In Vanity Fair: A Tale of Frocks and Femininity. Brainerd Eleanor Hoyt
but whenever it comes it marks the début of spring upon the Parisian calendar.
The weather may be bitterly cold, but that makes no difference to the Parisienne. She has prepared a costume for Auteuil and she wears it.
"Elise, what is the weather?"
"But of a coldness, Madame. It is to freeze!"
"Eh bien, bring me my fur coat."
Change the frock? The idea doesn't even occur to her. That is her Auteuil frock.
And so Auteuil usually offers a spectacle as picturesque as it is incongruous. The day is bright and cold, or – more probable supposition – the sky is lowering, and there is a flurry of snow in the air. The grand stand and pesage are not yet gay with blossoming plants. Tall braziers are set at intervals along the front of the stand, and near them hover swarms of women drawing sable coats together over frocks of chiffon and lace, showing faces a trifle blue with cold beneath flower-laden hats. They hold their chilled hands out to the flames, these forced blossoms of spring, and they shiver daintily and jest at their own discomfort and are altogether gay and inconsequent and absurd. Here and there the furs are thrown back to afford a deserving public glimpses of a toilette well worth seeing; and it is around the braziers that all Paris first gains an idea of the fashions that are to dominate spring and summer.
Feminine Paris appreciates and improves the opportunity. Nowhere in the world do races draw so large, so mixed, and so enthusiastic a crowd of women as do the races in "Parisi" – which, slangily speaking, implies the district round about Paris, and takes in all of the famous courses upon which the spring races are run, – Auteuil, Longchamps, St. Cloud, St. Ouen, Massons, Lafitte, and Chantilly.
It is a queer mixture, that feminine crowd. The Royalist Duchess, Fifi of the Variétés, the rich banker's wife, the stable boy's sweetheart, the famous actress, the little milliner, the tourist, the great manufacturers' women folk, – all are there, dressed in their best, gay, excited, conferring with jockeys and touts and illustrious members of the Jockey Club, quite impartially, in their quest for tips, betting eagerly, coquetting still more eagerly, showing their own frocks and studying those of their neighbours.
Verily, on the turf and under the turf all women as well as all men are equal, but nowhere is the mélange more amazing than at the Paris race courses. "A feminine pousse café melting into a cocktail," commented one irreverent and thirsty American as he watched the throng at the Grand Prix last year, and the description was apt if inelegant. Fifi and the Duchess come nearer meeting on equal terms in the pesage than they do in any other one place. They are beautiful women in beautiful gowns, vying with each other for the approbation of the crowd. The Duchess would not admit that, but the fact remains, and it is a fact, too, that the honours frequently rest with Fifi.
During the last few years there has been a tentative effort in the smart Parisian set toward simplicity of dress for the races. The demi-mondaines having chosen these occasions for reckless extravagance in dress, the social elect said, "Let us mark a distinction by disdaining rivalry in chiffons. Let us be chic, but with a difference, with a severity."
The movement has perhaps had some slight effect; but, on the whole, the cause is a lost one. It demands abnegation of too strenuous a type. Madame may sacrifice much to a principle, but not an opportunity of displaying her most charming costumes where their merits will find wide and enthusiastic recognition; and the racing events are the ideal opportunities for such display.
The setting is in itself a delectable one, for all of the courses near Paris are attractive. The grand-stands are all ablaze with flowers. Women trail their gowns over velvety turf and under shadowing boughs, or stroll along wide promenades between high banks of blossoming shrubs. Given sunshine and warm weather, a great day at any one of the courses is a surpassingly gay sight, all colour and motion and sparkle.
The grande Militaire, a steeplechase with gentlemen riders up, is one of the most popular of the Auteuil events, for the horses are ridden by officers from the neighbouring garrisons, and both Fifi and the Duchess "aiment le Militaire." The Day of the Drags, or coaching parade, is another chic event, and the occasion for a phenomenal toilette exhibit. One is so delightfully in evidence upon the box seat of a coach that one's most charming frock and hat will not be wasted there. Moreover, the competition in dress is more limited than it is in the pesage or the Tribune, and, naturally, is all the keener for the concentration. Seats upon the coaches, which are tooled out to the race track by their famous owners and greeted with traditional and impressive ceremony, are eagerly coveted, and many a mode has been launched from the top of a coach, many a new belle has entered into her kingdom behind four curvetting horses on the Day of the Drags.
But the day of days for the Parisienne who follows the races – and what true Parisienne does not? – is the day of the Grand Prix. The Grand Prix is the dramatic conclusion of the season to which Auteuil was the triumphal introduction. It is the climax to which St. Cloud and St. Ouen and Chantilly and the rest have led.
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