MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
THE best achievements of art or nature possess a quality which evokes ever-renewed surprise. However familiar we may be with any given site or picture, we find that, if it be of supreme quality, we are startled when we see it again. Last week I spent three sun-drenched days in Paris; it was as if I had never known the town before. From dawn to dusk the whole place sparkled; the motor-cars sparkled, the gendarmes sparkled, the trees sparkled, the asphalt sparkled and the hoses watering the grass and the geraniums threw small happy rainbows into the air. Those who are wise and really love Paris seek at night-time to exchange the garish for the mysterious. Nothing can be more soothing, after a day of brilliance, than to dine on the terrace of some secluded square, where the lamps are not hard, as in the greater avenues, but mellow and yellow as candles in the soft night. Much as I admire, and am continually surprised by, the per- spectives that render Paris the greatest of all panoramas, it is the abiding contrast between ostentation and seclusion that for me constitutes its special charm. Small streets with little windows; great doors concealing gravelled courtyards with stone sphinxes; unassuming frontages behind which, one assumes, there will be a plot of garden, with an iron table and four chairs painted mauve and arranged tidily in the shade of lilac and acacia. Such pools of silence are rendered necessary by the tensity of Paris; in no city in the world is man accorded such a variety of seats on which to sit. Thus the mental and aesthetic effort that the place entails is eased, or should be eased, at night by softer tones: the ice tinkles gently in the wine-cooler and the asparagus are large. We are not dis- pleased even when someone in the house opposite starts play- ing a piano out of tune.
* * * * Americans are apt to assure one that New York is not the United States; in the days when I explored that large continent I derived the impression that these assurances were correct. We English are less given to informing foreigners that London is not Great Britain, since we know that this fact is too evident to be stressed. But when Frenchmen, with a solemn shake of the head, seek to remind me that Paris is not France, I refuse to be convinced. It seems to me that all the genius, all the taste, all the pride and all the invention of the French people have for centuries been concentrated upon this astound- ing creation. " You realise," a friend said to me, " that this glitter is little more than a façade? Paris today is one enormous bluff." But is that true ? I know that they are faced with internal and external dangers and that their man-power is low. I know that they are alarmed by the prospect of a resurgent Germany, a selfish England, an ignorant United States and a divided France. I know that they are so bored by heroics that they seek to hide their own heroism. I know that their con- fidence in their own politicians is a limited confidence, and that there are moments even when they lose faith in themselves. I know that these moods of diffidence create scepticism, sus- picion and blind evasions. I know that Paris is accustomed to put a brave face on life, even as some beautiful Parisian, whose husband is unfaithful, whose son is a drug-addict, whose daughter has eloped with a Syrian, whose doctor has that morning given her disturbing information, will enter a drawing room with unclouded radiance. But all the same, Paris cannot be an illusion; it is a potent fact: it is the concrete symbol of the resilience and continuity of France. * * * * The.agreeable sensation of mingled recognition and surprise evoked by the immortal beauty of the French capital is not, however, the sole contentment of such visits. It has become a solace to me that I am not a Parisian but a man of Kent. There were moments, when I was young, when I felt that it might be nicer to be a French writer than to be an English writer. How splendid, I felt, to be constantly vivified by that electric intellectual climate: how pleasurable to sense the vehemence with which my writings would be discussed by beautifully dressed women in Louis XV saloons : how flattering to aspire to become a member of the Academy : how com- forting, as I got older, to be addressed by the younger genera- tion as "cher maitre": how convenient to be furnished by my publishers with unlimited free copies of my own books; and how consoling to believe that as a writer I was a figura of national importance and not, as in England, merely a humble member of an eccentric minority. Such aspirations no longer assail me. I should, I well know, find it tiring to maintain day and night the taut brilliance, the elegance of vesture or the energy of social politeness demanded of a writer by the exacting standards of Parisian society. I should today find it a torture to discuss my own books with bright and beautifully- dressed women. I do not desire to become a member of any Academy. I feel offended if young people, out of politeness, address me even as " Sir." I should loathe to be a figure of national importance, even as I should hate to have to send inscribed copies of my books to everybody I had ever known. Delightful it is assuredly to pay a three days' visit to Paris; but I return from this wedding feast to my own orchard, discard my grey waistcoat and top hat, and huddle happily back into my own tweed coat.
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Another thing that I should find so exhausting were I a Parisian is the horrible necessity of being up-to-date. In London it matters not if one has failed to read the latest book or visit the latest exhibition; should one in Paris confess to such inadvertence one would be regarded as having abandoned the struggle on the way down hill. "Ce pauvre Nicolson . . ." they would exclaim, and on his way back in the Underground the Assistant Under-Secretary of the Ministry of Fine Arts would think out the headings of the funeral oration which before long he might be called upon to pronounce. if at a Parisian luncheon one enquires about an event that occurred a fortnight before, one is conscious of having committed both a social and an intellectual solecism; after an instant of flustered shame, one's hostess will reply with that forced politeness which we ourselves adopt when an American visitor asks us to talk to him about the abdication of King Edward VIII. I was, for instance, most anxious to ascertain their views upon the publication by Le Monde of the apocryphal Fechteler report. The French, as I have said, are conven- tionally polite, and my hostess answered my questions with maternal care; but I observed that the other guests winced away from my instruction and started discussing among them- selves the Cocteau-Stravinsky performance. I was more fortunate when I enquired about the Pinay experiment. A terrific argument ensued, during the course of which, as I had expected, the word " freemasons " occurred four times. I left the luncheon-table little wiser and strolled back through the Tuileries gardens (feeling stupid and untidy as I always feel after Paris luncheon-parties) with an old French friend. " Tell me more about Pinay," I begged him. " At last," he said, " we have a statesman rather than a politician; his loan idea is an idea of genius. Believe me, I am not exaggerating when I say that I foresee that his Government will last until October."
* * * * The Dunkirk ferry that night, throbbing gently, wafted me back to England; the bottle of Evian in my sleeper tinkled a different tune when we became sea-borne. 'In the morning the orchards smiled gaily in the sunshine, being freed from the apprehension of May frosts. The silence of London, after all that conversation and all those motor horns and whistles, engulfed me soothingly. What a stimulus, what an excitement, it is to go for three days to Paris ! What a relaxation to get home !
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