Luncheon of the Boating Party

by Susan Vreeland

  “Ha! What a jolly catastrophe that was,” Auguste said, remembering his grand project of an amateur vaudeville at le Moul’ to fund an orphanage and pouponnière, a day nursery, for the illegitimate babes of Montmartre abandoned and dying in the streets. It wrenched him that the lives of the street waifs orphaned during the Prussian War were so wretched compared to the lives of the little darlings whose bourgeois fathers wanted them painted in their stylish frocks. The project was the one thing he did the summer he painted Moulin that his mother approved of, she who washed and fed every urchin who ever came to her door.

  All his friends had taken part, composing songs, poems, skits, painting scenery and posters, practicing their dances and acts, and writing articles in the local journals. Margot worked side by side with him on everything. She hand-printed tickets and strung paper garlands tree to tree. All of Montmartre was giddy with anticipation. Front-rank seats went for ten francs, two francs in the rear, and fifty centimes to stand. No one outside Montmartre came, and no Montmartrois could afford the ten-franc seats, but the rear seats and standing room were packed, and his idea of a nursery for foundlings had to wait until Madame Charpentier funded it herself later.

  “It was one of my happiest times. That spirit Margot had with me that summer, that’s what I need now in my painting. The spirit of Montmartre. It will die if this place turns commercial.”

  “This is going into my story, you know.”

  “Fine! Tell them Pierre-Auguste Renoir who immortalized the place without a roof is outraged!” He raised his fist high. “Infuriated!”

  The yowl of a cat in heat tore through the air. He yowled back, feeling the same wild need as they trudged uphill on rue des Saules. If Angèle wasn’t there, he knew no other place to look. There wasn’t anyone else. The painting would be diminished from the start.

  A person could pass by Cabaret des Assassins without noticing. It looked like any other cottage. In the dark they’d have to be careful not to miss it.

  “Look for a donkey tied to a tree,” he told Paul. “The owner rents it to painters to carry their equipment down the backside plunge to the Maquis.”

  “Any way to make a franc, I guess. Who would want to paint that rat-infested shantytown?”

  Auguste had gone to look once and found the wasteland behind Montmartre dotted with quarrymen’s cottages, scraggly kitchen gardens, and hovels of ragpickers and cutthroats. He never painted there. The poverty tore at him too deeply.

  “Raffaëlli, for one. Or any of the other Realists in love with misery.”

  Out of an opened door spilled music and yellow light onto the small hillside vineyard. Above it, he could just make out the trees in the garden where he had painted Margot standing on the swing. He listened. Canéla, a painter by day and a tenor by night, was singing the melancholy song from Offenbach’s La Vie Parisienne about a man writing to a prostitute asking her to give his friend the same pleasure she had once given him. Just the kind of song Angèle would request. They ducked under the low doorframe.

  There she was. Angèle, resting her bosoms on the table next to a man leaning toward her, his intentness almost palpable. Now, wouldn’t that be a sight to paint? In the light from the oil lamp, he saw the glint in her frolicsome blue-black eyes gobbling up the man with a hunger that her former struggles as a Maquis dweller had put in them. A raconteuse she was, captivating the man with a story. A few strands of her light auburn chignon had come undone in the ardor of her telling.

  She turned to see who had come in.

  “Well, if it isn’t the lanky bon vivant of rue Saint-Georges. What happened to you?”

  It was embarrassing to explain. “Oh, I was in a duel, that’s all.” He thought he was being amusing until he caught Paul’s glare.

  “Plumpy you down and let’s have a squint at you. Hm, your face got in the way of a right hook, looks like. You should have come to me. My own true love is a stand-in. Rapiers only. No pistols. He saved a baron from certain death once, and got paid handsomely.”

  “I thought your true love was a police spy.”

  “That too. And a forger and a snatcher.” She laughed a throaty, deep-voiced laugh. “He’s disappeared of late.” She lifted her shoulders. “I suppose I was only fancy-sick about him after all.”

  That’s the insouciance and spirit he wanted, but not just for his painting. He wanted to drink it in so his worries and regrets would be pushed away. He sat next to her and caught a whiff of the murky, animal scent of ambergris.

