IN THE LATIN QUARTER

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1636, 8 July 1903, Page 42 (Supplement)

IN THE LATIN QUARTER

A MAD SOCIAL EVENT. Quite the maddest social event in Paris each year in the students’ ball in the Latin Quarter. Those who recall the characters described in “Trilby” will imagine what such 'a carousa 1 is like — - ■

if they have not seen it. The function, the wildest and most fantastic fete which the imagination of Bohemia has ever conceived, lasts six hours, from 1 a.m. till 7. Months before the designing of costumes begins; months

afterwards studios still ring with echoes of past frolics. Each Paris studio is represented at the ball by a car, round which the students are grouped. Every year a fiat goes forth from a committee, naming the period or style to which the costumes must belong. This time everyone had to be mediaeval—not mediaeval in any scrappy, perfunctory way, but attired in a costume genuinely copied from a dress of the Middle Ages. Not only is fancy dress always absolutely obligatory, but anybody appearing at the door m such gar b as a monk’s robe and cowl is inexorably denied admittance, on the ground that he has not taken sufficient trouble about devising a costume. The students -at the entrance are as severe, in their own particular way as stewards of a State ball. Owing to what English people would deem indelicacies, admittance to the ball is a moreOdifficult privilege for an outsider to obtain than an invitation to a Government function. The only means by which the Philistine can get in is by assuming the identity of an art student and going as a member of a particular studio in company with the real pupils. Even then, if you are found out, you will be turned away by the students at the door, though your fancy dress be a masterpiece. This year the groups from the various studios tramped or drove in ’buses*, which they took by storm, across Paris to the scene of the ball, the Elysee Montmartre this year, the Moulin Rouge, where the fete took place many seasons in succession, having been transformed and become almost respectable. Towards midnight quiet Parisians going home met wild warriors having double-handed swords, and shouting warlike refrains with accompaniment of the French equivalents of “By my halidom 1” “Odds bodikins 1” and so - on.

AN ENTERPRISING AUCTIONEERING FIRM—MESSRS MACDONALD WILSON & CO.

These AA-ere the mediaeval merrymakers rehearsing their local colour. Knights, crusaders, friars, beggars, kings, cardinals, travelled across Paris or poured doAAn from Montmartre to the bailroom. In the latter by midnight AvellknoAvn artists haa already secured seats round the hall to see the fun. Towards 1 o clock the ball-room was e bewildering sight. On one side were

ranged the cars, on the other the mediaeval crowd was starting the ball with some preparatory dancing, which was already wilder than the wildest wind-up of any other ball there ever was. Then came the march past of the cars, which slowly emerged from what looked like an inextricable chaos of fantastic costumes and nightmarish monsters. One by one, to the sound of unearthly yells, half-drowning a tremendously powerful orchestra playing continuously foitissimo, the monumental cardboard structures devised by each studio passed before the masters and the jury. The laboratory of Di Eaustus appeared, dragged slowly along. The philosoEher is peering into destiny, and what e sees is a throng of skeletons dancing the cake-walk. In front of them, girls in blazing colours, surrounded a diabolical-looking woman in black tights from head to foot, with yellow bowers in her raven hair. She was a well-known model in the studios of the Boulevard Montparnasse. A mediaeval fortress being stormed by men-at-arms on foot, and gallant knights on hobby-horses, followed in the procession. Eventually, towards 5 in the morning, the stronghold gave way and collapsed completely, with a fearful noise of broken wood and clouds of dust from ripped-up pasteboard. Towards 7 a.m. the students went in procession to the Ecole des BeauxArts, where a cardboard nigger was impaled on a post in the courtyard, set fire to, and burnt to ashes. This symbolical performance Avas intended to mark the doom of the cake-walk, which the art students of Paris consider to be played out.