IITHE CURTAIN RISES(Paris)
ION THE GREAT ARTISTE
Out of the turmoil and struggling confusion of rehearsal, to gaze on the finished performance of the greatartiste! For in Paris we are before the curtain, not behind it; and few foreigners, though they may adopt the city for their own, and lovingly study it for many years, are granted more than an occasional rare glimpse of its personality without the stage between. From that safe distance, Paris coquets with you, rails at you, laughs and weeps for you; but first she has handed you a programme, which informs you that she does the same for all the world, at a certain hour each day, and for a fixed price. And if ever in the ardour of your admiration you show signs of forgetting, of seeking her personal favour by a rash gesture or smile, she points you imperiously to the barricade of the footlights—or vanishes completely, in the haughtiness of her ire.
Therefore, the tourist will tell you, Paris is not satisfactory. Because to his greedy curiosity she does not open her soul as she does the gates of her art treasures and museums, he pronounces her shallow, mercenary, heartless, even wicked. As her franknessin some things is foreign to his hypocrisy, as her complex unmorality resists his facile analysis, he grasps what he can of her; and goes away annoyed. Really to know Paris is to offer in advance a store of tolerance for her inconsistencies, patience for her whims, and the sincere desire to learn finally to see behind her mask—not to snatch it rudely from her face.
But this cannot be done in the curt fortnight which generally limits the casual visitor’s acquaintance. Months and years must be spent, if true knowledge of the City of Light is to be won. We can only, in our brief survey of its more significant phases, indicate a guide to further study of a place and people well worth a wider scrutiny.
The most prejudiced will not deny that Paris is beautiful; or that there is about her streets and broad, tree-lined avenues a graciousness at once dignified and gay. Stand, as the ordinary tourist does on his first day, in the flowering square before the Louvre; in the foreground are the fountains and bright tulip-bordered paths of the Tuileries—here a glint of gold, there a soft flash of marble statuary, shining through the trees; in the centre the round lake where the children sail their boats. Beyond spreads the wide sweep of the Place de la Concorde, with its obelisk of terrible significance, its larger fountains throwing brilliant jets of spray; and then the trailing, upward vista of the Champs Elysées to the great triumphal Arch: yes, even to the most indifferent, Paris is beautiful.
To the subtler of appreciation, she is more than beautiful: she is impressive. For behind the studiedelegance of architecture, the elaborate simplicity of gardens, the carefully lavish use of sculpture and delicate spray, is visible the imagination of a race of passionate creators—the imagination, throughout, of the great artist. One meets it at every turn and corner, down dim passageways, up steep hills, across bridges, along sinuous quays: the masterhand and its “infinite capacity for taking pains.” And so marvellously do its manifestations of many periods through many ages combine to enhance one another that one is convinced that the genius of Paris has been perennial; that St. Genevieve, her godmother, bestowed it as an immortal gift when the city was born.
From earliest days every man seems to have caught the spirit of the man who came before, and to have perpetuated it; by adding his own distinctive yet always harmonious contribution to the gradual development of the whole. One built a stately avenue; another erected a church at the end; a third added a garden on the other side of the church, and terraces leading up to it; a fourth and fifth cut streets that should give from the remaining two sides into other flowery squares with their fine edifices. And so from every viewpoint, and from every part of the entire city, today we have an unbroken series of vistas—each one different and more charming than the last.
History has lent its hand to the process, too; and romance—it is not an insipid chain of flowerbeds we have to follow, but the holy warriors of Saint Louis, the roistering braves of Henry the Great, the gallantBourbons, the ill-starred Bonapartes. These as they passed have left their monuments; it may be only in a crumbling old chapel or ruined tower, but there they are: eloquent of days that are dead, of a spirit that lives forever staunch in the heart of the fervent French people.
It comes over one overwhelmingly sometimes, in the midst of the careless gaiety of the modern city: the old, ever-burning spirit of rebellion and savage strife that underlies it all; and that can spring to the surface now on certain memorable days, with a vehemence that is terrifying. Look across the Pont Alexandre, at the serene gold dome of the Invalides, surrounded by its sleepy barracks. Suddenly you are in the fires and awful slaughter of Napoleon’s wars. The flower of France is being pitilessly cut down for the lust of one man’s ambition; and when that is spent, and the wail of the widowed country pierces heaven with its desolation, a costly asylum is built for the handful of soldiers who are left—and the great Emperor has done his duty!
Or you are walking through the Cité, past the court of the Palais de Justice. You glance in, carelessly—memory rushes upon you—and the court flows with blood, “so that men waded through it, up to the knees!” In the tiny stone-walled room yonder, Marie Antoinette sits disdainfully composed before her keepers; though her face is white with the sounds she hears, as her friends and followers are led out to swell that hideous river of blood.
A pretty, artificial city, Paris; good for shopping,and naughty amusements, now and then. History? Oh yes, of course; but all that’s so dry and uninspiring, and besides it happened so long ago.
