Awfully art nouveau

Tuesday, March 21st., Rue de Calais, Paris.

I went to see Docteur L. yesterday. He has a flat on the entresol in the Rue Marboeuf, en plein quartier chic.  The door was opened by a rather agreeable girl who politely picked up a pencil which I dropped. She showed me into a fairly spacious waiting-room horribly and characteristically furnished. A crimson plushy carpet all over the floor, a set of chairs and a sofa all in their housses; a modern Louis XVl table richly gilt and fairly well made, bearing old copies of L'Illustration and La Vie en Plein Air. A huge lamp standard in a corner; a piano with draped back; a column surmounted by a specimen of art nouveau statuary; to wit a withered tree, with a huge rock near it, the rock cut in the form of a face, as big as the tree - all in bronze. Two pairs of double doors heavily draped. Odd statuettes and signed photographs of men. I would have preferred to have spent the waiting time in company with the young woman but she did not re-appear. Her role in the establishment did not become clear.

The doctor surprised me by appearing through doors where I had not expected him. A man about 30, hair and beard sticking out, slightly stiff in manner but improving later. Beyond muttering the word "Vallee" he made no reference to the introduction which I had to him. He evidently sprang from the lower middle-class and was unable to rely on his manners. 

He took me into his consulting room, a room more frankly and awfully art nouveau than the waiting-room, but less distressing because it was all in one scheme and showed some sense of design. I soon found that he knew his business; but with that he proved to be somewhat vain and self-important. he wrote out his prescription at excessive length, and drew me the design of a canule. He couldn't help referring to that design twice afterwards, as it were fishing for praise of his ability to draw at all. However he was extremely practical. I should say he would be a brute in hospital and a brute with women. But in some ways I did not dislike him. He is an arriviste and quite young.

It was an odd consultation. I was somewhat embarrassed and pretty stiff myself. I must have seemed rather foolish to him, a stereotypical Englishman in Paris. I know that I can appear to be pompous and prickly; several friends have hinted as much. I find myself immediately on my guard with strangers, especially men of my own age, and engage in a pointless verbal fencing match which does me no favours at all. I am better with women. Or perhaps they are just more tolerant.