A GROUP OF MARBLE INSULAIRES.A GROUP OF MARBLE "INSULAIRES."So cold and natural they might be mistaken for life.
I happen to have seen the shops of many cities. I have peered into the quaint, small-windowed shops of Copenhagen; I have passed under the pendant tobacco leaves into the primitive cigar-shops of St. Sebastian; I have hobbled, in furs, into the shops of Stockholm; I have been compelled to take a look at the shops of London, Dublin, Edinburgh, Liverpool, and a host of other places; but perfect shopping is to be enjoyed in Paris only; and in the days gone by, the Palais Royal was the centre of this paradise. Alas! the days of its glory are gone. The lines of splendid boulevards, flanked with gorgeous shops andcafés; the long arcades ofthe Rue de Rivoli; and, in fine, the leaning of all that is fashionable, and lofty, and rich to the west, are the causes which have brought the destruction of the Palais Royal. Time was when that quaint old square—the Place-Royale in the Marais—was mighty fashionable. It now lies in the neglected, industrious, factory-crowded east—a kind of Parisian Bloomsbury Square, only infinitely more picturesque, with its quaint, low colonnades. You see the fine Parisians have travelled steadily westward, sloping slowly, like "the Great Orion." They are making their way along the Champs-Elysées to the Avenue de l'Impératrice; and are constructing white stone aristocratic suburbs.
So the foreigners no longer make their way direct to the Palais Royal now, on the morrow of their arrival in Paris. If they be at the Louvre, they bend westward along the Rue de Rivoli, and by the Rue de la Paix, to the brilliant boulevards. If they be in the Grand Hôtel, they issue at once upon these famous boulevards, and the ladies are in afeminine paradise at once. Why, exactly opposite to the Grand Hôtel is Rudolphi's remarkable shop, packed artistically with his works of art—ay, and of the most finished and cunning art—in oxidized silver. His shop is most admirably adapted to the articles the effect of which he desires to heighten. It is painted black and pointed with delicate gold threads. The rich array of jewellery and the rare ecclesiastical ornaments stand brightly out from the sombre case, and light the window. The precious stones, the lapis lazuli, the malachite, obtain a new brilliance from the rich neutral tints and shades of the chased dulled silver in which they are held.
Sophonisba, her mamma and sisters, are not at much trouble to decide the period to which the bracelet, or the brooch, or the earring belongs. "Cinque cento, my dear! I know nothing about that. I think it would suit my complexion."
"I confess to a more modern taste, Sophonisba. That is just the sort of thing your father would like. Now, do look at those—sphinxes, don't youcall them—for a brooch. I think they're hideous. Did you ever see such ears? I own, that diamond dew-drop lying in an enamel rose leaf, which I saw, I think, in the Rue de la Paix, is more to my taste."
And so the ladies stroll westward to the famous Giroux (where you can buy, an it please you, toys at forty guineas each—babies that cry, and call "mamma," and automata to whom the advancement of science and art has given all the obnoxious faculties of an unruly child), or east to the boulevards, which are known the wide world over, at least by name, the Boulevards de la Madeleine, des Capucines, des Italiens, Montmartre. These make up the heart and soul of Paris. Within the limits of these gorgeous lines of shops andcafésluxury has concentrated all her blandishments and wiles. This is the earthly heaven of the Parisians. Here all the celebrities air themselves. Here are the Opera stars, the lights of literature, the chiefs of art, the dandies of the Jockey Club, the prominentspendthrifts and eccentrics of the day. About four o'clock in the afternoon all the known Paris figures are lounging upon the asphaltum within this charmed space. Within this limit—where the Frenchman deploys all his seductive, and vain, and frivolous airs; where he wears his best clothes and his best manners; where he loves to be seen, and observed, and saluted—the tradesmen of the capital have installed establishments the costliness and elaborateness of which it is hardly possible to exaggerate. The gilding and the mirrors, the marbles and the bronze, the myriad lamps of every fantastic form, the quaint and daring designs for shop fronts, the infinite arts employed to "set off" goods, and the surprising, never-ceasing varieties of art-manufacture—whether in chocolate or the popular Algerian onyx—bewilder strangers. Does successful Mr. Brown, who, having doffed the apron of trade, considers it due to himself to become—so far as money can operate the strange transformation—afine fleur; does he desire also to make of plain,homely Mrs. Brown a leader of fashion and a model of expensive elegance?—here are all the appliances and means in abundance. Within these enchanted lines Madame B. may be made "beautiful for ever!" Every appetite, every variety of whim, the cravings of the gourmet and the dreams of the sybarite, may be gratified to the utmost. A spendthrift might spend a handsome patrimony within these limits, nor, at the end of his time, would he call to mind a taste he had not been able to gratify.
Sophonisba enters this charmed region of perfect shopping from the west. Tahan's bronze shop, at the corner of the Rue de la Paix, marks (or did mark) its western boundary. There are costly trifles in that window—as, book cutters worth a library of books, and cigar-stands, ash-trays, pen-trays, toothpick-holders (our neighbours are great in these), and match, and glove, and lace, and jewel-boxes—of wicked price. Ladies are not, however, very fond of bronze, as a rule. The great Maisonde Blanc—or White House—opposite, is more attractive, with its gigantic architectural front, and its acres of the most expensive linens, cambrics, &c. Ay, but close by Tahan is Boissier. Not to know Boissier is to argue yourself unknown in Paris. He is the shining light of the confectioner's art. Siraudin, of the Rue de la Paix, has set up a dangerous opposition to him, under the patronage of a great duke, whose duchess was one day treated like an ordinary mortal in Boissier's establishment, but Boissier's clients (nobody has customers in Paris) are, in the main, true to him; and his sweets pass the lips still of nearly all the élégantes of the "centre of civilization." Peep into his shop. Miss Sophonisba is within—la belle insulaire!—buying a bag ofmarrons glacés, for which Boissier is renowned throughout civilization. The shop is a miracle of taste. The white and gold are worthy of Marie Antoinette's bedroom at St. Cloud—occupied, by the way, by our English queen, when she was the guest of the French Emperor in 1855. Thefront of the shop is ornamented with rich and rare caskets. A white kitten lies upon a rosy satin cushion; lift the kitten, and you shall find that her bed is abon-bonbox!
