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PARIS  NIGHTS 

AENOLD  BENNETT 


AUTISTIC  KVKXING    (Page  1) 


PARIS  NIGHTS! 

AND  OTHER  IMPRESSIONS 
OF   PLACES  AND    PEOPLE 


BY 

ARNOLD  BENNETT 

AUTHOR  OF  THE  OLD  WIVES'  TALE,  CLAYHANGBR 
YOUR  UNITED  STATES,  ETC.,  ETC. 


With  Illustrations  by 
E.  A.  RICKARDS,  F.  R.  I.  B.  A. 


TORONTO 

THE  MUSSON  BOOK  COMPANY 
LIMITED 


LIBRARY 

•W-tW*J»w^U*W!UUA*.. 
| 

-ox    30 

ax  1981  / 


COPTRIGHT,  1913 
BT   GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


CONTENTS 

PARIS  NIGHTS  (1910)  PAGE 

I.    ARTISTIC  EVENING 1 

II.     THE  VARIETES 13 

III.  EVENING  WITH  EXILES    ....  21 

IV.  BOURGEOIS 38 

V.    CAUSE  CELEBRE 55 

VI.    RUSSIAN  IMPERIAL  BALLET  AT  THE 

OPERA  65 


LIFE  IN  LONDON  (1911) 

I.  THE  RESTAURANT        .....  83 

II.    BY  THE  RIVER 90 

III.  THE  CLUB 97 

IV.  THE  CIRCUS 103 

V.    THE  BANQUET 109 

VI.  ONE  OF  THE  CROWD  .  116 


ITALY   (1910) 

I.    NIGHT  AND  MORNING  IN  FLORENCE    127 

II.    THE  SEVENTH  OF  MAY,  1910  ...     148 

III.    MORE  ITALIAN  OPERA      ....     154 

Y 


CONTENTS— (Continued) 

THE  RIVIERA  (1907) 

I.    THE  HOTEL  TRISTE 163 

II.    WAR! 168 

III.  "MONTE" 174 

IV.  A  DIVERSION  AT  SAN  REMO         .       .  184 


FONTAINEBLEAU  (1904-1909) 

I.    FIRST  JOURNEY  INTO  THE  FOREST  193 

II.    SECOND  JOURNEY  INTO  THE  FOREST  199 

III.  THE  CASTLE  GARDENS 203 

IV.  AN  ITINERARY  206 


SWITZERLAND  (1909-1911) 

I.    THE  HOTEL  ON  THE  LANDSCAPE    .    .  215 

II.    HOTEL  PROFILES 228 

III.    ON  A  MOUNTAIN  .  234 


ENGLAND  AGAIN  (1907) 

I.    THE  GATE  OF  THE  EMPIRE    ...  243 

II.    AN  ESTABLISHMENT 249 

HI.    AMUSEMENTS 254 

IV.    MANCHESTER. 259 

V.    LONDON 264 

VI.    INDUSTRY        .  .     . 


CONTENTS— ( Continued ) 

THE  MIDLANDS  (1910-1911) 

I.    THE  HANBRIDGE  EMPIRE       ...  277 

II.    THE  MYSTERIOUS  PEOPLE      ...  284 

III.  FIRST  VOYAGE  TO  THE  ISLE  OF  MAN  .290 

IV.  THE  ISLAND  BOARDING-HOUSE    .       .  298 
V.    TEN  HOURS  AT  BLACKPOOL  .  305 


THE  BRITISH  HOME  (1908) 

I.  AN  EVENING  AT  THE  SMITHS'     .       .  317 

II.  THE  GREAT  MANNERS  QUESTION      .  322 

III.  SPENDING— AND  GETTING  VALUE      .  327 

IV.  THE  PARENTS 332 

V.  HARRY'S  POINT  OF  VIEW        ...  337 

VI.  THE  FUTURE  342 


STREETS  ROADS  AND  TRAINS   (1907-1909) 

I.    IN  WATLING  STREET         ....     349 

II.    STREET  TALKING 361 

III.  ON    THE    ROAD 367 

IV.  A  TRAIN 374 

V.    ANOTHER  TRAIN  .  379 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

ARTISTIC  EVENING Frontispiece 

SOME  JAPANESE  MUSIC  ON  THE  PLEYEL     .  6 

A  NEW  GUEST  ARRIVED 10 

OPPOSITE  THE  "MOULIN  ROUGE"     ...  18 

MONTMARTRE 22 

LA  DAME  DU  COMPTOIR 30 

A  BY-PRODUCT  OF  RUSSIAN  POLITICS     .       .  40 

CAUSE  CELEBRE 56 

THEY  INSPIRE  RESPECT 62 

LES  SYLPHIDES 68 

FRAGILE  AND  BEAUTIFUL  ODALISQUES        .  70 

THE  UNFORGETTABLE  SEASON     ....  72 

AN  HONEST  MISS 74 

SCHEHERAZADE 76 

CHIEF  EUNUCH .78 

HE  IS  VERY  DEFERENTIAL 84 

THE  RESTAURANT 86 

THE  BAND 88 

IX 


ILLUSTRATIONS—  (Continued) 

PAGE 

IN  THE  EMBANKMENT  GARDENS      ...  92 

HE  SLUMBERS  ALONE 98 

THE  CLUB  OF  THE  FUTURE 102 

FLOWER  WOMEN 106 

PICCADILLY  CIRCUS 108 

FROM  BAYSWATER  TO  THE  CIRCUS    ...  110 

FROM  SOUTH  LONDON  TO  THE  CIRCUS        .  112 

FROM  WEST  KENSINGTON  TO  THE  CIRCUS  116 

WAITING  FOR  THE  'BUS  AT  THE  CIRCUS     .  118 

THE    ORCHESTRA    PROVES    THAT    ITS    IN- 
STRUMENTS ARE  REAL 126 

WHY  DO  THEY  COME  ? 146 

LESS  UNHAPPY  HERE  THAN  AT  HOME   .      .     150 

A  HUMAN  BEING  TALKING   TO   ANOTHER 

HUMAN  BEING 166 

GAMBLING  AT  MONTE  CARLO       ....  174 

HOW  BALZACIAN  ! 196 

ON  THE  TERRACE  OF  THE  CASTLE    ...  198 

GUARDS  OF  THE  CASTLE 200 

THE  CASTLE  GARDENS        ......  204 

ARBONNE 210 

THE  CATHEDRAL  OF  LARCH  ANT  .  212 


ILLUSTRATIONS— (Continued) 

PAGE 

THE  LADY  CLOG-DANCER 282 

THE  VOYAGE 292 

THE  ISLAND  BOARDING  HOUSE     ....  298 

YOU  MEET  SOME  ONE  ON  THE  STAIRS    .      .  300 

FONTAINEBLEAU 366 

THE  LITTLE  RIVER  FUSAIN 370 

ASILE  DE  ST.  SEVERIN 372 

CHATEAU  LANDON  374 


PARIS  NIGHTS— 1910 


AUTISTIC  EVENING 

The  first  invitation  I  ever  received  into  a  purely 
Parisian  interior  might  have  been  copied  out  of  a 
novel  by  Paul  B  our  get.  Its  lure  was  thus  phrased : 
ffUn  pen  de  musique  et  d*  agreables  femmes.3'  It 
answered  to  my  inward  vision  of  Paris.  My  expe- 
riences in  London,  which  fifteen  years  earlier  I  had 
entered  with  my  mouth  open  as  I  might  have  en- 
tered some  city  of  Oriental  romance,  had,  of  course, 
done  little  to  destroy  my  illusions  about  Paris,  for 
the  ingenuousness  of  the  artist  is  happily  inde- 
structible. Hence,  my  inward  vision  of  Paris  was 
romantic,  based  on  the  belief  that  Paris  was  es- 
sentially "different."  Nothing  more  banal  in  Lon- 
don than  a  "little  music,"  or  even  "some  agreeable 
women"!  But  what  a  difference  between  a  little 
music  and  un  pen  de  musique!  What  an  exciting 
difference  between  agreeable  women  and  agreables 
femmes!  After  all,  this  difference  remains  nearly 
intact  to  this  day.  Nobody  who  has  not  lived  in- 
timately in  and  with  Paris  can  appreciate  the  unique 
savour  of  that  word  femmes.  " Women"  is  a  fine 
word,  a  word  which,  breathed  in  a  certain  tone, 
will  make  all  men — even  bishops,  misogynists,  and 
political  propagandists — fall  to  dreaming!  But 
femmes  is  yet  more  potent.  There  cling  to  it  the 
associations  of  a  thousand  years  of  dalliance  in 
a  land  where  dalliance  is  passionately  understood. 


2  PARIS   NIGHTS 

The  usual  Paris  flat,  high  up,  like  the  top  drawer 
of  a  chest  of  drawers!  No  passages,  but  multitudi- 
nous doors.  In  order  to  arrive  at  any  given  room  it 
is  necessary  to  pass  through  all  the  others.  I 
passed  through  the  dining-room,  where  a  servant 
with  a  marked  geometrical  gift  had  arranged  a 
number  of  very  small  plates  round  the  rim  of  a  vast 
circular  table.  In  the  drawing-room  my  host  was 
seated  at  a  grand  piano  with  a  couple  of  candles  in 
front  of  him  and  a  couple  of  women  behind  him. 
See  the  light  glinting  on  bits  of  the  ebon  piano,  and 
on  his  face,  and  on  their  chins  and  jewels,  and  on  the 
corner  of  a  distant  picture  frame;  and  all  the  rest 
of  the  room  obscure!  He  wore  a  jacket,  negli- 
gently; the  interest  of  his  attire  was  dramatically 
centred  in  his  large,  limp  necktie;  necktie  such  as 
none  but  a  hero  could  unfurl  in  London.  A  man 
with  a  very  intelligent  face,  eager,  melancholy  (with 
a  sadness  acquired  in  the  Divorce  Court),  wistful, 
appealing.  An  idealist!  He  called  himself  a  pub- 
licist. One  of  the  women,  a  musical  composer,  had 
a  black  skirt  and  a  white  blouse;  she  was  ugly  but 
provocative.  The  other,  all  in  white,  was  pretty 
and  sprightly,  but  her  charm  lacked  the  perverse- 
ness  which  is  expected  and  usually  found  in  Paris; 
she  painted,  she  versified,  she  recited.  With  the  eye 
of  a  man  who  had  sat  for  years  in  the  editorial  chair 
of  a  ladies'  paper,  I  looked  instinctively  at  the  hang 
of  the  skirts.  It  was  not  good.  Those  vague 
frocks  were  such  as  had  previously  been  something 
else,  and  would  soon  be  transformed  by  discreet 
modifications  into  something  still  else.  Candle- 


ARTISTIC    EVENING  3 

light  was  best  for  them.  But  what  grace  of  de- 
meanour, what  naturalness,  what  candid  ease  and 
appositeness  of  greeting,  what  absence  of  self  -con- 
sciousness! Paris  is  the  self  -unconscious. 

I  was  presented  as  le  romancier  anglais.  It 
sounded  romantic.  I  thought:  "What  a  false  im- 
pression they  are  getting,  as  of  some  vocation  ex- 
otic and  delightful  !  If  only  they  knew  the  prose  of 
it!"  I  thought  of  their  conception  of  England,  a 
mysterious  isle.  When  Balzac  desired  to  make  a 
woman  exquisitely  strange,  he  caused  her  to  be  born 
in  Lancashire. 

My  host  begged  permission  to  go  on  playing.  In 
the  intervals  of  being  a  publicist,  he  composed 
music,  and  he  was  now  deciphering  a  manuscript 
freshly  written.  I  bent  over  between  the  two 
women,  and  read  the  title  : 

"Ygdrasil:  reverie." 


When  there  were  a  dozen  or  fifteen  people  in  the 
room,  and  as  many  candles  irregularly  disposed  like 
lighthouses  over  a  complex  archipelago,  I  formed 
one  of  a  group  consisting  of  those  two  women  and 
another,  a  young  dramatist  who  concealed  his  ex- 
pressive hands  in  a  pair  of  bright  yellow  gloves, 
and  a  middle-aged  man  whose  constitution  was  ob- 
viously. ruined.  This  last  was  librarian  of  some 
public  library  —  I  forget  which  —  and  was  stated  to 
be  monstrously  erudite  in  all  literatures.  I  asked 
him  whether  he  had  of  late  encountered  anything 
new  and  good  in  English. 


4  PARIS   NIGHTS 

"I  have  read  nothing  later  than  Swinburne,"  he 
replied  in  a  thin,  pinched  voice— like  his  features, 
like  his  wary  and  suffering  eyes.  Speaking  with 
an  icy,  glittering  pessimism,  he  quoted  Stendhal  to 
the  effect  that  a  man  does  not  change  after  twenty- 
five.  He  supported  the  theory  bitterly  and  joy- 
ously, and  seemed  to  taste  the  notion  of  his  own  in- 
tellectual rigidity,  of  his  perfect  inability  to  receive 
new  ideas  and  sensations,  as  one  tastes  an  olive. 
The  young  dramatist,  in  a  beautifully  curved 
phrase,  began  to  argue  that  certain  emotional  and 
purely  intellectual  experiences  did  not  come  under 
the  axiom,  but  the  librarian  would  have  none  of  such 
a  reservation.  Then  the  women  joined  in,  and  it 
was  just  as  if  they  had  all  five  learnt  off  by  heart 
one  of  Landor's  lighter  imaginary  conversations, 
and  were  performing  it.  Well  convinced  that  they 
were  all  five  absurdly  wrong,  fanciful,  and  senti- 
mental either  in  optimism  or  pessimism,  I  neverthe- 
less stood  silent  and  barbaric.  Could  I  cut  across 
that  lacework  of  shapely  elegant  sentences  and  ap- 
posite gestures  with  the  jagged  edge  of  what  in 
England  passes  for  a  remark?  The  librarian  was 
serious  in  his  eternal  frost.  The  dramatist  had  the 
air  of  being  genuinely  concerned  about  the  matter; 
he  spoke  with  deference  to  the  librarian,  with  chival- 
rous respect  to  the  women,  and  to  me  with  glances 
of  appeal  for  help ;  possibly  the  reason  was  that  he 
was  himself  approaching  the  dreadful  limit  of 
twenty-five.  But  the  women's  eyes  were  always 
contradicting  the  polite  seriousness  of  their  tones. 
Their  eyes  seemed  to  be  always  mysteriously  talk- 


ARTISTIC   EVENING  5 

ing  about  something  else;  to  be  always  saying:  "All 
this  that  you  are  discussing  is  trivial,  but  I  am  brood- 
ing for  ever  on  what  alone  is  important."  This, 
while  true  of  nearly  all  women,  is  disturbingly  true 
of  Parisians.  The  ageing  librarian,  by  dint  of 
freezing  harder,  won  the  altercation:  it  was  as 
though  he  stabbed  them  one  by  one  with  a  dagger  of 
ice.  And  presently  he  was  lecturing  them.  The 
women  were  now  admiring  him.  There  was  some- 
thing in  his  face  worn  by  maladies,  in  his  frail  phys- 
ical unpleasantness,  and  in  his  frigid  and  total 
disgust  with  life,  that  responded  to  their  secret 
dream.  Their  gaze  caressed  him,  and  he  felt  it 
falling  on  him  like  snow.  That  he  intensely  en- 
joyed his  existence  was  certain. 

They  began  talking  low  among  themselves,  the 
women,  and  there  was  an  outburst  of  laughter; 
pretty  giggling  laughter.  The  two  who  had  been 
at  the  piano  stood  aside  and  whispered  and  laughed 
with  a  more  intimate  intimacy,  struggling  to  sup- 
press the  laughter,  and  yet  every  now  and  then 
letting  it  escape  from  sheer  naughtiness.  They 
cried.  It  was  the  fou  rire.  Impossible  to  believe 
that  a  moment  before  they  had  been  performing  in 
one  of  Landor's  imaginary  conversations,  and  that 
they  were  passionately  serious  about  art  and  life 
and  so  on.  They  might  have  been  schoolgirls. 

"Farceuses,  toutes  les  deux!33  said  the  host,  com- 
ing up,  delightfully  indulgent,  but  shocked  that 
women  to  whom  he  had  just  played  Ygdrasil, 
should  be  able  so  soon  to  throw  off  the  spell  of  it. 

The  pretty  and  sprightly  woman,  all  in  white, 


6  PARIS   NIGHTS 

despairing,  whisked  impulsively  out  of  the  room,  in 
order  to  recall  to  herself  amid  darkness  and  cloaks 
and  hats  that  she  was  not  a  giddy  child,  but  an  ex- 
perienced creature  of  thirty  if  she  was  a  day.  She 
came  back  demure,  her  eyes  liquid,  brooding. 
,*  #  *  * 

"By  the  way,"  said  the  young  dramatist  to  the 
host,  "Your  People's  Concert  scheme — doesn't  it 
move?" 

"By  the  way,"  said  the  host,  suddenly  excited, 
"Shall  we  hold  a  meeting  of  the  committee  now?" 

He  had  a  project  for  giving  performances  of  the 
finest  music  to  the  populace  at  a  charge  of  five  sous 
per  head.  It  was  the  latest  activity  of  the  publicist 
in  him.  The  committee  appeared  to  consist  of 
everybody  who  was  standing  near.  He  drew  me 
into  it,  because,  coming  from  London,  I  was  of 
course  assumed  to  be  a  complete  encyclopaedia  of 
London  and  to  be  capable  of  furnishing  detailed 
statistics  about  all  twopence-halfpenny  enterprises 
in  London  for  placing  the  finest  music  before  the 
people.  The  women,  especially  the  late  laughers, 
were  touched  by  the  beauty  of  the  idea  underlying 
the  enterprise,  and  their  eyes  showed  that  at  instants 
they  were  thinking  sympathetically  of  the  far-off 
"people."  The  librarian  remained  somewhat  apart, 
as  it  were  with  a  rifle,  and  maintained  a  desolating 
fire  of  questions :  "Was  the  scheme  meant  to  improve 
the  people  or  to  divert  them?  Would  they  come? 
Would  they  like  the  finest  music?  Why  five  sous? 
Why  not  seven,  or  three?  Was  the  enterprise  to  be 
self-supporting?"  The  host,  with  his  glance  fixed  in 


SOME  JAPANESE  MUSIC  ON  THE  PLEYEL    (Page  8) 


ARTISTIC  EVENING  7 

appeal  on  me  (it  seemed  to  me  that  he  was  entreating 
me  to  accept  him  as  a  serious  publicist,  warning  me 
not  to  be  misled  by  appearances) — the  host  replied 
to  all  these  questions  with  the  sweetest,  politest, 
wistful  patience,  as  well  as  he  could.  Certainly  the 
people  would  like  the  finest  music !  The  people  had 
a  taste  naturally  distinguished  and  correct.  It  was 
we  who  were  the  degenerates.  The  enterprise  must 
be  and  would  be  self-supporting.  No  charity!  No, 
he  had  learnt  the  folly  of  charity!  But  naturally 
the  artists  would  give  their  services.  They  would 
be  paid  in  terms  of  pleasure.  The  financial  diffi- 
culty was  that,  whereas  he  would  not  charge  more 
than  five  sous  a  head  for  admission,  he  could  not 
hire  a  hall  at  a  rent  which  worked  out  to  less  than  a 
franc  a  head.  Such  was  the  problem  before  the 
committee  meeting!  Dufayel,  the  great  shop- 
keeper, had  offered  to  assist  him.  .  .  .  The  li- 
brarian frigidly  exposed  the  anti-social  nature  of 
Dufayel's  business  methods,  and  the  host  hurriedly 
made  him  a  present  of  Dufayel.  Dufayel's  help 
could  not  be  conscientiously  accepted.  The  prob- 
lem then  remained!  .  .  .  London?  London, 
so  practical?  As  an  encyclopaedia  of  London  I  was 
not  a  success.  Politeness  hid  a  general  astonishment 
that,  freshly  arrived  from  London,  I  could  not  sug- 
gest a  solution,  could  not  say  what  London  would 
do  in  a  like  quandary,  nor  even  what  London  had 
done  I 

"We  will  adjourn  it  to  our  next  meeting,"  said 
the  host,  and  named  day,  hour,  and  place.  And  the 
committee  smoothed  business  out  of  its  brow  and 


8  PARIS  NIGHTS 

dissolved  itself,  while  at  the  host's  request  a  girl 
performed  some  Japanese  music  on  the  Pleyel. 
When  it  was  finished,  the  librarian,  who  had 
listened  to  Japanese  music  at  an  embassy,  said  that 
this  was  not  Japanese  music.  "And  thou  knowest 
it  well,"  he  added.  The  host  admitted  that  it  was 
not  really  Japanese  music,  but  he  insisted  with  his 
plaintive  smile  that  the  whole  subject  of  Japanese 
music  was  very  interesting  and  enigmatic. 

Then  the  pretty  sprightly  woman,  all  in  white, 
went  and  stood  behind  an  arm-chair  and  recited  a 
poem,  admirably,  and  with  every  sign  of  emotion. 
Difficult  to  believe  that  she  had  ever  laughed,  that 
she  did  not  exist  continually  at  these  heights!     She 
bowed  modestly,  a  priestess  of  the  poet,  and  came 
out  from  behind  the  chair. 
"By  whom?"  demanded  the  librarian. 
And  a  voice  answered,  throbbing:  "Henri  de 
Regnier." 

"Indeed,"  said  the  librarian  with  cold,  careless 
approval,  "it  is  pretty  enough." 

But  I  knew,  from  the  tone  alone  of  the  answering 
voice,  that  the  name  of  Henri  de  Regnier  was  a 
sacred  name,  and  that  when  it  had  been  uttered  the 
proper  thing  was  to  bow  the  head  mutely,  as  before 
a  Botticelli. 

"I  have  something  here,"  said  the  host,  producing 
one  of  these  portfolios  which  hurried  men  of  affairs 
carry  under  their  arms  in  the  streets  of  Paris,  and 
which  are  called  serviettes;  this  one,  however,  was  of 
red  morocco.  The  pretty,  sprightly  woman  sprang 
forward  blushing  to  obstruct  his  purpose,  but  other 


ARTISTIC  EVENING  9 

hands  led  her  gently  away.  The  host,  using  the 
back  of  the  arm-chair  for  a  lectern,  read  alternately 
poems  of  hers  and  poems  of  his  own.  And  he,  too, 
spoke  with  every  sign  of  emotion.  I  had  to  con- 
quer my  instinctive  British  scorn  for  these  people 
because  they  would  not  at  any  rate  pretend  that 
they  were  ashamed  of  the  emotion  of  poetry.  Their 
candour  appeared  to  me,  then,  weak,  if  not  actually 
indecent.  The  librarian  admitted  occasionally  that 
something  was  pretty  enough.  The  rest  of  the 
company  maintained  a  steady  fervency  of  enthusi- 
asm. The  reader  himself  forgot  all  else  in  his  in- 
creasing ardour,  and  thus  we  heard  about  a  score 
of  poems  —  all,  as  we  were  told,  unpublished  —  to- 
gether with  the  discussion  of  a  score  of  poems. 


We  all  sat  around  the  rim  of  an  immense  circle 
of  white  tablecloth.  Each  on  a  little  plate  had  a 
portion  of  pineapple  ice  and  in  aj  little  glass  a 
draught  of  Asti.  Far  away,  in  the  centre  of  the 
diaper  desert,  withdrawn  and  beyond  reach,  lay  a 
dish  containing  the  remains  of  the  ice.  Except 
fans  and  cigarette-cases,  there  was  nothing  else  on 
the  table  whatever.  Some  one  across  the  table 
asked  me  what  I  had  recently  finished,  and  I  said  a 
play.  Everybody  agreed  that  it  must  be  translated 
into  French.  The  Paris  theatres  simply  could  not 
get  good  plays.  In  a  few  moments  it  was  as  if  the 
entire  company  was  beseeching  me  to  allow  my 
comedy  to  be  translated  and  produced  with  dazzling 
success  at  one  of  the  principal  theatres  on  the  boule- 


10  BARIS  NIGHTS 

vard.    But  I  would  not.    I  said  my  play  was  un- 
suitable for  the  French  stage. 
"Because?" 

"Because  it  is  too  pure." 

I  had  meant  to  be  mildly  jocular.     But  this  joke 
excited   mirth   that    surpassed    mildness.     "Thou 
hearest  that?    He  says  his  play  is  too  pure  for  us !" 
My  belief  is  that  they  had  never  heard  one  of  these 
strange,  naive,  puzzling  barbarians  make  a  joke  be- 
fore, and  that  they  regarded  the  thing  in  its  novelty 
as  really  too  immensely  and  exotically  funny,  in 
some  manner  which  they  could  not  explain  to  them- 
selves.    Beneath  their  politeness   I   could   detect 
them  watching  me,  after  that,  in  expectation  of  an- 
other outbreak  of  insular  humour.     I  might  have 
been  tempted  to  commit  follies,  had  not  a  new  guest 
arrived.     This  was  a  tall,  large-boned,  ugly,  coquet- 
tish woman,  with  a  strong  physical  attractiveness 
and  a  voice  that  caused  vibrations  in  your  soul.    She 
was  in  white,  with  a  powerful  leather  waistband 
which  suited  her.     She  was  intimate  with  everybody 
except  me,  and  by  a  natural  gift  and  force  she  held 
the  attention  of  everybody  from  the  moment  of  her 
entrance.    You  could  see  she  was  used  to  that. 
The  time  was  a  quarter  to  midnight,  and  she  ex- 
plained that  she  had  been  trying  to  arrive  for  hours, 
but  could  not  have  succeeded  a  second  sooner.     She 
said  she  must  recount  her  journee^  and  she  re- 
counted her  journee,  which,  after  being  a  vague  pre- 
historic nebulosity  up  to  midday  seemed  to  begin  to 
take  a  definite  shape  about  that  hour.     It  was  the 
journee  of  a  Parisienne  who  is  also  an  amateur 


nfj,^1-  fi 


^ 


A  NEW  GUEST  ARRIVED    (Po^e 


ARTISTIC  EVENING  11 

actress  and  a  dog-fancier.  And  undoubtedly  all 
her  days  were  the  same:  battles  waged  against 
clocks  and  destiny.  She  had  no  sense  of  order  or  of 
time.  She  had  no  exact  knowledge  of  anything; 
she  had  no  purpose  in  life;  she  was  perfectly  futile 
and  useless.  But  she  was  acquainted  with  the  secret 
nature  of  men  and  women;  she  could  judge  them 
shrewdly;  she  was  the  very  opposite  of  the  ingenue; 
and  by  her  physical  attractiveness,  and  that  deep, 
thrilling  voice,  and  her  distinction  of  gesture  and 
tone,  she  created  in  you  the  illusion  that  she  was  a 
capable  and  efficient  woman,  absorbed  in  the  most 
important  ends.  She  sat  down  negligently  behind 
the  host,  waving  away  all  ice  and  Asti,  and  busily 
fanning  both  him  and  herself.  She  flattered  him 
by  laying  her  ringed  and  fluffy  arm  along  the  back 
of  his  chair. 

"Do  you  know,"  she  said,  smiling  at  him  myste- 
riously. "I  have  made  a  strange  discovery  to-day. 
Paris  gives  more  towards  the  saving  of  lost  dogs 
than  towards  the  saving  of  lost  women.  Very  curi- 
ous, is  it  not?" 

The  host  seemed  to  be  thunderstruck  by  this 
piece  of  information.  The  whole  table  was  agitated 
by  it,  and  a  tremendous  discussion  was  set  on  foot. 
I  then  witnessed  for  the  first  time  the  spectacle  of 
a  fairly  large  mixed  company  talking  freely  about 
scabrous  facts.  Then  for  the  first  time  was  I 
eased  from  the  strain  of  pretending  in  a  mixed  com- 
pany that  things  are  not  what  they  in  fact  are.  To 
listen  to  those  women,  and  to  watch  them  listening, 
was  as  staggering  as  it  would  have  been  to  see  them 


12  PARIS  NIGHTS 

pick  up  red-hot  irons  in  their  feverish,  delicate 
hands.  Their  admission  that  they  knew  every- 
thing, that  no  corner  of  existence  was  dark  enough 
to  frighten  them  into  speechlessness,  was  the  chief 
of  their  charms,  then.  It  intensified  their  acute 
femininity.  And  while  they  were  thus  gravely 
talking,  ironical,  sympathetic,  amused,  or  indig- 
nant, they  even  yet  had  the  air  of  secretly  thinking 
about  something  else. 

Discussions  of  such  subjects  never  formally  end, 
for  the  talkers  never  tire  of  them.  This  subject  was 
discussed  in  knots  all  the  way  down  six  flights  of 
stairs  by  the  light  of  tapers  and  matches.  I  left  the 
last,  because  I  wanted  to  get  some  general  informa- 
tion from  my  host  about  one  of  his  guests. 

"  She  is  divorcing  her  husband,"  he  said,  with  the 
simple  sad  pride  of  a  man  who  had  been  a  petitioner 
in  the  matrimonial  courts.  "For  the  rest,  you 
never  meet  any  but  divorced  women  at  my  place. 
It  saves  complications.  So  have  no  fear." 

We  shook  hands  warmly. 

"An  revolr,  mon  ami" 

"Au  revoir,  mon  cher" 


II 

THE   YAElf  Tlfe 

The  filth  and  the  paltry  shabbiness  of  the  en- 
trance to  the  theatre  amounted  to  cynicism.  In- 
stead of  uplifting  by  a  foretaste  of  light  and  mag- 
nificence, as  the  entrance  to  a  theatre  should,  it  de- 
pressed by  its  neglected  squalour.  Twenty  years 
earlier  it  might  have  cried  urgently  for  cleansing 
and  redecoration,  but  now  it  was  long  past  crying. 
It  had  become  vile.  In  the  centre  at  the  back  sat 
a  row  of  three  or  four  officials  in  evening  dress, 
prosperous  clubmen  with  glittering  rakish  hats,  at 
a  distance  of  twenty  feet,  but  changing  as  we  ap- 
proached them  to  indigent,  fustian-clad  ticket- 
clerks  penned  in  a  rickety  rostrum  and  condemned 
like  sandwich-men  to  be  ridiculous  in  order  to  live. 
(Their  appearance  recalled  to  my  mind  the  fact 
that  a  "front-of-the-house"  inspector  at  the  prin- 
cipal music-hall  in  France  and  in  Europe  is  paid 
thirty  sous  a  night.)  They  regarded  our  tickets 
with  gestures  of  scorn,  weariness,  and  cupidity. 
None  knew  better  than  they  that  these  coloured 
scraps  represented  a  large  lovely  gold  coin,  rare  and 
yet  plentiful,  reassuring  and  yet  transient,  the  price 
of  coals,  boots,  nectar,  and  love. 

We  came  to  a  very  narrow,  low,  foul,  semi-circu- 
lar tunnel  which  was  occupied  by  hags  and  harpies 

13 


14  PARIS  NIGHTS 

with  pink  bows  in  their  hair,  and  by  marauding  men, 
and  by  hats  and  cloaks  and  overcoats,  and  by  a 
double  odour  of  dirt  and  disinfectants.  Along  the 
convex  side  of  the  tunnel  were  a  number  of  little 
doors  like  the  doors  of  cells.  We  bought  a  pro- 
gramme from  a  man,  yielded  our  wraps  to  two  har- 
pies, and  were  led  away  by  another  man.  All  these 
beings  looked  hungrily  apprehensive,  like  dogs 
nosing  along  a  gutter.  The  auditorium  which  was 
nearly  full,  had  the  same  characteristics  as  the 
porch  and  the  couloir.  It  was  filthy,  fetid,  uncom- 
fortable, and  dangerous.  It  had  the  carpets  of  a 
lodging-house  of  the  'seventies,  the  seats  of  an  old 
omnibus,  the  gilt  and  the  decorated  sculpture  of  a 
circus  at  a  fair.  And  it  was  dingy!  It  was  en- 
crusted with  dinginess! 

Something  seemed  to  be  afoot  on  the  stage :  from 
the  embittered  resignation  of  the  audience  and  the 
perfunctory  nonchalance  of  the  players,  we  knew 
that  this  could  only  be  the  curtain-raiser.  The  hour 
was  ten  minutes  past  nine.  The  principal  piece  was 
advertised  to  commence  at  nine  o'clock.  But  the 
curtain-raiser  was  not  yet  finished,  and  after  it  was 
finished  there  would  be  the  entr'acte — one  of  the  re- 
nowned, interminable  entr'actes  of  the  Theatre 

des  Varietes. 

^    4    ^     «* 

The  Varietes  is  still  one  of  the  most  "truly  Paris- 
ian" of  theatres,  and  has  been  so  since  long  before 
Zola  described  it  fully  in  Nana.  The  young  bloods 
of  Buenos  Ayres  and  St.  Petersburg  still  have  vis- 
ions of  an  evening  at  the  Varietes  as  the  superlative 


f  HIE  VARIETES  IS 

of  intense  living.  Every  theatre  with  a  reputation 
has  its  "note,"  and  the  note  of  the  Varietes  is  to 
make  a  fool  of  its  public.  Its  attitude  to  the  public 
is  that  of  an  English  provincial  hotel  or  an  English 
bank:  "Come,  and  be  d — d  to  you!  Above  all,  do 
not  imagine  that  I  exist  for  your  convenience.  You 
exist  for  mine."  At  the  Varietes  bad  management 
is  good  management ;  slackness  is  a  virtuous  coquet- 
terie.  It  would  never  do,  there,  to  be  prompt,  clean, 
or  honest.  To  make  the  theatre  passably  habitable 
would  be  ruin.  Its  chic  would  be  lost  if  it  ceased  to 
be  a  Hades  of  discomfort  and  a  menace  to  health. 
There  is  a  small  troupe  of  notorious  artistes,  some 
of  whom  show  great  talent  when  it  occurs  to  them 
to  show  it ;  the  vogue  of  the  rest  is  one  of  the  innu- 
merable mysteries  which  abound  in  theatrical  life. 
It  is  axiomatic  that  they  are  all  witty,  and  that  what- 
ever lines  they  enunciate  thereby  become  witty. 
They  are  simply  side-splitting  as  Sydney  Smith  was 
simply  side-splitting  when  he  asked  for  the  potatoes 
to  be  passed.  Also  the  manager  of  the  theatre  al- 
ways wears  an  old  straw  hat,  summer  and  winter. 
He  is  the  wearer  of  an  eternal  battered  straw  hat, 
who  incidentally  manages  a  theatre.  You  go  along 
the  boulevard,  and  you  happen  to  see  that 
straw  hat  emerging  from  the  theatre.  And  by 
the  strange  potency  of  the  hat  you  will  be 
obliged  to  say  to  the  next  acquaintance  you 
meet:  "I've  just  seen  Samuel  in  his  straw 
hat."  And  the  thought  in  your  mind  and  in  the 
mind  of  your  acquaintance  will  be  that  you  are 
getting  very  near  the  heart  of  Paris. 


16  PARIS  NIGHTS 

Beyond  question  the  troupe  of  favourites  consid- 
ers itself  to  be  the  real  centre  of  Paris,  and,  there- 
fore, of  civilisation.  Practically  the  entire  Press, 
either  by  good  nature,  stupidity,  snobbishness,  or 
simple  cash  transactions,  takes  part  in  the  vast  make- 
believe  that  the  troupe  is  conferring  a  favour  on 
civilisation  by  consenting  to  be  alive.  And  the 
troupe  of  course  behaves  accordingly.  It  puts  its 
back  into  the  evening  when  it  thinks  it  will,  and 
when  it  thinks  it  won't,  it  doesn't.  "Aux  Varietes 
on  travaille  quand  on  ale  temps."  The  rise  of  the 
curtain  awaits  the  caprice  of  a  convivial  green-room. 
"Don't  hurry — the  public  is  getting  impatient." 
Naturally,  the  underlings  are  not  included  in  the 
benefits  of  the  make-believe.  "At  rehearsals  we 
may  wait  two  hours  for  the  principals,"  a  chorus- 
girl  said  to  me.  "But  if  we  are  five  minutes  late, 
one  flings  us  a  fine.  A  hundred  francs  a  month  I 
touch,  and  it  has  happened  to  me  to  pay  thirty  in 
fines.  Some  one  gets  all  that,  you  know!"  She 
went  off  into  an  impassioned  description  of  scenes 
at  rehearsals  of  a  ballet,  how  the  ballet-master,  after 
epical  outbursts,  would  always  throw  up  his  arms  in 
inexpressible  disgust  and  retire  to  his  room,  and  how 
the  women  would  follow  him  and  kiss  and  cajole 
and  hug  him,  and  how  then,  after  a  majestic  pause, 
his  step  could  be  heard  slowly  descending  the  stairs, 
and  at  last  the  rehearsal  would  resume.  .  .  . 
The  human  interest,  no  doubt! 

The  Varietes  has  another  role  and  justification. 
It  is  what  the  French  call  a  women's  theatre. 
When  I  asked  a  well-known  actress  why  the  entr'- 


THE  VARlTS  17 

actes  at  the  Varietes  were  so  long,  she  replied  with 
her  air  of  finding  even  the  most  bizarre  phenomena 
quite  natural:  "There  are  several  reasons.  One  is, 
so  that  the  gentlemen  may  have  time  to  write  notes 
and  to  receive  answers."  I  did  not  conceal  my 
sense  of  the  oddness  of  this  method  of  conducting 
a  theatre,  whereupon  she  reminded  me  that  it  was 
the  Varietes  we  were  talking  about.  She  said  that 
little  by  ttttle  I  should  understand  all  sorts  of 

things. 

&    *    *    * 

As  the  principal  piece  progressed — it  was  an 
operette — the  apathy  of  the  public  grew  more  and 
more  noticeable.  They  seemed  to  have  forgotten 
that  they  were  in  one  of  the  most  truly  Parisian  of 
theatres,  watching  players  whose  names  were  house- 
hold words  and  synonyms  of  wit  and  allurement. 
There  was  no  applause,  save  from  a  claque  which 
had  carried  discipline  to  the  extreme.  The  favour- 
ites were  evidently  in  one  of  their  moods  of  casual- 
ness.  Either  the  piece  had  run  too  long  or  it  was 
not  going  to  run  long  enough.  It  was  a  piece 
brightly  and  jinglingly  vulgar,  ministering,  of 
course,  in  the  main,  to  the  secret  concupiscence  which 
drives  humanity  forward;  titillating,  like  most 
stage-spectacles,  all  that  is  base,  inept,  and  gross  in 
a  crowd  whose  units  are  perhaps,  not  quite  odious. 
A  few  of  the  performers  had  moments  of  real  bril- 
liance. But  even  these  flashes  did  not  stir  the  pub- 
lic, whose  characteristic  was  stolidity.  A  public 
which,  having  regard  to  the  conditions  of  the  par- 
ticular theatre,  necessarily  consisted  of  simple  snob- 


18  PARIS  NIGHTS 

bish  gulls  whose  creed  is  whatever  they  read  or  hear, 
with  an  admixture  of  foreigners,  provincials,  ad- 
venturers, and  persons  who,  having  no  illusions, 
go  to  the  Varietes  because  they  have  been  to  every- 
thing else  and  must  go  somewhere!  The  first  half- 
dozen  rows  of  the  stalls  were  reserved  for  males:  a 
custom  which  at  the  Varietes  has  survived  from  a 
more  barbaric  age,  as  the  custom  of  the  finger-bowl 
has  survived  in  the  repasts  of  the  polite.  The  self- 
satisfied  and  self-conscious  occupants  of  these  rows 
seemed  to  summarise  and  illustrate  all  the  various 
masculine  stupidity  of  a  great  and  proud  city.  To 
counterbalance  this  preponderance  of  the  male,  I 
could  glimpse,  behind  the  lath  grilles  of  the  cages 
called  baignoires,  the  forms  of  women  (each 
guarded)  who  I  hope  were  incomparable.  The 
sight  of  these  grilles  at  once  sent  the  mind  to  the 
seraglio,  and  the  House  of  Commons,  and  other 
fastnesses  of  Orientalism. 

The  evening  was  interminable,  not  for  me  alone, 
but  obviously  for  the  majority  of  the  audience. 
Impossible  to  describe  the  dull  fortitude  of  the  au- 
dience without  being  accused  of  wilful  exaggera- 
tion! Only  in  the  entr'actes,  in  the  amplitude  and 
dubious  mystery  of  the  entr'actes,  did  the  audience 
arouse  itself  into  the  semblance  of  vivacity.  There 
was  but  little  complaining.  Were  we  not  at  the 
Varietes?  At  the  Varietes,  to  suffer  was  part  of 
the  entertainment.  The  French  public  is  a  public 
which  accepts  all  in  Christian  meekness — all!  It 
knows  that  it  exists  for  the  convenience  of  the 
bureaucracy  and  the  theatres.  It  covers  its  coward- 


OPPOSITE  THE  "MOULIN    ROUGE"    (Paye 


THE  VARI^T^S  19 

ice  under  a  mantle  of  philosophy  and  politeness. 
Its  fierce  protest  is  a  shrug.     "Que  voulez-vous? 

C'est  comme  pa/' 

£    j*    *    & 

At  last,  at  nearly  half  after  midnight,  we  came 
forth,  bitterly  depressed,  as  usual,  by  the  deep  con- 
sciousness of  futile  waste.  I  could  see,  in  my  pre- 
occupation, the  whole  organism  of  the  Varietes, 
which  is  only  the  essence  of  the  French  theatre.  A 
few  artistes  and  a  financier  or  so  at  the  core,  wilful, 
corrupt,  self-indulgent,  spoiled,  venal,  enormously 
unbusinesslike,  incredibly  cynical,  luxurious  in  the 
midst  of  a  crowd  of  miserable  parasites  and  menials ; 
creating  for  themselves,  out  of  electric  globes,  and 
newspapers,  and  posters,  and  photographs,  and  the 
inexhaustible  simplicity  and  sexuality  of  the  public, 
a  legend  of  artistic  greatness.  They  make  a  frame, 
and  hang  a  curtain  in  front  of  it,  and  put  footlights 
beneath;  and  lo!  the  capricious  manoeuvres  of  these 
mortals  become  the  sacred,  authoritative  function- 
ing of  an  institution! 

It  was  raining.  The  boulevard  was  a  mirror. 
And  along  the  reflecting  surface  of  this  mirror  cab 
after  cab,  hundreds  of  cabs,  rolled  swiftly.  Dozens 
and  dozens  were  empty,  and  had  no  goal ;  but  none 
would  stop.  They  all  went  ruthlessly  by  with  of- 
fensive gestures  of  disdain.  Strangers  cannot  be- 
lieve that  when  a  Paris  cabman  without  a  fare  re- 
fuses to  stop  on  a  wet  night,  it  is  not  because  he  is 
hoping  for  a  client  in  richer  furs,  or  because  he  is 
going  to  the  stables,  or  because  he  has  earned  enough 
that  night,  or  because  he  has  an  urgent  appointment 


20  PARIS  NIGHTS 

with  his  enchantress — but  simply  from  malice. 
Nevertheless  this  is  a  psychological  fact  which  any 
experienced  Parisian  will  confirm.  On  a  wet  night 
the  cabman  revenges  himself  upon  the  bourgeoisie, 
though  the  base  satisfaction  may  cost  him  money. 
As  we  waited,  with  many  other  princes  of  the  earth 
who  could  afford  to  throw  away  a  whole  louis  for  a 
few  hours'  relaxation,  as  we  waited  vainly  in  the 
wet  for  a  cabman  who  would  condescend,  I  could 
savour  only  one  sensation — that  of  exasperating 
tedium  completely  achieved. 


Ill 

EVENING  WITH  EXILES 

I  lived  up  at  the  top  of  the  house,  absolutely 
alone.  After  eleven  o'clock  in  the  morning,  when 
my  servant  left,  I  was  my  own  doorkeeper.  Like 
most  solitaries  in  strange  places,  whenever  I  heard 
a  ring  I  had  a  feeling  that  perhaps  after  all  it  might 
be  the  ring  of  romance.  This  time  it  was  the  tele- 
graph-boy. I  gave  him  a  penny,  because  in 
France,  much  more  than  in  England,  every  one 
must  live,  and  the  notion  still  survives  that  a  tele- 
gram has  sufficient  unusualness  to  demand  a  tip; 
the  same  with  a  registered  letter.  I  read  the  tele- 
gram, and  my  evening  lay  suddenly  in  fragments 
at  my  feet.  The  customary  accident,  the  accident 
dreaded  by  every  solitary,  had  happened.  "Sorry, 
prevented  from  coming  to-night,"  etc.  It  was  not 
yet  six  o'clock.  I  had  in  front  of  me  a  wilderness 
of  six  hours  to  traverse.  In  my  warm  disgust  I 
went  at  once  out  in  the  streets.  My  flat  had  be- 
come mysteriously  uninhabitable,  and  my  work  re- 
pugnant. The  streets  of  Paris,  by  reason  of  their 
hospitality,  are  a  refuge. 

The  last  sun  of  September  was  setting  across  the 
circular  Place  Blanche.  I  sat  down  at  the  terrace 
of  the  smallest  cafe  and  drank  tea.  Exactly  oppo- 
site were  the  crimson  wings  of  the  Moulin  Rouge, 
and  to  the  right  was  the  establishment  which  then 


22 


PARIS  NIGHTS 


held  first  place  among  nocturnal  restaurants  in 
Montmartre.  It  had  the  strange  charm  of  a  resort 
which  is  never  closed,  night  or  day,  and  where  money 
and  time  are  squandered  with  infantile  fatuity. 
Somehow  it  inspired  respect,  if  not  awe.  Its  ter- 
race was  seldom  empty,  and  at  that  hour  it  was  al- 
ways full.  Under  the  striped  and  valanced  awn- 
ing sat  perhaps  a  hundred  people,  all  slowly  and  de- 
liberately administering  to  themselves  poisons  of 
various  beautiful  colours.  A  crowd  to  give  pause 
to  the  divination  of  even  the  most  conceited  student 
of  human  nature,  a  crowd  in  which  the  simplest 
bourgeois  or  artist  or  thief  sat  next  to  men  and 
women  exercising  the  oldest  and  most  disreputable 
professions — and  it  was  impossible  surely  to  dis- 
tinguish which  from  which! 

Out  of  the  medley  of  trams,  omnibuses,  carts,  au- 
tomobiles, and  cabs  that  continually  rattled  over  the 
cobbles,  an  open  fiacre  would  detach  itself  every 
minute  or  so,  and  set  down  or  take  up  in  front  of 
the  terrace.  Among  these  was  one  carrying  two 
young  dandies,  an  elegantly  dressed  girl,  and  an- 
other young  girl  in  a  servant's  cap  and  apron. 
They  were  all  laughing  and  talking  together.  The 
dandies  and  the  elegancy  got  out  and  took  a  vacant 
table  amid  the  welcoming  eager  bows  of  a  maitre 
d*  hotel,  a  chasseur,  and  a  waiter.  She  was  freshly 
and  meticulously  and  triumphantly  got  up,  like  an 
elaborate  confection  of  starched  linen  fresh  from 
the  laundress.  Her  lips  were  impeccably  rouged. 
She  delighted  the  eye  by  her  health  and  her  youth 
and  her  pretty  insolence.  A  single  touch 


/=*- 


M'^c^te 

'•?  ./  •  .-.:<     ;-.';  'u:,>;..-^  

V^:t ¥^7 


MONTiMARTRE 


EVENING  WITH  EXILES        23 

would  have  soiled  her,  but  she  had  not  yet  been 
touched.  Her  day  had  just  begun.  Probably,  her 
bed  was  not  yet  made.  The  black-robed,  scissored 
girls  of  the  drapery  store  at  the  next  angle  of  the 
place  were  finishing  their  tenth  hour  of  vigil  over 
goods  displayed  on  the  footpath.  And  next  to  that 
was  a  creamery  where  black-robed  girls  could  obtain 
a  whole  day's  sustenance  for  the  price  of  one  glass 
of  poison.  Evidently  the  young  creature  had  only 
just  arrived  at  the  dignity  of  a  fashionable  dress- 
maker, and  a  servant  of  her  own.  Her  ingenuous 
vanity  obliged  her  to  show  her  servant  to  the  place, 
and  the  ingenuous  vanity  of  the  servant  was  con- 
tent to  be  shown  off;  for  the  servant  might  have  a 
servant  to-morrow — who  could  tell?  The  cabman 
and  the  servant  'began  to  converse,  and  presently 
the  cabman  in  his  long  fawn  coat  and  white  hat  de- 
scended and  entered  the  vehicle  and  sat  down  by 
the  servant,  and  pulled  out  an  illustrated  comic 
paper,  and  they  bent  their  heads  over  it  and  giggled 
enormously  in  unison;  he  was  piling  up  money  at 
the  rate  of  at  least  a  sou  a  minute.  Occasionally 
the  young  mistress  threw  a  loud  sisterly  remark  to 
the  servant,  who  replied  gaily.  And  the  two  young 
dandies  bore  nobly  the  difficult  role  of  world-worn 
men  who  still  count  not  the  cost  of  smiles.  Say 
what  you  like,  it  was  charming.  It  was  one  of  the 
reasons  why  Paris  is  the  city  which  is  always  for- 
given. Could  one  reasonably  expect  that  the  bright 
face  of  the  vapid  little  siren  should  be  solemnised 
by  the  thought:  "To-day  I  am  a  day  nearer  forty 
than  I  was  yesterday"? 


24  PARIS  NIGHTS 

The  wings  of  the  Moulin  Rouge,  jewelled  now 
with  crimson  lamps,  began  to  revolve  slowly.  The 
upper  chambers  of  the  restaurant  showed  lights  be- 
hind their  mysteriously-curtained  windows.  The 
terrace  was  suddenly  bathed  in  the  calm  blue  of  elec- 
tricity. No  austere  realism  of  the  philosopher  could 
argue  away  the  romance  of  the  scene. 

I  turned  down  the  steep  Rue  Blanche,  and  at  the 
foot  of  it  passed  by  the  shadow  of  the  Trinite,  the 
great  church  of  illicit  assignations,  at  whose  clock 
scores  of  frightened  and  expectant  hearts  gaze  anx- 
iously every  afternoon;  and  through  the  Rue  de  la 
Chaussee  d'Antin,  where  corsets  are  masterpieces 
beyond  price  and  flowers  may  be  sold  for  a  sover- 
eign apiece,  and  then  into  the  full  fever  of  the  grand 
boulevard  with  its  maddening  restlessness  of  il- 
luminated signs.  The  shops  and  cafes  were  all  on 
fire,  making  two  embankments  of  fire,  above  which 
rose  high  and  mysterious  facades  masked  by  trees 
that  looked  like  the  impossible  verdure  of  an  opera. 
And  between  the  summits  of  the  trees  a  ribbon  of 
rich,  dark,  soothing  purple — the  sky !  This  was  the 
city.  This  was  what  the  race  had  accomplished, 
after  eighteen  Louises  and  nearly  as  many  revolu- 
tions, and  when  all  was  said  that  could  be  said  it  re- 
mained a  prodigious  and  a  comforting  spectacle. 
Every  doorway  shone  with  invitation;  every  satis- 
faction and  delight  was  offered,  on  terms  ridicu- 
lously reasonable.  And  binding  everything  to- 
gether were  the  refined,  neighbourly,  and  graceful 
cynical  gestures  of  the  race:  so  different  from  the 


EVENING  WITH  EXILES        25 

harsh  and  awkward  timidity,  the  self-centred  ego- 
tism and  artistocratic  hypocrisy  of  Piccadilly.  It 
seemed  difficult  to  be  lonely  amid  multitudes  that  so 
candidly  accepted  human  nature  as  human  nature 
is.  It  seemed  a  splendid  and  an  uplifting  thing  to 
be  there.  I  continued  southwards,  down  the  nar- 
row, swarming  Rue  Richelieu,  past  the  immeasur- 
able National  Library  on  the  left  and  Jean  Goujon's 
sculptures  of  the  rivers  of  France  on  the  right,  and 
past  the  Theatre  Fran9ais,  where  nice  plain  people 
were  waiting  to  see  UAventuriere,  and  across  the 
arcaded  Rue  de  Rivoli.  And  then  I  was  in  the  dark 
desert  of  the  Place  du  Carrousel,  where  the  omni- 
buses are  diminished  to  toy-omnibuses.  The  town 
was  shut  off  by  the  vast  arms  of  the  Louvre.  The 
purple  had  faded  out  the  sky.  The  wind,  heralding 
October,  blew  coldly  across  the  spaces.  The  art- 
fully arranged  vista  of  the  Champs  Elysees,  rising 
in  flame  against  the  silhouette  of  Cleopatra's  needle, 
struck  me  as  a  meretricious  device,  designed  to  im- 
press tourists  and  monarchs.  Everything  was 
meretricious.  I  could  not  even  strike  a  match  with- 
out being  reminded  that  a  contented  and  corrupt  in- 
efficiency was  corroding  this  race  like  a  disease.  I 
could  not  light  my  cigarette  because  somebody, 
somewhere,  had  not  done  his  job  like  an  honest 
man.  And  thus  it  was  throughout. 

I  wanted  to  dine,  and  there  were  a  thousand 
restaurants  within  a  mile;  but  they  had  all  ceased 
to  invite  me.  I  was  beaten  down  by  the  over- 
whelming sadness  of  one  who  for  the  time  being 
has  no  definite  arranged  claim  to  any  friendly  at- 


•' 


26  PARIS  NIGHTS 

tention  in  a  huge  city — crowded  with  pre-occu- 
pied  human  beings.  I  might  have  been  George 
Gissing.  I  re-wrote  all  his  novels  for  him  in  an 
instant.  I  persisted  southwards.  The  tiny  walled 
river,  reflecting  with  industrious  precision  all  its 
lights,  had  no  attraction.  The  quays,  where  all 
the  book  shops  were  closed  and  all  the  bookstalls 
locked  down,  and  where  there  was  never  a  cafe, 
were  as  inhospitable  and  chill  as  Riga.  Mist 
seemed  to  heave  over  the  river,  and  the  pavements 
were  oozing  damp. 

I  went  up  an  entry  and  rang  a  bell,  thinking  to 
myself:  "If  he  isn't  in,  I  am  done  for!"  But  at  the 
same  moment  I  caught  the  sound  of  a  violoncello, 
and  I  knew  I  was  saved,  and  by  a  miracle  Paris  was 

herself  again. 

#    #    #    * 

"Not  engaged  for  dinner,  are  you?"  I  asked,  as 
soon  as  I  was  in  the  studio. 

"No.     I  was  just  thinking  of  going  out." 

"Well,  let's  go,  then." 

"I  was  scraping  some  bits  of  Gluck." 

The  studio  was  fairly  large,  but  it  was  bare,  un- 
kempt, dirty,  and  comfortless.  Except  an  old  sofa, 
two  hard  imperfect  chairs,  and  an  untrustworthy 
table,  it  had  no  furniture.  Of  course,  it  was  lit- 
tered with  the  apparatus  of  painting.  Its  sole  or- 
namentation was  pictures,  and  the  pictures  were 
very  fine,  for  they  were  the  painter's  own.  He  and 
his  pictures  are  well  known  among  the  painters  of 
Europe  and  America.  Successful  artistically,  and 
with  an  adequate  private  income,  he  was  a  full  mem- 


EVENING  WITH  EXILES        27 

ber  of  the  Champ  de  Mars  Salon,  and  he  sold  his 
pictures  upon  occasion  to  Governments.  Although 
a  British  subject,  he  had  spent  nearly  all  his  life  in 
Paris ;  he  knew  the  streets  and  resorts  of  Paris  like 
a  Frenchman;  he  spoke  French  like  a  Frenchman. 
I  never  heard  of  him  going  to  England.  I  never 
heard  him  express  a  desire  to  go  to  England.  His 
age  was  perhaps  fifty,  and  I  dare  say  that  he  had 
lived  in  that  studio  for  a  quarter  of  a  century,  with 
his  violoncello.  It  was  plain,  as  he  stood  there,  well 
dressed,  and  with  a  vivacious  and  yet  dreamy  eye, 
that  the  zest  of  life  had  not  waned  in  him.  He  was 
a  man  who,  now  as  much  as  ever,  took  his  pleasure 
in  seeing  and  painting  beautiful,  suave,  harmonious 
things.  And  yet  he  stood  there  unapologetic  amid 
that  ugly  and  narrow  discomfort,  with  the  sheet  of 
music  pinned  carelessly  to  an  easel,  and  lighted  by 
a  small  ill-regulated  lamp  with  a  truncated,  dirty 
chimney — sole  illumination  of  the  chamber!  His 
vivacious  and  dreamy  eye  simply  did  not  see  all  that, 
never  had  seen  it,  never  saw  anything  that  it  did  not 
care  to  see.  Nobody  ever  heard  him  multiply  words 
about  a  bad  picture,  for  example, — he  would  ignore 
it. 

With  a  gesture  of  habit  that  must  have  taken 
years  to  acquire  he  took  a  common  rose-coloured 
packet  of  caporal  cigarettes  from  the  table  by  the 
lamp  and  offered  it  to  me,  pushing  one  of  the  cig- 
arettes out  beyond  its  fellows  from  behind;  you 
knew  that  he  was  always  handling  cigarettes. 

"It's  not  really  arranged  for  'cello,"  he  mur- 
mured, gazing  at  the  music,  which  was  an  air  from 


28  PATHS  NIGHTS 

Alceste,  arranged  for  violin.  "You  see  it's  in  tHe 
treble  clef." 

"I  wish  you'd  play  it,"  I  said. 

He  sat  down  and  played  it,  because  he  was  inter- 
ested in  it.  With  his  greying  hair  and  his  fashion- 
able grey  suit,  and  his  oldest  friend,  the  brown  'cello, 
gleaming  between  his  knees,  he  was  the  centre  of  a 
small  region  of  light  in  the  gloomy  studio,  and  the 
sound  of  the  'cello  filled  the  studio.  He  had  no 
home;  but  if  he  had  had  a  home  this  would  have 
been  his  home,  and  this  his  home-life.  As  a  private 
individual,  as  distinguished  from  a  public  artist, 
this  was  what  he  had  arrived  at.  He  had  secured 
this  refuge,  and  invented  this  relaxation,  in  the  mid- 
dle of  Paris.  By  their  aid  he  could  defy  Paris. 
There  was  something  wistful  about  the  scene,  but  it 
was  also  impressive,  at  any  rate  to  me,  who  am 
otherwise  constituted.  He  was  an  exile  in  the  city 
of  exiles ;  a  characteristic  item  in  it,  though  of  a  va- 
riety exceedingly  rare.  But  he  would  have  been 
equally  an  exile  in  any  other  city.  He  had  no  con- 
sciousness of  being  an  exile,  of  being  homeless.  He 
was  above  patriotisms  and  homes.  Why,  when  he 
wanted  even  a  book  he  only  borrowed  it! 

"Well,  shall  we  go  out  and  eat?"  I  suggested,  af- 
ter listening  to  several  lovely  airs. 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "I  was  just  going.  I  don't  think 
you've  seen  my  last  etching.  Care  to?" 

I  did  care  to  see  it,  but  I  also  desired  my  dinner. 

"This  is  a  pretty  good  print,  but  I  shall  get  bet- 
ter," he  said,  holding  the  sheet  of  paper  under  the 
lamp. 


EVENING  WITH  EXILES        29 

"How  many  shall  you  print?"  I  asked. 

"Thirty." 

"You  might  put  me  down  for  one." 

"All  right.  I  think  it  will  give  you  pleasure,"  he 
said  with  impartial  and  dignified  conviction. 

After  another  ten  minutes,  we  were  out  on  the 
quay. 

"Grand  autumn  night?"  he  said  appreciatively. 
"Where  shall  we  have  the  aperitif?" 

"Aperitif!    It's  after  eight  o'clock,  man!" 

"I  think  we  shall  have  time  for  an  aperitif''  he  in- 
sisted, mildly  shocked. 

Drawing-rooms  have  their  ritual.     His  life,  too, 

had  its  ritual. 

^    ^    £    «* 

At  nearly  midnight  we  were  sitting,  three  of  us, 
in  a  cafe  of  the  Montparnasse  quarter,  possibly  the 
principal  cafe  of  the  Montparnasse  quarter. 
Neither  notorious  nor  secretly  eccentric ;  but  an  hon- 
est cafe,  in  the  sense  of  "honest"  applied  to  certain 
women.  Being  situated  close  to  a  large  railway 
terminus,  it  had  a  broad  and  an  indulgent  attitude 
towards  life.  It  would  have  received  a  frivolous 
habitue  of  the  Place  Blanche,  or  a  nun,  or  a  clergy- 
man, with  the  same  placidity.  And  although  the 
district  was  modified,  and  whole  streets,  indeed,  de- 
Parisianised  by  wandering  cohorts  of  American 
and  English  art-amateurs  of  both  sexes,  this  cafe 
remained,  while  accepting  them,  characteristically 
French.  The  cohorts  thought  they  were  seeing 
French  life  when  they  entered  it;  and  they  in  fact 
were. 


30  PARIS  NIGHTS 

This  cafe  was  the  chief  club  of  the  dis- 
trict, with  a  multitudinous  and  regular  clientele 
of  billiard-players,  card-players,  draught-players, 
newspapers  readers,  chatterers,  and  simple 
imbibers  of  bock.  Its  doors  were  continually 
a-swing,  and  one  or  the  other  of  the  two 
high-enthroned  caissieres  was  continually  lifting  her 
watchful  head  from  the  desk  to  observe  who  entered. 
Its  interior  seemed  to  penetrate  indefinitely  into  the 
hinterland  of  the  street,  and  the  effect  of  unending- 
ness  was  intensified  by  means  of  mirrors,  which  re- 
flected the  shirt-sleeved  arms  and  the  cues  of  a 
score  of  billiard-players.  Everywhere  the  same 
lively  and  expressive  and  never  ungraceful  gestures, 
between  the  marble  table-tops  below  and  the  light- 
studded  ceiling  above !  Everywhere  the  same  mur- 
mur of  confusing  pleasant  voices  broken  by  the  loud 
chant  of  waiters  intoning  orders  at  the  service-bar, 
and  by  the  setting  down  of  heavy  glass  mugs  and 
saucers  upon  marble!  Over  the  cafe,  unperceived, 
unthought  of,  were  the  six  storeys  of  a  large  house 
comprising  perhaps  twenty-five  separate  and  com- 
plete homes. 

The  third  man  at  our  table  was  another  exile,  also 
a  painter,  but  a  Scotchman.  He  had  lived  in  Paris 
since  everlasting,  but  before  that  rumour  said  that 
he  had  lived  for  several  years  immovable  at  the  little 
inn  of  a  Norman  village.  Now,  he  never  left  Paris, 
even  in  summer.  He  exhibited,  with  marked  dis- 
cretion, only  at  the  Independants.  Beyond  these 
facts,  and  the  obvious  fact  that  he  enjoyed  inde- 
pendent means,  nobody  knew  anything  about  him 


LA  DAME  DU  COMPTOIR    (Page  30) 


EVENING  WITH  EXILES        31 

save  his  opinions.  Even  his  age  was  exceedingly 
uncertain.  He  looked  forty,  but  there  were  ac- 
quaintances who  said  that  he  had  looked  forty  for 
twenty  years.  He  was  one  of  those  extremely  re- 
served men  who  talk  freely.  Of  his  hopes,  ambi- 
tions, ideals,  disappointments,  connections,  he  never 
said  a  word,  but  he  did  not  refuse  his  opinion  upon 
any  subject,  and  on  every  subject  he  had  a  definite 
opinion  which  he  would  express  very  clearly,  with  a 
sort  of  polite  curtness.  His  tendency  was  to  cyni- 
cism— too  cynical  to  be  bitter.  He  did  not  com- 
plain of  human  nature,  but  he  thoroughly  believed 
the  worst  of  it.  These  two  men,  the  'cellist  and  the 
Scotchman,  were  fast  friends ;  or  rather — as  it  might 
be  argued  in  the  strict  sense  neither  of  them  had 
a  friend — they  were  very  familiar  acquaintances, 
each  with  a  profound  respect  for  the  other's  judg- 
ment and  artistic  probity.  Further,  the  Scotch- 
man admired  his  companion  for  a  genius,  as 
everybody  did. 

They  talked  together  for  ever  and  ever,  but  not 
about  politics.  They  were  impatient  on  politics. 
Both  were  apparently  convinced  that  politics  are  an 
artificiality  imposed  upon  society  by  adventurers 
and  interferers,  and  that  if  such  people  could  be 
exterminated  politics  would  disappear.  Certainly 
neither  had  any  interest  in  the  organic  aspect  of  so- 
ciety. Their  political  desire  was  to  be  let  alone. 
Nor  did  they  often  or  for  long  "talk  bawdy" ;  after 
opinions  had  been  given  which  no  sensible  man  ever 
confides  to  more  than  two  reliable  others  at  a  time, 
the  Scotchman  would  sweep  all  that  away  as  sec- 


32  PARIS  NIGHTS 

ondary.  Nor  did  they  talk  of  the  events  of  the  day, 
unless  it  might  be  some  titillating  crime  or  mystery 
such  as  will  fill  whole  pages  of  the  newspaper  for  a 
week  together.  They  talked  of  the  arts,  all  the 
arts.  And  although  they  seemed  to  be  always  either 
in  that  cafe,  or  in  their  studios,  or  in  bed,  they  had 
the  air  of  being  mysteriously  but  genuinely  abreast 
of  every  manifestation  of  art.  And  since  all  the 
arts  are  one,  and  in  respect  to  art  they  had  a  real  at- 
titude and  real  views,  all  that  they  said  was  valuable 
suggestively,  and  their  ideas  could  not  by  any  prodi- 
gality be  exhausted.  As  a  patron  of  the  arts  even 
the  State  interested  them,  and  herein  they  showed 
glimmerings  of  a  social  sense.  In  the  intervals  of 
this  eternal  and  absorbing  "art,"  they  would  discuss 
with  admirable  restrained  gusto  the  exacerbating 
ridiculousness  of  the  cohorts  of  American  and  Eng- 
lish art-amateurs  who  infested  and  infected  the 

quarter. 

4444 

Little  bands  of  these  came  into  the  cafe  from 
time  to  time,  and  drifting  along  the  aisles  of  chairs 
would  sit  down  where  they  could  see  as  much  as  pos- 
sible with  their  candid  eyes.  The  girls,  inelegant 
and  blousy;  the  men,  inept  in  their  narrow  shrewd- 
ness: both  equally  naive,  conceited,  uncorrupted, 
and  incorruptible,  they  were  absolutely  incapable  of 
appreciating  the  refined  and  corrupt  decadence,  the 
stylistic  charm,  the  exquisite  tradition  of  the  civili- 
sation at  which  they  foolishly  stared,  as  at  a  peep- 
show.  Not  a  thousand  years  would  teach  them  the 
human  hourly  art  of  life  as  it  was  subtly  practised 


EVENING  WITH  EXILES        33 

by  the  people  whose  very  language  they  disdained 
to  learn.  When  loud  fragments  of  French  phrases, 
massacred  by  Americans  who  had  floated  on  but  not 
mingled  with  Paris  for  years,  reached  us  from  an 
Anglo-Saxon  table,  my  friends  would  seem  to  shud- 
der secretly,  ashamed  of  being  Anglo-Saxon.  And 
if  they  were  obliged  to  salute  some  uncouth  Anglo- 
Saxon  acquaintance,  and  thus  admit  their  own  un- 
Latin  origin,  their  eyes  would  say:  "Why  cannot 
these  people  be  imprisoned  at  home?  Why  are  not 
we  alone  of  Anglo-Saxons  permitted  to  inhabit 
Paris  ?" 

Occasionally  a  bore  would  complacently  present 
himself  for  sufferance.     Among  these  the  chief  was 
certainly  the  man  whose  existence  was  an  endless 
shuttle-work  between  the  various  cities  where  art  is 
or  has  been  practised,  from  Munich  to  Naples.     He 
knew  everything  about  painting,  but  he  ought  to 
have  been  a  bookmaker.     He  was  notorious  every- 
where as  the  friend  of  Strutt,  Strutt  being  the  very 
famous  and  wealthy  English  portrait-painter  of 
girls.     All  his  remarks  were  apropos  of  Tommy 
Strutt,  Tommy  Strutt — Tommy.     He  was  invari- 
ably full  of  Tommy.     And  this  evening  he  was  full 
of  Tommy's  new  German  model,  whose  portrait 
had   been    in   that    year's    Salon.     .     .     .     How 
Tommy  had  picked  her  up  in  the  streets  of  Berlin; 
how  she  was  nineteen,  and  the  rage  of  Berlin,  and 
was  asked  to  lunch  at  the  embassies,  and  had  re- 
ceived five  proposals  in  three  months:  how  she  re- 
fused to  sit  for  any  one  but  Tommy,  and  even  for 
him  would  only  sit  two  hours  a  day:  how  Tommy 


34  PARIS  NIGHTS 

looked  after  her,  and  sent  her  to  bed  at  nine-thirty 
of  a  night,  and  hired  a  woman  to  play  with  her;  and 
how  Tommy  had  once  telegraphed  to  her  that  he 
was  coming  to  Berlin,  and  how  she  had  hired  a  stu- 
dio and  got  it  painted  and  furnished  exactly  to  his 
fastidious  taste  all  on  her  own,  and  met  him  at  the 
station  and  driven  him  to  the  studio,  and  tea  was  all 
ready,  etc.;  and  how  pretty  she  was.  .  .  . 

"What's  her  figure  like?"  the  Scotchman  in- 
quired gruffly. 

"The  fact  is,"  said  Tommy's  friend,  dashed,  "I 
haven't  seen  her  posing  for  the  nude.  I've  seen  her 
posing  to  Tommy  in  a  bathing-costume  on  the  sea- 
shore, but  I  haven't  yet  seen  her  posing  for  the 
nude.  .  .  ."  He  became  reflective.  "My  boy, 
do  you  know  what  my  old  uncle  used  to  say  to  me 
down  at  the  old  place  in  Kildare,  when  I  was  a 
youngster?  My  old  uncle  used  to  say  to  me — and 
he  was  dying — 'My  boy,  I've  always  made  a  rule  of 
making  love  to  every  pretty  woman  I  met.  It's  a 
sound  rule.  But  let  me  warn  you — you  mustn't  ex- 
pect to  get  more  than  five  per  cent,  on  your  out- 
lay!" 

"The  old  place  in  Kildare!'"  murmured  the 
Scotchman,  in  a  peculiarly  significant  tone,  after 
Tommy  Strutt's  friend  had  gone;  and  this  was  the 
only  comment  on  Tommy  Strutt's  friend. 
#    #    #    ,* 

The  talk  on  art  was  resumed,  the  renowned 
Tommy  Strutt  being  reduced  to  his  proper  level  of 
the  third-rate  and  abruptly  dismissed.  One  o'clock ! 
A  quarter  past  one!  The  cafe  was  now  nearly 


EVENING  WITH  EXILES        35 

empty.  But  these  men  had  no  regard  for  time. 
Time  did  not  exist  for  them,  any  more  than  the 
structure  of  society.  They  were  not  bored,  nor 
tired.  They  conversed  with  ease,  and  with  mild 
pleasure  in  their  own  irony  and  in  the  disillusioned 
surety  of  their  judgments.  Then  I  noticed  that 
the  waiters  had  dwindled  to  two,  and  that  only  one 
cashier  was  left  enthroned  behind  the  bar;  somewhat 
later,  she  too  had  actually  gone!  Both  had  at 
length  rejoined  their  families,  if  any.  The  idea  was 
startling  that  these  prim  and  neat  and  mechanically 
smiling  women  were  human,  had  private  relations,  a 
private  life,  a  bed,  a  wardrobe.  All  over  Paris,  all 
day,  every  day,  they  sit  and  estimate  the  contents  of 
trays,  which  waiters  present  to  their  practised  gaze 
for  an  instant  only,  and  receive  the  value  of  the 
drinks  in  bone  discs,  and  write  down  columns  of 
figures  in  long  ledgers.  They  never  take  exercise, 
nor  see  the  sun;  they  even  eat  in  the  cafe.  Mystic 
careers!  ...  A  quarter  to  two.  Now  the 
chairs  had  been  brought  in  from  the  terrace,  and 
there  was  only  one  waiter,  and  no  other  customer 
that  I  could  see.  The  waiter,  his  face  nearly  as  pale 
as  his  apron,  eyed  us  with  patient  and  bland  resig- 
nation, sure  from  his  deep  knowledge  of  human 
habits  that  sooner  or  later  we  should  in  fact  depart, 
and  well  inured  to  the  great  Parisian  principle  that 
a  cafe  exists  for  the  convenience  of  its  habitues.  I 
was  uneasy:  I  was  even  aware  of  guiltiness;  but  not 
my  friends. 

Then  a  face  looked  in  at  the  doorway,  as  if  re- 
connoitring, and  hesitated. 


36 


PARIS  NIGHTS 


"By  Jove!"  said  the  violoncellist.  "There's  the 
Mahatma  back  again!  Oh!  He's  seen  us!" 

The  peering  face  preceded  a  sloping  body  into 
the  cafe,  and  I  was  introduced  to  a  man  whose  ex- 
cellent poems  I  had  read  in  a  limited  edition.  He 
was  wearing  a  heavily  jewelled  red  waistcoat,  and 
the  largest  ring  I  ever  saw  on  a  human  hand.  He 
sat  down.  The  waiter  took  his  order  and  intoned 
it  in  front  of  the  service-bar,  proving  that  another 
fellow-creature  was  hidden  there  awaiting  our  pleas- 
ure. When  the  Mahatma's  glass  was  brought,  the 
Scotchman  suddenly  demanded  from  the  waiter  the 
total  of  our  modest  consumption,  and  paid  it.  The 
Mahatma  said  that  he  had  arrived  that  evening  di- 
rect from  the  Himalayas,  and  that  he  had  been 
made  or  ordained  a  "khan"  in  the  East.  Without 
any  preface  he  began  to  talk  supernaturally.  As 
he  had  known  Aubrey  Beardsley,  I  referred  to  the 
rumour  that  Beardsley  had  several  times  been  seen 
abroad  in  London  after  his  alleged  death. 

"That's  nothing,"  he  said  quickly.  "I  know  a 
man  who  saw  and  spoke  to  Oscar  Wilde  in  the 
Pyrenees  at  the  very  time  when  Oscar  was  in  prison 
in  England." 

"Who  was  the  man?"  I  inquired. 

He  paused.     "Myself,"  he  said,  in  a  low  tone. 

"Shall  we  go  ?"  The  Scotchman,  faintly  smiling, 
embraced  his  friend  and  me  in  the  question. 

We  went,  leaving  the  Mahatma  bent  in  solitude 
over  his  glass.  The  waiter  was  obviously  saying 
to  himself:  "It  was  inevitable  that  they  should  ulti- 


EVENING  WITH  EXILES        37 

mately  go,  and  they  have  gone."     We  had  sat  for 
four  hours. 

Outside,  cabs  were  still  rolling  to  and  fro.  After 
cheerful  casual  good-nights,  we  got  indolently  into 
three  separate  cabs,  and  went  our  easy  ways.  I 
saw  in  my  imagination  the  vista  of  the  thousands  of 
similar  nights  which  my  friends  had  spent,  and  the 
vista  of  the  thousands  of  similar  nights  which  they 
would  yet  spend.  And  the  sight  was  majestic,  tre- 
mendous. 


IV 

BOURGEOIS 

You  could  smell  money  long  before  you  arrived 
at  the  double  portals  of  the  flat  on  the  second  floor. 
The  public  staircase  was  heated;  it  mounted  broadly 
upwards  and  upwards  in  a  very  easy  slope,  and  at 
each  spacious  landing  was  the  statue  of  some 
draped  woman  holding  aloft  a  lamp  which  threw 
light  on  an  endless  carpet,  and  on  marble  mosaics. 
There  was,  indeed,  a  lift;  but  who  could  refuse  the 
majestic  invitation  of  the  staircase,  deserted,  silent, 
and  mysterious?  The  bell  would  give  but  one  ting, 
and  always  the  same  ting;  it  was  not  an  electric  de- 
vice by  which  the  temperament  and  mood  of  the  in- 
truder on  the  mat  are  accurately  and  instantly  sig- 
nalled to  the  interior. 

The  door  was  opened  by  the  Tante  herself — per- 
haps she  had  been  crossing  from  one  room  to  an- 
other— and  I  came  into  the  large  entrance-hall, 
which  even  on  the  brightest  summer  day  was  as  ob- 
scure as  a  crypt,  and  which  the  architect  had  ap- 
parently meant  to  be  appreciated  only  after  night- 
fall. A  vast  armoire  and  a  vast  hat-and-coat  stand 
were  features  of  it. 

"My  niece  occupies  herself  with  the  children," 
the  Tante  half -whispered,  as  she  took  me  into  the 
drawing-room.  And  in  her  voice  were  mingled 


BOURGEOIS  39 

pride,  affection,  and  also  a  certain  conspiratorial 
quality,  as  though  the  mysteries  of  putting  a  little 
boy  and  a  little  girl  to  bed  were  at  once  religious 
and  delicious,  and  must  not  be  disturbed  by  loud 
tones  even  afar  off. 

She  was  a  stout  woman  of  seventy,  dressed  in 
black  with  a  ruching  of  white  at  the  neck  and  the 
wrists;  very  erect  and  active;  her  hair  not  yet  en- 
tirely grey;  an  aquiline  eye.  The  soft,  fresh  white 
frill  at  the  wrist  made  a  charming  contrast  with  the 
experienced  and  aged  hand.  She  had  been  a  widow 
for  very  many  years,  and  during  all  those  years  she 
had  matched  herself  against  the  world,  her  weapons 
being  a  considerable  and  secure  income,  and  a  quite 
exceptional  natural  shrewdness.  The  result  had 
left  her  handsomely  the  victor.  She  had  an  im- 
mense but  justifiable  confidence  in  her  own  judg- 
ment and  sagacity;  her  interest  in  the  spectacle  of 
existence  was  unabated,  and  a  long  and  passionate 
study  of  human  nature  had  not  embittered  her. 
She  was  a  realist,  and  a  caustic  realist,  but  she  could 
excuse;  she  could  accept  man  as  she  knew  him  in  his 
turpitude.  Her  chief  joys  were  to  arrange  and  re- 
arrange her  "reserves"  of  domestic  goods,  to  dis- 
cuss character,  and  to  indicate  to  a  later  generation, 
out  of  her  terrific  experience  of  Parisian  life,  the 
best  methods  of  defence  against  the  average  trades- 
man and  the  average  menial.  So  seldom  did  any- 
body get  the  better  of  her  that,  when  the  unusual 
did  occur,  she  could  afford  to  admit  the  fact  with  a 
liberal  laugh:  "II  m'a  roulee,  celui-la!  II  a  rouU  la 
vieiller 


40  PARIS  NIGHTS 

In  a  corner  of  the  drawing-room  she  resumed  the 
topic,  always  interesting  to  her,  of  my  adventures 
among  charwomen,  generously  instructing  me  the 
whole  time  in  a  hundred  ways.  And  when  the  con- 
versation dropped  she  would  sigh  and  go  back  to 
something  previously  said,  and  repeat  it.  "So  she 
polishes  the  door-knobs  every  day!  Well,  that  is  a 
quality,  at  least."  Then  my  hostess  (her  niece-in- 
law)  came  blandly  in:  a  woman  of  thirty-five,  also 
in  mourning,  with  a  pale,  powdered  face  and  golden 
hair;  benevolent  and  calm,  elegant,  but  with  the 
elegance  of  a  confessed  mother. 

"Ca  y  est?"  asked  the  Tante,  meaning — were  the 
infants  at  last  couched? 

"Ca  y  est,"  said  the  mother,  with  triumph,  with 
relief,  and  yet  also  with  a  little  regret. 

There  was  a  nurse,  but  in  practice  she  was  only 
an  under-nurse;  the  head-nurse  was  the  mother. 

"Eh  bien,  mon  petit  Bennett"  the  mother  began, 
in  a  new  tone,  as  if  to  indicate  that  she  was  no  longer 
a  mother,  but  a  Parisienne,  frivolous  and  challeng- 
ing, "what  there  that  is  new?" 

"He  is  there,"  said  the  Tante,  interrupting. 

We  heard  the  noise  of  the  front-door,  and  by  a 
common  instinct  we  all  rose  and  went  into  the  hall. 

£     *      £      £ 

The  master  of  the  home  arrived.  He  entered  like 
a  gust  of  wind,  and  Marthe,  the  thin  old  parlour- 
maid, who  had  evidently  been  lying  in  wait  for  him, 
started  back  in  alarm,  but  alarm  half -simulated. 
My  host,  about  the  same  age  as  his  wife,  was  a  doc- 
tor, specialising  in  the  diseases  of  women  and  chil- 


A  BY-PRODUCT  OF  RUSSIAN   POLITICS    (Page  77) 


BOURGEOIS  41 

dren,  and  he  had  his  cabinet  on  the  ground-floor  of 
the  same  house.  He  was  late,  he  was  impatient  to 
regain  his  hearth,  he  was  proud  of  his  industry;  and 
the  simple,  instinctive  joy  of  life  sparkled  in  his  eye. 

"Marie,"  he  cried  to  his  wife.  "I  love  thee!" 
And  kissed  her  furiously  on  both  cheeks. 

"It  is  well,"  she  responded,  calmly  smiling,  with  a 
sort  of  flirtatious  condescension. 

"I  tell  thee  I  love  thee!"  he  insisted,  with  his 
hands  on  her  shoulders.  "Tell  me  that  thou  lovest 
me!" 

"I  love  thee,"  she  said  calmly. 

