Europe Revised Part 12

Chapter XIV

That Gay Paresis

As you walk along the Rue de la Paix [Footnote: The X being one of the few silent things in France.] and pay and pay, and keep on paying, your eye is constantly engaged by two inscriptions that occur and recur with the utmost frequency. One of these appears in nearly every shopwindow and over nearly every shopdoor. It says:

English Spoken Here.

This, I may tell you, is one of the few absolutely truthful and dependable statements encountered by the tourist in the French capital.

Invariably English is spoken here. It is spoken here during all the hours of the day and until far Into the dusk of the evening; spoken loudly, clearly, distinctly, hopefully, hopelessly, stridently, hoa.r.s.ely, despondently, despairingly and finally profanely by Americans who are trying to make somebody round the place understand what they are driving at.

The other inscription is carved, painted or printed on all public buildings, on most monuments, and on many private establishments as well. It is the motto of the French Republic, reading as follows:

Liberality! Economy! Frugality!

[Footnote: Free translation.]

The first word of this--the Liberality part--is applicable to the foreigner and is aimed directly at him as a prayer, an injunction and a command; while the rest of it--the Economy and the Frugality--is competently attended to by the Parisians themselves. The foreigner has only to be sufficiently liberal and he is a.s.sured of a flattering reception wheresoever his straying footsteps may carry him, whether in Paris or in the provinces; but wheresoever those feet of his do carry him he will find a people distinguished by a frugality and inspired by an economy of the frugalest and most economical character conceivable.

In the streets of the metropolis he is expected, when going anywhere, to hail the fast-flitting taxicab [Footnote: Stops on signal only--and sometimes not then.], though the residents patronize the public bus.

Indeed, the distinction is made clear to his understanding from the moment he pa.s.ses the first outlying fortress at the national frontier [Footnote: Flag station.]--since, for the looks of things if for no better reason, he must travel first-cla.s.s on the de-luxe trains [Footnote: Diner taken off when you are about half through eating.], whereas the Frenchmen pack themselves tightly but frugally into the second-cla.s.s and the third-cla.s.s compartments.

Before I went to France I knew Saint Denis was the patron saint of the French; but I did not know why until I heard the legend connected with his death. When the executioner on the hill at Montmartre cut off his head the good saint picked it up and strolled across the fields with it tucked under his arm--so runs the tale. His head, in that shape, was no longer of any particular value to him, but your true Parisian is of a saving disposition. And so the Paris population have worshiped Saint Denis ever since. Both as a saint and as a citizen he filled the bill.

He would not throw anything away, whether he needed it or not.

Paris--not the Paris of the art lover, nor the Paris of the lover of history, nor yet again the Paris of the worth-while Parisians--but the Paris which the casual male visitor samples, is the most overrated thing on earth, I reckon--except alligator-pear salad--and the most costly.

Its system of conduct is predicated, based, organized and manipulated on the principle that a foreigner with plenty of money and no soul will be along pretty soon. Hence by day and by night the deadfall is rigged and the trap is set and baited--baited with a spurious gayety and an imitation joyousness; but the joyousness is as thin as one coat of sizing, and the bra.s.s shines through the plating; and behind the painted, parted lips of laughter the sharp teeth of greed show in a glittering double row. Yet gallus Mr. Fly, from the U.S.A., walks debonairly in, and out comes Monsieur Spider, ably seconded by Madame Spiderette; and between them they despoil him with the utmost dispatch.

When he is not being mulcted for large sums he is being nicked for small ones. It is tip, brother, tip, and keep right on tipping.

I heard a story of an American who spent a month in Paris, taking in the sights and being taken in by them, and another month motoring through the country. At length he reached the port whence he was to sail for home. He went aboard the steamer and saw to it that his belongings were properly stored; and in the privacy of his stateroom he sat down to take an inventory of his letter of credit, now reduced to a wan and wasted specter of its once plethoric self. In the midst of casting-up he heard the signal for departure; and so he went topside of the ship and, stationing himself on the promenade deck alongside the gang-plank, he raised his voice and addressed the a.s.sembled mult.i.tude on the pier substantially as follows:

"If"--these were his words--"if there is a single, solitary individual in this fair land who has not touched me for something of value--if there be in all France a man, woman or child who has not been tipped by me--let him, her or it speak now or forever after hold their peace; because, know ye all men by these presents, I am about to go away from here and if I stay in my right mind I'm not coming back!"

And several persons were badly hurt in the crush; but they were believed afterward to have been repeaters.

