CHAPTER III
THE FAMOUS ATELIERS
The dressmaker of Paris is an artist. Granted that, it is quite natural that his workroom should be an atelier. Your true artist works in a studio, not in a shop; and when one speaks of the famous ateliers of the Parisian dressmaking world, one but gives the work done in these establishments its due recognition.
But they are "magasins" as well as ateliers, those establishments in which fashions are made, and business plays quite as important a part in them as does art, though even the business in some of its phases approximates the dignity of a fine art.
The saleswoman of the great dressmaking establishment is certainly an artist in her line, and perhaps it would not be speaking extravagantly to call her the shrewdest business woman in the world. She is the chief figure in that department of the establishment which meets the public eye and which is designated as the front. Upon her depends the successful disposal of the creations which are tediously evolved behind the closed doors, and her work calls for no ordinary ability. Her knowledge of things Parisian is equalled only by her knowledge of human nature, her suavity is equalled only by her diplomacy. Her siren song would make the mermaiden's melodies sound like a hurdy-gurdy. She could sell a ten-thousand-dollar sable coat to the savage owner of a hut on the equator—provided she knew that the savage would be good for the ten thousand dollars. And she would know. That's the amazing thing about her. She always does know, or if she doesn't, she finds out by some lightning quick process painless to the customer. She makes no mistakes, this soft-voiced, smiling, carefully groomed, persuasive woman, and yet there is such opportunity for mistake in Paris. It is not only a question of knowing the financial rating of the husband of Madame A, or of the Countess B. The credit system of a Parisian dressmaking house is a more complicated thing than that. When Mademoiselle Blanche of the Scala, at fifty francs a week, drives up in a luxurious carriage, with coachman, footman, maid, and poodle all in attendance, sweeps into the show rooms and begins talking of five-thousand-franc gowns, the saleswoman shows no surprise. She only wonders and then adroitly institutes a search for the explanation. The chances are that she can get the story from Blanche herself, by dint of diplomatic wheedling and flattery. If not—well, there are other ways of finding out before the material is cut.
And when everyone knows that the Grand Duke has loved and ridden away from Antoinette of the Folies Bergère, yet Antoinette turns up smiling and places extravagant orders, one must not be too hasty. A grand duke may be succeeded by a rich banker. Even if there is no visible guarantee of the bills, the little woman should not be angered. The future may hold other grand dukes.
Not highly moral, these calculations, but supremely Parisian. Business is business, and Parisian business is adapted to Parisian conditions. The dressmaker does not concern himself about the source from which the money floods his tills, so long as the money is forthcoming, and tainted money scruples would sadly demoralize the business prosperity of the Rue de la Paix.
There are black books in the great dressmaking establishments and queer things are entered in them, items of information that would furnish spicy running commentary upon Parisian life. The incomes of Monsieur's customers are so often fluctuating things. Even in the beau monde there may be circumstances not generally understood, and, where no touch of scandal enters into the calculations, still there is room for mistake. Fortunes may rest on tottering foundations, appearances are often misleading. Yes, there is much to confide to the black book, and the dressmakers interchange statistics in right comradelike fashion. There are men employed whose business it is to investigate all matters having a bearing upon the financial condition of the women who make up the clientèles of the famous dressmakers, and it might surprise some of the gay butterflies that flutter into the luxurious salons of the dressmaking establishments to know how thoroughly informed concerning their private affairs are the saleswomen who wait upon them and the "master" who caters to their whims.
The saleswoman is as clever in dealing with Miss Millions from Chicago as with the irrepressible Toinette. She flatters so subtly, influences so insensibly, makes herself so indispensable. Madame must never be made to feel that her own taste is bad, but she must, if possible, be guided to wise selection, persuaded to believe that she herself has decided upon the frock she finally chooses. It is to the interest of the house that every woman who buys her frocks there should look her best. Moreover, the woman whose friends praise her clothes will hold fast to her dressmaker, so the saleswoman does her best, and unless the customer is very obstinate, that best is surprisingly good. If necessary, with an old and valued customer the diplomat can be firm, suavely, politely firm.
"Why have I no black gown on the list?" asks Madame, after studying the plan of her season's outfit as made out by Mademoiselle Therèse.
Mademoiselle smiles, a deprecatory little smile, but her reply is prompt.
"We find that this year Madame is not of an age to wear black," she says simply, sweetly, but with a finality in her tones.
Madame colours, looks resentful, Mademoiselle busies herself with orders to a mannequin. The pause is ended by a sigh of resignation.
"Oui, c'est vrai," admits Madame. "There is an age, and there is again an age, but in between—eh, bien, it is true. We must now be careful, Therèse."
The successful saleswoman gains the confidence of her customers, holds them, brings millions of francs' worth of business to her employer, and receives a commission on all sales. One saleswoman, among the best in her class, makes as much as fifteen thousand dollars a year out of her commissions, and, though this is exceptional, all earn good incomes.
The mannequins or models are the secondary features of the "front"; but they are of little importance compared with the saleswomen; and while it is a difficult thing to replace a good saleswoman, satisfactory mannequins may be had for the asking.
They are usually recruited from the ranks of the errand girls who swarm in all of the large dressmaking establishments, and are a sharp-witted, precocious set of gamins wise in the gossip of the atelier which is the gossip of all Paris. One of these girls grows up into a good-looking young woman with an admirable figure, a forty-four-inch skirt length, a twenty-one-inch waist, and a soaring ambition. She attracts the attention of the powers that be and is transplanted from her inconspicuous place behind the scenes to the full glare of the front. No more trotting about in pursuit of elusive colours and materials, no more delivering messages and frocks at all hours and in all weathers, no more being a shabby little atom of humanity at everyone's beck and call. Henceforward it is her sole duty to be chic, to wear with an air that will lend cachet to the creations any frocks or wraps which the saleswoman wishes to show.
Much of the talk concerning the transcendent charms of the Paris mannequins is great nonsense, and the sensational tales of these humble beauties and their spectacular marriages—or "arrangements," are, as a rule, pure fabrication. There are handsome girls among them, and one and all they have the French talent for wearing smart clothes; but their good looks are largely a matter of make-up and of those same smart clothes. A more ordinary looking group of girls than the mannequins of a house, when they arrive in the morning, it would be hard to find, but a half hour in a toilet room works a transformation, and when Mademoiselle, perfectly corsetted, skilfully made up as to complexion, eyes, and brows, with her hair dressed in the latest fashion, her hands and nails beautifully cared for, her feet clad in dainty high-heeled slippers, sweeps across the show room wearing a frock that is a dream of beauty—then one understands how the traditions concerning her have arisen. She is not beautiful perhaps, but one forgets it, for she is excessively chic, and being that she fulfils the French law and gospel.
Beer and his Mannequins
A few mannequins have developed into saleswomen, a few have married well, a few have become notorious cocottes; one became a favourite attendant of Queen Victoria, and finally drifted over to New York to end her days there. A number have found unimportant places upon the French stage, but, in the main, the mannequins are very ordinary young women whose history is but the history of the average Parisian working girl. Perhaps it is demoralizing, this constant masquerading in costly finery meant for others. One cultivates a taste for luxury under such conditions, and when six o'clock comes the rôle of grub must seem hard to the girl who has been the most gorgeous of butterflies all through the day. One works hard and lives shabbily and is virtuous—but among the customers for whom one trails silken draperies up and down, up and down, there are so many who have the fine clothes for their own, who live luxuriously, gaily, and who do not trouble about that tiresome virtue. Bernard Shaw is right. It is ill paid in a worldly sense, the virtue, and if the mannequin has that fact forced upon her by the show that passes before her—well, it is but one of the lessons of Vanity Fair. As we have said before, French frocks will have much to answer for when accounts are summed up.
