I'll sing of the days that will come,Of the changes that many won't see,Of the times years and years hence.I can tell you where some of you'll be:If you don't know I'll give you the tip.So catch on and don't be too late:If you do, you'll get left and you'll all lose your gripIn the year nineteen hundred and eight.
I'll sing of the days that will come,Of the changes that many won't see,Of the times years and years hence.I can tell you where some of you'll be:If you don't know I'll give you the tip.So catch on and don't be too late:If you do, you'll get left and you'll all lose your gripIn the year nineteen hundred and eight.
And then the chorus, as they used to sing it—that older generation—on the steps of Nassau Hall:
In nineteen hundred and eight, in nineteen hundred and eightYou can go to the moon in a two day balloon;In nineteen hundred and eight, in nineteen hundred and eightTo the north pole you can skate,And you'll find Annie Laurie cutting grass on the Bowery,In nineteen hundred and eight.
In nineteen hundred and eight, in nineteen hundred and eightYou can go to the moon in a two day balloon;In nineteen hundred and eight, in nineteen hundred and eightTo the north pole you can skate,And you'll find Annie Laurie cutting grass on the Bowery,In nineteen hundred and eight.
After the movies we went back to the Hotel, and sat out on our balcony with the brilliant vistas of the Avenue de l'Opéra and the Boulevard des Italiens before us. We could hear the music of the opera orchestra, faintly to be sure, but it was there. The spell of six and sixteen came back. Nearly another decade had passed, but Paris was home to me, and I had a twinge of regret that we were going farther afield. Had it not been for the news of Niazi Bey and Enver taking to the mountains in a revolt against the Sultan, I might have suggested giving up Turkey.
I was glad that we would have to stay long enough to get our passports. The passport, now the indispensablevade mecumof travelers everywhere, was needed only for Rumania and Turkey and Russia ten years ago. To make up for the extravagance of the Grand Hotel we found our way to the American Embassy and the Turkish Embassy afoot. Every corner of the Champs-Elysées had brought back memories to me and I was able to point out to Herbert theguignolto which Marie had often taken my little sister and me nearly twenty years before. We stopped to listen. Some of the jokes were just the same. Judy had lost the stove-lid, and Punch told her to sit on the hole herself. Anda useful and indispensable nursery household article (whose name I shall not mention) was suddenly clapped by Punch over the policeman's head in the same old way. The children laughed and clapped their hands in glee. Herbert, on his side, showed me the walk he used to take every morning from his room on the Rue d'Amsterdam by the Rue de la Boëtie and the Avenue d'Antin[A]to the Exposition of 1900, when he was writing feature stories for the Sunday edition of theNew York World.
[A]The Avenue d'Antin has become since the victory in the recent war Avenue Victor Emmanuel III., in honor of Italy's intervention.
[A]The Avenue d'Antin has become since the victory in the recent war Avenue Victor Emmanuel III., in honor of Italy's intervention.
With passports obtained and visaed, tickets bought and baggage registered, we were having our last meal in Paris before taking the train for Rome. It was a late breakfast on theterrasseof the Café de la Paix. The waiter was not surprised when we ordered eggs with our coffee: but we were when we found they cost a franc apiece. As we sat there, at the most interesting vantage point in Paris for seeing the passing crowd, my childhood instinct came back with force. I cried, "O! I do want to come here to live when we return from Turkey!"
Herbert had a fellowship from Princeton for foreign study. It had been postponed a year so that he could teach for a winter at an American college in Asia Minor. Then and there we made a decision that was prophetic. All the other men were going to Germany.The German universities were a powerful attraction for American university men. The German Ph.D. was almost a sine qua non in our educational system. You could not get a Ph.D. in England or in France. Herbert gallantly sacrificed his on the spot. It was not a revolt against Kultur. Nor was it clairvoyance.
"On one's honeymoon," Herbert said, "the wife's wish should be law. The man who starts endeavoring to get the woman he has married to realize that the things to do are the things he thinks should be done gets into trouble, and stays in trouble."
The last thing we were looking for on that perfect July morning was trouble.
"All right," said he, "we'll come back and study in Paris, and if you want to live here afterwards, I guess we can find some way to do it."
"IT was alcohol! He was right, that old buck. It was alcohol!"
We were sitting in the restaurant of the Hotel Terminus in Marseilles. Our month-old baby was lying on the cushioned seat between us. The maître d'hôtel told us she was the youngest lady that had ever come to his establishment. Bowls of coffee were before us on the table, and we were enjoying our French breakfast when Herbert burst out with the remark I have just recorded.
"What is the matter with you?" I asked.
Shaking with laughter, he told me the story.
"You know the basket with breakables in it? And those two champagne bottles Major Doughty-Wylie gave us?"
"One of them had boracic acid in it. Well?"
"Yes, yes, that is just it. The customshouse officer spied the bottles and it did not take him long to uncork one and smell it. He wanted to stick me for duty."
"What did you do?"
"Protested against paying duty on boracic acid solution.I pointed you out to him sitting over there with the baby. He yielded finally—observing that Americans are queer, tough customers, and that their babies must be husky if their eyes can stand such stuff. But he got the wrong bottle. Don't you remember that in the second one is pure grape alcohol, and that is what he sniffed."
Traveling with a baby, when tickets do not allow one to take therapidesleeping-cars, has its good points. People do not care to spend the night in a compartment with a baby. We got to the train early—very early. We put Christine's wicker basket (her bed) by the door, and found it to be the best kind of a "reserved" sign. Half a hundred travelers poked their heads in—and passed on. The sight of Christine acted like magic to our advantage. The baby started to cry. "Don't feed her yet," ordered her dad. "Until this train starts, the louder she cries the better for her later comfort." As the wheels began to move, a man came in, put his bag on the rack and sat down. Laughing, he closed the door and pulled down the curtain.
"I have been watching you," said he. "Yours is a clever game. I have three little cabbages myself, and I know babies don't disturb people as much as those who have none think. No," he added, "I must correct myself, thinking of my mother and my mother-in-law. Even those who have had many babies forget in the course of time how they were once used to them.We'll have a comfortable night. Have a cigar, monsieur!"
We did have a splendid sleep. Christine has always been one of those wonder babies. So we were ready to see Paris cheerfully. Heaven knows we needed every possible help to being cheerful! For we were embarked upon a venture that looked more serious than it had the year before. A pair of youngsters can knock around happily without worrying about uncertainties. A baby means a home—and certain unavoidable expenses. Where your progeny is concerned, you can't just do without. We had two hundred and fifty francs in cash, and the prospect of a six hundred dollar fellowship, payable in quarterly installments. That was all we could count upon. Our only other asset was some correspondence sent to theNew York Heraldthat had not been ordered, but for which we hoped to be paid.
The Marseilles express used to arrive at Paris at an outlandish hour. It was not yet six when we were ready to leave the Gare de Lyon. Two porters, laden down with hand-luggage, asked where we wanted to go. We did not know. The Paris hotels that had been our habitats in days past were no longer possible, even temporarily. There was no mother to foot my bills, and Herbert wasn't a bachelor with only his own room and food to pay for. I suggested the possibility of a small hotel by the station. The porters took us out onthe Boulevard Diderot. Across the street was a hotel (whose gilt letters, however, did not omit the invariable adjective "grand") that looked within our means.
