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.dt Over Periscope Pond, by Esther Sayles Root and Marjorie Crocker
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.ca Marjorie Crocker\ \ \ \ Esther Sayles Root
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OVER PERISCOPE POND
Letters
from Two American Girls in Paris
October 1916-January 1918
BY ESTHER SAYLES ROOT
AND MARJORIE CROCKER
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
BOSTON & NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1918
.nf-
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COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published April 1918
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FOREWORD
The authors of these letters are two young
American girls, one from New York and the
other from Boston.
They first met in Paris, each having volunteered
her services to the Rev. and Mrs. Ernest
W. Shurtleff, to aid in relief work among the
refugees, or, as Dr. Shurtleff expressed it, “To
help in our effort to get under part of the burden
of humanity.”
The letters were written (as is evident) for the
family eye only, and consent to their publication
has been given by cable with much hesitation.
To me they are revealing of the spirit of
feminine young America—a brave and self-sacrificing
spirit which shines out through irrepressible
youthful humor and vivacity, and is
a worthy complement to the unquestioning and
unquestioned valor shown by the brothers of
such girls to-day.
.rj
Clara Louise Burnham.
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CONTENTS
.ta r:7 l:32 r:3 s='Table of Contents'
|Foreword by Clara Louise Burnham|#v:linkF#
I.|From Esther|#1#
II.|From Esther|#9#
III.|From Esther|#27#
IV.|From Marjorie|#42#
V.|From Esther|#45#
VI.|From Marjorie|#58#
VII.|From Esther|#61#
VIII.|From Marjorie|#76#
IX.|From Marjorie|#82#
X.|From Esther|#90#
XI.|From Esther|#98#
XII.|From Marjorie|#111#
XIII.|From Marjorie|#117#
XIV.|From Esther|#130#
XV.|From Marjorie|#137#
XVI.|From Marjorie|#148#
XVII.|From Esther|#160#
XVIII.|From Marjorie|#170#
XIX.|From Esther|#197#
XX.|From Marjorie|#210#
XXI.|From Esther|#217#
XXII.|From Marjorie|#222#
XXIII.|From Esther|#228#
XXIV.|From Esther|#232#
XXV.|From Esther|#236#
XXVI.|From Marjorie|#257#
XXVII.|From Marjorie|#264#
XXVIII.|From Marjorie|#270#
XXIX.|From Marjorie|#274#
XXX.|From Esther|#288#
.ta-
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ILLUSTRATIONS
.nf b
#Marjorie Crocker and Esther Sayles Root:i01#
#No. 6 Place Denfert-Rochereau:i02#
#Women’s Vestiaire and Men’s Vestiaire:i03#
#Dr. and Mrs. Shurtleff in the Office:i04#
#Marjorie and Mrs. Shurtleff, with the Leopard Skin:i05#
#Esther and Marjorie in Ford Truck:i06#
#Rootie in Park at Saint-Germain:i07#
#Marje in the Salon at No. 12 Place Denfert-Rochereau:i08#
#“Bettina” at Saint-Germain:i09#
#Le Cèdre at Saint-Germain:i10#
#Will Irwin in the Garden at Blérancourt:i11#
#Mrs. Williams, Miss Dobson, and Mrs. Wethey in the Garden at Blérancourt:i12#
#Luncheon in the Garden at Blérancourt:i13#
#The Cathedral at Soissons:i14#
#Very Old and Beautiful House at Roye\: Interior completely gone:i15#
#A German Graveyard:i16#
#The Air Raid on Paris on the Night of January 30, 1918:i17#
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.pn 1
.h1 nobreak
OVER PERISCOPE POND
.sp 2
.h2 nobreak id=linkI
I||FROM ESTHER
.sp 2
.rj
Aboard Espagne, October 21, 1916.
Dear Father:—
The writing-room is a bower of gold leaf, electric-light
fixtures, and Louis XIV brocade, but
it is injudiciously placed where both the motion
and vibration are greatest, and not even the
marvelously developed yellow cherub, who holds
a candelabrum over my shoulder, is inviting
enough to induce me to stay here long. Not that
I haven’t plenty to tell. I could easily use up
all the ship’s paper in describing the various
people and events of this memorable week.
The day we sailed was perfectly gorgeous.
You remember. Mrs. Bigelow and I watched
the big buildings and the Statue of Liberty
slowly melt into the sunset, and then we went
down to see what surprises the stateroom might
reveal. And they were plenty. Letters upon
letters and lovely presents. The atmosphere
was a trifle charged as we passed the three-mile
limit, and we all found billets—not so doux as
they might have been—on our pillows
.pn +1
assigning us to lifeboats and saying just what to do
when the signal should be given to abandon the
boat. Both Mrs. Bigelow and Miss Short were
assigned to Lifeboat No. 10, while I was shunted
off in Lifeboat No. 8—a bad omen, I thought.
We went up on the top deck and looked them
over. No. 8 looks like a peanut shell—and then
we looked over the edge where the great big blue
rollers were beginning to make the boat creak,
and decided rather hurriedly to go down to dinner.
You can imagine yourself what it would be
like to start off on the sea in a canoe at our island
when there was a good dash at the rocks.
Now here is where the Shrinking Violet steps
in. Miss Short lost her traveling-bag, and was
in misery. She can’t speak or understand one
word of French—and she appealed to me. I
suppose you would have had me back coyly
into the stern of the boat, and say that I didn’t
know the word for suitcase and didn’t dare
speak to the steward. But not so. I went up
to a tremendous great gold-braided Frenchman
and linked together the words “bagage,” “noir,”
and “perdu,” by a series of what I considered
intelligent sounds, and, by Jove, the man—being
a genius anyway—got the idea that some
one had lost a black suitcase, and had the whole
ship’s service in action before I could wink.
.pn +1
Soon the suitcase appeared, and I had Miss
Short’s undying gratitude, coupled with complete
dependence for the rest of the trip.
This was the beginning of Miracle Number
One—that is, my French was perfectly understood,
and I understood nearly everything. Oh,
the joy of having the many hours spent over
Chardenal at Hawthorne School under the
vigilant eye of Miss Bourlard or Mlle. Delpit
at college—of having them not spent in vain!
Why, one of the Ambulance men told me yesterday
that when he first saw me he thought I
was French! (Of course, he speaks execrably himself,
and my red tam might assume any nationality.)
I order meals, carry on all our traffic
with the stewardess and deck steward, and interpret
right and left.
All during dinner you could see that people
were rather waiting for a shot off our bows, and
every one’s expression was bien pressé. After
dinner I took myself up on the bridge in my fur
coat and stood alone watching the most beautiful
moon-path that ever I saw. It was cold and
clear with a fine breeze. “O Sole Mio” floated
up gently from the steerage below. Helpful
thoughts came to me, and suddenly Miracle
Number Two happened. I felt perfectly sure
that we were all right and that nothing was
.pn +1
going to happen to the Espagne. I haven’t
thought of Germans or submarines or anything
since. I slept like a top that night.
Just as I was about to get into my berth, Mrs.
Bigelow asked me if I knew where the life-preservers
were. I hadn’t thought of them.
Well, I wasn’t dressed, and I couldn’t go and
ask the steward, so I said, “Go and find the
steward, and say, 'Où sont les gilets de sauvetage?’”
“I suppose,” said Mrs. Bigelow, “that
'gilets’ means 'preservers’?” “Well, not exactly,”
said I; “'gilets’ means waistcoats, and
'sauvetage’ means salvation; literally, the waistcoats
of salvation; quaint, isn’t it?” “Oh,
very,” said she; “Oo song lays geelays dee softadge—I
can say that easily.” “Alors, allez-vous
en,” said I, and bowed her out of the stateroom.
She marched erectly down the corridor,
and I could hear her voice,—firm, but growing
fainter and fainter,—“Where are the waistcoats
of salvation—oo song lays geelays dee
softadge—where are the waistcoats,” etc.,—for
all the world like “Fling out the Banner,” or
something of the kind. It would make a good
hymn, I thought.
Back she came with a mute and suffering
steward. He had understood her and pointed to
the top of the wardrobe. He was not at all
.pn +1
disturbed by my nightgown, and I gave mental
thanks to May for having run the ribbons in—I
feel freer in the French tongue when I am in
négligé. So the evening ended with a pleasant
chat about sauvetage and naufrage and the
amenities of life.
The first morning was blue and clear, but oh!
so rough. My head began to feel funny as I
dressed, so I hurried into my sailor blouse and
red tam and beat it for the deck. And here we
have Miracle Number Three. I wasn’t a bit
sick for one minute, and have felt better and
fuller of pep than I have since I was at Bailey’s.
I have been an obnoxious sight to most of the
passengers because I have run, skipped, and
jumped (figuratively) while they have rolled listless
eyes at me. There were only about fifteen
people in the dining-room that first luncheon,
and I was the only woman. You should see this
boat roll. Really, the Olympic or the Minneapolis
would blush at such actions.
I hardly saw Mrs. Bigelow and Miss Short
the first two days, and so it was natural that I
should get very chummy with the Frenchman
whose chair was next to mine. He has long wiry
mustaches that stick out at least five inches on
each side. He is a widower, and very small. He
speaks French the most beautifully I ever heard,
.pn +1
and says lovely things, and makes jokes too.
When he says anything funny he lifts his feet
aloft and twinkles them very fast and goes into
perfect spasms. He talks so fast that often I
don’t understand him, but I laugh just the same,
and the more he laughs the more I do, because it
strikes me so funny to be making such a hullabaloo
when I haven’t the faintest idea what it’s
about. He went up with me on the bridge for
the moonlight the second night (Mrs. Bigelow
and Miss Short were laid out in a tableau barely
vivant), and we talked French and a little German—he
recited Schiller—and I told him I
was going to France, and he said, “Belle a de
bon cœur,” and we were bien amusés. He is
French Consul at Montreal, and is going to see
his two little sons at ——.
The next day the captain asked to “be presented
to” me. He invited me to sit at his table,
and oh, how I hated to refuse. All the interesting
French people sit there, and Mrs. Craigee—that
lovely-looking girl that we saw on the dock—and
I could have practiced French so wonderfully.
Besides, Mrs. Bigelow and Miss Short
nearly always eat on deck,—but of course I
had to sit with them. I was very much flattered,
however, although I needn’t have been, for
there are so few girls on board.
.pn +1
There are thirty-six American Ambulance
men, and some of them are dandies. About
four in particular are most congenial, and we
do everything together—shuffle-board, deck-walking,
afternoon-teaing, card-playing, playing
the piano, and generally exploring about
the ship. I should like to describe every one,
but I feel that this is getting boring as it is. The
foreigners are delightful. Our French newspaper
man took my picture for his paper the other day.
He is exactly like a musical-comedy Frenchman—he
raises his shoulders and says “la, la,” and
wears checked trousers and patent leathers and
gets so very excited—such gestures!
At luncheon the other day there was great excitement—a
wireless for some one, and it was
for me! From Robert and Harris and Johnny.
Really, I was so pleased. We were nine hundred
miles out, and it seemed almost like seeing them
to have it come. I walked on air all afternoon.
At dinner that night the steward came around
again, saying, “Télégramme sans fil pour Mlle.
Root,”—and there was a plate of salted almonds
with the cards the Ambulance men had
stuck in it, with all sorts of crazy messages written
on them. I wirelessed back a poem as soon
as I could gather my senses sufficiently, and a
good time was had by all.
.pn +1
It is now Sunday and our last day. It is a
glorious blue morning.
There is a good deal of talk of submarines and
floating mines as we approach France. The lifeboats
were swung out last night, our guns
loaded, all the lights darkened, and everything
was preparedness. We tried on the life-preservers
before retiring, and the dust of ages that they
bore made me sneeze frightfully. How sharper
than a serpent’s tooth it is to sleep on one’s passport!
I have played the piano a good deal on the
trip. The whole ship is singing “Liebes Freud.”
This morning Mrs. Bigelow and I rose at 5.30,
and saw a wonderful sunrise. We stood on the
bridge together, and it was all gold and rose and
purple. She is a peach,—Mrs. Bigelow. I can’t
wait to land, although I love the ship. I had
thought of crossing as just crossing; and not as
such a wonderful time. I do appreciate it all so
much, Father, and I will write very seriously
when I get to Paris.
.nf r 0
Much love.
Esther.
.nf-
.sp 4
.pn +1
.h2 id=linkII
II||FROM ESTHER
.sp 2
.rj
Paris, Monday, October 23, 3 A.M.
Dearest Mother:—
This day has been so eventful, so utterly new
and remarkable to me, that I can’t bear to think
of its being crowded out of my mind by the immediate
to-morrows. These experiences in fact
have been so remarkable and the after-dinner
coffee so absolutely noir, that after a few hours of
fitful slumber I seem to be done for the night.
After I have described this place you will not
wonder that ink is not provided, but you will
forgive pencil, I hope (it’s the nice black one out
of Father’s writing-case which I love so, and its
maiden trip), although I know that writing in
pencil holds a place with you alongside of messing
the top bureau drawer and neglecting to
wear a fully equipped sewing-bag always about
the neck.
The last night on the steamer was thrilling. I
stood way out on the bow with one of the Ambulance
men (the nicest one) and watched the
lights way off on the horizon grow brighter and
.pn +1
brighter. We watched the pilot row out from
the pilot ship in a little boat, and although the
sea looked perfectly calm compared to what it
had been, it was like climbing mountains in a
hickory shell. All dark night everywhere with
a few flickering lights and men calling hoarse
things in French back and forth from the ships—can’t
you see how weird it was?
It was too bad to go down the Gironde at
night because they say it is a grand sight, but
we were glad enough to wake up in Bordeaux.
We got up at 5.30 and looked out on the wide
flat river, the many boats, and the picturesque
water’s edge of the harbor. We packed our last
things, had a farewell tour de force with the
femme de chambre, flew around saying good-bye
to everybody, and then stood in line to see the
préfet de police. Right here I want to say that
of all the fairy tales that were told me, the ones
about the difficulties of getting to Paris were the
most fantastic. There were a good many tiresome
details: I had to show our passports everywhere,
but everything went smoothly, and every
one was most polite. I wish I could tell you the
thousand and one funny things that happened in
leaving the boat. How we hated to leave that
darling stateroom and the still darlinger Espagne.
You know my penchant for everything
.pn +1
Spanish, and I knew when I first heard that
name at Bailey’s that it was the boat for me;
and it was.
You remember the confusion and perfect
riotousness of landing. I managed my own
things, which in itself is no joke. I had to get my
stuff together, have it examined, weighed, and
checked, send my cable, and telegraph Miss Curtis,
pay my excess, and buy my railroad ticket,
find a carriage, and leave that dock. It sounds
simple, but with a million people all hurrying to
do it at once and nothing but rapid-fire French
going on,—I got a few short circuits that were
disastrous,—it was dreadful (but often very
funny) and took nearly two hours.
The customs inspector was a woman and
pleasant as anything. I never even unlocked my
trunk and she just poked at my suitcases.
How can I describe Bordeaux as we saw it
through that musty cab window? Low and little
and picturesque. It was like stepping into a
stereopticon picture and finding it alive. Little
houses and shops, with bright signs all in French,
and foreign-looking people in the streets, and
many soldiers and many, many widows. Queer-painted
carts and little houses and little narrow
alleys with uneven houses, dark and aged, huddled
together with lights over the doors—you
.pn +1
know what I mean—adorable. The town itself
is quite a place—good hotels and shops and
cafés, with blue and red and yellow wicker chairs
and tables on the sidewalk.
We piled our luggage in the lobby of the hotel
and then filed into a dismal parlor and faced one
another over a marble table (for ornament only).
I was ready for bed and it was quarter of ten.
The train for Paris left at one—three hours to
wait and we so tired we couldn’t budge. How
that parlor rocked and reeled after the steamer!
Mrs. Bigelow said, “This is France.” It made
me think of “As You Like It” where Rosalind
and Celia and Touchstone arrive in the forest.
After I had slept a little, sitting bolt upright
in the lobby, we walked about town. The little
back streets were so tiny that only one could
walk on the sidewalk at a time. Even Boston
can go one better than that. I walked in the
middle of the street and never felt bigger in my
life. Miss Short sent a cable, and I went by
myself into a little shop and bought a copy of
the “Marseillaise”—my first venture in commerce,
and I was mighty embarrassed because I
don’t believe there is such a word as “copie”
anyway, but I got it and was pleased to death
to have actually achète-ed something.
It didn’t seem long until train-time, and we
.pn +1
got into crowded but comfortable first-class
carriages. After our elaborate good-byes, we
found nearly every one from the steamer on the
train, the Ambulance men and everybody. In
our compartment there were a very fat French
woman, a young girl, and her maid. The young
girl—I had planned to spend hours in describing
her, but I can’t stop now. I’ll just say she
was Elsie Ferguson in “The Strange Woman,”
and let you picture her. The prettiest, most
charming, and warmest creature I ever met. It
was the first time I had heard a girl speak high
French. There were no French women on the
boat, you remember, and it was like music. The
country we passed was the prettiest I’ve ever
seen, more perfect than England even. So many
poplars, and hills,—and such houses. There
were acres of vineyards and lovely farms and
with autumn foliage,—fainter than ours, of
course,—lovely yellows and reds, and leaves
dropping, and blue mists and more poplars, it
was like a dream-land.
It was a long trip, but the steamer people visited
back and forth and bought things at the
stations and stood in the corridors and talked,
and it didn’t seem long. The fat French woman
joined our conversation after the French girl got
out at Poitiers—I must tell you that she is
.pn +1
married and her husband is an officer and has
just recovered from being badly wounded. She
is going to find out on Sunday if he has to go
back, because, you see, he’ll never be strong
again, and she is praying that he’ll be réformé
for good. Oh, she does seem to love him so. If he
isn’t réformé he’ll have to go back to the front.
She is so brave and so beautiful!
Well, after she got out, a nice old Frenchman
got in and a typical Englishman (who spoke
French) and we had the most wonderful time.
Of course we didn’t speak at first, but the fat
woman and I would say things across the compartment
to one another and they would offer a
remark now and then, until we all got to talking.
I shall have to write some of these things down,
I fancy. I’d hate to forget them. I thanked
Heaven for the 'steenth time for my French,
which is a bruised reed, right enough, but a perfect
joy just the same.
I was expecting to fall into Miss Curtis’s arms,
but it would have been an empty fall, for she
wasn’t there. I didn’t know, when I wired her,
that there were two stations, so I suppose she
didn’t know which to choose. I could have gone
with Mrs. Bigelow and the others, but I thought
Miss Curtis would have engaged a room for me
here, so I wanted to try this place, anyway. One
.pn +1
of the Ambulance men, Mr. Baxter, offered to
bring me here and see me installed. There were
no taxis left, and it was still drizzling, and you
know my luggage,—the eleventh hour Altman
winter flannels boiling out of the carryall with
price-marks dangling and soiled from constant
exposure,—and me tired and dirty with the
ship still going round in my head, standing alone
by a dark and empty cabstand at 10.30 p.m. in
Paris, the unknown. The others all rattled off,
and Mr. Baxter disappeared to find a taxi, and
I sidled up behind a big French soldier for comfort.
I saw the fat French woman to say good-bye
and thanked her for being so bien gentille
to me. I told her that “elle m’avait fait senter
la bien venue en France,” which was rotten
French, and she said, “Mais Mlle. est si aimable.”
