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CHAPTER IV
FIFI AND THE DUCHESS ON THE TURF

For fashionable Paris, the season begins with Auteuil. The first of the races calls all of the wanderers back to the heart of Vanity Fair. It is the famous rally, the great spring opening, the first important toilette display of the season. The meeting is held as soon as winter shows the smallest sign of relenting, and is never later than March, sometimes as early as February; but whenever it comes it marks the début of spring upon the Parisian calendar.

The weather may be bitterly cold, but that makes no difference to the Parisienne. She has prepared a costume for Auteuil and she wears it.

"Elise, what is the weather?"

"But of a coldness, Madame. It is to freeze!"

"Eh bien, bring me my fur coat."

Change the frock? The idea doesn't even occur to her. That is her Auteuil frock.

And so Auteuil usually offers a spectacle as picturesque as it is incongruous. The day is bright and cold, or – more probable supposition – the sky is lowering, and there is a flurry of snow in the air. The grand stand and pesage are not yet gay with blossoming plants. Tall braziers are set at intervals along the front of the stand, and near them hover swarms of women drawing sable coats together over frocks of chiffon and lace, showing faces a trifle blue with cold beneath flower-laden hats. They hold their chilled hands out to the flames, these forced blossoms of spring, and they shiver daintily and jest at their own discomfort and are altogether gay and inconsequent and absurd. Here and there the furs are thrown back to afford a deserving public glimpses of a toilette well worth seeing; and it is around the braziers that all Paris first gains an idea of the fashions that are to dominate spring and summer.

Feminine Paris appreciates and improves the opportunity. Nowhere in the world do races draw so large, so mixed, and so enthusiastic a crowd of women as do the races in "Parisi" – which, slangily speaking, implies the district round about Paris, and takes in all of the famous courses upon which the spring races are run, – Auteuil, Longchamps, St. Cloud, St. Ouen, Massons, Lafitte, and Chantilly.

It is a queer mixture, that feminine crowd. The Royalist Duchess, Fifi of the Variétés, the rich banker's wife, the stable boy's sweetheart, the famous actress, the little milliner, the tourist, the great manufacturers' women folk, – all are there, dressed in their best, gay, excited, conferring with jockeys and touts and illustrious members of the Jockey Club, quite impartially, in their quest for tips, betting eagerly, coquetting still more eagerly, showing their own frocks and studying those of their neighbours.

Verily, on the turf and under the turf all women as well as all men are equal, but nowhere is the mélange more amazing than at the Paris race courses. "A feminine pousse café melting into a cocktail," commented one irreverent and thirsty American as he watched the throng at the Grand Prix last year, and the description was apt if inelegant. Fifi and the Duchess come nearer meeting on equal terms in the pesage than they do in any other one place. They are beautiful women in beautiful gowns, vying with each other for the approbation of the crowd. The Duchess would not admit that, but the fact remains, and it is a fact, too, that the honours frequently rest with Fifi.

During the last few years there has been a tentative effort in the smart Parisian set toward simplicity of dress for the races. The demi-mondaines having chosen these occasions for reckless extravagance in dress, the social elect said, "Let us mark a distinction by disdaining rivalry in chiffons. Let us be chic, but with a difference, with a severity."

The movement has perhaps had some slight effect; but, on the whole, the cause is a lost one. It demands abnegation of too strenuous a type. Madame may sacrifice much to a principle, but not an opportunity of displaying her most charming costumes where their merits will find wide and enthusiastic recognition; and the racing events are the ideal opportunities for such display.

The setting is in itself a delectable one, for all of the courses near Paris are attractive. The grand-stands are all ablaze with flowers. Women trail their gowns over velvety turf and under shadowing boughs, or stroll along wide promenades between high banks of blossoming shrubs. Given sunshine and warm weather, a great day at any one of the courses is a surpassingly gay sight, all colour and motion and sparkle.

The grande Militaire, a steeplechase with gentlemen riders up, is one of the most popular of the Auteuil events, for the horses are ridden by officers from the neighbouring garrisons, and both Fifi and the Duchess "aiment le Militaire." The Day of the Drags, or coaching parade, is another chic event, and the occasion for a phenomenal toilette exhibit. One is so delightfully in evidence upon the box seat of a coach that one's most charming frock and hat will not be wasted there. Moreover, the competition in dress is more limited than it is in the pesage or the Tribune, and, naturally, is all the keener for the concentration. Seats upon the coaches, which are tooled out to the race track by their famous owners and greeted with traditional and impressive ceremony, are eagerly coveted, and many a mode has been launched from the top of a coach, many a new belle has entered into her kingdom behind four curvetting horses on the Day of the Drags.

