Wild Talent (18 page)

— Paul Verlaine

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

July 14

T
o travel by steamboat from London to Havre is much the cheapest way, though also very slow when one includes six hours of leisurely progress down the Thames, past wharves and warehouses and great fleets of anchored ships, past the Isle of Dogs, through Limehouse Reach and Greenwich Reach and finally out to sea.

Kind Mr. Dodds came down with me to the docks. “No place for a lady to venture all alone,” he said, though in that noisy, bustling place, crowded with clerks and customs men and other travellers, I could not imagine I would come to any harm. As we said goodbye he pressed a pound note into my hand, “in case of unforeseen expenses,” and would hear no refusal.

I have read that the Thames is the busiest river in the world, visited by thousands of ships from every faraway port, with every imaginable sort of cargo. Even the pungent dockside smells of tar and timber, sewage and coal-smoke, tobacco and turpentine and spice, hold the promise of adventure.

I think I must be a good sailor, for I did not feel at all queasy on the Channel crossing. Mr. Baedeker's guidebook says “Havre itself contains little to interest travellers”, and this seems to be true, though there is a busy promenade from which one can look out over the water with its forest of masts, and a museum (not open today) with a fine collection of old coins and stuffed animals. But to find oneself in a great port city in a foreign country, on one's way to Paris, surely that is excitement enough for any traveller. The invaluable Mr. Baedeker mentioned an “unpretending” (meaning inexpensive) hotel near the centre of the city, and this is where I am spending the night, in a clean but very unpretending bed. Though a steamboat travels daily up the Seine to Rouen (fare only five francs) the trip is described by Mr. B. as “tedious”, and another eight hours on shipboard is more than I wish to contemplate; and so instead I will spend a little more (fifteen francs forty-five centimes, third class) to travel directly to Paris by rail.

July 15

One hundred and forty-two and a half miles, seven and a half hours to Paris — every one taking me further from my old life, and all that is familiar. With Mr. Baedeker as my faithful guide, I am observing as much as I can of Normandy through the windows of the train, for who knows when I may travel this way again? We rolled past Graville (“with its curious church of the eleventh century”) and then four miles on was the first station, Harfleur (“taken in 1415 by Henry V of England”). Now, after we cross a high viaduct and gather speed, there are villages, chateaus, a tunnel, another viaduct, and miles of pleasant countryside. After the junction with the Dieppe line comes, “a cheerful and picturesque district, abounding in factories,” and finally we have arrived at the city of Rouen. Here, Mr. B. goes on a great deal about gothic churches and cathedrals which of course I shall not have the opportunity to visit.

More tunnels now as we cross the Seine, and stop at “several unimportant stations” along its banks. But here at last are the outskirts of Paris, and I glimpse M. Eiffel's metal giant rising against the skyline. Yet another tunnel and we are at the Gare St. Lazare, where Alexandra is to meet me.

At first, swept up in that noisy, jostling crowd, I could not catch sight of Alexandra, and endured a moment of sheer panic. Could she have mistaken the day? Had she gone to the wrong station? Had she somehow been delayed? But no, there she was, small and trim and self-possessed in her sensible dark suit, waving and calling out to me.

“How well you look!” she declared, as she stepped back from my relieved embrace. “Clearly, travel agrees with you! First we are going to stop for a meal —I cannot subject you to the execrable Jourdan cuisine, your first night in Paris.”

And so we went to a café close by the station, to dine on oxtail soup and meat pies with mushroom sauce. Many of the voices I heard at the tables nearby were English, for Paris it seems is a wonderfully inexpensive place to live.

Alexandra's lodgings are much as she has described them, and the food as dreadful, though despite her earlier plans to lodge elsewhere, she has settled in quite comfortably. Luckily, as she has mentioned in her letters, there is a good, cheap restaurant nearby, and she has bought herself a few luxuries — an Indian rug, some bookshelves, a proper writing desk. I am to stay with her until a room comes available for me.