"It  is  very  well!"  he  said,  and  swinging  round  to 
Marthe,  giving  her  his  hat.  "Marthe,  I  love  you." 
And  he  caught  her  a  smack  on  the  shoulder. 

"Monsieur  hurts  me,"  the  spinster  protested. 

"Go  then!  Go  then!"  said  the  Tante,  as  the  be- 
loved nephew  directed  his  assault  upon  her  in  turn. 
She  was  grimly  proud  of  him.  He  flattered  her 
eye,  for,  even  at  his  loosest,  he  had  a  professional 
distinction  of  deportment  which  her  long-deceased 
husband,  a  wholesale  tradesman,  had  probably 
lacked. 

"Well,  my  old  one,"  the  host  grasped  my  hand 
once  more,  "you  cannot  figure  to  yourself  how  it 
gives  me  pleasure  to  have  you  here!"  His  voice 
was  rich  with  emotion. 

This  man  had  the  genius  of  friendship  in  a  very 
high  degree.  His  delight  in  the  society  of  his 
friends  was  so  intense  and  so  candid  that  only  the 
most  inordinately  conceited  among  them  could  have 
failed  to  be  aware  of  an  uncomfortable  grave  sense 


42  PARIS  NIGHTS 

of  unworthiness,  could  have  failed  to  say  to  them- 
selves fearfully:  "He  will  find  me  out  one  day!" 

*     4    jt     4 

The  dining-room  was  large,  and  massively  fur- 
nished, and  lighted  by  one  immense  shaded  lamp 
that  hung  low  over  the  table.  Among  the  heavily 
framed  pictures  was  a  magnificent  Jules  Dupre, 
belonging  to  the  Tante.  She  had  picked  it  up  long 
ago  at  a  sale  for  something  like  ten  thousand  francs, 
apparently  while  the  dealers  were  looking  the  other 
way.  It  was  a  known  picture,  and  one  of  the 
Tante's  satisfactions  was  that  some  dealer  or  other 
was  always  trying  to  relieve  her  of  it,  without  the 
slightest  success.  She  had  a  story,  too,  that  on  the 
day  after  the  sale  a  Duchesse  who  affected  Dupres 
had  sent  her  footman  offering  to  take  the  picture 
off  her  at  a  ten  per  cent,  increase  because  it  would 
make  a  pair  with  another  magnificent  Dupre  al- 
ready owned  by  the  Duchesse.  "Eh,  well,"  the 
widow  of  the  tradesman  had  said  to  the  footman, 
"you  will  tell  Madame  la  Duchesse  that  if  she  wants 
my  picture  she  had  better  come  herself  and  inquire 
about  it."  In  the  flat,  the  Dupre  was  one  of  the 
great  pictures  of  the  world.  Safer  to  sneeze  at  the 
Venus  de  Milo  than  at  that  picture !  Another  fa- 
vourite picture,  also  the  property  of  Tante,  was  one 
by  a  living  and  super-modern  painter,  an  acquaint- 
ance of  another  nephew  of  hers.  I  do  not  think  she 
much  cared  for  it,  or  that  she  cared  much  for  any 
pictures.  She  had  bought  it  by  a  benevolent  ca- 
price. "What  would  you?  He  had  not  the  sou. 
C'est  un  trh  gentil  garpon,  of  a  great  talent,  but  he 


BOURGEOIS  43 

was  eating  all  his  money  with  women — with  those 
birds  that  you  know.  And  one  day  it  may  be  worth 
its  price." 

What  always  interested  me  most  in  the  furniture 
of  that  dining-room  was  not  the  pictures,  nor  the 
ample  plate,  nor  the  edifices  called  sideboards,  etc., 
but  the  apron  of  Marthe,  who  served.  A  plain,  un- 
starched, white  apron,  without  a  bib — an  apron  that 
no  English  parlourmaid  would  have  deigned  to 
wear ;  but  of  such  fine  linen,  and  all  the  exactly  geo- 
metric creases  of  its  folding  visible  to  the  eye  as 
Marthe  passed  round  and  round  our  four  chairs! 
Whenever  I  saw  that  apron  I  could  see  linen-chests, 
and  endless  supplies  of  linen,  and  Tante  and  Marthe 
fussing  over  them  on  quiet  afternoons.  And  it 
went  so  well  with  her  dark-blue  shiny  frock! 
When  Tante  had  joined  her  nephew's  household  she 
had  brought  with  her  Marthe,  already  old  in  her 
service.  These  two  women  were  devoted  to  each 
other,  each  in  her  own  way.  "Arrive  then,  with 
that  sauce,  vieille  folle!"  Tante  would  command; 
and  Marthe,  pursing  her  lips,  would  defend  herself 
with  a  "Mais  madame — !"  There  was  no  high  in- 
visible wall  between  Marthe  and  her  employers. 
One  was  not  worried,  as  one  would  have  been  in 
England,  by  the  operation  of  the  detestable  and 
barbaric  theory  that  Marthe  was  an  automaton,  in- 
accessible to  human  emotions.  I  remember  seeing 
in  the  work-basket  of  the  wife  of  a  wealthy  English 
socialist  a  little  manual  of  advice  to  domestic  serv- 
ants upon  their  deportment,  and  I  remember  this: 
"Learn  to  control  your  voice,  and  always  speak  in 


44  PARIS  NIGHTS 

a  low  voice.  Never  show  by  your  demeanour  that 
you  have  heard  any  remark  which  is  not  addressed 
to  you."  I  wonder  what  Marthe,  who  had  never 
worn  a  cap,  nor  perhaps  seen  one,  would  have 
thought  of  the  manual,  which  possibly  was  written 
by  a  distressed  gentlewoman  in  order  to  earn  a  few 
shillings.  Martha  could  smile.  She  could  even 
laugh  and  answer  back — but  within  limits.  We 
had  not  to  pretend  that  Marthe  consisted  merely 
of  two  ministering  hands  animated  by  a  brain,  but 
without  a  soul.  In  France  a  servant  works  longer 
and  harder  than  in  England,  but  she  is  permitted 
the  constant  use  of  a  soul. 

A  simple  but  an  expensive  dinner,  for  these  peo- 
ple were  the  kind  of  people  that,  desiring  only  the 
best,  were  in  a  position  to  see  that  they  had  it,  and 
accepted  the  cost  as  a  matter  of  course.  Moreover, 
they  knew  what  the  best  was,  especially  the  Tante. 
They  knew  how  to  buy.  The  chief  dish  was  just 
steak.  But  what  steak!  What  a  thickness  of  steak 
and  what  tenderness!  A  whole  cow  had  lived  un- 
der the  most  approved  conditions,  and  died  a  vio- 
lent death,  and  the  very  essence  of  the  excuse  for  it 
all  lay  on  a  blue  and  white  dish  in  front  of  the  host- 
ess. Cost  according!  Steak;  but  better  steak  could 
not  be  had  in  the  world!  And  the  consciousness  of 
this  fact  was  on  the  calm  benignant  face  of  the  host- 
ess and  on  the  vivacious  ironic  face  of  the  Tante. 
So  with  the  fruits  of  the  earth,  so  with  the  wine. 
And  the  simple,  straightforward  distribution  of  the 
viands  seemed  to  suit  well  their  character.  Into 
that  flat  there  had  not  yet  penetrated  the  grand 


BOURGEOIS  45 

modern  principle  that  the  act  of  carving  is  an  ob- 
scene act,  an  act  to  be  done  shamefully  in  secret,  be- 
hind the  backs  of  the  delicate  impressionable.  No ! 
The  dish  of  steak  was  planted  directly  in  front  of 
the  hostess,  under  her  very  nose,  and  beyond  the 
dish  a  pile  of  four  plates ;  and,  brazenly  brandishing 
her  implements,  the  Parisienne  herself  cut  the  tit- 
bits out  of  the  tit-bit,  and  deposited  them  on  plate 
after  plate,  which  either  Marthe  took  or  we  took 
ourselves,  at  hazard.  Further,  there  was  no  embar- 
rassment of  multitudinous  assorted  knives  and  forks 
and  spoons.  With  each  course  the  diner  received 
the  tools  necessary  for  that  course.  Between 
courses,  if  he  wanted  a  toy  for  his  fingers,  he  had 
to  be  content  with  a  crust. 

During  the  meal  the  conversation  constantly  re- 
verted with  pleasure  to  the  question  of  food;  it  was 
diversified  by  expressions  of  the  host's  joy  in  his 
home,  and  the  beings  therein ;  and  for  the  rest  it  did 
not  ascend  higher  than  heterogeneous  personal  gos- 
sip,— "unstitched,"  as  the  French  say. 
^  ^  «*  # 

Instead  of  going  into  the  drawing-room,  we  went 
through  a  bed-chamber,  into  a  small  room  at  the 
back.  By  taking  a  circuitous  service-passage,  and 
infringing  on  the  kitchen,  we  might  ultimately  have 
arrived  at  that  room  without  passing  through  the 
bedchamber;  but  the  proper,  the  ceremonious  way 
to  it  was  through  the  bedchamber.  This  trifling  de- 
tail illuminates  the  methods  of  the  French  architect 
even  when  he  is  building  expensively — methods 
which  persist  to  the  present  hour.  Admirable  at 


46  PARIS  NIGHTS 

trades,  he  is  an  execrable  planner,  wasteful  and 
maladroit,  as  may  be  seen  even  in  the  most  impor- 
tant public  buildings  in  Paris — such  as  the  Town 
Hall.  In  arranging  the  "disposition"  of  flats,  he 
exhausts  himself  on  the  principal  apartments,  and 
then,  fatigued,  lets  the  others  struggle  as  best  they 
may  for  light  and  air  and  access  in  the  odd  corners 
of  space  which  remain.  Of  course,  he  is  strong  in 
the  sympathy  of  his  clients.  It  is  a  wide  question 
of  manners,  stretching  from  the  finest  palaces  of 
France  down  to  the  labyrinthine  coverts  of  indus- 
trialism. Up  to  twenty-five  years  ago,  architects 
simply  did  not  consider  the  factors  of  either  light 
or  ventilation.  I  have  myself  lived  in  a  flat,  in  one 
of  the  best  streets  of  central  Paris,  of  which  none  of 
the  eight  windows  could  possibly  at  any  period  of 
the  year  receive  a  single  direct  gleam  of  sunlight. 
Up  to  twenty-five  years  ago,  nobody  had  discovered 
a  reason  why,  in  a  domestic  interior,  a  bedroom 
should  riot  be  a  highroad.  .  .  . 

Visualise  the  magnificent  straight  boulevard,  full 
of  the  beautiful  horizontal  glidings  of  trams  and  au- 
tomobiles; the  lofty  and  stylistic  frontages;  the 
great  carved  doors  of  the  house ;  the  quasi-Oriental 
entrance  and  courtyard,  shut  in  from  the  fracas  of 
the  street;  the  monumental  staircase;  the  spacious 
and  even  splendid  dining-room;  and  then  the  bed- 
room opening  directly  off  it;  and  then  the  still 
smaller  sitting-room  opening  directly  off  that;  and 
us  there — the  ebullient  doctor,  his  elegant  and  calm 
wife,  the  Tante  (on  a  small  chair) ,  and  myself— 
sitting  round  a  lamp  amid  a  miscellany  of  book- 


BOURGEOIS  47 

cases  and  oddments.     This  was  the  room  that  the 
doctor  preferred  of  an  evening.     He  would  say, 
joyously:  "C'est  le  decor  home!" 
#    *    $    * 

A  cousin  of  the  host  was  announced ;  and  his  rela- 
tives and  I  smiled  archly,  with  affectionate  malice, 
before  he  came  in;  for  it  was  notorious  that  this 
cousin,  an  architect  by  profession,  and  a  bachelor  of 
forty  years  standing,  had  a  few  days  earlier  sol- 
emnly and  definitely  "broken"  with  his  petite  amie. 
I  knew  it.  Everybody  knew  it  within  the  wide  fam- 
ily-radius. It  was  one  of  those  things  that  "knew 
themselves."  This  call  was  itself  a  proof  that  the 
cousin  had  dragged  his  anchor.  Moreover,  he  em- 
braced his  aunt  with  a  certain  self -consciousness. 
He  was  a  tall,  dark-bearded  man,  well  dressed 
in  a  dark-grey  suit — a  good  specimen  of  French  tail- 
oring, but  a  French  tailor  cannot  use  an  iron  and  he 
cannot  "roll"  a  collar.  A  rather  melancholy  and 
secretive  and  flaccid  man,  but  somewhat  hardened 
and  strengthened  by  the  lifelong  use  of  a  private 
fortune.  They  all  had  money — money  of  their 
own,  independently  of  earned  money;  the  wife  had 
money — and  I  do  not  think  that  it  occurred  to  any 
of  them  to  live  up  to  his  or  her  income;  their  re- 
sources were  always  increasing,  and  the  reserves  that 
the  united  family  could  have  brought  up  to  face  a 
calamity  must  have  been  formidable.  None  of 
them  had  ever  been  worried  about  money,  and  by 
reason  of  their  financial  ideals  they  were  far  more 
solid  than  a  London  family  receiving,  but  spending, 
thrice  their  income. 


48  PARIS  NIGHTS 

Marthe  came  with  another  coffee  cup,  and  the 
cousin,  when  the  hostess  had  filled  it,  set  it  down 
to  go  cold,  after  the  French  manner. 

"Well,  my  boy,"  said  Tante,  whose  ancient  eyes 
were  sparkling  with  eagerness.  "By  what  appears, 
thou  art  a  widower  since  several  days." 

"How  a  widower?" 

"Yes,"  said  the  host,  "it  appears  that  thou  art 
a  widower."  And  added  enthusiastically:  "I  am 
pretty  content  to  see  thee,  my  old  one." 

The  hostess  smiled  at  the  widower  with  sympa- 
thetic indulgence. 

"Who  has  told  you?" 

"What !    Who  has  told  us  ?    All  Paris  knows  it !" 

"Well,"  said  the  cousin,  looking  at  the  carpet  and 
apparently  communing  with  himself — he  always  had 
an  air  of  self-communing,  "I  suppose  it's  true!" 
He  drank  the  tenth  of  a  teaspoonf ul  of  coffee. 

"Eh,  well,  my  friend,"  the  Tante  commented. 
"I  do  not  know  if  thou  hast  done  well.  That  did 
not  cost  thee  too  dear,  and  she  had  a  good-hearted 
face."  Tante  spoke  with  an  air  of  special  in- 
timacy, because  she  and  the  cousin  had  kept  house 
together  for  some  years  at  one  period. 

"Thou  hast  seen  her,  Tante?"  the  hostess  asked, 
surprised  a  little  out  of  the  calm  in  which  she  was 
crocheting. 

"Have  I  seen  her?  I  believe  it  well!  I  caught 
them  together  once  when  I  was  driving  in  the 
Bois." 

"That  was  Antoinette,"  said  the  cousin. 

"It  was  not  Antoinette,"  said  the  Tante.     "And 


BOURGEOIS  49 

thou  hast  no  need  to  say  it.  Thou  quittedst  An- 
toinette in  '96,  before  I  had  begun  to  hire  that  car- 
riage. I  recall  it  to  myself  perfectly." 

"I  suppose  now  it  will  be  the  grand  spree,"  said 
the  hostess,  "during  several  months." 

"The  grand  spree!"  Tante  broke  in  caustically. 
"Have  no  fear.  The  grand  spree — that  is  not  his 
kind.  It  is  not  he  who  will  scatter  his  money  with 
those  birds.  He  is  not  so  stupid  as  that."  She 
laughed  drily. 

"Is  she  rosse,  the  Tante,  all  the  same !"  the  host, 
flowing  over  with  good  nature,  comforted  his 
cousin. 

Then  Marthe  entered  again: 

"The  children  demand  monsieur." 

The  host  bounded  up  from  his  chair. 

"What !  The  children  demand  monsieur !"  he  ex- 
ploded. "At  nine  o'clock!  It  is  not  possible  that 
they  are  not  asleep!" 

"They  say  that  monsieur  promised  to  return  to 
them  after  dinner." 

"It  is  true!"  he  admitted,  with  a  gesture  of  dis- 
covery. "It  is  true!" 

"I  pray  thee,"  said  the  mother.  "Go  at  once. 
And  do  not  excite  them." 

"I  think  I'll  go  with  you,"  I  said. 

"My  little  Bennett,"  the  mother  leaned  towards 
me,  "I  supplicate  you — at  this  hour — " 

"But  naturally  he  will  come  with  me!"  the  host 
cried  obstreperously. 

We  went,  down  a  long  narrow  passage.  There 
they  were  in  their  beds,  the  children,  in  a  small  bed- 


50  PARIS  NIGHTS 

room  divided  into  two  by  a  low  screen  of  ribbed 
glass,  the  boy  on  one  side  and  the  girl  on  the  other. 
The  window  gave  on  to  a  small  subsidiary  court- 
yard. Through  the  half-drawn  curtains  the  lighted 
windows  of  rooms  opposite  could  be  discerned,  ris- 
ing, storey  after  storey,  up  out  of  sight.  A  night- 
light  burned  on  a  table.  The  nurse  stood  apart,  at 
the  door.  The  children  were  lively,  but  pale. 
They  had  begun  to  go  to  school,  and,  except  the 
journey  to  and  from  school,  they  seemed  to  have  al- 
most no  outdoor  exercise.  No  garden  was  theirs. 
The  hall  and  the  passages  were  their  sole  play- 
ground. And  all  the  best  part  of  their  lives  was 
passed  between  walls  in  a  habitation  twenty-five  or 
thirty  feet  above  ground,  in  the  middle  of  Paris. 
Yet  they  were  very  well.  The  doctor  did  not  romp 
with  them.  No  1  He  simply  and  candidly  caressed 
them,  girl  and  boy,  in  turn,  calling  them  passion- 
ately by  the  most  beautiful  names,  burying  his  head 
in  the  bedclothes,  and  fondling  their  wild  hair.  He 
then  entreated  them,  with  genuine  humility,  to  com- 
pose themselves  for  sleep,  and  parted  last  from  the 
girl. 

"She  is  exquisite — exquisite!"  he  murmured  to  me 
ecstatically,  as  we  returned  up  the  passage  from 
this  excursion. 

She  was. 

*     4     4     jl 

In  the  small  sitting-room  the  cousin  was  offering 
to  the  Tante  some  information  of  a  political  nature. 
The  Tante  kept  a  judicious  eye  on  everything  in 
Paris. 


BOURGEOIS  51 

"What!"  The  host  protested  vociferously.  "He 
is  again  in  his  politics!  Cousin,  I  supplicate 
thee— " 

A  good  deal  of  supplication  went  on  there.  The 
host  did  succeed  in  stopping  politics.  With  all  the 
weight  of  his  vivacious  good-nature  he  hore  poli- 
tics down.  The  fact  was,  he  had  a  real  objection  to 
politics,  having  convinced  himself  that  they  were 
permanently  unclean  in  France.  It  was  not  the 
measures  that  he  objected  to,  but  the  men — all  of 
them  with  scarcely  an  exception — as  cynical  adven- 
turers. On  this  point  he  was  passionate.  Politics 
were  incurably  futile,  horribly  assommcmt.  He 
would  not  willingly  allow  them  to  soil  his  hearth. 

"What  hast  thou  done  lately?"  he  asked  of  the 
cousin,  changing  the  subject. 

And  the  talk  veered  to  public  amusements.  The 
cousin  had  been  "distracting  himself"  amid  his  sen- 
timental misadventures,  by  much  theatre-going. 
They  all,  except  the  Tante,  went  very  regularly  to 
the  theatres  and  to  the  operas.  And  not  only  that, 
but  to  concerts,  exhibitions,  picture-shows,  services 
in  the  big  churches,  and  every  kind  of  diversion  fre- 
quented by  people  in  easy  circumstances  and  by  art- 
ists. There  was  little  that  they  missed.  They  ex- 
hibited no  special  taste  or  knowledge  in  any  art,  but 
leaned  generally  to  the  best  among  that  which  was 
merely  fashionable.  They  took  seriously  nearly 
every  craftsman  who,  while  succeeding,  kept  his 
dignity  and  refrained  from  being  a  mountebank. 
Thus,  they  were  convinced  that  dramatists  like  Ed- 
mond  Rostand  and  Henri  Lavedan,  actors  and 


52  PARIS  NIGHTS 

actresses  like  Le  Bargy  and  Cecile  Sorel,  painters 
like  Edouard  Detaille  and  La  Gandara,  composers 
like  Massenet  and  Charpentier,  critics  like  Adolphe 
Brisson  and  Francis  Chevassu,  novelists  like  Rene 
Bazin  and  Daniel  Lesueur,  poets  like  Jean  Riche- 
pin  and  Abel  Bonnard,  were  original  and  first- 
class,  and  genuinely  important  in  the  history  of* 
their  respective  arts.  On  the  other  hand  their 
attitude  towards  the  real  innovators  and  shapers  of 
the  future  was  timidly,  but  honestly,  antipathetic. 
And  they  could  not,  despite  any  theorising  to  the 
contrary,  bring  themselves  to  take  quite  seriously 
any  artist  who  had  not  been  consecrated  by  public 
approval.  With  the  most  charming  grace  they 
would  submit  to  be  teased  about  this,  but  it  would 
have  been  impossible  to  tease  them  out  of  it.  And 
there  was  always  a  slight  uneasiness  in  the  air  when 
they  and  I  came  to  grips  in  the  discussion  of  art. 
I  could  almost  hear  the  shrewd  Tante  saying  to 
herself:  "What  a  pity  this  otherwise  sane  and 
safe  young  man  is  an  artist!" 

"Figure  to  yourself,"  the  host  would  answer  me 
with  an  adorable,  affectionate  mien  of  apology, 
when  I  asked  his  opinion  of  a  new  work  by  Mau- 
rice Ravel,  heard  on  a  Sunday  afternoon,  "Figure 
to  yourself  that  we  scarcely  liked  it." 

And  with  the  same  mien,  of  a  very  fashionable 
comedy  in  which  Lavedan,  Le  Bargy,  and  Julia 
Bartet  had  combined  to  create  a  terrific  success  at 
the  Theatre  Fran9ais: 

"Figure  to  yourself,  it  was  truly  very  nice,  after 
all!  Of  course  one  might  say.  .  .  ." 


BOURGEOIS  53 

The  truth  was,  it  had  carried  them  off  their  feet. 

Upon  my  soul  I  think  I  liked  them  the  better 
for  it  all.  And,  in  talking  to  them,  I  understood 
a  little  better  the  real  and  solid  basis  upon  which 
rests  all  that  overwhelming,  complex,  expensive  ap- 
paratus of  artistic  diversions  laid  out  for  the  public 
within  a  mile  radius  of  the  Place  de  1'Opera.  There 
is  a  public,  a  genuine  public,  which  desires  ardently 
to  be  amused  and  which  will  handsomely  put  down 
the  money  for  its  amusement.  And  it  is  never 
tired,  never  satiated.  The  artist,  who  seldom  pays, 
is  apt  to  wonder  if  any  considerable  body  of  per- 
sons pay,  is  apt  to  regard  the  commercial  continu- 
ance of  art  as  a  sort  of  inexplicable  miracle.  But 
these  people  paid.  They  always  paid,  and  richly. 
And  there  were  whole  streets  of  large  houses  full  of 
other  people  who  shared  their  tastes  and  their  habits, 
if  not  their  extreme  attractiveness. 
<*  ji  «*  $ 

I  wondered  where  we  should  be  without  them,  we 
artists,  as  I  took  leave  of  them  at  something  after 
midnight.  My  good  friend,  the  melancholy  cousin, 
had  departed.  Tante  had  gone  to  bed,  though  she 
protested  she  never  slept.  We  had  been  drinking 
weak  tea  as  we  wandered  about  the  dining-room. 
And  now  I,  obdurate  against  the  host's  supplica- 
tions not  to  desert  them  so  early,  was  departing 
too.  At  the  door  the  hostess  lighted  a  little  taper, 
and  gave  it  to  me.  And  when  the  door  was  opened 
they  moderated  their  caressing  voices;  for  a  dozen 
other  domestic  interiors,  each  intricate  and  com- 
plete, gave  on  the  resounding  staircase.  And  with 


54  PARIS  NIGHTS 

my  little  taper  I  descended  through  the  silence  and 
the  darkness  of  the  staircase.  And  at  the  bottom  I 
halted  in  the  black  entrance  way,  and  summoned 
the  concierge  out  of  his  sleep  to  release  the  catch 
of  the  small  door  within  the  great  portals.  There 
was  a  responsive  click  immediately,  and  in  the  black- 
ness a  sudden  gleam  from  the  boulevard.  The  con- 
cierge and  his  wife,  living  for  ever  sunless  in  a  room 
and  a  half  beneath  all  those  other  interiors,  were 
throughout  the  night  at  the  mercy  of  a  call,  mine 
or  another's.  "Curious  existence!"  I  thought,  as 
my  shutting  of  the  door  echoed  about  the  building, 
and  I  stepped  into  the  illumination  of  the  boule- 
vard. "The  concierge  is  necessary  to  them.  And 
without  the  equivalent  of  such  as  they,  such  as  I 
could  not  possess  even  a  decent  overcoat  I"  On  the 
facade  of  the  house  every  outer  casement  was  shut. 
Not  a  sign  of  life  in  it. 


CAUSE  Ci5L]&BRE 

Quite  early  in  the  winter  evening,  before  the  light 
had  died  out  of  the  sky,  central  Paris  was  beginning 
to  be  pleasurably  excited.  The  aspect  of  the 
streets  and  of  the  cafes  showed  that.  One  saw  it 
and  heard  it  in  the  gestures  and  tones  of  the  people ; 
one  had  a  proof  of  it  in  oneself.  The  whole  city 
was  in  a  state  of  delightful  anxiety;  and  it  was 
happy  because  the  result  of  the  night,  whatever  fate 
chose  to  decide,  could  not  fail  to  be  amusing  and 
even  thrilling.  All  the  thoroughfares  converging 
upon  the  small  and  crowded  island  which  is  the  his- 
torical kernel  of  Paris,  were  busier  and  livelier  than 
usual.  In  particular,  automobiles  thronged — 
the  largest,  glossiest,  and  most  silent  automo- 
biles, whose  horns  were  orchestras — automo- 
biles which  vied  with  motor-omnibuses  for  im- 
posingness  and  moved  forward  with  the  smooth 
majesty  of  trains.  There  came  a  point,  near 
the  twinkling  bridges,  where  progress  was  im- 
possible, where  an  impalpable  obstacle  inter- 
vened, and  vehicles  stood  arrested  in  long  treble 
files,  atnd  mysterious  words  were  passed  backwards 
from  driver  to  driver.  But  nobody  seemed  to  mind; 
nobody  seemed  impatient;  for  it  was  something  to 
be  thus  definitely  and  materially  a  part  of  the  organ- 


56  PARIS  NIGHTS 

ised  excitement.  Hundreds  of  clever  resourceful 
persons  had  had  the  idea  of  avoiding  the  main  ave- 
nues, and  creeping  up  unobserved  to  the  centre  of 
attraction  by  the  little  streets.  So  that  all  these 
ancient,  narrow,  dark  lanes  that  thread  between  high 
and  picturesque  architectures  were  busy  with  auto- 
mobiles and  carriages.  And  in  the  gloom  one 
might  see  shooting  round  a  corner  the  brilliant  in- 
terior of  an  automobile,  with  electric  light  and 
flowers  and  a  pet  dog,  and  a  couple  of  extremely 
fashionable  young  women  in  it,  their  eyes  sparkling 
with  present  joy  and  the  confident  expectation  of 
joy  to  come.  And  such  young  women,  utterly  cor- 
rect, were  doing  the  utterly  correct  thing.  But  all 
these  little  streets  led  at  last  to  the  same  impalpable 
obstacle.  So  that  from  a  high  tower,  for  instance, 
the  Tour  St.  Jacques  close  by,  one  might  have  be- 
held the  black  masonry  of  the  centre  of  attraction 
as  it  were  beleaguered  on  every  side  by  the  attack- 
ing converging  files  that  were  held  back  by  some 
powerful  word;  while  the  minutes  elapsed,  and  the 
incandescent  signs  of  shops  and  theatres  increased 
in  the  sky,  and  the  Seine,  dividing  to  clasp  the 
island,  darkened  into  a  lamp-reflecting  mirror  along 
which  tiny  half-discerned  steamers  restlessly  plied. 
*  ji  ji  tf 

Despite  the  powerful  word,  the  Palace  of  Justice, 
the  centre  of  attraction,  was  tremendously  alive  and 
gay  with  humanity.  Traffic  could  not  be  stopped, 
and  was  not  stopped,  and  those  who  had  sufficient 
energy  and  perseverance  could  insinuate  themselves 
into  its  precincts.  The  great  gold  lamps  that  flank 


CAUSE  CELEBRE    (Pa0e  55) 


CAUSE  CELEBRE  57 

the  staircase  of  honour  gleamed  upon  a  crowd  con- 
tinually ascending  and  descending.     The  outer  hall 
was  full  of  laughing  chatter  and  of  smoke.     And 
barristers,  both  old  and  young,  walked  to  and  fro 
in  hieratic  converse,  waving  their  cigarettes  in  sober 
curves,  and  on  every  one  of  their  faces  as  they  gazed 
negligently  at  the  public  was  the  announcement 
that  they  could  tell  "an  they  would."     All  the  in- 
terminable intersecting  corridors  were  equally  viva- 
cious, with  their  diminishing  perspectives  of  stoves 
against  which  groups  warmed  themselves.     Groups 
of  talkers  made  the  circuit  of  the  corridors  as  it 
might  have  been  the  circuit  of  a  town,  passing  a 
given  spot  regularly,  and  repeating  and  repeating 
the  same  arguments.     And  the  solemn  arched  im- 
mensity of  the  Hall  of  Lost  Footsteps  was  like  a 
Bourse.     Here,  more  than  anywhere  else,  one  had 
the  sense  of  audience-chambers  concealed  behind 
doors,  where  fatal  doings  were  afoot;  one  had  the 
sense  of  the  terrific  vastness  and  complexity  of  the 
Palace     wherein     scores     of     separate     ceremon- 
ious activities  simultaneously  proceeded  in  scores 
of  different  halls.     The  general  public  knew  only 
that    somewhere    within    the    Palace,    somewhere 
close   at   hand,    at   the    end    of    some   particular 
passage,  guarded  doors  hid  the  spectacle  whose 
slightest    episode    was    being    telegraphed   to    all 
the  cities  of  the  entire  civilised  world,  and  the  gen- 
eral public  was  content,  even  very  content,  to  be 
near  by. 

The  affair  was  in  essence  a  trifle ;  merely  the  trial 
of  a  woman  for  the  murder  of  her  husband.     But 


58  PARIS  NIGHTS 

this  woman  was  a  heroic  woman;  this  woman  be- 
longed by  right  of  brain  and  individual  force  to  the 
great  race  of  Therese  Humbert.  Years  before,  she 
had  moved  safely  in  the  background  of  a  sensational 
tragedy  involving  the  highest  personages  of  the  Re- 
public. And  now  in  the  background  of  her  own 
tragedy  there  moved  somebody  so  high  and  so  po- 
tent that  no  newspaper  dared  or  cared  to  name  his 
name.  All  that  was  known  was  that  this  enigmatic 
and  awful  individual  existed,  that  he  was  in- 
volved, that  had  he  been  less  sublime  he  would  have 
had  to  appear  before  the  court,  that  he  would  not 
appear,  and  that  justice  would  suffer  accordingly. 
In  the  ordeal  of  extremest  publicity,  the  woman  had 
emerged  a  Titaness.  Throughout  all  her  alterca- 
tions with  judge,  advocates,  witnesses,  and  journal- 
ists, she  had  held  her  own  grandly,  displaying  not 
only  an  astounding  force  of  character,  but  a  superb 
appreciation  of  the  theatrical  quality  of  her  role. 
She  was  of  a  piece  with  yellow  journalism,  and  the 
multitude  that  gapes  for  yellow  journalism.  She 
was  shameless.  She  was  caught  again  and  again  in 
a  net  of  lies,  and  she  always  escaped.  She  admitted 
nearly  everything:  lyings,  adulteries,  and  manifold 
deceits;  but  she  would  not  admit  that  she  knew  any- 
thing about  the  murder  of  her  husband.  And  even 
though  it  was  obvious  that  the  knots  by  which  she 
was  bound  when  the  murder  was  discovered  were 
not  serious  knots,  even  though  she  left  a  hundred  in- 
criminating details  unexplained,  a  doubt  concern- 
ing her  guilt  would  persist  in  the  minds  of  the 
impartial.  She  was  indubitably  a  terrible  creature, 


CAUSE  CLBRE  59 

but  she  was  an  enchantress,  and  she  was  also  beyond 
question  an  exceedingly  able  housekeeper  and 
hostess.  She  might  be  terrible  without  being  a 
murderess. 

And  now  the  trial  was  closing.  The  verdict,  it 
was  stated,  would  be  rendered  that  night  even  if  the 
court  sat  till  midnight.  It  would  be  a  pity  to  keep 
an  amiable  public,  already  on  the  rack  of  impatience 
for  many  days,  waiting  longer.  The  time  was  ripe. 
Further,  the  woman  had  had  enough.  Her  re- 
sources were  exhausted,  and  to  continue  the  fight 
would  mean  an  anti-climax.  The  woman  had  com- 
pletely lost  the  respect  of  the  public — that  was  in- 
evitable— but  she  had  not  lost  its  admiration.  The 
attitude  of  the  public  was  cruel,  with  the  ignoble 
cruelty  which  is  practised  towards  women  in  Latin 
countries  alone;  she  had  even  been  sarcastically 
sketched  in  the  most  respectable  illustrated  paper  in 
the  attitude  of  a  famous  madonna;  but  beneath  the 
inconceivably  base  jeers,  there  remained  admiration; 
and  there  remained,  too,  gratitude — the  gratitude 
offered  to  a  gladiator  who  has  fought  well  and  pro- 
vided a  really  first-class  diversion. 

«*       4       #       «* 

The  supper-restaurants  were  visited  earlier  and 
were  much  more  crowded  than  usual  on  that  night. 
It  was  as  though  the  influence  of  the  trial  had  been 
aphrodisiacal.  Or  it  may  have  been  that  the  men 
and  women  of  pleasure  wished  to  receive  the  verdict 
in  circumstances  worthy  of  its  importance  in  the  an- 
nals of  pleasure.  Or  it  may  have  been  that  dinner 
had  been  deranged  by  the  excitations  connected  with 


60 


PARIS  NIGHTS 


the  trial  and  that  people  felt  honestly  hungry.  I 
went  into  one  of  these  restaurants,  in  a  square  whose 
buildings  are  embroidered  with  inviting  letters  of 
fire  until  dawn  every  morning  throughout  the  year. 
A  stern  attendant  took  me  up  in  a  lift,  and  instantly 
I  had  quitted  the  sternness  of  the  lift  I  was  in  an- 
other atmosphere.  There  was  the  bar,  and  there 
the  illustrious  English  barman,  drunk.  For  in 
these  regions  the  barman  must  always  be  English 
and  a  little  drunk.  The  barman  knows  everybody, 
and  not  to  know  his  Christian  name  and  the  feel  of 
his  hand  is  to  be  nobody.  This  barman  is  a  Paris- 
ian celebrity.  But  let  an  accident  or  a  misadven- 
ture disqualify  him  from  his  work,  and  he  will  be 
forgotten  utterly  in  less  than  a  week.  And  in  his 
martyred  old  age  he  will  certainly  recount  to  chari- 
table acquaintances,  who  find  him  ineffably  tedious, 
how  he  was  barman  at  the  unique  Restaurant  Lepic 
in  the  old  days  when  fun  was  really  fun,  and  the 
most  appalling  iniquity  was  openly  tolerated  by 
the  police. 

The  bar  and  the  barman  and  the  cloak-room  at- 
tendant (another  man  of  genius)  are  only  the  pre- 
lude to  the  great  supper-hall,  which  is  simply  and 
completely  dazzling,  with  its  profuse  festoons  of 
electric  bulbs,  its  innumerable  naked  shoulders, 
arms,  and  bosoms,  its  fancy  costumes,  its  bald  heads, 
its  music,  clatter,  and  tinkle,  and  its  desperate 
gaiety.  To  go  into  it  is  like  going  into  a  furnace 
of  sensuality.  It  can  be  likened  to  nothing  but 
an  orange-lit  scene  of  Roman  debauch  in  a  play 
written  and  staged  by  Mr.  Hall  Caine.  One  feels 


CAUSE  CELEBRE  61 

that  one  has  been  unjust  in  one's  attitude  to  Mr. 
Hall  Caine's  claims  as  a  realist. 

Although  the  restaurant  will  positively  not  hold 
any  more  revellers,  more  revellers  insist  on  coming 
in,  and  fresh  tables  are  produced  by  conjuring  and 
placed  for  them  between  other  tables,  until  the  whole 
mass  of  wood  and  flesh  is  wedged  tight  together 
and  waiters  have  to  perform  prodigies  of  insinua- 
tion. The  effect  of  these  multitudinous  wasters  is 
desolating,  and  even  pathetic.  It  is  the  enormous 
stupidity  of  the  mass  that  is  pathetic,  and  its  secret 
tedium  that  is  desolating.  At  their  wits'  end  how 
to  divert  themselves,  these  bald  heads  pass  the  time 
in  capers  more  antique  and  fatuous  than  were  ever 
employed  at  a  village  wedding.  Some  of  them  find 
distraction  in  monstrous  gorging — and  beefsteaks 
and  fried  potatoes  and  spicy  sauces  go  down  their 
throats  in  a  way  to  terrorise  the  arthritic  beholder. 
Others  merely  drink.  Some  quarrel,  with  the  bone- 
less persistency  of  intoxication.  One  falls  humor- 
ously under  a  table,  and  is  humorously  fished  up  by 
the  red-coated  leader  of  the  orchestra:  it  is  a 
marked  success  of  esteem.  Many  are  content  to 
caress  the  bright  odalisques  with  fond,  monotonous 
vacuity.  A  few  of  these  odalisques,  and  the  wait- 
ers, alone  save  the  spectacle  from  utter  humiliation. 
The  waiters  are  experts  engaged  in  doing  their  job. 
The  industry  of  each  night  leaves  them  no  energy 
for  dissoluteness.  They  are  alert  and  determined. 
Their  business  is  to  make  stupidity  as  lavish  as  pos- 
sible, and  they  succeed.  To  see  them  surveying 
with  cold  statistical  glances  the  field  of  their  opera- 


62  PARIS  NIGHTS 

tions,  to  listen  to  their  indestructible  politeness,  to 
divine  the  depth  of  their  concealed  scorn — this  is  a 
pleasure.  And  some  of  the  odalisques  are  beauti- 
ful. Fine  women  in  the  sight  of  heaven !  They  too 
are  experts,  with  the  hard  preoccupation  of  experts. 
They  are  at  work;  and  this  is  the  battle  of  life. 
They  inspire  respect.  It  is — it  is  the  dignity  of 
labour. 

Suddenly  it  is  announced  that  the  jury  at  the 
Palace  are  about  to  deliver  their  verdict.  Nobody 
knows  how  the  news  has  come,  nor  even  who  first 
spoke  it  in  the  restaurant.  But  there  it  is.  Hu- 
morous guffaws  of  relief  are  vented.  The  fever 
of  the  place  becomes  acute,  with  a  decided  influence 
on  the  consumption  of  champagne.  The  accused 
lady  is  toasted  again  and  again.  Of  course,  she  had 
been,  throughout,  the  solid  backbone  of  the  chatter; 
but  now  she  was  all  the  chatter.  And  everybody 
recounted  again  to  everybody  else  every  suggestive 
rumour  of  her  iniquity  that  had  appeared  in  any 
newspaper  for  months  past.  She  was  tried  over 
again  in  a  moment,  and  condemned  and  insulted  and 
defended,  and  consistently  honoured  with  libations. 
She  had  never  been  more  truly  heroic,  more  legend- 
ary, than  she  was  then. 

The  childlike  company  loudly  demanded  the  ver- 
dict, with  their  tongues  and  with  their  feet. 

A  beautiful  young  girl  of  about  eighteen,  the 
significant  features  of  whose  attire  were  long  black 
stockings  and  a  necklace,  said  to  a  gentleman  who 
was  helping  her  to  eat  a  vast  entrecote  and  to  drink 
champagne: 


THEY  INSPIRK  RESPKCT    (Page  62) 


CAUSE  CfiLlJBRE  63 

"If  it  comes  not  soon,  it  will  be  too  late." 

"The  verdict?"  said  the  fatuous  swain.  "How? 
—too  late?" 

"I  shall  be  too  drunk,"  said  the  girl,  apparently 
meaning  that  she  would  be  too  drunk  to  savour  the 
verdict  and  to  get  joy  from  it.  She  spoke  with 
mournful  and  slightly  disgusted  certainty,  as 
though  anticipating  a  phenomenon  which  was  abso- 
lutely regular  and  absolutely  inevitable, 

And  then,  on  a  table  near  the  centre  of  the  room, 
instead  of  plates  and  glasses  appeared  a  child- 
dancer  who  might  have  been  Spanish  or  Creole,  but 
who  probably  had  never  been  out  of  Montmartre. 
This  child  seemed  to  be  surrounded  by  her  family 
seated  at  the  table — by  her  mother  and  her  aunts 
and  a  cousin  or  so,  all  with  simple  and  respectable 
faces,  naively  proud  of  and  pleased  with  the  child. 
From  their  expressions,  the  child  might  have  been 
cutting  bread  and  butter  on  the  table  instead  of 
dancing.  The  child  danced  exquisitely,  but  her  per- 
formance could  not  moderate  the  din.  It  was  a 
lovely  thing  gloriously  wasted.  The  one  feature 
of  it  that  was  not  wasted  on  the  intelligence  of  the 
company  was  the  titillating  contrast  between  the 
little  girl's  fresh  infancy  and  the  advanced  decom- 
position of  her  environment. 

She  ceased,  and  disappeared  into  her  family. 
The  applause  began,  but  it  was  mysteriously  and 
swiftly  cut  short.  Why  did  every  one  by  a  simultane- 
ous impulse  glance  eagerly  in  the  direction  of  the 
door?  Why  was  the  hush  so  dramatic?  A  voice — 
whose? — cried  near  the  doorway: 


64  PARIS  NIGHTS 

"Acquittee!" 

And  all  cried  triumphantly:  "Acquitted 
Acquittee!  Acquittee!  Acquitted"  Happy,  bois- 
terous Bedlam  was  created  and  let  loose.  Even  the 
waiters  forgot  themselves.  The  whole  world  stood 
up,  stood  on  chairs,  or  stood  on  tables;  and  shouted, 
shrieked,  and  whistled.  But  the  boneless  drunkards 
were  still  quarrelling,  and  one  bald  head  had  re- 
tained sufficient  presence  of  mind  to  wear  a  large 
oyster-shell  facetiously  for  a  hat.  And  then  the  or- 
chestra, inspired,  struck  into  a  popular  refrain  of  the 
moment,  perfectly  apposite.  And  all  sang  with 
right  good- will: 

"Le  lendemain  die  etait  souriante" 


VI 

RUSSIAN  IMPERIAL  BALLET  AT  THE  OPERA 

Sylvain's  is  the  only  good  restaurant  in  the  centre 
of  Paris  where  you  can  dine  in  the  open  air,  that  is 
to  say,  in  the  street.  Close  by,  the  dark,  still  mass 
of  the  Opera  rises  hugely  out  of  the  dusk  and  out 
of  the  flitting  traffic  at  its  base.  Sylvain's  is  full  of 
diners  who  have  no  eyes  to  see  beyond  the  surfaces 
of  things. 

By  virtue  of  a  contract  made  between  Sylvain's 
and  the  city,  the  diners  are  screened  off  from  the 
street  and  from  the  twentieth  century  by  a  row  of 
high  potted  evergreens.  Pass  within  the  screen, 
and  you  leave  behind  you  the  modern  epoch.  The 
Third  Republic  recedes;  the  Second  Empire  re- 
cedes ;  Louis-Philippe  has  never  been,  nor  even  Na- 
poleon; the  Revolution  has  not  begun  to  announce 
itself.  You  are  become  suddenly  a  grand  seigneur. 
Every  gesture  and  tone  of  every  member  of  the 
personnel  of  Sylvain's  implores  your  excellency 
wifh  one  word: 

"Deign!" 

It  is  curious  that  while  a  modern  shopkeeper  who 
sells  you  a  cigar  or  an  automobile  or  a  quarter  of 
lamb  does  not  think  it  necessary  to  make  you  a  noble 
of  the  ancien  regime  before  commencing  business,  a 
shopkeeper  who  sells  you  cooked  food  could  not  omit 

65 


66  PARIS  NIGHTS 

this  preliminary  without  losing  his  self-respect. 
And  it  is  the  more  curious  since  all  pre-democratic 
books  of  travel  are  full  of  the  cheek  of  these  par- 
ticular shopkeepers.  Such  tales  of  old  travellers 
could  scarcely  be  credited,  in  spite  of  their  unison, 
were  it  not  that  the  ancient  tradition  of  rapacious 
insolence  still  survives  in  wild  and  barbaric  spots 
like  the  cathedral  cities  of  England. 

Your  excellency,  attended  by  his  gentlemen-in- 
waiting  (who  apparently  never  eat,  never  want  to 
eat),  in  the  intervals  of  the  ceremonious  collation 
will  gaze  with  interest  at  the  Opera,  final  legacy  of 
the  Empire  to  the  Republic.  A  great  nation  owes 
it  to  itself  to  possess  a  splendid  opera-palace.  Art 
must  be  fostered.  The  gracious  amenities  of  life 
must  be  maintained.  And  this  is  the  State's  affair. 
The  State  has  seen  to  it.  The  most  gorgeous  build- 
ing in  Paris  is  not  the  legislative  chamber,  nor  the 
hall  of  the  University,  nor  the  clearing-house  of 
charity.  It  is  the  Opera.  The  State  has  paid  for 
it,  and  the  State  pays  every  year  for  its  maintenance. 
That  is,  the  peasant  chiefly  pays.  There  is  not  a 
peasant  in  the  farthest  corner  of  France  who  may 
not  go  to  bed  at  dark  comforted  by  the  thought  that 
the  Opera  in  Paris  is  just  opening  its  cavalry-sen- 
tinelled doors,  and  lighting  its  fifteen  thousand 
electric  candles,  and  that  he  is  helping  to  support  all 
that.  Paris  does  not  pay ;  the  habitues  of  the  Opera 
do  not  pay;  the  yawning  tourists  do  not  pay;  the 
grandiose  classes  do  not  pay.  It  is  the  nation,  as  a 
nation,  that  accepts  the  burden,  because  the  encour- 
agement of  art  is  a  national  duty.  (Moreover, 


RUSSIAN  IMPERIAL  BALLET      67 

visiting  monarchs  have  to  be  diverted. )  Of  one  sort 
or  another,  from  the  tenor  to  the  vendor  of  pro- 
grammes, there  are  twelve  hundred  priests  and 
priestesses  of  art  in  the  superb  building.  A  few 
may  be  artists.  But  it  is  absolutely  certain  that  all 
are  bureaucrats. 

The  Opera  is  the  Circumlocution  Office.  The 
Opera  is  a  State  department.  More,  it  is  probably 
the  most  characteristic  of  all  the  State  departments, 
and  the  most  stubbornly  reactionary.  The  nominal 
director,  instead  of  being  omnipotent  and  godlike, 
is  only  a  poor  human  being  whose  actions  are  the  re- 
sultant of  ten  thousand  forces  that  do  not  fear  him. 
The  Opera  is  above  all  the  theatre  of  secret  influ- 
ences. Every  mystery  of  its  enormous  and  waste- 
ful inefficiency  can  be  explained  either  by  the  opera- 
tion of  the  secret  influence  or  by  the  operation  of 
the  bureaucratic  mind.  If  the  most  tedious  operas 
are  played  the  most  often,  if  the  stage  is  held  by 
singers  who  cannot  sing,  if  original  artists  have  no 
chance  there,  if  the  blight  of  a  flaccid  perf  unctoriness 
is  upon  nearly  all  the  performances,  if  astute  moth- 
ers can  sell  the  virginity  of  their  dancing  daughters 
to  powerful  purchasers  in  the  wings,  the  reason  is  a 
reason  of  State.  The  Opera  is  the  splendid  prey 
of  the  high  officers  of  State.  If  such  a  one  wants  an 
evening's  entertainment,  or  a  mistress,  or  to  get  rid 
of  a  mistress,  the  Opera  is  there,  at  his  disposition. 
The  foyer  de  la  danse  is  the  most  wonderful  seraglio 
in  the  western  world,  and  it  is  reserved  to  the  Gov- 
ernment and  to  subscribers.  Thus  is  art  fostered, 
and  for  this  does  the  peasant  pay. 


68  PARIS  NIGHTS 

Nevertheless  the  Opera  is  a  beautiful  and  impres- 
sive sight  in  the  late,  warm  dusk  of  June.  Against 
the  deep  purple  sky  the  monument  stands  up  like  a 
mountain;  and  through  its  innumerable  windows — 
holes  in  the  floor  of  heaven — can  be  glimpsed  yel- 
low clusters  of  candelabra  and  perspectives  of  mar- 
ble pillars  and  frescoed  walls.  And  at  the  foot  of 
the  gigantic  fapade  little  brightly  coloured  figures 
are  running  up  the  steps  and  disappearing  eagerly 
within:  they  are  the  world  of  fashion,  and  they 
know  that  they  are  correct  and  that  the  Opera  is  the 

Opera. 

«*    #    *    * 

I  looked  over  the  crimson  plush  edge  of  the  box 
down  into  Egypt,  where  Cleopatra  was  indulging 
her  desires ;  into  a  civilisation  so  gorgeous,  primitive, 
and  f  ar-off  that  when  compared  to  it  the  eighteenth 
and  the  twentieth  centuries  seemed  as  like  as  two  peas 
in  their  sophistication  and  sobriety.     Cleopatra  had 
set  eyes  on  a  youth,  and  a  whim  for  him  had  taken 
her.     By  no  matter  what  atrocious  exercise  of  power 
and  infliction  of  suffering,  that  whim  had  to  be 
satisfied  on  the  instant.     It  was  satisfied.     And  a 
swift  homicide  left  the  Queen  untrammelled  by  any 
sentimental  consequences.     The  whole  affair  was 
finished  in  a  moment,  and  the  curtain  falling  on  all 
that  violent  and  gorgeous  scene.     In  a  moment  this 
Oriental  episode,  interpreted  by  semi-Oriental  art- 
ists, had  made  all  the  daring  prurient  suggestiveness 
of  French  comedy  seem  timid  and  foolish.  It  was  a 
revelation.     A  new  standard  was  set,  and  there  was 
not  a  vaudevillist  in  the  auditorium  but  knew  that 


_.       ,    ftfr 

ft- 


SYLPHIDES    (Page  69) 


RUSSIAN  IMPERIAL  BALLET      69 

neither  he  nor  his  interpreters  could  ever  reach  that 
standard.  The  simple  and  childlike  gestures  of  the 
slave-girls  as  with  their  bodies  and  their  veils  they 
formed  a  circular  tent  to  hide  Cleopatra  and  her 
lover — these  gestures  took  away  the  breath  of  pro- 
test. 

The  St.  Petersburg  and  the  Moscow  troupes, 
united,  of  the  Russian  Imperial  Ballet,  had  been 
brought  to  Paris,  at  vast  expense  and  considerable 
loss,  to  present  this  astounding  spectacle  of  mere 
magnificent  sanguinary  lubricity  to  the  cosmopoli- 
tan fashion  of  Paris.  There  the  audience  actually 
was,  rank  after  rank  of  crowded  toilettes  rising  to  the 
dim  ceiling,  young  women  from  the  Avenue  du  Eois 
and  young  women  from  Arizona,  and  their  protec- 
tive and  possessive  men.  And  nobody  blenched,  no- 
body swooned.  The  audience  was  taken  by  assault. 
The  West  End  of  Europe  was  just  staggered  into 
acceptance.  As  yet  London  has  seen  only  frag- 
ments of  Russian  ballet.  But  London  may  and 
probably  will  see  the  whole.  Let  there  be  no 
qualms.  London  will  accept  also.  London  might 
be  horribly  scared  by  one-quarter  of  the  audacity 
shown  in  Cleopatra,  but  it  will  not  be  scared  by  the 
whole  of  that  audacity.  An  overdose  of  a  fatal 
drug  is  itself  an  antidote.  The  fact  is,  that  the 
spectacle  was  saved  by  a  sort  of  moral  nudity,  and 
by  a  naive  assurance  of  its  own  beauty.  Oh!  It 
was  extremely  beautiful.  It  was  ineffably  more 
beautiful  than  any  other  ballet  I  had  ever  seen.  An 
artist  could  feel  at  once  that  an  intelligence  of  really 
remarkable  genius  had  presided  over  its  invention 


70  PARIS  NIGHTS 

and  execution.  It  was  masterfully  original  from 
the  beginning.  It  continually  furnished  new  ideals 
of  beauty.  It  had  drawn  its  inspiration  from  some 
rich  fountain  unknown  to  us  occidentals.  Neither 
in  its  scenery,  nor  in  its  grouping,  nor  in  its  panto- 
mime was  there  any  clear  trace  of  that  Italian  influ- 
ence which  still  dominates  the  European  ballet. 
With  a  vengeance  it  was  a  return  to  nature  and  a 
recommencement.  It  was  brutally  direct.  It  was 
beastlike;  but  the  incomparable  tiger  is  a  beast.  It 
was  not  perverse.  It  was  too  fresh,  zealous,  and 
alive  to  be  perverse.  Personally  I  was  conscious  of 
the  most  intense  pleasure  that  I  had  experienced  in 
a  theatre  for  years.  And  this  was  Russia!  This 
was  the  country  that  had  made  such  a  deadly  and 
disgusting  mess  of  the  Russo-Japanese  War. 
*  #  «*  * 

The  box  was  a  stage-box.  It  consisted  of  a  suite 
of  two  drawing-rooms,  softly  upholstered,  lit  with 
electric  light,  and  furnished  with  easy-chairs  and 
mirrors.  A  hostess  might  well  have  offered  tea  to 
a  score  of  guests  therein.  And  as  a  fact  there  were 
a  dozen  people  in  it.  Its  size  indicated  the  dimen- 
sions of  the  auditorium,  in  which  it  was  a  mere  cell. 
The  curious  thing  about  it  was  the  purely  incidental 
character  of  its  relation  to  the  stage.  The  front  of 
it  was  a  narrow  terrace,  like  the  mouth  of  a  bottle, 
which  offered  a  magnificent  panorama  of  the  audi- 
torium, with  a  longitudinal  slice  of  the  stage  at  one 
extremity.  From  the  terrace  one  glanced  vertically 
down  at  the  stage,  as  at  a  street-pavement  from  a 
first-storey  window.  Three  persons  could  be  com- 


/ 


J 


FRAGILE  AND  B2AUTIFUL  ODALISQUES    (Page  77) 


RUSSIAN  IMPERIAL  BALLET     71 

fortable,  and  four  could  be  uncomfortable,  on  the 
terrace.  One  or  two  more,  by  leaning  against  chair- 
backs  and  coiffures,  could  see  half  of  the  longitud- 
inal slice  of  the  stage.  The  remaining  half-dozen 
were  at  liberty  to  meditate  in  the  luxurious  twilight 
of  the  drawing-room.  The  Republic,  as  operatic 
manager,  sells  every  night  some  scores,  and  on  its 
brilliant  nights  some  hundreds,  of  expensive  seats 
which  it  is  perfectly  well  aware  give  no  view  what- 
ever of  the  stage:  another  illustration  of  the  truth 
that  the  sensibility  of  the  conscience  of  corporations 
varies  inversely  with  the  size  of  the  corporation. 

But  this  is  nothing.  The  wonderful  aspect  of 
the  transaction  is  that  purchasers  never  lack.  They 
buy  and  suffer;  they  buy  again  and  suffer  yet 
again;  they  live  on  and  reproduce  their  kind. 
There  was  in  the  hinterland  of  the  box  a  dapper,  viva- 
cious man  who  might  (if  he  had  wasted  no  time) 
have  been  grandfather  to  a  man  as  old  as  I.  He 
was  eighty-five  years  old,  and  he  had  sat  in  boxes 
of  an  evening  for  over  sixty  years.  He  talked  eas- 
ily of  the  heroic  age  before  the  Revolution  of  '48, 
when,  of  course,  every  woman  was  an  enchantress, 
and  the  farces  at  the  Palais  Royal  were  really  amus- 
ing. He  could  pipe  out  whole  pages  of  farce. 
Except  during  the  entr'actes  this  man's  curiosity 
did  not  extend  beyond  the  shoulders  of  the  young 
women  on  the  terrace.  For  him  the  spectacle  might 
have  been  something  going  on  round  the  corner  of 
the  next  street.  He  was  in  a  spacious  and  discreet 
drawing-room;  he  had  the  habit  of  talking;  talking 
was  an  essential  part  of  his  nightly  hygiene;  and  he 


72  PARIS  NIGHTS 

talked.  Continually  impinging,  in  a  manner 
fourth-dimensional,  on  my  vision  of  Cleopatra's 
violent  afternoon,  came  the  " Je  me  rappelle"  of  this 
ancient.  Now  he  was  in  Rome,  now  he  was  in  Lon- 
don, and  now  he  was  in  Florence.  He  went  nightly 
to  the  Pergola  Theatre  when  Florence  was  the  capi- 
tal of  Italy.  He  had  tales  of  kings.  He  had  one 
tale  of  a  king  which,  as  I  could  judge  from  the 
hard  perfection  of  its  phraseology,  he  had  been  re- 
peating on  every  night-out  for  fifty  years.  Accord- 
ing to  this  narration  he  was  promenading  the  inevit- 
able pretty  woman  in  the  Cascine  at  Florence,  when 
a  heavily  moustached  person  en  civil  flashed  by, 
driving  a  pair  of  superb  bays,  and  he  explained  not 
without  pride  to  the  pretty  woman  that  she  looked 
on  a  king. 

"It  is  that,  the  king?"  exclaimed  the  pretty  in- 
genue too  loudly. 

And  with  a  grand  bow  (of  which  the  present  gen- 
eration has  lost  the  secret)  the  moustaches,  all  flash- 
ing and  driving,  leaned  from  the  equipage  and  an- 
swered: "Yes,  madame,  it  is  that,  the  king." 

"Et  si  vous  aviez  vu  la  tete  de  la  dame    .     .    .  f* 

In  those  days  society  existed. 

I  should  have  heard  many  more  such  tales  during 
the  entr'acte,  but  I  had  to  visit  the  stage.  Strictly, 
I  did  not  desire  to  visit  the  stage,  but  as  I  possessed 
the  privilege  of  doing  so,  I  felt  bound  in  pride  to  go. 
I  saw  myself  at  the  great  age  of  eighty-five  re- 
counting to  somebody  else's  grandchildren  the  mar- 
vels that  I  had  witnessed  in  the  coulisses  of  the 
Paris  Opera  during  the  unforgettable  season  of  the 


THE  UNFORGETTABLE  SEASON 


RUSSIAN  IMPERIAL  BALLET      73 

Russian  Imperial  Ballet  in  the  early  years  of  the 
century,  when  society  existed. 

At  an  angle  of  a  passage  which  connects  the  audi- 
torium with  the  tray  (the  stage  is  called  the  tray, 
and  those  who  call  the  stage  the  stage  at  the  Opera 
are  simpletons  and  lack  guile)  were  a  table  and  a 
chair,  and,  partly  on  the  chair  and  partly  on  the 
table,  a  stout  respectable  man:  one  of  the  twelve 
hundred.  He  looked  like  a  town-councillor,  and 
his  life-work  on  this  planet  was  to  distinguish  be- 
tween persons  who  had  the  entry  and  persons  who 
had  not  the  entry.  He  doubted  my  genuineness  at 
once,  and  all  the  bureaucrat  in  him  glowered  from 
his  eyes.  Yes !  My  card  was  all  right,  but  it  made 
no  mention  of  madame.  Therefore,  I  might  pass, 
but  madame  might  not.  Moreover,  save  in  cases 
very  exceptional,  ladies  were  not  admitted  to  the 
tray.  So  it  appeared!  I  was  up  against  an  entire 
department  of  the  State.  Human  nature  is  such 
that  at  that  moment,  had  some  power  offered  me  the 
choice  between  the  ability  to  write  a  novel  as  fine 
as  Crime  and  Punishment  and  the  ability  to  tri- 
umph instantly  over  the  pestilent  town-councillor, 
I  would  have  chosen  the  latter.  I  retired  in  good 
order.  "You  little  suspect,  town-councillor,"  I  said 
to  him  within  myself,  "that  I  am  the  guest  of  the 
management,  that  I  am  extremely  intimate  with  the 
management,  and  that,  indeed,  the  management  is 
my  washpot!"  At  the  next  entr'acte  I  returned 
again  with  an  omnipotent  document  which  in- 
structed the  whole  twelve  hundred  to  let  both  mon- 
sieur and  madame  pass  anywhere,  everywhere.  The 


74  PARIS  NIGHTS 

town-councillor  admitted  that  it  was  perfect,  so  far 
as  it  went.  But  there  was  the  question  of  my  hat 
to  be  considered.  I  was  not  wearing  the  right  kind 
of  hat!  The  town  councillor  planted  both  his  feet 
firmly  on  tradition,  and  defied  imperial  passports. 
"Can  you  have  any  conception,"  I  cried  to  him  within 
myself,  "how  much  this  hat  cost  me  at  Henry 
Heath's?"  Useless!  Nobody  ever  had  passed,  and 
nobody  ever  would  pass,  from  the  auditorium  to  the 
tray  in  a  hat  like  mine.  It  was  unthinkable.  It 
would  be  an  outrage  on  the  Code  Napoleon.  .  .  . 
After  all,  the  man  had  his  life-work  to  perform.  At 
length  he  offered  to  keep  my  hat  for  me  till  I  came 
back.  I  yielded.  I  was  beaten.  I  was  put  to 
shame.  But  he  had  earned  a  night's  repose. 
£  «*  ji  «* 

The  famous,  the  notorious  foyer  de  la  danse  was 
empty.  Here  was  an  evening  given  exclusively  to 
the  ballet,  and  not  one  member  of  the  corps  had  had 
the  idea  of  exhibiting  herself  in  the  showroom  spe- 
cially provided  by  the  State  as  a  place  or  rendez- 
vous for  ladies  and  gentlemen.  The  most  precious 
quality  of  an  annual  subscription  for  a  seat  at  the 
Opera  is  that  it  carries  with  it  the  entry  to  the 
foyer  de  la  danse  (provided  one's  hat  is  right) ;  if  it 
did  not,  the  subscriptions  to  the  Opera  would  as- 
suredly diminish.  And  lo !  the  gigantic  but  tawdry 
mirror  which  gives  a  factitious  amplitude  to  a  room 
that  is  really  small,  did  not  reflect  the  limbs  of  a 
single  dancer!  The  place  had  a  mournful,  shabby- 
genteel  look,  as  of  a  resort  gradually  losing  fashion. 
It  was  tarnished.  It  did  not  in  the  least  correspond 


AN  HONEST  MISS    (Pape  75) 


RUSSIAN  IMPERIAL  BALLET     75 

with  a  young  man's  dreams  of  it.  Yawning  tedium 
hung  in  it  like  a  vapour,  that  tedium  which  is  the 
implacable  secret  enemy  of  dissoluteness.  This,  the 
foyer  de  la  danse,  where  the  insipidly  vicious  hero- 
ines of  Halevy's  ironic  masterpiece  achieved,  with 
a  mother's  aid,  their  ducal  conquests!  It  was  as 
cruel  a  disillusion  as  the  first  sight  of  Rome  or  Jeru- 
salem. Its  meretriciousness  would  not  have  de- 
ceived even  a  visionary  parlour-maid.  Neverthe- 
lelss,  the  world  of  the  Opera  was  astounded  at  the 
neglect  of  its  hallowed  foyer  by  these  young  women 
from  St.  Petersburg  and  Moscow.  I  was  told,  with 
emotion,  that  on  only  two  occasions  in  the  whole 
season  had  a  Russian  girl  wandered  therein.  The 
legend  of  the  sobriety  and  the  chastity  of  these 
strange  Russians  was  abroad  in  the  Opera  like  a 
strange,  uncanny  tale.  Frankly,  Paris  could  not 
understand  it.  Because  all  these  creatures  were 
young,  and  all  of  them  conformed  to  some  standard 
or  other  of  positive  physical  beauty!  They  could 
not  be  old,  for  the  reason  that  a  ukase  obliged  them 
to  retire  after  twenty  years'  service  at  latest ;  that  is, 
at  about  the  age  of  thirty-six,  a  time  of  woman's  life 
which  on  the  Paris  stage  is  regarded  as  infancy. 
Such  a  ukase  must  surely  have  been  promulgated 
by  Ivan  the  Terrible  or  Catherine!  .  .  .  No! 
Paris  never  recovered  from  the  wonder  of  the  fact 
that  when  they  were  not  dancing  these  lovely  girls 
were  just  honest  misses,  with  apparently  no  taste 
for  bank-notes  and  spiced  meats,  even  in  the  fever 
of  an  unexampled  artistic  and  fashionable  success. 
Amid  the  turmoil  of  the  stage,  where  the  prodi- 


76  PARIS  NIGHTS 

giously  original  peacock-green  scenery  of  Schehera- 
zade was  being  set,  a  dancer  could  be  seen  here  and 
there  in  a  corner,  waiting,  preoccupied,  worried, 
practising  a  step  or  a  gesture.  I  was  clumsy 
enough  to  encounter  one  of  the  principals  who  did 
not  want  to  be  encountered;  we  could  not  escape 
from  each  other.  There  was  nothing  for  it  but  to 
shake  hands.  His  face  assumed  the  weary,  unwill- 
ing smile  of  conventional  politeness.  His  fingers 
were  limp. 

"It  pleases  you?" 

"Enormously." 

I  turned  resolutely  away  at  once,  and  with  relief 
he  lapsed  back  into  his  preoccupation  concerning 
the  half-hour's  intense  emotional  and  physical  la- 
bour that  lay  immediately  in  front  of  him.  In  a 
few  moments  the  curtain  went  up,  and  the  terrific 
creative  energy  of  the  troupe  began  to  vent  itself. 
And  I  began  to  understand  a  part  of  the  secret  of 
the  extreme  brilliance  of  the  Russian  ballet. 
£  «*  *  * 

The  brutality  of  Scheherazade  was  shocking.  It 
was  the  Arabian  Nights  treated  with  imaginative 
realism.  In  perusing  the  Arabian  Nights  we  never 
try  to  picture  to  ourselves  the  manners  of  a  real 
Bagdad;  or  we  never  dare.  We  lean  on  the  pictur- 
esque splendour  and  romantic  poetry  of  certain 
aspects  of  the  existence  portrayed,  and  we  shirk  the 
basic  facts:  the  crudity  of  the  passions,  and  the  su- 
perlative cruelty  informing  the  whole  social  system. 
For  example,  we  should  not  dream  of  dwelling  on 
the  more  serious  functions  of  the  caliphian  eunuchs. 


SCHEHERAZADE    (Page  76) 


RUSSIAN  IMPERIAL  BALLET     77 

In  the  surpassing  fury  and  magnificence  of  the  Rus- 
sian ballet  one  saw  eunuchs  actually  at  work,  scimi- 
tar in  hand.  There  was  the  frantic  orgy,  and  then 
there  was  the  barbarous  punishment,  terrible  and  re- 
volting ;  certainly  one  of  the  most  sanguinary  sights 
ever  seen  on  an  occidental  stage.  The  eunuchs  pur- 
sued the  fragile  and  beautiful  odalisques  with 
frenzy;  in  an  instant  the  seraglio  was  strewn  with 
murdered  girls  in  all  the  abandoned  postures  of 
death.  And  then  silence,  save  for  the  hard  breath- 
ing of  the  executioners!  ...  A  thrill!  It 
would  seem  incredible  that  such  a  spectacle  should 
give  pleasure.  Yet  it  unquestionably  did,  and  very 
exquisite  pleasure.  The  artists,  both  the  creative 
and  the  interpretative,  had  discovered  an  artistic 
convention  which  was  at  once  grandiose  and  truth- 
ful. The  passions  displayed  were  primitive,  but 
they  were  ennobled  in  their  illustration.  The  per- 
formance was  regulated  to  the  least  gesture ;  no  de- 
tail was  unstudied;  and  every  moment  was  beauti- 
ful; not  a  few  were  sublime. 

And  all  this  a  by-product  of  Russian  politics! 
If  the  politics  of  France  are  subtly  corrupt ;  if  any- 
thing can  be  done  in  France  by  nepotism  and  influ- 
ence, and  nothing  without;  if  the  governing  ma- 
chine of  France  is  fatally  vitiated  by  an  excessive 
and  unimaginative  centralisation — the  same  is  far 
more  shamefully  true  of  Russia.  The  fantastic  in- 
efficiency of  all  the  great  departments  of  State  in 
Russia  is  notorious  and  scandalous.  But  the  Im- 
perial ballet,  where  one  might  surely  have  presumed 
an  intensification  of  every  defect  (as  in  Paris), 


78  PARIS  NIGHTS 

happens  to  be  far  nearer  perfection  than  any  other 
enterprise  of  its  kind,  public  or  private.  It  is  genu- 
inely dominated  by  artists  of  the  first  rank;  it  is  in- 
vigorated by  a  real  discipline;  and  the  results 
achieved  approach  the  miraculous.  The  pity  is  that 
the  moujik  can  never  learn  that  one,  at  any  rate,  of 
the  mysterious  transactions  which  pass  high  up  over 
his  head,  and  for  which  he  is  robbed,  is  in  itself  hon- 
est and  excellent.  An  alleviating  thought  for  the 
moujik,  if  only  it  could  be  knocked  into  his  great 
thick  head!  For  during  the  performance  of  the 
Russian  Imperial  Ballet  at  the  Paris  Opera,  amid 
all  the  roods  of  toilettes  and  expensive  correctness, 
one  thinks  of  the  moujik;  or  one  ought  to  think  of 
him.  He  is  at  the  bottom  of  it.  See  him  in  Tche- 
koff's  masterly  tale,  The  Moujiks,  in  his  dirt, 
squalor,  drunkenness,  lust,  servitude,  and  despair! 
Realise  him  well  at  the  back  of  your  mind  as  you 
watch  the  ballet!  Your  delightful  sensations  be- 
fore an  unrivalled  work  of  art  are  among  the  things 
he  has  paid  for. 

^      «*      £      £ 

Walking  home,  I  was  attracted,  within  a  few  hun- 
dred yards  of  the  Opera,  by  the  new  building  of  the 
Magasins  du  Printemps.  Instead  of  being  lighted 
up  and  all  its  galleries  busy  with  thousands  of 
women  in  search  of  adornment,  it  stood  dark  and 
deserted.  But  at  one  of  the  entrances  was  a  feeble 
ray.  I  could  not  forbear  going  into  the  porch  and 
putting  my  nose  against  the  glass.  The  head- 
watchman  was  seated  in  the  centre  of  the  ground- 
floor  chatting  with  a  colleague.  With  a  lamp  and 


CHIEF  EUNUCH     (Page  77) 


RUSSIAN  IMPERIAL  BALLET     79 

chairs  they  had  constructed  a  little  domesticity  for 
themselves  in  the  middle  of  that  acreage  of  silks  and 
ribbons  and  feathers  all  covered  now  with  pale  dust- 
sheets.  They  were  the  centre  of  a  small  sphere  of 
illumination,  and  in  the  surrounding  gloom  could  be 
dimly  discerned  gallery  after  gallery  rising  in  a 
slender  lacework  of  iron.  The  vision  of  Bagdad 
had  been  inexpressibly  romantic;  but  this  vision  also 
was  inexpressibly  romantic.  There  was  something 
touching  in  the  humanity  of  those  simple  men  amid 
the  vast  nocturnal  stillness  of  that  organism — the 
most  spectacular,  the  most  characteristic,  the  most 
spontaneous,  and  perhaps  the  most  beautiful  sym- 
bol of  an  age  which  is  just  as  full  of  romance  as  any 
other  age.  The  human  machine  and  the  scenic  pan- 
orama of  the  big  shop  have  always  attracted  me, 
as  in  Paris  so  in  London.  And  looking  at  this  par- 
ticular, wonderful  shop  in  its  repose  I  could  con- 
template better  the  significance  of  its  activity. 
What  singular  ideals  have  the  women  who  passion- 
ately throng  it  in  the  eternal  quest!  I  say  "passion- 
ately," because  I  have  seen  eyes  glitter  with  fierce 
hope  in  front  of  a  skunk  boa  or  the  tints  of  a  new 
stuff,  translating  instantly  these  material  things 
into  terms  of  love  and  adoration.  What  cruelty  is 
hourly  practised  upon  the  other  women  who  must 
serve  and  smile  and  stand  on  their  feet  in  the  stuffi- 
ness of  the  heaped  and  turbulent  galleries  eleven 
hours  a  day  six  full  days  a  week;  and  upon  the  still 
other  women,  unpresentable,  who  in  their  high  gar- 
rets stitch  together  these  confections!  And  how 
fine  and  how  inspiriting  it  all  is,  this  fever,  and  these 


80  PARIS  NIGHTS 

delusive  hopes,  and  this  cruelty!  The  other  women 
are  asleep  now,  repairing  damage;  but  in  a  very 
few  hours  they  will  be  converging  here  in  long  hur- 
ried files  from  the  four  quarters  of  Paris,  in  their 
enforced  black,  and  tying  their  black  aprons,  and 
pinning  on  their  breasts  the  numbered  discs  which 
distinguish  them  from  one  another  in  the  judgment- 
books  of  the  shop.  They  will  be  beginning  again. 
The  fact  is  that  Bagdad  is  nothing  to  this.  Only 
people  are  so  blind. 


LIFE  IN  LONDON— 1911 


THE  RESTAURANT 

You  have  a  certain  complacency  in  entering  it, 
because  it  is  one  of  the  twenty  monster  restaurants 
of  London.  The  name  glitters  in  the  public  mind. 
"Where  shall  we  dine?"  The  name  suggests  it- 
self; by  the  immense  force  of  its  notoriety  it  comes 
unsought  into  the  conversation  like  a  thing  alive. 
"All  right !  Meet  you  in  the  Lounge  at  7.45."  You 
feel — whatever  your  superficial  airs — that  you  are 
in  the  whirl  of  correctness  as  you  hurry  (of  course 
late)  out  of  a  taxi  into  the  Lounge.  There  is  some- 
thing about  the  word  "Lounge"  .  .  .!  Space 
and  freedom  in  the  Lounge,  and  a  foretaste  of  lux- 
ury ;  and  it  is  inhabited  by  the  haughty  of  the  earth ! 
You  are  not  yet  a  prisoner,  in  the  Lounge.  Then 
an  official,  with  the  metallic  insignia  of  authority, 
takes  you  apart.  He  is  very  deferential — but  with 
the  intimidating  deference  of  a  limited  company  that 
pays  forty  per  cent.  You  can  go  upstairs — though 
he  doubts  if  there  is  immediately  a  table — or  you 
can  go  downstairs.  (Strange,  how  in  the  West- 
End,  when  once  you  quit  the  street,  you  must  al- 
ways go  up  or  down ;  the  planet's  surface  is  forbid- 
den to  you ;  you  lose  touch  with  it ;  the  ground-land- 
lord has  taken  it  and  hidden  it.)  You  go  down- 
stairs; you  are  hypnotised  into  going  downstairs; 

83 


84  PARIS  NIGHTS 

and  you  go  down,  and  down,  one  of  a  procession, 
until  a  man,  entrenched  in  a  recess  furnished  to 
look  like  a  ready-made  tailor's,  accepts  half  your 
clothing  and  adds  it  to  his  stock.  He  does  not  ask 
for  it;  he  need  not;  you  are  hypnotised.  Stripped, 
you  go  further  down  and  down.  You  are  now 
part  of  the  tremendous  organism;  you  have  left 
behind  not  merely  your  clothing,  but  your  volition; 
your  number  is  in  your  hand. 

Suddenly,  as  you  pass  through  a  doorway,  great 
irregular  vistas  of  a  subterranean  chamber  discover 
themselves  to  you,  limitless.  You  perceive  that 
this  wondrous  restaurant  ramifies  under  all  Lon- 
don, and  that  a  table  on  one  verge  is  beneath  St. 
Paul's  Cathedral,  and  a  table  on  the  other  verge 
beneath  the  Albert  Memorial.  All  the  tables  —  all 
the  thousands  of  tables — are  occupied.  An  official 
comes  to  you,  and,  putting  his  mouth  to  your  ear 
(for  the  din  is  terrific) ,  tells  you  that  he  will  have  a 
table  for  you  in  three  minutes.  You  wait,  forlorn. 
It  reminds  you  of  waiting  at  the  barber's  for  a 
shave,  except  that  the  barber  gives  you  an  easy-chair 
and  a  newspaper.  Here  you  must  stand;  and  you 
must  gather  your  skirts  about  you  and  stand  firm  to 
resist  the  shock  of  blind  waiters.  Others  are  in 
your  case;  others  have  been  waiting  longer  than 
you,  and  at  every  moment  more  arrive.  You  wait. 
The  diners  see  you  waiting,  and  you  wonder  whether 
they  are  eating  slowly  on  purpose.  .  .  .  At 
length  you  are  led  away — far,  far  from  the  pit's 
mouth  into  a  remote  working  of  the  mine.  You 
watch  a  men  whisk  away  foul  plates  and  glasses, 


\ 

'Ic   O         /(illA    V<         ^ 


HE  IS  VERY  DEFERENTIAL    (Page  83) 


THE  RESTAURANT  85 

and  cover  offence  with  a  pure  white  cloth.  You  sit. 
You  are  saved !  And  human  nature  is  such  that  you 
feel  positively  grateful  to  the  limited  com- 
pany. .  .  . 

«*«*«*«* 

You  begin  to  wait  again,  having  been  deserted 
by  your  saviours.  And  then  your  wandering  at- 
tention notices  behind  you,  under  all  the  other 
sounds,  a  steady  sound  of  sizzling.  And  there  fat, 
greasy  men,  clothed  and  capped  in  white,  are  throw- 
ing small  fragments  of  animal  carcases  on  to  a 
huge,  red  fire,  and  pulling  them  off  in  the  nick  of 
time,  and  flinging  them  on  to  plates  which  are  con- 
tinually being  snatched  away  by  flying  hands. 
The  grill,  as  advertised!  And  you  wait,  helpless, 
through  a  period  so  long  that  if  a  live  cow  and  a 
live  sheep  had  been  led  into  the  restaurant  to  sat- 
isfy the  British  passion  for  realism  in  eating,  there 
would  have  been  time  for  both  animals  to  be  mur- 
dered, dismembered,  and  fried  before  the  gaze  of 
a  delighted  audience.  But  fear  not.  The  deity 
of  the  organism,  though  unseen,  is  watching  over 
you.  You  have  not  been  omitted  from  the  divine 
plan.  Presently  a  man  approaches  with  a  gigan- 
tic menu,  upon  which  are  printed  the  names  of 
hundreds  of  marvellous  dishes,  and  you  can  have 
any  of  them — and  at  most  reasonable  prices. 
Only,  you  must  choose  at  once.  You  must  say  in- 
stantly to  the  respectful  but  inexorable  official  ex- 
actly what  you  will  have.  You  are  lost  in  the  menu 
as  in  a  labyrinth,  as  in  a  jungle  at  nightfall.  .  .  . 
Quick!  For,  as  you  have  waited,  so  are  others 


86 


PARIS  NIGHTS 


waiting!  Out  with  it!  You  drop  the  menu. 
"Roast  beef  and  Yorkshire  pudding— Guinness." 
The  magic  phrase  releases  you.  In  the  tenth  of  a 
second  the  official  has  vanished.  A  railway  truck 
laden  with  the  gifts  of  Cuba  and  Sumatra  and  the 
monks  of  the  Chartreuse,  sweeps  majestically  by, 
blotting  out  the  horizon;  and  lo!  no  sooner  has  it 
glided  past  than  you  see  men  hastening  towards 
you  with  plates  and  bottles.  With  an  astounding 
celerity  the  beef  and  the  stout  have,  arrived — out  of 
the  unknown  and  the  unknowable,  out  of  some  se- 
cret place  in  the  centre  of  the  earth,  where  rows 
and  rows  of  slices  of  beef  and  bottles  of  stout  wait 
enchanted  for  your  word. 

