A Wanderer in Paris

by E. V. Lucas

VÉNUS ET L'AMOUR
REMBRANDT
(Louvre)

The Bois has two restaurants of the highest quality and price—Armenonville, close to the Porte Maillot, a favourite dining-place when the Fête de Neuilly is in progress, in the summer, and the Pré Catelan, near Lac Inférieur and close to the point where the Allée de la Reine-Marguerite and the Allée de Longchamp cross. In the summer it is quite the thing for the young bloods who frequent the night cafés on Montmartre to drive into the Bois in the early morning and drink a glass of milk in the Pré Catelan's dairy, perhaps bringing the milkmaids with them.

The Bois has two race-courses, but it is at Longchamp that the principal races are run—the Grand Prix and the Conseil Municipal. Racing men tell me that the defect of the pari-mutuel system is that one cannot arrange one's book, since the odds are always more or less of a surprise; but to one who does not bet on horses anywhere but in Paris, and who views an English bookmaker with alarm, if not positive terror, the pari-mutuel seems perfect in its easy and silent workings and the dramatic unfolding of its surprises. For first you have the fun of picking out your horse; then quietly putting your money on him, to win or for a place; and then, after the race is run and your horse is a winner, you have those five to ten delightfully anxious minutes while the actuaries are working out the odds.

An experience of my own will illustrate not only the method of the system but the haphazard principles on which a stranger's modest gambling can be done. On the morning of the races I had visited the Louvre with Mr. Dexter, the artist of this book. We had not much time, and were therefore proposing to look only at the Leonardos and the Rembrandts, which are separated by a considerable stretch of gallery hung with other pictures. On leaving the Leonardos we walked briskly towards the Dutch end; Mr. Dexter, however, loitered here and there, and I was some distance ahead when he called me back to see a Holbein. It was worth going back for. In the afternoon at Longchamp, when the time came before the race to pick out the horses who were to have the honour of carrying my money, I noticed that one of them was named Holbein. Having already that day been pleased with a Holbein, I accepted the circumstance as a line of guidance, and placed a five-franc piece on the brave animal. He came in first, and being an outsider his price was 185.50.

The Longchamp course is perfectly managed. There are three places where one may go—to the pesage, which costs twenty francs for a cavalier and ten francs for a dame; to the pavillon, which is half that price; or to the pelouse, where the people congregate, which costs a franc. Perfect order reigns everywhere.

For the wanderer who has no carriage awaiting him and no appointments to hurry him there are two entertaining things to do when the races are over on a fine Sunday afternoon. One is to cross the Seine to Suresnes by the adjacent bridge and sitting at the café that faces it, watch the crowd and the traffic, for this is on a main road from Paris to the country; or walking the other way, one may enjoy a similar spectacle at the Café du Sport outside the Porte Maillot and study at one's ease the happy French in holiday mood—the husbands with their wives and their two children, and the Sunday lovers arm in arm.

And now we return to the Champs-Elysées in order to look at some pictures and admire a beautiful bridge. For the Avenue Alexandre III., as for the Pont Alexandre III., Paris is indebted to the 1900 Exhibition. These are her permanent gains, and very valuable they are. Of the two white palaces on either side of this green and spacious Avenue, that on the right, as we face the golden dome of the Invalides, is the home of the Salon and of various exhibitions. I say Salon, but Paris now has many Salons, two of which, in more or less amicable rivalry, occupy this building at the same time. In one, the Salon proper, the Salon of the old guard, the Royal Academicians of France, there are miles of paint but few experiments; in the other, where the more independent spirits—the New Englishers, so to speak—hang their works in personal groups, there are fewer miles but more outrages. For outrages, however, pure and simple (or even impure and complex), I recommend the Salon that is now held in the early spring in some of the old Exhibition buildings on the banks of the river, close to the Pont d'Alexandre III. I have seen pictures there—nudities, in the manner of Aztec decorations, by the youngest French artists of the moment—which made one want to scream. It was said once that the French knew how to paint but not what to paint, and the English what to paint but not how to paint it. Since then there has been such a fusing of nationalities, such increased and humble appreciation on the part of the English painters of the best French methods, that one can no longer talk in that kind of cast-iron epigram; but it is impossible to see some of the crude innovating work now being done without the reflection that France is rapidly and successfully creating a school of artists who not only know not what to paint but how to paint too.

The Palais des Beaux-Arts, which was built for the collection of pictures at the Exhibition of 1900, is now a permanent gallery for the preservation of the various works of art acquired from time to time by the municipality of Paris, thus differing from the Luxembourg collections, which are national. The Palais has become a kind of brother of the Carnavalet, the one being the historical museum of Paris and the other—the Palais—the artistic museum of Paris. The Palais undoubtedly contains much that is not of the highest quality, but no one who is interested in modern French painting and drawing can afford to neglect it, while the recent acquisition of the Collection Dutuit, consisting chiefly of small but choice pictures of the Dutch masters, including a picture of Rembrandt with his dog, from his own hand, has added a rather necessary touch of antiquity.