I could have hugged her, and I felt as
though she were a great big mother, twice, three
times, your size, Mother.
Mr. Baxter manufactured a taxi out of nothing
and we bundled in the bag and baggage
without any idea how far our place was from the
Quai d’Orsai. It was nice to be on terra-cotta—to
be in a place where you don’t have to show
your birth certificate before you can order an
egg, as he said. The only thing that any one has
told me that’s true is that Paris is dark. I don’t
.pn +1
see how the taxi-men can drive at all. We rattled
along, and finally came to a street that
looked like a tunnel—a faint light at the other
end—that’s all. At the very blackest point we
stopped, the driver said, “C’est l’hôtel,” and by
the light of a match we could see a black sign
with gold letters beside a door that looked like
the door of a stable, saying that, indeed, it was
Hôtel des St. Pères—but oh, so dark. It looked
as though Louis Treize’s sub-valet de chambre
had boarded it up and gone away and that no
one had ever been there since. We knocked and
knocked, and after ages we heard a shuffling
step and the great black doors swung open.
There stood the sleepiest, wall-eyed person, almost
entirely covered by a big spotted butcher’s
apron. I asked in uncertain tones if they had
place for Miss Root, and he shook his head and
I asked if he knew Miss Curtis, and he said no,
and then I asked if I could get a room. It was
the most awful-looking place. I didn’t know
just what to do. He made for a dark flight of
stairs,—the janitor, I mean,—and I started to
follow him. I asked Mr. Baxter if he supposed
the janitor was a concierge, and he told me that
jardinière was the nearest he could get to it. Upstairs
we went on dark-red carpet, past maroon
walls—up and up and up. Very high ceilings
.pn +1
and long black corridors. Finally he opened a
room on the fourth floor, and it looked clean,
and I said I’d stay. I went down to get my
things and to thank Mr. Baxter for being so
kind. I should have been so forlorn all alone.
So he drove off to the Ambulance Headquarters.
I could hear the taxi going off down the street
and the “jardinière” tumbling over my bags. I
do think American men are wonderful!
We climbed again to this eyrie and he wished
me “bon soir.” Again I was so glad for French
because, as he was turning down my bed,—I
told him that “je viens de venir d’Amérique,”
and that I did not wish “que l’on me réveille.”
He was quite genial and said good-night all over
again.
My room is the queerest of the queer. There
is a worn red carpet with rainbow figures, the
paper is green and yellow striped—mild, but
incontestably green and yellow. The ceiling is
slanted and I have one dormer window. There
is a marble mantelpiece and a huge bed; also a
marble washstand, which I feel must be a bit
of ornamentation looted from Napoleon’s tomb.
I looked out of the window, but it’s perfectly
black. There may be a blank wall six inches
away, or a court or a forest of trees or almost
anything for all I can see. I stood in the middle
.pn +1
of the room with my hands on my hips and
looked around and smiled. There was my own
fur coat which is Northampton to me, and my
black sweater which is Bailey’s, and my suitcases
and myself—all of us dropped into this
garret room.
When I went to lay my weary—oh, so weary—bones
between the sheets, I found the latter
to be fashioned apparently out of heavy canvas.
It was like nestling down between two jibs of the
good swordfisher, “Edmund Black.” The pillow
is enormous and uncompromising—my own little
baby pillow Mrs. Bigelow put in her trunk
for me. Still, as I describe them, they look very
good to me and I think I’ll go back to them. It
is getting light, I think, and pouring rain, I’ll
try looking out again.
.sp 2
.rj
Tuesday.
I have seen it! I have seen it! Paris is the
most romantic place in the world. Talk about
London! Oh, I never shall forget this afternoon.
I went to sleep almost before I stopped writing
the above in pencil and never woke up until
twelve o’clock. I asked the femme de chambre
whether or not any one had called for me, thinking
Miss Curtis might have tried to find me, and
she said that I had had two telephone calls, and
that a young gentleman had been here in a taxi.
.pn +1
It was Mr. Baxter, of course, because he said he
would take me back to the Quai d’Orsay and
help me with my trunk and customs and prefect
of police; and there, they’d told him that I was
asleep, and not to be waked up! I felt hopeless
at the thought of having to go by myself without
any idea of what to do! I suppose Mrs. Bigelow
may have called me up. I had no idea of Miss
Curtis’s whereabouts and I knew that the Shurtleffs
are at their headquarters all day long and I
had no idea where that was, and I knew that
Mrs. Bigelow was at the other end of Paris and
couldn’t help me even if I did see her.
I didn’t feel like lunch, so I took the map of
Paris and went out in the dripping streets with
no umbrella. I was so confused and so embarrassed
with my map, which I didn’t dare open;
I felt that people were staring at me, and my
rubbers and umbrella were in my trunk and my
coat and hat and feet were soaking. I just wandered
along and finally came to a taxi. I decided
to go to Mrs. Shurtleff’s house, whether she was
in or not. So I said, 6 Place Denfert-Rochereau,
and got out at a big apartment house. I walked
in, and there was no elevator boy or telephone
girl or anything, so I rang at the first apartment
and asked for Dr. Shurtleff. The maid said he
wasn’t there, and I asked if she could tell what
.pn +1
apartment he lived in and she said she didn’t
know; finally her face lighted up and she showed
me into a little parlor and said, “You come for a
consultation! I’ll go and get the doctor.” Heavens
and earth, I’d stumbled into a physician’s
office. I said, “No, no!” and went out. I
thought I’d have to ring at all the apartments
to find the Shurtleffs, but I found a concierge,
tremendously en négligé, who pointed to a little
elevator and said, “third floor.” I got in expecting
to be followed, but bang went the doors without
apparently word or sign from any one and up
I shot. Up and up; and I was scared to death. I
felt sure I was going through the roof; but eventually
we stopped and I got out and rang at the
first bell to the left, as I’d been told. No answer;
I rang and rang; still no answer. I gathered that
they were at the headquarters, so I sat down on
the top step of the stair and wrote on the back
of my visiting card that I was at the Hôtel des
St. Pères. I was a little discouraged, because it
meant that I would have to wait at the hotel until
some one could call or write. In the mean time
the lift was standing inert and I couldn’t make
it go down—of course, I wouldn’t have gone
down in it myself for the gross receipts. I could
hear people ringing wildly down below and
pretty soon a man came leaping up the stairs. I
.pn +1
asked in my prettiest French if he could make
the thing go down, and he couldn’t any more
than I. He started to go into an opposite apartment,
and as the door opened I heard some one
greet him in English. I jumped up; it was the
first English I’d heard since the others had left
me. I rushed forward and almost put my foot
in the door, for I was desperate. I asked the
woman who had spoken, one of the most beautiful
women I ever saw, if she knew where Dr.
Shurtleff lived. She said, “I am Mrs. Shurtleff.
Why, you must be Miss Root.” And she threw
both her arms around me and pulled me into
their living-room. There were Miss Curtis and
Dr. Shurtleff and a blazing wood-fire. If that
wasn’t heaven on earth to me, I should be ungrateful
to admit it. We talked and talked, and
oh, but I was glad to see them! They never
had received my telegram and the Espagne had
not been announced in Paris, the concierge had
directed me to the wrong apartment, but now
everything was straightened out. It just happened
that they were taking an afternoon off,
the Shurtleffs, that is; the others left very soon.
I hadn’t had anything to eat since on the train
the night before, and I felt weak and horrid, and
everything still rocked; so Mrs. Shurtleff gave
me hot tea and nut bread and cold chicken, and
.pn +1
warmed me through and through. She is an
angel; she looks like one of the old Gibson drawings,—beautiful,
and so charming and enthusiastic,
and much younger, too, than I had
thought, with light-brown hair and blue eyes
and pink cheeks.
.il id=i02 fn=i020a.jpg w=425px link=i020a.jpg
.il fn=i020b.jpg w=425px link=i020b.jpg
.ca No. 6 Place Denfert-Rochereau
The first thing to decide was where I should
live permanently, and Mrs. Shurtleff took me
that afternoon to two pensions, the best and
nearest to the work. One was very near, just
across a little green square from the Shurtleffs’.
The other was on an adorable little street in the
old Latin Quarter, where all the painters from
time immemorial have lived. It was dark, and
no conveniences, no heat, no running water, and
no bathtub in the whole house. But I peeped
into one of the rooms and there was a wood-fire
singing so adorably, and a lovely mantelpiece
and gold mirror, and a piano with candles. That
was nine francs a day, and although much more
inconvenient and far-away, I wanted to go there.
The cook showed us around and I promised to
call on Wednesday and see the landlady.
After that Mrs. Shurtleff took me to do an
errand—and I saw Paris for the first time. I
think that the Seine, and the bridges, and lines
of straight trees are the most beautiful things
I’ve ever seen. We looked up the
.pn +1
Champs Élysées as the sun was setting and the lights were
beginning to twinkle through a violet haze. It
was like a dream city. I sat on the extremest
edge of the seat in the taxi gazing and gazing at
everything. Mrs. Shurtleff delighted in my delight,
and she said it made her live again the
enthusiasm and wonder that she felt when she
came here ten years ago. So many queer things
I noticed that she grew used to years ago; the
door-handles in the middle of the doors, the
lamp-posts in the middle of the sidewalks, and
funny quaint little things like that. We saw a
trolley-car marked “Bastille,” and I burst out
laughing. Why, it seemed like marking the
ugliest, most ordinary or modern thing “Guillotine”
or “Robespierre”! Think of getting a
transfer or “watching your step” going to the
Bastille.
I went to the Vestiaire yesterday morning
where I am to work. It is wonderfully interesting.
All kinds of clothing are piled everywhere
and there is an office where people apply, and
everything is very business-like. The refugees
are pathetic to the last degree, and already I
have seen many, many people, and heard of
cases, that I couldn’t believe existed in the
world. I haven’t done any real work yet; but
here is something I want to tell you. We need
.pn +1
everything, particularly warm things, blankets;
and big wide shoes above everything. I saw men
turn away some people to-day, and I tell you
I’d like to snatch these bedclothes out of the
hotel and go find old people and give them to
them. But any kind of clothes! I saw a pile of
sticks, about a hundred, stored in the corner, and
I asked Mrs. Shurtleff what they were for and
she said for the blind. They can’t afford to buy
them. Think of being blinded and then not
being able to afford a few pennies to buy a cane.
I find that Paris is much more alive and happy
than I had expected, although the individual
cases are so very hard.
I have decided on my pension, and I like Mme.
H——. My room certainly is comfort itself, for
Paris, with lovely sunlight and trees and a park
below. I move in November 4th, and I am glad
to have it settled. Living is so expensive that
many of the best pensions have had to close, so
I feel I am wonderfully lucky.
Yesterday afternoon I covered about twelve
acres of streets and buildings in fulfilling various
official formalities, and now call all the prefects
of police by their first names. I had no trouble,
but it is tedious to go from one place to another.
My official title on the Paris register is now “Demoiselle
de Vestiaire,” and as that can refer both
to relief work and to check girls in restaurants, I
can give up one any time for the other.
.il id=i03 fn=i024a.jpg w=425px link=i024a.jpg
.ca Women’s Vestiaire
.il fn=i024b.jpg w=425px link=i024b.jpg
.ca Men’s Vestiaire
.pn +1
I went to the station and brought my trunk
here. I had dinner with Mrs. Bigelow, and we
just fell on each other’s necks and couldn’t
seem to let go. Those two days of separation
have been pretty long. We went to church to
the Wednesday evening meeting. We could hear
them singing “Abide with Me” as we came up
the street, and it was the first note of music that
I had heard in many a long day, except what
I played myself on the steamer. My heart just
swelled up, and when we got in and sang the
third verse, the tears were rolling down our
cheeks. It was a wonderful service.
The sun shines to-day for the first time, and
I have been out with my trusty map. You see
such vital little scenes in the street—two girls
poring over a letter from the front, and giggling
and teasing each other; a little girl with tight
black pig-tails, bare legs and socks, a full black
cape, and a basket under her arm, standing on
tippey-toes to ring an old bronze bell; a widow
walking along with a little child, watching with
an inscrutable expression a car full of soldiers
starting for the front; a group of poor people,
market-women, old men, and children, pressing
closely around a sign-poster who is posting up a
.pn +1
list, “Morts pour la Patrie.” Many times you
see the signs: “Don’t talk, be careful, enemy ears
are listening.” Oh, this country is at war, but I
can’t tell you the inspiration that seems to be in
the very streets. And it is so beautiful when I
think that I am really to live here, to be chez
moi, and have my own books and pictures and
perhaps some plants, and be able to go about
and see these things. I can’t tell you how happy
I am. If the Statue of Liberty ever wants to see
me again, she will have to turn a complete back
somersault.
I send love home in bushels. There have been
moments in these last few days! But never for
one breath have I wished that I hadn’t set out,
and now with my pension settled, my permis de
séjour granted by the police, my trunk by my
side, my work fairly started, the Shurtleffs perfectly
wonderful, and Mrs. Bigelow at hand and
happy, why, nothing could be happier than I
am. And I never can thank you enough for letting
me come. My one trouble now is writer’s
cramp, so I must stop before I am too paralyzed
to address the envelope!
Do write me.
.nf r 0
Love to you all.
Esther.
.nf-
.sp 4
.pn +1
.h2 id=linkIII
III||FROM ESTHER
.sp 2
.rj
Paris, November 26, 1916.
Dearest Mother:—
My literary style may be a trifle affected by
Baedeker, but I hope the following details will
not seem as dry as sawdust to you, for they are
the very air I breathe daily.
At the beginning of the war the French Government
declared a moratorium, which is the
suspension of rent payments for every one in
Paris paying a rent of less than two thousand
francs or possibly three thousand francs. With
practically all the men mobilized, many families
would have starved but for this provision.
The wives or widows of soldiers are given a regular
income by the French Government called
“allocation,”—one franc twenty-five centimes
a day and seventy-five centimes for each child.
The soldiers themselves get five sous a day (formerly
three sous), which barely enables them to
get necessities and soap and tobacco, etc.
“Chaumage” is money given to woman
.pn +1
refugees if they have no men fighting. One franc
twenty-five centimes a day for all over sixteen
not working (mothers of little children, invalids,
blind, etc.), and fifty centimes for children.
There is a special old-age pension for men and
women over sixty. In addition to these pensions
there are committees—Comité Franco-Belge,
Comité de la Marne, Secours des Meusiens, etc.,
who help refugees by giving money and clothes
to special cases. They are so swamped with
demands, however, that they cannot do much.
It is a marvel to me what they and the French
Government can do and what complication of
financial adjustment is apparently carried on
successfully. Where does the money come from
to finance this war?
Perhaps it would seem that considering the
chaumage, the refugees are nearly as well off as
the Parisians, but I assure you it is not so: the
moratorium makes a vast difference, and, above
all, the strangeness of Paris, ignorance of where
to find places to live and work, ill health often
contracted from the hardships of the way down
and the frightful shock of living through bombardment.
Many of them, you see, were fairly
well off in Rheims or Lille or Maubeuge, or
wherever they came from, and had to flee with
only the clothes they had on their backs. The
.pn +1
people who try to do much with little and live
up to their former way of living appeal to my
sympathy more than the most squalid who
really have the greatest misery.
We have found that people can get a furnished
room for thirty centimes a day and up. Awful
little rooms, dens of darkness and disease, can
be found (only occasionally, praise be) for three
francs a week; but I can’t consider those. I saw
one yesterday—a mother and two little girls
live there, and it was about the size of the cabin
in our motor-boat, but made the latter seem vast
and airy by comparison. With the prices of food
and coal high, and constantly soaring, the poor
people can just make out their rent and food, but
cannot buy clothes. Shoes are thirty francs and
up. You can figure it out for yourself. With our
help, however, many, many poor families can
get along that would otherwise be destitute.
Sometimes we can give a girl a suit which will
enable her to present herself for a far better position
than she could hope to obtain in rags.
Sometimes boys can go to school if they have
warm new shoes, a black apron, and an overcoat,
when without them they would stay at home
and shiver in idleness. Warm strong clothing
not only gives a new lease to health, but to life
as a whole. You should see the little girls when I
.pn +1
give them a hair-ribbon or a dress for their doll,
if they have one.
I have gathered a lot of old stuff that I found
at the Vestiaire and have brought it home and
ironed it out and cut it up fresh and given it
away to all sorts of little “fillettes.” I do believe
in the trimmings even for the most wretched,
especially if they’re kids, and I am glad to say
that Mrs. Shurtleff does, too. We have a box of
tinsel favors filled with tiny bonbons that we
give to the littlest, if they are restless while their
parents are being accommodated. The other day
we had a little angel of less than two, a small
refugee from Rheims with its father and mother.
Her ears were pierced and supported tiny earrings.
When in this war-time any one had the
time and inclination to pierce that child’s ears is
one on me! Her father left our part of the Vestiaire
a few minutes to be fitted to an overcoat
in the men’s department, and the child began to
howl. I took it in my arms and rushed it after
its father as fast as I could go. Then all was
serene again. In some cases we go so far as
to move families from crowded, dirty, unsavory
quarters to as clean and as airy a place as we can
find in proportion to their income. We then
guarantee their rent for three months and help
them to furnish. This is all in the hands of the
.pn +1
installation department, and I have nothing to
do with that, so I cannot tell you as much as I
would like to.
The field work is the visiting and investigation
of applicants. The war work of the Students
Atelier Reunions has become known by word
of mouth among the refugees. Of course, the
reports and results of our work travel like wildfire
and we are inundated with requests. After
receiving a letter from a refugee the case is
looked up by two field workers and reported at
a meeting of the committee the following Saturday
morning. A vote is taken as to what to do
and how much to give if it is decided to give anything.
The people are then told to present themselves
at the Vestiaire and we give them what
they need. Every type of man, woman, and
child has crossed our threshold even within my
month of service. How I love them all!
I try to get each story as I measure the person
and search the stock and try on and tie up and
list. Mother would die to see me, who have
never known anything more about children than
that they belonged to the animal kingdom and
were awful little monkeys and might better approach
more nearly the vegetable kingdom, even
if they were darlings—to see me tell some
mother of ten that “her little Yvonne is large
.pn +1
for eight,” or that “Renaud has small feet for a
boy of twelve.” It is I who measure and mark
children’s clothes as they are sent to us, according
to age, and in centimeters at that. I have
been driven to ascertaining my own waist measure
by the same rating and now go about heavily
veiled.
My good fortune has been to be made one of
the field workers and I go with either Miss Curtis
or Miss Sturgis every Monday and Wednesday.
Two always go together because, until we
have been to a place once, we don’t know what
we are getting into, and it would be foolish to go
alone way to the back of the top of these big
dark buildings without knowing what sort of people
lived there. In their homes you do see the
people chez eux. We see the extremes of cleanliness
and filth, thrift and abjectness. I shall not
stop to describe individual homes now, but I can
tell you some of them are rare. In one home of
about the same stratum as the Russian family
Mother and I visited last Christmas, I stepped
gingerly among the rags, coal-dust, food, and so
forth on the floor, and went and sat beside the
dirtiest but the darlingest child you ever saw,—blue
eyes with black lashes, which always
get me, you know,—but its nose running fearfully.
