Chapter I: Part 1

Peter Whiffle

His Life and Works

_BOOKS BY CARL VAN VECHTEN_

INTERPRETERS
IN THE GARRET
THE MERRY-GO-ROUND
THE MUSIC OF SPAIN
THE TIGER IN THE HOUSE
MUSIC AND BAD MANNERS
LORDS OF THE HOUSETOPS
MUSIC AFTER THE GREAT WAR
PETER WHIFFLE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS

Peter Whiffle

His Life and Works

_Carl Van Vechten_

New York Alfred · A · Knopf
MCMXXIII

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
ALFRED A. KNOPF, Inc.

_Published, April, 1922_

_Second Printing, April, 1922_

_Third Printing, May, 1922_

_Fourth Printing, June, 1922_

_Fifth Printing, July, 1922_

_Sixth Printing, August, 1922_

_Seventh Printing, October, 1922_

_Eighth Printing, March, 1923_

_Ninth Printing, July, 1923_

_Set up, electrotyped, printed and bound by the Vail-Ballou Co.,
Binghamton, N.Y.
Paper furnished by W.F. Etherington & Co., New York._

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO THE MEMORY OF

MY MOTHER,

ADA AMANDA FITCH VAN VECHTEN

"_'Tingling is the test,' said Babbalanja, 'Yoomy, did you tingle, when that song was composing?'_

"_'All over, Babbalanja.'_"

Herman Melville: Mardi.

"_We work in the dark--we do what we can--we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art._"

Dencombe: The Middle Years.

"_Les existences les plus belles sont peut-être celles qui ont subi tous les extrêmes, qui ont traversé toutes les températures, rencontré toutes les sensations excessives et tous les sentiments contradictoires._"

Remy de Gourmont: Le Chat de Misère.

"_The man who satisfies a ceaseless intellectual curiosity probably squeezes more out of life in the long run than any one else._"

Edmund Gosse: Books on the Table.

"_O mother of the hills, forgive our towers;
O mother of the clouds, forgive our dreams._"

Edwin Ellis.

_Preface_

So few people were acquainted with Peter Whiffle that the announcement, on that page of the New York Times consecrated to wedding, birth, and obituary notices, of his death in New York on December 15, 1919, awakened no comment. Those of my friends who knew something of the relationship between Peter and myself, probably did not see the slender paragraph at all. At any rate none of them mentioned it, save, of course, Edith Dale, whose interest, in a sense, was as special as my own. Her loss was not so personal, however, nor her grief so deep. It was strange and curious to remember that however infrequently we had met, and the chronicle which follows will give evidence of the comparative infrequency of these meetings, yet some indestructible bond, a firm determining girdle of intimate understanding, over which Time and Space had no power, held us together. I had become to Peter something of a necessity, in that through me he found the proper outlet for his artistic explosions. I was present, indeed, at the bombing of more than one discarded theory. It was under the spell of such apparently trivial and external matters that our friendship developed and, while my own interests often flew in other directions, Peter certainly occupied as important a place in my heart as I did in his, probably, in some respects, more important. Nevertheless, when I received a notification from his lawyer that I had been mentioned in Peter's will, I was considerably astonished. My astonishment increased when I was informed of the nature of the bequest. Peter Whiffle had appointed me to serve as his literary executor.

Now Peter Whiffle was not, in any accepted sense of the epithet, an author. He had never published a book; he had never, indeed, written a book. In the end he had come to hold a somewhat mystic theory in regard to such matters, which he had only explained to me a few moments before he died. I was, however, aware, more aware than any one else could possibly have been, that from time to time he had been accustomed to take notes. I was as familiar, I suppose, as any one could be, with the trend of his later ideas, and with some of the major incidents in his earlier life he had acquainted me, although, here, I must confess, there were lacunæ in my knowledge. Still, his testamentary request, unless I might choose to accept it in a sense, I am convinced, entirely too flattering to my slender talents, seemed to be inconsistent with the speculative idea which haunted him, at least towards the end of his life. This contradiction and an enlarging sense of the mysterious character of the assignment were somewhat dispelled by a letter, dated June 17, 1917, which, a few days after the reading of the will, his lawyer placed in my hands and which indicated plainly enough that Peter had decided upon my appointment at least two years and a half before he died. This letter not only confirmed the strange clause in the will but also, to some extent, explained it and, as the letter is an essential part of my narrative, I offer it in evidence at once.

Dear Carl--so it read:

I suppose that some day I shall die; people do die. If there has been one set purpose in my life, it has been not to have a purpose. That, you alone, perhaps, understand. You know how I have always hesitated to express myself definitely, you know how I have refrained from writing, and you also know, perhaps, that I can write; indeed, until recently, you thought I was writing, or would write. But I think you realize now what writing has come to mean to me, definition, constant definition, although it is as apparent as anything can be that life, nature, art, whatever one writes about, are fluid and mutable things, perpetually undergoing change and, even when they assume some semblance of permanence, always presenting two or more faces. There are those who are not appalled by these conditions, those who confront them with bravery and even with impertinence. You have been courageous. You have published several books which I have read with varying shades of pleasure, and you have not hesitated to define, or at any rate discuss, even that intangible, invisible, and noisy art called Music.

