I shall never forget this first morning’s impression of Paris, although all my impressions of it were delightful and inspiring, from the poorest quarter of the Charenton district to the perfections of the Bois and the region about the Arc de Triomphe. It chanced that this morning was bright, and I saw the Seine glimmering over the stones of its shallow banks and racing madly. How much the French have made of little in the way of a river! It is not very wide—about half as wide as the Thames at Blackfriars Bridge, and not so wide as the Harlem River. Here the Seine was as bright as a new button, its banks properly lined with gray, but not dull-looking, walls, the two streets which parallel it on each side alive with traffic; at every few blocks a handsome bridge; every block a row of very habitable, if not imposing, apartment-houses; at various points views of Notre-Dame, the Tuileries, the Cours-la-Reine, of the Trocadéro, and the Eiffel Tower. I followed the Seine from city wall to city wall one day, from Charenton to Issy, and found every inch of it delightful. I was never tired of looking at the wine-barges near Charenton; the little bathing-pavilions and passenger-boats in the vicinity of the Louvre; the brick-barges, hay-barges, coal-barges, and Heaven knows what else plying between the city’s heart and points down-stream past Issy. It gave me the impression of being one of the brightest, cleanest rivers in the world—a river on a holiday. I saw it once at Issy at what is known in Paris as the “green hour,” which is five o’clock, when the sun was going down, and a deep, palpable fragrance wafted from a vast manufactory of perfume filled the air. Men were poling boats of hay, and laborers in their great wide-bottomed corduroy trousers, blue shirts, and inimitable French caps, were trudging homeward, and I felt as though the world had nothing to offer Paris which it did not already have. I could have settled in a small house in Issy and worked as a laborer in a perfume factory, carrying my dinner-pail with me every morning, with a right good-will, or such was the mood of the moment. As I write this, the mood comes back.
This morning, on our way to St.-Etienne-du-Mont and the cathedral, we examined the book-stalls along the Seine. To enjoy them, one has to be in an idle mood and love out of doors; for they consist of a dusty row of four-legged boxes, with lids coming quite to your chest in height, and reminding one of those high-legged counting-tables at which clerks sit on tall stools making entries in their ledgers. These boxes are old and paintless and weather-beaten; and at night the very dusty-looking keepers, who from early morning until dark have had their shabby-backed wares spread out where dust and sunlight and wind and rain can attack them, pack them in the body of the box on which they are lying and close the lid. You can always see an idler or two here, perhaps many idlers, between the Quai d’Orsay and the Quai Voltaire.
Paris is as young in its mood as any city in the world. It is as wildly enthusiastic as a child. This morning I noticed here the strange occurrence of battered-looking old fellows singing to themselves, which I never noticed anywhere else in this world. Age sits lightly on the Parisian, I am sure, and youth is a wild fantasy, an exciting realm of romantic dreams. The Parisian, from the keeper of a market-stall to the prince of the money world or of art, wants to live gaily, briskly, laughingly, and he will not let the necessity of earning his living deny him. I felt it in the churches, the depots, the department stores, the theaters, the restaurants, the streets—a wild, keen desire for life, with the blood and the body to back it up. It must be in the soil and the air, for Paris sings. It is like poison in the veins, and I felt myself growing positively giddy with enthusiasm. I believe that for the first six months Paris would be a disease from which one would suffer greatly and recover slowly. After that you would settle down to live the life you found there in contentment and with delight, but you would not be in so much danger of wrecking your very mortal body and your uncertainly immortal soul.
Now there was luncheon at Foyot’s, a little restaurant near the Luxembourg and the Musée de Cluny, where the wise in the matter of food love to dine, and where, as usual, X. was at his best. Foyot’s, as the initiated will attest, is a delightful place to lunch or dine, for the cooking is perfection itself. The French, while entirely discarding show in many instances, and allowing their restaurants to look as though they had been put together with an effort, nevertheless attain an individuality of atmosphere which is delightful. For the life of me I could not tell why this little restaurant seemed so smart and bright, for there was nothing either smart or bright about it when I examined it in detail; and so I was compelled to attribute the impression to the all-pervading temperament of the owner. Always, in these cases, there is a man, or a woman, quite remarkable for his point of view; and although I did not see him, I fancied the owner, whatever his name, must be such a man. Otherwise you could not take such simple appointments and make them into anything so pleasing and so individual.
