In Vanity Fair: A Tale of Frocks and Femininity

The little grisettes of the Latin Quarter and Montmartre are largely French, and bear the homely French names, – Suzanne, Rose, Marie, – but they are, on the whole, the most honest, the least degraded and corrupt, as they are the humblest of the class to which, broadly speaking, they belong. A grade higher – or lower – according to the view-point of the one who classifies, is the little cocotte of the cafés and dance halls, the Cri-Cri of the Casino, the Fol-Fol of the Elysées Montmartre. When the boulevards and the better theatres and cafés are reached, the name is prone to take on dignity. Antoinette, Diane, Heloise appear. And further still up the cocotte's ladder comes an insistent "Mademoiselle" or "Madame." When the cocotte has become truly demi-mondaine, when she buys her clothes on the Place Vendôme, and acquires a villa at Trouville, an hôtel in Paris, she adds Madame to a high sounding, mouth-filling name, such as Montmorency or Beauregard. Perhaps she even preempts a title. There, for instance, was the Princesse d'Araignée. She was very quiet, this Princess, very retiring, but Paris knew her as it knew the king who was for many years her lover, and to whom she was loyal, though he came but seldom to Paris. He is dead now, that royal lover – a tragic death – and the Princess – but this was to be a story of her title.

The title was, on its face, self-explanatory. "The Spider Princess" had a fine appropriateness in the half-world of Paris. One day some one spoke jestingly of the name. The Princess shook her head.

"It is really mine," she said gravely, "mine since I was a baby."

The jester looked incredulous.

"But yes. I will tell you," said the Princess. "I am of Normandy. You did not know? Yes, I am of Normandy. I was born there in a little village by the sea. Such a very little town. I can see it now. My father was a fisherman. Big and brown and strong, my father – and kind. But yes, of a kindness. He loved me, and I – I adored him. My mother was good – an honest woman, but it was my father whom I adored. When he was at home I trotted always at his heels – une toute petite bébé, brown and plump and laughing always."

There was a big rock in the harbour – an immense jagged rock in the water. The waves washed over it always, save on one day during the month. Then it was quite out of the water and it lay there like a great spider in the sunshine, with long legs running out into the foam. Along the coast they called it l'Araignée.

"It fascinated me, that big rock spider. All the month I watched for it, and when it came up out of the sea I cried to be taken out to it. My father took me. He was like that always – très indulgent, mon père, and I – what I wanted I must have.

"He would carry me down to his boat and row out to the rock and then we would eat our luncheon there, and he would tell me stories and I would play – une bébé, vous savez. I had then but four years, and I was happy – Dieu, que j'étais heureuse. The fisher-folk came to know me there on my rock, to look for us, mon père et moi, and they called me la Princesse d'Araignée. Yes, that was my name. Everyone called me that, smiling, and I was proud.

"One does not stay always a baby. I grew up, and the father died. It was dull there in the little Norman village. I wanted excitement, and – what I wanted I must have, I was always like that.

"The story tells itself after that, n'est-ce pas? I came to Paris, and I found the excitement. But one does not use the name of an honest father here in Paris. Il était tellement bon, mon père.

"I remembered that I had been a princess and I took my title once more. La Princesse d'Araignée! You see it is really mine, the title. The rock is still there in the sea, – but, mon père et moi – "

A far cry from the Palais du Glace, yet not so far after all, as memories go; for the Princesse d'Araignée was at the Palais du Glace one December afternoon long ago, and her king was by her side.

If one does not skate, still one goes to the skating-rink. The promenade is crowded on popular afternoons with all the types familiar in leisure Paris. Women in airy gowns and picture hats furnish effective contrast to the feminine skaters in their short skirts and jaunty toques. A fragrance of flowers and perfumes floats in the air, the ring of the skates sounds through the swinging melody of the music. Once more the Parisian artificiality – once more the Parisian charm.

On one afternoon in the week the crowd at the Palais takes on a most chic and exclusive tone. The prices are higher on that day, but high prices would never shut out the cocotte and her following. Quite the reverse. An unwritten law accomplishes what the increased prices would not accomplish, and Friday afternoon smart society claims the rink for its own. That is le jour chic at the Palais de Glace. If one goes on other days – as one does – there is a fair field and no favour.