I have begun many things but nothing have I ever completed. It has always seemed unnecessary or impossible, although at times I have tried to carry a piece of work through. On these occasions a restraining angel has held me firmly back. It might be better if what I have written, what I have said, were permitted to pass into oblivion with me, to become a part of scoriac chaos. It may not mean anything in particular; if it means too much, to that extent I have failed.

Thinking, however, of death, as I sometimes do, I have wondered if, after all, behind the vapoury curtain of my fluctuating purpose, behind the orphic wall of my indecision, there did not lurk some vague shadow of intention. Not on my part, perhaps, but on the part of that being, or that condition, which is reported to be interested in such matters. This doubt, I confess, I owe to you. Sometimes, in those extraordinary moments between sleeping and awakening--and once in the dentist's chair, after I had taken gas--the knots seemed to unravel, the problem seemed as naked as Istar at the seventh gate. But these moments are difficult, or impossible, to recapture. To recapture them I should have been compelled to invent a new style, a style as capricious and vibratory as the moments themselves. In this, however, as you know, I have failed, while you have succeeded. It is to your success, modest as it may appear to you, that I turn in my dilemma. To come to the point, cannot you explain, make out some kind of case for me, put me on my feet (or in a book), and thereby prove or disprove something? Shameless as I am, it would be inconceivable, absurd, for me to ask you to do this while I am yet living and I have, therefore, put my request into a formal clause in my will. After I am dead, you may search your memory, which I know to be very good, for such examples of our conversations as will best be fitted to illuminate your subject, which I must insist--you, yourself, will understand this, too, sooner or later--_is not me at all_.

When your book is published, I shall be dead and perhaps unconscious. If, however, as I strongly suspect, some current connects the life to be with the life that is, I can enjoy what you have done. At the best, you may give others a slight intimation of the meaning of inspiration or furnish guideposts, lighthouses, and bell-buoys to the poet who intends to march singing along the highroad or bravely to embark on the ships at sea; at the worst, I have furnished you with a subject for another book, and I am well aware that subjects even for bad books are difficult to light upon.

Salve atque Vale,

Peter.

This letter, I may say, astonished me. I think it would astonish anybody. A profound and enveloping melancholy succeeded to this feeling of astonishment. At the time, I was engaged in putting the finishing touches to The Tiger in the House and I postponed meditation on Peter's affair until that bulky volume could be dispatched to the printer. That happy event fell on March 15, 1920, but my anthology, Lords of The Housetops, next claimed my attention, and then the new edition of Interpreters, for which I had agreed to furnish a new paper, and the writing of this new paper amused me very much, carrying my mind not only far away from cats, which had been occupying it for a twelvemonth, but also away from Peter's request. At last, Interpreters was ready for the printer, but now the proofs of The Tiger began to come in, and I may say that for the next three months my days were fully occupied in the correction of proofs, for those of Lords of The Housetops and Interpreters were in my garret when the proofs of The Tiger were not. Never have I corrected proofs with so much concentrated attention as that which I devoted to the proofs of The Tiger, and yet there were errors. In regard to some of these, I was not the collaborator. On Page 240, for instance, one may read, There are many females in the novels of Emile Zola. My intention was to have the fourth word read, felines, and so it stood in the final proof, but my ambition to surmount the initial letter of Zola's Christian name with an acute accent (an ambition I shall forswear on this present page), compelled the printer to reset the line, so that subsequently, when I opened the book at this page, I read with amazement that there are many females in the novels of Emile Zola, a statement that cannot be readily denied, to be sure, but still it is no discovery of which to boast.

It was not until September, 1920, that I had an opportunity to seriously consider Peter's request and when I did begin to consider it, I thought of it at first only as a duty to be accomplished. But when I began searching my memory for details of the conversations between us and had perused certain notes I had made on various occasions, visited his house on Beekman Place to look over his effects and talk with his mother, the feeling of the artist for _inevitable_ material came over me and I knew that whether Peter had written me that letter or not, I should sooner or later have written this book about him.

There was another struggle over the eventual form, a question concerning which Peter had made no suggestions. It seemed to me, at first, that a sort of haphazard collection of his ideas and pronunciamentos, somewhat in the manner of Samuel Butler's Note-Books, would meet the case, but after a little reflection I rejected this idea. Light on the man was needed for a complete understanding of his ideas, or lack of them, for they shifted like the waves of the sea. I can never tell why, but it was while I was reading William Dean Howells's Familiar Spanish Studies one day in the New York Public Library that I suddenly decided on a sort of loose biographical form, a free fantasia in the manner of a Liszt Rhapsody. This settled, I literally swam ahead and scarcely found it necessary to examine many papers (which was fortunate as few exist) or to consult anything but my memory, which lighted up the subject from obscure angles, as a search-light illuminates the spaces of the sea, once I had learned to decipher the meaning of the problem. What it is all about, or whether it is about anything at all, you, the reader, of course, must decide for yourself. To me, the moral, if I may use a conventional word to express an unconventional idea, is plain, and if I have not succeeded in making it appear so, then I must to some extent blame you, the reader, for what is true of all books, is perhaps truest of this, that you will carry away from it only what you are able to bring to it.