All  the  thousands  of  tables  scintillate  with  linen 
and  glass  and  silver,  and  steel  and  ivory,  and  are 
bright  with  flowers;  ten  thousand  blossoms  have 
been  wrenched  from  their  beds  and  marshalled  here 
in  captive  regiments  to  brighten  the  beef  and  stout 
on  which  your  existence  depends.  The  carpet  is  a 
hot  crimson  bed  of  flowers.  The  whole  of  the  ceil- 
ing is  carved  and  painted  and  gilded;  not  a  square 
inch  of  repose  in  the  entire  busy  expanse  of  it;  and 
from  it  thousands  of  blinding  electric  bulbs  hang 
down  like  stalactites.  The  walls  are  covered  with 
enormous  mirrors,  perversely  studded  with  gold 
nails,  and  framed  in  gold  sculpture.  And  these 
mirrors  fling  everything  remorselessly  back  at  you. 
So  that  the  immensity  and  glow  of  the  restau- 
rant are  multiplied  to  infinity.  The  band  is  fight- 
ing for  its  life.  An  agonised  violinist,  swaying 
and  contorting  in  front  of  the  band,  squeezes  the 


li^af.i.  •.^^-v^ 

- 


THE  RESTAURANT     (Page  83) 


THE  RESTAURANT  87 

last  drop  of  juice  out  of  his  fiddle.  The  "selec- 
tion" is  "Carmen"  But  "Carmen"  raised  to  the 
second  power,  with  every  piano,  forte,  allegro,  and 
adagio  exaggerated  to  the  last  limit ;  "Carmen" 
composed  by  Souza  and  executed  by  super- Sicil- 
ians; a  "Carmen"  deafening  and  excruciating! 
And  amid  all  this  light  and  sound,  amid  the  music 
and  the  sizzling,  and  the  clatter  of  plates  and  glass, 
and  the  reverberation  of  the  mirrors,  and  the  whir- 
ring of  the  ventilators,  and  the  sheen  of  gold,  and 
the  harsh  glitter  of  white,  and  the  dull  hum  of 
hundreds  of  strenuous  conversations,  and  the  hoarse 
cries  of  the  pale  demons  at  the  fire,  and  the  haste, 
and  the  crowdedness,  and  the  people  waiting  for 
your  table — you  eat.  You  practise  the  fine  art  of 
dining. 

In  a  paroxysm  the  music  expires.  The  effect 
is  as  disconcerting  as  though  the  mills  of  God  had 
stopped.  Applause,  hearty  and  prolonged,  re- 
sounds in  the  bowels  of  the  earth.  .  .  .  You 
learn  that  the  organism  exists  because  people  really 
like  it. 

£      *      «*      £ 

This  is  a  fearful  and  a  romantic  place.  Those 
artists  who  do  not  tingle  to  the  romance  of  it  are 
dead  and  have  forgotten  to  be  buried.  The  ro- 
mance of  it  rises  grandiosely  storey  beyond  storey. 
For  you  must  know  that  while  you  are  dining  in  the 
depths,  the  courtesans,  and  their  possessors  are  din- 
ing in  the  skies.  And  the  most  romantic  and  im- 
pressive thing  about  it  all  is  the  invisible  secret 
thoughts,  beneath  the  specious  bravery,  of  the  un- 


88  PARIS  NIGHTS 

countable  multitude  gathered  together  under  the 
spell  of  the  brains  that  invented  the  organism. 
Can  you  not  look  through  the  transparent  faces  of 
the  young  men  with  fine  waistcoats  and  neglected 
boots,  and  of  the  young  women  with  concocted  hats 
and  insecure  gay  blouses,  and  of  the  waiters  whose 
memories  are  full  of  Swiss  mountains  and  Italian 
lakes  and  German  beer  gardens,  and  of  the  violinist 
who  was  proclaimed  a  Kubelik  at  the  Conservatoire 
and  who  now  is  carelessly  pronounced  "jolly  good" 
by  eaters  of  beefsteaks?  Can  you  not  look  through 
and  see  the  wonderful  secret  pre-occupations?  If 
so,  you  can  also  pierce  walls  and  floors,  and  see 
clearly  into  the  souls  of  the  cooks  and  the  sub-cooks, 
and  the  cellar-men,  and  the  commissionaires  in  the 
rain,  and  the  washers-up.  They  are  all  there,  in- 
cluding the  human  beings  with  loves  and  ambitions 
who  never  do  anything  for  ever  and  ever  but  wash 
up.  These  are  wistful,  but  they  are  not  more  wist- 
ful than  the  seraphim  and  cherubim  of  the  upper 
floors.  The  place  is  grandiose  and  imposing;  it 
has  the  dazzle  of  extreme  success;  but  when  you 
have  stared  it  down  it  is  wistful  enough  to  make 
you  cry. 

Accidentally  your  eye  rests  on  the  gorgeous  frieze 
in  front  of  you,  and  after  a  few  moments,  among 
the  complex  scrollwork  and  interlaced  Cupids,  you 
discern  a  monogram,  not  large,  not  glaring,  not 
leaping  out  at  you,  but  concealed  in  fact  rather 
modestly!  You  decipher  the  monogram.  It  con- 
tains the  initials  of  the  limited  company  paying 


THE   BAND     (Pape  Sff) 


THE  RESTAURANT  89 

forty  per  cent,  and  also  of  the  very  men  whose 
brains  invented  the  organism.  They  are  men. 
They  may  be  great  meni  they  probably  are;  but 
they  are  men. 


II 

BY  THE  RIVER 

Every  morning  I  get  up  early,  and,  going 
straight  to  the  window,  I  see  half  London  from  an 
eighth-storey.  I  see  factory  chimneys  poetised, 
and  the  sign  of  a  great  lion  against  the  sky,  and  the 
dome  of  St.  Paul's  rising  magically  out  of  the  mist, 
and  pearl-coloured  minarets  round  about  the  hori- 
zon, and  Waterloo  Bridge  suspended  like  a  dream 
over  the  majestic  river;  and  all  that  sort  of  thing. 
I  am  obliged,  in  spite  of  myself,  to  see  London 
through  the  medium  of  the  artistic  sentimentalism 
of  ages.  I  am  obliged  even  to  see  it  through  the 
individual  eyes  of  Claude  Monet,  whose  visions  of 
it  I  nevertheless  resent.  I  do  not  want  to  see,  for 
example,  Waterloo  Bridge  suspended  like  a  dream 
over  the  majestic  river.  I  much  prefer  to  see  it 
firmly  planted  in  the  plain  water.  And  I  ulti- 
mately insist  on  so  seeing  it.  The  Victoria  Em- 
bankment has  been,  and  still  is,  full  of  pitfalls  for 
the  sentimentalist  in  art  as  in  sociology;  I  would 
walk  warily  to1  avoid  them.  The  river  at  dawn,  the 
river  at  sunset,  the  river  at  midnight  (with  its 
myriad  lamps,  of  course) !  .  .  .  Let  me  have 
the  river  at  eleven  a.  m.  for  a  change,  or  at  tea-time. 
And  let  me  patrol  its  banks  without  indulging  in 
an  orgy  of  melodramatic  contrasts. 

90 


BY  THE  RIVER  91 

I  will  not  be  carried  away  by  the  fact  that  the 
grand  hotels,  with  their  rosy  saloons  and  fair 
women  (not  invariably  or  even  generally  fair!), 
look  directly  down  upon  the  homeless  wretches  hud- 
dled on  the  Embankment  benches.  Such  a  juxta- 
position is  accidental  and  falsifying.  Nor  will  I 
be  imposed  upon  by  the  light  burning  high  in  the 
tower  of  St.  Stephen's  to  indicate  that  the  legisla- 
tors are  watching  over  Israel.  I  think  of  the  House 
of  Commons  at  question-time,  and  I  hear  the  rus- 
tling as  two  hundred  schoolboyish  human  beings 
(not  legislators  nor  fathers  of  their  country)  si- 
multaneously turn  over  a  leaf  of  two  hundred  ques- 
tion-papers, and  I  observe  the  self-consciousness  of 
honourable  members  as  they  walk  in  and  out,  and 
the  naive  pleasure  of  the  Labour  member  in  his  enor- 
mous grey  wideawake,  and  the  flower  in  the  but- 
tonhole of  the  white-haired  and  simple  ferocious 
veteran  of  democracy,  and  the  hobnobbing  over 
stewed  tea  and  sultana  on  the  draughty  terrace. 

Nor,  when  I  look  at  the  finely  symbolic  architec- 
ture of  New  Scotland  Yard,  will  I  be  obsessed  by 
the  horrors  of  the  police  system  and  of  the  prison 
system  and  by  the  wrongness  of  the  world.  I  re- 
gard with  fraternal  interest  the  policeman  in  his 
shirt-sleeves  lolling  at  a  fourth-floor  window. 
Thirty,  twenty,  years  ago  people  used  to  be  stag- 
gered by  the  sudden  discovery  that,  in  the  old  He- 
braic sense  of  the  word,  there  was  no  God.  It 
winded  them,  and  some  of  them  have  never  got 
over  it.  Nowadays  people  are  being  staggered  by 
the  sudden  discovery  that  there  is  something  funda- 


92  PARIS  NIGHTS 

mentally  wrong  with  the  structure  of  society. 
This  discovery  induces  a  nervous  disease  which  runs 
through  whole  thoughtful  multitudes.  I  suffer 
from  it  myself.  Nevertheless,  just  as  it  is  certain 
that  there  is  a  God,  of  some  kind,  so  it  is  certain 
that  there  is  nothing  fundamentally  wrong  with  the 
structure  of  society.  There  is  something  wrong — 
but  it  is  not,  fundamental.  There  always  has  been 
and  always  will  be  something  wrong.  Do  you  sup- 
pose, O  reformer,  that  when  land- values  are  taxed, 
and  war  and  poverty  and  slavery  and  overwork 
and  underfeeding  and  disease  and  cruelty  have  dis- 
appeared, that  the  structure  of  society  will  seem  a 
whit  the  less  wrong?  Never!  A  moderate  sense 
of  its  wrongness  is  precisely  what  most  makes  life 

worth  living. 

^    «*    «*    «* 

Between  my  lofty  dwelling  and  the  river  is  a 
large  and  beautiful  garden,  ornamented  with  stat- 
ues of  heroes.  It  occupies  ground  whose  annual 
value  is  probably  quite  ten  thousand  pounds — that 
is  to  say,  the  interest  on  a  quarter  of  a  million.  It 
is  tended  by  several  County  Council  gardeners,  who 
spend  comfortable  lives  in  it,  and  doubtless  thereby 
support  their  families  in  dignity.  Its  lawns  are 
wondrous ;  its  parterres  are  full  of  flowers,  and  its 
statues  are  cleansed  perhaps  more  thoroughly  than 
the  children  of  the  poor.  This  garden  is,  as  a  rule, 
almost  empty.  I  use  it  a  great  deal,  and  sometimes 
I  am  the  only  person  in  it.  Its  principal  occupants 
are  well-dressed  men  of  affairs,  who  apparently 


IN  THE  EMBANKMENT  GARDENS    (Page 


BY  THE  RIVER  93 

employ  it,  as  I  do,  as  a  ground  for  reflection. 
Nursemaids  bring  into  it  the  children  of  the  rich. 
The  children  of  the  poor  are  not  to  be  seen  in  it — • 
they  might  impair  the  lawns,  or  even  commit  the 
horrible  sin  of  picking  the  blossoms.  During  the 
only  hours  when  the  poor  could  frequent  it,  it  is 
thoughtfully  closed.  The  poor  pay,  and  the  rich 
enjoy.  If  I  paid  my  proper  share  of  the  cost  of 
that  garden,  each  of  my  visits  would  run  me  into 
something  like  half-a-sovereign.  My  pleasure  is 
being  paid  for  up  all  manner  of  side-streets.  This 
is  wrong;  it  is  scandalous.  I  would,  and  I  will, 
support  any  measure  that  promises  to  rectify  the 
wrongness.  But  in  the  meantime  I  intend  to  have 
my  fill  of  that  garden,  and  to  savour  the  great  sen- 
sations thereof.  I  will  not  be  obsessed  by  one  as- 
pect of  it. 

The  great  sensations  are  not  perhaps  what  one 
would  have  expected  to  be  the  great  sensations. 
Neither  domes,  nor  towers,  nor  pinnacles,  nor  spec- 
tacular contrasts,  nor  atmospheric  effects,  nor  the 
Wordsworthian  "mighty  heart" !  It  is  the  County 
Council  tram,  as  copied  from  Glasgow  and  Man- 
chester, that  appeals  more  constantly  and  more 
profoundly  than  anything  else  of  human  creation 
to  my  romantic  sensibility  "Yes,"  I  am  told,  "the 
tram-cars  look  splendid  at  night!"  I  do  not  mean 
specially  at  night.  I  mean  in  the  day.  And  fur- 
ther, I  have  no  desire  to  call  them  ships,  or  to  call 
them  aught  but  tram-cars.  For  me  they  resemble 
just  tram-cars,  though  I  admit  that  when  forty  or 


94  PARIS  NIGHTS 

fifty  of  them  are  crowded  together,  they  remind  me 
somewhat  of  a  herd  of  elephants.  They  are  enor- 
mous and  beautiful;  they  are  admirably  designed, 
and  they  function  perfectly;  they  are  picturesque, 
inexplicable,  and  uncanny.  They  come  to  rest  with 
the  gentleness  of  doves,  and  they  hurtle  through 
the  air  like  shells.  Their  motion — smooth,  delicate 
and  horizontal — is  always  delightful.  They  are 
absolutely  modern,  new,  and  original.  There  was 
never  anything  like  them  before,  and  only  when 
something  different  and  better  supersedes  them  will 
their  extraordinary  gliding  picturesqueness  be  ap- 
preciated. They  never  cease.  They  roll  along 
day  and  night  without  a  pause ;  in  the  middle  of  the 
night  you  can  see  them  glittering  away  to  the  ends 
of  the  county.  At  six  o'clock  in  the  morning 
they  roll  up  over  the  horizon  of  Westminster 
Bridge  in  hundreds  incessantly,  and  swing  down- 
wards and  round  sharply  away  from  the  Parlia- 
ment which  for  decades  refused  them  access  to  their 
natural  gathering-place.  They  are  a  thrilling 
sight.  And  see  the  pigmy  in  the  forefront  of  each 
one,  rather  like  a  mahout  on  the  neck  of  an  ele- 
phant, doing  as  he  likes  with  the  obedient  mon- 
ster !  And  see  the  scores  of  pigmies  inside  each  of 
them,  black  dots  that  jump  out  like  fleas  and  dis- 
appear like  fleas!  The  loaded  tram  stops,  and  in 
a  moment  it  is  empty,  and  of  the  contents  there  is 
no  trace.  The  contents  are  dissolved  in  London. 
.  .  .  And  then  see  London  precipitate  the  con- 
tents again;  and  watch  the  leviathans,  gorged, 


BY  THE  RIVER  95 

glide  off  in  endless  procession  to  spill  immortal  souls 
in  the  evening  suburbs! 

£    «*    #    $ 

But  the  greatest  sensation  offered  by  the  garden, 
though  it  happens  to  be  a  mechanical  contrivance, 
is  entirely  independent  of  the  County  Council.  It 
is — not  the  river — but  the  movement  of  the  tide. 
Imagination  is  required  in  order  to  conceive  the 
magnitude,  the  irresistibility,  and  the  consequences 
of  this  tremendous  shuttle- work,  which  is  regulated 
from  the  skies,  rules  the  existence  of  tens  of  thou- 
sands of  people,  and  casually  displaces  incalculable 
masses  of  physical  matter.  And  the  curious  human 
thing  is  that  it  fails  to  rouse  the  imagination  of  the 
town.  It  cleaves  through  the  town,  and  yet  is  ut- 
terly foreign  to  it,  having  been  estranged  from  it 
by  the  slow  evolutionary  process.  All  those  tram- 
cars  roll  up  over  the  horizon  of  Westminster 
Bridge,  and  cross  the  flood  and  run  for  a  mile  on 
its  bank,  and  not  one  man  in  every  tenth  tram-car 
gives  the  faintest  attention  to  the  state  of  the  river. 
A  few  may  carelessly  notice  that  the  tide  is  "in" 
or  "out,"  but  how  many  realise  the  implications? 
For  all  they  feel,  the  river  might  be  a  painted 
stream!  No  wonder  that  the  touts  crying  "Steam- 
boat! Steamboat!"  have  a  mournful  gesture,  and 
the  "music  on  board"  sounds  thin,  like  a  hallucina- 
tion, as  the  shabby  paddle-wheels  pound  the  water! 
The  cause  of  the  failure  of  municipal  steamers  is 
more  recondite  than  the  yellow  motor-cars  of  the 
journals  which  took  pride  in  having  ruined  them. 


96  PARIS  NIGHTS 

And  the  one  satisfactory  inference  from  the  failure 
is  that  human  nature  is  far  less  dependent  on  non- 
human  nature  than  vague  detractors  of  the  former 
and  devotees  of  the  latter  would  admit.  It  is,  after 
all,  rather  fine  to  have  succeeded  in  ignoring  the 
Thames ! 


Ill 

THE  CLUB 

It  was  founded  for  an  ideal.  Its  scope  is  na^ 
tional,  and  its  object  to  regenerate  the  race,  to 
remedy  injustice,  and  to  proclaim  the  brotherhood 
of  mankind.  It  is  for  the  poor  against  the  pluto- 
crat, and  for  the  slave  against  the  tyrant,  and  for 
democracy  against  feudalism.  It  is,  in  a  word,  of 
the  kingdom  of  heaven.  It  was  born  amid  im- 
mense collisions,  and  in  the  holy  war  it  is  the  of- 
ficial headquarters  of  those  who  are  on  the  side  of 
the  angels.  In  its  gigantic  shadow  the  weak  and 
the  oppressed  sell  newspapers  and  touch  their  hats 
to  the  warriors  as  they  pass  in  and  pass  out. 

The  place  is  as  superb  as  its  ideal.  No  half 
measures  were  taken  when  it  was  conceived  and 
constructed.  Its  situation  is  among  the  most  ex- 
pensive and  beautiful  in  the  world  of  cities.  Its 
architecture  is  grandiose,  its  square  columned  hall 
and  its  vast  staircase  (hewn  from  Carrara)  are  two 
of  the  sights  of  London.  It  is  like  a  town,  but  a 
town  of  Paradise.  When  the  warrior  enters  its 
portals  he  is  confronted  by  instruments  and  docu- 
ments which  inform  him  with  silent  precision  of 
the  time,  the  temperature,  the  barometric  pressure, 
the  catalogue  of  nocturnal  amusements,  and  the 
colour  of  the  government  that  happens  to  be  in 

97 


08  PARIS  NIGHTS 

power.  The  last  word  spoken  in  Parliament,  the 
last  quotation  on  the  Stock  Exchange,  the  last 
wager  at  Newmarket,  the  last  run  scored  at  cricket, 
the  result  of  the  last  race,  the  last  scandal,  the  last 
disaster — all  these  things  are  specially  printed  for 
him  hour  by  hour,  and  pinned  up  unavoidably  be- 
fore his  eyes.  If  he  wants  to  bet,  he  has  only  to  put 
his  name  on  a  card  entitled  "Derby  Sweepstake." 
Valets  take  his  hat  and  stick;  others  (working  sev- 
enty hours  a  week)  shave  him;  others  polish  his 

boots. 

$    $    £    £ 

The  staircase  being  not  for  use,  but  merely  to 
immortalise  the  memory  of  the  architect,  he  is 
wafted  upwards  by  a  lift  into  a  Titanic  apartment 
studded  with  a  thousand  easy-chairs,  and  furnished 
with  newspapers,  cigars,  cigarettes,  implements  of 
play,  and  all  the  possibilities  of  light  refection.  He 
lapses  into  a  chair,  and  lo!  a  bell  is  under  his  hand. 
Ting!  And  a  uniformed  and  initialled  being 
stands  at  attention  in  front  of  him,  not  speaking 
tijl  he  speaks,  and  receiving  his  command  with  the 
formalities  of  deference.  He  wishes  to  write  a  let- 
ter— a  table  is  at  his  side,  with  all  imaginable  sta- 
tionery; a  machine  offers  him  a  stamp,  another  licks 
the  stamp,  and  an  Imperial  letter-box  is  within 
reach  of  his  arm, — it  is  not  considered  sufficient 
that  there  should  be  a  post-office,  with  young 
girls  who  have  passed  examinations,  in  the  build- 
ing itself.  He  then  chats,  while  sipping  and  smok- 
ing, or  nibbling  a  cake,  with  other  reclining  war- 
riors; and  the  hum  of  their  clatter  rises  steadily 


HE  SLUMBERS  ALONE    (Page  99) 


THE  CLUB  99 

from  the  groups  of  chairs,  inspiring  the  uni- 
formed and  initialled  beings  who  must  not  speak 
till  spoken  to  with  hopes  of  triumphant  democracy 
and  the  millennium.  For  when  they  are  not  discuss- 
ing more  pacific  and  less  heavenly  matters,  the 
warriors  really  do  discuss  the  war,  and  how  they 
fought  yesterday,  and  how  they  will  fight  to-mor- 
row. If  at  one  moment  the  warrior  is  talking 
about  "a  perfectly  pure  Chianti  that  I  have  brought 
from  Italy  in  a  cask,"  at  the  next  he  is  planning  to 
close  public-houses  on  election  days. 

When  he  has  had  enough  of  such  amiable  gossip 
he  quits  the  easy  chair,  in  order  to  occupy  another 
one  in  another  room  where  he  is  surrounded  by  all 
the  periodical  literature  of  the  entire  world,  and 
by  the  hushed  murmur  of  intellectual  conversation 
and  the  discreet  stirring  of  spoons  in  tea-cups. 
Here  he  acquaints  himself  with  the  progress  of  the 
war  and  the  fluctuations  of  his  investments  and  the 
price  of  slaves.  And  when  even  the  solemnity  of 
this  chamber  begins  to  offend  his  earnestness,  he 
glides  into  the  speechless  glamour  of  an  enormous 
library,  where  the  tidings  of  the  day  are  repeated 
a  third  time,  and,  amid  the  companionship  of  a 
hundred  thousand  volumes  and  all  the  complex  ap- 
paratus of  research,  he  slumbers,  utterly  alone. 

Late  at  night,  when,  he  has  eaten  and  drunk,  and 
played  cards  and  billiards  and  dominoes  and 
draughts  and  chess,  he  finds  himself  once  more  in 
the  smoking-room — somehow  more  intimate  now — 
with  a  few  cronies,  including  one  or  two  who  out  in 
the  world  are  disguised  as  the  enemy.  The  atmos- 


100  PARIS  NIGHTS 

phere  of  the  place  has  put  him  and  them  into  a  sort 
of  exquisite  coma.  Their  physical  desires  are  as- 
suaged, and  they  know  by  proof  that  they  are  in 
control  of  the  most  perfectly  organised  mechanism 
of  comfort  that  was  ever  devised.  Naught  is  for- 
gotten, from  the  famous  wines  cooling  a  long  age 
in  the  sub-basement,  to  the  inanimate  chauffeur  in 
the  dark,  windy  street,  waiting  and  waiting  till  a 
curt  whistle  shall  start  him  into  assiduous  life. 
They  know  that  never  an  Oriental  despot  was  bet- 
ter served  than  they.  Here  alone,  and  in  the  man- 
sions of  the  enemy,  has  the  true  tradition  of  service 
been  conserved.  In  comparison,  the  most  select 
hotels  and  restaurants  are  a  hurly-burly  of  crude 
socialism.  The  bell  is  under  the  hand,  and  the  la- 
belled menial  stands  with  everlasting  patience  near ; 
and  home  and  women  are  far  away.  And  the 
world  is  not. 

Forgetting  the  platitudes  of  the  war,  they  talk 
of  things  as  they  are.  All  the  goodness  of  them 
comes  to  the  surface,  and  all  the  weakness.  They 
state  their  real  ambitions  and  their  real  prefer- 
ences. They  narrate  without  reserve  their  secret 
grievances  and  disappointments.  They  are  naked 
and  unashamed.  They  demand  sympathy,  and 
they  render  it,  in  generous  quantities.  And  while 
thus  dissipating  their  energy,  they  honestly  imagine 
that  they  are  renewing  it.  The  sense  of  reality 
gradually  goes,  and  illusion  reigns — the  illusion 
that,  after  all,  God  is  geometrically  just,  and  that 
strength  will  be  vouchsafed  to  them  according  to 


THE  CLUB  101 

their  need,  and  that  they  will  receive  the  reward  of 
perfect  virtue. 

And  their  illusive  satisfaction  is  chastened  and 
beautified  by  the  consciousness  that  the  sublime  in- 
stitution of  the  club  is  scarcely  what  it  was, — is  in 
fact  decadent;  and  that  if  it  were  not  vitalised  by 
a  splendid  ideal,  even  their  club  might  wilt  under 
the  sirocco  of  modernity.  And  then  the  echoing 
voice  of  an  attendant  warns  them,  with  deep  re- 
spect, that  the  clock  moves.  But  they  will  not 
listen,  cannot  listen.  And  the  voice  of  the  attend- 
ant echoes  again,  and  half  the  lights  shockingly  ex- 
pire. But  still  they  do  not  listen;  they  cannot 
credit.  And  then,  suddenly,  they  are  in  utter  dark- 
ness, and  by  the  glimmer  of  a  match  are  stumbling 
against  easy-chairs  and  tables,  real  easy-chairs  and 
real  tables.  The  spell  of  illusion  is  broken.  And 
in  a  moment  they  are  thrust  out,  by  the  wisdom  of 
their  own  orders,  into  Pall  Mall,  into  actuality,  into 
the  world  of  two  sexes  once  more. 
«*  #  *  $ 

And  yet  the  sublime  institution  of  the  club  is 
not  a  bit  anaemic.  Within  a  quarter  of  a  mile  is  the 
monumental  proof  that  the  institution  has  been  re- 
juvenated and  ensanguined  and  empowered.  Co- 
lossal, victorious,  expensive,  counting  its  adherents 
in  thousands  upon  thousands,  this  monument  scorns 
even  the  pretence  of  any  ancient  ideal,  and  adopts 
no  new  one.  The  aim  of  the  club  used  ostensibly 
to  be  peace,  idealism,  a  retreat,  a  refuge.  The  new 
aim  is  pandemonium,  and  it  is  achieved.  The  new 


102  PARIS  NIGHTS 

aim  is  to  let  in  the  world,  and  it  is  achieved.  The 
new  aim  is  muscular,  and  it  is  achieved.  Arms, 
natation,  racquets — anything  to  subdue  the  soul 
and  stifle  thought!  And  in  the  reading-room, 
dummy  books  and  dummy  book-cases !  And  a  din- 
ing-room full  of  bright  women;  and  such  a  mad 
competition  for  meals  that  glasses  and  carafes  will 
scarce  go  round,  and  strangers  must  sit  together  at 
the  same  small  table  without  protest!  And,  to 
crown  the  hullaballoo,  an  orchestra  of  red-coated 
Tziganes  swaying  and  yearning  and  ogling  in  or- 
der to  soothe  your  digestion  and  to  prevent  you 
from  meditating. 

This  club  marks  the  point  to  which  the  evolution 
of  the  sublime  institution  has  attained.  It  has 
come  from  the  shore  of  Lake  Michigan;  it  is  the 
club  of  the  future,  and  the  forerunner  of  its  kind. 
Stand  on  its  pavement,  and  watch  its  entering 
heterogeneous  crowds,  and  then  throw  the  glance  no 
more  than  the  length  of  a  cricket-pitch,  and  watch 
the  brilliantly  surviving  representatives  of  feudal- 
ism itself  ascending  and  descending  the  steps  of 
the  most  exclusive  club  in  England;  and  you  will 
comprehend  that  even  when  the  House  of  Lords 
goes,  something  will  go — something  unconsciously 
cocksure,  and  perfectly  creased,  and  urbane,  and 
dazzlingly  stupid — that  was  valuable  and  beauti- 
ful. And  you  will  comprehend  politics  better,  and 
the  profound  truth  that  it  takes  all  sorts  to  make  a 
world. 


THE  CLUB  OF  THE  FUTURE    (Page  102)     ' 


IV 

THE  CIRCUS 

The  flowers  heaped  about  the  bronze  fountain 
are  for  them.  And  so  that  they  may  have  flowers 
all  day  long,  older  and  fatter  and  shabbier  women 
make  their  home  round  the  fountain  (modelled  by 
a  genius  to  the  memory  of  one  whose  dream  was  to 
abolish  the  hardships  of  poverty),  with  a  sugar- 
box  for  a  drawing-room  suite  and  a  sack  for  a  cur- 
tain; these  needy  ones  live  there,  to  the  noise  of 
water,  with  a  secret  society  of  newspaper-sellers, 
knowing  intimately  all  the  capacities  of  the  sugar- 
box  and  sack ;  and  on  hot  days  they  revolve  round 
the  fountain  with  the  sun,  for  their  only  sunshade  is 
the  shadow  of  the  dolphins.  On  every  side  of  their 
habituated  tranquillity  the  odours  of  petrol  swirl. 
The  great  gaudy-coloured  autobuses,  brilliant  as 
the  flowers,  swing  and  swerve  and  grind  and  sink 
and  recover,  and  in  the  forehead  of  each  is  a  black- 
ened demon,  tremendously  preoccupied,  and  so 
small  and  withdrawn  as  to  be  often  unnoticed ;  and 
this  demon  rushes  forward  all  day  with  his  life  in 
his  hand  and  scores  of  other  lives  in  his  hand,  for 
two  pounds  a  week.  When  he  stops  by  the  foun- 
tain, he  glances  at  the  flowers  unseeing,  out  of  the 
depths  of  his  absorption.  He  is  piloting  cargoes 
of  the  bright  beings  for  whom  the  flowers  are 
heaped. 

103 


104  PARIS  NIGHTS 

Stand  on  the  steps  of  the  fountain,  and  look  be- 
tween the  autobuses  and  over  the  roofs  of  taxis  and 
the  shoulders  of  policemen,  and  you  will  see  at 
eveiy  hand  a  proof  that  the  whole  glowing  place, 
with  its  flags  gaily  waving  and  its  hubbub  of  rich 
hues,  exists  first  and  last  for  those  same  bright  be- 
ings. If  there  is  a  cigar  shop,  if  there  is  a  necktie 
shop  like  Joseph's  coat,  it  is  to  enable  the  male  to  cut 
a  dash  with  those  beings.  And  the  life  insurance 
office — would  it  continue  if  there  were  no  bright 
beings  to  be  provided  for?  And  the  restaurants! 
And  the  I  chemists!  And  the  music-hall!  The 
sandwich-men  are  walking  round  and  round  with 
the  names  of  the  most  beauteous  lifted  high  on  their 
shoulders.  The  leather  shop  is  crammed  with 
dressing-cases  and  hat-boxes  for  them.  The  jewel- 
ler is  offering  solid  gold  slave-bangles  (because 
they  like  the  feel  of  the  shackle)  at  six  pound  ten. 

And  above  all  there  is  the  great  establishment  on 
the  corner!  An  establishment  raised  by  tradition 
and  advertisement  and  sheer  skill  to  the  rank  of  a 
national  institution,  famous  from  Calgary  to  the 
Himalayas,  far  more  famous  and  beloved  than  even 
the  greatest  poets  and  philanthropists.  An  insti- 
tution established  on  one  of  the  seven  supreme  sites 
of  the  world!  And  it  is  all  theirs,  all  for  them! 
Coloured  shoes,  coloured  frocks,  coloured  neck- 
laces, coloured  parasols,  coloured  stockings,  jabots, 
scents,  hats,  and  all  manner  of  flimsy  stuffs  whose 
names — such  as  Shantung — summon  up  in  an  in- 
stant the  deep  orientalism  of  the  Occident:  the  in- 
numerable windows  are  a  perfect  riot  of  these  de- 


THE  CIRCUS  105 

licious  affairs!  Who  could  pass  them  by?  This 
is  a  wondrous  institution.  Of  a  morning,  before 
the  heat  of  the  day,  you  can  see  coming  out  of  its 
private  half -hidden  portals  (not  the  ceremonious 
glazed  doors)  black-robed  young  girls,  with  their 
hair  down  their  backs,  and  the  free  gestures  learnt 
at  school  and  not  yet  forgotten,  skipping  off  on  I 
know  not  what  important  errands,  earning  part  of 
a  livelihood  already  in  the  service  of  those  others. 
And  at  its  upper  windows  appear  at  times  more 
black-robed  girls,  and  disappear,  like  charming 
prisoners  in  a  castle. 

«*      «*      #      £ 

The  beings  for  whom  the  place  exists  come  down 
all  the  curved  vistas  towards  it,  on  foot  or  on  wheel, 
all  day  in  radiant  droves.  They  are  obliged  at  any 
rate  to  pass  through  it,  for  the  Circus  is  their  Clap- 
ham  Junction,  and  the  very  gate  of  finery.  Im- 
possible to  miss  it !  It  leads  to  all  coquetry,  and  all 
delights  and  dangers.  And  not  only  down  the  vis- 
tas are  they  coming,  but  they  are  shot  along 
subterranean  tubes,  and  hurried  through  endless 
passages,  and  flung  up  at  last  by  lifts  from  the 
depths  into  the  open  air.  And  when  you  look  at 
them  you  are  completely  baffled.  Because  they 
are  English,  and  the  most  mysterious  women  on 
earth,  save  the  Scandinavians.  You  cannot  get  at 
their  secret;  it  consists  in  an  impenetrable  ideal. 
With  the  Latin  you  do  come  in  the  end  to  the  solid 
marble  of  Latin  practicalness;  the  Latin  is  per- 
fectly unromantic.  But  the  romanticism  of  these 
English  is  something  so  recondite  that  no  research 


106  PARIS  NIGHTS 

and  no  analysis  can  approach  it.  Ibsen  could 
never  have  made  a  play  out  of  a  Latin  woman; 
but  I  tell  you  that,  for  me,  every  woman  stepping 
off  an  autobus  and  exposing  her  ankles  and  her 
character  as  she  dodges  across  the  Circus,  has  the 
look  in  her  face  of  an  Ibsen  heroine;  she  emanates 
romance  and  enigma;  she  is  the  potential  main- 
spring of  a  late-Ibsen  drama,  the  kind  whose  import 
no  critic  is  ever  quite  sure  of.  This  it  is  to  be 
Anglo-Saxon,  and  herein  is  one  of  the  grand  major 
qualities  of  the  streets  of  London. 

They  are  in  this  matter,  I  do  believe,  all  alike, 
these  creatures.  You  may  encounter  one  so  ugly 
and  mannish  and  grotesque  that  none  but  an  Eng- 
lishman could  take  her  to  his  arms,  and  even  she 
has  the  ineffable  romantic  gaze.  All  the  countless 
middle-aged  women  who  support  circulating  li- 
braries have  it;  the  hair  of  a  woman  of  fifty  blows 
about  her  face  romantically.  All  the  nice,  young- 
ish married  women  have  it,  those  who  think  they 
know  a  thing  or  two.  And  as  for  the  girls,  the 
young  girls,  they  show  a  romantic  naivete  which 
transcends  belief ;  they  are  so  fresh  and  so  virginal 
and  so  loose-limbed  and  so  obsessed  by  a  mysterious 
ideal,  that  really  (you  think)  the  street  is  too  peril- 
ous a  place  for  them.  And  yet  they  go  confidently 
about,  either  alone  or  in  couples,  or  with  young 
men  at  bottom  as  simple  as  themselves,  and  naught 
happens  to  them;  they  must  be  protected  by  their 
idealism.  And  now  and  then  you  will  see  a  woman 
who  is  strictly  and  truly  chic,  in  the  extreme  French 
sense — an  amazing  spectacle  in  our  city  of  sloppy 


£ 


^c\r 


MWJ 


-i 


FLOWER  WOMEN     (Pope  /OS) 


THE  CIRCUS  107 

women  who,  while  dreaming  of  dress  for  ten  hours 
a  day,  cannot  even  make  their  blouses  fasten  de- 
cently— and  this  chic  Parisianised  creature  herself 
will  have  kept  her  idealistic  gaze!  They  all  keep 
it.  They  die  with  it  at  seventy-five.  Whatever 
adventure  occurs  to  an  Englishwoman,  she  remains 
spiritually  innocent  and  naive.  The  Circus  is 
bathed  in  the  mood  of  these  qualities. 

£      £      £      £ 

Towards  dark  it  alters  and  is  still  the  same.  See 
it  after  the  performances  on  a  matinee  day,  surg- 
ing with  heroines.  See  it  at  eight  o'clock  at  night, 
a  packed  mass  of  taxis  and  automobiles,  each  the 
casket  of  a  romantic  creature,  hurrying  in  pursuit 
of  that  ideal  without  a  name.  Later,  the  place  is 
becalmed,  and  scarcely  an  Englishwoman  is  to  be 
seen  in  it  until  after  the  theatres,  when  once  again 
it  is  nationalised  and  feminised  to  an  intense  degree. 
The  shops  are  black,  and  the  flower-sellers  are 
gone;  but  the  electric  skysigns  are  in  violent  activ- 
ity, and  there  is  light  enough  to  see  those  baffling 
faces  as  they  flash  or  wander  by.  And  the  trains 
are  now  bearing  the  creatures  away  in  the  deep-laid 
tubes. 

And  then  there  comes  an  hour  when  the  hidden 
trains  have  ceased,  and  the  autobuses  have  nearly 
ceased,  and  the  bright  beings  have  withdrawn  them- 
selves until  the  morrow;  and  now,  on  all  the  foot- 
paths of  the  Circus,  move  crowded  processions  of 
men  young  and  old,  slowly,  as  though  in  the  per- 
formance of  a  rite.  It  leads  to  nothing,  this  tramp- 
ing; it  serves  no  end;  it  is  merely  idiotic,  in  a  pecul- 


108  PARIS  NIGHTS 

iarly  Anglo-Saxon  way.  But  only  heavy  rain  can 
interfere  with  it.  It  persists  obstinately.  And 
the  reason  of  it  is  that  the  Circus  is  the  Circus. 
And  after  all,  though  idiotic,  it  has  the  merit  and 
significance  of  being  instinctive.  The  Circus  sym- 
bolises the  secret  force  which  drives  forward  the 
social  organism  through  succeeding  stages  of  evo- 
lution. The  origin  of  every  effort  can  be  seen  at 
some  time  of  day  emerging  from  a  crimson  autobus 
in  the  Circus,  or  speeding  across  the  Circus  in  a 
green  taxi.  The  answer  to  the  singular  conundrum 
of  the  City  is  to  be  found  early  or  late  in  the  Circus. 
The  imponderable  spirit  of  the  basic  fact  of  society 
broods  in  the  Circus  forever.  Despite  all  changes, 
there  is  no  change.  I  say  no  change.  You  may 
gaze  into  the  jeweller's  shop  at  the  gold  slave-ban- 
gles, which  cannot  be  dear  at  six  pound  ten,  since 
they  express  the  secret  attitude  of  an  entire  sex. 
And  then  you  may  turn  and  gaze  at  the  face  of  a 
Suffragette,  with  her  poster  and  her  armful  of  pa- 
pers, and  her  quiet  voice  and  her  mien  of  pride. 
And  you  may  think  you  see  a  change  fundamental 
and  terrific.  Look  again. 


PICCADILLY  CIRCUS     (Pa^e  1(33) 


THE  BANQUET 

In  every  large  London  restaurant,  and  in  many 
small  ones,  there  is  a  spacious  hall  (or  several)  cur- 
tained away  from  the  public,  in  which  every  night 
strange  secret  things  go  on.  Few  suspect,  and 
still  fewer  realise,  the  strangeness  of  these  secret 
things.  In  the  richly  decorated  interior  (some- 
times marked  with  mystic  signs) ,  at  a  table  which 
in  space  reaches  from  everlasting  to  everlasting,  and 
has  the  form  of  a  grill  or  a  currycomb  or  the  end 
of  a  rake — at  such  a  table  sit  fifty  or  five  hundred 
males.  They  are  all  dressed  exactly  alike,  in  black 
and  white;  but  occasionally  they  display  a  coloured 
flower,  and  each  man  bears  exactly  the  same  spe- 
cies and  tint  and  size  of  flower,  so  that  you  think 
of  regiments  of  flowers  trained  throughout  their 
lives  in  barracks  to  the  end  of  shining  for  a  night 
in  unison  on  the  black  and  white  bosoms  of  these 
males.  Although  there  is  not  even  a  buffet  in  the 
great  room,  and  no  sign  of  the  apparatus  of  a  res- 
taurant, all  these  males  are  eating  a  dinner,  and 
it  is  the  same  dinner.  They  do  not  wish  to  choose ; 
they  accept,  reading  the  menu  like  a  decree  of  fate. 
They  do  not  inquire  upon  the  machinery;  a  slave, 
unglanced  at,  places  a  certain  quantity  of  a  dish  in 
front  of  them — and  lo!  the  same  quantity  of  the 

109 


HO  PARIS  NIGHTS 

same  dish  is  in  front  of  all  of  them;  they  do  not 
ask  whence  nor  how  it  came;  they  eat,  with  indus- 
try, knowing  that  at  a  given  moment,  whether  they 
have  finished  or  not,  a  hand  will  steal  round  from 
behind  them,  and  the  plate  will  vanish  into  limbo. 
Thus  the  repast  continues,  ruthlessly,  under  the 
aquiline  gaze  of  a  slave  who  is  also  a  commander- 
in-chief,  manoeuvring  his  men  silently,  manoeuvr- 
ing them  with  naught  but  a  glance.  With  one 
glance  he  causes  to  disappear  five  hundred  salad- 
plates,  and  with  another  he  conjures  from  behind 
a  screen  five  hundred  ices,  each  duly  below  zero, 
and  each  calculated  to  impede  the  digesting  of  a 
salad.  The  service  of  the  dinner  is  a  miracle,  but 
the  diners,  absorbed  in  the  expectancy  of  rites  to 
come,  reck  not;  they  assume  the  service  as  they  as- 
sume the  rising  of  the  sun.  Only  a  few  remember 
the  old,  old  days,  in  the  'eighties  (before  a  cabal  of 
international  Jews  had  put  their  heads  together 
and  inaugurated  a  new  age  of  miracles),  when 
these  solemn  repasts  were  a  scramble  and  a  guerilla, 
after  which  one  half  of  the  combatants  went  home 
starving,  and  the  other  half  went  home  glutted  and 
drenched.  Nowadays  these  repasts  are  the  most 
perfectly  democratic  in  England;  and  anybody 
who  has  ever  assisted  at  one  knows  by  a  morsel  of 
experience  what  life  would  be  if  the  imaginative 
Tory's  nightmare  of  Socialism  were  to  become  a 
reality.  But  each  person  has  enough,  and  has  it 
promptly. 

£      #      «*      £ 

The  ceremonial  begins  with  a  meal,  because  it 


FROM  BAYSWATER  TO  THE  CIRCUS     (Page  105) 


THE  BANQUET  111 

would  be  impossible  on  an  empty  stomach.  Its 
object  is  ostensibly  either  to  celebrate  the  memory 
of  some  deed  or  some  dead  man,  or  to  signalise  the 
triumph  of  some  living  contemporary.  Clubs  and 
societies  exist  throughout  London  in  hundreds  ex- 
pressly for  the  execution  of  these  purposes,  and 
each!  of  them  is  a  remunerative  client  of  a  large  res- 
taurant. Societies  even  exist  solely  in  order  to 
watch  for  the  triumphs  of  contemporaries,  and  to 
gather  in  the  triumphant  to  a  repast  and  inform 
them  positively  that  they  are  great.  So  much  so 
that  it  is  difficult  to  accomplish  anything  unusual, 
such  as  the  discovery  of  one  pole  or  another,  or  the 
successful  defence  of  a  libel  action,  without  sub- 
mitting to  the  ordeal  of  these  societies  one  after  the 
other  in  a  chain,  and  emerging  therefrom  with  mod- 
esty ruined  and  the  brazen  conceit  of  a  star  actor. 
But  the  ostensible  object  is  merely  a  cover  for  the 
real  object,  the  unadmitted  and  often  unsuspected 
object:  which  is,  to  indulge  in  a  debauch  of 
universal  mutual  admiration.  When  the  physical 
appetite  is  assuaged,  then  the  appetite  for  praise 
and  sentimentality  is  whetted,  and  the  design  of  the 
mighty  institution  of  the  banquet  is  to  minister,  in 
a  manner  majestic  and  unexceptionable,  to  this  base 
appetite,  whose  one  excuse  is  its  naivete. 

A  pleasurable  and  even  voluptuous  thrill  of  an- 
ticipation runs  through  the  assemblage  when  the 
chairman  rises  to  open  the  orgy.  Everybody 
screws  himself  up,  as  a  fiddler  screwing  the  pegs  of 
a  fiddle,  to  what  he  deems  the  correct  pitch  of  ap- 
preciativeness ;  and  almost  the  breath  is  held.  And 


112  PARIS  NIGHTS 

the  chairman  says:  " Whatever  differences  may  di- 
vide us  upon  other  subjects,  I  am  absolutely  con- 
vinced, and  I  do  not  hesitate  to  state  my  convic- 
tion in  the  clearest  possible  way,  that  we  are  enthusi- 
astically and  completely  agreed  upon  one  point," 
the  point  being  that  such  and  such  a  person  or  such 
and  such  a  work  is  the  greatest  person  or  the  great- 
est work  of  the  kind  in  the  whole  history  of  the  hu- 
man race.  And  although  the  point  is  one  utterly 
inadmissible  upon  an  empty  stomach,  although  it 
is  indeed  a  glaring  falsity,  everybody  at  once  fever- 
ishly endorses  it,  either  with  shrill  articulate  cries, 
or  with  deep  inarticulate  booming,  or  with  noises 
produced  by]  the  shock  of  flesh  on  flesh,  or  ivory  on 
wood,  or  steel  on  crystal.  The  uproar  is  enor- 
mous. The  chairman  grows  into  a  sacramental 
priest,  or  a  philosopher  of  amazing  insight  and 
courage.  And  everybody  says  to  himself:  "I  had 
not  screwed  myself  up  quite  high  enough,"  and 
proceeds  to  a  further  screwing.  And  in  every 
heart  is  the  thought:  "This  is  grand!  This  is 
worth  living  for !  This  alone  is  the  true  reward  of 
endeavour!"  And  the  corporate  soul  muses  ecstat- 
ically: "This  work,  or  this  man,  is  ours,  by  reason 
of  our  appreciation  and  our  enthusiasm.  And  he, 
or  it,  is  ours  exclusively."  And,  since  the  soul  and 
the  body  are  locked  together  in  the  closest  sympa- 
thetic intimacy,  all  those  cautious  dyspeptic  ones 
who  have  hitherto  shirked  danger,  immediately  put 
on  courage  like  a  splendid  garment,  and  order  the 
strongest  drinks  and  the  longest  cigars  that  the  es- 
tablishment can  offer.  The  real  world  fades  into 


FROM  SOUTH  LONDON  TO  THE  CIRCUS    (Page  105) 


THE  BANQUET  118 

unreality;  the  morrow  is  lost  in  eternity;  the  mo- 
ment and  the  illusion  alone  are  real. 


The  key  of  the  mood  is  to  be  sought  less  in  the 
speeches  as  they  succeed  each  other  than  in  the  ap- 
plause. For  the  applauders  are  not  influenced  by 
a  sense  of  responsibility,  or  made  self-conscious  by 
publicity.  They  can  be  natural,  and  they  are. 
What  fear  can  prevent  them  from  translating  in- 
stantly their  emotions  into  sound?  By  the  ap- 
plause, if  you  are  a  slave  and  non-participator,  you 
may  correct  your  too  kindly  estimate  of  men  in  the 
mass.  Note  how  the  most  outrageous  exaggera- 
tion, the  grossest  flattery,  the  most  banal  platitude, 
the  most  fatuous  optimism,  gain  the  loudest  ap- 
proval. Note  how  any  reservation  produces  a  fall 
of  temperature.  Note  how  the  smallest  jokes  are 
seized  on  ravenously,  as  a  worm  by  a  young  bird. 
And  note  always  the  girlish  sentimentality,  ever 
gushing  forth,  of  these  strong,  hard-headed  males 
whose  habit  is  to  proverbialise  the  sentimentality 
of  women. 

The  emotional  crisis  arrives.  Feeling  transcends 
the  vehicle  of  speech,  and  escapes  in  song.  And 
one  guest,  honoured  either  for  some  special  deed  of 
his  own  or  because  his  name  has  been  "coupled" 
with  some  historic  deed  or  movement,  remains  sit- 
ting, in  the  most  exquisite  self-consciousness  that 
human  ingenuity  ever  brought  about,  while  all  the 
rest  fling  hoarsely  at  him  the  fifteen  sacred  words 
of  a  refrain  which  in  its  incredible  vulgarity  sur- 
passes even  the  National  Anthem. 


114  PARIS  NIGHTS 

The  reaction  is  now  not  far  off.  But  owing  to 
several  reasons  it  is  postponed  yet  awhile.  The 
honoured  guest's  response  is  one  of  the  chief  attrac- 
tions of  the  night.  Very  many  diners  have  been 
drawn  to  the  banquet  by  the  desire  to  inspect  the 
honoured  guest  at  their  leisure,  to  see  his  antics,  to 
divine  his  human  weaknesses  and  his  ridiculous  side. 
And,  moreover,  the  honoured  guest  must  give  praise 
for  praise,  and  lie  for  lie.  He  is  bound  by  the 
strictest  conventions  of  social  intercourse  to  say  in 
so  many  words:  "Gentlemen,  you  are  the  most  en- 
lightened body  of  men  that  I  ever  had  the  good 
fortune  to  meet;  and  your  hospitality  is  the  great- 
est compliment  that  I  have  ever  had,  or  ever  shall 
have,  or  could  conceive.  Each  of  you  is  a  prince 
of  the  earth.  And  I  am  a  worm  .  .  ."  And 
then  there  are  the  minor  speeches,  finishing  off  in 
detail  the  vast  embroidery  of  laudation  which  was 
begun  by  the  Chairman.  Everybody  is  more  or 
less  enfolded  in  that  immense  mantle.  And  every- 
body is  satisfied  and  sated,  save  those  who  have  sat 
through  the  night  awaiting  the  sweet  mention  of 
their  own  names,  and  who  have  been  disappointed. 
At  every  banquet  there  are  such.  And  it  is  they 
who,  by  their  impatience,  definitely  cause  the  re- 
action at  last.  The  speakers  who  terminate  the  af- 
fair fight  against  the  reaction  in  vain.  The  ap- 
plause at  the  close  is  perfunctory — how  different 
from  the  fever  of  the  commencement  and  the  hys- 
teria of  the  middle!  The  illusion  is  over.  The 
emotional  debauch  is  finished.  The  adult  and 
bearded  boys  have  played  the  delicious  make-believe 


THE  BANQUET  115 

of  being  truly  great,  and  the  game  is  at  an  end; 
and  each  boy,  looking  within,  perceives  without  too 
much  surprise  that  he  is  after  all  only  himself.  A 
cohort  "of  the  best,"  foregathered  in  the  cloak- 
room, say  to  each  other,  "Delightful  evening! 
Splendid!  Ripping!"  And  then  one  says,  iron- 
ically leering,  in  a  low  voice,  and  a  tone  heavy  with 
realistic  disesteem:  "Well,  what  do  you  think 
of — ?"  Naming  the  lion  of  the  night. 


VI 

ONE  OF   THE   CROWD 

He  comes?  out  of  the  office,  which  is  a  pretty  large 
one,  with  a  series  of  nods — condescending,  curt,  in- 
different, friendly,  and  deferential.  He  has  de- 
testations and  preferences,  even  cronies;  and  if  he 
has  superiors,  he  has  also  inferiors.  But  whereas 
his  fate  depends  on  the  esteem  of  a  superior,  the 
fate  of  no  inferior  depends  on  his  esteem.  When 
he  nods  deferentially  he  is  bowing  to  an  august 
power  before  which  all  others  are  in  essence  equal ; 
the  least  of  his  inferiors  knows  that.  And  the  least 
of  his  inferiors  will  light,  on  the  stairs,  a  cigarette 
with  the  same  gesture,  and  of  perhaps  the  same 
brand,  as  his  own — to  signalise  the  moment  of  free- 
dom, of  emergence  from  the  machine  into  human 
citizenship.  Presently  he  is  walking  down  the 
crammed  street  with  one  or  two  preferences  or  in- 
differences, and  they  are  communicating  with  each 
other  in  slang,  across  the  shoulders  of  jostling  in- 
terrupters, and  amid  the  shouts  of  newsboys  and 
the  immense  roaring  of  the  roadway.  And  at  the 
back  of  his  mind,  while  he  talks  and  smiles,  or 
frowns,  is  a  clear  vision  of  a  terminus  and  a  clock 
and  a  train.  Just  as  the  water-side  man,  wher- 
ever he  may  be,  is  aware,  night  and  day,  of  the 
exact  state  of  the  tide,  so  this  man  carries  in  his 

116 


FROM  WEST  KENSINGTON  TO  THE  CIRCUS    (Page  105) 


ONE  OF  THE  CROWD  117 

brain  a  time-table  of  a  particular  series  of  trains, 
and  subconsciously  he  is  always  aware  whether  he 
can  catch  a  particular  train,  and  if  so,  whether  he 
must  hurry  or  may  loiter.  His  case  is  not  peculiar. 
He  is  just  an  indistinguishable  man  on  the  crowded 
footpaths,  and  all  the  men  on  the  footpaths,  like 
him,  are  secretly  obsessed  by  the  vision  of  a  train 
just  moving  out  of  a  station. 

He  arrives  at  the  terminus  with  only  one  com- 
panion; the  rest,  with  nods,  have  vanished  away 
at  one  street  corner  or  another.  Gradually  he  is 
sorting  himself  out.  Both  he  and  his  companion 
know  that  there  are  a  hundred  and  twenty  seconds 
to  spare.  The  companion  relates  a  new  humorous 
story  of  something  unprintable,  alleged  to  have 
happened  between  a  man  and  a  woman.  The  re- 
ceiver of  the  story  laughs  with  honest  glee,  and  is 
grateful,  and  the  companion  has  the  air  of  a  bene- 
factor; which  indeed  he  is,  for  these  stories  are 
the  ready-money  of  social  intercourse.  The  com- 
panion strides  off,  with  a  nod.  The  other  remains 
solitary.  He  has  sorted  himself  out,  but  only  for 
a  minute.  In  a  minute  he  is  an  indistinguishable 
unit  again,  with  nine  others,  in  the  compartment 
of  a  moving  train.  He  reads  an  evening  news- 
paper, which  seems  to  have  come  into  his  hand  of 
its  own  agency,  for  he  catches  it  every  night  with 
a  purely  mechanical  grasp  as  it  flies  in  the  street. 
He  reads  of  deeds  and  misdeeds,  and  glances  aside 
uneasily  from  the  disturbing  tides  of  restless  men 
who  will  not  let  the  social  order  alone.  Suddenly, 
after  the  train  has  stopped  several  times,  he  folds 


118  PARIS  NIGHTS 

up  the  newspaper  as  it  is  stopping  again,  and  gets 
blindly  out.  As  he  surges  up  into  the  street  on  a 
torrent  of  his  brothers,  he  seems  less  sorted  than 
ever.  The  street  into  which  he  comes  is  broad  and 
busy,  and  the  same  newspapers  are  flying  in  it. 
Nevertheless,  the  street  is  different  from  the  streets 
of  the  centre.  It  has  a  reddish  or  a  yellowish  qual- 
ity of  colour,  and  there  is  not  the  same  haste  in 
it.  He  walks  more  quickly  now.  He  walks  a  long 
way  up  another  broad  street,  in  which  rare  auto- 
buses and  tradesmen's  carts  rattle  and  thunder. 
The  street  gets  imperceptibly  quieter,  and  more 
verdurous.  He  passes  a  dozen  side-streets,  and  at 
last  he  turns  into  a  side-street.  And  this  side- 
street  is  full  of  trees  and  tranquillity.  It  is  so  si- 
lent that  to  reach  it  he  might  have  travelled  seventy 
miles  instead  of  seven.  There  are  glimpses  of  yel- 
low and  red  houses  behind  thick  summer  verdure. 
His  pace  still  quickens.  He  smiles  to  himself  at 
the  story,  and  wonders  to  whom  he  can  present  it 
on  the  morrow.  And  then  he  halts  and  pushes 
open  a  gate  upon  which  is  painted  a  name.  And 
he  is  in  a  small  garden,  with  a  vista  of  a  larger 
garden  behind.  And  down  the  vista  is  a  young 
girl,  with  the  innocence  and  grace  and  awkward- 
ness and  knowingness  of  her  years — sixteen;  a  lit- 
tle shabby,  or  perhaps  careless,  in  her  attire,  but 
enchanting.  She  starts  forward,  smiling,  and  ex- 
claims : 

"Father!" 

Now  he  is  definitely  sorted  out. 
,*    «*    &    * 


ONE  OF   THE  CROWD  119 

Though  this  man  is  one  of  the  crowd,  though 
nobody  would  look  twice  at  him  in  Cannon  Street, 
yet  it  is  to  the  successful  and  felicitous  crowd  that 
he  belongs.  There  are  tens  of  thousands  of  his 
grade;  but  he  has  the  right  to  fancy  himself  a  bit. 
He  can  do  certain  difficult  things  very  well — else 
how,  in  the  fierce  and  gigantic  struggle  for  money, 
should  he  contrive  to  get  hold  of  five  hundred 
pounds  a  year? 

He  is  a  lord  in  his  demesne;  nay,  even  a  sort  of 
eternal  father.  Two  servants  go  in  fear  of  him, 
because  his  wife  uses  him  as  a  bogey  to  intimidate 
them.  His  son,  the  schoolboy,  a  mighty  one  at 
school,  knows  there  is  no  appeal  from  him,  and  quite 
sincerely  has  an  idea  that  his  pockets  are  inexhaust- 
ible. Whenever  his  son  has  seen  him  called  upon 
to  pay  he  has  always  paid,  and  money  has  always 
been  left  in  his  pocket.  His  daughter  adores  and 
exasperates  him.  His  wife,  with  her  private  sys- 
tem of  visits,  and  her  suff  ragetting,  and  her  inde- 
pendences, recognises  ultimately  in  every  conflict 
that  the  resultant  of  forces  is  against  her  and  for 
him.  When  he  is  very  benevolent  he  joins  her  in 
the  game  of  pretending  that  they  are  equals.  He 
is  the  distributor  of  joy.  When  he  laughs,  all 
laugh,  and  word  shoots  through  the  demesne  that 
father  is  in  a  good  humour. 

He  laughs  to-night.  The  weather  is  superb;  it 
is  the  best  time  of  the  year  in  the  suburbs.  Twi- 
light is  endless;  the  silver  will  not  die  out  of  the 
sky.  He  wanders  in  the  garden,  the  others  with 
him.  He  works  potteringly.  He  shows  himself 


120  PARIS  NIGHTS 

more  powerful  than  his  son,  both  physically  and 
mentally.  He  spoils  his  daughter,  who  is  daily 
growing  more  mysterious.  He  administers  flat- 
tery to  his  wife.  He  throws  scraps  of  kindness  to 
the  servants.  It  is  his  wife  who  at  last  insists  on 
the  children  going  to  bed.  Lights  show  at  the  up- 
per windows.  The  kitchen  is  dark  and  silent.  His 
wife  calls  to  him  from  upstairs.  He  strolls  round 
to  the  front  patch  of  garden,  stares  down  the  side- 
road,  sees  an  autobus  slide  past  the  end  of  it,  shuts 
and  secures  the  gate,  comes  into  the  house,  bolts 
the  front  door,  bolts  the  back  door,  inspects  the 
windows,  glances  at  the  kitchen;  finally,  he  extin- 
guishes the  gas  in  the  hall.  Then  he  leaves  the 
ground  floor  to  its  solitude,  and  on  the  first-floor 
peeps  in  at  his  snoring  son,  and  admonishes  his 
daughter  through  a  door  ajar  not  to  read  in  bed. 
He  goes  to  the  chief  bedroom,  and  locks  himself 
therein  with  his  wife;  and  yawns.  The  night  has 
come.  He  has  made  his  dispositions  for  the  night. 
And  now  he  must  trust  himself,  and  all  that  is  his, 
to  the  night.  A  vague,  faint  anxiety  penetrates 
him.  He  can  feel  the  weight  of  five  human  beings 
depending  on  him;  their  faith  in  him  lies  heavy. 

In  the  middle  of  the  night  he  wakes  up,  and  is 
reminded  of  such-and-such  a  dish  of  which  he  par- 
took. He  remembers  what  his  wife  said:  "There's 
no  doing  anything  with  that  girl" — the  daughter 
— "I  don't  know  what's  come  over  her."  And  he 
thinks  of  all  his  son's  faults  and  stupidities,  and 
of  what  it  will  be  to  have  two  children  adult.  It 


ONE  OF  THE  CROWD  121 

is  true — there  is  no  doing  anything  with  either  one 
or  the  other.  Their  characters  are  unchangeable 
— to  be  taken  or  left.  This  is  one  lesson  he 
has  learnt  in  the  last  ten  years.  And  his  wife 
.  .  .  !  The  whole  organism  of  the  demesne 
presents  itself  to  him,  lying  awake,  as  most  extra- 
ordinarily complicated.  The  garden  alone,  the 
rose-trees  alone, — what  a  constant  cause  of  solici- 
tude! The  friction  of  the  servants, — was  one  of 
them  a  thief  or  was  she  not?  The  landlord  must 
be  bullied  about  the  roof.  Then,  new  wall-papers ! 
A  hinge!  His  clothes!  His  boots!  His  wife's 
clothes,  and  her  occasional  strange  disconcerting 
apathy!  The  children's  clothes!  Rent!  Taxes! 
Rates!  Season-ticket!  Subscriptions!  Negligence 
of  the  newsvendor!  Bills!  Seaside  holiday!  Er- 
ratic striking  of  the  drawing-room  clock !  The  pain 
in  his  daughter's  back!  The  singular  pain  in  his 
own  groin — nothing,  and  yet  .  .  .  !  Insur- 
ance premium!  And  above  all,  the  office!  Who 
knew,  who  could  tell,  what  might  happen?  There 
was  no  margin  of  safety,  not  fifty  pounds  margin 
of  safety.  He  walked  in  success  and  happiness  on 
a  thin  brittle  crust!  Crack!  And  where  would 
they  all  be?  Where  would  be  the  illusion  of  his 
son  and  daughter  that  he  was  an  impregnable  and 
unshakable  rock?  What  would  his  son  think  if 
he  knew  that  his  father  often  calculated  to  half-a- 
crown,  and  economised  in  cigarettes  and  a  great 
deal  in  lunches?  .  .  . 

He  asks,  "Why  did  I  bring  all  this  on  myself? 


122  PARIS  NIGHTS 

Where  do  I  come  in,  after  all?"     .     .     .     The 
dawn,  very  early;  and  he  goes  to  sleep  once  more! 

The  next  morning,  factitiously  bright  after  his 
bath,  he  is  eating  his  breakfast,  reading  his  news- 
paper, and  looking  at  his  watch.  The  night  is 
over;  the  complicated  organism  is  in  full  work 
again,  with  its  air  of  absolute  security.  His  news- 
paper, inspired  by  a  millionaire  to  gain  a  million- 
aire's ends  by  appealing  to  the  ingenuousness  of 
this  clever  struggler,  is  uneasy  with  accounts  of 
attacks  meditated  on  the  established  order.  His 
mind  is  made  up.  The  established  order  may  not 
be  perfect,  but  he  is  in  favour  of  it.  He  has  ar- 
rived at  an  equilibrium,  unstable  possibly,  but  an 
equilibrium.  One  push,  and  he  would  be  over! 
Therefore,  no  push!  He  hardens  his  heart  against 
the  complaint  of  the  unjustly  treated.  He  has  his 
own  folk  to  think  about. 

The  station  is  now  drawing  him  like  a  magnet. 
He  sees  in  his  mind's  eye  every  yard  of  the  way 
between  the  side-street  and  the  office,  and  in  imag- 
ination he  can  hear  the  clock  striking  at  the  other 
end.  He  must  go;  he  must  go!  Several  persons 
help  him  to  go,  and  at  the  garden-gate  he  stoops 
and  kisses  that  mysterious  daughter.  He  strides 
down  the  side-street.  Only  a  moment  ago,  it  seems, 
he  was  striding  up  it!  He  turns  into  the  long  road. 
It  is  a  grinding  walk  in  the  already  hot  sun.  He 
reaches  the  station  and  descends  into  it,  and  is  di- 
minished from  an  eternal  father  to  a  mere  unit  of 


ONE  OF  THE  CROWD  123 

a  throng.  But  on  the  platform  he  meets  a  jolly 
acquaintance.  His  face  relaxes  as  they  salute.  "I 
say,"  he  says  after  an  instant,  bursting  with  a  good 
thing,  "Have  you  heard  the  tale  about  the — ?" 


ITALY—1910 


NIGHT  AND  MORNING  IN  FLORENCE 

Amid  the  infantile  fluttering  confusion  caused  by 
the  arrival  of  the  Milan  express  at  Florence  rail- 
way station,  the  thoughts  of  the  artist  as  he  falls 
sheer  out  of  the  compartment  upon  the  soft  bodies 
of  hold-alls  and  struggling  women,  are  not  solely 
on  the  platform.  This  moment  has  grandeur. 
This  city  was  the  home  of  the  supreme  ones — 
Dante,  Leonardo,  Michael  Angelo,  and  Brunel- 
leschi.  You  have  entered  it.  ...  Awe?  I 
have  never  been  aware  of  sentiments  of  awe  towards 
any  artists,  saye  Charles  Baudelaire.  My  secret 
attitude  to  them  has  always  been  that  I  would  like 
to  shake  their  hands  and  tell  them  briefly  in  their 
private  slang,  whatever  their  private  slang  was, 
that  they  had  given  immense  pleasure  to  another 
artist.  I  have  excepted  Charles  Baudelaire  ever 
since  I  read  his  correspondence,  in  which  he  is  eter- 
nally trying  to  borrow  ten  francs  from  some  one, 
and  if  they  cannot  make  it  ten — then  five.  There 
is  something  so  excessively  poignant,  and  to  me  so 
humiliating,  in  the  spectacle  of  the  grand  author 
of  La  Charogne  going  about  among  his  acquaint- 
ance in  search  of  a  dollar,  that  I  would  only  think 
about  it  when  I  wished  to  inflict  on  myself  a  pen- 
ance. It  is  a  spectacle  unique.  Like  the  King 

127 


128  PARIS  NIGHTS 

of  Thule  song  in  Berlioz's  Damnation  of  Faust,  it 
resembles  nothing  else  of  its  kind.  If  the  artist 
does  not  stand  in  awe  before  that  monumental  en- 
igma of  human  pride  which  called  itself  Charles 
Baudelaire,  how  shall  the  artist's  posture  be  de- 
scribed? 

No,  I  will  tell  you  what  occupied  the  withdrawn 
and  undefiled  spaces  of  my  mind  as  I  entered  Flor- 
ence, drifting  on  the  stream  of  labelled  menials  and 
determined  ladies  with  their  teeth  hard-set:  Was 
it  more  interesting  for  an  artist  to  be  born  into  a 
great  age  of  art,  where  he  was  beloved  and  appre- 
ciated, if  not  wholly  comprehended,  by  relatively 
large  masses  of  people;  where  his  senses  were  on 
every  hand  indulged  and  pampered  by  the  caress 
of  the  obviously  beautiful;  where  he  lived  among 
equals,  and  saw  himself  continually  surrounded  by 
innumerable  acts  creative  of  beauty;  and  where  he 
could  feel  in  the  very  air  a  divine  palpitation — or, 
on  the  other  hand,  was  it  more  spiritually  voluptu- 
ous for  the  artist  to  be  born  into  a  stone  age,  an  age 
deaf  and  dumb,  an  age  insensible  to  the  sublime, 
ignorantly  rejecting  beauty,  and  occupying  itself 
with  the  most  damnable  and  offensive  futilities  that 
the  soul  of  an  artist  can  conceive?  For  I  was  go- 
ing, in  my  fancy,  out  of  the  one  age  into  the  other. 
And  I  decided,  upon  reflection,  that  I  would  just 
as  soon  be  in  the  age  in  which  I  in  fact  was ;  I  said 
that  I  would  not  change  places  even  with  the  most 
fortunate  and  miraculous  of  men — Leonardo  da 
Vinci.  There  is  an  agreeable  bitterness,  an  ex- 
quisite tang,  in  the  thought  of  the  loneliness  of  ar- 


FLORENCE  129 

tists  in  an  age  whose  greatness  and  whose  epic 
quality  are  quite  divorced  from  art.  And  when  I 
think  of  the  artist  in  this  age,  I  think  of  the  Invisi- 
ble Man  of  H.  G.  Wells,  in  the  first  pride  of  his  in- 
visibility (when  he  was  not  yet  hunted),  walking 
unseen  and  unseeing  amid  multitudes,  and  it  is 
long  before1  anybody  in  the  multitudes  even  notices 
the  phenomenon  of  mysterious  footmarks  that  can- 
not be  accounted  for!  I  like  to  be  that  man.  I 
like  to  think  that  my  fellows  are  few,  and  that  even 
I,  not  having  eyes  to  see  most  of  them,  must  now 
and  then  be  disconcerted  by  the  appearance  of  un- 
accountable footmarks.  There  is  something  be- 
yond happiness,  and  that  is,  to  know  intensely  and 
painfully  that  you  are  what  you  are.  The  great 
Florentines  of  course  had  that  knowledge,  but  their 
circumstances  were  not  so  favourable  as  mine  to  its 
cultivation  in  an  artist.  Therein  lay  their  disad- 
vantage and  lies  my  advantage. 

Besides,  you  do  not  suppose  that  I  would  wish  to 
alter  this  age  by  a  single  iota  of  its  ugliness  and  its 
preposterousness !  You  do  not  suppose  I  do  not 
love  it!  You  do  not  suppose  I  do  not  wallow  in 
the  trough  of  it  with  delight!  There  is  not  one 
stockbroker,  not  one  musical  comedy  star,  not  one 
philanthropic  giver  of  free  libraries,  not  one  noble 
brewer,  not  one  pander,  not  one  titled  musician, 
not  one  fashionable  bishop,  not  one  pro-consul,  that 
I  would  wish  away.  Where  should  my  pride  bit- 
terly exercise  itself  if  not  in  proving  that  my  age, 
exactly  as  it  exists  now,  contains  nothing  that  is 
not  the  raw  material  of'  beauty?  If  I  wished  to  do 


vf 


130  PARIS  NIGHTS 

so,  I  would  force  some  among  you  to  see  that  even 
the  hotel-tout  within  the  portals  of  the  city* of 

Giotto  is  beautiful. 

«*    *    *    * 

At  dinner  I  am  waited  upon  by  a  young  and 
beautiful  girl  who,  having  almost  certainly  never 
heard  of  Gabriele  d'Annunzio,  yet  speaks  his  lan- 
guage and  none  other.  But  she  wears  the  apron 
and  the  cap  of  the  English  parlour-maid,  in  plen- 
ary correctness,  and,  knowing  exactly  how  I  should 
be  served  in  England,  she  humours  me ;  and  above 
us  is  a  vaulted  ceiling.  Such  is  the  terrible  might 
of  England.  I  am  surrounded  by  ladies ;  the  room 
is  crammed  with  ladies.  By  the  perfection  of 
their  virtuosity  in  the  nice  conduct  of  forks  alone 
is  demonstrated  their  ladyship.  (And  I  who, 
like  a  savage,  cannot  eat  pudding  without  a  spoon!) 
There  is  a  middle-aged  gentleman,  whose  eye- 
glasses are  wandering  down  his  fine  nose,  lost  in  a 
bosky  dell  of  women  at  the  other  end  of  the  room; 
and  there  is  myself;  and  there  is  a  boy,  obviously  in 
Hades.  And  there  are  some  fifty  dames.  Their 
voices,  high,  and  with  the  sublime  unconscious  ar- 
rogance of  the  English,  fight  quietly  and  steadily 
among  each  other  up  in  the  vaulting.  "Of  course, 
I  used  to  play  cricket  with  my  brothers.  But, 
will  you  believe  me,  I've  never  seen  a  football  match 
in  my  life!"  "No,  we  haven't  seen  the  new  rector 
yet,  but  they  say  he's  frightfully  nice."  "Benozzo 
Gozzoli — ye-es."  It  is  impossible  not  to  believe, 
listening  to  these  astounding  conversations,  that 
nature,  tired  of  imitating  Balzac  any  longer,  has 


FLORENCE  131 

now  taken  to  imitating  the  novels  of  Mrs.  Hum- 
phry Ward. 

The  drawing-room  is  an  English  drawing-room 
— yes,  with  the  Queen  and  "the  authoress  of  Eliza- 
beth and  her  German  Garden"  and  a  Bechstein 
grand.  There  are  forty-five  chairs  and  easy  chairs 
in  it,  and  fifty  ladies;  the  odd  five  ladies  sit  low 
upon  hassocks  or  recline  on  each  other  in  attitudes 
of  intense  affection.  And  at  the  other  end  is  a 
male,  neither  the  man  with  the  pincenez  nor  the  boy 
in  Hades,  but  a  third  who  has  mysteriously  come 
out  of  nothing  into  existence.  I  have  entered,  and 
I  am  held,  as  by  a  spell,  in  the  doorway,  the  electric 
light  raining  upon  me,  a  San  Sebastian  for  the  fatal 
arrows  of  the  fifty,  who  fix  on  me  their  ingenuous 
eyes — 

And  dart  delicious  danger  thence 

(to  cull  an  incomparable  phrase  from  one  of  the 
secular  poems  of  Dr.  Isaac  Watts).  And  now 
there  are  more  ladies  behind  me,  filling  the  doorway 
with  hushed  expectation.  For  in  the  appalling 
silence,  a  young  sad-orbed  creature  is  lifting  a  vio- 
lin delicately  from  its  case  on  the  Bechstein,  at 
which  waits  a  sister-spirit.  "Do  tell  me,"  says  an 
American  voice,  intrepidly  breasting  the  silence, 
"what  was  that  perfectly  heavenly  thing  you 
played  last  night — was  it  Debussy?  We  thought 
it  must  be  Debussy."  And  the  violinist  answers: 
"No;  I  expect  you  mean  the  Goltermann.  It  is 
pretty,  isn't  it?"  And  as  she  holds  up  the  violin, 
interrogating  its  strings  with  an  anxious  and  a 


132  PARIS  NIGHTS 

critical  ear,  I  observe  that  beneath  the  strings  lies 
a  layer  of  rosin-dust.  Thirty  years  ago,  in  the 
fastnesses  of  the  Five  Towns,  amateurs  used  to 
deem  it  necessary  to  keep  their  violins  dirty  in  or- 
der to  play  with  the  soulfulness  of  a  Norman  Ne- 
ruda.  I  would  have  been  ready  to  affirm  that  ob- 
servation of  the  cleanliness  of  the  instruments  of 
professionals  had  killed  the  superstition  long  since; 
but  lo,  I  have  tunnelled  the  Simplon  to  meet  it 
again! 

I  go.  Somehow,  I  depart,  beaten  off  as  it  were 
with  great  loss.  I  plunge  out  into  dark  Florence, 
walking  under  the  wide  projecting  eaves  of  Flor- 
ence to  avoid  the  rain.  And  in  my  mind  I  can  still 
see  the  drawing-room,  a  great  cube  of  light,  with 
its  crowded  frocks  whose  folds  merge  one  into  the 
next,  and  the  Bechstein,  and  the  strains  of  Golter- 
mann,  and  the  attentive  polite  faces,  and  that  sole 
man  in  the  corner  like  a  fly  on  a  pin.  I  have  run 
away  from  it.  But  I  know  that  I  shall  go  back  to 
it,  and  that  my  curiosity  will  drink  it  to  the  dregs. 
For  that  drawing-room  is  to  the  working  artist  in 
me  the  most  impressive  and  the  most  interesting 
thing  in  Florence.  And  when  I  reflect  that  there 
are  dozens  and  dozens  of  it  in  Florence,  I  say  that 
this  age  is  the  most  romantic  age  that  ever  was. 
^  &  *  # 

I  know  where  I  am  going,  for  my  first  business 
in  entering  a  town,  whether  Florence,  Hull,  or 
Constantine,  is  always  to  examine  the  communica- 
tive posters  on  its  walls  and  to  glance  through  its 
newspapers.  There  is  a  performance  of  Spon- 


FLORENCE  133 

tini's  La  Vestale  at  the  Teatro  Verdi.  Nothing, 
hardly,  could  have  kept  me  away  from  that  per- 
formance, which  in  every  word  of  its  announce- 
ment seems  to  me  overpoweringly  romantic.  The 
name  of  Verdi  alone.  ...  I  heard  Verdi  late 
in  my  life,  and  in  Italy,  long  after  I  knew  by  rote 
all  the  themes  in  Tristan  and  Die  Meister singer, 
after  Pelleas  et  Melisande  had  ceased  to  be  a  nov- 
elty at  the  Paris  Opera  Comique,  after  even  the 
British  discovery  of  Richard  Strauss,  and  I  shall 
never  forget  the  ravishing  effect  on  me  of  the  first 
act  of  La  Traviata;  no,  nor  the  tedium  of  the  other 
acts.  I  would  go  to  any  theatre  named  Verdi. 
Then  Spontini!  What  is  Spontini  but  a  name? 
Was  it  possible  that  I  was  about  to  hear  an  actual 
opera  by  this  antique  mediocrity  whose  music  Ber- 
lioz loved  beyond  its  deserts?  Had  anybody  ever 
heard  an  opera  by  Spontini? 

The  shabbiness  of  the  facade  and  of  the  box- 
office,  and  of  the  suits  of  the  disillusioned  but  genial 
men  within  the  box-office — men  who  knew  the  full 
meaning  of  existence'  A  seat  in  the  parterre  for 
two  lire — say  one  and  sevenpence  halfpenny — it  is 
making  a  gift  of  the  spectacle!  The  men  take 
my  two  lire  with  an  indulgent  gesture,  exclaiming 
softly  with  their  eyes  and  hands:  "What  are  two 
lire  more  or  less  in  the  vast  abyss  of  our  deficit? 
Throw  them  down!"  Then  I  observe  that  my 
ticket  is  marked  posto  distinto — prominent  seat, 
distinguished  seat.  Useless  to  tell  me  that  it  means 
lothing!  It  means  much  to  me:  another  example 
>f  Italian  politeness,  at  once  exquisite  and  futile. 


134  PARIS  NIGHTS 

Would  the  earl  in  the  gate  at  Covent  Garden,  even 
for  thirty-two  lire  on  a  Melba  night,  offer  me  a  dis- 
tinguished seat?  ,  .  .  Long  stone  corridors, 
steps  up,  steps  down,  turnings,  directive  cries  echo- 
ing amid  arches;  and  then  I  am  in  the  auditorium, 
vast. 

It  is  as  big  as  Covent  Garden,  and  nearly  as  big 
as  La  Scala.  It  has  six  galleries,  about  a  hundred 
boxes,  and  four  varieties  of  seats  on  the  ground 
floor.  My  distinguished  seat  is  without  the  first 
quality  of  a  seat — yieldingness.  It  does  not  ac- 
quiesce. It  is  as  hard  as  seasoned  wood  can  be, 
though  roomy  and  well  situated.  And  in  a  corner, 
lying  against  the  high  rampart  of  a  box  for  ten 
people,  I  see  negligently  piled  a  great  pyramid  of 
ancient  red  cushions,  scores  and  scores  of  them. 
And  a  little  old  ragged  attendant  comes  and  whis- 
pers alluringly,  delicately  in  my  ear:  "Cuscina" 
Two  sous  would  hire  it  and  a  smile  thrown  in.  But 
no,  I  won't  have  it.  I  am  too  English  to  have  that 
cushion.  .  .  .  The  immense  theatre,  faced  all 
in  white  marble,  with  traces  here  and  there  in  a 
box  of  crimson  upholstery,  is  as  dim  as  a  church. 
There  are  hundreds  of  electric  bulbs,  but  unlighted : 
the  sole  illumination  comes  from  a  row  of  perfectly 
mediaeval  gas-burners  along  the  first  gallery. 
After  all,  economy  must  obtain  somewhere.  I 
count  an  orchestra  of  over  seventy  living  players; 
the  most  numerous  body  in  the  place :  somehow  they 
must  support  life.  Over  the  acreage  of  the  par- 
terre are  sprinkled  a  few  dozens  of  audience. 
There  is  a  serried  ring  of  faces  lining  the  fifth  gal- 


FLORENCE  135 

lery,  to  which  admittance  is  tenpence,  and  another 
lining  the  sixth  gallery,  to  which  admittance  is  six- 
pence. The  rest  is  not  even  paper. 

Yet  a  spruce  and  elegant  conductor  rises  and  the 
overture  begins,  and  the  orchestra  proves  that  its 
instruments  are  real;  and  I  hear  Spontini,  and  for 
a  little  while  enjoy  his  faded  embroideries.  And 
the  curtain  goes  up  on  "a  public  place  in  Rome," 
upon  a  scale  as  spacious  as  Rome  itself.  Every- 
thing is  genuine.  There  are  two  leading  sopranos, 
one  of  whom  is  young  and  attractive,  and  they  both 
have  powerful  and  trained  voices,  and  sing  like  the 
very  dickens.  No  amateurishness  about  them! 
They  know  their  business;  they  are  accomplished 
and  experienced  artists.  No  hesitations,  no  timid- 
ities, no  askings  for  indulgence  because  really  I 
have  only  paid  two  lire!  Their  fine  voices  fill  the 
theatre  with  ease,  and  would  easily  fill  Covent  Gar- 
den to  the  back  row  of  the  half-crown  gallery.  The 
same  with  the  tenor,  the  same  with  the  bass.  Spon- 
tini surges  onward  in  an  excellent  concourse  of 
multitudinous  sound,  and  I  wonder  what  it  is  all 
about.  I  have  a  book  of  the  words,  but  owing  to 
the  unfortunate  absence  of  Welsbach  mantles  I 
cannot  read  it.  ~  I  know  it  must  be  all  about  a  ves- 
tal who  objected  to  being  a  vestal,  on  account  of  a 
military  uniform,  and  I  content  myself  with  this 
grand  central  fact.  Then  the  stage  brightens,  and 
choruses  begin  to  march  on;  one  after  another;  at 
least  a  dozen:  soldiers,  wrestlers,  populace,  danc- 
ers, children.  Yes,  the  show  is  complete  even  to 
ragamuffins  larking  about  in  the  public  place  in 


136  PARIS  NIGHTS 

Rome.  I  count  a  hundred  people  on  the  stage. 
And  all  the  properties  are  complete.  It  is  a  com- 
plete production  and  an  expensive  production — 
except  probably  in  the  detail  of  wages.  For  in 
Italy  prime  dome  with  a  repertoire  of  a  dozen  or 
fifteen  first-class  roles  seem  to  go  about  the  streets 
dressed  like  shop-girls.  I  have  seen  it.  All  this 
is  just  as  exciting  to  me  as  the  Church  of  S.  Croce, 
even  as  explained  by  John  Ruskin  with  a  school- 
master's cane  in  his  lily-hand. 