Miss Curtis did the questioning, but I
.pn +1
interrupted every three minutes to beseech the
mother to wipe the offending organ. I finally
learned that the child ought to have an operation,
but it is only twenty-five months old and
the doctor will not operate until she is three. I
showed her the buttons on my glove, fastening
and unfastening them. She looked up to me
with her dirty little mouth smiling radiantly and
said, “Tiens!”
They are not the type we can do much for, but
I begged some warm clothes for them and they
came to the Vestiaire yesterday. The name is
Pruvot, and there are a mother and daughter,
three sons in the war, one of whom I am going
to adopt as “filleul,” a son and his wife and two
little girls, and a little illegitimate child of a
son who has disappeared and whose mother has
abandoned it. He is the star child, Marcel Pruvot,
two and a half years, and I am crazy to
adopt him. What would you say if I brought
him home with me? Think of what one could
make of his life; but, of course, I shall not. We
sent a layette to one little mother. (My mother
should see the layette department, stocked up
with the cutest things I ever saw.) And as a special
luxury, we included some talcum powder,
marked “poudre de riz” (rice powder). Mrs.
Jackson went to look her up one day and found
.pn +1
her boiling the talcum powder with water in a
saucepan, just about to feed it to the little creature
of three months. She had never heard of
powder before.
The next big branch of work is fitting out the
blind. There is more pathos, gayety, and inspiration
on Tuesday and Friday afternoons than
in all the rest of the week. After the men are
wounded at the front they are brought back
through a chain of relief stations, “postes de
secours,” to hospitals, and finally to a Paris
hospital. The blind are allowed to recuperate
here either at the Val de Grace or the Quinze-Vingt
(big hospitals), and are then sent away,
usually to the country to learn a trade or to rejoin
their families, or both. They must give up
their military clothes, underclothes, and shoes
when they are discharged, and are given only the
poorest kind of civilian clothes in exchange.
This is where we step in to give them decent
clothes. In many cases they are not given civilian
clothes at all, although I don’t understand
the Government system enough to see how that
is possible. So Miss Hodges, our representative
in work for the blind, brings five or six of the
most needy and touching cases to us and we fit
them out.
The blind are the most childlike as a general
.pn +1
rule of all the people we deal with, and the outfit
we give them and the kindness and help they
receive at the Vestiaire mean to them a new
start in life, as we have learned from guards
afterwards. Such brave fellows! It is an exception
to see one downcast or morose, but when
you do, your heart aches twice as much, not
only for them, but for the many gay ones who
have conquered despair. One boy twenty-four
years old was wounded in the leg and dragged
himself along the ground half conscious, to find
he was dragging himself toward the German
trenches. At this point he was struck again
and his eyes put out. He lay between the
trenches under fire for days, unconscious most of
the time and feigning death the rest. By a miracle
he escaped being killed. He was picked up
and taken to a hospital; has been there six
months, and is now starting out to learn a trade—in
the dark. I love to do what I can for them,
especially as this is my one chance to know the
French poilu.
You would laugh to see me measuring and fitting,
especially when it comes to holding up underwear
to some dear blind giant. I remember
all too well how at the age of eight I used to
wriggle in Altman’s when mother insisted on
“getting an idea how they would go” by holding
.pn +1
“them” up to me. Every saleswoman and floorwalker
got the idea clearly. There are moments
when blindness is not such a misfortune.
The blind soldiers are always interested to
know what their new clothes look like. “C’est de
quel couleur, Mademoiselle?” “Dark brown,” I
say, “and I will give you a brown and white tie.”
“Ah que je serai chic, moi!” One of his comrades
would nudge him and say, “Je voudrais
bien avoir les yeux pour te voir, maintenant,
mon vieux! C’est vrai que tu vais te marier?”
(I would like to have eyes to see you now, old
fellow; is it true you are just going to be married?)
Then they laugh and thank me “mille
fois” and shake hands and wish me good luck.
Sometimes I walk down the street with them and
guide them along. I admire their medals and
tell them that the passers-by are looking at them,
etc. We never say the word “aveugle” (blind),
but “blessé” (wounded). Sometimes when we
have to wait for their guards I sit on the table
and tell them all about my crossing and about
America, and, oh, a hundred things. We do
have good times—for the moment.
I have tried to give you a grasp of what we
have to meet and how we try to meet it. First,
the French system of pensions and rents, then
the giving of clothes and the moving of families,
.pn +1
then the field work and the work for the blind.
I haven’t told about the Ouvroir because I am
not well enough informed. We give employment
to many women in making clothes for the Vestiaire,—flannel
shirts and petticoats, underclothes,
dresses, everything. All materials,
clothes, furniture, or their equivalent in money,
come from America.
Now for our needs. We need shoes (this “we”
may be taken editorially, for when my present
boots take wings I don’t know what I shall do. I
can’t afford French shoes in war-times); large
sizes, both men’s and women’s, and all sizes children’s—women’s
5, 6, and 7 lengths, C, D,
and E widths, and men’s correspondingly large.
Then blankets, diaper material by the yard,
men’s overcoats (we had to turn away a blind
boy the other day who had had his feet and legs
frozen and was lame and was just beginning to
get tuberculosis), and women’s shirts and heavy
union suits. These are great needs, but if there
are any available just plain clothes,—dresses,
suits, children’s clothes, boy’s trousers and
sweaters, neckties, gloves, ribbons, stockings,
caps,—send them. If Mother has any sewing-circle
in New York or elsewhere at her command,
I should like to use it as a part of the
propaganda, if I may. I believe she suggested
.pn +1
it. If they want to make anything, make aprons
for boys and girls from four to fourteen years,
the larger sizes from ten to fourteen being the
most important. All the school children wear
them, and always black. The stuff is like lining
sateen. It is astonishing to me that not only
parents, but the children, are eager for anything
black. It is more practical, of course, and as it
is the custom for all the school children to wear
black, any child feels embarrassed and odd to
wear a color. Only hair-ribbons do they like
bright, and this is because they dress up on Sundays
to go to the cemeteries. The apron is an
all-over apron with sleeves, and buttons up the
back.
My idea is to give always what fits and what
is right to each person on the spot. Give her
something to take pride in and live up to. I
have seen a nice-looking waist for a girl to wear
to her work in a paper-bag factory not only
transform her looks, but the expression of her
face. I consider it as much my duty to tell
people at home what we need as to go to work
every morning. If you could know how we long
for packing-boxes to come from America. Sometimes
when they do come they are filled with
junk. Old dirty clothes full of holes, pieces of
lace, jet passementerie, etc., and how
.pn +1
disappointed we are! We are hoping, perhaps, for
three dozen heavy union suits for men, and find
some worn-out long white kid gloves.
Couldn’t you tell some of our dear friends
about the Vestiaire? So often at home I have
heard people say, “It is awful how little I do for
the war. I would like to do more, but I don’t
know just what to do.” Tell them that here’s
an opportunity not only to help France, but to
back up Americans.
One kind of help that appeals to me strongly,
though it is entirely outside of my work here, is
adopting “filleuls.” Many soldiers have wives
and families who write to them and send packages
and warm things, and an occasional bar of
soap, cake of chocolate, or package of cigarettes.
Then there are many poor fellows whose families
are in the invaded provinces or killed. They
have no one, no encouragement, no one to write
to or get letters from or give them trifling remembrances.
These are adopted as “filleuls”
(godsons) by “marraines” (godmothers), who
take an interest and try and fill the place of
family to them. Hundreds have been so adopted
in America, as you know, but there are so many
more who are quite forlorn. I heard of one boy
the other day who was the only one in his regiment
who never got anything, but tried to go
.pn +1
away by himself when he knew it was time for
the mail to come. I adopted him like a shot. I
have since taken three more temporarily, as I
can’t possibly afford to keep them unless I can
get some one in America to support them. Now,
many of my friends cannot write French very
readily and don’t want to be bothered, and it
takes months, anyway, for packages to get from
New York to the French front, so I thought that
if I could get two or three people to support my
boys, I would do the writing and the sending
of packages gladly, and then report to whoever
was supporting them at home and forward to
the supporters the men’s letters.
You spend anywhere from three dollars up
for the package and send the package once a
month. I shall keep these men from now until
I hear from you and make an account of what
I spend for them. Please be sure and let me
know.
One of our greatest needs is a small motor-car—we
take great heavy packages and heavy furniture
all over town, and then in the visiting
work we have to go everywhere, and we get
really more tired than I ever thought it possible
to get and we waste so much time walking. There
are many places where the trams and subways
don’t go and the auto-buses have stopped
.pn +1
running. Here they are too expensive to buy and
mostly too poor in quality. They ask thirty-two
hundred francs for a 1910 Ford.
.nf r 0
Affectionately,
Esther.
.nf-
.sp 4
.pn +1
.h2 id=linkIV
IV||FROM MARJORIE
.sp 2
.rj
S.S. Finland, Wednesday (December 19, 1916).
Dear Daddy:—
At about noon yesterday, we were all thrilled
to see a big transport ship go by us to starboard.
She was very lightly laden, and tossed about at
a great rate. She had no flag and no visible
name, and gave us no signal, which my friend,
the purser, tells me is the custom in war-time.
She was too far off to wig-wag, and she did not
wish to use the wireless and thereby let some one
else know her whereabouts. We were all duly
thrilled by her and watched her out of sight.
Then we lay down again, only to be bounced out
of our chairs by the news that a French man-of-war
was passing us to port. We tooted around
to the other side, and there she was, big French
flag, a medium-sized ship and a cruising destroyer,
according to the faithful purser. She
went by us slowly and gave no sign. We were
duly grateful, for I can tell you her guns looked
awfully big! After she had gotten well past us,
and we thought everything was over, she
.pn +1
suddenly fired a gun, began to steam up like everything,
and turned around remarkably quickly
and came racing down on top of us, smoke pouring
out of her funnels and coming full-tilt right
at us. Nobody knew what it could mean, and
then our engines stopped and we hove to. The
officers all beat it up to the bridge, and you never
saw so many sick passengers come to life and
hang over the rail with the rest of us watching.
Every one had a different notion, and I can tell
you it was sort of scary, for she might be a German
in disguise, and Heaven only knows what
she might do. After she got alongside, she
stopped and wig-wagged for all she was worth.
After about ten minutes, which seemed at least
an hour, our engines started, and we went our
way. She circled around us, and kept going off
in different directions, and then turning. It
seemed as if she was looking for something. The
report the captain gave out was that she wanted
the Greenwich time; wanted to know where we
were going, and then wished us “Bon voyage.”
You can believe that or not. It does not sound
plausible to me, but, anyway, the dear thing left
us after having scared the life out of us. When
she was alongside, and you began to think of life
in a lifeboat in this sea, which is fairly smooth, it
did not appeal. I suppose it all sounds trivial to
.pn +1
you,—to be held up by a warship in mid-ocean,—but
with the fact in mind that all sorts of
things are happening now that never did before,
and also that she went steaming past and then
suddenly turned, we all had plenty of room for
imagination. It was awfully interesting to see
how different people took it. I think I would
have been scared to death myself if it had not
been for the humor of the idea of perishing with
a certain one on my arm. She, poor soul, was so
frightened and weak that she was both pitiful
and laughable.
This dear boat seems to go more slowly every
day. At the present rate, I don’t think we will
land much before Easter! She certainly is nice
and steady, though, and if this glorious weather
keeps up, I, personally, don’t care at all when
we get in. It is so warm that it is really ridiculous.
Here we are at Christmas season, and yesterday
I walked the deck all the morning without
even a sweater, my flannel waists being
heavy enough, though, to make up for something,
I guess.
.rj
Marje.
.sp 4
.pn +1
.h2 id=linkV
V||FROM ESTHER
.sp 2
.rj
December 16 to 31, 1916.
Dearest Sister:—
From subtle remarks let fall from Father’s
pen, I take it that my letters have all the charming
privacy of Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians.
The thought that my recountings are coldly fed
to the jaws of a typewriter without so much as
considering my editorial “oui” has caused me to
give my writing-table as wide a berth as is compatible
with the size of this my dominion; but
since he at the same time calls me “fatuous
child” instead of using the far more obvious and
shorter adjective, I say, So be it. The writing-table
leads me on in spite of my better self, and
I settle myself before this block of cheapest
French paper with certain foreknowledge that I
shall give birth—this time—to many indiscretions.
(Why be called fatuous if you cannot
live up to it?)
I have an idea of compiling a list of my various
friends and associates in a series of descriptions,
.pn +1
something like La Bruyere’s “Caractères”—only
far more interesting. I realize from your
letters how stingy I have been in telling you
about the pension and the people who have invited
me about in Paris, and now that my first
fear is dispelled, I shall proceed. My first fear,
you see, was that the family would think I was
having too good a time and would call me home
with dispatch; now that good times manifest
themselves in such rarity, I feel free to describe
those first weeks of gayety. I shan’t mention
war or refugees this time, not because I don’t
every day live and breathe them (sometimes not
so pleasant), but because I do. To-night is my
night off—this letter is a soirée!
My room, my dominion, my home—how I
love it! It is fairly large, but larger still is the
bed, which is a dominion in itself. Alongside it I
am an incident, and alongside of me the piano
is an episode. The massive orange armoire,
topped by my two suitcases and a hatbox, towers
in vain when I look up at it in the early
morning from my eider-down fastness—or (see
Father) slowness. “My bed is like a little boat”
no more than it is like Central Park—in fact,
the darling Espagne would seem small beside it.
To enter the room, to comb the hair, to wash the
hands, to exit from the room, you must insinuate
.pn +1
yourself between the bed and the wall. I might
say there’s no getting around it.
I call the armoire Richard Cœur de Lion—it
is strong and all-embracing. I have no bureau,
but dress—instead of eat—“off” the mantelpiece.
Everything is dumped into the armoire—ribbons,
collars, dresses, shoes, books, chewing-gum,
hats, furs, et al., and believe me, they stand
not on the order of their going! I will say,
though, before Mother’s last whitened tress is
wound up on her finger and put away in a little
Altman box at the back of her right-hand bureau
drawer, that I keep things pretty well arranged
on the different shelves and in the little drawers,
my best clothes being left in my wardrobe trunk,
but my orderliness (so-called) is due to no virtue
of my own, but to the fact that I never wear anything
but my blue serge dress, my old blue coat,
heavy underwear, old tan boots and rubbers—never,
except during giddy interregna of the old
“battleship gray.” Always put on in the morning
what you took off the night before, is my
sine qua non—which doesn’t make any sense,
but you know what I mean.
For chairs, I have one armchair of imitation
red leather, which is stiff and smooth and cold,
but when I cover it over with my two sweaters
to take the edge off, as it were, it does very well.
.pn +1
Then there are two little chairs made so that you
sit on them diagonally,—I’ve always thought
them an abomination,—but I never sit in them,
just spread my clothes out on them at night.
Then I have a small straight chair which goes
with the little table that serves as desk.
My rugs—Heaven save the name!—are
three irregular strips of carpet—one red (a
little purpler than the chair) with navy-blue
fleurs-de-lys (you will remember that the wallpaper
is pink and gold); the other two, gray in
background, with a design which would seem
to be conventionalized lyre-birds and sculpins
sparring in a whirlpool. It takes the two strips
to show the pattern—perhaps it is the great-grandchild
of a gobelin nightmare.
I have no place for my books. Indeed, I
didn’t have any books when I started out, except
my dictionaries, but Mrs. Bigelow has left
me ten Baedekers, and any number of books
and magazines have been lent me. I stack them
up on the piano, but it is very untidy.
I have a little “cabinet” with a wash-bowl
and running water, and I have squeezed my
trunk in, too. I don’t mind being cramped, but
it is fierce to invite any one in to take tea. Of
course, if I had a divan or folding sofa instead
of the Royal Couch, things would be simple. I
.pn +1
have thought it over, and have hesitated less on
account of the expense of buying one than the
forfeiture of my one real source of comfort. I
had Mrs. Bigelow and Mrs. Shurtleff and Miss
Curtis and Miss Sturgis in one day for tea, and I
had to sit on the bed and practically entertain
through the bars. Mrs. Shurtleff is very anxious
for me to get a sofa,—it’s just impossible, of
course, to let any of the Ambulance men come to
call here,—but I don’t know. I may get a little
hanging bookcase. Just try, yourself, living
without a bureau, a desk, a bookcase, or a rug,
and see how screaming it is. This last week, I
spent most of the time I was in the house sitting
on a little hassock with my back to the radiator.
It has been bitter cold, and we had three centimeters
of snow, and there is hardly any coal.
Mme. H—— doesn’t turn on the electricity in
the morning, and turns it off at 10.45 at night,
and the heat goes off about 8.30, and we can’t
have fires in our rooms, and it is freezing. When
I even mention these little inconveniences, I
remind myself of the picture that came out in
“Punch” about two years ago: a silly ass reading
the newspaper and saying, “They’ve stopped the
cinemas at Brighton, by Jove! That does bring
the war home to one!” You should hear what my
boys write to me about the cold in the trenches.
.pn +1
Now for the wonder in my ménage—I have a
piano. One day I left the house determined to
get a mouth-organ if nothing else,—I had whistled
and sung quite enough,—and I was such a
pest in other people’s houses, when I discovered
their pianos, that I decided to do something desperate.
I found a little piano-store on rue Denfert-Rochereau,
with a little upright, and a darling
blind piano-maker and his worried little
wife—everything little. When I found that the
upright (with brass candle-brackets) would be
mine to command for twelve francs a month, I
said, “Have it charged and sent,” in my best
Lord & Taylor style.
Well, it came. It came the next morning
when I was still in bed, and I had to crawl into
my wardrobe trunk while it was being installed.
When the heavy footsteps had echoed down the
hall, I sprang forward like any Eurydice, in my
dollar-ninety-eight robe de nuit. I played and
played, and was a little late to the Vestiaire that
morning. I had a long hard day that day, and
almost forgot my new treasure until after dinner,
when I sat down on the piano-stool. I was
casting about for some music—any music—to
play, when Mlle. Germain, a French girl here,
came in and offered a copy of the Beethoven
Symphonies. I struck up the Fifth, and, believe
.pn +1
me, it was like solid ground beneath my feet.
Since then I have eaten up all five—it’s only
the first book that she has. We went to a concert
given in a little room (I thought it was a bar
when I first went in,—marble-topped tables
and men smoking), but there was no symphony.
I haven’t had time to go to another lately.
In spite of remembering the Steinway at
home, you can imagine how happy I am with
my little piano, even if it does come up barely to
my hip. It is usually out of tune, and is very
painful, but the little blind man comes with his
wife and tunes it, and I couldn’t send it back.
I play with a bicycle face my whole repertoire;—but
I tell you I’m gay, and I’ve learned to
watch out at the end of the F major étude not
to crack my elbow against the foot of the bed,
for I find that my bed gives out a metallic sound
when rapped sharply with a bone. I stick my
umbrella into the brass handle at the side of the
piano, and then I have a “piano à queue”!
After a few hours of reading Beethoven, Mlle.
Germain and I get out a piece of French gâteau
from the armoire and cut off a couple of slices
with my shoe-horn, and sit around in our pajamas
and discuss music and education and politics—and
our complexions. All too soon the
lights go out on us, and she says, “Bon soir,
.pn +1
chère Mademoiselle,” and goes off down the hall
by the light of her last cigarette. Oh, we do have
good times!
