XXIII
A WINTER IN PARIS
Schriftstellerroman and Das Maschinenzeitalter · Journey to Paris · Renewed acquaintance with Alfred Nobel · The Schnäbele affair · Madame Adam’s salon · Princess Tamara of Georgia in Paris · Max Nordau · A ball in the Palais of the Revue des deux mondes · Victor Cherbuliez · Ludovic Halévy · Alphonse Daudet
Now once more followed a long and industrious period of work in our dear Harmannsdorf. We all stayed in the country, even in winter; the palace in Vienna had been sold, for the quarry and other business transactions had turned out badly. But none of us had any yearnings for the city; the social companionship of the numerous members of the family, the sleighing parties on the snow-covered fields, mailtime with its manifold messages from the wide world, the sessions of joyous labor at our common writing-table, the reading aloud to each other of some interesting scientific book, the many little jokes and silly tricks which we still kept playing on each other,—for we remained like children,—all this filled our days so satisfactorily that we assuredly did not hanker for the pleasures of city life.
And then when spring awoke, about Easter-time, how we did enjoy finding the first violet in the sward of the park! and there followed the series of ever-increasing pleasures in the first umbels of the elder, the first call of the cuckoo, the first note of the blackbird.
“After all,” My Own remarked, “that is pleasanter to hear than the howling of the jackal. Now spring was thoroughly beautiful in the home of Medea too; but really the charm of the things which one has been accustomed to since childhood, the beauty of one’s own garden, the thousand greetings which come to one from the tones, the scents, and the colors of one’s own home, are sweeter than the most splendid impressions of travel.”
In this time I wrote my Schriftstellerroman (“Romance of an Author”) and Das Maschinenzeitalter (“The Age of Machinery”). The latter afforded me great enjoyment, for in it I threw off from my mind all that had accumulated within me of grief and exasperation at the conditions of the present, and of glowing hopes for the future so full of promise. The book was not to appear under my own name; it was signed Jemand—“Some One.” The motive for this anonymity was not cowardice, but, as it was altogether scientific and philosophical themes that were very freely treated in the Maschinenzeitalter, I was afraid that if the book were signed with a woman’s name it would not reach the readers whom I desired; for in scientific circles there is so much prejudice against the capacity of women as thinkers that a book signed with a woman’s name would simply remain unread by those for whom it was expressly designed.
When the second winter after our return from the Caucasus was coming on, we decided to see a bit of the European world. The Maschinenzeitalter was finished, and I had (not without difficulty) found a publisher for it,—Schabelitz in Switzerland. It was not to appear till spring.
We decided to spend a few weeks in Paris, which My Own had never seen. The payment for a novel sufficed to cover the expenses of the trip, and we set forth with that full sensation of enjoyment which is involved in the notion of a pleasure trip. I can still remember: deep snow was lying on the fields around Harmannsdorf, a fierce snowstorm was blowing into our faces as the sleigh took us to the station, and we rejoiced in it and laughed immoderately. If the road was drifted so as to be impassable, well, then we would start some other day; our trips in the Caucasus had accustomed us to far more serious difficulties. There we had often ridden on the edge of abysses and crossed narrow, swaying bridges; had reached ferries which the ferryman refused to take us over on account of the dangerously swollen state of the water, so that we had to seek shelter in a wooden hut, content ourselves with a meal of bread, sardines, and Kachetin wine, sleep on a bare bench,—and yet we used often to recall even these experiences as blithesome recollections.
The sleigh took us to the station without mishap; only the luggage-sled arrived too late, so we had to wait for a later train, and could not continue our journey to Paris on the same day, as we had meant to, but were obliged to spend a day in Vienna.
Our sojourn in Paris proved to be very pleasurable. We sauntered on the boulevards and in the Champs-Élysées; we drove in the Bois; we were assiduous attendants at the theaters great and little; we visited the museums; we made excursions to Versailles, Saint-Cloud, and Sèvres; and we took in all the other similar diversions that every visitor to Paris feels he must enjoy.
I wrote a note to Alfred Nobel, with whom I had all along kept in touch by correspondence,—perhaps in the eleven years eleven letters had passed between us,—to acquaint him with our presence in Paris. He came without delay to look us up. I found him unchanged, except that he had grown somewhat gray, but he was more deeply than ever immersed in his labors and inventions. My Own took a keen interest in his chemical investigations, which he explained in detail with the help of his crucibles and other apparatus when, a few days later, having invited us to dinner, he did the honors of his house and his laboratory. He still lived very much aloof from the world; the only house which he frequently visited was Madame Juliette Adam’s, and he took us there.
