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.”
“I am advised,” remarked Alexandra, “that M’sieu Huysmans, or his protagonist, says a great deal more than that, and none of it suitable for the ears of a respectable jeune femme . . . You will forgive our haste, M’sieu d’Artois, but we were on our way to see some paintings.”
“I have seen them,” said M. d’Artois. “A waste of time! Photographic realism, stale outdated salon art . . . scarcely so much as un impressionniste. Where are the Moreaus, where is Odilon Redon? These philistines have chosen to represent the dead past of art, not its future. But listen . . . ” He dug into a trouser pocket and produced a hand-written card. “Next week in Montmartre there is to be a private showing of Les Decadents. Here is the address. There you may discover what true artistic vision, true genius, may aspire to.”
“Perhaps we shall.” Alexandra tucked the slip of her paper into her bag. “Au ‘voir, M’sieu d’Artois.”
“Let us stay till after dark,” said Alexandra, “and see the lights come on.” And so we had dinner in an outdoor restaurant, where we ordered cheese soufflés and a bottle of white wine, and were serenaded by a string quartet.
“And what did you make of Monsieur d’Artois?” Alexandra inquired, as she spooned up the last morsel of her baba à rhum.
I was not sure how I should reply. In truth, M. d’Artois’s manner, and his strange talk, had made me quite uncomfortable. But Alexandra was a woman of the world; perhaps she did not find him so disturbing.
“He seems very . . . sophisticated,” I ventured. “I suppose in that way he is a typical Parisian.”
Alexandra burst out laughing. “Au contraire, Jeanne! He is not at all Parisian! That too is artifice. His real name is Albert Henslow. He is the son of a factory owner in Leeds. He is quite depraved, and a terrible poseur, and reads too many of the wrong sorts of books. He is not a person you would wish to know.”
And yet I noticed that she did not throw away the slip of paper he had given her.
While we dined the summer twilight had deepened, and now all at once thousands of twinkling, glimmering electric lamps lit up the bridges and gardens and pavilions and the tower itself, transforming the exposition grounds into a festival of light.
It was nearly midnight, and both of us a little tipsy from the wine and baba à rhum, when at last we went in search of a cab to take us home. Said Alexandra, as we turned to gaze back at the tallest building in the world, enveloped in magical, otherworldly light, “Perhaps there is some place for artifice after all.”