The Ways of Men Part 13

The truth is, the Ocean House had lived so long in an atmosphere of ostentatious worldliness that, like many residents of the summer city, it had come to take itself and its "position" seriously, and imagine that the eyes of the country were fixed upon and expected something of it.

The air of Newport has always proved fatal to big hotels. One after another they have appeared and failed, the Ocean House alone dragging out a forlorn existence. As the flames worked their will and the careless crowd enjoyed the spectacle, one could not help feeling a vague regret for the old place, more for what it represented than for any intrinsic value of its own. Without greatly stretching a point it might be taken to represent a social condition, a phase, as it were, in our development.

In a certain obscure way, it was an epoch-marking structure. Its building closed the era of primitive Newport, its decline corresponded with the end of the pre-palatial period-an era extending from 1845 to 1885.

During forty years Newport had a unique existence, unknown to the rest of America, and destined to have a lasting influence on her ways, an existence now as completely forgotten as the earlier boarding-house _matinee dansante_ time. {1} The sixties, seventies, and eighties in Newport were pleasant years that many of us regret in spite of modern progress. Simple, inexpensive days, when people dined at three (looking on the newly introduced six o'clock dinners as an English innovation and modern "frill"), and "high-teaed" together dyspeptically off "sally lunns" and "preserves," washed down by coffee and chocolate, which it was the toilsome duty of a hostess to dispense from a silver-laden tray; days when "rockaways" drawn by lean, long-tailed horses and driven by mustached darkies were, if not the rule, far from being an exception.

"Dutch treat" picnics, another archaic amus.e.m.e.nt, flourished then, directed by a famous organizer at his farm, each guest being told what share of the eatables it was his duty to provide, an edict from which there was no appeal.

Sport was little known then, young men pa.s.sing their afternoons tooling solemnly up and down Bellevue Avenue in top-hats and black frock-coats under the burning August sun.

This was the epoch when the Town and Country Club was young and full of vigor. We met at each other's houses or at historic sites to hear papers read on serious subjects. One particular afternoon is vivid in my memory. We had all driven out to a point on the sh.o.r.e beyond the Third Beach, where the Nors.e.m.e.n were supposed to have landed during their apocryphal visit to this continent. It had been a hot drive, but when we stopped, a keen wind was blowing in from the sea. During a pause in the prolix address that followed, a coachman's voice was heard to mutter, "If he jaws much longer all the horses will be foundered," which brought the learned address to an ignominious and hasty termination.

Newport during the pre-palatial era affected culture, and a whiff of Boston pervaded the air, much of which was tiresome, yet with an under-current of charm and refinement. Those who had the privilege of knowing Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, will remember the pleasant "teas" and sparkling conversation she offered her guests in the unpretending cottage where the beauty of the daughter was as brilliant as the mother's wit.

Two estates on Bellevue Avenue are now without the hostesses who, in those days, showed the world what great ladies America could produce. It was the foreign-born husband of one of these women who gave Newport its first lessons in luxurious living. Until then Americans had travelled abroad and seen elaborately served meals and properly appointed stables without the ambition of copying such things at home. Colonial and revolutionary state had died out, and modern extravagance had not yet appeared. In the interregnum much was neglected that might have added to the convenience and grace of life.

In France, under Louis Philippe, and in England, during Victoria's youth, taste reached an ebb tide; in neither of those countries, however, did the general standard fall so low as here. It was owing to the _savoir faire_ of one man that Newporters and New York first saw at home what they had admired abroad,-liveried servants in sufficient numbers, dinners served _a la Russe_, and breeched and booted grooms on English-built traps, innovations quickly followed by his neighbors, for the most marked characteristic of the American is his ability to "catch on."

When, during the war of the secession, our Naval Academy was removed from Annapolis and installed in the empty Atlantic House (corner of Bellevue Avenue and Pelham Street), hotel life had already begun to decline; but the Ocean House, which was considered a vast enterprise at that time, inherited from the older hotels the custom of giving Sat.u.r.day evening "hops," the cottagers arriving at these informal entertainments toward nine o'clock and promenading up and down the corridors or dancing in the parlor, to the admiration of a public collected to enjoy the spectacle.

At eleven the doors of the dining-room opened, and a line of well-drilled darkies pa.s.sed ices and lemonade. By half-past eleven (the hour at which we now arrive at a dance) every one was at home and abed.

One remembers with a shudder the military manuvres that attended hotel meals in those days, the marching and countermarching, your dinner cooling while the head waiter reviewed his men. That idiotic custom has been abandoned, like many better and worse. Next to the American ability to catch on comes the facility with which he can drop a fad.

