Pages Out of a Paris Sketch-Book

A Few Unprinted Scenes and Episodes From a Crowded Spring in the Ville Lumiere, 1928

DEEMS TAYLOR

§1

DESPITE the die-hards, Europe—in the person of the average European—has evidently decided to forget the war and go in for rapprochement. Paris this year is full of Germans, who crowd the cafes and sightseeing busses with all the joy of returned exiles (incidentally, most of them speak fluent and virtually accentless French). New "Alsatian" restaurants are springing up like mushrooms, most of them offering excellent German cooking and Pilsener beer. Imported vintages no longer bother to put Grand Vin d'Alsace on the label. There is even a German daily paper, the Neue Pariser Zeitung.

The French, on their side, are obviously trying to he nice to Teutonic visitors. The entire Vienna Opera Company arrived in Paris in May, to give a season of opera in German at the Opera, and Bruno Walter was imported in June to conduct a Mozart festival. The word hoche is no longer heard—is, indeed, very bad form. The French war film, La Grande Epreuve, is astonishingly polite to the Germans. In this picture there is no invasion; war merely "breaks out"—with whom, the titles never say. Nor does France win the war. "And then, one day, came the armistice", says the title, and lets it go at that. Moreover, the director has taken pains to insert a scene showing a German army surgeon helping to save the life of a sick French girl. The film could be shown in Berlin without hurting anyone's feelings—and probably will be.

§2

Lindbergh has invaded the amusement business. One of the diversions of this year's Foire de Pain d'Epices was a device whereby, for one franc, you could become violently seasick in a sort of aerial merry-go-round composed of captive airplanes. The chief of these, into which the crowd clamored to be seated, was The Spirit of St. Louis. The French, who never heard of the Missouri metropolis, assume that Lindy's plane was named after Louis IX, as a compliment to them.

§3

The peaceful penetration of the French language by the English continues unabated. Football, basketball, hockey, stayer, dead-heat (pronounced deedeet), and knockout are now perfectly good French. So are lunch, bacon, sweater, home, pullover, baby, and interview, most of them being pronounced approximately as in English. High-life, which used to be pronounced eegleef, is now ah-ee lah-eef. Popcorn, which came in at the Exposition of 1900 as pain de Buffalo Bill, and later became maïs a eclater, is now popcorn.

French tastes, as well as language, occasionally take on a faintly Anglo-American tinge. Three highly popular French cigarettes are now Lucky Strah-eek, Camehl, and Centonze (the last is dear old "in"). It is now grand chic to serve cocktails before fashionable dinner-parties. The boulevard cafes all manufacture a loathesome dry Martini upon demand, and many of them can produce a recognizable club sandwich.

§4

The French merry-go-round is called chevaux de hois, and is as a rule composed exclusively of either cows or pigs, which are good luck to ride. The cows are particularly charming, with enormous brass horns, pink curling tongues, and superb tails tied with blue or pink ribbon. They wear collars with their names on them, and a jigger underneath causes them to rock violently when in motion. There is no more comforting sight than to see an entire French family, ranging in age from four to fifty, astride a herd of plunging wooden cows named respectively Angelique, Cecile, Ma Belle-Mere, and Ma Concierge.

§5

What occasions the gaps in languages, I wonder? Why cannot one say "locked out" in French? And why have the French never managed words for "seventy", "eighty", and "ninety"? Why, when an American can say "eighteen ninety-seven", and be done with it, must the Frenchman say "one thousand, eight hundred four-twenties ten-seven"?

§6

Porters, waiters, and taxi-drivers may be avid for tips, but the average Frenchman is very touchy about gratuitous offers. An American who was busy celebrating his successes at Longchamps took a table on the terrasse of the Cafe de la Paix and, strictly in accordance with American tradition, announced that everybody present was to have champagne on him. He was promptly mobbed, and had to be rescued by the police, the customers explaining heatedly and at length that they had money enough to pay for their own drinks.

§7

I wonder if Vice-President Dawes knows that he is in the wax-works? There is a magnificent effigy of him in the Musee Grévin, on the Boulevard Poissoniere. The other exhibits include Calvin Coolidge, Mussolini, Tilden, Lindbergh, Paul Poiret, the Trial of Charlotte Corday, and a lively group of lions eating Christian martyrs.

§8

The American who frequents only the English-speaking restaurants in Paris has never dined in Paris. Between the head-waiter at Larue's, whose tender of the menu is accompanied by a shower of fluent salesmanEnglish ("Yessir what'll you have to begin some nice fresh Russian caviar and some nice cream of lettuce and some nice fresh brook trout") and an attempt to sell you the roast pheasant (fr 120) and the omelette souffle (price not marked) ; and the proprietor of the Brasserie Universelle, who intercepts a halfconsumed melon from the bus-boy and returns it with a scandalized, "But monsieur, it is necessary that you eat it all! It is terribly expensive!"—between these two lies a far vaster distance than the half-mile between the Place de la Madeleine and the Rue des Petits Champs.

§9

"Monsieur, have you paid your bill this week?"

"Then why did they not tell me? You are entitled to clean sheets!"

§10

For all the jokes about speed-demon taxi drivers, the Paris traffic cop is efficient, and wastes few words. The other day I saw a taxi run past the "stop" signal at the foot of the Rue de la Paix—probably as crowded a nook as you will find in the world. An American traffic officer, in a similar situation, would have had the alternative either of stopping to give the offender a summons (which would have jammed traffic for an hour), or of letting him go with a few ill-chosen words. This cop did neither. Still directing traffic, he snapped, "A gauche!", making the driver take a lefthand turn and face the opposite way.

"Va t'en!" then remarked the cop. The point of this seemingly ineffectual reproof is that the luckless driver was faced with the necessity of going back the full length of the Place Vendôme and the Rue de Castiglione before he could possibly make another lefthand turn to get back. And as he had a passenger, and as the passenger was French, and as the French are not meek with taxi drivers, the result of his misadventure was not merely the registering of another half-mile on the meter. As I went on my way I heard the voice of the passenger, raised less in sorrow than in anger; and I fancy the two had quite a chat before the driver managed to get his fare.

§11

The best taxis to hail, in case you want to get to your destination, are the old red Renaults. They rattle like milk-wagons, but their drivers are grizzled veterans who know Paris. About half of the nice new yellow Citroens are driven by Russians, who are polite and willing to take advice, but who know less about Paris than you do. Parisians used to be thrilled by the thought that almost any taxi was likely to have a Russian grand duke for a driver. They are beginning to get a bit bored with refugees by now, and are beginning to suspect that some of them acquired their titles in other ways than by inheritance. This year's taxi story concerns a Parisian who boarded a taxi, accompanied by his small dog. Arrived at the destination, the driver, dismounting and opening the door, said:

"Allow me, monsieur, to present myself: Prince Igor Alexandrovich Hippolitoff, formerly of the Imperial Court of Russia, and member of the body guard of his Sacred Majesty, the Tsar Nicholas."

"Ah," said the fare gravely, lifting his hat. "And may I, in turn, present my Pomeranian, Jiki: formerly a Great Dane."