_Chapter I_

One of my friends, a lady, visited Venice alone in her middle age. It was late at night when the train drew into the station, and it was raining, a drizzly, chilling rain. The porter pushed her, with her bag, into a damp gondola and the dismal voyage to the hotel began. There were a few lights here and there but she had the impression that she was floating down the Chicago River in a wash-tub. Once she had reached her destination, she clambered unsteadily out of the black barge, wobbled through a dark passageway, inhaling great whiffs of masticated garlic, and finally emerged in a dimly lighted lobby. At the desk, a sleepy clerk yawned as she spoke of her reservation. Tired, rather cross, and wholly disappointed, she muttered, I don't like Venice at all. I wish I hadn't come. The clerk was unsympathetically explanatory, Signora should have visited Venice when she was younger.

A day or so later, the lady recovered her spirits and even her sense of humour for she told me the story herself and I have always remembered it. The moment it passed her lips, indeed, I began to reflect that I had been lucky to encounter the Bride of the Adriatic in my youth. Paris, too, especially Paris, for there is a melancholy pleasure to be derived from Venice. It is a suitable environment for grief; there is a certain superior relish to suffering there. Paris, I sometimes think, smiles only on the very young and it is not a city I should care to approach for the first time after I had passed forty.

I was, as a matter of fact, in my twenties when I first went to Paris--my happiness might have been even greater had I been nineteen--and I was alone. The trip across England--I had landed at Liverpool--and the horrid channel, I will not describe, although both made sufficient impression on me, but the French houses at Dieppe awakened my first deep emotion and then, and so many times since, the Normandy cider, quaffed in a little café, conterminous to the railroad, and the journey through France, alive in the sunlight, for it was May, the fields dancing with the green grain spattered with vermilion poppies and cerulean cornflowers, the white roads, flying like ribbons between the stately poplars, leading away over the charming hills past the red-brick villas, completed the siege of my not too easily given heart. There was the stately and romantic interruption of Rouen, which at that period suggested nothing in the world to me but Emma Bovary. Then more fields, more roads, more towns, and at last, towards twilight, Paris.

Railroads have a fancy for entering cities stealthily through backyards and the first glimpses of Paris, achieved from a car-window, were not over-pleasant but the posters on the hoardings, advertising beer and automobile tires, particularly that of the Michelin Tire Company, with the picture of the pinguid gentleman, constructed of a series of pneumatic circles, seemed characteristic enough. Chéret was dead but something of his spirit seemed to glow in these intensely coloured affiches and I was young. Even the dank Gare Saint Lazare did not dismay me, and I entered into the novel baggage hunt with something of zest, while other busy passengers and the blue porters rushed hither and thither in a complicated but well-ordered maze. Naturally, however, I was the last to leave the station; as the light outside deepened to a rich warm blue, I wandered into the street, my porter bearing my trunk, to find there a solitary cocher mounted on the box of his carious fiacre.

An artist friend, Albert Worcester, had already determined my destination and so I gave commands, Hotel de la Place de l'Odéon, the cocher cracked his whip, probably adding a Hue cocotte! and we were under way. The drive through the streets that evening seemed like a dream and, even later, when the streets of Paris had become more familiar to me than those of any other city, I could occasionally recapture the mood of this first vision. For Paris in the May twilight is very soft and exquisite, the grey buildings swathed in a bland blue light and the air redolent with a strange fragrance, the ingredients of which have never been satisfactorily identified in my nasal imagination, although Huysmans, Zola, Symons, and Cunninghame Graham have all attempted to separate and describe them. Presently we crossed the boulevards and I saw for the first time the rows of blooming chestnut trees, the kiosques where newsdealers dispensed their wares, the brilliantly lighted theatres, the sidewalk cafés, sprinkled with human figures, typical enough, doubtless, but who all seemed as unreal to me at the time as if they had been Brobdingnags, Centaurs, Griffins, or Mermaids. Other fiacres, private carriages, taxi-autos, carrying French men and French ladies, passed us. I saw Bel Ami, Nana, Liane de Pougy, or Otero in every one of them. As we drove by the Opéra, I am certain that Cléo de Mérode and Leopold of Belgium descended the steps. Even the buses assumed the appearance of gorgeous chariots, bearing perfumed Watteauesque ladies on their journey to Cythera. As we drove through the Tuileries Gardens, the mood snapped for an instant as I viewed the statue of Gambetta, which, I thought at the time, and have always thought since, was amazingly like the portrait of a gentleman hailing a cab. What could more completely symbolize Paris than the statue of a gentleman perpetually hailing a cab and never getting one?

We drove on through the Louvre and now the Seine was under us, lying black in the twilight, reviving dark memories of crime and murder, on across the Pont du Carrousel, and up the narrow Rue de Seine. The Quartier Latin! I must have cried aloud, for the cocher looked a trifle suspicious, his head turned the fraction of an inch. Later, of course, I said, the left bank, as casually as any one. It was almost dark when we drove into the open Place, flanked by the Odéon, a great Roman temple, with my little hotel tucked into one corner, as unostentatiously as possible, being exactly similar to every other structure, save the central one, in the Place. I shall stop tonight, I said to myself, in the hotel where Little Billee lived, for, when one first goes to Paris when one is young, Paris is either the Paris of Murger, du Maurier, or the George Moore of the Confessions, perhaps the Paris of all three. In my bag these three books lay, and I had already begun to live one of them.

