These are ideal days. For it is warm, the sun shines and the M.P. peril is abating. I was out all day – alone. It is fine to get away from all these men whom I have to see the week long. Yesterday I did the same thing. Let me tell you about it. Saturday afternoons are free now. Our baseball team took advantage of the one to go out and play its first game. The victory was ours, 10 to 6. But I was elsewhere. The mere thought of sitting next to two or three hundred soldiers made me painfully ill; even the fact that it was the best game in the world didn’t help. I set off alone on foot, with no goal; nothing is easier to attain, so I had a very satisfactory afternoon. With a hazy idea of seeing the Latin quarter I took a couple of metros leading somewhere over on the left bank of the Seine – I didn’t know or care where. After a while I got out and walked kilometres and kilometres of rues. In the end I reached it. The character of a street or region depends on many things. Location, architecture and inhabitants are the most important of the determining influences. What else makes Fifth Avenue Fifth Avenue or Division Street Division Street?
Now unfortunately, perhaps, I am not the one to button hole a bearded Frenchman, and ask him what kind of man he is. Nor do I make a practice of asking concierges what their lodgers do or wear or eat. I can’t tell you that a certain building on the rue Seine was 17th century French quasi-classic or that the church of St. Germain des Pres was built in 533 in the best style of that post-Roman day. Most of the time I didn’t know where I was or was going, and couldn’t have found myself on a map.
Do you know that lacking any knowledge in these three prime essentials, I believe I absorbed more of the spirit and charm of the left bank than many a better-informed wanderer? For if I had lived with the people, known the architecture and been well up on the geography, I am afraid the poetry would have fled. I am afraid I should have seen all the baser side, smelt the garlic and been oppressed by the narrow, banal, work-a-day phase.
The students’ quarter is unbelievable. The streets are inconceivably narrow and old and delightful. It is full of books and pictures. Cosy cafes and artists’ materials vie with each other for the dominance of numbers. Over it all is a cover, like the silver cover of the roast-platter in a hotel – a cover of studious silence, which shuts out the vying, prying world. It is a sanctuary for the learned and the learning. And of course it isn’t easy to pierce the erudite reticence of the quarters. Having only one afternoon I failed in this. People have been known to live there for years and never recognize in it anything but another Paris street. My failure was dismal and complete. But it must be admitted that I didn’t make any effort to lift the dish-cover. I’m not enough of a gourmet.
There are American soldiers studying here. The art schools are full of them. I cannot think of any other army that would do that for its men.
To live the life of a lover of the true quarter isn’t to be done simply by letting the hair grow. One must frequent cafes and talk. Conversation is an open sesame. It is quite unnecessary to tell you that one must have something to say and a facile way of saying it. One must know everything – art, science, literature, life. But above all, it is indispensable to be just a little plastic. One must be adaptable enough for the quarter to mold him a bit. His mind must part from his self for the time being. That is the great pre-requisite for a course in the quarter.
Last night I went to Streiffs’.
This morning I went down again to the left bank and wandered some more. I had dinner at a pleasant but clean restaurant on the corner of the rue Jacob and the rue Bonaparte, about 50 yards from the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Then I walked across the ancient Pont Neuf to the Louvre. Towards 4 o’clock my head got swimmy so I made for the open. I went into the Tuileries Gardens, where all Paris walks on Sunday afternoons. Accordingly I saw all Paris. It is getting to be quite a demobilized Paris. There are fewer and fewer uniforms to be seen. At about 5 o’clock I set out to walk home. I had a persistent notion that I could be back here for supper (which is at five o’clock). I was halfway home at quarter to six and still stepping strong, when a taxi pulled up at the curb and one of our boys hailed me. He and his girl were headed homeward and I joined. I was in time for supper at Mme. Jeanne’s.
Next post April 10.
Letters from Sidney Friend During The Great War 