In the World of Tourism... Paris, Mecca of Tourists

There is no doubt that Britain attracts the American tourist more than any other country, given the bonds of language and blood that tie the two peoples together, and that half the American tourists who visit Europe this year pass first through Britain. And yet we find that the American tourist who stays eighteen days in London stays twenty days or more in Paris. For Paris has been the Mecca of tourists from of old — Americans and Europeans alike.

Paris, "forever adorned to receive her lovers," tempts them to stay, so that they cannot break free; they part from her only reluctantly, promising themselves to return. Paris is the city of learning, of art, and of pleasure. Seekers of learning and art make for her, as do seekers of amusement, luxury, pleasure, and beauty — until the number of her visitors, tourists and students and the like, rivals the number of her inhabitants.

She is furnished with the full equipment that fits her to play this unique threefold role in the world. Her building began in the Roman era in France — that is, two thousand years ago. The kings of France contributed to her building, from Louis IX down to Napoleon and Louis-Philippe. It is as though an unbroken chain of kings, great men, and artists had labored together for two thousand years to beautify Paris, until she became the capital of art and the city of beauty.

The first thing that strikes your eye in Paris is the breadth of the city and the breadth of her buildings, streets, and avenues. She is the carpet-city, stretched out to infinity; the city of the Seine, which divides her in two, gives her soil fertility, and adorns her with woods and groves: Boulogne, Vincennes, the Jardin des Plantes, the Luxembourg gardens, the Tuileries, the Champs-Élysées, the Trocadéro. It adorns her broad streets and long avenues with tall trees of spreading shade, and you feel that Paris is fortunate not only in the matter of art but also in that of natural beauty, which her people turn to the very best account.

The weather is changeable, shifting suddenly from intense heat to rain, and in Paris you cannot do without a raincoat even in the last days of summer. But the climate is dry, and one may say it is healthful. You cannot fail to notice the dimness of the air in the city — they do not have the sharp sun of the East — and the dimness of the old buildings and walls, and of the rooms hung about with curtains, into which only a faint light penetrates, spreading a solemn awe and stirring dreams. That is because most of the buildings were built of a dull-colored stone which the passage of time has made duller and blacker still. Rarely do you find a white-walled building, apart from some modern ones, like the Palais de Chaillot. But the beholder's soul finds rest in the order and arrangement all around it; this pervading order steals into the soul from the streets and the buildings, so that you sense a harmony among all its parts, and a new feeling takes possession of you — the feeling of one who has touched beauty, through whom a quiet breath has passed and permeated his whole being. Then I understood what one of the charming Parisiennes said to me: "Here we have no need to study the principles of beauty. It is born with us. We feel it in everything around us. We breathe it in as we breathe the air."

The movement of the streets goes on until a late hour of the night; the crowding is intense, people walk at a run along the wide sidewalks, and the din rises although the automobiles drive without honking. Yet with all this you feel that order surrounds you at every step; without it, traffic would be paralyzed and business would come to a standstill in this mighty city.

Underground, traffic goes by the Métro, or underground railway, which pierces the heart of the whole capital; above ground, by the autobus, which parallels the Métro along its lines, though its fares are higher. Each of its splendid cars takes on a fixed number of passengers; when the number is complete, the entrance is closed with a barrier and people stand waiting for the next car, each holding a number that shows his turn to board. The Métro, however, admits an unlimited number, and the passengers are packed into it like sardines.

Besides the Métro and the autobus there are the taxis, the carriages, and the buses belonging to the companies and the great business houses.

The names of the streets are perfectly clear, as are the numbers of houses and buildings — the even on one side and the odd on the side opposite. The sellers of newspapers, magazines, books, and other wares occupy stalls of their own on the wide sidewalks of every one of the great streets, so that you rarely find itinerant peddlers troubling people with their cries or blocking traffic with their carts. Advertisements have special columns and boards of their own, and are not permitted to disfigure the walls of buildings and the like. The letter boxes are set into the hearts of the telegraph poles, and everything is arranged in a way that saves space and preserves for the street its breadth and for the city her beauty. Every building is a great mass standing by itself, surrounded by streets on every side; there are no blind passages without outlets. Rainwater collects in drains that end underground; there are no open spouts pouring their water on the heads of the passers-by.