Once settled and breakfasted, the family council tackled the first problem—Scrappie, gurgling on the big bed. Ever since she was born we had been traveling, and she naturally had to be with us all the time. Only now, after five weeks of parenthood, did the novel and amazing fact dawn upon us that no longer could we "just go out." Scrappie was to be considered. Without Scrappie, we could have set forth immediately upon our search for a place to live. With Scrappie—?
There always is adeus ex machina. In our case it was adea. Marie still lived in Paris. The contact had never been lost, and when we went through Paris on our honeymoon the year before, I had taken my husband to show him off to Marie. It was decided that I should go out immediately and find her. A month before we had written that we were coming to Paris in June, and she would be expecting us. Marie, and Marie alone, meant freedom of movement. I could not think of trusting my baby to anyone else.
The address was at the tip of my tongue—22 Rue de Wattignies. A few people know vaguely of the battle, but how many life-long Parisians know the street? Not theboulevardiersor thefaubouriensof Saint-Germain, or the Americans, North and South, of the Etoile Quarter. And yet the Rue de Wattignies is anartery of importance, copiously inhabited. We had gone in a cab last year, and remembered that it was somewhere beyond the Bastille. At the corner of the street beyond our hotel, just opposite the great clock tower of the Gare de Lyon, I saw the Bastille column not far away. Why waste money on cabs? To the right of the Bastille lay the Rue de Wattignies, and not very far to the right. I remembered perfectly, and started out unhesitatingly.
Oh, the Paris vistas! No other city in the world has every hill top, every great open space, marked by a building or monument that beckons to you at the end of boulevard or avenue. No other city in the world has familiar dome or tower or steeple popping up over housetops in the distance to reassure you wherever you may have wandered, that you are not far from, and that you can always find your way to, a familiar spot. The Eiffel Tower, the Great Wheel, the Arc de Triomphe, Sacré Coeur, the Panthéon, Val-de-Grâce, the Invalides, the Tour St. Jacques, give you your direction. But when you dip into Paris streets, on your way to the goal, you are lost. Even constant reference to a map and long experience do not save you from the deceptive encouragement of Paris vistas. You can walk in circles almost interminably.
I had done this so often in the old days when I escaped from my governess. I did so again when I tried to find the Rue de Wattignies. Perhaps I did not tryvery hard: for one never minds wandering in Paris. The life of the streets is a witchery that makes one forgot time and distance and goal. When I lost sight of the Bastille column, the labyrinth of St. Antoine streets led me on until I had crossed the canal and found myself by the Hôpital St. Louis. After the year in the East, and years before that in America, old houses and street markets held me in a new world. It was a glorious June day to boot, and after steamer and train, walking was a keen pleasure. Marital and parental responsibilities were forgotten. The Hôpital St. Louis brought me back to the realities of life. I knew that it was north of the Bastille, and not in the direction of the Rue de Wattignies. Suddenly there came uneasily into my mind the picture of a husband, a prisoner, patiently waiting in a very small room in a very small hotel, and a baby demanding lunch. Conscience insisted upon a cab: for nearly two hours had passed since I started forth to find Marie. I had left the hotel early enough to catch her before she might have gone out. What if Marie should not be at home? "Hurry,cocher!"
My panic was unjustified. Marie was at home. Delighted to hear of our arrival, and eager to see her petite Hélène's baby, she put on her funny little black hat, and went right down to the waiting cab.
When we got to the hotel, Herbert was eating a second mid-morning petit déjeuner. He had a copyof the Paris edition of theNew York Herald, and showed me, well played up in a prominent place, the last of the Adana massacre stories he had forwarded by mail from Turkey. This was the first time he realized that his "stuff" had been exclusive. There was a pleasant prospect of drawing a little money. So my long absence brought forth no remark, specially as Scrappie had slept like an angel.
"We played a wise game," said Herbert, "when we sent the stories smuggled through Cyprus to theHerald. We shall not have to correspond with New York on a slim chance of a newspaper's gratitude. We can get at James Gordon Bennet right here in Paris." Then he showed me some advertisements picked out in the column ofpensionsas promising and within our means. We had decided to consider nothing outside of the Latin Quarter.
Marie had not changed a bit. She could not say the same for me although she fussed over me as if I were five going on six. She forgot that twenty years had gone since the last time she combed my hair. She communicated to me the old sense of security. She bathed the baby. She brought me food and sat beside me, observing that long ago she had to coax me to take one more mouthful to please her.
"You always were fussy about your food. Ma chère petite Hélène, you don't eat enough to keep a sparrow alive. You are a naughty one."
She insisted upon my drinking a cup of camomile tea, and took me straight back to my sixth year by calling itpipi du chat. Knowing that name for camomile tea is one of the tests of whether one really knows French.
"Marie," I begged, "show me how English people speak French—the way you used to do!"
But Herbert, who had gone out to get theDaily Mailfor itspensionlist, was coming in the door, and Marie would not show off before Monsieur. Never did she call mechère petite Hélènewhen he or any other person was present. It was always Madame before company. TheMailhad many advertisements ofpensionsin streets near the Luxembourg. Marie helped us pick them out. The Luxembourg Garden was an integral part of the Latin Quarter, and we had to think of Scrappie's outing.
After lunch we turned Christine over thankfully to Marie and went outpension-hunting together.
"You were lucky in finding Marie," was all Herbert said.
"Yes," I answered, "I really couldn't have left the baby with anyone else."
"But is Marie the only person in the world? Without her, would you be a slave for ever and ever? There must be plenty of people that we could get to look after Scrappie."
"You don't know what it means to have a child!" said Scrappie's mother.
"I guess I look pretty healthy for a fellow who has just landed in Paris with a wife and a baby and 250 francs!" said my husband.
"Can't make us mad," said I; "we're in Paris."
You pile up on one side of the scale heaps of things that ought to worry you, but if you put on the other side the fact that you are in Paris, down goes the Paris side with a sure and cheerful bang, up goes the other side, and the worries tumble off every which way into nowhere.
The main threads of the world's spider web start very far from Paris in all directions and the heaviest urge of traffic is towards the centre. Paris was the centre of the spider web long before Peace Delegates came here to discover the fact. Students, diplomats, travel-agencies, theatrical troupes knew it and whole shelves of books have been written, down the years, to prove it. If Paris is your birth-place, you learn that you are in the capital of the world long before you know how to read the books. If you are an expert on ancient coins, if you are a wood-carver, if you are a singer wanting a voice that will make your fortune because it was trained in France, if you are a baker, if you are a burglar, if you are a silk merchant, if you are a professor from Aberdeen hunting for manuscriptsthat will prove your thesis concerning Pelagius, if you are anapache, if you are an English nursemaid,—you'll never be lonely in Paris. No matter how isolated or queer or misunderstood you were where you came from, in Paris you'll find inspiration, competition, companionship, opportunity and pals. The papers tell us every week that the birth rate is going down. But the population of Paris is increasing. So in peace, in war and in peace again, there was one constant quantity underpinning existence—Paris, the centre of the spider web. The spider that lures is liberty to work out one's ideas in one's own way in a friendly country. It is a wonder the men who make maps in France can draw lines latitudinally and longitudinally. What difference did it make then if we had only two hundred and fifty francs?
