The Cockaynes in Paris Part 2

CHAPTER III.

MRS. ROWE'S COMPANY.

I must be permitted to tell the rambling stories that ran parallel during my experiences of Mrs. Rowe's establishment in my own manner--filling up with what I guessed, all I heard from Lucy, or saw for myself. Mr. Charles was a visitor at intervals who always arrived when the house was quiet; and after whose visits Mrs. Rowe regularly took to her room for the day, leaving the accounts and the keys wholly to Lucy, and the kitchen to Jane--with strict injunctions to look after the Reverend Horace Mohun's tea and his round of toast if he called--and let him see the _Times_ before it went up to the general sitting-room.

On these days Lucy looked pale; and Jane called her "poor child" to me, and begged me to say a few words of comfort to her, for she would listen to me.

What a fool Jane was!

Visitors came and went. The serious, who inspected Paris as Mr. Redgrave inspects a factory, or as the late Mr. Braidwood inspected a fire on the morrow; who did the Louvre and called for bread-and-b.u.t.ter and tea on the Boulevards at five. The new-rich, who would not have breakfasted with the general company to save their vulgar little souls, threw their money to the fleecing shopkeepers (who knew their _monde_), and misbehaved themselves in all the most expensive ways possible. The jolly ignorant, who were loud and unabashed in the sincerity and heartiness of their enjoyment, and had more litres of brandy in their bedrooms than the rest of the house, as Jane had it, "put together." The frugal, who counted the lumps of sugar, found fault with the dinners, lived with the fixed and savage determination to eat well up to the rate at which they were paying for their board, and stole in, in the evening, with their brandy hidden about them. Somehow, although there never was a house in which more differences of opinion were held on nearly every question of human interest, there was a surprising harmony of ideas as to French brandy. A Boulogne excursion boat on its homeward journey hardly contains more uncorked bottles of cognac, than were thrust in all kinds of secret places in the bedrooms under Mrs. Rowe's roof.

The hypocrisy and scandal which brandy produced in the general room were occasionally very fierce, especially when whispers had travelled quietly as the flies all over the house that one of the ladies had certainly, on one occasion, revoked at cards--for one reason, and one only. Free speculations would be cheerfully indulged in at other times on the exact quant.i.ty the visitor who left yesterday had taken during his stay, and the number of months which the charitable might give him to live.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ON THE BOULEVARDS.]

After the general brandy, in degree of interest, stood dress. The shopping was prodigious. The carts of the Louvre, the Ville de Paris, the Coin de Rue, and other famous houses of nouveautes were for ever rattling to Mrs. Rowe's door. With a toss of the head a parcel from the _Bon Marche_ was handed to its owner. Mrs. Jones must have come to Paris with just one change--and such a change! Mrs. Tottenham had nothing fit to wear. Mrs. Court must still be wearing out her trousseau--and her youngest was three! Mrs. Rhode had no more taste, my dear, than our cook. The men were not far behind--had looked out for Captain Tottenham in the Army List; went to Galignani's expressly: not in it, by Jove, sir! Court paid four shillings in the pound hardly two years ago, and met him swelling it with his wife (deuced pretty creature!) yesterday at Bignon's. Is quite up to Marennes oysters: wonder where he could have heard of 'em. Rhode is a bore; plenty of money, very good-natured; read a good deal--but can't the fellow come to table in something better than those eternal plaid trousers? Bad enough in Lord Brougham. Eccentricity _with_ the genius, galling enough; but without, not to be borne, sir. Last night Jones was simply drunk, and got a wigging, no doubt, when he found his room. He looks it all.

We are an amiable people!

Happily, I have forgotten the Joneses and the Tottenhams, and the Courts and the Rhodes! The two "sets" who dwell in my memory--who are, I may say, somewhat linked with my own life, and of whom I have something to tell--were, as a visitor said of the fowls of Boulogne hotels--birds apart. They crossed and re-crossed under Mrs. Rowe's roof until they hooked together; and I was mixed up with them, until a tragedy and a happy event made us part company.

Now, so complicated are our treaties--offensive and defensive--that I have to refer to my note-book, where I am likely to meet any one of them, to see whether I am on speaking terms with the coming man or woman as the case may be.

I shall first introduce the c.o.c.kaynes as holding the greater "lengths"

on my stage.