The mannequins' ball gives to the mannequin at least one opportunity during the year for playing her rôle of élégante outside the establishment in which she is employed. For the truly great houses there is little object in furnishing costumes for this ball, save only the giving of pleasure to favourite employees, but gorgeous confections are provided for the occasion, and the spirit of rivalry twixt the different ateliers runs high.
Sometimes, too, pretty mannequins are commissioned to wear model frocks at the great racing events or on other occasions when all the fashionable Parisian world turns out to see and be seen; but as a general thing, Mademoiselle's sphere of usefulness is limited to the salons of the firm that employs her. The days are not so dull even there. All sorts and conditions of women, save only the women without money, pass in and out. One sees the famous beauties, the most notorious demi-mondaines, the most celebrated artistes, the princesses and grand duchesses and queens, the wives of the rich bankers and manufacturers, the heroine of the latest scandal, the newest love of a crown prince, the American of fabulous millions,—the mannequin knows them all, so does the saleswoman, so does the page who opens the door, and the procession is an amusing one for onlookers who have the key to its humours. Ah, the very walls are saturated with gossip in the salons where Fashion makes her headquarters, and when an old customer disappears, when a new luminary arises, even the curtains flutter with interest and conjecture.
Stars of a certain type rise and set swiftly in Paris. Of a sudden, there is a new sensation. Some woman by force of beauty, wit, diablerie, sheer audacity, has caught the public eye. All Paris talks of her, men pour fortunes into her grasping little hands. She eats and drinks and is exceedingly merry. Her jewels are a proverb, her costumes beggar description, her sables would do credit to an empress. She has her handsome house, her horses, her carriages, her servants. Wherever she goes she is the cynosure of all eyes, and then—Pouf! she is with the snows of yesteryear. Paris has a new sensation. La belle Margot? Oh, yes; she had un succès fou, but that was yesterday.
"Where is Felise?" asked an American who had not been in Paris since the season two years earlier, when Felise was the lionne of the day. The Frenchman to whom he spoke shrugged his shoulders.
"Ah, mon ami, how can one tell?—picking rags for aught I know,—but have you seen Suzanne? Ravissante, mon chèr! Paris is at her feet."
They are good customers of the dressmaker when they are on the crest of the wave—these creatures of a day, whom the French misname "filles de joie." When their day is over and their credit is gone there is an entry in the black book. The familiar carriage appears no more at the door—but there are other carriages, other customers to take the vacant place. The performance is a continuous one in Vanity Fair.
There are fine distinctions made in regard to the customers who flock to the famous dressmaking establishments. Not for everyone are the choicest models brought to light. These are for the delectation of the elect, for known and cherished customers, for others whose custom is a thing greatly to be desired.
Not until she is sure that the visitor is worthy of the lure does the saleswoman order the mannequin to show these exclusive models. She is eternally vigilant and can recognize a dressmaker in search of ideas rather than of frocks, or a woman moved by curiosity rather than by a desire to buy, as far as she can see her. There are many such visitors and they are treated civilly, but they see little for their pains and they are not encouraged to linger.
Then there is the woman of one frock, the casual tourist who is seeing the sights of Paris and feels that she will not have completed her programme satisfactorily unless she takes at least one French frock home with her. She is not received with effusion, rather with a good-natured tolerance, yet the saleswoman's manner toward her is far warmer than that accorded to the visitor with no intention of buying. In the course of the year, these small orders, a vast majority of which are placed by Americans, foot up to an imposing sum total, and the saleswoman is too shrewd a business woman to underestimate the importance of small things.
What does Madame want? An evening gown, a dinner gown, a visiting gown, a street frock? Madame, somewhat embarrassed, thinks she would like a nice all-around dress, something dressy, but not too dressy, a dress to wear to luncheon or afternoon tea or theatre or—
"Parfaitement,—a gown utile. Marie, the grey crêpe; Elise, put on the black and white silk."
"Too youthful? But no, Madame. It is of a sobriety that grey crêpe. Madame is even too young for so serious a costume, but—since she does not wish anything conspicuous—The grey suits Madame's complexion and figure to perfection. It will serve for occasions of all kinds, and it is chic, très chic. The friends of Madame will recognize at once that it is of Paris. The sleeve is all that there is of the latest, and the skirt—Madame will observe how the skirt hangs. It is our newest skirt. Madame will be satisfied—oh, of a surety."
And Madame buys the frock or orders one made like the model. She has been shown little else, but then the saleswoman is clever enough to have brought out at the start something that would actually be suitable and becoming, so, though overawed and robbed of self-assertion, the unimportant customer probably fares better than if she had been shown many models and left to her own devices.
Then, of a sudden, there is a stir in the entry, the door opens, a woman elegantly gowned, aristocratic of air, sweeps into the salon. The saleswoman's face is wreathed in smiles of welcome, her air is eager, deferential. Madame la Princesse wishes to see Monsieur? But, certainly. He shall be called. In the meantime, if there is anything one can show?
Mannequins are sent flying for the best models and a long file of the young women promenades through the room wearing frocks in which the illustrious customer may be interested. Monsieur comes out from the inner fastnesses and declares himself enchanted, honoured; materials are brought out and displayed, trimmings are suggested. The interview is a very serious one. No smallest word of the Princess is treated lightly. A beggarly dozen of frocks, all extravagant in price, are planned. A few costly furs are thrown in for good measure. The Princess rises languidly. Monsieur himself accompanies her to the door, and in the hall she passes La Petite Fleurette, who has danced herself into notoriety and into the heart of the Prince whose name and title Madame la Princesse bears. Evidently this is to be an expensive day for his Royal Highness.
Fleurette, too, is received with smiles, with effusive greetings. The credit of his Royal Highness is excellent. Monsieur stops on his way to his private rooms and returns to greet the danseuse. His manner to her is not what it was to the Princess. Quite as cordial, yes; but more familiar. The grave deference has disappeared. The saleswoman, too, is familiar. She calls the customer "ma chère" and "ma petite," flatters her openly, jests with her. The best in the cases is brought out for Fleurette as for the Princess, but it is a best of a more striking type, and the master artist's suggestions are not those he made to the Princess. One is always an artist, but one caters to the individual. Where Madame la Princesse has ordered a dozen gowns, la petite Fleurette orders a score, and when she goes Monsieur accompanies her also to the door, but as he turns he shrugs his shoulders.
"Oh la, la!" says the saleswoman, vulgarly, expressively, as she meets his eyes, and a buzz of conversation sounds from the corner where the mannequins are gathered.
The popular danseuse, chanteuse, diseuse, of the Fleurette type is usually a more profitable customer in her private capacity than is the great actress. She is the fad, the sensation of the moment, and her money comes easily and plentifully. No ambitious productions, no expensive theatrical experiments, eat up her income. Her art is not of the kind that absorbs her thoughts and hopes and dreams. It is a means to an end, and that end is gay and luxurious living. So la petite Fleurette spends her money prodigally in self-indulgence, and much of it goes to swell the profits of those alluring establishments on the Rue de la Paix and the Place Vendôme. Other chanteuses and diseuses there are in Paris who take their art as seriously as Bernhardt takes hers, and who make it, in its own way, as truly an art; but here again one finds women too deeply interested in their work to take an absorbing interest in chiffons. They may dress well, but not extravagantly well; and beside the splendours of Fleurette their mild sartorial radiance will seem dim indeed.