In this peculiarity the history of Newport has been an epitome of the country, every form of amus.e.m.e.nt being in turn taken up, run into the ground, and then abandoned. At one time it was the fashion to drive to Fort Adams of an afternoon and circle round and round the little green to the sounds of a military band; then, for no visible reason, people took to driving on the Third Beach, an inaccessible and lonely point which for two or three summers was considered the only correct promenade.

I blush to recall it, but at that time most of the turnouts were hired hacks. Next, Graves Point, on the Ocean Drive, became the popular meeting-place. Then society took to attending polo of an afternoon, a sport just introduced from India. This era corresponded with the opening of the Casino (the old reading-room dating from 1854). For several years every one crowded during hot August mornings onto the airless lawns and piazzas of the new establishment. It seems on looking back as if we must have been more fond of seeing each other in those days than we are now.

To ride up and down a beach and bow filled our souls with joy, and the "cake walk" was an essential part of every ball, the guests parading in pairs round and round the room between the dances instead of sitting quietly "out." The opening promenade at the New York Charity Ball is a survival of this inane custom.

The disappearance of the Ocean House "hops" marked the last stage in hotel life. Since then better-cla.s.s watering places all over the country have slowly but surely followed Newport's lead. The closed caravansaries of Bar Harbor and elsewhere bear silent testimony to the fact that refined Americans are at last awakening to the charms of home life during their holidays, and are discarding, as fast as finances will permit, the pernicious herding system. In consequence the hotel has ceased to be, what it undoubtedly was twenty years ago, the focus of our summer life.

Only a few charred rafters remain of the Ocean House. A few talkative old duffers like myself alone survive the day it represents. Changing social conditions have gradually placed both on the retired list. A new and palatial Newport has replaced the simpler city. Let us not waste too much time regretting the past, or be too sure that it was better than the present. It is quite possible, if the old times we are writing so fondly about should return, we might discover that the same thing was true of them as a ragged urchin a.s.serted the other afternoon of the burning building:

"Say, Tom, did ye know there was the biggest room in the world in that hotel?"

"No; what room?"

"Room for improvement, ya!"

CHAPTER 27-_Sardou_ at Marly-le-Roy

Near the centre of that verdant triangle formed by Saint Cloud, Versailles, and Saint Germain lies the village of Marly-le-Roy, high up on a slope above the lazy Seine-an entrancing corner of the earth, much affected formerly by French crowned heads, and by the "Sun King" in particular, who in his old age grew tired of Versailles and built here one of his many villas (the rival in its day of the Trianons), and proceeded to amuse himself therein with the same solemnity which had already made vice at Versailles more boresome than virtue elsewhere.

Two centuries and four revolutions have swept away all trace of this kingly caprice and the art treasures it contained. Alone, the marble horses of Coustou, transported later to the Champs Elysees, remain to attest the splendor of the past.

The quaint village of Marly, cl.u.s.tered around its church, stands, however-with the faculty that insignificant things have of remaining unchanged-as it did when the most polished court of Europe rode through it to and from the hunt. On the outskirts of this village are now two forged and gilded gateways through which the pa.s.ser-by can catch a glimpse of trim avenues, fountains, and well-kept lawns.

There seems a certain poetical justice in the fact that Alexandre Dumas _fils_ and Victorien Sardou, the two giants of modern drama, should have divided between them the inheritance of Louis XIV., its greatest patron.

One of the gates is closed and moss-grown. Its owner lies in Pere-la-Chaise. At the other I ring, and am soon walking up the famous avenue bordered by colossal sphinxes presented to Sardou by the late Khedive. The big stone brutes, connected in one's mind with heat and sandy wastes, look oddly out of place here in this green wilderness-a bite, as it were, out of the forest which, under different names, lies like a mantle over the country-side.

Five minutes later I am being shown through a suite of antique salons, in the last of which sits the great playwright. How striking the likeness is to Voltaire,-the same delicate face, lit by a half cordial, half mocking smile; the same fragile body and indomitable spirit. The illusion is enhanced by our surroundings, for the mellow splendor of the room where we stand might have served as a background for the Sage of Ferney.

Wherever one looks, works of eighteenth-century art meet the eye. The walls are hung with Gobelin tapestries that fairly take one's breath away, so exquisite is their design and their preservation. They represent a marble colonnade, each column of which is wreathed with flowers and connected to its neighbor with garlands.

Between them are bits of delicate landscape, with here and there a group of figures dancing or picnicking in the shadow of tall trees or under fantastical porticos. The furniture of the room is no less marvellous than its hangings. One turns from a harpsichord of vernis-martin to the clock, a relic from Louis XIV.'s bedroom in Versailles; on to the bric-a-brac of old Saxe or Sevres in admiring wonder. My host drifts into his showman manner, irresistibly comic in this writer.