CHAPTER IV.

THE c.o.c.kAYNES IN PARIS.

The morning after a bevy of "the blonde daughters of Albion" have arrived in Paris, Pater--over the coffee (why is it impossible to get such coffee in England?), the delicious bread, and the exquisite b.u.t.ter--proceeds to expound his views of the manner in which the time of the party should be spent. So was it with the c.o.c.kaynes, an intensely British party.

"My dears," said Mr. c.o.c.kayne, "we must husband our time. To-day I propose we go, at eleven o'clock, to see the parade of the Guard in the Rue de Rivoli; from there (we shall be close at hand) we can see the Louvre; by two o'clock we will lunch in the Palais Royal. I think it's at five the band plays in the Tuileries gardens; after the band----"

"But, dear papa, we want to look at the shops!" interposes the gentle Sophonisba.

"The what, my dear? Here you are in the capital of the most polished nation on the face of the earth, surrounded by beautiful monuments that recall--that are, in fact----"

"Well!" firmly observes Sophonisba's determined mamma; "you, Mr.

c.o.c.kayne, go, with your Murray's handbook, see all the antiquities, your Raphaels and Rubens, and amuse yourself among the cobwebs of the Hotel Cluny; _we_ are not so clever--we poor women; and while you're rubbing your nose against the marbles in the Louvre, we'll go and see the shops."

"We don't mind the parade and the band, but we might have a peep at just a few of the shops near the hotel, before eleven," observes Sophonisba.

c.o.c.kayne throws up his eyes, and laments the frivolity of women. He is left with one daughter (who is a blue) to admire the proportions of the Madeleine, to pa.s.s a rapturous hour in the square room of the Louvre, and to examine St. Germain l'Auxerrois, while the frivolous part of his household goes stoutly away, light-hearted and gay as humming-birds, to have their first look at the shops.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A GROUP OF MARBLE "INSULAIRES." _So cold and natural they might be mistaken for life_.]

I happen to have seen the shops of many cities. I have peered into the quaint, small-windowed shops of Copenhagen; I have pa.s.sed under the pendant tobacco leaves into the primitive cigar-shops of St. Sebastian; I have hobbled, in furs, into the shops of Stockholm; I have been compelled to take a look at the shops of London, Dublin, Edinburgh, Liverpool, and a host of other places; but perfect shopping is to be enjoyed in Paris only; and in the days gone by, the Palais Royal was the centre of this paradise. Alas! the days of its glory are gone. The lines of splendid boulevards, flanked with gorgeous shops and _cafes_; the long arcades of the Rue de Rivoli; and, in fine, the leaning of all that is fashionable, and lofty, and rich to the west, are the causes which have brought the destruction of the Palais Royal. Time was when that quaint old square--the Place-Royale in the Marais--was mighty fashionable. It now lies in the neglected, industrious, factory-crowded east--a kind of Parisian Bloomsbury Square, only infinitely more picturesque, with its quaint, low colonnades. You see the fine Parisians have travelled steadily westward, sloping slowly, like "the Great Orion." They are making their way along the Champs-Elysees to the Avenue de l'Imperatrice; and are constructing white stone aristocratic suburbs.

So the foreigners no longer make their way direct to the Palais Royal now, on the morrow of their arrival in Paris. If they be at the Louvre, they bend westward along the Rue de Rivoli, and by the Rue de la Paix, to the brilliant boulevards. If they be in the Grand Hotel, they issue at once upon these famous boulevards, and the ladies are in a feminine paradise at once. Why, exactly opposite to the Grand Hotel is Rudolphi's remarkable shop, packed artistically with his works of art--ay, and of the most finished and cunning art--in oxidized silver. His shop is most admirably adapted to the articles the effect of which he desires to heighten. It is painted black and pointed with delicate gold threads.

The rich array of jewellery and the rare ecclesiastical ornaments stand brightly out from the sombre case, and light the window. The precious stones, the lapis lazuli, the malachite, obtain a new brilliance from the rich neutral tints and shades of the chased dulled silver in which they are held.

Sophonisba, her mamma and sisters, are not at much trouble to decide the period to which the bracelet, or the brooch, or the earring belongs.

"_Cinque cento_, my dear! I know nothing about that. I think it would suit my complexion."