"How very absurd!" exclaims Sophonisba's mamma,bon-bonboxes not being the particular direction which the extravagance of English ladies takes.
Close by the succulent establishment of M. Boissier, to whom every dentist should lift his hat, is the doorway of Madame Laure. Sophonisba sees a man in livery opening the door of what appears to be the entrance to some quiet learned institution. She touches her mamma upon the arm, and bids her pause. They had reached the threshold of a temple. Madame Laure makes for the Empress.
"Ah! to be sure, my child, so she does," Sophonisba's mamma replies. "I remember. Very quiet-looking kind of place, isn't it?" It is impossible to say what description of "loud" place had dwelt in the mind of Sophonisba's mamma asthe locale where the Empress Eugénie's milliner "made" for her Majesty. Perhaps she hoped to see twocent gardesdoing duty at the door of an or-molu paradise.
At every step the ladies find new excitement. By the quiet door of Madame Laure is the renowned Neapolitan Ice Establishment, well known to most ladies who have been in Paris. Why should there not be a Neapolitan icecafélike this in London? Ices we have, and we have Granger's; but here is ice in every variety, from the solid "bombe"—which we strongly recommend ladies to bear in mind next time—to the appetizingPonch à la Romaine! Again, sitting here on summer evenings, the lounger will perceive dapperbonnes, or men-servants, going in and out with little shapely white paper parcels which they hold daintily by the end. Madame has rung for an ice, and this little parcel, which you might blow away, contains it. Now, why should not a lady be able to ring for an ice—and an exquisitely-flavouredNeapolitan ice—on the shores of "perfidious Albion?"
"I wish Papa were here," cries Sophonisba; "we should have ices."
Sophonisba's mamma merely remarks that they are very unwholesome things.
Hard by is Christofle's dazzling window, Christofle being the Elkington of France.
"Tut! it quite blinds one!" says the mamma of Sophonisba. Christofle's window is startling. It is heaped to the top with a mound of plated spoons and forks. They glitter in the light so fiercely that the eye cannot bear to rest upon them. Impossible to pass M. Christofle without paying a moment's attention to him. And now we pass the asphaltum of the boulevard of boulevards—that known as "the Italiens." This is the apple of the eye of Paris.
"Now, my dears," says Sophonisba's mamma, "now we can really say that we are in Paris." The shops claimed the ladies' attention one by one.They passed with disdain thecafésradiant with mirror and gold, where the selfish men were drinking absinthe and playing at dominoes. It had always been the creed of Sophonisba's mamma that men were selfish creatures, and she had come to Paris only to see that she was right. They passed on to Potel's.
Potel's window is a sight that is of Paris Parisian. It is more imposing than that of Chevet in the Palais Royal. In the first place Potel is on "the Italiens." It is a daily store of all the rarest and richest articles of food money can command for the discontented palate of man. The truffled turkeys are the commonest of the articles. Everybody eats truffled turkeys, must be the belief of Potel. If salmon could peer into the future, and if they had any ambition, they would desire, after death, to be artistically arrayed in fennel in the shop-window of Potel. Would not the accommodating bird who builds an edible nest work with redoubled ardour, if he could be assured that his house would besome day removed to the great window on "the Italiens?"
Happy the ortolans whom destiny puts into Potel's plate of honour! Most fortunate of geese, whose liver is fattened by a slow fire to figure presently here with the daintiest and noblest of viands! The pig who hunts the truffle would have his reward could he know that presently the fragrant vegetable would give flavour to his trotter! And is it not a good quarter of an hour's amusement every afternoon to watch the gourmets feasting their eyes on the day's fare? And thegaminsfrom the poor quarters stare in also, and wonder what those black lumps are.
Opposite Potel's is a shop, the like of which we have not, nor, we verily believe, has any other city. It is the show-store of the far-famed Algerian Onyx Company. The onyx is here in great superb blocks, wedded with bronze of exquisite finish, or serving as background to enamels of the most elaborate design. Within, the shop iscrammed with lamps, jardinières, and monumental marbles, all relieved by bronzes, gold, and exotics. The smallest object would frighten a man of moderate means, if he inquired its price. There is a flower shop not far off, but it isn't a shop, it's a bower. It is close by a dram-shop, where the cab-men of the stand opposite refresh the inner man. It represents the British public-house. But what a quiet orderly place it is! The kettle of punch—a silver one—is suspended over the counter. The bottles are trim in rows; there are no vats of liquid; there is no brawling; there are no beggars by the door—no drunkards within. It is so quiet, albeit on the Boulevard, not one in a hundred of the passers-by notice it. The lordly Café du Cardinal opposite is not more orderly.
Past chocolate shops, where splendidly-attired ladies preside; wood-carving shops, printsellers, pastrycooks—where the savarins are tricked out, and wherepetit fourslie in a hundred varieties—music-shops, bazaars, immense booksellers' windows;they who are bent on a look at the shops reach a corner of the Grand Opera Street, where the Emperor's tailor dwells. The attractions here are, as a rule, a few gorgeous official costumes, or the laurel-embellished tail coat of the academician. Still proceeding eastward, the shops are various, and are all remarkable for their decoration and contents. There is a shop where cots and flower-stands are the main articles for sale; but such cots and such flower-stands! The cots are for Princes and the flower-stands for Empresses. I saw the Empress Eugénie quietly issuing from this very shop, one winter afternoon.