The author of Païenne and editor of the Nouvelle Revue lived in her own house in the street named after her the Rue Juliette Lambert. As every one knows, Madame Adam was a great patriote, which at that epoch signified a representative of the idea of revanche. And I can remember that in our very first call she steered the conversation into a political channel. But just then was one of the moments when it was generally believed that the war of revenge, predicted for sixteen years, was coming. Herr von Bismarck was in want of a military law valid for seven years, and in the German parliament the method of “War in Sight” was employed as is usual on such occasions. The recipe is a sure one: with a view to this all military demands are readily granted. Furthermore, the Schnäbele incident on the frontier happened, and on the horizon, slowly mounting, appeared General Boulanger’s black horse. What an outpouring of amateur political opinion there was! Wherever one went this question was asked, Will it break out? In the newspapers, and still more in the air, there was the anticipation of some great event. In the Chat noir, that famous artists’ Gschnas-Café (the ancestor of all the cabarets that now flood the world), Caran d’Ache was conducting his magic lantern “L’Épopée,” Napoleonic war scenes, and cela fait vibrer la fibre patriotique. Madame Adam also vibrated.
And she invited us in a most friendly way to a great evening reception which was to take place at her house within a few days. Of that soirée I have preserved a rather lively recollection.
The little house in the Rue Juliette Lambert was filled with guests from the first landing of the staircase to the farthest corner of the salon. On the threshold of the salon door stood Madame Adam, an imposing and captivating figure. She wore a dark-red velvet gown with long train, diamonds on the bosom, and diamonds in her white hair massed high. Her face under this white hair looked still youthful,—somewhat in the style of Marie Geistinger as la belle Hélène. Of course, as the duty of a hostess required, she gave each person a gracious word with a gracious smile.
“Ah, dear baron,” she said to my husband, “I am so much attracted toward you because the country which you describe so excellently in your books, the semibarbarous Caucasus, is so fascinating to me.”
Certainly, it was well known how much everything Russian fascinated Madame Adam, the glorifier of Aksákof and of General Skóbelef. “How can a woman ever busy herself so much with politics?” was my thought at that time. “How much that is disagreeable, and sometimes ridiculous, she brings upon herself by that! And how can one bother herself with editing a review into the bargain?”
Many distinguished men—artists, authors, politicians—were gathered in Madame Adam’s salons, and many pretty women. Madame Napoleon Ney was pointed out to us as one of the most famous beauties of Parisian society. Unfortunately, one could not make the acquaintance of all the interesting persons present; the throng was so dense that one had to stay in his corner and be contented with talking to a few in his own vicinity. And for the most part one had to be still and listen, for—as was the custom in Paris—the guests were served with all sorts of artistic delectations: a pianist played Hungarian melodies; an author of great promise, but as yet unknown, read a few short stories; and Mademoiselle Brandés, at that time not yet engaged at the Théâtre Français, declaimed a poem. But even here, amid this artistic and social gayety, the dark word “War” was buzzing through the room; here and there the names of Bismarck and Moltke and Schnäbele were heard, and prophecies that next spring it surely would come to something were boldly uttered, but without detracting from the spirit of cheerfulness that prevailed; these vaticinations probably aroused fine hopes in the hostess, enthusiastic for her country’s glory as she was. I was no longer so indifferent in the presence of these things as I had been during my youth. I already hated war fervently, and this frivolous trifling with the possibility of it seemed to me as lacking in conscience as in common sense.
It was a great joy to us to meet in Paris a friend from the Caucasus, Princess Tamara of Georgia. The beautiful young widow had been established in the French capital for a year with her two half-grown girls; she lived in a fascinatingly furnished mansion in the Elysée quarter. We were very frequently invited to her functions, and always found a large company there, Russians for the most part. General Baron Frederiks, who afterward became, and is still, chief master of ceremonies to the Tsar, was a friend of the house.
We cultivated literary society extensively. A Dr. Löwenthal, who had written to me on account of my Inventarium einer Seele when we were still in the Caucasus, and with whom, after an ardent exchange of ideas, we two had become close friends, made us acquainted with Max Nordau. The greatly celebrated author of “Conventional Lies,” although then only thirty-eight, had very thick snow-white hair, which was very effective with his black beard, black eyes, and interesting face. There were some unforgettable hours which we four spent in conversation about God’s magnificent world and the conventional, lie-ridden world of humanity.