Of the actresses who stand at the head of their profession in Paris, Réjane is probably the best dressed, spends the most money for her personal and unofficial adornment. She loves pretty frocks and she wears them well, off the stage as on it; but even she does not rival in her toilettes certain lesser lights of the stage, for whom, in her capacity as artiste, she may well feel a good-natured contempt.
It is when the famous actress appears in a new play that she becomes important in the dressmaking world. Then, if you please, she is extravagant, exacting, full of whims. Then she and her chosen dressmaker have long and strenuous conferences, at which the most able assistants of the master artist are present with suggestion and advice. The play must be gravely, exhaustively considered. If it deals with some historic period, the fashions of that period must be studied down to their merest detail and adapted to present needs. The physical characteristics of the actress must have due attention. She must be made to look her best,—but the psychological subtleties of her rôle must also be taken into account in the planning of her costumes. Oh they are grave, very grave, the preliminary consultations concerning the costumes for a new and important rôle. Day after day, Réjane drives up to the door, behind her white mules, and is closeted with the master and his chosen aids. There are sketches, crinoline models, materials to be viewed and discussed, high converse to be held concerning points upon which artiste and artist are not at one. Then come fittings by the dozen, with Monsieur looking on, and the heads of the departments called in to receive orders or suggest improvements. The skirt drapery does not fall as it should. Madame shakes her head. Monsieur knits his brows.
"Ask Renoir to come here." The chief skirt hand appears.
"Tu vois, Renoir, ça ne va pas. It is a horror, that drapery. I have the air of a femme des Halles, n'est-ce pas?"
Renoir goes down upon her knees, rips a stitch here and there, gathers the material up in her quick fingers. A touch, a fold, a lifting here, a dropping there, while everyone watches anxiously.
The skirt takes on new lines, Madame looks over her shoulder at her reflection in the mirror, and her frown melts into a smile.
"Mais oui, c'est ça."
Monsieur smooths his furrowed brow, and the skirtmaker endeavours to look modest as she hurries back to the workroom, but she is proud, extremely proud. It is something to surmount serious difficulties under the eye of the master.
There is perhaps a miniature stage in one of the fitting-rooms,—a tiny stage, but large enough for a solitary figure in sweeping draperies, and lighted by footlights as is a real stage. So much depends upon those footlights. They may ruin totally the effect of a frock lovely under ordinary light, just as they will make the most perfect natural complexion look cadaverous, and the stage costume must be planned with reference to this problem of lighting.
Many dressmakers care little for the theatrical custom and seldom make stage costumes save when a modern society play is in question, but other houses cater largely to the stage trade. Doucet makes more of the costumes worn on the Parisian stage than any other one maker, but Redfern has had great success in that line, and Drecoll, too, has costumed some famous rôles, while, when it comes to the modern society play, actresses turn to any one of the autocrats who finds most favour with them.
The première of an important production always brings out, if not the great dressmakers themselves, at least their official representatives, whose task it is to garner fashion ideas wherever they are to be found. Even a period play may furnish some idea in colour, line, or detail that may be adapted to modern dress and inspire a new mode, and the elaborately costumed modern play is always interesting to students of the modes. Sometimes an actress wears a new and original frock that catches the fancy of Parisiennes and launches a mode, but, in general, the stage frock's influence is limited to the inspiring of ideas for modes rather than to the setting of fashions, and the stage trade is not of great importance in the great game of fashion-making.
Professional buyers fill the salons at certain seasons of the year, and are to be reckoned with seriously in the business calculations of Monsieur.
In early spring and late summer dressmakers and buyers from all parts of the world set their faces toward Paris, but by far the largest element of the pilgrimage is American. Every dressmaker of pretensions to-day makes her trips to Paris at least twice a year, views the advance season models, buys as many of them as she can, lays in a supply of exclusive materials and trimmings, and fills her note-book with ideas to be used for the benefit of her home customers. Often during her summer trip she takes a run to Trouville and to other Normandy resorts where the tide of fashion is at its highest as the summer draws to a close; and, in the late winter or early spring, the Riviera is a famous hunting-ground for fashions.
Before March brings the Auteuil races, Paris is, in the eyes of the ultra-chic, a wilderness. Women charmingly gowned may be there. The uninitiated may believe that the latest creations of the French dressmakers' art are on view. The elect know better. They understand that the gowns being worn in Paris before March are the gowns of yesteryear. They understand, too, that, all through the Paris winter, spring modes are having their trial, but that this trial is going on in far-away summer lands. The women who launch the modes, the exclusive few who set the fashion, are already wearing toilettes that will serve as models to the general public when spring comes, but they are wearing them at the winter resorts, each of which has its distinct season for the European smart set, and it is not until Auteuil calls fashionable folk back to Paris that the stay-at-homes know what is upon Fashion's spring programme.
CHAPTER IV
FIFI AND THE DUCHESS ON THE TURF
For fashionable Paris, the season begins with Auteuil. The first of the races calls all of the wanderers back to the heart of Vanity Fair. It is the famous rally, the great spring opening, the first important toilette display of the season. The meeting is held as soon as winter shows the smallest sign of relenting, and is never later than March, sometimes as early as February; but whenever it comes it marks the début of spring upon the Parisian calendar.
The weather may be bitterly cold, but that makes no difference to the Parisienne. She has prepared a costume for Auteuil and she wears it.
"Elise, what is the weather?"
"But of a coldness, Madame. It is to freeze!"
"Eh bien, bring me my fur coat."
Change the frock? The idea doesn't even occur to her. That is her Auteuil frock.
And so Auteuil usually offers a spectacle as picturesque as it is incongruous. The day is bright and cold, or—more probable supposition—the sky is lowering, and there is a flurry of snow in the air. The grand stand and pesage are not yet gay with blossoming plants. Tall braziers are set at intervals along the front of the stand, and near them hover swarms of women drawing sable coats together over frocks of chiffon and lace, showing faces a trifle blue with cold beneath flower-laden hats. They hold their chilled hands out to the flames, these forced blossoms of spring, and they shiver daintily and jest at their own discomfort and are altogether gay and inconsequent and absurd. Here and there the furs are thrown back to afford a deserving public glimpses of a toilette well worth seeing; and it is around the braziers that all Paris first gains an idea of the fashions that are to dominate spring and summer.
Feminine Paris appreciates and improves the opportunity. Nowhere in the world do races draw so large, so mixed, and so enthusiastic a crowd of women as do the races in "Parisi"—which, slangily speaking, implies the district round about Paris, and takes in all of the famous courses upon which the spring races are run,—Auteuil, Longchamps, St. Cloud, St. Ouen, Massons, Lafitte, and Chantilly.
It is a queer mixture, that feminine crowd. The Royalist Duchess, Fifi of the Variétés, the rich banker's wife, the stable boy's sweetheart, the famous actress, the little milliner, the tourist, the great manufacturers' women folk,—all are there, dressed in their best, gay, excited, conferring with jockeys and touts and illustrious members of the Jockey Club, quite impartially, in their quest for tips, betting eagerly, coquetting still more eagerly, showing their own frocks and studying those of their neighbours.
Verily, on the turf and under the turf all women as well as all men are equal, but nowhere is the mélange more amazing than at the Paris race courses. "A feminine pousse café melting into a cocktail," commented one irreverent and thirsty American as he watched the throng at the Grand Prix last year, and the description was apt if inelegant. Fifi and the Duchess come nearer meeting on equal terms in the pesage than they do in any other one place. They are beautiful women in beautiful gowns, vying with each other for the approbation of the crowd. The Duchess would not admit that, but the fact remains, and it is a fact, too, that the honours frequently rest with Fifi.