Interval!  I  go  to  the  refreshment  foyer  to  see 
life.  And  now  I  can  perceive  that  quite  a  crowd 
of  people  has  been  hidden  somewhere  in  the  nooks 
of  the  tremendous  theatre.  The  large  caffe  is 
crammed.  Of  course,  it  is  vaulted,  like  everything 
in  Florence.  The  furniture  of  the  caffb  is 
strangely  pathetic  in  its  f  orlornness :  marble-topped 
mahogany  tables,  and  mahogany  chairs  in  faded 
and  frayed  crimson  rep.  Furniture  that  ought  to 
have  been  dead  and  buried  long  ago!  The  marble 
is  yellow  with  extreme  age  and  use.  These  tables 
and  chairs  are  a  most  extraordinary  survival;  in  a 
kind  of  Italian  Louis  Philippe  style,  debased  First 
Empire;  or  it  might  be  likened  to  earliest  Victorian. 
Once  they  were  new;  once  they  were  the  latest 
thing.  For  fifty  years  perhaps  the  management 
has  been  meaning  to  refurnish  the  caffe  as  soon  as 
it  could  afford.  The  name  of  the  theatre  has  been 
changed,  but  not  those  chairs  nor  that  marble. 
And  conceivably  the  sole  waiter,  gliding  swiftly  to 
and  fro  with  indestructible  politeness,  is  their  con- 
temporary. The  customers  are  the  equivalent  of  a 


THE  ORCHESTRA  PROVES  THAT  ITS  INSTRUMENTS  ARE  REAL     (Page  135) 


FLORENCE  137 

music-hall  audience  in  these  isles.  They  smoke, 
drink,  and  expectorate  with  the  casualness  of  men 
who  are  taking  a  rest  after  Little  Tich.  They  do 
not  go  to  the  opera  with  prayer  and  fasting  and  the 
score.  They  just  stroll  into  the  opera.  Nor  does 
the  conductor,  nor  do  the  players,  have  the  air  of 
high  priests  of  art  who  have  brought  miracles  to 
pass.  And  I  know  what  those  two  sopranos  are 
talking  about  upstairs.  Here  opera  is  in  the  bones 
of  the  rabble.  It  is  a  tradition:  a  tradition  in  a 
very  bad  way  of  decayed  splendour,  but  alive 
yet. 

For  the  second  act  the  auditorium  is  brighter, 
and  fuller,  though  the  total  receipts  would  not  pay 
for  five  minutes  of  Caruso  alone.  The  place  looks 
half  full  and  is  perhaps  a  third  full.  Behind  me 
a  whole  series  of  first-tier  boxes  are  occupied  by  a 
nice,  cheerful,  chattering  shop-keeping  class  of  per- 
sons, simple  folk  that  I  like.  A  few  soldiers  are 
near.  Also  there  is  a  man  next  but  one  to  me  who 
cannot  any  longer  deprive  himself  of  a  cigarette. 
He  bows  his  head  and  furtively  strikes  a  match, 
right  in  the  middle  of  the  theatre,  and  for  every 
puff  he  bows  his  head,  and  then  looks  up  with  an 
innocent  air,  as  though  repudiating  any  connection 
with  the  wisp  of  smoke  that  is  floating  aloft.  No- 
body minds.  The  curtain  rises  on  the  interior  of 
the  Temple,  a  beautiful  and  solid  architectural 
scene,  much  superior  to  anything  in  the  first  act, 
whose  effect  was  rich  and  complex  without  being 
harmonious.  The  vestal  is  attending  to  the  fire. 
When  the  military  uniform  unostentatiously  enters, 


138  PARIS  NIGHTS 

I  feel  that  during  an  impassioned  dialogue  she  will 
go  and  let  that  fire  out.  And  she  does.  Such  is 
the  second  act.  I  did  not  see  the  third.  I  shall 
never  see  it.  I  convinced  myself  that  two  acts  of 
Spontini  were  enough  for  me.  It  was  astonishing 
that  even  in  Florence  Spontini  had  not  been  in- 
terred. But  clearly,  from  the  efficiency,  assurance, 
and  completeness  of  its  production,  La  Vestale 
must  have  been  in  the  Florentine  repertoire  per- 
haps ever,  since  its  composition,  and  a  management 
selling  seats  at  two  lire  finds  it  so  much  easier  to 
keep  an  old  opera  in  the  repertoire  than  to  kick  it 
out  and  bring  in  a  new  one.  I  had  savoured  the 
theatre,  and  I  went,  satisfied;  also  much  preoccu- 
pied with  the  financial  enigma  of  the  enterprise, 
where  indeed  the  real  poetry  of  this  age  resides. 
Whence  came  the  money  to  pay  the  wages  of  at 
least  a  couple  of  hundred  skilled  persons,  and  the 
lighting  and  the  heating  and  the  rent,  and  the  ad- 
vertisement, and  the  thousand  minor  expenses  of 
such  an  affair? 

When  I  reached  the  abode  of  the  ladies  it  was 
all  dark  and  silent.  I  rang,  intimidated.  And  one 
of  those  young  and  beautiful  girls  (no,  not  so 
young  and  not  so  beautiful,  but  still- — )  in  her  ex- 
otic English  attire  opened  the  door.  And  with  her 
sleepy  eyes  she  looked  at  me  as  if  saying:  "Once 
in  a  way  this  sort  of  thing  is  all  very  well,  but 
please  don't  let  it  occur  too  often.  I  suffer."  A 
shame!  And  I  crept  contrite  up  the  stairs,  and 
along  passages  between  hidden  rows  of  sleeping  la- 


FLORENCE  139 

dies.  And  there  was  my  Baedeker  lying  on  the 
night-table,  and  not  a  word  in  it  about  Florentine 
opera  and  the  romance  thereof. 

«*     £     4     4 

Rain  still!  Florentine  rain,  the  next  morning, 
steady  and  implacable!  They  come  down  to 
breakfast,  those  fifty  ladies;  not  in  a  cohort,  but  in 
ones  and  twos  and  threes,  appearing  and  disappear- 
ing, so  that  there  are  never  more  than  half  a  dozen 
hovering  together  over  the  white  and  almost  naked 
tables.  They  glance  momentarily  at  the  high  win- 
dows and  glance  away,  crushing  by  a  heroic  effort 
of  self-control,  impossible  to  any  but  women  of  the 
north,  the  impulse  to  criticise  the  order  of  the  uni- 
verse. Calm,  angular,  ungainly,  long-suffering, 
and  morose,  Cimabue  might  have  painted  them; 
not  Giotto.  Their  garb  is  austere,  flannel  above 
the  zone  and  stuff  below;  no  ornament,  no  fluffiness, 
no  enticement;  but  passably  neat,  save  for  the  un- 
tidy, irregular  buttoning  of  the  bodice  down  the 
spine.  And  note  that  they  are  fully  and  finally 
dressed  to  be  seen  of  men;  all  the  chill  rites  have 
been  performed ;  they  have  not  leapt  straight  from 
the  couch  into  a  peignoir,  after  the  manner  of  Latin 
women — those  odalisques  at  heart!  They  are  as- 
toundingly  gentle  with  each  other,  cooing  sympa- 
thetic inquiries,  emitting  kind  altruistic  hopes, 
leaning  intimately  towards  each  other,  fondling 
each  other,  and  even  sweetly  kissing.  They  know 
by  experience  that  strict  observance  of  a  strict  code 
is  the  price  of  peace.  In  that  voluntary  mutual 


140  PARIS  NIGHTS 

captivity,  so  full  of  enforced,  familiar  contacts,  the 
error  of  a  moment  might  produce  a  thousand  hours 
of  purgatory.  ...  A  fresh  young  girl  comes 
swinging  in,  and  with  a  gesture  of  which  in  a  few 
years  she  will  be  incapable,  caresses  the  chin  of  her 
desiccated  mamma.  And  the  contrast  between  the 
two  figures,  the  thought  of  what  lies  behind  the  one 
and  what  lies  before  the  other,  inured  so  soon  to 
this  existence — is  poignant.  The  girl  perceptibly 
droops  in  that  atmosphere;  flourish  in  it  she  cannot. 
And  the  smiles  and  the  sweetness  continue  in  pro- 
fusion. Nevertheless  I  feel  that  I  am  amid  loose 
nitro-glycerine :  one  jar,  and  the  whole  affair 
might  be  blown  to  atoms,  and  the  papers  would 
be  full  of  "mysterious  fatal  explosion  in  a  pension 
at  Florence."  The  danger-points  are  the  jam- 
pots and  the  honey-pots  and  the  marmalade-pots, 
of  which  each  lady  apparently  has  her  own.  And 
when  one  of  them  says  to  the  maid  (all  in  white  at 
this  hour,  as  is  meet) :  "This  is  not  my  jam — I  had 
more,"  I  quake  at  the  conception  of  the  superhu- 
man force  which  restrains  the  awful  bitterness  in 
her  voice.  A  matter  of  an  instant ;  but  in  that  in- 
stant, in  that  fraction  of  an  instant,  the  tigress  has 
snarled  at  the  bars  of  the  cage  and  been  dragged 
back.  It  is  marvellous.  It  is  terrifying. 

We  talk.  We  talk  to  prove  our  virtuosity  in 
the  nice  conduct  of  the  early  meal.  I  learn  that 
they  have  been  here  for  months,  and  that  they  will 
be  here  for  months.  And  that  next  year  it  may  be 
Rome,  or  more  possibly  Florence  again.  Florence 
is  inexhaustible,  inexhaustible. 


FLORENCE  141 

I  mention  the  opera.  I  assert  that  there  is  such 
a  thing  as  an  opera. 

"Really!"     Politeness  masking  indifference. 

I  say  that  I  went  to  the  opera  last  night. 

"Really!"  Politeness  masking  a  puzzled,  an 
even  slightly  alarmed  surprise. 

I  say  that  the  opera  was  most  diverting. 

"Really!"     Politeness  masking  boredom. 

The  opera  is  not  appraised  in  the  guide-books. 
,The  opera  is  no  part  of  the  official  museum.  Flor- 
ence is  a  museum,  and  nothing  but  a  museum. 
Beyond  the  museum  they  do  not  admit  that  any- 
thing exists ;  hence  nothing  exists  beyond  it.  They 
do  not  scorn  the  rest  of  Florence.  The  rest  of 
Florence  simply  has  not  occurred  to  them.  Pride 
of|  the  Medicis,  bow  before  this  pride,  sublime  in  its 
absolute  unconsciousness ! 

*    *    #    ^ 

That  morning  I  made  my  way  in  the  rain  to  the 
Strozzi  Palace,  which  palace  is  for  me  the  great 
characteristic  building  of  Florence.  When  I  think 
of  Florence,  I  do  not  expire  in  ecstasy  on  the  sylla- 
bles of  Duomo,  Baptistery,  or  Palazzo  Vecchio, 
or  even  Bargello.  The  Strozzi  Palace  is  in  my 
mind.  Possibly  I  merely  prefer  it  to  the  Riccardi 
Palace  because  I  cannot  by  paying  fivepence  in- 
vade it  and  add  it  up.  The  Strozzi  Palace  still 
holds  out  against  the  northern  hordes.  Filippo 
Strozzi,  as  to  whom  my  ignorance  is  immaculate, 
must  have  united  in  a  remarkable  degree  the  qual- 
ities of  savagery,  austere  arrogance,  and  fine  taste; 
otherwise  he  would  never  have  approved  Maiano's 


142  PARIS  NIGHTS 

plans  for  this  residence  and  castle.  The  dimensions 
of  it  remind  you  of  the  Comedie  Humaine,  and 
it  carries  rectangularity  and  uncompromising 
sharpness  of  corners  to  the  last  limit.  In  form  it 
is  simply  a  colossal  cube,  of  which  you  can  only 
appreciate  the  height  by  standing  immediately  be- 
neath the  unfinished  roof -cornice,  the  latter  so  vast 
in  its  beautiful  enlargement  of  a  Roman  model  that 
nobody  during  five  hundred  years  has  had  the 
pluck  to  set  about  and  finish  it.  Then  you  can 
see  that  in  size  the  Strozzi  ranks  with  cathedrals, 
and  that  the  residential  part  of  it,  up  in  the  air, 
only  begins  where  three-story  houses  end. 

To  appreciate  its  beauty  and  its  moral  you  must 
get  away  from  it,  opposite  one  of  its  corners,  so  as 
to  have  two  facades  in  perspective.  The  small 
arched  windows  of  the  first  and  second  storeys  are 
all  that  it  shows  of  &  curve.  Rather  finicking  these 
windows,  the  elegant  trifling  of  a  spirit  essentially 
grim;  some  are  bricked  up,  some  show  a  gleam  of 
white-painted  interior  woodwork,  and  others  have 
the  old  iron-studded  shutters.  The  lower  windows 
are  monstrously  netted  in  iron  to  resist  the  human 
storm.  The  upper  windows  may  each  be  ten  feet 
high,  but  they  are  mere  details  of  the  fapades,  and 
the  lower  windows  might  be  square  port-holes. 
See  the  two  perspectives  sloping  away  from  you 
under  the  tremendous  eaves,  a  state-entrance  in 
the  middle  of  each!  See  the  three  rows  of  torch 
or  banner  holders  and  the  marvellous  iron  lanterns 
at  the  corners!  Imagine  the  place  lit  up  with 
flame  on  some  night  of  the  early  sixteenth  cen- 


FLORENCE  143 

tury,  human  beings  swarming  about  its  base  as 
at  the  foot  of  precipices.  Imagine  the  lights  out, 
and  the  dawn,  and  the  day-gloom  of  those  ill- 
lighted  and  splendid  apartments.  Imagine  the 
traditional  enemies  of  the  Medicis  trying  to  keep 
themselves  warm  therein  during  a  windy  Floren- 
tine winter!  Imagine,  from  the  Strozzi  Palace, 
the  ferocious  altercations,  and  the  artistic  connois- 
seurship,  and  the  continuous  ruthless  sweating  of 
the  common  people,  which  made  up  the  lives  of 
the  masters  of  Florence — and  you  will  formulate 
a  better  idea  of  what  life  was  than  from  any 
church!  This  palace  is  a  supreme  monument  of 
grim  force  tempered  by  an  exquisite  sense  of 
beauty.  With  the  exception  of  an  intervening 
cornice  which  has  had  a  piece  knocked  out  of  it, 
and  the  damaged  plinth,  it  stands  now  as  it  did 
at  the  commencement.  Time  has  not  accepted  the 
challenge  of  its  sharp  corners.  It  might  have  been 
constructed  ten  years  ago  by  Foster  and  Dicksee. 
I  go  up  to  one  of  the  state  entrances  and  peep 
in,  shamefacedly.  For  it  is  a  private  house.  At 
the  far  end  of  the  archway  is  a  magnificent  iron 
grille,  and  I  can  see  a  delicately  arched  courtyard, 
utterly  different  in  style  from  the  exterior,  fruit 
of  another  brain;  and  beyond  the  courtyard,  a 
glimpse  of  a  fresco  and  the  vista  of  the  state  en- 
trance in  the  opposite  fapade.  At  each  corner  of 
the  courtyard  the  rain  is  splashing  down,  evidently 
from  high  open  spouts,  splashing  with  a  loud,  care- 
less, insolent  noise,  and  the  middle  of  the  courtyard 
is  a  pool  continuously  pricked  by  thousands  of  rain- 


144  PARIS  NIGHTS 

drops.  The  glass  of  the  large  lamp  swinging  in 
the  draught  of  the  archway  is  broken.  A  huge 
lackey  in  uniform  strolls  in  front  of  the  grille  and 
lolls  there.  I  move  instinctively  away,  for  if  any- 
body recoils  before  a  lackey  it  is  your  socialist. 

Then  I  see  a  lady  hurrying  across  the  square  en- 
veloped in  a  great  cloak  and  sheltered  beneath  an 
umbrella.  She  makes  straight  for  the  state  en- 
trance, and  passes  me,  dripping  up  the  archway.  I 
say  to  myself: 

"She  belongs  to  the  house.  Now  I  am  going  to 
see  the  gates  yield.  The  lackey  was  expecting 
her."  And  I  had  quite  a  thrill  at  sight  of  this  liv- 
ing inhabitant  of  the  Strozzi  Palace. 

But  no!  She  went  right  up  to  the  grille,  as 
though  the  lackey  was  in  prison  and  she  visiting 
him,  and  stopped  there  and  stared  silently  into  the 
courtyard.  The  lackey,  dumbfounded  and  craven, 
moved  off.  She  had  only  come  to  look.  This  was 
her  manner  of  coming  to  look.  I  ought  to  have 
divined  by  the  solidity  of  her  heels  that  she  was 
one  of  ours;  not  one  of  my  particular  band  at 
breakfast,  but  in  Florence  there  are  dozens  upon 
dozens  of  such  breakfasts  every  morning,  and  from 
some  Anglican  breakfast  she  had  risen. 
#  #  #  # 

Our  breakfast  took  place  in  a  palace.  Not  the 
Strozzi,  not  nearly  so  large  nor  so  fine  as  the 
Strozzi,  but  a  real  Florentine  palazzo.  It  has  been 
transformed  within  to  suit  the  needs  and  the  ca- 
prices of  those  stern  ladies.  They  have  come,  and 


FLORENCE  145 

they  have  come  again,  and  they  have  calmly  in- 
sisted, and  they  have  had  their  will.  Hygienic  ap- 
pliances authentically  signed  by  the  great  English 
artists  in  this  genre!  Radiators  in  each  room! 
Electric  bulbs  over  the  bed  and  in  the  ceiling!  Iron 
beds!  The  inconvenient  height  of  the  windows 
from  the  floor  lessened  by  a  little  wooden  platform 
on  which  are  a  little  chair  and  a  little  table  and  a 
little  piece  of  needlework  and  a  little  vase  of 
flowers!  .  .  *  Steadily  they  are  occupying  the 
palaces,  each  lady  in  her  nook,  and  the  slow  force 
of  their  will  moulds  even  the  granite  to  the  de- 
sired uses. 

Why  do  they  come?  It  cannot  be  out  of  pas- 
sion for  the  great  art  of  the  world.  Nobody  who 
had  a  glimmering  of  the  real  sense  of  beauty  could 
dress  as  they  dress,  move  as  they  move,  buy  what 
they  buy,  or  talk  as  they  talk.  They  mingle  in 
their  heads  Goltermann  with  Debussy,  and  Botti- 
celli with  Maude  Goodman.  Their  drawing-room 
is  full  of  Maude  Goodman  in  her  rich  first  period. 
.  .  .  It  cannot  be  out  of  a  love  of  history,  for 
they  never  unseal  their  lips  in  a  spot  where  history 
has  been  made  without  demonstrating  in  the  most 
painful  manner  an  entire  lack  of  historical  imag- 
ination. They  nibble  daintily  at  crumbs  of  art 
and  of  archaeology  in  special  booklets  which  some 
of  themselves  have  written  and  others  of  them- 
selves have  illustrated,  and  which  make  the  coarse 
male  turn  with  an  almost  animal  satisfaction  to 
Carl  Baedeker  or  even  the  Reverend  Herbert  H. 


146  PARIS  NIGHTS 

Jeaffreson,  M.  A.  It  is  impossible  that  these  ex- 
cellent creatures,  whose  only  real  defect  has  to  do 
with  the  hooks  and  eyes  down  their  spines,  can  ever 
comprehend  the  beauty  and  the  significance  of 
that  by  which  they  are  surrounded.  They  have 
not  the  temperament.  Temperamentally,  they 
would  be  much  more  at  home  in  Riga.  Also  it  is 
impossible  to  believe  that  they  are  happy  in  Flor- 
ence. They  do  not  wear  the  look  of  joy.  Their 
gestures  are  not  those  of  happiness.  Nevertheless 
they  can  only  be  in  Florence  because  they  have 
discovered  that  they  are  less  unhappy  here  than 
at  home.  What  deep  malady  of  society  is  it  that 
drives  them  out  of  their  natural  frame — the  frame 
in  which  they  are  comely  and  even  delectable,  the 
frame  which  best  sets  off  their  finer  qualities — into 
unnatural  exile  and  the  poor  despised  companion- 
ship of  their  own  sex? 

And  what  must  be  the  force  of  that  malady 
which  drives  them!  The  long  levers  that  ulti- 
mately exert  their  power  on  the  palaces  of  Flor- 
ence are  worked  from  England.  Behind  each  of 
these  solitary  ladies,  in  the  English  background, 
there  must  be  a  mysterious  male — relative,  friend, 
lawyer,  stockbroker — advising,  controlling,  for- 
warding cheques  and  cheques  and  cheques,  always. 
These  ladies,  economically,  are  dolls  of  a  finan- 
cial system.  Or  you  may  call  them  the  waste 
products  of  an  arthritic  civilisation.  What  a  force 
is  behind  them,  that  they  should  possess  themselves 
of  another  age  and  genius,  and  live  in  it  as  con- 
querors, modifying  manners,  architecture,  and  even 


WHY  DO  THEY  COME?    (Page  145) 


FLORENCE  147 

perhaps  language!  The  cloaked  lady  in  front  of 
the  grille  shall,  if  you  choose,  fairly  be  likened  to 
a  barbarian  on  the  threshold  of  a  philosopher's  dead 
court ;  but  as  regards  mere  force,  one  may  say  that 
in  her  the  Strozzis  are  up  against  an  equal. 


II 

THE   SEVENTH   OF   MAY,    1910 

It  was  an  exquisitely  beautiful  Italian  morning, 
promising  heat  that  a  mild  and  constant  breeze 
would  temper.  The  East  was  one  glitter.  Harm- 
less clouds  were  loitering  across  the  pale  sky,  and 
across  the  Piazza  children  were  taking  the  longest 
way  to  early  school,  as  I  passed  from  the  clear  sun- 
shine into  the  soft  transparent  gloom  of  one  of  the 
great  pantheons  of  Italy — a  vast  thirteenth-century 
Franciscan  church,  the  largest  church  ever  built  by 
any  mendicant  Order — carved  and  decorated  and 
painted  by  Donatello,  Giotto,  Andrea  della  Robbia, 
Rossellino,  Maiano,  Taddeo  Gaddi,  Verrocchio,  the 
incomparable  Mino  da  Fiesole,  Vasari,  Canova. 

Already  the  whole  place  had  been  cleansed  and 
swept,  but  at  one  of  the  remotest  altars  a  char- 
woman was  dusting.  Little  by  little  I  descried  other 
visitors  in  the  distance,  moving  quietly  under  the  in- 
timidation of  that  calm,  afraid  to  be  the  first  to 
break  the  morning  stillness.  There  was  the  red 
gleam  of  a  Baedeker.  At  a  nearer  altar  a  widow 
in  black  was  kneeling  in  one  of  those  attitudes  of 
impassioned  surrender  and  appeal  that  strike  you 
so  curiously,  when  for  instance,  you  go  out  of  Har- 
rods'  Stores  suddenly  into  the  Brompton  Oratory. 
From  an  unseen  chapel  came  the  sound  of  chanting, 

148 


THE  SEVENTH  OF  MAY,  1910     149 

perfunctory,  a  part  of  the  silence;  and  last  of  all,  at 
still  another  altar,  I  made  out  a  richly  coloured 
priest  genuflecting,  all  alone,  save  for  a  black  aco- 
lyte. In  a  corner  two  guides  were  talking  busi- 
ness, and  by  the  doors  the  beggars  were  talking 
business  in  ordinary  tones  before  the  official  whin- 
ing of  the  day  should  commence.  The  immense  in- 
terior had  spaciousness  for  innumerable  separate 
and  diverse  activities,  each  undisturbed  by  the 
others.  And  all  around  me  were  the  tombs  and 
cenotaphs  of  great  or  notorious  men,  who  had  made 
the  glory  and  the  destiny  of  Italy;  Dante,  Galileo, 
Michael  Angelo,  Donatello,  Machiavelli;  and 
Alfieri,  Rossini,  Aretino,  Cherubim,  Alberti;  and 
even  St.  Louis,  and  a  famous  fourteenth  century 
English  Bishop,  and  a  couple  of  Bonapartes;  many 
ages,  races,  climes. 

«5»        «x*        t?*        <?* 

I  sat  down  and  opened  the  damp  newspaper 
which  I  had  just  bought  outside  at  the  foot  of  the 
steps  leading  up  to  the  dazzling  marble  fa9ade. 
And  when  I  had  been  staring  at  the  newspaper 
some  time  I  became  aware  that  the  widow  at  the  al- 
tar in  the  middle  distance  had  risen  and  was  leav- 
ing the  church,  and  then  I  saw  to  my  surprise  that 
she  was  an  Irish  lady  staying  in  my  hotel.  She 
passed  near  me.  Should  I  stop  her,  or  should  I 
not?  I  wanted  to  stop  her,  from  the  naive  pride 
which  one  feels  in  being  able  to  communicate  a  star- 
tling piece  of  news  of  the  first  magnitude.  But  on 
the  other  hand,  I  really  was  nervous  about  telling 
her,  To  tell  her  seemed  brutal,  seemed  like  knock- 


150  PARIS  NIGHTS 

ing  her  down.  This  was  my  feeling.  She  decided 
the  question  for  me  by  deviating  from  her  path  to 
greet  me. 

"What  a  lovely  morning!"  she  said. 

"Have  you  heard  about  the  King?"  I  asked  her 
gruffly,  well  knowing  that  she  had  not. 

"No,"  she  answered  smiling.  And  then,  as  she 
looked  at  me,  her  smile  faded. 

"Well,"  I  said,  "he's  dead!" 

"What!  Our  King?" 

"Yes.  He  died  at  midnight.  Here  it  is."  And 
I  showed  her  the  "Recentissime"  or  Latest  News 
page  of  the  newspaper,  two  lines  in  leaded  type: 
"Londra,  7,  ore  2:30  (Urgenza).  Re  Edoardo  e 
morto  a  mezzanotte"  She  knew  enough  Italian  to 
comprehend  that. 

"This  last  midnight?"     She  was  breathless. 

"Yes." 

"But — but — no  one  even  knew  anything  about 
him  being  ill?"  she  protested. 

"Yesterday  evening's  Italian  papers  had  columns 
about  the  illness — it  was  bronchitis,"  I  said  grimly. 

"Oh!"  she  said,  "I  never  see  the  Italian  papers." 

Yet  the  name  of  Edward  the  Seventh  had  been  on 
every  newspaper  placard  in  the  land  on  Friday 
night.  But  in  Italy  these  British  have  literally 
no  sight  for  anything  later  than  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury. 

Tears  stood  in  her  eyes.  On  my  part  it  would 
have  been  just  as  kindly  to  knock  her  down. 

"Just  think  of  that  little  fellow  at  Osborne — 
he's  got  to  be  Prince  of  Wales  now,  and  I  suppose 


LESS  UNHAPPY  HERE  THAN  AT  HOME    (Page  14$) 


THE  SEVENTH  OF  MAY,  1910     151 

they'll  take  him  away  from  there,"  she  murmured 

brokenly,  as  she  went  off,  aghast. 
«*    ,*    #    * 

I  sat  down  again.  It  seemed  to  me,  as  I  re- 
flected among  these  tombs  and  cenotaphs,  that  a 
woman's  eyes,  on  such  an  occasion,  were  a  good  test 
of  the  genuineness  of  popular  affection. 

I  then  noticed  that,  while  the  Irish  lady  and  I  had 
been  whispering,  another  acquaintance  of  mine  had 
mysteriously  entered  the  church  without  my  cog- 
nizance and  had  set  up  his  tent  in  the  south  tran- 
sept. This  was  a  young  man  who,  having  gained 
a  prominent  place  in  a  certain  competition  at  the 
Royal  College  of  Art,  had  been  sent  off  with  money 
in  his  pocket,  at  the  expense  of  the  British  nation, 
to  study  art  and  to  paint  in  Italy.  He  possessed 
what  is  called  a  travelling  scholarship,  and  the  treas- 
ures of  Italy  were  at  his  feet  as  at  the  feet  of  a 
conqueror.  Already  he  had  visited  me  at  my  hotel, 
and  filled  my  room  with  the  odour  of  his  fresh  oil- 
sketches.  There  were  only  two  things  in  his  head 
— the  art  of  painting,  and  the  prospect  of  an  im- 
mediate visit  to  Venice.  He  had  lodged  his  easel 
on  a  memorial-stone  among  the  flags  of  the  pave- 
ment, and  was  painting  a  vista  of  tombs  ending  in 
a  bright  light  of  stained  glass.  His  habit  was  to 
paint  before  the  museums  opened  and  after  they 
closed.  I  went  and  accosted  him.  Again  I  was 
conscious  of  the  nai've  pride  of  a  bringer  of  tragic 
tidings.  He  was  young  and  strong,  with  fire  in 
his  eye.  I  need  not  be  afraid  of  knocking  him 
down,  at  any  rate. 


152  PARIS  NIGHTS 

"The  King's  dead,"  I  said. 
He  lifted  his  brush. 


I  nodded. 

He  burst  out  with  a  tremendous,  "By  Jove!" 
that  broke  that  fresh  morning  stillness  once 
for  all,  and  faintly  echoed  into  silence  among  those 
tombs.  "By  Jove!" 

His  imagination  had  at  once  risen  to  the  solemn 
grandeur  of  the  event,  as  an  event;  but  the  sharp 
significance  of  death  did  not  penetrate  the  armour 
of  that  enthusiastic  youthfulness.  "What  a  pity!" 
he  exclaimed  nicely ;  but  he  could  not  get  the  irides- 
cent vision  of  Venice  out  of  his  head,  nor  the  prob- 
lems of  his  canvas.  He  continued  painting — what 
else  could  he  do? — -and  then,  after  a  few  moments, 
he  said  eagerly,  "I  wish  I  was  in  London!" 

"Me  too!"  I  said. 

Probably  most  of  the  thousands  of  Englishmen 
in  Italy  had  the  same  wish. 

*    4     4     J 

I  departed  from  the  church.  The  chanting  had 
ceased;  the  guides  were  still  talking  business,  but 
the  beggars  had  begun  to  whine. 

In  the  dining-room  of  the  hotel  there  was  abso- 
lute silence.  A  lady  near  the  door,  with  an  Italian 
newspaper  over  her  coffee-cup,  who  had  never 
spoken  to  me  before,  and  would  probably  never 
speak  to  me  again,  said: 

"I  suppose  you've  heard  about — " 

"Yes,"  I  said. 

Everybody  in  the  room  knew.     Everybody  was 


THE  SEVENTH  OF  MAY,  1910     153 

English.  And  nobody  spoke.  As  the  guests  came 
down  by  ones  and  twos  to  breakfast,  the  lady  near 
the  door  stopped  each  of  them:  "I  suppose  you've 
heard — "  But  none  of  them  had.  I  was  her  sole 
failure.  At  length  a  retired  military  officer  came 
down,  already  informed.  "Where  does  this  news 
come  from?"  he  demanded  of  the  room,  impatiently, 
cautiously,  half-incredulously,  as  one  who  would 
hesitate  to  trust  any  information  that  he  had  not 
seen  in  a  London  daily.  With  a  single  inflection  of 
his  commanding  voice  he  wiped  out  the  whole  Press 
of  Italy — that  country  of  excellent  newspapers. 
He  got  little  answer.  We  all  sat  silent. 


Ill 

MORE  ITALIAN   OPERA 

Geographical  considerations  made  it  impossible 
for  me  to  be  present  at  the  performance  of  La 
Traviata>  which  opened  the  Covent  Garden  sea- 
son. I  solaced  myself  by  going  to  hear,  on  that 
very  night,  another  and  better  opera  of  Verdi's, 
Aida,  in  a  theatre  certainly  more  capacious  than 
Covent  Garden,  namely,  the  Politeamo  Florentine, 
at  Florence.  Florence  is  a  city  of  huge  theatres, 
which  seem  to  be  generally  empty,  even  during 
performances,  and  often  on  sale.  In  the  majority 
of  them  the  weather  is  little  by  little  getting  the  bet- 
ter of  the  ceiling;  and  the  multifarious  attendants, 
young  and  old,  go  about  their  casual  vague  business 
of  letting  cushions  or  selling  cigars  in  raiment  that 
has  the  rich,  storied  interest  of  antiquity.  But  on 
this  particular  occasion  prosperity  attended  a  Flor- 
entine theatrical  enterprise.  I  was  one  of  three 
thousand  or  so  excited  and  crowded  beings,  most  of 
whom  had  paid  a  fair  price  for  admission  to  hear  the 
brassiest  opera  ever  composed. 

Once  I  used  to  condescend  to  Verdi.  That  was 
in  the  early  nineties,  when,  at  an  impressionable 
and  violent  age,  I  got  caught  in  the  first  genuine 
Wagner  craze  that  attacked  this  country.  We 
used  to  go  to  the  special  German  seasons  at  Drury 
Lane,  as  it  were  to  High  Mass.  And  although 


154 


MORE  ITALIAN  OPERA         155 

Max  Alvary  and  Frau  Klafsky  would  be  singing 
in  Tristan,  you  might  comfortably  have  put  all 
the  occupants  of  the  upper  circle  into  a  Pullman 
car.  Once  a  cat  walked  across  the  stage  during  a 
solemn  moment  in  the  career  of  Isolde,  and  nearly 
everybody  laughed;  a  few  tittered,  which  was  even 
more  odious.  Only  a  handful,  of  such  as  myself, 
scowled  angrily — not  at  the  cat,  which  was  really 
rather  fine  in  the  garden,  completing  it — but  at 
the  infantile  unseriousness  of  these  sniggering  so- 
called  Wagnerians.  I  felt  that  laughter  would 
have  been  very  well  at  a  Verdi  performance,  might 
even  have  enhanced  it.  Meanwhile,  over  the  way 
at  Convent  Garden,  Verdi  performances  were  being 
given  to  the  usual  full  houses.  It  never  occurred 
to  me  to  attend  them.  Verdi  was  vulgar.  I  can- 
not explain  my  conviction  that  Verdi  was  vulgar, 
because  I  had  not  heard  a  single  opera  of  Verdi's, 
save  his  Wagnerian  imitations.  No  doubt  it  arose 
out  of  the  deep  human  instinct  to  intensify  the 
pleasure  of  admiring  one  thing  by  simultaneously 
disparaging  another  thing. 

*     *    <*     «* 

Then,  a  long  time  afterwards,  in  the  compara- 
tively calm  interval  between  the  first  and  the  second 
Wagner  crazes,  I  heard  the  real  Verdi.  It  was 
La  Traviata,  in  a  little  town  in  Italy,  and  it  was 
the  first  operatic  performance  I  had  attended  in 
Italy.  I  adored  it,  when  I  was  not  privately 
laughing  at  it;  and  there  are  one  or  two  airs  in  it, 
which  I  would  sit  through  the  whole  opera  to  hear, 
if  I  could  not  hear  them  otherwise.  (Happily 


156  PARIS  NIGHTS 

they  occur  in  the  first  act.)  Yes,  Verdi's  name 
does  not  begin  with  W;  but  it  very  nearly  does.  I 
stuck  him  up  at  once  a  little  lower  than  the  angels, 
and  I  have  never  pulled  him  down.  It  is  certain, 
however,  that  La  Traviata  at  any  rate  cannot 
live,  unless  as  a  comic  opera.  I  personally  did  not 
laugh  aloud,  because  the  English  are  seldom  cruel  in 
a  theatre;  but  the  tragical  parts  are  undoubtedly 
very  funny  indeed,  funnier  even  than  the  tragical 
parts  of  the  exquisitely  absurd  play,  La  Dame  aux 
Camelias,  upon  which  the  opera  is  founded. 
When  La  Traviata  was  first  produced,  about 
fifty-five  years  ago,  in  Venice,  its  unconscious  hu- 
mour brought  about  an  absolute,  a  disastrous  fail- 
ure. The  performance  ended  amid  roars  of  laugh- 
ter. Unhappily  the  enormous  proportions  of  Sig- 
nora  Donatelli,  who  sang  Violetta,  aided  the  fiasco. 
When  the  doctor  announced  that  this  lady  was  in 
an  advanced  stage  of  consumption  and  had  but  a 
few  hours  to  live,  Harry  Lauder  himself  could  not 
have  had  a  greater  success  of  hilarity  with  the  mob. 
Italians  are  like  that.  They  may  be  devoted  to 
music — though  there  are  reasons  for  doubting  it — 
but  as  opera-goers  and  concert-goers  they  are  a 
godless  crew.  An  Englishman  would  have  laughed 
at  Violetta's  unconsumptive  waist,  but  he  would 
have  laughed  in  the  street,  or  the  next  morning. 
The  English  have  reverence,  and  when  they  go  to 
the  opera,  they  go  to  hear  the  opera. 
^  «*  «*  * 

When  Italians  go  to  the  opera,  they  are  appar- 
ently out  for  a  lark,  and  they  have  some  of  the 


MORE  ITALIAN  OPERA        157 

qualities  of  the  Roman  multitude  enjoying  wild 
beasts  in  the  amphitheatre.  I  think  I  have  never 
been  to  an  operatic  performance  in  Italy  without 
acutely  noticing  this.  When  I  went  to  hear 
Aida,  the  colossal  interior  of  the  Politeamo 
Fiorentino  had  the  very  look  of  an  amphitheatre, 
with  its  row  of  heads  and  hats  stretching  away 
smaller  and  smaller  into  a  haze.  There  were  no- 
tices about  appealing  to  the  gentleness  of  the 
public  not  to  smoke.  But  do  you  suppose  the  pub- 
lic did  not  smoke?  Especially  considering  that  the 
management  thoughtfully  offered  cigars,  ciga- 
rettes, and  matches  for  sale !  In  a  very  large  assem- 
blage of  tightly-packed  people,  unauthorised 
noises  are  bound  to  occur  from  time  to  time.  Now, 
an  Italian  audience  will  never  leave  an  unauthor- 
ised noise  alone.  If  a  chair  creaks,  or  a  glass  on 
the  bar  tinkles,  an  Italian  audience  will  hiss  sav- 
agely and  loudly  for  several  seconds — which  seem 
like  several  minutes.  Not  in  the  hope  of  stopping 
the  noise,  for  the  noise  has  stopped!  Not  because 
it  wishes  not  to  miss  a  note  of  the  music,  for  it 
misses  about  twenty-five  per  cent,  of  the  notes 
through  its  own  fugal  hissing!  But  from  simple, 
truculent  savagery!  It  cares  naught  for  the  sus- 
ceptibilities of  the  artists.  Whether  a  singer  is  in 
the  midst  of  a  tender  pianissimo,  or  the  band  is 
blaring  its  best,  if  an  Italian  audience  hears  a  noise, 
however  innocent,  it  will  multiply  that  noise  by  a 
hundred.  Yet  the  individual  politeness  of  the 
Italian  people  is  perfectly  delightful. 

Further:  In  the  middle  of  the  performance  a 


158  PARIS  NIGHTS 

shabby  gentleman  came  on  to  the  stage  and  begged 
indulgence  for  an  artist  who  was  "gravely  indis- 
posed." The  audience  received  him  with  cynical 
laughter;  he  made  a  gesture  of  cynical  resignation 
and  departed.  The  artist  received  no  indulgence. 
The  artist  was  silly  enough  to  hold  on  powerfully 
to  a  high  note  at  the  end  of  a  long  solo;  and  that 
solo  had  to  be  given  again — and  let  there  be  no 
mistake  about  it! — despite  the  protests  of  a  minor- 
ity against  such  insistence.  The  Latin  tempera- 
ment! If  you  sing  in  opera  in  Italy,  your  career 
may  be  unremunerative,  but  it  will  be  exciting. 
You  may  be  deified,  or  you  may  be  half-killed. 
But  be  assured  that  the  audience  is  sincere,  as  sin- 
cere as  a  tiger. 

*     4     41     4 

Composers  also  must  beware.  When  Pasini's 
new  opera,  Don  Quixote,  was  produced  lately,  it 
had  a  glorious  run  of  two  performances.  It  was, 
indeed,  received  with  execration.  After  the  second 
night  the  leading  newspaper  appeared  with  a  few 
brief,  barbed  remarks:  "The  season  of  the  Teatro 
Verdi  is  ended.  It  would  have  been  better  if  it  had 
never  started.  .  .  .  The  maestro  Pasini  has 
written  an  opera  which  may  be  very  pleasing — to 
deaf  mutes."  Yet  Don  Quixote  was  not  worse 
than  many  other  operas  which  people  pay  to  see. 
Imagine  these  manners  in  unmusical  England. 

France  is  less  crude,  but  not  always  very  much 
less  crude.  The  most  musical  city  in  France  is 
Toulouse.  An  extraordinary  number  of  singers, 
composers,  and  poets  seem  to  be  born  in  Toulouse. 


MORE  ITALIAN  OPERA         159 

But  the  debuts  of  an  operatic  artist  at  the  Toulouse 
municipal  opera  are  among  the  most  dangerous  and 
terrible  experiences  that  can  fall  to  a  singer.  The 
audience  is  merciless,  and  recks  not  of  youth  nor 
sex.  If  it  is  not  satisfied,  it  expresses  its  opinion 
frankly,  and  for  the  more  frank  and  effective  ex- 
pression of  its  opinion  it  goes  to  the  performance 
suitably  provided  with  decayed  vegetables. 
And  I  am  told  that  Marseilles  candour  is  carried 
even  further.  As  for  Naples — . 

Perhaps,  after  all,  our  admirable  politeness  and 
the  solemnity  of  our  attitude  towards  the  whole 
subject  of  opera  merely  prove  that  Continental  na- 
tions are  right  in  regarding  us  as  fundamentally 
unmusical.  With  us  opera  is  a  cultivated  exotic. 
In  Italy,  what  does  it  matter  if  you  ruin  a  com- 
poser's career,  or  even  kill  a  young  soprano  who  has 
not  reached  your  standard!  There  are  quantities 
of  composers  and  sopranos  all  over  Italy.  You 
can  see  them  active  in  the  very  streets.  You  can't 

keep  them  down.     We  say  Miss ,  the  English 

soprano,  in  startled  accents  of  pride.     Italians  don't 

say  Signorina -,  the  Italian  soprano.     In  Italy 

you  get  a  new  opera  about  once  a  month.  The  last 
English  grand  opera  that  held  the  English  stage 
was  Artaxeroces,  and  it  is  so  long  ago  that  not  one 
person  in  a  hundred  who  reads  these  lines  will  be 
able  to  give  the  name  of  the  composer.  Can  any 
nation  be  musical  which  does  not  listen  chiefly  to 
its  own  music? 


THE  RIVIERA— 1907 


I 

THE  HOTEL  TRISTE 

Because  I  am  a  light  and  uneasy  sleeper  I  can 
hear,  at  a  quarter  to  six  every  morning,  the  distant 
subterranean  sound  of  a  peculiarly  energetic  bell. 
It  rings  for  about  one  minute,  and  it  is  a  signal  at 
which  They  quit  their  drowsy  beds.  And  all  along 
the  Riviera  coast,  from  Toulon  to  San  Remo,  in 
the  misty  and  chill  dawn,  They  are  doing  the  same 
thing,  beginning  the  great  daily  conspiracy  to  per- 
suade me,  and  those  like  me,  that  we  are  really  the 
Sultan,  and  that  our  previous  life  has  been  a  dream. 
I  sink  back  into  slumber  and  hear  the  monotonous 
roar  of  the  tideless  Mediterranean  in  my  sleep. 
The  Mediterranean,  too,  is  in  the  conspiracy.  It  is 
extremely  inconvenient  and  annoying  to  have  to  go 
running  about  after  a  sea  which  wanders  across  half 
a  mile  of  beach  twice  a  day;  appreciating  this,  and 
knowing  the  violent  objection  of  sultans  to  any  sort 
of  trouble,  the  Mediterranean  dispenses  with  a  tide ; 
at  any  hour  it  may  be  found  tirelessly  washing 
the  same  stone.  After  an  interval  of  time,  during 
which  a  quarter  to  six  in  the  morning  has  receded 
to  the  middle  of  the  night,  I  wake  up  wide,  and  in- 
stantly, in  Whitman's  phrase, 

I  know  I  am  august. 

I  put  my  hand  through  the  mosquito  curtains  and 
touch  an  electrical  contrivance  placed  there  for  my 

163 


164  PARIS  NIGHTS 

benefit,  and  immediately  there  appears  before  me  a 
woman  neatly  clothed  to  delight  my  eye,  and  I  gaze 
out  at  her  through  my  mosquito  curtains.  She 
wishes  me  "Good  morning"  in  my  own  language, 
in  order  to  save  the  trouble  of  unnecessary  compre- 
hension, and  if  I  had  happened  to  be  Italian, 
French,  or  German  she  could  still  greet  me  in  my 
own  language,  because  she  has  been  taught  to  do 
so  in  order  to  save  me  trouble.  She  takes  my  com- 
mands for  the  morning,  and  then  I  notice  that  the 
sun  has  thoughtfully  got  round  to  my  window  and 
is  casting  a  respectful  beam  or  two  on  my  hyacin- 
thine  locks.  In  the  vast  palace  the  sultans  are  aris- 
ing, and  I  catch  the  rumour  thereof.  Presently, 
with  various  and  intricate  aid,  I  have  laved  the  im- 
perial limbs  and  assumed  the  robes  of  state.  The 
window  is  opened  for  me,  and  I  pass  out  on  to  the 
balcony  and  languidly  applaud  the  Mediterranean, 
like  a  king  diverting  himself  for  half  an  hour  at 
the  opera.  It  is  a  great  sight,  me  applauding  the 
Mediterranean  as  I  drink  a  cup  of  tea;  stockbrok- 
ers clapping  the  dinner-band  at  the  Trocadero 
would  be  nothing  to  it.  After  this  I  do  an  un- 
monarchical  act,  an  act  of  which  I  ought  to  be 
ashamed,  and  which  I  keep  a  profound  secret  from 
the  other  sultans  in  the  vast  palace — I  earn  my 
living  by  sheer  hard  labour. 

Then  I  descend  to  the  banqueting-hall,  and  no 
sooner  do  I  appear  than  I  am  surrounded  by  min- 
ions in  black,  an  extraordinary  race  of  persons. 
At  different  hours  I  see  these  mysterious  minions 
in  black,  and  sometimes  I  observe  them  surrepti- 


THE  HOTEL  TRISTE  165 

tiously.  They  have  no  names.  They  never  eat, 
never  drink,  never  smile,  never  love,  never  do  any- 
thing except  offer  me  prepared  meats  with  respect- 
ful complacency.  Their  god  is  my  stomach,  and 
they  have  made  up  their  minds  that  it  must  be  ap- 
peased with  frequent  burnt  sacrifices  and  libations. 
They  watch  my  glance  as  mariners  the  sky,  and  the 
slightest  hint  sends  them  flying.  At  the  conclu- 
sion of  the  ceremony  they  usher  me  out  of  the  hall 
with  obeisances  into  other  halls  and  other  deferen- 
tial silences. 

«7*  <5^  c^*  e5* 

And  when  the  entire  rite  has  been  repeated  twice 
we  recline  on  sofas,  I  and  the  other  sultans,  and 
spend  the  final  hours  of  the  imperial  day  in  being 
sad  and  silent  together.  We  are  sad  because  we 
are  sultans.  It  is  in  the  nature  of  things  that  sul- 
tans should  be  sad;  it  is  not  the  cares  of  state  which 
make  us  sad,  but  merely  a  high  imperial  instinct 
for  the  correct.  Silence  is,  of  course,  a  necessity 
to  sultans,  and  for  this  reason  the  activity  of  the  im- 
mense palace  is  conducted  solely  in  hushed  tones. 
The  minions  in  black  never  raise  their  dulcet  voices 
more  than  half  an  inch  or  so.  Late  at  night,  as  I 
pass  on  my  solitary,  sad  way  to  the  chamber  of 
sleep,  I  see  them,  those  mysterious  minions  with  no 
names  and  no  passions  and  no  heed  for  food,  still 
hovering  expectant,  still  bowing,  still  silent.  And 
lastly  I  retire.  I  find  my  couch  beautifully  laid 
out,  I  cautiously  place  myself  upon  it,  I  savour  the 
soundless  calm  of  the  palace,  and  I  sleep  again; 
and  my  closing  thought  is  the  thought  that  I  am 


166  PARIS  NIGHTS 

august,  and  that  all  the  other  sultans,  in  this  and  all 
the  other  palaces  from  Toulon  to  San  Remo,  are 
august. 

«*       «*       «*       £ 

Strange  things  happen.  Once  a  week  a  very 
strange  thing  happens.  I  find  an  envelope  lying 
about.  It  is  never  given  to  me  openly.  I  may 
discover  it  propped  up  against  the  teapot  on  my 
tea-tray,  or  on  my  writing-desk,  or  sandwiched  in 
my  "post,"  between  a  love-letter  and  a  picture  post 
card.  But  I  invariably  do  find  it;  measures  are 
taken  that  I  shall  succeed  promptly  in  finding  it. 
All  the  minions  pretend  that  this  envelope  is  a 
matter  of  no  importance  whatever;  I  also  pretend 
the  same.  Now,  the  fact  is  that  I  simply  hate  this 
envelope;  I  hate  the  sight  of  it;  I  hate  to  open  it; 
I  dread  its  contents.  Every  week  it  shocks  me.  I 
carry  it  about  with  me  in  my  imperial  pocket  for 
several  hours,  fighting  against  the  inevitable. 
Then  at  length  I  dismally  yield  to  a  compulsion. 
And  I  wander,  by  accident  on  purpose,  in  the  direc- 
tion of  a  little  glass-partitioned  room,  where  a  ma- 
levolent man  sits  like  a  spider  sits  in  its  web.  We 
both  pretend  I  am  there  by  chance,  but  since  I  am 
*n  fact  there,  I  may  as  well — a  pure  formality! 
And  a  keen  listener  might  hear  a  golden  chink  or 
the  rustle  of  paper.  And  then  I  feel  feeble  but  re- 
lieved, as  if  I  had  come  out  of  the  dentist's.  And 
I  am  aware  that  I  am  not  so  excessively  august 
after  all,  and  that  I  am  in  the  middle  of  the  Riviera 
season,  when  one  must  expect,  etc.,  etc.,  and  that 
even  the  scenery  was  scientifically  reduced  to  fig- 


A  HUMAN  BEING  TALKING  TO  ANOTHER   HUMAN  BEING     (Page  167) 


THE  HOTEL  TRISTE  167 

ures  in  that  envelope,  and  that  anyhow  the  Hotel 
Triste  is  the  Hotel  Triste.  (Triste  is  not  its  real 
name;  one  of  my  fellow  sultans,  who  also  does  the 
shameful  act  in  secret,  so  baptised  it  in  a  ribald  mo- 
ment.) 

«*    «*    #    # 

The  strangest  thing  of  all  occurred  one  night. 
I  was  walking  moodily  along  the  convenient  marge 
of  the  Mediterranean  when  I  saw  a  man,  a  human 
being,  dressed  in  a  check  suit  and  a  bowler  hat, 
talking  to  another  human  being  dressed  in  a  blouse 
and  a  skirt.  I  passed  them.  The  man  was  smil- 
ing, and  chattering  loudly  and  rapidly  and  even 
passionately  to  the  soul  within  the  blouse.  Soon 
they  parted,  with  proofs  of  affection,  and  the  man 
strode  away  and  overtook  and  left  me  behind. 
You  could  have  knocked  me  down  with  a  feather 
when  I  perceived  he  was  one  of  the  mysterious 
nameless  minions  who  I  thought  always  wore 
mourning  and  never  ate,  drank,  smiled,  or  loved. 
"Fellow  wanderer  in  the  Infinite,"  I  addressed  his 
back  as  soon  as  I  had  recovered,  "What  are  your 
opinions  upon  life  and  death  and  love,  and  the  ad- 
visability of  being  august?" 


II 

WAR! 

We  were  in  the  billiard-room — English  men  and 
women  collected  from  various  parts  of  the  earth, 
and  enjoying  that  state  of  intimacy  which  is  some- 
how produced  by  the  comfortable  click  of  billiard 
balls.  It  is  extraordinary  what  pretty  things  the 
balls  say  of  a  night  in  the  billiard-room  of  a  good 
hotel.  They  say:  "You  are  very  good-natured  and 
jolly  people.  Click.  Women  spoil  the  play,  but 
it's  nice  to  have  them  here.  Click.  And  so  well- 
dressed  and  smiling  and  feminine!  Click.  Click. 
Cigars  are  good  and  digestion  is  good.  Click. 
How  correct  and  refined  and  broad-minded  you  all 
are!  All's  right  with  the  world.  Click."  A 
stockbroker  sat  near  me  by  the  fire.  My  previous 
experience  of  stockbrokers  had  led  me  to  suppose 
that  all  stockbrokers  were  pursy,  middle-aged,  hard- 
breathers,  thick-fingered,  with  a  sure  taste  in  wines, 
steaks,  and  musical  comedies.  But  this  one  was 
very  different — except  perhaps  on  the  point  of 
musical  comedies.  He  was  quite  young,  quite  thin, 
quite  simple.  In  fact,  he  was  what  is  known  as  an 
English  gentleman.  He  frankly  enjoyed  showing 
young  ladies  aged  twenty-three  how  to  make  a 
loser  off  the  red,  and  talking  about  waltzes,  travel, 
and  sport.  He  never  said  anything  original,  and 

168 


WAR!  169 

so  never  surprised  one  nor  made  one  feel  uncom- 
fortable. He  was  extremely  amiable,  and  we  all 
liked  him.  The  sole  fact  about  the  Stock  Exchange 
which  I  gleamed  from  him  was  that  the  Stock  Ex- 
change comprised  many  bounders,  and  "you  had  to 
be  civil  to  'em,  too." 

"You've  heard  the  news?"  I  said  to  him. 
"About  Japan?"  he  asked.  No,  he  had  not  heard. 
It  took  the  English  papers  two  days  to  reach  us, 
and,  of  course,  for  the  English  there  are  no  news- 
papers but  English  newspapers.  There  was  a  first- 
class  local  daily;  with  a  complete  service  of  foreign 
news,  and  a  hundred  thousand  readers ;  but  I  do  not 
believe  that  one  English  person  in  ten  even  knew 
of  its  existence.  So  I  took  the  local  daily  out  of 
my  pocket,  and  translated  to  him  the  Russian  note 
informing  the  Powers  that  ambassadors  were  pack- 
ing up.  "Looks  rather  bad!"  he  murmured.  I 
could  have  jumped  up  and  slain  him  on  the 
spot  with  the  jigger,  for  every  English  person  in 
that  hotel  every  night  for  three  weeks  past  had  ex- 
claimed on  glancing  at  the  "Times":  "Looks  bad!" 
And  here  this  amiable  young  stockbroker,  with  war 
practically  broken  out,  was  saying  it  again!  I  am 
perfectly  convinced  that  everyone  said  this,  and  this 
only,  because  no  one  had  any  ideas  beyond  it. 
There  had  appeared  some  masterly  articles  in  the 
"Times"  on  the  Manchurian  question.  But  nobody 
read  them:  I  am  sure  of  that.  No  one  had  even  a 
passable  notion  of  Far  Eastern  geography,  and  no 
one  could  have  explained,  lucidly  or  otherwise,  the 


170  PARIS  NIGHTS 

origin  of  the  gigantic  altercation.  How  strange  it 
is  that  the  causes  of  war  never  excite  interest! 
(What  was  the  cause  of  the  Franco- German  war, 
you  who  are  omniscient?) 

In  response  to  another  question,  the  young 
stockbroker  said  that  his  particular  market  would 
be  seriously  affected.  "I  should  like  to  be  there," 
[on  the  Exchange],  he  remarked,  and  added 
dreamily:  "It  would  be  rather  fun."  Then  we  be- 
gan a  four-handed  game,  a  game  whose  stupidities 
were  atoned  for  by  the  charming  gestures  of 
women.  And  the  stockbroker  found  himself  in 
enormous  form.  The  stone  of  the  Russian  Note 
had  sunk  into  the  placid  lake  and  not  a  ripple  was 
left.  Nothing  but  billiards  had  existed  since  the 
beginning  of  the  world,  or  ever  would  exist.  Noth- 
ing, I  reflected,  will  rouse  the  average  sensible  man 
to  an  imaginative  conception  of  what  a  war  is,  not 
even  the  descriptions  of  a  Stephen  Crane.  Nay, 
not  even  income  tax  at  fifteen  pence  in  the  pound! 

«*      «*      £      # 

The  next  morning  I  went  out  for  a  solitary  walk 
by  the  coast  road.  And  I  had  not  gone  a  mile  be- 
fore I  came  to  an  unkempt  building,  with 
a  few  officials  lounging  in  front  of  it.  'Trench 
Custom  House"  was  painted  across  its  pale  face. 
Then  the  road  began  to  climb  up  among  the  outly- 
ing spurs  of  the  Maritime  Alps.  It  went  higher 
and  higher  till  it  was  cut  out  of  the  solid  rock. 
Half  a  mile  further,  and  there  was  another  French 
Custom  House.  Still  further,  where  the  rock  be- 
came crags,  and  the  crags  beetled  above  and  beetled 


WAR!  171 

below,  there  occurred  a  profound  gorge,  and  from 
the  stone  bridge  which  spanned  it  one  could  see,  and 
faintly  hear,  a  thin  torrent  rushing  to  the  sea  per- 
haps a  couple  of  hundred  feet  below.  Immediately 
to  the  west  of  this  bridge  the  surface  of  the  crags 
had  been  chiselled  smooth,  and  on  the  expanse  had 
been  pictured  a  large  black  triangle  with  a  white 
border — about  twelve  feet  across.  And  under  the 
triangle  was  a  common  little  milestone  arrange- 
ment, smaller  than  many  English  milestones,  and 
on  one  side  of  the  milestone  was  painted  "France" 
and  on  the  other  "Italia."  This  was  the  division  be- 
tween the  two  greatest  Latin  countries;  across  this 
imaginary  line  had  been  waged  the  bloodless  but 
disastrous  tariff  war  of  ten  years  ago.  I  was  in 
France;  a  step,  and  I  was  in  Italy!  And  it  is  on 
account  of  similar  imaginary,  artificial,  and  uncon- 
vincing lines,  one  here,  one  there — they  straggle 
over  the  whole  earth's  crust — that  most  wars,  mili- 
tary, naval,  and  financial,  take  place. 
*  #  t*  * 

Across  the  gorge  was  a  high,  brown  tenement, 
and  towards  the  tenement  strutted  an  Italian  sol- 
dier in  the  full,  impossible  panoply  of  war.  He 
carried  two  rifles,  a  mile  or  so  of  braid,  gilt  enough 
to  gild  the  dome  of  St.  Paul's  and  Heaven  knows 
what  contrivances  besides.  And  he  was  smoking 
a  cigarette  out  of  a  long  holder.  Two  young  girls, 
aged  perhaps  six  or  eight,  bounded  out  of  the  slat- 
ternly tenement,  and  began  to  chatter  to  him  in  a 
high  infantile  treble.  The  formidable  warrior 
smiled  affectionately,  and  bending  down,  offered 


172  PARIS  NIGHTS 

them  a  few  paternal  words;  they  were  evidently 
spoiled  little  things.  Close  by  a  vendor  of  picture 
post  cards  had  set  up  shop  on  a  stone  wall.  Far  be- 
low, the  Mediterranean  was  stretched  out  like  a 
blue  cloth  without  a  crease  in  it,  and  a  brig  in  full 
sail  was  crawling  across  the  offing.  The  sun  shone 
brilliantly.  Roses  in  perfect  bloom  had  escaped 
from  gardens  and  hung  free  over  hedges.  Every- 
thing was  steeped  in  a  tremendous  and  impressive 
calm — a  calm  at  once  pastoral  and  marine,  and  the 
calm  of  obdurate  mountains  that  no  plough  would 
ever  conquer.  And  breaking  against  this  mighty 
calm  was  the  high,  thin  chatter  of  the  little  girls, 
with  their  quick  and  beautiful  movements  of  child- 
hood. 

And  as  I  watched  the  ragged  little  girls,  and  fol- 
lowed the  brig  on  the  flat  and  peaceful  sea,  and 
sniffed  the  wonderful  air,  and  was  impregnated  by 
the  spirit  of  the  incomparable  coast  and  the  morning 
hour,  something  overcame  me,  some  new  perception 
of  the  universality  of  humanity.  (It  was  the  little 
girls  that  did  it.)  And  I  thought  intensely  how 
absurd,  how  artificial,  how  grotesque,  how  acci- 
dental, how  inessential,  was  all  that  rigmarole  of 
boundaries  and  limits  and  frontiers.  It  seemed  to 
me  incredible,  then,  that  people  could  go  to  war 
about  such  matters.  The  peace,  the  natural  univer- 
sal peace,  seemed  so  profound  and  so  inherent  in 
the  secret  essence  of  things,  that  it  could  not  be 
broken.  And  at  the  very  moment,  though  I  knew 
it  not,  while  the  brig  was  slipping  by,  and  the  little 


WAR !  173 

girls  were  imposing  upon  the  good-nature  of  their 
terrible  father,  and  the  hawker  was  arranging  his 
trumpery,  pathetic  post  cards,  they  were  killing 
each  other — Russia  and  Japan  were — in  a  row 
about  "spheres  of  influence." 


Ill 


"MONTE" 


Monte  Carlo — the  initiated  call  it  merely 
"Monte" — has  often  been  described,  in  fiction  and 
out  of  it,  but  the  frank  confession  of  a  ruined  gam- 
bler is  a  rare  thing;  partly  because  the  ruined  gam- 
bler can't  often  write  well  enough  to  express  himself 
accurately,  partly  because  he  isn't  in  the  mood  for 
literary  composition,  and  partly  because  he  is  some- 
times dead.  So,  since  I  am  not  dead,  and  since  it 
is  only  by  means  of  literary  composition  that  I  can 
hope  to  restore  my  shattered  fortunes,  I  will  give 
you  the  frank  confession  of  a  ruined  gambler.  Be- 
fore I  went  to  Monte  Carlo  I  had  all  the  usual  ideas 
of  the  average  sensible  man  about  gambling  in  gen- 
eral, and  about  Monte  Carlo  in  particular. 
"Where  does  all  the  exterior  brilliance  of  Monte 
Carlo  come  from?"  I  asked  sagely.  And  I  said 
further:  "The  Casino  administration  does  not  dis- 
guise the  fact  that  it  makes  a  profit  of  about  50,000 
francs  a  day.  Where  does  that  profit  come  from?" 
And  I  answered  my  own  question  with  wonderful 
wisdom:  "Out  of  the  pockets  of  the  foolish  gam- 
blers." I  specially  despised  the  gambler  who  gam- 
bles "on  a  system";  I  despised  him  as  a  creature  of 
superstition.  For  the  "system"  gambler  will  argue 
that  if  I  toss  a  penny  up  six  times  and  it  falls 

174 


cf^^jjk 


GAMBLING  AT  MONTE  CARLO    (Page 


"MONTE"  175 

"tail"  every  time,  there  is  a  strong  probability  that 
it  will  fall  "head"  the  seventh  time.  "Now,"  I  said, 
"can  any  rational  creature  be  so  foolish  as  to  sup- 
pose that  the  six  previous  and  done-with  spins  can 
possibly  affect  the  seventh  spin?  What  connec- 
tion is  there  between  them?"  And  I  replied:  "No 
rational  creature  can  be  so  foolish.  And  there  is 
no  connection."  In  this  spirit,  superior,  omnis- 
cient, I  went  to  Monte  Carlo. 

Of  course,  I  went  to  study  human  nature  and  find 
material.  The  sole  advantage  of  being  a  novelist 
is  that  when  you  are  discovered  in  a  place  where,  as 
a  serious  person,  you  would  prefer  not  to  be  discov- 
ered, you  can  always  aver  that  you  are  studying 
human  nature  and  seeking  material.  I  was  much 
impressed  by  the  fact  of  my  being  in  Monte  Carlo. 
I  said  to  myself:  "I  am  actually  in  Monte  Carlo!" 
I  was  proud.  And  when  I  got  into  the  gorgeous 
gaming  saloons,  amid  that  throng  at  once  glitter- 
ing and  shabby,  I  said:  "I  am  actually  in  the  gam- 
ing saloons!"  And  the  thought  at  the  back  of  my 
mind  was:  "Henceforth  I  shall  be  able  to  say  that 
I  have  been  in  the  gaming  saloons  at  Monte  Carlo." 
After  studying  human  nature  at  large,  I  began  to 
study  it  at  a  roulette  table.  I  had  gambled  before 
— notably  with  impassive  Arab  chiefs  in  that  singu- 
lar oasis  of  the  Sahara  desert,  Biskra — but  only  a 
little,  and  always  at  petits  chevaux.  But  I  under- 
stood roulette,  and  I  knew  several  "systems."  I 
found  the  human  nature  very  interesting;  also  the 
roulette.  The  sight  of  real  gold,  silver,  and  notes 
flung  about  in  heaps  warmed  my  imagination.  At 


176  PARIS  NIGHTS 

this  point  I  felt  a  solitary  five-franc  piece  in  my 
pocket.     And  then  the  red  turned  up  three  times 
running,  and  I  remembered  a  simple  "system"  that 
began  after  a  sequence  of  three. 
s*    j*    *    £ 

I  don't  know  how  it  was,  but  long  before  I  had 
formally  decided  to  gamble  I  knew  by  instinct  that 
I  should  stake  that  five-franc  piece.  I  fought 
against  the  idea,  but  I  couldn't  take  my  hand  empty 
out  of  my  pocket.  Then  at  last  (the  whole  experi- 
ence occupying  perhaps  ten  seconds)  I  drew  forth 
the  five-franc  piece  and  bashfully  put  it  on  black. 
I  thought  that  all  the  fifty  or  sixty  persons  crowded 
round  the  table  were  staring  at  me  and  thinking  to 
themselves:  "There's  a  beginner!"  However, 
black  won,  and  the  croupier  pushed  another  five- 
franc  piece  alongside  of  mine,  and  I  picked  them 
both  up  very  smartly,  remembering  all  the  tales  I 
had  ever  heard  of  thieves  leaning  over  you  at  Monte 
Carlo  and  snatching  your  ill-gotten  gains.  I  then 
thought:  "This  is  a  bit  of  all  right.  Just  for  fun 
I'll  continue  the  system."  I  did  so.  In  an  hour  I 
had  made  fifty  francs,  without  breaking  into  gold. 
Once  a  croupier  made  a  slip  and  was  raking  in  red 
stakes  when  red  had  won,  and  people  hesitated  (be- 
cause croupiers  never  make  mistakes,  you  know, 
and  you  have  to  be  careful  how  you  quarrel  with  the 
table  at  Monte  Carlo),  and  I  was  the  first  to  give 
vent  to  a  protest,  and  the  croupier  looked  at  me  and 
smiled  and  apologised,  and  the  winners  looked  at 
me  gratefully,  and  I  began  to  think  myself  the 
deuce  and  all  of  a  Monte  Carlo  habitue. 


"MONTE" 

Having  made  fifty  francs,  I  decided  that  I 
would  prove  my  self-control  by  ceasing  to  play. 
So  I  did  prove  it,  and  went  to  have  tea  in  the  Ca- 
sino cafe.  In  those  moments  fifty  francs  seemed  to 
me  to  be  a  really  enormous  sum.  I  was  as  happy  as 
though  I  had  shot  a  reviewer  without  being  found 
out.  I  gradually  began  to  perceive,  too,  that 
though  no  rational  creature  could  suppose  that  a 
spin  could  be  affected  by  previous  spins,  neverthe- 
less, it  undoubtedly  was  so  affected.  I  began  to 
scorn  a  little  the  average  sensible  man  who  scorned 
the  gambler.  "There  is  more  in  roulette  than  is 
dreamt  of  in  your  philosophy,  my  conceited  friend," 
I  murmured.  I  was  like  a  woman — I  couldn't 
argue,  but  I  knew  infallibly.  Then  it  suddenly 
occurred  to  me  that  if  I  had  gambled  with  louis  in- 
stead of  five-franc  pieces  I  should  have  made  200 
francs — 200  francs  in  rather  over  an  hour!  Oh, 
luxury!  Oh,  being-in-the-swim!  Oh,  smartness! 
Oh,  gilded  and  delicious  sin! 

*    #    *    * 

Five  days  afterwards  I  went  to  Monte  Carlo 
again,  to  lunch  with  some  brother  authors.  In  the 
meantime,  though  I  had  been  chained  to  my  desk 
by  unalterable  engagements,  I  had  thought  con- 
stantly upon  the  art  and  craft  of  gambling.  One 
of  these  authors  knew  Monte  Carlo,  and  all  that 
therein  is,  as  I  know  Fleet  Street.  And  to  my 
equal  astonishment  and  pleasure  he  said,  when  I 
explained  my  system  to  him:  "Couldn't  have  a  bet- 
ter!" And  he  proceeded  to  remark  positively  that 
the  man  who  had  a  decent  system  and  the  nerve  to 


178  PARIS  NIGHTS 

stick  to  it  through  all  crises,  would  infallibly  win 
from  the  tables — not  a  lot,  but  an  average  of  sev- 
eral louis  per  sitting  of  two  hours.  "Gambling," 
he  said,  "is  a  matter  of  character.  You  have  the 
right  character,"  he  added.  You  may  guess 
whether  I  did  not  glow  with  joyous  pride.  "The 
tables  make  their  money  from  the  plunging  fools," 
I  said,  privately,  "and  I  am  not  a  fool."  A  man 
was  pointed  out  to  me  who  extracted  a  regular  in- 
come from  the  tables.  "But  why  don't  the  author- 
ities forbid  him  the  rooms?"  I  demanded,  "Be- 
cause he's  such  a  good  advertisement.  Can't  you 
see?"  I  saw. 

We  went  to  the  Casino  late  after  lunch.  I  cut 
myself  adrift  from  the  rest  of  the  party  and  began 
instantly  to  play.  In  forty-five  minutes,  with  my 
"system,"  I  had  made  forty-five  francs.  And  then 
the  rest  of  the  party  reappeared  and  talked  about 
tea,  and  trains,  and  dinner.  "Tea!"  I  murmured 
disgusted  (yet  I  have  a  profound  passion  for  tea), 
"when  I  am  netting  a  franc  a  minute!"  However, 
I  yielded,  and  we  went  and  had  tea  at  the  Restau- 
rant de  Paris  across  the  way.  And  over  the  white- 
and-silver  of  the  tea-table,  in  the  falling  twilight, 
with  the  incomparable  mountain  landscape  in  front 
of  us,  and  the  most  chic  and  decadent  Parisianism 
around  us,  we  talked  roulette.  Then  the  Russian 
Grand  Duke  who  had  won  several  thousand 
pounds  in  a  few  minutes  a  week  or  two  before,  came 
veritably  and  ducally  in,  and  sat  at  the  next  table. 
There  was  no  mistaking  his  likeness  to  the  Tsar. 
It  is  most  extraordinary  how  the  propinquity  of  a 


"MONTE"  179 

Grand  Duke,  experienced  for  the  first  time,  affects 
even  the  proverbial  phlegm  of  a  British  novelist. 
I  seemed  to  be  moving  in  a  perfect  atmosphere  of 
Grand  Dukes!  And  I,  too,  had  won!  The  art  of 
literature  seemed  a  very  little  thing. 

«*      £      £      £ 

After  I  had  made  fifty  and  forty-five  francs 
at  two  sittings,  I  developed  suddenly,  without  vis- 
iting the  tables  again,  into  a  complete  and  thorough 
gambler.  I  picked  up  all  the  technical  terms  like 
picking  up  marbles — the  greater  martingale,  the 
lesser  martingale,  "en  plein,"  "a  cheval,"  "the  horses 
of  seventeen,"  "last  square,"  and  so  on,  and  so  on — 
and  I  had  my  own  original  theories  about  the  al- 
leged superiority  of  red-or-black  to  odd-or-even  in 
betting  on  the  even  chances.  In  short,  for  many 
hours  I  lived  roulette.  I  ate  roulette  for  dinner, 
drank  it  in  my  Vichy,  and  smoked  it  in  my  cigar. 
At  first  I  pretended  that  I  was  only  pretending  to 
be  interested  in  gambling  as  a  means  of  earning  a 
livelihood  (call  it  honest  or  dishonest,  as  you 
please) .  Then  the  average  sensible  man  in  me  be- 
gan to  have  rather  a  bad  time,  really.  I  frankly 
acknowledged  to  myself  that  I  was  veritably  keen 
on  the  thing.  I  said:  "Of  course,  ordinary  people 
believe  that  the  tables  must  win,  but  we  who  are 
initiated  know  better.  All  you  want  in  order  to 
win  is  a  prudent  system  and  great  force  of  char- 
acter." And  I  decided  that  it  would  be  idle,  that 
it  would  be  falsely  modest,  that  it  would  be  inane, 
to  deny  that  I  had  exceptional  force  of  character. 
And  beautiful  schemes  formed  themselves  in  my 


180  PARIS  NIGHTS 

mind:  how  I  would  gain  a  certain  sum,  and  then 
increase  my  "units"  from  five-franc  pieces  to  louis, 
and  so  quadruple  the  winnings,  and  how  I  would 
get  a  friend  to  practise  the  same  system,  and  so 
double  them  again,  and  how  generally  we  would 
have  a  quietly  merry  time  at  the  expense  of  the 
tables  during  the  next  month. 

And  I  was  so  calm,  cool,  collected,  impassive. 
There  was  no  hurry.  I  would  not  go  to  Monte 
Carlo  the  next  day,  but  perhaps  the  day  after. 
However,  the  next  day  proved  to  be  very  wet,  and 
I  was  alone  and  idle,  my  friends  being  otherwise 
engaged,  and  hence  I  was  simply  obliged  to  go  to 
Monte  Carlo.  I  didn't  wish  to  go,  but  what  could 
one  do?  Before  starting,  I  reflected:  "Well,  there's 
just  a  chance — such  things  have  been  known,"  and 
I  took  a  substantial  part  of  my  financial  resources 
out  of  my  pocket-book,  and  locked  that  reserve  up 
in  a  drawer.  After  this,  who  will  dare  to  say  that  I 
was  not  cool  and  sagacious?  The  journey  to  Monte 
Carlo  seemed  very  long.  Just  as  I  was  entering 
the  ornate  portals  I  met  some  friends  who  had  seen 
me  there  the  previous  day.  The  thought  flashed 
through  my  mind:  "These  people  will  think  I  have 
got  caught  in  the  meshes  of  the  vice  just  like  ordi- 
nary idiots,  whereas,  of  course  my  case  is  not  or- 
dinary at  all."  So  I  quickly  explained  to  them  that 
it  was  very  wet  (as  if  they  couldn't  see),  and  that 
my  other  friends  had  left  me,  and  that  I  had  come 
to  Monte  Carlo  merely  to  kill  time.  They  ap- 
peared to  regard  this  explanation  as  unnecessary. 


"MONTE"  181 

I  had  a  fancy  for  the  table  where  I  had  previously 
played  and  won.  I  went  to  it,  and  by  extraordi- 
nary good  fortune  secured  a  chair — a  difficult  thing 
to  get  in  the  afternoons.  Behold  me  seated  next 
door  to  a  croupier,  side  by  side  with  regular  fre- 
quenters, regular  practisers  of  systems,  and  doubt- 
less envied  by  the  outer  ring  of  players  and  specta- 
tors !  I  was  annoyed  to  find  that  every  other  occu- 
pant of  a  chair  had  a  little  printed  card  in  black  and 
red  on  which  he  merked  the  winning  numbers.  I 
had  neglected  to  provide  myself  with  this  contriv- 
ance, and  I  felt  conspicuous;  I  felt  that  I  was  not 
correct.  However,  I  changed  some  gold  for  silver 
with  the  croupier,  and  laid  the  noble  pieces  in  little 
piles  in  front  of  me,  arid  looked  as  knowing  and  as 
initiated  as  I  could.  And  at  the  first  opening  of- 
fered by  the  play  I  began  the  operation  of  my  sys- 
tem, backing  red,  after  black  had  won  three  times. 
Black  won  the  fourth  time,  and  I  had  lost  five 
francs.  .  .  .  Black  won  the  sixth  time  and  I  had  lost 
thirty-five  francs.  Black  won  the  seventh  time,  and 
I  had  lost  seventy-five  francs.  "Steady,  cool  cus- 
tomer!" I  addressed  myself.  I  put  down  four  louis 
(and  kindly  remember  that  in  these  hard  times 
four  louis  is  four  louis — three  English  pounds  and 
four  English  shillings),  and,  incredible  to  relate, 
black  won  the  eighth  time,  and  I  had  lost  a  hundred 
and  fifty-five  francs.  The  time  occupied  was  a 
mere  nine  minutes.  It  was  at  this  point  that  the 
"nerve"  and  the  "force  of  character"  were  required, 
for  it  was  an  essential  part  of  my  system  to  "cut  the 
loss"  at  the  eighth  turn.  I  said:  "Hadn't  I  better 


182  PARIS  NIGHTS 

put  down  eight  louis  and  win  all  back  again,  just 
this  once?  Red's  absolutely  certain  to  win  next 
time."  But  my  confounded  force  of  character  came 
in,  and  forced  me  to  cut  the  loss,  and  stick  strictly 
to  the  system.  And  at  the  ninth  spin  red  did  win. 
If  I  had  only  put  down  that  eight  louis  I  should 
have  been  all  right.  I  was  extremely  annoyed, 
especially  when  I  realised  that,  even  with  decent 
luck,  it  would  take  me  the  best  part  of  three  hours 
to  regain  that  hundred  and  fifty-five  francs. 

«*       £       £       «5« 

I  was  shaken.  I  was  like  a  pugilist  who  had 
been  knocked  down  in  a  prize  fight,  and  hasn't  quite 
made  up  his  mind  whether,  on  the  whole,  he  won't 
be  more  comfortable,  in  the  long  run,  where  he  is. 
I  was  like  a  soldier  under  a  heavy  fire,  arguing  with 
himself  rapidly  whether  he  prefers  to  be  a  Balaclava 
hero  with  death  or  the  workhouse,  or  just  a  plain, 
ordinary,  prudent  Tommy.  I  was  struck  amid- 
ships. Then  an  American  person  behind  my  chair, 
just  a  casual  foolish  plunger,  of  the  class  out  of 
which  the  Casino  makes  its  profits,  put  a  thousand 
franc  note  on  the  odd  numbers,  and  thirty-three 
turned  up.  "A  thousand  for  a  thousand,"  said  the 
croupier  mechanically  and  nonchalantly,  and  handed 
to  the  foolish  plunger  the  equivalent  of  eighty 
pounds  sterling.  And  about  two  minutes  after- 
wards the  same  foolish  plunger  made  a  hundred  and 
sixty  pounds  at  another  single  stroke.  It  was 
odious;  I  tell  you  positively  it  was  odious.  I  col- 
lected the  shattered  bits  of  my  character  out  of  my 
boots,  and  recommenced  my  system;  made  a  bit; 


"MONTE"  183 

felt  better ;  and  then  zero  turned  up  twice — most  un- 
settling, even  when  zero  means  only  that  your  stake 
is  "held  over."  Then  two  old  and  fussy  ladies  came 
and  gambled  very  seriously  over  my  head,  and  de- 
ranged my  hair  with  the  end  of  the  rake  in  raking 
up  their  miserable  winnings.  .  .  .  At  five  o'clock 
I  had  lost  a  hundred  and  ninety-five  francs.  I 
don't  mind  working  hard,  at  great  nervous  tension, 
in  a  vitiated  atmosphere,  if  I  can  reckon  on  netting 
a  franc  a  minute;  but  I  have  a  sort  of  objection 
to  three  laborious  sittings  such  as  I  endured 
that  week  when  the  grand  result  is  a  dead  loss  of 
four  pounds.  I  somehow  failed  to  see  the 
point.  I  departed  in  disgust,  and  ordered  tea  at 
the  Cafe  de  Paris,  not  the  Restaurant  de  Paris  (I 
was  in  no  mood  for  Grand  Dukes).  And  while  I 
imbibed  the  tea,  a  heated  altercation  went  on  inside 
me  between  the  average  sensible  man  and  the  man 
who  knew  that  money  could  be  made  out  of  the 
tables  and  that  gambling  was  a  question  of  nerves, 
etc.  It  was  a  pretty  show,  that  altercation.  In 
about  ten  rounds  the  average  sensible  man  had 
knocked  his  opponent  right  out  of  the  ring.  I 
breathed  a  long  breath,  and  seemed  to  wake  up  out 
of  a  nightmare.  Did  I  regret  the  episode?  I  re- 
gretted the  ruin,  not  the  episode.  For  had  I  not  all 
the  time  been  studying  human  nature  and  getting 
material?  Besides  that,  as  I  grow  older  I  grow 
too  wise.  Says  Montaigne:  "Wlsdome  hath  hir  ex- 
cesses, and  no  leise  need  of  moderation,  then  follie" 
(The  italics  are  Montaigne's)  .  .  .  And  there's 
a  good  deal  in  my  system  after  all. 