The theatres of Paris are in full swing during the winter, and new plays are magnets for the society set as for all Paris; but even the smartest of Parisians are democratic when it comes to theatre-going, and no one or two houses claim their allegiance. The Théâtre Français, the Odeon, les Nouveautés, les Variétés, le Vaudeville, le Théâtre Antoine, le Théâtre Sara Bernhardt, le Maturin, – to all of these Madame goes, and to the cafés chantants in addition. Wherever there is clever entertainment, there one finds the swell Parisienne. She is catholic of taste.

Americans visiting Paris in summer are likely to have a curious idea of the Parisian theatre, as of many things Parisian. Then the better theatres are closed, the actors are probably away with the summer holiday folk, or, if the exigencies of their profession keep them in Paris, they are occupying little villas at Ville d'Avray, at Bougival, or in some other convenient suburb, whence they can run in for rehearsals or professional business when necessary.

Only the cafés chantants and the variety theatres are open and beckoning to the summer visitors, and the crowd at these places has little of the true Parisian character, is made up chiefly of strangers from the colonies, from America, from a host of regions whose summer climates are more trying than that of Paris. The shows are amusing in their way, the crowd is amusing too, but neither is calculated to give one an accurate idea of Paris theatre or of Paris theatre-goers. Indeed, one thing about the summer attendance at Les Ambassadeurs, le Jardin de Paris, and the other resorts that draw the crowd during July and August, always impresses Parisians themselves as phenomenal and distinctly shocking. The "jeune fille" of France does not frequent "ces coins là," but respectable American fathers and mothers tranquilly take their daughters with them to cafés chantants, variety theatres, even to the dance halls of the Rive Gauche and of Montmartre. A goodly number of these rendezvous exist solely for the delectation of visiting strangers and, like the Moulin Rouge, are supported chiefly by the American tourists' money. That the Moulin Rouge is dead speaks well for the educational development of the American traveller, but from the ashes of the place, which had nothing save sheer vulgarity to commend it, has risen a variety theatre with café balconies, and some of the dance-hall features of the old resort are retained in modified form. The Café de la Mort, and the other melodramatic and banal cafés, where efforts are made to provide the visitor with a shock that will sustain the reputation of Paris for devilish wickedness, are, like the Moulin Rouge of unblessed memory, provided for the edification of travellers, and supported chiefly by American dollars. Even Maxim's, which means to the average American the last word on Parisian impropriety, is, by Parisians themselves, considered one of the concessions to American and English expectations and tastes.

"Maxim's? Oh c'est bête ça – toujours les Americains chez Maxim," says the Frenchman, disdainfully.

There is wickedness enough of a purely Parisian flavour in Paris, heaven knows; but the lurid spectacles provided for the tourist are perhaps the least immoral if the most vulgar of its manifestations.

The Opera is a tradition of the Paris season. All of the swell clubs have boxes and the society folk who can afford it subscribe, yet the opera is not so important an item of the social year in Paris as in New York, and one will usually see more elaborate toilettes and more fashionable women in any one of the popular theatres than at the Opera.

When spring comes to Paris and the horse-chestnuts burst into bloom, new elements enter into the merry-go-round. The clubs in the Bois and outside of Paris become centres of social activity, the races begin, al fresco dining and tea-drinking are in order. Hostesses blest with such grounds as those of Baronne Henri Rothschild give picturesque garden parties, there are chic evening fêtes at Puteaux, elaborate open-air charity entertainments are organized. Riding and driving in the Bois, which has continued languishingly during the winter, takes on new spirit.

The Avenue des Acacias is thronged with carriages and motors at the driving hours, and now and then women descend from their carriage to promenade, to chat with friends, to display their toilettes.

The Avenue des Acacias is the drive of drives for the mixed crowd of smart folk, but the old nobility of France prefers to drive in stately hauteur along the Avenue de la Reine Marguerite. One must make some protest against the levelling of class barriers.