The patron and a servant in a long white apron were waiting, standing in the doorway. The servant hoisted my trunk to his shoulder and bore it away. I paid the cocher's reckoning, not without difficulty for, although I was not ignorant of the language, I was unaccustomed to the simplicity of French coinage. There were also the mysteries of the pourboire to compute--ten per cent, I had been told; who has not been told this?--and besides, as always happens when one is travelling, I had no little money. But at length the negotiations were terminated, not to the displeasure of the cocher, I feel certain, since he condescended to smile pleasantly. Then, with a crack of his whip, this enormous fellow with his black moustaches, his glazed top-hat, and his long coat, drove away. I cast a long lingering look after him, apparently quite unaware that many another such teratological specimen existed on every hand. Now I followed the patron into a dark hallway and new strata of delight. He gave me a lighted candle and, behind him, I mounted the winding stairway to the first floor, where I was deposited in a chamber with dark red walls, heavy dark red curtains at the windows, which looked out over the Place, a black walnut wash-hand-stand with pitcher and basin, a huge black walnut wardrobe, two or three chairs of the same wood, upholstered with faded brocade, and a most luxurious bed, so high from the floor that one had to climb into it, hung with curtains like those at the window, and surmounted by a feather-bed. There was also another article of furniture, indispensable to any French bedroom.

I gave Joseph (all men servants in small hotels in Paris are named Joseph, perhaps to warn off prospective Potiphar's wives) his vail, asked for hot water, which he bore up promptly in a small can, washed myself, did a little unpacking, humming the Mattchiche the while, changed my shirt, my collar and my necktie, demanded another bougie, lighted it, and under the humble illumination afforded by it and its companion, I began to read again The Confessions of a Young Man. It was not very long before I was interrupted in the midst of an absorbing passage descriptive of the circle at the Nouvelle Athènes by the arrival of Albert Worcester, who had arranged for my reception, and right here I may say that I was lodged in the Hotel de la Place de l'Odéon for fifty francs a month. Albert's arrival, although unannounced, was not unexpected, as he had promised to take me to dinner.

I was sufficiently emphatic. Paris! I cried. Paris! Good God!

I see you are not disappointed. But Albert permitted a trace of cynicism to flavour his smile.

It's too perfect, too wonderful. It is more than I felt or imagined. I'm moving in.

But you haven't seen it....

I've seen enough. I don't mean that. I mean I've seen enough to know. But I want to see it all, everything, Saint Sulpice, the Folies-Bergère, the Musée de Cluny, the Nouvelle Athènes, the Comédie Française, the Bal Bullier, the Arc de Triomphe, the Luxembourg Gardens....

They close at sundown. My expression was the cue for him to continue, They'll be open tomorrow and any other day. They're just around the corner. You can go there when you get up in the morning, if you do get up in the morning. But what do you want to do tonight?

Anything! Everything! I cried.

Well, we'll eat first.

So we blew out the candles, floated down the dark stairs--I didn't really walk for a week, I am sure--, brushing on our way against a bearded student and a girl, fragrant and warm in the semi-blackness, out into the delicious night, with the fascinating indescribable odour of Paris, which ran the gamut from the fragrance of lilac and mimosa to the aroma of horse-dung; with the sound of horses' hoofs and rolling wheels beating and revolving on the cobble-stones, we made our way--I swear my feet never touched the ground--through the narrow, crooked, constantly turning, bewildering streets, until we came out on a broad boulevard before the Café d'Harcourt, where I was to eat my first Paris dinner.

The Café d'Harcourt is situated near the Church of the Sorbonne on the Boulevard Saint Michel, which you are more accustomed to see spelled Boul' Mich'. It is a big, brightly lighted café, with a broad terrasse, partially enclosed by a hedge of green bushes in boxes. The hands of the clock pointed to the hour of eight when we arrived and the tables all appeared to be occupied. Inside, groups of men were engaged in games of checkers, while the orchestra was performing selections from Louis Ganne's operetta, Les Saltimbanques. On the terrasse, each little table, covered with its white cloth, was lighted by a tiny lamp with a roseate shade, over which faces glowed. The bottles and dishes and silver all contributed their share to the warmth of the scene, and heaping bowls of peaches and pears and apples and little wood strawberries, ornamenting the sideboards, gave the place an almost sumptuous appearance. Later I learned that fruit was expensive in Paris and not to be tasted lightly. Victor Maurel has told me how, dining one night with the composer of The Barber, he was about to help himself to a peach from a silver platter in the centre of the table when the frugal Madame Rossini expostulated. Those are to look at, not to eat!

While we lingered on the outer sidewalk, a little comedy was enacted, through the dénouement of which we secured places. A youth, with wine in his head and love in his eyes, caressed the warm lips of an adorable girl. Save for the glasses of apéritifs from which they had been drinking, their table was bare. They had not yet dined. He clasped her tightly in his arms and kissed her, kissed her for what seemed to be a very long time but no one, except me, appeared to take any notice.

Look! I whispered to Albert. Look!

O! that's all right. You'll get used to that, he replied negligently.

Now the kiss was over and the two began to talk, very excitedly and rapidly, as French people are wont to talk. Then, impulsively, they rose from their chairs. The man threw a coin down on his napkin. I caught the glint of gold. He gathered his arms about the woman, a lovely pale blue creature, with torrid orange hair and a hat abloom with striated petunias. They were in the middle of the street when the waiter appeared, bearing a tray, laden with plates of sliced cucumbers, radishes and butter, and tiny crayfish, and a bottle of white wine. He stared in mute astonishment at the empty table, and then picked up the coin. Finally, he glanced towards the street and, observing the retreating pair, called after them:

Mais vous n'avez pas diné!

