We Visit Paris Now

by Mrs. A.J. Wilder

Paris isn’t only the place where fashions are made. It is very much more, and in these word pictures drawn by Rose Wilder Lane the city seems to have come to life.

This is Paris as seen by one of ourselves:

“You never saw or dreamed of a city like Paris; it is perfectly beautiful. I have contended all these years that cities need not be ugly and crowded and crushing to death every human impulse worth having. I always knew there could be a Paris although I never could have imagined it as beautiful as it is.

“The broad streets lined with parks where children play, the curving little narrow streets lined with wonderful, old stone buildings, there are not two roofs alike in all Paris, nor two streets that cross each other at right angles in the stiff way of American cities.

“There are almost no street cars, all traffic is underground or by taxi, and I wake in the mornings, in my hotel in the very heart of Paris, and hear nothing but birds as I would on Rocky Ridge Farm. Except for the honks of the taxis, which have a funny, little hoarse sound and remind me of nothing so much as geese flying high and honking as they go.

“The Champs Elysses is a broad, broad street with parks as broad along both sides: the loveliest, most graceful trees and lawns, and children playing there. Little girls all in little white dresses that show the legs half way above the knees and have no sleeves at all, with big bows in their hair and little white kid gloves: little boys in the least possible bit of clothing, a one piece thing that ends just below their thighs and is low necked; no stockings for either girls or boys, just bare legs and arms except for little boots and gloves, always gloves. And with them are nurses, peasant women most of them, in embroidered aprons and wide sleeved, black silk and velvet dresses and every one wearing a different sort of fantastic cap. I saw one Algerian nurse black as ebony. She wore a white sort of wrapped around robe and turban of glorious reds and yellows. Under the trees are Punch and Judy shows, gaily painted and carved and gilded stages where Punch and Judy do things you could not believe possible of puppets, and the children yell with joy, packed all around in a crowd.

“I am very much surprised to find the Seine so small. I don’t know why I had though of it as such a large river, but I had some vague notion of its being like a river at home. It runs thru the city, you know, and is crossed every few blocks by beautiful stone bridges, and there are parks all along its edge and usually quite beautiful slanting roofed or turreted stone buildings beyond them. At night when the colored lights shine from the bridges on the water, and the boats on it each carry a swinging Japanese lantern swinging at the bow, it is like something you have dreamed about.

“The hotels in Paris have inner courts with grass and flowers. Every alley way reveals the lovely, green vistas, alluring beyond words. Space is expensive but, by the bounty of God to the French they know that hideousness is more so. They will tenderly nurse a tree and 16 square feet of flowers in land valued in hundreds of francs an inch.

“Little items are interesting. Door knobs are in the middle of doors instead of at the edge. Big doors, like hotel doors open with long levers instead of handles.

“There are no traffic officers; everyone goes where he pleases, when he pleases, and if a pedestrian is run down he is arrested for blocking the traffic. That is perhaps one reason why there are almost no accidents. Another reason is the taxi drivers, who are the most reckless speed maniacs on earth, who momentarily handle death at their finger ends and always escape.

“When you buy anything in a store you have to go with the clerk to the cashier’s office where you wait while the purchase is recorded in the ledgers and then with the slip and the clerk you go to the next department, the treasurer I suppose, where you hand him the money and get the change and then to the wrappers where it is wrapped and given you.” 

Mrs. A.J. Wilder. "We Visit Paris Now." Missouri Ruralist (January 5, 1921); 23.  CLICK HERE to see this article as it originally appeared in the Missouri Ruralist.

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