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The strollers melt away from the promenade, the cafés empty, and at a fairly respectable hour Trouville is given over to quiet and night shadow. Late hilarity is the exception rather than the rule, but enough gaiety is crowded into the hours between eleven A.M. and midnight to last the ordinary summer resort for a fortnight.
Dieppe, of course, echoes certain notes of the Trouville season and is as gay in its own way, though it has not the fine sparkle of the more Parisian resort nor such an exclusively chic villa set as that of Deauville.
One hears as much English as French in the Hôtel Royale and the Casino and on the beach, and more swell Americans congregate at Dieppe than at any other one of the European summer resorts. For the great racing week crowds flock in, as at Trouville, from all the coast and inland resorts, and in at least one feature the Dieppe races surpass any others of the seashore circuit. No finer natural steeple chase course is known to the racing world than that at Dieppe, and the steeple chase races there are events that make a notable sensation even among the many sensations of the Normandy season.
At Ostend it is German that disputes supremacy with French, and there are more Austrians and Germans there than at any other place on the Jockey Club racing circuit, but one misses the familiar Parisian faces, for my lady of Deauville does not often go to Ostend even for the grande quinzaine of August; and, oddly enough, even the "filles de Paris" do not make much of the Ostend season.
The crowd is an immense and interesting one even without the French element, and money is spent as prodigally as at Trouville – even more prodigally perhaps and a trifle more crudely. The Café de la Plage has the reputation of being one of the most expensive places in the world in which one may order a dinner, the promenade, as has been said, is the best on the coast, and the Kursaal is one of the finest in Europe. The programme of the days is as crowded as that of Trouville, and life at Ostend moves at a breathless pace, – tennis tournaments, golf tournaments, automobile races, motor-boat races, horse races, children's fêtes, balls, flower festivals, theatre, excursions, déjeuners, dinners, yachting – but the list is endless. There is gambling, too, at Ostend. Gambling cuts comparatively little figure at Dieppe, and the Belgian government has muzzled it at Ostend, but here as in Paris one may always play at one's private club, and there is a private club at Ostend where during the quinzaine play rivals that of the famous fourth-floor room at Trouville during grande semaine. Many of the same players are in evidence in both places, but at Ostend entrance to the club is a very serious matter. The king of Belgium, notorious viveur and most practical sovereign, has been extremely firm in regard to Ostend play, and permits it only on the guarantee of the club that no scandal shall arise to discredit the little Belgian country. Any serious gambling fracas would mean an immense forfeit to the government, and consequently rigid measures are taken to safeguard the play. Anyone desiring admission must be introduced by reliable members and his name must be posted for three days before he is accepted. No exceptions are made, and a rich American who presented written introductions from two of the best known and wealthiest men of Europe last season was promptly turned down.
"These gentlemen are members. We know them well. Monsieur is doubtless altogether eligible, but our rules are our rules. We cannot accept cards of introduction, but if Monsieur will come here with sponsors who are members – "
Money would not buy the entrée. The directors of the Ostend Club take no chances. They leave that to the gamblers at the club tables.
With Ostend the season ends, and during the next week all of the expresses running to Paris are crowded with homing holiday folk. Dinard and the other Brittany resorts have been crowded as has Normandy, but Dinard is not so popular with the smart Parisienne as is Trouville, and money is not spent so lavishly in the Brittany resorts as in those of Normandy. Some Parisians of the fashionable set have wandered to Switzerland or to German or French spas. Others have spent the summer in quiet country houses and châteaux far from fashion's haunts; but from all quarters they flock to Paris when August is past, and Paris welcomes them with smiles. She has amused herself after a fashion, but the summer has been long and a trifle dull.
CHAPTER VIII
THE MERRY-GO-ROUND
The Parisienne adores Paris, but she is subject to acute attacks of that modern malady to which the leisure class is peculiarly susceptible, and which one of Madame's countrymen has aptly called the "nostalgie d'ailleurs" – homesickness for elsewhere.
Moved by that spirit of restlessness she forsakes Paris – in order that she may better love that city of her heart. She does not yearn for rest, but she wants change, and so she goes flitting here and there within easy reach of Paris – always within easy reach of Paris. Her fashion circuit is circumscribed by that national sentiment which makes the average Frenchman an unhappy and protesting alien anywhere outside of la belle France.
