Front matter

PARIS VISTAS

The Invalides from Pont Alexandre III

PARIS VISTAS

BY HELEN DAVENPORT GIBBONS Author of "A Little Gray Home in France," "Red Rugs of Tarsus," etc. WITH SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS BY LESTER GEORGE HORNBY NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1919 Copyright, 1919, by THE CENTURY CO. ——— Published, December, 1919

TO A CRITIC WHO LIVED MOST OF THESE DAYS WITH ME

FOREWORD

Webster defines a vista as "a view, especially a distant view, through or between intervening objects." If I were literal-minded, I suppose I should either abandon my title or make this book a series of descriptions of Sacré Coeur, crowning Montmartre, as you see the church from dark gray to ghostly white, according to the day, at the end of apartment-house-lined streets from the allée of the Observatoire, from the Avenue Montaigne, from the rue de Solférino, and from the Rue Taitbout. I ought to be writing about the vistas, than which no other city possesses a more beautiful and varied array, that feature the Arc de Triomphe, the Trocadéro, the Tour Eiffel, the Grande Roue, the Invalides, the Palais Bourbon, the Madeleine, the Opéra, Saint-Augustin, Val de Grâce and the Panthéon.

But may not one's vistas be memories, with the years acting as "intervening objects"? Has not distance as much to do with time as with space? Vistas in words can no more convey the impression of things seen than Lester Hornby's sketches. If you want a substitute for Baedeker, please do not read this book! If you want a substitute for photographs, you will be disappointed in Lester's sketches.

The monuments of Paris, ticketed by name and historical events to tourists whose eyes have had hardly more time than the camera, known by photographs to prospective tourists who dream of things as yet unseen, are interwoven into the canvas of my life. The Gare Saint-Lazaire, for instance, is the place where I was lost once as a kid, where I have had to say goodbye to my husband starting on a long and perilous journey, and over which I have seen a Zeppelin floating. Since Louis Philippe was long before my time, the obelisk always has been in the Place de la Concorde. And when you pass it, your eyes, meeting the Arc de Triomphe at the end of the Champs-Elysées, the Carrousel at the end of the Tuileries, the Madeleine at the end of the Rue Royale and the Palais Bourbon at the end of the bridge, record vistas as natural, as familiar as your mother's face in the doorway of the childhood home. Where else could the Arc de Triomphe be? Of course it looks like that!

I shall not attempt to apologize for the autobiography that comes to the front in my Paris vistas. Perhaps my own insignificance and unimportance and the lack of interest on the part of the public in what I do and think—impressed upon me by more than one critic of earlier volumes—should deter me from telling how I lived and brought up my family in Paris. But it is the only way I can tell how I feel about Paris. Whether the end justifies the means the reader must decide for himself.

H. D. G.

Paris, August, 1919.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

(1887-1888)

CHAPTER PAGE

IChildhood Vistas3

(1899)

IIAt Sixteen15

(1908)

IIIA Honeymoon Promise31

(1909-1910)

IVThe Promise Fulfilled41

VThe Pension in the Rue Madame51

VILares and Penates in the Rue Servandoni63

VIIGold in the Chimney76

VIIIAt the Bibliothèque Nationale86

IXEmilie in Monologue97

XHunting Apaches104

XIDriftwood112

XIISome of Our Guests119

XIIIWalks at Nightfall132

XIVAfter-dinner Coffee142

XVRepos Hebdomadaire148

XVI"Many Waters Cannot Quench Love"154

XVIIReal Paris Shows167

XVIIIThe Spell of June181

(1913)

XIXChildhood Vistas for a New Generation193

XXThe Problem of Housing201

(1914)

XXI"Nach Paris!"211

(1914-1915)

XXIIAt Home in the Whirlwind223

XXIIISauvons Les Bébés231

XXIVUncomfortable Neutrality243

(1917)

XXVHow We Kept Warm253

XXVIApril Sixth262

XXVIIThe Vanguard of the A. E. F.269

(1918)

XXVIIIThe Darkest Days277

XXIXThe Gothas and Big Bertha294

XXXThe Bird Charmer of the Tuileries307

XXXIThe Quatorze of Testing313

XXXIIThe Liberation of Lille321

XXXIIIArmistice Night326

XXXIVRoyal Visitors341

XXXVThe First Peace Christmas348

(1919)

XXXVIPlotting Peace361

XXXVIILa Vie Chère373

XXXVIIIThe Revenge of Versailles378

XXXIXThe Quatorze of Victory385

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The Invalides from Pont Alexandre III Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

The Madeleine Flower Market16

Looking up the Avenue de l'Opéra32

The Rue de Vaugirard by the Luxembourg64

Château de la Reine Blanche: Rue des Gobelins88

Where stood the walls of old Lutetia120

The Panthéon from the Rue Soufflot144

Hôtel de Ville from the Pont d'Arcole168

Market day in the Rue de Seine184

The first snow in the Luxembourg224

A passage through the Louvre256

In an Old Quarter272

Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois304

Old Paris is disappearing320

The Grand Palais336

Spire of the Saint-Chapelle from the Place Saint-Michel368