Just around the corner from us, on the Rue de Tournon, was the Concerts-Rouges, the blessed institution to make unnecessary the tragedy of would-be musician and singer failing to get a hearing. Pianists, violinists, cellists and future opera stars had a place to put on their own concerts at little cost. We were the audience. Of course it was not all amateurs: the management had to promise an audience. A good orchestra gathered around the stove in the middle of the room. You sat in a chair such as they have in school rooms, whose right arm spread out generously to give space for your notebook. There was room, too, for coffee-cup or stein. The only rule of the Concerts-Rouges was silence. You could move your chair away from the music. When you were not interested in the number, you read or wrote. Many theses and dramas and poems have been worked out in the Concerts-Rouges.
The Boulevard du Montparnasse, which has since become our home, was not too far from the Rue Servandoni to be frequented for after-dinner coffee. TheDôme, on the corner of the Boulevard Raspail, and Versailles and Lavenue, opposite the Gare Montparnasse, were after-dinner coffee haunts where friendships that have lasted through the years were formed. We still sit there. Lavenue, after five years of silence, again offers music. But we miss Schumacker, beloved of the Quarter, who fell, they say, in the ranks of the enemy. His face is one of those I cannot forget. I see him now, blue eyes and bright smile and bushy hair, bending over his violin on the little platform by the piano. He seemed to play his heart out and never tired. I always like to write my letters at Lavenue. When I called for "de quoi écrire," the waiter brought a tiny bottle of ink, spillable and square, sheets of ruled writing paper and the cheapest quality of manila envelopes in a black oilcloth folder, whose blotter never blotted. But you did not care. You listened to the music after each page until it dried.
IN Philadelphia you still find shutters with the rings at the middle of their closing edge. To one of the rings is tied a piece of tape. In my grandfather's house of a Sunday the shutters were together almost to the touching point and held that way by the tape tied to the other ring. A vertical bar of sunshine filtered through the slit. The parlor was cool and quiet. Nothing moved. My father told me that when he was a little boy he had to sit at one of those windows all Sunday afternoon memorizing passages from the Bible. I wonder if in America there are still many families who install in their children a repugnance for the Scriptures by this sort of torture, whose observance of Sunday is reached by a process of elimination of everything a normal person would instinctively choose to do on a day of rest, and where there are more don'ts for the children on Sunday than on Monday. Sunday seems to me a happier day in America now than it was twenty-five years ago. But for all that we do not enjoy it the way the French do. Until I lived in France I never knew the full meaning of what I was singing in the hymn, "O day of rest and gladness."
The French dress up for Sunday as we do. I suppose as large a proportion of the Parisians go to church as of Americans in any large city. But once mass is over the day is given to recreation—and recreation out of doors. What is more depressing than an English or American city on Sunday? Sunday in Paris is the most animated day of the week. The French wordendimanchéis translated in dictionaries "in Sunday best." It has a wider connotation. A place as well as a person can beendimanché. The word brings up to the mind of one who has lived in Paris crowds, laughter, fun, open air. How different from sitting on a chair in a room with bowed shutters when common sense would dictate getting your lungs filled with fresh air and worshipping God in communion with nature!
In the Rue Servandoni days we came to know the joy and benefit of the Continental Sunday. And ever since we have brought up our children to look forward to Sunday as the best day of the week, the out-of-doors day, when the family could be together from morning to night.
The great thing about Sunday in Paris is that fathers and mothers and children go out together, all bound for the same place, and stick together. The family includes grandfathers and grandmothers, who are always given the best places in the train, the choicest morsels to eat and who to the day of their death are the adored center of the family party. Mother carries thefilet, a big net with handles filled with good things to eat, and the baby too small to navigate alone is held in father's strong arms. You can tell little sisters—and even big ones—for they are dressed alike. Trams and trains for Versailles, the Bois de Bologne, Saint-Germain-en-Laye and a dozen other equally attractive suburbs are not taken by assault. The family waits in line at the tram station, young and old clutching the precious little tickets that tell them when it is their turn to get places. Everybody has his chance, and there is no need to worry about grandmother or the baby. Trams are not overcrowded: there are seats for all. If there is not the money to go far from home, or if the weather is too threatening, each quarter has its park, the Luxembourg, Montsouris, Monceau, Buttes-Chaumont, Jardin des Plants, Vincennes, or the simplesquares. For two cents you have the right to sit on chairs near the band-stand. First come, first served. The only restriction here is that baby-carriages must stay outside of the enclosure for music-lovers. In the baby-carriage zone, nobody minds if a baby howls: you may be in the same condition at the next minute.
Merry-go-rounds, Punch and Judy, swings and donkey-carts are everywhere to be found for the children. At four o'clock the woman with fresh rolls goes by. Hotgauffretteand hokey-pokey venders are always near at hand. If you do not want hokey-pokey, there iscocoto drink. The innocent Sunday fun is not"the kind of thing no-one would think of doing." Once I was waiting for the wife of a professor of the Ecole de Guerre, who was later a brilliant general on the Marne. It was Sunday afternoon. She excused herself for being late. "I stopped in the square to listen to the band, and I had to have somecoco. I never can pass acococart," she explained. More than once have I seen a mother, elegantly dressed, come hurrying to the garden, sit down on a bench, and nurse a baby handed to her by a nurse in cap and ribbons. I have done that myself. Is there anything shocking about this? It is the natural out-of-doors instinct. Distinguished looking gentlemen wearing rosettes of the Legion of Honor head family excursions. They do not mind pushing baby-carriages, either.
On a good day the Seine boats are crowded. From Charenton to Saint-Cloud, there is an endless procession of boats on a Sunday. Parisians never tire of the spectacle of their city from the river. They name the bridges as they pass under them and tell their stories to the children. River clubs abound, and all Paris seems afloat in row-boats and canoes. From one end of the city to the other the banks of the Seine are lined with fishermen who seem never to become discouraged. Seine boating is not without its dangers. But in the Bois de Boulogne the most inexperienced learn to row and paddle in the shallow water of the lakes. A miniature railway crosses a corner of the Bois from the PorteMaillot to the Jardin d'Acclimatation, where kiddies can ride on elephants and camels or be drawn by ostriches and zebras.
No park is too small to have its ducks and swans with unlimited capacity for bread-crumbs, its band-stand, its open-air restaurant where drinks are served and you bring your own food, and its place without grass where you can stretch your own tennis-net between trees.
The Seine boats, the subway, and many tram lines land you at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. An elevator quickly takes you above Paris for a view that was unique before the days of aeroplanes. Near by is the Great Wheel, always revolving from morning to night on Sundays. Parisians do not feel the lack of the roofs of skyscrapers when they want to look down on their city.
For several hundred yards around the fortifications of Paris the law forbids the erection of permanent buildings: at least, if you do build in stone and mortar, you risk having your house destroyed, as many found to their cost in 1914. This enormous land surface, between the city and suburbs is covered with wooden shacks of rag-pickers and junk-dealers. Everyone seems to have a very small holding, as the ground is of little value either for residential or manufacturing purposes. Here thousands of Parisians own cabins and have miniature vegetable gardens, which they cultivate on Sunday, dreaming of the day when there will beenough money in the bank to retire permanently to some quiet country spot. They come home with arms filled with vegetables and flowers.
In the year at the Rue Servandoni Herbert and I started to explore on Sundays thebanlieueof Paris. Despite increasing "encumbrances" of different ages, we have managed to keep up our delightful excursions from early spring to chestnut time, and often on winter Sundays. But we do not pretend to have exhausted in ten years the possibilities of Sunday afternoons. We are always discovering new excursions for therepos hebdomadaire.