"I confess to a more modern taste, Sophonisba. That is just the sort of thing your father would like. Now, do look at those--sphinxes, don't you call them--for a brooch. I think they're hideous. Did you ever see such ears? I own, that diamond dew-drop lying in an enamel rose leaf, which I saw, I think, in the Rue de la Paix, is more to my taste."

And so the ladies stroll westward to the famous Giroux (where you can buy, an it please you, toys at forty guineas each--babies that cry, and call "mamma," and automata to whom the advancement of science and art has given all the obnoxious faculties of an unruly child), or east to the boulevards, which are known the wide world over, at least by name, the Boulevards de la Madeleine, des Capucines, des Italiens, Montmartre.

These make up the heart and soul of Paris. Within the limits of these gorgeous lines of shops and _cafes_ luxury has concentrated all her blandishments and wiles. This is the earthly heaven of the Parisians.

Here all the celebrities air themselves. Here are the Opera stars, the lights of literature, the chiefs of art, the dandies of the Jockey Club, the prominent spendthrifts and eccentrics of the day. About four o'clock in the afternoon all the known Paris figures are lounging upon the asphaltum within this charmed s.p.a.ce. Within this limit--where the Frenchman deploys all his seductive, and vain, and frivolous airs; where he wears his best clothes and his best manners; where he loves to be seen, and observed, and saluted--the tradesmen of the capital have installed establishments the costliness and elaborateness of which it is hardly possible to exaggerate. The gilding and the mirrors, the marbles and the bronze, the myriad lamps of every fantastic form, the quaint and daring designs for shop fronts, the infinite arts employed to "set off" goods, and the surprising, never-ceasing varieties of art-manufacture--whether in chocolate or the popular Algerian onyx--bewilder strangers. Does successful Mr. Brown, who, having doffed the ap.r.o.n of trade, considers it due to himself to become--so far as money can operate the strange transformation--a _fine fleur_; does he desire also to make of plain, homely Mrs. Brown a leader of fashion and a model of expensive elegance?--here are all the appliances and means in abundance. Within these enchanted lines Madame B. may be made "beautiful for ever!" Every appet.i.te, every variety of whim, the cravings of the gourmet and the dreams of the sybarite, may be gratified to the utmost.

A spendthrift might spend a handsome patrimony within these limits, nor, at the end of his time, would he call to mind a taste he had not been able to gratify.

Sophonisba enters this charmed region of perfect shopping from the west.

Tahan's bronze shop, at the corner of the Rue de la Paix, marks (or did mark) its western boundary. There are costly trifles in that window--as, book cutters worth a library of books, and cigar-stands, ash-trays, pen-trays, toothpick-holders (our neighbours are great in these), and match, and glove, and lace, and jewel-boxes--of wicked price. Ladies are not, however, very fond of bronze, as a rule. The great Maison de Blanc--or White House--opposite, is more attractive, with its gigantic architectural front, and its acres of the most expensive linens, cambrics, &c. Ay, but close by Tahan is Boissier. Not to know Boissier is to argue yourself unknown in Paris. He is the shining light of the confectioner's art. Siraudin, of the Rue de la Paix, has set up a dangerous opposition to him, under the patronage of a great duke, whose d.u.c.h.ess was one day treated like an ordinary mortal in Boissier's establishment, but Boissier's clients (n.o.body has customers in Paris) are, in the main, true to him; and his sweets pa.s.s the lips still of nearly all the elegantes of the "centre of civilization." Peep into his shop. Miss Sophonisba is within--_la belle insulaire!_--buying a bag of _marrons glaces_, for which Boissier is renowned throughout civilization. The shop is a miracle of taste. The white and gold are worthy of Marie Antoinette's bedroom at St. Cloud--occupied, by the way, by our English queen, when she was the guest of the French Emperor in 1855. The front of the shop is ornamented with rich and rare caskets. A white kitten lies upon a rosy satin cushion; lift the kitten, and you shall find that her bed is a _bon-bon_ box!

"How very absurd!" exclaims Sophonisba's mamma, _bon-bon_ boxes not being the particular direction which the extravagance of English ladies takes.

