Читать книгу Paris Vistas - Helen Davenport Gibbons - Страница 6

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MY Scotch-Irish grandfather was a Covenanter. He kept his whisky in a high cupboard under lock and key. If any of his children were around when he took his night-cap, he would admonish them against the use of alcohol. When he read in the Bible about Babylon, he thought of Paris. To Grandpa all "foreign places" were pretty bad. But Paris? His children would never go there. The Scotch-Irish are awful about wills. But life goes so by opposites that when my third baby, born in Paris a year before the war, was christened in the Avenue de l'Alma Church, Grandpa Brown's children and grandchildren and some of his great-grandchildren were present. My bachelor uncle had been living in Paris most of the time for thirty years. My mother, my brothers, and my sister were there. We Browns had become Babylonians. We were no longer Covenanters. And we had no high cupboard for the whisky.

After Grandpa's death, the Philadelphia house was sublet for a year. In the twilight we went through all the rooms to say good-by. Jocko, our monkey-doll, was on the sitting-room floor. Papa picked him up and began talking to him. Jocko tried to answer, but his voice was shaky, and he hadn't much to say. Papa took a piece of string out of his desk drawer, and tied it around Jocko's neck. He asked Jocko whether it was too tight. The monkey answered, "No, sir." Jocko never forgot to say "sir." We hung him on the shutter of a window in the west room where I learned to watch the sunset. There we left him. What a parting if we had known that the tenants' children were going to do for Jocko, and that we should never see him again! It was bad enough as it was. It is hard for me, even to-day, to believe that it was Papa and not Jocko who told us stories about the fairies in Ireland.

A carriage drove us to a place called Thelafayette-hotel. It was very dark outside and we seemed to have been traveling all night. Papa carried me upstairs to a room that had light green folding doors. My little sister Emily was sound asleep and had to be put right to bed. Papa sat me in a red arm-chair. Beside it were satchels and Papa's black valise. Wide awake, I looked around and asked, "Is this Paris?" I did not see why they had to laugh at me.

A steward of my very own on the Etruria told me that she was the biggest transatlantic liner. People gave me chocolates until I was sick. So Mama painted a picture of the poor little fishes that could get no candy in mid-ocean. She made me feel so sorry that when I got more chocolates I would slip to the railing and drop them overboard. Once, before I had heard about the fishes, I was lying in my berth. After a while I began to feel better and to wish that Papa and Mama had not left me alone. My feelings were hurt because I had to stay all by myself. I found my clothes and put on a good many of them. My steward came and was surprised that I was not on deck. He brought me a wide, thin glass of champagne. It was better than lemonade. The steward told me that by staying in my cabin I had missed the chance to see the ship's garden. He buttoned my dress and put on my coat. He found my bonnet. All the time he was telling me how the ship's garden was hitched to the deck. He carried me up those rubber-topped steps that smell so when your stomach feels funny. He hurried all he could and got terribly out of breath. But we did not reach the deck in time to see the garden. The steward said that you had to get there just at a certain time to catch it. I wondered how a ship could have a garden. He replied that he'd like to know where a ship's cook would find vegetables and fruit, and how there were so many freshly picked flowers on the dining-room table every day, if the ship hadn't a garden. To prove it he brought me a plate of cool white grapes—"picked before the garden went out of sight a few minutes ago," he assured me.

So the week at sea passed, and the next thing I remember is London. It was not a pretty city. Too much rain and smoke that dirtied your frock and pinafore. These funny names for my dress and apron, and calling a clock Big Ben, and a queer way of speaking English, form my earliest memories of London. No, I forgot sources of wonderment. The best orange marmalade was bitter, and the tooth-powder was in a round tin hard to open, that spilled and wasted a lot when you did succeed in prying the lid off.

And in Paris I found that my dress was a "robe" and my apron a "tab-lee-ay." This was worse than "pinafore," but not so astonishing, because one expected French words to be different.

Which is the greater joy and satisfaction—always to have had a thing, or, when you think of something in your life, to be able to remember how and when it came into your possession? Paris is my home city in the sense that I cannot remember first impressions of things in Paris. Of events, yes, and sometimes connected with things, but of things themselves, no. And I am glad of it. My husband did not see Paris until he was twenty, and he learned to speak French by hard work. I have always had a little feeling of superiority here, of belonging to Paris as my children belong to Paris. But Herbert contests this point of view. He claims that affection for what one adopts by an act of the will is as strong as, if not stronger than, affection for what is yours unwittingly. And he advances in refutation of what I say that he knew Paris before he knew me!

"Cinquante-deux Rue Galilée." I cannot remember learning to speak French. That just came. But standing on a trunk in the corner of a bedroom and repeating Cinquante-deux Rue Galilée after Marie is just as clear in my mind as if it were yesterday instead of thirty years ago. It is a blank to me how and when we came to Paris and how and when we got Marie Guyon for our nurse. I recall only learning the number and street of our pension, and the impressiveness of Marie telling me how little kids get lost in Paris and that in such a case I mustn't cry when the blue-coated agent came along, but simply say, "Cinquante-deux Rue Galilée."