WE started our search for a temporary home at the Observatoire, and good fortune took our footsteps down the Rue d'Assas rather than down the Boulevard Saint-Michel. Had we turned to the right instead of to the left, we should probably have found apensionthat satisfied our requirements on the Rue Gay-Lussac, the Rue Claude Bernard, the Rue Soufflot, or behind the Panthéon. But a short distance down the Rue d'Assas, we turned into the Rue Madame, which held two possibilities on our list. The first place advertised proved to be a private apartment, whose mistress was looking for boarders for one room who would not only pay her rent but her food and her old father's as well. We got out quickly, and kept our hopes up for the second place. It was a small private hotel just below the Rue de Vaugirard, with a modest sign:Pension de Famille.
A beaming young woman, who told us that she was Mademoiselle Guyénot,propriétaire et directrice de la maison, answered our first question in a way that won our hearts forever. "Do I mind a baby!" she exclaimed. "I love them. No trouble in the world.Wish thebon dieuwould allow me to have one myself. If any boarder complains about babies crying in my house, I ask them how they expect the world to keep on going.Parfait!Bring the little rabbit right along. Of course there is no charge. Is it I who will feed her? Think of it, then!" And Mademoiselle Guyénot opened wide her arms and lifted them Heavenward. Her eyes shone, and she laughed.
We engaged a room on the court, two flights up, for seventy francs a weektout compris, lodging, food, boots, wine. Lights would not amount to more than a franc a week. We could give what we wanted for attendance. The arrangement with Marie was perfect. She would stay at home and come for the days we wanted her. That meant only her noonday meal on ourpensionbill—one franc-fifty.
We got out of the Boulevard Diderot hotel none too soon. The charges were fully as much as at a first-class hotel (I have frequently since found this to be the case in trying to economize in travel) and made a serious dent in our nest-egg. When we reached thepensionwith our baby and baggage, we felt that it was only the square thing to acquaint the new friend who loved babies with our financial situation.
"Oh! la, la," cried Mademoiselle Guyénot, "you may pay me when you like!"
"You must understand," said my husband, "that we have just come out of Turkey and have very littlemoney. Of course, as soon as we get settled, things will be all right again."
Mademoiselle received us in thebureauof her pension with open arms and lightning French. I could not get it all, but we knew she was glad to see us. She turned around on her chair and faced us as we sat on an old stuffed sofa surrounded by our suitcases.
"You must not worry," she exclaimed, "you must not worrydu tout, du tout, du tout, du tout.... If you don't pay me I'll keep the baby,pauvre chou."
Mademoiselle's voice went up the scale and down again, dying away only when she opened her mouth wider to laugh.
Mademoiselle ran thepensionsingle-handed in those days. Now she is Madame and the mother of two little girls. Monsieur is a mechanical genius and has himself installed many conveniences. He can paper a room, rig up a table lamp at the head of a bed, carry in the coal, forage for provisions with a hand-cart and a cheerfuljusqu'au boutismethat stops at nothing. He is also able to make a quick change in clothes and bobs up serenely within fifteen minutes after unloading the potatoes, quite ready to make you a cocktail.
Mademoiselle handled her clients with cheerful firmness. She used to marshal the forces of her house with a strong and capable hand. You could not put one over on her then any more than you can now, as sometransients discovered to their confusion. The regulars knew better than to try. On the other hand if your case was good and your complaint justified, she defended you with energy.Liberté,égalité,fraternitéwere realities in the Rue Madame.
The clientele was French for the most part: elderly people who had got tired of keeping house. Folks from the provinces who had come to town to spend the winter after Monsieur retired from business. Young people, mostly men, some of them long haired who were studying at the Sorbonne or elsewhere. And a sprinkling of transients whose chief effect upon the regulars was allowing them to shift about until they had possession of the rooms they wanted to keep at a monthly rate. When we went to the pension we were the only Americans. We paid five francs a day for room and board like everybody else excepting the old lady who had come to the house years ago when the rate was four francs fifty. German Hausfraus may be marvels in management, but I defy any lady Boche to beat Mademoiselle's efficiency. She got all the work of kitchen and dining-room done, and well done too, by Victorine the tireless, Louis the juggler and François the obsequious. Guillaume and Yvonne, a working menage, looked after the rooms until they got a swell job at the Ritz Hotel, where tips would count. The other three were fixtures.
In spirit the Rue Madamepensionhas not changed.The atmosphere to-day is as it was in nineteen hundred and nine. The table is good, plentiful, appetizing—and, oh, what a variety of meats and vegetables! The potatoes are never served in the same way twice in a week, and Madame Primel, as Mademoiselle is now called, cooks as many differentplats de jouras her number in the street, which is forty-four. There the reader has my secret! But five francs a day no longer holds. In nineteen hundred and nineteen five francs will barely pay for a single meal. Not only has the price of food more than doubled, but the traveler is beginning to demand comforts that cost. We used to have buckets of coal brought up, and make a cheerful fire. We used to grope in the dark when we came home, strike a match, and look for our candle on the hall table. We used to have a lamp—the best light in the world—in our room. But now thepensionin the Rue Madame has yielded to the demands of a discontented world. Steam heat, electric lights—these have had their part in making five francs a day disappear forever. The five francpensionexists only in the memory of Paris lovers, or in story books like mine.
At our table were Mrs. Reilly, a sprightly Irish woman called by the pensionnaires Madame Reely; Monsieur Mazeron, a law student with an ascetic blond face and hair like a duckling; an elderly couple from Normandy who had adopted Madame Reely, swallowed her at one gulp of perfection, only to discover afterwardsthat they did not understand her; a Polish doctor and his wife from Warsaw; and others. Madame Reely made a pretty speech the first night at dinner, proposing that our table volunteer to help us take care of the baby.
"To-morrow is the Fête Dieu," said she. "I'll go to the early mass so that I can come back and stay with the baby while you two go to the later mass. You will see the priests in their robes of ceremony, the Holy Relics, and a thousand children in the procession. It is too lovely,—all those little things with their baskets of flowers, throwing petals in the path of the priests. Who can tell," she went on in a whispered aside to her neighbor, "it may impress them. One never knows when new converts are to be added to the blessed Church!"
"And I shall look at the baby," said the Doctor from Warsaw. "Children are my specialty. That is why I am here, observing in the clinics of Paris, you see. I shall come to your room to-morrow after breakfast. Being an American mother, I suppose you give your baby orange juice?"
"Certainly I give her orange juice," said I; "it is good for her."
"Au contraire! au contraire!" cried the Doctor, waving his hands. The Doctor was always "au contraire" no matter what was said and who said it. Polish character.
In a corner was a tiny table for one. It was for the starboarder, a young Roumanian, who wore a purple tie held together by a large amethyst ring. Possibly he wore it because he believed in the ancient legend about amethysts being good to prevent intoxication. When we entered upon the scene he was still in high favor. His downfall came later and had to do with a wide-awake concierge and a luckless kiss at the front door.
The food we had was the kind we used to have in Paris when many visitors came here with no better excuse than to enjoy thecuisine. Mademoiselle gave us two meat dishes for each meal. If you did not like calves' liver, Louis would do a trick that landed a steaming plate of crisp fried eggs (fried in butter, you remember) before you. And that without being told. Behind the scenes was Victorine.
Victorine invited me into her kitchen to learn how to makesauce piquante.
"Are you married, Victorine?" I queried.
"My cookstove is my husband," she laughed; "his heart is good and warm and he never leaves me."
