CHAPTER XIX
CHILDHOOD VISTAS FOR A NEW GENERATION

IN September, 1910, we went to Constantinople for just one year, as we had gone to Tarsus for one year. But the lure of the East held us. We loved our home up above the Bosphorus behind the great castle of Rumeli Hissar. When the Judas-trees were ablaze and nightingales were singing that first spring in Constantinople, we forgot Paris and rashly promised to stay two years longer. Life was full of adventure, the war with Italy, the war between Turkey and the Balkan States during which our city was the prize fought for, cholera, the coming of our second baby, and a wonderful trip in the Balkans. We would not have missed it, no, but Paris called us again, and we decided to leave the political unrest and wars of the Near East to return to the peaceful atmosphere of the BibliothÈque Nationale.

My husband could not get away from Constantinople until the end of June and then he wanted to pay his way back to Paris by traveling through the Balkans again after peace was signed with Turkey. With my two children, I sailed for Marseilles at the beginning of March and reached Paris just in time to get the last weeks of winter. In the calendar seasons are conventional. As in the United States, France frequently has winter until April is well started.

I found a little apartment on the Rue du Montparnasse just north of the Boulevard. From the standpoint of my friends I suppose the Quarter was a bit more comme il faut than the Rue Servandoni. I missed the picturesqueness of our old abode with the Épicerie on the ground floor and the moyenageux atmosphere. But the change to the Montparnasse Quarter had its compensations. The air, none too good in the great city, is better around the Boulevard du Montparnasse than in any other part of the city except Montmartre, Belleville and Buttes-Chaumont. You are on high ground away from the heavy mists and dampness of the river. Communications are excellent. You do not have to sacrifice the feeling of being in a real vital part of Paris, either. We still lived in the midst of historical association. If Gondorcet hid in the Rue Servandoni from those who would have chopped his head off during the Terror, Lamartine was hauled from a house on the Rue du Montparnasse by the soldiers of Louis Napoleon at the beginning of the coup d'etat of 1851, and to the Rue du Montparnasse flocked the cream of Paris on Mondays to hear Sainte-Beuve during the Third Empire.

It was a new world opened for the eyes of Christine and Lloyd to live cooped up in an apartment after the big house at Rumeli Hissar and to have to walk through city streets to find a garden to play in instead of simply stepping out of their own front door. But life has its compensations—everywhere and at all times. You never get anything without sacrificing something else for it. We have to choose at every step, and we must turn away from some blessings to obtain others. I love the country. Theoretically speaking, it is the best place to bring up children. But living in the open does deprive them of the mental alertness, of the broad vision from infancy, of the self-reliance, of the habits of industry that childhood in the city alone can give. And then, the doctor comes right away when you telephone.

Thirty-Eight Rue du Montparnasse was opposite Notre-Dame-des-Champs, and only a door down from the Boulevard. From the windows my tots could see the passing show on the boulevard: and the church was a never-failing source of interest. Just opposite us was the sexton's apartment, tucked into the roof of the church. It is characteristic of Paris that a home should be hidden away in an unexpected corner like this. From the windows Christine and Lloyd could see the little church children playing on their flat roof, and out of the door below the choir boys passed in and out. We went into our apartment at First Communion season. My childhood enjoyed the "little brides of Christ" in their white dresses and veils. Every day had its weddings and funerals. The children did not distinguish between life and death. Whenever carriages stopped in front of the church, they would jump up and down and shout, "Mariage!"

A little sister arrived at the beginning of May. When June came, I was able to take Emily Elizabeth out to market. Every morning we went down the Boulevard Raspail to Sadla's, on the corner of the Rue de SÈvres, and twice a week to the market on the Boulevard Edgar-Quinet. They were the blessed days, when I had no cook—which meant that I could buy what I liked to eat, and no nurse—which meant that I saw something of my own children. Servants are a necessary evil to the housewife and mother that wants to see something of the world in which she lives. But an occasional interlude, when everything devolves on mother, is good both for her and the children.

