Part 7

Although the students at the University of Paris do not have the fun in athletics and society that the students do in the University of Kansas, they have a good time in the French way. The quarter is filled with cafés, large and small, where students and artists congregate and eat, drink and make merry. The back room of the café is something of a club, and discussions on art and science mingle with the perfume of tobacco and fermented grape-juice. While there is a lack of co-eds there is no scarcity of ladies, who constitute a part of the course taken by many of the students, not leading to a degree, not even to matrimony. All of this, which would be regarded with horror in Lawrence, is quite the thing in Paris and seems to work out most satisfactorily to the University authorities, for even the professors do not hesitate to mingle with their students at the evening sessions in the joints of the Latin Quarter. The men take examinations and degrees and go their way to promote the advancement of learning, while the ladies stay and aid in the instruction of the next generation of students. The original of the old college story took place in the Sorbonne. A father who had graduated many years before came for a visit with his son, who had matriculated as a student. The son had gone to the same lodging-place which his father had occupied in the years gone by. The old man was recalling his student days, looking over the familiar place, noticing the changes and the old scenes. “The same old beamed ceiling, where I carved my name, and here it is,” he exclaimed with delight. “The same old view from the window. The same old furniture--” and just then the back door opened and a dashing lady appeared. “Same old girl,” he cried with rapture. The boy tried to explain that she was a friend of a friend. “Same old story,” was the happy comment, “Same old game.”

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Near the Sorbonne is the Pantheon, originally built for a church, in the shape of a Greek cross, located on a hill which is the highest place on the south side of the river, and with a noble dome that can be seen for many miles. This is a new building, having been constructed in the eighteenth century. It was dedicated to Saint Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris. The revolution converted it into a memorial temple and named it the Pantheon. It has been a church a couple of times since then, but is now not used for religious purposes. It is the burying-place of great Frenchmen. Here are buried Victor Hugo, Mirabeau, Rousseau, Carnot, and others distinguished in literature and statecraft. You can see the last resting-place of these great men by securing an order from the Government or by tipping the custodian: the latter way I always find the easiest and best. The Pantheon is beautifully decorated, and the interior with Corinthian columns and mural paintings is most effective. If it makes any difference to these men where they are buried they should be glad, for it is the finest memorial building in Europe.

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That leads me to a rather grave subject. As a matter of fact, funerals are very important events in France. Three or four directors in black clothes and three-cornered hats march ahead, and the hearse is heavily draped. If the departed was a man of prominence there are a number of orations delivered, the crowd goes away excited over the condition of the republic, and is likely to break windows and show its feeling toward the political opponents of the deceased. When Zola was buried a hundred thousand people marched in the procession, and there were a number of street fights and duels as a climax.

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But the biggest thing in the Latin Quarter so far as American tourists are concerned is the Bon Marché, I suppose the largest retail general store in the world. In most ways it is like our department stores, and announces that it has made its success by reason of faithful dealings with the public and by advertising. It has been running about fifty years; the original proprietor is dead, but the business moves on smoothly. The corporation has a method of division of profits among employés who have been with the store more than ten years. It also pensions its old employés, provides lectures and amusements for its workers, and has a paternal and cöoperative side that is interesting, although the corporation is in fact controlled by a few heavy stockholders.

Somehow I had the idea that our own country was the leader in the big department store business. But the Bon Marché and others in Paris took the idea out of me. It has many clerks who speak foreign languages, and it is said that a native of Timbuctoo or Arkansas could slip into the store and find some one who could speak his language.

The clerks in the Bon Marché get from $3 to $6 a week, with the exception of a few who have special qualifications. So I guess the old-age pension business is necessary. That is the ordinary wage paid store clerks in Paris.

It was at the Bon Marché that the ancient joke happened to me. I was looking at a price-mark, and, not understanding the figure, inquired in my pigeon French, “Est sees [6] auter set? [7].” The clerk answered “It is six.”

My French is a joke. From necessity I have learned enough French words to order a meal, buy a ticket and ask how much. I have found that a good bluff, plenty of signs and the throwing in of French and German words on the subject generally get about what I want. But often I fall down. The word for potatoes in French is “pommes.” I told a waiter I wanted “fried pommes,” and as the word for cold is “froid,” I got cold potatoes.