During meals Mademoiselle was to be found in the kitchen. She did the carving herself and tasted everything before it was passed through a window to Louis.
There was no felt covering under the table-cloth. The serving of the meal competed with piping, high-pitched, excited voices. Perhaps I oughtn't to say excited, but the Frenchman in his most ordinary matterof fact conversation sounds excited to the Anglo-Saxon. He asks you to pass the bread in the same tone you would use in announcing an event of moment. At each place was a glass knife-and-fork rest. In France, unless the first dish happens to be fish, you keep the same knife and fork. This is the custom in the best of homes. We are prodigal of cutlery where the French are prodigal of plates. The same knife and fork didn't matter, because the food was so good. Nor does it matter to-day, because now there is only one meat dish. Times have changed.
If fruit or pudding ran out, Mademoiselle opened a section of the wall, finding the key on a bunch that was suspended from her belt on a piece of faded black tape. From the cupboard she took tiny glasses filled with confiture or perhaps a paste made of mashed chestnuts and flour slightly sweetened. The glasses, to the touch, were cylindrical, but when you had broken the paper pasted across the top and had eaten half way down, the space was no wider than the fat part of your tea spoon. If your glass was a cylinder outside, on the inside it was an inverted cone.
The quantities of bread consumed in that house would be appalling to anybody but a Frenchman. A Turk can live on bread and olives. But a Frenchman can live on bread alone. If he had to choose between bread and wine he would forget the wine. When the basket was passed around, thepensionnaires, with a delightfulabsence of self-consciousness, would cast their eye over it in order to select the biggest piece. There was always one person who would look around the room furtively, take the biggest piece on the plate, slip the second biggest piece into the lap under the serviette, and then, gazing far away in ostrich fashion, glide the bread into pocket or reticule. If the dessert happened to be fruit, an orange or an apple would follow the bread for private consumption later in the day. Perhaps these people came in for luncheon only and the bread and fruit was devoured at twilight at some little café where it is permitted to customers to bring their own supplies, if they buy a drink. This stretching of luncheon procured the evening meal. If necessity is the mother of invention, the students of Paris are necessity's grandmother.
Louis, the arch-juggler, was forced by public opinion to alternate day by day his point of departure when passing the steamingplat du jour.Egalité, you remember, is one-third of French philosophy. It would never do for the same end of the dining-room to enjoy for two days running the little privilege of having the first pick at the best piece of meat in the plate.
François helped in the dining-room. But he was everywhere else too. He was useful for Louis to swear at and to blame. He was bell-hop, scullery-boy, errand-man, who needed all of his amazing reserves of cheerfulness. I wondered when François slept. Hewas on hand with his grin and hisoui, madame, early and late. Once when we slid out of the house at five in the morning to go on an excursion, we found him in the lower hall surrounded by the boots of the house. Back of his ear was a piece of chalk used for marking the number of the room on the soles of the boots. He was polishing away, moving his arm back and forth with a diminutive imitation of the swing his legs had to accomplish when his brush-clad feet were polishing the waxed floors. As a concession to the early hour, he was whistling softly instead of singing. The whistling of François fascinated everyone because it came through a tongue folded funnel-wise and placed in the aperture where a front tooth was missing. And we would often find him up and about when we came home late at night. It was a pleasant surprise, when, after calling out your name, you made ready to walk back to the candlestick table, hands stretched out before you, to have François suddenly appear with a light. He would hold out over the table his little hand lamp with the flourish a Gascon alone can make. You picked out your candlestick by the number of your room cut in its shining surface. The number had an old-fashioned swing to its curve, suggesting that the solid bit of brass might have been dug up from the garden of some moss-grown hostelry after a passage of the Huns.
Mademoiselle Guyénot insisted that the flagged pavementbe washed every day. François used to fill with water a tin can in the bottom of which he had punched half a dozen holes. He swung it about the court until figure eight shaped sprinkle-tracks lay all over the twelve-by-twenty garden. Afterwards he would take a short-handled broom, bend himself over like a hairpin, and sweep up the flag-stones. The dirt he accumulated was made into a neat newspaper package and set aside to wait until early to-morrow morning when it was put out on the street in the garbage-pail. François' thin high voice sang incessantly and sounded for all the world like the piping of a Kurdish shepherd above the timber line in the Taurus Mountains. In those days woe betide you if you put trash or garbage on a Paris street later than 8A. M.It was as unseemly an act as shaking carpets out of your window after the regulation hour. Now, even if you are a late and leisurely bank clerk or fashionable milliner and you don't have to show up at work before 10 o'clock, you will see garbage-pails along curb-stones and likely as not get a dust shower furious enough to make you wish you hadn't left your umbrella at home. The old days—will they come back?
When the band plays soft Eliza-crossing-the-ice music, my mind flies to several Home-Sweet-Homes. I think of Tarsus, Constantinople, Oxford and Princeton. But there is no twinge of homesickness. Paris and my present home there satisfy every want and longing.Among the homes of the past, however, I think of others in Paris as well as of those of other places. I never forget thepensionin the Rue Madame. Thankfully it is still a reality. During the past decade it has housed our mothers and sisters and cousins and friends. We have gone there to see them. And we go there to see our first warm friend in Paris and her husband and children. From time to time we have a meal in the old dining-room. We hope thepensionwill not disappear or will not be converted into too grand a hotel. For us it is a Paris landmark.
WE spent the first anniversary of our wedding in Egypt. A week later we arrived in Paris. For prospective residents as well as for tourists, June is the best time of the year to reach Paris. You have good weather and long days, both essentials of successful home-hunting. It is an invariable rule in Paris to divide the year in quarters, beginning with the fifteenth of January, April, July and October. Whether you are looking for a modestlogementon a three months' lease or agrand appartement-confort moderne—on a three years' lease, the dates of entry are the same. One rarely breaks in between terms. If you have passed one period, you must wait for the nexttrimestre. The person who is leaving the apartment you rent might be perfectly willing to accommodate you, but he has to wait to get into his new place. So when we went to thepension, we had before us the best home-hunting weeks of the year, with the expectation of being able to get settled somewhere on July 15th.
At thepension, our room faced on the court, and thepersonnel, from Mademoiselle Guyénot down to Victorine and François, assured us that we need not feel bound to stay at home on the days Marie could notcome to us. Marie for years had been sewing four different days of the week for oldpatrons, and we did not feel certain enough of our own plans and purse to accept the responsibility of her giving up a sure thing.
"Go out all you want to," urged our friends. "You only have to think about meal times for the baby. Someone is always in the court sewing or sorting the laundry or preparing vegetables. Your window is open. We cannot fail to hear the baby."
But a chorus ofbien sûrandparfaitementandsoyez tranquilledid not reassure what was as new born as Christine herself—the maternal instinct. A letter from Herbert's father solved the problem. He inclosed the money for a baby carriage. We carried Scrappie down the Boulevard Raspail to the little square in front of the Bon Marché. I kept her on a bench while Herbert went in to follow my directions as well as he could. In a few minutes he came out and said he would rather take care of the baby. It was the first time I had seen him stumped. So I had the joy I had hoped would be mine all along but of which I did not want to deprive my husband, seeing that we could not share it. The reader may ask why we didn't take the baby inside. But it will not be a young mother who puts that question! With one's firstborn, one sees contagion stalking in every place where crowds gather indoors.[B]
[B]The critic would have me insert a modification here. Why confine the fear of the young mother toindoors? The critic insists that I used to be afraid of taking Scrappie into any sort of a crowd, and that my supersensitive ear translated the bark of every kiddie with a cold into whooping cough, while I saw measles in mosquito bites on children's faces.
