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CHAPTER V
LE SPORT IN PARIS
Parisian society is not given over wholly to racing during those weeks that lie between the March winds and braziers of Auteuil and the sunshine and flowers of Grand Prix. Smart social functions of all kinds are packed closely into the sunshiny days and the balmy nights, and the daytime reunions have increased and multiplied during recent years; for the Parisienne has taken up "le sport."
It is a tyrant, le sport. It exacts the surrender of many of the self-indulgent habits of Madame. It demands of her more violent exercise than is agreeable to the true Frenchwoman; it forces her into short frocks for which she has no love; it endangers her carefully protected complexion; it interferes with her siesta; it even gets her up early in the morning after a night of dancing and merry-making – but it is chic, tr-r-r-ès chic, le sport, and so the Parisienne accepts it with the verve which characterizes all she does.
The English and Americans are responsible for the rise of sports in Paris, and neither Frenchmen nor Frenchwomen will ever, as a class, go in for tennis, golf, hockey, polo, etc., with the genuine energy and enjoyment displayed by their transatlantic and trans-channel cousins; but they go through the motions and they have the most ornate and attractive of installations for each separate sport, and there is a small French element which actually distinguishes itself in outdoor athletics. The English and American residents in Paris do the rest, and so le sport flourishes mightily round about the city on the Seine.
To certain forms of sport, the Parisian takes as naturally as does a duck to water. He loves excitement, danger, swift motion. He will take, with a reckless audacity, sporting risks at which an Englishman or American might hesitate; but ask him to work hard at a game, to lame his muscles and blister his feet and hands, and earn his golf score or tennis score or hockey score by the sweat of his brow, and, as a rule, he will beg to be excused. What is true of the Parisian is true of the Parisienne. Both combine a certain sensuous indolence of body with a wild energy of nerves and brain. They do not like exercise, but they adore excitement; and it is only in the sports that cater to their nervous excitability that they excel.
The automobile whirled its way straight into the hearts of the French. From the first it was extravagantly popular in Paris. Here was a sport that suited perfectly the French temperament. There was danger in it, excitement in it, piquancy in it. It afforded exhilaration. It provided the swift changes and sudden contrasts so dear to the restless and dramatic temperament. With an automobile as slave of the lamp, one could range far afield even in one short day, and the possibilities held in solution within the twenty-four hours were multiplied astonishingly when the motor made its début in Parisian society. Small wonder that it was greeted with acclaim.
One might fancy that the difficulty of looking well in motor costume would prejudice the Parisienne against the machine, for with her, the most important thing connected with taking up a new sport is the excuse offered for a new and piquant costume. But the difficulties in the way of the motor woman merely added zest to the adoption of the fad.
Madame flew to her dressmaker.
"Tiens, M'sieu. I have bought three automobiles. What shall I wear?"
And Monsieur brought his brows together in his most effective and judicial fashion, led the fair motor woman to an inner room where the conference might have the quiet demanded by such weighty consultations, and set himself to planning methods of leaping this sartorial hurdle.
Some of the experimental stages of the Parisian motor costume were fearful and wonderful, and even now our importers bring over spectacular motor outfits to which are attached the names of famous makers; but, on the whole, the Parisienne has mastered the problem of motor dress.
For her electric brougham and victoria and the other luxurious, smooth-running electric vehicles in which she speeds over the asphalt and takes her afternoon outing in the Bois, no special costume is required. Perhaps, if she is her own chauffeuse, she wears a trim tailor frock and hat, but no eccentricity enters into her attire even then, and, as a rule, she wears what she might wear were the carriage drawn by horses instead of being propelled by electricity.