I must tell you about the maids, for they
are no inconsiderable part of my days. There
are two femmes de chambre, both small, and
dark, and very young. I was reading in my
room one night after I had been here about a
week, when Mélanie came to turn down my bed.
I, thinking to turn my French on any victim,
started to ask her questions about where her
home was, etc. She told me that she and Maria
were both from the North—Pas-de-Calais—and
that they had had to come to Paris to work
after their husbands had been killed early in
the war.
“Husbands!” I said. “Don’t tell me you’re
married?”
“Mais si, Mademoiselle,—Maria has a little
boy and I have a little girl,—they’re both three
years old. They live with their grandmothers
back home. We can see them only once a year!”
I simply couldn’t believe it. Why, those two
are perfect kids themselves—little and rosy-cheeked,
scared to death of Mme. H——, but
often giggling apart in corners.
No one giggles, I can tell you, when you mention
the war, and it’s only because they’ve been
.pn +1
blessed with sunny natures that they can ever
seem light-hearted. Their children, being in
the war zone, seem a thousand miles away from
them, because, even if Mélanie and Maria could
afford the trip oftener, they couldn’t get the
military permit to go through more than once a
year. They can’t earn anything in the invaded
district, and Heaven knows Paris is the worst
place to move the whole family to, who are now
fairly well off in the country. So here they are,
Mélanie and Maria, working their legs off, doing
all the chamber work, waiting on table and odd
jobs for fourteen people—for the princely sum
of six dollars a month and tips. Louise, the cook,
is Mélanie’s aunt, a jolly soul, and one fine cook.
She lets me come into the kitchen any time, and
gives me a hot apple fritter or some grilled carrots.
I found it was customary to give ten francs
for the three maids to divide among them each
month—three francs apiece—sixty cents for a
month’s hard labor. I gave them twelve francs,
and they were tickled to death. Then through
the Vestiaire I got some warm things for Mélanie’s
and Maria’s children for Christmas—a
coat and dress for the little girl, and a doll and a
purse filled with chocolate money covered with
tinfoil (the kind Father used to enchant me with
in East Orange days—he’s had to keep
.pn +1
following it up, poor dear). Then for the little boy a
coat and tiny trousers and blouse and necktie,
and tin soldiers and candy. Louise has a little
niece to whom I sent a dress and a darling doll’s
tea-set—I used to have a set like it for my big
Jean. Well, I’m sure the kids were pleased, and
I know that the mothers have been beaming
ever since. Mélanie puts a hot-water bottle in
my bed every night now.
In the morning it is very dark, and I am correspondingly
sleepy. She knocks at my door and
says, “Sept heures et demie. Mademoiselle,—la
journée commence,” and I turn over and in
desperation sing (like Charles Woody), “Ferme
la fenêtre, pour l’amour de Dieu!” Then I get
up in the cold and light my candle—Madame
won’t turn on the electricity in the morning—and
the day does commence. At night the light
goes off at eleven, so I not only dress by yellow
candle-light, but write by it also—as I’m doing
now.
The coal situation is terrific. For the last few
days we’ve had no heat and no fires. It is just
like out-of-doors in my room, and I sit in my fur
coat and comforter all the time. It rains endlessly.
I never thought that depression from
mere weather could get me, but when you don’t
see the sun for four weeks, the grayness gets
.pn +1
inside of you. It gets dark at about half-past three
or quarter of four. The other day I was walking
down the Avenue de l’Opéra, and noticed that
it was ten minutes past four. There was another
clock beside the one I was looking at, which said
quarter past eleven—New York time. It gave
me a sort of a start, and I said right out loud,
“Not even hungry for lunch yet.”
.sp 2
.rj
December 26.
Great Heavens! I started this ten days ago,
and stopped because I had no more paper—now
it’s after Christmas, and I have so much
more to say, and so many, many things to thank
you all for. We were all electrified at Father’s
cable about the Ford. Did any girl ever have
such a good father! I will write him at once!
Then the “New Republic,” and Mother’s letter,
and yours. Please write me about the things
that you alone can tell me. Your letter was so
fine the way it referred to what I had said before,
and so gave me an idea what I had written and
what you had thought of it. I’m certain you
think I’m bad about writing—I will try to do
better.
My Christmas was a very pleasant one. On
Saturday the 23d I helped trim the tree and do
up packages at one of the smaller hospitals here.
.pn +1
It was Mrs. Lane who asked me to help, a charming
American woman whose husband is head of
the hospital. He had been called to the front by
the illness of their son, one of the American Ambulance
men near Verdun. Sunday night I went
to the tree celebration, and it was a great experience.
In the first place, the hospital is in an old
French private mansion—hôtel, as they call it—and
is quite a gorgeous place. What was
once the salon was filled with convalescents, all
well enough to be in uniform. At one end was
the tree, the stage, and a piano, and at the other
end we guests sat. All in between was a mass
of soldiers in Joffre blue, laughing and jostling
one another, expectant as children. There were
a few musical numbers, and then a playlet with
songs. I happened to be sitting by the mother of
the girl in the playlet, and we had a beautiful
time together. The girl was lovely, and how the
men clapped and cheered!
Then there were speeches, and the tree was
lighted. Before the presents were given out, the
“Marseillaise” was sung. I hadn’t heard any
singing here,—men together especially,—and
to see them all facing the tree with the light on
their faces, many of them pale, some bandaged,
singing with their whole hearts, it was too much
for me. Some had only one leg to stand on, and
.pn +1
had their arms around the next fellows’ necks,
some couldn’t see, and looked so alone. I
wouldn’t let any one see the tears in my eyes,
for tears seemed to be their last thought.
It was very gay when the bags were distributed.
Each man got some bonbons and some
trifle, and pieces of holly and mistletoe, and
there were snappers and caps, and things raffled
off, and more speeches. The evening ended with
“Vive la France!” and “Joyeux Noël,” and
again, “Vive la France!” I shall never forget it.
Love, and Happy New Year.
.rj
Esther.
.sp 4
.pn +1
.h2 id=linkVI
VI||FROM MARJORIE
.sp 2
.rj
73 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea (January 4, 1917).
Dearest Daddy:—
I have been having a delightful time—have
seen a good many of the sights, and have been
to the theater. The houses are pretty good, not
crammed, but better than the average house has
been in Boston for the last two years. The pit
is always full. The plays are frightfully long-drawn-out,
and I can’t help thinking all the time
that an American audience would never endure them,
but they are bright and beautifully
staged, which surprised me. We went to the
Battle of the Somme pictures, and enjoyed them
very much, if one can use the word “enjoy” for
such interesting but harrowing pictures. There
was a very small house, but they were charging
regular theater prices, and the pictures have
been here for a long time. The opera was good,
and was particularly interesting to us, for Mr.
Julius Harrison, who conducted, is a friend of
the Smiths. It did seem strange to me to have
them sing in English, and once in a while an
.pn +1
awful bit of Cockney would get in, such as in
“Cavalleria,” the fiery Alfio, in his rage at discovering
his wife’s infidelity, gave a wild leap
on the stage and shrieked, “It’s strienge, it’s
straeynge.” That is as near to the spelling as I
can get. There was a small but appreciative
audience, and again the pit was crammed full—Tommies
and their girls.
Chelsea is certainly much the most pleasant
part of London to live in if one is an ordinary
mortal—not a title, I mean. The houses have
lots of personality, and make me think of Beacon
Hill all the time. It is fun to compare them with
the Boston houses and see just what the Americans
have copied and what they ignored. I love
the plumbing here; it is so very informal—the
way it is all on the outside and usually down the
front of the houses. One bath to seven rooms is
the average, I gather. And that one bath is
usually in the end of a hallway, or in a closet.
The weather is behaving in a true London
fashion—was at first foggy, as I told you, and
now is absurdly warm. I have not suffered from
the cold, therefore, so far, and am waiting for
my trials to begin in Paris along that line. I
have been so lucky this far on my trip that
I suppose something awful will soon happen to
me, but I can look back to these weeks of
.pn +1
comfort and good food when I starve on the Channel
ship!
You will be disappointed to know that they
have not done away with the dogs here, and
that there are quantities of them everywhere!
There is a dear little puppy in this household,
which makes me think of how you would enjoy
her, if only you were here.
I have so far had no difficulty in arranging
affairs, and now with Dr. Page behind me, I
think I shall be in Paris soon. I have found my
various letters and papers valuable, and have
been impressed with the courteous efficient officers
I have met. I can very well see, though,
that it would be impossible to get anywhere unless
one knew exactly what one wanted to do,
and where one was going, and had good evidence
to back up one’s statement.
.nf r 0
Your loving daughter,
Marje.
.nf-
.sp 4
.pn +1
.h2 id=linkVII
VII||FROM ESTHER
.sp 2
.rj
Paris, January 24, 1917.
Dearest Father:—
I dashed off a few words to you almost in my
sleep the other night to be sure of having something
on the Espagne. Sometimes I don’t feel
like getting out a bolt of wrapping-paper and
beginning at the extreme end, and that was one
of the times. I did manage to jot down a few
theme sentences, however, and now I will proceed
to talk.
To say that we are overjoyed with the Ford
is to put it mildly! It is the ideal car and body
for our purposes and we all feel much indebted
to you, Father dear, and to Mr. Migel. Two
perfectly lovely letters are on their way to him
from Mrs. Shurtleff and me respectively. Mrs.
Shurtleff would like to know the name of the
dealer who gave the thirty-three dollars discount,
to write him a note also. As for lettering,
we shall have time to think of the flourishes
when the car arrives. I am glad you didn’t
bother about it as Mrs. Shurtleff wants to have
.pn +1
an American flag underneath the name to let
the French people see that it is an American
work.
The American mail has just come, and such a
dandy lot has come my way! I am sorry you
have worried about the box sent November
15th; I acknowledged it last time, but I will say
again how much appreciated everything was.
The December 9th one came Thursday January
18th, which was very quick, as we count on
six weeks for cases. I was as excited as a colt
and went at it with hammer and tongs—in this
case an old rusty axe and a pair of pinchers—and
pulled forth joyfully the shirts, coats, and
all the things. Certainly Mother does send jim-dandy
things. I shed a few sentimental tears on
the name-tag on Mr. Hathaway’s coat and more
tears when I didn’t find my Oxford book or
any peanut brittle! But the box did contribute
something to me personally which was of the
greatest value, which will appear later in my
narrative.
It is touching to hear the refugees tell what
they have tried to save from their old homes. If
they have been driven to Paris by bombardment
they have perhaps been able to save a
couple of mattresses (so handy to travel with) or
some blankets; but for the ones who have been
.pn +1
in the invaded country and have only recently
been repatriated by the Germans, they rarely
arrive here with anything but the clothes on
their backs. The trip is eventful enough, usually,
in trying merely to keep life going without juggling
with furniture and extra clothes. They
are sent from Northern France into Germany
through Switzerland to Southern France and
thence up to Paris. The traveling is not de luxe
as you may imagine and takes many hours—days
even. To get a vivid idea of the journey
you should have it described by an old dame
of seventy summers who has never set foot out
of her native village before. She will sit with
ten or twenty knitting needles flashing in her
lap, her white cap tied neatly under her chin
and rattle on in toothless but fluent patois reciting
a series of experiences that you wonder
she could ever have survived. Perhaps you
can picture for yourself the effect of taking any
old country woman that we know through the
Dolomites under a hostile guard.
Highest praises are always given to the Swiss.
They have given warm clothes, warm food, and
a warm welcome to countless refugees that I
have talked to.
What you say about the feeling in America,
that France at the end of the war will be safe
.pn +1
from the encroachment of other nations for
generations, sounds encouraging, but does that
imply that the end of the war is a long way off?
I have been astonished ever since coming to
France to find the general expectation is for
an early termination of hostilities—very early,
this spring or next fall at the latest. My opinion
was formed almost entirely by the “New
Republic” and the Frank H. Simonds articles
in the “Atlantic” and in the “Tribune,” so that
I considered the fall of 1918 to be the most
logical time to hope for the end. What the
Allies have to do seems still well-nigh insurmountable,
but to my surprise, young and old,
rich or poor, wise or foolish, seem sure that
1917 is, indeed, l’année de la victoire et de la
paix. I can’t tell whether it is because they
wish it so hard or because to people who have
seen and are living among the results of such
tremendous desolation, it seems impossible for
it to go on longer.
Please send more “New York Tribunes.”
You have no idea how they are appreciated by
all of us. I took the ones Mother sent over to
the Shurtleffs, then over to Mrs. Houpt’s, then
up to Miss Dorr’s when I went to tea one afternoon,
and when I asked some people in they
were the features of my party. The W. E. Hill
.pn +1
drawing of “scenes in the hat department”
brought down the house.
We haven’t seen such good war pictures over
here at all, and the pictures of the stage and
society and art exhibitions, etc., are fascinating.
It is wonderful to know that such things are going
on. Then for news, the regular “Tribune”
was gobbled up. We have only these punk
French papers and the punker “New York
Paris Herald,” which costs three cents and consists
of one sheet of four pages—of nothing.
We read, “Quiet night on the front”; “Wilson
presses investigation of ——, may write note to
Germany”; and accounts of the London dog
shows morning after morning. Take pity. And
especially the magazine sections of the “Sunday
Tribune,” and more stuff by Hill!
Now for my Hymn of Hate which is in this
case a Hymn of Heat. I am cold. This is a
theme which has been elaborated in every degree
of variation, and amplification since December
23, 1916, I think. I wrote you about
that time that our steam heating had died suddenly
and ingloriously, so it was with relief that
I read in your letters of this morning no trace
of worry about how I was managing to exist. All
the old wiseacres that I meet, and this includes
Mrs. Shurtleff, shake their heads and say, “If your
.pn +1
father and mother knew how you were living,
what would they say?” and I think to myself,
“They would probably think it was jolly well
good for me—and that it was a terrific joke.”
As I said, the Chauffage Central didn’t
marché on December 23, and hadn’t marché-d
since. The proprietor says he can’t get any coal,
and this may be true enough, for the Seine has
been rising and rising, and a few days ago was
higher than at any time since the floods of '08.
Great quantities of coal are at Rouen, but the
transports can’t get under the bridges to bring
it to Paris, with the river so high. It seems that
almost every one’s proprietor was far-seeing
enough to get in a huge supply last summer, but
ours was probably strolling along some sunny
beach and never gave the question a thought.
To-day Mme. H—— heard that he has been
laying in coal at his residence this last week, and
still won’t provide for us. The only indemnity
he can be made to give is five francs a day per
apartment, and it costs about two francs per
room a day to keep heated by coal or wood.
The five francs pays to keep alive the stove that
Madame has had put in the dining-room and
for the extra gas she uses in cooking.
And where do we come in, we pensionnaires?
We buy our own coal or wood or petrol stove,
.pn +1
as the case may be, and it’s very hard on some
of us, particularly Mlle. Germain. And on top
of all this, we freeze.
I thought at first that it would be lovely to
have a darling little fire every night, and I never
thought what it would be to get hold of darling
little logs and then make them burn. For a week
or two it was more or less fun and very war-y,
but the drawbacks begin to pall after weeks.
You see the fireplace is only nineteen inches
wide (I measured it with the little blue tape
measure Mother gave me), and the logs I burn
are about twelve inches long. So at best the heat
penetrates to a maximum distance of five feet.
And finally the logs they send me are wet—and
you can’t get kindling. If you could imagine
the amount of time I have spent kneeling in my
fur coat before the miniature fireplace trying to
light a couple of wet logs with an old copy of the
“Herald,” you would certainly smile. Here’s
where the cases from home came in strong. Our
good helper Agatha and I split them into kindling
and made two bundles and I carried them
home. It is typical of the Latin Quarter that no
one gave me a second glance as I strode along
the street with a big bundle of wood on each
shoulder. They burned as nothing ever has
burned in my sight before. I told Mrs. Shurtleff
.pn +1
that I was going to write next for a case of
kindling from America!
Fortunately it is not as cold here as it is
in New York, although this confounded thermometer
means so little to me that I can’t tell
you just what it is. Some days it’s zero, others
it’s 2, and in the house it’s 5 or 7, and it feels
just as cold as that would be on good old Fahrenheit.
It’s just as cozy to live in my room
these days as it would be to live in a tent out on
Place Denfert-Rochereau. I can see my breath
if I care to look, but I’m tired of it as we
approach the fifth week. I wear my fur coat
most of the time and sometimes my hat, and
settle down on a hassock in front of whatever
fire there is, to read. I have tried wearing gloves,
but the pages stick so that I lose in temper what
I make up for in warmth. To play my piano is
like playing on icicles. But I play just the same
and then go into the kitchen to warm my hands.
I have Louise put some of my wet logs on the
back of the stove when she has been cooking and
it has dried them out fairly successfully.
You can imagine what getting up in the
morning is like. If it weren’t immodest I’d
like to dress out on my balcony, for I think
the temperature would be an improvement. The
very walls of the room are cold, they haven’t
.pn +1
been heated for so long. And as for touching
the bare floor or a door-handle! Really, had I
the tongue of Greeks or Jews or possibly Siberians
or Esquimaux I would describe our home
atmosphere, which makes itself felt as it whistles
under the doors and around the windows—but
not unless. But I wouldn’t think of moving
even if I knew of any warm place to go. The
people are just like a big family and I’ll never
desert Mme. H. —— Micawber. It will be lovely
in the spring.
And after all I love my little fire “that goes
in and out with me.” And I feel so settled here.
I never wake up in the morning any more and
say like the bewildered little darky, “Whar
me!” and when I open the front door at night
I feel that I never really belonged anywhere
else.
What I look forward to all day is getting into
bed at night. I slide in between the icy sheets and
find the tin bed-warmer that Olive gave me, and
then way down at the bottom a hot, squashy,
hot-water bag. I tuck the comforter in tight,
and pull my fur coat up over my head and stay
there suffocated until I’m sure my nose is warm
enough not to keep me awake, then I uncover
cautiously and slowly go off to sleep. When once
asleep nothing could wake me up—not the
.pn +1
Allies victorious or the Heavenly trump. But
before I go to sleep I have a fine chance to think
over happy things of the past and I do love it. I
think of what fun we used to have at Northampton,
especially those two years at the Lodge.
It seems too wonderful to be true now, to think
of living not merely with people who were girls
your own age and spoke English, but your very
own best friends that you would pick out from
all the world. All living together under one
roof!
When it was cold like this there was skating
on Paradise, and after giving three looks at our
history in the evening, a bunch of us would go
down to the boat-house and put on our skates
and go out and skate by the electric light and
moonlight combined. Then when we were frozen,
we’d come in and warm ourselves by the
huge fireplace, leave our skates, and go down
town to Kingsley’s for some hot chocolate and
whipped cream. When the moon shone full
on the white snow it gave the luster of midday
all right. I can just hear how our footsteps
crunched and the snow squeaked, it was so cold.
As we’d be drinking our chocolate some one
would look down the street at the town clock
and cry, “It’s quarter of ten!!” and we’d dash
out of the place and run like mad up Main
.pn +1
Street, turn to the left at the watering-trough,
up West Street, down Arnold Avenue, and
pound up the kitchen steps of the Lodge.
Usually we got there just as the college clock
was striking ten. We’d fly up the back stairs
and undress in the dark and jump into bed.
“Nothing on our minds but our hair!” It seems
so long ago.