HIGHER than 1883; higher than 1879; higher than 1876; higher than 1802; higher than 1740; higher than 1699; equalling the flood of 1658, the worst in the history of Paris; finally breaking all records, both as to height attained and as to damage done, such was the daily crescendo of the press in recording the progress ofla Grande Crueduring the last week of January, 1910. No investing army, no Commune, no revolution, threatened Paris this time. The best friend of Paris had turned against her. For several days the older generation, who passed through the trials of 1871, recalled painful memories and feared a worse peril from the Seine than from the German invaders or the Internationalists.
In the third week of January, from Tuesday to Friday, we were concerned over the news of devastation wrought by floods in different parts of France. There was much damage and suffering in our own suburbs. Sympathetic editorials appeared in the newspapers: relief funds were opened. On Friday afternoon, when we were taking a walk along thequaisof the Rive Gauche, we had no suspicion what was going to happen.
Only on Saturday did Paris begin to worry for herself. Neuilly and Courbevoie were flooded. Loroy reported ten drowned. The Seine, within the city limits, suddenly rose ten feet. The first subway tunnel, that of the "Métro" from the Chatelet under the Cité to the Place Saint-Michel, was filled with water. The river spread into the original "Métro" line under the Rue de Rivoli. The second tunnel, that of the "Nord-Sud," was an easy prey because it was still in the course of construction. The Gare d'Orléans was invaded. Its tracks, which parallel the left bank of the river under thequais, disappeared. The Gare d'Invalides, whose line runs the opposite direction along the Seine, was also flooded.
On Sunday morning we heard that in the Rue Félicien-David people were rowing around in boats. We thought this interesting enough to invest in afiacre, and took Scrappie in the afternoon to Auteuil. On the way, we got out and wormed ourselves through the crowd to hear the waters swishing around the stair-cases down to the train levels at the two flooded stations. When we reached the Rue Félicien-David and actually saw people in boats, we bought photographs from an enterprising hawker, wanting to preserve this souvenir of Paris. Little did most of the crowd dream that within a few days they would not have to go farther than their own front windows to see such a sight!
On Monday evening everyone realized that the flood was not a curious spectacle but a disaster. The river had been rising at the steady rate of an inch an hour, and by nightfall was sixteen feet above its normal height. Herbert decided to report the flood. This justified a taxi-cab by the day. As this was an unheard-of luxury for the Gibbons family, which had few chances to ride in automobiles at that stage of its evolution, of course the baby and I decided to profit by the opportunity, even though it was winter and not the best time of the year for joy-rides. Anyway, I was interested in the great drama that was being enacted, and we could tell Scrappie about it later. From notes taken at the time, I am able to reconstruct the story of days as stirring as any of those during the Great War.
On Monday afternoon we went up and down thequais. All the river industries, with their wooden buildings squatting on the river bank under the shelter of the solid ramparts of thequais, were swept away. Freight and customs stations and depots came within the grasp of the river. At the Entrepôt de Bercy and the Halle aux Vins, barrels of the spirits and wine were first gently floated and then drawn out into the angry stream. The water in the Nord-Sud tunnel was threatening the Gare Saint-Lazare. The Eiffel Tower moved slightly.[C]The cellars of the public buildingsalong the river front—Palais de Justice, Chambre de Deputés, Hôtel de Ville, Monnaie, Institut, Chancellerie de la Légion d'Honneur, Grand Palais, Louvre—were gradually flooded until their furnishings were extinguished. At Billancourt we saw the inundation of the Renault automobile works and the Voisin aeroplane factory. The effect of the latter disaster reached as far as Heliopolis in Egypt, where an Aviation Week was scheduled. In those days aeroplanes were in their infancy and depended upon a single factory for their motors.
[C]My critic says this is not true. He did not see it, and he doesn't think it is possible that the Tower would have remained standing, if it had moved during the flood of 1910. But I find this statement in my notes. Why shouldn't the Eiffel Tower move? I reminded my critic that we had seen together on our honeymoon at Pisa a tower that had been leaning for centuries. I do not intend to cross out this statement about the most striking landmark of Paris, the participant in most of my vistas.
[C]My critic says this is not true. He did not see it, and he doesn't think it is possible that the Tower would have remained standing, if it had moved during the flood of 1910. But I find this statement in my notes. Why shouldn't the Eiffel Tower move? I reminded my critic that we had seen together on our honeymoon at Pisa a tower that had been leaning for centuries. I do not intend to cross out this statement about the most striking landmark of Paris, the participant in most of my vistas.
Tuesday morning a heavy snow was falling. Awakened early by an explosion, we thought that the Pont de l'Alma was being blown up. This heroic measure had in fact been contemplated by the city engineers in order to prevent the backing up of the water into the Champs-Elysées district. The flood was rapidly gaining street after street in Auteuil and Charenton. A rumor was afloat that we would soon be cut off from the outside world. This meant a run on provisions and profiteering by shopkeepers. We yielded to the common impulse and laid in kerosene and potatoes for ourselves and condensed milk for Scrappie,paying double prices and thinking we were lucky in having a chance to buy.
On Wednesday morning commenced what we regarded at the time as a real reign of terror. Underground communication ceased. Owing to the inundation of their power houses, electric-trams stopped running. The subway station at Bercy collapsed. Sewers began to burst in all quarters of the city. A subterranean lake formed under the Rue Royal from the Place de la Concorde to the Madeleine, and the street was closed to traffic. In front of the Louvre and at the Pont de la Concorde soldiers worked night and day raising the parapets higher and building barricades with paving-stones and bags of cement. By evening the water had reached a height of thirty feet, breaking all records since 1799. Refugees began to pour into the city by the thousands and were lodged in the old Seminary of Saint-Sulpice near us, the Panthéon and other public buildings. The Red Cross began to be displayed throughout the city. Boats and sailors arrived from seaports. The markets required substantial police protection to prevent mobs from taking them by storm.
On Thursday and Friday the fight against the ever-rising waters was continued with desperate energy. In spite of all that human skill and labor could accomplish, the Seine pushed its way over parapets and through barricades, flooding rapidly thequaisand adjoiningquarters. By means of subways and sewers (channels opened to the river by man's hand and that had not existed in the seventeenth-and-eighteenth-century floods), districts far from the river suffered equally. Auteuil, Grenelle, Charenton, Bercy were submerged. On either side of the Trocadéro the palatial private homes of thequaiswere in the Seine up to the second story. The river appropriated to itself the entire length of Cours-la-Reine from the Pont de l'Alma to the Pont de la Concorde, reached the fashionable restaurants at the foot of the Avenue des Champs-Elysées, and partly surrounded the two palaces of Fine Arts, souvenirs of the Exposition of 1900. The streets between the Avenue des Champs-Elysées and the river formed a transplanted Venice.