The two most fashionable bridle-paths run along beside these two favourite driving avenues, but the whole Bois is a paradise of bridle-paths, and near its centre is a spot which has been chosen as the favourite meeting-place of chic riders at certain hours. The Parisians are riding more since things English became the fashion, and many of them ride very well, though the men affect English horsemanship to the point of caricature; but, on the whole, the French are better at haute école riding than at park riding. They make the best circus riders in the world, but the horsemanship of the average rider on the bridle-paths of the Bois leaves much to be desired.

As for driving, there are many good whips, but the accomplishment is not general, and few Parisiennes of social prominence drive. It is not "convenable," and though several of the greatest ladies of France hold the reins over their own fine horses in the Bois, driving alone with a groom is generally ranked in the same category as walking alone with a dog. The woman who does either must expect uncomplimentary classification, unless she stands high enough to be a law unto herself.

And apropos of dogs, the pet dog show is always one of the events of the spring season, an occasion that calls for artistic effect in mistress as well as dog, produces scores of effective tableaux, offers testimony concerning feminine folly. There are good dogs shown, dog aristocrats of unimpeachable birth and breeding, but their exhibition is enveloped in such a flurry of chiffons, such a hysteria of pride, ambition, emotion. Nowhere in the world has the dog endured such insults to his sturdy, canine simplicity as in Paris. Nowhere else has he been so dandified, so coddled, so spoiled. The pet dog of the Parisienne of high degree is likely to be a sybarite, and the pet dog of the famous cocotte leads a luxurious existence that demands prodigal expenditure.

One Parisian dog tailor has a most flourishing and successful business. He is the Paquin of dogdom, and let no one think that he is not an artist. When Madame brings her little angel to him for a spring outfit, there is an impressive paraphrase of Madame's own sessions with her couturier, – a serious conference concerning materials, colours, trimmings, models. In New York a dog blanket is a dog blanket. It may be cheap or expensive, but it is probably bought ready made and approximately fitted. The Parisian dog tailor considers his client's figure, complexion, air.

"But no, Madame. I find that he has not the breadth of chest to wear that model – and the colour! He is not of a type for the blue and silver. A warm violet, now, with the embroidery in more tender shades, and a touch of gold? Bon! And the curving line on the shoulder? It gives an air of slenderness, that shoulder seam. Madame has samples of the other costumes she wishes to match?"

Absurd? Of course it is all ineffably absurd, but the mania for dress extends even to the lapdog in Paris.

The little angel has also his boots – of fur for the cold, of oilskin for the dampness. He has his tiny kerchiefs of cobweb fineness, embroidered with his name or monogram, and tucked into the pockets of his handsome coats. He wears jewelry, more or less costly, collars, bangles, even bracelets. One notorious Parisienne has a collection of jewelry for her dog that is worth a fortune, collars of cabuchon emeralds and diamonds, of pink pearls, of cunningly wrought gold and lucky jade. It is a hobby of the mistress, this dog jewelry, and when one's specialty is the speedy bankrupting of Grand Dukes and wealthy American fledglings and rich Portuguese Jews, one has the money for one's hobbies.

The pet dog show is not a dog clothes exhibit. The entries are judged upon their canine merits, but it is amusing all the same, this event, and the mistresses pose most charmingly with their pets. Nothing that happens in Paris lacks its theatrical note.

The Fête des Fleurs belongs to the spring season, but it does not belong to the smart Parisian set, though every one turns out to see the show. The fête is given in the name of charity, and doubtless charity covers its sin, but there is more than a little vulgarity and horse-play mixed with the picturesque beauty of the scene. A part of the Bois is roped off, and an entrance fee is charged for all sight-seers and equipages passing the barriers. So much for charity. The rest is merry-making of a somewhat promiscuous sort. Every seat along the avenues is taken, masses of flowers are banked high along the curb, to be sold as ammunition for the battle of flowers. Bands are playing, flags are fluttering, garlands are swinging from decorated poles, and past the judges' stand by the pigeon-shooting club files an endless line of carriages, carts, automobiles, fiacres, conveyances of all types, from the butcher's cart, bearing the honest butcher and his wife and children, to the electric victoria of the most famous dancer of Paris. Only the chic society woman is conspicuous by her absence. One seldom sees, in the Fête des Fleurs procession, faces familiar in the exclusive salons.