I thought this story was overdrawn, but, after traveling over somewhat the same route which this fellow countryman had taken, I came to the conclusion that it was no exaggeration, but a true bill in all particulars. On the night of our second day in Paris we went to a theater to see one of the topical revues, in which Paris is supposed to excel; and for sheer dreariness and blatant vulgarity Paris revues do, indeed, excel anything of a similar nature as done in either England or in America, which is saying quite a mouthful.

In the French revue the members of the chorus reach their artistic limit in costuming when they dance forth from the wings wearing short and shabby undergarments over soiled pink fleshings and any time the dramatic interest begins to run low and gurgle in the pipes a male comedian pumps it up again by striking or kicking a woman. But to kick her is regarded as much the more whimsical conceit. This invariably sets the audience rocking with uncontrollable merriment. Howsomever, I am not writing a critique of the merits of the performance. If I were I should say that to begin with the t.i.tle of the piece was wrong. It should have been called Lapsus Lingerie--signifying as the Latins would say, "A Mere Slip." At this moment I am concerned with what happened upon our entrance.

At the door a middle-aged female, who was raising a natty mustache, handed us programs. I paid her for the programs and tipped her. She turned us over to a stout brunette lady who was cultivating a neat and flossy pair of muttonchops. This person escorted us down the aisle to where our seats were; so I tipped her. Alongside our seats stood a third member of the sisterhood, chiefly distinguished from her confreres by the fact that she was turning out something very fetching in the way of a brown vand.y.k.e; and after we were seated she continued to stand there, holding forth her hand toward me, palm up and fingers extended in the national gesture, and saying something in her native tongue very rapidly. Incidentally she was blocking the path of a number of people who had come down the aisle immediately behind us.

I thought possibly she desired to see our coupons, so I hauled them out and exhibited them. She shook her head at that and gabbled faster than ever. It next occurred to me that perhaps she wanted to furnish us with programs and was asking in advance for the money with which to pay for them. I explained to her that I already secured programs from her friend with the mustache. I did this mainly in English, but partly in French--at least I employed the correct French word for program, which is programme. To prove my case I pulled the two programs from my pocket and showed them to her. She continued to shake her head with great emphasis, babbling on at an increased speed. The situation was beginning to verge on the embarra.s.sing when a light dawned on me. She wanted a tip, that was it! She had not done anything to earn a tip that I could see; and unless one had been reared in the barbering business she was not particularly attractive to look on, and even then only in a professional aspect; but I tipped her and bade her begone, and straightway she bewent, satisfied and smiling. From that moment on I knew my book. When in doubt I tipped one person--the person nearest to me. When in deep doubt I tipped two or more persons. And all was well.

On the next evening but one I had another lesson, which gave me further insight into the habits and customs of these gay and gladsome Parisians.

We were completing a round of the all-night cafes and cabarets. There were four of us. Briefly, we had seen the Dead Rat, the Abbey, the Bal Tabarin the Red Mill, Maxim's, and the rest of the lot to the total number of perhaps ten or twelve. We had listened to bad singing, looked on bad dancing, sipped gingerly at bad drinks, and nibbled daintily at bad food; and the taste of it all was as grit and ashes in our mouths.

We had learned for ourselves that the much-vaunted gay life of Paris was just as sad and sordid and sloppy and unsavory as the so-called gay life of any other city with a lesser reputation for gay life and gay livers.

A sc.r.a.p of the gristle end of the New York Tenderloin; a suggestion of a certain part of New Orleans; a short cross section of the Levee, in Chicago; a dab of the Barbary Coast of San Francisco in its old, unexpurgated days; a touch of Piccadilly Circus in London, after midnight, with a top dressing of Gehenna the Unblest--it had seemed to us a compound of these ingredients, with a distinctive savor of what was essentially Gallic permeating through it like garlic through a stew.

We had had enough. Even though we had attended only as onlookers and seekers after local color, we felt that we had a-plenty of onlooking and entirely too much of local color; we felt that we should all go into retreat for a season of self-purification to rid our persons of the one and take a bath in formaldehyde to rinse our memories clean of the other. But the ruling spirit of the expedition pointed out that the evening would not be complete without a stop at a cafe that had--so he said--an international reputation for its supposed sauciness and its real Bohemian atmosphere, whatever that might be. Overcome by his argument we piled into a cab and departed thither.