Sophonisba's mother lingered a long time over the cots, and delighted her mother-eye with the models of babies that were lying in them. One, she remarked, was the very image of young Harry at home.
And so on to "Barbédienne's," close by the well-known Vachette.
Sophonisba, however, will not wait for our description of the renowned Felix's establishment, where are the lightest hands for pastry, it is said, in all France. When last we caught sight of the young lady, she waschezFelix, demolishing her secondbaba!May it lie lightly on her—!
I humbly beg the pardon of Mademoiselle Sophonisba!
The Cockaynes deserve a few words of formal introduction to the reader, since he is destined to make their better acquaintance. We have ventured hitherto only to take a few discreet and distant glimpses at them, as we found them loitering about the Boulevards on the morrow of their appearance in Paris. Mr. Cockayne—having been very successful for many years in the soap-boiling business, to the great discomfort and vexation of the noses of his neighbours, and having amassed fortune enough to keep himself and wife and his three blooming daughters among thecrême de la crêmeof Clapham, and in the list of the elect of society, known as carriage-people—he had given upthe soap-boiling to his two sons, and had made up his mind to enjoy his money, or rather so much of it as Mrs. Cockayne might not require. It is true that every shilling of the money had been made by Cockayne, that every penny-piece represented a bit of soap which he had manufactured for the better cleansing of his generation. But this highly honourable fact, to the credit of poor Cockayne, albeit it was unpleasant to the nostrils of Mrs. C. when she had skimmed some of the richest of the Claphamcrêmeinto her drawing-room, did not abate her resolve to put at least three farthings of the penny into her pocket, for her uses and those of her simple and innocent daughters. Mrs. Cockayne, being an economical woman, spent more money on herself, her house, and her children than any lady within a mile of Cockayne House. It is certain that she was an excellent mother to her three daughters, for she reminded Cockayne every night regularly—as regularly, he said, as he took his socks off—that if it were not for her, she didnot know what would become of the children. She was quite sure their father wouldn't trouble his head about them.
Perhaps Mrs. Cockayne was right. Cockayne had slaved in business only thirty-five years out of the fifty-two he had passed in this vale of tears, and had only lodged her at last in a brougham and pair. He might have kept in harness another ten years, and set her up in a carriage and four. She was sure he didn't know what to do with himself, now he had retired. He was much better tempered when he went off to business by the nine o'clock omnibus every morning; and before he had given himself such ridiculous airs, and put himself on all kinds of committees he didn't understand anything about, and taken to make himself disagreeable to his neighbours in the vestry-hall, and moving what he called amendments and riders, for the mere pleasure, she verily believed, of opposing somebody, as he did everybody in his own house, and of hearing himself talk. Does the reader perceive by thistime the kind of lady Mrs. Cockayne was, and what a comfort she must have been to her husband in the autumn of his life?
How he must have listened for what the novelists call "her every footstep," and treasured her every syllable! It was mercifully ordained that Mr. Cockayne should be a good-tempered, non-resisting man. When Mrs. Cockayne was, as her sons pleasantly and respectfully phrased it, "down upon the governor," the good man, like the flowers in the poem, "dipped and rose, and turned to look at her." He sparkled while she stormed. He smiled when the shafts of her sarcasm were thrown point-blank at him. He was good-tempered before the storm began, while it lasted, and when it was over. Mrs. Cockayne had the ingenuity to pretend that Cockayne was the veriest tyrant behind people's backs; he who, as a neighbour of his very expressively put the case, dared not help himself to the fresh butter without having previously asked the permission of his wife. Fate, in order to trythe good-nature of Timothy Cockayne to the utmost, had given him two daughters closely resembling, in patient endurance and self-abnegation, their irreproachable mamma. Sophonisba—at whom the reader has already had a glimpse, and whom we last saw demolishing her secondbabaat Felix's, was the eldest daughter—and the second was Theodosia. There was a third, Carrie; she was the blue, and was gentle and contented with everything, like her father.
The reader may now be prepared to learn that it was not Mr. Timothy Cockayne, late of Lambeth, who had planned the family's journey to Paris. Mrs. Cockayne had projected the expedition. Everybody went to Paris now-a-days, and you looked so very stupid if you had to confess in a drawing-room that you had never been. She was sure there was not another family on Clapham Common, of their station, who had not been. Besides, it would exercise the girls' French. If Mr. Cockayne could only consent to tear himself away from board-meetings, and devote a little time to his own flesh and blood. They would go alone, and not trouble him, only what would their neighbours say to see them start off alone, as though they'd nobody in the world to care a fig about them. At any rate, they didn't want people to know they were neglected. Now Mr. Cockayne had never had the most distant idea of leaving the ladies of his family to go alone to Paris. But it pleased his wife to put the case in this pleasant way, and he never interfered with her pleasures. He wanted very much to see Paris again, for he had never been on the banks of the Seine since 1840, when he made a flying visit to examine some new patent soap-boiling apparatus. He was ordered about by both mother and daughters, by boat and railway. He was reproached fifty times for his manners in insisting on going the Dieppe route. He was loaded with parcels and baskets and rugs, and was soundly rated all the way from the railway station to the Grand Hôtel, on the Boulevard des Capucines, for having permitted the Custom House officers to turn over Mrs. Cockayne's boxes, as she said, "in the most impudent manner; but they saw she was without protection."