Hotels and stores on the Rue de Rivoli, the Théâtre Français—and even the Opéra—found their heat and light cut off by the attack of the Seine. Far away from thequais, in the neighborhood of the Gare Saint-Lazare, the Seine, following the subway tunnel, burst forth into the Place du Havre and the Cour de Rome. Hasty barricades were of no avail. One could hardly trust his eyes when he looked up the Boulevard Haussmann from the Opéra and saw boats flitting back and forth as far as Saint-Augustin and the Boulevard Malesherbes. On the Rive Gauche the aspect of Paris grew even more alarming. The Esplanade des Invalides and the Quai d'Orsay joined the Seine. Soldiersthrew a pontoon bridge across the Esplanade for pedestrians. But taxi-cabs and buses were compelled to plunge into the water hub-high. We saw motor-drawn vehicles stalled because the water had reached their engines, while the old-fashionedcocherswent merrily by, proud of their superiority. All the people infiacreshad to do was to put their feet up on thecocher'sbox. The Chamber of Deputies and the Ministery of Foreign Affairs were approachable by boat. The angle formed by the Boulevard Saint-Germain, the Quai d'Orsay and the Rue du Bac was all under water. In this angle the Rue d'Université and the Rue de Lille were practically inaccessible. We who lived in the Latin, Luxembourg and Montparnasse Quarters could reach the Seine only by the Rue Dauphine or the Boulevard Saint-Michel. For increasing torrents soon covered the Rue des Saints-Pères, the Rue Bonaparte and the Rue de Seine. We had never realized before how the early builders of Paris, in their determination to stick to the river for purposes of defence, had reclaimed ground much lower than the flood level of the Seine, relying upon the masonry of thequaisto keep back the river. In modern times we have undermined the natural defences of the Rive Gauche by bringing our railways to the center of the city, by our sewers and by the subways. When you are on a Seine river-boat, you can see all along the river how we have opened up the city to floods. Paris,honeycombed underground, fell an easy prey to the fury of the river. The very skill that added to the material comfort and well-being of the city made Paris vulnerable when the unexpected and unprecedented happened.
The Jardin des Plantes, set apart originally for botanical purposes as its name indicates, has gradually become the Paris "Zoo." Many American tourists go there because it is the place where Cuvier worked and do not realize that it is the home of wild animals also. The Jardin d'Acclimatation in the Bois de Boulogne is more visited, and I have often heard my compatriots express surprise at the paucity of what they think is the Paris "Zoo." The Jardin des Plantes is less fashionable but much richer in its variety of animals. As it is on the river, it was invaded by the flood. In the first days, before we realized the calamity of the rising waters, the Jardin des Plantes was thronged with visitors. Interest centered around the bear-pits. The polar bears alone seemed to enjoy splashing in the icy waters. The climbers were soon treed. It was an engineering feat to rescue them with planks and prod them into portable cages. The non-climbers narrowly escaped drowning. We watched them lifted out by cranes, caught in sturdy nets. This was the only means of rescue as they tore with their claws the bands that were first placed around them by men whose only experience had been lifting horses and cows from pits.
When the river broke all records, the whole gardenwas flooded. Many keepers were prevented from reaching their posts. The police took charge. Food supplies were lacking, and the few keepers on hand did not dare to let their dangerous charges loose. The furnaces were flooded and there was no heat. In the monkey-houses the shivering animals, perched high, scolded and growled with chattering teeth. We saw them form a swinging bridge to lift out of the water's reach one of their number who seemed unable to climb. Lions and tigers, cold and hungry, roared and dashed themselves against their bars until the belated order arrived to shoot them. The hippopotamus, contrary to tradition, drowned. Only the birds, proud possessors of the secret of aviation, were superior to the calamity. Here was the occasion for a new Noah. But alas, not even an ark arrived, and it took Paris many years to restock the garden. Even now there are no giraffes like those that used to look at us from their sublime heights.
On the River Droite, the Gare de Lyon was an island. Nearer the flood took possession of the Quai des Grands Augustins with its famous book shop, and, on the other side of the Place Saint-Michel, the quaint old streets up to the Place Maubert. A depression there, where the walls of old Paris once stood, brought the flood up to the roofs of some little houses.
In the Rue Servandoni we escaped the flood: for the ground rises steadily from the Boulevard Saint-Germainto Montparnasse. This put us considerably above the reach of the river. On Friday afternoon, when we were facing a danger that stupified all, the flood was at its height. We conceived the idea of viewing it from the top of Notre-Dame. It was a long process for us, as hundreds of others thought of the same thing, and we could not both go up together. I waited with the baby in the taxi while Herbertfaisait la queue(if you do not know what this expression means it would be well to learn it before visiting Paris!) After he came down I had my turn. I was cold enough to enjoy the climb. The view from the top of the tower was unique. The next day would have been too late. We caught the flood at its flood. Paris was swimming. On both sides the cathedral had become an angry, menacing rush of water. Debris and wreckage was choked against the bridge piers. One realized that habit had given us a sense of proportion to the cityscape. The effect of diminished ground-floors and abbreviated lamp-posts and trees was sinister. It was as if elemental forces, subdued and imprisoned when the earth's surface cooled, had escaped. As I looked down on the scene, I felt that abysmal water was breaking forth. Where would it end?
After leaving Notre-Dame we rode up one side of the river to Auteuil and down the other, frequently forced to make long detours. Our remorseless enemy was making sad inroads upon the Ile-Saint Louis, and itseemed as if it would soon sweep away the Cité. The Sainte-Chapelle was almost afloat, as were the Conciergerie and the Tour de l'Horloge. The river surpassed the parapets. The arches of most of the bridges had vanished. The colossal statues of the Pont de l'Alma were submerged to their chins. At the Pont d'Auteuil the water reached the wreath around the letter N. Although the newspapers warned us that they might be swept away, the bridges were crowded with sightseers. Curiosity is stronger than fear. The current carried every conceivable object. At the Pont d'Arcole the calamity was forgotten in the sport of watching huge barrels sucked one by one under an arch and jumping high in the air as they came out on the other side.
Returning from Auteuil as darkness was falling, we had to pass above the Trocadéro, the Rue de Bassano and the Champs-Elysées. Newsboys were crying extras: "The river still rises!" We were in darkness. No lights on the Avenue des Champs-Elysées. An engineer regiment was fighting the water in the Place de la Concorde by the light of acetylene lamps. The wheezing of an old pump taking water out of the cellar of Maxim's was the only sign of life on the gay Rue Royale. To return to the Rive Gauche we had to go down to the Pont-Neuf. The other bridges were now barred. Does it not speak eloquently for the genius of our ancestors that, with bridges every few hundredfeet, the only one that could be trusted—the sole link between Rive Droite and Rive Gauche—was the work of Henri IV at the end of the sixteenth century?
Ourchauffeur, keeping up a running comment in which the hint as to his expectation of a substantialpourboirewas uppermost, picked his way as best he could back to the Rue Servandoni. We saw strange sights that night, wooden paving-blocks floating in a messy jumble; a few restaurants endeavoring to dispel the gloom with candles; soldiers with fixed bayonets guarding the inundated quarters. It was bitter cold and the glare of their fires was weirdly silhouetted in the rising waters, mingled with the shadows of deserted houses.
The river reached thirty-one feet seven inches at midnight Friday. During the rest of the night and Saturday it remained stationary. Saturday evening it began to fall slightly, and on Sunday all Paris was out in gay holiday attire to view the damage and to celebrate the retreat of the enemy. Lightheartedness returned immediately. Why worry about what was over? This is the credo of Paris. But we had seen during the dark week of flood-fighting a prophetic revelation of the real character of the people among whom we lived. Little did we dream that the precious qualities shown in the flood crisis were to be brought out more than once again in future years. In 1914 we were not surprised at the courage, persistence, unflagging energy andsolidarity with suffering of the Parisians. The flood, as I look back on it, did more damage to Paris than was done during the war by German bombs. It was a more formidable enemy than the Germans. I remember the comment of my old Emilie: "Mon Dieu, this thing is worse than fire. You can fight fire with water, but with what can you fight water?"
When the newspapers Sunday morning assured us that the danger was over, I realized how wonderful had been the struggle of civilians and soldiers against the elemental. It was a manifestation of their love for their city. And in the quick and generous relief given on all sides—and unostentatiously—to those who were driven from their homes was the proof that hearts beat fast and firm to help fellow-citizens as well as to save the historic monuments that line the banks of the Seine. That is why, when Herbert went out to preach in the Rue Roquépine church, I gave him his text from the Hebrew songster: "Many waters cannot quench love; neither can the floods drown it."