I went for a ride in the underground tube. Bought my tickets and got onto a train I knew was in the right direction. It stopped, everybody got out, and the porter insisted that I go too. I knew something was wrong, and I tackled the platform boss with good English. He couldn’t understand a word, so he waved his hands and clawed the air and talked French for a couple of minutes. Then he tried to walk off, but I hung on. I was away down below the surface of the ground and didn’t even know straight up. “Correspond” he kept saying, and I assured him I would be glad to do so if he would give me his address, but first I wanted to know where I was “at.” I knew he was swearing, but it was French swear and I didn’t mind. Finally he took me by the arm and walked me through a couple of passages and pointed to another platform. A light broke in on me, and I took the train which soon came. I learned afterward that “correspond” is French for “transfer.”

The Boulevards of Paris

PARIS, August 18.

The boulevards of Paris are one of the wonders of the world. Strictly speaking there are a number of broad avenues which are called boulevards, but usually “the boulevards” is a phrase which means the one long wide boulevard extending for several miles, from near the Place de la Concorde to the Place de la Bastille, built in a semi-circle on the north of the old city and on the fortifications which defended the city in the Middle Ages. Of course later walls and fortifications were built farther out, and the “grand boulevards” are through the heart of the present Paris. The boulevard--for it is one continuous highway--changes its name every few blocks, a fact that is characteristically French and somewhat confusing to the stranger. The beginning is a short distance from the Place de la Concorde at the church of the Madeleine, the fashionable church of Paris. The building is in the style of a Roman temple, and has an imposing colonnade of Corinthian columns. The interior decorations are very good, and include a large fresco above the altar in which Christ, Napoleon and Pope Pius the Seventh are classified more or less together. The boulevard is called The Madeleine for about 200 yards, when the name changes to the Capucines and sticks for a couple of blocks until the grand opera house is reached. Along this short stretch are some of the wildest music halls and the greatest cafés of the world. The greatest is the Café de la Paix, where everybody who visits Paris goes for at least one drink of ginger ale or cold coffee.

The Opera is the largest theatre in the world, covering about three acres. The site alone cost $2,000,000 and the building over $7,000,000. The materials are marble and costly stone, and there are statues of Poetry, Music, Drama, Dance, with other figures, medallions and allegorical statuary until your head swims. The front of the roof is sculptured with gilded masks and with collossal groups representing Music and Poetry attended by the Muses and Goddesses of Fame. Apollo with a golden lyre and two Pegasuses occupy the dome. The interior has a grand staircase of marble with a rail of onyx, and the rest of the interior is be-columned and be-frescoed to match. It is the most beautiful building in Paris, and could hardly be surpassed if the attempt were made regardless of expense. I would not try a detailed description, for it would not convey the real effect, best described by the word gorgeous.

From the Opera a street runs southerly called the Avenue de l’Opera, the great shopping street of Paris, and at another angle goes the Street de la Paix, where the most expensive jewelry stores and millinery establishments are located. The name of this street is properly pronounced de la Pay.

But the Boulevard continues, no longer the Capucines, but the Italiens. Some years ago this was the great shopping-place, and it is not bad now. As the ladies promenade past the Opera and into the Italiens, the skirts unconsciously go a little higher. The boulevard proceeds, the next section being called the Montmartre. This part interested me a great deal. On the rue Montmartre, a side street to the right, is the Y. M. C. A., and on Mt. Montmartre, a little to the left, is the Moulin Rouge.

The Y. M. C. A. in Paris is one of the best things in the city, but it does not get much newspaper notoriety. It is an English-speaking organization, with convenient quarters, parlor, reception, billiard, smoking-and dining-rooms. It is one place in Paris where there is no café or bar, and it is a great help to young men from America who are in this city by reason of their business or to study or to visit the historic places. A great many use the Y. M. C. A. facilities, and a membership card from Hutchinson or any other association in the world is good for these privileges in the heart of Paris. I would recommend to every American that when he goes to Paris he make his headquarters at the Y. M. C. A., but I am not going to count on many of them doing it. The Paris atmosphere has the same effect on a Y. M. C. A. that a nice, warm August sun has on a cake of ice left on the sidewalk in Hutchinson. I am not telling what I would like to, but I setting down the facts as they appear to me. The man who goes to Paris and sticks to the Y. M. C. A. as his loafing-place should have his halo ordered at once. He has a cinch.

