In Vanity Fair: A Tale of Frocks and Femininity

by Eleanor Hoyt Brainerd

Frankly speaking, the café retains its vogue by favour of the demi-mondaine of Paris. Long ago she chose Armenonville for her own, and she has remained loyal to her choice. This is not saying that for the beau-monde the restaurant is taboo. Everybody goes to Armenonville, but there, as to no other café, flock the high-class demi-mondaines with their elaborate toilettes, their superb jewels, their consummately sensuous allure; and, as always, in their wake comes a reckless, prodigal crowd. Terrace, verandahs, and inner rooms are thronged night after night, and the throng is the incarnation of the spirit that has made Paris the hub of the frivolous world, has drawn from all countries folk devoted to the worship of the vanities, has stamped the money-spending set of Paris as the most consistently volatile, the most systematically extravagant class of Vanity Fair.

The leisure class of France is unreservedly a leisure class. The Frenchman of wealth, rank, and leisure is likely to give himself up to what someone has called "the science of not making a living." He does not have the vast business interests that usually claim the wealthy American, he does not go in for public life as does the average Englishman of a corresponding class; and, though exceptions to this rule are many, the chances are that he concentrates his energies upon amusing himself and assiduously cultivates every taste that will open an avenue to pleasurable sensation.

He is, for instance, connoisseur of food and wine, but he is epicure not glutton. Your true gourmet has with much effort and at considerable cost trained his palate to an appreciation of subtle distinctions, of vague, elusive flavours. Eating and drinking are serious matters with him. He eats not to kill his appetite but to tickle his senses, and he values his capacity for epicurean joys too highly to endanger it by riotous indulgence. The Parisian viveur devotes to his meals an extravagant amount of consideration. They are to him sacred rites, mystic, unfathomable to the uninitiated. The dishes are planned and arranged with reference to their relation to one another, are harmonized, blended, resolved into wonderful, sense-satisfying gastronomic chords. A succession of flavours leads subtly and cumulatively to a gastronomic climax, drinks are not absorbed with blithe impartiality, but run a faultless scale of stimulation and form a fitting accompaniment to the progressive harmony of the food.

It is with other pleasures as with eating and drinking. The Parisian takes his gaiety with profound seriousness, and the foreigner, as well as the Parisian, if he stays long in Paris, adapts himself to the epicurean point of view.

Out at Armenonville, one comes into an understanding of that modern paganism which lies at the heart of Vanity Fair, though the scene does not represent the most subtly æsthetic expression of the cult, for the place is overcrowded, and there is a hurrying and bustling of waiters, the laughter is a trifle too loud, the perfumes are a trifle too heavy, the jewels a trifle too resplendent. There is a burning fever in the pulse of Armenonville, a strain of coarseness in the gaiety. The Vanity worshippers go about their devotions with finer art over among the great trees of the courtyard of Madrid.

But Armenonville is—Armenonville. One must take it as one finds it, and one is likely to find it amusing.

The flowers and napery and service of the little tables on the terrace—more popular on a summer night than the tables within doors—glow with a roseate bloom under the shaded lights. Vivid ruby and topaz gleam in the wine-glasses, the air is throbbing with the wild, passionate music of the Tziganes. Men of all types and from all quarters of the globe lean to look into the eyes of women marvellously gowned, magnificently jewelled, flushed under the influence of music and wine and admiration and conscious power. Laughter, wit, the tinkle of glasses, the hum of voices talking gossip in all the languages of Europe, delicately cooked dishes, rare wines, colour, perfume, melody,—everywhere an appeal to the senses, an effort to meet the demands of a class with tastes trained to appreciate the fine flower of all things material, and with money to pay for the gratification of its desires! Nothing in old Rome was in spirit more essentially pagan and prodigal than this, but latter-day civilization has brought its refinements. The Roman orgy has been translated into polite French.

If one sits long enough at one of the terrace tables, familiar faces are likely to float within one's range of vision, for all the world pays tribute to Armenonville, and public characters are many in the crowd. Opera singers, theatrical folk, famous writers and painters, professional beauties, diplomats,—all the celebrities whose pictures are most often in the papers are among the diners. Over there at the end table, Tod Sloan is sitting opposite a radiant being in cerise and silver. At the next table the Prime Minister of England is dining with an American Duchess and her English Duke. Beyond her Grace, little Polaire of "Claudine" fame is keeping a tableful of men in a gale of laughter. An American millionaire is host to a group of theatrical folk of whom Maxine Elliott is bright particular star, and close at hand the Newstraten, who owes her notoriety to the favour of another millionaire, is vis-à-vis to a well-known Russian nobleman. Réjane, the ever-youthful, is exchanging good French for bad with an English theatrical manager. Leopold, King of the Belgians, boulevardier, dear friend of Parisian cocottes, is in evidence. A Turkish pasha with several members of his suite is back to back with the greatest brewer of England. London's latest Maharajah is having a royal occidental time in company with several pretty and titled English women. Mrs. Clarence Mackay and several other members of the New York smart set are among the elaborately gowned diners—but Madame Stanley and Margyl and the beautiful Cavalieri are gowned as well and more bejewelled. The crowd is never the same, yet always the same, and all through the year the show goes on, though cold weather drives the diners from the terrace to over-heated and over-lighted rooms.

Over at the Madrid, too, there is picturesque dining—but with a difference. The old château lies on the edge of the Bois, an unimposing building promising little, and, so far as the building itself is concerned, fulfilling its promises. One does not go to the Madrid in winter. The rooms are small and stuffy, and poorly adapted to restaurant purposes, but during the season of al fresco dining, the Madrid is all that there is of the most modish, a gathering place for the most exclusive society folk of Paris. One drives boldly up to the château and into an archway that leads through the building and brings one out upon the edge of a big courtyard picturesquely set with fine old forest trees under which men and women are dining at little tables. Beyond the court are the stables and, though a high, thick hedge intervenes, a muffled stamping of hoofs, the jingle of silver chains, sometimes furnishes a subdued accompaniment to the music of the Tziganes, an element hardly discordant and suggesting vaguely ideas of mettled horses, of luxurious carriages, of all that goes to the self-indulgence of such diners as those beneath the trees.

Things are more tranquil here than at Armenonville—gay, sense-satisfying, artificial, wordly, but of a finer flavour. Here one finds the most aristocratic of Parisian mondaines, the clique of the Polo Club and la Boulié and Puteaux. Many nationalities are represented among the diners, but the French are in the majority and the Parisienne of the best type may be found under the great trees of Madrid. She may be no more perfectly dressed, this mondaine, than her demi-mondaine sister of Armenonville. Their frocks and hats come from the same makers, their jewels were bought at the same shop on the Rue de la Paix, the grande dame of Madrid has perhaps not so liberal a share of good looks as the lionne of Armenonville, and may be made up quite as conscientiously—for artificiality is beloved of the Parisienne, is a part of her creed—but my lady of Madrid has the something which sets her apart, the impress of race, of blood, of class. Even the veriest stranger within Parisian gates who might wander from one café to the other would realize at first impression that the two were separated by more than the green stretches of the Bois. As to which café he would prefer, that depends upon his tastes—and to some extent upon his mood. One who does not "belong" at Madrid may feel himself a lonely outsider. No one is on the outside at Armenonville save the bankrupt.