  “This is Antonio Maggiolo. An Italian to the bone,” she said as though she knew him well, which was her way with everyone. “He’s a journalist.”

  Auguste glanced at Paul and then scrutinized the man. His tousled brown hair, slender neck, and tanned face, smooth except for wisps of a light brown beard at his chin, gave him the air of Ganymede, the beautiful youth of Greek legend carried off by Zeus. Truth to say, he was on the pretty side of handsome, with that angular jaw and narrow nose.

  “A journalist,” Auguste said. “Everybody’s a journalist. Every week new journals. New critics. Anybody can call himself an art critic if he has two eyes and owns a pen. Soon the only new thing they’ll have to write about is each other.” He gestured to Paul. “Meet Paul Lhôte. He’s a journalist. You can write about him writing about you.”

  Paul shook Antonio’s hand, pulled up a chair, and sat down.

  “Antonio is interviewing me, and introducing me to grappa. Upsee down.” She tipped her head back and poured in the potent clear drink as if it were white wine. “Ah, that’ll drive away my toothache.” She licked her lips and introduced Auguste. “I’m going to pose nude for him someday.” She took obvious delight in saying this, tantalizing all of them in one fell swoop.

  “So much the luckier man.” Maggiolo turned to Auguste. “Will she pose for Vice or Virtue, for a goddess or just for her beauty?”

  “For Beauty,” Auguste said. He appreciated the man’s cleverness in contrasting academic art that needed a classical goddess as pretext for a nude with modern painting in which a nude could be merely a beautiful woman at the bath or in the boudoir or waiting for a client. “Angèle needs no trappings of Roman ruins or Mount Olympus to justify her. She is what she is.” He touched her under her chin. “An embodiment of beauty.”

  Angèle beamed flirtatiously and blew him a kiss.

  “Are you an art critic?” Paul asked.

  “Not at the moment. Just now, I’m a social observer. I’m writing a piece on the ladies of Montmartre for Le Triboulet.” With slender fingers, Maggiolo whipped out a card from a silver case in his breast pocket.

  “Ah, les Montmartroises. Are you going to include the singers and dancers and circus performers?” Paul asked. “And the ladies of the evening?”

  “Especially the ladies of the evening.”

  “Then you can take your pick,” Paul said. “The fresh buds of girlhood newly arrived from the country or the trollops of the gutters. The Montmartroises are more Parisian than the Parisiennes.”

  Maggiolo tipped his head curiously at Paul. “I can see I have much to research. I may send the results to a journal in Milano as well. I’m somewhat of a roving correspondent.”

  “Where have you been roving lately?” Paul asked.

  “The spas at Baden-Baden.”

  “Been there,” Paul said.

  “The casino di Locarno.”

  “The casino of Lugano pays out higher.”

  “The Wagner opera season at Bayreuth.”

  “Ah, you’ve got me there,” Paul conceded.

  “Antonio’s made of piles of money. He’s got brains too.” Angèle gave him a teasing glance. “And something else, I do believe.”

  “Brain enough to hear stories of Paris from Montmartre’s most accomplished raconteuse,” Auguste said. “What were you telling him just now?”

  “About my life,” she said blithely, wagging her head.

  “Ah, then he must have charmed you more than I ever have, since I
’ve never heard the tale.”

  “Don’t let us stop you,” Paul said.

  “I was telling how as a girl, being that I had no mother to speak of, I lived in an attic space in the Maquis and slept on hare skins. Oh, a regular ragtag was I, in the clutches of a flower broker from rue du Temple, what some call rue du Crime. Every day, just after dawn, the Beadle, as she was called, met me at the flower market on Île de la Cité, and if I was late, I’d get a smack on my cheek. She would hang an empty coin pouch around my neck and send me off with a bundle of roses in both arms to Pont Neuf where the jugglers perform, or to l’Opéra, or La Madeleine, and I couldn’t come back to her flat until I’d sold them all. She would empty the pouch and give me a few sous, enough for bread and soup. If she thought I was hiding a coin, she’d strip me down to the skin to see if there were any between my cheeks.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Maggiolo said.

