The proposition of a furnished apartment looks better than it is. The French are the worst people in the world for biting a penny. They are meticulous to a point incomprehensible to Americans. The inventory is a horror! In taking a villa, whether it be in Brittany, in Normandy, at Aix-les-Bains, or on the Riviera, you are handed sheets of paper by the arm's length, on which are recorded not only the objects in each room but the state of walls, garden, woodwork, carpets, mattresses, pillows and blankets. You wrestle with the agent when you enter. But he is cleverer than you are. And when you come to leave, he finds spots and cracks, nicks in the china, ink-stains, and all sorts of damages you never thought of. He points to your signature—and you pay! You replace what is broken or chipped by new objects. You repaint and repaper and clean. The bill is as long as the inventory. And you find that your original rent is simply an item.
I do not want to infer that you are entirely free from this annoyance and uncertain item of expense when you lease unfurnished. Your walls and ceilings and floors, your mirrors (which in France are an integral part of the building) and your charges are to be considered. An architect, if you please, draws up the état des lieux, which you are required to sign as you do the inventoire of a furnished apartment. But the longer you remain in an apartment the less proportionately to your rent are the damages liable to be. As for the charges, by which is meant your share towards the carpets in the halls and on the stairs, the lighting, elevator, etc., in many leases they are now represented by a fixed sum, and where they are not, you can have a pretty definite idea as to what they are going to be. The unexpected does not hit you.
Most Paris leases are on the 3-6-9 year basis. You sign for three years. If you do not give notice six months before the end of the three-year term, the lease is automatically continued for another equal period. For nine years, then, you are sure of undisturbed possession, and your propriétaire cannot raise the rent on you. Leases are generally uniform in their clauses. You bind yourself to put furniture to the value of at least one year's rent in the apartment to live in it bourgeoisement (that is, to carry on no business), to keep no dogs or other pets,[D] and to sublet only with proprietor's consent. On his side, the proprietor agrees to give you proper concierge and elevator service, to heat the apartment for five months from November first to March thirty-first, and to furnish water, hot and cold, at fixed rates per cubic meter. The lease is registered at the mairie at the locataire's expense.
[D] This clause is a dead letter almost everywhere. You are much more apt to be refused an apartment because you have children than because you have dogs or birds. In fact, although you often see a sign or are greeted by the statement NI CHIENS NI ENFANTS, the prohibition, when you press the concierge, is limited to children. My bitter criticism of the people among whom I live is the attitude of a large part of them towards children. They do not like children. They do not want them. And they do not understand why any woman is fool enough to have "a big family," as they call my four. This is the most serious problem of contemporary France. It makes the winning of the war a hollow victory.
You pay the taxes, which are collected directly from you. The municipal tax runs to about sixteen percent of the annual rental, and now includes in a lump sum the old taxes for windows and doors. In addition, you pay a very small tax to recompense the city for having suppressed the octroi on wines and liquors and mineral waters. A new tax, which no resident in France who has an apartment can escape, is the income tax. But unless you are a French subject, you are not compelled to make a return of your sources of income. Should you choose to be taxed d'office, the collector assesses you on a basis of having an income seven times the amount of your rental. The concierge is forbidden to allow you to move from your apartment until you have shown him the receipts for the current year for all your taxes.
Once you have signed your lease and have arranged to move in, your troubles are not yet over. Proprietors furnish no chandeliers or other lights, not even the simplest. You have to go to an electrician, buy your fixtures, and have them installed, if you have not bought the lights in the apartment from the previous locataire. You must sign contracts and make deposits for your gas and electric light. The gas company will rent you a stove and a meter. You pay the charges for connecting you up. Telephones are in the hands of the government. If you want a direct telephone, you have to sign a contract. If you want to have your telephone through the concierge's loge, the telephone service is charged on your quarterly rent bill. In any case, you pay for the instrument and bell box and the charges for installation. A private line is not much of an advantage in Paris. The service is scarcely any quicker. With your telephone by way of the concierge, a message can be left if you do not answer, and the person calling you is informed if you are out of town.
The last of your troubles is fire insurance. Thanks to the solid construction of Paris and careful surveillance, fires are very rare. During all the years I have lived in Paris I remember no fires except those caused by the German bombs. However, you do not dare not to insure. For French law holds you responsible for damage to neighbors' apartments from water as well as fire, if the fire starts in yours. Your insurance policy insures your neighbors as well as yourself. The French law is excellent. It makes you careful. French law, also, by the way, holds you liable for accidents to your servants, of any kind and no matter how incurred. You cannot fall back on the joker of contributory carelessness. All the servant has to prove is that the accident happened while working for you.
I have forgotten to mention one further formality that was not of importance before the war but is indispensable now. An old French police law requires all foreigners to secure a certificat d'immatriculation from the Prefecture of Police as the sine qua non to residence in Paris. Before the war, no one ever bothered about this. The only foreigners watched by the police were Russians, due to a provision France ought never to have agreed to in the alliance with Russia. When the war broke out and my husband went to get his permis de séjour, he was asked for the first time for this paper. And we had been living in France on and off for six years, and had leased three apartments! This was a reason for loving Paris. Nobody bothered you, and you could live as you pleased and do as you pleased so long as you behaved yourself. Foreigners were never made to feel that they were foreigners. They enjoyed equality before the law with Frenchmen. Paris was cosmopolite in a unique sense. Hindsight blamed the laxity of the French police. But let us fervently hope that the old spirit of hospitality may not have changed with the war and that France in regard to Germany may not be as Rome in regard to Greece. Why be victor if one has to adopt the habits of the vanquished?
I have gone into the question of the housing problem with too much precision and detail, I fear, for a book of Paris sketches. But so many friends have asked me, so many strangers have written me, about taking up their abode in Paris that I feel what I have said about it will be of interest to all who are interested in Paris.
We had three months to our new residence. You always have three months at least in Paris. It is not enough if you are undecided or lazy. It is plenty if you go about hunting for a home with the same energy and persistence and enthusiasm that you put into other things. After all, what is more important than a home? We tramped the quarter, as we had done in the summer of 1909. But we now had a large family. And we had realized the fundamental truth of the beautiful old Scotch saying, "Every bairn brings its food wi' it." So we were able to aspire to two salons and three bedrooms, to confort moderne (which means central heat, electric light, bath-rooms, elevator and hot water), and to palms and red carpet in the doorway.