The Short Reign of Pippin IV
John Steinbeck
The unpredictable Mr. Steinbeck has been having himself a ball with some of his contemporaries. This frothy extravaganza about French polities—and various other matters—is so full of fun and good-natured satire that it almost bubbles over. It’s clear that he has had a wonderful time writing it; and readers who don’t hold it against a writer for changing his type will have a wonderful time reading it.
There’s a story here—of what happens to a retiring middle-aged astronomer suddenly drafted to rule the unruly French; of his teen-age, glamour-struck daughter and her American swain, son of the Egg King of Petaluma, California; and of sundry members of the ancient nobility, art dealers, nuns, guards, gardeners, politicians, and plain people. But it would be criminal to try to tell more, or to pretend that the story makes the book.
This is the French Revolution upside down, and Steinbeck at his most original. If anyone wants to compare it to Candida, or to Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee, he is at liberty to do so. On a different shelf from Cannery Row and his other humorous books—and several aisles away from The Grapes of Wrath—it might find a place, we think, as a minor classic.
TO MY SISTER ESTHER
Number One Avenue de Marigny in Paris is a large, square house of dark and venerable appearance. The mansion is on the comer where de Marigny crosses the Avenue Gabriel, a short block from the Champs Elysées and across the street from the Elysée Palace, which is the home of the President of France. Number One abuts on a glass-roofed courtyard, on the other side of which is a tall and narrow building, once the stables and coachmen’s quarters. On the ground level are still the stables, very elegant with carved marble mangers and water troughs, but upstairs there are three pleasant floors, a small but pleasant house in the center of Paris. On the second floor large glass doors open on the unglassed portion of the courtyard which connects the two buildings.
It is said that Number One, together with its coach house, was built as the Paris headquarters of the Knights of St. John, but it is presently owned and occupied by a noble French family who for a number of years have leased the converted coach house, the use of the courtyard, and half of the flat connecting roof to M. Pippin Arnulf Héristal and his family, consisting of his wife, Marie, and his daughter, Clotilde. Soon after leasing the stable house, M. Héristal called on his noble landlord and requested permission to set up the base and mount for an eight-inch refracting telescope on the portion of the flat roof to which he had access. This request was granted, and thereafter, since M. Héristal was prompt with the rent, intercourse between the two families was limited to formal greetings when they happened to meet in the courtyard, which was of course guarded by heavy iron bars on the street side. Héristal and landlord shared a concierge, a brooding provincial, who after years of living in Paris still refused to believe in it. And there were never any complaints from the noble landlord, since M. Héristal’s celestial hobby was carried on at night and silently. The passions of astronomy, however, are no less profound because they are not noisy.
The Héristal income was almost perfect of its kind for a Frenchman. It derived from certain eastward-facing slopes near Auxerre, on the Loire, on which the vines sucked the benevolence from the early sun and avoided the poisons of the afternoon, and this, together with a fortunate soil and a cave of perfect temperature, produced a white wine tasting like the odor of spring wildflowers—a wine which, while it did not travel well, had no need, for its devotees made pilgrimage to it. This estate, while small, was perhaps the very best of a holding once very great. Furthermore, it was cultivated and nurtured by tenants expert to the point of magic, who moreover paid their rent regularly and had, generation by generation. M. Héristal’s income was far from great, but it was constant and it permitted him to live comfortably in the coach house of Number One Avenue de Marigny; to attend carefully selected plays, concerts, and ballet; to belong to a good social club and three learned societies; to purchase books as he needed them; and to peer as a respected amateur at the incredible heavens over the Eighth Arrondissement of Paris.
Indeed, if Pippin Héristal could have chosen the life he would most like to live, he would have spoken, with very few changes, for the life he was living in February of 19—. He was fifty-four, lean, handsome, and healthy in so far as he knew. By that I mean his health was so good that he was not aware he had it.
His wife, Marie, was a good wife and a good manager who knew her province and stayed in it. She was buxom and pleasant and under other circumstances might have taken her place at the bar of a very good small restaurant. Like most Frenchwomen of her class, she hated waste and heretics, considering the latter a waste of good heavenly material. She admired her husband without trying to understand him and had a degree of friendship with him which is not found in those marriages where passionate love sets torch to peace of mind. Her duty as she saw it was to keep a good, clean, economical house for her husband and her daughter, to do what she could about her liver, and to maintain the spiritual payments on her escrowed property in Heaven. These activities took up all her time. Her emotional overflow was absorbed by an occasional fight with the cook, Rose, and her steady warfare with wine-merchant and grocer, who were cheats and pigs, and, at certain times of the year, ancient camels. Madame’s closest friend and perhaps only confidante was Sister Hyacinthe, of whom there will be more later.
M. Héristal was French of the French and yet French plus. For instance, he did not believe it was a sin not to speak French and an affectation for a Frenchman to learn other languages. He knew German, Italian, and English. He had a scholarly interest in progressive jazz, and he loved the cartoons in Punch. He admired the English for their intensity and their passion for roses, horses, and some kinds of conduct.
“An Englishman is a bomb,” he would say, “but a bomb with a hidden fuse.” He also observed, “Almost any generality one makes about the English turns out at some time to be untrue.” And he would continue, “How different from the Americans they are!”