If she is going farther afield – out to the Henri Quatre for luncheon, to the Reservoir for dinner – she wears an all-enveloping dust cloak to protect her delicate frock, a veil or perhaps a hood to cover her fragile hat and shield her face and hair from dust, but beneath this outer wrapping she is as exquisite, as elaborate as ever. When it comes to longer runs, or to genuine touring, the Parisienne promptly abandons all effort to look well on the road. To be comfortable, to be suitably dressed, to be immaculate at the journey's end, – all these aims demand the setting aside of a desire to be beautiful; and, since she may not be beautiful, the quick-witted Madame seizes upon the possibility of being piquant and goes to the extreme of attaining the hideous in pursuit of the practical. She hides figure, hair, face. Even her sparkling eyes are eclipsed behind goggles or dimmed by masks, and she consoles herself for the ugliness by thought of the dramatic effect with which she may flutter from the cocoon when her butterfly moment arrives.
One sees these transformations by the score at such a rendezvous as Chantilly at the time of the "Derby," for it is the mode to motor to Chantilly on the eve of the important day and put up over night at the Grand Condé, or to arrive in time for luncheon before the races. Machine after machine dashes up to the hotel, discharges its freight of grotesque figures and wheezes away to the garage. Madame, carrying a hat box, and cloaked, hooded, masked, powdered with dust, hurries to the chamber reserved for her. In a twinkling there trips from the room which swallowed the awesome enigma a charming woman, fresh, dainty, smiling, gowned in the airiest and most delicate of confections. Or perhaps there is not even the moment of seclusion. A toot, a whir, a quick reversing of levers! The automobile has stopped. A dusty, shrouded, shapeless figure springs lightly to the step, while the idlers look on curiously. A swift movement of the hands and the hood falls back; another, and the cloak slips from the shoulders. There is Fifi, a Dresden china figure all fluttering frills and laces and ribbon and flowers, a smile on her lips, a challenge in her eyes.
"C'est chic, ça," comments the old Marquis over his Burgundy. "All that there is of the most modern, mon garçon!"
Paris is the city of automobiles, and France is the motor tourist's paradise. The roads are good, the inns are excellent and are rapidly improving under the influence of the motor touring, and on every hand are picturesque towns and picturesque scenery, not too rugged for the peace of mind of the average chauffeur.
Many inns known to history, but fallen from their high estate in later years, are looking up again since the motor took the road. At any hour, a gay crowd of folk, masquerading in dust coats and goggles and hoods, may appear at the door demanding luncheon or dinner. They know a good wine and a good sauce, these travellers, and they scatter gold in a fashion that recalls stories of the days when the great men of old France and their retinues took their ease in this same inn. Mine host's heart warms to the devil wagon and its Parisian freight. He brings long hoarded bottles covered with cobwebs up from the cellars, he sacrifices his choicest chickens, he goes into the kitchen himself to prepare the fish and the sauces, he scolds his wife and bullies the cook and embraces the maid, all from pure excitement, and beams upon the world in general and the motorists in particular; for he sees the dawn of a new day and hears the clink of coin in his long empty tills.
He gives to the party of his best; and, when they whirl away, he stands at his door watching the cloud of dust that envelopes them. Then he draws a long breath, sniffs ecstatically at the gasoline-laden air.
"Que j'aime cette odeur là!" he says with fervour. The automobile has an ardent friend in mine host of the country inn.
With the restaurant keeper at Paris, the story is a different one. It is so easy to run away from the city for luncheon or dinner since the motor car is at one's service, and the wandering has an effect upon the receipts in the town restaurant. Moreover, – one smiles at this, but it is told in all seriousness and with lively grief by the proprietors of certain cafés, and echoed dolefully by women accustomed to late suppers and carousals in those rendezvous, – the automobile has been a reforming agent. It has interfered with the long established habits of the gilded youth and more heavily gilded age, wont to furnish the late suppers and the wherewithal for carousal.
"It makes a difference, the automobile, a great difference," confides the discreet waiter. "Monsieur now rises early. Before, he was up early, also, but with a difference. Now he is to make a day's run in his car. The programme requires that he shall start with the sunrise. It demands steady nerves, the automobiling. One needs sleep, – and Monsieur goes to bed early. Oui, c'est dommage. Ça dérange les choses, but he will not stay. No; he is devoted to the automobile. He will even sleep for it. It will pass, perhaps, this mania. They pass always, the manias. Then again we will have the old crowd, and in the meantime there are, fortunately, those who do not own the machines."
