In Vanity Fair: A Tale of Frocks and Femininity

Evening at Trouville means an elaborate dinner at one of the private villas or hotels, and an hour or two at the Casino, or perhaps some private social function following in the wake of a dinner – dancing, bridge, music, theatricals. The Hôtel de Paris is the public dining-place par excellence, the best vantage-ground from which to watch the passing show, but it is no easy matter to secure a table at the Hôtel de Paris during the height of the season. The most extravagant and modish part of the Trouville crowd – aside from the occupants of the handsomest villas – is quartered at the Hôtel de Paris. A crowd quite as swell but more inclined to quiet goes to the Grand Hôtel de Deauville, but rooms at this hotel are all taken months in advance by folk belonging to the Deauville set. The Hôtel de Paris rooms are reserved far in advance, too, but by a clientèle less exclusive. Money is the one essential at the Hôtel de Paris, but one must have plenty of that. There are always famous mondaines, millionaires, royal personages, staying at the Paris; but there, too, one finds the Parisian demi-mondaine, the noted jockey, the great actress, the wealthy tourist, and the worthy bourgeois of Paris will often save thriftily all year in order that he may afford a week at the Paris during the season. It is chic to stay at the Paris, and it is vastly amusing. Incidentally it is, as has been hinted, expensive. To have the humblest and scrappiest of rooms one must pay at least six dollars a day, and the prices of suites run up into appalling sums. Restaurant prices, too, are monumental and tips are no small item. The waiter who serves one is the most ingratiating, the most efficient, the most knowing of his kind, but if one does not give the suave Shylock the full ten per cent of his bill, which is the letter of his bond, it will be much better not to come back again. They have retentive memories, those waiters; they are used to lavish generosity – and tables are always at a premium.

It is practically impossible to secure a table for dinner without first enlisting the head waiter's sympathy by a discreet tip of from five to fifty francs, and a thousand francs has been paid for a table during grande semaine. The cuisine is not remarkable – not so good, for instance, as that of the Paris Café de Paris, which is under the same management; but much beside food goes to make up one's money's worth when the coveted table has at last been obtained, and there are few things more amusing to a student of men, women, and things than to sit in some corner of the café and watch the world go by. To thoroughly appreciate the show one should have, across the table, a friend who is versed in the gossip of the European capitals, and who can name the diners and tell their stories; but even the stranger within the gates can get a vast amount of entertainment out of the heterogeneous crowd, the amazing types, the beautiful clothes, the superb jewels, and many of the stories are written so plainly that he who runs may read.

After dinner the crowd drifts into the great Casino and now for a certain part of the idlers begins the serious business of the day. It is the custom to say that there is no high play in France to-day and that the great days of gambling are over, but every year folk go away from Trouville who could furnish circumstantial evidence to refute that theory. Play is more guarded than it once was. The gambling does not jump at the eyes. On the first floor of the Casino near the music a few modest tables of petits chevaux attract a crowd of players whose heaviest plunging is but a matter of a few francs, and many transient visitors go away thinking that this outfit represents the gambling of Trouville; but habitués of the place know better than that. Up on the second floor there are trente et quarante and baccarat, but even here the limit is not high. Many women surround the tables here, and women make up a large percentage of the crowd admitted to the tables of the third floor, where play runs high and admittance is not altogether easy to obtain; but on the fourth floor are tables from which women are barred and to which only the men accustomed to play for very high stakes are welcomed. Here is the innermost circle of the Trouville gambling Inferno, and here are found men whose very names ooze money. Here are found, too, men who have no colossal fortunes behind them, but who can play high because they are willing to risk all they have. A Rothschild, a Vanderbilt, a Menier, may rub shoulders at the tables, but they will perhaps have an actor, a restaurant proprietor, and a great dressmaker for vis-à-vis, and no one is playing for less than one thousand dollars a point. Last season an American actor was one of the heavy losers in this fourth-floor room, but a theatrical manager evened things up by cashing in a goodly heap of counters representing ten thousand dollars each at the end of a spectacular evening's play in which several of the wealthiest men of Europe took a hand. Men have been beggared at these tables. One prominent racing man lost his stables down to the last horse and bridle in an evening of play. A famous English yacht changed hands as a result of an hour at baccarat. Some of those who are knowing in such matters contend that the heaviest gambling in the world to-day goes on in the Trouville Casino during grande semaine, but one gives that statement for what it is worth, and authentic gambling statistics are not easy to obtain.