Madame goes to Monte Carlo; for the Côte d'Azur Rapid has made the Riviera resorts mere suburbs of Paris. She goes to Tangiers; for, after all, Tangiers is France, and in the French quarter of that picturesque place one finds a limited edition of Parisian society. But as for Cairo – no. The fashion show in Cairo, during the height of the season, is a great one, but it is furnished chiefly by English and Americans, and one finds few smart French folk in the throng. The Pyramids are too far from the Avenue des Acacias and the Rue de la Paix.
The Monte Carlo season is not, like the seashore season, an obligatory decampment. One may stay away from the Riviera without imperilling one's social position, while a summer spent in Paris would stamp one as quite outside the social pale; and, though there is, during January and February, a mighty going and coming to and from the south, Paris is gay and crowded all through the winter.
Great private fêtes are usually reserved for the spring season, unless some special event calls them forth, but there is a merry-go-round of more or less formal entertaining, and the society woman needs an expert accountant to keep her engagement book, and the semainier which records the at-home days of her friends, in intelligible order. There is time in the winter for the intimate reunions that are likely to be crowded out in the whirl of spring social functions, and when Bagatelle and Puteaux and la Boulié and the other open-air rendezvous are eliminated from the Parisienne's calculations, she can more often meet her friends in her own home or in theirs.
Balls are not a remarkably important feature of the Parisian season. There is dancing, of course, but the Frenchmen, as a rule, do not care for it.
"The ball? Je m'en passe," said a society man of Paris, when questioned about the matter.
"In America it is, perhaps, different. There one dances and one sits out dances, and one converses, and one flirts. Here, it is usually for the demoiselles that dances are given. You know our French girls? The writers tell us that they are emancipated, that they know many things. Perhaps, – but they do not show all this at the dance. One is introduced, one takes the girl from her mamma, one dances with her, one returns her to her mamma. C'est finis. Gai ça, n'est-ce pas? For the man who wishes to marry, to settle himself, the private ball may have much interest; but for one who seeks merely amusement, entertainment, – Grace à Dieu, il y a d'autres choses."
Truly, there are other things, a multitude of them. The Parisian hostess makes a feature of the musicale and certain salons are famous for music of extraordinarily good quality. Private theatricals, amateur or professional, are a social specialty in Paris. Bridge is a passion there as elsewhere. Parisian vivacity and buoyancy make even the formal reception an occasion lively rather than depressing.
But, when all is said, the dinner is the private social function dearest to the Parisian heart, and the successful Parisian hostess understands the art of dinner-giving as do few other women in the world. An elaborate menu and a gorgeous and extravagant decorative scheme seldom enter into her calculations. There is a rational number of courses, perfectly cooked, perfectly served, there is a dainty and attractive table; but the extravagant display, the eager striving after unique and picturesque effects in table decoration, the costly souvenirs which mark the formal dinner in New York, are not often a part of the French scheme.
On the other hand, the French hostess displays a tact and finesse amounting to genius in the selection and grouping of her guests, and, as a result, her dinner goes off with a verve which no amount of extraneous gorgeousness could achieve. The Parisienne of the better type, – "she of the subtle charm, to whom every man is a possible admirer" – has a famous opportunity for exhibiting her charm at the dinner table – particularly at the "little dinner." From the time she could lisp she has been trained to please and be pleased. She lacks the cultivated imperiousness of the American woman, and though she too, rules, her method differs from that of our social tyrant. Instead of demanding man's allegiance and devotion, she sets about winning them. She is gay, agreeable, witty, sympathetic, thoughtful of man's little needs, indulgent of man's little foibles; and her influence, though less assertive, is subtler than that of the American woman who claims her throne by divine right. Someone has said that "cherchez la femme" is written over every phase of Parisian life, and the thing is true. The Parisienne's influence is felt in politics, art, business, society, and yet the Parisienne is so essentially feminine, and the Parisian is so sure of his supremacy, so unconscious of any bondage save that of love or gallantry.