He knew and liked Cole Porter, Ludwig Bemelmans, and, until a few years before, had known sixty per cent of the Harmonica Rascals. He had once shaken hands with Louis Armstrong and addressed him as Cher Maitre Satchmo, to which the master replied, “You frogs ape me.”
The Héristal household was comfortable without being extravagant, and carefully keyed to the family income, which was sufficient for the pleasant but frugal life which, as good French, Pippin and Madame preferred to live. Monsieur’s main extravagance lay in the instruments of astronomy. His telescope of more than amateur power was equipped with mounting of sufficient weight and stability to overcome oscillation, and mechanism to compensate for the earth’s turning. Some of Pippin’s celestial photographs have appeared in the magazine Match, and properly so, for he is given credit for discovering the comet of 1951, designated the Elysée Comet. A Japanese amateur in California, Walter Haschi, made a simultaneous report and shared credit for the discovery. Haschi and Héristal still corresponded regularly and compared photographs and techniques.
Under ordinary circumstances Pippin read four daily papers like any good and alert citizen. He was not political except in so far as he distrusted all governments, particularly the one in power, but this too might be said to be more French than individual.
The family Héristal was blessed with only one child—Clotilde, twenty years old, intense, violent, pretty, and overweight. Her background was interesting. At an early age she had revolted against everything she could think of. At fourteen, Clotilde determined to be a doctor of medicine; at fifteen she wrote a novel entitled Adieu Ma Vie, which sold widely and was made into a motion picture. As a result of he
r literary and cinemagraphic success she toured America and returned to France wearing blue jeans, saddle oxfords, and a man’s shirt, a style which instantly caught on with millions of gamines who for several years were known as “Les Jeannes Bleues” and caused untold pain to their parents. It was said that Les Jeannes Bleues were, if anything, sloppier and more frowzy than the Existentialists, while their stem-faced gyrations in le jitterbug caused many a French father to clench agonized fists over his head.
From the arts, Clotilde went directly into politics. At sixteen and a half she joined the Communists and held the all-time record of sixty-two hours of picketing the Citroen plant. It was during this association with the lower classes that Clotilde met Pére Mechant, the little Pastor of the Pediment, who so impressed her that she seriously considered taking the veil in an order of nuns dedicated to silence, black bread, and pedicures for the poor. St. Hannah, patron saint of feet, founded the order.
On February 14, a celestial accident occurred which had a sharp effect on the Héristal household. A pre-equinoctial meteor shower put in an untimely and unpredicted appearance. Pippin worked frantically with the blazing heavens, exposing film after film, but even before he retired to his darkroom in the wine cellar off the stable he knew that his camera was not adequate to stop the fiery missiles in their flight. The developed film verified his fear. Cursing gently, he walked to a great optical supply house, conferred with the management, telephoned several learned friends. Then he strolled reluctantly back to Number One Avenue de Marigny, and so preoccupied was he that he did not notice the Gardes Republicans in shining cuirasses and red- plumed helmets, milling their horses around the gates of the Elysée Palace.
Madame was concluding an argument with Rose, the cook, as Pippin climbed the stairs. She emerged from the kitchen, victorious and a little red in the face, while the sullen muttering of the defeated Rose followed her down the hall.
In the salon she told her husband, “Closed the window over the cheese—a full kilogram of cheese suffocating all night with the window closed. And do you know what her excuse was? She was cold. For her own comfort the cheese must strangle. You can’t trust servants any more.”
Monsieur said, “One finds oneself in a difficult situation.'
“Difficult—of course it’s difficult with the kind of trash who call themselves cooks—”
“Madame—the meteor shower continues. This is verified. I find I must procure a new camera.”
The outgo of money was definitely in Madame’s province. She remained silent, but Monsieur sensed danger in her narrowing eyes and in her hands, which rose slowly and saddled her hips.
He said uneasily, “It is a decision one must make. No one is to blame. One might say the order comes from Heaven itself.”
Madame’s voice was steel. “The cost of this—this camera, Monsieur?”
He named a price which shook her sturdy frame as though an internal explosion had occurred. But almost immediately she marshaled herself with iron discipline for the attack.
“Last month, M’sieur, it was a new—what do you call it? The expenditure for film is already ruinous. May I remind you, M’sieur, of the letter recently arrived from Auxerre, of the need for new cooperage, of the insistence that we stand half of the cost?”
“Madame,” he cried, “I did not call down the meteor shower.”
“Nor did I decay the casks at Auxerre.”
“I have no choice, Madame.”
She seemed to grow to a tower with castellations, and darkness hung about her like a personal thunderstorm.
“M’sieur is master of the house,” she said. “If M’sieur wishes to allow the meteors to bring bankruptcy down on the heads of his family—who am I to complain? I must go to apologize to Rose. A kilo of strangulated cheese is a laughable nothing compared to the blobs of light on film. Can one eat meteors, M’sieur? Can one wear them to keep out the night damp? Can one make wine barrels of these precious meteors? M’sieur, I leave you to make your choice.” And she moved on quiet, deadly feet out of the room.