FOR many years the old expression that we can't get rid of, "the Salon," has been a misnomer. There are five Salons, and, as going to see the season's pictures and statues is a form of amusement and distraction in Paris on a par with theatrical productions, all five are equally important. Even if one desires to judge by the standard of art, establishing categories of excellence and importance is impossible. The longer one lives in Paris, the more one realizes the absolute lack of criteria in judging artistic achievement. Painters and sculptors, poets and playwrights and authors, singers and actors do not acknowledge the existence of the jury of public opinion, much less newspaper critics, art juries,premiers prix, medals, and organizations. Schools are legion: standards are the taste and liking of the individual. So we let those who claim temperament and genius have their chance, and we go to the five Salons with equal zest, just as we look constantly for lights under a bushel to please us far from the Académie Française and other bodies of the Institut. In June the two "regular" Salons exhibit separately, although simultaneously, in the Grand Palais. There is anautumn Salon of the progressives. The humorists and cartoonists have their own Salon. Last, but not least (in numbers!) the independents exhibit what they please in wooden buildings erected on Cours-la-Reine.
On a late June afternoon in 1914, I stood on the steps of the Grand Palais, after an afternoon in the two big Salons—I mean to say principal Salons—no, in order to escape criticism let me put it "most universally accepted as important" Salons. It was raining hard. I never saw the water come down in sheets the way it did that afternoon. Cabs were of course unobtainable. The wind made umbrellas no protection. And I was wearing my best frock. What a bother! Hundreds waited as I did, preferring the additional fatigue of standing herded almost to suffocation to spoiling their clothes. Suddenly, the rumor spread of a flood, a flood as disastrous as 1910. Only this time the water came from above. So heavy was the rainfall that sewers were bursting and new excavations for subway extension were caving in. Enterprising newsboys brought us the evening papers with scare headlines. Not far from where we were an hour earlier choirboys, going home from practice, were swallowed up in the earth in front of Saint-Philippe-de-Roule. A taxi-cab hurrying along the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré disappeared. The earth opened up under a newspaperkiosqueand a shoe store at the corner of the Boulevard Haussmann and the Rue du Havre.Eboulementseverywhere. The Place de l'Alma was a gaping hole, tramway tracks and pavements falling into the new subway station.
Hôtel de Ville from the Pont d'ArcoleHôtel de Ville from the Pont d'Arcole
My mind went back to the dark week of 1910, which I have just described. Comments of the Salon crowd were identical in reaction to those we heard after the flood. "Outrageous, theincurieof the municipal authorities! Something should be done to protect us against this constant digging. Why, it won't be safe to stick your nose out of doors. These awful accidents—in Paris, mind you! Somethingmustbe done!" For an hour it went on like that. Then the storm stopped. The sun, still high at six in June, broke through the clouds. The wind died down. I started up to the Champs-Elysées with the crowd. More newsboys! This time the principal headline announced the trial of Madame Caillaux. The Parisians—and I with them—went down into the Métro. An hour ago such a risky undertaking would have caused us to shudder with horror. No more underground for us! As I waited in line for my ticket, the man in front of me said to his wife, "Now do you really think that Madame Caillaux—"
I laughed to myself. The Medes and Persians boasted of not changing their laws. The Parisians could boast of not changing their mentality. A danger over is a danger forgotten. Hurrah for the new sensation! My readers may think me guilty of skippingsuddenly backwards and forwards in this book from one thing to something entirely different. But remember that I am writing in Paris and about Paris. Paris is like that. I went forward to 1914 to get an illustration for 1910. The very day after we were sure the flood was going down, we lost interest in the Seine. Our great project of an emergency channel for turning the Seine at flood-time died in twenty-four hours and will not be revived until Paris is actually being once more submerged.Actualitéis a word for which we Anglo-Saxons have no equivalent. It means the thing-of-the-moment-which-is-of-prime-interest. And the press can create a newactualitéovernight.
The Government did this several times during the war in order to relieve a tense internal political situation. During the last German drive we had the affair of the false Rodins, and we turned to read about the new statue exposed as a fake each day before we looked for the new German advance. When the Clemenceau Cabinet was threatened, a twentieth-century Bluebeard, with the police daily discovering new wives, was dished up to us every morning in all the papers.
Back in 1910 we turned from the flood toChantecler. After seven years of heralding and "puffing," after many mysterious delays that whetted the appetite, the management of the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin announced that the curiosity of Paris would be rewarded at the end of January. The flood was the lastpostponement. The waters had hardly begun to recede before public interest was again centred uponChantecler. When therépetition généralewas given on February sixth, oldest inhabitants and historians of the French theatre were agreed that not even Hernani nor yetLe Mariage de Figarohad created so universal an anticipatory interest. WasChanteclermerely an eccentric literary endeavor or was it to prove a practical theatrical venture? More than any living writer Rostand had been able to win for his plays recognition as literature and recognition as "money-winners" in the theatres of foreign countries as well as his own.
Looking back over a decade I may be wrong in comparing a past with a present event. But I honestly believe that there was far more interest in Paris in what was going on at the Porte-Saint-Martin on the evening of February 6, 1910, than in what took place at Versailles on the afternoon of June 28, 1919. Interest was lost in the Treaty of Versailles before it was signed.Chanteclerhad a fighting chance to succeed. Just as the curtain started to rise before the cream of French literary and theatrical circles there was a cry of "Pas encore!" M. Jean Coquelin sprang up from the prompter's box in conventional evening dress. Was there to be another postponement—a fiasco in the presence of the invited guests? No: for M. Coquelin began to recite a prologue, inimitably phrased. He told the audience that they were to be introduced to abarnyard as soon as the farmer's family had gone. It was Sunday afternoon, and when the chores were finished, the animals would be left to themselves. As he spoke, numerous illustrative sounds came from the stage. We heard the young girls going off with a song on their lips, the wheels of a receding carriage, the bells of the village church, and shots of hunters out for their Sunday sport. Then M. Coquelin disappeared, and the curtain went up.
The first two acts were wildly received. The third act was too long and modernisms marred the beauty of the verse. The lyrical continuity of the play was broken by the introduction of a purely satirical effect. The real reason for lack of sustained interest was the mental confusion and weariness of having to imagine the actors as animals. The human mind is incapable of receiving through the sense of vision a representation of the unreal, where the real is at the same time glaringly evident, and keep clear, harmonious, concordant images. No ingenuity could make an actor's figure like a bird's. And then humans do not differ in size like birds. There was no way of approximating widely different proportions of the rooster, the black-bird, the pheasant and the nightingale.
In watchingChanteclerI had the same painful impression of how we are handicapped by the multiplicity of necessities we have created for ourselves in modern days as I had in watching the flood. Our evolutionhas bound us fast with chains of our own forging. Physically and mentally, we have manufactured so many props to lean upon that we can no longer stand on our own feet.Chanteclercannot be compared with the animal plays of Aristophanes for in Greek drama there was no attempt to present to the spectators a visual image in harmony with the audile image. Nor even in Shakespeare's time was the dramatist limited by the difficulties of amise en scène. A Midsummer Night's Dream was an easier proposition for the Elizabethan actor than for Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, despite the properties of Her Majesty's Theatre, the hidden orchestra playing Mendelssohn's music, and the magic aerial ballets.