In the other direction, on Mt. Montmartre, is the Moulin Rouge. I do not recommend it to nervous men, but it is one of the sights of this city. When I was a boy I read somewhere about a “gilded palace of sin,” and now I know what that means. The cowboys out west used to have what they called “free-and-easies,” but the Moulin Rouge is not free. I shut my eyes as the dancers loped by until a friend said the next dance would be a quadrille. I once danced quadrilles myself, and I thought there would be a breathing-place. The young people arranged themselves as if they were going to dance a Virginia Reel, and I could feel consciousness returning. The music struck up and the quadrille began. At first it went as smooth as if it were at the Country Club. Then each young lady passed the toe of her right foot over the head of her partner. Then she turned and pointed the toe of her left foot at the chandelier which hung from the ceiling. And then came the most wonderful display of things that are put in the store windows at home and marked “white goods sale,” or “lingerie.”

It was dreadfully embarrassing to me, as it must have been to any other Kansas man present, but I braced myself, for I knew the worst was yet to come. I felt like getting right up on my chair and saying, “Ladies, there are gentlemen present.” But I didn’t, and I have been glad ever since, for they might not have understood English and thought I wanted a partner for the next quadrille.

Afterwards the proceedings became almost immodest.

So I do not recommend the Moulin Rouge, though I fear that this failure on my part will not detract from the rush of strangers who are visiting in Paris and who might go to the Y. M. C. A. But I will say in passing that it is no place for a man unless his wife is with him, and it is somewhat distracting even then.

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Returning to the boulevard. It changes its name to the Poissoniere, and on this part is the office of the _Matin_, the great newspaper, which has 750,000 circulation, prints only six pages, and pretends not to care for advertising. The _Matin_ differs from most Parisian newspapers in really printing news. The general run of papers here are purely political, and put their editorials on the front page. They are very abusive, and the editor has to fight frequent duels. The fighting is done with pistols at a safe distance, and after an exchange of shots with nobody hurt, the principals rush together and clinch, but it is to kiss each other on both cheeks and rejoice that Honor has been Satisfied. I wouldn’t mind the dueling, but I positively would not kiss these Frenchmen, and so far as I can learn the society editresses do not duel.

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The _Matin_ is the paper that cleared Dreyfus after his trial and conviction a few years ago. The story is interesting. Dreyfus was made the victim of a conspiracy, and a document showing details of the French army was attributed to him as a German spy. Everybody remembers the trial and the fuss at the time. It became a contest between the Honor of the French Army and Dreyfus. The _Matin_ took little part, but, like most of the French, sided with the army. One evening at a dinner an officer of the court exhibited the original of the document which Dreyfus had been convicted of writing. Mr. Bueno-Varilla, editor of the _Matin_, was present, and as the paper was passed around he looked at it carelessly. That night when he reached home he remembered that a few years before this same Dreyfus had written him a letter about some engineering, and he dug up the letter. The handwriting was not at all what he had seen that evening. He rushed to the telephone and got the official who had shown the document, who promised to bring it to him in the morning. They compared the spy information and the Dreyfus letter which Bueno-Varilla had, and they were utterly unlike. Next day the _Matin_ printed a photograph copy of the document, and appealed to anyone who knew the handwriting to advise the _Matin_. In a day or two a gentleman wrote and said it was the writing of a drunken bankrupt army officer, named Esterhazey, inclosing letters from the latter which proved it. Dreyfus was brought back from prison and pardoned, Esterhazey skipped the country, and the honor of the French army was flyspecked. All of this because Bueno-Varilla happened to keep an old letter, and because he owned the _Matin_.

The boulevard next becomes the Bonne-Nouvelle, and then St. Denis and then St. Martin, and has several other names before it reaches its end in the Place de la Bastille.

This place is even more important in French history than Independence Hall in ours. The 14th of July is celebrated every year, just as we do the 4th of July as Independence Day, because on that date in 1789 the Bastille prison was destroyed by an uprising of the people which became the French Revolution. The Bastille was especially odious because political prisoners were confined there, and it only took an order from the police to send a man or woman to its dungeons. Its use for this purpose was so flagrant and so despotic that the first fury of the revolution was directed against its walls, and it was entirely destroyed, and the jailers and soldiers defending it were killed. The place is now a large square surrounded by business houses and ornamented by a statue of Liberty on a column 150 feet high. From the beginning to the end of this great boulevard with the many names, are places made historic by great men and hard fights. Now it is a peaceful, broad avenue, with shops and cafés and handsome buildings, the promenade-ground for the Parisian and of tourists from all countries.

Some French Ways

PARIS, August 20.