I have always been at a loss to discover why certain classes of English travellers, who make their appearance in Paris during the excursion season, persist in regarding the capital of France, or, as the Parisian has it, "the centre of civilization," as a Margate without the sea. I wonder what was floating in the head of Mr. Cockayne, when he bought a flat cloth grey cap, and ordered a plaid sporting-suit from his tailor's, and in this disguise proceeded to "do" Paris. In London Mr. Cockayne was in the habit of dressing like any other respectable elderly gentleman. He was going to the capital of a great nation, where people's thoughts are not unfrequently given to the cares of thetoilette;where, in short, gentlemen are every bit as severe in their dress as they are in Pall Mall, or in a banking-house in Lombard Street. Now Mr. Cockayne would as soon have thought of wearingthat plaid shooting-suit and that grey flat cap down Cheapside or Cornhill, as he would have attempted to play at leap-frog in the underwriters' room at Lloyd's. He had a notion, however, that he had done the "correct thing" for foreign parts, and that he had made himself look as much a traveller as Livingstone or Burton. Some strange dreams in the matter of dress had possessed the mind of Mrs. Cockayne, and her daughters also. They were in varieties of drab coloured dresses and cloaks; and the mother and the three daughters, deeming bonnets, we suppose, to be eccentric head-gears in Paris, wore dark brown hats all of one pattern, all ornamented with voluminous blue veils, and all ready to Dantan's hand. The young ladies had, moreover, velvet strings, that hung down from under their hats behind, almost to their heels. It was thus arrayed that the party took up their quarters at the Grand Hôtel, and opened their Continental experiences. I have already accompanied Mrs. Cockayne, Sophonisba, and Theodosia, on theirfirst stroll along the Boulevards, and peeped into a few shops with them. Mr. Cockayne was in the noble courtyard of the Hôtel, waiting to receive them on their return, with Carrie sitting close by him, intently reading a voluminous catalogue of the Louvre, on which, according to Mrs. Cockayne, her liege lord had "wasted five francs." Mr. Cockayne was all smiles. Mrs. Cockayne and her two elder daughters were exhausted, and threw themselves into seats, and vowed that Paris was the most tiring place on the face of the earth.
BEAUTY AND THE B----.BEAUTY & THE B——.Usually a severe Excursionist.
"My dear," said Mr. Cockayne, addressing his wife, "people find Paris fatiguing because they walk about the streets all day, and give themselves no rest. If we did the same thing at Clapham——"
"There, that will do, Cockayne," the lady sharply answered. "I'm sure I'm a great deal too tired to hear speeches. Order me some iced water. You talk about French politeness, Cockayne. I think I never saw people stare so much in the whole coarse of my life. And some boys in bluepinafores actually laughed in our very faces. I know whatIshould have done to them, hadIbeen their mother. What was it they said, Sophy, my dear?"
"I didn't quite catch, mamma; these people talk so fast."
"They seem to me," Mrs. Cockayne continued, "to jumble all their words one into another."
"That is because——" Mr. Cockayne was about to explain.
"Now, pray, Mr. Cockayne, do leave your Mutual Improvement Society behind, and give us a little relief while we are away. I say the people jumble one word into another in the most ridiculous manner, and I suppose I have ears, and Sophy has ears, and we are not quite lunatics because we have not been staring our eyes out all the morning at things we don't understand."
Here Carrie, lifting her eyes from her book, said to her father—
"Papa dear, you remember that first SculptureHall, where the colossal figures were; that was the Salle des Caryatides, and those gigantic figures you admired so much were by Jean Goujon. Just think! It was in this hall that Henry IV. celebrated his wedding with Marguerite de Valois. Yes, and in this very room Molière used to act before the Court."
"Yes," Mrs. Cockayne interjected, pointing to Carrie's hands, "and in that very room, I suppose, Miss Caroline Cockayne appeared with her fingers out of her glove."
"And where have you been all day, my dear?" Mr. Cockayne said, in his blandest manner, to his wife.
"We poor benighted creatures," responded Mrs. Cockayne, "have been—pray don't laugh. Mr. Cockayne—looking at the shops, and very much amused we have been, I can assure you, and we are going to look at them to-morrow, and the day after, and the day after that."
"With all my heart, my dear," said Mr. Cockayne, who was determined to remain in the very best of tempers. "I hope you have been amused, that is all."
PALAIS DU LOUVRE.PALAIS DU LOUVRE.
THE ROAD TO THE BOIS.THE ROAD TO THE BOIS.
"We have had a delightful day," said Sophonisba.
"I am sure we have been into twenty shops," said Theodosia.
"And I am sure," Mrs. Cockayne continued, "it is quite refreshing, after the boorish manners of your London shopkeepers, to be waited upon by these polite Frenchmen. They behave like noblemen."
"Mamma has had fifty compliments paid to her in the course of the day, I am certain," said Sophonisba.
"I am very glad to hear it," said Sophonisba's papa.
"Glad to hear it, and surprised also, I suppose, Mr. Cockayne! In London twenty compliments have to last a lady her lifetime."
"I don't know how it is," Theodosia observed, "but the tradespeople here have a way of doingthings that is enchanting. We went into an imition jeweller's in the Rue Vivienne—and such imitations! I'll defy Mrs. Sandhurst—and you know how ill-natured she is—to tell some earrings and brooches we saw from real gold and jewels. Well, what do you think was the sign of the shop, which was arranged more like a drawing-room than a tradesman's place of business; why, it was called L'Ombre du Vrai (the Shadow of Truth). Isn't it quite poetical?"
Mr. Cockayne thought he saw his opportunity for an oratorical flourish.
"It has been observed, my dear Theo," said he, dipping the fingers of his right hand into the palm of his left, "by more than one acute observer, that the mind of the race whose country we are now——"
Here Mrs. Cockayne rapped sharply the marble table before her with the end of her parasol, and said—
"Mr. Cockayne, have you ordered any dinner for us?"
Mr. Cockayne meekly gave it up, and replied that he had secured places for the party at thetable d'hôte.
Satisfied on this score, the matron proceeded to inform that person whom in pleasant irony she called her lord and master, that she had set her heart on a brooch of the loveliest design it had ever been her good fortune to behold.
"At theL'Ombre—what do you call it, my dear?" said the husband, blandly.
Mrs. Cockayne went through that stiffening process which ladies of dignity call drawing themselves up.