The man turned and shot his reply over his shoulder, Nous rentrons!

The crowd on the terrasse shrieked with delight. They applauded. Some even tossed flowers from the tables after the happy couple and we ... we sat down in the chairs they had relinquished. I am not certain that we did not eat the dinner they had ordered. At any rate we began with the cucumbers and radishes and écrevisses and a bottle of Graves Supérior.

That night in Paris I saw no Americans, at least no one seemed to be an American, and I heard no English spoken. How this came about I have no idea because it never occurred again. In fact, one meets more Americans in Paris than one does in New York and most of the French that I manage to speak I have picked up on the Island of Manhattan. During dinner I began to suspect a man without a beard, in a far corner, but Albert reassured me.

He is surely French, he said, because he is buttering his radishes.

It would be difficult to exaggerate my emotion: the white wine, the bearded French students, the exquisite women, all young and smiling and gay, all organdie and lace and sweet-peas, went to my head. I have spent many happy evenings in the Café d'Harcourt since that night. I have been there with Olive Fremstad, when she told me how, dressed as a serpent in bespangled Nile green, she had sung the finale of Salome to Edward VII in London, and one memorable Mardi-Gras night with Jane Noria, when, in a long raincoat which covered me from head to foot, standing on our table from time to time, I shouted, C'est l'heure fatale! and made as if to throw the raincoat aside but Noria, as if dreading the exposure, always dragged me down from the table, crying, No! No! until the carnival crowd, consumed with curiosity, pulled me into a corner, tore the raincoat away, and everything else too! There was another night, before the Bal des Quat'z Arts, when the café was filled with students and models in costume, and costume for the Quat'z Arts in those days, whatever it may be now, did not require the cutting out of many handkerchiefs. But the first night was the best and every other night a more or less pale reflection of that, always, indeed, coloured a little by the memory of it. So that today, when sometimes I am asked what café I prefer in Paris and I reply, the d'Harcourt, there are those who look at me a little pityingly and some even go so far as to ejaculate, O! that! but I know why it is my favourite.

Even a leisurely dinner ends at last, and I knew, as we sipped our coffee and green chartreuse and smoked our cigarettes, that this one must be over. After paying our very moderate addition, we strolled slowly away, to hop into an empty fiacre which stood on the corner a block down the boulevard. I lay back against the seat and gazed at the stars for a moment as the drive began through the warm, fragrant Paris air, the drive back to the right bank, this time across the Pont Neuf, down the Rue de Rivoli, through the Place de la Concorde, where the fountains were playing, and up the Champs-Elysées. The aroma of the chestnuts, the melting grey of the buildings, the legions of carriages and buses, filled with happy, chattering people, the glitter of electricity, all the mystic wonder of this enchanting night will always stay with me.

We drove to the Théâtre Marigny where we saw a revue; at least we were present at a revue; I do not remember to have seen or heard anything on the stage. Between the acts, we walked in the open foyer, at this theatre a sort of garden, and admired the cocottes, great ladies of some distant epoch, they seemed to me, in their toilets from Redfern and Doucet and Chéruit and Callot Sœurs, their hats from the Rue de la Paix and the Place Vendôme, their exceedingly elaborate and decoratively artificial complexions. Later, we sipped cassis on the balcony. It was Spring in Paris and I was young! The chestnut trees were heavy with white blossoms and the air was laden with their perfume. I gazed down the Champs-Elysées, surely the true Elysian Fields, a myriad of lights shining through the dark green, the black, leaved branches. I do not think I spoke many words and I know that Albert did not. He may have been bored, but I think he derived some slight pleasure from my juvenile enthusiasm for, although Paris was old hat to him, he loved this particular old hat.

We must have stopped somewhere for more drinks on the way home, perhaps at Weber's in the Rue Royale, where there was a gipsy band. I do not remember, but I am sure that it was nearly four in the morning when we drove up before the little hotel in the Place de l'Odéon and when, after we had paid the driver and dismissed him, I discovered to my astonishment that the door was locked. Albert assured me that this was the custom and that I must ring for the concierge. So I pulled the knob, and even outside we could hear the distant reverberations of the bell, but no reply came, and the door remained closed. It was Joseph's job to open the door and Joseph was asleep and refused to awaken. Again and again we pulled the cord, the bell tinkling in the vast silence, for the street was utterly deserted, but still no one came. At last we desisted, Albert suggesting that I go home with him. We walked a few paces until we came to the iron fence surrounding the Luxembourg Gardens and there, lying beside it, I espied a ladder, left by some negligent workman.

But my room is on the first floor. The window is open; it looks over the Place. I can enter with the ladder, I cried.

Albert, amused, helped me carry it back. Set up, it just reached the window and I swiftly scaled it and clambered into the room, waving my hand back to Albert, who hoisted the ladder to his shoulder as he started up the street trying to whistle, Viens Poupoule! but laughing to himself all the time, so that the tune cracked. As for me, I lighted one of my candles, undressed, threw the feather-bed off to the floor, and climbed into bed. Then I blew out the candle and soon fell asleep. It was the tenth of May, 1907, that I spent my first night in Paris.