Did it? In your stroll along the Rue Royale, among the jewellers’ and milliners’ shops and Maxim’s, glance up at the Madeleine, down at the obelisk in the Place de la Concorde. Little over a hundred years ago, this was the brief distance between life and death for those who one minute were dancing in the “Temple of Victory,” the next were laying their heads upon the block of the guillotine. Can you see, beyond the shadowy grey pillars of the Temple, that brilliant circling throng within? The reckless-laughing ballet girl in her shrine as “Goddess,” her worshippers treading their wild measures among the candles and crucifixes and holy images, as though they are pursued? Look—a grim presence is at the door. He enters, lays a heavy hand upon the shoulder of a young and beautiful dancer. She looks into his face, and smiles. The music never stops, but goes more madly on; as the one demanded makes a lowrévérence, then rising, throws a kiss over her shoulder to her comrades who in turn salute her; calls a gay “Adieu!” and with the smile still terrible upon her lips—is gone.
Ah, but the French are different now, you say. Those were the aristocrats, thevieille noblesse; these modern Republicans are of another breed. And yet the same blood flows in their veins, the same scornful courage animates them—who, for example, leads the world in aviation?—and on days like the fourteenthof July (the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille), the common people at least show a patriotism no less fiery if less ferocious than they showed in 1789. Let us see if they are so different after all.
The first charge against the French invariably is that of artificiality. Anglo-Saxons admit them to be charming, of a delightful wit and keen intelligence; but, they immediately add, how deep does it go? Superficially, the Parisian is vastly agreeable; courteous to the point of extravagance, an accomplished conversationalist, even now and then with a flash of the profound. Probe him, and what do you find? A cynical, world-weary degenerate, who will laugh at you when your back is turned, and make love to your wife before your very eyes!
AN OPEN-AIR BALL ON THE 14TH JULY
AN OPEN-AIR BALL ON THE 14TH JULY
AN OPEN-AIR BALL ON THE 14TH JULY
And why not? You should appreciate the compliment to your good taste. It is when he begins to make love behind one’s back that one must beware of one’s French friend; for he is a finished artist at the performance, and women know it, and are prepared in advance to be subdued. He is by no means a degenerate, however, the average Frenchman; he has to work too hard, and besides he has not the money degeneracy costs. He may have his “petite amie,” generally he has; but quite as generally she is a wholesome, well-behaved little person,—a dressmaker in a small way, orvendeusein a shop—content to drink a bock with him in the evening, at their favourite café, and on Sundays to hang on his arm during their excursion to St. Germain or Meudon. Just as a very small percentage of New Yorkers are thosewho dwell in Wall Street and corner stocks, so a very small percentage of Parisians are those who feedlouisto night restaurants and carouse till morning with riotous demi-mondaines.
It is a platitude that foreigners are the ones who support the immoral resorts of Paris; yet no foreigner seems to care to remember the platitude. The best way to convince oneself of it forever is to visit a series of these places, and take honest note of their personnel. The employés will be found to be French; but ninety-eight per cent. of the patrons are English, German, Italian, Spanish, and North and South American. The retort is made that nevertheless the Parisians started such establishments in the first place. They did; but only after the stranger had brought his crude sensuality to their variety theatres and night cafés, stripping the first of their racy wit, the second of their rollickingbonhomie, taking note only of the license underlying both—and blatantly revelling in it. Then it was that the ever-alert commercial sense of the Frenchman awoke to a new method of making money out of foreigners; and the vulgar night-restaurant of today had its beginning.
But not only in the matter of degeneracy is the common analysis of the Parisian open to refutation; his inveterate cynicism also comes up for doubt. The attitude that calls forth this mistaken conclusion on the part of those not well acquainted with French character is more or less the attitude of every instinctively dramatic nature: a kind of impersonaldetachment, which causes the individual to appreciate situations and events first as bits of drama,seenin their relation to himself. Thus, during the recent scandal of the motor bandits, I have heard policemen laugh heartily at some clever trick of evasion on the part of the criminals; only to see them turn purple with rage the next minute, on realizing the insult to their own intelligence.
A better example is the story of the littlemidinettewho, though starving, would not yield to her formerpatron(desirous also of being her lover), and whom the latter shot through the heart as she was hurrying along the Quai Passy late at night. “Quel phenomène!” she exclaimed, with a faint shrug, as her life ebbed away in the cornerbrasserie; “to be shot, while on the way to drown oneself—c’est inoui!” The next moment she was dead. And all she had to say was, “what a phenomenon—it’s unheard of!”
Is this cynicism? Or is it not rather the characteristic impersonality of the histrionic temper, which causes the artist, even in death, to gaze at herself and at the scene, as it were, from the critical vantage of the wings? And the light shrug—which so often grounds the idea of heartlessness, or simply of shallow frivolity, in the judgment of the stranger—look closer, and you will see it hiding a brave stoicism that this race of born actors makes every effort to conceal. The French throughout embody so complex a combination of Latin ardour, Spartan endurance, and Greek ideality as to render them extremely difficult of any but the most superficial comprehension. Theylaugh at things that make other people shudder; they take fire at things that leave other people cold; they burn with a white flame for beauties other people never see. As a great English writer has said, “below your level, they’re above it:—and a paradox is at home with them!”