IV 

A  DIVERSION  AT  SAN  REMO 

The  Royal  Hotel,  San  Remo,  has  the  reputation 
of  being  the  best  hotel,  and  the  most  expensive,  on 
the  Italian  Riviera.  It  is  the  abode  of  correctness 
and  wealth,  and  if  a  stray  novelist  or  so  is  discov- 
ered there,  that  is  only  an  accident.  It  provides 
distractions  of  all  kinds  for  its  guests:  bands  of 
music,  conjuring  shows,  dances;  and  that  week  it 
provided  quite  a  new  thing  in  the  way  of  distraction, 
namely,  an  address  from  Prebendary  Carlile,  head 
of  the  Church  Army,  which  was  quite  truthfully 
described  as  a  "national  antidote  to  indiscriminate 
charity."  We  looked  forward  to  that  address;  it 
was  a  novelty.  And  if  we  of  the  Royal  Hotel  had 
a  fault,  our  fault  was  a  tendency,  after  we  had  paid 
our  hotel  bills,  to  indiscriminate  charity.  Indis- 
criminate charity  salves  the  conscience  just 
as  well  as  the  other  kind,  and  though  it 
costs  as  much  in  money,  it  costs  less  in 
trouble.  However,  we  liked  to  be  castigated  for 
our  sins,  and,  in  the  absence  of  Father  Vaughan,  we 
anticipated  with  pleasure  Mr.  Carlile.  We  did 
not  all  go.  None  of  the  representatives  of  ten  dif- 
ferent Continental  aristocracies  and  plutocracies 
went.  Nor  did  any  young  and  beautiful  persons  of 
any  nation  go.  As  a  fact,  it  was  a  lovely  afternoon. 

184 


SAN  REMO  185 

To  atone  for  these  defections,  the  solid  respectabil- 
ity of  all  San  Remo  swarmed  into  the  hotel.  (A  no- 
tice had  been  posted  that  it  might  order  its  carriages 
for  3.30.)  We  made  an  unprepossessing  assem- 
blage. I  am  far  removed  from  the  first  blush  of 
youth;  but  I  believe  I  was  almost  the  youngest  per- 
son present,  save  a  boy  who  had  been  meanly 
"pressed"  by  his  white-haired  father.  We  were 
chiefly  old,  stout,  plain,  and  of  dissatisfied  visage. 
Many  of  us  had  never  been  married,  and  never 
would  be.  We  were  prepared  to  be  very  grave. 
But  the  mischief  was  that  Mr.  Carlile  would  not  be 
grave. 

Mr.  Carlile  looked  like  a  retired  colonel  who  had 
dressed  by  mistake  in  clerical  raiment.  His  hue 
was  ruddy,  his  eye  clear,  and  his  moustache  mar- 
tial. He  is  of  a  naturally  cheerful  disposition.  It 
is  impossible  not  to  like  him,  not  to  admire  him,  not 
to  respect  him.  It  really  requires  considerable  self- 
restraint,  after  he  has  been  speaking  for  a  few  min- 
utes, not  to  pelt  him  with  sovereigns  for  the  prose- 
cution of  his  work.  Still,  appreciation  of  humour 
was  scarcely  our  strong  point.  We  could  not  laugh 
without  severe  effort.  We  were  unaccustomed  to 
laugh.  It  is  no  use  pretending  that  we  were  not  a 
serious  conclave  (we  were  not  basking  in  the  sun, 
nor  dashing  across  the  country  in  our  Fiat  cars ;  we 
had  the  interests  of  the  Empire  at  heart) .  There- 
fore, though  we  took  the  Prebendary's  humorous  de- 
nunciation of  our  indiscriminate  charity  with  fairly 
good  grace,  we  should  have  preferred  it  with  a  little 
less  facetiousness.  People  burdened  as  we  were 


186  PARIS  NIGHTS 

with  the  responsibilities  of  Empire  ought  not  to  be 
expected  to  laugh.  As  protectionists,  we  were  not, 
if  the  truth  is  to  be  told,  in  a  mood  for  gaiety. 
Hence  we  did  not  laugh;  we  hardly  smiled.  We 
just  listened  soberly  to  the  Prebendary,  who,  after 
he  had  told  us  what  we  ought  not  to  do,  told  us 
what  we  ought  to  do. 

^     4     «*     «* 

"What  we  try  to  do,"  he  said,  "is  to  bridge  the 
gulf — to  bridge  the  gulf  between  the  East  End 
and  the  West  End.  We  don't  want  your  money, 
we  want  your  help,  we  want  each  of  you  to  take  up 
one  person  and  look  after  him.  That  is  the  only 
way  to  bridge  the  gulf."  He  kept  on  emphasising 
the  phrase  "bridge  the  gulf";  and  to  illustrate  it,  he 
mentioned  a  Christmas  pudding  that  was  sent  from 
a  Royal  palace  to  his  "Pudding  Sunday"  orgy  la- 
belled for  "the  poorest  and  loneliest  widow."  "We 
soon  found  her,"  he  said.  "She  worked  from  8.30 
A.M.  to  6:30  P.M.  and  again  two  hours  at  night, 
sewing  buttons,  and  in  a  good  week  she  earned  six 
shillings.  Her  right  hand  was  all  distorted  by  rheu- 
matism, so  that  to  sew  gave  her  great  pain.  We 
found  her,  and  we  pushed  her  upstairs,  with  great 
difficulty — because  she  was  so  bad  with  bronchitis — 
and  she  had  her  pudding.  Someone  insisted  on  giv- 
ing her  Is.  a  week  for  life,  and  someone  else  insisted 
on  giving  her  2s.  a  week  for  life,  so  now  she's  a 
blooming  millionaire.  Give  us  money,  if  you  like, 
but  please  don't  give  us  any  more  money  for 
her.  .  .  ."  "There's  another  class  of  women," 
continued  the  Prebendary,  "the  drunkards. 


SAN  REMO  187 

Drunkenness  is  growing  among  women  owing  to 
the  evil  of  grocers'  licences.  We  should  like  some 
of  you  to  take  up  a  drunken  woman  apiece  and  look 
after  her.  We  can  easily  find  you  a  nice,  gentle 
creature,  to  whom  getting  drunk  is  no  more  than 
getting  cross  is  to  us.  Very  nice  women  are  drunk- 
ards, and  they  can  be  reclaimed  by  bridging  the 
gulf.  Then  there's  the  hooligans — you  have  them 
on  the  Riviera,  too.  I've  had  a  good  deal  of  expe- 
rience of  them  myself.  I  was  once  picked  up  for 
dead  near  the  Army  and  Navy  Stores  after  meeting 
a  hooligan.  Only  the  other  day  a  man  put  his  fist 
in  my  face  and  said:  'You've  ruined  our  trade.' 
'What  trade?  The  begging  trade?'  I  said,  'I  wish 
I  had.'  And  then  the  discharged  prisoners.  We 
off  er  five  months'  work  to  any  discharged  prisoner 
who  cares  .to  take  it;  there  are  200,000  every  year. 
I  was  talking  to  a  prison  official  the  other  day,  who 
told  me  that  90  per  cent,  of  his  'cases'  he  sent  to  us. 
We  reclaim  about  half  of  these.  The  other  half 
break  our  hearts.  One  broke  all  our  windows  not 
long  since  .  .  ." 

And  the  Prebendary  said  also:  "My  greatest 
pleasure  is  a  day,  a  whole  day,  in  a  thoroughly  bad 
slum.  I  went  down  to  Wigan  for  such  a  day,  and 
at  a  meeting,  when  I  asked  whether  anyone  would 
come  forward  and  speak  up  for  beer,  not  for  Christ, 
a  man  came  along  and  threw  three  pence  at  my  feet 
— -remains  of  pawning  his  waistcoat — and  then  fell 
down  dead  drunk.  We  picked  him  up,  and  I 
charged  a  helper  with  6d.,  so  that  he  could  be  filled 
up  with  tea  or  coffee  beyond  his  capacity  to  drink 


188  PARIS  NIGHTS 

any  more  beer  at  all.  I  don't  know  whether  it  was 
the  beer  or  the  tea,  but  he  joined  us.  All  due  to 
emotion,  or  excitement,  perhaps!  Yes,  but  the  next 
morning  I  was  going  out  to  the  7.30  prayer-meet- 
ing and  I  came  across  a  Wigan  collier  dead  drunk 
in  the  road.  I  tried  to  pick  him  up.  I  had  my  sur- 
plice on:  I  always  wear  my  surplice,  for  the  adver- 
tisement, and  because  people  like  to  see  it.  And  I 
couldn't  pick  him  up.  I  was  carrying  my  trombone 
in  one  hand.  Then  another  man  came  along,  and 
we  couldn't  get  that  drunkard  up  between  us.  And 
then  who  should  come  along  but  my  reclaimed 
drunkard  of  the  night  before!  He  managed  it." 

And  the  Prebendary  further  said:  "Come  some 
day  and  have  lunch  with  me.  It  will  take  you  two 
hours.  You  ought  to  chop  ten  bundles  of  fire- 
wood, but  I'll  let  you  off  that.  Or  come  and  have 
tea.  That  will  take  four  hours.  There's  a  Starva- 
tion Supper  to  end  it  at  8.30,  and  something  going 
on  all  the  time.  We  have  a  brass  band,  thirty  play- 
ers, all  very  bad.  I'm  the  worst,  with  my  trom- 
bone. We  also  have  a  women's  concertina  band. 
It's  terrible.  But  it  goes  down.  As  one  man  said, 
'It  mykes  me  'ead  ache,  but  it  do  do  me  'eart  good.'  " 
#  #  #  «* 

Then  Lord  Dundonald  proposed  a  vote  of  thanks 
to  everybody  who  deserved  to  be  thanked.  He  in- 
dicated that  we  ought  to  help  Mr.  Carlile,  just  to 
show  our  repentance  for  having  allowed  the  people 
free  access  to  public-houses  for  several  centuries. 
(Faint  applause. )  Unless  we  prevented  the  people 
from  getting  at  beer  and  unless  we  prevented  aliens 


SAN  REMO  189 

from  entering  England — (Loud  applause) — Mr. 
Carlile's  efforts  would  not  succeed.  If  we  stopped 
the  supply  of  beer  and  of  aliens  then  the  principal 
steps  [towards  Utopia?]  would  have  been  accom- 
plished. This  simple  and  comprehensible  method 
of  straightening  out  the  social  system  appealed  to 
us  very  strongly.  I  think  we  preferred  it  to 
"bridging  the  gulf."  At  the  back  of  our  minds  was 
the  idea  that  if  we  lent  our  motor-cars  or  our  hus- 
bands' or  brothers'  motor-cars  to  the  right  candi- 
dates at  election  time  we  should  be  doing  all  that 
was  necessary  to  ensure  the  millennium.  Upon  this 
we  departed.  In  the  glow  of  the  meeting  the 
scheme  of  attaching  ourselves  each  to  a  nice,  gentle 
drunken  woman  seemed  attractive;  but  really,  on 
reflection  .  .  .  !  There  was  a  plate  at  the  door. 
However,  Mr.  Carlile  had  himself  said,  "I  don't  de- 
pend much  on  the  plate  at  the  door." 


FONTAINEBLEAU— 1904-1909 


FIRST  JOURNEY  INTO  THE  FOREST 

Just  to  show  how  strange,  mysterious,  and  ro- 
mantic life  is,  I  will  relate  to  you  in  a  faithful  nar- 
rative a  few  of  my  experiences  the  other  day — it  was 
a  common  Saturday.  Some  people  may  say  that 
my  experiences  were  after  all  quite  ordinary  expe- 
riences. After  all,  they  were  not.  I  was  staying 
in  a  little  house,  unfamiliar  to  me,  and  beyond  a 
radius  of  a  few  hundred  yards  I  knew  nothing  of 
my  surroundings,  for  I  had  arrived  by  train,  and 
slept  in  the  train.  I  felt  that  if  I  wandered  far 
from  that  little  house  I  should  step  into  the  un- 
known and  the  surprising.  Even  in  the  house  I 
had  to  speak  a  foreign  tongue;  the  bells  rang  in 
French.  During  the  morning  I  walked  about 
alone,  not  daring  to  go  beyond  the  influence  of  the 
little  house;  I  might  have  been  a  fly  wandering 
within  the  small  circle  of  lamplight  on  a  tablecloth; 
all  about  me  lay  vast  undiscovered  spaces.  Then 
after  lunch  a  curious  machine  came  by  itself  up  to 
the  door  of  the  little  house.  I  daresay  you  have 
seen  these  machines.  You  sit  over  something  mys- 
terious, with  something  still  more  mysterious  in 
front  of  you.  A  singular  liquid  is  poured  into  a 
tank;  one  drop  explodes  at  a  spark,  and  the  explo- 
sion pushes  the  machine  infinitesimally  forward, 


193 


194  PARIS  NIGHTS 

another  drop  explodes  and  pushes  the  machine  in- 
finitesimally  forward,  and  so  on,  and  so  on,  and 
quicker  and  quicker,  till  you  can  outstrip 
trains.  Such  is  the  explanation  given  to  me. 
I  have  a  difficulty  in  believing  it,  but  it  seems  to 
find  general  acceptance.  However,  the  machine 
came  up  to  the  door  of  the  little  house,  and  took  us 
off,  four  of  us,  all  by  itself;  and  after  twisting  about 
several  lanes  for  a  couple  of  minutes  it  ran  us  into 
a  forest.  I  had  somehow  known  all  the  time  that 
that  little  house  was  on  the  edge  of  a  great  forest. 

<*      «*      £      * 

Without  being  informed,  I  knew  that  it  was  a 
great  forest,  because  against  the  first  trees  there  was 
a  large  board  which  said  "General  Instructions  for 
reading  the  signposts  in  the  forest,"  and  then  a  lot 
of  details.  No  forest  that  was  not  a  great  forest,  a 
mazy  forest,  and  a  dangerous  forest  to  get  lost  in, 
would  have  had  a  notice  board  like  that.  As  a 
matter  of  fact  the  forest  was  fifty  miles  in  circum- 
ference. We  plunged  into  it,  further  and  further, 
exploding  our  way  at  the  rate  of  twenty  or  thirty 
miles  an  hour,  along  a  superb  road  which  had  a  be- 
ginning and  no  end.  Sometimes  we  saw  a  solitary 
horseman  caracoling  by  the  roadside;  sometimes  we 
passed  a  team  of  horses  slowly  dragging  a  dead 
tree;  sometimes  we  heard  the  sound  of  the  wood- 
man's saw  in  the  distance.  Once  or  twice  we  de- 
tected a  cloud  of  dust  on  the  horizon  of  the  road,  and 
it  came  nearer  and  nearer,  and  proved  to  be  a  ma- 
chine like  ours,  speeding  on  some  mysterious  errand 
in  the  forest.  And  as  we  progressed  we  looked  at 


INTO  THE  FOREST  195 

each  other,  and  noticed  that  we  were  getting  whiter 
and  whiter — not  merely  our  faces,  but  even  our 
clothes.  And  for  an  extraordinary  time  we  saw 
nothing  but  the  road  running  away  from  under 
our  wheels,  and  on  either  side  trees,  trees,  trees — 
the  beech,  the  oak,  the  hornbeam,  the  birch,  the  pine 
— interminable  and  impenetrable  millions  of  them, 
prodigious  in  size,  and  holding  strange  glooms  in 
the  net  of  their  leafless  branches.  And  at  inter- 
vals we  passed  cross-roads,  disclosing  glimpses,  come 
and  gone  in  a  second,  of  other  immense  avenues  of 
the  same  trees.  And  then,  quite  startlingly,  quite 
without  notice,  we  were  out  of  the  forest;  it  was 
just  as  if  we  were  in  a  train  and  had  come  out  of  a 
tunnel. 

And  we  had  fallen  into  the  midst  of  a  very  little 
village,  sleeping  on  the  edge  of  the  forest,  and 
watched  over  by  a  very  large  cathedral.  Most  of 
the  cathedral  had  ceased  to  exist,  including  one  side 
of  the  dizzy  tower,  but  enough  was  left  to  instil  awe. 
A  butcher  came  with  great  keys  (why  a  butcher,  if 
the  world  is  so  commonplace  as  people  make  out?), 
and  we  entered  the  cathedral;  and  though  outside 
the  sun  was  hot,  the  interior  of  the  vast  fane  was  ice- 
cold,  chilling  the  bones.  And  the  cathedral  was 
full  of  realistic  statues  of  the  Virgin,  such  as  could 
only  have  been  allowed  to  survive  in  an  ice-cold 
cathedral  on  the  edge  of  a  magic  forest.  And  then 
we  climbed  a  dark  corkscrew  staircase  for  about  an 
hour,  and  came  out  (as  startlingly  as  we  had  come 
out  of  the  forest)  on  the  brink  of  a  precipice  two 
hundred  feet  deep.  There  was  no  rail.  One  little 


196  PARIS  NIGHTS 

step,  and  that  night  our  ghosts  would  have  begun 
to  haunt  the  remoter  glades  of  the  forest.  The 
butcher  laughed,  and  leaned  over ;  perhaps  he  could 
do  this  with  impunity  because  he  was  dressed  in 

blue;  I  don't  know. 

*     4*     jl     4 

Soon  afterwards  the  curious  untiring  machine  had 
swept  us  into  the  forest  again.  And  now  the  for- 
est became  more  and  more  sinister,  and  beautiful 
with  a  dreadful  beauty.  Great  processions  of 
mighty  and  tremendous  rocks  straggled  over  hill- 
ocks, and  made  chasms  and  promontories,  and  lairs 
for  tigers — tigers  that  burn  bright  in  the  night. 
But  the  road  was  always  smooth,  and  it  seemed  non- 
chalant towards  all  these  wonders.  And  presently 
it  took  us  safely  out  of  the  forest  once  again.  And 
this  time  we  were  in  a  town,  a  town  that  by  some 
mistake  of  chronology  had  got  into  the  wrong  cen- 
tury ;  the  mistake  was  a  very  gross  one  indeed.  For 
this  town  had  a  fort  with  dungeons  and  things,  and 
a  moat  all  round  it,  and  the  quaintest  streets  and 
bridges  and  roofs  and  river  and  craft.  And  pro- 
cessions in  charge  of  nuns  were  walking  to  and  fro 
in  the  grass  grown  streets.  And  not  only  were  the 
houses  and  shops  quaint  in  the  highest  degree,  but 
the  shopkeepers  also  were  all  quaint.  A  grey- 
headed tailor  dressed  in  black  stood  at  the  door  of 
his  shop,  and  his  figure  offered  such  a  quaint  spec- 
tacle that  one  of  my  friends  and  myself  exclaimed 
at  the  same  instant:  "How  Balzacian!"  And  we 
began  to  talk  about  Balzac's  great  novel  "Ursule 
Mirouet."  It  was  as  if  that  novel  had  come  into 


HOW  BALZACIAN  !     (Page  198) 


INTO  THE  FOREST  197 

actuality,  and  we  were  in  the  middle  of  it.  Every- 
thing was  Balzacian;  those  who  have  read  Balzac's 
provincial  stories  will  realise  what  that  means. 
Yet  we  were  able  to  buy  modern  cakes  at  a  con- 
fectioner's. And  we  ordered  tea,  and  sat  at  a  table 
on  the  pavement  in  front  of  an  antique  inn.  And 
close  by  us  the  landlady  sat  on  a  chair,  and  sewed, 
and  watched  us.  I  ventured  into  the  great  Bal- 
zacian kitchen  of  the  inn,  all  rafters  and  copper 
pans,  and  found  a  pretty  girl  boiling  water  for  our 
tea  in  one  pan  and  milk  for  our  tea  in  another  pan. 
I  told  her  it  was  wrong  to  boil  the  milk,  but  I  could 
see  she  did  not  believe  me.  We  were  on  the  edge 
of  the  forest. 

«*      «*      ^      £ 

And  then  the  machine  had  carried  us  back  into 
the  forest.  And  this  time  we  could  see  that  it 
meant  business.  For  it  had  chosen  a  road  mightier 
than  the  others,  and  a  road  more  determined  to  pene- 
trate the  very  heart  of  the  forest.  We  travelled 
many  miles  with  scarcely  a  curve,  until  there  were 
more  trees  behind  us  than  a  thousand  men  could 
count  in  a  thousand  years.  And  then — you  know 
what  happened  next.  At  least  you  ought  to  be  able 
to  guess.  We  came  to  a  castle.  In  the  centre  of 
all  forests  there  is  an  enchanted  castle,  and  there 
was  an  enchanted  castle  in  the  centre  of  this  forest. 
And  as  the  forest  was  vast,  so  was  the  castle  vast. 
And  as  the  forest  was  beautiful,  so  was  the  castle 
beautiful.  It  was  a  sleeping  castle;  the  night  of 
history  had  overtaken  it.  We  entered  its  portals  by 
a  magnificent  double  staircase,  and  there  was  one 


198  PARIS  NIGHTS 

watchman  there,  like  a  lizard,  under  the  great  door- 
way. He  showed  us  the  wonders  of  the  castle,  con- 
ducting us  through  an  endless  series  of  noble  and 
splendid  interiors,  furnished  to  the  last  detail  of 
luxury,  but  silent,  unpeopled,  and  forlorn.  Only 
the  clocks  were  alive.  "There  are  sixty-eight  clocks 
in  the  castle."  (And  ever  since  I  have  thought  of 
those  sixty-eight  clocks  ticking  away  there,  with 
ten  miles  of  trees  on  every  side  of  them.)  And  the 
interiors  grew  still  more  imposing.  And  at  length 
we  arrived  at  an  immense  apartment  whose  gor- 
geous and  yet  restrained  magnificence  drew  from  us 
audible  murmurs  of  admiration.  Prominent  among 
the  furniture  was  a  great  bed,  hung  with  green  and 
gold,  and  a  glittering  cradle;  at  the  head  of  the 
cradle  was  poised  a  gold  angel  bearing  a  crown. 
Said  the  sleepy  watchman:  "Bed-chamber  of  Na- 
poleon, with  cradle  of  the  King  of  Rome."  This 
was  the  secret  of  the  forest. 


ON  THE  TERRACE  OF  THE  CASTLE 


II 

SECOND  JOURNEY  INTO  THE  FOREST 

We  glided  swiftly  into  the  forest  as  into  a  tun- 
nel. But  after  a  while  could  be  seen  a  silvered  lane 
of  stars  overhead,  a  ceiling  to  the  invisible  double 
wall  of  trees.  There  were  these  stars,  the  rush  of 
tonic  wind  in  our  faces,  and  the  glare  of  the  low- 
hung  lanterns  on  the  road  that  raced  to  meet  us. 
The  car  swerved  twice  in  its  flight,  the  second  time 
violently.  We  understood  that  there  had  been  dan- 
ger. As  the  engine  stopped,  a  great  cross  loomed 
up  above  us,  intercepting  certain  rays;  it  stood  in 
the  middle  of  the  road,  which,  dividing,  enveloped 
its  base,  as  the  current  of  a  river  strokes  an  island. 
The  doctor  leaned  over  from  the  driving-seat  and 
peered  behind.  In  avoiding  the  cross  he  had  mis- 
taken for  part  of  the  macadam  an  expanse  of  dust 
which  rain  and  wind  had  caked ;  and  on  this  treach- 
ery the  wheels  had  skidded.  ffCa  aurait  pu  etre 
une  sale  liistoire!"  he  said  briefly  and  drily.  In  the 
pause  we  pictured  ourselves  flung  against  the  cross, 
dead  or  dying.  I  noticed  that  other  roads  joined 
ours  at  the  cross,  and  that  a  large  grassy  space,  cir- 
cular, separated  us  from  the  trees.  As  soon  as  we 
had  recovered  a  little  from  the  disconcerting  glimpse 
of  the  next  world,  the  doctor  got  down  and  re- 
started the  engine,  and  our  road  began  to  race  f  or- 

199 


200  PARIS  NIGHTS 

ward  to  us  again,  under  the  narrow  ceiling  of  stars. 
After  monotonous  miles,  during  which  I  pondered 
upon  eternity,  nature,  the  meaning  of  life,  the  pre- 
cariousness  of  my  earthly  situation,  and  the  incipient 
hole  in  my  boot-sole — all  the  common  night-thoughts 
— we  passed  by  a  high  obelisk  (the  primitive  phal- 
lic symbol  succeeding  to  the  other) ,  and  turning  to 
the  right,  followed  an  obscure  gas-lit  street  of  walls 
relieved  by  sculptured  porticoes.  Then  came  the 
vast  and  sombre  courtyard  of  a  vague  palace, 
screened  from  us  by  a  grille;  we  overtook  a  tram- 
car,  a  long,  glazed  box  of  electric  light;  and  then 
we  were  suddenly  in  a  bright  and  living  town.  We 
descended  upon  the  terrace  of  a  calm  cafe,  in  front 
of  which  were  ranged  twin  red-blossomed  trees  in 
green  tubs,  and  a  waiter  in  a  large  white  apron  and 

a  tiny  black  jacket. 

«*    ,*    «*    ,* 

The  lights  of  the  town  lit  the  earth  to  an  eleva- 
tion of  about  fifteen  feet;  above  that  was  the  prim- 
eval and  mysterious  darkness,  hiding  even  the  house- 
tops. Within  the  planes  of  radiance  people  moved 
to  and  fro,  appearing  and  disappearing  on  their 
secret  errands;  and  glittering  tramcars  continually 
threaded  the  Square,  attended  by  blue  sparks.  A 
monumental  bull  occupied  a  pedestal  in  the  centre 
of  the  Square;  parts  of  its  body  were  lustrous,  others 
intensely  black,  according  to  the  incidence  of  the 
lights.  My  friends  said  it  was  the  bull  of  Rosa 
Bonheur,  the  Amazon.  Pointing  to  a  dark  void 
beyond  the  flanks  of  the  bull,  they  said,  too,  that 
the  palace  was  there,  and  spoke  of  the  Council- 


I 

\ 


GUARDS  OF  THE  CASTLE     (Paye  198) 


INTO  THE  FOREST  201 

Chamber  of  Napoleon,  the  cradle  of  the  King  of 
Rome,  the  boudoir  of  Marie  Antoinette.  I  had  to 
summon  my  faith  in  order  to  realise  that  I  was  in 
Fontainebleau,  which  hitherto  had  been  to  me  chiefly 
a  romantic  name.  In  the  deep  and  half-fearful 
pleasure  of  realisation — -"This  also  has  happened  to 
me P — I  was  aware  of  the  thrill  which  has  shaken  me 
on  many  similar  occasions,  each  however  unique :  as 
when  I  first  stepped  on  a  foreign  shore ;  when  I  first 
saw  the  Alps,  the  Pyrenees ;  when  I  first  strolled  on 
the  grand  boulevards ;  when  I  first  staked  a  coin  at 
Monte  Carlo ;  when  I  walked  over  the  French  fron- 
tier and  read  on  a  thing  like  a  mile-post  the  sacred 
name  "Italia";  and,  most  marvellous,  when  I  stood 
alone  in  the  Sahara  and  saw  the  vermilions  and 
ochres  of  the  Aures  Mountains.  This  thrill,  ever 
returning,  is  the  reward  of  a  perfect  ingenuousness. 
£  #  #  «* 

I  was  shown  a  map,  and  as  I  studied  it,  the 
strangeness  of  the  town's  situation  seduced  me  more 
than  the  thought  of  its  history.  For  the  town,  with 
its  lights,  cars,  cafes,  shops,  halls,  palaces,  theatres, 
hotels,  and  sponging-houses,  was  lost  in  the  midst  of 
the  great  forest.  Impossible  to  enter  it,  or  to  leave 
it,  without  winding  through  those  dark  woods !  On 
the  map  I  could  trace  all  the  roads,  a  dozen  like 
ours,  converging  on  the  town.  I  had  a  vision  of 
them,  palely  stretching  through  the  interminable 
and  sinister  labyrinth  of  unquiet  trees,  and  gradu- 
ally reaching  the  humanity  of  the  town.  And  I  had 
a  vision  of  the  recesses  of  the  forest,  where  the  deer 
wandered  or  couched.  All  around,  on  the  rim  of 


202  PARIS  NIGHTS 

the  forest,  were  significant  names:  the  Moret  and 
the  Grez  and  the  Franchard  of  Stevenson;  Bar- 
bizon;  the  Nemours  of  Balzac;  Larchant.  Nor  did 
I  forget  the  forest  scene  of  George  Moore's  "Mil- 
dred Lawson." 

After  we  had  sat  half  an  hour  in  front  of  glasses, 
we  rushed  back  through  the  forest  to  the  house  on  its 
confines  whence  we  had  come.  The  fascination  of 
the  town  did  not  cease  to  draw  me  until,  years  later, 
I  yielded  and  went  definitely  to  live  in  it. 


Ill 

THE   CASTLE  GARDENS 

On  the  night  of  the  Feast  of  Saint  Louis  the 
gardens  of  the  palace  are  not  locked  as  on  other 
nights.  The  gardens  are  within  the  park,  and  the 
park  is  within  the  forest.  I  walked  on  that  hot,  clear 
night  amid  the  parterres  of  flowers;  and  across 
shining  water,  over  the  regular  tops  of  clipped  trees, 
I  saw  the  long  fa9ades  and  the  courts  of  the  palace: 
pale  walls  of  stone  surmounted  by  steep  slated  roofs, 
and  high  red  chimneys  cut  out  against  the  glittering 
sky.  An  architecture  whose  character  is  set  by  the 
exaggerated  slope  of  its  immense  roofs,  which  dwarf 
the  walls  they  should  only  protect!  All  the  interest 
of  the  style  is  in  these  eventful  roofs,  chequered 
continually  by  the  facings  of  upright  dormers, 
pierced  by  little  ovals,  and  continually  interrupted 
by  the  perpendicularity  of  huge  chimneys.  The 
palace  seems  to  live  chiefly  in  its  roof,  and  to  be  top- 
heavy.  It  is  a  forest  of  brick  chimneys  growing  out 
of  stone.  Millions  upon  millions  of  red  bricks  had 
been  raised  and  piled  in  elegant  forms  solely  that 
the  smoke  of  fires  below  might  escape  above  the  roof 
ridge :  fires  which  in  theory  heated  rooms,  but  which 
had  never  heated  aught  but  their  own  chimneys :  in- 
efficient and  beautiful  chimneys  of  picturesque,  in- 
effectual hearths!  Tin  pipes  and  cowls,  such  as 

203 


2p4  PARIS  NIGHTS 

sprout  thickly  on  the  roofs  of  Paris  and  London, 
would  have  been  cheaper  and  better.  (It  is  al- 
ways thus  to  practical  matters  that  my  mind  runs. ) 
In  these  monstrous  and  innumerable  chimneys  one 
saw  eccentricity  causing  an  absurd  expense  of 
means  for  a  trifling  end:  sure  mask  of  a  debased 

style ! 

#    #    #    * 

With  malicious  sadness  I  reflected  that  in  most 
of  those  chimneys  smoke  would  never  ascend  again. 
I  thought  of  the  hundreds  of  rooms,  designed  before 
architects  understood  the  art  of  planning,  crowded 
with  gilt  and  mahogany  furniture,  smothered  in 
hangings,  tapestries,  and  carpets,  sparkling  with 
crystal  whose  cold  gaiety  is  reflected  in  the  polish  of 
oak  floors!  And  not  a  room  but  conjures  up  the 
splendour  of  the  monarchs  and  the  misery  of  the 
people  of  France!  Not  an  object  that  is  associated 
with  the  real  welfare  of  the  folk,  the  makers  of  the 
country !  A  museum  now — the  palace,  the  gardens, 
and  the  f  ountained  vistas  of  lake  and  canal — or  shall 
I  not  say  a  mausoleum? — whose  title  to  fame,  in  the 
esteem  of  the  open-mouthed,  is  that  here  Napoleon, 
the  supreme  scourge  of  families  and  costly  spreader 
of  ruin,  wrote  an  illegible  abdication.  The  docu- 
ment of  abdication,  which  is,  after  all,  only  a  fac- 
simile, and  the  greedy  carp  in  the  lake — these  two 
phenomena  divide  the  eyes  of  the  open-mouthed. 
And  not  all  the  starers  that  come  from  the  quarters 
of  the  world  are  more  than  sufficient  to  dot  very 
sparsely  the  interminable  polished  floors  and  the 
great  spaces  of  the  gardens.  The  fantastic  monu- 


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THE  CASTLE  GARDENS     (Page  203) 


THE  CASTLE   GARDENS        205 

ment  is  preserved  ostensibly  as  one  of  the  glories  of 
France!  (Gloire,  thou  art  French!  Fontaine- 
bleau,  Pasteur,  the  Eiffel  Tower,  Victor  Hugo,  the 
Paris-Lyons-Mediterranean  Railway— each  has 
been  termed  a  gloire  of  France!)  But  the  true 
reason  of  the  monument's  preservation  is  that  it  is 
too  big  to  destroy.  The  later  age  has  not  the  force 
nor  the  courage  to  raze  it  and  parcel  it  and  sell  it, 
and  give  to  the  poor.  It  is  a  defiance  to  the  later 
age  of  the  age  departed.  Like  a  gigantic  idol,  it 
is  kept  gilded  and  tidy  at  terrific  expense  by  a  cult 
which  tempers  fear  with  disdain. 


IV 

AN  ITINERARY 

I  have  lived  for  years  in  the  forest  of  Fontaine- 
bleau,  the  largest  forest  in  France,  and  one  of  the 
classic  forests — I  suppose — of  the  world.  Not  in 
a  charcoal-burner's  hut,  nor  in  a  cave,  but  in  a  town ; 
for  the  united  towns  of  Avon  and  Fontainebleau 
happen  to  be  in  the  forest  itself,  and  you  cannot 
either  enter  or  quit  them  without  passing  through 
the  forest ;  thus  it  happens  that,  while  inhabiting  the 
recesses  of  a  forest  you  can  enjoy  all  the  graces  and 
conveniences  of  an  imperial  city  (Fontainebleau  is 
nothing  if  not  Napoleonic) ,  even  to  cafes  chantants, 
cinematograph  theatres,  and  expensive  fruiterers. 
I  tramp  daily,  and  often  twice  daily,  in  this  forest, 
seldom  reaching  its  edge,  unless  I  do  my  tramping 
on  a  bicycle,  and  it  is  probably  this  familiarity  with 
its  fastnesses  and  this  unf amiliarity  with  its  periph- 
ery as  a  continuous  whole  that  has  given  me  what  I 
believe  to  be  a  new  idea  for  a  tramping  excursion: 
namely,  a  circuit  of  the  forest  of  Fontainebleau.  It 
is  an  enterprise  which  might  take  two  days  or  two 
months.  I  may  never  accomplish  it  myself,  but  it 
ought  to  be  accomplished  by  somebody,  and  I  can 
guarantee  its  exceeding  diversity  and  interest.  The 
forest  is  surrounded  by  a  ring  of  towns,  townships, 
and  villages  of  the  most  varied  character.  I  think  I 


AN  ITINERARY  207 

know  every  one  of  them,  having  arrived  somehow 
at  each  of  them  by  following  radii  from  the  centre. 
I  propose  to  put  down  some  un-Baedekerish  but 
practical  notes  on  each  place,  for  the  use  and  bene- 
fit of  the  tramper  who  has  the  wisdom  to  pursue  my 
suggestion. 

£      £      £      £ 

One  must  begin  with  Moret.  Moret  is  the  show- 
place  on  the  edge  of  the  forest,  and  perhaps  the  old- 
est. I  assisted  some  years  ago  at  the  celebration 
of  its  thousandth  anniversary.  It  is  only  forty- 
three  miles  from  Paris,  on  the  main  line  of  the  Paris- 
Lyons-Mediterranean  railway,  an  important  junc- 
tion ;  two  hundred  and  fifty  trains  a  day  pass  through 
the  station.  And  yet  it  is  one  of  the  deadest  places 
I  ever  had  tea  in.  It  lies  low,  on  the  banks  of  the 
Loing,  about  a  mile  above  the  confluence  of  the 
Seine  and  the  Loing.  It  is  dirty,  not  very  healthy, 
and  exceedingly  picturesque.  Its  bridge,  church, 
gates  and  donjon  have  been  painted  and  sketched 
by  millions  of  artists,  professional  and  amateur.  It 
appears  several  times  in  each  year's  Salon.  This 
is  its  curse — the  same  curse  as  that  of  Bruges :  it  is 
overrun  by  amateur  artists.  I  am  an  amateur  ar- 
tist myself;  in  summer  I  am  not  to  be  seen  abroad 
without  a  sketching-stool,  a  portfolio,  and  a  water- 
bottle  in  my  hip  pocket.  But  I  hate,  loathe  and  de- 
spise other  amateur  artists.  Nothing  would  induce 
me  to  make  one  of  the  group  of  earnest  dabbers  and 
scratchers  by  the  bridge  at  Moret.  When  I  attack 
Nature,  I  must  be  alone,  or,  if  another  artist  is  to 
be  there,  he  must  be  a  certified  professional.  I 


208  PARIS  NIGHTS 

have  nothing  else  to  say  against  Moret.     There  are 
several  hotels,  all  mediocre. 

A  more  amusing  and  bracing  place  than  Moret  is 
its  suburb  St.  Mammes,  the  port  at  the  afore-men- 
tioned confluence,  magnificently  situated,  and  al- 
ways brightened  by  the  traffic  of  barges,  tugs,  and 
other  craft.  There  is  an  hotel  and  a  pension.  The 
Seine  is  a  great  and  noble  stream  here,  and  abso- 
lutely unused  by  pleasure-craft.  I  do  not  know 
why.  I  once  made  a  canoe  and  navigated  the  Ama- 
zonian flood,  but  the  contrivance  was  too  frail. 
Tugs  would  come  rushing  down,  causing  waves 
twelve  inches  high  at  least,  and  I  was  afraid,  espe- 
cially as  I  had  had  the  temerity  to  put  a  sail  to 

the  canoe. 

#    #    *    $ 

The  tramper  should  cross  the  Seine  here,  and  go 
through  Champagne,  a  horrible  town  erected  by  the 
Creusot  Steel  Company — called,  quite  seriously,  a 
"garden  city."  He  then  crosses  the  river  again  to 
Thomery — the  grape  town.  The  finest  table 
grapes  in  France  are  grown  at  Thomery. 
Vines  flourish  in  public  on  both  sides  of 
most  streets,  and  public  opinion  is  so  powerful 
(on  this  one  point)  that  the  fruit  is  never  stolen. 
Thomery's  lesser  neighbour,  By,  is  equally  vinous. 
These  large  villages  offer  very  interesting  studies  in 
the  results  of  specialisation.  Hotels  and  pensions 
exist. 

From  Thomery,  going  in  a  general  direction 
north  by  west,  it  is  necessary  to  penetrate  a  little 


AN  ITINERARY  209 

into  the  forest,  as  the  Seine  is  its  boundary  here, 
and  there  is  no  practical  towing-path  on  the  forest 
side  of  the  river.  You  come  down  to  the  river  at 
Valvins  Bridge,  and,  following  the  left  bank,  you 
arrive  at  the  little  village  of  Les  Platreries,  which 
consists  of  about  six  houses  and  an  hotel  where  the 
food  is  excellent  and  whose  garden  rises  steeply 
straight  into  the  forest.  A  mile  farther  on  is  the 
large  village  of  Samois,  also  on  the  Seine.  Lower 
Samois  is  too  pretty — as  pretty  as  a  Christmas 
card.  It  is  much  frequented  in  summer;  its  hotel 
accommodation  is  inferior  and  expensive,  and  its 
reputation  for  strictly  conventional  propriety  is 
scarcely  excessive.  However,  a  picturesque  spot! 
Climb  the  very  abrupt  stony  high  street,  and  you 
come  to  Upper  Samois,  which  is  less  sophisticated. 

From  Samois  (unless  you  choose  to  ferry  across 
to  Fericy  and  reach  Melun  by  Fontaine-le-Port) 
you  must  cut  through  an  arm  of  the  forest  to  Bois- 
le-Roi.  You  are  now  getting  toward  the  northern 
and  less  interesting  extremity  of  the  forest.  Bois- 
le-Roi  looks  a  perfect  dream  of  a  place  from  the 
station.  But  it  is  no  such  thing.  It  is  residential. 
It  is  even  respectably  residential.  All  trains  ex- 
cept the  big  expresses  stop  at  Bois-le-Roi,  which 
fact  is  a  proof  that  the  residents  exert  secret  influ- 
ences upon  the  railway  directors,  and  that  there- 
fore they  are  the  kind  of  resident  whose  notion  of 
architecture  is  merely  distressing.  You  can  stay 
at  Bois-le-Roi  and  live  therein  comfortably,  but 
there  is  no  reason  why  you  should. 


210  PARIS  NIGHTS 

The  next  place  is  Melun,  which  lies  just  to  the 
north  of  the  forest.  It  is  the  county  town.  It  is 
noted  for  its  brewery.  It  is  well  situated  on  a  curve 
of  the  Seine,  and  it  is  more  provincial  (in  the  stodgy 
sense)  and  more  ineffably  tedious  even  than  Moret. 
It  possesses  neither  monuments  nor  charm.  Yet 
the  distant  view  of  it — say  from  the  height  above 
Fontaine-le-Port,  is  ravishing  at  morn. 

From  Melun  you  face  about  and  strike  due  south, 
again  cutting  through  a  bit  of  the  forest,  to  Chailly- 
en-Biere.  (All  the  villages  about  here  are  "en 
biere")  Chailly  is  just  a  nice  plain  average  forest- 
edge  village,  and  that  is  why  I  like  it.  I  doubt  if 
you  could  sleep  there  with  advantage.  But  if  you 
travel  with  your  own  tea,  you  might  have  excellent 
tea  there. 

The  next  village  is  Barbizon,  the  most  renowned 
place  in  all  the  Fontainebleau  region;  a  name  full 
of  romantic  associations.  It  is  utterly  vulgarised, 
like  Stratford-on-Avon.  "Les  Charmettes"  has 
become  a  fashionable  hotel  with  a  private  theatre 
and  an  orchestra  during  dinner.  What  would 
Rousseau,  Daubigny  and  Millet  say  if  they  could 
see  it  now?  Curiosity  shops,  art  exhibitions,  and  a 
very  large  cafe!  An  appalling  light  railway,  and 
all  over  everything  the  sticky  slime  of  sophistication! 
Walking  about  the  lanes  you  have  glimpses  of  su- 
perb studio  interiors,  furnished  doubtless  by  War- 
ing or  Lazard.  Indeed  Barbizon  has  now  become 
naught  but  a  target  for  the  staring  eyes  of  tourists 
from  Arizona,  and  a  place  of  abode  for  persons 
whose  mentality  leads  them  to  believe  that  the  at- 


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AN  ITINERARY  211 

mosphere  of  this  village  is  favourable  to  high-class 
painting. 

All  the  country  round  about  here  is  exquisite.  I 
have  seen  purple  mornings  in  the  fields  nearly  as 
good  as  any  that  Millet  ever  painted.  A  lane  west- 
ward should  be  followed  so  that  other  nice  average 
villages,  St.  Martin-en-Biere  and  Fleury-en-Biere 
can  be  seen.  At  Fleury  there  is  a  glorious  castle, 
partly  falling  to  ruin,  and  partly  in  process  of  res- 
toration. Thence,  south-easterly,  to  Arbonne. 

«*       «*       «*       # 

Arbonne  is  only  a  few  miles  from  Barbizon,  and  I 
fancy  that  it  resembles  what  Barbizon  used  to  be  be- 
fore Barbizon  was  discovered  by  London  and  New 
York.  It  is  a  long,  straggling  place,  with  one  im- 
possible and  one  quite  possible  hotel.  As  a  field 
of  action  for  the  tramping  painter  I  should  say 
that  it  is  unsurpassed  in  the  department.  From 
Arbonne  you  must  cross  another  arm  of  the 
forest,  and  pass  from  the  department  of  Seine-et- 
Marne  to  that  of  Seine-et-Oise,  to  the  market  town 
of  Milly.  From  Milly  onwards  the  human  interest 
is  less  than  the  landscape  interest  until  you  come  to 
Chapelle-la-Reine ;  from  there  you  are  soon  at 
Larchant,  whose  ruined  cathedral  is  one  of  the  lead- 
ing attractions  of  the  forest  edge. 

You  are  now  within  the  sphere  of  Nemours. 
From  Larchant  to  Nemours  the  only  agreeable 
method  of  locomotion  is  by  aeroplane.  The  high 
road  is  straight  and  level,  and,  owing  to  heavy  traf- 
fic caused  by  quarries,  atrociously  bad.  It  reaches 
the  acme  of  boredom.  Its  one  merit  is  its  brevity, 


212  PARIS  NIGHTS 

about  five  miles.     Nemours  is  a  fine  Balzacian 
town,  on  the  Loing,  with  a  picturesque  canal  in  the 
heart  of  it,  a  frowning  castle,  a  goodish  church  and 
bridge,  a  good  hotel  and  delightful  suburbs. 
«*    «*    4    * 

At  Nemours,  cross  the  river,  and  keep  to  the  high 
road  which  follows  the  Loing  canal  through  Episy 
back  to  Moret.  Or,  in  the  alternative,  refrain  from 
crossing  the  river,  and  take  the  Paris  high  road, 
leaving  it  to  the  left  at  Bourron,  and  so  reach  Moret 
through  Marlotte  and  Montigny.  Marlotte  and 
Montigny  are  Parisian  villages  in  July,  August, 
and  September,  new,  artistic,  snobbish;  in  winter 
they  are  quite  tolerable.  Montigny  is  ' 'pictur- 
esquely situated"  on  the  Loing,  and  Marlotte  has  a 
huge  hotel.  The  road  thence  on  the  rim  of  the  for- 
est back  to  Moret  is  delightful. 

I  do  not  know  how  many  miles  you  will  have  done 
— anything  from  sixty  to  a  hundred  and  twenty 
probably — when  you  arrive  for  the  second  time  in 
Moret.  But  you  must  find  strength  to  struggle  on- 
wards from  Moret  to  Fontainebleau  itself,  about 
seven  miles  off  in  the  forest.  Fontainebleau  con- 
tains one  of  the  dearest  hotels  in  the  world.  Ask 
for  it,  and  go  somewhere  else. 


n^  - 


:  CATHEDRAL  OF  LARCHANT     (Page  211) 


SWITZERLAND— 1909-191 1 


THE  HOTEL  ON  THE  LANDSCAPE 

I  do  not  mean  the  picturesque  and  gabled  con- 
struction which  on  our  own  country-side  has  been 
restored  to  prosperity,  though  not  to  efficiency,  by 
Americans  travelling  with  money  and  motor-cars. 
I  mean  the  uncompromising  grand  hotel — Majestic, 
Palace,  Metropole,  Royal,  Splendide,  Victoria, 
Belle  Vue,  Ritz,  Savoy,  Windsor,  Continental,  and 
supereminently  Grand — which  was  perhaps  first  in- 
vented and  compiled  in  Northumberland  Avenue, 
and  has  now  spread  with  its  thousand  windows  and 
balconies  over  the  entire  world.  I  mean  the  hotel 
which  is  invariably  referred  to  in  daily  newspapers 
as  a  "huge  modern  caravanserai."  This  hotel  cannot 
be  judged  in  a  town.  In  a  town,  unless  it  possesses 
a  river-front  or  a  sea-esplanade,  the  eye  never  gets 
higher  than  its  second  storey,  and  as  a  spectacle  the 
hotel  resolves  itself  usually  into  a  row  of  shops  (for 
the  sale  of  uselessness),  with  a  large  square  hole  in 
the  middle  manned  by  laced  officials  who  die  after  a 
career  devoted  exclusively  to  the  opening  and  shut- 
ting of  glazed  double- doors. 

To  be  fairly  judged,  the  grand  hotel  must  be  seen 
alone  on  a  landscape  as  vast  as  itself.  The  best 
country  in  which  to  see  it  is  therefore  Switzerland. 
True,  the  Riviera  i§  regularly  fringed  with  grand 

215 


216  PARIS  NIGHTS 

hotels  from  Toulon  to  the  other  side  of  San  Remo; 
but  there  they  are  so  closely  packed  as  to  interfere 
with  each  other's  impressiveness,  and  as  a  rule  they 
are  at  too  low  an  altitude.  In  Switzerland  they 
occur  in  all  conceivable  and  inconceivable  situations. 
The  official  guide  of  the  Swiss  Society  of  Hotel 
Keepers  gives  us  photographs  of  over  eight  hundred 
grand  hotels,  and  it  is  by  no  means  complete;  in 
fact,  some  of  the  grandest  consider  themselves 
too  grand  to  be  in  it,  pictorially.  Just  as 
Germany  is  the  land  of  pundits  and  aniline  dyes, 
France  of  re/volutions,  England  of  beautiful  women, 
and  Scotland  of  sixpences,  so  is  Switzerland  the 
land  of  huge  modern  caravanserais. 

You  may  put  Snowdon  on  the  top  of  Ben  Nevis 
and  climb  up  the  height  of  the  total  by  the  aid  of 
railways,  funiculars,  racks  and  pinions,  diligences 
and  sledges;  and  when  nothing  but  your  own  feet 
will  take  you  any  farther,  you  will  see,  in  Switzer- 
land, a  grand  hotel,  magically  and  incredibly  raised 
aloft  in  the  mountains;  solitary — no  town,  no 
houses,  nothing  but  this  hotel  hemmed  in  on  all 
sides  by  snowy  crags,  and  made  impregnable  by 
precipices  and  treacherous  snow  and  ice.  I  always 
imagine  that  at  the  next  great  re-drawing  of  the 
map  of  Europe,  when  the  lesser  nationalities  are 
to  disappear,  the  Switzers  will  take  armed  refuge  in 
their  farthest  grand  hotels,  and  there  defy  the  man- 
dates of  the  Concert.  For  the  hotel,  no  matter  how 
remote  it  be,  lacks  nothing  that  is  mentioned  in  the 
dictionary  of  comfort.  Beyond  its  walls  your  life 
is  not  worth  twelve  hours'  purchase.  You  would 


THE  HOTEL  217 

not  die  of  hunger,  because  you  would  perish  of  cold. 
At  best  you  might  hit  on  some  peasant's  cottage  in 
which  the  standards  of  existence  had  not  changed 
for  a  century.  But  once  pass  within  the  portals  of 
the  grand  hotel,  and  you  become  the  spoiled  darling 
of  an  intricate  organisation  that  laughts  at  moun- 
tains, avalanches,  and  frost.  You  are  surrounded 
by  luxuries  surpassing  even  the  luxuries  offered  by 
the  huge  modern  caravanserais  of  London.  (For 
example,  I  believe  that  no  London  caravanserai 
was,  until  quite  lately,  steam-heated  throughout.) 
You  have  the  temperature  of  the-  South,  or  of  the 
North,  by  turning  a  handle,  and  the  light  of  suns 
at  midnight.  You  have  the  restaurants  of  Picca- 
dilly and  the  tea-rooms  of  St.  James's  Street.  You 
eat  to  the  music  of  wild  artistes  in  red  uniforms. 
You  are  amused  by  conjurers,  bridge-drives,  and 
cotillons.  You  can  read  the  periodical  literature 
of  the  world  while  reclining  on  upholstery  from  the 
most  expensive  houses  in  Tottenham  Court  Road 
and  Oxford  Street.  You  have  a  post-office,  a  tele- 
graph-office, and  a  telephone;  pianos,  pianolas,  and 
musical-boxes.  You  go  up  to  bed  in  a  lift,  arid 
come  down  again  to  lunch  in  one.  You  need  only 
ring  a  bell,  and  a  specially  trained  man  in  clothes 
more  glittering  than  yours  will  answer  you  softly 
in  any  language  you  please,  and  do  anything  you 
want  except  carry  you  bodily.  .  .  .  And  on 
the  other  side  of  a  pane  of  glass  is  the  white  peak, 
the  virgin  glacier,  twenty  degrees  of  frost,  starva- 
tion, death — and  Nature  as  obdurate  as  she  was  ten 
thousand  years  ago.  Within  the  grand  hotel  civili- 


218  P.ARIS  NIGHTS 

sation  is  so  powerful  that  it  governs  the  very  colour 
of  your  necktie  of  an  evening.  Without  it,  cut  off 
from  it,  in  those  mountains  you  would  be  fighting 
your  fellows  for  existence  according  to  the  codes  of 
primitive  humanity.  Put  your  nose  against  the 
dark  window,  after  dinner,  while  the  band  is  sooth- 
ing your  digestion  with  a  waltz,  and  in  the  distance 
you  may  see  a  greenish  light.  It  is  a  star.  And  a 
little  below  it  you  may  see  a  yellow  light  glimmer- 
ing, It  is  another  grand  hotel,  by  day  generally  in- 
visible, another  eyrie  de  luxe. 

You  go  home  and  calmly  say  that  you  have  been 
staying  at  the  Grand  Hotel  Blank.  But  does  it 
ever  occur  to  you  to  wonder  how  it  was  all  done? 
Does  it  ever  occur  to  you  that  orchestras,  lamp- 
shades, fresh  eggs,  fresh  fish,  vanilla  ices,  cham- 
pagne, and  cut  flowers  do  not  grow  on  snow- 
wreathed  crags?  You  have  not  been  staying  in  a 
hotel,  but  in  a  miracle  of  seven  storeys.  In  the 
sub-basement  lie  the  wines.  In  the  basement 
women  are  for  ever  washing  linen  and  men  for  ever 
cooking.  On  the  ground-floor  all  is  eating  and 
drinking  and  rhythm.  Then  come  five  storeys  of 
slumber;  and  above  that  the  attics  where  the  tips 
are  divided. 

In  judging  the  hotel  on  the  landscape,  you  must 
thus  imaginatively  realise  what  it  is  and  what  it 

means. 

*    «*    #    # 

The  eye  needs  to  be  trained  before  it  can  look 
seeingly  at  a  grand  hotel  and  disengage  its  beauty 
from  the  mists  and  distortions  which  prejudice  has 


THE  HOTEL  219 

created.  This  age  (like  any  other  age,  for  the  mat- 
ter of  that)  has  so  little  confidence  in  itself  that  it 
cannot  believe  that  it  has  created  anything  beauti- 
ful. It  is  incapable  of  conceiving  that  an  insur- 
ance office  may  be  beautiful.  It  is  convinced,  with 
the  late  Sir  William  Harcourt,  that  New  Scotland 
Yard  is  a  monstrosity.  It  talks  of  the  cost,  not  of 
the  beauty,  of  the  Piccadilly  Hotel.  No  doubt  the 
Romans,  who  were  nevertheless  a  sound  artistic  race 
of  the  second  rank,  talked  of  the  cost  (in  slaves)  of 
their  aqueducts,  and  would  have  been  puzzled  could 
they  have  seen  us  staring  at  the  imperfect  remains 
of  the  said  aqueducts  as  interesting  works  of  art. 
The  notion  that  a  hotel,  even  the  most  comfortable, 
is  anything  but  a  blot  on  the  landscape,  has  prob- 
ably never  yet  occurred  to  a  single  one  of  the  thou- 
sands of  dilettanti  who  wander  restlessly  over  the 
face  of  Europe  admiring  architecture  and  scenery. 
Hotels  as  visual  objects  are  condemned  offhand, 
without  leave  to  appeal,  unheard,  or  rather  unseen 
— I  mean  really  unseen. 

For  several  weeks,  once,  I  passed  daily  in  the  vi- 
cinity of  a  huge  modern  caravanserai,  which  stood 
by  itself  on  a  mountain  side  in  Switzerland ;  and  my 
attitude  towards  that  hotel  was  as  abusive  and  vio- 
lent as  Ruskin's  towards  railways.  And  then  one 
evening,  early,  in  the  middle  dusk,  I  came  across  it 
unexpectedly,  when  I  was  not  prepared  for  it:  it 
took  me  unawares  and  suddenly  conquered  me.  I 
saw  it  in  the  mass,  rising  in  an  immense,  irregular 
rectangle  out  of  a  floor  of  snow  and  a  background 
of  pines  and  firs.  Its  details  had  vanished.  What 


220  PARIS  NIGHTS 

I  saw  was  not  a  series  of  parts,  but  the  whole  hotel, 
as  one  organism  and  entity.  Only  its  eight  floors 
were  indicated  by  illuminated  windows,  and  behind 
those  windows  I  seemed  to  have  a  mysterious  sense 
of  its  lifts  continually  ascending  and  descending. 
The  apparition  was  impressive,  poetic,  almost  over- 
whelming. It  was  of  a  piece  with  the  moun- 
tains. It  had  simplicity,  severity,  grandeur.  It 
was  indubitably  and  movingly  beautiful.  My  eye 
had  been  opened ;  the  training  had  been  begun. 

I  expected,  naturally,  that  the  next  morning  I 
should  see  the  hotel  again  in  its  original  ugliness. 
But  no!  My  view  of  it  had  been  permanently  al- 
tered. I  had  glimpsed  the  secret  of  the  true  man- 
ner of  seeing  a  grand  hotel.  A  grand  hotel  must 
be  seen  grandiosely — that  is  to  say,  it  must  be  seen 
with  a  large  sweep  of  the  eye,  and  from  a  distance, 
and  while  the  eye  is  upon  its  form  the  brain  must 
appreciate  its  moral  significance;  for  the  one  ex- 
plains the  other.  You  do  not  examine  Mont  Blanc 
or  an  oil  painting  by  Turner  with  a  microscope,  and 
you  must  not  look  at  a  grand  hotel  as  you  would 
look  at  a  marble  fountain  or  a  miniature. 

Since  the  crepuscular  hour  above  described,  I 
have  learnt  to  observe  sympathetically  the  physiog- 
nomy of  grand  hotels,  and  I  have  discovered  a  new 
source  of  aesthetic  pleasure.  I  remember  on  a 
morning  in  autumn,  standing  on  a  suspension 
bridge  over  the  Dordogne  and  gazing  at  a  feudal 
castle  perched  on  a  pre-feudal  crag.  I  could  not 
decide  whether  the  feudal  castle  or  the  suspension 
bridge  was  the  more  romantic  fact  (for  I  am  so  con- 


THE  HOTEL  221 

stituted  as  to  see  the  phenomena  of  the  nineteenth 
century  with  the  vision  of  the  twenty-third),  but 
the  feudal  castle,  silhouetted  against  the  flank  of  a 
great  hill  that  shimmered  in  the  sunshine,  had  an 
extraordinary  beauty — moral  as  well  as  physical, 
possibly  more  moral  than  physical.  As  architec- 
ture it  could  not  compare  with  the  Parthenon  or 
New  Scotland  Yard.  But  it  was  far  from  ugly, 
and  it  had  an  exquisite  rightness  in  the  landscape. 
I  understood  that  it  had  been  put  precisely  there  be- 
cause that  was  the  unique  place  for  it.  And  I  un- 
derstood that  its  turrets  and  windows  and  roofs  and 
walls  had  been  constructed  precisely  as  they  were 
constructed  because  a  whole  series  of  complicated 
ends  had  to  be  attained  which  could  have  been  at- 
tained in  no  other  way.  Here  was  a  simple  result 
of  an  unaffected  human  activity  which  had  endeav- 
oured to  achieve  an  honest  utilitarian  end,  and, 
while  succeeding,  had  succeeded  also  in  producing 
a  work  of  art  that  gave  pleasure  to  a  mind  entirely 
unfeudal.  A  feudal  castle  on  a  crag  as  impossible 
to  climb  as  to  descend  is,  and  always  was,  exotic, 
artificial,  and  against  nature — like  every  effort  of 
man! — but  it  does,  and  always  did,  contribute  to  the 
happiness  of  peoples. 

Similarly  I  remember,  on  a  morning  in  winter, 
standing  on  a  wild  country  road,  gazing  at  another 
castle  perched  on  a  pre-feudal  crag.  But  this  cas- 
tle was  about  fifteen  times  as  big  as  the  former  one, 
and  the  crag  had  its  earthy  foot  in  a  lake  about  a 
mile  below.  The  scale  of  everything  was  terrific- 
ally larger.  Still,  the  two  castles,  seen  at  proper- 


222  PARIS  NIGHTS 

tionate  distances,  bore  a  strange,  disconcerting,  re- 
semblance the  one  to  the  other.  The  architecture 
of  the  second,  as  of  the  first,  would  not  compare  with 
the  Parthenon  or  New  Scotland  Yard.  But  it  was 
not  ugly.  And  assuredly  it  had  an  exquisite  right- 
ness  in  the  landscape.  I  understood,  far  better 
than  in  the  former  instance,  that  it  had  been  put 
precisely  where  it  was,  because  no  other  spot  would 
have  been  so  suited  to  its  purposes;  its  geographical 
relation  to  the  sun  and  the  lake  and  the  mountains 
had  been  perfectly  adjusted.  I  understood  pro- 
foundly the  meaning  of  all  those  rows  of  windows 
and  all  those  balconies  facing  the  south  and  south- 
east. I  understood  profoundly  the  intention  of  the 
great  glazed  box  at  the  base  of  the  castle.  I  could 
read  the  words  that  the  wreath  of  smoke  from  be- 
hind the  turreted  roof  was  writing  on  the  slate  of 
the  sky,  and  those  words  Were  "Chauffage  central." 
From  the  facades  I  could  construct  the  plan  and  ar- 
rangement of  the  interior  of  the  castle.  I  could 
instantly  decide  which  of  its  two  hundred  chambers 
were  the  costliest,  and  which  would  be  the  last  to  be 
occupied  and  the  first  to  be  left.  I  could  feel  the 
valves  of  its  heart  rising  and  falling.  Here  was 
the  simple  result  of  an  unaffected  human  activity, 
which  had  endeavoured  to  achieve  an  honest  utili- 
tarian end,  and,  while  succeeding,  had  succeeded 
also  in  giving  pleasure  to  a  mind  representative  of 
the  twenty-third  century.  A  grand  hotel  on  a  crag 
as  impossible  to  climb  as  to  descend  is,  and  always 
will  be,  exotic,  artificial,  and  against  nature — like 
every  effort  of  man!  Why  should  a  man  want  to 


THE  HOTEL  223 

leave  that  pancake,  England,  and  reside  for  weeks 
at  a  time  in  dizzy  altitudes  in  order  to  stare  at  moun- 
tains and  propel  himself  over  snow  and  ice  by  means 
of  skis,  skates,  sledges,  and  other  unnatural  dodges? 
No  one  knows.  But  the  ultimate  sequel,  gathered 
up  and  symbolised  in  the  grand  hotel,  contributes 
to  the  happiness  of  peoples  and  gives  joy  to  the  eye 
that  is  not  afflicted  with  moral  cataract. 

And  I  am  under  no  compulsion  to  confine  my- 
self to  Switzerland.  I  do  not  object  to  go  to  the 
other  extreme  and  flit  to  the  Sahara.  Who  that 
from  afar  off  in  the  Algerian  desert  has  seen  the 
white  tower  of  the  Royal  Hotel  at  Biskra,  oasis  of 
a  hundred  thousand  palm-trees  and  twenty  grand 
hotels,  will  deny  either  its  moral  or  its  physical 
beauty  in  that  tremendously  beautiful  landscape? 

Conceivably,  the  judgment  against  hotel  archi- 
tecture was  fatally  biassed  in  its  origin  by  the  hor- 
rible libels  pictured  on  hotel  notepapers. 
«*    «*    ^    # 

In  estimating  the  architecture  of  hotels,  it  must 
be  borne  in  mind  that  they  constitute  the  sole  genu- 
ine contribution  made  by  the  modern  epoch  to  the 
real  history  of  architecture.  The  last  previous  con- 
tribution took  the  shape  of  railway  stations,  which, 
until  the  erection  of  the  Lyons  and  the  Orleans  sta- 
tions in  Paris — about  seventy  years  after  the  birth 
of  stations — were  almost  without  exception  deso- 
late failures.  It  will  not  be  seriously  argued,  I 
suppose,  that  the  first  twenty  years  of  grand  hotels 
have  added  as  much  ugliness  to  the  world's  stock 
of  ugliness  as  the  first  twenty  years  of  railway  sta- 


224  PARIS  NIGHTS 

tions.  If  there  exists  a  grand  hotel  as  dire  fully 
squalid  as  King's  Cross  Station  (palace  of  an  un- 
dertaking with  a  capital  of  over  sixty  millions  ster- 
ling) I  should  like  to  see  it.  Hotel  architecture  is 
the  outcome  of  a  new  feature  in  the  activity  of  so- 
ciety, and  this  fact  must  be  taken  into  account. 
When  a  new  grand  hotel  takes  a  page  of  a  daily 
paper  to  announce  itself  as  the  "last  word"  of  hotels 
— -what  it  means  is,  roughly,  the  "first  word,"  as 
distinguished  from  inarticulate  babbling. 

Of  course  it  is  based  on  strictly  utilitarian  prin- 
ciples— and  rightly.  Even  when  the  grand  hotel 
blossoms  into  rich  ornamentation,  the  aim  is  not 
beauty,  but  the  attracting  of  clients.  And  the 
practical  conditions,  the  shackles  of  utility,  in  which 
the  architecture  of  hotels  has  to  evolve,  are  ex- 
tremely severe  and  galling.  In  the  end  this  will 
probably  lead  to  a  finer  form  of  beauty 
than  would  otherwise  have  been  achieved.  In 
the  first  place  a  grand  hotel,  especially  when 
it  is  situated  "on  the  landscape,"  can  have  only  one 
authentic  face,  and  to  this  face  the  other  three 
must  be  sacrificed.  Already  many  hotels  ad- 
vertise that  every  bedroom  without  exception 
looks  south,  or  at  any  rate  looks  direct  at 
whatever  prospect  the  visitors  have  come  to  look  at. 
This  means  that  the  hotel  must  have  length  without 
depth — that  it  must  be  a  sort  of  vast  wall  pierced 
with  windows.  Further,  the  democratic  quality  of 
the  social  microcosm  of  a  hotel  necessitates  an  ex- 
ternal monotony  of  detail.  In  general,  all  the 
rooms  on  each  floor  must  resemble  each  other,  pos- 


THE  HOTEL  225 

sessing  the  same  advantages.  If  one  has  a  balcony, 
all  must  have  balconies.  There  must  be  no  sacri- 
ficing of  the  amenities  of  a  room  here  and  there  to 
demands  of  variety  or  balance  in  the  elevation. 
Again,  the  hotel  must  be  relatively  lofty — not  be- 
cause of  lack  of  space,  but  to  facilitate  a  complex 
service.  The  kitchens  of  Buckingham  Palace  may 
be  a  quarter  of  a  mile  from  the  dining-room,  and 
people  will  say,  "How  wonderful!"  But  if  a  pot 
of  tea  had  to  be  carried  a  quarter  of  a  mile  in  a 
grand  hotel,  from  the  kitchen  to  a  bedroom,  people 
would  say,  "How  absurd!"  or,  "How  stewed!" 
The  "layer"  system  of  architecture  is  from  all 
points  of  view  indispensable  to  the  grand  hotel,  and 
its  scenic  disadvantages  must  be  met  by  the  exercise 
of  ingenuity.  There  are  other  problems  confront- 
ing the  hotel  architecture,  such  as  the  fitting  to- 
gether of  very  large  public  rooms  with  very  small 
private  rooms,  and  the  obligation  to  minimise  ex- 
ternally a  whole  vital  department  of  the  hotel  (the 
kitchens,  etc.) ;  and  I  conceive  that  these  problems 
are  perhaps  not  the  least  exasperating. 

From  the  utilitarian  standpoint  the  architect  of 
hotels  has  unquestionably  succeeded.  The  latest 
hotels  are  admirably  planned;  and  a  good  plan  can- 
not result  in  an  elevation  entirely  bad.  One  might 
say,  indeed,  that  a  good  plan  implies  an  elevation 
good  in,  at  any  rate,  elementals.  Save  that  bed- 
rooms are  seldom  sound-proof,  and  that  they  are 
nearly  always  too  long  for  their  breadth  (the  rea- 
son is  obvious),  not  much  fault  can  be  found  with 
the  practical  features  of  the  newest  hotel  architec- 


226  PARIS  NIGHTS 

ture.  In  essential  matters  hotel  architecture  is  good. 
You  may  dissolve  in  ecstasy  before  the  fa£ade 
of  the  Chateau  de  Chambord;  but  it  is  certainly  the 
whited  sepulchre  of  sacrificed  comfort,  health,  and 
practicability.  There  also,  but  from  a  different 
and  a  less  defensible  cause,  and  to  a  different  and 
not  a  better  end,  the  importance  of  the  main  front 
rides  roughly  over  numerous  other  considerations. 
In  skilful  planning  no  architecture  of  any  period 
equals  ours;  and  ours  is  the  architecture  of  grand 
hotels. 

The  beholder,  before  abruptly  condemning  that 
uniformity  of  feature  which  is  the  chief  character- 
istic of  the  hotel  on  the  landscape,  must  reflect  that 
this  is  the  natural  outer  expression  of  the  spirit  and 
needs  of  the  hotel,  and  that  it  neither  can  be  nor 
ought  to  be  disguised.  It  is  of  the  very  essence  of 
the  building.  It  may  be  very  slightly  relieved  by 
the  employment  of  certain  devices  of  grouping — 
as  some  architects  in  the  United  States  have  shown 
— but  it  must  remain  patent  and  paramount;  and 
the  ultimate  beauty  of  more  advanced  styles  will  un- 
doubtedly spring  from  it  and,  in  a  minor  degree, 
from  the  other  inner  conditions  to  which  I  have  re- 
ferred. And  even  when  the  ultimate  beauty  has 
been  accomplished  the  same  thing  will  come  to  pass 
as  has  always  come  to  pass  in  the  gradual  progress 
of  schools  of  architecture.  The  pendulum  will 
swing  too  far,  and  the  best  critics  of  those  future 
days  will  point  to  the  primitive  erections  of  the 
early  twentieth  century  and  affirm  that  there  has 
been  a  decadence  since  then,  and  that  if  the  virtue  of 


THE  HOTEL  227 

architecture  is  to  be  maintained  inspiration  must  be 
sought  by  returning  to  the  first  models,  when  men 
did  not  consciously  think  of  beauty,  but  produced 
beauty  unawares ! 

It  was  ever  thus. 

The  salvation  of  hotel  architecture,  up  to  this 
present,  is  that  the  grand  hotel  on  the  landscape,  in 
nineteen  cases  out  of  twenty,  is  remuneratively  oc- 
cupied only  during  some  three  or  four  months  in  the 
year.  Which  means  that  the  annual  interest  on 
capital  expenditure  must  be  earned  in  that  brief 
period.  Which  in  turn  means  that  architects  have 
no  money  to  squander  on  ornament  in  an  age  no- 
torious for  its  bad  ornament.  If  the  architect  of 
the  grand  hotel  were  as  little  disturbed  by  the  ques- 
tion of  dividends  as  Francis  the  First  was  in  creat- 
ing his  Chambord  and  other  marvels,  the  conse- 
quences might  have  been  offensive  even  to  the  sym- 
pathetic eye. 

Meanwhile,  in  Switzerland,  the  hotel  architect 
may  flatter  himself  that  he  has  suddenly  given  ar- 
chitecture to  a  country  which  had  none.  This  is  a 
highly  curious  phenomenon.  "Next  door"  to  the 
grand  hotel  which  so  surprised  me  in  the  twilight  is 
another  human  habitation,  fairly  representative  of 
all  the  non-hotel  architecture  on  the  Swiss  country- 
side. It  is  quaint,  and  it  would  not  hurt  a  fly. 
But  surely  the  grand  hotel  is  man's  more  fitting  an- 
swer to  the  challenge  of  the  mountains? 


II 

HOTEL    PROFILES 

The  Egoist 

A  little  boy,  aged  about  eight,  with  nearly  all  his 
front  teeth  gone,  came  down  early  for  breakfast 
this  morning  while  I  was  having  mine.  He  asked 
me  where  the  waiters  were,  and  rang.  When  one 
arrived,  the  little  boy  discovered  that  he  could  speak 
no  French.  However,  the  waiter  said  "Cafe?"  and 
he  said  "One";  but  he  told  me  that  he  also  wanted 
buns.  While  breakfasting,  he  said  to  me  that  he 
had  got  up  early  because  he  was  going  down  into 
the  town  that  morning  by  the  Funicular,  as  his 
mother  was  to  buy  him  his  Christmas  present,  a  sil- 
ver lever  watch.  He  said :  "I  hate  to  be  hurried  for 
anything.  Now,  at  home,  I  have  to  go  to  school,  and 
I  get  up  early  so  that  I  shan't  be  hurried,  but  my 
breakfast  is  'always  late;  so  I  have  too  much  time 
before  breakfast,  and  nothing  to  do,  and  too  little 
time  after  breakfast  when  I've  a  lot  to  do."  In  an- 
swer to  my  question,  he  said  gravely  that  he  was 
going  into  the  Navy.  He  knew  the  exam,  was  very 
stiff,  and  that  if  you  failed  at  a  certain  age  you 
were  barred  out  altogether;  and  he  asked  me 
whether  I  thought  it  was  better  to  try  the  exam, 
early  with  only  a  little  preparation,  or  to  leave  it 
late  with  a  long  preparation.  He  thought  the  first 


HOTEL  PROFILES  229 

course  was  the  best,  because  you  could  go  in  again 
if  you  failed.  I  asked  him  if  he  didn't  want  some 
jam.  He  said  no,  because  the  butter  was  so  good, 
and  if  he  had  jam  he  wouldn't  be  able  to  taste  the 
butter.  He  then  rang  the  bell  for  more  milk,  and 
explained  to  me  that  he  couldn't  drink  coffee 
strong,  and  the  consequence  was  that  he  had  a  whole 
lot  of  coffee  left  and  no  milk  to  drink  it  with. 
.  .  .  He  said  he  lived  in  London,  and  that  some 
shops  down  in  the  town  were  better  than  London 
shops.  By  this  time  a  German  had  descended. 
He  and  I  both  laughed.  But  the  child  stuck  to  his 
point.  We  asked  him:  "What  shops?"  He  said 
that  jerseys  and  watches  were  nicer  in  the  town 
than  in  London.  In  this  he  was  right,  and  we  had 
to  admit  it.  As  a  complete  resume,  he  said  that 
there  were  fewer  things  in  the  town  than  in  London, 
but  some  of  the  things  were  nicer.  Then  he  ex- 
plained to  the  German  his  early  rising,  and  added 
an  alternative  explanation,  namely,  that  he  had  been 
sent  to  bed  at  6.45,  whereas  7.15  was  his  legal  time. 

Later  in  the  day  I  asked  him  if  he  would  come 
down  early  again  to-morrow  and  have  breakfast 
with  me.  He  said:  "I  don't  know.  I  shall  see." 
There  was  no  pose  in  this.  Simply  a  perfect  pre- 
occupation with  his  own  interests  and  welfare.  I 
should  say  he  is  absolutely  egotistic.  He  always 
employs  natural,  direct  methods  to  get  what  he 
wants  and  to  avoid  what  he  doesn't  want. 

I  met  him  again  a  few  afternoons  later  on  the 
luge-track.  He  was  very  solemn.  He  said  he  had 
decided  not  to  go  in  for  the  single-luge  race,  as  it 


230  PARIS  NIGHTS 

all  depended  on  weight.  I  said:  "Put  stones  in 
your  pocket.  Eat  stones  for  breakfast." 

He  laughed  slightly  and  uncertainly.  "You 
can't  eat  stones  for  breakfast,"  he  said.  "I'm  get- 
ting on  fine  at  skating.  I  can  turn  round  on  one 
leg." 

"Do  you  still  fall?"  (He  was  notorious  for  his 
tumbles.) 

"Yes." 

"How  often?" 

He  reflected.  Then:  "About  twelve  times  an 
hour.  ...  If  I  skated  all  day  and  all  night  I 
should  fall  twelve  twelves — 144,  isn't  it?" 

I  said  it  would  be  twenty- four  twelves. 

"Oh!  I  see •" 

"Two  hundred  and " 

"Eighty-eight,"  he  overtook  me  quickly.  "But 
I  didn't  mean  that.  I  meant  all  day  and  all  night, 
you  know — evening.  People  don't  generally  skate 
all  through  the  night,  do  they?"  Pause.  "Six 
from  144 — 138,  isn't  it?  I'll  say  138,  because  you'd 
have  to  take  half  an  hour  off  for  dinner,  wouldn't 
you?" 

He  became  silent,  discussing  seriously  within 
himself  whether  half  an  hour  would  suffice  for  din- 
ner, without  undue  hurrying. 

The  Bland  Wanderer 

In  the  drawing-room  to-night  an  old  and  soli- 
tary, but  blandly  cheerful,  female  wanderer  re- 
counted numerous  accidents  at  St.  Moritz:  legs 
broken  in  two  places,  shoulders  broken,  spines  in- 


HOTEL  PROFILES  231 

jured;  also  deaths.  Further,  the  danger  of  catch- 
ing infectious  diseases  at  St.  Moritz.  "One  very 
large  hotel,  where  everybody  had  influenza,"  etc. 
These  recitals  seemed  to  give  her  calm  and  serious 
pleasure. 

"Do  you  think  this  place  is  good  for  nerves?  she 
broke  out  suddenly  at  me.  I  told  her  that  in  my 
opinion  a  hot  bath  and  a  day  in  bed  would  make 
any  place  good  for  nerves.  "I  mean  the  nerves  of 
the  body"  she  said  inscrutably.  Then  she  deviated 
into  a  long  set  description  of  the  historic  attack  of 
Russian  influenza  which  she  had  had  several  years 
ago,  and  which  had  kept  her  in  bed  for  three  months, 
since  when  she  had  never  been  the  same  woman. 
And  she  seemed  to  savour  with  placid  joy  the  fact 
that  she  had  never  since  been  the  same  woman. 

Then  she  flew  back  to  St.  Moritz  and  the  prices 
thereof.  She  said  you  could  get  pretty  reasonable 
terms,  even  there,  "provided  you  didn't  mind  going 
high  up."  Upon  my  saying  that  I  actually  pre- 
ferred being  high  up,  she  exclaimed:  "I  don't. 
I'm  so  afraid  of  fire.  I'm  always  afraid  of  fire." 
She  said  that  she  had  had  two  nephews  at  Cam- 
bridge. The  second  one  took  rooms  at  the  top  of 
the  highest  house  in  Cambridge,  and  the  landlord 
was  a  drunkard.  "My  sister  didn't  seem  to  care, 
but  I  didn't  know  what  to  do!  What  could  I  do? 
Well,  I  bought  him  a  non-inflammable  rope."  She 
smiled  blandly. 

This  allusion  to  death  and  inebriety  prompted  a 
sprightly  young  Yorkshirewoman,  with  the  coun- 
try gift  for  yarn-spinning,  to  tell  a  tale  of  some- 


232  PARIS  NIGHTS 

thing  that  had  happened  to  her  cousin,  who  gave 
lessons  in  domestic  economy  at  a  London  Board 
School.  A  little  girl,  absent  for  two  days,  was 
questioned  as  to  the  reason. 

"I  couldn't  come." 

"But  why  not?" 

"I  was  kept  .  .  .  Please  'm,  my  mother's 
dead." 

"Well,  wouldn't  you  be  better  here  at  school? 
When  did  she  die?" 

"Yesterday.  I  must  go  back,  please.  I  only 
came  to  tell  you." 

"But  why?" 

"Well,  ma'am.  She's  lying  on  the  table  and  I 
have  to  watch  her." 

"Watch  her?" 

"Yes.  Because  when  father  comes  home  drunk, 
he  knocks  her  off,  and  I  have  to  put  her  on  again." 

This  narration  startled  even  the  bridge-players, 
and  there  were  protests  of  horror.  But  the  philoso- 
phic wanderer,  who  had  never  been  the  same  woman 
since  Russian  influenza,  smiled  placidly. 

"I  knew  something  really  much  more  awful  than 
that,"  she  said.  "A  young  woman,  well-known  to 
me,  had  charge  of  a  creche  of  thirty  infants,  and  one 
day  she  took  it  into  her  head  to  amuse  herself  by 
changing  all  their  clothes,  so  that  at  night  they 
could  not  be  identified;  and  many  of  them  never 
were  identified!  She  was  such  a  merry  girl!  I 
knew  all  her  brothers  and  sisters  too!  She  wanted 
to  go  into  a  sisterhood,  and  she  did,  for  a  month. 
But  the  only  thing  she  did  there — well,  one  day  she 


HOTEL  PROFILES  233 

went  down  into  the  laundry  and  taught  all  the  laun- 
dry-maids to  polka.     She  was  such  a  merry  girl!" 

She  smiled  with  extraordinary  simplicity. 