This letter is going very slowly, I’m afraid.
If I could only write with my left hand, it
wouldn’t be so bad, but I have to keep stopping
to put my right on the hot-water bag to keep
my fingers going. They look like carrots, anyway.
Please tell Aunt Esther that I have become
a mad devotee of hot water as a beverage. This
ought to put new life into her, for I have always
felt that she never quite recovered from the obstinate
way I used to take the pitcher of hot
water, regularly delivered to me on a tray
flanked conspicuously with a cup and saucer,
dump the contents into the bowl and bathe
comfortably and leisurely. This at the age of
eight. Now all is changed. I drink what is
brought piping hot for me to use to bathe in,
and bathe in the dispirited contents of my night-blooming
hot-water bag. Such is age—and
Paris.
Now the results of this constant warfare
.pn +1
between man and the elements are twofold. I first
might say that my flesh is brilliantly branded
by the various applications, too arduously embraced,
so that it looks as though giant postage
stamps had been applied promiscuously over my
huge gaunt frame. Secondly, I am a bit done
up. With my room fairly uninhabitable it has
been against nature to refuse as many of the
cordial (and warm) invitations that have been
given me as would have been consistent with
wisdom—certainly ag’in’ my nature, and I have
tired myself with trotting back and forth from
one fireside to another on top of the new forms
of work that I have been adapting myself to. I
have gone out a great deal to tea, and sometimes
in the evening, too, and haven’t rested
very much. Yet it’s little comfort to come home
and rest when you’re shivering!
However, I’m not a bit discouraged about
anything—one must find out one’s strength
somehow—and please don’t worry. By the
time you get this I shall probably be blooming.
I heard “Faust,” with Mary Aiken and her
mother a week ago Saturday—the only time
since Mother took Olive and Franklin and me
eleven years ago, when it was my first opera. It
was glorious! I seemed to know it all and what
I didn’t know was lovely too. We had dandy
.pn +1
seats in the parterre—only seven francs seventy
centimes, the seventy centimes being a tax
for the poor, imposed on all theater and opera
seats. Do you remember when we used to struggle
and squeak through “Anges purs, anges radieux”?—where
it goes up a key each time? I
find myself singing, “Salut, demeure chaste et
pure,” as I turn my chilled footsteps toward
Place Denfert-Rochereau sometimes—so chaste
and pure that there is no sybaritic allurement
even in the fireplace.
I must tell you how wonderful that child Gile
Davies has been to me. Every week since I’ve
been gone I’ve had a note, sometimes a long
letter from her; and not a word did I write until
Christmas-time. To cap the climax, I received a
package a day or two ago—a Christmas present.
It was a baby blue satin handkerchief bag
that she had made herself, with a handkerchief
and a sachet inside. It seemed great to see anything
so pretty and useless after so many flannel
waists and boots and trousers and all the homely
things that are so indispensable. In the bottom
of the box was the most precious of all—an
enlargement of the picture Martha took of Gile
one morning when she was putting up the flag
at Bailey’s—Gile in a middy blouse with the
sun full on her, just turning to smile as she’s
.pn +1
pulling the ropes; and Harpswell and the Sound
in the distance.
When I found that, on top of the handkerchief
and the sachet, I just opened the bag and risked
all the blue satin lining by crying into it. Oh, I
never saw anything look so sweet.
I think I was even gladder about what you
wrote of wearing my circle scarf-pin for my sake,
than about the Ford; though maybe it’s wicked.
I can forgive with abandon, and picture with
tenderness the cruel and unusual neckties in
which it probably nestles. My one fear is that
you may waste too much affection on me when
I’m away, thinking that I have changed. I
haven’t at all, malheureusement. It’s just that
blessings apparently seem to brighten immediately
after taking flight. I never do anything
wonderful at all. I sometimes get tired clear
through and wish there were some one to manage
things for me—some one to take me out—some
one else to buy the tickets—some one else
to order the taxi—some one else to decide what
to do. I just long to get all dressed up and go
out somewhere and see people in evening clothes.
Sometimes I feel that I’d rather put on a pair
of long white gloves than put off the old man!
You can see from that.
Remember that if I’m your little tin-god-on-wheels,
.pn +1
you’re mine, and I think of you
every day, no matter what I’m doing, and send
you oceans of love, not only for all your kindness
to me and others, but because I love you,
anyway.
.nf r 0
Good-night to you all,
Esther.
.nf-
Dear Father, don’t worry, I’m going to get a
stove.
.sp 4
.pn +1
.h2 id=linkVIII
VIII||FROM MARJORIE
.sp 2
.nf r 0
Villa des Dames,
79 rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, Paris.
(January 25, 1917.)
.nf-
Dear Daddy:—
Well, the impossible has happened! I am
plunged into reckless expense after having restrained
myself for over a week. Yesterday
afternoon I came back from the Vestiaire with
a great deal of typewriting to do. I found my
room a little colder than usual,—which was too
much,—so I just sailed downstairs and demanded
a fire! Such excitement you never saw.
The head of the hôtel and his wife both came
tearing up and wanted to know if “Mademoiselle
was cold”—with the marvelous steam
heat going full tilt(!). I said yes, I was cold, and
that I must have a fire at once—so I got it.
They were most apologetic because it had to be
a wood fire—but I was delighted. I then lit
my candles—ordered tea, and after getting all
warm inside, just sat down and toasted myself!
You don’t know, you can’t possibly imagine, the
divine joy I got from that little fire of only two
.pn +1
pieces of wood at a time! I did not tell Miss W.
that I had it for a while, because I wanted to enjoy
it all by myself. When I did tell her, she was
as thrilled as I was, and we two just sat over it
and nursed it all afternoon and evening! I do
not know how much it cost me,—I didn’t dare
ask,—but I do know that for the first time
since I left my room in the Belmont I have been
truly so warm that I am comfortable! I have
had it again this afternoon, and am now sitting
by its dying embers before I go to bed. Miss W.
is sitting opposite me reading. We are both—wonder
of wonders—sweaterless. You do not
know what all this means, but I can assure you
after I worked in two sweaters and a coat, with
my fur coat around my knees, and stopping to
blow on my fingers every few minutes, I decided
that it was plain silly, and that I would move my
table, which was put in the fireplace,—to suggest,
as it were, that there is now no need of a
fire,—and investigate the chimney. I was so
pleased to find that it is a peach of a one, and
draws beautifully. By strict economy I have
only used one basket of wood in the two days,
and that cannot be very, very extravagant.
Also I am going out to buy my own wood tomorrow,
and bring it home under my arm, for I
know it will be less than what they will charge
.pn +1
me here,—so picture me as wandering through
the streets with a load of wood under my arm in
true Parisian fashion! But also picture my once
barely livable room turned into a positive hot-bed—it
must be 68° in here, I am sure! I may
have to give up going in the underground and
have to walk everywhere,—it will be so expensive,—but
I will always from now on have a
warm room to work and rest in! You are probably
saying, “What a lot of fuss over a fire,” but
you do not know how I have been trying to figure
out just how much I could stand and how
much I could not. I do not mind working at the
Vestiaire in the cold, for I am always active; but
I have got to have it decently warm when I sit
and type for three hours at a time, and I am
so thrilled to find that this comparatively small
fireplace has such very excellent effects.
I can tell you little Marje is so grateful to
Sears-Roebuck Company that she is seriously
considering putting them in her prayers! I sleep
under Sears-Roebuck blankets, wear their flannel
nighties and underclothes, and use their pen,
paper, and pins! The French idea of blankets
seems to be something as heavy as possible, with
the least possible warmth in it!
Miss W. says that I am to tell you that I already
look better than when I first came. I have
.pn +1
a wonderful appetite, and only hope that I will
not by any unfortunate chance grow out of any
of my warm things!
When I get home I expect to put your Miss K.
out of the office, I am becoming such an expert
typist! It is rather amusing to come way over
here and type so much, but just now that and
“visiting” is what they need most. I expect to
work after a time on the tuberculosis cases under
a very nice elderly gentleman whose name I cannot
remember, and also to drive the auto a good
deal. Esther Root, one of the workers, has just
had a car (Ford, of course) sent to her by her
father, and when it arrives we are going to Bordeaux
to drive it up here. Won’t that be great?
We hope it will get here soon, for we need it
frightfully. There is so much to be carried
around—furniture and such—when we move
a family, which we do quite often.
Oh, I do hope that Mother is not going to
worry too much about me, now that I am at last
in such good hands. I never saw a much nicer,
kinder, more thoughtful set of workers. Now
that I shall be warm, and I am very well fed, indeed,
I am as happy as can be. I think that I
shall work in to be fairly useful after a time.
We keep hearing rumors of sugar-cards, no
more bakeries open, and all sorts of things. I
.pn +1
shall be interested to see if the new laws really
come into effect the first of February. Even if
they do, I do not believe that it will affect us
very much. As usual, the poorer people will
have the hardest part of it to bear.
The more I see of Dr. and Mrs. Shurtleff, the
more I like them; they are so simple. It is quite
wonderful to me to see how this work of Mrs.
Shurtleff’s has grown up. The whole institution
is run very smoothly and very thoroughly. She
takes it all very calmly and keeps it all in hand
without giving the appearance of being what
you would call a “business woman.” She always
has time to be more than polite and kind. She
takes the trouble to drop in to see me, for instance,
when I know perfectly well how busy she
is. She writes the greater part of the “thank-you”
letters herself, and that alone is a terrific
job. She is almost an exact opposite to Mrs. ——,
and yet it is wonderful to see how she has kept
this work up to standard and how she has enlarged
it, and is every day, almost, enlarging.
Since I have come, for instance, she has started
a grocery store department, and the special
tubercular department. Altogether I am thoroughly
enjoying “watching the wheels go
round,” and I think I shall be able to do my bit
towards pushing. I do not see how I could have
found a pleasanter, more fitting job for a girl of
my age.
.il id=i04 fn=i080.jpg link=i080.jpg w=425px
.ca Dr. and Mrs. Shurtleff in the Office
.pn +1
Until I got warmed up yesterday, I had
the keenest sympathy with one “Sam McGee”
in one of Robert Service’s poems,—who, you
probably remember, never was warm until he
finally sat in his “crematorium”!
I must stop now. I hope that you have been
able to read this. I used a pen to-night because
I have typed so much all day I was tired
of it! Lots and lots of love from your daughter
.rj
Marje.
.sp 4
.pn +1
.h2 id=linkIX
IX||FROM MARJORIE
.sp 2
.nf r 0
Villa des Dames,
79 rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, Paris.
(February 4, 1917.)
.nf-
Dearest Family:—
Oh, Mother and Daddy, this work here is so
interesting. Now that I have settled down to it
more, and can see what I am doing and where it
all leads to, I am very, very interested. I think
that I shall be useful, too. My typewriter hasn’t
stopped clicking for many hours since I came.
It is now being adjusted over Sunday, and they
are going to give me a price on having the
French accents put on it. I tried to exchange
it for a French keyboard one, same machine,
Corona, of course, but find it would cost twenty
dollars, which is an absurd price, I think. Of
course, they are selling so many here, they can
ask what they want. However, I jollied the lady
a good deal, and she is going to see how much it
would cost to add the accents only to mine,—for
you see it takes a lot of extra, and just now
pretty valuable, time, to go back over every
page and put on the accents. If they give me a
.pn +1
good price, I think I shall do it out of the money
Mr. M. gave me.
I have been put in entire charge of the mail
now, and, therefore, I try to get to the Vestiaire
by twenty minutes to nine, which gives me
twenty minutes free all to myself to get the
letters opened at least, and somewhat sorted. I
am becoming a regular Sherlock Holmes when
it comes to guessing at names, addresses, and
whether the letters are from soldiers’ wives, cultivated
persons, or the regular appeals! After I
sort them, I head them with the last name, the
address, and the arrondissement, and then file
what I can, and deliver the rest to the various
workers who are by this time assembling, and,
as I have chosen the mantelpiece for my desk,
pro tem., I find every one gathers towards the
fire, which saves me lots of time! Because I am
new, and the streets are so very peculiar to me
still, and it takes longer to look over a French
letter than it would an English one, I do not get
ready for calling until about 9.45. Then I get
off, the others having paired off and started soon
after 9.10. Call all morning, but usually only
three visits, for it takes time to get all the details
we want, and, as it is really pretty much up to
the visitor and her report as to what the conference
votes Saturday, we don’t hurry, but try
.pn +1
to give them each their due, as it were. When I
was home, of course, I thought that I knew what
the war over here meant, but now I am beginning
to realize that if I stayed here the rest of my life
(which I hope I will not have to do, even with
the new international complications), I would
find new horrors, new complications and results
every day. Of course, the object of our visiting
is to determine whether the family deserves
what it has asked for, and also to decide if they
deserve what we can do, but they never dream
of asking us to move them. Of course, the greatest
difference between our work here and the
ordinary visiting done by social service workers
at home, is that usually the people at home
have brought their present condition of misery
on themselves in one way or another, while these
poor souls over here have not. They have had
homes, gardens, rabbits, and savings, which they
tell you about as a rule with pleasure, and not
emotionally. (That is one thing, these people
have suffered so they do not weep any more.)
These people used to help others a little, and
were driven out in various horrible and less
horrible ways,—marching for days on foot, a
whole family, old and young, and not able to
save anything, and some families separated forever,
perhaps by the blowing up of a bridge
.pn +1
behind them to keep back the “Boches.” We
have one family who got across a bridge just in
time. The mother and two youngest children
they saw on the other side before the bridge was
blown up, and they have never heard of or from
them since. Then the days of walking, sleeping
in caves, sometimes for weeks, eating only when
chance put food in their ways; women having
their babies born in straw in cellars under bombardment,
and the children surviving, sometimes.
Then after weeks of this, they arrive here, for it
is certainly true of Paris as of Rome, that “all
roads lead to Rome,” to find that they being
refugees must pay rent. No one wants to take
them in when they have many children. The
Government is wonderful the way it does give
its “allocation” to them. The Mairies give
coal once a month and potatoes twice; and
the schools give sabots or jalottes every three
months. But even with this, it is hard, after
having had a “home,” to live in hôtels all in one
room, or two at the most (and these people that
were a pretty good class of persons formerly).
I don’t know whether their mental as well as
physical suffering is more pitiful than those
common miners’ families, refugees who always
lived a squalid life, but whose actual physical
misery is usually worse than the first class.
.pn +1
Of course, the Parisians have a certain definite
advantage right from the first, because, according
to law, they do not have to pay rent; that is,
none who have a member at the front, and goodness
knows that includes all Parisiennes, at any
rate. This law does not refer to refugees, so you
see it makes a good big difference in the comparative
cost of living.
I suppose that it must be the Rockefeller
Foundation that gives so many of these people
from the “pays envahis” such excellent aid if
they pass through Switzerland. We hear over
and over again that in “Suisse on est bien
traité.”
Just at present, things are very busy here, for
Mrs. Shurtleff is opening two new départements,—grocery
and tuberculosis. The former will be
invaluable, for so many of the people are sick
through lack of proper food; and, after all, with
one franc twenty-five centimes a day allocation
for the wife or mother, and seventy-five centimes
per day for the children under sixteen
years, and only fifty centimes per kid if there
is no member at the front, with the average
family now, with the very varying rent, sometimes
very high and other times comparatively
low, it is, even with a small supply of coal and
potatoes (erratically given, for the most part),
.pn +1
hard for a family that is run down, after the
exposures and general strain of their flight, to
have enough money left, when they have paid
their rent, to buy very nourishing and very much
food. It is most interesting to find every day
new twists and turns as to what the different Comités
and Mairies will and will not do. They
are cutting down on everything as much as they
can, and you can hardly blame them. But the
inconsistencies are amusing at times;—one
family does not get its “allocation de réfugié,”
generally known as “chaumage” (differing from
“allocation militaire” in that it is given, although
there is no member of the family at the front), because
they have only four children! Yet if there
were five children or more, they would receive
only four pairs of shoes from the schools every
three months, so whatever you have in the way
of a family is a drawback; but if you have no
children at all, you are worse off than ever!!
In one way the poor children are better off,
from my way of thinking, in one detail,—the
poorer they are the heavier stockings they wear,
and as they grow richer, the stockings become
less and less, until the really rich, swell, Commonwealth-Avenue
children go about with
socks and purple knees!
We each of us have our “pet families” whom
.pn +1
we want to do little extra things for, and I
have already acquired one family—a very extra
special, nice, self-respecting one, who won me
among other things by telling me she opened the
window in her room twice a day to change the
air!—an absolutely unheard-of thing in this
land! The woman has three dear little children,
two who go to school and a lovely little baby.
They are all so clean, and the tiny room is spotless.
The eldest boy is now sixteen, and has just
been operated on for appendicitis, and has gone
to some friends in the country to rest after the
operation. The mother and three children spent
a month in caves before she came here. The
father is at the front, of course,—is a wirelayer
for telephone and telegraph service. He
does lookout work, sitting in tree-tops with spyglasses
and hoisted on top of poles to try to discover
the enemy’s guns and positions,—all of
which is very dangerous work. Enough of all
this;—I did not realize how I had rambled on.
I want you and Daddy to know that I have
been writing so hard that I never heard the
luncheon bell at all!! I am now eating my various
kinds of crackers with one hand, while I
finish this with the other! I shall have a splendid
excuse to have a very plentiful tea this afternoon,
which will be very nice. I can tell you I think
.pn +1
that I could stand a several days’ siege with my
well-stocked wardrobe.
Lots and lots of love to all the family from
your very happy and busy daughter,
.rj
Marje.
This letter, although probably late, brings
many, many happy returns of the day to you,
Mother dear.
P.S. Having re-read this letter, I have to
apologize for the writing. I am terribly sorry it
is so messy. I guess I got excited and tried to go
as fast as the typewriter does!
.sp 4
.pn +1
.h2 id=linkX
X||FROM ESTHER
.sp 2
.rj
On train from Pau, Saturday, February 24, 1917.
Dearest Father:—
A telegram came to me a week ago, just as I
was about to return to Paris, telling me that the
Ford had arrived at Bordeaux and to stay in
Pau until further notice. So I have been put in
Pau since then, having one more extra week. It
has been glorious.
But nothing so glorious as the news that our
darling Ford is on French soil—or in French
docks or wherever it is. A letter from Mrs.
Shurtleff unfolds this plan for me to meet her
and Marjorie Crocker in Bordeaux and drive the
car up to Paris. Our road lies straight through
the château country. With weather and reasonable
luck with the car we ought to manage to
get some fun out of it. Mrs. Shurtleff and Marjorie
would be my choice of companions, and the
heart of France with a long straight road my
choice of place.
My “permis de conduire” hangs in mid-air.
No word has been said of it, but I know I must
.pn +1
have one. The more I concentrate on the genus
Ford, the less I can remember about it; and
to start off with an air in a new car and in a
strange city will be a sensation, at least. However,
I’ll do anything once. The last time I
drove a car was when I took Mrs. Perkins for
a national excursion down the sylvan ways of
Connecticut. I hardly expected then to have
as my next passenger a frowning French prefect
of police through the heart of Bordeaux. We
shall see.
Yesterday afternoon is one of the pleasantest
that I have to look back on in adorable Pau.