During the last few years there has been a tentative effort in the smart Parisian set toward simplicity of dress for the races. The demi-mondaines having chosen these occasions for reckless extravagance in dress, the social elect said, "Let us mark a distinction by disdaining rivalry in chiffons. Let us be chic, but with a difference, with a severity."
The movement has perhaps had some slight effect; but, on the whole, the cause is a lost one. It demands abnegation of too strenuous a type. Madame may sacrifice much to a principle, but not an opportunity of displaying her most charming costumes where their merits will find wide and enthusiastic recognition; and the racing events are the ideal opportunities for such display.
The Day of the Drags
The setting is in itself a delectable one, for all of the courses near Paris are attractive. The grand-stands are all ablaze with flowers. Women trail their gowns over velvety turf and under shadowing boughs, or stroll along wide promenades between high banks of blossoming shrubs. Given sunshine and warm weather, a great day at any one of the courses is a surpassingly gay sight, all colour and motion and sparkle.
The grande Militaire, a steeplechase with gentlemen riders up, is one of the most popular of the Auteuil events, for the horses are ridden by officers from the neighbouring garrisons, and both Fifi and the Duchess "aiment le Militaire." The Day of the Drags, or coaching parade, is another chic event, and the occasion for a phenomenal toilette exhibit. One is so delightfully in evidence upon the box seat of a coach that one's most charming frock and hat will not be wasted there. Moreover, the competition in dress is more limited than it is in the pesage or the Tribune, and, naturally, is all the keener for the concentration. Seats upon the coaches, which are tooled out to the race track by their famous owners and greeted with traditional and impressive ceremony, are eagerly coveted, and many a mode has been launched from the top of a coach, many a new belle has entered into her kingdom behind four curvetting horses on the Day of the Drags.
But the day of days for the Parisienne who follows the races—and what true Parisienne does not?—is the day of the Grand Prix. The Grand Prix is the dramatic conclusion of the season to which Auteuil was the triumphal introduction. It is the climax to which St. Cloud and St. Ouen and Chantilly and the rest have led.
Auteuil is likely to be stormy. One expects that, but bad weather for the Grand Prix is a tragedy. For weeks, dressmakers and milliners have been at work upon Grand Prix toilettes, and certain women, famed for their beauty and the inimitable grace with which they wear their clothes, might have the choicest products of the ultra-swell ateliers merely for the wearing at the Grand Prix, did they but choose to accept the favours and organize themselves into advertising agencies. Every woman with money to spend, spends as much of it as she can spare upon her toilette for this one occasion. She will blossom out gorgeously for Grand Prix, if she goes shabby during the rest of the year.
Oh the heartburnings, the jealousies, the opera bouffe dramas that are woven round those Grand Prix gowns,—the solemn conferences with the great dressmakers, the whispers and rumours about the frocks of rival beauties, the eager interest of all the Parisian world! In the ateliers nothing is talked of save the coming event. From the smallest errand girl to the master artist, all have the interests of the establishment at heart and are curious regarding the achievements in other workrooms. To have turned out a majority of the frocks which create a sensation at the Grand Prix,—that is a triumph surpassed only by the winning of the Grand Prix itself.
So the dressmakers outdo themselves in aspiration and effort, and when the great day comes they go to Longchamps to sit in judgment upon their own creations and those of their rivals. They bet upon the horses, yes; but they realize that the race is run in the Tribune and the pesage, not upon the track, and as for the two-hundred-thousand-franc purse that goes to the owner of the winning horse—two hundred thousand francs would carry Madame but a little way on her race for fashionable prominence. Ten thousand dollars' worth of lace went into one frock worn at the Grand Prix last June and the ropes of pearls worn over the lace were worth a prince's ransom, yet the toilette was a quiet one. Only the initiated could appraise its value—but, fortunately for the wearer, in the matter of clothes, Paris is a city of initiates.
There are strenuous times in the boudoirs of Paris on the morning of the Grand Prix. Both Fifi and the Duchess are hard to satisfy, and their maids walk on tiptoe and breathe but lightly until the last rebellious lock is brought into subjection, the last sustaining pin is thrust through the tip-tilted hat, the last touch of powder is applied to the pretty nose, the last fold of the veil is coquettishly adjusted.
Madame surveys herself conscientiously, exhaustively. Not a detail escapes her, and, if all is well, she sighs,—a sigh of supreme content. She has done what she could. Dressmaker, milliner, and maid have done what they could. Le bon Dieu also has had a share in the satisfactory tout ensemble. Mentally, Madame includes all in a sweeping vote of thanks, but the maid is nearest at hand.
"Celeste, you may have the blue silk frock you like—the one with the embroidery. Yes; and the blue parasol also."
She is gone, in a flutter of laces and chiffon and plumes, and the exhausted maid stops only long enough to appropriate the blue silk, before hurrying out to the Bois where she may see the passing show, or joining Jacques and setting forth—she also—for Longchamps.
The parade to the Grand Prix is well worth seeing, even if one cannot see the race itself. Out the broad avenue of the Champs Elysées streams the procession, coaches, automobiles, smart traps of all kinds, hired fiacres, high-stepping horses, dapper drivers, exquisitely gowned women, merry-makers of all types.
Past the Place de l'Etoile they go, where the avenues, radiating in all directions, pour tributary streams of humanity into the already swollen tide. Out along the Avenue du Bois and through the gates, past Armenonville, past the cascades, on to Longchamps!
There is the smooth green stretch, there is the pesage already crowded with fashionable men and women, jockeys, sports, gee-gees (as the French bookies are called). There is the Tribune, closely packed and glowing like a Dutch tulip-garden with colour. Groups of women, arrayed with a subtlety of elegance of which Sheba's queen never dreamed, are clustered under the lindens, everywhere flutter the colours of the various starters,—which are the colours of the great families of France; for the Grand Prix is run under the auspices of the Jockey Club of France, and the Jockey Club, as has been said before, is the gentlemen's racing club par excellence.
Perhaps it is because the horses belong, as it were, in her own set, perhaps because she and her world follow the racing season so closely, that the average Frenchwoman of society knows more about the horses than her American or English sister, and places her bets right cannily; but the Parisienne at large is quite as eager over racing, and puts up her money with quite as much zest as does my lady of legitimate Jockey Club connections. She is a born gambler, the little Parisienne, born to gambling as to all forms of excitement, to all that is recklessly, feverishly, uncalculatingly gay; and she bets upon the Grand Prix, if not again through the year. She may wager louis or francs, but she places her stake with smiling audacity, and takes her losses or gains sportily.
Each year, after Grand Prix, the air of Paris is full of stories of feminine plunging, and many of the stories would make spicy reading could they be told with the names attached.
There, for instance, was the American actress who lost the ten thousand dollars borrowed for her new production, and could not get her ordered gowns out of the hands of her dressmaker until she had made a flying trip to New York and succeeded in raising money enough to pay for them.
There was the French danseuse who, through a jealous rival, obtained a tip that was pure fabrication, but purported to be a sure thing emanating from a distinguished source. She did what she was expected to do, staked every franc she could get together upon a horse quite out of the running, and was the only one not surprised when she found herself one of the handful who had backed a winner, and provided with money to throw to the birds. And there was the story of the little Countess of high degree who pawned the family diamonds for money to risk on a sure tip from a famous jockey, and who came a cropper that was offset only by the spectacular winnings of her husband's bonne amie on the same race.