"In  the  end,"  the  bland  wanderer  continued,  af- 
ter a  little  pause,  "she  went  to  America.  America 
is  such  an  odd  place !  Once  I  got  into  a  car  at  Phil- 
adelphia that  had  come  from  New  York.  The 
conductor  showed  me  my  berth.  The  bed  was 
warm.  I  partly  undressed  and  got  into  it,  and 
drew  the  curtain.  I  was  half  asleep,  when  I  felt 
a  hand  feeling  me  over  through  the  curtain.  I 
called  out,  and  a  man's  voice  said:  'It's  all  right. 
I'm  only  looking  for  my  stick.  I  think  I  must  have 
left  it  in  the  berth' !  Another  time  a  lot  of  student 
girls  were  in  the  same  car  with  me.  They  all  got 
into  their  beds — or  berths  or  whatever  you  call  it — 
about  eight  o'clock,  wearing  fancy  jackets,  and  they 
sat  up  and  ate  candy.  I  was  walking  up  and  down, 
and  every  time  I  passed  they  implored  me  to  have 
candy,  and  then  they  implored  each  other  to  try  to 
persuade  me.  They  were  mostly  named  Sadie. 
At  one  in  the  morning  they  ordered  iced  drinks 
'round.  I  was  obliged  to  drink  with  them.  They 
tired  me  out,  and  then  made  me  drink.  I  don't 
know  what  happened  just  after  that,  but  I  know 
that,  at  five  in  the  morning,  they  were  all  sitting  up 
and  eating  candy.  I've  travelled  a  good  deal  in 
America  and  it's  such  an  odd  place!  It  was  just 
the  place  for  that  young  woman  to  go  to." 


Ill 

ON   A   MOUNTAIN 

Last  week  I  did  a  thing  which  you  may  call  hack- 
neyed or  unhackneyed,  according  to  your  way  of 
life.  To  some  people  an  excursion  to  Hamp- 
stead  Heath  is  a  unique  adventure:  to  others, 
a  walk  around  the  summit  of  Popocatapetl 
is  all  in  the  year's  work.  I  went  to  Switzer- 
land and  spent  Easter  on  the  top  of  a 
mountain.  At  any  rate,  the  mountain  was  less 
hackneyed  at  that  season  than  Rome  or  Seville, 
where  the  price  of  beds  rises  in  proportion  as  reli- 
gious emotion  falls.  It  was  Marcus  Aurelius  An- 
toninus who  sent  me  to  the  mountain.  To  mention 
Marcus  Aurelius  is  almost  as  clear  a  sign  of  priggish 
affectation  and  tenth-rate  preciosity  as  to  quote 
Omar  Khayyam;  and  I  may  interject  defensively 
that  I  prefer  Epictetus,  the  slave,  to  Marcus  Au- 
relius, the  neurotic  emperor.  Still,  it  was  Marcus 
Aurelius  who  sent  me  to  the  mountain.  He  advised 
me,  in  certain  circumstances,  to  climb  high  and  then 
look  down  at  human  nature. 

I  did  so.  My  luggage  alone  cost  me  four  francs 
excess  in  the  Funicular. 

^     #     £     4 

I  had  before  me  what  I  have  been  told — by  others 
than  the  hotel  proprietor — is  one  of  the  finest  pano- 


ON  A  MOUNTAIN  235 

ramas  in  Europe.  Across  a  Calvinistic  lake,  whose 
renown  is  familiar  to  the  profane  chiefly  because 
Byron  wrote  a  mediocre  poem  about  a  castle  on  its 
shores,  rose  the  five-fanged  Dent  du  Midi,  twenty- 
five  miles  off,  and  ten  thousand  feet  towards  the 
sky;  other  mountains,  worthy  companions  of  the  il- 
lustrious Tooth,  made  a  tremendous  snowy  semi- 
circle right  and  left;  and  I  on  my  mountain 
fronted  this  semi-circle.  The  weather  was  perfect. 
Down  below  me,  on  the  edge  of  the  lake,  was  a 
continuous  chain  of  towns,  all  full  and  crammed 
with  the  final  products  of  civilisation,  miles  of  them. 
There  was  everything  in  those  towns  that  a  nation 
whose  destiny  it  is  to  satisfy  the  caprices  of  the 
English  thought  the  English  could  possibly  desire. 
Such  things  as  baths,  lifts,  fish-knives,  two-steps 
and  rag-times,  casinos,  theatres,  rackets,  skates,  hot- 
water  bottles,  whisky,  beef-steaks,  churches,  chap- 
els, cameras,  puttees,  jig-saws,  bridge-markers, 
clubs,  China  tea,  phonographs,  concert-halls,  chari- 
table societies,  money-changers,  hygiene,  picture 
post  cards,  even  books — -just  cheap  ones!  It  was 
dizzying  to  think  of  the  refined  complexity  of  ex- 
istence down  there.  It  was  impressive  to  think  of 
the  slow  centuries  of  effort,  struggle,  discovery  and 
invention  that  had  gone  to  the  production  of  that 
wondrous  civilisation.  It  was  perfectly  distract- 
ing to  think  of  the  innumerable  activities,  that  were 
proceeding  in  all  parts  of  the  earth  (for  you  could 
have  coral  from  India's  coral  strand  in  those  towns, 
and  furs  from  Labrador,  and  skates  from  Birming- 
ham) to  keep  the  vast  organism  in  working  order. 


236  PARIS  NIGHTS 

And  behind  the  chain  of  towns  ran  the  railway 
line,  along  which  flew  the  expresses  with  dining- 
cars  and  fresh  flowers  on  the  tables  of  the  dining- 
cars,  and  living  drivers  on  the  footplates  of  the  en- 
gines, whirling  the  salt  of  the  earth  to  and  fro, 
threading  like  torpedo-shuttles  between  far-distant 
centres  of  refinement.  And  behind  the  railway  line 
spread  the  cultivated  fields  of  these  Swiss,  who,  af- 
ter all,  in  the  intervals  of  passing  dishes  to  stately 
guests  in  hotel-refectories,  have  a  national  life  of 
their  own;  who  indeed  have  shown  more  skill  and 
commonsense  in  the  organisation  of  posts,  hotels, 
and  military  conscription,  than  any  other  nation ;  so 
much  so,  that  one  gazes  and  wonders  how  on  earth 
a  race  so  thick-headed  and  tedious  could  ever  have 

done  it. 

^    #    ^    # 

I  knew  that  I  had  all  that  before  me,  because  I 
had  been  among  it  all,  and  had  ascended  and  de- 
scended in  the  lifts,  lolled  in  the  casinos  and  the 
trains,  and  drunk  the  China  tea.  But  I  could  not 
see  it  from  the  top  of  my  mountain.  All  that  I 
could  see  from  the  top  of  my  mountain  was  a  scat- 
tering of  dolls'  houses,  and  that  scattering  consti- 
tuted three  towns ;  with  here  and  there  a  white  cube 
overtopping  the  rest  by  half  an  inch,  and  that  white 
cube  was  a  grand  hotel;  and  out  of  the  upper  face 
of  the  cube  a  wisp  of  vapour,  and  that  wisp  of  va- 
pour was  the  smoke  of  a  furnace  that  sent  hot- 
water  through  miles  of  plumbing  and  heated  400 
radiators  in  400  elegant  apartments;  and  little 
stretches  of  ribbon,  and  these  ribbons  were  boule- 


ON  A  MOUNTAIN  237 

vards  bordered  with  great  trees;  and  a  puff  of 
steam  crawling  along  a  fine  wire,  and  that  crawling 
puff  was  an  international  express ;  and  rectangular 
spaces  like  handkerchiefs  fresh  from  a  bad  laundry, 
and  those  handkerchiefs  were  immense  fields  of 
vine ;  and  a  water-beetle  on  the  still  surface  of  the 
lake,  and  that  water-beetle  was  a  steamer  licensed 
to  carry  850  persons.  And  there  was  silence. 
The  towns  were  feverishly  living  in  ten  thousand 
fashions,  and  made  not  a  sound.  Even  the  express 
breathed  softly,  like  a  child  in  another  room. 

£      £      £      £ 

The  mountains  remained  impassive;  they  were 
too  indifferent  to  be  even  contemptuous.  Human- 
ity had  only  soiled  their  ankles:  I  could  see  all 
around  that  with  all  his  jumping  man  had  not 
found  a  perch  higher  than  their  ankles.  It  seemed 
to  me  painfully  inept  that  humanity,  having  spent 
seven  years  in  worming  a  hole  through  one  of  those 
mountains,  should  have  filled  the  newspapers  with 
the  marvels  of  its  hole,  and  should  have  fallen  into 
the  habit  of  calling  its  hole  "the  Simplon."  The 
Simplon — that  hole !  It  seemed  to  me  that  the  ex- 
cellence of  Swiss  conscription  was  merely  ridiculous 
in  its  exquisite  unimportance.  It  seemed  to  me 
that  I  must  have  been  absolutely  mad  to  get  myself 
excited  about  the  January  elections  in  a  trifling  isle 
called  Britain,  writing  articles  and  pamphlets  and 
rude  letters,  and  estranging  friends  and  thinking 
myself  an  earnest  warrior  in  the  van  of  progress. 
Land  taxes !  I  could  not  look  down,  or  up,  and  see 
land  taxes  as  aught  but  an  infantile  invention  of 


238  PARIS  NIGHTS 

comic  opera.  Two  Chambers  or  one!  Veto  first 
or  Budget  first!  Mr.  F.  E.  Smith  or  Mr.  Steel- 
Maitland!  Ah!  The  tea-cup  and  the  storm! 

The  prescription  of  Marcus  Aurelius  Antoninus 
had  "acted." 

*     £     £     £ 

It  is  an  exceedingly  harmful  prescription  if 
employed  long  or  often.  Go  to  the  top  of  a  moun- 
tain by  all  means,  but  hurry  down  again  quickly. 
The  top  of  a  mountain,  instead  of  correcting  your 
perspective,  as  is  generally  supported  by  philoso- 
phers for  whom  human  existence  is  not  good 
enough,  falsifies  it.  Because  it  induces  self -ag- 
grandisement. You  draw  illusive  bigness  from  the 
mountain.  You  imagine  that  you  are  august,  but 
you  are  not.  If  the  man  below  was  informed  by 
telephone  that  a  being  august  was  gazing  on  him 
from  above  he  would  probably  squint  his  eyes  up- 
wards in  the  sunshine  and  assert  with  calmness  that 
he  couldn't  even  see  a  living  speck  on  the  mountain- 
crest.  You  who  have  gone  up  had  better  come 
down.  You  couldn't  remain  up  twenty-four  hours 
without  the  aid  of  the  ant-like  evolutions  below, 
which  you  grandiosely  despise.  You  couldn't  have 
got  up  at  all  if  a  procession  of  those  miserable  con- 
ceited ants  had  not  been  up  there  before  you. 

The  detached  philosophic  mountain  view  of  the 
littleness  of  things  is  a  delightful  and  diverting 
amusement,  and  there  is  perhaps  no  harm  in  it  so 
long  as  you  don't  really  act  on  it.  If  you  begin 
really  to  act  on  it  you  at  once  become  ridiculous, 
and  especially  ridiculous  in  the  sight  of  mountains. 


ON  A  MOUNTAIN  239 

You  commit  the  fatuity  of  despising  the  corporate 
toil  which  has  made  you  what  you  are,  and  you 
prove  nothing  except  that  you  have  found  a  rather 
specious  and  glittering  excuse  for  idleness,  for  cow- 
ardice, and  for  having  permitted  the  stuffing  to  be 
knocked  out  of  you. 

When  I  hear  a  man  say,  when  I  hear  myself  say: 
"I'm  sick  of  politics,"  I  always  think:  "What  you 
want  is  six  months  in  prison,  or  in  a  slum,  or  in  a 
mine,  or  in  a  bakehouse,  or  in  the  skin  of  a  woman. 
After  that,  we  should  see  if  you  were  sick  of  poli- 
tics." And  when  I  hear  a  lot  of  people  together 
say  that  they  are  sick  of  politics,  then  I  am  quite 
sure  that  politics  are  more  than  ever  urgently  in 
need  of  attention.  It  is  at  such  moments  that  a 
man  has  an  excellent  opportunity  of  showing  that 
he  is  a  man. 


ENGLAND  AGAIN— 1907 


THE    GATE    OF    THE    EMPIRE 

When  one  comes  back  to  it,  after  long  absence, 
one  sees  exactly  the  same  staring,  cold  white  cliffs 
under  the  same  stars.  Ministries  may  have  fallen; 
the  salaries  of  music-hall  artistes  may  have  risen; 
Christmas  boxes  may  have  become  a  crime;  war 
balloons  may  be  in  the  air;  the  strange  notion  may 
have  sprouted  that  school  children  must  be  fed  be- 
fore they  are  taught:  but  all  these  things  are  as 
nothing  compared  to  the  changeless  fact  of  the 
island  itself.  You  in  the  island  are  apt  to  forget 
that  the  sea  is  eternally  beating  round  about  all  the 
political  fuss  you  make;  you  are  apt  to  forget  that 
your  40-h.p.  cars  are  rushing  to  and  fro  on  a  mere 
whale's  back  insecurely  anchored  in  the  Atlantic. 
You  may  call  the  Atlantic  by  soft,  reassuring 
names,  such  as  Irish  Sea,  North  Sea,  and  silver 
streak;  it  remains  the  Atlantic,  very  careless  of 
social  progress,  very  rude. 

The  ship  under  the  stars  swirls  shaking  over  the 
starlit  waves,  and  then  bumps  up  against  granite 
and  wood,  and  amid  cries  ropes  are  thrown  out, 
and  so  one  is  lashed  to  the  island.  Scarcely  any 
reasonable  harbours  in  this  island!  The  inhabi- 
tants are  obliged  to  throw  stones  into  the  sea  till 


243 


244  PARIS  NIGHTS 

they  emerge  like  a  geometrical  reef,  and  vessels 
cling  hard  to  the  reef.  One  climbs  on  to  it  from 
the  steamer;  it  is  very  long  and  thin,  like  a  sword, 
and  between  shouting  wind  and  water  one  precari- 
ously balances  oneself  on  it.  After  some  eighty 
years  of  steam,  nothing  more  comfortable  than  the 
reef  has  yet  been  achieved.  But  far  out  on  the 
water  a  black  line  may  be  discerned,  with  the  sil- 
houettes of  cranes  and  terrific  engines.  Denied  a 
natural  harbour,  the  island  has  at  length  deter- 
mined to  have  an  unnatural  harbour  at  this  bleak 
and  perilous  spot.  In  another  ten  years  or  so  the 
peaceful  invader  will  no  longer  be  compelled  to 
fight  with  a  real  train  for  standing  room  on  a  storm- 
swept  reef. 

*    *    «*    # 

And  that  train!  Electric  light,  corridors,  lava- 
tories, and  general  brilliance!  Luxuries  incon- 
ceivable in  the  past!  But,  just  to  prove  a  robust 
conservatism,  hot-water  bottles  remain  as  the  sole 
protection  against  being  frozen  to  death. 

"Can  I  get  you  a  seat,  sir?" 

It  is  the  guard's  tone  that  is  the  very  essence  of 
England.  You  may  say  he  descries  a  shilling  on 
the  horizon.  I  don't  care.  That  tone  cannot  be 
heard  outside  England.  It  is  an  honest  tone, 
cheerful,  kindly,  the  welling-up  of  a  fundamental 
good  nature.  It  is  a  tone  which  says :  "I  am  a  de- 
cent fellow,  so  are  you;  let  us  do  the  best  for  our- 
selves under  difficulties."  It  is  far  more  English 
than  a  beefsteak  or  a  ground-landlord.  It  touches 
the  returned  exile  profoundly,  especially  at  the 


GATE  OF  THE  EMPIRE         245 

dreadful  hour  of  four  A.  M.  And  in  replying, 
"Yes,  please.  Second.  Not  a  smoker,"  one  is  say- 
ing, "Hail!  Fellow-islander.  You  have  appal- 
ling faults,  but  for  sheer  straightness  you  cannot  be 
matched  elsewhere." 

One  comes  to  an  oblong  aperture  on  the  reef, 
something  resembling  the  aperture  of  a  Punch  and 
Judy  show,  and  not  much  larger.  In  this  aperture 
are  a  man,  many  thick  cups,  several  urns,  and  some 
chunks  of  bread.  One  struggles  up  to  the  man. 

"Tea  or  coffee,  sir?" 

"Hot  milk,"  one  says. 

"Hot  milk!"  he  repeats.  You  have  shocked  his 
Toryism.  You  have  dragged  him  out  of  the  rut 
of  tea  and  coffee,  and  he  does  not  like  it.  How- 
ever— brave,  resourceful  fellow! — he  pulls  himself 
together  for  an  immense  effort,  and  gives  you  hot 
milk,  and  you  stand  there,  in  front  of  the  aperture, 
under  the  stars  and  over  the  sea  and  in  the  blast, 
trying  to  keep  the  cup  upright  in  a  melee  of  elbows. 

This  is  the  gate,  and  this  the  hospitality,  of  the 
greatest  empire  that,  etc. 

"Can  I  take  this  cup  to  the  train?" 

"Certainly,  sir!"  says  the  Punch  and  Judy  man 
genially,  as  who  should  say:  "God  bless  my  soul! 
Aren't  you  in  the  country  where  anyone  can  choose 
the  portmanteau  that  suits  him  out  of  a  luggage 
van?" 

Now  that  is  England!  In  France,  Germany, 
Italy,  there  would  have  been  a  spacious  golden  cafe 
and  all  the  drinks  on  earth,  but  one  could  never 
have  got  that  cup  out  of  the  cafe  without  at  least  a 


246  PARIS  NIGHTS 

stamped  declaration  signed  by  two  commissioners 
of  police  and  countersigned  by  a  Consul.  One 
makes  a  line  of  milk  along  the  reef,  and  sits  blow- 
ing and  sipping  what  is  left  of  the  milk  in  the  train. 
And  when  the  train  is  ready  to  depart  one  demands 
of  a  porter: 

"What  am  I  to  do  with  this  cup?" 

"Give  it  to  me,  sir." 

And  he  planks  it  down  on  the  platform  next  a 
pillar,  and  leaves  it.  And  off  one  goes.  The  ad- 
ventures of  that  thick  mug  are  a  beautiful  demon- 
stration that  the  new  England  contains  a  lot  of  the 
old.  It  will  ultimately  reach  the  Punch  and  Judy 
show  once  more  (not  broken — perhaps  cracked)  ; 
not,  however,  by  rules  and  regulations;  but  hig- 
gledy-piggledy, by  mutual  aid  and  good  nature  and 
good  will.  Be  tranquil;  it  will  regain  its  counter. 

#      £      «*      £ 

The  fringe  of  villas,  each  primly  asleep  in  its 
starlit  garden,  which  borders  the  island  and  divides 
the  hopfields  from  the  Atlantic,  is  much  wider 
than  it  used  to  be.     But  in  the  fields  time  has  stood 
still.     .    ..  .  ...    Now,  one  has  left  the  sea  and  the 

storm  and  the  reef,  and  already  one  is  forgetting 
that   the   island   is   an   island.     .     .     .     Warmth 

gradually  creeps  up  from  the  hot-water  bottles  to 
one's  heart  and  eyes,  and  sleep  comes  as  the  train 
scurries  into  the  empire.  ...  A  loud  reverber- 
ation, and  one  wakes  up  in  a  vast  cavern,  dimly  lit, 
and  sparsely  peopled  by  a  few  brass-buttoned  be- 
ings that  have  the  air  of  dwarfs  under  its  high,  in- 
visible roof.  They  give  it  a  name,  and  call  it 


GATE  OF  THE  EMPIRE        247 

Charing  Cross,  and  one  remembers  that,  since  one 
last  saw  it,  it  fell  down  and  demolished  a  theatre. 
Everything  is  shuttered  in  the  cavern.  Nothing 
to  eat  or  to  drink,  or  to  read,  but  shutters.  And 
shutters  are  so  cold,  and  caverns  so  draughty. 

"Where  can  I  get  something  to  eat?"  one  de- 
mands. 

"Eat,  sir?"  A  staggered  pause,  and  the  porter 
looks  at  one  as  if  one  were  Oliver  Twist.  "There's 
the  hotels,  sir,"  he  says,  finally. 

Yet  one  has  not  come  by  a  special,  unique  train, 
unexpected  and  startling.  No!  That  train  knocks 
at  the  inner  door  of  the  empire  every  morning  in 
every  month  in  every  year  at  the  same  hour,  and 
it  is  always  met  by  shutters.  And  the  empire,  by 
the  fact  of  its  accredited  representatives  in  brass 
buttons  and  socialistic  ties,  is  always  taken  aback 
by  the  desire  of  the  peaceful  invader  to  eat. 


One  wanders  out  into  the  frozen  silence.  Gas 
lamps  patiently  burning  over  acres  of  beautiful 
creosoted  wood  !  A  dead  cab  or  so  !  A  policeman  ! 
Shutters  everywhere:  Nothing  else.  No  change 
here. 

This  is  the  changeless,  ineffable  Strand  at  Char- 
ing Cross,  sacred  as  the  Ganges.  One  cannot  see 
a  single  new  building.  Yet  they  say  London  has 
been  rebuilt. 

The  door  of  the  hotel  is  locked.  And  the  night 
watchman  opens  with  the  same  air  of  astonishment 
as  the  Punch  and  Judy  man  when  one  asked  for 


248  PARIS  NIGHTS 

milk,  and  the  railway  porter  when  one  asked  for 
food.  Every  morning  at  that  hour  the  train  stops 
within  fifty  yards  of  the  hotel  door,  and  pitches  out 
into  London  persons  who  have  been  up  all  night; 
and  London  blandly  continues  to  be  amazed  at  their 
arrival.  A  good  English  fellow,  the  watchman — 
almost  certainly  the  elder  brother  of  the  train- 
guard. 

"I  want  a  room  and  some  breakfast." 

He  cautiously  relocks  the  door. 

"Yes,  sir,  as  soon  as  the  waiters  are  down.  In 
about  an  hour,  sir.  I  can  take  you  to  the  lavatory 
now,  sir,  if  that  will  do." 

Who  said  there  was  a  new  England? 

One  sits  overlooking  the  Strand,  and  tragically 
waiting.  And  presently,  in  the  beginnings  of  the 
dawn,  that  pathetic,  wistful  object  the  first  omnibus 
of  the  day  rolls  along — all  by  itself — no  horses  in 
front  of  it!  And,  after  hours,  a  waiter  descends 
as  bright  as  a  pin  from  his  attic,  and  asks  with  a 
strong  German  accent  whether  one  will  have  tea 
or  coffee.  The  empire  is  waking  up,  and  one  is  in 
the  heart  of  it. 


II 

AN  ESTABLISHMENT 

When  I  returned  to  England  I  came  across  a 
terrific  establishment.  As  it  may  be  more  or  less 
novel  to  you  I  will  attempt  to  describe  it,  though 
the  really  right  words  for  describing  it  do  not  exist 
in  the  English  language.  In  the  first  place,  it  is 
a  restaurant,  where  meals  are  served  at  almost  any 
hour — and  not  meals  such  as  you  get  in  ordinary 
restaurants,  but  sane  meals,  spread  amid  flowers 
and  diaper.  Then  it  is  also  a  creche,  where  babies 
are  tended  upon  scientific  principles;  nothing  that 
a  baby  needs  is  neglected.  Older  children  are  also 
looked  after,  and  the  whole  question  of  education 
is  deeply  studied,  and  advice  given.  Also  young 
men  and  women  of  sixteen  or  so  are  started  in  the 
world,  and  every  information  concerning  careers 
is  collected  and  freely  given  out. 

Another  branch  of  the  establishment  is  devoted 
to  inexpensive  but  effective  dressmaking,  and  still 
another  to  hats;  here  you  will  find  the  periodical 
literature  of  fashion,  and  all  hints  as  to  shopping. 
There  is,  further,  a  very  efficient  department  of 
mending,  highly  curious  and  ingenious,  which  em- 
braces men's  clothing.  I  discovered,  too,  a  horti- 
cultural department  for  the  encouragement  of  flow- 
ers, serving  secondarily  as  a  branch  of  the  creche 

249 


250  PARIS  NIGHTS 

-and  nursery.  There  is  a  fine  art  department,  where 
reproductions  of  the  great  masters  are  to  be  seen 
and  meditated  upon,  and  an  applied  art  depart- 
ment, full  of  antiques.  Ii  must  mention  the  library, 
where  the  latest  and  the  most  ancient  literatures 
fraternise  on  the  same  shelves;  also  the  chamber- 
music  department. 

Lastly,  a  portion  of  the  establishment  is  simply 
nothing  but  an  uncommon  lodging-house  for  trav- 
ellers, where  electric  light,  hot  water  bottles,  and 
hot  baths  are  not  extras.  I  scarcely  expect  you  to 
believe  what  I  say;  nevertheless  I  have  exaggerated 
in  nothing.  You  would  never  guess  where  I  en- 
countered this  extraordinary,  this  incredible  estab- 
lishment. It  was  No.  137  (the  final  number)  in 
a  perfectly  ordinary  long  street  in  a  residential 
suburb  of  a  large  town.  When  I  expressed  my 
surprise  to  the  manager  of  the  place,  he  looked  at 
me  as  if  I  had  come  from  Timbuctoo.  "Why!"  he 
exclaimed,  "there  are  a  hundred  and  thirty-six  es- 
tablishments much  like  mine  in  this  very  street!" 
He  was  right;  for  what  I  had  stumbled  into  was 
just  the  average  cultivated  Englishman's  home. 

«*      £      #      £ 

You  must  look  at  it  as  I  looked  at  it  in  or- 
der to  perceive  what  an  organisation  the  thing  is. 
The  Englishman  may  totter  continually  on  the 
edge  of  his  income,  but  he  does  get  value  for  his 
money.  I  do  not  mean  the  poor  man,  for  he  is  too 
unskilled,  and  too  hampered  by  lack  of  capital,  to 
get  value  even  for  what  money  he  has.  Nor  do  I 
mean  the  wealthy  man,  who  usually  spends  about 


AN  ESTABLISHMENT  251 

five-sixths  of  his  income  in  acquiring  worries  and 
nuisances.  I  mean  the  nice,  usual  professional  or 
business  islander,  who  by  means  of  a  small  oblong 
piece  of  paper,  marked  £30  or  so,  once  a  month, 
attempts  and  accomplishes  more  than  a  native  of 
the  mainland  would  dream  of  on  <£30  a  week.  The 
immense  pyramid  which  that  man  and  his  wife 
build,  wrong  side  up,  on  the  blowsy  head  of  one  do- 
mestic servant  is  a  truly  astonishing  phenomenon, 
and  its  frequency  does  not  impair  its  extraordi- 
nariness. 

The  mere  machinery  is  tremendously  complex. 
You  lie  awake  at  6-30  in  the  uncommon  lodging- 
house  department,  and  you  hear  distant  noises.  It 
is  the  inverted  apex  of  the  pyramid  starting  into 
life.  You  might  imagine  that  she  would  be  in- 
tensely preoccupied  by  the  complexity  of  her  du- 
ties, and  by  her  responsiblity.  Not  a  bit.  Open 
her  head,  and  you  would  find  nothing  in  it  but  the 
vision  of  a  grocer's  assistant  and  a  new  frock.  You 
then  hear  weird  bumps  and  gurgling  noises.  It  is 
the  hot  water  running  up  behind  walls  to  meet  you 
half-way  from  the  kitchen.  You  catch  the  early 
vivacity  of  the  creche.  A  row  overhead  means  that 
a  young  man  who  has  already  studied  the  compara- 
tive anatomy  of  cigars  is  embarking  on  life.  A 
tinkling  of  cymbals  below — it  is  a  young  woman 
preparing  to  be  attractive  to  some  undiscovered 
young  man  in  another  street. 

&    *    *    £ 

The  Englishman's  home  is  assuredly  the  most 
elaborate  organisation  for  sustaining  and  reproduc- 


252  PARIS  NIGHTS 

ing  life  in  the  world — or  at  any  rate,  east  of  Sandy 
Hook.  It  becomes  more  and  more  elaborate,  lux- 
urious, and  efficient.  For  example,  illumination 
is  not  the  most  important  of  its  activities.  Yet, 
you  will  generally  find  in  it  four  different  methods 
of  illumination — electricity,  gas,  a  few  oil  lamps 
in  case  of  necessity,  and  candles  stuck  about.  Only 
yesterday,  as  it  seems,  human  fancy  had  not  got 
beyond  candles.  Much  the  same  with  cookery. 
Even  at  a  simple  refection  like  afternoon  tea  you 
may  well  have  jam  boiled  over  gas,  cake  baked  in 
the  range,  and  tea  kept  hot  by  alcohol  or  electricity. 
I  am  not  old,  but  I  have  known  housewives  who 
would  neither  eat  nor  offer  to  a  guest,  bread  which 
they  had  not  baked.  They  drew  water  from  their 
own  wells.  And  the  idea  of  a  public  laundry  would 
have  horrified  them.  And  before  that  generation 
there  existed  a  generation  which  spun  and  wove  at 
home.  To-day  the  English  household  is  dependent 
on  cooperative  methods  for  light,  heat,  much  food, 
and  several  sorts  of  cleanliness.  True  (though  it 
has  abandoned  baking),  the  idea  of  cooperative 
cookery  horrifies  it !  However,  another  generation 
is  coming!  And  that  generation,  while  expending 
no  more  energy  than  ourselves,  will  live  in  homes 
more  complicatedly  luxurious  than  ours.  When 
it  is  house-hunting  it  will  turn  in  scorn  from  an 
abode  which  has  not  a  service  of  hot  and  cold 
water  in  every  bedroom  and  a  steam  device  for 
"washing  up"  without  human  fingers.  And  it  will 
as  soon  think  of  keeping  a  private  orchestra  as  of 


AN  ESTABLISHMENT  253 

keeping  a  private  cook — with  her  loves  and  her 
thirst. 

£      &      £      £ 

Leave  England  and  come  hack,  and  you  cannot 
fail  to  see  that  this  generation  is  already  knocking 
at  the  door.  When  it  once  gets  inside  the  door 
it  will  probably  be  more  "house-proud,"  more  in- 
clined to  regard  the  dwelling  as  its  toy,  with  which 
it  can  never  tire  of  playing,  than  even  the  present 
generation.  Such  is  a  salient  characteristic  which 
strikes  the  returned  traveller,  and  which  the  for- 
eigner goes  back  to  his  own  country  and  talks  about 
— namely,  the  tremendous  and  intense  pre-occupa- 
tion  of  the  English  home  with  "comfort" — with 
every  branch  and  sub-branch  of  comfort. 

"Le  confort  anglais"  is  a  phrase  which  has 
passed  into  the  French  language.  On  spiritual  and 
intellectual  matters  the  Englishman  may  be  the 
most  sweetly  reasonable  of  creatures — always  ready 
to  compromise,  and  loathing  discussion.  But  catch 
him  compromising  about  his  hot-water  apparatus, 
the  texture  of  a  beefsteak,  or  the  flushing  of  a 
cistern ! 


Ill 

AMUSEMENTS 

It  is  when  one  comes  to  survey  with  a  fresh  eye 
the  amusements  of  the  English  race  that  one  real- 
ises the  incomprehensibility  of  existence.  Here 
is  the  most  serious  people  on  earth — the  only  peo- 
ple, assuredly,  with  a  genuine  grasp  of  the  prin- 
ciples of  political  wisdom — amusing  itself  untir- 
ingly with  a  play-ball.  The  ball  may  be  large  and 
soft,  as  in  football,  or  small  and  hard,  as  in  golf,  or 
small  and  very  hard,  as  in  billiards,  or  neither  one 
thing  nor  the  other,  as  in  cricket — it  is  always  a 
ball.  Abolish  the  sphere,  and  the  flower  of  Eng- 
lish manhood  would  perish  from  ennui. 

The  fact  is,  speaking  broadly,  there  is  only  one 
amusement  worth  mentioning  in  England.  Foot- 
ball dwarfs  all  the  others.  It  has  outrun  cricket. 
This  is  a  hard  saying,  but  a  true  one.  Football 
arouses  more  interest,  passion,  heat;  it  attracts  far 
vaster  crowds;  it  sheds  more  blood.  Having  be- 
held England,  after  absence,  in  the  North  and  in 
the  South,  I  seem  to  see  my  native  country  as  an 
immense  football  ground,  with  a  net  across  the  Isle 
of  Wight  and  another  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
John  o'  Groat's,  and  the  entire  population  stamp- 
ing their  feet  on  the  cold,  cold  ground  and  hoarsely 
roaring  at  the  bounces  of  a  gigantic  football.  It  is 

254 


AMUSEMENTS  255 

a  great  game,  but  watching  it  is  a  mysterious  and 
peculiar  amusement,  full  of  contradictions.  The 
physical  conditions  of  getting  into  a  football 
ground,  of  keeping  life  in  one's  veins  while  there, 
and  of  getting  away  from  it,  appear  at  first  sight 
to  preclude  the  possibility  of  amusement.  ,They 
remind  one  of  the  Crimean  War  or  the  passage  of 
the  Beresina.  A  man  will  freeze  to  within  half  a 
degree  of  death  on  a  football  ground,  and  the  same 
man  will  haughtily  refuse  to  sit  on  anything  less 
soft  than  plush  at  a  music-hall.  Such  is  the  inex- 
plicable virtue  of  football. 

£      £      £      * 

Further,  a  man  will  safely  carry  his  sense  of  fair 
play  past  the  gate  of  a  cricket  field,  but  he  will 
leave  it  outside  the  turnstiles  of  a  football  ground. 
I  refer  to  the  relentless  refusal  of  the  man  amusing 
himself  at  a  football  match  to  see  any  virtue  in  the 
other  side.  I  refer  to  the  howl  of  execration  which 
can  only  be  heard  on  a  football  ground.  English 
public  life  is  a  series  of  pretences.  And  the  great- 
est pretence  of  all  is  that  football  matches  are  eleven 
a  side.  Football  matches  are  usually  a  battle  be- 
tween eleven  men  and  ten  thousand  and  eleven; 
that  is  why  the  home  team  so  seldom  loses. 

The  football  crowd  is  religious,  stern,  grim,  ter- 
rible, magnificent.  It  is  prepared  to  sacrifice 
everything  to  an  ideal.  And  even  when  its  ideal 
gets  tumbled  out  of  the  First  League  into  the  Sec- 
ond, it  will  not  part  with  a  single  illusion.  There 
are  greater  things  than  justice  (which,  after  all,  is 
a  human  invention,  and  unknown  to  nature),  and 


256  PARIS  NIGHTS 

this  ferocious  idealism  is  greater  than  justice.  The 
explanation  is  that  football  is  the  oldest  English 
game — far  older  than  cricket,  and  it  "throws  back" 
to  the  true,  deep  sources  of  the  English  character. 
It  is  a  weekly  return  to  the  beneficent  and  heroic 
simplicity  of  nature's  methods. 

Another  phenomenon  of  the  chief  English  amuse- 
ment goes  to  show  the  religious  sentiment  that  un- 
derlies it.  A  leading  Spanish  toreador  will  earn 
twenty  thousand  pounds  a  year.  A  leading  Eng- 
lish jockey  will  make  as  much.  A  music-hall  star 
can  lay  hands  on  several  hundreds  a  week.  A  good 
tea-taster  receives  a  thousand  a  year,  and  a  cloak- 
room attendant  at  a  fashionable  hotel  can  always 
retire  at  the  age  of  forty.  Now,  on  the  same  scale, 
a  great  half-back,  or  a  miraculous  goalkeeper  with 
the  indispensable  gift  of  being  in  two  places  at  once, 
ought  to  earn  about  half  a  million  a  year.  He  is 
the  idol  of  innumerable  multitudes  of  enthusiasts; 
he  can  rouse  them  into  heavenly  ecstasy,  or  render 
them  homicidal,  with  a  turn  of  his  foot.  He  is  the 
theme  of  hundreds  of  newspapers.  One  town  will 
cheerfully  pay  another  a  thousand  pounds  for  the 
mere  privilege  of  his  citizenship.  But  his  total  per- 
sonal income  would  not  keep  a  stockbroker's  wife  in 
hats!  His  uniform  is  the  shabbiest  uniform  ever 
donned  by  a  military  genius,  and  he  is  taught  to 
look  forward  to  the  tenancy  of  a  tied  public-house 
as  an  ultimate  paradise! 

To  the  uhimpassioned  observer,  nothing  in  Eng- 
lish national  life  seems  more  anomalous  than  this. 
It  can  be  explained  solely  by  stern  religious  senti- 


AMUSEMENTS  257 

ment.  Call  it  pagan  if  you  will,  but  even  pagan 
religions  were  religious.  The  truth  is  that  so  foul 
a  thing  as  money  does  not  enter  into  the  question. 
A  footballer  is  treated  like  a  sort  of  priest.  "You 
have  this  rare  and  incommunicable  gift,"  says  the 
public  to  him  in  effect.  "You  can,  for  instance,  do 
things  with  your  head  that  the  profane  cannot  do 
with  their  hands.  It  is  no  credit  to  you.  You  were 
born  so.  Yet  a  few  years,  and  the  gift  will  leave 
you!  Then  we  shall  cast  you  aside  and  forget 
you.  But,  in  the  meantime,  you  are  like  unto  a 
precious  vase.  Keep  yourself,  therefore,  holy  and 
uncracked.  There  is  no  money  in  the  career,  no 
luxury,  no  soft  cushions,  nothing  but  sprained 
ankles,  broken  legs,  abstinence,  suspensions,  and  a 
pittance,  followed  by  ingratitude  and  neglect.  But 
you  have  the  rare  and  incommunicable  gift!  And 
that  is  your  exceeding  reward." 

In  view  of  such  an  attitude,  to  offer  the  salary 
of  a  County  Court  judge  to  a  footballer  would  be 

an  insult. 

*    $    #    & 

After  indulging  in  the  spectacle  and  the  vocal 
gymnastics  of  a  football  match,  the  British  public 
goes  home  to  its  wife,  hurries  her  out,  and  they 
stand  in  the  open  street  at  a  closed  door  for  an 
hour,  or  it  may  be  two  hours,  stolidly,  grimly, 
fiercely,  with  obstinate  chins,  on  pleasure  bent. 
They  are  determined  to  see  that  door  open,  no  mat- 
ter what  the  weather.  Let  it  rain,  let  it  freeze,  they 
will  stand  there  till  the  door  opens.  At  last  it  does 
open,  and  they  are  so  superbly  eager  to  see  what 


258  PARIS  NIGHTS 

they  shall  see  that  they  tumble  over  each  other  in 
order  to  arrive  at  the  seats  of  delight.  That  which 
they  long  to  witness  with  such  an  ardent  longing  is 
usually  a  scene  of  destruction.  Let  an  artiste  come 
forward  and  simply  guarantee  to  smash  a  thousand 
plates  in  a  quarter  of  an  hour,  and  he  will  fill  with 
enraptured  souls  the  largest  music-hall  in  England. 
Next  to  splendid  destruction  the  British  public  is 
most  amused  by  knockabout  comedians,  so  called 
because  they  knock  each  other  about  in  a  manner 
which  would  be  fatally  tragic  to  any  ordinary  per- 
sons. 

Though  this  freshly-obtained  impression  of  the 
amusements  of  the  folk  is  perfectly  sincere  and  fair, 
it  is  fair  also  to  assert  that  the  folk  shine  far  more 
brightly  at  work  and  at  propaganda  than  at  play. 
The  island  folk,  being  utterly  serious,  have  not  yet 
given  adequate  attention  to  the  amusement  of  the 
better  part  of  themselves.  But  far  up  in  the  em- 
pyrean, where  culture  floats,  the  directors  of  the 
Stage  Society  and  Miss  Horniman  are  devoting 
their  lives  to  the  question. 


IV 

MANCHESTER 

Over  thirty  years  ago  I  first  used  to  go  to 
Manchester  on  Tuesdays,  in  charge  of  people  who 
could  remember  Waterloo,  and  I  was  taken  into  a 
vast  and  intricate  palace,  where  we  bought  quanti- 
ties of  things  without  paying  for  them — a  method 
of  acquisition  strictly  forbidden  in  our  shop.  This 
palace  was  called  "Rylands."  I  knew  not  what 
"Rylands"  was,  but  from  the  accents  of  awe  in 
which  the  name  was  uttered  I  gathered  that  its  im- 
portance in  the  universe  was  supreme.  My  sole 
impression  of  Manchester  was  an  impression  of  ex- 
treme noise.  Without  shouting  you  could  not 
make  yourself  heard  in  the  streets.  Ten  years 
later,  London-road  Station  had  somehow  become 
for  me  the  gate  of  Paradise,  and  I  was  wont  to  es- 
cape into  Manchester  as  a  prisoner  escapes  into  the 
open  country. 

After  twenty  years'  absence  in  London  and  Paris 
I  began  to  revisit  Manchester.  My  earliest  im- 
pression will  be  my  last.  Still  the  same  prodigious 
racket;  the  same  gigantic  altercation  between  irre- 
sistible iron  and  immovable  paving  stones!  With 
the  addition  of  the  growling  thunder  of  cars  that 
seem  to  be  continually  bumping  each  other  as  if 
they  were  college  eights!  Lunch  in  a  fashionable 
grill-room  at  Manchester  constitutes  an  auditory 

259 


260  PARIS  NIGHTS 

experience  that  could  not  be  matched  outside  New 
York.  In  the  great  saloon  there  is  no  carpet  on 
the  polished  planks  of  the  floor,  and  the  walls  con- 
sist of  highly  resonant  tiles,  for  Manchester  would 
not  willingly  smother  the  slightest  murmur  of  its 
immense  reverberations.  The  tables  are  set  close 
together,  so  that  everybody  can  hear  everybody; 
the  waiters  (exactly  the  same  waiters  that  one  meets 
at  Monte  Carlo  or  in  the  Champs  Elysees)  under- 
stand all  languages  save  English,  so  that  the  Brit- 
isher must  shout  at  them.  Doors  are  for  ever  swing- 
ing, and  people  rush  to  and  fro  without  surcease.  It 
is  Babel.  In  the  background,  a  vague  somewhere, 
an  orchestra  is  beating;  one  catches  the  bass  notes 
marking  the  measure,  and  occasionally  a  high 
squeak  in  the  upper  register.  And  superimposed 
on  this,  the  lusty  voice  of  a  man  of  herculean  phy- 
sique passionately  chanting  that  "a-hunting  we 

will  go." 

£    4!     jft    .4 

One  looks  through  the  window  and,  astonished, 
observes  one  of  those  electric  cars  flying  hugely  past 
without  a  sound.  The  thunder  within  has  chal- 
lenged and  annihilated  the  heaviest  thunder  with- 
out. The  experience  is  unique.  One  rushes  forth 
in  search  of  silence.  Where  can  silence  dwell  in 
Manchester?  The  end  of  every  street  is  a  mystery 
of  white  fog,  a  possible  home  of  silence.  But  no! 
Be  sure  that  if  one  plucks  out  the  heart  of  the  mys- 
tery one  will  find  a  lorry  preceded  by  at  least  eight 
iron  hoofs.  The  Art  Gallery!  One  passes  in. 
Clack!  Clack!  Clack!  It  is  the  turnstile.  And  all 


MANCHESTER  261 

afternoon  the  advent  of  each  student  of  the  fine 
arts,  of  each  cultivated  dilettante,  is  announced  by 
Clack!  Clack!  Clack!  Two  young  men  come  in. 
Clack!  Clack!  Clack!  Turner's  "Decline  of  Car- 
thage" naturally  arrests  them.  "By  Jove!"  says 
one,  "that  was  something  to  tackle!"  Clack! 
Clack!  Clack!  Out  again,  in  search  of  silence. 
But  over  nearly  every  portal  curves  the  legend: 
"Music  all  day."  And  outside  the  music-halls 
hired  bawlers  are  bawling  to  the  people  to  come  in. 
At  last,  near  the  Infirmary,  one  sees  a  stationary 
cab,  and  across  the  window  of  this  cab  is  printed, 
in  letters  of  gold,  the  extraordinary,  the  magic,  the 
wonderful,  the  amazing  word : 

"Noiseless." 

Ah!  The  traditional,  sublime  humour  of  cab- 
men! 

Biut  if  my  impression  has  remained,  and  even 
waxed,  that  Manchester  would  be  an  ideal  metropo- 
lis for  a  nation  of  deaf  mutes,  my  other  early  im- 
pression, of  its  artistic  and  intellectual  primacy,  is 
sharply  renewed  and  intensified.  Of  late,  not  only 
by  contact  with  Manchester  men,  but  by  the  subtle 
physiognomy  of  Manchester  streets  and  the  reveal- 
ing gestures  of  the  common  intelligent  person,  I 
have  been  more  than  ever  convinced  that  there  is  no 
place  which  can  match  its  union  of  intellectual 
vigour,  artistic  perceptiveness,  and  political  sa- 
gacity. 

«*      «*      *      £ 

Long  and  close  intercourse  with  capitals  has  not 
in  the  slightest  degree  modified  my  youthful  con- 


262  PARIS  NIGHTS 

ception  of  Manchester,  my  admiration  for  its  insti- 
tutions, and  my  deep  respect  for  its  opinion.  Lon- 
don may  patronise  Manchester  as  it  chooses,  but 
you  can  catch  in  London's  tone  a  secret  awe,  an 
inward  conviction  of  essential  inferiority.  I  have 
noticed  this  again  and  again.  I  know  well  that  my 
view  is  shared  by  the  fine  flower  of  Fleet-street,  and 
i/o  dread  of  disagreeable  insinuations  or  accusations 
shall  prevent  me  from  expressing  my  sentiments 
with  my  customary  directness.  There  is  no  de- 
partment of  artistic,  intellectual,  social,  or  political 
activity  in  which  Manchester  has  not  corporately 
surpassed  London.  And  there  have  been  very  few 
occasions  on  which,  when  they  have  differed  in 
opinion,  Manchester  has  been  as  wrong  as  London. 

It  is,  of  course,  notorious  that  London  is  still  agi- 
tated by  more  than  one  controversy  which  was  defi- 
nitely settled  by  Manchester  twenty  years  ago  in 
the  way  in  which  London  will  settle  it  twenty  years 
hence.  Manchester  is  too  proud  to  proclaim  its 
fundamental  supremacy  in  the  island  (though  unal- 
terably convinced  of  it),  and  no  other  city  would 
be  such  a  fool  as  to  proclaim  it ;  hence  it  is  not  pro- 
claimed. But  it  exists,  and  the  general  knowledge 
of  it  exists. 

The  explanation  of  Manchester  is  twofold. 
First,  its  geographical  situation,  midway  between 
the  corrupting  languor  of  the  south  and  the  too 
bleak  hardness  of  the  north.  And,  second,  that  it 
enjoys  the  advantages  of  a  population  as  vast  as 
that  of  London,  without  the  disadvantages  of  either 
an  exaggerated  centralisation  or  of  a  capital.  Lon- 


MANCHESTER  263 

don  suffers  from  elephantiasis,  a  rush  of  blue  blood 
to  the  head,  vertigo,  imperfect  circulation,  and  other 
maladies.  Bureaucratic  and  caste  influences  must 
always  vitiate  the  existence  of  a  capital,  and  I  do 
not  suppose  that  any  great  capital  in  Europe  is  the 
real  source  of  its  country's  life  and  energy.  Not 
Rome,  but  Milan!  Not  Madrid,  but  Barcelona! 
Not  St.  Petersburg,  but  Moscow!  Not  Berlin, 
but  Hamburg  and  Munich!  Not  Paris,  but  the 
rest  of  France!  Not  London,  but  the  Manchester 
area! 


LONDON 
t 

There  are  probably  other  streets  as  ugly,  as  ut- 
terly bereft  of  the  romantic,  as  Lots-road,  Chelsea, 
but  certainly  nothing  more  desolating  can  exist  in 
London.  It  was  ten  years  since  I  had  seen  it,  and 
now  I  saw  it  at  its  worst  moment  of  the  week,  about 
ten  o'clock  of  a  Sunday  morning.  Some  time  be- 
fore I  reached  it  I  heard  a  humming  vibration 
which  grew  louder  and  more  impressive  as  I  ap- 
proached. I  passed  (really)  sixty-eight  seagulls 
sitting  in  two  straight  rows  on  the  railings  of  a  de- 
serted County  Council  pier,  and  on  a  rusty  lantern 
at  the  head  of  the  pier  was  a  sixty-ninth  seagull,  no 
doubt  the  secretary  of  their  trade  union. 

A  mist  lay  over  the  river  and  over  a  man  reading 
the  "Referee"  on  an  anchored  barge,  and  nobody 
at  all  seemed  to  be  taking  any  notice  of  the  growing 
menace  of  this  humming  vibration.  Then  I  came 
to  a  gigantic  building,  quite  new  to  me — I  had  not 
suspected  that  such  a  thing  was — a  building  which 
must  be  among  the  largest  in  London,  a  red  brick 
building  with  a  grandiose  architectural  effect,  an 
overpowering  affair,  one  of  those  affairs  that  man 
creates  in  order  to  show  how  small  and  puny  he 
himself  is.  You  could  pile  all  the  houses  of  a  dozen 
neighbouring  streets  under  the  colossal  roof  of  that 


LONDON  265 

erection  and  leave  room  for  a  church  or  so.  Ex- 
traordinary that  a  returned  exile,  interested  in  Lon- 
don, could  have  walked  about  London  for  days 
without  even  getting  a  glimpse  of  such  hugeness. 

It  was  shut  up,  closed  in,  mysterious,  inviolable. 
The  gates  of  its  yards  were  bolted.  It  bore  no 
legend  of  its  name  and  owner ;  there  was  no  sign  of 
human  life  in  it.  And  the  humming  vibration 
came  out  of  it,  and  was  visibly  cracking  walls  and 
windows  in  the  doll's-houses  of  Lots-road  that 
shook  at  its  feet.  Lots-road  got  up  to  that  thunder, 
went  to  bed  to  that  thunder,  ate  bacon  to  it,  and 
generally  transacted  its  daily  life.  I  gazed  baffled 
at  the  building.  No  clue  anywhere  to  the  mystery ! 
Nothing  but  a  proof  of  the  determined  tendency 
on  the  part  of  civilisation  to  imitate  the  romances 
of  H.  G.  Wells! 

A  milkman  in  a  striped  apron  was  ringing  and 
ringing  angrily  at  the  grille  of  a  locked  public- 
house.  I  hate  to  question  people  in  the  street,  but 
curiosity  concerning  a  marvel  is  like  love,  stronger 
than  hate. 

"That?"  said  the  milkman  peevishly.  "That's 
the  generating  stytion  for  the  electric  rilewys." 

"Which  railways?"  I  asked. 

"All  of  'em,"  said  he.  "There's  bin  above  sixty 
men  killed  there  already." 

#     $      £      £ 

Who  would  have  supposed,  a  few  years  ago,  that 
romance  would  visit  unromantic  Lots-road  in  this 
strange  and  terrible  manner,  cracking  it,  smashing 
it,  deafening  it,  making  the  vases  rattle  on  its  man- 


266  PARIS  NIGHTS 

telpieces,  and  robbing  it  of  sleep?  Lots-road  is 
now  the  true  romantic  centre  of  London.  (It 
would  probably  prefer  to  be  something  else,  but  it 
is.)  It  holds  the  true  symbol  of  the  development 
of  London's  corporate  life. 

You  come  to  an  unusual  hole  in  the  street,  and 
enter  it,  and  find  yourself  on  a  large  floor  sur- 
rounded by  advertisements  of  whisky  and  art  fur- 
niture. The  whole  floor  suddenly  sinks  with  you 
towards  the  centre  of  the  earth,  far  below  sewers. 
You  emerge  into  a  system  of  tunnels,  and, 
guided  by  painted  white  hands,  you  traverse 
these  tunnels  till  you  arrive  at  a  precipice.  Then 
a  suite  of  drawing-rooms,  four  or  six,  glides 
along  the  front  of  the  precipice.  Each  saloon 
is  lighted  by  scores  of  electric  lamps,  and  the 
steel  doors  of  each  are  magically  thrown  wide 
open.  An  attendant  urges  you  to  come  in  and 
sit  down.  You  do  so,  and  instantly  the  suite 
of  rooms  glides  glittering  away  with  you,  curving 
through  an  endless  subterranean  passage,  and  stop- 
ping now  and  then  for  two  seconds  at  a  precipice. 
At  last  you  get  out,  and  hurry  through  more  tun- 
nels, and  another  flying  floor  wafts  you  up  out  of 
the  earth  again,  and  you  stagger  into  daylight  and 
a  strange  street,  and  when  your  eyes  have  recovered 
themselves  you  perceive  that  the  strange  street  is 
merely  Holborn.  .  .  .  And  all  this  because  of 
the  roaring  necromancers'  castle  in  Lots-road! 
All  this  impossible  without  the  roaring  necro- 
mancers' castle! 

People  ejaculate,  "The  new  Tubes!"  and  think 


LONDON  267 

they  have  described  these  astounding  phenomena. 

But  they  have  not. 

&    #    *     # 

The  fact  that  strikes  the  traveller  beyond  all  other 
facts  of  the  new  London  is  the  immensity  of  the 
penalty  which  the  Metropolis  is  now  paying  for  its 
size.  Tubes,  electrified  "Districts,"  petrol  omni- 
buses, electric  cars  and  cabs,  and  automobiles ;  these 
are  only  the  more  theatrical  aspects  of  an  activity 
which  permeates  and  exhausts  the  life  of  the  com- 
munity. Locomotion  has  become  an  obsession  in 
London;  it  has  become  a  perfect  nightmare.  The 
city  gets  larger  pnd  larger,  but  the  centre  remains 
the  centre  and  e  erybody  must  get  to  it. 

See  the  motor  cars  speeding  over  Barnes  Com- 
mon to  plunge  into  London.  One  after  another, 
treading  on  each  other's  heels,  scurrying,  preoccu- 
pied, and  malodorous,  they  fly  past  in  an  inter- 
minable procession  for  hours,  to  give  a  melodra- 
matic interest  to  the  streets  of  London.  See  the 
attack  on  the  omnibuses  by  a  coldly- determined 
mob  of  workers  outside  Putney  Station,  and  the 
stream  that  ceaselessly  descends  into  Putney  Sta- 
tion. Follow  the  omnibuses  as  they  rush  across 
the  bridge  into  Fulham-road.  See  the  girls  on  the 
top  at  8  A.  M.  in  the  frosty  fog.  They  are  glad  to 
be  anywhere,  even  on  the  top. 

See  the  acrobatic  young  men  who,  all  along  the 
route,  jump  on  to  the  step  and  drop  off  disap- 
pointed because  there  are  already  sixteen  inside  and 
eighteen  out.  Notice  the  fight  at  every  stopping- 
place.  Watch  the  gradual  growth  of  the  traffic, 


268  PARIS  NIGHTS 

until  the  driver,  from  being  a  charioteer,  is  trans- 
formed into  a  solver  of  Chinese  puzzles.  And  re- 
member that  Fulham-road  is  one  great  highway  out 
of  fifty.  Bend  your  head,  and  gaze  through  Lon- 
don clay  into  the  tunnels  full  of  gliding  drawing- 
rooms  and  the  drawing-rooms  jammed  with  people. 
Think  of  the  five  hundred  railway  stations  of  all 
sorts  in  London,  all  at  the  same  business  of  trans- 
porting people  to  the  centre!  Then  put  yourself 
in  front  of  one  station,  the  type-terminus,  Liver- 
pool-street, and  see  the  incredible  thick,  surging, 
bursting  torrent  that  it  vomits  (there  is  no  other 
word)  from  long  before  dawn  till  ten  o'clock. 
And,  finally,  see  the  silent,  sanguinary  battles  on 
bridges  for  common  tram-cars  and  'buses. 

Not  clubs,  not  hotels,  not  cathedrals,  not  halls 
of  song,  not  emporia,  not  mansions ;  but  t his  is  Lon- 
don, now;  this  necessary,  passionate,  complex  loco- 
motion !  All  other  phenomena  are  insignificant  be- 
side it. 


VI 

INDUSTRY 

My  native  heath,  thanks  to  the  enterprise  of  Lon- 
don newspapers  and  the  indestructibility  of  pictur- 
esque lies,  has  the  reputation  of  being  quite  unlike 
the  rest  of  England,  but  when  I  set  foot  in  it  after 
absence,  it  seems  to  me  the  most  English  piece  of 
England  that  I  ever  came  across.  With  extraor- 
dinary clearness  I  see  it  as  absurdly,  ridiculously, 
splendidly  English.  All  the  English  characteris- 
tics are,  quite  remarkably,  exaggerated  in  the  Pot- 
teries. (That  is  perhaps  why  it  is  a  butt  for  the 
organs  of  London  civilisation.)  This  intensifying 
of  a  type  is  due  no  doubt  to  a  certain  isolation, 
caused  partly  by  geography  and  partly  by  the  in- 
spired genius  of  the  gentleman  who,  in  planning 
what  is  now  the  London  and  North- Western  Kail- 
way,  carefully  diverted  it  from  a  populous  district 
and  sent  it  through  a  hamlet  six  miles  away.  On 
the  28  miles  between  Stafford  and  Crewe  of  the 
four-track  way  of  the  greatest  line  in  England,  not 
a  town!  And  a  solid  population  of  a  quarter  of  a 
million  within  gunshot!  English  methods!  That 
is  to  say,  the  preposterous  side  of  English  methods. 

We  practise  in  the  Potteries  the  fine  old  English 
plan  of  not  calling  things  by  their  names.  We  are 
one  town,  one  unseparated  mass  of  streets.  We 

269 


270  PARIS  NIGHTS 

are,  in  fact,  the  twelfth  largest  town  in  the  United 
Kingdom  (though  you  would  never  guess  it)u 
And  the  chief  of  our  retail  commerce  and  of  our 
amusements  are  congregated  in  the  centre  of  our 
town,  as  the  custom  is.  But  do  not  imagine  that 
we  will  consent  to  call  ourselves  one  town.*  No! 
We  pretend  that  we  are  six  towns,  and  to  carry 
out  the  pretence  we  have  six  town  halls,  six  Mayors 
or  chief  bailiffs,  six  sanitary  inspectors,  six  every- 
thing, including  six  jealousies.  We  find  it  so  much 
more  economical,  convenient,  and  dignified,  in  deal- 
ing with  public  health,  education,  and  railway, 
canal,  and  tramway  companies  to  act  by  means  of 
six  mutually  jealous  authorities. 

$    *    #    £ 

We  make  your  cups  and  saucers — and  other 
earthen  utensils.  We  have  been  making  them  for 
over  a  thousand  years.  And,  since  we  are  Eng- 
lish, we  want  to  make  them  now  as  we  made  them 
a  thousand  years  ago.  We  flatter  ourselves  that 
we!  are  a  particularly  hard-headed  race,  and  we  are. 
Steel  drills  would  not  get  a  new  idea  into  our  hard 
heads.  We  have  a  characteristic  shrewd  look,  a 
sort  of  looking  askance  and  suspicious.  We  are 
looking  askance  and  suspicious  at  the  insidious  ap- 
proaches of  science  and  scientific  organisation.  At 
the  present  moment  the  twelfth  largest  town  is 
proposing  to  find  a  sum  of  £250  (less  than  it 
spends  on  amusement  in  a  single  day)  towards  the 
cost  of  a  central  school  of  pottery.  Mind,  only 

*  Since  this  was  written  a  very  modified  form  of  federation 
has  been  introduced  into  the  Potteries. 


INDUSTRY  271 

proposing!  Up  to  three  years  ago  (as  has  been 
publicly  stated  by  a  master-potter)  we  carped  at 
scientific  methods.  "Carp"  is  an  amiable  word.  We 
hated  and  loathed  innovation.  We  do  still.  Only 
a  scientific,  adventurous,  un-English  manufacturer 
who  has  dared  to  innovate  knows  the  depth  and 
height,  the  terrific  inertia,  of  that  hate  and  that 
loathing. 

Oh,  yes,  we  are  fully  aware  of  Germany!  Yes- 
terday a  successful  manufacturer  said  to  me — and 
these  are  his  exact  words,  which  I  wrote  down  and 
read  over  to  him:  "Owing  to  superior  technical 
knowledge,  the  general  body  of  German  manufac- 
turers are  able  to  produce  certain  effects  in  china 
and  in  earthenware,  which  the  general  body  of 
English  manufacturers  are  incapable  of  produc- 
ing." However,  we  have  already  established  two 
outlying  minor  technical  schools,  and  we  are  pro- 
posing to  find  £250  privately  towards  a  grand 
and  imposing  central  technical  college.  Do  not 
smile,  you  who  read  this.  You  are  not  arch- 
angels, either.  Besides,  when  we  like,  we  can 
produce  the  finest  earthenware  in  the  world. 
We  are  only  just  a  tiny  bit  more  English  than  you 
— that's  all.  And  the  Potteries  is  English  indus- 
try in  little — a  glass  for  English  manufacture  to 
see  itself  in. 

«*      «*      #      $ 

For  the  rest,  we  are  the  typical  industrial  com- 
munity, presenting  the  typical  phenomena  of  new 
England.  We  have  made  municipal  parks  out  of 
wildernesses,  and  hired  brass  bands  of  music  to 


272  PARIS  NIGHTS 

play  in  them.  We  have  quite  six  parks  in  our 
town.  The  character  of  our  annual  carnivals  has 
improved  out  of  recognition  within  living  memory. 
Electricity  no  longer  astounds  us.  We  have  pub- 
lic baths  everywhere  (though  I  have  never  heard 
that  they  rival  our  gasworks  in  contributing  to  the 
rates).  Our  public  libraries  are  better  and  more 
numerous,  though  their  chief  function  is  still  to 
fleet  the  idle  hours  of  our  daughters.  Our  roads 
are  less  awful.  Our  slums  are  decreasing.  Our 
building  regulations  are  stricter.  Our  sanitation 
is  vastly  improved;  and  in  spite  of  asthma,  lead- 
poisoning,  and  infant  mortality  our  death-rate  is 
midway  between  those  of  Manchester  and  Liver- 
pool. 

We  grow  steadily  less  drunken.  Yet  drunken- 
ness remains  our  worst  vice,  and  in  the  social  hier- 
archy none  stands  higher  than  the  brewer,  precisely 
as  in  the  rest  of  England.  We  grow  steadily  less 
drunken,  but  even  the  intellectuals  still  think  it 
odd  and  cranky  to  meet  without  drinking  fluids 
admittedly  harmful;  and  as  for  the  workingman's 
beer  .  .  .  Knock  the  glass  out  of  his  hand 
and  see!  We  grow  steadily  less  drunken,  but  we 
possess  some  750  licensed  houses  and  not  a  single 
proper  bookshop.  No  man  could  make  a  hundred 
pounds  a  year  by  selling  books  in  the  Potteries. 
We  really  do  know  a  lot,  and  we  have  as  many 
bathrooms  per  thousand  as  any  industrial  hive  in 
this  island,  and  as  many  advertisments  of  incom- 
parable soaps.  We  are  in  the  way  of  perfection, 
and  when  we  have  conquered  drunkenness,  igno- 


INDUSTRY  273 

ranee,  and  dirt  we  shall  have  arrived  there,  with 
the  rest  of  England.  Dirt — a  public  slatternli- 
ness, a  public  and  shameless  flouting  of  the  virtues 
of  cleanliness  and  tidiness — is  the  most  spectacular 
of  our  sins. 

We  are  the  supreme  land  of  picturesque  con- 
trasts. On  one  day  last  week  I  saw  a  Town  Clerk 
who  had  never  heard  of  H.  G.  Wells;  I  walked 
five  hundred  yards  and  assisted  at  a  performance 
of  chamber-music  by  Bach  and  a  discussion  of  the 
French  slang  of  Huysmans;  walked  only  another 
hundred  yards  and  was,  literally,  stuck  in  an  un- 
protected bog  and  extricated  therefrom  by  the 
kindness  of  two  girls  who  were  rooting  in  a  shawd- 
ruck  for  bits  of  coal. 

Lastly,  with  other  industrial  communities,  we 
share  the  finest  of  all  qualities — the  power  and  the 
will  to  work.  We  do  work.  All  of  us  work.  We 
have  no  use  for  idlers.  Climb  a  hill  and  survey 
our  combined  endeavour,  and  you  will  admit  it  to 
be  magnificent. 


THE  MIDLANDS— 1910-1911 


THE  HANBRIDGE  EMPIRE 

When  I  came  into  the  palace,  out  of  the  streets 
where  black  human  silhouettes  moved  on  seemingly 
mysterious  errands  in  the  haze  of  high-hung  elec- 
tric globes,  I  was  met  at  the  inner  portal  by  the 
word  "Welcome"  in  large  gold  letters.  This 
greeting,  I  saw,  was  part  of  the  elaborate  me- 
chanics of  the  place.  It  reiterated  its  message  mo- 
notonously to  perhaps  fifteen  thousand  visitors  a 
week;  nevertheless,  it  had  a  certain  effectiveness, 
since  it  showed  that  the  Hanbridge  Theatres  Com- 
pany Limited  was  striving  after  the  right  attitude 
towards  the  weekly  fifteen  thousand.  At  some  pit 
doors  the  seekers  after  pleasure  are  received  and 
herded  as  if  they  were  criminals,  or  beggars.  I  en- 
tered with  curiosity,  for,  though  it  is  the  business 
of  my  life  to  keep  an  eye  on  the  enthralling  social 
phenomena  of  Hanbridge,  I  had  never  been  in  its 
Empire.  When  I  formed  part  of  Hanbridge  there 
was  no  Empire;  nothing  but  sing-songs  conducted 
by  convivial  chairmen  with  rapping  hammers  in 
public-houses  whose  blinds  were  drawn  and  whose 
posters  were  in  manuscript.  Not  that  I  have  ever 
assisted  at  one  of  those  extinct  sing-songs.  They 
were  as  forbidden  to  me  as  a  High  Church  service. 
The  only  convivial  rapping  chairman  I  ever  beheld 

277 


278  PARIS  NIGHTS 

was    at    Gatti's,    under    Charing    Cross    Station, 
twenty-two  years  ago. 

Now  I  saw  an  immense  carved  and  gilded  inte- 
rior, not  as  large  as  the  Paris  Opera,  but  assuredly 
capable  of  seating  as  many  persons.  My  first 
thought  was:  "Why,  it's  just  like  a  real  music- 
hall!"  I  was  so  accustomed  to  regard  Hanbridge 
as  a  place  where  the  great  visible  people  went  in  to 
work  at  seven  A.M.  and  emerged  out  of  public- 
houses  at  eleven  P.M.,  or  stood  movelessly  mournful 
in  packed  tramcars,  or  bitterly  partisan  on  chill 
football  grounds,  that  I  could  scarcely  credit  their 
presence  here,  lolling  on  velvet  amid  gold  Cupids 
and  Hercules,  and  smoking  at  ease,  with  plentiful 
ash-trays  to  encourage  them.  I  glanced  round  to 
find  acquaintances,  and  the  first  I  saw  was  the  hu- 
man being  who  from  nine  to  seven  was  my  tailor's 
assistant;  not  now  an  automaton  wound  up  with 
deferential  replies  to  any  conceivable  question  that 
a  dandy  could  put,  but  a  living  soul  with  a  calabash 
between  his  teeth,  as  fine  as  anybody.  Indeed, 
finer  than  most!  He,  like  me,  reclined  aristocratic 
in  the  grand  circle  (a  bob).  He,  like  me,  was  of- 
fered chocolates  and  what  not  at  reasonable  prices 
by  a  boy  whose  dress  indicated  that  his  education 
was  proceeding  at  Eton.  I  was  glad  to  see  him. 
I  should  have  gone  and  spoken  to  him,  only  I  feared 
that  by  so  doing  I  might  balefully  kill  a  man  and 
create  a  deferential  automaton.  And  I  was  glad 
to  see  the  vast  gallery  with  human  twopences.  In 
nearly  all  public  places  of  pleasure,  the  pleasure  is 
poisoned  for  me  by  the  obsession  that  I  owe  it,  at 


THE  HANBRIDGE  EMPIRE     279 

last,  to  the  underpaid  labour  of  people  who  aren't 
there  and  can't  be  there;  by  the  growing,  deepen- 
ing obsession  that  the  whole  structure  of  what  a  re- 
spectable person  means,  when  he  says  with  patriotic 
warmth  "England,"  is  reared  on  a  stupendous  and 
shocking  injustice.  I  did  not  feel  this  at  the  Han- 
bridge  Empire.  Even  the  newspaper-lad  and  the 
match-girl  might  go  to  the  Hanbridge  Empire  and, 
sitting  together,  drink  the  milk  of  paradise.  Won- 
derful discoverers,  these  new  music-hall  directors 
all  up  and  down  the  United  Kingdom !  They  have 

discovered  the  folk. 

«*    ,*    «*    «* 

THe  performance  was  timed  as  carefully  as  a 
prize-fight.  Ting!  and  the  curtain  went  unfail- 
ingly up.  Ting!  and  it  came  unfailingly  down. 
Ting!  and  something  started.  Ting!  and  it 
stopped.  Everybody  concerned  in  the  show  knew 
what  he  and  everybody  else  had  to  do.  The  illu- 
minated number-signs  on  either  side  of  the  prosce- 
nium changed  themselves  with  the  implacable 
accuracy  of  astronomical  phenomena.  It  was  as 
though  some  deity  of  ten  thousand  syndicated  halls 
was  controlling  the  show  from  some  throne  studded 
with  electric  switches  in  Shaftesbury  Avenue. 
Only  the  uniformed  shepherd  of  the  twopences  aloft 
seemed  free  to  use  his  own  discretion.  His  "Now 
then,  order,  please"  a  masterly  union  of  entreaty 
and  intimidation,  was  the  sole  feature  of  the  enter- 
tainment not  regulated  to  the  fifth  of  a  second  by 
that  recurrent  ting. 

But  what  the  entertainment  gained  in  efficient 


280  PARIS  NIGHTS 

exactitude  by  this  ruthless  ordering,  it  seemed  to 
lose  in  zest,  in  capriciousness,  in  rude  joy.  It  was 
watched  almost  dully,  and  certainly  there  was  noth- 
ing in  it  that  could  rouse  the  wayward  animal  that 
is  in  all  of  us.  It  was  marked  by  an  impeccable 
propriety.  In  the  classic  halls  of  London  you  can 
still  hear  skittish  grandmothers,  stars  of  a  past  age 
unreformed,  prattling  (with  an  amazing  imitation 
of  youthfulness)  of  champagne  suppers.  But  not 
in  the  Hanbridge  Empire.  At  the  Hanbridge  Em- 
pire the  curtain  never  rises  on  any  disclosure  of  the 
carnal  core  of  things.  Even  when  a  young  woman 
in  a  short  skirt  chanted  of  being  clasped  in  his  arms 
again,  the  tepid  primness  of  her  manner  indicated 
that  the  embrace  would  be  that  of  a  tailor's  dummy 
and  a  pretty  head-and-shoulders  in  a  hairdresser's 
window.  The  pulse  never  asserted  itself.  Only  in 
the  unconscious  but  overpowering  temperament  of 
a  couple  of  acrobatic  mulatto  women  was  there  the 
least  trace  of  bodily  fever.  Male  acrobats  of  the 
highest  class,  whose  feats  were  a  continual  creation 
of  sheer  animal  beauty,  roused  no  adequate  en- 
thusiasm. 

"When  do  the  Yorkshire  Songsters  come  on?"  I 
asked  an  attendant  at  the  interval.  In  the  bar,  a 
handful  of  pleasure-seekers  were  dispassionately 
drinking,  without  a  rollicking  word  to  mar  the  flow 
of  their  secret  reflections. 

"Second  item  in  the  second  part,"  said  the  at- 
tendant, and  added  heartily :  "And  very  good  they 
are,  too,  sir!" 

He  meant  it.     He  would  not  have  said  as  much 


THE  HANBRIDGE  EMPIRE     281 

of  a  man  whom  in  the  lounge  of  a  London  hotel  I 
saw  playing  the  fiddle  and  the  piano  simultane- 
ously. He  was  an  attendant  of  mature  and  diffi- 
cult judgment,  not  to  be  carried  away  by  clowning 
or  grotesquerie.  With  him  good  meant  good. 
And  they  were  very  good.  And  they  were  what 
they  pretended  to  be.  There  were  about  twenty  of 
them ;  the  women  were  dressed  in  white,  and  the  men 
wore  scarlet  hunting  coats.  The  conductor,  a  little 
shrewd  man,  was  disguised  in  a  sort  of  lev ee  dress, 
with  knee-breeches  and  silk  stockings.  But  he 
could  not  disguise  himself  from  me.  I  had  seen 
him,  and  hundreds  of  him,  in  the  streets  of  Hali- 
fax, Wakefield,  and  Batley.  I  had  seen  him  all 
over  Yorkshire,  Lancashire,  and  Staffordshire. 
He  was  a  Midland  type:  infernally  well  satisfied 
with  himself  under  a  crust  of  quiet  modesty ;  a  nice 
man  to  chat  with  on  the  way  to  Blackpool,  a  man 
who  could  take  a  pot  of  beer  respectably  and  then 
stop,  who  could  argue  ingeniously  without  heat, 
and  who  would  stick  a  shaft  into  you  as  he  left  you, 
just  to  let  you  know  that  he  was  not  quite  so  ordi- 
nary as  he  made  out  to  be.  They  were  all  like  that, 
in  a  less  degree;  women  too;  those  women  could 
cook  a  Welsh  rarebit  with  any  woman,  and  they 
wouldn't  say  all  they  thought  all  at  once,  either. 

And  there  they  were  ranged  in  a  flattened  semi- 
circle on  a  music-hall  stage.  Perhaps  they  ap- 
peared on  forty  music-hall  stages  in  a  year.  It  had 
come  to  that:  another  case  of  specialisation. 
Doubtless  they  had  begun  in  small  choirs,  or  in  the 
parlours  of  home,  singing  for  the  pleasure  of  sing- 


282  PARIS  NIGHTS 

ing,  and  then  acquiring  some  local  renown;  and 
then  the  little  shrewd  conductor  had  had  the  grand 
idea  of  organised  professionalism.  God  bless  my 
soul!  The  thing  was  an  epic,,  or  ought  to  be! 
They  really  could  sing.  They  really  had  voices. 
And  they  would  not  "demean"  themselves  to  cheap- 
ness. All  their  eyes  said:  "This  is  no  music-hall 
foolery.  This  is  uncompromisingly  high-class,  and 
if  you  don't  like  it  you  ought  to  be  ashamed  of 
yourselves!"  They  sang  part-song  music,  from 
"Sweet  and  Low"  to  a  "Lohengrin"  chorus.  And 
with  a  will,  with  finesse,  with  a  pianissimo  over  which 
the  endless  drone  of  the  electric  fan  could  be  clearly 
distinguished,  and  a  fine,  free  fortissimo  that  would 
have  enchanted  Wagner!  They  brought  the  house 
down  every  time.  They  might  have  rendered  en- 
cores till  midnight,  but  for  my  deity  in  Shaf tesbury 
Avenue.  It  was  the  "folk"  themselves  giving  back 
to  the  folk  in  the  form  of  art  the  very  life  of  the 
folk. 

«*     #     £     £ 

But  the  most  touching  instances  of  this  giving- 
back  was  furnished  by  the  lady  clog-dancer.  Han- 
bridge  used  to  be  the  centre  of  a  land  of  clogs. 
Hundreds  of  times  I  have  wakened  in  winter  dark- 
ness to  the  sound  of  clogs  on  slushy  pavements. 
And  when  I  think  of  clogs  I  think  of  the  knocker- 
up,  and  hurried  fire-lighting,  and  tea  and  thick 
bread,  and  the  icy  draught  from  the  opened  front- 
door, and  the  factory  gates,  and  the  terrible  time- 
keeper therein,  and  his  clock:  all  the  military  harsh- 
ness of  industrialism  grimly  accepted.  Few  are 


THE  LADY  CLOG-DANCER     (Page  282) 


THE  HANBBJDGE  EMPIRE      283 

the  clogs  now  in  Hanbridge.  The  girls  wear  paper 
boots,  for  their  health's  sake,  and  I  don't  know  what 
the  men  wear.  Clogs  have  nearly  gone  out  of  life. 
But  at  the  Hanbridge  Empire  they  had  reappeared 
in  an  art  highly  conventionalised.  The  old  clog- 
dancing,  begun  in  public-houses,  was  realistic,  and 
was  done  by  people  who  the  next  morning  would 
clatter  to  work  in  clogs.  But  this  pretty,  simpering 
girl  had  never  worn  a  clog  seriously.  She  had 
never  regarded  a  clog  as  a  cheap  and  lasting  pro- 
tection against  wind  and  rain,  but  as  a  contrivance 
that  you  had  to  dance  in.  I  daresay  she  rose  at 
eleven  A.M.  She  had  a  Cockney  accent.  She 
would  not  let  her  clogs  make  a  noise.  She  minced 
in  clogs.  It  was  no  part  of  her  scheme  to  lose  her 
breath.  And  yet  I  doubt  not  that  she  constituted  a 
romantic  ideal  for  the  young  male  twopences,  with 
her  clogs  that  had  reached  her  natty  feet  from  the 
original  back  streets  of,  say,  Stockport.  As  I  lum- 
bered home  in  the  electric  car,  besieged  by  printed 
requests  from  the  tram  company  not  on  any  ac- 
count to  spit,  I  could  not  help  thinking  and  think- 
ing, in  a  very  trite  way,  that  art  is  a  wonderful 
thing. 


II 

THE  MYSTERIOUS  PEOPLE 

According  to  Whitaker's  Almanac,  there  are 
something  under  a  million  of  them  actually  at  work, 
which  means  probably  that  the  whole  race  numbers 
something  over  two  millions.  And,  speaking 
broadly,  no  one  knows  anything  about  them.  The 
most  modern  parents,  anxious  to  be  parental  in  a 
scientific  manner,  will  explain  to  their  children  on 
the  hearth  the  chemistry  of  the  fire,  showing  how 
the  coal  releases  again  the  carbon  which  was  ab- 
sorbed by  the  plant  in  a  past  age,  and  so  on,  to  the 
end  that  the  children  may  learn  to  understand  the 
order  of  the  universe. 

This  I  have  seen.  But  I  have  never  seen  par- 
ents explaining  to  their  children  on  the  hearth  the 
effect  of  coal-getting  on  the  family  life  of  the  col- 
lier, to  the  end  that  the  children  might  learn  to  un- 
derstand the  price  of  coal  in  sweat,  blood,  and  tears. 
The  householder  is  interested  only  in  the  other  in- 
significant part  of  the  price  of  coal.  And  this  is 
odd,  for  the  majority  of  householders  are  certainly 
not  monsters  of  selfish  and  miserly  indifference  to 
the  human  factor  in  economics.  Nor — I  have  con- 
vinced myself,  though  with  difficulty — are  the  mem- 
bers of  the  House  of  Lords.  Yet  among  all  the 
speeches  against  the  Miners'  Eight  Hours  Bill  in 

284 


THE  MYSTERIOUS  PEOPLE     285 

this  Chamber  where  beats  the  warm,  generous  heart 
of  Lord  Halsbury,  I  do  not  remember  one  which 
mentioned  the  real  price  of  coal.  Even  the  mem- 
bers of  the  sublime  Coal  Consumers'  League, 
though  phantoms,  cannot  be  phantoms  without 
bowels.  But  has  the  League  ever  issued  one  leaflet 
dealing  with  the  psychology  of  the  collier's  wife  as 
affected  by  notions  of  fire-damp?  I  doubt  it. 

£    £    $    » 

Even  artists  have  remained  unstirred  by  the  pro- 
vocative mystery  of  this  subterranean  race,  which 
perspires  with  a  pick,  not  only  beneath  our  cellars, 
but  far  beneath  the  caves  of  the  sea  itself.  A  work- 
ing miner,  Joseph  Skipsey,  had  to  write  the  one 
verse  about  this  race  which  has  had  vigour  enough 
to  struggle  into  the  anthologies.  The  only  novel 
handling  in  the  grand  manner  this  tremendous  and 
bizarre  theme  is  Emile  Zola's  "Germinal."  And, 
though  it  is  a  fine  novel,  though  it  is  honest  and 
really  impressive,  there  are  shallows  in  the  mighty 
stream  of  its  narrative,  and  its  climax  is  marred  by 
a  false  sentimentality,  which  is  none  the  less  senti- 
mentality for  being  sensual.  Not  a  great  novel, 
but  nearly  great;  as  the  child's  ring  was  "nearly 
gold."  And  in  English  fiction  what  is  there  but 
"Miss  Grace  of  All  Souls,"  a  wistful  and  painstak- 
ing book,  with  pages  which  extort  respect,  but  which 
no  power  can  save  from  oblivion?  And  in  the  fine 
arts,  is  there  anything  but  pretty  coloured  sentimen- 
talities of  hopeless  dawns  at  pit-heads?  Well, 
there  is!  Happily  there  are  Constantin  Meunier's 
sculptures  of  miners  at  work — compositions  over 


286  PA'RIS  NIGHTS 

which  oblivion  will  have  no  power.  But  I  think 
this  is  all. 

Journalistic  reporting  of  great  tragic  events 
is  certainly  much  better  than  it  used  to  be, 
when  the  phraseology  of  the  reporter  was  as 
rigidly  fixed  by  convention  as  poetic  phrase- 
ology in  the  eighteenth  century.  The  spe- 
cial correspondent  is  now  much  more  of  an  artist, 
because  he  is  much  more  free.  But  he  is  handi- 
capped by  the  fact  that  when  he  does  his  special 
work  really  well,  he  is  set  to  doing  special  work  al- 
ways, and  lives  largely  among  abnormal  and  af- 
frighting phenomena,  and  so  his  sensibility  is 
dulled.  Moreover,  there  are  valuable  effects  and 
impressions  which  the  greatest  genius  on  earth  could 
not  accomplish  in  a  telegraph  office.  But  did  you 
ever  see  the  lives  or  the  swift  deaths  of  the  myste- 
rious people  treated,  descriptively  by  an  imaginative 
writer  in  a  monthly  review?  I  noted  recently  with 
pleasure  that  the  American  magazines,  characteris- 
tically alert,  have  awakened  to  the  possibilities  of 
the  mysterious  people  as  material  for  serious  work 
in  the  more  leisurely  journalism.  The  last  tre- 
mendous accident  in  the  United  States  produced 
at  any  rate  one  careful  and  fairly  adequate  study 
of  the  psychology  of  the  principal  figures  in  it,  and 
of  the  drama  which  a  bundle  of  burning  hay  orig- 
inated. 