But I do not think that they are always ridiculing the foreigner, when the latter is uncomfortably conscious of their smiling glance upon him. There are travelling types at whom everyone laughs, and these delight the Frenchman’s keen humour; but the ordinary stranger has become so commonplace to Paris that, unless he or she is especially distinguished, no one takes any notice. Here, however, we have in a nutshell the reason for that smile that sometimes irritates the foreigner: it is often a smile of pure admiration. The great artist’s eye knows no distinction of nationality or an iota of provincial prejudice. When it lights upon ugliness, it is disgusted—or amused, if the ugliness has a touch of the comic; when, on the other hand, it lights upon beauty—and how instant it is to spy out the most obscure trait of this—enthusiasm is kindled, regardless of kind or race, and thevifFrench features break into a smile of pleased appreciation. Here, he would say, is someone who contributes to the scene; someone who helps to make, not mar, the radiantensemblewe are striving for.
Paris, as no other city in the world, offers a playhouse of brilliant and charmingmise-en-scène; and gives the visitor subtly to understand that she expectshim to live up to it. Otherwise she has no interest in him. For the well-tailored Englishman, the strikingAméricaine, for anyone and everyone who can claim title to that supreme quality,chic, Paris is ready to open her arms and cry kinship. Those whom she favours, however, are held strictly to the mark of her fine standard of the exquisite; and if they falter—oblivion.
“I am never in Paris two hours,” said an American friend of mine, “before I begin to perk and prink, and furbish up everything I have. One feels that each man and woman in the street knows the very buttons of one’s gloves, and quality of one’s stockings; and that every detail of one’s costumemustbe right.” Many people have voiced the same impression: as of being consciously and constantly “on view”—before spectators keenly critical. The curtain seems to rise on oneself alone in the centre of the stage, and never to go down until the last pair of those appraising eyes has passed on.
It is a very different appraisement, however, from the “inventory stare” of Fifth Avenue. Here, not money value but beauty of line—blend of colour, grace,verve—is the criterion. And the modestly gowned littlemidinettereceives as many admiring glances as the gorgeous demi-mondaine, if only she has contrived an original cut to her frock, or tied a clever, new kind of bow to her hat. Novelty, novelty, is the cry of the exactingartiste; and who obeys wins approval—who has exhausted imagination is laid upon the shelf.
But, again, this is not the shifting, impermanent temper of Madame New York; it is the fickle variability of the great artist, exercising her eternal prerogative: caprice. She accepts a fashion one week, discards it the next for one newer; throws that aside two days later, and demands to know where everyone’s ideas have gone. It is not that she is pettish, but simply that she is used to being slaved for, and to being pleased—by something different, something more charming every hour. Infinite pains are taken to produce the merest trifle she may fancy. Look from your window into the rows of windows up and down the street, or that line your court: everywhere people are sewing, fitting minute bits of delicate stuffs into a pattern, threading tiny pearls to make a border, straining their eyes in dark work-rooms,—toiling indefatigably—to create some fragile, lovely thing that will be snatched up, worn once or twice, and tossed aside, forgotten for the rest of time.
Yet no one of the workers seems to grow impatient or disheartened over this; the faces bent absorbedly over their tasks are bright with interest, alert and full of eagerness to make something that will captivate the difficult mistress, if only for an hour. They may never see her—when she comes to inspect their handiwork, they are shut behind a dingy door; at best, they may only catch a glimpse of her as she enters her carriage, or sweeps past them outside some brilliant theatre of her pleasure. But one cries to another: “She’s wearing my fichu!” The other cries back: “And I draped her skirt!” Andsupreme contentment illumines each face, for each has helped towards the goddess’s perfection—and they are satisfied.
As I heard one unimportant littlecouturièreremark, “Dieu merci, in Paris weallare artists!” And so they all are responsible for the finished success of the star. One cannot help contrasting this ideal that animates the most insignificant of them—the ideal of sheer beauty, towards which they passionately toil to attain—with the stolid “what-do-I-get-out-of-it” attitude of the Anglo-Saxon artisan. French working people are poorly paid, they have little joy in life beyond the joy of what they create with their fingers; yet there is about them a fine contentment, an almost radiance, that is inspiring only to look upon. When they do have a few francs for pleasure, you will find them at theFrançaisor theOdéon—the best to be had is their criterion; and when the theatres are out of their reach, on Sundays and holidays they crowd the galleries and museums, exchanging keenly intelligent comment as they scrutinize one masterpiece after another.
The culture of the nation, at least, is not artificial; but deep-rooted as no other race can claim: in the poorestouvrier, no less than in the most polished gentleman, there exists the insatiable instinct for what is fine and worthy to be assimilated. And if the prejudiced concede this perhaps, but add that it remains an intellectual instinct always—an artistic instinct, while the heart of French people is callous and cold, one may suggest that there are two kinds of artists:those who give away their hearts in their art, and those who jealously hide theirs lest the vulgar tear it to pieces.
And thegreatartiste, however gracious she may be for us, however kind may be her smile, never lets us forget that we are before a curtain; which, though she may draw it aside and give us brief glimpses of her wonder, conceals some things too precious to be shown.