"You really surprise me, Mr. Cockayne. If you mean it as a joke, I would have you know that people don't joke with their wives; and I should think you ought to know by this time that I am not in the habit of wearing imitation jewellery."
"I ought," briefly responded Cockayne; and then he rapidly continued, in order to ward off the fire he knew his smart rejoinder would provoke—
"Tell me where it was, my dear. Suppose we go and look at it together. I saw myself some exquisite Greek compositions in the Rue de la Paix, which both myself and Carrie admired immensely."
"Greek fiddlesticks! I want no Greek, nor any other old-fashioned ornaments, Mr. Cockayne. One would think you were married to the oldest female inhabitant, by the way you talk; or that I had stepped out of the Middle Ages; or that I and Sphinx were twins. But you must be so very clever, with your elevation of the working-classes, and those prize Robinson Crusoes you gave to the Ragged-school children—which you know you got trade price."
"Well, well," poor Cockayne feebly expostulated, "if it's not far, let us go and see the brooch."
"There, mamma!" cried both Sophonisba and Theodosia in one breath. "Mind, the one with the three diamonds."
MUSEE DU LUXEMBOURG.MUSEE DU LUXEMBOURG.
Mrs. Cockayne being of an exceedingly yielding temperament, allowed herself to be mollified, andsailed out of the hotel, with the blue veil hanging from her hat down her back, observing by the way that she should like to box those impudent Frenchmen's ears who were lounging about the doorway, and who, she was sure, were looking at her. Mr. Cockayne was unfortunate enough to opine that his wife was mistaken, and that the Frenchmen in question were not even looking in her direction.
"Of course not, Mr. Cockayne," said the lady; "who would look at me, at my time of life?"
"Nonsense! I didn't mean that," said Mr. Cockayne, now a little gruffly, for there was a limit even tohispatience.
"It is difficult to tell what you mean. I don't think you know yourself, half your time."
Thus agreeably beguiling the way, the pair walked to the shop in the Rue de la Paix, where the lady had seen a brooch entirely to her mind. It was the large enamel rose-leaf, with three charming dew-drops in the shape of brilliants.
"They speak English, I hope," said Mr. Cockayne. "We ought to have brought Sophonisba with us."
"Sophonisba! much useherFrench is in this place. She says their French and the French she learnt at school are two perfectly different things. So you may make up your mind that all those extras for languages you paid for the children were so much money thrown away."
"That's a consoling reflection, now the money's gone," quoth Mr. Cockayne.
They then entered the shop. A very dignified gentleman, with exquisitely arranged beard and moustache, and dressed unexceptionably, made a diplomatic bow to Mr. Cockayne and his wife. Cockayne, without ceremony, plungedin medias res. He wanted to look at the rose-leaf with the diamonds on it. The gentleman in black observed that it became English ladies' complexion "à ravir."
It occurred to Mr. Cockayne, as it has occurredto many Englishmen in Paris, that he might make up for his ignorance of French by speaking in a voice of thunder. He seemed to have come to the conclusion that the French were a deaf nation, and that they talked a language which he did not understand in order that he might bear their deafness in mind. For once in her life Mrs. Cockayne held the same opinion as her husband. She accordingly, on her side, made what observations she chose to address to the dignified jeweller in her loudest voice. The jeweller smiled good naturedly, and pattered his broken English in a subdued and deferential tone. As Mr. Cockayne found that he did not get on very well, or make his meaning as clear as crystal by bawling, and as he found that the polite jeweller could jerk out a few broken phrases of English, the bright idea struck him that he, Mr. Cockayne, late of Lambeth, would make his meaning plainer than a pike-staff by speaking broken English also. The jeweller was puzzled, but he was very patient; and as he kept passing one bracelet after another overthe arm of Mrs. Cockayne, quite captivated that lady.
"He seems to think we're going to buy all the shop," growled Cockayne.
"How vulgar you are! Lambeth manners don't do in Paris. Mr. Cockayne."
"But they seem to like Lambeth sovereigns, anyhow," was the aggravating rejoinder.
"If you're going to talk like that, I'll leave the shop, and not have anything."
This was a threat the lady did not carry out. She bore the enamel rose-leaf—the leaf with the three diamonds, as her daughters had affectionately reminded her—off in triumph, having promised that delightful man, the jeweller, to return and have a look at the bracelets another day. She was quite enchanted with the low bow the jeweller gave her as he closed his handsome plate-glass door. He might have been a duke or a prince, she said.
"Or a footman," Mr. Cockayne added. "I don't call all that bowing and scraping business."
When Mr. and Mrs. Cockayne returned to the Grand Hôtel, they found their daughters Sophonisba and Theodosia in a state of rapture.
"Mamma, mamma!" cried Sophonisba, holding up a copy ofLa France,an evening paper, "you know that splendid shop we passed to-day, under the colonnades by the Louvre Hôtel, where there was that deep bluemoireyou said you should so much like if you could afford it. Well, look here, there is a 'Grande Occasion' there!" and the enraptured girl pointed to letters at least two inches high, printed across the sheet of the newspaper. "Look! a 'Grande Occasion!'"
"And pray what's that, Sophy?" Mrs. Cockayne asked. "What grand occasion, I should like to know."
"Dear me, mamma," Theodosia murmured, "it means an excellent opportunity."
"My dear," Mrs. Cockayne retorted severely to her child, "I didn't have the advantage of lessons in French, at I don't know how many guineas aquarter; nor, I believe, did your father; nor did we have occasion to teach ourselves, like Miss Sharp."
"Well, look here, mamma," Miss Sophonisba said, her eyes sparkling and her fingers trembling as they ran down line after line of the advertisement that covered the whole back sheet of the newspaper. "You never saw such bargains. The prices are positively ridiculous. There are silks, and laces, and muslins, and grenadines, and alpacas, and shawls, and cloaks, and plainsultanes, and I don't know what, all at such absurdly low prices that I think there must be some mistake about it."
