-flowers; and eight pairs of white-gloved arms circled rhythmically
in the air. The effect was worthy of the Russian Ballet and, had
Fokine been present, it would doubtless have been perpetuated to the
subsequent enjoyment of audiences at Covent Garden and the Paris Opéra.
Now, an assured and measured step was heard. From a room in the rear,
the calm, practical presence entered, bearing a glass of water. The
ladies moved a little to one side as she knelt before the recumbent
figure and sprinkled the green face. Serapi almost immediately began
to manifest signs of recovery; his muscles began to contract and his
face regained its natural colour. We made our way into the open air
and the warm western sunlight of the late afternoon. Peter was choking
with laughter. I was chuckling. Richards was too astonished to express
himself.
Life is sometimes artistic, Peter was saying. Sometimes, if you give
it a chance and look for them, it makes patterns, beautiful patterns.
But Serapi excelled himself today. He has never done anything like this
before. I shall never go back there again. It would be an anticlimax.
We dined somewhere, where I have forgotten. It is practically the only
detail of that evening which has escaped my memory. I remember clearly
how Richards sat listening in silent amazement to Peter's arguments
and decisions on dreams and circumstances, erected on bewilderingly
slender hypotheses. He built up, one after another, the most gorgeous
and fantastic temples of theory; five minutes later he demolished them
with a sledge-hammer or a feather. It was gay talk, fancy wafted from
nowhere, unimportant, and vastly entertaining. Indeed, who has ever
talked like Peter?
We seemed to be in his hands. At any rate neither Richards nor I
offered any suggestions. We waited to hear him tell us what we were to
do. About 9 o'clock, while we were sipping our cognac, he informed us
that our next destination would be La Cigale, a music hall on the outer
circle of the boulevards in Montmartre, where there was to be seen a
revue called, Nue Cocotte, of which I still preserve the poster, drawn
by Maës Laïa, depicting a fat duenna, fully dressed, wearing a red wig
and adorned with pearls, and carrying a lorgnette, a more plausible
female, nude, but for a hat, veil, feather boa, and a pair of high
boots with yellow tops over which protrude an inch or two of blue
sock, and an English comic, in a round hat, a yellow checked suit,
bearing binoculars, all three astride a remarkably vivid red hobby
horse whose feet are planted in the attitude of bucking. The comic
grasps the bobbed black tail of the nag in one hand and the long yellow
braid of the female in the other.
The cocottes of the period were wont to wear very large bell-shaped
hats. Lily Elsie, who was appearing in The Merry Widow in London,
followed this fashion and, as a natural consequence, these
head-decorations were soon dubbed, probably by an American, Merry Widow
hats. Each succeeding day, some girl would appear on the boulevards
surmounted by a greater monstrosity than had been seen before.
Discussion in regard to the subject, editorial and epistolary, raged at
the moment in the Paris journals.
Once we were seated in our stalls on the night in question, it became
evident that the hat of the cocotte in front of Peter completely
obscured his view of the stage. He bent forward and politely requested
her to remove it. She turned and explained with equal politeness and
a most entrancing smile that she could not remove her hat without
removing her hair, surely an impossibility, Monsieur would understand.
Monsieur understood perfectly but, under the circumstances, would
Madame have any objection if Monsieur created a disturbance? Madame,
her eyes shining with mirth, replied that she would not have the
tiniest objection, that above all else in life she adored fracases.
They were of a delight to her. At this juncture in the interchange
of compliments the curtain rose disclosing a row of females in mauve
dresses, bearing baskets of pink roses. Presently the compère appeared.
Chapeau! cried Peter, in the most stentorian voice I have ever heard
him assume. Chapeau!
The spectators turned to look at the valiant American. Several heads
nodded sympathy and approval.
Chapeau! Peter called again, pointing to the adorable little lady in
front of him, who was enjoying the attention she had created. Her
escort, on the other hand, squirmed a little.