But the day of days for the Parisienne who follows the races – and what true Parisienne does not? – is the day of the Grand Prix. The Grand Prix is the dramatic conclusion of the season to which Auteuil was the triumphal introduction. It is the climax to which St. Cloud and St. Ouen and Chantilly and the rest have led.

Auteuil is likely to be stormy. One expects that, but bad weather for the Grand Prix is a tragedy. For weeks, dressmakers and milliners have been at work upon Grand Prix toilettes, and certain women, famed for their beauty and the inimitable grace with which they wear their clothes, might have the choicest products of the ultra-swell ateliers merely for the wearing at the Grand Prix, did they but choose to accept the favours and organize themselves into advertising agencies. Every woman with money to spend, spends as much of it as she can spare upon her toilette for this one occasion. She will blossom out gorgeously for Grand Prix, if she goes shabby during the rest of the year.

Oh the heartburnings, the jealousies, the opera bouffe dramas that are woven round those Grand Prix gowns, – the solemn conferences with the great dressmakers, the whispers and rumours about the frocks of rival beauties, the eager interest of all the Parisian world! In the ateliers nothing is talked of save the coming event. From the smallest errand girl to the master artist, all have the interests of the establishment at heart and are curious regarding the achievements in other workrooms. To have turned out a majority of the frocks which create a sensation at the Grand Prix, – that is a triumph surpassed only by the winning of the Grand Prix itself.

So the dressmakers outdo themselves in aspiration and effort, and when the great day comes they go to Longchamps to sit in judgment upon their own creations and those of their rivals. They bet upon the horses, yes; but they realize that the race is run in the Tribune and the pesage, not upon the track, and as for the two-hundred-thousand-franc purse that goes to the owner of the winning horse – two hundred thousand francs would carry Madame but a little way on her race for fashionable prominence. Ten thousand dollars' worth of lace went into one frock worn at the Grand Prix last June and the ropes of pearls worn over the lace were worth a prince's ransom, yet the toilette was a quiet one. Only the initiated could appraise its value – but, fortunately for the wearer, in the matter of clothes, Paris is a city of initiates.

There are strenuous times in the boudoirs of Paris on the morning of the Grand Prix. Both Fifi and the Duchess are hard to satisfy, and their maids walk on tiptoe and breathe but lightly until the last rebellious lock is brought into subjection, the last sustaining pin is thrust through the tip-tilted hat, the last touch of powder is applied to the pretty nose, the last fold of the veil is coquettishly adjusted.

Madame surveys herself conscientiously, exhaustively. Not a detail escapes her, and, if all is well, she sighs, – a sigh of supreme content. She has done what she could. Dressmaker, milliner, and maid have done what they could. Le bon Dieu also has had a share in the satisfactory tout ensemble. Mentally, Madame includes all in a sweeping vote of thanks, but the maid is nearest at hand.

"Celeste, you may have the blue silk frock you like – the one with the embroidery. Yes; and the blue parasol also."

She is gone, in a flutter of laces and chiffon and plumes, and the exhausted maid stops only long enough to appropriate the blue silk, before hurrying out to the Bois where she may see the passing show, or joining Jacques and setting forth – she also – for Longchamps.

The parade to the Grand Prix is well worth seeing, even if one cannot see the race itself. Out the broad avenue of the Champs Elysées streams the procession, coaches, automobiles, smart traps of all kinds, hired fiacres, high-stepping horses, dapper drivers, exquisitely gowned women, merry-makers of all types.

Past the Place de l'Etoile they go, where the avenues, radiating in all directions, pour tributary streams of humanity into the already swollen tide. Out along the Avenue du Bois and through the gates, past Armenonville, past the cascades, on to Longchamps!

There is the smooth green stretch, there is the pesage already crowded with fashionable men and women, jockeys, sports, gee-gees (as the French bookies are called). There is the Tribune, closely packed and glowing like a Dutch tulip-garden with colour. Groups of women, arrayed with a subtlety of elegance of which Sheba's queen never dreamed, are clustered under the lindens, everywhere flutter the colours of the various starters, – which are the colours of the great families of France; for the Grand Prix is run under the auspices of the Jockey Club of France, and the Jockey Club, as has been said before, is the gentlemen's racing club par excellence.