This particular cafe was found, in its physical aspects, to be typical of the breed and district. It was small, crowded, overheated, underlighted, and stuffy to suffocation with the mingled aromas of stale drink and cheap perfume. As we entered a wrangle was going on among a group of young Frenchmen picturesquely attired as art students--almost a sure sign that they were not art students. An undersized girl dressed in a shabby black-and-yellow frock was doing a Spanish dance on a cleared s.p.a.ce in the middle of the floor. We knew her instantly for a Spanish dancer, because she had a fan in one hand and a pair of castanets in the other. Another girl, dressed as a pierrot, was waiting to do her turn when the Spanish dancer finished. Weariness showed through the lacquer of thick cosmetic on her peaked little face. An orchestra of three pieces sawed wood steadily; and at intervals, to prove that these were gay and blithesome revels, somebody connected with the establishment threw small, party-colored b.a.l.l.s of celluloid about. But what particularly caught our attention was the presence in a far corner of two little darkies in miniature dress suits, both very wally of eye, very brown of skin, and very shaved as to head, huddled together there as though for the poor comfort of physical contact. As soon as they saw us they left their place and sidled up, tickled beyond measure to behold American faces and hear American voices.

They belonged, it seemed, to a troupe of jubilee singers who had been imported from the States for the delectation of French audiences. At night, after their work at a vaudeville theater was done, the members of their company were paired off and sent about to the cafes to earn their keep by singing ragtime songs and dancing buck dances. These two were desperately, pathetically homesick. One of them blinked back the tears when he told us, with the plaintive African quaver in his voice, how long they had been away from their own country and how happy they would be to get back to it again.

"We suttin'ly is glad to heah somebody talkin' de reg'lar New 'Nited States talk, same as we does," he said. "We gits mighty tired of all dis yere French jabberin'!"

"Yas, suh," put in his partner; "dey meks a mighty fuss over cullud folks over yere; but 'tain't noways lak home. I comes from b.u.mmin'ham, Alabama, myse'f. Does you gen'lemen know anybody in b.u.mmin'ham?"

They were the first really wholesome creatures who had crossed our paths that night. They crowded up close to us and there they stayed until we left, as grateful as a pair of friendly puppies for a word or a look.

Presently, though, something happened that made us forget these small dark compatriots of ours. We had had sandwiches all round and a bottle of wine. When the waiter brought the check it fell haply into the hands of the one person in our party who knew French and--what was an even more valuable accomplishment under the present circ.u.mstances--knew the intricate French system of computing a bill. He ran a pencil down the figures. Then he consulted the price list on the menu and examined the label on the neck of the wine bottle, and then he gave a long whistle.

"What's the trouble?" asked one of us.

"Oh, not much!" he said. "We had a bottle of wine priced at eighteen francs and they have merely charged us twenty-four francs for it--six francs overcharge on that one item alone. The total for the sandwiches should have been six francs, and it is put down at ten francs. And here, away down at the bottom, I find a mysterious entry of four francs, which seems to have no bearing on the case at all--unless it be that they just simply need the money. I expected to be skinned somewhat, but I object to being peeled. I'm afraid, at the risk of appearing mercenary, that we'll have to ask our friend for a recount."

He beckoned the waiter to him and fired a volley of rapid French in the waiter's face. The waiter batted his eyes and shrugged his shoulders; then reversing the operation he shrugged his eyelids and batted his shoulderblades, meantime endeavoring volubly to explain. Our friend shoved the check into his hands and waved him away. He was back again in a minute with the account corrected. That is, it was corrected to the extent that the wine item had been reduced to twenty-one francs and the sandwiches to eight francs.

By now our paymaster was as hot as a hornet. His gorge rose--his freeborn, independent American gorge. It rose clear to the ceiling and threw off sparks and red clinkers. He sent for the manager. The manager came, all bows and graciousness and rumply shirtfront; and when he heard what was to be said he became all apologies and indignation. He regretted more than words could tell that the American gentlemen who deigned to patronize his restaurant had been put to annoyance. The garcon--here he turned and burned up that individual with a fiery sideglance--was a debased idiot and the misbegotten son of a yet greater and still more debased idiot. The cashier was a green hand and an imbecile besides. It was incredible, impossible, that the overcharging had been done deliberately; that was inconceivable. But the honor of his establishment was at stake. They should both, garcon and cashier, be discharged on the spot. First, however, he would rectify all mistakes.

Would monsieur intrust the miserable addition to him for a moment, for one short moment? Monsieur would and did.

This time the amount was made right and our friend handed over in payment a fifty-franc note. With his own hands the manager brought back the change. Counting it over, the payee found it five francs short.

Attention being directed to this error the manager became more apologetic and more explanatory than ever, and supplied the deficiency with a shiny new five-franc piece from his own pocket. And then, when we had gone away from there and had traveled a homeward mile or two, our friend found that the new shiny five-franc piece was counterfeit--as false a thing as that manager's false smile. We had bucked the unbeatable system, and we had lost.

