Читать книгу Paris Vistas - Helen Davenport Gibbons - Страница 15

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WE spent the first anniversary of our wedding in Egypt. A week later we arrived in Paris. For prospective residents as well as for tourists, June is the best time of the year to reach Paris. You have good weather and long days, both essentials of successful home-hunting. It is an invariable rule in Paris to divide the year in quarters, beginning with the fifteenth of January, April, July and October. Whether you are looking for a modest logement on a three months' lease or a grand appartement-confort moderne—on a three years' lease, the dates of entry are the same. One rarely breaks in between terms. If you have passed one period, you must wait for the next trimestre. The person who is leaving the apartment you rent might be perfectly willing to accommodate you, but he has to wait to get into his new place. So when we went to the pension, we had before us the best home-hunting weeks of the year, with the expectation of being able to get settled somewhere on July 15th.

At the pension, our room faced on the court, and the personnel, from Mademoiselle Guyénot down to Victorine and François, assured us that we need not feel bound to stay at home on the days Marie could not come to us. Marie for years had been sewing four different days of the week for old patrons, and we did not feel certain enough of our own plans and purse to accept the responsibility of her giving up a sure thing.

"Go out all you want to," urged our friends. "You only have to think about meal times for the baby. Someone is always in the court sewing or sorting the laundry or preparing vegetables. Your window is open. We cannot fail to hear the baby."

But a chorus of bien sûr and parfaitement and soyez tranquille did not reassure what was as new born as Christine herself—the maternal instinct. A letter from Herbert's father solved the problem. He inclosed the money for a baby carriage. We carried Scrappie down the Boulevard Raspail to the little square in front of the Bon Marché. I kept her on a bench while Herbert went in to follow my directions as well as he could. In a few minutes he came out and said he would rather take care of the baby. It was the first time I had seen him stumped. So I had the joy I had hoped would be mine all along but of which I did not want to deprive my husband, seeing that we could not share it. The reader may ask why we didn't take the baby inside. But it will not be a young mother who puts that question! With one's firstborn, one sees contagion stalking in every place where crowds gather indoors.[B]

[B] The critic would have me insert a modification here. Why confine the fear of the young mother to indoors? The critic insists that I used to be afraid of taking Scrappie into any sort of a crowd, and that my supersensitive ear translated the bark of every kiddie with a cold into whooping cough, while I saw measles in mosquito bites on children's faces.

The Rue de Vaugirard by the Luxembourg

We did not intend to consider a home that was not within baby-carriage distance of the Rue Madame. In fact, after a few days in the Luxembourg Quarter, we were determined to live as near the Garden as possible. There we were within walking distance of the Bibliothèque Nationale and the Sorbonne and the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques. Marie, whom the fact that I was my Mother's daughter did not blind to the extent of the Gibbons family resources, urged the Bois de Vincennes. But we would not hear of it.

It is strange how rich and poor rub elbows with each other in their homes. Paris is no different from American cities in this respect. The kind of an apartment we wanted would cost more than our total income, as rents around the Luxembourg for places equipped with electric lights and bathtubs and central heating seemed to be as expensive as around the Etoile. Then in the same street—sometimes next door—you had the other extreme. Our finances pointed to a logement in a workingmen's tenement. Care for Scrappie's health made our hearts sink every time we were shown a place that seemed within our means.

Of course there were reasonable places: for many others who demanded cleanliness had no more money than we. But the Latin and Montparnasse Quarters are the Mecca of slim-pursed foreigners. People foolish enough to study or sing or paint are almost invariably poor. Perhaps that is the reason! We had lots of exercise, and came to know every street between the Luxembourg and the Seine. Our good fortune arrived unexpectedly as good fortune always arrives to those who will not be side-tracked.

Between the Rue Vaugirard and Saint-Sulpice are three tiny streets, the houses on the opposite sides of which almost rub cornices. The Rue Férou is opposite the Musée de Luxembourg. On the Rue de Vaugirard is the home of Massenet. We used to get a glimpse of him occasionally on his terrasse—a sort of roof-garden with a vine-covered lattice on top of the low Rue Férou wing of his house. The other two streets paralleling the Rue Férou from the Palais du Luxembourg to the Eglise Saint-Sulpice are the Rue Servandoni and the Rue Garancière.

On the morning of the Fourth of July we had been diving in and out the side streets of the Rue Bonaparte and the Boulevard Saint-Germain. At Scrappie's meal time, we came to a bench in the Square in front of Saint-Sulpice. It wasn't a bit like a holiday. It was sultry and looked like rain. We were wondering whether we had better not hurry back to the pension for fear of getting the baby wet. Just then people began to stop and look up. A huge balloon was above us. And it carried the American flag.

"You can't beat it," said my husband. "And we are Americans. Ergo, you can't beat us!"