The pleasures of the collector are apparently divided into three phases, without counting the rapture of the hunt. First, the delight a true amateur takes in living among rare and beautiful things. Second, the satisfaction of showing one's treasures to less fortunate mortals, and last, but perhaps keenest of all, the pride which comes from the fact that one has been clever enough to acquire objects which other people want, at prices below their market value. Sardou evidently enjoys these three sensations vividly. That he lives with and loves his possessions is evident, and the smile with which he calls your attention to one piece after another, and mentions what they cost him, attests that the two other joys are not unknown to him. He is old enough to remember the golden age when really good things were to be picked up for modest sums, before every parvenu considered it necessary to turn his house into a museum, and factories existed for the production of "antiques" to be sold to innocent amateurs.

In calling attention to a set of carved and gilded furniture, covered in Beauvais tapestry, such as sold recently in Paris at the Valencay sale-Talleyrand collection-for sixty thousand dollars, Sardou mentions with a laugh that he got his fifteen pieces for fifteen hundred dollars, the year after the war, from an old chateau back of Cannes! One unique piece of tapestry had cost him less than one-tenth of that sum. He discovered it in a peasant's stable under a two-foot layer of straw and earth, where it had probably been hidden a hundred years before by its owner, and then all record of it lost by his descendants.

The mention of Cannes sets Sardou off on another train of thought. His family for three generations have lived there. Before that they were Sardinian fishermen. His great-grandfather, he imagines, was driven by some tempest to the sh.o.r.e near Cannes and settled where he found himself.

Hence the name! For in the patois of Provencal France an inhabitant of Sardinia is still called _un Sardou_.

The sun is off the front of the house by this time, so we migrate to a shady corner of the lawn for our _aperitif_, the inevitable vermouth or "bitters" which Frenchmen take at five o'clock. Here another surprise awaits the visitor, who has not realized, perhaps, to what high ground the crawling local train has brought him. At our feet, far below the lawn and shade trees that encircle the chateau, lies the Seine, twisting away toward Saint Germain, whose terrace and dismantled palace stand outlined against the sky. To our right is the plain of Saint Denis, the cathedral in its midst looking like an opera-gla.s.s on a green table.

Further still to the right, as one turns the corner of the terrace, lies Paris, a white line on the horizon, broken by the ma.s.s of the Arc de Triomphe, the roof of the Opera, and the Eiffel Tower, resplendent in a fresh coat of yellow lacquer!

The ground where we stand was occupied by the feudal castle of Les Sires de Marly; although all traces of that stronghold disappeared centuries ago, the present owner of the land points out with pride that the extraordinary beauty of the trees around his house is owing to the fact that their roots reach deep down to the rich loam collected during centuries in the castle's moat.

The little chateau itself, built during the reign of Louis XIV. for the _grand-veneur_ of the forest of Marly, is intensely French in type,-a long, low building on a stone terrace, with no trace of ornament about its white facade or on its slanting roof. Inside, all the rooms are "front," communicating with each other _en suite_, and open into a corridor running the length of the building at the back, which, in turn, opens on a stone court. Two lateral wings at right angles to the main building form the sides of this courtyard, and contain _les communs_, the kitchen, laundry, servants' rooms, and the other annexes of a large establishment. This arrangement for a summer house is for some reason neglected by our American architects. I can recall only one home in America built on this plan. It is Giraud Foster's beautiful villa at Lenox. You may visit five hundred French chateaux and not find one that differs materially from this plan. The American idea seems on the contrary to be a square house with a room in each corner, and all the servants' quarters stowed away in a bas.e.m.e.nt. Cottage and palace go on reproducing that foolish and inconvenient arrangement indefinitely.

After an hour's chat over our drinks, during host has rippled on from one subject to another with the lightness of touch of a born talker, we get on to the subject of the grounds, and his plans for their improvement.

Good luck has placed in Sardou's hands an old map of the gardens as they existed in the time of Louis XV., and several prints of the chateau dating from about the same epoch have found their way into his portfolios. The grounds are, under his care, slowly resuming the appearance of former days. Old avenues reopen, statues reappear on the disused pedestals, fountains play again, and clipped hedges once more line out the terraced walks.

In order to explain how complete this work will be in time, Sardou hurries me off to inspect another part of his collection. Down past the stables, in an unused corner of the grounds, long sheds have been erected, under which is stored the debris of a dozen palaces, an a.s.sortment of eighteenth-century art that could not be duplicated even in France.