But the sight is an interesting one, for all that. A Parisian fête does not need the indorsement of the Faubourg St. Germain in order to be gay, and the public celebrities and demi-mondaines turn out in all their glory for the Fête des Fleurs.

Pretty women look out from the riot of flowers that covers hansom, victoria, dog-cart, phaeton, automobile, and money has been spent like water to furnish some of the beauties with their setting. One phaeton is literally hidden under purple orchids, and holds two blondes elaborately arrayed in white and violet. Behind comes a victoria trimmed in thousands of yellow and red roses and bearing a noted Spanish dancer. A popular opera singer has made her motor car a moving bank of pink roses and violets.

Bunches of forget-me-nots and daisies and pinks are hurtling through the air. A popular lionne of the day is so pelted with fragrant ammunition that she springs up in her carriage bower and stands, a slender mousseline-draped beauty, laughing under the rain of nosegays, and with gay abandon returning her assailants' fire.

In the carriage just behind hers are two gorgeously gowned women, old and haggard and hideous under their cosmetics, derelicts, favourites who have outlived their day, and are fighting the hopeless fight against defeat and misery and oblivion; but the beauty of the flower battle does not look behind her and read the memento mori. She is having her day now. What has yesterday or to-morrow to do with a Fête des Fleurs?

There are other public fêtes on the floodtide of the Paris spring, – plebeian, many of them, and the Fête de Neuilly is one of the most plebeian; yet it is chic to go to Neuilly at least once while the van dwellers from all the highways and byways of France are in camp along the Avenue de Neuilly. From every direction the vagabonds have gathered, – a motley crew of gipsy wanderers, strolling entertainers who, after a winter in the provinces, have found their way back to the borders of the Paris they love.

Ramshackle booths, tents, shooting-galleries, carousels, acrobats, fortune-tellers, snake-charmers, lion tamers, ventriloquists, fat ladies, magicians, vendors of every imaginable cheap and tawdry thing – the old Coney Island multiplied by ten and invested with a Gallic lightness and sparkle in place of its own dull vulgarity. That is the Neuilly Fair.

Smart folk give jolly little dinners and, after, take their guests out to Neuilly for a lark. They visit the side shows, and shoot at the balls, and buy ridiculous souvenirs, and ride on the carousel, and throw confetti, and give themselves up to vulgar amusements with the infantile joyousness that is a characteristic Parisian mood.

Madame is very charming in all her elegant perfection against the tawdry background of Neuilly, and she knows that she is charming – all of which helps to make the "Neuilly evening" a popular item on the June programme.

There was once a crown prince who went to the Neuilly Fête, and who saw a gipsy girl there. He was bon garçon, this crown prince, and he was doing the fête incognito and with a thoroughness that included making friends with many of the van folk. The gipsy girl was beautiful. She killed herself afterward, far from Paris, in the country of the Prince, but one expects comedy, not tragedy, of the fête de Neuilly.

Princes and kings are frequent visitors in Paris, and when they come officially, everyone, from the President of the Republic to the street-sweeper of the boulevards, conspires to do them honour. But his Royal Highness loves better to visit Paris incog. and amuse himself according to his own will. He has even been known to make an official visit, to endure with cheerful resignation the formal entertaining lavished upon him, to be escorted to the station by a guard of honour and high officials, to wave a courteous adieu from his car window, and, within forty-eight hours, to be back in Paris, incognito, with only one or two members of his suite for attendants and only his own tastes to be consulted in the matter of entertainment. Even royalty is human.

Paris dances and sings and fiddles her way through the spring days – as she has danced and sung and fiddled her way through history; and when July comes and the blinds are drawn down in the fashionable residence quarters, still Paris is not dull.

Swarms of visitors from the Colonies, from Southern Europe, from America, fill the gaps left by departing Parisians. Restaurant tables are crowded. Les Ambassadeurs, l'Horloge and their rivals do a flourishing business. Only the onlooker who knows the real Paris misses the gayest element of the Parisian world from its accustomed haunts, and finds the Parisian summer a dreary interregnum twixt season and season.