Even  if  I  did  not  share  the  general  incurious 
apathy  towards  the  mysterious  people,  I  should  not 
blame  that  apathy,  for  it  is  so  widespread  that  there 
must  be  some  human  explanation  of  it;  my  object 


THE  MYSTERIOUS  PEOPLE     287 

is  merely  to  point  it  out.  But  I  share  it.  I  lived 
half  my  life  among  coalpits.  I  never  got  up  in  the 
morning  without  seeing  the  double  wheels  at  a 
neighbouring  pit-head  spin  silently  in  opposite  di- 
rections for  a  time,  and  then  stop,  and  then  begin 
again.  I  was  accustomed  to  see  coal  and  ironstone, 
not  in  tons,  but  in  thousands  of  tons.  I  have  been 
close  to  colliery  disasters  so  enormous  that  the  am- 
bitious local  paper  would  make  special  reporters  of 
the  whole  of  its  staff,  and  give  up  to  the  affair  the 
whole  of  its  space,  save  a  corner  for  the  betting 
news.  My  district  lives  half  by  earthenware  and 
half  by  mining.  I  have  often  philandered  with  pot- 
workers,  but  I  have  never  felt  a  genuine,  active  curi- 
osity about  the  mysterious  people.  I  have  never 
been  down  a  coalpit,  though  the  galleries  are  now 
white-washed  and  lighted  by  electricity.  It  has 
never  occurred  to  me  to  try  to  write  a  novel  about 
the  real  price  of  coal. 

#    j*    #    * 

And  yet  how  powerfully  suggestive  the  glimpses 
I  have  had!  Down  there,  on  my  heath,  covered 
with  a  shuttle-work  of  trams,  you  may  get  on  to  a 
car  about  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  to  pay  a 
visit,  and  you  may  observe  a  handful  of  silent,  for- 
midable men  in  the  car,  a  greyish-yellowish-black 
from  head  to  foot.  Like  Eugene  Stratton,  they 
are  black  everywhere,  except  the  whites  of  their 
eyes.  You  ask  yourself  what  these  begrimed 
creatures  that  touch  nothing  without  soiling 
it  are  doing  abroad  at  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon, 
seeing  that  men  are  not  usually  unyoked  till  six. 


288  PARIS  NIGHTS 

They  have  an  uncanny  air,  especially  when  you  re- 
flect that  there  is  not  one  arm  among  them  that 
could  not  stretch  you  out  with  one  blow.  Then  you 
remember  that  they  have  been  buried  in  geological 
strata  probably  since  five  o'clock  that  morning,  and 
that  the  sky  must  look  strange  to  them. 

Or  you  may  be  walking  in  the  appalling  out- 
skirts, miles  from  town  halls  and  free  libraries,  but 
miles  also  from  flowers,  and  you  may  see  a  whole 
procession  of  these  silent  men,  encrusted  with  car- 
bon and  perspiration,  a  perfect  pilgrimage  of  them, 
winding  its  way  over  a  down  where  the  sparse  grass 
is  sooty  and  the  trees  are  withered.  And  then  you 
feel  that  you  yourself  are  the  exotic  stranger  in  those 
regions.  But  the  procession  absolutely  ignores 
you.  You  might  not  exist.  It  goes  on,  absorbed, 
ruthless,  and  sinister.  Your  feeling  is  that  if  you 
got  in  its  path  it  would  tramp  right  over  you.  And 
it  passes  out  of  sight. 

Around,  dotting  the  moors,  are  the  mining  vil- 
lages, withdrawn,  self-centred,  where  the  entire  ex- 
istence of  the  community  is  regulated  by  a  single 
steam-siren,  where  good  fortune  and  ill- fortune  are 
common,  and  where  the  disaster  of  one  is  the  disaster 
of  all.  Little  is  known  of  the  life  of  these  villages 
and  townlets — known,  that  is,  by  people  capable  of 
imaginative  external  sympathetic  comprehension. 
And  herein  is  probably  a  reason  why  the  myste- 
rious people  remain  so  mysterious.  They  live  phys- 
ically separated.  A  large  proportion  of  them 
never  mingle  with  the  general  mass.  They  are  not 
sufficiently  seen  of  surface-men  to  maintain  curi- 


THE  MYSTERIOUS  PEOPLE     289 

osity  concerning  them.  They  keep  themselves  to 
themselves,  and  circumstances  so  keep  them.  Only 
at  elections  do  they  seem  to  impinge  in  powerful  si- 
lence on  the  destinies  of  the  nation. 

I  have  visited  some  of  these  villages.  I  have 
walked  over  the  moors  to  them  with  local  preach- 
ers, and  heard  them  challenge  God.  I  have  talked 
to  doctors  and  magistrates  about  them,  and 
acquired  the  certainty,  vague  and  yet  vivid,  that  in 
religion,  love,  work,  and  debauch  they  are  equally 
violent  and  splendid.  It  needs  no  insight  to  per- 
ceive that  they  live  nearer  even  than  sailors  to  that 
central  tract  of  emotion  where  life  and  death  meet. 
But  I  have  never  sympathetically  got  near  them. 
And  I  don't  think  I  ever  shall. 

Once  I  was  talking  to  a  man  whose  father,  not 
himself  a  miner,  had  been  the  moral  chieftain  of  one 
of  these  large  villages,  the  individuality  to  which 
everyone  turned  in  doubt  or  need.  And  I  was 
getting  this  man  to  untap  the  memories  of  his  child- 
hood. "Eh!"  he  said,  "I  remember  how  th'  women 
used  to  come  to  my  mother  sometimes  of  a  night, 
and  beg,  'Mrs.  B.,  an'  ye  got  any  old  white  shirts 
to  spare?  They're  bringing  'em  up,  and  we  mun 
lay  'em  out!'  And  I  remember — "  But  just  then 
he  had  to  leave  me,  and  I  obtained  no  more.  But 
what  a  glimpse! 


Ill 

FIRST  VOYAGE  TO   THE  ISLE  OF   MAN 

It  seemed  solid  enough.  I  leaned  for  an  instant 
over  the  rail  on  the  quarter  away  from  the  landing- 
stage,  and  there,  at  the  foot  of  the  high  precipice 
formed  by  the  side  of  the  vessel,  was  the  wavy 
water.  A  self-important,  self-confident  man 
standing  near  me  lighted  a  black  cigar  of  unseemly 
proportions,  and  threw  the  match  into  the  water. 
The  match  was  lost  at  once  in  the  waves,  which  far 
below  beat  up  futilely  against  the  absolutely  un- 
moved precipice.  I  had  never  been  on  such  a  large 
steamer  before.  I  said  to  myself:  "This  is  all 
right." 

However,  that  was  not  the  moment  to  go  into 
ecstasies  over  the  solidity  of  the  steamer.  I  had  to 
secure  a  place  for  myself.  Hundreds  of  people  on 
the  illimitable  deck  were  securing  places  for  them- 
selves. And  many  of  them  were  being  aided  by 
porters  or  mariners.  The  number  of  people  seemed 
to  exceed  the  number  of  seats ;  it  certainly  exceeded 
the  number  of  nice  sheltered  corners.  I  picked  up 
my  portmanteau  with  one  hand  and  my  bag 
and  my  sticks  and  my  rug  with  the  other.  Then  I 
dropped  the  portmanteau.  A  portmanteau  has  the 
peculiar  property  of  possessing  different  weights. 
You  pick  it  up  in  your  bedroom,  and  it  seems  a 

29Q 


THE  ISLE  OF  MAN  291 

feather.  You  say  to  yourself:  "I  can  carry  that 
easily — save  tips  to  porters."  But  in  a  public 
place  its  weight  changes  for  the  worse  with  every 
yard  you  walk.  At  twenty  yards  it  weighs  half  a 
ton.  At  forty  yards  no  steam-crane  could  support 
it.  You  drop  it.  Besides,  the  carrying  of  it  robs 
your  movements  of  all  grace  and  style.  Well,  I 
had  carried  that  bag  myself  from  the  cab  to  the 
steamer,  across  the  landing-stage,  and  up  the  gang- 
way. Economy!  I  had  spent  a  shilling  on  a  use- 
less magazine,  and  I  grudged  three  pence  to  a  por- 
ter with  a  wife  and  family !  I  was  wearing  a  neck- 
tie whose  price  represented  the  upkeep  of  the  porter 
and  his  wife  and  family  for  a  full  twenty- four 
hours,  and  yet  I  wouldn't  employ  the  porter  to  the 
tune  of  threepence.  Economy!  These  thoughts 
flashed  through  my  head  with  the  rapidity  of  light- 
ning. 

You  see,  I  could  not  skip  about  for  a  deck-chair 
with  that  portmanteau  in  my  hand.  But  if  I  left 
it  lying  on  the  deck,  which  was  like  a  street  .  .  . 
well,  thieves,  professional  thieves,  thieves  who 
specialise  in  departing  steamers!  They  nip  off 
with  your  things  while  you  are  looking  for  a  chair ; 
the  steamer  bell  sounds;  and  there  you  are! 
Nevertheless,  I  accepted  the  horrid  risk  and  left 
all  my  belongings  in  the  middle  of  the  street. 
«*  $  #  # 

Not  a  free  chair,  not  a  red  deck-chair,  not  a  cor- 
ner! There  were  seats  by  the  rail  at  one  extremity 
of  the  boat,  and  at  the  other  extremity  of  the  boat, 
but  no  chair  to  be  had.  Thousands  of  persons  re- 


292  PAHIS  NIGHTS 

dining  in  chairs,  and  thousands  of  others  occupied 
by  bags,  rugs,  and  bonnet-boxes,  but  no  empty 
chair. 

"Want  a  deck-chair,  governor?"  a  bearded  mar- 
iner accosted  me. 

Impossible  to  conceal  from  him  that  I  did.  But, 
being  perhaps  the  ship's  carpenter,  was  he  going  to 
manufacture  a  chair  for  me  on  the  spot?  I  knew 
not  how  he  did  it,  but  in  about  thirty  seconds  he  pro- 
duced a  chair  out  of  the  entrails  of  the  ship,  and  fixed 
it  for  me  in  a  beautiful  situation,  just  forward  of 
the  funnel,  and  close  to  a  charming  young  woman, 
and  a  little  deck-house  in  front  for  protection!  It 
was  exactly  what  I  wanted;  the  most  stationary  part 
of  the  entire  vessel. 

Sixpence!  Economy!  Still,  I  couldn't  give 
him  less.  Moreover,  I  only  had  two  pence  in  cop- 
pers. 

"What  will  the  voyage  be  like?"  I  asked  him  with 
false  jollity,  as  he  touched  his  cap. 

"Grand,  sir!"  he  replied  enthusiastically. 

Yes,  and  if  I  had  given  him  a  shilling  the  voyage 
would  have  been  the  most  magnificent  and  utterly 
perfect  voyage  that  ship  ever  made. 

No  sooner  was  I  comfortably  installed  in  that 
almost  horizontal  deck-chair  than  I  was  aware  of  a 
desire  to  roam  about,  watch  the  casting-off  and  the 
behaviour  of  the  poor  stay-at-home  crowd  on  the 
landing-stage;  a  very  keen  desire.  But  I  would 
not  risk  the  portmanteau  again.  Nothing  should 
part  us  till  the  gangways  were  withdrawn.  Absurd, 
of  course!  Human  nature  is  absurd.  I 


THE  VOYAGE     (/'off* 


THE  ISLE  OF  MAN  293 

caught  the  charming  young  woman's  eye  about  a 
dozen  times.  The  ship  got  fuller  and  fuller.  With 
mean  and  paltry  joy  I  perceived  other  passengers 
seeking  for  chairs  and  not  finding  them,  and  I 
gazed  at  them  with  haughty  superiority.  Then  a 
fiendish,  an  incredible,  an  appalling  screech  over  my 
head  made  me  jump  in  a  silly  way  quite  unworthy 
of  a  man  who  is  reclining  next  to  a  charming  young 
woman,  and  apt  to  prejudice  him  in  her  eyes.  It 
was  merely  the  steamer  announcing  that  we  were 
off.  I  sprang  up,  trying  to  make  the  spring  seem 
part  of  the  original  jump.  I  looked.  And  lo!  The 
whole  landing-stage  with  all  the  people  and  horses 
and  cabs  was  moving  backwards,  floating  clean 
away ;  while  the  enormous  ship  stood  quite  still !  A 
most  singular  effect ! 

*    «*    £    £ 

In  a  minute  we  were  in  the  middle  of  the  river, 
and  my  portmanteau  was  safe.  I  left  it  in  pos- 
session of  the  chair. 

The  next  strange  phenomenon  of  my  mental  con- 
dition was  an  extraordinary  curiosity  in  regard  to 
the  ship.  I  had  to  explore  it.  I  had  to  learn  all 
about  it.  I  began  counting  the  people  on  the 
deck,  but  soon  after  I  had  come  to  the  man  with  the 
unseemly  black  cigar  I  lost  count.  Then  I  went 
downstairs.  There  seemed  to  be  staircases  all  over 
the  place.  You  could  scarcely  move  without  falling 
down  a  staircase.  And  I  came  to  another  deck  also 
full  of  people  and  bags,  and  fitted  with  other  stair- 
cases that  led  still  lower.  And  on  the  sloping  ceil- 
ing of  one  of  these  lower  staircases  I  saw  the  Board 


294  PARIS  NIGHTS 

of  Trade  certificate  of  the  ship.  A  most  interesting 
document.  It  gave  the  tonnage  as  2,000,  and  the 
legal  number  of  passengers  as  about  the  same;  and 
it  said  there  were  over  two  thousand  life-belts  on 
board,  and  room  on  the  eight  boats  for  I  don't  re- 
member how  many  shipwrecked  voyagers.  It  even 
gave  the  captain's  Christian  name.  You  might 
think  that  this  would  slake  my  curiosity.  But,  no! 
It  urged  me  on.  Lower  down — somewhere  near 
the  caverns  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea,  I  came  across 
marble  halls,  upholstered  in  velvet,  where  at  snowy 
tables  people  were  unconcernedly  eating  steaks  and 
drinking  tea.  I  said  to  myself  "At  such  and  such 
an  hour  I  will  come  down  here  and  have  tea.  It 
will  break  the  monotony  of  the  voyage."  Looking 
through  the  little  round  windows  of  the  restaurant 
I  saw  strips  of  flying  green. 

Then  I  thought:  "The  engines!"  And  somehow 
the  word  "reciprocating"  came  into  my  mind.  I 
really  must  go  and  see  the  engines  reciprocate.  I 
had  never  seen  anything  reciprocate,  except  possibly 
my  Aunt  Hilda  at  the  New  Year,  when  she  an- 
swered my  letter  of  good  wishes.  I  discovered  that 
many  other  persons  had  been  drawn  down  towards 
the  engine-room  by  the  attraction  of  the  spectacle 
of  reciprocity.  And  as  a  spectacle  it  was  assuredly 
majestic,  overwhelming,  and  odorous.  I  must 
learn  the  exact  number  of  times  those  engines  recip- 
rocated in  a  minute,  and  I  took  out  my  watch  for 
the  purpose.  Other  gazers  at  once  did  the  same. 
It  seemed  to  be  a  matter  of  the  highest  impor- 
tance that  we  should  know  the  precise  speed  of  those 


THE  ISLE  OF  MAN  295 

engines.  Then  I  espied  a  large  brass  plate  which 
appeared  to  have  been  affixed  to  the  engine 
room  in  order  to  inform  the  engineers  that  the  ship 
was  built  by  Messrs.  Macconochie  and  Sons,  of 
Dumbarton.  Why  Dumbarton?  Why  not 
Halifax?  And  why  must  this  precious  in- 
formation always  be  staring  the  engineers  in 
the  face?  I  wondered  whether  "Sons"  were 
married,  and,  if  so,  what  the  relations  were  be- 
tween Sons'  wives  and  old  Mrs.  Macconochie. 
Then,  far  down,  impossibly  far  down,  furlongs  be- 
neath those  gesticulating  steely  arms,  I  saw  a  coal- 
pit on  fire  and  demons  therein  with  shovels.  And 
all  of  a  sudden  it  occurred  to  me  that  I  might  as 
well  climb  up  again  to  my  own  special  deck. 
*  $  *  $ 

I  did  so.  The  wind  blew  my  hat  off,  my  hat  ran 
half-way  up  the  street  before  I  could  catch  it.  I 
caught  it  and  clung  to  the  rail.  We  were  just  pass- 
ing a  lightship;  the  land  was  vague  behind;  in  front 
there  was  nothing  but  wisps  of  smoke  here  and 
there.  Then  I  saw  a  fishing-smack,  tossing  like 
anything ;  its  bows  went  down  into  the  sea  and  then 
jerked  themselves  fairly  out  of  the  sea,  and  this 
process  went  on  and  on  and  on.  And  although  I  was 
not  aboard  the  smack,  it  disconcerted  me.  How- 
ever, I  said  to  myself,  "How  glad  I  am  to  be  on  a 
nice  firm  steamer,  instead  of  on  that  smack!"  I 
looked  at  my  watch  again.  We  seemed  to  have 
been  away  from  England  about  seven  days,  but  it 
was  barely  three-quarters  of  an  hour.  The  offen- 
sive man  with  the  cigar  went  swaggering  by.  And 


296  PARIS  NIGHTS 

then  a  steward  came  up  out  of  the  depths  of  the 
sea  with  a  tray  full  of  glasses  of  beer,  and  a  group 
of  men  lolling  in  deck  chairs  started  to  drink  this 
beer.  I  cared  not  for  the  sight.  I  said  to  myself, 
"I  will  go  and  sit  down."  And  as  I  stepped  for- 
ward the  deck  seemed  to  sink  away  ever  so  slightly. 
A  trifle!  Perhaps  a  delusion  on  my  part!  Surely 
nothing  so  solid  as  that  high  road  of  a  deck  could 
sink  away!  Having  removed  my  portmanteau 
from  my  chair,  I  sat  down.  The  charming  girl  was 
very  pale,  with  eyes  closed.  Possibly  asleep! 
Many  people  had  the  air  of  being  asleep.  Every 
chair  was  now  occupied.  Still,  dozens  of  boastful 
persons  were  walking  to  and  fro,  pretending  to  have 
the  easy  sea-legs  of  Lord  Charles  Beresford.  The 
man  with  the  atrocious  cigar  (that  is,  another  atro- 
cious cigar)  swung  by.  Hateful  individual!  "You 
wait  a  bit!"  I  said  to  him  (in  my  mind).  "You'll 
see!" 

I,  too,  shut  my  eyes,  keeping  very  still.  A  grand 
voyage!  Certainly,  a  grand  voyage!  Then  I  woke 
up.  I  had  been  asleep.  It  was  tea-time.  But  I 
would  not  have  descended  to  that  marble  restaurant 
for  ten  thousand  pounds.  For  the  first  time  I  was 
indifferent  to  tea  in  the  afternoon.  However,  af- 
ter another  quarter  of  an  hour,  I  had  an  access  of 
courage.  I  rose.  I  walked  to  the  rail.  The  hori- 
zon was  behaving  improperly.  I  saw  that  I  had 
made  a  mistake.  But  I  dared  not  move.  To  move 
would  have  been  death.  I  clung  to  the  rail.  There 
was  my  chair  five  yards  off,  but  as  inaccessible  as 
if  it  had  been  five  miles  off.  Years  passed.  Pale 


THE  ISLE  OF  MAN  297 

I  must  have  been,  but  I  retained  my  dignity.  More 
years  rolled  by.  Then,  by  accident,  I  saw  what  re- 
sembled a  little  cloud  on  the  horizon. 

It  was  the  island!  The  mere  sight  of  the  island 
gave  me  hope  and  strength,  and  cheek. 

In  half  an  hour — you  will  never  guess  it — I  was 
lighting  a  cigarette,  partly  for  the  benefit  of  the 
charming  young  woman,  and  partly  to  show  that 
offensive  man  with  the  cigars  that  he  was  not  the 
Shah  of  Persia.  He  had  not  suffered.  Confound 
him! 


IV 

THE  ISLAND  BOARDING-HOUSE 

When  you  first  take  up  your  brief  residence  in 
the  private  hotel,  as  they  term  it — though  I  believe 
it  is  still  called  boarding-house  in  the  plain-spoken 
island — your  attitude  towards  your  fellow-guests 
is  perfectly  clear;  I  mean  your  secret  attitude,  of 
course.  Your  secret  attitude  is  that  you  have  got 
among  a  queer  and  an  unsympathetic  set  of  people. 
At  the  first  meal — especially  if  it  be  breakfast — 
you  glance  at  them  all  one  by  one  out  of  the  cor- 
ners of  your  eyes,  and  in  that  shrewd  way  of  yours 
you  add  them  up  (being  a  more  than  average  ex- 
perienced judge  of  human  nature),  and  you  come 
to  the  conclusion  that  you  have  seldom,  if  ever,  en- 
countered such  a  series  of  stupid  and  harsh  faces. 
The  men  seem  heavy,  if  not  greedy,  and  sunk  in 
mental  sloth.  And,  really,  the  women  might  have 
striven  a  little  harder  to  avoid  resembling  guys. 
After  all,  it  is  the  duty  of  educated  people  not  to 
offend  the  gaze  of  their  fellow-creatures.  And  as 
for  eating,  do  these  men,  in  fact,  live  for  naught  but 
eating?  Here  are  perhaps  fifty  or  sixty  immortal 
souls,  and  their  unique  concern,  their  united  con- 
cern, seems  to  be  the  gross  satisfaction  of  the  body. 
Perhaps  they  do  not  have  enough  to  eat  at  home, 
you  reflect  ironically.  And  you  also  reflect  that 

298 


THE  ISLAND  BOARDING  HOUSE 


THE  BOARDING-HOUSE        299 

some  people,  when  they  have  contracted  for  bed  and 
full  board  at  so  much  per  day,  become  absolutely 
lost  to  all  sense  of  scruple,  all  sense  of  what  is  nice, 
and  would,  if  they  could,  eat  the  unfortunate  land- 
lord right  into  the  bankruptcy  court.  Look  at 
that  man  there,  near  the  window — doubtless,  he  ob- 
tained his  excellent  place  near  the  window  by  the 
simple,  colonizing  method  of  grabbing  it — well,  he 
has  already  apportioned  to  himself  four  Manx  her- 
rings, and  now,  with  his  mouth  full,  he  is  mumbling 
about  eggs  and  flesh  meat. 

And  then  their  conversation!  How  dull! — how 
lacking  in  point,  in  originality!  These  unhappy 
people  appear  to  have  in  their  heads  no  ideas  that 
are  not  either  trivial,  tedious,  or  merely  absurd. 
They  do  not  appear  to  be  interested  in  any  matters 
that  could  interest  a  reasonable  man.  They  babble, 
saying  over  and  over  again  the  same  things.  Or  if 
they  do  not  babble  they  giggle,  or  they  may  do 
both,  which  is  worse;  and,  indeed,  the  uproarious 
way  in  which  some  of  them  laugh,  upon  no  sufficient 
provocation,  is  disagreeable,  especially  in  a  woman. 
Or,  if  they  neither  babble,  giggle,  nor  deafen  the 
room  with  their  outrageous  mirth,  they  sit  glum, 
speaking  not  a  word,  glowering  upon  humanity. 
How  English  that  is — and  how  rude! 

Commonplace — that  is  what  these  people  are!  It 
is  not  their  fault,  but  it  is  nevertheless  a  pity;  and 
you  resent  it.  Indubitably  you  are  not  in  a  sym- 
pathetic environment;  you  are  not  among  kindred 
spirits.  You  grow  haughty,  within.  When  two 
late  comers  enter  breezily  and  take  seats  near  to 


300  PARIS  NIGHTS 

you,  and  one  of  them  begins  at  once  by  remarking 
that  he  is  going  to  Port  Erin  for  the  day,  and  asks 
you  if  you  know  Port  Erin,  you  reply  "No";  the 
fact  being  that  you  have  visited  Port  Erin,  but  the 
fact  also  being  that  you  shirk  the  prospect  of  a  sus- 
tained conversation  with  any  of  these  too  common- 
place, uncomprehending  strangers. 

You  rise  and  depart  from  the  table,  and  you  en- 
deavour to  make  your  exit  as  majestic  as  possible; 
but  there  is  a  suspicion  in  your  mind  that  your  exit 
is  only  sheepish. 

You  meet  someone  on  the  stairs,  a  woman  less 
like  a  guy  than  those  you  have  seen,  and  still  youth- 
ful. As  you  are  going  upstairs  and  she  is  coming 
down,  and  the  two  of  you  are  staying  in  the  same 
house,  you  wonder  whether  it  would  not  be  well  to 
greet  her.  A  simple  "Good-morning."  You 
argue  about  this  in  your  head  for  some  ten  years — 
it  is  only  in  reality  three  seconds,  but  it  seems  eter- 
nal. You  feel  it  would  be  nice  to  say  good-morn- 
ing to  her.  But  at  the  critical  point,  at  the  psycho- 
logical moment,  a  hard  feeling  comes  into  your 
heart,  and  a  glazed  blind  look  into  your  eyes,  and 
you  glance  away.  You  perceive  that  she  is  staring 
straight  in  front  of  her;  you  perceive  that  she  is 
deliberately  cutting  you.  And  so  the  two  of  you 
pass  like  ships  in  the  night,  and  yet  not  quite  like 
ships  in  the  night,  because  ships  do  not  hate,  de- 
test, and  despise. 

You  go  out  into  the  sunshine  (if  sunshine  there 
happens  to  be),  between  the  plash  of  the  waves 
and  the  call  of  the  boatman  on  the  right  hand,  and 


YOU  MEET  SOME  ONE  ON  THE  STAIRS    (Pa^e  300) 


THE  BOARDING-HOUSE       301 

the  front  doors  of  all  the  other  boarding-houses  on 
the  left,  and  you  see  that  the  other  boarding-houses 
are  frequented  by  a  much  superior,  smarter,  more 
intelligent,  better-mannered  set  of  pleasure-seek- 
ers than  yours.  You  feel  by  a  sure  premonition  that 
you  are  in  for  a  dull  time. 

4    «*    £    * 

Nothing  occurs  for  about  forty-eight  terrible 
hours,  during  which  time,  with  the  most  strict  pro- 
priety, you  behave  as  though  the  other  people  in  the 
boarding-house  did  not  exist.  On  several  occasions 
you  have  meant  to  exchange  a  few  words  with  this 
individual  or  that,  but  this  individual  or  that  has  not 
been  encouraging,  has  made  no  advance.  And  you 
are  the  last  person  to  risk  a  rebuff.  You  are  sen- 
sitive, like  all  fine  minds,  to  a  degree  which  this 
coarse  clay  in  the  boarding-house  cannot  conceive. 

Then  one  afternoon  something  occurs.  It  usu- 
ally does  occur  in  the  afternoon.  You  are  in  the 
tram-car.  About  ten  others  are  in  the  tram-car. 
And  among  them  you  notice  the  man  who  put  a 
pistol  to  your  head  at  the  first  meal  and  asked  you 
if  you  knew  Port  Erin ;  also  the  young  woman  who 
so  arrogantly  pretended  that  she  did  not  see  you  on 
the  stairs.  They  are  together.  You  had  an  idea 
they  were  together  in  the  boarding-house;  but  you 
were  not  sure,  because  they  seldom  arrived  in  the 
dining-room  together,  or  left  it  together,  and  both 
of  them  did  a  great  deal  of  talking  to  other  people. 
Of  course,  you  might  have  asked,  but  the  matter  did 
not  interest  you;  besides,  you  hate  to  seem  inquisi- 
tive. He  is  considerably  older  than  she  is;  a  hale, 


302  PARIS  NIGHTS 

jolly,  red-faced,  grey  bearded  man,  who  probably 
finds  it  easier  to  catch  sight  of  his  watch-chain  than 
of  his  toes.  She  is  slim,  and  a  little  arch.  If  she  is 
his  wife  the  difference  between  their  ages  is  really 
excessive. 

The  car  in  its  passage  gradually  empties  until 
there  is  nobody  in  it  save  you  and  the  conductor  on 
the  platform  and  these  two  inside.  And  a  minute 
before  it  reaches  the  end  of  its  journey  the  man 
opens  his  cigar-case,  and  preparing  a  cigar  for  the 
sacrificial  burning,  strolls  along  the  car  to  the  plat- 
form. 

"We're  the  last  on  the  car,"  he  says,  between  two 
puffs,  and  not  very  articulately. 

"Yes,"  you  say.  It  is  indubitable  that  you  are 
the  last  on  the  car.  You  needed  nobody  to  tell  you 
that.  Still,  the  information  gives  you  pleasure, 
and  the  fellow  is  rather  jolly.  So  you  add,  ami- 
ably, "I  suppose  it's  these  electric  motors  that  are 
giving  the  tram-cars  beans." 

He  laughs.  He  evidently  thinks  you  have  ex- 
pressed yourself  in  an  amusing  manner. 

And  inspecting  the  scarlet  end  of  his  cigar,  he 
says  in  a  low  voice:  "I  hope  you're  right.  I've  just 
bought  a  packet  of  shares  in  that  motor  com- 
pany." 

"Really!"  you  exclaim.  So  he  is  a  shareholder, 
a  member  of  the  investing  public!  You  are  im- 
pressed. Instantly  you  imagine  him  as  a  yery 
wealthy  man  who  knows  how  to  look  after  his 
money,  and  who  has  a  hawk's  eye  for  "a  good 
thing."  You  wish  you  had  loose  money  that  would 


THE  BOARDING-HOUSE        303 

enable  you  to  pick  up  a  casual  "packet  of  shares" 
here  and  there. 

The  car  stops.  The  lady  gets  out.  You  raise 
your  hat;  it  is  the  least  you  can  do.  Instead  of 
pretending  that  you  are  empty  air,  she  smiles  on 
you  charmingly,  almost  anxiously  polite  (perhaps 
she  wants  to  make  up  for  having  cut  you  on  the 
stairs),  and  offers  you  some  remark  about  the 
weather,  a  banal  remark,  but  so  prettily  enveloped 
in  tissue  paper  and  tied  with  pink  ribbon,  that  you 
treasure  it. 

Your  common  home  is  only  fifty  yards  off.  Ob- 
viously you  must  reach  it  in  company. 

"My  daughter  here—  "  the  grey-bearded  man  be- 
gins a  remark. 

So    she    is    his    daughter.     Rather    interesting. 
You  talk  freely,  exposing  all  the  most  agreeable 
and  polite  side  of  your  disposition. 
&    £    #    $ 

While  preparing  for  dinner  you  reflect  with  sat- 
isfaction and  joy  that  at  last  you  are  on  friendly 
terms  with  somebody  in  the  house.  You  anticipate 
the  dinner  with  eagerness.  You  regard  the  father 
and  daughter  somewhat  as  palm  trees  in  the  desert. 
During  dinner  you  talk  to  them  a  great  deal,  and 
insensibly  you  find  yourself  exchanging  remarks 
with  other  guests. 

They  are  not  so  bad  as  they  seemed,  perhaps. 
Anyhow,  one  ought  to  make  the  best  of  things. 

£      $      *      $ 

A  whisky  that  night  with  the  father!  In  the 
course  of  the  whisky  you  contrive  to  let  him  gather 


304  PARIS  NIGHTS 

that  you,  too,  keep  an  eye  on  the  share-market,  and 
that  you  have  travelled  a  great  deal.  In  another 
twenty- four  hours  you  are  perfectly  at  home  in  the 
boarding-house,  greeting  people  all  over  the  place, 
and  even  stopping  on  the  stairs  to  converse. 
Rather  a  jolly  house!  Really,  some  very  decent 
people  here,  indeed!  Of  course  there  are  also  some 
with  whom  the  ice  is  never  broken.  To  the  end  you 
and  they  glaringly  and  fiercely  pretend  to  be  blind 
when  you  meet.  You  reconcile  yourself  to  this; 
you  harden  yourself.  As  for  new-comers,  you  wish 
they  would  not  be  so  stiff  and  so  absurdly  aristo- 
cratic. You  take  pity  on  them,  poor  things ! 

But  father  and  daughter  remain  your  chief 
stand-by.  They  overstay  you  (certainly  unlimited 
wealth),  and  they  actually  have  the  delightful  idea 
of  seeing  you  off  at  the  station.  You  part  on  terms 
that  are  effusive.  You  feel  you  have  made  friends 
for  life — and  first-class  friends.  You  are  to  meet 
them  again;  you  have  sworn  it. 

By  the  time  you  get  home  you  have  forgotten 
all  about  them. 


TEN  HOURS  AT  BLACKPOOL 

Manchester  is  a  right  place  to  start  from.  And 
the  vastness  of  Victoria  Station — more  like  Lon- 
don than  any  other  phenomenon  in  Manchester — 
with  its  score  of  platforms,  and  its  subways  ro- 
mantically lighted  by  red  lamps  and  beckoning  pale 
hands,  and  its  crowds  eternally  surging  up  and 
down  granitic  flights  of  stairs — the  vastness  of  this 
roaring  spot  prepares  you  better  than  anything  else 
could  for  the  dimensions  and  the  loudness  of  your 
destination.  The  Blackpool  excursionists  fill  the 
twelfth  platform  from  end  to  end,  waiting  with 
bags  and  baskets :  a  multitude  of  well-marked  types, 
some  of  the  men  rather  violently  smart  as  to  their 
socks  and  neckties,  but  for  the  most  part  showing 
that  defiant  disregard  of  appearances  which  is  per- 
haps the  worst  trait  of  the  Midland  character.  The 
women  seem  particularly  unattractive  in  their  mack- 
intoshed  blousiness — so  much  so  that  the  mere  con- 
tinuance of  the  race  is  a  proof  that  they  must  pos- 
sess secret  qualities  which  render  them  irresistible; 
they  evidently  consult  their  oculists  to  the  neglect  of 
their  dentists :  which  is  singular,  and  would  be  dan- 
gerous to  the  social  success  of  any  other  type  of 
woman. 

"I  never  did  see  such  a  coal-cellar,  not  in  all  my 

305 


306  PARIS  NIGHTS 

days!"  exclaims  one  lady,  apparently  outraged  by 
sights  seen  in  house-hunting. 

And  a  middle-aged  tradesman  (or  possibly  he 
was  an  insurance  agent)  remarks:  "What  I  say  is 
— the  man  who  doesn't  appreciate  sterling  generos- 
ity— is  no  man!" 

Such  fragments  of  conversation  illustrate  the 
fine  out-and-out  idiosyncrasy  of  the  Midlands. 

The  train  comes  forward  like  a  victim,  and  in  an 
instant  is  captured,  and  in  another  instant  is  gone, 
leaving  an  empty  platform.  These  people  ruth- 
lessly know  what  they  want.  And  for  miles  and 
many  miles  the  train  skims  over  canals,  and  tram- 
cars,  and  yards,  and  back-streets,  and  at  intervals 
you  glimpse  a  young  woman  with  her  hair  in  pins 
kneeling  in  sack-cloth  to  wash  a  grimy  doorstep. 
And  you  feel  convinced  that  in  an  hour  or  two, 
when  she  has  "done,"  that  young  woman,  too,  will 
be  in  Blackpool ;  or,  if  not  she,  at  any  rate  her  sister. 
#  *  #  # 

The  station  of  arrival  is  enormous;  and  it  is  as 
though  all  the  passenger  rolling-stock  of  the  entire 
country  had  had  an  important  rendezvous  there. 
And  there  are  about  three  cabs.  This  is  not  the 
town  of  cabs.  On  every  horizon  you  see  floating 
terrific  tramcars  which  seat  ninety  people  and  which 
ought  to  be  baptised  Lusitania  and  Baltic. 
You  wander  with  your  fellow  men  down  a  long 
street  of  cookshops  with  calligraphic  and  unde- 
cipherable menus,  and  at  every  shopdoor  is  a  loud- 
tongued  man  to  persuade  you  that  his  is  the  gate 
of  paradise  and  the  entrance  to  the  finest  shilling 


BLACKPOOL  307 

dinner  in  Blackpool.  But  you  have  not  the  cour- 
age of  his  convictions;  though  you  would  like  to 
partake  of  the  finest  shilling  dinner,  you  dare  not, 
with  your  southern  stomach  in  rebellion  against  you. 
You  slip  miserably  into  the  Hotel  Majestic,  and 
glide  through  many  Lincrusta- Walton  passages  to 
an  immense,  empty  smoking-room,  where  there  is 
one  barmaid  and  one  waiter.  You  dare  not  even 
face  the  bar.  ...  In  the  end  the  waiter 
chooses  your  aperitif  for  you,  and  you  might  be  in 
London.  The  waiter,  agreeably  embittered  by  ex- 
istence, tells  you  all  about  everything. 

"This  hotel  used  to  be  smaller,"  he  says.  "A 
hundred  and  twenty.  A  nice  select  party,  you 
know.  Now  it's  all  changed.  Our  better-class 
clients  have  taken  houses  at  St.  Anne's.  .  .  . 
Jews!  I  should  say  so!  Two  hundred  and  fifty 
out  of  three  hundred  in  August.  Some  of  'em  all 
right,  of  course,  but  they  try  to  own  the  place. 
They  come  in  for  tea,  or  it  may  be  a  small  ginger 
with  plenty  of  lemon  and  ice,  and  when  they've  had 
that  they've  had  their  principal  drink  for  the  day. 
.  .  .  The  lift  is  altered  from  hydraulic  to  elec- 
tricity .  .  .  years  ago  .  .  ." 

Meanwhile  a  client  who  obviously  knows  his  way 
about  has  taken  possession  of  the  bar  and  the  bar- 
maid. 

"I've  changed  my  frock,  you  see,"  says  she. 

"Changed  it  down  here?"  he  demands. 

"Yes.  Well,  I've  been  ironing  .  .  .  Oh! 
You  monkey!" 

In  a  mirror  you  catch  her  delicately  chucking 


308  PARIS  NIGHTS 

him  under  the  chin.  And,  feeling  that  this  kind  of 
thing  is  not  special  to  Blackpool,  that  it  in  fact 
might  happen  anywhere,  you  decide  that  it  is  time 
to  lunch  and  leave  the  oasis  of  the  Majestic  and  con- 
front Blackpool  once  more. 

£     £     £     £ 

The  Fair  Ground  is  several  miles  off,  and  on  the 
way  are  three  piers,  loaded  with  toothless  young 
women  flirting,  and  with  middle-aged  women  dili- 
gently crocheting  or  knitting.  Millions  of  stitches 
must  be  accomplished  to  every  waltz  that  the  bands 
play;  and  perhaps  every  second  a  sock  is  finished. 
But  you  may  not  linger  on  any  pier.  There  is  the 
longest  sea-promenade  in  Europe  to  be  stepped. 
As  you  leave  the  shopping  quarter  and  undertake 
the  vista  of  ten  thousand  boarding-house  windows 
(in  each  of  which  is  a  white  table  full  of  knives  and 
forks  and  sauce-bottles)  you  are  enheartened  by  a 
banneret  curving  in  the  breeze  with  these  words: 
"Flor  de  Higginbotham.  The  cigar  that  you  come 
back  for.  2d."  You  know  that  you  will,  indeed, 
come  back  for  it.  ...  At  last,  footsore,  amid 
a  maze  of  gliding  trams,  your  vision  dizzy  with  the 
passing  and  re-passing  of  trams,  you  arrive  at  the 
Fair  Ground.  And  the  first  thing  you  see  is  a 
woman  knitting  on  a  campstool  as  she  guards  the 
booth  of  a  spiritualistic  medium.  The  next  is  a 
procession  of  people  each  carrying  a  doormat  and 
climbing  up  the  central  staircase  of  a  huge  light- 
house, and  another  procession  of  people,  each  sit- 
ting on  a  doormat  and  sliding  down  a  corkscrew 
shoot  that  encircles  the  lighthouse.  Why  a  light- 


BLACKPOOL  309 

house?  A  gigantic  simulation  of  a  bottle  of  Bass 
would  have  been  better. 

The  scenic  railway  and  the  switchback  surpass  all 
previous  dimensions  in  their  kind.  Some  other 
method  of  locomotion  is  described  as  "half  a  mile  of 
jolly  fun."  And  the  bowl-slide  is  "a  riot  of  joy." 
"Joy"  is  the  key-word  of  the  Fair  Ground.  You 
travel  on  planks  over  loose,  unkempt  sand,  and  un- 
der tethered  circling  Maxim  aeroplanes,  from  one 
joy  to  the  next.  In  the  House  of  Nonsense,  "joy 
reigns  supreme."  Giggling  also  reigns  supreme. 
The  "human  spider,"  with  a  young  woman's  face, 
is  a  source  of  joy,  and  guaranteed  by  a  stentorian 
sailor  to  be  alive.  Another  genuine  source  of  joy 
is  "  'Dante's  Inferno'  up  to  date."  Another  enor- 
mous booth,  made  mysterious,  is  announced  as  "the 
home  of  superior  enjoyments."  Near  by  is  the 
abode  of  the  two-headed  giant,  as  to  whom  it  is 
shouted  upon  oath  that  "he  had  a  brother  which 
lived  to  the  height  of  twelve  foot  seven."  Then 
you  come  to  the  destructive  section,  offering  joy 
still  more  vivid.  Here  by  kicking  a  football  you 
may  destroy  images  of  your  fellow  men.  Or — ex- 
quisitely democratic  invention — you  can  throw 
deadly  missiles  at  life-sized  dolls  that  fly  round  and 
round  in  life-sized  motor-cars:  genius  is,  in  fact, 
abroad  on  the  Fair  Ground. 

All  this  is  nothing  compared  to  the  joy- wheel, 
certainly  the  sublimest  device  for  getting  money 
and  giving  value  for  it  that  a  student  of  human  na- 
ture ever  hit  upon.  You  pay  threepence  for  ad- 
mittance into  the  booth  of  the  joy- wheel,  and  upon 


310  PARIS  NIGHTS 

entering  you  are  specially  informed  that  you  need 
not  practise  the  joy- wheel  unless  you  like;  it  is  your 
privilege  to  sit  and  watch.  Having  sat  down,  there 
is  no  reason  why  you  should  ever  get  up  again,  so 
diverting  is  the  spectacle  of  a  crowd  of  young  men 
and  boys  clinging  to  each  other  on  a  large  revolving 
floor  and  endeavouring  to  defy  the  centrifugal 
force.  Every  time  a  youth  is  flung  against  the 
cushions  at  the  side  you  grin,  and  if  a  thousand 
youths  were  thrown  off,  your  thousandth  grin 
would  be  as  hearty  as  the  first.  The  secret  thought 
of  every  spectator  is  that  a  mixture  of  men  and 
maidens  would  be  even  more  amusing.  A  bell 
rings,  and  the  floor  is  cleared,  and  you  anticipate 
hopefully,  but  the  word  is  for  children  only,  and 
you  are  somewhat  dashed,  though  still  inordinately 
amused.  Then  another  bell,  and  you  hope  again, 
and  the  word  is  for  ladies  only.  The  ladies  rush 
on  to  the  floor  with  a  fearful  alacrity,  and  are  flung 
rudely  off  it  by  an  unrespecting  centrifugal  force 
(which  alone  the  attendant,  acrobatic  and  stately, 
can  dominate) ;  they  slide  away  in  all  postures,  head 
over  heels,  shrieking,  but  the  angel  of  decency  seems 
to  watch  over  their  skirts.  .  .  .  And  at  length 
the  word  is  for  ladies  and  gentlemen  together,  and 
the  onslaught  is  frantic.  The  ladies  and  gentle- 
men, to  the  number  of  a  score  or  so,  clutch  at  each 
other,  making  a  bouquet  of  trousers  and  petticoats 
in  the  centre  of  the  floor.  The  revolutions  com- 
mence, and  gain  in  rapidity,  and  couple  after  cou- 
ple is  shot  off,  yelling,  to  the  periphery.  They  en- 
joy it.  Oh!  They  enjoy  it!  The  ladies,  aban- 


BLACKPOOL  311 

doning  themselves  to  dynamic  law,  slither  away 
with  closed  eyes  and  muscles  relaxed  in  a  voluptu- 
ous languor.  And  then  the  attendant,  braving  the 
peril  of  the  wheel,  leaps  to  the  middle,  and  taking 
a  lady  in  his  arms,  exhibits  to  the  swains  how  it  is 
possible  to  keep  oneself  in  the  centre  and  keep  one's 
damsel  there  too.  And  then,  with  a  bow,  he  hands 
the  lady  back  to  her  lawful  possessor.  Nothing 
could  be  more  English,  or  more  agreeable,  than  the 
curious  contradiction  of  frank  abandonment  and 
chaste  simplicity  which  characterises  this  extraordi- 
nary exhibition.  It  is  a  perfect  revelation  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  temperament,  and  would  absolutely 
baffle  any  one  of  Latin  race.  .  .  .  You  leave 
here  because  you  must ;  you  tear  yourself  away  and 
return  to  the  limitless  beach,  where  the  sea  is  going 
nonchalantly  about  its  business  just  as  if  human 
progress  had  not  got  as  far  as  the  joy-wheel. 

£    $    #    * 

After  you  have  gone  back  for  the  cigar,  and 
faced  the  question  of  the  man  on  the  kerb,  "Who 
says  Blackpool  rock?"  and  eaten  high  tea  in  a  res- 
taurant more  gilded  than  the  Trocadero,  and  vis- 
ited the  menagerie,  and  ascended  to  the  top  of  the 
Tower  in  order  to  be  badgered  by  rather  nice  girl- 
touts  with  a  living  to  make  and  a  powerful  determi- 
nation to  make  it,  and  seen  the  blue  turn  to  deep 
purple  over  the  sea,  you  reach  at  length  the  danc- 
ing-halls, which  are  the  justification  of  Blackpool's 
existence.  Blackpool  is  an  ugly  town,  mean  in 
its  vastness,  but  its  dancing-halls  present  a  beautiful 
spectacle.  You  push  your  way  up  crowded  stairs 


PARIS  NIGHTS 

into  crowded  galleries,  where  the  attendants  are 
persuasive  as  with  children— ''Please  don't  smoke 
here» — and  you  see  the  throng  from  Victoria  Sta- 
tion and  a  thousand  other  stations  in  its  evening 
glory  of  drooping  millinery  and  fragile  blouses, 
though  toothless  as  ever.  You  see  it  in  a  palatial 
and  enormous  setting  of  crystal  and  gold  under  a 
ceiling  like  the  firmament.  And  you  struggle  to 
the  edge  and  look  over,  and  see,  beneath,  the  glit- 
tering "floor  covered  with  couples  in  a  strange  array 
of  straw  hats  and  caps,  and  knickers,  and  tennis 
shoes,  and  scarcely  a  glove  among  the  five  hundred 
of  them.  Only  the  serio-comic  M.C.,  with  a  deli- 
cately waved  wand,  conforms  to  the  fashion  of 
London.  He  has  his  hands  full,  has  that  M.C.,  as 
he  trips  to  and  fro,  calling,  with  a  curious  stress 
and  pause:  "One — more  couple  please!  One — 
more  couple  please !"  And  then  the  music  pulsates 
—does  really  pulsate — and  releases  the  multitude. 
.  .  .  It  is  a  sight  to  stir  emotion.  The  waltz  is 
even  better.  And  then  beings  perched  in  the  lofti- 
est corners  of  the  roof  shoot  coloured  rays  upon  the 
floor,  and  paper  snow  begins  to  fall,  and  confetti  to 
fly  about,  and  eyes  to  soften  and  allure.  .  .  . 
And  all  around  are  subsidiary  halls,  equally  re- 
splendent, where  people  are  drinking,  or  lounging, 
or  flirting,  or  gloating  over  acrobats,  monkeys  and 
ballerinas.  The  tiger  roars,  the  fountain  tin- 
kles, the  corks  go  pop,  the  air  is  alive  with  music 
and  giggling,  the  photographer  cries  his  invitation, 
and  everywhere  there  is  the  patter  of  animated  feet 
and  the  contagion  of  a  barbaric  and  honest  gaiety. 


BLACKPOOL  313 

Brains  and  imagination  are  behind  this  colossal  phe- 
nomenon. For  sixpence  you  can  form  part  of  it; 
for  sixpence  you  can  have  delight,  if  you  are  young 
and  simple  and  lusty  enough.  This  is  the  huge 
flower  that  springs  from  the  horrid  bed  of  the  factory 
system.  Human  creatures  are  half-timers  for  this ; 
they  are  knocked  up  at  5.30  A.M.  in  winter  for  this; 
they  go  on  strike  for  this;  they  endure  for  eleven 
months  and  three  weeks  for  this.  They  all  earn 
their  living  by  hard  and  repulsive  work,  and  here 
they  are  in  splendour!  They  will  work  hard  at  joy 
till  they  drop  from  exhaustion.  You  can  see  men 
and  women  fast  asleep  on  the  plush,  supporting 
each  other's  heads  in  the  attitudes  of  affection. 
The  railway  stations  and  the  night-trains  are  wait- 
ing for  these. 


THE  BRITISH  HOME— 1908 


AN   EVENING   AT   THE   SMITHS' 

Mr.  Smith  returns  to  his  home  of  an  evening 
at  6:30.  Mr.  Smith's  home  is  in  a  fairly  long 
street,  containing  some  dozens  of  homes  exactly 
like  Mr.  Smith's.  It  has  a  drawing-room  and  a 
dining-room,  two  or  three  bedrooms,  and  one  or 
two  attics,  also  a  narrow  hall  (with  stained  glass 
in  the  front  door) ,  a  kitchen,  a  bathroom,  a  front 
garden,  and  a  back  garden.  It  has  a  service  of 
gas  and  of  water,  and  excellent  drains.  The 
kitchen  range  incidentally  heats  the  water  for  the 
bathroom,  so  that  the;  bath  water  is  hottest  at  about 
noon  on  Sundays,  when  nobody  wants  it,  and  cold- 
est first  thing  in  the  morning,  and  last  thing  at 
night,  when  everybody  wants  it.  (This  is  a  de- 
tail. The  fact  remains  that  when  hot  water  is 
really  required  it  can  always  be  had  by  cooking  a 
joint  of  beef.) 

The  house  and  its  two  gardens  are  absolutely 
private.  The  front  garden  is  made  private  by  iron 
rails;  its  sole  purposes  are  to  withdraw  the  house 
a  little  from  the  road  and  to  enable  the  servant 
to  fill  up  her  spare  time  by  washing  tiles.  The 
back  garden  is  made  private  by  match-boarding. 
The  house  itself  is  made  private  by  a  mysterious 
substance  unsurpassed  as  a  conductor  of  sound. 

317 


318  PARIS  NIGHTS 

Mr.  Smith's  home  is  adequately  furnished. 
There  may  be  two  beds  in  a  room,  but  each  person 
has  a  bed.  Carpets  are  everywhere;  easy  chairs 
and  a  sofa  do  not  lack;  linen  is  sufficient;  crockery 
is  plenteous.  As  for  cutlery,  Mr.  Smith  belongs 
to  the  only  race  in  the  world  which  allows  itself 
a  fresh  knife  and  fork  to  each  course  of  a  meal. 
The  drawing-room  is  the  best  apartment  and  the 
least  used,  It  has  a  piano,  but,  as  the  drawing- 
room  fire  is  not  a  constant  phenomenon,  pianists 
can  only  practise  with  regularity  and  comfort  dur- 
ing four  months  of  the  year — hence,  perhaps,  a 
certain  mediocrity  of  performance. 

Mr.  Smith  sits  down  to  tea  in  the  dining-room. 
According  to  fashionable  newspapers,  tea  as  a 
square  meal  has  quite  expired  in  England.  On 
six  days  a  week,  however,  tea  still  constitutes  the 
chief  repast  in  about  99  per  cent,  of  English 
homes.  At  th^  table  are  Mrs.  Smith  and  three 
children — John,  aged  25;  Mary,  aged  22;  and 
Harry,  aged  15.  For  I  must  inform  you  that 
Mr.  Smith  is  50,  and  his  wife  is  very  near  50. 
Mr.  Smith  gazes  round  at  his  home,  his  wife,  and 
his  children.  He  has  been  at  work  in  the  world 
for  34  years,  and  this  spectacle  is  what  he  has  to 
show  for  his  labour.  It  is  his  reward.  It  is  the 
supreme  result.  He  hurries  through  his  breakfast, 
and  spends  seven  industrious  hours  at  the  works 
in  order  that  he  may  have  tea  nicely  with  his  own 
family  in  his  own  home  of  a  night. 

Well,  the  food  is  wholesome  and  sufficient,  and 
they  are  all  neat  and  honest,  and  healthy — except 


AN  EVENING  AT  SMITHS'     319 

Mrs.  Smith,  whose  health  is  not  what  it  ought  to 
be.  Mr.  Smith  conceals  his  pride  in  his  children, 
but  the  pride  is  there.  Impossible  that  he  should 
not  be  proud!  He  has  the  right  to  be  proud. 
John  is  a  personable  young  man,  earning  more 
and  more  every  year.  Mary  is  charming  in  her 
pleasant  blouse,  and  Harry  is  getting  enormous, 
and  will  soon  be  leaving  school. 

£      #      £      £ 

This  tea,  which  is  the  daily  blossoming-time  of 
the  home  that  Mr.  Smith  and  his  wife  have  con- 
structed with  26  years'  continual  effort,  ought  to 
be  a  very  agreeable  affair.  Surely  the  materials 
for  pleasure  are  present!  But  it  does  not  seem  to 
be  a  very  agreeable  meal.  There  is  no  regular 
conversation.  Everybody  has  the  air  of  being  pre- 
occupied with  his  own  affairs.  A  long  stretch  of 
silence;  then  some  chaffing  or  sardonic  remark  by 
one  child  to  another;  then  another  silence;  then 
a  monosyllable  from  Mr.  Smith;  then  another 
silence. 

No  subject  of  wide  interest  is  ever  seriously  ar- 
gued at  that  table.  No  discussion  is  ever  under- 
taken for  the  sake  of  discussion.  It  has  never 
occurred  to  anyone  named  Smith  that  conversa- 
tion in  general  is  an  art  and  may  be  a  diverting 
pastime,  and  that  conversation  at  table  is  a  duty. 
Besides,  conversation  is  nourished  on  books,  and 
books  are  rarer  than  teaspoons  in  that  home.  Fur- 
ther, at  back  of  the  excellent,  honest,  and  clean 
mind  of  every  Smith  is  the  notion  that  politeness 
is  something  that  one  owes  only  to  strangers. 


320  PARIS  NIGHTS 

When  tea  is  over — and  it  is  soon  over — young 
John  Smith  silently  departs  to  another  home,  very 
like  his  own,  in  the  next  street  but  one.  In  that 
other  home  is  a  girl  whom  John  sincerely  considers 
to  be  the  pearl  of  womanhood.  In  a  few  months 
John,  inspired  and  aided  by  this  pearl,  will  em- 
bark in  business  for  himself  as  constructor  of  a 
home. 

Mary  Smith  wanders  silently  and  inconspicu- 
ously into  the  drawing-room  (it  being,  as  you 
know  summer)  and  caresses  the  piano  in  an  ex- 
pectant manner.  John's  views  as  to  the  identity 
of  the  pearl  of  womanhood  are  not  shared  by  an- 
other young  man  who  lives  not  very  far  off.  This 
other  young  man  has  no  doubt  whatever  that  the 
pearl  of  womanhood  is  precisely  Mary  Smith  (an 
idea  which  had  never  entered  John's  head)  ;  and 
he  comes  to  see  Mary  every  night,  with  the  per- 
mission of  her  parents.  The  pair  are,  in  fact, 
engaged.  Probably  Mary  opens  the  door  for  him, 
in  which  case  they  go  straight  to  the  drawing-room. 
(One  is  glad  to  think  that,  after  all,  the  drawing- 
room  is  turning  out  useful.)  Young  Henry  has 
disappeared  from  human  ken. 
*  &  &  # 

Mr.  Smith  and  wife  remain  in  the  dining-room, 
separated  from  each  other  by  a  newspaper,  which 
Mr.  Smith  is  ostensibly  reading.  I  say  "osten- 
sibly," for  what  Mr.  Smith  is  really  reading  on  the 
page  of  the  newspaper  is  this:  "I  shall  have  to 
give  something  to  John,  something  pretty  hand- 
some. Of  course,  there's  no  question  of  a  dowry 


AN  EVENING  AT  SMITHS'       321 

with  Mary,  but  I  shall  have  to  give  something  hand- 
some to  her,  too.  And  weddings  cost  money. 
And  I  have  no  savings,  except  my  insurance."  He 
keeps  on  reading  this  in  every  column.  It  is  true. 
He  is  still  worried  ahout  money,  as  he  was  26  years 
ago.  He  has  lived  hard  and  honourably,  ever  at 
strain,  and  never  had  a  moment's  true  peace  of 
mind:  once  it  was  the  fear  of  losing  his  situation; 
now  it  is  the  fear  of  his  business  going  wrong; 
always  it  has  been  the  tendency  of  expenditure  to 
increase.  The  fruit  of  his  ancient  immense  desire 
to  have  Mrs.  Smith  is  now  ripe  for  falling.  The 
home  which  he  and  she  have  built  is  finished  now, 
and  is  to  be  disintegrated.  And  John  and  Mary 
are  about  to  begin  again  what  their  parents  once 
began.  I  can  almost  hear  Mr.  Smith  plaintively 
asking  the  newspaper,  as  he  thinks  over  the 
achieved  enterprise  of  his  home:  Has  it  been  a  suc- 
cess? Is  it  a  success? 


II 

THE   GEEAT   MANNERS    QUESTION 

Let  us  forget  that  it  is  a  home.  Let  us  con- 
ceive it  as  a  small  collection  of  people  living  in 
the  same  house.  They  are  together  by  accident 
rather  than  by  design,  and  they  remain  together 
rather  by  inertia  than  by  the  fitness  of  things. 
Supposing  that  the  adult  occupants  of  the  average 
house  had  to  begin  domestic  life  again  (I  do  not 
speak  of  husbands  and  wives) ,  and  were  effectively 
free  to  choose  their  companions,  it  is  highly  im- 
probable that  they  would  choose  the  particular 
crew  of  which  they  form  part ;  it  is  practically  cer- 
tain that  they  would  not  choose  it  in  its  entirety. 
However,  there  they  are,  together,  every  day, 
every  night,  on  a  space  of  ground  not  perhaps  more 
than  twenty  feet  by  twenty  feet — often  less.  To 
find  room  to  separate  a  little  they  live  in  layers, 
and  it  is  the  servant  who  is  nearest  heaven.  That 
is  how  you  must  look  at  them. 

Now  it  is,  broadly  speaking,  a  universal  char- 
acteristic of  this  strange  community  that  the  mem- 
bers of  it  can  depend  upon  each  other  in  a  crisis. 
They  are  what  is  called  "loyal"  to  an  extraordinary 
degree.  Let  one  of  them  fall  ill,  and  he  can  ab- 
solutely rely  on  tireless  nursing. 

Again,  let  one  of  them  get  into  trouble,  and  his 


THE  MANNERS  QUESTION    323 

companions  will  stand  by  him,  and  if  they  cannot, 
or  will  not,  help  him  materially,  they  will,  at  any 
rate,  make  sympathetic  excuses  for  not  doing  so. 
Or  let  one  of  them  suffer  a  loss,  and  he  will  in- 
stantly be  surrounded  by  all  the  consolations  that 
kindness  can  invent.  Or  let  one  of  them  be  ill- 
spoken  of,  and  every  individual  of  the  community 
will  defend  him,  usually  with  heat,  always  with 

conviction. 

^    «*    at    # 

But  I  have  drawn  only  the  foul-weather  picture. 
We  come  to  the  fine-weather  picture.  Imagine  a 
stranger  from  the  moon,  to  whom  I  had  quite  truth- 
fully described  the  great  qualities  of  this  strange 
community  presided  over  by  Mr.  Smith — imagine 
him  invisibly  introduced  into  the  said  community! 

You  can  fancy  the  lunatic's  astonishment!  In- 
stead of  heaven  he  would  decidedly  consider  that 
he  had  strayed  into  an  armed  camp,  or  into  a  cage 
of  porcupines.  He  would  conclude,  being  a  lun- 
atic, that  the  members  of  the  community  either 
hated  each  other,  or  at  best  suffered  the  sight  of 
each  other  only  as  a  supreme  act  of  toleration. 
He  would  hear  surly  voices,  curt  demands,  impo- 
lite answers ;  and  if  he  did  not  hear  amazing  silences 
it  would  be  because  you  cannot  physically  hear  a 
silence. 

He  would  no  doubt  think  that  the  truth  was  not 
in  me.  He  would  remonstrate:  "But  you  told 


me—" 


Then  I  should  justify  myself:  '  'In  a  crisis,'  I 
said,  my  dear  gentleman  from  the  moon.     I  said 


324  PARIS  NIGHTS 

nothing  about  ordinary  daily  life.  Now  you  see 
this  well-favoured  girl  who  has  been  nagging  at 
her  brother  all  through  tea  because  of  some  omis- 
sion or  commission — I  can  assure  you  that  if,  for 
instance,  her  brother  had  typhoid  fever  that  girl 
would  nurse  him  with  the  devotion  of  a  saint. 
Similarly,  if  she  lost  her  sweetheart  by  death  or 
breach  of  promise,  he  would  envelope  her  in 
brotherly  affection." 

"How  often  does  he  have  typhoid  fever?"  the 
lunatic  might  ask.  "Once  a  month?" 

"Well,"  I  should  answer,  "he  hasn't  had  it  yet. 
But  if  he  had  it — you  see!" 

"And  does  she  frequently  get  thrown  over?" 

"Oh,  no!  Her  young  man  worships  her.  She 
is  to  be  married  next  spring.  But  if — " 

"And  so,  while  waiting  for  crises  and  disasters, 
they  go  on — like  this?" 

"Yes,"  I  should  defend  my  fellow-terrestrials. 
"But  you  must  not  jump  to  the  conclusion  that 
they  are  always  like  this.  They  can  be  just  as 
nice  as  anybody.  They  are  perfectly  charming, 
really." 

"Well,  then,"  he  might  inquire,  "how  do  they 
justify  this  behaviour  to  one  another?" 

"By  the  hazard  of  birth,"  I  should  reply,  "or  by 
the  equally  great  hazard  of  marriage.  With  us, 
when  you  happen  to  have  the  same  father  and 
mother,  or  even  the  same  uncle,  or  when  you  hap- 
pen to  be  married,  it  is  generally  considered  that 
you  may  abandon  the  forms  of  politeness  and  the 


THE  MANNERS  QUESTION      325 

expressions  of  sympathy,  and  that  you  have  an  un- 
limited right  of  criticism." 

"I  should  have  thought  precisely  the  contrary," 
he  would  probably  say,  being  a  lunatic. 

The  lunatic  having  been  allowed  to  depart,  I 
should  like  to  ask  the  Smiths — middle-aged  Mr. 
Smith  and  Mrs.  Smith — a  question  somewhat  in 
these  terms:  "What  is  the  uppermost,  the  most 
frequent  feeling  in  your  minds  about  this  com- 
munity which  you  call  'home'?  You  needn't  tell 
me  that  you  love  it,  that  it  is  the  dearest  place  on 
earth,  that  no  other  place  could  ever  have  quite 
the  same,  etc.,  etc.  I  know  all  about  that.  I  ad- 
mit it.  Is  not  your  uppermost,  commonest  feel- 
ing a  feeling  that  it  is  rather  a  tedious,  tiresome 
place,  and  that  the  human  components  of  it  are 
excellent  persons,  BUT  ...  and  that  really 
you  have  had  a  great  deal  to  put  up  with?" 

In  reply,  do  not  be  sentimental,  be  hon- 
est. .  .  . 

Such  being  your  impression  of  home  (not  your 
deepest,  but  your  most  obvious  impression),  can 
it  fairly  be  stated  that  the  home  of  the  Smiths  is 

a  success? 

#    #    *    # 

There  are  two  traits  which  have  prevented  the 
home  of  the  Smiths  from  being  a  complete  suc- 
cess, from  being  that  success  which  both  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Smith  fully  intended  to  achieve  when  they 
started,  and  which  young  John  and  young  Mary 
fully  intend  to  achieve  when  they  at  length  start 


326  PARIS  NIGHTS 

without  having  decided  precisely  how  they  will  do 
better  than  their  elders.  The  first  is  British  inde- 
pendence of  action,  which  causes  the  owner  of  a 
Britsh  temperament  to  seek  to  combine  the  ad- 
vantages of  anarchical  solitude  with  the  advantages 
of  a  community:  impossible  feat!  In  the  home  of 
the  Smiths  each  room  is  a  separate  Norman  for- 
tress, sheltering  an  individuality  that  will  be  un- 
trammelled or  perish. 

And  the  second  is  the  unchangeable  conviction 
at  the  bottom  of  every  Briton's  heart  that  formal 
politeness  in  intimacy  is  insincere.  This  is  espe- 
cially true  of  the  Midlands  and  the  North.  When 
I  left  the  Midlands  and  went  South,  I  truly 
thought,  for  several  days,  that  Southerners  were 
a  hypocritical  lot,  just  because  they  said,  "If  you 
wouldn't  mind  moving,"  instead  of  "Now,  then, 
out  of  it!"  Gruff  ness  and  the  malicious  satisfac- 
tion of  candid  gratuitous  criticism  are  the  root  of 
the  evil  in  the  home  of  the  Smiths.  And  the  con- 
sequences of  them  are  very  much  more  serious 
than  the  Smiths  in  their  gruffness  imagine. 


Ill 

SPENDING AND    GETTING   VALUE 

I  now  allude  to  those  financial  harassments 
which  have  been  a  marked  feature  of  the  home 
founded  and  managed  by  Mr.  Smith,  who  has 
been  eternally  worried  about  money.  The  children 
have  grown  up  in  this  atmosphere  of  fiscal  anxiety, 
accustomed  to  the  everlasting  question  whether 
ends  will  meet;  accustomed  to  the  everlasting  de- 
bate whether  a  certain  thing  can  be  afforded.  And 
nearly  every  house  in  the  street  where  the  Smiths 
live  is  in  the  same  case. 

Why  is  this?  Is  it  that  incomes  are  lower  and 
commodities  and  taxes  higher  in  England  than  in 
other  large  European  countries?  No;  the  con- 
trary is  the  fact.  In  no  large  European  country 
will  money  go  so  far  as  in  England.  Is  it  that 
the  English  race  is  deficient  in  financial  skill? 
England  is  the  only  large  European  country  which 
genuinely  balances  its  national  budget  every  year 
and  regularly  liquidates  its  debts. 

I  wish  to  hint  to  Mr.  Smith  that  he  differs  in 
one  very  important  respect  from  the  Mr.  Smith 
of  France,  and  the  Mr.  Smith  of  Germany,  his 
only  serious  rivals.  In  the  matter  of  money,  he 
always  asks  himself,  not  how  little  he  can  spend, 
but  how  much  he  can  spend.  At  the  end  of  a  life- 


328  PARIS  NIGHTS 

time  the  result  is  apparent.  Or  when  he  has  a 
daughter  to  marry  off,  the  result  is  apparent.  In 
England  economy  is  a  virtue.  In  France,  for  ex- 
ample, it  is  merely  a  habit. 

#    #    *    # 

Mr.  Smith  is  extravagant.  He  has  an  extrava- 
gant way  of  looking  at  life.  On  his  own  plane 
Mr.  Smith  is  a  haughty  nobleman  of  old  days;  he 
is  royal;  he  is  a  born  hangman  of  expense. 

"What?"  cries  Mr.  Smith,  furioua  "Me  ex- 
travagant! Why,  I  have  always  been  most  care- 
ful! I  have  had  to  be,  with  my  income!" 

He  may  protest.  But  I  am  right.  The  very 
tone  with  which  he  says:  "With  my  income!"  gives 
Mr.  Smith  away.  What  is  the  matter  with  Mr. 
Smith's  income?  Has  it  been  less  than  the  aver- 
age? Not  at  all.  The  only  thing  that  is  the  mat- 
ter with  Mr.  Smith's  income  is  that  he  has  never 
accepted  it  as  a  hard,  prosaic  fact.  He  has  always 
pretended  that  it  was  a  magic  income,  with  which 
miracles  could  be  performed.  He  has  always  been 
trying  to  pour  two  pints  and  a  gill  out  of  a  quart 
pot.  He  has  always  hoped  that  luck  would  befall 
him.  On  a  hundred  and  fifty  a  year  he  ever  en- 
deavoured to  live  as  though  he  had  two  hundred. 
And  so  on,  as  his  income  increased. 

When  he  married  he  began  by  taking  the  high- 
est-rented house  that  he  could  possibly  afford,  in- 
stead of  the  cheapest  that  he  could  possibly  do  with, 
and  he  has  been  going  on  ever  since  in  the  same 
style— creating  an  effect,  cutting  a  figure. 


SPENDING  329 

This  system  of  living,  the  English  system,  has 
indubitable  advantages.  It  encourages  enterprise 
and  prevents  fossilisation.  It  gives  dramatic  in- 
terest to  existence.  And,  after  all,  though  at  the 
age  of  50  Mr.  Smith  possesses  little  beside  a  house- 
ful of  furniture  and  his  insurance  policy,  he  can 
say  that  he  has  had  something  for  his  money  every 
year  and  every  day  of  the  year.  He  can  truth- 
fully say,  when  charged  with  having  "eaten  his 
cake,"  that  a  cake  is  a  futile  thing  till  it  is  eaten. 

The  French  system  has  disadvantages.  The 
French  Mr.  Smith  does  not  try  to  make  money, 
he  tries  merely  to  save  it.  He  shrinks  from  the 
perils  of  enterprise.  He  does  not  want  to  create. 
He  frequently  becomes  parsimonious,  and  he  may 
postpone  the  attempt  to  get  some  fun  out  of  life 
until  he  is  past  the  capacity  for  fun. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  financial  independence 
with  which  his  habits  endow  him  is  a  very  precious 
thing.  One  finds  it  everywhere  in  France ;  it  is  in- 
stinctive in  the  attitude  of  the  average  man.  That 
chronic  tightness  has  often  led  Mr.  Smith  to  make 
unpleasing  compromises  with  his  dignity;  such 
compromises  are  rarer  in  France.  Take  a  person 
into  your  employ  in  France,  even  the  humblest, 
and  you  will  soon  find  out  how  the  habit  of  a  mar- 
gin affects  the  demeanour  of  the  employed.  Per- 
sonally, I  have  often  been  inconvenienced  by  this 
in  France.  But  I  have  liked  it.  After  all,  one 
prefers  to  be  dealing  with  people  who  can  call  their 
souls  their  own. 


330  P'ARIS  NIGHTS 

Mr.  Smith  need  not  go  to  the  extremes  of  the 
extremists  in  France,  but  he  might  advantageously 
go  a  long  way  towards  them.  He  ought  to  recon- 
cile himself  definitely  to  his  income.  He  ought  to 
cease  his  constant  attempt  to  perform  miracles  with 
his  income.  It  is  really  not  pleasant  for  him  to 
be  fixed  as  he  is  at  the  age  of  fifty,  worried  be- 
cause he  has  to  provide  wedding  presents  for  his 
son  and  his  daughter.  And  how  can  he  preach 
thrift  to  his  son  John?  John  knows  his  father. 

There  is  another,  and  an  even  more  ticklish, 
point.  It  being  notorious  that  Mr.  Smith  spends 
too  much  money,  let  us  ask  whether  Mr.  Smith  gets 
value  for  the  money  he  spends.  I  must  again  com- 
pare with  France,  whose  homes  I  know.  Now, 
as  regards  solid,  standing  comfort,  there  is  no  com- 
parison between  Mr.  Smith's  home  and  the  home 
of  the  French  Mr.  Smith.  Our  Mr.  Smith  wins. 
His  standard  is  higher.  He  has  more  room,  more 
rooms,  more  hygiene,  and  more  general  facilities 
for  putting  himself  at  his  ease. 

£     £      #      £ 

But  these  contrivances,  once  acquired,  do  not 
involve  a  regular  outlay,  except  so  far  as  they  af- 
fect rent.  And  in  the  household  budget  rent  is  a 
less  important  item  than  food  and  cleansing.  Now, 
the  raw  materials  of  the  stuff  necessary  to  keep  a 
household  healthily  alive  cost  more  in  France  than 
in  England.  And  the  French  Mr.  Smith's  income 
is  a  little  less  than  our  Mr.  Smith's.  Yet  the 
French  Mr.  Smith,  while  sitting  on  a  less  comfort- 
able chair  in  a  smaller  room,  most  decidedly  con- 


SPENDING  331 

sumes  better  meals  than  our  Mr.  Smith.  In  other 
words,  he  lives  better. 

I  have  often  asked  myself,  in  observing  the  fam- 
ily life  of  Monsieur  and  Madame  Smith:  "How  on 
earth  do  they  do  it?"  Only  one  explanation  is  pos- 
sible. They  understand  better  how  to  run  a  house 
economically  in  France  than  we  do  in  England. 

Now  Mrs.  Smith  in  her  turn  cries :  "Me  extrava- 
gant?" 

Yes,  relatively,  extravagant!  It  is  a  hard  say- 
ing, but,  I  believe,  a  true  one.  Extravagance  is 
in  the  air  of  England.  A  person  always  in  a  room 
where  there  is  a  slight  escape  of  gas  does  not  smell 
the  gas — until  he  has  been  out  for  a  walk  and  re- 
turned. So  it  is  with  us. 

As  for  you,  Mrs.  Smith,  I  would  not  presume  to 
say  in  what  you  are  extravagant.  But  I  guaran- 
tee that  Madame  Smith  would  "do  it  on  less." 

The  enormous  periodical  literature  now  devoted 
largely  to  hints  on  household  management  shows 
that  we,  perhaps  unconsciously,  realise  a  defect. 
You  don't  find  this  literature  in  France.  They 
don't  seem  to  need  it. 


IV 

THE  PARENTS 

Let  us  look  at  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Smith  one  evening 
when  they  are  by  themselves,  leaving  the  children 
entirely  out  of  account.  For  in  addition  to  being 
father  and  mother,  they  are  husband  and  wife. 
Not  that  I  wish  to  examine  the  whole  institution 
of  marriage — people  who  dare  to  do  so  deserve 
the  Victoria  Cross !  My  concern  is  simply  with  the 
effects  of  the  organisation  of  the  home — on  mar- 
riage and  other  things. 

Well,  you  see  them  together.  Mr.  Smith  has 
done  earning  money  for  the  day,  and  Mrs.  Smith 
has  done  spending  it.  They  are  at  leisure  to  en- 
joy this  home  of  theirs.  This  is  what  Mr.  Smith 
passes  seven  hours  a  day  at  business  for.  This 
is  what  he  got  married  for.  This  is  what  he  wanted 
when  he  decided  to  take  Mrs.  Smith,  if  he  could 
get  her.  These  hours  ought  to  be  the  flower  of 
their  joint  life.  How  are  these  hours  affected  by 
the  organisation  of  the  home? 

I  will  tell  you  how  Mrs.  Smith  is  affected.  Mrs. 
Smith  is  worried  by  it.  And  in  addition  she  is 
conscious  that  her  efforts  are  imperfectly  appreci- 
ated, and  her  difficulties  unrealised.  As  regards 
the  directing  and  daily  recreation  of  the  home,  Mr. 
Smith's  attitude  on  this  evening  by  the  domestic 

332 


THE  PARENTS  333 

hearth  is  at  best  one  of  armed  neutrality.  His 
criticism  is  seldom  other  than  destructive.  Mr. 
Smith  is  a  strange  man.  If  he  went  to  a  lot  of 
trouble  to  get  a  small  holding  under  the  Small 
Holdings  Act,  and  then  left  the  cultivation  of  the 
ground  to  another  person  not  scientifically  trained 
to  agriculture  he  would  be  looked  upon  as  a  ninny. 
When  a  man  takes  up  a  hobby,  he  ought  surely 
to  be  terrifically  interested  in  it.  What  is  Mr. 
Smith's  home  but  his  hobby? 

£      «*      £     & 

He  has  put  Mrs.  Smith  in  to  manage  it.  He 
himself,  once  a  quarter,  discharges  the  complicated 
and  delicate  function  of  paying  the  rent.  All  the 
rest,  the  little  matters,  such  as  victualling  and 
brightening — trifles,  nothings! — he  leaves  to  Mrs. 
Smith.  He  is  not  satisfied  with  Mrs.  Smith's  ac- 
tivities, and  he  does  not  disguise  the  fact.  He  is 
convinced  that  Mrs.  Smith  spends  too  much,  and 
that  she  is  not  businesslike.  He  is  convinced  that 
running  a  house  is  child's  play  compared  to  what 
he  has  to  do.  Now,  as  to  Mrs.  Smith  being  un- 
businesslike, is  Mr.  Smith  himself  businesslike?  If 
he  is,  he  greatly  differs  from  his  companions  in 
the  second-class  smoker.  The  average  office  and 
the  average  works  are  emphatically  not  run  on 
business  lines,  except  in  theory.  Daily  experi- 
ence proves  this.  The  businesslikeness  of  the  aver- 
age business  man  is  a  vast  and  hollow  pretence. 

Besides,  who  could  expect  Mrs.  Smith  to  be 
businesslike?  She  was  never  taught  to  be  business- 
like. Mr*  Smith  was  apprenticed,  or  indentured, 


334  PARIS  NIGHTS 

to  his  vocation.  But  Mrs.  Smith  wasn't.  Mrs. 
Smith  has  to  feed  a  family,  and  doesn't  know  the 
principles  of  diet.  She  has  to  keep  children  in 
health,  and  couldn't  describe  their  organs  to  save 
her  life.  She  has  to  make  herself  and  the  home 
agreeable  to  the  eye,  and  knows  nothing  artistic 
about  colour  or  form. 

I  am  an  ardent  advocate  of  Mrs.  Smith.  The 
marvel  is  not  that  Mrs.  Smith  does  so  badly,  but 
that  she  does  so  well.  If  women  were  not  more 
conscientious  than  men  in  their  duties  Mr.  Smith's 
home  would  be  more  amateurish  than  it  is,  and  Mr. 
Smith's  "moods"  more  frequent  than  they  are. 
For  Mrs.  Smith  is  amateurish.  Example:  Mrs. 
Smith  is  bothered  to  death  by  the  daily  question, 
What  can  we  have  for  dinner?  She  splits  her  head 
in  two  in  order  to  avoid  monotony.  Mrs.  Smith's 
repertoire  probably  consists  of  about  50  dishes, 
and  if  she  could  recall  them  all  to  her  mind  at  once 
her  task  would  be  much  simplified.  But  she  can't 
think  of  them  when  she  wants  to  think  of  them. 
Supposing  that  in  Mrs.  Smith's  kitchen  hung  a 
card  containing  a  list  of  all  her  dishes,  she  could 
run  her  eyes  over  it  and  choose  instantly  what 
dishes  would  suit  that  day's  larder.  Did  you  ever 
see  such  a  list  in  Mrs.  Smith's  kitchen?  No.  The 
idea  has  not  occurred  to  Mrs.  Smith! 

I  say  also  that  to  spend  money  efficiently  is  quite 
as  difficult  as  to  earn  it  efficiently.  Any  fool  can, 
somehow,  earn  a  sovereign,  but  to  get  value  for  a 
sovereign  in  small  purchases  means  skill  and  im- 
mense knowledge.  Mr.  Smith  has  never  had  ex- 


THE  PARENTS  335 

perience  of  the  difficulty  of  spending  money  ef- 
ficiently. Most  of  Mr.  Smith's  payments  are  fixed 
and  mechanical.  Mrs.  Smith  is  the  spender.  Mr. 
Smith  chiefly  exercises  his  skill  as  a  spender  in  his 
clothes  and  in  tobacco.  Look  at  the  result.  Any 
showy  necktie  shop  and  furiously-advertised  to- 
bacco is  capable  of  hood-winking  Mr.  Smith. 
«*  #  #  # 

In  further  comparison  of  their  respective  "jobs" 
it  has  to  be  noted  that  Mrs.  Smith's  is  rendered 
doubly  difficult  by  the  fact  that  she  is  always  at 
close  quarters  with  the  caprices  of  human  nature. 
Mrs.  Smith  is  continually  bumping  up  against  hu- 
man nature  in  various  manifestations.  The  hu- 
man butcher-boy  may  arrive  late  owing  to  marbles, 
and  so  the  dinner  must  either  be  late  or  the  meat 
undercooked;  or  Mr.  Smith,  through  too  much 
smoking,  may  have  lost  his  appetite,  and  veal  out 
of  Paradise  wouldn't  please  him!  Mrs.  Smith's 
job  is  transcendently  delicate. 