[B]The critic would have me insert a modification here. Why confine the fear of the young mother toindoors? The critic insists that I used to be afraid of taking Scrappie into any sort of a crowd, and that my supersensitive ear translated the bark of every kiddie with a cold into whooping cough, while I saw measles in mosquito bites on children's faces.
The Rue de Vaugirard by the LuxembourgThe Rue de Vaugirard by the Luxembourg
We did not intend to consider a home that was not within baby-carriage distance of the Rue Madame. In fact, after a few days in the Luxembourg Quarter, we were determined to live as near the Garden as possible. There we were within walking distance of the Bibliothèque Nationale and the Sorbonne and the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques. Marie, whom the fact that I was my Mother's daughter did not blind to the extent of the Gibbons family resources, urged the Bois de Vincennes. But we would not hear of it.
It is strange how rich and poor rub elbows with each other in their homes. Paris is no different from American cities in this respect. The kind of an apartment wewantedwould cost more than our total income, as rents around the Luxembourg for places equipped with electric lights and bathtubs and central heating seemed to be as expensive as around the Etoile. Then in the same street—sometimes next door—you had the other extreme. Our finances pointed to alogementin a workingmen's tenement. Care for Scrappie's health made our hearts sink every time we were shown a place that seemed within our means.
Of course there were reasonable places: for many others who demanded cleanliness had no more moneythan we. But the Latin and Montparnasse Quarters are the Mecca of slim-pursed foreigners. People foolish enough to study or sing or paint are almost invariably poor. Perhaps that is the reason! We had lots of exercise, and came to know every street between the Luxembourg and the Seine. Our good fortune arrived unexpectedly as good fortune always arrives to those who will not be side-tracked.
Between the Rue Vaugirard and Saint-Sulpice are three tiny streets, the houses on the opposite sides of which almost rub cornices. The Rue Férou is opposite the Musée de Luxembourg. On the Rue de Vaugirard is the home of Massenet. We used to get a glimpse of him occasionally on histerrasse—a sort of roof-garden with a vine-covered lattice on top of the low Rue Férou wing of his house. The other two streets paralleling the Rue Férou from the Palais du Luxembourg to the Eglise Saint-Sulpice are the Rue Servandoni and the Rue Garancière.
On the morning of the Fourth of July we had been diving in and out the side streets of the Rue Bonaparte and the Boulevard Saint-Germain. At Scrappie's meal time, we came to a bench in the Square in front of Saint-Sulpice. It wasn't a bit like a holiday. It was sultry and looked like rain. We were wondering whether we had better not hurry back to thepensionfor fear of getting the baby wet. Just then peoplebegan to stop and look up. A huge balloon was above us. And it carried the American flag.
"You can't beat it," said my husband. "And we are Americans. Ergo, you can't beat us!"
Did the sight of the flag do the trick? Anyway, it was our Japanese "last quarter of an hour." We had come down through the Rue Férou. We went back for the twentieth time in twenty days through the Rue Servandoni. Grey houses, topped with beehive chimneys, leaned amicably against each other and broke the sky line as well as the municipalréglement(made long after they were) concerning the distance between houses on opposite sides of streets. Our hearts nearly stopped beating when we reached Number 21. There was the magic sign (it had not been there yesterday):Appartement à Louer. We stopped short in the middle of the street. The side-walks are not wide enough to walk on, much less wheel a baby-carriage along. The grocer on the ground floor saw us take the bait. Out he came. Did Monsieur and Madame care to see theappartement? If so, he was concierge as well as grocer. He would show us the place. We drew the new baby-carriage into the dark vestibule and went up one easy flight of oak balustraded stairs. The grocer pulled a red-braided bell rope.
A man in shirt-sleeves opened the door. We stepped into a tiny dining-room where the gas was lit althoughit was noon. The wall-paper was yellow, and had sprawling brown figures like beetles. A dark passage led into an immense room with a generous fireplace. Two windows opened on the Rue Servandoni. It was a paper-hanger's shop with ladders, brushes, buckets, rolls and rolls of paper and barrels of flour-paste around. But the fellow in shirt-sleeves assured us that when his fittings were out, we would realize what a handsome room it was. "The dining-room is dark," he admitted, "but you can't match this room for light and size in any two-room apartment in the Quarter. I know them all. I am leaving because I have found a ground floor shop. I'll put new paper on here very cheap."
Thelocataireassumed that we would take it. So did the grocer-concierge. Without our asking, Monsieur Sempé told us that the rent would be one hundred and fifty francs a quarter. We did not have to make a troublesome lease, just a little agreement involving three months' notification on either side.
"Don't forget," said Sempé, "that this old house sits between two modern apartment buildings. The walls are warm. Your neighbors have steam heat."
"True," confirmed the paper-hanger. But he did not want us to think that we could be altogether vicariously heated. "Possibly you may not have noticed," he added, "the fireplace in the dining-room. It heatsalmost as well as this one. I'll sell you my grates.Bouletsmake the best fire."
The thrill of admiration I had for my husband's magnificent courage when he signed the paper, and paid out fifty of his last hundred francs "on account" is with me still.
"We are sure to be able to pay our rent," said he, as we went back to thepension. "We couldn't expect to get anything for less than ten dollars a month. The first installment of the fellowship money will come next week, and before then I shall certainly get something out of theHerald. It will have to be enough to buy our furniture."
It never rains but it pours. At thepensionwe found a letter from Mr. James Gordon Bennett, asking Herbert to call that afternoon at three o'clock at 104 Avenue des Champs-Elysées. It was in a blue envelope with a little owl embossed on the flap, and was signed "J. G. BENNETT" in blue pencil almost the color of the paper. How often we were to see this envelope and this signature, and what luck it was going to bring us! We thought the occasion demanded a celebration. I did Scrappie and myself up in our best, and we set forth for the Champs-Elysées in an openfiacre—our first ride since we came from the Boulevard Diderot to the Rue Madame. We waited in the carriage while Herbert went in to collect his money for the Adana massacre stories.
I watched the door of the big apartment house anxiously. Our furniture and the rest of the rent for the apartment depended upon the success of the visit. Half an hour later Herbert's face told me that all was well. He had sent in a bill of four hundred dollars, and fifty dollars expenses. Mr. Bennett, he told me, began by scolding him for not making it in francs, and then gave him a check for twenty-five hundred francs, which more than covered what Herbert asked for. The Commodore then offered Herbert a position at five hundred francs a week, and was surprised when it was declined. He seemed much amused when Herbert explained that he had come to Paris to study. "But you will go on special trips in an emergency," said Mr. Bennett. It is enough to say that the "emergencies" occurred often enough to tide over many a financial difficulty during years that followed.
Provided with funds after passing by the bank, we took Christine to Rumpelmayer's to tea, and then drove back the Rue Servandoni to pay the rest of our rent. When Monsieur Sempé gave us thequittance, he admonished us that we must put enough furniture in the apartment to cover six months' rent, that is to say, we must be prepared to spend at least sixty dollars to set up our Lares and Penates. Bubbling over with good will, Monsieur Sempé and Madame Sempé (who appeared on the scene the moment it was a question of a receipt for our money) gave us splendid advice aboutfurniture-buying. They urged us to go to the Rue de Rennes to some good-sized place where we would see second-hand furniture on the side-walk, and not to a smallbrocanteuror dealer in antiques.