Did the sight of the flag do the trick? Anyway, it was our Japanese "last quarter of an hour." We had come down through the Rue Férou. We went back for the twentieth time in twenty days through the Rue Servandoni. Grey houses, topped with beehive chimneys, leaned amicably against each other and broke the sky line as well as the municipal réglement (made long after they were) concerning the distance between houses on opposite sides of streets. Our hearts nearly stopped beating when we reached Number 21. There was the magic sign (it had not been there yesterday): Appartement à Louer. We stopped short in the middle of the street. The side-walks are not wide enough to walk on, much less wheel a baby-carriage along. The grocer on the ground floor saw us take the bait. Out he came. Did Monsieur and Madame care to see the appartement? If so, he was concierge as well as grocer. He would show us the place. We drew the new baby-carriage into the dark vestibule and went up one easy flight of oak balustraded stairs. The grocer pulled a red-braided bell rope.

A man in shirt-sleeves opened the door. We stepped into a tiny dining-room where the gas was lit although it was noon. The wall-paper was yellow, and had sprawling brown figures like beetles. A dark passage led into an immense room with a generous fireplace. Two windows opened on the Rue Servandoni. It was a paper-hanger's shop with ladders, brushes, buckets, rolls and rolls of paper and barrels of flour-paste around. But the fellow in shirt-sleeves assured us that when his fittings were out, we would realize what a handsome room it was. "The dining-room is dark," he admitted, "but you can't match this room for light and size in any two-room apartment in the Quarter. I know them all. I am leaving because I have found a ground floor shop. I'll put new paper on here very cheap."

The locataire assumed that we would take it. So did the grocer-concierge. Without our asking, Monsieur Sempé told us that the rent would be one hundred and fifty francs a quarter. We did not have to make a troublesome lease, just a little agreement involving three months' notification on either side.

"Don't forget," said Sempé, "that this old house sits between two modern apartment buildings. The walls are warm. Your neighbors have steam heat."

"True," confirmed the paper-hanger. But he did not want us to think that we could be altogether vicariously heated. "Possibly you may not have noticed," he added, "the fireplace in the dining-room. It heats almost as well as this one. I'll sell you my grates. Boulets make the best fire."

The thrill of admiration I had for my husband's magnificent courage when he signed the paper, and paid out fifty of his last hundred francs "on account" is with me still.

"We are sure to be able to pay our rent," said he, as we went back to the pension. "We couldn't expect to get anything for less than ten dollars a month. The first installment of the fellowship money will come next week, and before then I shall certainly get something out of the Herald. It will have to be enough to buy our furniture."

It never rains but it pours. At the pension we found a letter from Mr. James Gordon Bennett, asking Herbert to call that afternoon at three o'clock at 104 Avenue des Champs-Elysées. It was in a blue envelope with a little owl embossed on the flap, and was signed "J. G. BENNETT" in blue pencil almost the color of the paper. How often we were to see this envelope and this signature, and what luck it was going to bring us! We thought the occasion demanded a celebration. I did Scrappie and myself up in our best, and we set forth for the Champs-Elysées in an open fiacre—our first ride since we came from the Boulevard Diderot to the Rue Madame. We waited in the carriage while Herbert went in to collect his money for the Adana massacre stories.

I watched the door of the big apartment house anxiously. Our furniture and the rest of the rent for the apartment depended upon the success of the visit. Half an hour later Herbert's face told me that all was well. He had sent in a bill of four hundred dollars, and fifty dollars expenses. Mr. Bennett, he told me, began by scolding him for not making it in francs, and then gave him a check for twenty-five hundred francs, which more than covered what Herbert asked for. The Commodore then offered Herbert a position at five hundred francs a week, and was surprised when it was declined. He seemed much amused when Herbert explained that he had come to Paris to study. "But you will go on special trips in an emergency," said Mr. Bennett. It is enough to say that the "emergencies" occurred often enough to tide over many a financial difficulty during years that followed.

Provided with funds after passing by the bank, we took Christine to Rumpelmayer's to tea, and then drove back the Rue Servandoni to pay the rest of our rent. When Monsieur Sempé gave us the quittance, he admonished us that we must put enough furniture in the apartment to cover six months' rent, that is to say, we must be prepared to spend at least sixty dollars to set up our Lares and Penates. Bubbling over with good will, Monsieur Sempé and Madame Sempé (who appeared on the scene the moment it was a question of a receipt for our money) gave us splendid advice about furniture-buying. They urged us to go to the Rue de Rennes to some good-sized place where we would see second-hand furniture on the side-walk, and not to a small brocanteur or dealer in antiques.