The Parisienne was born to dining. She has adopted tea-drinking. Fifteen years ago it was almost impossible to obtain a good cup of tea in Paris. To-day Paris is flooded with tea. The change has come about through the Anglomania which, within recent years, has attacked Parisian society. Tea came in with polo and golf, and English tweeds, and long walks, and all the other Anglo-Saxon strenuousness which has disturbed French traditions. It has become the fashion to adopt English sports, English clothes, English customs, English slang.
The Frenchwoman has a form of the mania less virulent than that which has attacked the Frenchman. She may go in for le sport, may do violence to her inclinations and her Louis XV heels by walking, – or as she calls it, "footing," – may employ an English maid and interlard her conversation with English phrases; but she draws the line at English clothes, while the French dandy's ultimate ambition is to be mistaken for an Englishman, and to that end he employs London tailors, cultivates English habits, and succeeds in being as much like a Londoner as the Place de la Concorde is like Trafalgar Square.
Five o'clock tea is a matter-of-course necessity in London. In Paris it is a fad, and to "five-o'-clocker" is one of the unfailing diversions of the smart Parisienne, whether mondaine or demi-mondaine.
Naturally, being a social fad instead of a personal comfort, afternoon tea is seldom served to Madame when she is alone in boudoir or salon.
If one is at home to one's friends, and there is an appreciative audience for a tea-gown of rare merit, then there is good reason to five-o'-clocker under one's own roof; but, on the whole, the Parisienne loves better to make a toilette worthy of applause and sally forth to drink her tea under the eyes of her world.
Columbin's was the first of the fashionable tea-rooms. Just why the little pâtisserie on the Rue Cambon leaped into fame, it is hard to say. Anglomania was rife, the Parisienne needed new amusement. A shrewd pâtissier combined the psychical moment with superior-toasted currant muffins and cakes and tea and a convenient rendezvous. All the smart Parisian set flocked to Columbin's, the narrow Rue Cambon was crowded with imposing equipages, the curb was lined with dapper grooms, and in the little tea-rooms, between five and six, there was one of the most impressive fashion shows of the fashion-making city.
There is no need of putting the story in the past tense. The crowd and the fashion show are still to be seen in the Rue Cambon, though Columbin's has spread over more space and rival tea-rooms have sprung up like mushrooms all over Paris. On almost any corner one may now get a good cup of tea, but among the multitude of tea-rooms only a few have caught the fancy of the fashionable Parisiennes.
Rumpelmayer's on the Rue de Rivoli is one of the few, and is perhaps the most successful rival of Columbin's among the Parisian mondaines; but tea hour at the Ritz is vastly entertaining, if less exclusive, and more cosmopolitan, while at the Elysées there is music and things are excessively gay. "Too gay," says Madame of the chic Parisian set, with an expressive shrug of her shoulders, but one goes to the Elysées all the same.
Possibly a pretty woman is prettier in ball or dinner toilette than in any other dress, – though one might take issue even with that theory; but surely individuality and distinctive elegance count for more in street costumes of the handsome type than in any other item of a woman's wardrobe. The tea-hour crowd at – say Columbin's, on a winter afternoon, diffuses an atmosphere of luxury, elegance, richness, that even Paris would find it hard to surpass. She is so coquette in her velvets and broadcloth and furs, this dear Parisienne. She steps from her carriage and passes through the door which her groom hurries to open. Inside is a murmur of many voices, a ripple of laughter, a rustle of silken stuffs, a scent of violets. Madame looks about her and smiles – an inclusive smile, for she recognizes so many of the women who are grouped about the little tables. Then she trails her chiffons forward in the manner habitual with Ouida's heroines, and she stops to choose just the little cakes she will have with her tea. The little cakes of Paris merit consideration. She turns her back upon the tea drinkers as she deliberates, my lady chez Columbin. It requires supreme confidence in one's figure and one's dressmaker to turn one's back gracefully, carelessly, upon one's most merciless critics, but Madame does it with nonchalance, and when she has settled the weighty question of cakes she finds her way to a table, stopping here and there to exchange greetings and jests with friends. She is perfectly gowned, wrapped in superb and becoming furs, smiling under the shadowing brim and nodding plumes of her great hat or under the tip-tilted absurdity of her tiny toque. And all around her are women of the same type, exotic products of a society highly artificial, sensuously material. Some of them are beautiful, some are homely, all are extravagantly dressed, and all have made that effort to appear beautiful which is with the Parisienne – more than with any other woman of the world – an absorbing passion.