Of places furnishing the motive for short automobile trips from Paris there is no end, and the roads running out of the city swarm with cars. There are quiet-loving country folk who protest, futilely, but even the country horse and the excitable barnyard fowl of France have become accustomed to the snort of the motor and the onward rush of the demon, and are, like Pet Marjorie's turkey, "more than usual calm" as the great machine speeds past.
One meets them everywhere, these automobiles. Out in the Forest of Fontainebleau the mosses are still green and gold where the sunshine filters to them through the interlacing branches of the great trees. The rocks are still covered with grey and green and faint purple lichens. Little wood creatures rustle among the ferns and heather. Bird-notes sound from the branches overhead and from the thicket depths. The forest is still the grey-green, gold-green, brown and violet forest beloved of French artists, but one cannot walk for ten minutes along the woodland paths without hearing the blast of a Gabriel horn and seeing a huge automobile plunge by, its occupants blind to the light and shadow and colour, deaf to the rustle in the brake and the music from the bough, absorbed simply and solely in the breathless speed of their pace and in the skill with which the chauffeur swings round corners, dodges boulders, and avoids climbing trees, for to the motor maniac, Fontainebleau means the Hôtel d'Angleterre and luncheon. To the impotent rage of the artist clan, the motor has invaded Barbizon as well, and is to be found by the dozen, puffing and panting outside the inn sacred to the Bohemians of the Latin Quarter and Montmartre. "C'est très gentil, Barbizon – très chic," says Madame with an approving nod of her hooded head, as she climbs into the auto, after her luncheon. Shades of Millet and Corot and Rousseau! Barbizon has lived to be called "très chic" by a Parisian Duchess in a blue silk hood.
Wherever historic memories and associations cluster most thickly, where ghosts walk in the greatest numbers, there the automobile roars and rattles and toots and puffs its consummately modern way. Many Parisians are for the first time discovering France since motor touring came into vogue. Even Fifi talks French history and folk-lore. She has invoked the sunken city of Y's as she sped through Brittany in her Panhard. She has a speaking acquaintance with all Normandy. She has motored down through old Provence on her gay way to Monte Carlo. If she remembers stopping places rather by what she had to eat there than by historic associations – still she has enlarged her horizon. Even gastronomic voyaging is educational.
Close to Paris there are popular restaurants, within driving distance and almost too near at hand to please those who seek luncheon or dinner in motor cars. The Henri Quatre at St. Germain is frequented more than ever by Parisian diners, since motoring eliminated distance. The Reservoir at Versailles, the Bellevue at Meudon, the Cadran Bleu at St. Cloud – all have their motoring contingents, and at luncheon and dinner hours there is a host of machines waiting before these country restaurants, where one may have the luxury of Paris and the beauty and seclusion of nature, provided one has the money to pay for the abnormal combination – which comes high.
One goes to the golf links, too, in one's automobile, unless one prefers driving out – for the motor has not yet entirely undermined the Parisian's love for a smart trap and good pair of horses.
There are various links near Paris, all more or less frequented by devotees of le sport, but the links at La Boulié, near Versailles, are, with the exception of those at Deauville, the finest in France. All the smart set of Paris goes to la Boulié to flirt, to gossip, to drink and smoke and play cards and meet friends. Incidentally golf is played, and real golfers, enjoying the beautiful course and the perfect greens, bless the day when golf became a Parisian fad, and look tolerantly at the goodly collection of dukes and counts and princes and bankers and diplomats who sit in the shade of the big bungalow during the long golden afternoon, drinking Scotch whiskey and soda, – as a concession to the genius loci, – and watching with a certain amused wonder the scattered figures toiling around the links in the glare of the sun.