The amount ticked up on the fiacre's taximetre was larger than we had dreamed we should ever spend gadding about Paris. A few hours before it would have worried us. We knew this could not keep up—in spite of the crisp hundred franc notes. Wealth brings a strange sense of prudence. We drove back to the pension, dismissed our cocher, and pushed the baby-carriage around to the Rue de Rennes.

MOBILIERS COMPLETS PAR MILLIERS. "Household furniture sets by the thousand." That sign read promisingly. We entered, and found a salesman—excuse me, the proprietor and salesman and cashier—who took in my clothes and hat, and then assured us that he did not mind the baby crying and could fit us up in anything from Louis Quatorze to the First Empire, real or (this as a feeler) imitation. Salle à manger from eight hundred francs to four thousand; chambre à coucher from four hundred francs to two thousand six hundred; salon from one thousand francs to six thousand; splendid garnitures (which means clocks and candlesticks or vases) of all epochs for our cheminées; hatracks for the hall; kitchen and servants' furniture—all, everything, anything we needed.

I knew what was in Herbert's reproachful look. He always did ungraciously blame my mother for the fact that he had so frequently to counteract my trousseau by embarrassed words. Mostly I let him stumble along. But as this was his day and as I hadn't taken off the pretty things worn in honor of the visit to the Champs-Elysées, which was a break on my part, I thought it was up to me to let the furniture man see how things stood.

"We have a little apartment," I said, "bedroom and living-room combined, a very small dining-room and a kitchen. I expect to buy the baby's crib and mattress aside, but the rest must come out of five hundred francs—I mean all of it. What can you give us for that?"

I often think the French are essentially poor salesmen. They do not know how to show their goods and they are too indifferent or too anxious. But the blessed virtue of chivalry! The blessed sense of proportion! The blessed instinct of moderation! Our furniture man rose to the occasion with a grace that made me want to hug him. He kept his smile and bow and changed with perfect ease from Louis and Napoleons to pitchpine. It would require figuring. But it could be done. Yes, of course it could be done. Down into the cellar he took us, and in half an hour he had arranged to give us all we needed for Francs 532.70. I remember those figures. And he agreed to take the whole lot back at half-price at the end of a year!

The furniture man bore a striking resemblance to some one I knew. I watched him, and tried to place him, as he made out our bill in the office—seven square feet of glassed-in suffocation surrounded by armoires and buffets. Dust clung to pages and blotters and yellowing files; no air ever came in here to blow it away. Where had I seen the double of our friend? Full forehead, closely-trimmed, pointed beard, soft black tie—and the eyes. Where had I seen him before? Writing with flourishes in purple ink, slightly bending over the high desk, he certainly fitted into some memory picture. Then it came to me! His pen ought to be a quill. It was William Shakespeare.

"Will-yum Shakespeare!" I cried.

My husband did not think I was crazy. For he was looking at the furniture man when I made my involuntary exclamation.

"What does Madame say? Is she not content?" asked William Shakespeare. Herbert's hand shot out behind his back and grasped mine. "Shades of Stratford-on-Avon," he murmured. We had passed a honeymoon day there just a year ago.

It was hard to wait until July 15, and then two days longer for the necessary cleaning by a femme de ménage hired for us by the Sempés. July 17th was the magical day of our first housekeeping. Never before had we been together in a place where everything was ours. Tables and chairs and beds and mattresses, and even the piano rented at ten francs a month, arrived at Twenty-One on hand-carts drawn by men who pulled only a little harder against the greasy harness that bound them to their job than did the dogs under the carts.

Turkish women say that if you must move, abandon the furniture and dishes; they can be had anywhere. But take with you the rugs and brass that you love, and you have your home. During the previous winter in Tarsus, we managed to buy several good rugs, a cradle-shawl, some candlesticks and Damascus beaten-brass trays out of our eight-hundred dollar salary. Don't ask me now how we did it. In retrospect it is a mystery. But we had these things in two big boxes. They were as butter is to bread with our pitch-pine. No, I'm not going to belittle that pitch-pine. Years of usage had modified its yellowness, and it took to our rubbing with a marvelous furniture polish. The floors could have been better. The wood was hard, however, and we got some sort of a wax shine on them. The Shakespeare furniture plus rugs and brasses—and candle light—made a home than which we have never since had better. Never mind if the dining-room was dark. Never mind if we had to sleep in our study, and study in our bedroom. Never mind if Scrappie's nursery was the salon, cabinet de travail and chambre à coucher combined. Never mind if we were compelled to take our baths at the foot of our bed in a tin basin. It was Paris, our dream city.

We were fully installed by six o'clock. The femme de ménage volunteered to stay with Christine while we went out for supper. Before finding a restaurant, we climbed the north tower of Saint-Sulpice. Between us and the mass of verdure that marked the Jardin du Luxembourg was our home. Up there near heaven, with the city at our feet, we danced the Merry Widow Waltz, for sheer joy that we had a home of our own in Paris.