July 16

Once when I was quite young I found a book in Father's library called
Vie de Bohème.
I thought what a romantic life they must lead, those artists and poets in their draughty Paris attics, careless of all convention, existing only for their art. (Later on though, finding myself up to my elbows in a tater pit in a winter dawn, the notion of freezing in a Paris garret did not appeal to me so much.) But here in Alexandra's Paris it is summer, and the avenues are full of life and music and colour and I can scarcely believe my good fortune that I am to be a part of it all.

On the Boulevard St-Michel, students from the Sorbonne, artists, poets, bohemians of all kinds throng the pavements and the cafés. In the Latin Quarter no one ever seems to sleep. All last night, or at least until I fell into an exhausted doze, I could hear through my open window the rumble of cabs and the clamour of voices raised in lively (and often drunken) conversation and exuberant song. How far removed, this gaudy and exotic world of velveteen cloaks and flowing silk cravats, red berets and wide-brimmed hats and ostrich plumes and gypsy shawls and artist's smocks, from the sober black and grey of London. From Alexandra's window overlooking the street I watch the passing parade. Once I saw descending from a cab a woman so proud in her bearing, so elegantly gowned in her silk and pearls that I imagined she must be a lady of wealth and position, a duchess perhaps; but Alexandra says no, she is a woman of dubious reputation, one of the
demi-monde
, who has come to the cafés of the Boulevard St-Michel to mingle with artists and poets and perhaps with ruffians and thieves as well — for it seems that Boulevard St-Michel, like all of the Latin Quarter, has itself a dubious reputation. In the dead of night, when even the cafés had fallen silent, I woke to the sound of cursing somewhere outside in the street; but when I looked out all I could see was one sullen-faced woman in a ragged gown, hovering at the dark entrance to an alleyway.

July 17

Our landlady Madame Jourdan is a timid mouse of a woman, utterly devoted to her husband, whom she appears to regard with awestruck terror. She is responsible for all the cooking and housekeeping, as well as looking after the books of the Theosophist Society, even though she is not allowed to attend the meetings of the inner circle. At times it all becomes too much for her to manage, and Alexandra finds her hiding in the kitchen in tears. Both she and her three year old son look half-starved. Alexandra says she usually brings them back some buns and cheese whenever she goes to the market. From time to time Alexandra, who is afraid of no one, berates M. Jourdan for the way he treats his family, but it falls on deaf ears. M. Jourdan seems to exist solely on some higher plane. Madame Blavatsky would make short work of him, I think!

In these supposedly enlightened circles, one would expect women to be better treated, but sadly it is not so. Even as a bondager I felt less of a servant than poor Madame Jourdan.

July 18

Another fine summer morning spent exploring the stalls of used books and prints along the Seine. We bought some cheese and crusty bread to eat in the Luxembourg Gardens, which are close by Alexandra's lodgings, and then we wandered through the narrow, winding streets of the Quarter, full of odd little shops selling every sort of curiosity. I hope to sleep soundly tonight, for tomorrow we are to visit the
Exposition Universelle.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

July 20

I
am not surprised that Madame Blavatsky so dislikes M. Eiffel's tower. That metal colossus looming over the city is startling to see and impossible to ignore. Alexandra tells me that some of Paris's most famous writers and artists protested its construction with an angry petition to the city government, but to no avail. However Alexandra, who because of her Oriental studies takes a longer view, says “After all, it is only made of iron. In time it will simply rust away, and fall to bits like Ozymandias.”

In any event, it serves as a grand entrance to the Universal Exposition, and passing beneath is like entering the gates of fairyland. The exposition, spread out along the Champ de Mars and well beyond, commemorates the hundredth anniversary of the storming of the Bastille and the beginning of the French Revolution. (I hoped there would be no guillotines on display — to my relief there are not — though we have heard there was a proposal, wisely rejected, to build one thirty metres high.)