The amount ticked up on the fiacre's taximetre was larger than we had dreamed we should ever spend gadding about Paris. A few hours before it would have worried us. We knew this could not keep up—in spite of the crisp hundred franc notes. Wealth brings a strange sense of prudence. We drove back to thepension, dismissed ourcocher, and pushed the baby-carriage around to the Rue de Rennes.
MOBILIERS COMPLETS PAR MILLIERS. "Household furniture sets by the thousand." That sign read promisingly. We entered, and found a salesman—excuse me, the proprietor and salesman and cashier—who took in my clothes and hat, and then assured us that he did not mind the baby crying and could fit us up in anything from Louis Quatorze to the First Empire, real or (this as a feeler) imitation.Salle à mangerfrom eight hundred francs to four thousand;chambre à coucherfrom four hundred francs to two thousand six hundred;salonfrom one thousand francs to six thousand; splendidgarnitures(which means clocks and candlesticks or vases) of all epochs for ourcheminées; hatracks for the hall; kitchen and servants' furniture—all, everything, anything we needed.
I knew what was in Herbert's reproachful look. He always did ungraciously blame my mother for the fact that he had so frequently to counteract my trousseau by embarrassed words. Mostly I let him stumble along. But as this was his day and as I hadn't taken off the pretty things worn in honor of the visit to the Champs-Elysées, which was a break on my part, I thought it was up to me to let the furniture man see how things stood.
"We have a little apartment," I said, "bedroom and living-room combined, a very small dining-room and a kitchen. I expect to buy the baby's crib and mattress aside, but the rest must come out of five hundred francs—I mean all of it. What can you give us for that?"
I often think the French are essentially poor salesmen. They do not know how to show their goods and they are too indifferent or too anxious. But the blessed virtue of chivalry! The blessed sense of proportion! The blessed instinct of moderation! Our furniture man rose to the occasion with a grace that made me want to hug him. He kept his smile and bow and changed with perfect ease from Louis and Napoleons to pitchpine. It would require figuring. But it could be done. Yes, of course it could be done. Down into the cellar he took us, and in half an hour he had arranged to give us all we needed for Francs 532.70. I remember those figures. And he agreed totake the whole lot back at half-price at the end of a year!
The furniture man bore a striking resemblance to some one I knew. I watched him, and tried to place him, as he made out our bill in the office—seven square feet of glassed-in suffocation surrounded byarmoiresand buffets. Dust clung to pages and blotters and yellowing files; no air ever came in here to blow it away. Where had I seen the double of our friend? Full forehead, closely-trimmed, pointed beard, soft black tie—and the eyes. WherehadI seen him before? Writing with flourishes in purple ink, slightly bending over the high desk, he certainly fitted into some memory picture. Then it came to me! His pen ought to be a quill. It was William Shakespeare.
"Will-yumShakespeare!" I cried.
My husband did not think I was crazy. For he was looking at the furniture man when I made my involuntary exclamation.
"What does Madame say? Is she not content?" asked William Shakespeare. Herbert's hand shot out behind his back and grasped mine. "Shades of Stratford-on-Avon," he murmured. We had passed a honeymoon day there just a year ago.
It was hard to wait until July 15, and then two days longer for the necessary cleaning by afemme de ménagehired for us by the Sempés. July 17th was the magical day of our first housekeeping. Never before had webeen together in a place where everything was ours. Tables and chairs and beds and mattresses, and even the piano rented at ten francs a month, arrived at Twenty-One on hand-carts drawn by men who pulled only a little harder against the greasy harness that bound them to their job than did the dogs under the carts.
Turkish women say that if you must move, abandon the furniture and dishes; they can be had anywhere. But take with you the rugs and brass that you love, and you have your home. During the previous winter in Tarsus, we managed to buy several good rugs, a cradle-shawl, some candlesticks and Damascus beaten-brass trays out of our eight-hundred dollar salary. Don't ask me now how we did it. In retrospect it is a mystery. But we had these things in two big boxes. They were as butter is to bread with our pitch-pine. No, I'm not going to belittle that pitch-pine. Years of usage had modified its yellowness, and it took to our rubbing with a marvelous furniture polish. The floors could have been better. The wood was hard, however, and we got some sort of a wax shine on them. The Shakespeare furniture plus rugs and brasses—and candle light—made a home than which we have never since had better. Never mind if the dining-room was dark. Never mind if we had to sleep in our study, and study in our bedroom. Never mind if Scrappie's nursery was thesalon,cabinet de travailandchambre àcouchercombined. Never mind if we were compelled to take our baths at the foot of our bed in a tin basin. It was Paris, our dream city.
We were fully installed by six o'clock. Thefemme de ménagevolunteered to stay with Christine while we went out for supper. Before finding a restaurant, we climbed the north tower of Saint-Sulpice. Between us and the mass of verdure that marked the Jardin du Luxembourg was our home. Up there near heaven, with the city at our feet, we danced the Merry Widow Waltz, for sheer joy that we had a home of our own in Paris.
HOW can two young people, with a baby and three hundred dollars in cash, able to count upon a one-year fellowship yielding six hundred dollars, live a year in Paris? The answer to that question is that it cannot be done. But we were not in the position to answer it that way. We were in Paris, and we had the baby. Pride and ambition are factors that refuse to be overruled by the remorseless logic of figures. If you put a proposition down on paper, you can prove that almost anything you want to do is impossible. Successful undertakings are never the result of logical thinking. Herbert and I would not have had a wedding at all if we had thought the matter out and had considered the financial side of life.
Herbert was keeping, however, some prejudices and some prudent reserves, remembering his father's caution that life has a financial basis. Sitting there on the packing-case we had picked out for a coal-box in our study-bedroom, he hauled out an account-book and was fussing over a missing franc. Our first year was one of constant change of scene, and we had not "kept house." Now, declared my husband, was the time toturn over a new leaf. If we knew where and how our money went, financing the proposition would be easier. With tears in my eyes and biting a pencil with trembling lips, I rebelled. I could not get interested in that missing franc.
"I want you to realize now, once for all, that I'm not going to keep this old cash account. I don't believe in worrying about money. I'm not going to worry about money and neither are you. There are only three financial questions: (1) how much money is there? (2) how long is it going to last? (3) what are we going to do when it's all gone? Two follows one, and three follows two—one, two, three—just like that!"
I was laughing now, and raised three fingers successively under my boss's nose.
"As long as we are in one, we are not in two; and when we are in two, we have not reached three. Let us wait for three until we are in three, or at least until we know we are about to leave two."
After paying a quarter's rent, the bill for the furniture and cleaning up sundry little expenses, we had left fifteen hundred francs of the Gordon Bennett capital. A thousand francs was deposited with Morgan, Harjes and Company. The other five hundred, in twenty-franc gold-pieces, the bank gave us in a shiny little pink pasteboard box. Our chimney had a big hole in the plaster. The wall paper was torn but intact.An ideal hiding-place. I put the box in the hole and smoothed down the paper.
"This hole is our bank," I announced. "We shall keep no account, and you and I will take the gold boys when we need them."
