Bohemian Paris of To-day / Second Edition

by W. C. Morrow; Edward Cucuel

Upon regaining her seat she was immediately surrounded by a praise- giving crowd, who shook hands with her and heartily congratulated her; but it was clear that she could think only of him of the fur collar, and that no word of praise or blame would weigh with her the smallest fraction of a feather's weight unless this one man uttered it. She disengaged her hand from her crowding admirers and deftly donned her little white Alpine hat, all the while looking into the face of the one man who could break her heart or send her to heaven. He sat looking at his boot, indifferent, bored. Presently he looked up into her anxious eyes, gazed at her a moment, and then leaned forward and spoke a word. It sent her to heaven. Her face all aglow and her eyes shining with happiness, she called the garçon, paid for the four saucers upon the table, and left the room upon the arm of her lover.

"How she does adore that dog!" exclaimed my friend the musician.

"What does he do?" I asked.

"Do?" he echoed. "Nothing. It is she who does all. Without her he would starve. He is a writer of some ability, but too much of a socialist to work seriously. In her eyes he is the greatest writer in the world. She would sacrifice everything to please him. Without him her life would fall into a complete blank, and her recklessness would quickly send her into the lowermost ranks. When a woman like that loves, she loves—ah, les femmes sont difficiles à comprendre!" My friend sighed, burying his moustaches in a foaming bock.

Individual definition grew clearer as I became more and more accustomed to the place and its habitués. It seemed that nearly all of them were absinthe-drinkers, and that they drank a great deal,—all they could get, I was made to understand. They care little about their dress and the other accessories of their personal appearance, though here and there they exhibit the oddest finery, into whose possession they fall by means which casual investigation could not discover, and which is singularly out of harmony with the other articles of their attire and with the environment which they choose. As a rule, the men wear their hair very long and in heavy, shaggy masses over their ears and faces. They continually roll and smoke cigarettes, though there are many pipes, and big ones at that. But though they constitute a strange crowd, there is about them a distinct air of refinement, a certain dignity and pride that never fail, and withal a gentleness that renders any approach to ruffianism impossible. The women take a little more pride in their appearance than the men. Even in their carelessness and seeming indifference there abides with nearly all of them the power to lend themselves some single touch of grace that is wonderfully redeeming, and that is infinitely finer and more elusive than the showy daintiness of the women of the cafés.

As a rule, these Bohemians all sleep during the day, as that is the best way to keep warm; at night they can find warmth in the cabarets. In the afternoon they may write a few lines, which they sell in some way for a pittance, wherewithal to buy them a meal and a night's vigil in one of these resorts. This is the life of lower Bohemia plain and simple,—not the life of the students, but of the misfit geniuses who drift, who have neither place nor part in the world, who live from hand to mouth, and who shudder when the Morgue is mentioned,—and it is so near, and its lights never go out! They are merely protestants against the formalism of life, rebels against its necessities. They seek no following, they desire to exercise no influence. They lead their vacant lives without the slightest restraint, bear their poverty without a murmur, and go to their dreary end without a sigh. These are the true Bohemians of Paris.

Other visitors came into the Soleil d'Or and sought seats among their friends at the tables, while others kept leaving, bound for other rendezvous, many staying just sufficiently long to hear a song or two. They were all of the same class, very negligently and poorly attired, some displaying their odd pieces of finery with an exquisite assumption of unconsciousness on its account, as though they were millionaires and cared nothing for such trivial things. And the whimsical incongruities of it! If one wore a shining tile he either had no shirt (or perhaps a very badly soiled one), or wore a frayed coat and disreputable shoes. In fact, no complete respectable dress made its appearance in the room that night, though each visitor had his distinctive specialty,—one a burnished top hat, another a gorgeous cravat, another a rich velvet jacket, and so on. But they all wore their hair as long as it would grow. That is the Bohemian mark.

The little bell again rang, and the heavy director announced that "Monsieur Léon Décarmeau will sing one of his newest songs." Monsieur Léon Décarmeau was a lean, half-starved appearing man of about forty, whose eyes were sunk deep in his head, and whose sharp cheek-bones protruded prominently. On the bridge of his thin, angular nose set a pair of "pince-nez," attached by a broad black cord, which he kept fingering nervously as he sang. His song was entitled "Fleurs et Pensées," and he threw himself into it with a broad and passionate eagerness that heavily strained the barrier between melodrama and burlesque. His glance sought the ceiling in a frenzied quest of imaginary nymphs, his arms swayed as he tenderly caressed imaginary flowers of sweet love and drank in their intoxicating perfume instead of the hot, tobacco-rife smoke of the room. His voice was drawn out in tremendous sighs full of tears, and his chest heaved like a blacksmith's bellows. But when he had ceased he was most generously applauded and praised.

During the intervals between the songs and recitations the room was noisy with laughter, talking, and the clinking of glasses. The one garçon was industriously serving boissons and yelling orders to the bar, where the fat woman sat industriously knitting, heedless, as might have been expected of the keeper of the Cave of Adullam, and awakening to activity only when the stentorian yells of the garçon's orders rose above the din of the establishment. Absinthe and beer formed the principal beverages, though, as a rule, absinthe was taken only just before a meal, and then it served as an appetizer,—a sharpener of hunger to these who had so little wherewithal to satisfy the hunger that unaided nature created!

The mystery of the means by which these lighthearted Bohemians sustained their precarious existence was not revealed to me; yet here they sat, and laughed, and talked, and recited the poetry of their own manufacture, and sang their songs, and drank, and smoked their big pipes, and rolled cigarettes incessantly, happy enough in the hour of their lives, bringing hither none of the pains and pangs and numbing evidences of their struggles. And there was no touch of the sordid in the composite picture that they made, and a certain tinge of intellectual refinement, a certain spirituality that seemed to raise them infinitely above the plane of the lowly strugglers who won their honest bread by honest labor, shone about them as a halo.