  “Why, aren’t you a white goose! Hang me if it isn’t true. Once, outside l’Opéra, I got shoved by the crowd, and fell into the street, and a carriage wheel rolled over the flowers. Là, she beat the tick right out of me.

  “Such things went on until I sprouted breasts. Mon Dieu, was I happy when those titties swelled, because I had a plan. I knew I could survive beatings aplenty, so I made up stories about being robbed by snatchers. It broke my heart to do it, but I tore my dress to convince her I’d fought back. Time and again she walloped me, but I’d already emptied what I collected under a loose cobble in that stub of a street of women’s cribs off rue du Temple.

  “Seeing as how I was so itchy to get out of her clutches, I put up with it only enough to go to Madame Hortense who rents dresses to femmes publiques, me being in rags, you see, but now with a collection of coins. I begged her to rent me one for just one hour. She took pity on me because I was plucky and scrubbed me down good before she let me so much as touch the fabric. ‘Why, your hair’s near to golden,’ she said. ‘Who would have thought? You bring this dress back with one stain of a man’s comings, and I’ll flay that beautiful face right off your cheekbones,’ she croaked. You can imagine, I felt like a queen in such a dress as was clean and respectable, which I guess showed on my face, because I only had to stand in the models’ market on place Pigalle for half an hour before I got picked up. I knew right then I wasn’t a throwaway, and I didn’t deserve to be beaten.”

  Angèle swelled as though a prince had just given her a box of chocolate creams. “After that I moved up a notch and could buy from the used clothing stalls of the Marché du Temple.”

  “Bravo!” Her spunk was one more reason why he wanted her in the painting. She was climbing out of penury just like he was. They shared the same hope, that security was just around the corner.

  With the perfect timing of a born actress, she slid forward her glass for more grappa, and quaffed it down. “Now my friends have come here—”

  “For a particular reason,” Auguste said. “I have a painting in mind in which you could figure prominently, and your roving correspondent as well.”

  As he explained, her sly eyes shot sparks to Antonio and then to him. “You can bet your brushes we’ll be there.”

  “Every Sunday for a while. Wear a blue boating dress, if you have one.”

  “I know blessed well where to get one. I’ll be traipsing through the Marché du Temple come nine in the morning.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Dans l’ Avenue Frochot

  Sunday morning. Yes, it had to be. The roar of applause last night as she took her bow, the hot carriage ride with the shades drawn leaving the theater, the slick feel of the leather seat under her damp palms, the heat of his body underneath his frock coat, and his low voice breathing words in rhythm with the clop clop of hooves on cobbles—this man, this Joseph-Paul Lagarde, last night, had murmured in the carriage, “Marry me, Jeanne. Marry me tomorrow. No, not tomorrow. Marry me at Christmas and we’ll have a fête that will set Paris abuzz for the season.” And she had said, “Whenever you’d like.”

  She had used the formal vous to show she knew he didn’t consider the daughter of a music professor from the edge of Montmartre, an actress playing ladies’ maids, equal to the son of the Most Honorable Michel Lagarde, agent supérieur of the stock exchange, and châtelain of Château Saint-Clair in Compiègne.

  And early this morning Joseph-Paul had come to call upon her father, very properly, mustering respect, asking for her hand in marriage, and Papa was pleased, knowing that Joseph-Paul had a sound future, and Maman was happy because her daughter was happy, and Joseph-Paul had made them promise not to tell anyone until he told his parents, and he kissed her mother on the cheek, and now the two of them were promenading back and forth along avenue Frochot, astonished at what they’d just done.

  Avenue Frochot, her little oasis of a street, a one-block crescent, calm and leafy. Not a monstrous block of apartments on a busy boulevard, nor the oddly shaped cottages of Montmartre, but an avenue secreted between the two, each maison particulière separate the other and with a distinct character, her home since girlhood. She would hate so very much to leave it.

  She looped her hand around his arm and told him where the painter Eva Gonzalès lived, and showed him Madame Galantière’s cast-iron bench where her life had taken a turn, Madame who was like an aunt to her and never missed her opening nights. She told him Victor Hugo had once lived at number five, and she described the grand day of her childhood when crowds followed him home when he returned to Paris after the Siege, and how he spoke to them from his balcony above the tier of arches, the great world coming to her little street.

