In Vanity Fair: A Tale of Frocks and Femininity

by Eleanor Hoyt Brainerd

There are other cafés in the Bois whose fortunes have risen and fallen, but none rank with Armenonville and Madrid, though quite recently the Café de Lac has taken a fresh lease of life and begun to find favour with the smart Parisian crowd.

Report has it, however, that there is to be a new restaurant in the Bois, one that will totally eclipse the two reigning cafés, and will set a new standard for the world. A syndicate with unlimited capital has the project in hand, and it is said that the new pleasure palace will rise on the site of the old Pre Catalan,—Arcadian little farm where a herd of mild-eyed cows furnishes fresh milk for children, and a little café supplies drinks of less Arcadian simplicity to anyone who asks for them. For years the popular duelling ground of Paris was just behind the buildings of the Pre Catalan. There is a little ruined theatre, too, behind the restaurant, and all the smart world of Paris has upon occasion gone out there to see the actors of the Théâtre Français and the Odeon give classical plays upon the sylvan stage. Such piquant incongruities are dear to the French heart.

But it is in the middle of the afternoon that the Pre Catalan is charming. Carriages full of children, with their quaintly costumed bonnes or their fashionably dressed mammas, roll up, one after another, and deposit their loads, until the place is all abloom with babies and musical with pattering feet and babbling tongues. They have come to drink the fresh milk, these pretty, overdressed children. Even the babies lead a life chic, in Paris.

And when the babies are all snugly asleep in their beds, the Pre Catalan often has other visitors. Late diners who have made a night of it in town cafés, and then driven about the Bois singing romantic ballads and growing more maudlin moment by moment, drive up to the Pre Catalan in the grey dawn, and weep upon the shoulder of the waiter who brings them their glasses of fresh milk. It is milk they want. They are in a state of exuberant sentimentality—of dramatic remorse. They have renounced Bacchus and all his crew. They are beginning new lives. The world is a weariness and a delusion, full of headaches and profound melancholy—Fifi goes back to nature at the Pre Catalan in such a mood,—but midnight finds her at the Café de Paris once more.

It is in this place of duels and babies and tipsy penitents that the new restaurant is to shine resplendent, if plans do not miscarry. Whether with all its grandeurs it will attract the crowd remains to be seen. A restaurant's success is not always in proportion to the money spent in equipping it. There, for example, was the Café des Fleurs. It was the prettiest café in Paris. The men behind it were so wealthy that they did not care whether the place paid or not. They lavished money upon the decorations, the cuisine, the cellars. They hired the best Tzigane orchestra in Paris—and the fashionable crowd stayed away. Why? No one knows why. "The women would not come," says the promoter, with a shrug. "There is no accounting for the whims of the women. There was everything to attract them and they would not come,—c'était finis."

Cafés by the score have had this same history, or have had a brief brilliant success and a failure sudden and complete. There was Cubats on the Champs Elysées, superbly installed in a house where had lived the mistress of Louis Napoleon. For a little while everyone went to Cubats. The place had enormous success, and then, all of a sudden, the crowd stopped going. Cubats did not exist. Perhaps the diners grew tired of being robbed. Parisians of the high-living class do not object to spending money. It is their metier, but the prices at Cubats were monumental and the proprietor in other and less humdrum times would have been a bold buccaneer or a bandit chief. One night a diner ordered a melon with his dinner. The waiter reported that melons were out of season. The patron growled, the waiter murmured that he would call Monsieur. Monsieur came, bland, imperturbable, and listened to the growling.

M'sieu wished absolutely to have a melon? But certainly. One could get it. It would be for after the dinner instead of before the dinner, however. That would be satisfactory?

The diner, mollified, signified his willingness to eat his melon after his sweet, and when the appointed time arrived, the melon arrived with it. Later, the bill arrived in its turn. One item read: "Melon—250 francs." There was a storm and the matter went to the courts, but the restaurateur remained imperturbable. The melon was expensive—he admitted as much to the judge sorrowfully—but M'sieu would have it. When one orders horses and carriage and sends a special messenger post-haste through the night for many miles in order to gratify a patron's whim, one must be paid for one's trouble. The judge appreciated the point and the bill was paid,—but in time Cubats closed its doors.

Outside of Paris there are many restaurants to which Parisians drive or motor for dinner when they are tired of the Bois, yet want to escape from city walls. The Reservoir at Versailles, and the Henri Quatre at St. Germain, are the oldest, the most famous of the list, and though for a time their prestige declined in so far as the truly fashionable diners were concerned, both have taken on new popularity since the automobile brought about a mania for dining out of town. At the Reservoir one is in the midst of historic associations. The place, with its decorations and furnishings in pure Louis XVI style, was already famous when Marie Antoinette played at farming in the Petit Trianon, near by. The place has seen many notable dinners, harboured many illustrious personages, and its ancient grandeur clings about it like a garment, though it caters now to the most mixed and modern of fashionable crowds.

Historic memories swarm thickly about the Henri Quatre too. Louis the XIV was born in the building which is now a restaurant, and a cradle marks the café silver. From the terrace and the windows one looks over miles of fertile valley, and at the tables one finds, save upon Sunday, a particularly chic crowd. On Sunday the bourgeoisie invade the place, but during the week it is very much the thing to run out to the Henri Quatre for luncheon or dinner.