"Tut," Mr. Cockayne said; "one of those 'awful sacrifices' and bankrupt stock sales, like those we see in London, and the bills of which are thrown into the letter-box day after day."
"You are quite mistaken, papa dear, indeed you are," Theodosia said; "we have asked the person in theBureaudown stairs, and she has told us that these 'Grandes Occasions' take place twice regularly every year, and that people wait for them tomake good bargains for their summer things and for their winter things."
The lady in theBureauwas right. The prudent housewives of Paris take advantage of these "Grandes Occasions" to make their summer and winter purchases for the family. In the spring-time, when the great violet trade of Paris brightens the corners of the streets, immense advertisements appear in all the daily and weekly papers of Paris, headed by gigantic letters that the fleetest runner may read, announcing extraordinary exhibitions, great exhibitions, and unprecedented spring shows. "Poor Jacques" offers 3000 cashmere shawls at twenty-seven francs each, 2000 silk dresses at twenty-nine francs, and 1000 at thirty-nine francs. "Little Saint Thomas," of the Rue du Bac, has 90,000 French linos, 1000 "Jacquettes gentleman," 500 Zouaves, and 1000 dozen cravats—all at extraordinary low prices. Poor Jacques draws public attention to the "incomparable cheapness" of his immense operations: while Little St. Thomas declares that his assortment of goods is of "exceptional importance," and that he is selling his goods at a cheapnesshors ligne. For a nation that has twitted the English with being a race of shop-keepers, our friends the Parisians who keep shops are not wanting in devotion to their own commercial interests. Indeed, there is a strong commercial sense in thousands of Parisians who have no shutters to take down. Take for instance the poetical M. Alphonse Karr, whose name has passed all over Europe as the charming author of A Journey round my Garden. Nothing can be more engaging than the manner in which M. Karr leads his readers about with him among his flowers and the parasites of his garden. He falls into raptures over the petals of the rose, and his eye brightens tenderly over the June fly. One would think that this garden-traveller was a very ethereal personage, and that milk and honey and a few sweet roots would satisfy his simple wants, and that he had no more idea of trafficking in a marketthan a hard man of business has in spending hours watching a beetle upon a leaf. But let not the reader continue to labour under this grievous mistake.
M. Karr is quite up to the market value of every bud that breaks within the charmed circle of his garden at Nice.
He cultivates the poetry for his books, but he does not neglect his ledger. In the spring, when, according to Mr. Tennyson, "a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast," and "young men's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love," M. Alphonse Karr, poet and florist, opens his flower-shop.
Carrie had taken up the newspaper which had moved the enthusiasm of her elder sisters. Her eyes fell on the following advertisement:—
"By an arrangement agreed upon,M.Alphonse Karr, of Nice,sends direct, gratuitously, and post free, either a box containing Herbes aux Turguoises, or a magnificent bouquet of Parma Violets, to every person who, before the end of March, shall become a subscriber to the monthly review entitled Life in the Country. A specimen number will be sent on receipt of fifteen sous in postage stamps."
"By an arrangement agreed upon,M.Alphonse Karr, of Nice,
sends direct, gratuitously, and post free, either a box containing Herbes aux Turguoises, or a magnificent bouquet of Parma Violets, to every person who, before the end of March, shall become a subscriber to the monthly review entitled Life in the Country. A specimen number will be sent on receipt of fifteen sous in postage stamps."
This is Alphonse Karr's magnificent spring assortment—his Grand Occasion.
"So you see, Mr. Cockayne," said his wife, "this Mr. Karr, whose book about the garden—twaddle,Icall it—you used to think so very fine and poetic, is just a market-gardener and nothing more. He is positively an advertising tradesman."
"Nothing more, mamma, I assure you," said Sophonisba. "I remember at school that one of the French young ladies, Mademoiselle de la Rosière, told me that when her sister was married, the bride and all the bridesmaids had Alphonse Karr'sbouquets. It seems that the mercenary creature advertises to sell ball or weddingbouquets, which he manages to send to Paris quite fresh in little boxes, for a pound apiece."
"Do you hear that?" said Mrs. Cockayne, addressing her husband. "This is your pet, sir, who was so fond of his beetles! Why, the man would sell the nightingales out of his trees, if he could catch them, I've no doubt."
"The story is a little jarring, I confess," Pater said. "But after all, why shouldn't he sell the flowers also, when he sells the pretty things he writes about them?"
"Upon my word, you're wonderful. You try to creep out of everything. But what is that you were reading, my dear Sophonisba, about thegrande occasionnear the Louvre Hôtel? I dare say it's a great deal more interesting than Mr. Karr and his violets. I haven't patience with your papa's affectation. What was it we saw, my dear, in the Rue Saint Honoré? The 'Butterfly's Chocolate'?"
"Yes, mamma," Theodosia answered. "Chocolat du Papillon. Yes; and you know, mamma, there was the linen-draper's with the signA la Pensée. I never heard such ridiculous nonsense."
"Yes; and there was another, my dear," said Mrs. Cockayne, "'To the fine Englishwoman,' or something of that sort."
"Oh, those two or three shops, mamma," saidSophonisba, "dedicatedA la belle Anglaise!Just think what people would say, walking along Oxford Street, if they were to see over a hosier's shop, written in big, flaring letters, 'To the beautiful Frenchwoman!"
Mr. Cockayne laughed. Mrs. Cockayne saw nothing to laugh at. She maintained that it was a fair way of putting the case.
Mr. Cockayne said that he was not laughing at his wife, but at some much more ridiculous signs which had come under his notice.
"What do you say," he asked, "to a linen-draper's called the 'Siege of Corinth?' or the 'Great Condé?' or the 'Good Devil'?"
"What on earth has La Belle Jardinière got to do with cheap trowsers, Mr. Cockayne?" his wife interrupted. "You forget your daughters are in the room."
