by Bill Nye
GRAINS OF TRUTH
XVIII
A young friend has written to me as follows: "Could you tell mesomething of the location of the porcelain works in Sevres, France, andwhat the process is of making those beautiful things which come fromthere? How is the name of the town pronounced? Can you tell me anythingof the history of Mme. Pompadour? Who was the Dauphin? Did you learnanything of Louis XV whilst in France? What are your literary habits?"
It is with a great, bounding joy that I impart the desired information.Sevres is a small village just outside of St. Cloud (pronounced SanCloo). It is given up to the manufacture of porcelain. You go to St.Cloud by rail or river, and then drive over to Sevres by diligence orvoiture. Some go one way and some go the other. I rode up on the Seine,aboard of a little, noiseless, low-pressure steamer about the size of asewing machine. It was called the Silvoo Play, I think.
The fare was thirty centimes--or, say, three cents. After paying my fareand finding that I still had money left, I lunched at St. Cloud in theopen air at a trifling expense. I then took a bottle of milk from mypocket and quenched my thirst. Traveling through France, one finds thatthe water is especially bad, tasting of the Dauphin at times, anddangerous in the extreme. I advise those, therefore, who wish to be wellwhilst doing the Continent, to carry, especially in France, as I did, alarge, thick-set bottle of milk, or kumiss, with which to take the wireedge off one's whistle whilst being yanked through the Louvre.
St. Cloud is seven miles west of the center of Paris and almost tenmiles by rail on the road to Versailles--pronounced Vairsi. St. Cloudbelongs to the Canton of Sevres and the arrondissement of Versailles. Anarrondissement is not anything reprehensible. It is all right. You,yourself, could belong to an arrondissement if you lived in France.
St. Cloud is on the beautiful hill slope, looking down the valley of theSeine, with Paris in the distance. It is peaceful and quiet andbeautiful. Everything is peaceful in Paris when there is no revolutionon the carpet. The steam cars run safely and do not make so much noiseas ours do. The steam whistle does not have such a hold on people as itdoes here. The adjutant-general at the depot blows a little tin bugle,the admiral of the train returns the salute, the adjutant-general says"Allons!" and the train starts off like a somewhat leisurely young manwho is going to the depot to meet his wife's mother.
One does not realize what a Fourth of July racket we live in and employin our business till he has been the guest of a monarchy of Europebetween whose toes the timothy and clover have sprung up to a greatheight. And yet it is a pleasing change, and I shall be glad when we asa republic have passed the blow-hard period, laid aside theear-splitting steam whistle, settled down to good, permanentinstitutions, and taken on the restful, sootheful, Boston air whichcomes with time and the quiet self-congratulation that one is born in aBible land and with Gospel privileges, and where the right to worship ina strictly high-church manner is open to all.
The Palace of St. Cloud was once the residence of Napoleon I insummer-time. He used to go out there for the heated term, and foldinghis arms across his stomach, have thought after thought regarding thefuture of France. Yet he very likely never had an idea that some day itwould be a thrifty republic, engaged in growing green peas, or pulling asoiled dove out of the Seine, now and then, to add to the attractions ofher justly celebrated morgue.
Louis XVIII also put up at the Palace in St. Cloud several summers. Hespelled it "palais," which shows that he had very poor early Englishadvantages, or that he was, as I have always suspected, a native ofQuebec. Charles X also changed the bedding somewhat, and moved in duringhis reign. He also added a new iron sink and a place in the barn forwashing buggies. Louis Philippe spent his summers here for a number ofyears, and wrote weekly letters to the Paris papers, signed "Uno," inwhich he urged the taxpayers to show more veneration for their royalnibs. Napoleon III occupied the palais in summer during his lifetime,availing himself finally of the use of Mr. Bright's justly celebrateddisease and dying at the dawn of better institutions for beautiful butunhappy France.
I visited the palais (pronounced pallay), which was burned by thePrussians in 1870. The grounds occupy 960 acres, which I offered to buyand fit up, but probably I did not deal with responsible parties. Thispart of France reminds me very much of North Carolina. I mean, ofcourse, the natural features. Man has done more for France, it seems tome, than for the Tar Heel State, and the cities of Asheville and Parisare widely different. The police of Paris rarely get together in frontof the court-house to pitch horseshoes or dwell on the outlook for thegoober crop.
And yet the same blue, ozonic sky, if I may be allowed to coin a word,the same soft, restful, dolce frumenti air of gentle, genial health, andof cark destroying, magnetic balm to the congested soul, the inflamednerve and the festering brain, are present in Asheville that one findsin the quiet drives of San Cloo with the successful squirt of the mightyfountains of Vairsi and the dark and whispering forests ofFon-taine-_bloo_.
The palais at San Cloo presents a rather dejected appearance since itwas burned, and the scorched walls are bare, save where here and there awarped and wilted water pipe festoons the blackened and blistered wreckof what was once so grand and so gay.