In order to cover the gambling, the Casino ranks as a club, though everybody gets in – at least on the first floor. While fortunes are changing hands overhead, down here all is light and laughter and mirth. There is no drinking, but that does not trouble thirsty folk for there is first aid near at hand in the Café de Paris; and dinner is still a recent memory. The music is always good and there is dancing for those who want it. Perhaps some popular chanteuse or dancer from Paris is a feature of the evening entertainment, or there may be a costume ball or an effective cotillon. The best theatrical companies of Paris play in the little theatre, and always there are the petits chevaux to offer amusement of a mildly exciting sort.

All goes merrily until eleven o'clock, then the crowd pours out into the night, the doors close, the lights go out, and the great building stands dark and grim until morning. The board walk is thronged for a time with late strollers, but it is a poor imitation of Atlantic City's pride, this narrow board walk stretching from the Hôtel de Paris to the Rochers Noirs. Only Ostend can offer a board walk that appeals to Americans as something approaching the real thing.

The strollers melt away from the promenade, the cafés empty, and at a fairly respectable hour Trouville is given over to quiet and night shadow. Late hilarity is the exception rather than the rule, but enough gaiety is crowded into the hours between eleven A.M. and midnight to last the ordinary summer resort for a fortnight.

Dieppe, of course, echoes certain notes of the Trouville season and is as gay in its own way, though it has not the fine sparkle of the more Parisian resort nor such an exclusively chic villa set as that of Deauville.

One hears as much English as French in the Hôtel Royale and the Casino and on the beach, and more swell Americans congregate at Dieppe than at any other one of the European summer resorts. For the great racing week crowds flock in, as at Trouville, from all the coast and inland resorts, and in at least one feature the Dieppe races surpass any others of the seashore circuit. No finer natural steeple chase course is known to the racing world than that at Dieppe, and the steeple chase races there are events that make a notable sensation even among the many sensations of the Normandy season.

At Ostend it is German that disputes supremacy with French, and there are more Austrians and Germans there than at any other place on the Jockey Club racing circuit, but one misses the familiar Parisian faces, for my lady of Deauville does not often go to Ostend even for the grande quinzaine of August; and, oddly enough, even the "filles de Paris" do not make much of the Ostend season.

The crowd is an immense and interesting one even without the French element, and money is spent as prodigally as at Trouville – even more prodigally perhaps and a trifle more crudely. The Café de la Plage has the reputation of being one of the most expensive places in the world in which one may order a dinner, the promenade, as has been said, is the best on the coast, and the Kursaal is one of the finest in Europe. The programme of the days is as crowded as that of Trouville, and life at Ostend moves at a breathless pace, – tennis tournaments, golf tournaments, automobile races, motor-boat races, horse races, children's fêtes, balls, flower festivals, theatre, excursions, déjeuners, dinners, yachting – but the list is endless. There is gambling, too, at Ostend. Gambling cuts comparatively little figure at Dieppe, and the Belgian government has muzzled it at Ostend, but here as in Paris one may always play at one's private club, and there is a private club at Ostend where during the quinzaine play rivals that of the famous fourth-floor room at Trouville during grande semaine. Many of the same players are in evidence in both places, but at Ostend entrance to the club is a very serious matter. The king of Belgium, notorious viveur and most practical sovereign, has been extremely firm in regard to Ostend play, and permits it only on the guarantee of the club that no scandal shall arise to discredit the little Belgian country. Any serious gambling fracas would mean an immense forfeit to the government, and consequently rigid measures are taken to safeguard the play. Anyone desiring admission must be introduced by reliable members and his name must be posted for three days before he is accepted. No exceptions are made, and a rich American who presented written introductions from two of the best known and wealthiest men of Europe last season was promptly turned down.

"These gentlemen are members. We know them well. Monsieur is doubtless altogether eligible, but our rules are our rules. We cannot accept cards of introduction, but if Monsieur will come here with sponsors who are members – "

Money would not buy the entrée. The directors of the Ostend Club take no chances. They leave that to the gamblers at the club tables.