Our next "real show" was the political campaign for the new Chamber of Deputies that was to inaugurate the fifth decade of the Third Republic on June first. Herbert spent an inordinate amount of time, I thought, in puzzling out the voting strength of the Ministerialist and Opposition groups, and patiently wrote articles for American magazines about Radical Socialists, Clemenceau and Caillaux, to vary his Turkish articles. But whether he treated of French leaders and politics or of Venizelos or of the Young Turks, his articles invariably came back with a polite rejection slip. We put them away and sold them later, when they were out of date, for more than we would have gotten then. Our money for writing came from theHerald, and we realized thatif you want to make your living by writing the anchor to a newspaper is not lightly to be weighed.
But though I was not even mildly interested in Radical Socialists, Republicans of the Left, Independent Socialists, Progressists and what not, I did like to go to political meetings. They were good for your French and good for the opportunity of studying the influence of politics upon the Latin character. How the French love meetings! They use our English word instead ofréunion, just as they always speak of self-government. But they are not at all like us in politics. There are as many parties as there are leaders, and their campaigns center around personalities, not principles.
In 1910, the first round of the election was on April 24, and the final round on May 8. It just happened that May first was a Sunday, and fell between the two election Sundays. Throughout the Third Republic, Labor Day has been a time of fear and trembling for the Parisbourgeoisie. The Cabinet is always anxious on May first. You never can tell what is going to happen when crowds gather in Paris: so the wise Government does not allow trouble to be started. Encouraged by the success of their Ferrer demonstration on the Boulevard de Clichy a few months before, the revolutionary elements decided to make May Day a big event with the hope of influencing the second round of the elections. Premier Briand decided there would beno May Day parade. Believing that the Government would not dare to come into conflict with them in the midst of their election struggle, workingmen's unions plastered Paris with boastful posters announcing a monster demonstration in the Bois de Bologne, followed by a parade to the Place de la Concorde. This was in open defiance to the law, which requires a permit for gatherings in the open air and for parades. But M. Briand was equal to the occasion. Saturday night he threw twenty thousand troops into Paris. They bivouacked in the Place de la Concorde, the Place de l'Etoile, and in the Bois. I took Christine to church. After the service, we went to the Bois for lunch. There were troops on every road in the part of the Bois indicated in the posters as the workingmen's rendez-vous. Here and there little tents with the Red Cross flag were pitched, and to make the picture more impressive doctors in white coats stood before the door. This scared the workingmen more than the soldiers did. We saw many of them in their blue blouses. But they took care not to stop or to walk in numbers.
Thebourgeoisiewere able to rest easy. Assured that order would be kept, fashionable Paris flocked in great numbers to the Longchamp races. Of course we went, too. As Herbert had a story, he bought the best seats. We were not far from President Fallières, and we saw the spring fashions. Scrappie created as much of a sensation as some of the gowns. People who frequentLongchamp are not in the habit of bringing babies with them. But with me it is always, "love me, love my child."
The unions did not have good luck in the spring of 1910. But no more did the clericals and monarchists. Hopes of a clerical reaction were dissipated. Briand was as bitter against the orders as against the unions. The royalists no longer count. We had many royalist friends. Some we knew well enough to ask, "How goes the propaganda?" And they knew us well enough to answer, "Pas de blague! C'est à rire!" "Stop teasing me: it's a joke!" The Duke of Orleans has about as much chance of being King of France as he has of being President of the United States. In our estimates of political conditions are we not too apt to judge France by her checkered past? There is no government in Europe more assured of stability than the French Republic: and this was as true in 1910 as it is in 1919.
Public lectures are a source of diversion to Parisians. We Americans think that we are great on listening to ourselves and others talk. But crowds in France do not need a political campaign, a religious revival or a return from near the North Pole to come together for a lecture. The most surprising topics, treated by men who are not in the public eye, draw attentive and assiduous audiences. Every day you have a wealth of choice in free lectures in Paris. Some newspaperspublish the lecture program of the day just as naturally as they publish the theatrical offerings. At the Sorbonne, the Collège de France, the Ecole des Hautes-Etudes, the Ecole des Sciences Politiques, the Ecole des Chartes, the various Musées, and a host of other organizations offer single lectures and courses of lectures, week days and Sundays, either free or for a very slight fee. Many of the best courses in the various Facultés of the University of Paris are open to the public. Just to give one instance of popular interest in a rather technical subject, we used to attend the courses in physical geography of Professor Brunhes at the Collége de France. That year he was treating the formation of the mountainous center of France. If you did not go early, your chances of a seat were slim. There were always people standing thronged at the doors way out into the hall. This was not unusual. Any man who knew his subject and who could treat it with vigor and wit was sure of asalle comble. His subject did not matter. One did not have to spend money: free courses were as attractive as those for which a fee was charged. We discovered that Parisians never cease going to school. One is accustomed to see only young faces in the class-rooms of American universities. In the Sorbonne and the Collège de France there are students from sixteen to seventy.
If music is your passion, you can indulge it to the full in Paris. With the Opéra and Opéra Comiqueand Opéra Municipal, there is something that you really want to see every day, and when the music does not particularly attract you, you can be sure of an excellentdivertissement, as the ballet spectacle is called. Parisians love choregraphy. And there is choregraphy for all tastes and all moods. Paris is the mother of the spectacle calledrevue. We have borrowed the name but not the thing. Norevuecan be successful in Paris unless it possesses distinct quality in dances, costumes,mise en scène, and especially in the dialogue. Therevuemust reflect what Parisians are thinking about, take into accountactualités, and interpret the events of the day. This means constant change in the dialogue, suppression of old and introduction of new scenes, to the point where you can go to the samerevuein the third month of its run and find something entirely different as far as the lines go. For six months of the year the bands of the Garde Républicaine and of the regiments stationed in Paris play in the gardens and squares on Thursdays and Sundays. The Tuileries offers from April to October open-air opera and concerts in the heart of the city. You pay only for your chair.
The foreigner resident in Paris soon becomes aware that he does not have to leave his own quarter to find a good evening's entertainment. Real Paris shows are perhaps best to be found far from the Grands Boulevards, Clichy and Montmartre. From the heights ofsuperior opportunity one does not want to look down upon the tourist and tell him that he doesn't really see Paris. But the fact remains that when theatres and music-halls and restaurants become rendezvous for foreigners they insensibly lose their distinctive local atmosphere. They begin to cater to the tourist trade and give their audiences what they come to see. This is so true of the Folies-Bergère, the Casino de Paris and other large music-halls that the program has become half English and the actresses and choruses and clowns are as often of London as of Paris origin. The same foreign invasion on the stage, following the invasion in the audience, is to be found at the Ambassadeurs and Marigny on the Champs-Elysées. Alas! even the Concert Mayol type of music-hall has succumbed to the temptation of catering to the big world. English and American "turns" are dragged in by the ears to enlivenrevuesfor those who do not understand French, and the spectacle has become a totally un-Parisian jumble of vaudeville. But in the little music-halls of the quarters one still finds the atmosphere that Parisians love and a program offered to their taste. Herbert and I used to go to a theatre on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, just off the Boulevard Saint-Michel, where plays were typically Parisian. Another such theatre exists in the Rue de la Gaité. In the same street are three music-halls that put on songs and stagerevuesfor Parisians. There are probably a hundred theatresand music-halls of this kind whose names do not appear in Baedeker, and which have resisted successfully the first decade of cinema competition.
Last of all among real Paris shows thefoiresmust not be forgotten. But I speak of these in another chapter because visiting them is a goal for apromenadeand not the deliberate seeking of an evening's entertainment. You take in afoireas incidental to a walk, just as yourapéritifor your after-dinner coffee is most often the price you pay for a seat to watch the passing crowd, which, when all is said and done, is the real Paris show.