In the Buloz house, where we attended a ball a few days after the Adam soirée, there was not so strong a flavor of politics as in the home of the Nouvelle revue; here homage was paid to only two things, the Revue des deux mondes and the Académie Française. The Buloz house had the reputation of being a center of the literary and intellectual life of Paris. On Madame Buloz’s Tuesdays half of the Forty Immortals were to be found there, and of course all the collaborators of the Revue, from which the Academy so often draws its recruits. The solid old palais in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, with its ground floor devoted to the offices of the monthly, and its big reception rooms on the floor above, had a grave and dignified air. The furnishings of the salon were of rich and substantial plainness. The tone all through the house was rather stiff, puristic, erudite—in short, academic. The same tone, you know, that permeates the so often uncut pages of the articles in the old Revue. The married life of the husband and wife seemed to be exemplary. M. Buloz, a man of serious and steady look, and at the same time amiable, of about forty, with full red beard trimmed to a point—liking best of all to talk about his Revue, the conduct of which cost him much labor, for he read every line of the manuscripts that were sent in, and sternly repelled any encroachment of frivolous realism—who could have suspected at that time that a few years later he would be compelled to part from his Revue, and that under such frivolous circumstances as he would never have permitted one of his colleagues to incorporate in a novel? Most surprising and startling for the whole serious milieu came the sudden discovery that M. Buloz had wasted nearly all his property, besides incurring a million in debts,—all for a woman. A separation resulted—whether Madame Buloz got one or whether she pardoned him I do not know—but a separation from his Revue, the proud paternal inheritance. He was forced to leave the management; and the monthly, which ever since its foundation, for more than a half century, had borne the name of Charles Buloz, both father and son, came out with the name of Brunetière.
Since then the undertaking has fallen off in circulation; various new monthlies have come into existence to enter into active rivalry with this great-grandmother of reviews. At that time it was in full flower; it had a circulation of 25,000 copies and brought its stockholders large and ever-increasing dividends. At that ball M. Buloz told me that his father had for thirty years published the magazine under a deficit; then suddenly came the change—the Revue was read all over the world and its owners became millionaires.
“You see, gracious lady,” added M. Buloz jestingly, “if a periodical has been kept up for a time, it can expect further duration and some profit; only the first thirty years are rather hard sailing.”
The connections which we formed at the Buloz house brought us into relations with various members of the Academy. I remember one evening which we spent with Victor Cherbuliez and when we met Ernest Renan. It was but a small circle of people that was grouped around the fireplace there, and the result was a genuine causerie, such as cannot be had in reception rooms filled with hundreds of people. There were present M. and Mme. Cherbuliez and their daughter; M. and Mme. Renan; M. de Rothan, a former diplomat and author of highly valued political articles and contemporaneous reminiscences, especially regarding Alsace-Lorraine; his wife; and lastly, Ludovic Halévy, the latest of the Academicians. The merry blasphemer of the Grecian Olympus,—for with the aid of the equally merry Meilhac he had exposed Jupiter, Juno, Venus, and Mars to Offenbach’s musical mockery,—the creator of Madame Cardinal, mistress of the household, and her daughters who “went on the boards,” was sparkling with wit in his conversation too. As a novelist, however, he was also successful in striking the serious strings; remember his novel L’Abbé Constantin, with its tinge of sentimentality and its harmlessness for boarding-school misses. And by no means did he fail to make the famous patriot fiber vibrate; he became the historian of the invasion of 1871, and celebrated the military glory and the heroic misfortunes of the conquered.
So it came about that when the conversation that evening touched upon the predominant question of the day—the threatening war-cloud—Halévy welcomed, with some pathos, the possibly approaching day of requital.
Renan excitedly took the other side. He did not conceal his horror for national massacres in general, but as a thinker he was especially pained by the hostility between his nation and “the nation of thinkers.” He acknowledged that he had learned much from German philosophy, and spoke with the greatest respect of its representatives in both older and later times.
I had expected that Renan should be ugly in his outward appearance, for that was notorious; but this expectation fell below the reality: short, stout, sallow, with a broad, beardless face, reminding one of Grützner’s monks, a monstrous bald cranium,—with these qualities, the author of the Vie de Jésus gave me at first glance the impression that he was the ugliest man I had seen in my life. Ten minutes after he had begun to speak, this impression was effaced. Not only tolerable did he seem to me, but possessed of a genuine charm.
Another charmer whose acquaintance we made in Paris was Alphonse Daudet. In his case the power of the intellect, the fiery, easy discourse, were accompanied by an externally beautiful appearance. With his flashing black eyes, his thick curling hair, his mobile, aristocratic features, Alphonse Daudet could not have helped pleasing every one even if he had not been Alphonse Daudet. His wife—who was more of a collaborator to him than the world suspects, though his grateful testimony to the fact was public and plain-spoken—was likewise a very attractive personality. I often called there on her day at home. The man of the house was not present on these occasions, but stayed shut up in his workroom. It was in this that he used to receive us and fascinate us with his gift of fiery conversation.