Close by the succulent establishment of M. Boissier, to whom every dentist should lift his hat, is the doorway of Madame Laure. Sophonisba sees a man in livery opening the door of what appears to be the entrance to some quiet learned inst.i.tution. She touches her mamma upon the arm, and bids her pause. They had reached the threshold of a temple. Madame Laure makes for the Empress.

"Ah! to be sure, my child, so she does," Sophonisba's mamma replies. "I remember. Very quiet-looking kind of place, isn't it?" It is impossible to say what description of "loud" place had dwelt in the mind of Sophonisba's mamma as the locale where the Empress Eugenie's milliner "_made_" for her Majesty. Perhaps she hoped to see two _cent gardes_ doing duty at the door of an or-molu paradise.

At every step the ladies find new excitement. By the quiet door of Madame Laure is the renowned Neapolitan Ice Establishment, well known to most ladies who have been in Paris. Why should there not be a Neapolitan ice _cafe_ like this in London? Ices we have, and we have Granger's; but here is ice in every variety, from the solid "bombe"--which we strongly recommend ladies to bear in mind next time--to the appetizing _Ponch a la Romaine_! Again, sitting here on summer evenings, the lounger will perceive dapper _bonnes_, or men-servants, going in and out with little shapely white paper parcels which they hold daintily by the end. Madame has rung for an ice, and this little parcel, which you might blow away, contains it. Now, why should not a lady be able to ring for an ice--and an exquisitely-flavoured Neapolitan ice--on the sh.o.r.es of "perfidious Albion?"

"I wish Papa were here," cries Sophonisba; "we should have ices."

Sophonisba's mamma merely remarks that they are very unwholesome things.

Hard by is Christofle's dazzling window, Christofle being the Elkington of France.

"Tut! it quite blinds one!" says the mamma of Sophonisba. Christofle's window is startling. It is heaped to the top with a mound of plated spoons and forks. They glitter in the light so fiercely that the eye cannot bear to rest upon them. Impossible to pa.s.s M. Christofle without paying a moment's attention to him. And now we pa.s.s the asphaltum of the boulevard of boulevards--that known as "the Italiens." This is the apple of the eye of Paris.

"Now, my dears," says Sophonisba's mamma, "now we can really say that we are in Paris." The shops claimed the ladies' attention one by one. They pa.s.sed with disdain the _cafes_ radiant with mirror and gold, where the selfish men were drinking absinthe and playing at dominoes. It had always been the creed of Sophonisba's mamma that men were selfish creatures, and she had come to Paris only to see that she was right.

They pa.s.sed on to Potel's.

Potel's window is a sight that is of Paris Parisian. It is more imposing than that of Chevet in the Palais Royal. In the first place Potel is on "the Italiens." It is a daily store of all the rarest and richest articles of food money can command for the discontented palate of man.

The truffled turkeys are the commonest of the articles. Everybody eats truffled turkeys, must be the belief of Potel. If salmon could peer into the future, and if they had any ambition, they would desire, after death, to be artistically arrayed in fennel in the shop-window of Potel.

Would not the accommodating bird who builds an edible nest work with redoubled ardour, if he could be a.s.sured that his house would be some day removed to the great window on "the Italiens?"

Happy the ortolans whom destiny puts into Potel's plate of honour! Most fortunate of geese, whose liver is fattened by a slow fire to figure presently here with the daintiest and n.o.blest of viands! The pig who hunts the truffle would have his reward could he know that presently the fragrant vegetable would give flavour to his trotter! And is it not a good quarter of an hour's amus.e.m.e.nt every afternoon to watch the gourmets feasting their eyes on the day's fare? And the _gamins_ from the poor quarters stare in also, and wonder what those black lumps are.

Opposite Potel's is a shop, the like of which we have not, nor, we verily believe, has any other city. It is the show-store of the far-famed Algerian Onyx Company. The onyx is here in great superb blocks, wedded with bronze of exquisite finish, or serving as background to enamels of the most elaborate design. Within, the shop is crammed with lamps, jardinieres, and monumental marbles, all relieved by bronzes, gold, and exotics. The smallest object would frighten a man of moderate means, if he inquired its price. There is a flower shop not far off, but it isn't a shop, it's a bower. It is close by a dram-shop, where the cab-men of the stand opposite refresh the inner man. It represents the British public-house. But what a quiet orderly place it is! The kettle of punch--a silver one--is suspended over the counter.