MY critic points out that after having been so enthusiastic about walks at nightfall and having put myself on record as to the exceptional advantages of seeing Paris in the dark on winter afternoons, rain or shine, I shall be inconsistent in extolling daylight Paris. Why the spell of June, when your walks are wholly in daylight? If it were inconsistency, being a woman I should be within my rights to ask the critic what he expected. But is it inconsistent? I think not. If I love to go out in the rain, if I enjoy city streets at night time, it does not follow that I do not enjoy good weather and the long days of June. It is another aspect of Paris that we get in our walks. We have time to go on longer excursions. We "do" the river and open spaces more than old quarters. And, best of all, in the two Junes of our early married life, we took the baby with us on our strolls. I felt the spell of June when we returned to Paris from Turkey in 1909. I felt it more when we were going back to Turkey in 1910. And ever since, the Paris June has had a charm all its own, deepening with theyears. However I may like autumn and winter and spring, June is the best month. The spell is partly due to the knowledge that one is soon going off to the shore or mountains for the summer, and partly to the thought that it might be the last June. Each year we have felt that we ought to return to America in the autumn.
In the Rue Servandoni year, April and May were cold, wet months. Spring fever did not get us until June. Then we decided that all the wisdom and profit of our Paris year was not to be found in the Bibliothèque Nationale. We began to divorce ourselves from daily study by the excuse that we ought to get together a small library on Turkish history. Where could the books be bought more advantageously than on thequais? From the Pont des Saints-Pères to beyond Notre-Dame the parapets of the Rive Gauche are used by second-hand booksellers for the display of their wares. Thebouquinistesclamp wooden cases on the stone parapets. You can go for more than a mile with the certainty of finding something interesting at an astonishingly low price. There is no more delightful form of loafing in the open air. The books are an excuse. They become a habit. In order to prevent the habit from growing costly, you must make out a budget. Some days you are only "finding out what is there"; other days, before leaving home, you divest yourself of all the money in your pocketbooks and wallet exceptwhat you feel you can afford to spend. Then only are you safe! I do not know of a more insidious temptation to buy what you do not need than loitering along thequaisof the Rive Gauche. In a few days we spent all we could afford for Turkish history. But the afternoon walk started earlier and ended later. We never tired of thequaisand the river. We watched fishermen and the barges. We were amused by the men who bathe and clip dogs. We explored the streets between the Seine and the Boulevard Saint-Germain. We stood on the Pont des Arts and watched the people coming home from work. We went often into Notre-Dame. We glued our noses to the window-glass of the art print shops around the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. We selected furniture (from the side-walk!) displayed in the numerous antique shops of the Rue des Saints-Pères, the Rue Bonaparte and the Rue de Seine. We always came back at sunset, with the westward glow before us. That was when our oldest daughter got the taste of going to bed late.
The narrowest street in Paris is the Rue de Venise, which runs from the Rue Beaubourg across the Rue Saint-Martin to the Rue Quicampoix. But neither in itself nor in its location is it as picturesque as the Rue de Nevers, luring you from the Pont Neuf as you cross to the Rive Gauche. Nowhere else in Paris is one so completely held by the past as in the Rue de Nevers. Here stood the Tour de Nesle. The Mint now comesup to one side of this street for a few hundred feet, but elsewhere it is on both sides as it was in the time of Henri IV. Massive doorways, with bars of iron and peep-holes covered with grating, tell the story of a time when one relied upon himself for protection. Noagentsin the Paris of the fifteenth century! Going down to the river from the Rue Servandoni, we always took the Rue de Nevers. In it Scrappie's carriage seemed like a full-grown vehicle. There was always the nervous fear that something would be thrown out on us from upper windows, not unjustified, as more than one narrow escape proved. We used to say that when the baby was grown up, we should enjoy taking her on one of the promenades of her infancy, and especially through the Rue de Nevers. We have shown Christine the street, and hope that she will remember it. But she will never show it to her children. Some sanitary engineer, successor of Baron Haussmann, has conceived a project of widening the Rue Dauphine. The Rue de Nevers will soon disappear. Our only hope is that the war will have delayed a long time the fulfillment of projects that mean the disappearance of what remains of mediaeval Paris.
Market day in the Rue de SeineMarket day in the Rue de Seine
The Parisian who goes to New York marvels at our skyscrapers. He is properly impressed with the hustle and bustle of the New World. But it does not take him long to note the absence of wide boulevards and the lack ofensemblein the cityscape. Then he will invariablymake two comments: "There are no trees," and "There is no place to sit down." Except the Eiffel Tower, Paris does not boast of a "biggest in the world." It will take Americans centuries to acquire a sense of harmony and proportion in city building. But shall we ever learn to bring the out-of-doors into city life? Until we do learn the big American city will be intolerable in the summer months. Paris, built on ancient foundations, has increased to a city of millions, and one still feels that an outing does not mean going to the country. Boulevards andquaisare lined with trees. Every open spot has grass and flowers. Best of all, when you want to sit down to read your paper or look at the crowd, there is always a bench. You do not have to go home or indoors to rest, and wherever you live, a park or boulevard is near at hand. Parisians are as closely huddled together as New Yorkers. But they can spend all their leisure time in the open. The privilege of sitting down on a bench is a blessing. All the year round you can eat or drink out of doors. I have often marveled at the criticism that the French dislike open air, simply because they, like other Europeans, do not keep their windows open at night. The Parisian lives far more in the open air than the American does. To be out of doors day and night is a natural instinct from the cradle to the grave. Trees and benches are a large part of the spell of June in Paris.
Then there were the omnibuses with theirimpériales. When we did not have the price of a cab, we could get on top of the Montsouris-Opéra or Odéon-Clichy bus, and go for a few sous from south to north across the river through the heart of Paris. We climbed to theimpérialeof the tram at Saint-Sulpice and rode to Auteuil, on the horse-drawn omnibus from the Madeleine to the Bastille, from the Place Saint-Michel to the Gare Saint-Lazare, from the Gare Montparnasse to La Villette, from the Bourse to Passy, from the Panthéon to Courcelles. Alas! horses andimpérialesdisappeared before the war. The last omnibus with three horses abreast was the Panthéon-Courcelles line. It was replaced by closed motor-bus in 1913. Each year, when June comes round, I long for these rides. Horses, I suppose, are gone forever. But we still hope for the revival of an upper story on our motor-buses. There never was—or will be—a better way of having Paris vistas become a part of your very being.
Foiremeans fair. But the term is used for a much more intimate and vital sort of a fair than we have. The French have big formal fairs in buildings and grounds, where a little fun is mixed in with a lot of business. But they have also small street fairs, solely for amusement, and selling street fairs, where amusements have their full share. The Parisfoiresare a distinct institution. There is a regular schedule for them, as for Brittanypardons. From the end of March to thebeginning of November you can always find afoirein the city or the suburbs. They are held out of doors, generally in the center of a boulevard. Some of them are important institutions. In the businessfoiresyou range from scrap-iron, old clothes and nicked china and disreputable furniture at the Porte Saint-Ouen and on the Boulevard Richard Lenoir to the costliest Paris has to offer on the Esplanade des Invalides and building materials and engines in the Tuileries. The purely amusementfoireson the Quai d'Orsay, the Boulevard de Clichy, and at Saint-Cloud stretch for blocks and are attended by all Paris. To go to them is the thing to do.