Yes, the air is full of such stories and the scandal-mongers whisper them, chuckling; but they are hardly pleasant stories, and sometimes tragedy looms grim in the aftermath of the Grand Prix. For that matter, tragedy lurks always just beneath the surface of Parisian life, but on the surface there is such gaiety, such insouciance, such a glitter and a fanfare, that one forgets. It is absurd to be haunted in Paris. The ghosts are themselves Parisian; and, recognizing the absurdity of their metier, allow themselves to be decently laid while the tide of life swirls over them and around them. Or, if they do walk between the hydrangea clumps of Auteuil, or under the lindens of Longchamps, or steal through the corridors of the Grand Condé at Chantilly, they are well-behaved, unobtrusive ghosts, unnoticed in the whirl of brilliant colourful life.
At Longchamps
Down in the pesage at Longchamps there is no question of ghosts on Grand Prix day. Sunshine, laughter, life at its merriest, rule the day. The Parisienne's grand passion is for diverting herself and others. She is the queen of luxury and of gaiety, and she plays her rôle royally at the Grand Prix. "Parisienne," one says, but one means the woman of Paris, not the woman born in Paris; for Paris is cosmopolis. The over-elaboration of all civilization centres there. Her women are the women from all lands, women of all types, resembling each other only in sex and in their ready assimilation of the best that civilization has to offer to the senses. The spell of Paris, the witch city, is over them all.
In the paddock at Longchamps, one will see all the well-known women of Paris, and not only of Paris but of Europe. Homburg empties its cosmopolitan smart set into Paris for the Grand Prix, St. Petersburg always sends a large contingent, the racing folk of England are out in full force, Americans are numerous; but perhaps most notable of all are the Viennese. The Viennese women are marvels. They can meet Parisiennes on their own ground and at least share the honours. They have superb figures, attractive faces, a talent for dress, and, with all that, a certain vivacity, dash, vivid charm, that makes them, in the estimation of many critics, the most fascinating women of Europe, though they lack the subtle tact and finesse, the swift wit and ready adaptability, of the Frenchwoman.
There are grave faces in the crowd that waits for its carriages and motors outside the pelouse after the race is over, but they are the exception. If one has lost—well, one must pay or must make someone else pay, and meanwhile the great day is not over. The horse has played his part, one has lost or won, the sun is dropping low in the west; but if one has lost, one can drown regret; if one has gained, one must celebrate the victory. The long night lies beyond the sunset, and Paris is at its best under artificial light.
So the tide sets back toward Paris, along the channels by which it came, and once more the green silence of the Bois is shattered by the beat of hoofs, the roll of wheels, the "teuf-teuf" of automobiles, the laughter and chatter of a multitude. It has seen many sights, this famous Bois, since the days when it was the quiet old forêt de Rouvray, and, if the little green leaves could but speak—but the budget of gossip is large enough in Paris without such an avalanche of new items as the leaves could supply.
For weeks beforehand every table in the fashionable restaurants has been reserved for the evening of the Grand Prix. Armenonville is crowded to its limits. The Madrid, not so cosmopolitan but popular with the French, has not a vacant seat. The Pavilion Royal, the Cascade, and the other Bois restaurants are filled with folk whose swellness is in proportion to the standing of the place.
Down in the city, the Café de Paris has the crowd corresponding to that at Armenonville, in the Bois. Durand's, Paillard's, Voisins, the Ritz, the Elysées—all have their quota of the patronage, and a host of restaurants less famed in social annals accommodate the lesser folk of the Grand Prix multitude. Everywhere there is eating, drinking, and making merry, and one gives no thought to dying on the morrow. The hours go lightly to the accompaniment of music and laughter and the clink of coin, and when, after the dinner, the diners move on to the theatres, no serious drama is likely to claim them. Glitter, gaiety, and frivolity are the keynotes of this June day from start to finish, and the staid Comédie Française is left high and dry, while all the "tingle-tangles" are packed to suffocation.
Les Variétés, Les Nouveautés, Le Mathurins and the other Boulevard resorts, Les Ambassadeurs, l'Horloge and places of similar type—these are the after-dinner rendezvous for Grand Prix night, and every famous café chantant in the city reaps a harvest. Then, when theatre is over, a large percentage of the celebrating world brings up at Maxim's. Folk who go there at no other time drift in on that one night, and the crowd is a motley one, a conglomeration of types, the concentrated distillation of the variety, the extravagance, the gaiety of Paris—reckless, feverish, pleasure-mad Paris.
So Grand Prix day ends; and, with it, according to tradition, ends the Paris season. In the old days this was true. The morrow of the Grand Prix saw the fashionables packing trunks for the country, Brittany, Normandy,—anywhere, everywhere, away from Paris; but the flight was one of convention. Paris is at its best in June, and the enjoyable weather is likely to last on into July. The mad rush of social engagements is over, so that one may relax and enjoy one's self in leisurely fashion, may assume a social déshabille, go where one will, do what one will. And Parisiennes have gradually taken to lingering after Grand Prix. Until the second or third week in July one may see famous mondaines at the restaurants, the theatres, and the open-air clubs, which are a recent Parisian fad, may pass them driving in the Bois, or notice their equipages drawn up before the shops of the Rue de la Paix or the dressmaking palaces of the Place Vendôme. After that time, however, though to the casual visitor Paris may seem as animated and as crowded as ever, he who knows la Ville Lumière realizes that for the moment it is a social desert. The smart world is out round the Normandy circuit in the wake of the horses, is flirting and lounging and frivolling in seashore villas and casinos, is taking the baths and playing high at popular spas, or is motoring frantically over the face of Europe, with intervals for all of these occupations. It is the most restless class in the world, this Parisian smart set,—a class curiously compact of nerves and intellect, though the intellect is perhaps oddly applied to the purposes of life; and though a wealth of poetical similes has first and last been applied to la belle Parisienne, the one truthful if not poetic which would suit her best is the human peg-top. It spins to brave music, this peg-top, but its metier is to spin.
Fifi and the Duchess take leave of the horses on the day of the Grand Prix, but they are on hand to cheer them at Caen, and the Normandy racing circuit is, in its way, quite as gay, quite as popular, as the racing season in Paris. The greater part of the fashionable Parisian world is in Normandy for the summer season and within easy motoring distance of all of the great races. Those who are not so located come from wherever they may be summering to attend the opening of the circuit at Caen or the "grande semaine" at Deauville, Trouville. A multitude of humbler Parisians is also having its summer outing on the Normandy coast, and is quite as much devoted to racing as its social betters. And then Paris itself is but a few hours away, a short journey whether by train or motor, and folk city-bound may run up to the coast for the great racing days.
So history repeats itself at Caen, at Houlgate, at Deauville, at Dieppe, at Ostend. It is the old story of Auteuil and Longchamps over again, with a different setting;—the same horses, the same owners, the same jockeys, the same onlookers. Only the women's frocks are new and Paris is hours away, while white sands and blue sea are close at hand. There is a short fall racing season round about Paris, crowded in twixt summer outings and the time of dog and gun. Then Fifi and the Duchess tuck their betting books away until after the Riviera season. Perhaps they foot up their gains and losses. Much more probably they do nothing of the kind. Why bother with what Mr. Mantalini would call "the demn'd total." The races have served their purpose. They have furnished amusement and excitement, have fed the avid nerves. One has danced and has paid the piper—or has persuaded someone else to pay him. Now one must give one's mind to toilettes for the Riviera. The racing season is past, and with the Parisienne the past—be it but the yesterday—is buried deep.
CHAPTER V
LE SPORT IN PARIS
Parisian society is not given over wholly to racing during those weeks that lie between the March winds and braziers of Auteuil and the sunshine and flowers of Grand Prix. Smart social functions of all kinds are packed closely into the sunshiny days and the balmy nights, and the daytime reunions have increased and multiplied during recent years; for the Parisienne has taken up "le sport."