  “Let’s go to the Bois now,” Joseph-Paul said.

  She was miffed. Was he even listening? She had so much more to tell.

  “To do what?”

  “Stroll to the cascade, take a gondola ride, meet my parents at the Kiosque de l’Empereur on the island. Let’s get your parasol and we’ll be off.”

  “I don’t need it.” She knew what he liked to hear. “All I need is you.”

  “Yes, but I must promenade you in all your splendor. Come now, Jeanne, let’s go back and get it.” He kissed her on her temple, a quick assurance of affection. “We have a bit of work to do.”

  She stopped in the cobbled street. “Work?” She squeaked out the word so he would laugh. “You’ve just described pleasure.”

  “Work that will be pleasure. We have to convince my parents. It’s a delicate issue. Father is very old-fashioned.”

  He paused. Was she supposed to guess his meaning?

  “When I mentioned you to them”—he stroked her hand as if smoothing the nap on a velvet glove—“Father said, ‘Once upon the boards, no matter how irreproachable their character may be, actresses can never be received by people of character and condition except in their professional capacity.’”

  A slam. It was like tripping and falling flat on the stage, not knowing how she’d gotten there.

  She planted herself on Madame Galantière’s bench. The playwright in the Flemish house was tap-tapping on his writing machine. When he stopped for a few moments, she held her breath for him, willing him to go on, and didn’t look up at Joseph-Paul until the man was tapping regularly again.

  “I know it’s terribly conservative of them, but they’ll come around. Let’s go.”

  “No.”

  “No?” He stretched out the word into two rising syllables.

  “I’m not going with you to the Bois.”

  “But you need to meet my parents. They need to see that you are—”

  “Refined. Yes, you may show me off, and I shall charm them, I promise you, but not today.”

  “Why not?”

  “I have a rendezvous. I did not expect today to be taken up with this. I’m going to pose.”

  “On a Sunday? You can’t be serious. You couldn’t have arranged that any day but Sunday?”

  “No. It has to be Sunday. Sundays. For Auguste Renoir.”

  He raised both arms, an overly d
ramatic gesture, and gave her a stern look. “You said that was over.”

  She could not suppress a giggle. “Stern looks don’t play well on men who have just asked one’s father for one’s hand in marriage. It is over, but this is a favor.”

  “Posing nude is a favor?”

  “It’s not for a nude. I’ve never posed nude, but what if it were?”

  “You wouldn’t do it, that’s what. And you’re not doing it today, regardless. I forbid you—”

  “Sh.”

  He lowered his voice. “Darling.”

  Those words, I forbid you, sent an icy tingle through her, head to toe. That a man would command her like that. Heaven and earth! It gave her a shock. She had never been told such a thing by Auguste. He was so blithe, letting her go her own way after an evening together, she to the theater, the shops, a friend’s flat, while he went to some hôtel particulier to paint a portrait, or out to his river. Auguste never questioned her. Was it titillating or merely inconvenient to love a man she was a jot afraid of?

  “It’s only a favor done out of good will. A pleasant thing to do.” She reached into her drawstring bag and pulled out the note. “See?” A touch of jealousy would do him good.

  He read it, and in a broad gesture, tore it in two.

  She grabbed for it. “You have no right—”

  “Remember the sight of this.” He tore it into smaller pieces, and still smaller, and dropped them in the gutter.

  She watched all those bits of male adoration float down like stage snowflakes. She hadn’t known that he was capable of so theatrical a gesture. It would play well at the Opéra, better there than at the Comédie-Française, where it wouldn’t convey genuine sadness.

  Such a difference in men. The joy Auguste took in her had been purely visual, sensual, and spontaneous. It wasn’t founded on possession, which was all right for a lover, but not for a husband. Joseph’s love was based on notions new to her, seriousness and permanence.

  “I’ve made a promise,” she said.

  “To him?”

  “No. I haven’t seen him for half a year. To Madame Charpentier. She said if this painting gets in the Salon and I’m not in it—”