But each quarter has itsfoire, underwritten by the shop-keepers and café proprietors of the neighborhood. They are never widely heralded, you stumble upon them by chance. And if you want to see real Paris the littlefoiresgive you the closest glimpse it is possible to get of Paris at play. At thefoires de quartierthere are no onlookers. Everybody is taking part. If you do not feel the impulse to get on the merry-go-round, the dipping boats, the scenic-railway; if you are averse to having your fortune told; if you feel doubtful of your ability to throw a wooden ring around the neck of a bottle of champagne; if you are indifferent to the mysteries of the two-headed calf and the dancing cobra; if your stomach does not digestpain d'épiceand candy made of coal-tar; if you think yourbaby ought not to have a rubber-doll or a woolly lamb or a jumping rabbit made of cat's fur—for heaven's sake stay away from thefoires!
Most of the neighborhoodfoiresare held in June. Whatever direction you take for your evening walk, your ears will give you a goal towards which to work. The merry-go-rounds have the same class of music as in America, and the tricks of the barkers—their figures of speech even—are the same. But the difference between our amusement parks and the Parisfoiresis the spontaneous atmosphere of thefoires, their setting improvised in the midst of the city, and the amazing childlike quality of the fun. Seven or seventy, you enjoy the wooden horses just as much. And there is no dignity to lose. You do not care a bit if your cook sees you wildly pushing a fake bicycle or standing engrossed in the front row of the crowd watching a juggler.
The glorious days of June, when we put work deliberately out of our scheme of things, furnish opportunities for excursions of a different character than those of Sunday. At the risk of being ridiculed again by my critic, who has read my praise ofrepos hebdomadaire, I must confess that Sunday has its drawbacks. The whole city is out on Sunday, and every place is crowded. Your good time is somewhat marred all day long by the anticipation of the crowded trains and trams, for a place in which you wait with much less equanimity than when you left home in the morning. On week daysthere are no waits and plenty of room. I can entice my husband from his work—if it is June!
It is surprising how far afield it is possible to go at little drain on your strength and pocket-book on a June week-day. We wanted just the country sometimes. Then it was the valley of Chevreuse, Villers-Cotteret, luncheon in a tree at Robinson, or the Marne between Meaux and Château-Thierry. On a very bright day one could choose the shade of Compiègne, Chantilly, Rambouillet, Versailles, Marly, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Cloud, Fountainebleau, forests and parks incomparable. Cathedral-hungry or in a mood for the past, Amiens, Beauvais, Evreux, Dreux, Orléans, Mantes, Chartres, Sens, Troyes, Rheims, Laon, Soissons, Noyon, and Senlis are from one to three hours by train. A good luncheon at little cost is always easily found. And after lunch you have no difficulty in getting acocherto take you to the ruins of a castle or abbey for a few francs.
Inexhaustible as is thebanlieueof Paris you are always glad to get back. From whatever direction you return, the first you see of the great city is the Eiffel Tower. It beckons you back to the spell of June—in Paris.
IN September, 1910, we went to Constantinople for just one year, as we had gone to Tarsus for one year. But the lure of the East held us. We loved our home up above the Bosphorus behind the great castle of Rumeli Hissar. When the Judas-trees were ablaze and nightingales were singing that first spring in Constantinople, we forgot Paris and rashly promised to stay two years longer. Life was full of adventure, the war with Italy, the war between Turkey and the Balkan States during which our city was the prize fought for, cholera, the coming of our second baby, and a wonderful trip in the Balkans. We would not have missed it, no, but Paris called us again, and we decided to leave the political unrest and wars of the Near East to return to the peaceful atmosphere of the Bibliothèque Nationale.
My husband could not get away from Constantinople until the end of June and then he wanted to pay his way back to Paris by traveling through the Balkans again after peace was signed with Turkey. With my two children, I sailed for Marseilles at the beginning of March and reached Paris just in time to get the lastweeks of winter. In the calendar seasons are conventional. As in the United States, France frequently has winter until April is well started.
I found a little apartment on the Rue du Montparnasse just north of the Boulevard. From the standpoint of my friends I suppose the Quarter was a bit morecomme il fautthan the Rue Servandoni. I missed the picturesqueness of our old abode with theépicerieon the ground floor and themoyenageuxatmosphere. But the change to the Montparnasse Quarter had its compensations. The air, none too good in the great city, is better around the Boulevard du Montparnasse than in any other part of the city except Montmartre, Belleville and Buttes-Chaumont. You are on high ground away from the heavy mists and dampness of the river. Communications are excellent. You do not have to sacrifice the feeling of being in a real vital part of Paris, either. We still lived in the midst of historical association. If Gondorcet hid in the Rue Servandoni from those who would have chopped his head off during the Terror, Lamartine was hauled from a house on the Rue du Montparnasse by the soldiers of Louis Napoleon at the beginning of thecoup d'etatof 1851, and to the Rue du Montparnasse flocked the cream of Paris on Mondays to hear Sainte-Beuve during the Third Empire.
It was a new world opened for the eyes of Christine and Lloyd to live cooped up in an apartment after thebig house at Rumeli Hissar and to have to walk through city streets to find a garden to play in instead of simply stepping out of their own front door. But life has its compensations—everywhere and at all times. You never get anything without sacrificing something else for it. We have to choose at every step, and we must turn away from some blessings to obtain others. I love the country. Theoretically speaking, it is the best place to bring up children. But living in the open does deprive them of the mental alertness, of the broad vision from infancy, of the self-reliance, of the habits of industry that childhood in the city alone can give. And then, the doctor comes right away when you telephone.
Thirty-Eight Rue du Montparnasse was opposite Notre-Dame-des-Champs, and only a door down from the Boulevard. From the windows my tots could see the passing show on the boulevard: and the church was a never-failing source of interest. Just opposite us was the sexton's apartment, tucked into the roof of the church. It is characteristic of Paris that a home should be hidden away in an unexpected corner like this. From the windows Christine and Lloyd could see the little church children playing on their flat roof, and out of the door below the choir boys passed in and out. We went into our apartment at First Communion season. My childhood enjoyed the "little brides of Christ" in their white dresses and veils. Every dayhad its weddings and funerals. The children did not distinguish between life and death. Whenever carriages stopped in front of the church, they would jump up and down and shout, "Mariage!"
A little sister arrived at the beginning of May. When June came, I was able to take Emily Elizabeth out to market. Every morning we went down the Boulevard Raspail to Sadla's, on the corner of the Rue de Sèvres, and twice a week to the market on the Boulevard Edgar-Quinet. They were the blessed days, when I had no cook—which meant that I could buy what I liked to eat, and no nurse—which meant that I saw something of my own children. Servants are a necessary evil to the housewife and mother that wants to see something of the world in which she lives. But an occasional interlude, when everything devolves on mother, is good both for her and the children.
During the war Sadla's went bankrupt, and for several years the corner opposite the Hotel Lutetia has been desolate. Probably the firm failed for the very reason that made it unique among the provision-shops even of Paris, where the selling of food is as much a work of art as the cooking of it. We loved Sadla's. Marketing there was always a joy. Your baby-carriage was not an inconvenience: for everything was displayed outside on the street. You started with fish and ended with fruit and flowers, passing by meats and vegetables, canned goods, groceries, pastry, cakes andcandies. The fish swam in a marble basin under a fountain. You made your choice, and the victim was netted by a white-clad boy and flopped over the counter to the scales. Live lobsters sprawled in sea-weed, and boiled ones lay on ice. Oysters from fifty centimes to five francs a dozen were packed in wicker baskets, passed by their guardian every few minutes under the fountain. In thehors d'œuvresand cold meat section, you had your choice of the cheapest and the most expensive variety of tempting morsels. It made no difference if you wanted a little chicken wing or a big turkey encased in truffle-studded jelly, a slice of ham or a whole Yorkshire quarter, one pickle or a hundred, twenty centimes worth ofsalade Russeor an earthenware dishful arranged like an Italian garden landscape, one radish or a bunch of them. In Paris everybody is accustomed to purchasing things to eat and drink of the best quality: so you do not feel that the quality of what you want depends upon the quantity you ask for. On the meat counters, for instance, single chops, and tiny cutlets and roasts, and chickens of all sizes, are displayed side by side, each with its price marked. Apples, pears, tomatoes, bananas, even plums, are price-marked by the piece. Tarts and cakes are of all sizes. When you come to flowers, you can buy single roses or carnations. I never tired of shopping at Sadla's. Nor did the children.
