THE LURE OF PARIS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 3687, 23 November 1912, Page 10

THE LURE OF PARIS.

WHY THE “CITY OF LIGHT” FASCINATES. Why is it that we all want to go to Paris Y What is it that attracts us so strongly to the City of Light on the banks of the Seine? To explain prei eisely is one of those great difficulties ; that beset us whenever we try to define anything that is really indefinable. One can no more say exactly ; why Paris lures us than answer the | question: What is love? or What is | Beauty? Yet, in a book entitled, ! “Sensations of Paris,” by Rowland Strong (published by John Long, Lid) I found, as I read it during the most . recent of my sojourns in Paris the best attempt I know of to probe the mystery and put in simple words the meaning of the wonderful city’s , strange fascination. | Let us say, first- of all, that to the j sensitive mind, to the seeker after | new thrills, the real interest does not lie in what Mr. Strong truly describesas “the drearv round of the’shnra “mv Pa roe.’. with its meretricious amusements invented for the satisfaction of

the foreigner, and bearing no relation to the native life of Paris.” No, if is not Maxim’s or the Olvmpia or the Bd Tabarin or the Cafe d’Harcourt that is Paris, nor anything one sees or experiences during a few days’ hurried sight-seeing and pieasure-sec.V-'ng. All that has as little relation to veal Paris life as a provincial visitor’;? round of Mine. Tussnwd’s. Es id’s Court, and the Leicester Square cafes Ims to real London life. The me tl:i’;~ that matters about either of the two groat cities, Paris or London, is the soul of the city, the particular kind o f human comedy you will find being played there. No tourist pager to “do” a city in a few da vs or •■ervks has ever yet discovered that cite’? soul and inner meaning.

THE VOICE OF PARIS

The Boulevards are the first thing that strikes the visitor to Paris. He wanders along them, especially that bit of Boulevard which stretches from the Rue de Richelieu to the Madeleine and which changes its name—no one ever exactly knows where—from the Boulevard des Italiens to the Boulevard des Cap-ucines.

“The Boulevard,” says Mr Strong, “survives because it is essential to Paris. The London parks hare boon described as the lungs of Louder; The Parisians are an .out-door-living people, and they have the loquacity of the South. The _ Boulevard is a needed outlet for their expansiveness. Its pavements are the widest in Paris. Its cafes and restaurants are the most numerous and best appointed. . . The ample proportions of the Bmilovhrd are necessary to the Parisian for his gesticulations and for the breadth of his ideas on moral, social, and political topics. Its avenues of luxuriant trees supply in summer a grateful shade- for the lounger, the dreamer, and the talker. The Boulevard is the threat of Paris, and its palate as well. Nowhere are the nuances of French popular thought and feeling expressed with so much precision and authority as on the Boulevard. . . The Boulevard makes and mars the reputation of a savant with the same imperial authority and assumption of omniscience that it applies to politics and the arts, to cooking and religion, to all subjects that come within the scope of human criticism. And inasmuch as Paris leads France, and the Boulevard inspires Paris, it is the opinion of the Boulevard which for the time being prevails.” A TRUE ARISTOCRACY.

But the Boulevard, both as a place and as a great' informal club, is not the whole of Paris. In London we speak of Society with a capital S’, and by that we mean all the people who matter in social life. In Paris the corresponding phrase is “Tout Paris” —“All Paris” —and unless you become one of “All Paris” you will miss a very great and important side of the life of the French capital. “All Paris,” and this, perhaps, is its mostdistinguishing trait, is both exclusive and eclectic. It reflects the national as well as the Parisian spirit. It is a microcosm of France, and therefore of the civilised world ; for France is in the van of civilisation, notwithstanding many a wayward impulse, many a false step; and Paris, in spite of limitations and defects, is still the Ville Lumiere (City of Light) a Beacon to Humanity, the Capital of Progress. All Paris is exclusive because it is an aristocracy—an aristocracy in the true sense of the term, not of birth hut of achievement. It is eclectic because human achievement knows no bounds but is daily widening its horizons, lengthening its perspectives, heightening its skies; hut, though exclusive, All Paris is not a. charmed circle; a temple of mysteries to which a shibboleth is the only open-sesame, a chili with ■committees and rules of admission, a. social University setting examination and granting degrees: it is as elastic as the morals of its meekest member and nimble as a reble with unfixed ends girdling the earth.”