It is this determined spirit of coquetry which leads the mondaine of Paris to make up in a fashion which in other cities is relegated chiefly to the class without the social gates. The Parisienne makes up frankly, conscientiously, with thought only of the effect obtained and with no effort to attribute to nature the results of her maid's skill or her own. Her cosmetics are as much a part of her toilette as her frock or her hat, and her French audience applauds her make-up instead of criticising. It is coquette, this artificiality, it shows that desire to please which is the fundamental principle of French femininity. If one is beautiful – that is excellent. If one is not beautiful, but makes a heroic effort to appear so, – that too is excellent. The French public forgives all save indifference to the true feminine metier.
Over in the spacious rooms of the Ritz, at the tea hour, one will find more English and Americans than French, though the French go there too, and there is a sprinkling of many nations. The crowd is more mixed than that of the Rue Cambon, in features other than that of nationality. Few demi-mondaines go to Columbin's. Why? – It is hard to tell, – but they do not go. Occasionally, demi-mondaines of the highest class drift in, but they are out of their element. There are hardly enough of them to give each other confidence.
At the Ritz things are different. There one is likely to see the most famous half-world beauties of Paris drinking tea, and at the Elysées the percentage of notoriety is still greater than at the Ritz.
They love dearly to range themselves alongside of the haut monde, these cocottes of Paris, but they like a large and varied scene, a certain amount of moral – or immoral – support. The restricted intimacy of a rendezvous like Columbin's is not to their taste.
At the Palais de Glace the demi-mondaine shines. Here is a setting to which she lends herself readily, a setting, moreover, in which she may pose beside Madame of the beau monde and measure charms with her.
Only the social elect may skate at the Cercle des Patineurs in the Bois, and there one finds the society women of Paris gliding over the ice or chatting around the braziers on the banks of the horseshoe lake. It is the most chic of social rendezvous, this skating club in the Bois, but the weather clerk is no respecter of high society, and there are comparatively few weeks during the winter when open-air skating is practicable in Paris.
Down at the Palais de Glace on the Champs Elysées, the management deals out artificial ice to the just and the unjust every day during the season. Even in October there is skating at the Palais, and it is chic to skate then, just as it is chic to eat fresh strawberries in January, while, during midwinter, this skating-rink is one of the most popular afternoon resorts in Paris. The Parisian skating costume is a triumph, and the Parisiennes skate well, conscious of their own grace and revelling in that consciousness. Some of the great ladies of the French world are famous skaters; especially certain members of the Russian colony; and there are demi-mondaines too who skate marvellously well, – particularly two or three Danish beauties, who have taken on a Parisian lacquer. After all, it is hardly fair that the demi-mondaine of Paris should be credited entirely to the essential immorality of French society, and constitute a reproach against French womanhood, for the class is cosmopolitan to an extraordinary degree, recruited from Spain, from Italy, from Austria, from Russia, from Germany, from Sweden, from Denmark, from all countries of Europe, and centred in Paris because there are concentrated the wealth and prodigality of a material and luxurious civilization, because there the cocotte can live her short day so brilliantly, so dizzily, that during it she can quite forget the inevitable hideousness of the long days to come.
The little grisettes of the Latin Quarter and Montmartre are largely French, and bear the homely French names, – Suzanne, Rose, Marie, – but they are, on the whole, the most honest, the least degraded and corrupt, as they are the humblest of the class to which, broadly speaking, they belong. A grade higher – or lower – according to the view-point of the one who classifies, is the little cocotte of the cafés and dance halls, the Cri-Cri of the Casino, the Fol-Fol of the Elysées Montmartre. When the boulevards and the better theatres and cafés are reached, the name is prone to take on dignity. Antoinette, Diane, Heloise appear. And further still up the cocotte's ladder comes an insistent "Mademoiselle" or "Madame." When the cocotte has become truly demi-mondaine, when she buys her clothes on the Place Vendôme, and acquires a villa at Trouville, an hôtel in Paris, she adds Madame to a high sounding, mouth-filling name, such as Montmorency or Beauregard. Perhaps she even preempts a title. There, for instance, was the Princesse d'Araignée. She was very quiet, this Princess, very retiring, but Paris knew her as it knew the king who was for many years her lover, and to whom she was loyal, though he came but seldom to Paris. He is dead now, that royal lover – a tragic death – and the Princess – but this was to be a story of her title.