_Chapter II_

It must have been nearly noon when I awakened and drew back the heavy curtains to let the sunlight into my room, as I have since seen so many French actresses do on the stage. I rang the bell, and when Joseph appeared, I asked for hot water, chocolate and rolls. Presently, he returned with a little can of tepid water and my breakfast on a tray. While I sponged myself, I listened to the cacophony of the street, the boys calling vegetables, the heavy rumbling of the buses on the rough pavement, the shrieking and tooting of the automobile sirens. Then I sipped my chocolate and munched my croissant, feeling very happy. My past had dropped from me like a crustacean's discarded shell. I was in Paris and it still seemed possible to live in Paris as I had been told that one lived there. It was exactly like the books.

After my breakfast, I dressed slowly, and wandered out, past the peristyle of the Odéon, where I afterwards spent so many contented hours searching for old plays, on through the now open gate of the Luxembourg Gardens, gaily sprinkled with children and their nounous, students and sweet girls, charming old ladies with lace caps on their heads and lace scarfs round their shoulders, and painters, working away at their canvases on easels. In the pool in front of the Senate, boys were launching their toy sloops and schooners and, a little further away on the gravel walk, other boys were engaged in the more active sport of diabolo. The gardens were ablaze with flowers but a classic order was maintained for which the stately rows of clipped limes furnished the leading note. The place seemed to have been created for pleasure. Even the dingy statues of the queens smiled at me. I sat on a bench, dreaming, until an old crone approached and asked me for a sou. I thought her a beggar until she returned the change from a fifty centimes piece which I had given her, explaining that one sou was the price of my seat. There were free seats too, I discovered after I had paid.

The Luxembourg Gardens have always retained their hold over my imagination. I never visit Paris without spending several hours there, sometimes in the bright morning light, sometimes in the late afternoon, when the military band plays dolent tunes, usually by Massenet, sometimes a spectator at one of the guignols and, very often in the autumn, when the leaves are falling, I sit silently on a bench before the Medici fountain, entirely unconscious of the passing of time. The Luxembourg Gardens always envelop me in a sentimental mood. Their atmosphere is softly poetic, old-fashioned, melancholy. I am near to tears now, merely thinking of them, and I am sure the tears came to my eyes even on that bright May morning fourteen years ago.

Did I, attracted by the strange name, lunch at the Deux-Magots? It is possible. I know that later I strolled down the Rue de Seine and along the quais, examining eighteenth century books, buying old numbers of l'Assiette au Beurre, and talking with the quaint vendors, most of them old men. Then I wandered up the Rue de Richelieu, studying the examples of fine bindings in the windows of the shops on either hand. About three o'clock, I mounted the impériale of a bus, not even asking where it was going. I didn't care. I descended before the gate of the Parc Monceau and passed a few happy moments in the presence of the marble lady in a dress of the nineties, who reads Guy de Maupassant in the shadow of his bust, and a few more by the Naumachie, the oval pool, flanked by a semi-circular Corinthian colonnade in a state of picturesque ruin.

At a quarter before four, I left the parc and, hailing a fiacre, bade the driver take me to Martha Baker's studio in the Avenue Victor Hugo, where I had an appointment. Martha was painting my portrait. She had begun work on the picture in Chicago the year before but when I went to New York, she went to Paris. So it was still unfinished and I had promised to come to her for more sittings. Now, in Chicago, Martha noted that I grew restless on the model-stand and she had found it expedient to ask people in to talk to me, so that my face would not become dead and sullen. There, I usually knew the people she would ask, but it occurred to me, as I was driving to her door, that in Paris I knew no one, so that, if she followed her habit, I would see new faces.

The cocher stopped his horse before an old stone house and I entered. Challenged by the concierge, I asked for Mademoiselle Bahker, and was directed to go through the courtyard into a back passageway, up the stairs, where I would find Mademoiselle Bahker, troisième à gauche. I followed these instructions and knocked at the door. Martha, herself, opened it.

Oh, Carl, it's you! I'm so glad to see you!

Martha had not changed. She and even her studio were much as they had been in Chicago. She is dead now, dead possibly of a broken heart; certainly she was never happy. Her Insouciance, the portrait of Elizabeth Buehrmann, in a green cloth dress trimmed with fur, and a miniature or two hang in the Art Institute in Chicago, but during her lifetime she never received the kind of appreciation she really craved. She had an uncanny talent for portraiture, a talent which in some respects I have never seen equalled by any of her coevals. Artists, as a matter of fact, generally either envied or admired her. Her peculiar form of genius lay in the facility with which she caught her sitters' weaknesses. Possibly this is the reason she did not sell more pictures, for her models were frequently dissatisfied. It was exasperating, doubtless, to find oneself caught in paint on canvas against an unenviable immortality. Her sitters were exposed, so to speak; petty vices shone forth; Martha almost idealized the faults of her subjects. It would be impossible for the model to strut or pose before one of her pictures. It told the truth. Sargent caught the trick once. I have been informed that a physician diagnosed the malady of an American lady, his patient, after studying Sargent's portrait of her.