In  fine,  though  Mrs.  Smith's  job  is  perhaps  not 
quite  so  difficult  as  she  fancies  it  to  be,  it  is  much 
more  difficult  than  Mr.  Smith  fancies  it  to  be. 
And  if  it  is  not  as  well  done  as  she  thinks,  it  is  much 
better  done  than  Mr.  Smith  thinks.  But  she  will 
never  persuade  Mr.  Smith  that  he  is  wrong  until 
Mr.  Smith  condescends  to  know  what  he  is  talking 
about  in  the  discussion  of  household  matters.  Mr. 
Smith's  opportunities  of  criticism  are  far  too  am- 
ple ;  or,  at  any  rate,  he  makes  use  of  them  unfairly, 
and  not  as  a  man  of  honour.  Supposing  that  Mrs. 
Smith  finished  all  her  work  at  four  o'clock,  and  was 


336  PARIS  NIGHTS 

free  to  stroll  into  Mr.  Smith's  place  of  business 
and  criticise  there  everything  that  did  not  please 
her!  (It  is  true  that  she  wouldn't  know  what  she 
was  talking  about;  but  neither  does  Mr.  Smith  at 
home ;  at  home  Mr.  Smith  finds  pride  in  not  know- 
ing what  he  is  talking  about.)  Mr.  Smith  would 
have  a  bit  of  a  "time"  between  four  and  six. 

Mr.  and  Mrs.  Smith  are  united  by  a  genuine  af- 
fection. But  their  secret  attitudes  on  the  subject 
of  home  management  cause  that  affection,  by  a 
constant  slight  friction,  to  wear  thin.  It  must  be 
so.  And  it  will  be  so  until  (a)  Mr.  Smith  deigns 
to  learn  the  business  of  his  home;  (b)  Mr.  Smith 
ceases  to  expect  Mrs.  Smith  to  perform  miracles; 
(c)  Mrs.  Smith  ceases  to  be  an  amateur  in  domes- 
tic economy — i.  e.,  until  domestic  economy  becomes 
the  principal  subject  in  the  upper  forms  of  the 
average  girls'  school. 

At  present  the  organisation  of  the  home  is  an 
agency  against  the  triumph  of  marriage  as  an  in- 
stitution. 


HARRY'S  POINT  or  VIEW 

You  may  have  forgotten  young  Harry  Smith, 
whom  I  casually  mentioned  in  my  first  section,  the 
schoolboy  of  fifteen.  I  should  not  be  surprised  to 
hear  that  you  had  forgotten  him.  He  is  often  for- 
gotten in  the  home  of  the  Smiths.  Compared  with 
Mr.  Smith,  the  creator  of  the  home,  or  with  the 
lordly  eldest  son  John,  who  earns  his  own  living  and 
is  nearly  engaged,  or  with  Mary,  who  actually  is  en- 
gaged, young  Harry  is  unimportant.  Still,  his 
case  is  very  interesting,  and  his  own  personal  im- 
pression of  the  home  of  the  Smiths  must  be  of 
value. 

Is  Harry  Smith  happy  in  the  home?  Of  course, 
one  would  not  expect  him  to  be  perfectly  happy. 
But  is  he  as  happy  as  circumstances  in  themselves 
allow?  My  firm  answer  is  that  he  is  not.  I  am 
entirely  certain  that  on  the  whole  Harry  Smith 
regards  home  as  a  fag,  a  grind,  and  a  bore.  Mr. 
Smith,  on  reading  these  lines,  is  furious,  and  Mrs. 
Smith  is  hurt.  What!  Our  dear  Harry  experi- 
ences tedium  and  disappointment  with  his  dear  pa- 
rents? Nonsense! 

The  fact  is,  no  parents  will  believe  that  their 
children  are  avoidably  unhappy.  It  is  universally 
agreed  nowadays,  that  children  in  the  eighteenth 

337 


338 


PARIS  NIGHTS 


century,  and  in  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth, 
had  a  pretty  bad  time  under  the  sway  of  their  el- 
ders. But  the  parent  of  those  epochs  would  have 
been  indignant  at  any  accusation  of  ill-treatment. 
He  would  have  called  his  sway  beneficent  and  his 
affection  doting.  The  same  with  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Smith!  Now,  I  do  not  mean,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Smith, 
that  you  crudely  ill-treat  your  son,  tying  him  to 
posts,  depriving  him  of  sleep,  or  pulling  chestnuts 
out  of  the  fire  with  his  fingers.  (See  reports  of 
S.P.C.C.)  A  thousand  times,  no!  You  are  soft- 
hearted. Mrs.  Smith  is  occasionally  somewhat  too 
soft-hearted.  Still,  I  maintain  that  you  ill-treat 
Harry  in  a  very  subtle,  moral  way,  by  being  funda- 
mentally unjust  to  him  in  your  own  minds. 
£  «*  ^  # 

Just  look  at  your  Harry,  my  excellent  and  con- 
scientious Mr.  Smith.  He  is  all  alive  there,  a  real 
human  being,  not  a  mechanical  doll;  he  has  feelings 
just  like  yours,  only,  perhaps,  more  sensitive.  He 
finds  himself  in  a  world  which — well,  of  which  the 
less  said  the  better.  You  know  what  the  world  is, 
Mr.  Smith,  and  you  have  often  said  what  you  know. 
He  is  in  this  world,  and  he  can't  get  out  of  it.  You 
have  started  him  on  the  dubious  adventure,  and  he 
has  got  to  go  through  with  it.  And  what  is  the 
reason  of  his  being  here?  Did  you  start  him  out  of 
a  desire  to  raise  citizens  for  the  greatest  of  empires? 
Did  you  imagine  he  would  enjoy  it  hugely?  Did 
you  act  from  a  sense  of  duty  to  the  universe? 
None  of  these  things,  Mr.  Smith!  Your  Harry 


HARRY'S  POINT  OF  VIEW      339 

is  merely  here  because  you  thought  that  Mrs.  Smith 
was  somehow  charmingly  different  from;  other  girls. 
He  is  a  consequence  of  your  egotistic  desire  to  en- 
large your  borders,  of  your  determination  to  have 
what  you  wanted.  Every  time  you  cast  eyes 
on  him  he  ought  to  remind  you  what  a  self-seeking 
and  consequence-scorning  person  you  are,  Mr. 
Smith.  And  not  only  is  he  from  no  choice  or  wish 
of  his  own  in  a  world  as  to  which  the  most  power- 
ful intellects  are  still  arguing  whether  it  is  tragic 
or  ridiculous;  but  he  is  unarmed  for  the  perils  of 
the  business.  He  is  very  ignorant  and  very  inex- 
perienced, and  he  is  continually  passing  through 
disconcerting  modifications. 

These  are  the  facts,  my  dear  sir.  You  cannot 
deny  that  you,  for  your  own  satisfaction,  have  got 
Harry  into  a  rather  fearful  mess.  Do  you  con- 
stantly make  the  effort  to  be  sympathetic  to  this 
helpless  victim  of  your  egotism?  You  do  not. 
And  what  is  worse,  to  quiet  your  own  consciences, 
both  you  and  Mrs.  Smith  are  for  ever  pouring  into 
his  ear  a  shocking — I  won't  call  it  "lie" — perver- 
sion of  the  truth.  You  are  always  absurdly  try- 
ing to  persuade  him  that  the  obligation  is  on  his 
side.  Not  a  day  wears  to  night  but  Mrs.  Smith 
expresses  to  Harry  her  conviction  that  by  good  be- 
haviour he  ought  to  prove  his  gratitude  to  you  for 
being  such  a  kind  father. 

And  you  talk  to  him  in  the  same  strain  of  Mrs. 
Smith.  The  sum  of  your  teaching  is  an  insinua- 
tion— often  more  than  an  insinuation — that  you 


340  PARIS  NIGHTS 

have  conferred  a  favour  on  Harry.  Supposing 
that  some  one  pitched  you  into  the  Ship  Canal — 
one  of  the  salubrious  reaches  near  Warrington,  Mr. 
Smith — and  then  clumsily  dragged  you  half-way 
out,  and  punctured  his  efforts  by  a  reiterated  state- 
ment that  gratitude  to  him  ought  to  fill  your  breast, 
how  would  you  feel? 

*    «*    #    # 

Things  are  better  than  they  were,  but  the  general 
attitude  of  the  parent  to  the  child  is  still  funda- 
mentally insincere,  and  it  mars  the  success  of  the 
home,  for  it  engenders  in  the  child  a  sense  of  in- 
justice. Do  you  fancy  that  Harry  is  for  an  in- 
stant deceived  by  the  rhetoric  of  his  parents?  Not 
he !  Children  are  very  difficult  to  deceive,  and  they 
are  horribly  frank  to  themselves.  It  is  quite  bad 
enough  for  Harry  to  be  compelled  to  go  to  school. 
Harry,  however,  has  enough  sense  to  perceive  that 
he  must  go  to  school.  But  when  his  parents  be- 
gin to  yarn  that  he  ought  to  be  glad  to  go  to  school, 
that  he  ought  to  enjoy  the  privilege  of  solving  quad- 
ratic equations  and  learning  the  specific  gravities 
of  elements,  he  is  quite  naturally  alienated. 

He  does  not  fail  to  observe  that  in  a  hundred 
things  the  actions  of  his  parents  contradict  their 
precepts.  When,  being  a  boy,  he  behaves  like  a 
boy,  and  his  parents  affect  astonishment  and  dis- 
gust, he  knows  it  is  an  affectation.  When  his 
father,  irritated  by  a  superabundance  of  noise, 
frowns  and  instructs  Harry  to  get  away  for  he  is 
tired  of  the  sight  of  him,  Harry  is  excusably  af- 
fronted in  his  secret  pride. 


HARRY'S  POINT  OF  VIEW       341 

These  are  illustrations  of  the  imperfect  success 
of  the  Smiths'  home  as  an  organisation  for  making 
Harry  happy.  Useless  for  Mr.  Smith  to  argue 
that  it  is  "all  for  Harry's  own  good."  He  would 
simply  be  aggravating  his  offence.  Discipline,  the 
enforcement  of  regulations,  is  necessary  for  Harry. 
I  strongly  favour  discipline.  But  discipline  can 
be  practised  with  sympathy  or  without  sympathy; 
with  or  without  the  accompaniment  of  hypocritical 
remarks  that  deceive  no  one ;  with  or  without  odious 
assumptions  of  superiority  and  philanthropy. 

I  trust  that  young  John  and  young  Mary  will 
take  note,  and  that  their  attitude  to  their  Harrys 
will  be,  not:  "You  ought  to  be  glad  you're  alive," 
but:  "We  thoroughly  sympathise  with  your  diffi- 
culties. We  quite  agree  that  these  rules  and  pro- 
hibitions and  injunctions  are  a  nuisance  for  you, 
but  they  will  save  you  trouble  later,  and  we  will  be 
as  un-cast-iron  as  we  can."  Honesty  is  the  best 
policy. 


VI 

THE  FUTURE 

The  cry  is  that  the  institution  of  the  home  is  be- 
ing undermined,  and  that,  therefore,  society  is  in 
the  way  of  perishing.  It  is  stated  that  the  home 
is  insidiously  attacked,  at  one  end  of  the  scale,  by 
the  hotel  and  restaurant  habit,  and,  at  the  other, 
by  such  innovations  as  the  feeding-of -school-chil- 
dren habit.  We  are  asked  to  contemplate  the 
crowded  and  glittering  dining-rooms  of  the  Mid- 
land, the  Carlton,  the  Adelphi,  on,  for  instance, 
Christmas  Night,  when,  of  all  nights,  people  ought] 
to  be  on  their  own  hearths,  and  we  are  told:  "It 
has  come  to  this.  Thisi  is  the  result  of  the  craze  for 
pleasure!  Where  is  the  home  now?" 

To  which  my  reply  would  be  that  the  home  re- 
mains just  about  where  it  was.  The  spectacular 
existence  of  a  few  great  hotels  has  never  mirrored 
the  national  life.  Is  the  home  of  the  Smiths,  for 
example,  being  gradually  overthrown  by  the  res- 
taurant habit?  The  restaurant  habit  will  only 
strengthen  the  institution  of  the  home.  The  most 
restaurant-loving  people  on  the  face  of  the  earth 
are  the  French,  and  the  French  home  is  a  far  more 
powerful,  more  closely-knit  organisation  than  our 
own.  Why!  Up  to  last  year  a  Frenchman  of 
sixty  could  not  marry  without  the  consent  of  his 

343 


THE  FUTURE  343 

parents,  if  they  happened  to  be  alive.  I  wonder 
what  the  Smiths  would  say  to  that  as  an  example 
of  the  disintegration  of  the  home  by  the  restaurant 
habit! 

Most  assuredly  the  modest,  medium,  average 
home  founded  by  Mr.  Smith  has  not  been  in  the 
slightest  degree  affected  either  by  the  increase  of 
luxury  and  leisure,  or  by  any  alleged  meddlesome- 
ness on  the  part  of  the  State.  The  home  founded 
by  Mr.  Smith,  with  all  its  faults — and  I  have  not 
spared  them — is  too  convenient,  too  economical, 
too  efficient,  and,  above  all,  too  natural,  to  be  over- 
thrown, or  even  shaken,  by  either  luxury  or  grand- 
motherliness.  To  change  the  metaphor  and  call  it 
a  ship,  it  remains  absolutely  right  and  tight.  It  is 
true  that  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Smith  assert  sadly  that 
young  John  and  young  Mary  have  much  more  lib- 
erty than  they  ever  had,  but  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Smith's 
parents  asserted  exactly  the  same  thing  of  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Smith,  and  their  grandparents  of  their  par- 
ents, and  so  on  backwards  doubtless  up  to  Noah. 
That  is  only  part  of  a  process,  a  beneficent  pro- 
cess. 

Nevertheless,  the  home  of  the  Smiths  has  a  very 
real  enemy,  and  that  enemy  is  not  outside,  but  in- 
side. That  enemy  is  Matilda.  I  have  not  hitherto 
discussed  Matilda.  She  sleeps  in  the  attic,  and 
earns  <£18  a  year,  rising  to  £20.  She  doesn't 
count,  and  yet  she  is  the  factor  which,  more  than 
any  other,  will  modify  the  home  of  the  Smiths. 

Let  me  say  no  word  against  Matilda.     She  is  a 


344  PARIS  NIGHTS 

respectable  and  a  passably  industrious,  and  a  pass- 
ably obedient  girl.  I  know  her.  She  usually 
opens  the  door  for  me,  and  we  converse  "like  any- 
thing"! "Good  evening,  Matilda,"  I  say  to  her. 
"Good  evening,  sir,"  says  she.  And  in  her  tone 
and  mine  is  an  implicit  recognition  of  the  fact  that 
I  have  been  very  good-natured  and  sympathetic  in 
greeting  her  as  a  human  being.  "Mr.  Smith  in?" 
I  ask,  smiling.  "Yes,  sir.  Will  you  come  this 
way?"  says  she.  Then  I  forget  her.  A  nice, 
pleasant  girl!  And  she  has  a  good  place,  too. 
The  hygienic  conditions  are  superior  to  those  of  a 
mill,  and  the  labour  less  fatiguing.  And  both  Mrs. 
Smith  and  Miss  Mary  help  her  enormously  in  "lit- 
tle ways."  She  eats  better  food  than  she  would 
eat  at  home,  and  she  has  a  bedroom  all  to  herself. 
You  might  say  she  was  on  velvet. 

And  yet,  in  the  middle  of  one  of  those  jolly,  un- 
affected evenings  that  I  occasionally  spend  with 
the  Smiths,  when  the  piano  has  been  going,  and  I 
have  helped  Mrs.  Smith  to  cheat  herself  at  pa- 
tience, and  given  Mr.  Smith  the  impression  that 
he  can  teach  me  a  thing  or  two,  and  discussed  cig- 
arettes with  John,  and  songs  with  Mary,  and  the 
sense  of  intimate  fellowship  and  mutual  compre- 
hension is  in  the  air,  in  comes  Matilda  suddenly 
with  a  tray  of  coffee — and  makes  me  think  furi- 
ously! She  goes  out  as  rapidly  as  she  came  in,  for 
she  is  bound  by  an  iron  law  not  to  stop  an  instant, 
and  if  she  happened  to  remark  in  a  friendly,  human 
way:  "You  seem  to  be  having  a  good  time  here!" 


THE  FUTURE  345 

all  the  Smiths,  and  I  too,  would  probably  drop 
down  dead  from  pained  shock. 

But  though  she  is  gone  I  continue  to  think  furi- 
ously. Where  had  she  been  all  the  jolly  evening? 
Where  has  she  returned  to?  Well,  to  her  beauti- 
ful hygienic  kitchen,  where  she  sits  or  works  all  by 
herself,  on  velvet.  My  thoughts  follow  her  ex- 
istence through  the  day,  and  I  remember  that  from 
morn  till  odorous  eve  she  must  not,  save  on  busi- 
ness, speak  unless  she  is  spoken  to.  Then  I  give 
up  thinking  about  Matilda's  case,  because  it  annoys 
me.  I  recall  a  phrase  of  young  John's ;  he  is  youth- 
fully interested  in  social  problems,  and  he  wants  a 
latch-key  vote.  Said  John  to  me  once,  when  an- 
other Matilda  had  left:  "Of  course,  if  one  thought 
too  much  about  Matilda's  case,  one  wouldn't  be 
able  to  sleep  at  nights." 

$    *    &    $ 

When  you  visit  the  Smiths  the  home  seems  al- 
ways to  be  in  smooth  working  order.  But  ask  Mrs. 
Smith!  Ask  Mary!  Get  beneath  the  surface. 
And  you  will  glimpse  the  terrible  trouble  that  lies 
concealed.  Mrs.  Smith  began  with  Matilda  the 
First.  Are  you  aware  that  this  is  Matilda  the 
Fortieth,  and  that  between  Matilda  the  Fortieth 
and  Matilda  the  Forty-first  there  will  probably  be 
an  interregnum?  Mrs.  Smith  simply  cannot  get 
Matildas.  And  when  by  happy  chance  she  does 
get  a  Matilda,  the  misguided  girl  won't  see  the 
velvet  with  which  the  kitchen  and  the  attic  are  car- 
peted, 


346  PARIS  NIGHTS 

Mrs.  Smith  says  the  time  will  come  when  the  race 
of  Matildas  will  have  disappeared.  And  Mrs. 
Smith  is  right.  The  "general  servant"  is  bound 
to  disappear  utterly.  In  North  America  she  has 
already  almost  disappeared.  Think  of  that!  In- 
stead of  her,  in  many  parts  of  the  American  con- 
tinent, there  is  an  independent  stranger  who,  if  she 
came  to  the  Smiths,  would  have  the  ineffable  impu- 
dence to  eat  at  the  same  table  as  the  Smiths,  just  as 
though  she  was  of  the  same  clay,  and  who,  when  told 
to  do  something,  would  be  quite  equal  to  snapping 
out:  "Do  it  yourself." 

But  you  say  that  the  inconvenience  brought 
about  by  the  disappearance  of  Matilda  would  be 
too  awful  to  contemplate.  I  venture  to  predict 
that  the  disappearance  of  Matilda  will  not  ex- 
haust the  resources  of  civilisation.  The  home  will 
dontinue.  But  mechanical  invention  will  have  to 
be  quickened  in  order  to  replace  Matilda's  red 
hands.  And  there  will  be  those  suburban  restau- 
rants !  And  I  have  a  pleasing  vision  of  young  John, 
in  the  home  which  Tie  builds,  cleaning  his  own  boots. 
Inconvenient,  but  it  is  coming! 


STREETS     ROADS 
AND  TRAINS— 1907-1909 


IN    WATLING    STREET 

Upon  an  evening  in  early  autumn,  I,  who  had 
never  owned  an  orchard  before,  stood  in  my  or- 
chard; behind  me  were  a  phalanx  of  some  sixty 
trees  bearing  (miraculously,  to  my  simplicity)  a 
fine  crop  of  apples  and  plums — my  apples  and 
plums,  and  a  mead  of  some  two  acres,  my  mead, 
upon  which  I  discerned  possibilities  of  football  and 
cricket ;  behind  these  was  a  double  greenhouse  con- 
taining three  hundred  pendent  bunches  of  grapes 
of  the  dark  and  aristocratic  variety  which  I  thought 
I  had  seen  in  Piccadilly  ticketed  at  four  shillings 
a  pound — my  grapes;  still  further  behind  uprose 
the  chimneys  of  a  country-house,  uncompromis- 
ingly plain  and  to  some  eyes  perhaps  ugly,  but  my 
country-house,  the  lease  of  which,  stamped,  was  in 
my  pocket.  Immediately  in  front  of  me  was  a 
luxuriant  hedge  which,  long  undipped,  had  at- 
tained a  height  of  at  least  fifteen  feet.  Beyond  the 
hedge  the  ground  fell  away  sharply  into  a  drain- 
ing ditch,  and  on  the  other  side  of  the  ditch, 
through  the  interstices  of  the  hedge,  I  perceived 
glimpses  of  a  very  straight  and  very  white  high- 
way. 

This  highway  was  Watling  Street,  built  of  the 
Romans,  and  even  now  surviving  as  the  most  fa- 

349 


350  PARIS  NIGHTS 

mous  road  in  England.  I  had  "learnt"  it  at  school, 
and  knew  that  it  once  ran  from  Dover  to  London, 
from  London  to  Chester  and  from  Chester  to  York. 
Just  recently  I  had  tracked  it  diligently  on  a  series 
of  county  maps,  and  discovered  that,  though  only 
vague  fragments  of  it  remained  in  Kent,  Surrey, 
Shropshire,  Cheshire,  and  Yorkshire,  it  still  flour- 
ished and  abounded  exceedingly  in  my  particular 
neighbourhood  as  a  right  line,  austere,  renowned, 
indispensable,  clothed  in  its  own  immortal  dust.  I 
could  see  but  patches  of  it  in  the  twilight,  but  I 
was  aware  that  it  stretched  fifteen  miles  southeast 
of  me,  and  unnumbered  miles  northwest  of  me,  with 
scarcely  a  curve  to  break  the  splendid  inexorable 
monotony  of  its  career.  To  me  it  was  a  wonderful 
road — more  wonderful  than  the  Great  North  Road, 
or  the  military  road  from  Moscow  to  Vladivostock. 
And  the  most  wonderful  thing  about  it  was  that 
I  lived  on  it.  After  all,  few  people  can  stamp 
the  top  of  their  notepaper,  "Watling  Street,  Eng- 
land." It  is  not  a  residential  thoroughfare. 

Only  persons  of  imagination  can  enter  into  my 
feelings  at  that  moment.  I  had  spent  two-thirds 
of  my  life  in  a  town  (squalid,  industrial)  and  the 
remaining  third  in  Town.  I  thought  I  knew  every 
creosoted  block  in  Fleet  Street,  every  bookstall  in 
Shoreditch,  every  hosier's  in  Piccadilly.  I  cer- 
tainly did  know  the  order  of  stations  on  the  Inner 
Circle,  the  various  frowns  of  publishers,  the  strange 
hysteric,  silly  atmosphere  of  theatrical  first-nights, 
and  stars  of  the  Empire  and  Alhambra  (by  sight), 
and  the  vicious  odours  of  a  thousand  and  one  res- 


IN  WATLING  STREET         351 

taurants.  And  lo!  burdened  with  all  this  accumu- 
lated knowledge,  shackled  by  all  these  habits,  as- 
sociations, entrancements,  I  was  yet  moved  by 
some  mysterious  and  far-off  atavism  to  pack  up, 
harness  the  oxen,  "trek,"  and  go  and  live  in  "the 
country." 

Of  course  I  soon  discovered  that  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  "the  country,"  just  as  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  Herbert  Spencer's  "state."  "The 
country"  is  an  entity  which  exists  only  in  the  brains 
of  an  urban  population,  whose  members  ridicu- 
lously regard  the  terrene  surface  as  a  concatenation 
of  towns  surrounded  by  earthy  space.  There  is 
England,  and  there  are  spots  on  England  called 
towns:  that  is  all.  But  at  that  time  I  too  had 
the  illusion  of  "the  country,"  a  district  where  one 
saw  "trees,"  "flowers,"  and  "birds."  For  me,  a 
tree  was  not  an  oak  or  an  ash  or  an  elm  or  a  birch 
or  a  chestnut;  it  was  just  a  "tree."  For  me  there 
were  robins,  sparrows,  and  crows;  the  rest  of  the 
winged  fauna  was  merely  "birds."  I  recognised 
roses,  daisies,  dandelions,  forget-me-nots,  chrysan- 
themums, and  one  or  two  more  blossoms;  all  else 
was  "flowers."  Remember  that  all  this  happened 
before  the  advent  of  the  nature-book  and  the  sub- 
lime invention  of  week-ending,  and  conceive  me 
plunging  into  this  unknown,  inscrutable,  and  rec- 
ondite "country,"  as  I  might  have  plunged  fully 
clothed  and  unable  to  swim  into  the  sea.  It  was 
a  prodigious  adventure!  When  my  friends  asked 
me,  with  furtive  glances  at  each  other  as  in  the 
presence  of  a  lunatic,  why  I  was  going  to  live  in 


352  PARIS  NIGHTS 

the  country,  I  could  only  reply:  "Because  I  want 
to.  I  want  to  see  what  it's  like."  I  might  have 
attributed  my  action  to  the  dearness  of  season- 
tickets  on  the  Underground,  to  the  slowness  of 
omnibuses  or  the  danger  of  cabs :  my  friends  would 
have  been  just  as  wise,  and  I  just  as  foolish,  in 
their  esteem.  I  admit  that  their  attitude  of  be- 
nevolent contempt,  of  far-seeing  sagacity,  gave  me 
to  think.  And  although  I  was  obstinate,  it  was 
with  a  pang  of  misgiving  that  I  posted  the  notice 
of  quitting  my  suburban  residence;  and  the  pang 
was  more  acute  when  I  signed  the  contract  for  the 
removal  of  my  furniture.  I  called  on  my  friends 
before  the  sinister  day  of  exodus. 

"Good-bye,"  I  said. 

"Au  revoir,"  they  replied,  with  calm  vaticinatory 
assurance,  "we  shall  see  you  back  again  in  a  year." 
«*  *  &  * 

Thus,  outwardly  braggart,  inwardly  quaking,  I 
departed.  The  quaking  had  not  ceased  as  I  stood, 
in  the  autumn  twilight,  in  my  beautiful  orchard, 
in  front  of  my  country-house.  Toiling  up  the 
slope  from  the  southward,  I  saw  an  enormous  van 
with  three  horses:  the  last  instalment  of  my  chat- 
tels. As  it  turned  lumberingly  at  right  angles  into 
my  private  road  or  boreen,  I  said  aloud: 

"I've  done  it." 

I  had.  I  felt  like  a  statesman  who  has  handed 
an  ultimatum  to  a  king's  messenger.  No  with- 
drawal was  now  possible.  From  the  reverie  nat- 
ural to  this  melancholy  occasion  I  was  aroused  by 
a  disconcerting  sound  of  collision,  the  rattle  of 


IN  WATLING  STREET          358 

chains,  and  the  oaths  customary  to  drivers  in  a  dif- 
ficulty. I  ran  towards  the  house  and  down  the 
weedy  drive  bordered  by  trees  which  a  learned  gar- 
dener had  told  me  were  of  the  variety,  cupressus 
lawsoniana.  In  essaying  the  perilous  manoeuvre 
of  twisting  round  three  horses  and  a  long  van  on  a 
space  about  twenty  feet  square,  the  driver  had 
overset  the  brick  pier  upon  which  swung  my  gar- 
den-gate. The  unicorn  horse  of  the  team  was 
nosing  at  the  cupressus  lawsoniana  and  the  van  was 
scotched  in  the  gateway.  I  thought,  "This  is  an 
omen."  I  was,  however,  reassured  by  the  sight  of 
two  butchers  and  two  bakers  each  asseverating  that 
nothing  could  afford  him  greater  pleasure  than  to 
call  every  day  for  orders.  A  minute  later  the  post- 
man, in  his  own  lordly  equipage,  arrived  with  my 
newspapers  and  his  respects.  I  tore  open  a  paper 
and  read  news  of  London.  I  convinced  myself 
that  London  actually  existed,  though  I  were  never 
to  see  it  again.  The  smashing  of  the  pier  dwindled 
from  a  catastrophe  to  an  episode. 
«*  «*  «*  ,* 

The  next  morning  very  early  I  was  in  Watling 
Street.     Since  then 

Full  many  a  glorious  morning  have  I  seen 
Flatter  the  mountain  tops  with  sovereign  eye, 

but  this  was  the  first  in  the  sequence  of  those 
Shaksperean  mornings,  and  it  was  also,  subjec- 
tively, the  finest.  I  shall  not  describe  it,  since,  ob- 
jectively and  in  the  quietude  of  hard  fact,  I  now 
perceive  that  it  could  not  have  been  in  the  least 


354  PARIS  NIGHTS 

remarkable.  The  sun  rose  over  the  southward 
range  which  Bunyan  took  for  the  model  of  his  De- 
lectable Mountains,  and  forty  or  fifty  square  miles 
of  diversified  land  was  spread  out  in  front  of  me. 
The  road  cut  down  for  a  couple  of  miles  like  a  geo- 
metrician's rule,  and  disappeared  in  a  slight  S 
curve,  the  work  of  a  modern  generation  afraid  of 
gradients,  on  to  the  other  side  of  the  Delectable 
Mountains.  I  thought:  "How  magnificent  were 
those  Romans  in  their  disregard  of  everything  ex- 
cept direction!"  And  being  a  professional  novel- 
ist I  naturally  began  at  once  to  consider  the  possi- 
bilities of  exploiting  Watling  Street  in  fiction. 
Then  I  climbed  to  the  brow  of  my  own  hill,  whence, 
at  the  foot  of  the  long  northerly  slope,  I  could 
descry  the  outposts  of  my  village,  a  mile  away; 
there  was  no  habitation  of  mankind  nearer  to  me 
than  this  picturesque  and  venerable  hamlet,  which 
seemed  to  lie  inconsiderable  on  the  great  road  like 
a  piece  of  paper.  The  seventy-four  telegraph 
wires  which  border  the  great  road  run  above  the 
roofs  of  Winghurst  as  if  they  were  unaware  of  its 
existence.  "And  Winghurst,"  I  reflected,  "is 
henceforth  my  metropolis."  No  office!  No  mem- 
orising of  time-tables!  No  daily  struggle-for- 
lunch!  Winghurst,  with  three  hundred  inhabi- 
tants, the  centre  of  excitement,  the  fount  of  ex- 
ternal life! 

The  course  of  these  ordinary  but  inevitable 
thoughts  was  interrupted  by  my  consciousness  of 
a  presence  near  me.  A  man  coughed.  He  had 
approached  me,  in  almost  soleless  boots,  on  the 


IN  WATLING  STREET          355 

grassy  footpath.  For  a  brief  second  I  regarded 
him  with  that  peculiar  fellow-feeling  which  a  man 
who  has  risen  extremely  early  is  wont  to  exhibit 
towards  another  man  who  has  risen  extremely 
early.  But  finding  no  answering  vanity  in  his  un- 
distinguished features  I  quickly  put  on  an  appear- 
ance of  usualness,  to  indicate  that  I  might  be  found 
on  that  spot  at  that  hour  every  morning.  The 
man  looked  shabby,  and  that  Sherlock  Holmes  who 
lies  concealed  in  each  one  of  us  decided  for  me  that 
lie  must  be  a  tailor  out-of-work. 

"Good  morning,  sir,"  he  said. 

"Good  morning,"  I  said. 

"Do  you  want  to  buy  a  good  recipe  for  a  horse, 
sir?"  he  asked. 

"A  horse?"  I  repeated,  wrondering  whether  he 
was  a  lunatic,  or  a  genius  who  had  discovered  a 
way  to  manufacture  horses. 

•"Yes,  sir,"  he  said,  "They  often  fall  sick,  sir, 
you  know.  The  saying  is,  as  I  daresay  you've 
heard,  'Never  trust  a  woman's  word  or  a  horse's 
health.'  " 

I  corrected  his  quotation. 

"I've  got  one  or  two  real  good  recipes,"  he  re- 
sumed. 

"But  I've  got  no  horse,"  I  replied,  and  that 
seemed  to  finish  the  interview. 

"No  offence,  I  hope,  sir,"  he  said,  and  passed 
on  towards  the  Delectable  Mountains. 

He  was  a  mystery;  his  speech  disclosed  no 
marked  local  accent;  he  had  certainly  had  some 
education;  and  he  was  hawking  horse-remedies  in 


356  PARIS  NIGHTS 

Watling  Street  at  sunrise.  Here  was  the  germ 
of  my  first  lesson  in  rusticity.  Except  in  towns, 
the  "horsey"  man  does  not  necessarily  look  horsey. 
That  particular  man  resembled  a  tailor,  and  by  a 
curious  coincidence  the  man  most  fearfully  and 
wonderfuly  learned  in  equine  lore  that  I  have  yet 
known  is  a  tailor. 

But  horses !  Six  miles  away  to  the  West  I  could 
see  the  steam  of  expresses  on  the  London  and 
North  Western  Main  line;  four  miles  to  the  East 
I  could  see  the  steam  of  expresses  on  the  Midland. 
And  here  was  an  individual  offering  stable-recipes 
as  simply  as  though  they  had  been  muffins!  I  re- 
flected on  my  empty  stable,  harness-room,  coach- 
house. I  began  to  suspect  that  I  was  in  a  land 
where  horses  entered  in  the  daily  and  hourly  exist- 
ence of  the  people.  I  had  known  for  weeks  that 
I  must  buy  a  horse ;  the  nearest  town  and  the  near- 
est railway  station  were  three  miles  off.  But  now, 
with  apprehension,  I  saw  that  mysterious  and  dan- 
gerous mercantile  operation  to  be  dreadfully  im- 
minent: me,  cor  am  publico,  buying  a  horse,  me  the 
dupe  of  copers,  me  a  butt  for  the  covert  sarcasm 
of  a  village  omniscient  about  horses  and  intolerant 
of  ignorance  on  such  a  subject! 
*  *  *  * 

Down  in  the  village,  that  early  morning,  I  saw 
a  pony  and  an  evidently  precarious  trap  standing 
in  front  of  the  principal  shop.  I  had  read  about 
the  "village-shop"  in  novels;  I  had  even  ventured 
to  describe  it  in  fiction  of  my  own ;  and  I  was  equally 
surprised  and  delighted  to  find  that  the  village- 


IN  WATLING  STREET          357 

shop  of  fiction  was  also  the  village-shop  of  fact. 
It  was  the  mere  truth  that  one  could  buy  every- 
thing in  this  diminutive  emporium,  that  the  multi- 
f ariousness  of  its  odours  excelled  that  of  the  odours 
of  Cologne,  and  that  the  proprietor,  who  had  never 
seen  me  before,  instantly  knew  me  and  all  about 
me.  Soon  I  was  in  a  fair  way  to  know  something 
of  the  proprietor.  He  was  informing  me  that  he 
had  five  little  children,  when  one  of  the  five,  snuf- 
fling and  in  a  critical  mood,  tumbled  into  the  shop 
out  of  an  obscure  Beyond. 

"And  what's  your  name?"  I  enquired  of  the  girl, 
with  that  fatuous,  false  blandness  of  tone  which 
the  inexpert  always  adopt  toward  children.  I 
thought  of  the  five  maidens  whose  names  were  five 
sweet  symphonies,  and  moreover  I  deemed  it  politic 
to  establish  friendly  relations  with  my  monop- 
olist. 

"She's  a  little  shy,"  I  remarked. 

"It's  a  boy,  sir,"  said  the  monopolist. 

It  occurred  to  me  that  Nature  was  singularly 
uninventive  in  devising  new  quandaries  for  the 
foolish. 

"Tell  the  gentleman  your  name." 

Thus  admonished,  the  boy  emitted  one  mono- 
syllable: "Guy." 

"We  called  him  Guy  because  he  was  born  on  the 
fifth  of  November,"  the  monopolist  was  good 
enough  to  explain. 

As  I  left  the  shop  a  man  driving  a  pony  drew 
up  at  the  door  with  an  immense  and  sudden  flourish 
calculated  to  impress  the  simple.  I  noticed  that 


358  PARIS  NIGHTS 

the  pony  was  the  same  animal  which  I  had  previ- 
ously seen  standing  there. 

"Want  to  buy  a  pony,  sir?"  The  question  was 
thrown  at  me  like  a  missile  that  narrowly  escaped 
my  head;  launched  in  a  voice  which  must  once  have 
been  extremely  powerful,  but  which  now,  whether 
by  abuse  of  shouting  in  the  open  air  or  by  the  de- 
teriorating effect  of  gin  on  the  vocal  chords,  was 
only  a  loud,  passionate  whisper:  so  that,  though 
the  man  obviously  bawled  with  all  his  might,  the 
drum  of  one's  ear  was  not  shattered.  I  judged, 
partly  from  the  cut  of  his  coat  and  the  size  of  the 
buttons  on  it,  and  partly  from  the  creaminess  of 
the  shaggy,  long-tailed  pony,  that  my  questioner 
was  or  had  been  connected  with  circuses.  His  very 
hand  was  against  him;  the  turned-back  podgy 
thumb  showed  acquisitiveness,  and  the  enormous 
Gophir  diamonds  in  brass  rings  argued  a  certain 
lack  of  really  fine  taste.  His  face  had  literally 
the  brazen  look,  and  that  absolutely  hard,  impudent, 
glaring  impassivity  acquired  only  by  those  who 
earn  more  than  enough  to  drink  by  continually 
bouncing  the  public. 

"The  finest  pony  in  the  county,  sir."  (It  was 
an  animal  organism  gingerly  supported  on  four 
crooked  legs;  a  quadruped  and  nothing  more.) 
"The  finest  pony  in  the  county!"  he  screamed, 
"Finest  pony  in  England,  sir!  Not  another  like 
him!  I  took  him  to  the  Rothschild  horse-show, 
but  they  wouldn't  have  him.  Said  I'd  come  too 
late  to  enter  him  for  the  first-clawss.  They  were 
afraid — afferaid!  There  was  the  water- jump. 


WATLING  STREET          359 

'Stand  aside,  you  blighters,'  I  said,  'and  he'll  jump 
that,  the  d — d  gig  and  all.'  But  they  were 
afferaidl" 

I  asked  if  the  animal  was  quiet  to  drive. 

"Quiet  to  drive,  sir,  did  you  say?  I  should  say 
so.  I  says  Away,  and  off  he  goes."  Here  the 
thin  scream  became  a  screech.  "Then  I  says  Pull 
up,  you  blighter,  and  he  stops  dead.  A  child  could 
drive  him.  He  don't  want  no  driving.  You  could 
drive  him  with  a  silken  thread."  His  voice  melted, 
and  with  an  exquisite  tender  cadence  he  repeated: 
4  With  a  silk-en  therredd!" 

"Well,"  I  said.     "How  much?" 

"How  much,  did  you  say,  sir?  How  much?" 
He  made  it  appear  that  this  question  came  upon 
him  as  an  extraordinary  surprise.  I  nodded. 

He  meditated  on  the  startling  problem,  and  then 
yelled:  "Thirty  guineas.  It's  giving  him  away." 

"Make  it  shillings,"  I  said.  I  was  ingenuously 
satisfied  with  my  retort,  but  the  man  somehow 
failed  to  appreciate  it. 

"Come  here,"  he  said,  in  a  tone  of  intimate  con- 
fidence. "Come  here.  Listen.  I've  had  that 
pony's  picture  painted.  Finest  artist  in  England, 
sir.  And  frame!  You  never  see  such  a  frame! 
At  thirty  guineas  I'll  throw  the  picture  in.  Look 
ye!  That  picture  cost  me  two  quid,  and  here's  the 
receipt."  He  pulled  forth  a  grimy  paper,  and  I 
accepted  it  from  his  villainous  fingers.  It  proved, 
however,  to  be  a  receipt  for  four  pounds,  and  for 
the  portrait,  not  of  a  pony,  but  of  a  man. 

"This  is  a  receipt  for  your  own  portrait,"  I  said. 


360  PARIS  NIGHTS 

"Now  wasn't  that  a  coorious  mistake  for  me  to 
make?"  he  asked,  as  if  demanding  information. 
"Wasn't  that  a  coorious  mistake?" 

I  was  obliged  to  give  him  the  answer  he  desired, 
and  then  he  produced  the  correct  receipt. 

"Now,"  he  said  wooingly,  "There!  Is  it  a  trade? 
I'll  bring  you  the  picture  to-night.  Finest  frame 
you  ever  saw!  What?  No?  Look  here,  buy  him 
at  thirty  guineas — say  pounds — and  I'll  chuck  you 
both  the  blighted  pictures  in!" 

"Away!"  he  screamed  a  minute  later,  and  the 
cream  pony,  galvanised  into  frantic  activity  by  that 
sound,  and  surely  not  controllable  by  a  silken 
thread,  scurried  off  towards  the  Delectable  Moun- 
tains. 

This  was  my  first  insight  into  horse  dealing. 


II 

STREET  TALKING 

Few  forms  of  amusement  are  more  amusing  and 
few  forms  of  amusement  cost  less  than  to  walk 
slowly  along  the  crowded  central  thoroughfares  of 
a  great  capital — London,  Paris,  or  Timbuctoo— 
with  ears  open  to  catch  fragments  of  conversation 
not  specially  intended  for  your  personal  consump- 
tion. It,  perhaps,  resembles  slightly  the  justly 
blamed  habit  of  listening  at  keyholes  and  the  uni- 
versally practised  habit  of  reading  other  peo- 
ple's postcards ;  it  is  possibly  not  quite  "nice."  But, 
like  both  these  habits,  it  is  within  the  law,  and  the 
chances  of  it  doing  any  one  any  harm  are  exceed- 
ingly remote.  Moreover,  it  has  in  an  amazing 
degree  the  excellent  quality  of  taking  you  out  of 
yourself — and  putting  you  into  some  one  else.  De- 
tectives employ  it,  and  if  it  were  forbidden  where 
would  novelists  be?  Where,  for  example,  would 
Mr.  Pett  Ridge  be?  Once  yielded  to,  it  grows  on 
you;  it  takes  hold  of  you  in  its  fell,  insidious  clutch, 
as  does  the  habit  of  whisky,  and  becomes  incur- 
able. You  then  treat  it  seriously;  you  make  of  it 
a  passkey  to  the  seventy  and  seven  riddles  of  the 
universe,  with  wards  for  each  department  of  life. 
You  judge  national  characteristics  by  it;  by  it  alone 
you  compare  rival  civilisations.  And,  incidentally, 

361 


362  PARIS  NIGHTS 

you  somewhat  increase  your  social  value  as  a  diner- 
out. 

$    #    »    $ 

For  a  long  time  I  practised  it  in  the  streets  of 
Paris,  the  city  of  efficient  chatter,  the  city  in  which 
wayfarers  talk  with  more  exuberance  and  more 
grammar  than  anywhere  else.  Here  are  a  few 
phrases,  fair  samples  from  lists  of  hundreds,  which 
I  have  gathered  and  stored,  on  the  boulevards  and 
in  quieter  streets,  such  as  the  Rue  Blanche,  where 
conversation  grows  intimate  on  mild  nights: — 

She  is  mad. 

She  lived  on  the  fourth  floor  last  year. 

Yes,  she  is  not  bad,  after  all. 

Thou  knowest,  my  old  one,  that  my  wife  is  a 
little  bizarre. 

He  has  left  her. 

They  say  she  is  very  jealous. 

Anything  except  oysters. 

Thou  annoyest  me  terribly,  my  dear. 

It  is  a  question  solely  of  the  cache-corset. 

With  those  feet! 

He  is  a  beau  gar^on,  but — 

He  is  the  fourth  in  three  years. 

My  big  wolf! 

Do  not  say  that,  my  small  rabbit. 

She  doesn't  look  it. 

It  is  open  to  any  one  to  assert  that  such  phrases 
have  no  significance,  or  that,  if  they  have  signifi- 
cance, their  significance  must  necessarily  be  hidden 
from  the  casual  observer.  But  to  me  they  are  like 
the  finest  lines  in  the  tragedies  of  John  Ford. 


STREET  TALKING  363 

Marlow  was  at  his  best  in  the  pentameter,  but  Ford 
usually  got  his  thrill  in  a  chipped  line  of  about 
three  words — three  words  which,  while  they  mean 
nothing,  mean  everything.  All  depends  on  what 
you  "read  into"  them.  And  the  true  impassioned 
student  of  human  nature  will  read  into  the  over- 
heard exclamations  of  the  street  a  whole  revealing 
philosophy.  What!  Two  temperaments  are  sep- 
arately born,  by  the  agency  of  chance  or  the  equally 
puzzling  agency  of  design,  they  one  day  collide, 
become  intimate,  and  run  parallel  for  a  space. 
You  perceive  them  darkly  afar  off;  they  approach 
you;  you  are  in  utter  ignorance  of  them:  and  then 
in  the  instant  of  passing  you  receive  a  blinding 
flash  of  illumination,  and  the  next  instant  they  are 
eternally  hidden  from  you  again.  That  blinding 
flash  of  illumination  may  consist  of  "My  big  wolf!" 
or  it  may  consist  of  "It  is  solely  a  question  of  the 
cache-corset."  But  in  any  case  it  is  and  must  be 
profoundly  significant.  In  any  case  it  is  a  gleam 
of  light  on  a  mysterious  place.  Even  the  matter 
of  the  height  of  the  floor  on  which  she  lived  is 
charged  with  an  overwhelming  effect  for  one  who 
loves  his  fellow-man.  And  lives  there  the  being 
stupid  or  audacious  enough  to  maintain  that  the 
French  national  character  does  not  emerge  charm- 
ingly and  with  a  curious  coherence  from  the  frag- 
ments of  soul-communication  which  I  have  set 
down? 

£       «*       £       «* 

On  New  Year's  Eve  I  was  watching  the  phe- 
nomena of  the  universal  scheme  of  things  in  Put- 


364  PARIS  NIGHTS 

ney  High-street.  A  man  and  a  girl  came  down 
the  footpath  locked  in  the  most  intimate  conversa- 
tion. I  could  see  that  they  were  perfectly  absorbed 
in  each  other.  And  I  heard  the  man  say:— 

"Yes,  Charlie  is  a  very  good  judge  of  beer- 
Charlie  is!" 

And  then  they  were  out  of  hearing,  vanished 
from  the  realm  of  my  senses  for  ever  more.  And 
yet  people  complain  that  the  suburbs  are  dull!  As 
for  me,  when  I  grasped  the  fact  that  Charlie  was 
a  good  judge  of  beer  I  knew  for  certain  that  I 
was  back  in  England,  the  foundation  of  whose 
greatness  we  all  know.  I  walked  on  a  little  far- 
ther and  overtook  two  men,  silently  smoking  pipes. 
The  companionship  seemed  to  be  a  taciturn  com- 
munion of  spirits,  such  as  Carlyle  and  Tennyson 
are  said  to  have  enjoyed  on  a  certain  historic  eve- 
ning. But  I  was  destined  to  hear  strange  mes- 
sages that  night.  As  I  forged  ahead  of  them,  one 
murmured : — 

"I  done  him  down  a  fair  treat!" 

No  more!  I  loitered  to  steal  the  other's  answer. 
But  there  was  no  answer.  Two  intelligences  that 
exist  from  everlasting  to  everlasting  had  momen- 
tarily joined  the  path  of  my  intelligence,  and  the 
unique  message  was  that  some  one  had  been  done 
down  a  fair  treat.  They  disappeared  into  the  un- 
known of  Werter-road,  and  I  was  left  meditating 
upon  the  queer  coincidence  of  the  word  "beer"  pre- 
ceding the  word  "treat."  A  disturbing  coincidence, 
a  caprice  of  hazard!  And  my  mind  flew  back  to 
a  smoking-concert  of  my  later  youth,  in  which 


STREET  TALKING  365 

"Beer,  beer,  glorious  beer"  was  followed,  on  the 
programme,  by  Handel's  Largo. 

£    ^    <*    * 

In  the  early  brightness  of  yesterday  morning 
fate  led  me  to  Downing-street,  which  is  assuredly 
the  oddest  street  in  the  world  (except  Bow- street). 
Everything  in  Downing-street  is  significant,  save 
the  official  residence  of  the  Prime  Minister,  which, 
with  its  three  electric  bells  and  its  absurdly  inade- 
quate area  steps,  is  merely  comic.  The  way  in 
which  the  vast  pile  of  the  Home  Office  f rowns  down 
upon  that  devoted  comic  house  is  symbolic  of  the 
empire  of  the  permanent  official  over  the  elected 
of  the  people.  It  might  be  thought  that  from  his 
second-floor  window  the  Prime  Minister  would 
keep  a  stern  eye  on  the  trembling  permanent  of- 
ficial. But  experienced  haunters  of  Downing- 
street  know  that  the  Hessian  boot  is  on  the  other 
leg.  Why  does  that  dark  and  grim  tunnel  run 
from  the  side  of  No.  10,  Downing-street,  into  the 
spacious  trackless  freedom  of  the  Horse  Guards 
Parade,  if  it  is  not  to  facilitate  the  escape  of  Prime 
Ministers  fleeing  from  the  chicane  of  conspiracies? 
And  how  is  it  that  if  you  slip  out  of  No.  10  in 
your  slippers  of  a  morning,  and  toddle  across  to 
the  foot  of  the  steps  leading  to  St.  James's  Park, 
you  have  instantly  a  view  (a)  of  Carlton  House 
Terrace  and  (b)  of  the  sinister  inviting  water  of 
St.  James's  Park  pond?  I  say  that  the  mute  sig- 
nificance of  things  is  unsettling  in  the  highest  de- 
gree. That  morning  a  motor-brougham  was 
seeking  repose  in  Downing-street.  By  the  motor- 


366  PARIS  NIGHTS 

brougham  stood  a  chauffeur,  and  by  the  chauffeur 
stood  a  girl  under  a  feathered  hat.  They  were 
exchanging  confidences,  these  two.  I  strolled  non- 
chalantly past.  The  girl  was  saying: — 

"Look  at  this  skirt  as  I've  got  on  now.  Me 
and  her  went  'alves  in  it.  She  was  to  have  it  one 
Sunday,  and  me  the  other.  But  do  you  suppose 
as  I  could  get  it  when  it  come  to  my  turn?  Not 
me!  Whenever  I  called  for  it  she  was  always — " 

I  heard  no  more.  I  could  not  decently  wait. 
But  I  was  glad  the  wearer  had  ultimately  got  the 
skirt.  The  fact  was  immensely  significant. 


FONTAINEBLEAU 


Ill 

ON    THE   ROAD 

The  reader  may  remember  a  contrivance  called 
a  bicycle  on  which  people  used  to  move  from  one 
place  to  another.  The  thing  is  still  employed  by 
postmen  in  remote  parts.  We  discovered  a  couple 
in  the  stable,  had  them  polished  with  the  electro- 
plate powder  and  went  off  on  them.  It  seemed  a 
strange  freak.  Equally  strange  was  the  freak  of 
quitting  Fontainebleau,  even  for  three  days.  I 
had  thought  that  no  one  ever  willingly  left  Fon- 
tainebleau. Everybody  knows  what  the  roads  of 
France  are.  Smooth  and  straight  perfection,  bor- 
dered by  double  rows  of  trees.  They  were  as- 
suredly constructed  with  a  prevision  of  automobiles. 
They  run  in  an  absolutely  straight  line  for  about 
five  miles,  then  there  is  a  slight  bend  and  you  are 
faced  with  another  straight  line  of  five  miles.  It 
is  magnificent  on  a  motor-car  at  a  mile  a  minute. 
On  a  bicycle  it  is  tedious ;  you  never  get  anywhere, 
and  the  one  fact  you  learn  is  that  France  consists 
of  ten  thousand  million  plane  trees  and  a  dust- 
cloud.  We  left  the  main  road  at  the  very  first 
turn.  As  a  rule,  the  bye-roads  of  France  are  as 
well  kept  as  the  main  roads,  often  better,  and  they 
are  far  more  amusing.  But  we  soon  got  lost  in  a 
labyrinth  of  bad  roads.  We  went  back  to  the 

36T 


368  PARIS  NIGHTS 

main  roads,  despite  their  lack  of  humour,  and  they 
were  just  as  bad.  All  thei  roads  of  the  department 
which  we  had  invaded  were  criminal — as  criminal 
as  anything  in  industrial  Yorkshire.  A  person 
who  had  travelled  only  on  the  roads  of  the  Loiret 
would  certainly  say  that  French  roads  were  the 
worst  in  Europe.  This  shows  the  folly  of  general- 
ising. We  held  an  inquisition  as  to  these  roads 
when  we  halted  for  lunch. 

"What  would  you?"  replied  the  landlady.  "It 
is  like  that!"  She  was  a  stoic  philosopher.  She 
said  the  state  of  the  roads  was  due  to  the  heavy 
loads  of  beetroot  that  pass  over  them,  the  beetroot 
being  used  for  sugar.  This  seemed  to  us  a  feeble 
excuse.  She  also  said  we  should  find  that  the  roads 
got  worse.  She  then  proved  that  in  addition  to 
being  a  great  philosopher  she  was  a  great  tactician. 
We  implored  lunch,  and  it  was  only  11:15.  She 
said,  with  the  most  charming  politeness,  that  her 
regular  clients — ces  messieurs — arrived  at  twelve, 
and  not  before,  but  that  as  we  were  "pressed"  she 
would  prepare  us  a  special  lunch  (founded  on  an 
omelette)  instantly.  Meanwhile  we  could  inspect 
her  fowls,  rabbits  and  guinea-pigs.  Well,  we  in- 
spected her  fowls,  rabbits  and  guinea-pigs  till 
exactly  five  minutes  past  twelve,  when  ces  mes- 
sieurs began  to  arrive.  The  adorable  creature  had 
never  had  the  least  intention  of  serving  us  with  a 
special  lunch.  Her  one  desire  was  not  to  hurt  our 
sensitive,  high-strung  natures.  The  lunch  con- 
sisted of  mackerel,  ham,  cutlets,  fromage  a  la 
creme,  fruits  and  wine.  I  have  been  eating  at 


ON  THE  ROAD  369 

French  inns  for  years,  and  have  not  yet  ceased  to 
be  astonished  at  the  refined  excellence  of  the  repast 
which  is  offered  in  any  little  poky  hole  for  a  florin. 

«*     *    #    # 

She  was  right  about  the  roads.  Emphatically 
they  got  worse.  But  we  did  not  mind,  for  we  had 
a  strong  wind  at  our  backs.  The  secret  of  happi- 
ness in  such  an  excursion  as  ours  is  in  the  wind 
and  in  naught  else.  We  bumped  through  some 
dozen  villages,  all  exactly  alike — it  was  a  rolling 
pasture  country — and  then  came  to  our  first  town, 
Puiseaux,,  whose  church  with  its  twisted  spire  must 
have  been  destined  from  its  beginning  to  go  on  to 
a  picture  post  card.  And  having  taught  the  lead- 
ing business  house  of  Puiseaux  how  to  brew  tea, 
we  took  to  the  wind  again,  and  were  soon  in  Eng- 
land; that  is  to  say,  we  might  have  been  in  England, 
judging  by  the  hedges  and  ditches  and  the  capri- 
ciousness  of  the  road's  direction,  and  the  little  oc- 
casional orchards,  bridges  and  streams.  This  was 
not  the  hedgeless,  severe  landscape  of  Gaul — not 
a  bit!  Only  the  ancient  farmhouses  and  the  cha- 
teaux guarded  by  double  pairs  of  round  towers 
reminded  us  that  we  were  not  in  Shropshire.  The 
wind  blew  us  in  no  time  to  within  sight  of  the 
distant  lofty  spire  of  the  great  church  of  Pithiviers, 
and  after  staring  at  it  during  six  kilometres,  we 
ran  down  into  a  green  hollow  and  up  into  the 
masonry  of  Pithiviers,  where  the  first  spectacle  we 
saw  was  a  dog  racing  towards  the  church  with  a 
huge  rat  in  his  mouth.  Pithiviers  is  one  of  the 
important  towns  of  the  department.  It  demands 


370  PARIS  NIGHTS 

and  receives  respect.  It  has  six  cafes  in  its  pic- 
turesque market  square,  and  it  specialises  in  lark 
patties.  What  on  earth  led  Pithiviers  to  special- 
ise in  lark  patties  I  cannot  imagine.  But  it  does. 
It  is  revered  for  its  lark  patties,  which  are  on  view 
everywhere.  We  are  probably  the  only  persons 
who  have  spent  a  night  in  Pithiviers  without  par- 
taking of  lark  patties.  We  went  into  the  hotel 
and  at  the  end  of  the  hall  saw  three  maids  sewing 
in  the  linen-room — a  pleasing  French  sight — and, 
in  a  glass  case,  specimens  of  lark  patties.  We 
steadily  and  consistently  refused  lark  pat- 
ties. Still  we  did  not  starve.  Not  to  men- 
tion lark  patties,  our  two-and-tenpenny  dinner 
comprised  soup,  boiled  beef,  carrots,  turnips, 
gnocchi*  fowl,  beans,  leg  of  mutton,  cherries,  straw- 
berries and  minor  details.  During  this  eternal 
meal,  a  man  with  a  bag  came  vociferously  into  the 
salle  a  manger.  He  was  selling  the  next  day's 
morning  paper!  Chicago  could  not  surpass  that! 
Largely  owing  to  the  propinquity  and  obstinacy 
of  the  striking  clock  of  the  great  church  I  arose 
at  6  A.  M.  The  market  was  already  in  progress. 
I  spoke  withj  an  official  about  the  clock,  but  I  could 
not  make  him  see  that  I  had  got  up  in  the  middle 
of  the  night.  In  spite  of  my  estimate  of  his  clock, 
he  good-naturedly  promised  me  much  better  roads. 
And  the  promise  was  fulfilled.  But  we  did  not 
mind.  For  now  the  strong  wind  was  against  us. 
This  altered  all  our  relations  with  the  universe,  and 
transformed  us  into  impolite,  nagging  pessimists; 
previously  we  had  been  truly  delightful  people. 


THE  LITTLE  RIVER  FUSAIN     (Page  371) 


ON  THE  ROAD  371 

All  that  day  till  tea-time  we  grumbled  over  a  good 
road  that  wound  its  way  through  a  gigantic  wheat- 
field.  True  that  sometimes  the  wheat  was  oats,  or 
even  a  pine  plantation;  but,  broadly  speaking,  the 
wheat  was  all  wheat,  and  the  vast  heaving  sea  of  it 
rolled  up  to  the  very  sides  of  the  road  under  our 
laggard  wheels.  And  it  was  all  right,  and  it  was  all 
being  cut  with  two-horse  McCormick  reapers.  We 
actually  saw  hundreds  of  McCormick  reapers. 
Near  and  far,  on  all  the  horizons,  we  could  detect 
the  slow-revolving  paddle  of  the  McCormick 
reaper.  And  at  least  we  reached  Chateau  Landon, 
against  the  walls  of  which  huge  waves  of  wheat 
were  breaking.  Chateau  Landon  was  our  destina- 
tion. We  meant  to  discover  it  and  we  did. 

#      «*      £      £ 

Chateau  Landon  is  one  of  the  most  picturesque 
towns  in  France;  but,  as  the  landlady  of  the  Red 
Hat  said  to  us,  "no  one  has  yet  known  how  to 
make  come  messieurs,  the  tourists."  I  should 
say  that  (except  Carcassone,  of  course)  Vezelay, 
in  the  Avalonnais,  is  perhaps  the  most  picturesque 
town  in  all  France.  Chateau  Landon  comes  near 
it,  and  is  much  easier  to  get  at.  On  one  side  it 
rises  straight  up  in  a  tremendous  sheer  escarpment 
out  of  the  little  river  Fusain,  in  which  the  entire 
town  washes  its  clothes.  The  view  of  the  city 
from  the  wooded  and  murmurous  valley  is  genu- 
inely remarkable,  and  the  most  striking  feature  of 
the  view  is  the  feudal  castle  which  soars  with  its 
terrific  buttresses  out  of  a  thick  mass  of  trees. 
Few  more  perfect  relics  of  feudalism  than  this  for- 


372  PARIS  NIGHTS 

midable  building  can  exist  anywhere.  It  will  soon 
celebrate  its  thousandth  birthday.  In  putting  it  to 
the  uses  of  a  home  for  the  poor  ( Asile  de  St.  Sev- 
erin)  the  townsmen  cannot  be  said  to  have  dishon- 
oured its  old  age.  You  climb  up  out  of  the  river 
by  granite  steps  cut  into  the  escarpment  and  find 
yourself  all  of  a  sudden  in  the  market  square,  which 
looks  over  a  precipice.  Everybody  is  waiting  to 
relate  to  you  the  annals  of  the  town  since  the  be- 
ginning of  history:  how  it  had  its  own  mint,  and 
how  the  palace  of  the  Mint  still  stands ;  how  many 
an  early  Louis  lived  in  the  town,  making  laws  and 
dispensing  justice;  how  Louis  le  Gros  put  himself 
to  the  trouble  of  being  buried  in  the  cathedral  there ; 
and  how  the  middlemen  come  from  Fontainebleau 
to  buy  game  at  the  market.  We  sought  the  tomb 
in  the  cathedral,  but  found  nothing  of  interest  there 
save  a  stout  and  merry  priest  instructing  a  class  of 
young  girls  in  the  aisle.  However,  we  did  buy  a 
pair  of  fowls  in  the  market  for  4s.  and  carried  them 
at  our  saddles,  all  the  way  back  to  Fontainebleau. 
The  landlady  of  the  Red  Hat  asked  us  whether  her 
city  was  not  wondrous?  We  said  it  was.  She 
asked  us  whether  we  should  come  again?  We  said 
we  should.  She  asked  us  whether  we  could  do  any- 
thing to  spread  the  fame  of  her  wondrous  town? 
We  said  we  would  do  what  we  could. 

To  reach  Fontainebleau  it  was  necessary  to  pass 
through  another  ancient  town  which  we  have  long 
loved,  largely  on  account  of  Balzac,  to  wit,  Ne- 
mours. After  Chateau  Landon,  Nemours  did 
not  seem  to  be  quite  the  exquisite  survival  that  we 


ASILE  DE  ST.  SEVERIN     (Page  371) 


ON  THE  ROAD  373 

had  thought.  It  had  almost  a  modern  look.  Thus 
on  the  afternoon  of  the  third  day  we  came  to  Fon- 
tainebleau  again.  And  there  was  no  wind  at  all. 
We  had  covered  a  prodigious  number  of  miles, 
about  as  many  as  a  fair  automobile  would  swallow, 
up  in  two  hours ;  in  fact,  eighty. 


IV 

A  TRAIN 

At  the  present  moment  probably  the  dearest  bed 
of  its  size  in  the  world  is  that  to  be  obtained  on  the 
Calais-Mediterranean  express,  which  leaves  Calais 
at  1.05  every  afternoon  and  gets  to  Monte  Carlo  at 
9.39  the  next  morning.  This  bed  costs  you  be- 
tween £4  and  £5  if  you  take  it  from  Calais,  and 
between  £3  and  £4  if  you  take  it  from  Paris  [(as 
I  did),  in  addition  to  the  first-class  fare  r(no  baga- 
telle that,  either!),  and,  of  course,  in  addition  to 
your  food.  Why  people  should  make  such  a  ter- 
rific fuss  about  this  train  I  don't  know.  It  isn't 
the  fastest  train  between  Paris  and  Marseilles,  be- 
cause, though  it  beats  almost  every  other  train  by 
nearly  an  hour,  there  is,  in  February,  just  one  train 
that  beats  it— by  one  minute.*  And  after  Mar- 
seilles it  is  slow.  And  as  for  comfort,  well,  Ameri- 
cans aver  that  it  "don't  cut  much  ice,  anyway" 
(this  is  the  sort  of  elegant  diction  you  hear  on  it) , 
seeing  that  it  doesn't  even  comprise  a  drawing- 
roomi  car.  Except  when  you  are  eating,  you  must 
remain  boxed  up  in  a  compartment  decidedly  not 
as  roomy  as  a  plain,  common,  ordinary,  decent 
Anglo-Saxon  first-class  compartment  between 
Manchester  and  Liverpool. 

*In  1904. 

374 


>•-  - 1,  p.-f  ^: 

-      W —  v-        *  '     i    t-1^/        •  ^^         '    ^€'    t-^f*'        •***   '  ^ 


, '  ~i 

'.«##.    ,r 

'''-*  •       V"  .-*^C^_  V -'  '      ^         S 

(tt  - ";;  %1 


CHATEAU   LANDON 


A  TRAIN  375 

However,  it  is  the  train  of  trains,  outside  the 
Siberian  express,  and  the  Chicago  and  Empire 
City  Vestibule  Flyer,  Limited,  and  if  decorations, 
silver,  rare  woods,  plush,  silk,  satin,  springs,  cut- 
flowers,  and  white-gloved  attendants  will  make  a 
crack  train,  the  International  Sleeping  Car  Com- 
pany  (that  bumptious  but  still  useful  association 
for  the  aggrandisement  of  railway  directors)   has 
made  one.     You  enter  this  train  with  awe,   for 
you  know  that  in  entering  you  enrol  yourself  once 
and  for  ever  among  the  elite.     You  know  that  no- 
body in  Europe  can  go  one  better.     For  just  as  the 
whole  of  the  Riviera  coast  has  been  finally  special- 
ised into  a  winter  playground  for  the  rich  idlers, 
dilettanti,  hypochondriacs,  and  invalids  of  two  or 
three  continents,  and  into  a  field  of  manoeuvres  for 
the  always-accompanying  gilded  riff-raff  and  odal- 
isques, so  that  train  is  a  final  instance  of  the  spe- 
cialisation of  transit  to  suit  the  needs  of  the  afore- 
said  plutocrats   and   adventurers.     And   whether 
you  count  yourself  a  plutocrat  or  an  adventurer, 
you  are  correct,  doing  the  correct  thing,  and  prov- 
ing every  minute  that  money  is  no  object,  and  thus 
realising  the  ideal  of  the  age. 

«*      £      *      * 

French  railway  platforms  are  so  low  that  in  the 
vast  and  resounding  Gare  de  Lyon  when  the  ma- 
chine rolled  magnificently  in  I  was  obliged  to  look 
up  to  it,  whether  I  wanted  to  or  not;  and  so  I 
looked  up  reverently.  The  first  human  being  that 
descended  from  it  was  an  African ;  not  a  negro,  but 
something  nobler.  He  was  a  very  big  man,  with  a 


376  PARIS  NIGHTS 

distinguished  mien,  and  he  wore  the  uniform,  in- 
cluding the  white  gloves,  of  the  dining-car  staff. 
Now,  I  had  learnt  from  previous  excursions  in  this 
gipsy-van  of  the  elite  that  the  proper  thing  to  do 
aboard  it  is  to  display  a  keen  interest  in  your  stom- 
ach. So  I  approached  the  African  and  demanded 
the  hour  of  dinner.  He  enveloped  me  in  a  glance 
of  courteous  hut  cold  and  distant  disdain,  and  for 
quite  five  seconds,  as  he  gazed  silently  down  at  me 
|(I  am  5ft.-8f in.) ,  he  must  have  been  saying  to  him- 
self: "Here's  another  of  'em."  I  felt  inclined  to 
explain  to  him,  as  the  reporter  explained  to  the  re- 
vivalist who  inquired  about  his  soul,  that  I  was  on 
the  Press,  and  therefore  not  to  be  confused  with  the 
general  elite.  But  I  said  nothing.  I  decided  that 
if  I  told  him  that  I  worked  as  hard  as  he  did  he 
would  probably  take  me  for  a  liar  as  well  as  a  plu- 
tocratic nincompoop. 

Then  the  train  went  off,  carrying  its  cargo  of 
human  parcels  all  wrapped  up  in  pretty  cloths  and 
securely  tied  with  tapes  and  things,  and  plunged 
with  its  glitter  and  meretricious  flash  down  through 
the  dark  central  quietudes  of  France.  I  must  say 
that  as  I  wandered  about  its  shaking  corridors, 
looking  at  faces  and  observing  the  deleterious  ef- 
fects of  idleness,  money,  seasickness,  lack  of  imag- 
ination, and  other  influences,  I  was  impressed, 
nevertheless,  by  the  bright  gaudiness  of  the  train's 
whole  entity.  It  isn't  called  a  train  de  luxe;  it  is 
called  a  train  de  grand  luxe;  and  though  the  ar- 
tistic taste  displayed  throughout  is  uniformly  de- 
plorable, still  it  deserves  the  full  epithet.  As  an 


A  TRAIN  377 

example  of  ostentation,  of  an  end  aimed  at  and 
achieved,  it  will  pass  muster.  And,  lost  in  one  of 
those  profound  meditations  upon  life  and  death 
and  luxury  which  even  the  worst  novelists  must 
from  time  to  time  indulge  in,  I  forgot  everything 
save  the  idea  of  the  significance  of  the  train  rush- 
ing, so  complete  and  so  self-contained,  through  un- 
known and  uncared-for  darkness.  For  me  the 
train  might  have  been  whizzing  at  large  through 
the  world  as  the  earth  whizzes  at  large  through 
space.  Then  that  African  came  along  and  asserted 
with  frigid  politeness  that  dinner  was  ready. 
#  #  #  # 

And  in  the  highly-decorated  dining-car,  where 
vines  grew  all  up  the  walls,  and  the  table-lamps 
were  electric  bulbs  enshrined  in  the  metallic  curves 
of  the  art  nouveau,  and  the  fine  cut  flowers  had 
probably  been  brought  up  from  Grasse  that  morn- 
ing, it  happened  that  the  African  himself  handed 
me  the  menu  and  waited  on  me.  And  when  he 
arrived  balancing  the  elaborate  silver  "contrap- 
tion" containing  ninety-nine  varieties  of  hors- 
d'oeuvres,  but  not  the  particular  variety  I  wanted, 
I  determined  that  I  would  enter  the  lists  with  him. 
And,  catching  his  eye,  I  said  with  frigid  politeness : 

N*y  a-t-il  pas'  de  sardines?39 

He  restrained  himself  for  his  usual  five  seconds, 
and  then  he  replied,  with  a  politeness  compared  to 
which  mine  was  sultry: 

"Non,  monsieur" 

And  he  went  on  to  say  (without  speaking,  but 
with  his  eyes,  arms,  legs,  forehead,  and  spinal  col- 


378  PATHS  NIGHTS 

umn) :  "Miserable  European,  parcel,  poltroon, 
idler,  degenerate,  here  I  offer  you  ninety-and-nine 
hors  d'ceuvres,  and  you  want  the  hundredth!  You, 
living  your  unnatural  and  despicable  existence! 
If  I  cared  sufficiently  I  could  kill  every  man  on 
the  train,  but  I  don't  care  sufficiently!  Have  the 
goodness  not  to  misinterpret  my  politeness,  and 
take  this  Lyons  sausage,  and  let  me  hear  no  more 
about  sardines." 

Hence  I  took  the  sausage  and  obediently  ate  it. 
I  gave  him  best.  Among  the  few  men  that  I  re- 
spected on  that  train  were  the  engine-driver,  out 
there  in  the  nocturnal  cold,  with  our  lives  in  his 
pocket,  and  that  African.  He  really  could  have 
killed  any  of  us.  I  may  never  see  him  again.  His 
circle  of  eternal  energy  just  touched  mine  at  the 
point  where  a  tin  of  sardines  ought  to  have  been 
but  was  not.  He  was  emphatically  a  man.  He 
had  the  gestures  and  carriage  of  a  monarch.  Per- 
haps he  was  one,  de  jure,  somewhere  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  Timbuctoo.  For  practical  European, 
Riviera,  plutocratic  purposes  he  was  a  coloured 
waiter  in  the  service  of  the  International  Sleeping 
Car  Company. 


ANOTHER  TRAIN 

After  six  hours'  continuous  sleep,  I  felt  full  of 
energy  and  joy.  There  were  no  servants  to  sad- 
den by  their  incompetence;  so  I  got  up  and  made 
the  tea  and  prepared  the  baths,  and  did  many  sim- 
ple domestic  things,  the  doing  of  which  personally 
is  the  beginning  of  "the  solution  of  the  servant 
problem,"  so  much  talked  about.  Shall  we  catch 
the  9.25  fast  or  the  9.50  slow?  Only  my  watch  was 
going  among  all  the  clocks  and  watches  in  the  flat. 
I  looked  at  it  from  time  to  time,  fighting  against 
the  instinct  to  hurry,  the  instinct  to  beat  that  one 
tiny  watch  in  its  struggle  against  me.  Just  when 
I  was  quite  ready,  I  had  to  button  a  corsage  with 
ten  thousand  buttons — toy  buttons  like  sago,  that 
must  be  persuaded  into  invisible  nooses  of  thread. 
I  turned  off  the  gas  at  the  meter  and  the  electricity 
at  the  meter,  and  glanced  'round  finally  at  the  little 
museum  of  furniture,  pictures,  and  prints  that  was 
nearly  all  I  had  to  show  in  the  way  of  spoils  after 
forty  years  of  living  and  twenty-five  years  of  sharp- 
shooting.  I  picked  up  the  valise,  and  we  went  out 
on  the  staircase.  I  locked  and  double  locked  the 
door.  [(Instinct  of  property.)1  At  the  concierge's 
lodge  a  head  stuck  itself  out  and  offered  the  "Mer- 
cure  de  France,"  which  had  just  come.  Strange 

379 


380  PARIS  NIGHTS 

how  my  pleasure  in  receiving  new  numbers  never 
wanes!  I  shoved  it  into  my  left-hand  pocket;  in 
my  right-hand  pocket  a  new  book  was  already  re- 
posing. 

#      £      $      £ 

Out  into  the  street,  and  though  we  had  been  up 
for  an  hour  and  a  half,  we  were  now  for  the  first 
time  in  the  light  of  day!  Mist!  It  would  proba- 
bly be  called  "pearly"  by  some  novelists;  but  it  was 
like  blue  mousseline — diaphanous  as  a  dancer's 
skirt.  The  damp  air  had  the  astringent,  nipping 
quality  that  is  so  marked  in  November — like  a 
friendly  dog  pretending  to  bite  you.  Pavements 
drying.  The  coal  merchant's  opposite  was  not  yet 
open.  The  sight  of  his  closed1  shutters  pleased  me ; 
I  owed  him  forty  francs,  and  my  pride  might  have 
forced  me  to  pay  him  on  the  spot  had  I  caught  his 
eye.  We  met  a  cab  instantly.  The  driver,  a  mid- 
dle-aged parent,  was  in  that  state  of  waking  up  in 
which  ideas  have  to  push  themselves  into  the  brain. 
"Where?"  he  asked  mechanically,  after  I  had  di- 
rected him,  but  before  I  could  repeat  the  direction 
the  idea  had  reached  his  brain,  and  he  nodded. 
This  driver  was  no  ordinary  man,  for  instead  of 
taking  the  narrow,  blocked  streets,  which  form  the 
shortest  route,  like  the  absurd  99  per  cent,  of  driv- 
ers, he  aimed  straight  for  the  grand  boulevard,  and 
was  not  delayed  once  by  traffic  in  the  whole  jour- 
ney. More  pleasure  in  driving  through  the  city  as 
it  woke !  It  was  ugly,  dirty — look  at  the  dirty  shirt 
of  the  waiter  rubbing  the  door  handles  of  the  fash- 
ionable restaurant! — but  it  was  refreshed.  And 


ANOTHER  TRAIN  381 

the  friendly  dog  kept  on  biting.  Scarcely  any  mo- 
tor-cars— all  the  chauffeurs  were  yet  asleep — but 
the  tram-cars  were  gliding  in  curves  over  the  muddy 
wood,  and  the  three  horses  in  each  omnibus  had 
their  early  magnificent  willingness  of  action,  and 
the  vegetable  hawkers,  old  men  and  women,  were 
earnestly  pushing  their  barrows  along  in  financial 
anxiety;  their  heads,  as  they  pushed,  were  always 
much  in  advance  of  their  feet.  They  moved  for- 
ward with  heedless  fatalism;  if  we  collided  with 
them  and  spilled  cauliflowers,  so  much  the  worse! 

We  reached  the  station,  whose  blue  mousseline 
had  evaporated  as  we  approached  it,  half  an  hour 
too  soon.  A  good  horse,  no  stoppages,  and  the  rec- 
ord had  been  lowered,  and  the  driver  had  earned 
two  francs  in  twenty-five  minutes!  Before  the 
Revolution  he  would  have  had  to  pay  a  franc  and 
a  half  of  it  in  assorted  taxes.  Thirty  minutes  in  a 
vast  station,  and  nothing  to  do.  We  examined  the 
platform  signs.  There  was  a  train  for  Marseilles 
and  Monte  Carlo  at  9.00  and  another  train  for  Mar- 
seilles at  9.15.  Then  ours  at  9.25.  Sometimes  I 
go  south  by  the  "Cote  d'Azur,"  so  this  morning  I 
must  inspect  it,  owning  it.  Very  few  people;  a 
short,  trying-to-be-proud  train.  The  cook  was 
busy  in  the  kitchen  of  the  restaurant-car — what 
filth  and  smell!  Separated  from  him  only  by  a 
partition  were  the  flower-adorned  white  tables. 
On  the  platform  the  officials  of  the  train,  some  in 
new  uniforms,  strolled  and  conversed.  A  young 
Frenchman  dressed  in  the  height  of  English  fash- 
ion, with  a  fine-bred  pink-under-white  fox  ter- 


382  PARIS  NIGHTS 

rier,  attracted  my  notice.  He  guessed  it;  became 
self-conscious,  bridled,  and  called  sportsmannishly 
to  the  dog.  His  recognition  of  his  own  vital 
existence  had  forced  him  into  some  action.  He 
knew  I  was  English,  and  that,  therefore,  I  knew 
all  about  dogs.  He  made  the  dog  jump  into  the 
car,  but  the  animal  hadn't  enough  sense  to  jump 
in  without  impatient  and  violent  help  from  behind* 
I  never  cared  to  have  my  dogs  too  well-bred,  lest 
they  should  be  as  handsome  and  as  silly  as  the 
scions  of  ancient  families.  This  dog's  master  was 
really  a  beautiful  example  of  perfect  masculine 
dressing.  His  cap,  the  length  of  his  trousers,  the 
"roll"  of  the  collar  of  his  jacket — perfect!  Yes,  it 
is  agreeable  to  see  a  faultless  achievement.  Not  a 
woman  on  the  train  to  compare  to  him!  It  is  a 
fact  that  men  are  always  at  their  sartorial  best 
when  travelling ;  they  then  put  on  gay  colours,  and 
give  themselves  a  certain  licence.  .  .  .  The 
train  seemed  to  go  off  while  no  one  was  looking;  no 
whistle,  no  waving  of  flags.  It  crept  out.  But  to 

the  minute.     .     .     . 

*    £    ^    * 

It  is  astounding  the  lively  joy  I  find  in  staring  at 
a  railway  bookstall.  Men  came  up,  threw  down  a 
sou,  snatched  a  paper,  and  departed;  scores  of 
them;  but  I  remained,  staring,  like  a  ploughman, 
vaguely.  .  .  ''; 

I  was  a  quarter  of  an  hour  in  buying  the  "Fig- 
aro." What  decided  me  was  the  Saturday  lit- 
erary supplement.  We  mounted  into  our  train 
before  its  toilette  was  finished.  It  smelt  nice  and 


ANOTHER  TRAIN  383 

damp.  We  had  a  compartment  to  ourselves.  X. 
had  one  seat,  I  another,  the  "Mercure  de  France" 
a  third,  the  "Figaro"  a  fourth,  and  the  valise  a 
fifth.  Male  travellers  passed  along  the  corridor 
and  examined  us  with  secret  interest,  but  exter- 
nally ferocious  and  damnatory.  Outside  were  two 
little  Frenchmen  of  employes,  palefaces,  with  short, 
straggly  beards.  One  yawned  suddenly,  and 
then  said  something  that  the  other  smiled  at. 
What  diverts  me  is  to  detect  the  domestic  man 
everywhere  beneath  the  official,  beneath  the  mere 
unit.  I  never  see  a  porter  without  giving  him  a 
hearth  and  home,  and  worries,  and  a  hasty  break- 
fast. Then  the  train  went,  without  warning,  like 
the  other,  silently.  I  did  not  pick  up  my  newspa- 
per nor  my  magazine  at  once,  nor  take  the  new 
book  out  of  my  pocket.  I  felt  so  well,  so  full  of 
potential  energy.  .  .  .  and  the  friendly  dog 
was  still  biting  ...  I  wanted  to  bathe  deep 
in  my  consciousness  of  being  alive  .  .  .  Then 
I  read  unpublished  letters  of  de  Maupassant,  and 
a  story  by  Matilde  Serao  and  memoirs  of  Ernest 
31um,  and  my  new  book.  What  pleasure !  After 
all  what  joy  I  had  in  life!  Is  it  not  remarkable 
that  so  simple  a  mechanism  as  print,  for  the  trans- 
mission of  thought,  can  work  so  successfully! 

At  Melun  there  were  teams  of  oxen,  with  the 
yoke  on  their  foreheads,  in  the  shunting-yard. 
Quaint,  piquant,  collusion  of  different  centuries! 
And  Melun,  what  a  charming  provincial  town — to 
look  at  and  pass  on !  I  would  not  think  of  its  hard 
narrowness,  nor  of  its  brewery.  .  .  . 


384  PARIS  NIGHTS 

The  landscape  shed  its  mousseline,  and  day  really 
began.  Brilliant  sunshine.  We  arrived.  Sud- 
denly I  felt  tired.  I  wished  to  sleep.  I  no  longer 
tingled  with  the  joy  of  life.  I  only  remembered, 
rather  sadly,  that  half  an  hour  ago  I  had  been  a 
glorious  and  proud  being. 


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UNIVERSITY  OF  TORONTO  LIBRARY 


D  Bennett,  Arnold 
k29         Paris  nights,  and  other 

B4  impressions  of  places  and 

1913  people