Earlier that same evening we spent a gloom-laden quarter of an hour in another cafe--one which owes its fame and most of its American customs to the happy circ.u.mstance that in a certain famous comic opera produced a few years ago a certain popular leading man sang a song extolling its fascinations. The man who wrote the song must have had a full-flowered and glamorous imagination, for he could see beauty where beauty was not.

To us there seemed nothing particularly fanciful about the place except the prices they charged for refreshments. However, something unusual did happen there once. It was not premeditated though; the proprietor had nothing to do with it. Had he known what was about to occur undoubtedly he would have advertised it in advance and sold tickets for it.

By reason of circ.u.mstances over which he had no control, but which had mainly to do with a locked-up wardrobe, an American of convivial mentality was in his room at his hotel one evening, fairly consumed with loneliness. Above all things he desired to be abroad amid the life and gayety of the French capital; but unfortunately he had no clothes except boudoir clothes, and no way of getting any, either, Which made the situation worse. He had already tried the telephone in a vain effort to communicate with a ready-made clothing establishment in the Rue St.

Honore. Naturally he had failed, as he knew he would before he tried.

Among Europeans the telephone is not the popular and handy adjunct of every-day life it is among us. The English have small use for it because it is, to start with, a wretched Yankee invention; besides, an Englishman in a hurry takes a cab, as his father before him did--takes the same cab his father took, if possible--and the Latin races dislike telephone conversations because the gestures all go to absolute waste.

The French telephone resembles a dingus for curling the hair. You wrap it round your head, with one end near your mouth and the other end near your ear, and you yell in it a while and curse in it a while; and then you slam it down and go and send a messenger. The hero of the present tale, however, could not send a messenger--the hotel people had their orders to the contrary from one who was not to be disobeyed.

Finally in stark desperation, maddened by the sounds of sidewalk revelry that filtered up to him intermittently, he incased his feet in bed-room slippers, slid a dressing gown over his pajamas, and negotiated a successful escape from the hotel by means of a rear way. Once in the open he climbed into a handy cab and was driven to the cafe of his choice, it being the same cafe mentioned a couple of paragraphs ago.

Through a side entrance he made a hasty and unhindered entrance into this place--not that he would have been barred under any circ.u.mstances, inasmuch as he had brought a roll with him. A person with a cl.u.s.ter of currency on hand is always suitably dressed in Paris, no matter if he has nothing else on; and this man had brought much ready cash with him. He could have gone in fig-leaved like Eve, or fig-leafless like September Morn, it being remembered that as between these two, as popularly depicted, Morn wears even less than Eve. So he whisked in handily, and when he had hidden the lower part of himself under a table he felt quite at home and proceeded to have a large and full evening.

Soon there entered another American, and by that mental telepathy which inevitably attracts like-spirit to like-spirit he was drawn to the spot where the first American sat. He introduced himself as one feeling the need of congenial companionship, and they shook hands and exchanged names, and the first man asked the second man to be seated; so they sat together and had something together, and then something more together; and as the winged moments flew they grew momentarily more intimate.

Finally the newcomer said:

"This seems a pretty lachrymose shop. Suppose we go elsewhere and look for some real doings."

"Your proposition interests me strangely," said the first man; "but there are two reasons--both good ones--why I may not fare forth with you. Look under the table and you'll see 'em."

The second man looked and comprehended, for he was a married man himself; and he grasped the other's hand in warm and comforting sympathy.

"Old Man," he said--for they had already reached the Old Man stage--"don't let that worry you. Why, I've got more pants than any man with only one set of legs has any right to have. I've got pants that've never been worn. You stay right here and don't move until I come back.

My hotel is just round the corner from here."

No sooner said than done. He went and in a surprisingly short time was back, bearing spare trousers with him. Beneath the shielding protection of the table draperies the succored one slipped them on, and they were a perfect fit. Now he was ready to go where adventure might await them.

They tarried, though, to finish the last bottle.

Over the rim of his gla.s.s the second man ventured an opinion on a topic of the day. Instantly the first man challenged him. It seemed to him inconceivable that a person with intelligence enough to have ama.s.sed so many pairs of trousers should harbor such a delusion. He begged of his new-found friend to withdraw the statement, or at least to abate it. The other man was sorry, but he simply could not do it. He stood ready to concede almost anything else, but on this particular point he was adamant; in fact, adamant was in comparison with him as pliable as chewing taffy. Much as he regretted it, he could not modify his a.s.sertion by so much as one brief jot or one small t.i.ttle without violating the consistent principles of a consistent life. He felt that way about it. All his family felt that way about it.