During the war Sadla's went bankrupt, and for several years the corner opposite the Hotel Lutetia has been desolate. Probably the firm failed for the very reason that made it unique among the provision-shops even of Paris, where the selling of food is as much a work of art as the cooking of it. We loved Sadla's. Marketing there was always a joy. Your baby-carriage was not an inconvenience: for everything was displayed outside on the street. You started with fish and ended with fruit and flowers, passing by meats and vegetables, canned goods, groceries, pastry, cakes and candies. The fish swam in a marble basin under a fountain. You made your choice, and the victim was netted by a white-clad boy and flopped over the counter to the scales. Live lobsters sprawled in sea-weed, and boiled ones lay on ice. Oysters from fifty centimes to five francs a dozen were packed in wicker baskets, passed by their guardian every few minutes under the fountain. In the hors d'oeuvres and cold meat section, you had your choice of the cheapest and the most expensive variety of tempting morsels. It made no difference if you wanted a little chicken wing or a big turkey encased in truffle-studded jelly, a slice of ham or a whole Yorkshire quarter, one pickle or a hundred, twenty centimes worth of salade Russe or an earthenware dishful arranged like an Italian garden landscape, one radish or a bunch of them. In Paris everybody is accustomed to purchasing things to eat and drink of the best quality: so you do not feel that the quality of what you want depends upon the quantity you ask for. On the meat counters, for instance, single chops, and tiny cutlets and roasts, and chickens of all sizes, are displayed side by side, each with its price marked. Apples, pears, tomatoes, bananas, even plums, are price-marked by the piece. Tarts and cakes are of all sizes. When you come to flowers, you can buy single roses or carnations. I never tired of shopping at Sadla's. Nor did the children.

Vegetables and fruits and nuts are mostly bought in the open markets or from the marchandes des quatre saisons, who deal also in dairy products and poultry and flowers. The markets are held on certain days in different quarters. The women with push-carts line the streets every day. They go early in the morning to the Halles Centrales and buy whatever they find is the bargain of the day, and hawk in their own quarter, announcing their merchandise by queer cries that even to the well-trained ear of the French woman need a glance at the push-cart to confirm what is at the best a guess.

It is fun to buy on the street, and the commodities and price are sometimes an irresistible temptation. But you have to watch the marchandes des quatre saisons. They have a way of throwing your purchase on the scales in the manner of an American iceman, and you want to be ready to put out your hand to steady the needle. Your eye must be sharp too, to watch that some of the apples do not come, wormy and spotted, from a less desirable layer underneath the selling layer. It is a wonderful lesson in learning how to put the best foot forward to watch the push-cart women arranging their wares on the side-walks around the Halles Centrales before starting out on the daily round. From the writings of Carlyle and other seekers after the picturesque, the legend has grown that the poissonniÈres, who knitted before the guillotine, are a race apart. But there is as much truth in this belief as in the belief that our gallant marines did the trick alone at ChÂteau-Thierry. Fish women are no more formidable among Parisiennes than the general run of marchandes des quatre saisons. And ask almost anyone who has lived in a Paris apartment about her concierge!

Fresh from Montenegro, Herbert reached our new home on the morning of July fourteenth. He explained that he had left the Greeks and Serbians and Bulgarians to fight over the Turkish spoils to their heart's content. He was sick of following wars. He wanted to see his new baby. It had come over him one night in Albania, when sleeplessness was due to the usual cause in that part of the world, that by catching a certain boat from Cattaro to Venice he could get home for the Quatorze.

After he had looked over his new acquisition, we started out for a stroll by ourselves just to talk things over. We walked down the Boulevard Montparnasse to the Place de l'Observatoire. Between the Closerie des Lilas and the Bal Bullier was a big merry-go-round. The onlookers were throwing multi-colored streamers at the girls they liked the best among the riders. In the middle of the street a strong man in pink tights was doing stunts with dumb-bells and the members of his family.

The same thought came to us both. What a pity the children are missing this! We hurried back for them, forgetting that we had promised ourselves a long just-us talk to bridge the months of separation. And we returned to join in the celebration, my husband pushing the baby-carriage and I with progeny hanging to both hands. Why do children drag so, even when you are walking slowly? Every mother knows how they lean on her literally as well as figuratively.

That Quatorze was the beginning of a new epoch. A new generation was to have childhood vistas of Paris, but parent-led and parent-shown, as it had been for me thirty years before. For that is the way of the world.