There are practically no athletic sports in France, none at all in and around Paris. In America the men put in a lot of time talking baseball, football, boating and such-like. In France the men talk only politics or gossip. There are no lodges and no clubs in France. This ought to be applauded by the women, but as a matter of fact they probably wish the men would do a little something in that line. There is a secret order or two, but they are not strong and not recognized by the orders in other countries. Frenchmen do not seem to care for athletics of any kind. The nearest approach to it is fencing, and the young Frenchman learns to use the sword so he can fight duels. The popular Hero is not a ball-player nor a prize-fighter, but a man who has invented something new or who has run off with the wife of a friend. They are venturesome and personally brave, but they can’t stand for team work. The attempt has been made to introduce a mild form of football, but every man on the team wanted to be the star. I suppose if the French should organize a baseball club every one of them would insist on being pitcher. They will go up in balloons or airships with dashing recklessness and are brave enough, if that trait is not merely the absence of caution and calculation. French aviators are numerous and successful, though the fatalities are still many. They have shown themselves good fighters but not good losers. They will quarrel over a trifle and then forgive and kiss each other in a manner that makes an American seasick. They are polite in a veneer, for they will lift their hats and make goo-goo eyes at every pretty woman, and they will let an old woman stand up in a street car. They are industrious, thrifty, temperate, and cheerful. Just because they look at some things from a different viewpoint is no reason why we should criticize them, and yet they are so different from the neighbors that I can’t help mentioning a few things that are very noticeable.

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The French Government has a president, whose name few people know, and a senate which has little power, and therefore the main factor is the lower house. This kind of government is a mistake, for the large legislative body rushes from one extreme to another; whenever its majority changes, the cabinet resigns, and the result is inconstancy and instability. Public sentiment is the controlling factor, and it takes an acrobat to be a statesman in France. Sometimes the flippety-flop is popular in America, but on the long run he loses. In France he is succeeded by another just as good.

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The French are great lovers of art, and in the Louvre they claim the largest collection of pictures in the world. They looted Italy to get them, but they have them. No living artist has a picture in the Louvre. The fellows now on earth have to hang their pictures in the Salon or the Luxembourg or some other gallery, a sort of artistic tryout, with the judging done after they are no longer able to exert any personal influence. I think modern art is as good as ancient art, or better, except that every modern picture is not art. And I may add that in the Paris Salon the pictures painted by the artists of today have just as good color, better drawing and just as few clothes as the works of the old masters in the Louvre. I get along right well with the old masters until they paint Mary de Medici and Mary the mother of Christ sitting and talking together, and then I want to go outside and say a few things.

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But while Paris is important in the world, politically, historically, and artistically, its great distinction nowadays is in millinery and dressmaking. The women go to Paris to shop, and the men go on account of the women. The men of Paris are about the worst dressers in the world. The women are the best. The Parisienne has the natural ability to take a hat and stick a feather in it so the effect is brilliant. She can wear a dress that costs much less than the gown of an English woman or an American woman, and she can look stylish when the other women have hard work to look decent. The American woman is second, and in a few respects, like shoes and gloves, she can beat the French; but take it all around, and the world removes its hat to the French milliner. Of course the milliner is often a man, but he has to have his Parisian model or he would fail. Let M. Worth or any of the other Monsieurs who dictate styles in feminine attire go to London and he would be a second-rater at once. This is true, whether you want to believe it or not, and the doubter need only spend a few days on the Paris boulevards to be convinced.

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There may be some who think that the latest development in costumes, the hobble skirt, has reached America. They are mistaken. No real French hobble skirt could go down the street of an American city without starting a riot. When one does get to the territory of the Stars and Stripes the railroads will run excursion trains. The first day or two in Paris I was nervous about this style of gown. When I saw a saucy French lady in a dress which looked as if it was put on by a glove-fitter, I felt that I ought to blush and look at the statuary. I was told by the best feminine authority with me that in order to wear one of those skirts it was necessary to discard any wearing apparel which is usually beneath the female skirt. The poor, pretty things would go along the street like boys in a sack-race trying to walk, and by a slit up one side which was not buttoned for several feet from the bottom, a little motion was secured. But when the lady crossed the street, or when she climbed to the top of a bus or even stepped into a cab, it was necessary in order that she maintain appearances that there be not even a hole in her stocking above the knee. Of course I do not speak from personal observation. Far be it from me to watch a lady cross the street or climb into a vehicle. But I knew how it must be from a careless study of the environment, and my theory was confirmed by the evidence of all those who did not hide their eyes or observe the scenery. And I will add that it is extremely difficult to keep the blinders on while seeing the sights.

I only speak of these matters because they are much more in evidence in Paris than are the Statue of Liberty, or the Column of Vendôme, or any of the great places that the guide-books tell about.

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