With Ostend the season ends, and during the next week all of the expresses running to Paris are crowded with homing holiday folk. Dinard and the other Brittany resorts have been crowded as has Normandy, but Dinard is not so popular with the smart Parisienne as is Trouville, and money is not spent so lavishly in the Brittany resorts as in those of Normandy. Some Parisians of the fashionable set have wandered to Switzerland or to German or French spas. Others have spent the summer in quiet country houses and châteaux far from fashion's haunts; but from all quarters they flock to Paris when August is past, and Paris welcomes them with smiles. She has amused herself after a fashion, but the summer has been long and a trifle dull.

CHAPTER VIII

THE MERRY-GO-ROUND

The Parisienne adores Paris, but she is subject to acute attacks of that modern malady to which the leisure class is peculiarly susceptible, and which one of Madame's countrymen has aptly called the "nostalgie d'ailleurs" – homesickness for elsewhere.

Moved by that spirit of restlessness she forsakes Paris – in order that she may better love that city of her heart. She does not yearn for rest, but she wants change, and so she goes flitting here and there within easy reach of Paris – always within easy reach of Paris. Her fashion circuit is circumscribed by that national sentiment which makes the average Frenchman an unhappy and protesting alien anywhere outside of la belle France.

Madame goes to Monte Carlo; for the Côte d'Azur Rapid has made the Riviera resorts mere suburbs of Paris. She goes to Tangiers; for, after all, Tangiers is France, and in the French quarter of that picturesque place one finds a limited edition of Parisian society. But as for Cairo – no. The fashion show in Cairo, during the height of the season, is a great one, but it is furnished chiefly by English and Americans, and one finds few smart French folk in the throng. The Pyramids are too far from the Avenue des Acacias and the Rue de la Paix.

The Monte Carlo season is not, like the seashore season, an obligatory decampment. One may stay away from the Riviera without imperilling one's social position, while a summer spent in Paris would stamp one as quite outside the social pale; and, though there is, during January and February, a mighty going and coming to and from the south, Paris is gay and crowded all through the winter.

Great private fêtes are usually reserved for the spring season, unless some special event calls them forth, but there is a merry-go-round of more or less formal entertaining, and the society woman needs an expert accountant to keep her engagement book, and the semainier which records the at-home days of her friends, in intelligible order. There is time in the winter for the intimate reunions that are likely to be crowded out in the whirl of spring social functions, and when Bagatelle and Puteaux and la Boulié and the other open-air rendezvous are eliminated from the Parisienne's calculations, she can more often meet her friends in her own home or in theirs.

Balls are not a remarkably important feature of the Parisian season. There is dancing, of course, but the Frenchmen, as a rule, do not care for it.

"The ball? Je m'en passe," said a society man of Paris, when questioned about the matter.

"In America it is, perhaps, different. There one dances and one sits out dances, and one converses, and one flirts. Here, it is usually for the demoiselles that dances are given. You know our French girls? The writers tell us that they are emancipated, that they know many things. Perhaps, – but they do not show all this at the dance. One is introduced, one takes the girl from her mamma, one dances with her, one returns her to her mamma. C'est finis. Gai ça, n'est-ce pas? For the man who wishes to marry, to settle himself, the private ball may have much interest; but for one who seeks merely amusement, entertainment, – Grace à Dieu, il y a d'autres choses."

Truly, there are other things, a multitude of them. The Parisian hostess makes a feature of the musicale and certain salons are famous for music of extraordinarily good quality. Private theatricals, amateur or professional, are a social specialty in Paris. Bridge is a passion there as elsewhere. Parisian vivacity and buoyancy make even the formal reception an occasion lively rather than depressing.

But, when all is said, the dinner is the private social function dearest to the Parisian heart, and the successful Parisian hostess understands the art of dinner-giving as do few other women in the world. An elaborate menu and a gorgeous and extravagant decorative scheme seldom enter into her calculations. There is a rational number of courses, perfectly cooked, perfectly served, there is a dainty and attractive table; but the extravagant display, the eager striving after unique and picturesque effects in table decoration, the costly souvenirs which mark the formal dinner in New York, are not often a part of the French scheme.