Clear days were rare—days when it didn't look as if it were going to rain. Then I would have my long walk with Papa, who didn't stay like Marie on the Champs-Elysées or in the Tuileries, but who would take me (Emily was too little) where there were crowds. We would climb to the roof of the omnibus at the Madeleine and ride to the Place de la République. Then we would walk back along the Grands Boulevards. Down that way is a big clothing-store with sample suits on wooden models out on the side-walk. One day Papa bumped into a dummy wearing a dress-suit. Papa took off his hat, bowed, and said "Pardon." I thought Papa believed it was a real man. So I told him that he had made a mistake. But Papa replied that one never makes a mistake in being polite. I used to dance with glee when we came to the Porte Saint-Denis. For there, at the place the boulevard now cuts straight through a hill leaving the houses high above the pavement, the pastry and brioche and waffle stands were sure of my patronage. Papa may not have had regard for my digestion, but he always considered my feelings. I used to pity other little children who were dragged remorselessly past the potent appeal to eye and nose. The pastry places are still there on that corner. And a new generation of kiddies passes, tugging, remonstrating, sometimes crying. As for me, I beg the question. I walk my children on the other side of the street.

One afternoon Marie took us to buy Papa's newspaper. When we got to the front door, it was raining. So Marie left us in the bureau and told us to wait until she returned. But the valet de chambre came along with his wood-basket empty. He always boasted he could carry any basket of wood, no matter how high they piled it. So we asked if he could carry us. Immediately he made us jump in, and told us we must pretend to be good little kittens, and little kittens were never good unless they were quiet, and they were never quiet unless they were asleep. When we got to our room, we could look right in at Papa and Mama through the transom. We reached out and knocked. The sound came from so high up that Papa looked curiously at the door. When he opened it we ducked down into the basket, and were not seen until the valet dumped us out on the bed.

My first memory of a negro was in Paris. Probably they were common enough in Philadelphia not to have made an impression and I had forgotten that there were black men. I was paralyzed with fear, thinking I saw Croqueminot en chair et en os. Marie saved me by teaching me on the spot to stick out my index and little fingers, doubling over the two between. This charm against evil helped and comforted me greatly. I found it useful later when I saw suspicious-looking beggars in Rome. Only, although the gesture was the same, it was jettatura and not faire les cornes in Italy, and the charm was more efficacious if concealed. I was glad my dress had a pocket.

Mama and Marie took us to the Louvre. I was filled with anticipation. For had I not heard some one say at our pension that she had bought things there for a song? Why spend Papa's money if just a song would do? I could sing. Marie had taught me a pretty song about "La Fauvette." I was willing to sing if I could get a doll's trunk. I'd sing two or three songs for a pair of gloves with white fur on them. But when I sang "La Fauvette" they only smiled at me. I asked the saleslady to take me to the toy counter, as I could sing again for things I wanted. I had to explain a whole lot to Mama and Marie and the saleslady. I suppose I cried with disappointment. Then a man in black with a white tie came along and heard the story. He gave me a red balloon and Mama consoled me by buying me a blue velvet dress.

A few months before the war I was walking in the Rue Saint-Honoré with an old American friend who was doing Paris. He was brimming over with French history. Your part was to mention the name of the place you showed him. He would do the rest with enthusiasm and a wealth of detail.

"What is that church?" he asked.

"Saint-Roch," I answered.

"Saint-Roch! Saint-Roch! Saint-Roch!" he cried in crescendo. "Of course, OF COURSE, because this is the Rue Saint-Honoré. The Rue Saint-Honoré!" Beside himself with excitement, he rushed across the street, and up on the steps. I followed, mystified. My friend was waving his cane when I reached his side. "It was here," he announced, as if he had made a wonderful discovery, "right on this spot."

"In Heaven's name what?" I queried.

"The beginning of the most glorious epoch of French history, the birth of the Napoleonic era."

And then he told me the story of how young Bonaparte, called upon to prevent a mob from rushing the Tuileries, put his guns on the steps of Saint-Roch, swept the street in both directions, and demonstrated that he was the first man since '89 who could dominate a Parisian crowd. "You wouldn't have thought there was anything interesting about this old church, would you?" he ended triumphantly.

My eyes filled with tears, and my lips trembled. It was his turn to be mystified, and mine to lead. I took him inside the church, and back to the chapel of Saint Joseph. "Here," I said, "on Christmas Eve I came with my father when I was five years old. It was the first time I remember seeing the Nativity pictured. Good old Joseph looked down on the interior of the inn. The three wise men were there with the gifts. Le petit Jésus was in a real cradle, and I counted the jewels around the Mother's neck. My father tried to explain to me what Christmas means. He died when I was a little girl. I brought my firstborn here on Christmas Eve and the others as they came along. I never knew about Napoleon's connection with Saint-Roch before. And you asked me whether I would have thought there was anything interesting about this old church!"

The same place can mean so many different things to so many different people. Paris was Babylon to my grandfather who never went there. And to those who go there Paris gives what they seek, historical reminiscences, esthetic pleasure, intellectual profit, inspiration to paint or sing or play, a surfeit of the mundane, a diminution or an increase of the sense of nationality, pretty clothes and hats and perfumes, "rattling" good food and drink or a "howling" good time. You can be bored in Paris just as quickly and as completely as in any other place in the world. You can fill your life full of interesting and engrossing pursuits more quickly and completely than in any other place in the world. Best of all you make your home in Paris, with no sense of exile, and enjoy what Paris alone offers in material and spiritual values without being abnormal or living abnormally.

My childhood vistas seem fragmentary when I put them down on paper. But they have meant so much to me that I could choose for my children no greater blessing than to know Paris as home at the beginning of their lives.