The title was, on its face, self-explanatory. "The Spider Princess" had a fine appropriateness in the half-world of Paris. One day some one spoke jestingly of the name. The Princess shook her head.
"It is really mine," she said gravely, "mine since I was a baby."
The jester looked incredulous.
"But yes. I will tell you," said the Princess. "I am of Normandy. You did not know? Yes, I am of Normandy. I was born there in a little village by the sea. Such a very little town. I can see it now. My father was a fisherman. Big and brown and strong, my father – and kind. But yes, of a kindness. He loved me, and I – I adored him. My mother was good – an honest woman, but it was my father whom I adored. When he was at home I trotted always at his heels – une toute petite bébé, brown and plump and laughing always."
There was a big rock in the harbour – an immense jagged rock in the water. The waves washed over it always, save on one day during the month. Then it was quite out of the water and it lay there like a great spider in the sunshine, with long legs running out into the foam. Along the coast they called it l'Araignée.
"It fascinated me, that big rock spider. All the month I watched for it, and when it came up out of the sea I cried to be taken out to it. My father took me. He was like that always – très indulgent, mon père, and I – what I wanted I must have.
"He would carry me down to his boat and row out to the rock and then we would eat our luncheon there, and he would tell me stories and I would play – une bébé, vous savez. I had then but four years, and I was happy – Dieu, que j'étais heureuse. The fisher-folk came to know me there on my rock, to look for us, mon père et moi, and they called me la Princesse d'Araignée. Yes, that was my name. Everyone called me that, smiling, and I was proud.
"One does not stay always a baby. I grew up, and the father died. It was dull there in the little Norman village. I wanted excitement, and – what I wanted I must have, I was always like that.
"The story tells itself after that, n'est-ce pas? I came to Paris, and I found the excitement. But one does not use the name of an honest father here in Paris. Il était tellement bon, mon père.
"I remembered that I had been a princess and I took my title once more. La Princesse d'Araignée! You see it is really mine, the title. The rock is still there in the sea, – but, mon père et moi – "
A far cry from the Palais du Glace, yet not so far after all, as memories go; for the Princesse d'Araignée was at the Palais du Glace one December afternoon long ago, and her king was by her side.
If one does not skate, still one goes to the skating-rink. The promenade is crowded on popular afternoons with all the types familiar in leisure Paris. Women in airy gowns and picture hats furnish effective contrast to the feminine skaters in their short skirts and jaunty toques. A fragrance of flowers and perfumes floats in the air, the ring of the skates sounds through the swinging melody of the music. Once more the Parisian artificiality – once more the Parisian charm.
On one afternoon in the week the crowd at the Palais takes on a most chic and exclusive tone. The prices are higher on that day, but high prices would never shut out the cocotte and her following. Quite the reverse. An unwritten law accomplishes what the increased prices would not accomplish, and Friday afternoon smart society claims the rink for its own. That is le jour chic at the Palais de Glace. If one goes on other days – as one does – there is a fair field and no favour.
The theatres of Paris are in full swing during the winter, and new plays are magnets for the society set as for all Paris; but even the smartest of Parisians are democratic when it comes to theatre-going, and no one or two houses claim their allegiance. The Théâtre Français, the Odeon, les Nouveautés, les Variétés, le Vaudeville, le Théâtre Antoine, le Théâtre Sara Bernhardt, le Maturin, – to all of these Madame goes, and to the cafés chantants in addition. Wherever there is clever entertainment, there one finds the swell Parisienne. She is catholic of taste.