CHAPTER XX
THE PROBLEM OF HOUSING

WHEN you are in Paris without children you can get along in a hotel or a pension: and you can probably live as cheaply as, if not more cheaply than, in a home of your own. There are several combinations. Inexpensive rooms (in normal times) can be found in good hotels: and there are lots of hotels that take only roomers. You do not, as at a pension, have to be tied down to at least two meals where you live. The advantages of a furnished-room or a pension are: easy to find in the quarter you wish to live in; no bother about service; and no necessity to tie yourself up with a lease. But if you are making a protracted stay, it is wise to weigh at the beginning the disadvantages with the advantages. You get tired of the food; you have to associate daily with people whom you do not like; and—especially if you are of my sex—you have no place to receive your friends. I think in the end most people who go to Paris and who follow the line of least resistance, either because it is that or because they have the idea that they can learn French quicker in a "French pension," regret having missed the opportunity of a home of their own, of a chez soi, as the French say. For you really cannot feel that you belong in Paris unless you are keeping house. "Be it ever so humble," you can set up your own home, if you are determined to do so. There are innumerable wee apartments—a hall big enough to hang up your coat and hat, a kitchenette, and a room where your bed can be a couch disguised with a rug and pillows during the day. Studios furnish another opportunity of making a home of your own. Of course, during the war and since Paris has been overcrowded. But there will be a return to normal conditions.

And if you have a family—even one baby—hotel or pension life becomes unendurable.

When Herbert came back from Turkey in the summer of 1913, we found the three little rooms and kitchen of Thirty-eight Rue du Montparnasse too small for us. The first thing Herbert did was to "give notice." The Paris system of renting is very advantageous if one is looking for a modest apartment. Your lease is by the term—a term being three months—and can be canceled upon giving one term's notice. This means that you're tied down for only six months in the beginning, and after that for only three months. One can buy simple furniture, as we did in the Rue Servandoni, and sell it at the end of the year without a great loss. It is possible to rent an apartment for a year, furnish it and sell out, at about the same price you would pay for a furnished apartment. And you will have had the pleasure of being surrounded by your own things.

The proposition of a furnished apartment looks better than it is. The French are the worst people in the world for biting a penny. They are meticulous to a point incomprehensible to Americans. The inventory is a horror! In taking a villa, whether it be in Brittany, in Normandy, at Aix-les-Bains, or on the Riviera, you are handed sheets of paper by the arm's length, on which are recorded not only the objects in each room but the state of walls, garden, woodwork, carpets, mattresses, pillows and blankets. You wrestle with the agent when you enter. But he is cleverer than you are. And when you come to leave, he finds spots and cracks, nicks in the china, ink-stains, and all sorts of damages you never thought of. He points to your signature—and you pay! You replace what is broken or chipped by new objects. You repaint and repaper and clean. The bill is as long as the inventory. And you find that your original rent is simply an item.

I do not want to infer that you are entirely free from this annoyance and uncertain item of expense when you lease unfurnished. Your walls and ceilings and floors, your mirrors (which in France are an integral part of the building) and your charges are to be considered. An architect, if you please, draws up the État des lieux, which you are required to sign as you do the inventoire of a furnished apartment. But the longer you remain in an apartment the less proportionately to your rent are the damages liable to be. As for the charges, by which is meant your share towards the carpets in the halls and on the stairs, the lighting, elevator, etc., in many leases they are now represented by a fixed sum, and where they are not, you can have a pretty definite idea as to what they are going to be. The unexpected does not hit you.

Most Paris leases are on the 3-6-9 year basis. You sign for three years. If you do not give notice six months before the end of the three-year term, the lease is automatically continued for another equal period. For nine years, then, you are sure of undisturbed possession, and your propriÉtaire cannot raise the rent on you. Leases are generally uniform in their clauses. You bind yourself to put furniture to the value of at least one year's rent in the apartment to live in it bourgeoisement (that is, to carry on no business), to keep no dogs or other pets,[D] and to sublet only with proprietor's consent. On his side, the proprietor agrees to give you proper concierge and elevator service, to heat the apartment for five months from November first to March thirty-first, and to furnish water, hot and cold, at fixed rates per cubic meter. The lease is registered at the mairie at the locataire's expense.