Sudden inspiration seized me in the early afternoon
and I bought a sketch-book. Possibly
Harold’s charming drawings, made in the country
and at the front, planted ambitions in my unaspiring
pencil that I had hitherto ignored. Anyway,
I bought a businesslike appareil and wandered
around the château seeking the most
appealing detail. I chose my point of attack and
settled myself down on the curbstone with my
muff as a cushion. A few yards away a real
artist was working, with stool, easel, board, and
other paraphernalia. I could almost hear his
brush scratch the canvas and feel his withering
eye on my back. Undismayed, I maintained my
lowly position and scratched on for my own
.pn +1
part with unabashed enjoyment. The afternoon
sun gave long shadows and “touched the Sultan’s
turret with a shaft of light.” It was
magical.
I had almost finished when some boys came
running out to play. They were little chaps in
the inevitable black aprons, and on their heads
the round sailor tams topped by a rosette. Some
clustered around the artist, the rest looked over
my shoulder. They began to take sides. “Pas
mal çà,” said one sitting on the curb beside me.
“L’autre est mieux,” genially put in another.
At that several champions sprang magnanimously
forward—I say magnanimously, for
really my efforts weren’t too successful. Age
and weather and the piecemeal way in which
the château was built have given it that irregularity
which is charming. The towers tilt and
the roofs sag in a way to make Bob’s architectural
soul recoil; but I have rendered these with
such unstinted charm that in general perspective
the château seems to have aged several centuries.
One rosy eight-year-old shook his head and declared
vehemently: “Je mettrais quinze jours
â faire un tel dessein!” I asked him if they
taught drawing in school. It seems that every
Tuesday and Friday “one” draws pitchers and
cups and casseroles and that day the whole class
.pn +1
had drawn his whistle. One day they draw the
map of États-Unis. “Oh,” I said, “c’est de là
que je viens, moi.”
Then began a thousand questions, and I related
what wonders I could, for joy to see the
many eyes grow rounder and rounder. There are
buildings in New York—I told them—there
were buildings in New York ten times as high as
the château. “Pas possible!” was the general
verdict. My eight-year-old pushed his way out
of the crowd and ran to the corner of the street.
“Dis donc, Julien!” he called out, “viens ici,
écouter ce qu’il y a aux États-Unis!” Another
boy came running from the house and joined
him, and I saw him out of the corner of my eye,
pointing out the tower of the château with astounding
comments. I went on describing the
elevators in the high buildings and how fast they
went. But they had never seen an elevator. He
who has missed a French elevator cannot complain
of any great lack, but it certainly does
heighten the difficulty of fifty-eight stories. I
had finished. My pals started to go off, lured on
by some one’s “prelotte” (hop-scotch stone). I
said, “Vous pouvez dire hop-scotch?” They all
tried in different tones and tempos—and it was
drôle comme tout. We all burst out laughing
and I started on my way. “'Voir, Mam’selle,”
.pn +1
they called after me, lifting their “bonnets” and
waving. I walked home smiling.
What I should have missed if the sketch-book
hadn’t inspired me—or if French were an unknown
tongue—or if you hadn’t let me come
to France!
You have doubtless known and detested hotel
children—the spoiled darlings of elevator boys
and hotel habitués; so you will be grieved to
know that you have raised one. At my time of
life—it is only a second childhood, I know; but
this month at Pau has given me a luscious taste
of being petted. The Hôtel de Londres is small
and English. Every one greets every one else in
the dining-room, every one shares in hotel newspapers,
and every one promenades on the boulevard.
Getting acquainted is easy and interesting,
but for my first two weeks I did nothing but
sleep and read. My third week was the week
that Harold and the boys left, and as they didn’t
get their definite orders until Saturday, we had
to say farewell nearly every day.
This week has been my week of expecting a
telegram, so I have steadily made the best of the
last moment, and really feel that some of those
wonderful English people are my friends.
Mr. and Mrs. Moody are my favorites. She is
tall and majestic and her face is a mass of little
.pn +1
wrinkles like the ripples when you drop a pebble
in a pool. Mr. Moody is little and bald and
white-haired and coughing, and must always
have his rug. He has explained the Crimean
War to me from A to Izzard and traced a genealogy
of the French kings by memory.
Then there’s Mr. Heyworth, a sort of a William
Gillette man from India, who was torpedoed
on the Arabic; a young French aviator and
his wife, very good-looking both of them; and a
Russian lady who in a desperation of loneliness
took a great shine to me, which I successfully
counteracted by having her teach me the Russian
alphabet. Last of all, there was a little
French girl,—Bernadotte,—whose mother, an
American, died three weeks ago, and whose
father is at the front. If she had had any less
than two governesses to keep her away from
people, I shouldn’t have had a show as the
hotel baby.
Well, we played bridge and walked and took
tea and went driving and had a splendid time.
Aunt Ella studies all morning, never takes tea,
and goes to bed early, so that I have been a great
deal with these other people. Mr. Moody called
me “m’dear” and patted my hand, and Mrs.
Moody teased me in the most tremendously
ladylike way, and we had a splendid time. When
.pn +1
my telegram finally came, it seemed very sudden;
and they were no end nice about my going.
Mrs. Moody said how much she would miss the
Donna of the next room. (We had become acquainted
by my hearing them gargle and their
hearing me laughing over my letters from home,
and singing “La Donna e Mobile” to myself.)
One day I called Mr. Moody’s attention to the
fact that I had changed my time of departure.
He said, “Quite in keeping, my dear. La Donna
e Mobile!” As I was finally going, he, in the
sweetest way and the most English English,
quoted what Boswell said when he heard of
Johnson’s death. “The gayety of nations is
eclipsed,” and said that he hoped to encounter
the gayety in Paris. I said that I hated to go,
but,—and here, Plagiarism, gentle presence!
lit on my brow,—“This Donna likes to be en
automobile.” It proved to be a wonderful exit
speech.
Even Teresa said she regretted my going,
“On s’amuse bien quand M’lle est là,” and
when I said, “Hasta luego!” she answered feelingly,
“Hasta luego!”—perhaps our most
felicitous Spanish conversation.
It has been more than I had dreamed, this
stay in Pau. The mountains, the country, the
aviation, and the people. I tried to repay the
.pn +1
kindness that was shown me, and I realize that
young people and happy people are scarce now,
so that any one of my age and spirits would have
had as cordial a reception. Those older folk
were lonely and I was different, that’s all. C’est
la guerre.
We are passing through lovely country. It is
sunset-time and the shepherd boys are driving
home their sheep in an orange haze. The man
opposite us looks like the villain in the play—black
mustache, derby well over the eyes, black
velvet brocaded waistcoat, and gold ball cuff-buttons.
I expected him to draw a Smith &
Wesson on me a short time ago, but it was three
pills (like shoe-buttons) that he had. He gulped
them down and is now sleeping innocuously like
a baby of two.
My writing is only a trifle less awful than the
roadbed—Bordeaux!
.nf r 0
Love.
Esther.
.nf-
.sp 4
.pn +1
.h2 id=linkXI
XI||FROM ESTHER
.sp 2
.rj
Paris, March, 1917.
Dearest Father:—
I have never told you enough about our trip
up from Bordeaux, and so many things happened
that were interesting and the effects of
the trip have been so lasting that I want very
much to put you au courant.
We left on a Wednesday for Angoulême, which
was a beautiful day’s run. The weather was
superb, and it seemed too good to be true that
we were actually flying down the famous poplar-edged
roads of France in our own little car. We
reached Angoulême at sunset-time. If you have
ever been there, you will remember the wonderful
situation of the city. It rises high in the center
of a plain and the walk around the walls affords
a beautiful view. After getting settled in
the hotel, we made the circuit of the town and
watched the shades of a pink and gold sunset
slowly deepen into the purple of twilight.
I rose early the next morning, before the
.pn +1
others were up, and took a few pictures. I had
a lovely ramble among the old churches.
It was on leaving Angoulême that I cleverly
took the wrong road, which added fully fifty kilometres
to our day’s run. We found ourselves at
about two o’clock in La Rochefoucauld. Everywhere
we were in search of essence, and as we
found plenty of it there, Marje forgave my stupidity.
As we knew we could make Poitiers
that night, anyway, Mrs. Shurtleff said that it
made no difference. After having given one look
at the lovely château, I felt personally very
pleased with myself. We had luncheon at a
funny little inn, which was so stuffy inside that
we insisted upon having them serve our omelets
on the front porch. They thought, of course,
that we were crazy and the windows were
crowded with faces showing ill-concealed curiosity.
We went up to the château and found an old
woman there who was glad to take us around.
The present Duke and Duchess of La Rochefoucauld
have not lived in the château since the
beginning of the war. She is an American with
millions who has restored most lavishly but in
the best possible taste the interior of the fine old
castle. The only son and heir died, at the age of
seven, a few years ago. A charming marble bust
.pn +1
of the child placed in the chapel gave a pathetic
note to the whole place. We stopped at Ruffec
that afternoon, having been advised not to miss
the place where they manufacture pâtés de foie
gras and truffles. The fattest woman I ever saw
has a little shop in a courtyard where the finest
canned goods are put up. She showed us her
storeroom of thousands of cans, and I felt like
buying a couple of thousand until I found out
how much she charged. As it was, we bought
six or seven cans, arguing that it was pure economy
to eat pâté with bread at the side of the
road instead of going to a hotel for luncheon
every day.
We made Poitiers that night just after dark,
dead tired. We slept late in the morning and
had a terrific time making the car start. We had
time to stop only at a few stores before going on
our way, so that at the present writing I can’t
tell you the difference in the general topography
between Poitiers and Jersey City. One thing I
do remember is that Harold made a careful note,
on the guide that he wrote out for me, that the
Field of the Cloth of Gold was near Poitiers; and
as I am a perfect sight-seeing fiend I was bound
that I would see it. While manicuring the car in
the garage and pouring gasoline and oil into
every joint and crevice, I tried to find out from
.pn +1
the garage-man where I could find (and here
Marje disappeared inside the bonnet) “le
champs de l’étoffe d’or.” He thought it was a
part of the car and said that he was sure that it
was not that that was out of order. I gave up the
search and found when I reached Paris that such
Field is near Dieppe, a good three hundred miles
from Poitiers.
I have mentioned stores, I believe. Well, it
was here that Folly for the first time in many
well-ordered months jumped out of my pocket.
I have always been crazy about leopards, as you
know; especially this winter I have wanted to
get a leopard’s skin, but I did not think that
even the “miscellaneous” column in my accounts
would justify the purchase of any jungle
trophies. I asked at Revillon’s one day the price
of a perfect beauty that was in the window, and
found that it was three hundred francs. In Poitiers
Marje and I were walking innocently down
a side street looking for some crackers and jam
and a chamois skin through which to strain the
gasoline, when, suddenly, I saw in the window a
little yellow leopard that just twined himself
around my heart! I soon had him spread out on
the counter and was haggling with the woman
over the price. She said sixty francs, with tears
in her eyes. I objected strenuously and Marje
.pn +1
walked off in the other direction. She hates me
when I am trying to “marchander” and suddenly
pretends that she is not with me and
doesn’t know me, which is absurd when we are
often the only two American girls in the town.
Well, I bought the leopard—“Leo” on further
acquaintance—for forty francs, and this time
tears were in the very voice of his former mistress.
We left Poitiers in a cloud of dust, not
having seen one building, one church, or one
view. Baedeker lay sulking in the back of the
car, but Marje was correspondingly exultant.
There is a certain antipathy between Marje
and a statistic which may be noticed. We had
luncheon by the side of the road with Leo as
guest of honor. I thought Mrs. Shurtleff would
die of laughter when she saw him and when she
discovered a large bald spot on his left shoulder.
We all laughed so that we could hardly negotiate
another truffle! I must tell you that weeks
afterwards, when I told Aunt Ella that I had
bought a leopard skin in Poitiers, expecting her
to throw up her hands at such foolishness, she
sat up straight and said: “You did? Oh! I wish
I had known there were leopard skins in Poitiers,—I
just love them.”
.il id=i05 fn=i102.jpg link=i102.jpg w=325px
.ca Marjorie and Mrs. Shurtleff, with the Leopard Skin
.pn +1
Tours was our next stop. We went straight
to the cathedral, which is very lovely. As we
walked around toward the back, I saw a beautiful
black dog tied to a little push-cart and approached
it making appropriate remarks. Quick
as a wink it jumped up and bit me, tearing my
dress, but giving me only a scratch. This was
considered very funny, as I had been remarking
what a way I had with animals. I have
since learned that such dogs are trained to bite
anything that approaches the push-cart in its
master’s absence.
Marje was particularly anxious to go the
rounds of the antique shops in Tours. Her
mother and father had once spent a good deal
of time there, and she was anxious to see the city
and also to try to match some china that her
mother had bought there. I usually stiffen my
neck and keep my eyes front when I see an
antique shop and especially since Leo has come
into my life! I have been really meticulous in
my studied inattention! But here we positively
ran into the jaws of the enemy. Marje bought
a million dollars’ worth of gorgeous dark blue
and gold cups, the kind that are supposed to be
made only in Tours. I came off with a little imitation
one for two francs, fifty centimes, which
will mean as much to me when I drink tea from
it with Leo at my back.
From Tours we ran along the edge of the
.pn +1
Loire. We were weary of asking for essence, so
you can imagine our delight to be able to get
as much as we wanted just outside of the city.
You see, essence is practically unobtainable in
Paris, and at best at a very high figure, so that
we were anxious to get enough to run on for a
while until we should be able to get a special
order from the Ministère de la Guerre on account
of ours being a work for charity.
We spent that night at Amboise. It was bitterly
cold, but wonderfully picturesque. The
hotel faced on the water front, and up the hill,
and on the right, was a lovely château. The
“Cheval blanc,” as the hotel is called, was very
quaint, but, like all things quaint, as cold as an
iceberg. We sat around the little stove in the
dining-room after dinner and did our accounts,
no simple matter. We got to laughing so over
the state of our affairs that our additions and
subtractions—chiefly subtractions—showed
the effects, no doubt. That famous black velvet
hat of mine I had worn down in the train when I
went to Pau, not knowing that I should make
the trip home in a Ford ambulance. Fortunately
I had my little brown hat with me to wear back,
but the body of the car was so congested, with
our gasoline, our suitcases, the thermos bottles,
Marje’s china, and the automobile tools,
.pn +1
that the hat suffered considerably—to put it
mildly.
At Amboise Mrs. Shurtleff admitted that she
had been very ill during the night. She wanted
to go to Chenonceaux just the same, however.
We gave only a fleeting glance at the gem of all
the châteaux and hurried on to Blois. I was
driving that morning and I shall never forget
the ride. Mrs. Shurtleff was really suffering
badly and freezing cold; she was anxious to get
the first train to Paris to get home to her husband.
So, of course, you can imagine what a
hurry we were in, but the roads were rough and
full of country carts, and I could see that driving
fast made her nervous. It was cold and windy,
as I have said; but I had my coat open and was
covered with perspiration by the time we crossed
the bridge and arrived at Blois.
We took Mrs. Shurtleff to a little hotel close
to the railroad-station, where she lay down and
begged us to leave her and go off and have a
good time. We said that we would and that we
would come back in plenty of time to put her on
the 7.40 train for Paris. We hadn’t had anything
to eat all day and were too tired to think;
and the thought of the château was a little too
much for us. So we went to a pâtisserie for some
hot chocolate. We ate every cake in the place
.pn +1
and got up so much spunk that we decided to
give the château the once over. It was late and
the place was supposed to be closed, but a nice
guide took us through. When we returned we
found Mrs. Shurtleff a little better, and with
one grand effort she rose and took the train.
We went to a comfortable hotel and didn’t
waste much time in getting between the sheets.
The next day was fine, and Marje suggested
going to Chaumont and Chambord and not
trying to get to Paris until the following day.
She said that as long as she reached Paris by
Sunday night it would be all right. So we went
to that heavenly Chaumont, my favorite of all
the châteaux,—do you remember my writing
enthusiastically about Blois on the way down to
Pau? It was the castle of Chaumont that I
thought was the castle of Blois, and it is as
fascinating when you actually visit it as it is
from the train; but as for Blois I never want to
see it again. Chaumont is filled with beautiful
tapestries and furniture. The situation high
over the Loire is magnificent, and it is the only
château that we saw which is set in a large park,
studded with great trees. How I hated to hurry
away! In the afternoon we went to Chambord,
which is a marvel of construction, but cold and
unromantic. It is hardly furnished at all and its
.pn +1
most interesting feature is the promenade on the
roof, where you walk in and out among its three
hundred and sixty-five chimneys. We arrived in
Orléans at about five o’clock and went straight
to the cathedral. Jeanne d’Arc completely dominates
the city and the cathedral; the latter is
to me one of the most beautiful I have ever
seen, being harmonious throughout in style and
period. The stained glass is uniform—modern,
of course—telling the story of the “Pucelle de
France.” Marje and I clung to each other in the
fading light and drank in the quiet and beauty
of those great arches.
We went to a very nice hotel, and in engaging
a room we asked the proprietor how far it was
to Paris. We said we wanted to be sure to make
it by Sunday night. He said: “But this is Sunday
night.” We looked at him amazed and
gave in to his whim for the moment. We stepped
out and bought the paper and found that it
really was Sunday! I never felt so completely
lost in my life! Of course we had forgotten to
count out the time we had spent in Blois with
Mrs. Shurtleff, but it gave us quite a start, I can
tell you, particularly as Marje was so anxious to
get home. We did not let the grass grow under
our feet the next day, believe me. We had
luncheon at Chartres and gave about ten
.pn +1
minutes to the cathedral. I drove from Chartres,
and at Maintenon I stopped to take a picture of
the château reflected in the lake. Marje wandered
off for a few minutes to watch the old women
in the market-place, and while I was standing
there alone two officers came up to me and
one of them said, “Are you English?” I said,
“No, American.” “Have you your papers, your
permis de conduire?” I felt my knees give way,
but I hung on to the bridge that I was standing
on, and said smilingly, “Oui, Monsieur.” “All
right,” he said hesitatingly, and passed on. Of
course, it was only Marje that had her permis,
and I don’t know just what would have happened
if they had pressed the matter further, for
I didn’t have a sign of a permis and they had
seen me drive. Marje insists, however, that it
would have been all right because she could
have said that she was teaching me. I was pretty
grateful, I can tell you, to have had one smile
left just the same.
At Versailles we were surprised to find that we
could buy still more gasoline. We couldn’t understand
because there is never enough in Paris.
We bought all that we could carry, however, and
started for home. When we came to the crossroads
where it says: “Saint-Cloud, 11 K.M. and
Sèvres 6 K.M.,” we decided to take the road
.pn +1
to Sèvres, although people had always warned
us not to. We soon found out why. The road is
hilly and covered with cobblestones the entire
way; but we really didn’t care, when we caught
sight of the Eiffel Tower. At the gate of Paris
there was an armed soldier standing in a sentry
box, and as we slowed down to go through the
gate I leaned out and said, “Bon jour, Monsieur.”
