Public lectures are a source of diversion to Parisians. We Americans think that we are great on listening to ourselves and others talk. But crowds in France do not need a political campaign, a religious revival or a return from near the North Pole to come together for a lecture. The most surprising topics, treated by men who are not in the public eye, draw attentive and assiduous audiences. Every day you have a wealth of choice in free lectures in Paris. Some newspapers publish the lecture program of the day just as naturally as they publish the theatrical offerings. At the Sorbonne, the Collège de France, the Ecole des Hautes-Etudes, the Ecole des Sciences Politiques, the Ecole des Chartes, the various Musées, and a host of other organizations offer single lectures and courses of lectures, week days and Sundays, either free or for a very slight fee. Many of the best courses in the various Facultés of the University of Paris are open to the public. Just to give one instance of popular interest in a rather technical subject, we used to attend the courses in physical geography of Professor Brunhes at the Collége de France. That year he was treating the formation of the mountainous center of France. If you did not go early, your chances of a seat were slim. There were always people standing thronged at the doors way out into the hall. This was not unusual. Any man who knew his subject and who could treat it with vigor and wit was sure of a salle comble. His subject did not matter. One did not have to spend money: free courses were as attractive as those for which a fee was charged. We discovered that Parisians never cease going to school. One is accustomed to see only young faces in the class-rooms of American universities. In the Sorbonne and the Collège de France there are students from sixteen to seventy.
If music is your passion, you can indulge it to the full in Paris. With the Opéra and Opéra Comique and Opéra Municipal, there is something that you really want to see every day, and when the music does not particularly attract you, you can be sure of an excellent divertissement, as the ballet spectacle is called. Parisians love choregraphy. And there is choregraphy for all tastes and all moods. Paris is the mother of the spectacle called revue. We have borrowed the name but not the thing. No revue can be successful in Paris unless it possesses distinct quality in dances, costumes, mise en scène, and especially in the dialogue. The revue must reflect what Parisians are thinking about, take into account actualités, and interpret the events of the day. This means constant change in the dialogue, suppression of old and introduction of new scenes, to the point where you can go to the same revue in the third month of its run and find something entirely different as far as the lines go. For six months of the year the bands of the Garde Républicaine and of the regiments stationed in Paris play in the gardens and squares on Thursdays and Sundays. The Tuileries offers from April to October open-air opera and concerts in the heart of the city. You pay only for your chair.
The foreigner resident in Paris soon becomes aware that he does not have to leave his own quarter to find a good evening's entertainment. Real Paris shows are perhaps best to be found far from the Grands Boulevards, Clichy and Montmartre. From the heights of superior opportunity one does not want to look down upon the tourist and tell him that he doesn't really see Paris. But the fact remains that when theatres and music-halls and restaurants become rendezvous for foreigners they insensibly lose their distinctive local atmosphere. They begin to cater to the tourist trade and give their audiences what they come to see. This is so true of the Folies-Bergère, the Casino de Paris and other large music-halls that the program has become half English and the actresses and choruses and clowns are as often of London as of Paris origin. The same foreign invasion on the stage, following the invasion in the audience, is to be found at the Ambassadeurs and Marigny on the Champs-Elysées. Alas! even the Concert Mayol type of music-hall has succumbed to the temptation of catering to the big world. English and American "turns" are dragged in by the ears to enliven revues for those who do not understand French, and the spectacle has become a totally un-Parisian jumble of vaudeville. But in the little music-halls of the quarters one still finds the atmosphere that Parisians love and a program offered to their taste. Herbert and I used to go to a theatre on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, just off the Boulevard Saint-Michel, where plays were typically Parisian. Another such theatre exists in the Rue de la Gaité. In the same street are three music-halls that put on songs and stage revues for Parisians. There are probably a hundred theatres and music-halls of this kind whose names do not appear in Baedeker, and which have resisted successfully the first decade of cinema competition.
Last of all among real Paris shows the foires must not be forgotten. But I speak of these in another chapter because visiting them is a goal for a promenade and not the deliberate seeking of an evening's entertainment. You take in a foire as incidental to a walk, just as your apéritif or your after-dinner coffee is most often the price you pay for a seat to watch the passing crowd, which, when all is said and done, is the real Paris show.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE SPELL OF JUNE
MY critic points out that after having been so enthusiastic about walks at nightfall and having put myself on record as to the exceptional advantages of seeing Paris in the dark on winter afternoons, rain or shine, I shall be inconsistent in extolling daylight Paris. Why the spell of June, when your walks are wholly in daylight? If it were inconsistency, being a woman I should be within my rights to ask the critic what he expected. But is it inconsistent? I think not. If I love to go out in the rain, if I enjoy city streets at night time, it does not follow that I do not enjoy good weather and the long days of June. It is another aspect of Paris that we get in our walks. We have time to go on longer excursions. We "do" the river and open spaces more than old quarters. And, best of all, in the two Junes of our early married life, we took the baby with us on our strolls. I felt the spell of June when we returned to Paris from Turkey in 1909. I felt it more when we were going back to Turkey in 1910. And ever since, the Paris June has had a charm all its own, deepening with the years. However I may like autumn and winter and spring, June is the best month. The spell is partly due to the knowledge that one is soon going off to the shore or mountains for the summer, and partly to the thought that it might be the last June. Each year we have felt that we ought to return to America in the autumn.