On the other hand, the French hostess displays a tact and finesse amounting to genius in the selection and grouping of her guests, and, as a result, her dinner goes off with a verve which no amount of extraneous gorgeousness could achieve. The Parisienne of the better type, – "she of the subtle charm, to whom every man is a possible admirer" – has a famous opportunity for exhibiting her charm at the dinner table – particularly at the "little dinner." From the time she could lisp she has been trained to please and be pleased. She lacks the cultivated imperiousness of the American woman, and though she too, rules, her method differs from that of our social tyrant. Instead of demanding man's allegiance and devotion, she sets about winning them. She is gay, agreeable, witty, sympathetic, thoughtful of man's little needs, indulgent of man's little foibles; and her influence, though less assertive, is subtler than that of the American woman who claims her throne by divine right. Someone has said that "cherchez la femme" is written over every phase of Parisian life, and the thing is true. The Parisienne's influence is felt in politics, art, business, society, and yet the Parisienne is so essentially feminine, and the Parisian is so sure of his supremacy, so unconscious of any bondage save that of love or gallantry.

The Parisienne was born to dining. She has adopted tea-drinking. Fifteen years ago it was almost impossible to obtain a good cup of tea in Paris. To-day Paris is flooded with tea. The change has come about through the Anglomania which, within recent years, has attacked Parisian society. Tea came in with polo and golf, and English tweeds, and long walks, and all the other Anglo-Saxon strenuousness which has disturbed French traditions. It has become the fashion to adopt English sports, English clothes, English customs, English slang.

The Frenchwoman has a form of the mania less virulent than that which has attacked the Frenchman. She may go in for le sport, may do violence to her inclinations and her Louis XV heels by walking, – or as she calls it, "footing," – may employ an English maid and interlard her conversation with English phrases; but she draws the line at English clothes, while the French dandy's ultimate ambition is to be mistaken for an Englishman, and to that end he employs London tailors, cultivates English habits, and succeeds in being as much like a Londoner as the Place de la Concorde is like Trafalgar Square.

Five o'clock tea is a matter-of-course necessity in London. In Paris it is a fad, and to "five-o'-clocker" is one of the unfailing diversions of the smart Parisienne, whether mondaine or demi-mondaine.

Naturally, being a social fad instead of a personal comfort, afternoon tea is seldom served to Madame when she is alone in boudoir or salon.

If one is at home to one's friends, and there is an appreciative audience for a tea-gown of rare merit, then there is good reason to five-o'-clocker under one's own roof; but, on the whole, the Parisienne loves better to make a toilette worthy of applause and sally forth to drink her tea under the eyes of her world.

Columbin's was the first of the fashionable tea-rooms. Just why the little pâtisserie on the Rue Cambon leaped into fame, it is hard to say. Anglomania was rife, the Parisienne needed new amusement. A shrewd pâtissier combined the psychical moment with superior-toasted currant muffins and cakes and tea and a convenient rendezvous. All the smart Parisian set flocked to Columbin's, the narrow Rue Cambon was crowded with imposing equipages, the curb was lined with dapper grooms, and in the little tea-rooms, between five and six, there was one of the most impressive fashion shows of the fashion-making city.

There is no need of putting the story in the past tense. The crowd and the fashion show are still to be seen in the Rue Cambon, though Columbin's has spread over more space and rival tea-rooms have sprung up like mushrooms all over Paris. On almost any corner one may now get a good cup of tea, but among the multitude of tea-rooms only a few have caught the fancy of the fashionable Parisiennes.

Rumpelmayer's on the Rue de Rivoli is one of the few, and is perhaps the most successful rival of Columbin's among the Parisian mondaines; but tea hour at the Ritz is vastly entertaining, if less exclusive, and more cosmopolitan, while at the Elysées there is music and things are excessively gay. "Too gay," says Madame of the chic Parisian set, with an expressive shrug of her shoulders, but one goes to the Elysées all the same.