Perhaps it is because the horses belong, as it were, in her own set, perhaps because she and her world follow the racing season so closely, that the average Frenchwoman of society knows more about the horses than her American or English sister, and places her bets right cannily; but the Parisienne at large is quite as eager over racing, and puts up her money with quite as much zest as does my lady of legitimate Jockey Club connections. She is a born gambler, the little Parisienne, born to gambling as to all forms of excitement, to all that is recklessly, feverishly, uncalculatingly gay; and she bets upon the Grand Prix, if not again through the year. She may wager louis or francs, but she places her stake with smiling audacity, and takes her losses or gains sportily.

Each year, after Grand Prix, the air of Paris is full of stories of feminine plunging, and many of the stories would make spicy reading could they be told with the names attached.

There, for instance, was the American actress who lost the ten thousand dollars borrowed for her new production, and could not get her ordered gowns out of the hands of her dressmaker until she had made a flying trip to New York and succeeded in raising money enough to pay for them.

There was the French danseuse who, through a jealous rival, obtained a tip that was pure fabrication, but purported to be a sure thing emanating from a distinguished source. She did what she was expected to do, staked every franc she could get together upon a horse quite out of the running, and was the only one not surprised when she found herself one of the handful who had backed a winner, and provided with money to throw to the birds. And there was the story of the little Countess of high degree who pawned the family diamonds for money to risk on a sure tip from a famous jockey, and who came a cropper that was offset only by the spectacular winnings of her husband's bonne amie on the same race.

Yes, the air is full of such stories and the scandal-mongers whisper them, chuckling; but they are hardly pleasant stories, and sometimes tragedy looms grim in the aftermath of the Grand Prix. For that matter, tragedy lurks always just beneath the surface of Parisian life, but on the surface there is such gaiety, such insouciance, such a glitter and a fanfare, that one forgets. It is absurd to be haunted in Paris. The ghosts are themselves Parisian; and, recognizing the absurdity of their metier, allow themselves to be decently laid while the tide of life swirls over them and around them. Or, if they do walk between the hydrangea clumps of Auteuil, or under the lindens of Longchamps, or steal through the corridors of the Grand Condé at Chantilly, they are well-behaved, unobtrusive ghosts, unnoticed in the whirl of brilliant colourful life.

Down in the pesage at Longchamps there is no question of ghosts on Grand Prix day. Sunshine, laughter, life at its merriest, rule the day. The Parisienne's grand passion is for diverting herself and others. She is the queen of luxury and of gaiety, and she plays her rôle royally at the Grand Prix. "Parisienne," one says, but one means the woman of Paris, not the woman born in Paris; for Paris is cosmopolis. The over-elaboration of all civilization centres there. Her women are the women from all lands, women of all types, resembling each other only in sex and in their ready assimilation of the best that civilization has to offer to the senses. The spell of Paris, the witch city, is over them all.

In the paddock at Longchamps, one will see all the well-known women of Paris, and not only of Paris but of Europe. Homburg empties its cosmopolitan smart set into Paris for the Grand Prix, St. Petersburg always sends a large contingent, the racing folk of England are out in full force, Americans are numerous; but perhaps most notable of all are the Viennese. The Viennese women are marvels. They can meet Parisiennes on their own ground and at least share the honours. They have superb figures, attractive faces, a talent for dress, and, with all that, a certain vivacity, dash, vivid charm, that makes them, in the estimation of many critics, the most fascinating women of Europe, though they lack the subtle tact and finesse, the swift wit and ready adaptability, of the Frenchwoman.

There are grave faces in the crowd that waits for its carriages and motors outside the pelouse after the race is over, but they are the exception. If one has lost – well, one must pay or must make someone else pay, and meanwhile the great day is not over. The horse has played his part, one has lost or won, the sun is dropping low in the west; but if one has lost, one can drown regret; if one has gained, one must celebrate the victory. The long night lies beyond the sunset, and Paris is at its best under artificial light.

So the tide sets back toward Paris, along the channels by which it came, and once more the green silence of the Bois is shattered by the beat of hoofs, the roll of wheels, the "teuf-teuf" of automobiles, the laughter and chatter of a multitude. It has seen many sights, this famous Bois, since the days when it was the quiet old forêt de Rouvray, and, if the little green leaves could but speak – but the budget of gossip is large enough in Paris without such an avalanche of new items as the leaves could supply.

For weeks beforehand every table in the fashionable restaurants has been reserved for the evening of the Grand Prix. Armenonville is crowded to its limits. The Madrid, not so cosmopolitan but popular with the French, has not a vacant seat. The Pavilion Royal, the Cascade, and the other Bois restaurants are filled with folk whose swellness is in proportion to the standing of the place.

