Paris in Disguise

The Institution of the "Bal Masque" in France, with Philosophical and Genealogical Origins

PAUL MORAND

"HIGH society is a masked ball," a philosopher of the eighteenth century has said. What then is a masked ball, if not the world brought to a state of perfection? Men and women who are accustomed to hide their feelings in daily life, to scheme from morning till night, and to dissemble their thoughts constantly, will find the masked ball the perfect symbol of their conduct. To them it will be an incidental though supreme ceremony in that continual festival which they make of life. Old Europe no longer lives the carefree and easy existence of the past. And nonetheless, the disguise is no less prevalent. Is it perhaps to escape boredom, ruin, and themselves that people to-day seek to become someone else for a few hours?

The fashion of giving costume balls in the month of June, at the height of the season, is recent and seems to come from England. Formerly such amusements were in full swing during Lent, in February or March, or on Twelfth Night in January. The reasons for this must have been profound and must hark back to the earliest days of mankind. For it is at the beginning of the New Year, a little before spring, that the blacks of the Antilles celebrate their voodoo masquerades, and the Negroes of the Southern states enjoy their carnivals, and their African ancestors dance their masked ballets to ask the gods for rain and good harvests. However that may be, the finest jêtes travesties to be seen in Paris since the war have taken place in June.

THIS year, the first was given by the Comte Etienne de Beaumont, the force behind the Soirees de Paris. It was held in his hotel near the Invalides, which is open not only to the fashionable society of the Faubourg, but also to the artists of the advance guard. The guests formed one of those picturesque gatherings which are possible only in Paris. The theme chosen for this year was The Sea. To-day the stage, particularly the Russian Ballet, makes its influence felt even in private homes. No more candlesticks or lamps; the costumes inspired by the theatre require real stage settings, with spotlights, footlights, and projectors. What finer background than this garden in the centre of Paris, with its centuryold trees, its dark-green hornbeams? And all Paris met that night, transformed into the marvels of the ocean, into fish and "sea fruits" (frutti di mare, the Neapolitans say). The imagination was as boundless as the deep. All maritime substances, mother-of-pearl, coral, sea weed, and shells, served to enhance the beauty of the women. Most notable of all was Lady A., who appeared as a cloud, a white "fog on the water." She was surrounded by such numerous clusters of balloons that one might have thought her in danger of being carried away. Then there was Venus in a rose shell; there were Neptune, the Sea Serpent, and an Iceberg; a school of jelly-fish entered, in weird and stylized costumes designed by Madame Jean Victor-Hugo. The strange fabrics and materials of the modern decorators in the Russian Ballet, tarlatans, oil-cloth, linoleum, mica, and cellophane, had been utilized, dethroning the earlier silks, gauzes, and velvets. There were the handsome sailors of Saint-Tropez, Chinese fish, and Polynesian gods. Not only the surface and intermediate waters were represented, but also the sea bottom, with lobsters, eels, and crabs. The host, made up as a skate, was trailing a cape the colour of the depths.

Everyone was grouped, I was going to say, in families, but this was not the case, for this fantastic album lacked all scientific order. They were grouped, rather, in accordance with maritime affinities—and then, lighted by fireworks under the direction of a sea diver, they advanced from the far end of the garden, green as a translucent aquarium. The abyss of colours recalled Hugo's verses on the ball:

Quel bonheur de bondir e per due en la joule, De sentir par le bal ses sens multiplies, Et de ne pas savoir si dans la nue on roule ... ou si Von joule Un flot tournoyant a ses pieds!

Some days after this artistic ball, the Duc and Duchesse de Doudeauville gave a Regency ball, which was classic in spirit, in the great tradition of the Faubourg. The left bank of the Seine resounded that evening with all the poetry which Proust attached to the great historic names as they strike the ear of dreamer or poet. Such an evening had not been seen since the Persian ball of Mme. de Chabrillan, or the Princesse de Broglie's Ball of Gems, which were given before the war.

OUITE different in character was the ball which took place last year in the environs of Paris and which had for its principal hero the illustrious magician of the eighteenth century, Cagliostro. The brilliance of a dying world on the eve of the Revolution had been revived for an evening by the Marquise Casati at her home in Le Vésinet. The Comte d'Artois, Cardinal de Rohan, Marie-Antoinette, and all the court of Louis XVI were present. And, as though to give more actuality to the celebrated saying, "après moi le déluge," the suburban populace gathered at the gates to show its displeasure . . .