Possibly a pretty woman is prettier in ball or dinner toilette than in any other dress, – though one might take issue even with that theory; but surely individuality and distinctive elegance count for more in street costumes of the handsome type than in any other item of a woman's wardrobe. The tea-hour crowd at – say Columbin's, on a winter afternoon, diffuses an atmosphere of luxury, elegance, richness, that even Paris would find it hard to surpass. She is so coquette in her velvets and broadcloth and furs, this dear Parisienne. She steps from her carriage and passes through the door which her groom hurries to open. Inside is a murmur of many voices, a ripple of laughter, a rustle of silken stuffs, a scent of violets. Madame looks about her and smiles – an inclusive smile, for she recognizes so many of the women who are grouped about the little tables. Then she trails her chiffons forward in the manner habitual with Ouida's heroines, and she stops to choose just the little cakes she will have with her tea. The little cakes of Paris merit consideration. She turns her back upon the tea drinkers as she deliberates, my lady chez Columbin. It requires supreme confidence in one's figure and one's dressmaker to turn one's back gracefully, carelessly, upon one's most merciless critics, but Madame does it with nonchalance, and when she has settled the weighty question of cakes she finds her way to a table, stopping here and there to exchange greetings and jests with friends. She is perfectly gowned, wrapped in superb and becoming furs, smiling under the shadowing brim and nodding plumes of her great hat or under the tip-tilted absurdity of her tiny toque. And all around her are women of the same type, exotic products of a society highly artificial, sensuously material. Some of them are beautiful, some are homely, all are extravagantly dressed, and all have made that effort to appear beautiful which is with the Parisienne – more than with any other woman of the world – an absorbing passion.

It is this determined spirit of coquetry which leads the mondaine of Paris to make up in a fashion which in other cities is relegated chiefly to the class without the social gates. The Parisienne makes up frankly, conscientiously, with thought only of the effect obtained and with no effort to attribute to nature the results of her maid's skill or her own. Her cosmetics are as much a part of her toilette as her frock or her hat, and her French audience applauds her make-up instead of criticising. It is coquette, this artificiality, it shows that desire to please which is the fundamental principle of French femininity. If one is beautiful – that is excellent. If one is not beautiful, but makes a heroic effort to appear so, – that too is excellent. The French public forgives all save indifference to the true feminine metier.

Over in the spacious rooms of the Ritz, at the tea hour, one will find more English and Americans than French, though the French go there too, and there is a sprinkling of many nations. The crowd is more mixed than that of the Rue Cambon, in features other than that of nationality. Few demi-mondaines go to Columbin's. Why? – It is hard to tell, – but they do not go. Occasionally, demi-mondaines of the highest class drift in, but they are out of their element. There are hardly enough of them to give each other confidence.

At the Ritz things are different. There one is likely to see the most famous half-world beauties of Paris drinking tea, and at the Elysées the percentage of notoriety is still greater than at the Ritz.

They love dearly to range themselves alongside of the haut monde, these cocottes of Paris, but they like a large and varied scene, a certain amount of moral – or immoral – support. The restricted intimacy of a rendezvous like Columbin's is not to their taste.

At the Palais de Glace the demi-mondaine shines. Here is a setting to which she lends herself readily, a setting, moreover, in which she may pose beside Madame of the beau monde and measure charms with her.

Only the social elect may skate at the Cercle des Patineurs in the Bois, and there one finds the society women of Paris gliding over the ice or chatting around the braziers on the banks of the horseshoe lake. It is the most chic of social rendezvous, this skating club in the Bois, but the weather clerk is no respecter of high society, and there are comparatively few weeks during the winter when open-air skating is practicable in Paris.

Down at the Palais de Glace on the Champs Elysées, the management deals out artificial ice to the just and the unjust every day during the season. Even in October there is skating at the Palais, and it is chic to skate then, just as it is chic to eat fresh strawberries in January, while, during midwinter, this skating-rink is one of the most popular afternoon resorts in Paris. The Parisian skating costume is a triumph, and the Parisiennes skate well, conscious of their own grace and revelling in that consciousness. Some of the great ladies of the French world are famous skaters; especially certain members of the Russian colony; and there are demi-mondaines too who skate marvellously well, – particularly two or three Danish beauties, who have taken on a Parisian lacquer. After all, it is hardly fair that the demi-mondaine of Paris should be credited entirely to the essential immorality of French society, and constitute a reproach against French womanhood, for the class is cosmopolitan to an extraordinary degree, recruited from Spain, from Italy, from Austria, from Russia, from Germany, from Sweden, from Denmark, from all countries of Europe, and centred in Paris because there are concentrated the wealth and prodigality of a material and luxurious civilization, because there the cocotte can live her short day so brilliantly, so dizzily, that during it she can quite forget the inevitable hideousness of the long days to come.