One shed shelters an entire semicircle of _treillage_, pure Louis XV., an exquisite example of a lost art. Columns, domes, panels, are packed away in straw awaiting resurrection in some corner hereafter to be chosen. A dozen seats in rose-colored marble from Fontainebleau are huddled together near by in company with a row of gigantic marble masques brought originally from Italy to decorate Fouquet's fountains at his chateau of Vaux in the short day of its glory. Just how this latter find is to be utilized their owner has not yet decided. The problem, however, to judge from his manner, is as important to the great playwright as the plot of his next drama.

That the blood of an antiquarian runs in Sardou's veins is evident in the subdued excitement with which he shows you his possessions-statues from Versailles, forged gates and balconies from Saint Cloud, the carved and gilded wood-work for a dozen rooms culled from the four corners of France. Like the true dramatist, he has, however, kept his finest effect for the last. In the centre of a circular rose garden near by stands, alone in its beauty, a column from the facade of the Tuileries, as perfect from base to flower-crowned capital as when Philibert Delorme's workmen laid down their tools.

Years ago Sardou befriended a young stone mason, who through this timely aid prospered, and, becoming later a rich builder, received in 1882 from the city of Paris the contract to tear down the burned ruins of the Tuileries. While inspecting the palace before beginning the work of demolition, he discovered one column that had by a curious chance escaped both the flames of the Commune and the patriotic ardor of 1793, which effaced all royal emblems from church and palace alike. Remembering his benefactor's love for antiquities with historical a.s.sociations, the grateful contractor appeared one day at Marly with this column on a dray, and insisted on erecting it where it now stands, pointing out to Sardou with pride the crowned "H," of Henri Quatre, and the entwined "M. M." of Marie de Medicis, topped by the Florentine lily in the flutings of the shaft and on the capital.

A question of mine on Sardou's manner of working led to our abandoning the gardens and mounting to the top floor of the chateau, where his enormous library and collection of prints are stored in a series of little rooms or alcoves, lighted from the top and opening on a corridor which runs the length of the building. In each room stands a writing-table and a chair; around the walls from floor to ceiling and in huge portfolios are arranged his books and engravings according to their subject. The Empire alcove, for instance, contains nothing but publications and pictures relating to that epoch. Roman and Greek history have their alcoves, as have mediaeval history and the reigns of the different Louis. Nothing could well be conceived more conducive to study than this arrangement, and it makes one realize how honest was the master's reply when asked what was his favorite amus.e.m.e.nt. "Work!"

answered the author.

Our conversation, as was fated, soon turned to the enormous success of _Robespierre_ in London-a triumph that even Sardou's many brilliant victories had not yet equalled.

It is characteristic of the French disposition that neither the author nor any member of his family could summon courage to undertake the prodigious journey from Paris to London in order to see the first performance. Even Sardou's business agent, M. Roget, did not get further than Calais, where his courage gave out. "The sea was so terrible!"

Both those gentlemen, however, took it quite as a matter of course that Sardou's American agent should make a three-thousand-mile journey to be present at the first night.

The fact that the French author resisted Sir Henry Irving's pressing invitations to visit him in no way indicates a lack of interest in the success of the play. I had just arrived from London, and so had to go into every detail of the performance, a rather delicate task, as I had been discouraged with the acting of both Miss Terry and Irving, who have neither of them the age, voice, nor temperament to represent either the revolutionary tyrant or the woman he betrayed. As the staging had been excellent, I enlarged on that side of the subject, but when pressed into a corner by the author, had to acknowledge that in the scene where Robespierre, alone at midnight in the Conciergerie, sees the phantoms of his victims advance from the surrounding shadows and form a menacing circle around him, Irving had used his poor voice with so little skill that there was little left for the splendid climax, when, in trying to escape from his ghastly visitors, Robespierre finds himself face to face with Marie Antoinette, and with a wild cry, half of horror, half of remorse, falls back insensible.

In spite of previous good resolutions, I must have given the author the impression that Sir Henry spoke too loud at the beginning of this scene and was in consequence inadequate at the end.

"What!" cried Sardou. "He raised his voice in that act! Why, it's a scene to be played with the soft pedal down! This is the way it should be done!" Dropping into a chair in the middle of the room my host began miming the gestures and expression of Robespierre as the phantoms (which, after all, are but the figments of an over-wrought brain) gather around him. Gradually he slipped to the floor, hiding his face with his upraised elbow, whispering and sobbing, but never raising his voice until, staggering toward the portal to escape, he meets the Queen face to face. Then the whole force of his voice came out in one awful cry that fairly froze the blood in my veins!