"Well, my dear, the Moses of Paris call their establishment the Belle Jardinière."
"That's not half so absurd, papa dear," Sophonisba observed, "as another cheap tailor's I have seen under the sign of the 'Docks de la Violette.'"
"I don't know, my dear; I thought when my friend Rhodes came back from Paris, and told me he had worn a pair of the Belle Jardinières——"
"Mr. Cockayne!" screamed his wife.
"Well, unmentionables, my dear—I thought I should have died with laughter."
"Sophonisba, my dear, tell us what the paper says about that magnificent shop under the Louvre colonnade; your father is forgetting himself."
"Dear mamma," said Sophonisba, "it would take me an hour to read all;" but she read the tit-bits.
"My dears," said Mrs. Cockayne to her daughters, "it would be positively a sin to miss such an opportunity."
Mr. Cockayne took up the paper which Sophonisba had finished reading, and running his eye over it, said, with a wicked curling of his lip—
"My dear Sophy, my dear child, here are a number of things you've not read."
Sophonisba tittered, and ejaculated—"Papa dear!"
"We have heard quite enough," Mrs. Cockayne said, sternly; "and we'll go to-morrow, directly after breakfast, and spend a nice morning looking over the things."
"But there are really two or three items, my dear, Sophy has forgotten. There are a lot of articles with lace and pen work; and think of it, my love, ten thousand ladies' chem——"
Mrs. Cockayne started to her feet, and shrieked—
"Girls, leave the room!"
"What a pity, my dear," the incorrigible Mr. Cockayne continued, in spite of the unappeasable anger of Mrs. Cockayne—"what a pity theMagasins de Louvrewere not established at the time of the celebrated emigration of the ten thousand virgins; you see there would have been just one apiece."
"Well, these Paris tradespeople are the most extraordinary persons in the world," cried Sophonisba's mamma, and the absolute ruler of Mr. Cockayne. "I confess I can't make them out. They beat me. My dear, they are the most independent set I ever came across. They don't seem to care whether you buy or you don't; and they ask double what they intend to take."
"What is the matter now, my dear?" Mr. Cockayne ventured, in an unguarded moment, to ask, putting aside for a moment Mr. Bayle St. John's scholarly book on the Louvre.
"At any rate, Mr. Cockayne, we do humbly venture to hope that you will be able to spare usan hour this morning to accompany us to theMagasins du Louvre. We would not ask you, but we have been told the crowd is so great that ladies alone would be torn to pieces."
"I forget how many thousands a day, papa dear," Sophonisba mercifully interposed, "but a good many, visit these wonderful shops. I confess I never saw anything like even the outside of them. The inside must be lovely."
"I have no doubt they are, my dear," Mr. Cockayne observed. "They were built about ten years ago. The foundations were——"
"There," cried Mrs. Cockayne, rising, "there, your papa is off with his lecture. I shall put on my bonnet." And Mrs. Cockayne swept grandly from the room.
Mrs. Cockayne re-entered the room with her bonnet on; determination was painted on the lady's countenance. Cockayne should not escape this time. He should be led off like a lamb to the slaughter. Were not the silks marked at ridiculously low prices? Was not the shawl-room a sight more than equal to anything to be seen in any other part of Paris? Was not the folding department just as much a sight of Paris as that wretched collection of lumber in the Hôtel Cluny?
Some wives had only to hint to have; but that was not the case with the hapless Mrs. Cockayne. She was sure nobody could be more economical than she was, both for herself and the children, and that was her reward. She had to undergo the most humiliating process of asking point-blank; even when twenty or thirty thousand pairs of gloves were to be sold at prices that were unheard of! Men were so stupid in their meanness!
"Buy the shop," Mr. Cockayne angrily observed.
Perhaps Mr. Cockayne would be pleased to inform his lawful wife and the unfortunate children who were subjected by fate to his cruel tyranny—perhaps he would inform them when it would be convenient for him to take them home. His insults were more than his wife could bear.
"What's the matter now?" asked the despairing Cockayne, rubbing his hat with his coat-sleeve.
"Mamma dear, papa is coming with us," Sophonisba expostulated.
"Well, I suppose he is. It has not quite come to that yet, my dear. I am prepared for anything, I believe; but your father will, I trust, not make us the laughing-stock of the hotel."
"I am ready," said Cockayne, grimly, between his teeth.
"I am obliged, you see, children, to speak," icily responded the lady he had sworn to love and cherish. "Hints are thrown away. I must suffer the indignity for your sakes, of saying to your father, I shall want some money for the purchases your mother wants to make for you. It is not the least use going to this Grande Occasion, or whatever they call it, empty-handed."
"Will you allow me time to get change?" And Mr. Cockayne headed the procession through the hotel court-yard to the Boulevards.
"Walk with your father," the outraged lady said to Sophonisba. "It's positively disgraceful, straggling out in this way. But I might have known what it was likely to be before I left home."
Mr. Cockayne, as was his wont, speedily re-assumed his equanimity, and chatted pleasantly with Sophonisba as they walked along the Rue de la Paix, across the Place Vendôme, into the Rue Castiglione. Mrs. Cockayne followed with Theodosia; Carrie had begged to be left behind, to write a long letter to her intellectual friend, Miss Sharp.
Mr. Cockayne stopped before the door of Mr. John Arthur.
"What on earth can your father want here?" said Mrs. Cockayne, pausing at the door, while her husband had an interview with Mr. John Arthur within.
Theodosia, peering through the window, answered, "He is getting change, mamma dear."
"At last!"
Mr. Cockayne issued radiant from Mr. John Arthur's establishment.
"There," said he to his wife, in his heartiest voice; "there, my dear, buy what you and the girls want."
"I will do the best I can with it. Perhaps we can manage our shopping without troubling you."
