Paris 1919 - Margaret Macmillan [98]
Paris offered many distractions: the races at St. Cloud, excellent restaurants if you could afford the prices and could get in, and the Opéra, where there were productions of the great favorites: Les Contes d’Ho fmann, Madame Butterfly, La Bohème. The theaters were gradually reopening, with everything from the classics to farces. Sarah Bernhardt appeared in a gala for a French charity, and Isadora Duncan’s brother did interpretative dances. Ruth Draper came over from London to give her monologues, and Canadian delegates were slightly shocked by the musical Phi Phi. “We concurred, however,” wrote one to his wife, “in thinking there was something to be said for the open eyes. I should like to know if, through greater knowledge, the French escape diseases of a kind which, there is no doubt, are prevalent with us.” Even Wilson, who was usually in bed by ten P.M., went out to a revue; he found some of the jokes too crude but enjoyed “the decent parts.” Elsa Maxwell carried Balfour off to a nightclub for the first time in his life. “Allow me to thank you,” said the elder statesman with his usual courtesy, “for the most delightful and degrading evening I have ever spent.” 11
Other delegates found more innocent pastimes: early morning walks in the Bois de Boulogne, bridge games in the evening. Balfour tried to play tennis whenever he could. Lansing passed his evenings quietly reading philosophy. The chief Italian delegates, Sonnino and Orlando, kept to their hotel. Lloyd George went out occasionally in the evenings to restaurants or the theater, although Frances Stevenson found that his arrival always caused an unfortunate stir. She also complained one evening when he flirted with a young woman from the British delegation. “However, he was quite open about it & I think it did him good, so that I did not mind.” 12
Social life in Paris started to revive. When Prince Murat and Elsa Maxwell went together to a costume ball—Murat as Clemenceau, and Maxwell, who was rather plump, as Lloyd George—their car was stopped on the Champs-Elysées by a huge, cheering crowd. In the bar at the Ritz, people met to drink the new cocktails. Out at Versailles, in her famous villa, the decorator Elsie de Wolfe (later Lady Mendl) gave teas for the more prominent delegates. Mrs. Wilson tried to drag Wilson out to some of the parties and receptions, to the dismay of his admirers.13
At the Hôtel Majestic, Ian Malcolm, Balfour’s private secretary, gave readings of his comic poems, “The Breaking Out of Peace” and “The Ballad of Prinkipo.” There were amateur theatricals in the basement. After Orpen did posters for one production which showed two naked children, the next revue had a chorus singing “We are two little Orpens / Of raiment bereft.” A British officer, who had come hundreds of miles to report on the situation in central Europe, went away in disgust. “Nobody at his level,” he told an American colleague, “could be bothered to listen to his account of the appalling conditions in Poland because they were totally preoccupied with discussing whether the ballroom should be used for theatricals to the exclusion of dancing on Tuesdays and Thursdays or just on Tuesdays.” Lloyd George’s youngest daughter, the sixteen-year-old Megan, had the time of her life. The hotel, said the wits, should be called the Megantic. Her father finally put his foot down and she was shipped off to a finishing school.14
The dancing at the Majestic became famous. The young nurses and typists—“like nymphs,”