It is a tyrant, le sport. It exacts the surrender of many of the self-indulgent habits of Madame. It demands of her more violent exercise than is agreeable to the true Frenchwoman; it forces her into short frocks for which she has no love; it endangers her carefully protected complexion; it interferes with her siesta; it even gets her up early in the morning after a night of dancing and merry-making—but it is chic, tr-r-r-ès chic, le sport, and so the Parisienne accepts it with the verve which characterizes all she does.
The English and Americans are responsible for the rise of sports in Paris, and neither Frenchmen nor Frenchwomen will ever, as a class, go in for tennis, golf, hockey, polo, etc., with the genuine energy and enjoyment displayed by their transatlantic and trans-channel cousins; but they go through the motions and they have the most ornate and attractive of installations for each separate sport, and there is a small French element which actually distinguishes itself in outdoor athletics. The English and American residents in Paris do the rest, and so le sport flourishes mightily round about the city on the Seine.
To certain forms of sport, the Parisian takes as naturally as does a duck to water. He loves excitement, danger, swift motion. He will take, with a reckless audacity, sporting risks at which an Englishman or American might hesitate; but ask him to work hard at a game, to lame his muscles and blister his feet and hands, and earn his golf score or tennis score or hockey score by the sweat of his brow, and, as a rule, he will beg to be excused. What is true of the Parisian is true of the Parisienne. Both combine a certain sensuous indolence of body with a wild energy of nerves and brain. They do not like exercise, but they adore excitement; and it is only in the sports that cater to their nervous excitability that they excel.
The automobile whirled its way straight into the hearts of the French. From the first it was extravagantly popular in Paris. Here was a sport that suited perfectly the French temperament. There was danger in it, excitement in it, piquancy in it. It afforded exhilaration. It provided the swift changes and sudden contrasts so dear to the restless and dramatic temperament. With an automobile as slave of the lamp, one could range far afield even in one short day, and the possibilities held in solution within the twenty-four hours were multiplied astonishingly when the motor made its début in Parisian society. Small wonder that it was greeted with acclaim.
One might fancy that the difficulty of looking well in motor costume would prejudice the Parisienne against the machine, for with her, the most important thing connected with taking up a new sport is the excuse offered for a new and piquant costume. But the difficulties in the way of the motor woman merely added zest to the adoption of the fad.
Madame flew to her dressmaker.
"Tiens, M'sieu. I have bought three automobiles. What shall I wear?"
And Monsieur brought his brows together in his most effective and judicial fashion, led the fair motor woman to an inner room where the conference might have the quiet demanded by such weighty consultations, and set himself to planning methods of leaping this sartorial hurdle.
Some of the experimental stages of the Parisian motor costume were fearful and wonderful, and even now our importers bring over spectacular motor outfits to which are attached the names of famous makers; but, on the whole, the Parisienne has mastered the problem of motor dress.
For her electric brougham and victoria and the other luxurious, smooth-running electric vehicles in which she speeds over the asphalt and takes her afternoon outing in the Bois, no special costume is required. Perhaps, if she is her own chauffeuse, she wears a trim tailor frock and hat, but no eccentricity enters into her attire even then, and, as a rule, she wears what she might wear were the carriage drawn by horses instead of being propelled by electricity.
If she is going farther afield—out to the Henri Quatre for luncheon, to the Reservoir for dinner—she wears an all-enveloping dust cloak to protect her delicate frock, a veil or perhaps a hood to cover her fragile hat and shield her face and hair from dust, but beneath this outer wrapping she is as exquisite, as elaborate as ever. When it comes to longer runs, or to genuine touring, the Parisienne promptly abandons all effort to look well on the road. To be comfortable, to be suitably dressed, to be immaculate at the journey's end,—all these aims demand the setting aside of a desire to be beautiful; and, since she may not be beautiful, the quick-witted Madame seizes upon the possibility of being piquant and goes to the extreme of attaining the hideous in pursuit of the practical. She hides figure, hair, face. Even her sparkling eyes are eclipsed behind goggles or dimmed by masks, and she consoles herself for the ugliness by thought of the dramatic effect with which she may flutter from the cocoon when her butterfly moment arrives.
One sees these transformations by the score at such a rendezvous as Chantilly at the time of the "Derby," for it is the mode to motor to Chantilly on the eve of the important day and put up over night at the Grand Condé, or to arrive in time for luncheon before the races. Machine after machine dashes up to the hotel, discharges its freight of grotesque figures and wheezes away to the garage. Madame, carrying a hat box, and cloaked, hooded, masked, powdered with dust, hurries to the chamber reserved for her. In a twinkling there trips from the room which swallowed the awesome enigma a charming woman, fresh, dainty, smiling, gowned in the airiest and most delicate of confections. Or perhaps there is not even the moment of seclusion. A toot, a whir, a quick reversing of levers! The automobile has stopped. A dusty, shrouded, shapeless figure springs lightly to the step, while the idlers look on curiously. A swift movement of the hands and the hood falls back; another, and the cloak slips from the shoulders. There is Fifi, a Dresden china figure all fluttering frills and laces and ribbon and flowers, a smile on her lips, a challenge in her eyes.
"C'est chic, ça," comments the old Marquis over his Burgundy. "All that there is of the most modern, mon garçon!"
Paris is the city of automobiles, and France is the motor tourist's paradise. The roads are good, the inns are excellent and are rapidly improving under the influence of the motor touring, and on every hand are picturesque towns and picturesque scenery, not too rugged for the peace of mind of the average chauffeur.
Many inns known to history, but fallen from their high estate in later years, are looking up again since the motor took the road. At any hour, a gay crowd of folk, masquerading in dust coats and goggles and hoods, may appear at the door demanding luncheon or dinner. They know a good wine and a good sauce, these travellers, and they scatter gold in a fashion that recalls stories of the days when the great men of old France and their retinues took their ease in this same inn. Mine host's heart warms to the devil wagon and its Parisian freight. He brings long hoarded bottles covered with cobwebs up from the cellars, he sacrifices his choicest chickens, he goes into the kitchen himself to prepare the fish and the sauces, he scolds his wife and bullies the cook and embraces the maid, all from pure excitement, and beams upon the world in general and the motorists in particular; for he sees the dawn of a new day and hears the clink of coin in his long empty tills.
He gives to the party of his best; and, when they whirl away, he stands at his door watching the cloud of dust that envelopes them. Then he draws a long breath, sniffs ecstatically at the gasoline-laden air.
"Que j'aime cette odeur là!" he says with fervour. The automobile has an ardent friend in mine host of the country inn.
With the restaurant keeper at Paris, the story is a different one. It is so easy to run away from the city for luncheon or dinner since the motor car is at one's service, and the wandering has an effect upon the receipts in the town restaurant. Moreover,—one smiles at this, but it is told in all seriousness and with lively grief by the proprietors of certain cafés, and echoed dolefully by women accustomed to late suppers and carousals in those rendezvous,—the automobile has been a reforming agent. It has interfered with the long established habits of the gilded youth and more heavily gilded age, wont to furnish the late suppers and the wherewithal for carousal.
"It makes a difference, the automobile, a great difference," confides the discreet waiter. "Monsieur now rises early. Before, he was up early, also, but with a difference. Now he is to make a day's run in his car. The programme requires that he shall start with the sunrise. It demands steady nerves, the automobiling. One needs sleep,—and Monsieur goes to bed early. Oui, c'est dommage. Ça dérange les choses, but he will not stay. No; he is devoted to the automobile. He will even sleep for it. It will pass, perhaps, this mania. They pass always, the manias. Then again we will have the old crowd, and in the meantime there are, fortunately, those who do not own the machines."