Herbert saw a great light. From that moment to this day we have been free from a useless drudgery and have been able to conserve our energy for our work. Herbert said, "Agreed! And when the pile gets low, I'll be like the little boy the old man saw digging."
"What was the little boy digging for?" I chuckled.
"Ground-hogs," answered my husband. "An old man came along and told him he would never catch a gopher like that, for they could dig quicker than folks. 'Can't get him?' said the boy. 'Got to get him, the family's out of meat.'"
Now that the financial credo of the home-makers in the Rue Servandoni is set forth, I shall not have to talk any more about how we got our money and how much there was of it. But I had to take my readers into my confidence, for I did not want them to labor under the misapprehension that persisted among our neighbors of the Rue Servandoni throughout our year there. They took it for granted thatles petits américainswere living at Twenty-One because that sort of fun appealed to us. We were just queer. Of course we had plenty of money, and could have lived at Nineteen or Twenty-Three if we had wanted to! The Parisian, theFrenchman, the European, of whatever social class, believes that America is El Dorado and that every American is able to draw at will from inexhaustible transatlantic gold-mines. During the war the Red Cross, the Y.M.C.A., and the officers and men of the A.E.F. confirmed and strengthened this traditional belief. I do not blame my compatriots for what is a universal attitude among us towards money. On the contrary, my long years of residence abroad have made me feel that we get more out of life by looking upon money as our servant than Europeans do, who look upon it as their master.
The first thing—the practical and imperative thing—when you set up a home in Paris is to make friends with the concierge. Without his approval and cooperation, your money, your position, your brains will not help you in making living conditions easy. The concierge stands between you and servants, tradespeople, visitors. You are at his mercy. Traveling in Russia, they used to say to us: lose your pocket-book or your head, but hold on to your passport. In Paris, dismiss your prize servant or fall out with your best friend, but hold on to the good-will of the concierge.
Our first skirmish with the Sempés was an easy victory. We could not keep the baby-carriage in our apartment, even if we had been willing to haul it up and down a flight of stairs. Boldly we announced that we wanted to leave it in the lower hall. "Of course,"agreed Monsieur Sempé. "I was just going to suggest that and to tell you that in my shop I carry everything, fruits and vegetables as well as dry-groceries."
We took the hint, and seldom went farther afield to do our marketing. Madame Sempé was the first to call usles petits américains. She was capable and kindly, and our friendship became firmly rooted when she discovered that we intended to patronize her shop. The Sempé commodities were good. This was lucky in more ways than one. For the mice knew it too, and never came upstairs to bother us.
Sempé himself was a genial soul, partly because he always kept a bottle uncorked. Hard work and temperament, he explained, made him require a stimulant. He took just enough, you understand, to affect his disposition pleasantly. If you had a little complaint to make or a favor to ask, much as you deplored his thirst, you found yourself casting an eye over the man to make sure of his mood before you spoke. If you caught him when the bottle was not too full or too empty, he could fix a lock or put a new mantle on the dining-room gas-jet most graciously.
Our friendship became undying when Monsieur found out that we were the solution of his financial pinches. He came up one night, and, hooking his thumbs in his purple suspenders, asked for a loan of "shong shanquante francs shusqua sheudi."Jeudinever came. To Sempé's intense relief, we agreed totake out the debt in groceries. This was the beginning of a sort of gentlemen's agreement. A paper, thumb-tacked to a shelf in the shop, kept the record of our transactions. When I came to make purchases in the morning or when Herbert dropped in of an evening to buy a supplement to our dinner for unexpected guests or our own good appetites, we could see at a glance whether to pay cash for what we bought or whether we should do a sum in subtraction. It was generally subtraction, and Sempé, wagging his head, would say, "This goes well—soon I shall be square with you." But the satisfaction of being square with the world was never Sempé's for long. The arrival of a barrel of wine or a load of potatoes would send him running up the stairs for the money to help finance his business. In spite of our slender resources we did not feel this to be a hardship. Not infrequently it was an advantage. First of all things one has to eat. We always began to get our money back immediately in the necessities of life. Instead of having our money out in an uncertain loan we took the attitude that our board was paid for two or three weeks in advance.
In another connection, we had the benefit of the advantageous side of the Golden Rule.
In our study of Turkish history we had constant use of Von Hammer'sHistoire de l'Empire Ottoman. This meant much transcribing by long-hand at the Bibliothèque Nationale where the typewriter could notbe used. If only we had Von Hammer at home! But it was a rare book—eighteen volumes and an atlas—far beyond our means. One day we were browsing at Welter's, the most wonderful bookshop in Paris, on the Rue Bernard-Palissy off the Rue de Rennes near Saint-Germain-des-Près. Monsieur Welter, who took pains to become acquainted with and discover the specialty of every passingclient, told us that he had a set of Von Hammer, recently purchased at a London auction. He sent a boy to bring it out. Oh how tempting it looked, beautifully bound in calf! We handled it fondly, but turned regretfully away when he said that the price was two hundred francs.
"Do you not want it?" asked Monsieur Welter, astonished. "It is indispensable for your work and you do not get a chance often to purchase a set of Von Hammer. Never will you find it cheaper than this."
"I do want it, and it isn't the price. I'll come back later, hoping you will not have sold it."
We each had a volume in our hands. I poked my nose between the pages of mine to sniff the delightful odor to be found only in old books. Monsieur looked at us, smiled, and said, "You mean that you haven't the money. You will have it some day. No hurry. Give me your address and the books will be sent around this afternoon."
The delightful relationship thus began lasted until August, 1914, when Welter (who never became naturalizedalthough his sons were in the French army) had to flee to escape internment. His business was sequestrated. German though he was, we never cease to mourn the only expert bookman in Paris. We have tried a dozen since, some of them charming men, but none with the slightest idea of how to sell books. Welter had book-buyers all over the world. Whenever he came across rare books in your line, he mailed them to you with the bill. If you did not want them, you sent them back. Every three months, a statement of the quarter's purchases came, and you sent a check when you had the money. One's attention was brought to many valuable sources, and one was able to buy books of immense value, the possibility of whose acquisition one had never dreamed of.
Monsieur Welter told me years later, when I recalled the Von Hammer incident, that he didn't lose five hundred francs a year in bad bills. "The dealer in old books who does not give all the credit the buyers need is crazy," he said. "What man interested in the things I deal in would think of cheating me? Your husband wanted Von Hammer. I saw that. Any man who wanted Von Hammer would pay for it in time."
We had never had a French book-seller offer us credit, much less send books on approval when we had not ordered them.
When I think of the hundreds and hundreds of bookswe bought from Welter, I realize one of the secrets of the inferiority of the French to the Germans in business. The French cannot bring themselves to give credit: they have an innate fear of being cheated, and understand commercial transactions only in terms of cash. For years I have made a point of watching French shopkeepers. Invariably they arrange that the money is in their hands before they give you your package.