"After all, they stood for the thing," says Willy, as he picks his ball out of the last hole and turns toward the indolent groups around the club-house.
That is just it. They stood for it all; and if a majority of the men do not play – well, tastes differ. It is a charming place to "five-o'clocker," is la Boulié.
The Parisienne and her admirers admit that, from one point of view, golf has profound merit. As an excuse for a prolonged promenade à deux it is admirable and "le flirt" thrives famously on the links. One is willing to make sacrifices in the interests of flirtation; but that one should golf for the love of golfing, should play from sun up to sun down alone or with another man, – "Ça, c'est trop," says Monsieur with a shrug of his shapely shoulders, and, having imbibed whiskey and soda for the sake of the golfing unities, he orders a vermouth by way of relaxation. Even assisting at le sport is exacting, very exacting. One becomes fatigued.
And yet there are Frenchmen who love the game and play it well, and if one covets the privilege of familiarly shouting "fore" at a Russian Grand Duke, or an Italian Prince, or an Austrian Baron, la Boulié is the place in which to gratify that heart's desire. The visitor to Paris may have the entrée to the club by virtue of one dollar a day and introductions from two of the club members; but though the dollar may be procurable, the casual tourist is not likely to enjoy the acquaintance of two members of the la Boulié set, and the chances are that he does his Parisian golfing at l'Hermitage, where any respectable introduction is an open sesame.
Some of the smartest of Parisiennes have gone in for golf and play fairly well, but they golf in costumes that would fill the Scotch and English lassies of the famous scores with frank amazement.
"You have seen Lady L – ," whispers Madame of the Rue de la Paix golfing costume. "She is English, yes. It is wonderful how she plays golf – and without a corset! But yes, vraiment, quite without a corset. C'est incroyable ça. One has the lines of a poplar."
It all depends upon the point of view. One sacrifices one's game or one's curves. Either way, the choice has its compensations.
L'Hermitage is not so chic as la Boulié, but there are true golfers, even among the social elect, who enjoy playing on the Hermitage links and like the democratic geniality of the less exclusive club; so the membership list has its sprinkling of notable names.
The course lies out near St. Germain, on the old farm of M. Jean Boussod, and neither the links nor the house will compare with la Boulié in point of art and costliness; but there is a charm in the cluster of old-fashioned cottages over which the vines and roses clamber, in the raftered dining-room, in the old fruit trees under which tea is served, in the stately poplars which stand sentinel over the place, and in the informality which makes even the tourist stranger feel less far from Ardsley and Baltusrol.
There are good links at Compiègne, too, but Compiègne is too far from Paris for the ordinary golfer, unless he is going away for a week-end of the sport, and only in hot weather do the Parisians stray so far from the boulevards in pursuit of the royal game.
For tennis, the Parisienne has more love than for golf. The game is an older friend, and then, though it does not furnish, as does golf, ample pretext for prolonged solitude à deux, it does have a dramatic quality, a certain swift dash and spirit which appeal to Madame's temperament and are lacking in the more protracted and leisurely game. There are good tennis courts at the golf clubs and in various parts of the Bois, but it is at the Cercle de l'Ile de Puteaux that one finds tennis at its best and most picturesque. It is one of the most fashionable and most exclusive clubs of Paris, this club on the little island of Puteaux, in the Seine. One sees there no one who is not of the elect, and the little ferry that carries the chosen spirits to these Elysian fields is thronged with the beauty and fashion of Paris, day after day, during the season. Such a gay freight the little ferry carries when Puteaux is especially en fête, such charming women, such ravishing gowns, such bewitching hats, such coquettish parasols, such admiring cavaliers! A veritable "embarquement pour Cythère!" The ferry should be guided by flutterings loves, à la Fragonard, instead of by the most prosaic Charon who fills the position and regards, unmoved, the carnival of the vanities.