The cry was now taken up by other unfortunate gentlemen in the stalls,
who were placed in like situations but who had not had the courage to
begin the battle. The din, indeed, soon gained such a degree of dynamic
force that not one word of what was being said on the stage, not one
note of the music, could be distinguished. Gesticulating figures
stood up in every part of the theatre, shrieking and frantically
waving canes. The compère advanced to the footlights and appeared to
be addressing us, much in the manner of an actor attempting to stem
a fire stampede in a playhouse, but, of course, he was inaudible. As
he stepped back, a sudden lull succeeded to the tumult. Peter took
advantage of this happy quiet to interject: Comme Mélisande, je ne suis
pas heureux ici!
The spectators roared and screamed; the house rocked with their mirth.
Even the mimes were amused. Now, escorted by two of his secretaries
in elaborate coats decorated with much gold braid, the manager of the
theatre appeared, paraded solemnly down the aisle to our seats and,
with a bow, offered us a box, which we accepted at once and in which
we received homage for the remainder of the evening. At last we could
see the stage and enjoy the blond Idette Bremonval, the brunette Jane
Merville, the comic pranks of Vilbert and Prince, and the Festival of
the Déesse Raison.
The performance concluded, the pretty lady who had not removed her hat,
commissioned her reluctant escort to inquire if we would not step out
for a drink with them. The escort was not ungracious but, obviously, he
lacked enthusiasm. The lady, just as obviously, had taken a great fancy
to Peter. We went to the Rat Mort, where we sat on the terrasse, the
lady gazing steadily at her new hero and laughing immoderately at his
every sally. Peter, however, quickly showed that he was restless and
presently he rose, eager to seek new diversions. We hailed a passing
fiacre and jumped in, while the lady waved us pathetic adieux. Her
companion seemed distinctly relieved by our departure. Peter was now
in the highest animal spirits. All traces of fatigue had fled from
his face. The horse which drew our fiacre was a poor, worn-out brute,
like so many others in Paris, and the cocher, unlike so many others in
Paris, was kind-hearted and made no effort to hasten his pace. We were
crawling down the hill.
I will race you! cried Peter, leaping out (he told me afterwards that
he had once undertaken a similar exploit with a Bavarian railway train).
Meet me at the Olympia Bar! he cried, dashing on ahead.
The cocher grunted, shook his head, mumbled a few unintelligible words
to the horse, and we drove on more slowly than before. Peter, indeed,
was soon out of sight.
Ten minutes later, as we entered the café under the Olympia Music Hall,
we noted with some surprise that the stools in front of the bar, on
which the cocottes usually sat with their feet on the rungs, their
trains dragging the floor, were empty. The crowd had gathered at the
other end of the long hall and the centre of the crowd was Peter. He
was holding a reception, a reception of cocottes!
Ah! Good evening, Mademoiselle Rolandine de Maupreaux, he was saying as
he extended his hand, I am delighted to greet you here tonight. And if
this isn't dear little Mademoiselle Célestine Sainte-Résistance and her
charming friend, Mademoiselle Edmée Donnez-Moi! And Camille! Camille
la Grande! Quelle chance de vous voir! Et Madame, votre mère, elle va
bien? Et Gisèle la Belle! Mais vous avez oublié de m'écrire! Do not, I
pray you, neglect me again. And the charming Hortense des Halles et de
chez Maxim, and the particularly adorable Abélardine de Belleville et
de la Place d'Italie. Votre sœur va mieux, j'espère. Then, drawing us
in, Permettez-moi, mesdemoiselles, de vous presenter mes amis, le Duc
de Rochester et le Comte de Cedar Rapids. Spécialement, mesdemoiselles,
permettez-moi de vous recommander le Comte de Cedar Rapids.
He had never, of course, seen any of them before, but they liked it.
Richards grumbled, It's bloody silly, but he was laughing harder than I
was.