unbuttoned americans—and others

roger du béarn

an investigation into the debonair philosophy which lures good americans to the affable shores of france

The wines of France flow sweetly down the parched American throat; hut it is not the alcoholic content—on whichever syllable you accent the word—that I hold chiefly responsible for the passionate attachment to France found in so large and, unfortunately, so mixed a group of American citizens. It is not, either, the fact that they can grow beards over there without having them pointed at or pulled; for such a reason would leave out of account a number of American women; nor is it, again, the attractive welcome that awaits the American tourist, for, if he occasionally finds it, he more often finds it missing.

Why does he go then? Why do boatloads of his kind, every summer, leave the happy Mid-West home, the bucolic Eastern Campus, the restful downtown office, to spend three months full of petty annoyances in distrustful contact with that tradesman population whose hungry eye never swerves from the tourist's pocketbook? Don't tell me it is the architecture!

Why, again, do others, with their return ticket safely sewn into the lining of their left boot, fail to return? Why, rather than share the comforts of a steam-heated, bath-ridden apartment, do they prefer to live in a small, dingy hotel on the left bank, where the comfort moderne exists only outside the building, on the marble plaque above the front door? Surely, it is not on account of Emily Post's knife and fork crusade: my Lord Chesterfield's belief that no one is polished till he has lived in France is a thing of the past. In the first place, no American desires to be polished: he either is, thinks he is, or does not think at all about it. In the second place, it is notorious that nowadays one is allowed more license with the knife and fork in France than anywhere else. You may engineer a piece of absorbent bread into your gravy or cut up a rebellious salad without "the others" nudging each other and exchanging glances to the effect that you do not use Lifebuoy soap and probably can't play contract bridge, anyway. No, etiquette is the most democratic of cultures, and if Emily Post seems to go in any direction, it is against, rather than with, the current of American immigration into France.

But what impels that current? Could it be a yearning for intellectual culture?

If so, it is not a desire but a whim, to which an ocean journey is fatal. For the Americans one sees in France seem a specially selected group from which culture of every kind has been largely and carefully—er—deleted.

In fact, these visible American Frenchmen spend their time assiduously doing nothing. What they absorb all day long is not, I am sure, culture. Perhaps Father, back home in America, is patiently toiling behind a grocery counter or before a bootblack stand, but Son and Daughter's patient toil in Paris is before a Pernod or behind a tray of hors-d'oeuvres.

Usually, Son and Daughter are at odds with the family—and here perhaps we are arriving at one of the motives, from the American side, of this hearty exodus from the parent roof. The family, you understand, does not understand. It has never been to Europe, it has never enjoyed leisure, though it may have had it; it has never lived—at least not that way. The family motto may be "God Bless Our Home"; it certainly is not je m'en fous. And je m'en fous, which is not so much an "I don't care" as a blunt "What the hell," seems to have the more powerful appeal.

And here we arrive at the other half of the motives, from the French side. Je m'en fous has the more powerful appeal, because it is more direct. It embodies that most sublime of duties, as my Montparnasse friends will tell you, duty to oneself. It is Puritanism as practiced by Mr. Lucifer.

It is a well-known fact that the human body protests against any strenuous exertion. Surely it would be wrong not to heed these protests. It is known also that the mind rebels against difficulties and positively boils over worries. Plainly, the wise course is to disregard problems and forget worries. But as one must do something to keep from being bored, a farseeing society has instituted food, drink, and companionship as pleasant and time-consuming occupations. Such, for the effete descendants of Daniel Boone, is the expanded meaning of je m'en fous.

That it has long had full standing as a philosophy of existence in France is attested by the dignity of an "-ism," je m'en foutisme, no less, which is recorded in the hearts of my countrymen, if not in the dictionary of their Academy. But it is a very complex and very difficult philosophy to live up to, in spite of its obvious charms.

The self-escaping American overdoes it— or rather doesn't do it at all. He innocently supposes that by wearing the corduroy pants of the Belle Jardiniere, spending every night at the Dome, and every day at the Deux Magots, and perhaps, once, as a sign of full initiation, running to the corner post-box in his bedroom slippers, he is a convinced je m'en foutiste. He may be convinced, but, I am afraid, no one else is.

The difficulty, you see, is that he is not doing it for himself; he is putting on a show. He is not acting that way because he feels like it. Having been brought up in Gratz, Pennsylvania, or East Gloucester, Massachusetts, he does not feel a damn bit like it. He really wants to wear a collar, preferably clean; tweeds and not corduroys; shoes and not slippers. At the same time, he does not want to assume the consequences of wearing a white collar.

But as a show implies an audience, the object of this self-imposed masquerade is that his friends shall see it. If, coming from "the States" they chance to, and in the course of human events report it to the family, then those patient months of torture will not have been in vain. In sending the next check, Mother will also enclose a letter. This will be the usual maternal mixture of shock and reproof; of wonder as to his progress in poesy—or is it interior decorating that claims him?—and of mild admonition tiptoeing cautiously, and with flattering reluctance, into the realm of moral considerations.