San Cloo has a normal school for the training of male teachers only. Ivisited it, but for some cause I did not make a hit in my address to thepupils until I began to speak in their own national tongue. Then theclosest attention was paid to what I said, and the keenest delight wasmanifest on every radiant face. The president, who spoke some English,shook hands with me as we parted, and I asked him how the students tookmy remarks. He said: "They shall all the time keep the thinkness--whatyou shall call the recollect--of monsieur's speech in preserves, so thatthey shall forget it not continualle. We shall all the time say we havenot witness something like it since the time we come here, and have notso much enjoy ourselves since the grand assassination by the guillotine.Come next winter and be with us for one week. Some of us will remain inthe hall each time."
At San Cloo I hired of a quiet young fellow about thirty-five years ofage, who kept a very neat livery stable there, a sort of victoria and abig Percheron horse, with fetlock whiskers that reminded me of theSutherland sisters. As I was in no hurry I sat on an iron settee in thecool court of the livery stable, and with my arm resting on the shoulderof the proprietor I spoke of the crops and asked if generally peopleabout there regarded the farmer movement as in any way threatening tothe other two great parties. He did not seem to know, and so I watchedthe coachman who was to drive me, as he changed his clothes in order togive me my money's worth in grandeur.
One thing I liked about France was that the people were willing, at aslight advance on the regular price, to treat a very ordinary man withunusual respect and esteem. This surprised and delighted me beyondmeasure, and I often told people there that I did not begrudge theadditional expense. The coachman was also hostler, and when the carriagewas ready he altered his attire by removing a coarse, gray shirt ortunic and putting on a long, olive green coachman's coat, with erectlinen collar and cuffs sewed into the collar and sleeves. He wore a highhat that was much better than mine, as is frequently the case withcoachmen and their employers. My coachman now gives me his silk hat whenhe gets through with it in the spring and fall, so I am better dressedthan I used to be.
But we were going to say a word regarding the porcelain works atSevres. It is a modern building and is under government control. Themuseum is filled with the most beautiful china dishes and funny businessthat one could well imagine. Besides, the pottery ever since itsconstruction has retained its models, and they, of course, are worthy ofa day's study. The "Sevres blue" is said to be a little bit bluer thananything else in the known world except the man who starts a nonpareilpaper in a pica town.
I was careful not to break any of these vases and things, and thusendeared myself to the foreman of the place. All employes are uniformedand extremely deferential to recognized ability. Practically, for half aday, I owned the place.
A cattle friend of mine who was looking for a dynasty whose tail hecould twist while in Europe, and who used often to say over our glass ofvin ordinaire (which I have since learned is not the best brand at all),that nothing would tickle him more than "to have a little deal with acrowned head and get him in the door," accidentally broke a blue crockout there at Sevres which wouldn't hold over a gallon, and it took thebest part of a car load of cows to pay for it, he told me.
The process of making the Sevres ware is not yet published in book form,especially the method of coloring and enameling. It is a secretpossessed by duly authorized artists. The name of the town is pronouncedSave.
Mme. Pompadour is said to have been the natural daughter of a butcher,which I regard as being more to her own credit than though she had beenan artificial one. Her name was Jeanne Antoinette Poisson Le Normandd'Etioles, Marchioness de Pompadour, and her name is yet used by theauthorities of Versailles as a fire escape, so I am told.
She was the mistress of Louis XV, who never allowed her to put her handsin dishwater during the entire time she visited at his house.D'Etioles was her first husband, but she left him for a gay but ratherreprehensible life at court, where she was terribly talked about, thoughshe is said not to have cared a cent.
She developed into a marvelous politician, and early seeing that theFrench people were largely governed by the literary lights of that time,she began to cultivate the acquaintance of the magazine writers, andtried to join the Authors' Club.
She then became prominent by originating a method of doing up the hair,which has since grown popular among people whose hair has not, like myown, been already "done up."
This style of Mme. Pompadour's was at once popular with the young menwho ran the throttles of the soda fountains of that time, and is stillwell spoken of. A young friend of mine trained his hair up from hisforehead in that way once and could not get it down again. During hisfuneral his hair, which had been glued down by the undertaker, becamesurprised at something said by the clergyman and pushed out the end ofhis casket.
The king tired in a few years of Mme. Pompadour and wished that he hadnot encouraged her to run away from her husband. She, however, retainedher hold upon the blase and alcoholic monarch by her wonderfulversatility and genius.
When all her talents as an artiste and politician palled upon his oldrum-soaked and emaciated brain, and ennui, like a mighty canker, ateaway large corners of his moth-eaten soul, she would sit in the gloamingand sing to him, "Hard Times, Hard Times, Come Again No More," meantimeaccompanying herself on the harpsichord or the sackbut or whatever theyplayed in those days. Then she instituted theatricals, giving, throughthe aid of the nobility, a very good version of "Peck's Bad Boy" and"Lend Me Five Centimes."
She finally lost her influence over Looey the XV, and as he got to be anold man the thought suddenly occurred to him to reform, and so he hadMme. Pompadour beheaded at the age of forty-two years. This little storyshould teach us that no matter how gifted we are, or how high we maywear our hair, our ambitions must be tempered by honor and integrity;also that pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before aplunk.