Vegetables and fruits and nuts are mostly bought inthe open markets or from themarchandes des quatre saisons, who deal also in dairy products and poultry and flowers. The markets are held on certain days in different quarters. The women with push-carts line the streets every day. They go early in the morning to the Halles Centrales and buy whatever they find is the bargain of the day, and hawk in their own quarter, announcing their merchandise by queer cries that even to the well-trained ear of the French woman need a glance at the push-cart to confirm what is at the best a guess.
It is fun to buy on the street, and the commodities and price are sometimes an irresistible temptation. But you have to watch themarchandes des quatre saisons. They have a way of throwing your purchase on the scales in the manner of an American iceman, and you want to be ready to put out your hand to steady the needle. Your eye must be sharp too, to watch that some of the apples do not come, wormy and spotted, from a less desirable layer underneath the selling layer. It is a wonderful lesson in learning how to put the best foot forward to watch the push-cart women arranging their wares on the side-walks around the Halles Centrales before starting out on the daily round. From the writings of Carlyle and other seekers after the picturesque, the legend has grown that thepoissonnières, who knitted before the guillotine, are a race apart. But there is as much truth in this belief as in the belief that our gallant marines did the trick alone at Château-Thierry.Fish women are no more formidable among Parisiennes than the general run ofmarchandes des quatre saisons. And ask almost anyone who has lived in a Paris apartment about her concierge!
Fresh from Montenegro, Herbert reached our new home on the morning of July fourteenth. He explained that he had left the Greeks and Serbians and Bulgarians to fight over the Turkish spoils to their heart's content. He was sick of following wars. He wanted to see his new baby. It had come over him one night in Albania, when sleeplessness was due to the usual cause in that part of the world, that by catching a certain boat from Cattaro to Venice he could get home for the Quatorze.
After he had looked over his new acquisition, we started out for a stroll by ourselves just to talk things over. We walked down the Boulevard Montparnasse to the Place de l'Observatoire. Between the Closerie des Lilas and the Bal Bullier was a big merry-go-round. The onlookers were throwing multi-colored streamers at the girls they liked the best among the riders. In the middle of the street a strong man in pink tights was doing stunts with dumb-bells and the members of his family.
The same thought came to us both. What a pity the children are missing this! We hurried back for them, forgetting that we had promised ourselves a long just-us talk to bridge the months of separation. And we returnedto join in the celebration, my husband pushing the baby-carriage and I with progeny hanging to both hands. Why do children drag so, even when you are walking slowly? Every mother knows how they lean on her literally as well as figuratively.
That Quatorze was the beginning of a new epoch. A new generation was to have childhood vistas of Paris, but parent-led and parent-shown, as it had been for me thirty years before. For that is the way of the world.
WHEN you are in Paris without children you can get along in a hotel or apension: and you can probably live as cheaply as, if not more cheaply than, in a home of your own. There are several combinations. Inexpensive rooms (in normal times) can be found in good hotels: and there are lots of hotels that take only roomers. You do not, as at apension, have to be tied down to at least two meals where you live. The advantages of a furnished-room or apensionare: easy to find in the quarter you wish to live in; no bother about service; and no necessity to tie yourself up with a lease. But if you are making a protracted stay, it is wise to weigh at the beginning the disadvantages with the advantages. You get tired of the food; you have to associate daily with people whom you do not like; and—especially if you are of my sex—you have no place to receive your friends. I think in the end most people who go to Paris and who follow the line of least resistance, either because it is that or because they have the idea that they can learn French quicker in a "Frenchpension," regret having missed the opportunity of ahome of their own, of achez soi, as the French say. For you really cannot feel that you belong in Paris unless you are keeping house. "Be it ever so humble," you can set up your own home, if you are determined to do so. There are innumerable wee apartments—a hall big enough to hang up your coat and hat, a kitchenette, and a room where your bed can be a couch disguised with a rug and pillows during the day. Studios furnish another opportunity of making a home of your own. Of course, during the war and since Paris has been overcrowded. But there will be a return to normal conditions.
And if you have a family—even one baby—hotel orpensionlife becomes unendurable.
When Herbert came back from Turkey in the summer of 1913, we found the three little rooms and kitchen of Thirty-eight Rue du Montparnasse too small for us. The first thing Herbert did was to "give notice." The Paris system of renting is very advantageous if one is looking for a modest apartment. Your lease is by the term—a term being three months—and can be canceled upon giving one term's notice. This means that you're tied down for only six months in the beginning, and after that for only three months. One can buy simple furniture, as we did in the Rue Servandoni, and sell it at the end of the year without a great loss. It is possible to rent an apartment for a year, furnish it and sell out, at about the same price you wouldpay for a furnished apartment. And you will have had the pleasure of being surrounded by your own things.
The proposition of a furnished apartment looks better than it is. The French are the worst people in the world for biting a penny. They are meticulous to a point incomprehensible to Americans. The inventory is a horror! In taking a villa, whether it be in Brittany, in Normandy, at Aix-les-Bains, or on the Riviera, you are handed sheets of paper by the arm's length, on which are recorded not only the objects in each room but the state of walls, garden, woodwork, carpets, mattresses, pillows and blankets. You wrestle with the agent when you enter. But he is cleverer than you are. And when you come to leave, he finds spots and cracks, nicks in the china, ink-stains, and all sorts of damages you never thought of. He points to your signature—and you pay! You replace what is broken or chipped by new objects. You repaint and repaper and clean. The bill is as long as the inventory. And you find that your original rent is simply an item.
I do not want to infer that you are entirely free from this annoyance and uncertain item of expense when you lease unfurnished. Your walls and ceilings and floors, your mirrors (which in France are an integral part of the building) and yourchargesare to be considered. An architect, if you please, draws up theétat des lieux, which you are required to sign as you do theinventoireof a furnished apartment. But the longer you remainin an apartment the less proportionately to your rent are the damages liable to be. As for thecharges, by which is meant your share towards the carpets in the halls and on the stairs, the lighting, elevator, etc., in many leases they are now represented by a fixed sum, and where they are not, you can have a pretty definite idea as to what they are going to be. The unexpected does not hit you.
Most Paris leases are on the 3-6-9 year basis. You sign for three years. If you do not give notice six months before the end of the three-year term, the lease is automatically continued for another equal period. For nine years, then, you are sure of undisturbed possession, and yourpropriétairecannot raise the rent on you. Leases are generally uniform in their clauses. You bind yourself to put furniture to the value of at least one year's rent in the apartment to live in itbourgeoisement(that is, to carry on no business), to keep no dogs or other pets,[D]and to sublet only with proprietor's consent. On his side, the proprietor agrees to give youproper concierge and elevator service, to heat the apartment for five months from November first to March thirty-first, and to furnish water, hot and cold, at fixed rates per cubic meter. The lease is registered at themairieat thelocataire'sexpense.