Once in Paris we found that we were completely
lost, having brought everything with us
but a map of Paris. It was too provoking, but
here my refugee knowledge did me good service,
and I picked my way in and out among the
slums and found the way straight to our Lion
de Belfort. We had enough energy left to start
unpacking that dear little car that was stuffed
full to the roof. The people at the pension were
all excitement, and the maids ran up and down
stairs helping us with our things. We went over
at once to Mrs. Shurtleff. We found her looking
worn. We knew how anxious she must have
been to know that we had arrived safely, so that
you can imagine how we felt when we tiptoed
into the room and found that she was so weak
that all she could do was to turn her head on the
pillow and say, “Hello, girls!” We found that
she had fainted twice coming up on the train,
.pn +1
but that Miss Curtis had taken care of her at the
station.
After seeing Mrs. Shurtleff, we took the car
to Miss Curtis’s because we knew no place to
leave it overnight. We did not feel much like
a triumphal entry, but Miss Curtis and Miss
Sturgis were so glad to see us that all we had
to do was to answer questions and get back to
Place Denfert as soon as possible.
Well, that is our trip. It certainly was interesting
and it laid the foundations of my friendship
with Marje, who is the finest ever. It is
worth everything to me to have her companionship.
Time is up.
.nf r 0
Devotedly,
Esther.
.nf-
.sp 4
.pn +1
.h2 id=linkXII
XII||FROM MARJORIE
.sp 2
.nf r 0
12 Place Denfert-Rochereau, Paris.
(March 26, 1917.)
.nf-
My dearest Daddy:—
Writing nowadays is rather like the shooting
the men do at the front; they never can see if
their shots get there. I am never sure if my
letters get to you, there has been so much
trouble with the mails. The head man at
Morgan, Harjes told Dr. G. the other day that
they had just received a great deal of mail—the
first for a long time—which was all wet.
The papers were ruined, but the letters had
fared better as a whole. I wonder what that
meant?
As you probably know by the papers, we had
a Zeppelin raid or alarm last week. It was very
exciting. I have never heard such a noise as the
“gare à vous” trumpets or horns—or whatever
they are—make. Esther Root and I stood
out on our balcony for a long time watching
the aeroplanes overhead. They had searchlights
and made a beautiful effect. The Zeppelin was,
.pn +1
of course, brought down way outside Paris.
They never get here, because the air guard is so
very efficient; also they have to go right over
the army and are always discovered. However,
I can now say that I have been in Paris during
a “near-raid,” at least! This almost makes up
to me for the disappointment of not having
had one during my interminably long stay in
London.
I have one very serious confession to make to
you. I have been religiously keeping accounts
ever since I left New York, first in dollars on the
ship, then in pounds, shillings, and pence while
in London, and then shifted to francs when I got
here. You have no idea what a gorgeous account-book
it was, or still is, but—here is the tragedy—I
lost the dear book last week, somewhere in
the metro. There is only one chance in hundreds
that I will find it again. I don’t know just what
I can do about it. I can’t possibly remember
what I spent, but I will make a rough account
which will give you some idea.
This room which I have now is only ten francs
a day, and is much nicer. It has splendid hot
running water in the closet, a nice balcony, and
the food is delicious. Mme. H—— is very nice,
and so are the other boarders. Some queer ones,
too,—two sisters from Poland who tell us
.pn +1
stories that make our hair curl! Also a Mlle.
Germain, who is studying to be a doctor, and
tells us, at meal-time, about the latest corpses
from the Morgue she has cut up! It is wonderful
to me the way the French don’t mind what they
say at table.
I am wondering if I shall do all the queer
things that I am now doing, when I get home.
I take my fork and knife off my plate every
course and lay them on the tablecloth. I
“swab” (it’s the only word) my plate with a
piece of bread, to get all the gravy. I eat bread
by the yard (literally), while I never touch it at
home. You would laugh to hear what we have
for meals, and yet they are delicious,—mostly
vegetables, a little meat, very well done, and
with delicious sauce, and never anything but
cheese and confitures for dessert. Although the
tea-shops are all open, you can notice a slight
difference in their cakes. They no longer have
frosting in the real sense of the word, but are
covered with cream or paste or powdered sugar.
The fillings are not as sweet as they once were,
but they are still delicious. Do you suppose I
will want white wine with luncheon and red
with dinner, when I get back? I can’t get along
without it over here. It is so funny when you
once begin to think it over. It does make me
.pn +1
tired when I hear people say that living in
Paris in war-time “is very different,” and then
heave a sigh. Of course, I don’t know what it
is like here in peace-times, but I do know that
we are all very comfortable. We all have luxuries,
and there are wonderfully few restrictions, I
think. You should hear Mr. Ayrault—who has
just come back from a four months’ tour of
inspection of prison camps in Germany—talk.
He says we don’t know what war means here,
compared with Germany, where everything is
distributed by cards,—everything except goose,
and that, as a result, is prohibitively high. He
is most interesting in his accounts of Germany.
I wish I could write you all, but I don’t suppose
Mr. Censor would approve. By the bye,
of all my letters from America, only one from
C. Morss has ever been opened.
In one of your letters you spoke of fighting
the “White Rats.” I don’t care much for the
idea. Don’t, for goodness’ sake, get stabbed in
the back or poisoned by a lot of bum vaudeville
artists! I speak of stabbing and such. If you
hear of a young American being killed by a
bicycle over here, you may be sure that it is I,
and it will be such an ignominious death. A
taxicab I could bear, but I seem fated to be
killed by a bicycle. They don’t use horns here,
.pn +1
and just go whizzing by. I have just avoided
two already.
Spring seems to be trying hard to get here,—not
too successful so far in its attempts,
but there is some green grass in the gardens,
and on Sundays the Punch and Judys and
merry-go-rounds are open on the Champs
Élysées.
I know I am getting cross-eyed, and walking
up and down the Champs Élysées is doing it.
There are so many interesting people, so many
uniforms, that it is horrible. I try to look both
ways at once. Then tea. I have been to Rumpelmeyer’s
several times. It is very popular here,
although in London no one would go to Rumpelmeyer’s,
for it was considered too “Boche.” I
am afraid the French love their cakes too much!
Such people as you see there, regular “coo-coos,”
you would say. It is very amusing to sit
in a corner, and watch and listen, and, of course,
the food—to say nothing of the joy of having
ice cream—is to be considered.
I have been going over several other Vestiaires
lately, and I am becoming more and more
convinced that Mrs. Shurtleff’s is among the
best organized institutions of its kind. Naturally
some of the Government things are much more
complicated and wonderful. I can’t help asking
.pn +1
myself more and more what France would have
done and would do without the assistance she
receives from America.
.nf r 0
Your very loving daughter,
Marje.
.nf-
.sp 4
.pn +1
.h2 id=linkXIII
XIII||FROM MARJORIE
.sp 2
.nf r 0
12 Place Denfert-Rochereau, Paris.
(April 5, 1917.)
.nf-
Dearest Mother:—
Having gotten rather tired out the last few
weeks, and having had several bad headaches,
I decided to take a few days’ rest now,—for
I have at last finished the card catalogue,—before
I start out on my new duties, which are to
be many and various. So here I am in bed with
the machine on my lap, having a good time,
writing to you. Things have sort of piled in
on us at the work lately. It seems to me so
very important that none of the workers should
fail now, so that is why I am taking these few
days to get my breath before going on. Mrs.
Shurtleff has at last come in from Neuilly with
Gertrude, who seems to be doing remarkably
well. I can tell you that we are glad to have
Mrs. S. home again. I am particularly so, for I
have had to go out for her and take her back
every afternoon, and as she wanted to be here
for the work as near nine o’clock in the mornings
.pn +1
as possible, and the garage, or remise, is some
distance from here, I have had to make pretty
early starts. I found to my surprise that I was
leaving this house at eight o’clock, and, after a
struggle with the car to start it,—for it has no
starter and we have to grind it,—I would beat
it out to Neuilly, which, being outside the gate,
is an awful nuisance. You are stopped going and
coming, and have to get a red slip saying how
much gas you have in the tank, and you have to
be very careful, for if they do measure how much
you have and find that you said either too much
or too little, they are very strict, and there is a
heavy fine.
If, for any reason, I should die suddenly just
now, and you had my brain dissected, you
would find, I am sure, that at least one half was
a mass of figures, which, if you studied, you
would find was the result of my constant reducing
gallons to litres, and miles to kilometres, and
my endeavoring to figure out without measuring
in the tank, how much essence remains. Also
you would find “essence,” where to get it, how
much to pay for it,—“shall we stop here and
buy some, or chance it till we get home?” written
all over my gray matter. I am at present
entirely responsible for the car, and, delightful
as that should sound to you, it is a privilege not
entirely free from care. The question of getting
gasoline alone, in these days, is hard enough.
Then I have to keep an account of just what the
car costs per day, and also to keep it in good
shape, for it is impossible to get mechanics these
times. They are all under the Government. We
have for the car (which, by the bye, we named
“Nilly,” for the other car being “Willy,” and
this one having come over as I told you without
anything—absolutely NIL) a small hole in the
.pn +1
wall off a peculiar alleyway, which is known
over here as a “remise.” It is just big enough to
get into, and is fairly difficult to navigate, for it
faces a cement wall, and one has to back in and
turn just so, or else hit the wall. But at the rate
Rootie is going now, there will not be much wall
left to trouble us soon!
.il id=i06 fn=i118.jpg link=i118.jpg w=425px
.ca Esther and Marjorie
I have enjoyed the rides out and back with
Mrs. Shurtleff ever so much in one way, for it
gives me a chance to have her all to myself, and
that is something that few people can have with
Mrs. Shurtleff. We have had some bully talks.
One day I went in to the hospital,—which is the
American Hospital, by the way, not connected
with the American Ambulance out there, but a
hospital for Americans sick over here, and is a
model in many ways. I went all over it, and,
incidentally, met Mrs. Robert W. Service, the
.pn +1
wife of the man who wrote those poems about
Western life, very much in Kipling’s style.
Daddy has them. “The Cremation of Sam
Magee” is one of the best. He has just published
“Rhymes of a Red Cross Man,”—war poems,
needless to say. Well, Mrs. Service was at the
hospital, with two kids, twins, eight weeks old,
dear little things. She herself was very sweet
and rather pathetic, I thought, trying to do
everything in the American way, although she
is really a French woman. I was impressed with
the hospital and the nurses, and it gave me a
nice, secure feeling that, if I was ever sick, I
could be so in the good American way, even
way over here.
I have been out with Agathe, the maid at the
Vestiaire, almost every afternoon, sending off
packages, and then later returning Mrs. S. to
Neuilly. She stayed out there all the time with
Gertrude, sleeping in a horrid little hotel where
there was no heating, but she got comfort from
being with Gertrude in the afternoons and evenings.
By the time I got the office work done,
and did some chores and extra leaving and calling
for bundles, I found that it was after seven
before I put the car finally to bed, covered up
and locked up, with the precious bidons of
essence standing in tidy rows behind the car.
.pn +1
Then letter-writing in the evenings, and making
reports, extra typing for Mrs. Newson, and all
the hundred and one things that come up every
day, reading and listening to Rootie play,—which
she does so very wonderfully,—this was
getting to be too long a day, so I have cut it out.
Monday was my last day to go for Mrs. S., as
she brought Gertrude in yesterday. Just think,
only eight days from the operation. I hope that
they are not going to let her do too much, but I
do not believe that they will.
Yesterday I was a little tired, anyway, and
had a headache, and I was told to take a Mrs.
Jackson, one of the workers, off for all day in the
car, calling, as usual. I had no idea where I was
going, or what I was going to do, but I was given
the address and told that it was an all-day job—lunching
with Mrs. J. too. I adore Mrs. J., she
is such a sport, and, like all the rest of the people
over here, has been so good to me. I got lost on
the way to her house. I never saw such an elusive
street. I swear it moved on the map, while
I was watching out for taxis. You have no idea
what sport it is trying to find one’s way about
Paris with a map in one hand and driving with
the other. Fortunately, my sense of direction
is fairly good, and after a time I arrived on
the street—going in the wrong direction, of
.pn +1
course. If any one can tell me the French system
of numbering their streets, I would be
obliged.
I used to think that Boston streets were
mixey, because they changed names once in a
while, and Summer Street becomes Winter after
it crosses Washington, for some reason best
known to itself. In Paris, a street is one thing
on one side of a lamp-post, and then suddenly
adopts the name of the nearest square on the
other side of the post. The odd and even numbers
of a street run entirely differently on the
two sides of the street, so that when looking for
forty and you see thirty-seven, you think that
forty is apt to be fairly near on the opposite side
of the street, but no, no, it is a couple of blocks
ahead or past, for the numbers do not run evenly,
and twelve faces thirty-seven! Of course, all the
numbers are put up good and high, so that they
won’t be stolen, I suppose, and also so that when
you want to see them, and are walking, you can
turn your face skywards and, walking ahead, fall
off the sidewalk and amuse the children! Also in
the car, with this body, one has to lean out the
side and crane, and I can tell you my swanlike
neck comes in handy, to say nothing of my eyes,
for the ingenuity shown by whoever hides the
numbers on the houses—just behind a blind or
.pn +1
beneath a scroll, or to right or left or beside the
doorway—is wonderful!
As I started to say, before I got off on this
feeling dissertation on the Parisian street names
and numbers, I was late to Mrs. Jackson, and
found her waiting and eager to be off, for there
was lots to be done. As I knew that there was
not any too much gas in the tank, I emptied one
of my extra bidons in (I always carry two extra
ones; each holds five litres of gas, makes about
five gallons in all). I said as I did so that it
smelled like bum gas, and then thought no more
about it. We started cheerfully, and got about
three blocks, on a nice muddy asphalt street,
and she died, quietly, but very dead, indeed. I
got out and cranked for a time, but soon knew
that there was trouble deeper than mere cranking
would remove. So off came my hat and coat,
and I rolled my sleeves up and went to it. I
found the spark seemed all right, and by a process
of elimination found out that just what I
dreaded from the first was wrong—the carburetor.
By this time the sidewalk crowd had
grown considerably, for the sight of an American
girl, hatless, sleeves rolled up, hair flying, bobbing
under the car and into the hood, was not
missed by many residents of that district, I can
tell you. A very nice gentleman pushed his way
.pn +1
through the gaping crowd, which was getting as
near and as much in the way as possible, except
when I turned every few minutes and froze the
half-dozen most forward with a glance calculated
to freeze, and which I wished could kill, for
anything that gets me peeved is an audience,
particularly a French one. The nice American
said that he “knew nothing about a car,” but
“could he help?” He could. I dispatched him
for help from the nearest garage so quick that
he couldn’t change his mind. By the time he
returned, I had the feed-pipe of the carburetor
all off (I know that these names mean nothing to
you, but they will to Daddy), and the two mechanics
which he had found would not, of course,
believe a simple woman—and I guess that I
looked more simple than I felt even by this time,
for they had thoughtfully begun to clean the
streets while I was exploring under the car, and
I was not only muddy but wet.
After a heated discussion in Anglo-French, the
men believed me, and stopped cranking, and, on
turning the pipe down to let the gas run out, we
were delighted to see pure aqua pura run out—not
gas at all! Now, don’t you call that the
limit? The last bidon of gas which I had put in
wasn’t gas at all—it was water, pure and simple.
Of course, we had to wash out the tank,
.pn +1
waste quarts of essence, which is more precious
than gold these days, and then clean out the
feed-pipe and carburetor. You never saw such a
job, and all performed on the street! All told,
that little drink of water which I gave the Ford
cost about one and a half hours of time, and
about sixteen francs in money.
We got under way again, but it was so late
that nice Mrs. Jackson had to rearrange all her
plans. However, we got a great deal done, and,
incidentally, I had a wonderful day being with
her. We lunched at a queer little restaurant
over in Montmartre—had hors d’œuvres,
cheese omelette, lots of very good bread (at
least, as bread goes these days; how I shall enjoy
some toast made out of white bread!), and cream
cheese and apple sauce, with coffee which was
the real article—not chicory or burnt almonds,
or whatever it is that they give you at half
the places. We talked about everything under
heaven and earth, and I came away from luncheon
more than ever convinced that she is a
wonder. She asked me to go South with her
the 22d of this month, but I am not going
to. First place, the work needs me, and second
place, I do not want to take my vacation until
this summer, and then take it all in one
big lump, doing something worth while. I am
.pn +1
awfully complimented that she asked me, anyway.
I went back to her house for tea after we did
some more calls in the afternoon, and had another
nice talk with her in front of her fire, in
the nicest apartment—all etchings in her study
and such dainty nice things. I can tell you it is
pretty nice to have tea from a silver service once
in a while, only it makes me sort of homesick for
the library and Josey to scrap with over the remaining
piece of cake. I suppose that she will
be so grown up when I get back that I will not
be able to henpeck her any more at all. I think
from her letters that she and I are going to understand
each other much better when we get
together again, and that we will pull together,
not apart. I wish that I could possibly tell her
how much her letters have pleased me, for I know
very well what a nuisance it is to write me, and
she has been so faithful. After tea with Mrs.
Jackson, I went over to see Ibb, who has been
resting off for a few days, and found her better.
Then I toddled the old Ford home, and, when I
arrived here, went to bed myself. I found I was
a good deal more tired than I realized at the
time, so yesterday I just lay abed all day, and
am doing the same thing to-day. As a result, I
feel like a fighting cock this afternoon, and am
.pn +1
going to do some work here at home to-morrow,
for Mrs. S. wants me to go easy and not go to the
Vestiaire until Monday or Tuesday, for Monday
is a holiday. Mme. H—— is too good to me; she
has had all sorts of special nice things cooked for
me, keeps the fire going in my room all day, and
with that and the sunshine, and every one being
so good to me, I feel like a different person already.
Esther is a very fussy nurse, and won’t
let me turn over for myself if she can do it for
me; and to-day Mrs. Jackson, dear, busy soul,
came in to see me. I couldn’t get over it. It is
too wonderful the way people are so good to me
here: Mrs. Shurtleff, Mrs. Jackson, Mrs. Christie,
Dr. and Mrs. Lines, and I don’t know how
many others. I just love them all, and am altogether
too lucky for words.
Every one seems to have a different idea as to
what the effect of our entering the war will be.
I hope that you will approve of my helping by
driving, if they call for volunteers for the American
Ambulance, for I would like to do it very
much, and think that I am up to it. I naturally
will cable you before I do anything definite, and
will consider it very seriously before I leave Mrs.
Shurtleff, as Daddy told me to. If, however,
America needs any help which it is within my
very limited power to give, I could not be happy,
.pn +1
feeling that I was working for the French only.
This is, of course, all “IF”!
I have been saving the papers lately, for they
are interesting, and I thought that we would
have a good time comparing them with the
American papers when I get home—seeing
what they have let us know over here and what
they tell you over there about us here. I wonder
which place is really the most interesting.
Of course, all the mail is coming in the most
peculiar order, yours of February 28th arriving
in the most dilapidated, water-soaked, almost
illegible condition, long after yours of March 2d,
which came before yours of March 11th. I never
knew such wonderful letters as you and Daddy
write to me. I simply read and re-read them by
the hour. Thank goodness, you feel that I am
telling you just what you want to know. You
have no idea how hard it is to write, for there are
so many things to say that one longs to be a
Bernard Shaw and be able to say them all, and
not be just plain Marjorie Crocker, who can
only ramble on without any rhyme or reason,
as she talks!
For goodness’ sake, take my letters in doses,
not all at once. I know that it is awful to rant on
as long as I do, but I have so much to say, I simply
cannot stop. That is why I only write once a
.pn +1
week or so, because I had so much rather take a
long time to it, when I get started, than to write
a lot of hasty notes. Well, this is over now.