You pay the taxes, which are collected directly from you. The municipal tax runs to about sixteen percent of the annual rental, and now includes in a lump sum the old taxes for windows and doors. In addition, you pay a very small tax to recompense the city for having suppressed the octroi on wines and liquors and mineral waters. A new tax, which no resident in France who has an apartment can escape, is the income tax. But unless you are a French subject, you are not compelled to make a return of your sources of income. Should you choose to be taxed d'office, the collector assesses you on a basis of having an income seven times the amount of your rental. The concierge is forbidden to allow you to move from your apartment until you have shown him the receipts for the current year for all your taxes.

Once you have signed your lease and have arranged to move in, your troubles are not yet over. Proprietors furnish no chandeliers or other lights, not even the simplest. You have to go to an electrician, buy your fixtures, and have them installed, if you have not bought the lights in the apartment from the previous locataire. You must sign contracts and make deposits for your gas and electric light. The gas company will rent you a stove and a meter. You pay the charges for connecting you up. Telephones are in the hands of the government. If you want a direct telephone, you have to sign a contract. If you want to have your telephone through the concierge's loge, the telephone service is charged on your quarterly rent bill. In any case, you pay for the instrument and bell box and the charges for installation. A private line is not much of an advantage in Paris. The service is scarcely any quicker. With your telephone by way of the concierge, a message can be left if you do not answer, and the person calling you is informed if you are out of town.

The last of your troubles is fire insurance. Thanks to the solid construction of Paris and careful surveillance, fires are very rare. During all the years I have lived in Paris I remember no fires except those caused by the German bombs. However, you do not dare not to insure. For French law holds you responsible for damage to neighbors' apartments from water as well as fire, if the fire starts in yours. Your insurance policy insures your neighbors as well as yourself. The French law is excellent. It makes you careful. French law, also, by the way, holds you liable for accidents to your servants, of any kind and no matter how incurred. You cannot fall back on the joker of contributory carelessness. All the servant has to prove is that the accident happened while working for you.

I have forgotten to mention one further formality that was not of importance before the war but is indispensable now. An old French police law requires all foreigners to secure a certificat d'immatriculation from the Prefecture of Police as the sine qua non to residence in Paris. Before the war, no one ever bothered about this. The only foreigners watched by the police were Russians, due to a provision France ought never to have agreed to in the alliance with Russia. When the war broke out and my husband went to get his permis de sÉjour, he was asked for the first time for this paper. And we had been living in France on and off for six years, and had leased three apartments! This was a reason for loving Paris. Nobody bothered you, and you could live as you pleased and do as you pleased so long as you behaved yourself. Foreigners were never made to feel that they were foreigners. They enjoyed equality before the law with Frenchmen. Paris was cosmopolite in a unique sense. Hindsight blamed the laxity of the French police. But let us fervently hope that the old spirit of hospitality may not have changed with the war and that France in regard to Germany may not be as Rome in regard to Greece. Why be victor if one has to adopt the habits of the vanquished?

I have gone into the question of the housing problem with too much precision and detail, I fear, for a book of Paris sketches. But so many friends have asked me, so many strangers have written me, about taking up their abode in Paris that I feel what I have said about it will be of interest to all who are interested in Paris.

We had three months to our new residence. You always have three months at least in Paris. It is not enough if you are undecided or lazy. It is plenty if you go about hunting for a home with the same energy and persistence and enthusiasm that you put into other things. After all, what is more important than a home? We tramped the quarter, as we had done in the summer of 1909. But we now had a large family. And we had realized the fundamental truth of the beautiful old Scotch saying, "Every bairn brings its food wi' it." So we were able to aspire to two salons and three bedrooms, to confort moderne (which means central heat, electric light, bath-rooms, elevator and hot water), and to palms and red carpet in the doorway.

For us the heart of Paris at that time was where the Boulevard du Montparnasse is crossed by the Boulevard Raspail. On the Boulevard du Montparnasse, between Baty's and the Rue LÉopold-Robert, a new apartment house was being built. Before the stairs were finished we climbed to the sixth floor, lost our hearts to a view of all Paris, and signed a 3-6-9 lease. The war has come and gone. We are still there.