Americans visiting Paris in summer are likely to have a curious idea of the Parisian theatre, as of many things Parisian. Then the better theatres are closed, the actors are probably away with the summer holiday folk, or, if the exigencies of their profession keep them in Paris, they are occupying little villas at Ville d'Avray, at Bougival, or in some other convenient suburb, whence they can run in for rehearsals or professional business when necessary.
Only the cafés chantants and the variety theatres are open and beckoning to the summer visitors, and the crowd at these places has little of the true Parisian character, is made up chiefly of strangers from the colonies, from America, from a host of regions whose summer climates are more trying than that of Paris. The shows are amusing in their way, the crowd is amusing too, but neither is calculated to give one an accurate idea of Paris theatre or of Paris theatre-goers. Indeed, one thing about the summer attendance at Les Ambassadeurs, le Jardin de Paris, and the other resorts that draw the crowd during July and August, always impresses Parisians themselves as phenomenal and distinctly shocking. The "jeune fille" of France does not frequent "ces coins là," but respectable American fathers and mothers tranquilly take their daughters with them to cafés chantants, variety theatres, even to the dance halls of the Rive Gauche and of Montmartre. A goodly number of these rendezvous exist solely for the delectation of visiting strangers and, like the Moulin Rouge, are supported chiefly by the American tourists' money. That the Moulin Rouge is dead speaks well for the educational development of the American traveller, but from the ashes of the place, which had nothing save sheer vulgarity to commend it, has risen a variety theatre with café balconies, and some of the dance-hall features of the old resort are retained in modified form. The Café de la Mort, and the other melodramatic and banal cafés, where efforts are made to provide the visitor with a shock that will sustain the reputation of Paris for devilish wickedness, are, like the Moulin Rouge of unblessed memory, provided for the edification of travellers, and supported chiefly by American dollars. Even Maxim's, which means to the average American the last word on Parisian impropriety, is, by Parisians themselves, considered one of the concessions to American and English expectations and tastes.
"Maxim's? Oh c'est bête ça – toujours les Americains chez Maxim," says the Frenchman, disdainfully.
There is wickedness enough of a purely Parisian flavour in Paris, heaven knows; but the lurid spectacles provided for the tourist are perhaps the least immoral if the most vulgar of its manifestations.
The Opera is a tradition of the Paris season. All of the swell clubs have boxes and the society folk who can afford it subscribe, yet the opera is not so important an item of the social year in Paris as in New York, and one will usually see more elaborate toilettes and more fashionable women in any one of the popular theatres than at the Opera.
When spring comes to Paris and the horse-chestnuts burst into bloom, new elements enter into the merry-go-round. The clubs in the Bois and outside of Paris become centres of social activity, the races begin, al fresco dining and tea-drinking are in order. Hostesses blest with such grounds as those of Baronne Henri Rothschild give picturesque garden parties, there are chic evening fêtes at Puteaux, elaborate open-air charity entertainments are organized. Riding and driving in the Bois, which has continued languishingly during the winter, takes on new spirit.
The Avenue des Acacias is thronged with carriages and motors at the driving hours, and now and then women descend from their carriage to promenade, to chat with friends, to display their toilettes.
The Avenue des Acacias is the drive of drives for the mixed crowd of smart folk, but the old nobility of France prefers to drive in stately hauteur along the Avenue de la Reine Marguerite. One must make some protest against the levelling of class barriers.
The two most fashionable bridle-paths run along beside these two favourite driving avenues, but the whole Bois is a paradise of bridle-paths, and near its centre is a spot which has been chosen as the favourite meeting-place of chic riders at certain hours. The Parisians are riding more since things English became the fashion, and many of them ride very well, though the men affect English horsemanship to the point of caricature; but, on the whole, the French are better at haute école riding than at park riding. They make the best circus riders in the world, but the horsemanship of the average rider on the bridle-paths of the Bois leaves much to be desired.
As for driving, there are many good whips, but the accomplishment is not general, and few Parisiennes of social prominence drive. It is not "convenable," and though several of the greatest ladies of France hold the reins over their own fine horses in the Bois, driving alone with a groom is generally ranked in the same category as walking alone with a dog. The woman who does either must expect uncomplimentary classification, unless she stands high enough to be a law unto herself.
