The Roanoke times. [volume] (Roanoke, Va.) 1890-1895, 1893-05-31
OUR GIRLS IN PARIS.
Young American Students Of Music
and Painting.
Their Manner of Living Shoals and
Quicksands of Partisan Life That
Must BE Carefully Avoided
Their Clubs.


biggest hotels or an elegant fat in the
Marbeuf quarter, and patronizes the
most expensive restaurants and shops
His wife and daughters get their
clothes of Worth or Felix.
But there is another and much
larger class of Americans in Paris
"A class with whom dollars are by TO
means plentiful. who are seldom seen
III the Rue dc In paiX or the Alice des
Acacias, who are unknown at Worth's.
and whose feet never tread the soft
carpets of NJ Felix. l alludc to the
American Bohcmians-thc students
who come to Paris to study painting
and music, to whom art is everything,
and who will often undergo privations
in the pursuit of it. In mundane
society these moilers and toievs
never mix, but their energy and
perseverance have earned for them
the admiration of the few French
people with whom they came IN con-
tact. have heard artists-professors
speak in glowing terms of the zeal and
pluck shown by the girls who leave
their homes and families and travel
thousands of miles to spend years in
Paris, carefully eking out the small
stipend allotted to them, and only re-
turning when their funds arc en-
hausted or when they have attained
the object for which they came to the
gay French capitol.
When we think of it. it is a dread
July risky thing to launch such a frail
bark on the troubled ocean of the Paris
world. Fortunately they know little
of evil, and nothing at all of the par
ticularly noisome evil which stalks
abroad in Paris, and which their Paris
i'm sisters could not approach, it is
presumed, without being dctilcd.
Poverty is the chief difficulty with
which many students have to contend.
Manage as economically as You will
living is dear in Paris and then there
are the studio fees or the charges of the
professor of music, vocal or instrument
tai, and later on the private studio and
models for the artist, and the pretty
toilets and SO on for the budding prina
donna, who must not go ill-cothcd or
ill-shod or her chances of success will
be small y thousand dollars is soon
spent Thus we find girl students pre-
fcrring the furnished room in quiet
hotel to the greater cost of the board
ing house, though frequently ut the
expense of health and strength Gun
/.
of ham and a cake for lunch "A howl
of bread and milk for support have
known girls TO live day after day on
this, working carly and late Some
Times two three club togcthcr-l
like this plan, there is safety in mum
bers-and furnish Il bare little studio
with n table and few chairs and turn
up bedsteads. In the daytime some bits
OF drapery thrown over the bedsteads
transform them into nondcscrip bits of
furniture, into the mysteries of which
no visitor is curious enough to PRIV.
Then, when summer comes, and the air
is heavy and the temperature renders
work in the studios almost impossible.
they migrate into the country Some
go to Barbizon, some further aficld to
cool Normandy. You come across them
in the most unlikely places.
Much is being done for the girl
students, one way and another There
is Washington House open To them
where they can live in comfort infinitely
cheaper than in those dingy hotel
rooms and studios told YOU Of Then
Miss Smcdley, most energetic woman
has set about founding another home
specially designed for Americans who
come here to study art or what not:
and Mrs. Arthur Gray. with the help of
the artist Carl Gutherz, is very busy
drawing up the plan for an Academy
for Painting on the lines of the Amcri-
can Ladies Art Association of New
York, and the other day the association
gave Il matinee which was honorcd bv
the presence of Mr.. jefferson Coolidge
and Mrs Sears
There must be something Irresistible
attractive about Paris. for even when
the student days are over, after the pic
turc has been accepted and hung ut the
Salon, when orders begin to come in
and pictures sent home are sold for good
prices, the artists often lingcr on there.
They have imbibcd their artistic cdu-
cation i'll Paris, and they cannot tear
themselves away from it So it is with
pretty Miss Lee Robbins, the best and
favoritc pupil of Carous Duran Miss
Gardner continues to tread in the
shadow of Bouguerean. Elizabeth
Noursc, as we have seen, is still to be
found in the haunts of Bohemia, and
Miss Greatorex, also, while Miss Anna
Kiumpke. a Californian. may almost
be rcckoned among Frcnchwomen.
And it is the same with the men-with
Henry Bacon and Stewart, with Bridge
man, who has lately builded himself IL
Moorish house In the Monceau quarter;
with Edwin Weeks. his neighbor;with
Alexander Harrison and Dannat, with
the sculptors Guernety Mitchell and
Douglas Iilden, the silent sculptor OF
San Francisco. Paris is like the siren
OF old who held Ulysses in her tolls.