CHAPTER IX

THE HUNTING SEASON AT THE CHÂTEAUX

With September, Parisians renounce their allegiance to Neptune. For that matter, Neptune has little to do even with the seashore season of the Parisian world. The hoary old fellow is but a detail of the stage setting. Whatever sovereignty he may have claimed at Trouville, Dieppe, Dinard, he long ago made over to Venus Anadyomene, and even she cannot hold her courtiers. There comes a day when the sands that have for months bloomed riotously in Parisian gowns and sunshades and millinery, stretch away, yellow and lone, before deserted casinos and empty hotels.

The seashore season is over. The hunting season is on.

Venus Anadyomene has given way to Diana, goddess of the chase. Pagan Neptune has handed the fashionable crowd over to Christian St. Hubert, patron saint of venery.

There is an element of farce in certain phases of French hunting, for the Frenchman is born to theatrical effects as the sparks fly upward, and the good shopkeeper of Paris goes a-hunting in a fashion that has been the delight of Punch artists for many years. He is so round and rosy and valiant and important this French sportsman of Punch, his hunting costume is so elaborate, he is so lavishly equipped with hunting paraphernalia. The railway stations of Paris are crowded with hunters of this class when the falling leaves are aswirl in the forests of France; but Monsieur is only one of many French hunting types, and the English go far astray when they make the caricature inclusive, just as they strain the truth when they picture the French follower of hounds as a dapper and rotund little fop clinging frantically round his horse's neck and shouting – "Stop ze hunt! Stop zat fox! I tomble! I faloff! Stop ze fox!"

If the London cockney should arise en masse each October and go forth to hunt as does the bourgeois of Paris, there would doubtless be amusing sights in the railway stations of London; and though the fox hunting of France does not compare favourably with that of England, there's many a fox-hunting English squire who would fall by the way if he attempted to ride with a wiry French marquis on an all day and night wolf hunt through the woods and plains of Poitou.

The chase is a passion with the French, and all classes save those to which a day's holiday, a gun, and a dog are unattainable joys hail the advent of the shooting season with enthusiasm. One sees the solitary hunter in the marshes near the city, or searching patiently for birds on ground where no placards warn trespassers away. The toy estates that fringe the woods near Paris are carefully enclosed in high fences of wire net, and there, on clear autumn mornings, there is a mighty fusillade among the thickets while Monsieur in his English tweeds, and Madame in her newest and most impractical shooting costume, and their equally decorative friends, play at la chasse.

Since the greater part of the French land is subdivided to a remarkable degree, and the average proprietor cannot shoot over his own place without danger of killing the owner or the game on adjoining property, many shooting alliances are made between groups of men owning adjacent lands, and the privilege of hunting over the whole territory is accorded to each of the group, while the game killed is apportioned according to fixed rules. There are other hunting syndicates more ambitious, renting or owning expensive preserves in country far from Paris, and, of course, there are the fortunate owners of large estates who have on their own preserves enough good shooting to satisfy even the most exacting of English sportsmen.

Millionaire bourgeois own a majority of the important preserves of Seine et Marne, Seine et Oise, and Oise, and the Rothschilds have the finest shooting estate in France, at Vaux-de-Cernay. Kings and princes from all quarters of Europe have shot the birds of the famous banker, who is a power behind many thrones, and some of the fêtes that have followed great hunts in the Rothschild coverts have been memorable ones. Four thousand pheasants were slaughtered to make a holiday for the last royal guest, and after the hunt came an evening of dazzling fête and spectacular illumination of all the country round.

There are other estates where the chasses à tir are famous and where sumptuous entertaining is done during shooting season; but it is in the chasse à cour that France lives up to its old traditions and can show the disdainful Englishman sport not known on the English country side.

The area of the French hunting districts is comparatively small, for over half of the hounds of France are found in Vendee, Anjou, Touraine, and Poitou, but the packs are many and admirable and the sport is good. In the remote regions there is boar hunting, that for an exciting run and a dangerous finish beats anything England has to offer. The Frenchman will go far for a boar hunt, but he will not take many of his favourite hounds with him. English foxhounds are cheaper and the boar is sure to make short work of any dog that runs in on him when he stands at bay, bristles erect, little eyes red with rage, foam flying from his champing tusks; so, as a rule, the French dog is used only to locate the boar, and English dogs are offered up, if sacrifice there must be.