Down in the city, the Café de Paris has the crowd corresponding to that at Armenonville, in the Bois. Durand's, Paillard's, Voisins, the Ritz, the Elysées – all have their quota of the patronage, and a host of restaurants less famed in social annals accommodate the lesser folk of the Grand Prix multitude. Everywhere there is eating, drinking, and making merry, and one gives no thought to dying on the morrow. The hours go lightly to the accompaniment of music and laughter and the clink of coin, and when, after the dinner, the diners move on to the theatres, no serious drama is likely to claim them. Glitter, gaiety, and frivolity are the keynotes of this June day from start to finish, and the staid Comédie Française is left high and dry, while all the "tingle-tangles" are packed to suffocation.

Les Variétés, Les Nouveautés, Le Mathurins and the other Boulevard resorts, Les Ambassadeurs, l'Horloge and places of similar type – these are the after-dinner rendezvous for Grand Prix night, and every famous café chantant in the city reaps a harvest. Then, when theatre is over, a large percentage of the celebrating world brings up at Maxim's. Folk who go there at no other time drift in on that one night, and the crowd is a motley one, a conglomeration of types, the concentrated distillation of the variety, the extravagance, the gaiety of Paris – reckless, feverish, pleasure-mad Paris.

So Grand Prix day ends; and, with it, according to tradition, ends the Paris season. In the old days this was true. The morrow of the Grand Prix saw the fashionables packing trunks for the country, Brittany, Normandy, – anywhere, everywhere, away from Paris; but the flight was one of convention. Paris is at its best in June, and the enjoyable weather is likely to last on into July. The mad rush of social engagements is over, so that one may relax and enjoy one's self in leisurely fashion, may assume a social déshabille, go where one will, do what one will. And Parisiennes have gradually taken to lingering after Grand Prix. Until the second or third week in July one may see famous mondaines at the restaurants, the theatres, and the open-air clubs, which are a recent Parisian fad, may pass them driving in the Bois, or notice their equipages drawn up before the shops of the Rue de la Paix or the dressmaking palaces of the Place Vendôme. After that time, however, though to the casual visitor Paris may seem as animated and as crowded as ever, he who knows la Ville Lumière realizes that for the moment it is a social desert. The smart world is out round the Normandy circuit in the wake of the horses, is flirting and lounging and frivolling in seashore villas and casinos, is taking the baths and playing high at popular spas, or is motoring frantically over the face of Europe, with intervals for all of these occupations. It is the most restless class in the world, this Parisian smart set, – a class curiously compact of nerves and intellect, though the intellect is perhaps oddly applied to the purposes of life; and though a wealth of poetical similes has first and last been applied to la belle Parisienne, the one truthful if not poetic which would suit her best is the human peg-top. It spins to brave music, this peg-top, but its metier is to spin.

Fifi and the Duchess take leave of the horses on the day of the Grand Prix, but they are on hand to cheer them at Caen, and the Normandy racing circuit is, in its way, quite as gay, quite as popular, as the racing season in Paris. The greater part of the fashionable Parisian world is in Normandy for the summer season and within easy motoring distance of all of the great races. Those who are not so located come from wherever they may be summering to attend the opening of the circuit at Caen or the "grande semaine" at Deauville, Trouville. A multitude of humbler Parisians is also having its summer outing on the Normandy coast, and is quite as much devoted to racing as its social betters. And then Paris itself is but a few hours away, a short journey whether by train or motor, and folk city-bound may run up to the coast for the great racing days.

So history repeats itself at Caen, at Houlgate, at Deauville, at Dieppe, at Ostend. It is the old story of Auteuil and Longchamps over again, with a different setting; – the same horses, the same owners, the same jockeys, the same onlookers. Only the women's frocks are new and Paris is hours away, while white sands and blue sea are close at hand. There is a short fall racing season round about Paris, crowded in twixt summer outings and the time of dog and gun. Then Fifi and the Duchess tuck their betting books away until after the Riviera season. Perhaps they foot up their gains and losses. Much more probably they do nothing of the kind. Why bother with what Mr. Mantalini would call "the demn'd total." The races have served their purpose. They have furnished amusement and excitement, have fed the avid nerves. One has danced and has paid the piper – or has persuaded someone else to pay him. Now one must give one's mind to toilettes for the Riviera. The racing season is past, and with the Parisienne the past – be it but the yesterday – is buried deep.