There is an endless and bewildering number of exhibits — more than 61,000, according to the official guide, “a gigantic encyclopaedia, in which nothing is forgotten.” In the History of Habitation we saw a prehistoric house (rather like a tall, lumpy anthill), a Lapland and a Russian house, and homes of the ancient Egyptians and Phoenicians. We visited a Polynesian village, a Chinese pavilion, an Angkor Pagoda, a Portico of Ceramics, a display of antique Persian carpets. We rode on the
trottoir roulant
, the moving pavement, drank black coffee and ate pastries in a Moorish café, watched the Argentinean tango dancers, heard music played on gamelins by Javanese musicians, and opera played on Mr. Edison's phonograph machine. In a week, or a month, one could not hope to see and hear everything. We agreed to leave the galleries of Industry and Machinery and the Palace of Beaux Arts for another day; nor did we try to see Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley in their “Wild West Show”, for the crowds were far too thick.

Though it is advertised as one of the main attractions of the fair, what we enjoyed least was the
village nègre,
where four hundred native people from the African colonies are kept on display. “A zoo for human beings,” said Alexandra in disgust. “
Quelle horreur! C'est révoltant!”,
and we quickly moved on.

By then my feet were starting to ache and my head buzzed. I swear that visiting an exposition is more work than thinning a whole field of turnips! But Alexandra, when she is in a mood to explore, has boundless energy.

As we walked through the “Bazar Egyptien”, a voice behind us called out, “Mademoiselle David!
Quelle
surprise
!”

We stopped and turned. Hurrying to catch up with us was a tall young man so fancifully dressed that he himself could have been placed on display. He was the very picture of the Paris dandy, with his carefully groomed and upturned moustache and his small goatee. Under an elegant cream-coloured suit he wore a silk waistcoat in shades of gold and rose and plum that might have been borrowed from an Oriental prince. His long flowing cravat was the colour of aubergines, and his jaunty straw hat, which he waved in greeting, had a bunch of violets stuck in the band.

“M'sieu d'Artois!” exclaimed Alexandra, looking faintly annoyed. She said, in French, “A surprise, indeed. Are you playing the part of tourist today?”

“In my own fashion,” he replied.

“Jeanne.” Alexandra turned to me and I looked up. (My attention had been distracted by the handle of the young man's ebony walking stick, in the shape of some fabulous beast with snarling jaws and ruby eyes.) In English she said, “Jeanne, may I introduce M'sieu Etienne d'Artois?”

M. d'Artois inquired politely whether we were enjoying our tour of the Egyptian Bazaar. He spoke in flawless English, though with a curious hint of a North of England accent.

“It is indeed most interesting, in
its
own fashion,” said Alexandra, a trifle dismissively. “But there are limits to artifice. It cannot hope to replace the real experience of travel.”

“But, my dear mademoiselle,
au contraire
! Why would you wish to endure the inconvenience and fatigue of travel, the unhygienic conditions, the indigestible food — the
bugs! —
when here you can enjoy the very essence of travel, the distilled experience? Nature is chaos, my dear Mademoiselle David. It is only through artifice we can experience it in civilized fashion. Permit me to quote from my favourite author: ‘One can enjoy imaginary pleasures similar in all respects to the pleasures of reality'. Or are you perhaps not familiar with Monsieur J. K. Huysman's remarkable book
, À Rebours?”

“I have heard of it, of course,” said Alexandra. “ I'm told it is the most wicked and perverse book ever written. It is much admired by the poets of my acquaintance.”

“Wicked, yes. Perverse, without question. But therein lies its brilliance! A celebration of exquisite evil and divine
ennui
! But allow me to continue: ‘Nature has had her day. There is not a single one of her inventions that human ingenuity cannot manufacture.' Thus, says Monsieur Huysman's hero, with a floodlit stage one can easily reproduce a moonlit forest, with papier-mâché a perfectly convincing rock. With silk or coloured paper one can reproduce the loveliest of flowers, without the inevitable withering and decay.”