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National Geographic : 1936 Oct
Contents
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE not hard to swallow and an apple from the Yakima Valley finished an admirable dinner. For finger-bowl, the washbasin, lacking, it is true, a slice of lemon or a sprig of geranium leaf. It was with a sense of virtue and inde pendence that I made my own bed. SEVEN O'CLOCK AND NO PLACE TO SIT Seven stories below me the life of the Boulevard de la Madeleine went on about as usual, except that three million French men saw seven o'clock arrive with no place to sit. The sidewalk at the Cafe de la Paix was as bare as Mother Hubbard's cupboard. As I had my shoes shined in the subway instead of at my hotel, I saw the sign "Shine 10 cents, service not included." When a customer sits down, the chair re cords the fact and the shine boy pays ten cents to the boss. His only income is from tips. Understand that sign and you can understand the strikes. "What did you gain from your strike?" I asked my waiter. "We used to have to pay 60 centimes per person for the use of the napkins, plates, and silverware. Now we keep our tips. But that isn't enough. We want to be workers, not beggars." "Did you ever hear anything like it?" the man at the next table asked me when the strike deprived him of food. It seemed to me I had, in the Hugo of a century ago describing conditions centuries earlier. It is January 6, 1482. The Day of the Kings is ending in the Feast of Fools. The university bookseller is talking to the king's furrier. Ten years from now, an unknown named Columbus, sailing into the unknown, is to bring back a rich cargo of new visions. But how can the bookseller know that? His story is as old as Noah, but let's listen: "I tell you, monsieur, the world's at an end. . . . It's the cursed inventions . . . and above all, the printing press, that Ger man pest! No more manuscripts-no more books! Printing puts an end to booksell ing-the end of the world is coming!" "I see it is, by velvet's coming so much into fashion," sighed the furrier. Changing styles long favored the Pari sian couturier, but today even the "crea tion" is menaced by such sartorial ditto marks as I saw selling for $1.25 each in an arcade on the once aristocratic Champs Elysees. One afternoon a style show walked into the middle of my tea. It moved majes tically past, turned and stopped, slipped out of its jackets or coats and, in the nicest and most impersonal way, showed off. With each change of costume came a striking change of personality. Thirty women, showing three styles, could not have been as different as were those three mannequins, wearing thirty changes of dress! ART IN THE MAKING From style I turned to art. At the Salon, one of the most admired paintings was Jean Gabriel Domergue's spirited study of a dusky girl with long limbs, carry ing a green parasol aslant against a blue sky. After I took some candid shots in his studio, M. Domergue gave me a card to the School of Fine Arts (page 531). "My chief interest is in the class," I explained to the model. "Do you mind if I go behind your back to take my pic tures?" "On the contrary," was her eager re sponse. The life-class students were serious, the students of architecture delightfully gay. In a sculpture class I found one of the most promising pupils to be a slant-eyed and charming Chinese girl from Shanghai. The dignity of the School of Fine Arts was a protection, but on being welcomed to the renowned Julian's Academy I had to depend on my wits. It was like the Cafe Momus scene in La Boheme, with myself playing the Philistine among Bo hemians. The model and I flashed signals of help less sympathy across the barrage of fun, while one serious painter continued his work. Among the 60,000 students who have studied at Julian's have been many Amer icans and the walls show the high quality of some of the sculpture and painting done there under the, tutelage of such men as Landowski, Bouguereau, Jules Lefebvre and Jean Paul Laurens. But the visitor who arrives after school is out is likely to provide most of the fun. I was never so grateful for fluent, though horrible, French as during the charivari which greeted my visit to the famous Academy in the Street 532
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