The other night I went to the Champs-Elysées theatre to see a show given by American soldiers of the 88th Division. One act opens with Hiram Scarum bringing a military trunk into his hotel. Staggering under the weight, Hiram hobbles across the stage, plants his trunk on the floor, and sits down on it to mop his brow. He spies a paper across the room, and investigates to find it is the tag belonging to the trunk. Pulling himself together, Hiram spits on his hands, wearily shoulders the burden again, and carries it across the room where he ties the tag to the handle of the trunk. Then he picks up the trunk and carries it back where he had first put it down. Hiram is like French commerce. The Frenchman, with a sense of self-congratulation on his own industry, carries the trunk to the tag. He is surprised to discover that while he has been carrying the trunk to the tag, his German competitor has carried a great many tags and has tied them to a great many trunks. We hear much in these days about the war after the war. We are told by Paris newspapers howthe French business men are going to capture trade from Germany. How can the French win in the commercial game? I'm sure I don't know. One is concerned lest the inability to take the large view end in disappointment and disaster for the Frenchmen we love. We are just as sure that our French friends will continue to carry the trunk to the tag as we are that they ought to get a hustle on, give up their old ways, and win the game.
THERE are many libraries in Paris. Some of them are so famous that I ought to hesitate to call the Bibliothèque Nationale simply "the library." But I do call it that, not because it is the largest in the world (a fact that calls forth instinctively admiration and respect from Americans), but because we love the Bibliothèque from long and habitual association. It is a part of our life like our home.
In the beginning of the fellowship year, Herbert came to realize that books could do more for him than lecturers. A magnetic and enthusiastic lecturer communicates his inspiration: but most professors are decidedly non-conductors. And then, with rare exceptions, university professors are not sources themselves. What they do is to stand between you and the sources. When they have something original and suggestive to say, why not let them speak to you from the covers of a book? If a book does not hold you, you can throw it aside and take up another: the lecturer has you fast for an hour, and you often suffer because his baby did not sleep well the night before. But when the professor speaks from the printed page, he has had a chance toeliminate in his final revision whatever effects of insomnia there may have been in the first draft. If he hasn't done so, you do not need to read him.
When students become full fledged post-graduates, they are at the parting of the ways. Either they go directly to the sources, form independent judgments, and produce original work as a result of constructive thinking, or they continue to remain in intellectual dependence upon their teachers. The latter alternative is the more pleasant course. It requires less effort, and does not make one restless and unhappy. The pleasant days of taking in are prolonged and the agonizing days of giving out are postponed. But if a youngster is face to face with books all day long every day, he either stops studying or commences to produce for himself. Then, too, he is constantly under the salutory influence of being confronted with his own appalling ignorance. Whatever effort he makes, the volumes he summons from the shelves to his desk keep reminding him that others have given years to what he hopes to compass in days. The Bibliothèque teaches two lessons, and teaches them with every tick of the clock from nine a. m. to four p. m.—humility and industry.
There was, of course, much to be learned at the Sorbonne. But my husband had already passed through three years of post-graduate work, and was tired of chasing around from one lecture to another. There were hours between courses that could not be utilized,and the habit of loafing is the easiest formed in the world. It was because we were jealous of every hour in the Golden Year that Herbert and I first turned from the Sorbonne to the Bibliothèque. Later we came to realize that the only thing in common between Salles de Conférences of the Sorbonne and the Salle de Lecture of the Bibliothèque was the lack of fresh air—the universal and unavoidable torture of indoors everywhere in France.
Nine to four, five days in the week, Herbert lived in the Bibliothèque, and I went there mornings—when Scrappie was not on my conscience! One did not have to go out to lunch, as the fare of thebuvettewas quite acceptable to those interested in books and manuscripts. The old law of the time of Louis XIV holds good in this day. No light but that of heaven has ever been introduced into the Bibliothèque. After gas was discovered, the law was not changed. Even when electricity came, presenting an infinitesimal risk of fire, the Government refused to have the vast building wired. The prohibition of lights extends, of course, to smoking. You cannot strike a match in the sacred precincts. So, after lunch we used to go across the street and sit for half an hour in the Square Louvois.
Château de la Reine Blanche: Rue des GobelinsChâteau de la Reine Blanche: Rue des Gobelins
Do you know the Square Louvois? I'll wager you do not. For when one passes afoot up the Rue Richelieu, he is generally in a hurry to get to the Bourse or the Grands Boulevards. If you go on the Clichy-Odéonbus, you whizz by one of the most delightful little green spots in the city of green spots without noticing it. The Square Louvois has on the side opposite the Bibliothèque Nationale a good-sized hotel, which was named after the square. The boundary streets on the north and south are lined with modest restaurants and coffee bars, within the purse ofpetits commisandmidinettes. In Europe there is not the hurry over the mid-day meal that seems universal in America. Dyspepsia is unknown. The humblest employee or laborer has from one hour and a half to two hours off at noon. There is competition for benches and chairs in the Square Louvois between twelve-thirty and two. Mothers who are their own nursemaids have to resist the temporary encroachment of the Quarter's business world. We from the Bibliothèque make an additional demand. We must have our smoke and fresh air. And we never tire of the noble monument to the rivers of France that is the fountain in the center of the Square.
"Funny, isn't it," said I, "how things turn out to be different from what you expected—your thesis for instance. Gallicanism is simply a closed door for the present."
"I tackled too big a subject," admitted Herbert.
We were smoking in the Square after lunching in the buffet of the Bibliothèque Nationale with the Scholar from Oxford.
"I'll wager," said Herbert, "that those greasy fellows in thesalle de travaildiscovered long ago what I have just learned. You start with a general subject and a century. You narrow down until you have a phase and a decade. If I ever do Gallicanism, it'll be limited to the influence of the conversion of Henry of Navarre upon the movement. I could work till my hair was grey developing that. But I should be narrow-minded and dry as bones when I finished."
"Ah! You must not quarrel with the greasy fellows," put in the Scholar from Oxford. "That is research. They are not narrow: they are specialists." The Scholar is a canny Scotchman who gives his r's their full value, and then some.
Allowing the letter r to be heard for sure is another point of contact and sympathy between Scott and Frank. Just as the cooler Teutonic temperament seeks the sun, and has been seeking the sun right down through history, in trying to reach the Mediterranean, the cooler Scotch temperament seeks the sun where it is nearest to be found—in France. It is the attraction of opposites.
"You Americans," said the Scholar, "with your Rocky Mountains and your Niagaras naturally approach research from the general to the particular. It is far easier for men born in an older civilization to begin with a specialist's point of view."
"I know, I know," said Herbert, "I had to work thatout and I had to change my whole subject, too. I wobbled from Gallicanism to Ottoman history."
"That's no sin," declared Alick. "A man engrossed in research is human. Going to Turkey was bound to influence your thinking. The traditions of France still hold you, but the memory of Turkey is strong enough to change the trend of your work. Go on with your origins of the Ottoman Empire and be thankful you have discovered a line off the beaten track."
"Yes," I cried, "and for goodness' sake stick to constructive ideas. You research-fiends waste too much time trying to prove that the other fellow is wrong. Instead of remaining scientists you get to be quibblers. But I must leave you now. I cannot put my whole day into the Bibliothèque. I have to mix up tea-kettles and dusting with pamphlets and cards for the file."
As Herbert and the Scholar from Oxford passed by the solemn guard at the door of thesalle de travail, I lingered in the lobby musing about what we had been saying. I leaned for a minute against the pedestal of the Sèvres vase and watched Herbert and Alick take their places side by side at the old inked desks. I looked through the great polished plate glass that makes thesalle de travailand thetravailleursseem like a picture in its frame. I knew from experience that once the two men had got their noses in their books they would not look up. There was no use in waiting for a smile.