Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 January 1915 — LAZY HAPPY BORDEAUX [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

LAZY HAPPY BORDEAUX

BURDIGALA, better known by Its everyday name of Bordeaux, the new capital of my country, a patch of France upon which the sun and Dionysus have smiled —the land of palatable red wine and pleasant, dark women. To most newspaper-reading people Bordeaux is Interesting Just now because of the change that has happened to it; for me Bordeaux is interesting because it does not change. So writes Marthe Troly-Curtin, in the London Sketch. Bordeaux does not want to change—it is a lazy, happy, bourgeois, wellfed town; it is snug and contented, warmed for nine months of the year by a very clement climate, and all the year round by the rutilant glow of its claret. Bordeaux has a few large and fine streets, and many old-fashioned and insanitary ones, the Improvement of which nobody really cares about, least pf all the dwellers of those particular streets, the bad air of which seems to agree with them to an extraordinary degree. The Bond street of Bordeaux is the Rue Sainte Catherine, a narrow, dark, cobbled street, wherein you can buy quite smart hats, and where fish-wives and their wares spread themselves on the threshold of fashionable modistes. In Bordeaux life counts more years, and summers more days than in most other towns. It seldom snows, but often rains; ice on lakes or ponds is a wonder to be talked about at many “feeve o’clocks” for many weeks after. Well do I remember the year In Bordeaux when the lake of the Jardin Public did freeze; the Bordeaux papers had leading articles on the event: ’ “One could almost skate on the lake,” they said, “so thick was the ice.” AH the fashionable people of the town as-

sembled to view the wonder; a score of them had even brought skates with them. Rash people! The ice melted away under the warmth of their enthusiasm, and the daredevils took what the Anglophile Bordelais calls a “tob” —a short immersion in cold water! Conservative and Comfortable... The population of Bordeaux is conservative and comfortable —conservative by nature, and comfortable by principles. In the, heart of the city there is a large open sppee called Les Quinconces, where twice a year a big fair is Jield, A real fair with a real giantess, a dwarf no less real and a real glass-spinner, gingerbread shops, booths of all sorts and mournfully real merry-go-rounds. Everyone In Bordeaux and the Bordelais district goes to the fair —the somebodies to show their Paris frocks, made in Bordeaux (and very well made, too!), the nobodies to eat gingerbread jpind have their teeth pulled out, net by the gingerbread, but by a gorgeous being In a red-and-gold dress with a big drum,

a mighty wrist, and a monstrous pair of pincers! Bordeaux has no motor omnibuses and very few taxicabs, even in time of peace, as nobody in Bordeaux is really ever in a hurry; they know there that one should always postpone until tomorrow what one could have done today, thanks to which principle one achieves fewer follies. It is not so clean as Lyon, hut how much more smiling a town! —and it gives an impression of greater cleanliness because of its clarity, because of the sun, the space of its center and fine quays, and the whiteness of the magnificent stones of its buildings. It is not so animated as Marseilles, but its population is more stable —everybody knows everybody else, and —well, it saves surprises and social slips. There are two events in the year—the horse show, which, like the fair, is held on the Quinconces; and the ball, the ball at the prefecture, an invitation to which is’the hallmark of a satisfactory status. Society Wholesomely Mixed. Its “society" is admirably and wholesomely mixed, for it is a university, military and business town, and, Bordeaux not being very large, those diverse elements have to form a certain alliance through the constant jostling, meeting, and living close together. In a certain part of the province there is a strange streak among the people, many Of- them having blue eyes, blond or ginger hair, and fresh complexions, quite the English type. The Black Prince and his army occupied the Aquitaine, of which he was governor; his son, Richard 11, was even born there in a castle, the ruins of which can still be seen. It is a

long while ago, _ grant you, but until of late years French people, especially of the provinces, traveled very lit tie and Intermarried much, which might justify the suftnlse that those two facts are related, and that many among the Medocalns are of English descent , v What else can I tell yen of Bordeaux that will sound less pedantic? That nowhere else in the world can they accommodate mushrooms in such truly inspired manner; that it has a fine theater, the staircase of which, they say, served as model for that of the Paris opera; that Bordeaux is a great productive place, not only of good wines, but of rich voices, as are her sister towns. Marseilles and Toulouse; and that there is a cathedral, lovely and lovable, motherly, homely* and awfully stately, dating from the eleventh century, with the dearest gargoyles crawling along every oor> nice, and such.a collection of. stone saints on the portal that one '■wonders if they b*ve left any roop for "« others” in paradise.