"It's not the least trouble in the world," gaily said Cockayne, putting that bright face of his on matters.
"I thought you had some idea of going to the Museum of Artillery this afternoon, to see whether or not you approved of the French guns."
Mr. Cockayne laughed at the sarcasm, and again gave Sophonisba his arm, and went under the colonnades of the Rue de Rivoli, wondering, by the way, why people stared at him in his plaid suit, and at his daughter in her brown hat and blue veil. Mrs. Cockayne wondered likewise. The French were the rudest people on the face of the earth, and not the politest, as they had the impudence to assert.
When the party reached the colonnades of the Grand Hôtel du Louvre, they found themselves in the midst of a busy scene.
TheMagasins du Louvrestretch far under the Hôtel, from the Rue de Rivoli to the Rue Saint-Honoré. Year after year has the stretching process continued; but now the great company of linen drapers and hosiers have all the space that can be spared them. The endless lines of customers' carriages in the Rue Saint-Honoré and on thePlaceopposite Prince Napoleon's palace betoken the marvellous trade going on within.
The father of the English family here turned his back upon the great shop, and glancing towards the Louvre and the Church of Saint Germain l'Auxerrois, exclaimed—"Marvellous scene! A sight not to be equalled in the world. Yonder is the old church, the bell of which tolled the——"
"You're making a laughing-stock of yourself," Mrs. Cockayne exclaims, taking her husband firmly by the arm. "One would think you were an hotel guide, or a walking handbook, or—or a beadle or showman. What do you want to know about the massacre of St. Bartholomew now? There'll notbe a mantle or a pair of gloves left. Come in—do! You can go gesticulating about the streets with Carrie to-morrow, if you choose; but do contrive to behave like an ordinary mortal to-day."
Mr. Cockayne resigned himself. He plunged into the magnificent shop. He was dragged into the crowd that was defiling past the fifteen-sous counter, where the goods lay in great tumbled masses on the floor and upon the counter. He was surprised to see the shopmen standing upon the counter, and, with marvellous rapidity, telling off the yards of the cheap fabrics to the ladies and gentlemen who were pressing before them in an unbroken line. Beyond were the packers. Beyond again, was the office where payment was made, each person having a note or ticket, with the article bought, showing the sum due. A grave official marshalled the customer to the pay-place. There was wonderful order in the seeming confusion. The admirable system of the establishment was equal to the emergency. An idea of the continuousflow of the crowd past the silk and mixed fabric counters may be got from the fact that many ladies waited three and four hours for their turn to be served. One Parisian lady told Mrs. Cockayne that, after waiting four hours in the crowd, she had gone home to lunch, and had returned to try her fortune a second time.
Poor Cockayne! He was absolutely bewildered. His endeavours to steer the "three daughters of Albion" who were under his charge, in the right direction, were painful to witness. First he threaded corridors, then he was in the carpet gallery, and now he was in the splendid, the palatial shawl-hall, where elegant ladies were trying on shawls of costly fabric, with that grace and quiet for which Parisians are unmatched.
"This is superb! Oh, this is very, very fine!" cried the ladies. "How on earth shall we find our way out?"
Now they sailed among immensities of silk and satin waves. Now they were encompassed withshawls; and now they were amid colonnades of rolls of carpet.
Mrs. Cockayne stayed here and there to make a purchase, by the help of Sophonisba's French, which was a source of considerable embarrassment to the shopmen. They smiled, but were very polite.
"This is not a shop, it is a palace dedicated to trade," cried Cockayne.
"Stuff and nonsense," was his answer; "take care of the parcels. Yon know better, of course, than the people to whom it belongs."
The Cockaynes found themselves borne by the endless stream of customers into a vast and lofty gallery. Pater paused.
"This is superb! It would have been impossible to realize——"
"Don't be a fool, Cockayne," said his wife; "this is the lace department. We must not go away without buying something."
"Let us try," was saucily answered.
Mrs. Cockayne immediately settled upon some Chantilly, and made her lord, as she expressed it in her pretty way, "pay for his impudence."
The silk gallery was as grand and bewildering as the lace department; and here again were made some extraordinary bargains.
Obliging officials directed the party to the first staircase on the right, or to turn to the left, by the furnishing department. They made a mistake, and found themselves in thesalonsdevoted to made linen, where Mrs. Cockayne hoped her husband would not make his daughters blush with what he considered to be (and he was much mistaken) witty observations. He was to be serious and silent amid mountains of feminine under linen. He was to ask no questions.
In the Saint Honoré gallery—which is the furnishing department—Mr. Cockayne was permitted to indulge in a few passing expressions of wonder. He was hushed in the splendour of the shawl gallery—where all is solid oak and glass and richgold, and where the wearied traveller through the exciting scene of aGrande Occasionat the marvellous shops of the Louvre, can get a little rest and quiet.
"A wonderful place!" said Pater, as he emerged in the Rue de Rivoli, exhausted.
"And much more sensible than the place opposite," his wife replied, pointing to the palace where the art treasures of Imperial France are imperially housed.
"Grande Occasion!" muttered Mr. Cockayne, when he reached the hotel—"a grand opportunity for emptying one's pocket. The cheapness is positively ruinous. I wonder whether there are any cheap white elephants in Paris?"
"White elephants, Cockayne! White fiddlesticks! I do really think, girls, your father is gradually—mind, I say,gradually—graduallytaking leave of his senses."
"La! mamma," unfortunate Carrie interposed, raising her eyes from a volume on Paris in theMiddle Ages—"la! mamma, you know that in India——"
"Hold your tongue, Miss—of course I know—and if I didn't, it is not foryouto teach me."
Mr. Timothy Cockayne heaved a deep sigh and rang for his bill.
He was to leave for London on the morrow—and his wife and daughters were to find lodgings.
I Introduce at this point—its proper date—Miss Carrie Cockayne's letter to Miss Sharp:—