In the heart of the city are gathered the most important historic monuments, eloquent of the most splendid events of the history of France: the vastly spacious Place de la Concorde, the Tuileries garden, the buildings of the Louvre, the Place de l'Étoile, the Invalides, the Opéra, the Place de la République, the Place de la Bastille; then the Madeleine, the Panthéon, the Sorbonne. Squares and monuments and buildings enormous in bulk, massive of column, beneath which lies folded a long history of heroism, ambition, revolution, and struggle.

Before these splendors so many in number, these huge statues that look down on you from every side, these wide, far-stretching streets, the solitary visitor come from a small country like Lebanon cannot help feeling awe and utter smallness before this teeming world, in which everything is like the fortress of al-Samaw'al,
"impregnable — it turns back the gaze grown dim."

Paris Receives the Tourists

That is a summary description of the outward aspect of Paris. I cannot say that the interior of the houses, the dwellings, and the restaurants keeps pace with their exterior in grandeur, order, and cleanliness. There are many dirty hotels and restaurants, which serve a full meal for two hundred and fifty francs or even less. But the Parisians expect the tourists to put up at the sumptuous hotels prepared for them, and to spend their money without counting.

For Paris is forever ready to receive the tourists. She prepares for them, besides the hotels and restaurants, the night taverns and the artistic pleasure-halls beyond number, to which pleasure-seekers come from every corner of Europe and beyond, and in which, until morning, whirl the most splendid kinds of dancing, singing, frolic, and license — the taverns of Montmartre, the Latin Quarter, and Montparnasse, of worldwide fame, whose names the owners of Beirut taverns, and others everywhere, vie with one another in copying.

She makes ready for them the numerous theaters in which Paris stands alone — for there is no place on earth where the art of acting receives the care it receives there — and the tourist agencies, which prepare for them the finest comfortable motor coaches to carry them on organized excursions in the company of guides and interpreters, to visit historic Paris and modern Paris and the night taverns and the environs of Paris, such as Versailles and Fontainebleau, the châteaux of the Loire, and the cathedral of Chartres.

There are made ready for them, too, the steamboats reserved for tourists and sightseers, which cleave the Seine with them and show them the buildings and monuments along its two banks — boats decked with flowers, air-conditioned, on which food and refreshments are served to the sightseers to the strains of music, so that they delight their eyes, their ears, and their palates all at once.

Guides are provided for them, both persons and books: every museum has its guide, and every exhibition another guide; and likewise the theaters, the Métro, the autobus, the streets, the monuments, and the organized excursions.

And in every museum and in every place there are old women who receive the tourists and take from them the belongings that weigh them down in walking — the raincoat, the parasol, the camera, the umbrella, the cloak — guarding them until the visitor's return, when they hand them back for a fee. Or they keep watch over the chairs in certain gardens and historic places, charging a fee of five francs for each chair — the old women have work to do in the city of the Seine...

Paris is like one great exhibition of art and beauty: wherever you turn, you find a museum or an exhibition or a cathedral or a square or a statue or a historic gate (Saint-Denis, Saint-Martin) or an arch or a tower or a shop front or a mirror that stops you, compels you to look and to inquire, and tempts you to visit or to buy.

And the Parisians in general have a strong sense of the proper way to treat tourists; they are exceedingly courteous with the strangers who fill their hotels and streets, and ready to direct them to whatever they ask.

A Return to the Short Skirt

The era of long skirts has passed, and women have returned to the short skirt that goes only a little past the knee.

All the beautiful dresses displayed in the windows and galleries of the Louvre, the Lafayette, and the Bon Marché are of this kind — except evening gowns, of course.

And the woman in Paris represents all the ages and all the classes. You find among them the lady of the veiled hat and the elegant gown, excessive in rouge and perfume, whose age lies hidden beneath layers of powder, and who reminds you of the marquises of past centuries. And you find the athletic girl, bare-headed, bobbed-haired, light-shod, whose smiles can dispense with ornament and powder. And you find the working woman so given over to her work that she neglects her appearance and pays no heed to the fashion. But all of them are marked by the charm of femininity and delicacy of speech. And I saw that the men are no less polished than the women; the city has smoothed their faces and their manners — outwardly, at least...

You find woman there in every office and every occupation, above all in the work of buying and selling: she sells the newspapers, punches the tickets of the autobus and the Métro, and pulls the food cart. She works in the house and outside the house, and it is as though her devotion to work and her absorption in it distract her from meddling in politics or in public affairs.