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To receive such a letter is the confirmation of true emancipation, the paradoxical encouragement needed to bolster up youthful rebellion. Fortunately, unbuttoned Americans are at least as numerous in France as they are in the United States; whence, above the mounting pile of saucers, under the watchful eye of a waiter who looks like H. G. Wells, arises the chorus gently pitying the brethren in the "old country" (now on the western side of the Atlantic), deprecating business hours, whatever they be, and discussing with mild patronage that quaint remnant, the family.

Je m'en foutisme—to revert to our severe terminology—pervades all the activities of the nation, and thereby exerts a wholesome influence on whoever is exposed to it, however casually. The solid American business man whom the proverbial wild horses could not keep in bed after seven in the morning, receives a profitable shock every time he wishes to take a French train. His high bloodpressure on crossing the Place St. Augustin after the policeman has blown his whistle and the autos keep coming, is most salutary. But he really graduates from the university of stiff shocks wdien he tries to pul through a phone-call or buy a 50-centime stamp. The fact that the clerk at the next window (marked Mandats-Poste) is occupied, to the exclusion of all other business, in whistling "Ramona" only emphasizes the democratic prevalence of the national philosophy.

Our brisk, efficient leader of the clothes-pin industry in Akron dismisses "Ramona" with a glance, and asks, at the stamp window, for his 50centime stamp; but he must wait until the clerk at the stamp-window has finished his lunch. That interesting ceremony takes almost two hours, and no amount of slogans, bonuses, advertising, time-clocks, or Bible verses will reduce the traditional lapse of time.

As a barber, mistaking me for an American, made it clear when I entered his shop around twelve-thirty, "One must work, it is true, but also one must eat; now, one does not eat in order to work, one works in order to eat." With which Euclidian irrefutability he put on his hat and, departing with an air of righteousness, left me to contemplate the empty chairs in the basement of Florentin's.

It will not do to deny that love of good food is a traditional character of the French, but it would be an interesting point for historians to determine whether originally, the French used their time to fill up on food, or the food to fill up their time.

But to return to our pillar of society—the post office clerk: il s'en fout, et royalement! Still, he is not altogether useless. Trains run, and in spite of much apparent slackness, letters get delivered. A proof is to be found in the fact that when the Post, Telephone, and Telegraph employees struck, some years ago, the resulting confusion w'as distinctly noticeable. Of course, being government employees, they had no right to strike, but a Machiavelli in their midst discovered a rule whereby every postcard sent through the mails must be read, to prevent the dissemination of obscene or libelous matter. Our united je m'en foutistes, therefore, assiduously read every postcard mailed throughout France and so quickly piled up mountains of other mail that the government granted their demands. Which only goes to show what the concentrated efforts of Frenchmen can do.

In the face of this mode of life, the American business man resists, storms, fumes, makes himself more than usually unpleasant to his family. But soon, if he only stays long enough in the country, he succumbs. The next thing he or any one else knows, he becomes a convert. And then, Enter Romance.

The creaky, musty Charles X Hotel where he resides, rue des Matliurins (half-way between Cook's and the American Express) becomes, for him, a "quaint old Restoration mansion." The garrulous female proprietor is, no doubt, an ill-circumstanced dame de la bourgeoisie. All of which may not be true, but is certainly interesting.

Gradually, the most inveterate Hoosier Rotarian ceases to ask for corn on the cob and goes in with both weapons brandished for gigot and flageolets. If he travels at all, he points with almost personal pride to the good roads, the frequent, correct and legible sign posts; the clean look of villages and countryside, the friendliness and good-wdll of strangers.

And, by that time, he has arrived at the other aspect of the nonchalant je m'en foutiste attitude. So long as he treated the French individual briskly, as an object, a servant, or a cog in the machine, he evoked only a coglike response. With remarkable logic, the French mind supposes it in the nature of things that a cog should do as little as possible—should be driven. But as soon as the individual is appealed to, he beams, expands, and confides in you; he is ready to overwhelm you with attentions.

Je m'en foutisme, then, is a defense against the world, the world that includes the tourist and the stranger, at the same time as it is a defense against being merged in the common herd. Apart from what it does for the individual's own enjoyment, it is an entity, an event in itself—like the traffic tangle of the Place de I'Opera, which untangles itself with the divine assistance of Parisian profanity, and "gets you there" faster than if you were being driven through New York by an exceedingly well-bred Mr. Moses Izvolzky—No. 508,624.

But, alas, the charm and the efficacy of this philosophy of je m'en foutisme is something that can never be entirely understood or achieved by the visiting or even the resident American, be he buttoned or unbuttoned. And I say this with the greatest regard for my good American friends who make Montparnasse such a picturesque corner—one that Parisians, no doubt, love to visit.