Martha should have painted our presidents, our mayors, our politicians, our authors, our college presidents, and our critics. Posterity might have learned more from such portraits than from volumes of psychoanalytic biography. But most of her sitters were silly Chicago ladies, not particularly weak because they were not particularly strong. On the few occasions on which in her capacity as an artist she had faced character, her brushes unerringly depicted something beneath the surface. She tore away men's masks and, with a kind of mystic understanding, painted their insides. How it was done, I don't know. Probably she herself didn't know. Many an artist is ignorant of the secret of his own method. If I had ascribed this quality to Martha during her lifetime, which I never did, she might not have taken it as praise. It may not, indeed, have been her ambition, although truth was undoubtedly her ambition. Speculation aside, this was no art for Chicago. I doubt, indeed, if it would have been popular anywhere, for men the world over are alike in this, that they not only prefer to be painted in masks, they even want the artist to flatter the mask a bit.

The studio, I observed at once, was a little arty, a little more arty than a painter's studio usually is. It was arranged, of that there could be no doubt. There were, to be sure, canvases stacked against the wall in addition to those which were hanging, but they had been stacked with a crafty hand, one indubious of its effect. For the rest, the tables and couches were strewn with brocades and laces, and lilacs and mimosa bloomed in brown and blue and green earthenware bowls on the tables. Later, I knew that marigolds and zinnias would replace these and, later still, violets and gardenias. On an easel stood my unfinished portrait and a palette and a box of paints lay on a stool nearby.

Martha herself wore a soft, clinging, dark-green woolen dress, almost completely covered by a brown denim painter's blouse. Her hair was her great glory, long, reddish gold Mélisande hair which, when uncoiled, hung far below her knees, but today it was knotted loosely on top of her head. Her face, keen and searching, wore an expression that might be described as wistful; discontent lurked somewhere between her eyes and her mouth. Her complexion was sallow and she wore eye-glasses.

There was some one else present, a girl, sitting in a shadowy corner, who rose as I entered. A strong odour of Cœur de Jeannette hovered about her. She was an American. She was immediately introduced as Miss Clara Barnes of Chicago, but I would have known she was an American had she not been so introduced. She wore a shirt-waist and skirt. She had very black hair, parted in the middle, a face that it would have been impossible to remember ten minutes and which now, although I have seen her many times since, I have completely forgotten, and very thick ankles. I gathered presently that she was in Paris to study singing as were so many girls like her. Very soon, I sized her up as the kind of girl who thinks that antimacassars are ottomans, that tripe is a variety of fish, that Così Fan Tutte is an Italian ice cream, that the pope's nose is a nasal appendage which has been blessed by the head of the established church, that The Beast in the Jungle is an animal story, and that when one says Arthur Machen one means Harry Mencken.

Well, we'd best begin, said Martha. It's late.

Isn't it _too_ late? I was rather surprised when you asked me to come in the afternoon.

Martha smiled but there was a touch of petulance in her reply: I knew you wouldn't get up very early the morning after your first night in Paris, and I knew if I didn't get you here today there would be small chance of getting you here at all. If you come again, of course it will be in the morning.

I climbed to the model-chair, seated myself, grasped the green book that was part of the composition, and automatically assumed that woebegone expression that is worn by all amateurs who pose for their portraits.

That won't do at all, said Martha. I asked Clara to come here to amuse you.

Clara tried. She told me that she was studying Manon and that she had been to the Opéra-Comique fifteen times to hear the opera.

Garden is all wrong in it, all wrong, she continued. In the first place she can't sing. Of course she's pretty, but she's not my idea of Manon at all. I will really _sing_ the part and act it too.

A month or two later, while we munched sandwiches and drank beer between the acts of Tristan und Isolde in the foyer of the Prinzregenten Theater in Munich, Olive Fremstad introduced me to an American girl, who informed me that a new Isolde had been born that day.

I shall be the great Isolde, she remarked casually, and her name, I gathered, when I asked Madame Fremstad to repeat it, was Minnie Saltzmann-Stevens.

But on the day that Clara spoke of her future triumphs in Manon, I had yet to become accustomed to this confidence with which beginners in the vocal art seem so richly endowed, a confidence which is frequently disturbed by circumstances for, as George Moore has somewhere said, our dreams and our circumstances are often in conflict. Later, I discovered that every unsuccessful singer believes, and asserts, that Geraldine Farrar is instrumental in preventing her from singing at the Metropolitan Opera House. On this day, I say, I was unaware of this peculiarity in vocalists but I was interested in the name she had let slip, a name I had never before heard.

Who is Garden? I asked.

You don't know Mary Garden! exclaimed Martha.

There! shrieked Clara. There! I told you so. No one outside of Paris has ever even heard of the woman.

Well, they've heard of her here, said Martha, quietly, pinching a little worm of cobalt blue from a tube. She's the favourite singer of the Opéra-Comique. She is an American and she sings Louise and Manon and Traviata and Mélisande and Aphrodite, especially Aphrodite.

She's singing Aphrodite tonight, said Miss Barnes.

And what is she like? I queried.

Well, Clara began dubiously, she is said to be like Sybil Sanderson but, of course, Sanderson had a voice and, she hurried on, you know even Sanderson never had any success in New York.

I recalled, only too readily, how Manon with Jean de Reszke, Pol Plançon, and Sybil Sanderson in the cast had failed in the nineties at the Metropolitan Opera House, and I admitted as much to Clara.

But would this be true today? I pondered.

Certainly, advanced Clara. America doesn't want French singers. They never know how to sing.

But you are studying in Paris.

The girl began to look discomfited.