The outstanding festivity of the season was the ball given by the Prince and Princesse Jean-Louis de Faucigny-Lucinge. It was a reconstruction of the years 1875-1900, an era which is so remote from our own, though so near it in point of time. For some time the "advance guard" motion picture houses had been showing on Parisian screens the films of thirty years ago, of the first days of the cinema; as a result they had restored to favour all the old-fashioned clothing and a whole world which seems to the young people of to-day to date from times before the flood. Thus the idea of choosing costumes from this period promptly met with the greatest success. Some rooted out the clothes which had belonged to their grandmothers, with "bustles, pads, and leg of mutton sleeves," in black laces and red silks; others copied old magazines; and finally, within a few days' time, the second-hand clothing dealers in the most out-of-the-way quarters of the city found themselves, to their great stupefaction, relieved of faded grey hats and tight-kneed check trousers which they had never had the slightest hope of selling. It is unbelievable that men's old clothes could disappear so rapidly; (it is as hard to find a coat of forty years ago as a Roman toga; thus perish the fragile coverings of our bodies, our bodies which are scarcely less fragile). Among the restorations were the cake-walk, Eton boys of 1900, Loie Fuller, the first African explorers with their red whiskers, the last cabs; and for a moment Jean Cocteau even had the idea of appearing as the "Dreyfus Case." The Duchesse de Gramont was a lioness and the Due de la Verdura an animal tamer. There was also an "entree Marcel Proust." We saw again all of Proust's characters, which are now as celebrated as the characters of Balzac. M. Swann, the Duchesse de Guermantes, M. de Charlus, the Jeunes Filles en Fleurs, and Madame Verdurin, were evoked for a time, just as they had appeared to the worldly young author who made his debut in the salons of Paris forty years ago. The most exceptional costume was the one worn by Madame Jean Victor-Hugo; the front of it was masculine and the back feminine, to symbolize Sodom and Gomorrah.

THE season in Paris ended with the Opera Ball, known as the Bal du Grand-Prix, which is sometimes devoted to a period and sometimes to a colour. Blue was the theme for this year. Although the women were obliged to be masked, the custom seemed to have its drawbacks. For it is quite an art to wear a mask. The world of to-day is too large, and the cities are too vast, for there to be much amusement in hatching up intrigues. Before people can conceal their identity they must first be known to one another. At Parma in the times of Stendhal, and in London under the first Georges, everybody knew everybody else. In the Venice of Casanova, where society went about in masks nearly all the year round, the habit of dissembling the features was so prevalent, and people were so expert in the art of intrigue and at "duelling with, the fan," that there was no end of amusement in tracking down one's friends and deceiving one's enemies. But the heyday of the mask is over. There is nothing now but the Italian comedy, with Harlequin and Pulchinella, to remind us of a time when all actors were masked. Nor can the invention be attributed to Bacchus, father of the Greek tragedy, for the mask is as old as the world and has its origin in magic, as witness the masks which are now seen in the Congo, Ceylon, Alaska, and Polynesia. Also those of the Mexican festivals, like death heads; and the strange prehistoric masks representing animals which still survived in France up to the fourteenth century, when the Church interdicted them because they were so monstrous and so obviously pagan. Yet the mask is returning to favour on the contemporary stage. The essays by Jean Cocteau in the Bœuf sur le Toit and by Oliver in the London Pavilion, are instances.

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This fashionable and mundane Opera Ball of a few weeks ago, with all its diplomats, and its Americans just off the ship, made me think of the earlier Opera Balls, a hundred years back. The people, in hired clothing, overran the stage, and (in the words of our grandfathers) "women of the street came to eat the crumbs of prostitution out of the hand of shame." These balls are still famous, thanks to the lithographs of Gavarni and to their admirable captions, so perfectly simple and eternal:

THE MAN: "It's almost morning . . . I'm done up."

THE WOMAN: "Not me."

Or again the one in which two masked persons on a balcony are watching a crowd surge by. One says to the other, gloomily:

"All those women! And when you think that the whole lot eats everyday. That gives you a fine idea of man!"

Finally, on leaving the ball:

"We will go on foot," says the husband.

"Thank you! I'll be as lowas you like—but in poor style, never!"

The Paris season is over. As I write, nothing remains but the annual and classic Bal des Quat'z-Arts, much more renowned in America, I believe, than in Paris itself. About eight o'clock in the evening, the Champs-Elysées are amused to see these hordes of naked savages, these unknown men daubed with colours, whizzing past in taxis on their way to Luna Park. India, Africa, Greece, and China are the eternal themes of the students. This year the Huns were chosen. Perhaps in the year 3000 the Quat'z-Arts ball will be called "Paris or New York in 1928." But with the tradition of fanciful garments still in force, and the imaginativeness of the artists unabated, w-e who presently inhabit these great and highly proper cities shall be represented as wearing nothing but a necklace of champagne corks, with a layer of paint for our only covering.