Of places furnishing the motive for short automobile trips from Paris there is no end, and the roads running out of the city swarm with cars. There are quiet-loving country folk who protest, futilely, but even the country horse and the excitable barnyard fowl of France have become accustomed to the snort of the motor and the onward rush of the demon, and are, like Pet Marjorie's turkey, "more than usual calm" as the great machine speeds past.
The First Sportswoman of France
One meets them everywhere, these automobiles. Out in the Forest of Fontainebleau the mosses are still green and gold where the sunshine filters to them through the interlacing branches of the great trees. The rocks are still covered with grey and green and faint purple lichens. Little wood creatures rustle among the ferns and heather. Bird-notes sound from the branches overhead and from the thicket depths. The forest is still the grey-green, gold-green, brown and violet forest beloved of French artists, but one cannot walk for ten minutes along the woodland paths without hearing the blast of a Gabriel horn and seeing a huge automobile plunge by, its occupants blind to the light and shadow and colour, deaf to the rustle in the brake and the music from the bough, absorbed simply and solely in the breathless speed of their pace and in the skill with which the chauffeur swings round corners, dodges boulders, and avoids climbing trees, for to the motor maniac, Fontainebleau means the Hôtel d'Angleterre and luncheon. To the impotent rage of the artist clan, the motor has invaded Barbizon as well, and is to be found by the dozen, puffing and panting outside the inn sacred to the Bohemians of the Latin Quarter and Montmartre. "C'est très gentil, Barbizon—très chic," says Madame with an approving nod of her hooded head, as she climbs into the auto, after her luncheon. Shades of Millet and Corot and Rousseau! Barbizon has lived to be called "très chic" by a Parisian Duchess in a blue silk hood.
Wherever historic memories and associations cluster most thickly, where ghosts walk in the greatest numbers, there the automobile roars and rattles and toots and puffs its consummately modern way. Many Parisians are for the first time discovering France since motor touring came into vogue. Even Fifi talks French history and folk-lore. She has invoked the sunken city of Y's as she sped through Brittany in her Panhard. She has a speaking acquaintance with all Normandy. She has motored down through old Provence on her gay way to Monte Carlo. If she remembers stopping places rather by what she had to eat there than by historic associations—still she has enlarged her horizon. Even gastronomic voyaging is educational.
Close to Paris there are popular restaurants, within driving distance and almost too near at hand to please those who seek luncheon or dinner in motor cars. The Henri Quatre at St. Germain is frequented more than ever by Parisian diners, since motoring eliminated distance. The Reservoir at Versailles, the Bellevue at Meudon, the Cadran Bleu at St. Cloud—all have their motoring contingents, and at luncheon and dinner hours there is a host of machines waiting before these country restaurants, where one may have the luxury of Paris and the beauty and seclusion of nature, provided one has the money to pay for the abnormal combination—which comes high.
One goes to the golf links, too, in one's automobile, unless one prefers driving out—for the motor has not yet entirely undermined the Parisian's love for a smart trap and good pair of horses.
There are various links near Paris, all more or less frequented by devotees of le sport, but the links at La Boulié, near Versailles, are, with the exception of those at Deauville, the finest in France. All the smart set of Paris goes to la Boulié to flirt, to gossip, to drink and smoke and play cards and meet friends. Incidentally golf is played, and real golfers, enjoying the beautiful course and the perfect greens, bless the day when golf became a Parisian fad, and look tolerantly at the goodly collection of dukes and counts and princes and bankers and diplomats who sit in the shade of the big bungalow during the long golden afternoon, drinking Scotch whiskey and soda,—as a concession to the genius loci,—and watching with a certain amused wonder the scattered figures toiling around the links in the glare of the sun.
"After all, they stood for the thing," says Willy, as he picks his ball out of the last hole and turns toward the indolent groups around the club-house.
That is just it. They stood for it all; and if a majority of the men do not play—well, tastes differ. It is a charming place to "five-o'clocker," is la Boulié.
The Parisienne and her admirers admit that, from one point of view, golf has profound merit. As an excuse for a prolonged promenade à deux it is admirable and "le flirt" thrives famously on the links. One is willing to make sacrifices in the interests of flirtation; but that one should golf for the love of golfing, should play from sun up to sun down alone or with another man,—"Ça, c'est trop," says Monsieur with a shrug of his shapely shoulders, and, having imbibed whiskey and soda for the sake of the golfing unities, he orders a vermouth by way of relaxation. Even assisting at le sport is exacting, very exacting. One becomes fatigued.
And yet there are Frenchmen who love the game and play it well, and if one covets the privilege of familiarly shouting "fore" at a Russian Grand Duke, or an Italian Prince, or an Austrian Baron, la Boulié is the place in which to gratify that heart's desire. The visitor to Paris may have the entrée to the club by virtue of one dollar a day and introductions from two of the club members; but though the dollar may be procurable, the casual tourist is not likely to enjoy the acquaintance of two members of the la Boulié set, and the chances are that he does his Parisian golfing at l'Hermitage, where any respectable introduction is an open sesame.
Some of the smartest of Parisiennes have gone in for golf and play fairly well, but they golf in costumes that would fill the Scotch and English lassies of the famous scores with frank amazement.
"You have seen Lady L——," whispers Madame of the Rue de la Paix golfing costume. "She is English, yes. It is wonderful how she plays golf—and without a corset! But yes, vraiment, quite without a corset. C'est incroyable ça. One has the lines of a poplar."
It all depends upon the point of view. One sacrifices one's game or one's curves. Either way, the choice has its compensations.
L'Hermitage is not so chic as la Boulié, but there are true golfers, even among the social elect, who enjoy playing on the Hermitage links and like the democratic geniality of the less exclusive club; so the membership list has its sprinkling of notable names.
The course lies out near St. Germain, on the old farm of M. Jean Boussod, and neither the links nor the house will compare with la Boulié in point of art and costliness; but there is a charm in the cluster of old-fashioned cottages over which the vines and roses clamber, in the raftered dining-room, in the old fruit trees under which tea is served, in the stately poplars which stand sentinel over the place, and in the informality which makes even the tourist stranger feel less far from Ardsley and Baltusrol.
There are good links at Compiègne, too, but Compiègne is too far from Paris for the ordinary golfer, unless he is going away for a week-end of the sport, and only in hot weather do the Parisians stray so far from the boulevards in pursuit of the royal game.
For tennis, the Parisienne has more love than for golf. The game is an older friend, and then, though it does not furnish, as does golf, ample pretext for prolonged solitude à deux, it does have a dramatic quality, a certain swift dash and spirit which appeal to Madame's temperament and are lacking in the more protracted and leisurely game. There are good tennis courts at the golf clubs and in various parts of the Bois, but it is at the Cercle de l'Ile de Puteaux that one finds tennis at its best and most picturesque. It is one of the most fashionable and most exclusive clubs of Paris, this club on the little island of Puteaux, in the Seine. One sees there no one who is not of the elect, and the little ferry that carries the chosen spirits to these Elysian fields is thronged with the beauty and fashion of Paris, day after day, during the season. Such a gay freight the little ferry carries when Puteaux is especially en fête, such charming women, such ravishing gowns, such bewitching hats, such coquettish parasols, such admiring cavaliers! A veritable "embarquement pour Cythère!" The ferry should be guided by flutterings loves, à la Fragonard, instead of by the most prosaic Charon who fills the position and regards, unmoved, the carnival of the vanities.