With an Italian teacher, she asseverated.

It delighted me to be able to add, I think Sanderson studied with Sbriglia and Madame Marchesi.

Your face is getting very hard, cried Martha in despair.

I think he is very rude, exclaimed the outraged and contumacious Miss Barnes, with a kind of leering acidity. He doesn't seem to know the difference between tradition and impertinent improvisation. He doesn't see that singing at the Opéra or the Opéra-Comique with a lot of rotten French singers would ruin anybody who didn't have training enough to stand out against this influence, singing utterly unmusical parts like Mélisande, too, parlando rôles calculated to ruin any voice. Maeterlinck won't even go to hear the opera, it's so rotten. I wonder how much Mr. Van Vechten knows about music anyway?

Very little, I remarked mildly.

O! wailed Martha, you're not entertaining Carl at all and I can't paint when you squabble. Carl's very nice. Why can't you be agreeable, Clara? What is the matter?

Miss Barnes disdained to reply. She drew herself into a sort of sulk, crossing her thick ankles massively. The scent of Cœur de Jeannette seemed to grow heavier. Within bounds, I was amused by her display of emotion but I was also bored. My face must have showed it. Martha worked on for a moment or two and then flung down her brushes.

It's no good, no good at all, she announced. You have no expression today. I can't get behind your mask. Your face is completely empty.

And, I may add, as this was the last day that Martha ever painted on this portrait, she never did get behind the mask. To that extent I triumphed, and the picture still exists to confuse people as to my real personality. It is as empty as if it had been painted by Boldini or McEvoy. Fortunately for her future reputation in this regard, Martha had already painted a portrait of me which is sufficiently revealing.

I must have stretched and yawned at this point, for Martha looked cross, when a welcome interruption occurred in the form of a knock at the door. Martha walked across the room. As she opened the door, directly opposite where I was sitting, I saw the slender figure of a young man, perhaps twenty-one years old. He was carefully dressed in a light grey suit with a herring-bone pattern, and wore a neck-scarf of deep blue. He carried a stick and buckskin gloves in one hand and a straw hat in the other.

Why, it's Peter! cried Martha. I wish you had come sooner.

This is Peter Whiffle, she said, leading him into the room and then, as he extended his hand to me, You know Clara Barnes.

He turned away to bow but I had already caught his interesting face, his deep blue eyes that shifted rather uneasily but at the same time remained honest and frank, his clear, simple expression, his high brow, his curly, blue-black hair, carefully parted down the centre of his head. He spoke to me at once.

Martha has said a good deal, perhaps too much about you. Still, I have wanted to meet you.

You must tell me who you are, I replied.

I should have told you, only you just arrived, Martha put in. I had no idea that Peter would come in today. He is the American Flaubert or Anatole France or something. He is writing a book. What _is_ your book about, Peter?

Whiffle smiled, drew out a cigarette-case of Toledo work, extracted a cigarette from it, and said, I haven't the slightest idea. Then, as if he thought this might be construed as rudeness, or false modesty, or a rather viscous attempt at secrecy, he added, I really haven't, not the remotest. I want to talk to you about it.... That's why I wanted to meet you. Martha says that you know ... well, that you _know_.

You really should be painting Mr. Van Vechten now, said Clara Barnes, with a trace of malice. He has the right expression.

I hope I haven't interrupted your work, said Peter.

No, I'm through today, Martha rejoined. We're neither of us in the mood. Besides it's absurd to try to paint in this light.

Painting, Peter went on, is not any easier than writing. Always the search for--for what? he asked suddenly, turning to me.

For truth, I suppose, I replied.

I thought you would say that but that's not what I meant, that's not at all what I meant.

This logogriph rather concluded that subject, for Peter did not explain what it was that he did mean. Neither did he wear a conscious air of obfuscation. He rambled on about many things, spoke of new people, new books, new music, and he also mentioned Mary Garden.

I have heard of Mary Garden for the first time today, I said, and I am beginning to be interested.

You haven't seen her? demanded Peter. But she is stupendous, soul, body, imagination, intellect, everything! How few there are. A lyric Mélisande, a caressing Manon, a throbbingly wicked Chrysis. She is the cult in Paris and the Opéra-Comique is the Temple where she is worshipped. I think some day this new religion will be carried to America. He stopped. Let me see, what am I doing tonight? O! yes, I know. I won't do that. Will you go with me to hear Aphrodite?

Of course, I will. I have just come to Paris and I want to do and hear and see everything.

Well, we'll go, he announced, but I noted that his tone was curiously indecisive. We'll go to dinner first.

You're not going to dinner yet? Martha demanded rather querulously.

Not quite yet. Then, turning to Clara, How's the Voice?

It was my first intimation that Clara had thus symbolized her talent in the third person. People were not expected to refer to her as Clara or Miss Barnes; she was the Voice.

The Voice is doing very well indeed, Clara, now quite mollified, rejoined. I'm studying Manon, and if you like Mary Garden, wait until you hear me!

Peter continued to manipulate Clara with the proper address. The conversation bubbled or languished, I forget which; at any rate, a half hour or so later, Peter and I were seated in a taxi-cab, bound for Foyot's where he had decided we would dine; at least I thought he had decided, but soon he seemed doubtful.

Foyot's, Foyot's, he rolled the name meditatively over on his tongue. I don't know....