Later in the day we took a taxi through singing streets, lighted by a springtime sun, and came finally to the Restaurant Prunier, where it was necessary to secure a table and order dinner in advance; and thence to the Théâtre des Capucines in the Rue des Capucines, where tickets for a farce had to be secured; and thence to a café near the Avenue de l’Opéra, where we were to meet Madame de J., who, out of the goodness of her heart, was to help entertain me while I was in the city.
We came to her out of the whirl of the “green hour,” when the Paris boulevards in this vicinity were fairly swarming with people—the gayest world I have ever seen. We have enormous crowds in New York, but they seem to be going somewhere very much more definitely than in Paris. With us there is an eager, strident, almost objectionable effort to get home or to the theater or to the restaurant which one can easily resent, it is so inconsiderate and indifferent. In London you do not feel that there are any crowds that are going to the theaters or the restaurants; and if they are, they are not very cheerful about it. They are enduring life; they have none of the lightness of the Parisian world. I think it is all explained by the fact that Parisians feel keenly that they are living now, and that they wish to enjoy themselves as they go. The American and the Englishman—the Englishman much more than the American—have decided that they are going to live in the future. Only the American is a little angry about his decision, and the Englishman a little meek or patient. Both feel that life is intensely grim. But the Parisian, while he may feel or believe it, decides wilfully to cast it off. He lives by the way, out of books, restaurants, theaters, boulevards, and the spectacle of life generally. The Parisians move briskly, and they come out where they can see one another—out into the great wide-sidewalked boulevards and the thousands upon thousands of cafés, and make themselves comfortable and talkative and gay. It is obvious that everybody is having a good time, not merely trying to have it; that they are enjoying the wine-like air, the brasseries, the net-like movements of the cabs, the dancing lights of the roadways, and the flare of the shops. It may be chill or drizzling in Paris, but you scarcely feel it. Rain can scarcely drive the people off the streets; literally it does not, for there are crowds whether it rains or not, and they are not despondent. This particular hour that brought us to the bar was essentially thrilling, and I was interested to see what Madame de J. was like.
We were sitting at a table, sipping a brandy and soda, when she entered, a brisk, genial, sympathetic French person whose voice on the instant gave me a delightful impression of her. It was the loveliest voice I ever heard, soft and musical, a colorful voice touched with both gaiety and sadness. Her eyes were light blue, her hair was brown, and her manner sinuous and insinuating. She seemed to have the spirit of a delightfully friendly collie or a child, and all the vitality and alertness that go with either. I had a chance to observe her keenly. In a moment she turned to me and asked whether I knew either of two American authors whom she knew, men of considerable repute. Knowing them both very well, it surprised me to think that she knew them. From the way she spoke, she seemed to have been on the friendliest terms with both; and any one by looking at her could have understood why they should have taken an interest in her.
If she had been of a somewhat more calculating type, I fancy that, with her intense charm of face and manner and her intellect and voice, she would have been very successful. I gained the impression that she had been on the stage in some small capacity; but she had been too diffident, not really brazen enough for the grim world in which the French actress rises. I soon gained the impression that she was a charming blend of emotion, desire, and refinement which one sometimes meets with in the demi-monde. She would have done better in literature or music or art, and she seemed fitted by her moods and her understanding to be a light in any one of them or all.
I shall never forget how she looked at me, quite in the spirit of a gay uncertain child, and how quickly she made me feel that we should get along very well together. “Why, yes,” she said in her soft voice, “I will go about with you, although I should not know what is best to see. But I shall be here, and if you want to come for me, we can see things together.” Suddenly she reached over and took my hand and pressed it genially, as though to seal the bargain. Then Madame de J., promising to join us at the theater, went away.
I would not say more of this evening except that it gave me another glimpse of this unquestionably remarkable woman, who was especially charming in a pale bluish-gray dress and gray furs. She helped entertain us through what to me was a somewhat dull performance of a farce in a tongue I did not understand. I was entertained by the effective character work of the actors, but nothing compensates, as I found everywhere, for ignorance of French.