They play tennis at Puteaux, but they play at the making of love and of epigrams and of fashion more earnestly still. One may see all the fashion leaders of the beau monde drinking tea there on a bright spring afternoon, – the lovable young Duchesse d'Uzes, with her excessive modernity grafted upon her ancient lineage and traditions; the beautiful Madame Letellier, who is one of the best dressed women of Paris; the blonde and chic Vicomtesse Foy, the popular Mrs. Ridgway, the wealthy Baronne Henri de Rothschild, Baronne Seillière. These are some of the women who set the fashions, but the complete list is a long one, and Puteaux brings together all these orchids of Paris.
There have been memorable evening fêtes at Puteaux when the island was converted into a fairyland of gleaming lights and mysterious shadows of flowers and music, and all that modern luxury which is pagan in its prodigality; and cotillions are given there regularly during a part of the season. But the island is at its best when the sun is shining on it and touching to vividness the pretty frocks of the tennis players in the courts, when vivacious women in wonderful gowns and hats are gossiping over their tea in the shade or flirting under their parasols of chiffon and lace. It belongs to the open-air phase of French society, does Puteaux, for, oddly enough, the Parisienne of the scented boudoir and the hot-house associations has a passion for plein air.
Out in the Bois there are open-air clubs and to spare, the Polo Club and the Tir au Pigeon being those most frequented by the fashionable set during spring and summer, while the club des Patineurs is the smart skating club and one of the most attractive social rendezvous of winter Paris. The Parisienne loves skating. Here is a sport that lends itself amiably to coquetry, a sport for which one may plan the most piquant of costumes. Furs are becoming and extravagant, and looking well at an extravagant cost is the fashionable Parisienne's chief aim in life. So Madame orders her skating costumes of fur and cloth and velvet, buys an assortment of skating boas more ornamental than practical, and plays in her skating as in all her sports a rôle vastly ornamental, impressively dramatic. Yachting, too, is dear to the heart of our Lady of the Chiffons, though her yachting consists chiefly in dressing the part. Scoffers say that the French have a flourishing yacht club but no yachts, and while this statement is more amusing than accurate, the actual facts do suggest some such comic-opera situation, for though there is a yacht club of France, extremely swell and of large membership, and though several wealthy Frenchmen own superb yachts, there is little serious French yachting. Boating of one sort or another is indulged in along the Seine, and a large flotilla of small private launches and yachts lies in the basin of Deauville during the Normandy season, but the yachting races of the Regatta week at Havre are given over almost wholly to foreigners, French entries being extremely rare.
Not until within the past year did the fashionable folk of Paris take up with ardour any form of water sport. The motor boat has brought about the revolution and has the distinction of being the latest Parisian fad. It is easy to understand why this most modern form of boating has caught the Parisian fancy. Like the automobile, it appeals irresistibly to the French temperament. It demands no active exercise and it offers exhilaration, swift travel, danger, novelty. Last summer there was a race for motor boats from Paris to the sea; and, while the little boats were scudding along the river, the society folk interested in them were spinning along the road from Paris to Trouville in their automobiles, making calls at the châteaux en route, and reaching Trouville-Deauville, in time to see the up-to-date little boats follow up their three days' race to Havre by racing for the Menier cup in Trouville Bay. The motor boat came into its own that day, and next summer it will rival the horse and the automobile in the affections of sporting Paris.