Anger fought with panic in Pippin Héristal. Through the double glass doors he could see his telescope in its garment of waterproof silk. And anger won. He walked sternly down the stairs, crushed his hat on his head, took his stick from the rack and Clotilde’s briefcase from the table. With furious dignity he crossed the courtyard and waited while the concierge opened the iron gate. In a moment of weakness he looked back and saw Madame watching him from the kitchen window and Rose scowling happily beside her.
“I am going to see Uncle Charlie,” said Pippin Héristal, and he slammed the iron gate behind him.
Charles Martel was proprietor of a small but prosperous art gallery and antique store in the Rue de Seine, a dark and pleasant place with pictures properly ill-lighted and provocative. He sold unsigned paintings which he would not guarantee as early Renoirs, and also bits of crystal, gilt, and chinoiserie which he could and did attest as coming from the great and ancient houses of France.
At the rear of the gallery a red velvet curtain concealed one of the most comfortable and discreet bachelor’s quarters in all Paris. The chairs, softened by velvet cushions stuffed with down, were a joy to sit in. His bed, a triumph of Napoleonic work in gilded wood, had high curved head and foot like the prow and stern of a Viking dragon ship. During the day a cover and pillows made from softly faded altar cloths converted his sleeping arrangements into a charming nook, inviting and subtly sinful. Green-shaded lamps spread just enough light in the room to bring out beauties and to conceal defects. His cooking arrangements, a sink and a gas ring, were hidden behind a Chinese screen mellowed by the years to pearly black and melted butter. His bookcase was filled with leather and gold volumes, inviting to the eye without demanding that they be read.
Charles had always been a worldly man, gentle but inflexible, of impeccable carriage and dress. Now in his late sixties, he still adored ladies and his manner made ladies of all women until they insisted otherwise. Even now, when his impulse aimed more toward sleep than gallantry, he nevertheless kept his standard so high that selected young ladies felt a pleasant thrill on being invited past the red velvet curtain for an aperitif. And to the best of Charles’s ability, they were not disappointed. A little door opened on an alleyway behind the shop—a small thing, but one to give his companions confidence.
When the custodian of an ancient name and a bat-ridden chateau required a relaxing day at Auteuil or a new lining for a fur-collared topcoat, where was there a better place to take the crystal chandelier from the ballroom or the inlaid piquet table once the property of a kings mistress than to the gallery of Uncle Charlie? And a chosen group of customers understood that, if pressed, Charles Martel could come up with a rarity. Willie Chitling, the movie producer, built the entire bar in his ranch house at Palm Springs with the furniture, paneling, and thirteenth-century altar from the chapel of the Chateau Vieilleculotte. Charles also made reasonable loans. He was said to hold the personal IOUs of nine out of the Twelve Peers of France.
Charles Martel was the uncle and friend of Pippin Arnulf Héristal. He went out of his field of art and bric-a- brac to trace the Bix Beiderbecke records for Pippin’s almost perfect collection. Also he was his nephew’s adviser in matters spiritual and temporal.
When M. Héristal stormed into the gallery in the Rue de Seine, Charles noted that he had come in a taxi. The mission was therefore serious.
Charles gestured his nephew past the velvet curtain and quickly concluded the sale of a Louis Quinze make-up box to an elderly lady tourist for whom it had no practical value. He closed the negotiation not by lowering the price but by suddenly raising it, which convinced the lady that she should buy it at once or she wouldn’t get it at all. Charles bowed her out of the gallery, shut the front door, and hung a battered card which read “Closed for Renovation.” Then he himself went past the velvet curtain and greeted his pacing nephew.
“You are troubled, my child,” he said. “Sit down, sit down.
Let me give you a drop of cognac for your nerves.”
“I am in a fury,” Pippin said, but he did sit down and he did accept the cognac.
It is Marie?” said Uncle Charlie. “Or perhaps Clotilde?”
“It is Marie.”
“It is about money?”
“It is about money,” said Pippin.
“How much?”
“I did not come to borrow.”
“You come, then, to complain?”
“Exactly, to complain.”
“A good idea. It removes pressures. You will return to your home in a more agreeable humor, in a word a better husband. Do you wish to be specific in your complaint?”
Pippin said, “An unpredicted meteor shower has blundered into earth’s atmosphere. My camera is not adequate to—well, I need a new camera.”
“Expensive, and Marie does not find it necessary?”
“You understand the situation very well. She wears her hurt look, that damnable injured expression. She is planning revenge.”
“You have bought the camera?”
“Not yet.”
“But you have decided.”
“Understand, my uncle, it is unusual to find showers of meteors at this season. Who knows what is going on up there? Do not forget that it was I who first reported the Elysée Comet. I was commended by the Academy. It is whispered that in the not too distant future I may be elected.”
“Congratulations, my child. What an honor! While I myself do not view the heavens with passion, I support passion, whatever its source. Begin your complaint, my dear nephew. Now—I am Marie and you are you. Shall we start with the undeniable fact that your income springs from your property, rather than from dot?”
“Exactly.”
“This land has belonged to your family since the dawn of history.”
“Since the Salic Franks invaded from the east.”