They play tennis at Puteaux, but they play at the making of love and of epigrams and of fashion more earnestly still. One may see all the fashion leaders of the beau monde drinking tea there on a bright spring afternoon,—the lovable young Duchesse d'Uzes, with her excessive modernity grafted upon her ancient lineage and traditions; the beautiful Madame Letellier, who is one of the best dressed women of Paris; the blonde and chic Vicomtesse Foy, the popular Mrs. Ridgway, the wealthy Baronne Henri de Rothschild, Baronne Seillière. These are some of the women who set the fashions, but the complete list is a long one, and Puteaux brings together all these orchids of Paris.
There have been memorable evening fêtes at Puteaux when the island was converted into a fairyland of gleaming lights and mysterious shadows of flowers and music, and all that modern luxury which is pagan in its prodigality; and cotillions are given there regularly during a part of the season. But the island is at its best when the sun is shining on it and touching to vividness the pretty frocks of the tennis players in the courts, when vivacious women in wonderful gowns and hats are gossiping over their tea in the shade or flirting under their parasols of chiffon and lace. It belongs to the open-air phase of French society, does Puteaux, for, oddly enough, the Parisienne of the scented boudoir and the hot-house associations has a passion for plein air.
Fashion's Ferry
Out in the Bois there are open-air clubs and to spare, the Polo Club and the Tir au Pigeon being those most frequented by the fashionable set during spring and summer, while the club des Patineurs is the smart skating club and one of the most attractive social rendezvous of winter Paris. The Parisienne loves skating. Here is a sport that lends itself amiably to coquetry, a sport for which one may plan the most piquant of costumes. Furs are becoming and extravagant, and looking well at an extravagant cost is the fashionable Parisienne's chief aim in life. So Madame orders her skating costumes of fur and cloth and velvet, buys an assortment of skating boas more ornamental than practical, and plays in her skating as in all her sports a rôle vastly ornamental, impressively dramatic. Yachting, too, is dear to the heart of our Lady of the Chiffons, though her yachting consists chiefly in dressing the part. Scoffers say that the French have a flourishing yacht club but no yachts, and while this statement is more amusing than accurate, the actual facts do suggest some such comic-opera situation, for though there is a yacht club of France, extremely swell and of large membership, and though several wealthy Frenchmen own superb yachts, there is little serious French yachting. Boating of one sort or another is indulged in along the Seine, and a large flotilla of small private launches and yachts lies in the basin of Deauville during the Normandy season, but the yachting races of the Regatta week at Havre are given over almost wholly to foreigners, French entries being extremely rare.
Not until within the past year did the fashionable folk of Paris take up with ardour any form of water sport. The motor boat has brought about the revolution and has the distinction of being the latest Parisian fad. It is easy to understand why this most modern form of boating has caught the Parisian fancy. Like the automobile, it appeals irresistibly to the French temperament. It demands no active exercise and it offers exhilaration, swift travel, danger, novelty. Last summer there was a race for motor boats from Paris to the sea; and, while the little boats were scudding along the river, the society folk interested in them were spinning along the road from Paris to Trouville in their automobiles, making calls at the châteaux en route, and reaching Trouville-Deauville, in time to see the up-to-date little boats follow up their three days' race to Havre by racing for the Menier cup in Trouville Bay. The motor boat came into its own that day, and next summer it will rival the horse and the automobile in the affections of sporting Paris.
Already a number of Parisiennes have adopted the dangerous playthings. Madame du Gast, upon whom some judges bestow the title of "first sportswoman of France," is an ardent devotee of motor boating as she has been of automobiling. She has all the daring of her race associated with an easy nonchalance and imperturbable self-control which never deserts her even under the most trying circumstances; and no pastime is too dangerous, no risk too hazardous for her, provided only that there is amusement connected with the danger and hazard. She has made a record in automobile races and ballooning, and she hailed the motor boat with joy at its first appearance; but her sporting enthusiasm had of course its Parisian side. There was the costume to be considered—always the costume is the starting-point of a Parisienne's sport. The motor boat is a treacherous plaything. It upsets, blows up, sinks,—and when one starts out in a promenade à bateau, one is likely to swim home, so petticoats and chiffons are not for motor boating. Madame du Gast wears what looks much like swimming tights, save that the one-piece garment is high of neck, long of sleeve, and at the knee tucks into trim high boots that may be kicked off if occasion demands. Over this practical attire goes a loose, handsome coat of sporting allure which quite hides the tights and falls over the tops of the well-fitted boots; a becoming cap warranted to stay on without attention from its wearer—and there you have the owner of the Camille as she looks when she enters a race. When she had the Turquoise built for the Monaco races, Madame du Gast indulged in a bit of drama characteristically French. S. A. R. the Prince of Monaco stood sponsor for the slim little craft. There was a ceremony, with great sheaves of flowers nodding over the bow of the boat and bedewed with the christening champagne, with gaily attired friends looking on, and with the canon from a neighbouring church in gorgeous vestments solemnly bestowing baptism and the blessing of the church upon the nautical infant. Roses and champagne and smart frocks, and the owner of Monte Carlo, and the church—all joining in the launching of the racing boat of a charming sportswoman in swimming tights and top boots! There you have a snapshot of le sport as it is sometimes played in France.
The Camille, named for Madame du Gast herself, and a motor boat more pretentious than the Turquoise, entered, with owner aboard, the famous and foolhardy high seas race from Tangiers to Toulon, and though strong winds and rough seas played havoc with all of the tiny craft, and the Camille and her owner were rescued at the eleventh hour by her escorting yacht, Madame did not lose for a moment her sporting nerve. She was obtaining excitement in large blocks and the thrill was well worth the danger.
It goes without saying that the young Duchesse d'Uzes has taken up motor boating.
When has she ever passed by a new sport, a new chance for diversion, this gay little Duchess, who is the typical fine flower of modern French civilization, the most piquant and perhaps the most popular figure in French society to-day.
She was born to social eminence, daughter of the great and ancient family of de Luynes, sister of the ninth Duke of Chaulnes and Pecquinguy, rich in her own name, good to look at, keen of wit, exquisite of taste, and stranger to fear. As if this were not enough, she must needs marry Louis Emmanuel, fourteenth Duke d'Uzes, and add his prestige and wealth to hers.
The dowager Duchesse d'Uzes, she who came so near mounting Boulanger on the back of France, is of the old régime, strong, keen, autocratic still, but surrounding herself with the old customs, the old traditions, refusing to admit that the world has moved and France with it.
But the young Duchess—she is all that there is of the most modern, the most representative type of the motoring, racing, golfing, hunting, hockey-playing Parisienne. She is all restlessness, all nerves. There is nothing new that she has not tried, and she is always reaching out for something more novel, more exciting, more audacious. And yet with it all she is grande dame, the little pleasure-seeking Duchess, and she wears her title right royally in spite of her vagaries. She has the traditions of her race, too, behind her modern caprices. She is devôte, has her private chaplain, is heart and soul in sympathy with the church party as opposed to state, she loves politics and ranges herself with her class. Not for nothing is one of de Luynes and d'Uzes. She was in the heart of the turmoil on the Place de la Concorde, at the meeting of protest against the state's measures concerning the nuns, and she was taken by the troops, this hot-headed little Duchess, though it was the dowager Duchess who was arrested and fined. She would go to the scaffold humming a tune and wearing her smartest Paquin frock, were she called upon to tread the path many of her ancestors trod, but, since scaffolds are out of date, she runs a motor boat and speeds an automobile, and dances a cake walk, and plays an extraordinary game of billiards, and is one of the best shots in France, and plays tennis and hockey and golf, and rides cross country, and swims like a fish, and has made ballooning the fashion. She is one of the prettiest, the most amusing, the cleverest and the best dressed women of Paris, and she, beyond all of her set, is the champion of le sport.