Already a number of Parisiennes have adopted the dangerous playthings. Madame du Gast, upon whom some judges bestow the title of "first sportswoman of France," is an ardent devotee of motor boating as she has been of automobiling. She has all the daring of her race associated with an easy nonchalance and imperturbable self-control which never deserts her even under the most trying circumstances; and no pastime is too dangerous, no risk too hazardous for her, provided only that there is amusement connected with the danger and hazard. She has made a record in automobile races and ballooning, and she hailed the motor boat with joy at its first appearance; but her sporting enthusiasm had of course its Parisian side. There was the costume to be considered – always the costume is the starting-point of a Parisienne's sport. The motor boat is a treacherous plaything. It upsets, blows up, sinks, – and when one starts out in a promenade à bateau, one is likely to swim home, so petticoats and chiffons are not for motor boating. Madame du Gast wears what looks much like swimming tights, save that the one-piece garment is high of neck, long of sleeve, and at the knee tucks into trim high boots that may be kicked off if occasion demands. Over this practical attire goes a loose, handsome coat of sporting allure which quite hides the tights and falls over the tops of the well-fitted boots; a becoming cap warranted to stay on without attention from its wearer – and there you have the owner of the Camille as she looks when she enters a race. When she had the Turquoise built for the Monaco races, Madame du Gast indulged in a bit of drama characteristically French. S. A. R. the Prince of Monaco stood sponsor for the slim little craft. There was a ceremony, with great sheaves of flowers nodding over the bow of the boat and bedewed with the christening champagne, with gaily attired friends looking on, and with the canon from a neighbouring church in gorgeous vestments solemnly bestowing baptism and the blessing of the church upon the nautical infant. Roses and champagne and smart frocks, and the owner of Monte Carlo, and the church – all joining in the launching of the racing boat of a charming sportswoman in swimming tights and top boots! There you have a snapshot of le sport as it is sometimes played in France.
The Camille, named for Madame du Gast herself, and a motor boat more pretentious than the Turquoise, entered, with owner aboard, the famous and foolhardy high seas race from Tangiers to Toulon, and though strong winds and rough seas played havoc with all of the tiny craft, and the Camille and her owner were rescued at the eleventh hour by her escorting yacht, Madame did not lose for a moment her sporting nerve. She was obtaining excitement in large blocks and the thrill was well worth the danger.
It goes without saying that the young Duchesse d'Uzes has taken up motor boating.
When has she ever passed by a new sport, a new chance for diversion, this gay little Duchess, who is the typical fine flower of modern French civilization, the most piquant and perhaps the most popular figure in French society to-day.
She was born to social eminence, daughter of the great and ancient family of de Luynes, sister of the ninth Duke of Chaulnes and Pecquinguy, rich in her own name, good to look at, keen of wit, exquisite of taste, and stranger to fear. As if this were not enough, she must needs marry Louis Emmanuel, fourteenth Duke d'Uzes, and add his prestige and wealth to hers.
The dowager Duchesse d'Uzes, she who came so near mounting Boulanger on the back of France, is of the old régime, strong, keen, autocratic still, but surrounding herself with the old customs, the old traditions, refusing to admit that the world has moved and France with it.
But the young Duchess – she is all that there is of the most modern, the most representative type of the motoring, racing, golfing, hunting, hockey-playing Parisienne. She is all restlessness, all nerves. There is nothing new that she has not tried, and she is always reaching out for something more novel, more exciting, more audacious. And yet with it all she is grande dame, the little pleasure-seeking Duchess, and she wears her title right royally in spite of her vagaries. She has the traditions of her race, too, behind her modern caprices. She is devôte, has her private chaplain, is heart and soul in sympathy with the church party as opposed to state, she loves politics and ranges herself with her class. Not for nothing is one of de Luynes and d'Uzes. She was in the heart of the turmoil on the Place de la Concorde, at the meeting of protest against the state's measures concerning the nuns, and she was taken by the troops, this hot-headed little Duchess, though it was the dowager Duchess who was arrested and fined. She would go to the scaffold humming a tune and wearing her smartest Paquin frock, were she called upon to tread the path many of her ancestors trod, but, since scaffolds are out of date, she runs a motor boat and speeds an automobile, and dances a cake walk, and plays an extraordinary game of billiards, and is one of the best shots in France, and plays tennis and hockey and golf, and rides cross country, and swims like a fish, and has made ballooning the fashion. She is one of the prettiest, the most amusing, the cleverest and the best dressed women of Paris, and she, beyond all of her set, is the champion of le sport.