In the Rue Servandoni year, April and May were cold, wet months. Spring fever did not get us until June. Then we decided that all the wisdom and profit of our Paris year was not to be found in the Bibliothèque Nationale. We began to divorce ourselves from daily study by the excuse that we ought to get together a small library on Turkish history. Where could the books be bought more advantageously than on the quais? From the Pont des Saints-Pères to beyond Notre-Dame the parapets of the Rive Gauche are used by second-hand booksellers for the display of their wares. The bouquinistes clamp wooden cases on the stone parapets. You can go for more than a mile with the certainty of finding something interesting at an astonishingly low price. There is no more delightful form of loafing in the open air. The books are an excuse. They become a habit. In order to prevent the habit from growing costly, you must make out a budget. Some days you are only "finding out what is there"; other days, before leaving home, you divest yourself of all the money in your pocketbooks and wallet except what you feel you can afford to spend. Then only are you safe! I do not know of a more insidious temptation to buy what you do not need than loitering along the quais of the Rive Gauche. In a few days we spent all we could afford for Turkish history. But the afternoon walk started earlier and ended later. We never tired of the quais and the river. We watched fishermen and the barges. We were amused by the men who bathe and clip dogs. We explored the streets between the Seine and the Boulevard Saint-Germain. We stood on the Pont des Arts and watched the people coming home from work. We went often into Notre-Dame. We glued our noses to the window-glass of the art print shops around the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. We selected furniture (from the side-walk!) displayed in the numerous antique shops of the Rue des Saints-Pères, the Rue Bonaparte and the Rue de Seine. We always came back at sunset, with the westward glow before us. That was when our oldest daughter got the taste of going to bed late.
The narrowest street in Paris is the Rue de Venise, which runs from the Rue Beaubourg across the Rue Saint-Martin to the Rue Quicampoix. But neither in itself nor in its location is it as picturesque as the Rue de Nevers, luring you from the Pont Neuf as you cross to the Rive Gauche. Nowhere else in Paris is one so completely held by the past as in the Rue de Nevers. Here stood the Tour de Nesle. The Mint now comes up to one side of this street for a few hundred feet, but elsewhere it is on both sides as it was in the time of Henri IV. Massive doorways, with bars of iron and peep-holes covered with grating, tell the story of a time when one relied upon himself for protection. No agents in the Paris of the fifteenth century! Going down to the river from the Rue Servandoni, we always took the Rue de Nevers. In it Scrappie's carriage seemed like a full-grown vehicle. There was always the nervous fear that something would be thrown out on us from upper windows, not unjustified, as more than one narrow escape proved. We used to say that when the baby was grown up, we should enjoy taking her on one of the promenades of her infancy, and especially through the Rue de Nevers. We have shown Christine the street, and hope that she will remember it. But she will never show it to her children. Some sanitary engineer, successor of Baron Haussmann, has conceived a project of widening the Rue Dauphine. The Rue de Nevers will soon disappear. Our only hope is that the war will have delayed a long time the fulfillment of projects that mean the disappearance of what remains of mediaeval Paris.
The Parisian who goes to New York marvels at our skyscrapers. He is properly impressed with the hustle and bustle of the New World. But it does not take him long to note the absence of wide boulevards and the lack of ensemble in the cityscape. Then he will invariably make two comments: "There are no trees," and "There is no place to sit down." Except the Eiffel Tower, Paris does not boast of a "biggest in the world." It will take Americans centuries to acquire a sense of harmony and proportion in city building. But shall we ever learn to bring the out-of-doors into city life? Until we do learn the big American city will be intolerable in the summer months. Paris, built on ancient foundations, has increased to a city of millions, and one still feels that an outing does not mean going to the country. Boulevards and quais are lined with trees. Every open spot has grass and flowers. Best of all, when you want to sit down to read your paper or look at the crowd, there is always a bench. You do not have to go home or indoors to rest, and wherever you live, a park or boulevard is near at hand. Parisians are as closely huddled together as New Yorkers. But they can spend all their leisure time in the open. The privilege of sitting down on a bench is a blessing. All the year round you can eat or drink out of doors. I have often marveled at the criticism that the French dislike open air, simply because they, like other Europeans, do not keep their windows open at night. The Parisian lives far more in the open air than the American does. To be out of doors day and night is a natural instinct from the cradle to the grave. Trees and benches are a large part of the spell of June in Paris.