I am going into Rootie’s room to listen to her
play. She is so wonderful. She just takes care of
me, and to-night, to finish off a wonderful day,
Mrs. Shurtleff has just been in and was too nice.
I adore that lady more every time I see her. We
all do, and that is, of course, the secret of the
success of her work here! We all adore her so.
She made me promise that I would not come
back to the work until I felt really like it, and
my headache was all gone, and so forth. Then
we planned out my work in the future, now that
the catalogue is done, and it just sounds too
good to be true—just enough visiting to keep
in touch, and some office work and some automobiling,
and calling with Rootie, which is, of
course, a perfect lark. I am so happy to-night,
so much more so than I have been, since I got
Daddy’s cable on Sunday. Well, lots and lots
and lots of love to you all,
.rj
Marje.
.sp 4
.pn +1
.h2 id=linkXIV
XIV||FROM ESTHER
.sp 2
.nf r
Place Denfert-Rochereau, Paris XIV^{e},
April 8, 1917.
.nf-
Dearest Aunt Esther:—
It is curious that gloom is so absolutely
gloomy and that happiness is so happy and full.
There are times when I cast about for something
to write home about without finding anything—or
rather nothing that isn’t so black that it
seems only selfishness to sit down and enlarge
upon it. To-night, on the contrary, I have spent
a most wonderful Easter, and looking backward
and forward I can see a thousand things that I
should love to tell you about. It can be only a
few for the moment, for the electricity will be
turned off in a few minutes.
This morning Marjorie, my new but very dear
friend who lives here at the pension, woke me
up and said that the sun was shining. It has
rained and snowed without a break lately and
the sunlight seemed a glorious novelty.
We had breakfast together, then went to the
patriotic service at the American Church, where
.pn +1
Dr. Shurtleff preached. The long-waited-for
news of our actually going to war had rejoiced us
all yesterday, but it was more thrilling than we
ever could have imagined to drive past the big
French Administration Buildings and see the
Stars and Stripes waving with the other Allies’
flags in the Easter sunshine! To be one of the
Allies at last! To have our flag and the French
flag flying side by side as they should be, to have
our great country wake up and fight its own
fight—it is not only Easter but Thanksgiving
to-day.
The American Church was full—men from
the American Ambulance Service sat in uniform
in the front rows and the church was decorated
in flowers and flags. Dr. Shurtleff preached a
fine sermon. He said that to lose life was to gain
it, and that this war was fought that war should
cease—that the world should know Christ’s
peace.
A lovely primrose plant was waiting for us
here. After all, the cold and snow, flowers, especially
the pink primrose, are heavenly. In the
afternoon Mrs. Shurtleff came over to say that
the pianist who was to play at Dr. Shurtleff’s
little Sunday evening meeting had been taken
ill, and would I play. Fortunately I had given a
short programme last Monday at the last
.pn +1
meeting of a woman’s club, so that I was glad to be
able to fill in.
I must tell you about last Monday. Not long
ago I exchanged the little old upright that I have
had all winter for a wonderful Pleyel (French
make corresponding to Steinway). This piano
seems to me to be the most wonderful instrument
I ever heard, and I love it and pat it and dust it
and play it, never tiring. It has saved my life
these past weeks.
Knowing that I have been playing more of
late, Mrs. Baldwin asked me to play for the
woman’s club that I spoke of. I couldn’t think
of much to play, and of course I have no music
with me, but I was glad to have something to
make me practice, and I accepted.
The club meets every Monday afternoon to
sew and knit garments for the war orphans—Mrs.
Cassette, a dear lady who used to live in
Chicago, is the president, and when it was time
for me to play, she made the announcement, and
proceeded to enlarge on the Root family in general
and grandfather in particular. She spoke of
his influence during the Civil War, and of his
and Uncle Fred’s help in establishing good music
in Chicago. She spoke beautifully and gave me
an at-home sort of feeling to think of her knowing
my relatives; but it was hard for me when
.pn +1
she started speaking of me as the third generation,
etc. After I had played I met a great
many interesting people, among them the girl
who wrote that little book of letters called
“Mademoiselle Miss.” Do you remember reading
it with Mother at Bailey’s last summer?
The letters are full of imagination, and charming,
as is Miss Dare herself. We went off in a
corner together and talked over our experiences
at a great rate.
To come back to Sunday evening. I played at
the meeting the same programme as on Monday.
To my surprise, Dr. Shurtleff also made a speech
about grandfather, whom he knew in Chicago
when he (Dr. Shurtleff) was a young man.
Many people came up and spoke to me afterwards,
and I found that lots of them knew the
family in Chicago. Their enthusiasm was quite
exciting and made me feel almost like writing
war songs myself. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to
hear grandfather’s “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp,”
sung in France!
Yesterday—Easter Monday—we all gave
up our holiday to go to the Vestiaire and help
to move our ouvroir department into a little
store up the street. I have explained that the
work is carried on in an apartment on the ground
floor at 18 rue Ernest Cresson—one room is the
.pn +1
women’s vestiaire, another, the men’s vestiaire,
a third Mrs. Shurtleff’s office, and a fourth, the
ouvroir, where sewing and all kinds of work
is given out to the refugees. We have been
crowded always, but of late it has been almost
impossible to work in the front two rooms with
so many people doing different things at once.
People would keep running in and out of Mrs.
Shurtleff’s office while she was dictating, to look
up records, or to get down reserve stock from the
shelves; the officer of the day would have to interview
refugees in a corner of the ouvroir, while
lines of other refugees were waiting to call for,
and hand in, work—the confusion was impossible.
The two rooms together are not as big as
the den at home.
Well, Mrs. Shurtleff, who goes around this
world with her eyes open, I can tell you, discovered
a little store that had been closed since the
beginning of the war. It had been rented by a
German. He was chased away in 1914, his windows
broken, and the place roughly boarded up.
Mrs. Shurtleff sought out the proprietor, rented
it, and had it repaired. Saturday word came
that we could move in. We have been so crazy
to spread out a little that when some one suggested
that all hands should report on Easter
Monday,—one of the great holidays here,—and
.pn +1
get the moving actually done, we all volunteered.
At nine o’clock we started. We took
things down off shelves, stood in line and passed
them through the window, where Miss Curtis
received them and stuffed them into the Ford.
When the poor little car was so laden down
with clothes and materials and bundles that it
looked as though it would burst a blood vessel,
it started off and we all ran along beside it up to
the new shop. There we formed another line,
and unloaded the car and put the things on the
waiting shelves.
There were tons of stuff—it was like moving
R. H. Macy and Company, but I can’t tell you
what fun it was. Dr. Shurtleff and each one of
our workers, who usually work at their own
special jobs, pitched in to sort out bundles of
clothes, or carry yards and yards of worsted, or
do whatever turned up. Dr. Shurtleff started
us singing “Tipperary” as we worked, and
we had a splendid time and accomplished wonders.
This morning when work began, there were
the two front rooms all neatly arranged, with
plenty of space and everybody happy.
Well, I must close, but I shall have enough to
tell you when I come home to outlast many a
wood fire, and I am looking forward to the day
.pn +1
when we can sit down together and talk, with
the clock faced toward the wall!
Much love to you always.
.nf r 0
Your niece,
Esther.
.nf-
.sp 4
.pn +1
.h2 id=linkXV
XV||FROM MARJORIE
.sp 2
.rj
Sunday.
Dearest Family:—
Here I go again in one of these cahier affairs.
It seems to be the best and only way to write
you. I am this minute out at Saint-Germain—an
hour outside of Paris. It is the place where
Ibby Coolidge nurses. Her hospital is closed
down now, so she is in at the “Invalides” for a
few months. Although she lives in Paris, I don’t
see much of her, for she works from eight to
eight, and is too tired to dine out after that.
Rootie has been out here for ten days resting.
The air is wonderful—so different from Paris,
although so near. It has been getting warmer,
and to-day we are sitting out under the trees
writing. I can hardly believe it. If spring has
only come, it will make so much difference. I
have been working fairly hard these last two
weeks, for Agathe, the maid, has been off on a
vacation, and I have had to open the four vestiaires
in the mornings—open the shutters,
dust a little, arrange the chairs and such, build
.pn +1
the fires in the offices, and generally start things.
This, combined with doing Rootie’s work,—at
least certain parts that could not be allowed to
wait,—has made life fairly complicated. Mrs.
Shurtleff is letting me have my Monday off this
week, so I have two whole glorious days out here
with Rootie. We do nothing but sleep, eat, and
walk. We have sticks, and so feel very safe, and
wander far into the woods. The youngest class
is being trained out here,—at least, part of it,—and
they come home from their lessons every
night at about half-past six,—about five hundred
of them, in every sort and description of
uniform, all out of step, four abreast, except
when they want to run ahead and speak to a
friend a few rows in front; all singing “poilu”
songs like regular soldiers. They are such a
bright-faced crew, we love to go out to the terrace
and watch them march to the center court,
and there line up, be counted more or less—and
mostly less—correctly, and then be dismissed.
It makes you laugh to watch their antics as they
march along. They all smile and salute us now,
because we have been there so often. They are
not fresh,—just amusing,—but it also makes
me a little sad to think what they are training
for—what is ahead of them. To think that
these bright-faced boys will, in all probability,
turn into some of the sad-faced, mutilated men
that we see in the hospitals and on the streets.
.pn +1
Although it sometimes disgusts you to have a
réformé talk about getting so much for his arm,
or lack of arm, or leg or eye, or so much more for
a ball in his neck,—still I can hardly blame
them. They have served their country when
their country called them. They have given
their health, and perhaps their happiness, to the
country. Why shouldn’t they be paid for it, and
paid well?
.il id=i07 fn=i138a.jpg w=425px link=i138a.jpg
.ca Rootie in Park at Saint-Germain
.il id=i08 fn=i138b.jpg w=425px link=i138b.jpg
.ca Marje in the Salon at No. 12 Place Denfert-Rochereau
If Rootie were writing this letter, she would
tell you all the facts of historic interest about
Saint-Germain, as she is well up in her Baedeker,
but, as I am not, I will have to let you live in
ignorance. I vaguely know that Henri IV was
born in the pavillon here, and that François
something started to build the château, got disgusted,
and built Versailles instead. I can tell
you, however, that the woods and park here are
wonderful, that the church bell that rings every
half-hour is most pleasing, and that there are
many good restaurants here—one of which we
are sampling this evening.
Daddy writes that my letter about the trip
has not arrived. I guess it must have sunk,—isn’t
it just my luck? Well, I am going to send
you the pictures we took, and I will write
.pn +1
another shorter and much less interesting account.
I will type it and send a carbon copy a week
after the original, and, if you don’t get either,
I give it up! I know I have missed some of your
letters, but I haven’t been much over two
weeks without word, so I certainly must not
complain.
Mrs. Willis, a friend of Rootie’s, took over a
few little things to you which I was anxious for
you to have. She had no room, so I could not
send several other things I wanted to. This letter
and Eleanor’s, a Mr. Whiting, a friend of
mine, is taking for me. I hope that you will get
them quicker than usual;—you ought to. I am
also sending a couple of posters which I thought
you might like for the bungalow in Marion. Tell
Josey the little medal I sent her is a regular
“croix de guerre,” and the palm leaf on the ribbon
is the highest “citation” one can have.
If you get a spare minute, read Helen Davenport
Gibbons’s “Red Rugs of Tarsus.” It is
Mrs. Gibbons’s first book. In some ways it is
more interesting to read, when you do not know
her. She is, of course, Dr. Herbert Adams Gibbons’s
wife—the one Betty Colt is secretary to.
Betty grows more and more attractive. I see
quite a lot of her. She has tea every day in the
studios after they stop work at half-past four.
.pn +1
I blow in pretty often, at about half-past five,
and Betty, dear soul, brews me a fresh cup of
tea. There are usually interesting people there.
Mr. Ayrault drops in often, also Mr. Griffiths,
although the latter has broken my great heart
by announcing that he has got to work so hard
from now until June, he does not expect to take
any time off.
Paris has seemed to me a little more sober
these last weeks. Ever since America entered
the war, the enthusiasm has been mostly American,
as far as I can see. The French do not
seem too hopeful as to the difference it will make.
Mr. Ayrault says that if Germany can hold out
through August, or until the next crops,—Heaven
help the Allies. He says that the German
markets are pathetic now; that they are almost
empty; that the poor people are actually
hungry, and not from high prices, but because
there isn’t any food to be bought. He himself
would have been hungry if he hadn’t had outside help.
The embassy gets eggs and butter and
some meat from Norway, and also from Switzerland.
Mr. A. also said that the discipline is so
good there, and law and order so much the ordinary
run of things, that the people are not likely
to revolt. He feels that it is only possible to
finish the war soon if the United States can
.pn +1
build enough ships quickly to supply England,
which, from all accounts, needs food. There are,
after all, only a limited number of submarines,
and each carries only seven or eight torpedoes, I
believe. They do not get a ship every time that
they fire, so that, if the United States can build
enough ships, losing a hundred or more will
not matter in the long run. Mr. Simons, of the
American Embassy here,—I mean consulate,—tells
me that no grain ship has come to Paris
for fifteen days. That is why the new regulation
about the cakes and pastries has gone through so
suddenly. I personally am glad, for it does not
seem quite right for us to be eating so many foolish,
unnecessary things if flour is scarce. I suppose
the shopkeepers will manage to get around
the law somewhat, but it seems to be a step in
the right direction.
Harold Willis writes us the most thrilling accounts
of the doings of the aviators now. He
sent us some of the cards, printed in German by
the French Government, which he and his fellow
“flyers” drop by the thousands while flying
over German territory. The cards say that the
United States has joined the war, and recommend
that the people surrender, as they will be
well fed and taken care of. They are not very
dignified, I think, and it is an amusing campaign,
.pn +1
is it not? But in some ways I would rather have
them drop cards than bombs on the villages,
hadn’t you?
It will seem queer to get home to Boston
some day and go into street cars and public
buildings, and not read on all sides such notices
as “Taisez-vous, méfiez-vous, les oreilles ennemies
vous écoutent.” Also, “Versez votre or
pour le Gouvernement.”
Sunday, while we were wandering through the
woods, we came upon a beautiful big tree,—a
fairy oak,—all decorated with flags and flowers
and prayers for victory. It stood in the middle
of a clear space—benches around it. It was
touching to see every passer-by take a few flowers
from the bunch they were carrying home and
lay them devoutly at the foot of the tree, praying
as they did so. All the flags were weather-beaten
except the latest addition, the American, which
looked bright and hopeful in contrast to the
others. I have never seen a tree like this. Mark
Twain tells of the one at Arc in his “Life of
Joan of Arc.”
The terrace at night is in some ways more
beautiful than in the daytime. One can see the
various searchlights playing in all directions.
They are really wonderful,—first one and then
another combs the sky, as it were, looking for
.pn +1
hostile aircraft, which, by the bye, never get
here.
The work continues to grow. Mrs. Sturgis is
leaving us this next week, unfortunately, and
we are all dividing up her duties. Work in the
Food Department comes to me. I am both glad
and scared. It will be interesting handing out
the food and keeping the shop shelves supplied;
but it requires lots of judgment to talk with
the women each week, and decide when to stop
giving them food, and to try to advise them on
all sorts of questions. However, I am going to
make a try at it. I think it is pretty nice of Mrs.
Shurtleff to ask me to do it.
I ran across a new thing the other day: one of
the families we were calling on showed us their
linen,—sheets and underclothes,—which were
completely yellowed and rotted by the asphyxiating
gases! They fell to pieces when touched.
Another result of this new kind of warfare.
Sometimes when I see so many children sick and
diseased through the results of their privations
while under the German rule, I can’t help wondering
what the coming generation will be like
when they grow up. They have had such hideous
childhood. Gas-mask drills at school, lack
of food, no homes for many of them, and goodness
knows no future.
.pn +1
Rootie and I are thinking of writing to the
Mayor at Rheims to find out who it is that
counts the number of shells falling in that town
daily! It must be a splendid job, and the person
who has it is delightfully accurate. Every day
we see by the paper just how many thousand
have fallen, except once, when they “fell so
fast” it was impossible to keep count. How
awful it is to make fun of it, and yet one has to
make fun of something about this terrible, terrible
war.
Betty Potter has given me my wonderful
package. When I saw the wrapper and Daddy’s
writing, and all the flags and ribbon, I just almost
went to pieces, but Miss Whittier being
with me, I couldn’t. I tore home, and didn’t go
in to luncheon, but sat and read and read and
read. Oh, you dear, dear people, how did you
ever think of doing such a wonderful thing? It
pleased and thrilled me so that I am still walking
on air. And the money. Oh, we do need it so,
particularly just now! I shall write every one
slowly, as I get time, but will you just tell everybody
what a wonderful time it gave me, and how
I can’t possibly express myself? All I can say is,
thank you, thank you all, over and over again.
It was pretty mighty good of you.
I had already spent eighteen francs of
.pn +1
Daddy’s money on a hot-water bottle for a poor dear
old lady refugee, who is dying of cancer. It is
only a question of time. Her two daughters care
for her now. We have installed them, and are
trying to make the end easier for them all. I
found on one of my visits that they used a
heated plate to give her relief when she had attacks
in the night. The hot-water bottle is a
great help, and they are pathetically grateful.
I shall write you as to just what we do with all
the money. Oh, you don’t know how much it
means! The little pins have gone like lightning.
It is so sweet to see the joy that they give the
children. Incidentally the various “workers”
have grabbed them also. Rootie is downtown
this minute buying bright ribbons for the children.
It will be too marvelous to have new ribbons
to give them.
Mrs. Shurtleff is driving with Miss Curtis to
the front, or rather the evacuated district, next
week. She has an opportunity and is seizing it,
you can be sure. If we get enough clothes from
America these next few months and can afford
it, we are going to establish a regular station, and
deliver clothes per Ford every fifteen days, and
I shall do the driving!!! To say that the idea
thrills me barely describes it. Of course, she is
taking Miss Curtis this time because she is older
.pn +1
and is the head worker, but next time she will
take me. I can’t tell you how I long to hear the
guns and actually see some of the things that I
have been hearing about for so long. It will be
splendid.
The new jitney, having finally arrived, proves
much more satisfactory than the old ambulance
body. I will send you some pictures of it soon.
We live on our balcony now, for the spring has
really come. We purchased a chaise-longue and
cushions at nine dollars, and take turns lying out
on it. The balcony is so small we can only have
one. We are just at the height of the tree-tops,
and now the leaves are out and the little garden
in front of us in the Square has many Japanese
apple trees. The air is lovely; with the moon at
night, it is marvelous. We hate to go to bed at
all.
I have got to stop now. Lots and lots of love
to every one, and thank you again for the package
of letters.
.rj
Marje.
.sp 4
.pn +1
.h2 id=linkXVI
XVI||FROM MARJORIE
.sp 2
.rj
Sunday, May 13, 1917.
Dearest Family:—
Here I am out at Saint-Germain again, this
time quite differently, though. Betty Colt and
I planned several weeks ago to have a day in the
country together; we have both been so busy
that we haven’t got round to it until to-day.
We planned to take the 8.04 train out, but, owing
to a thunder-shower at five this morning,—which
caused me to rise and go out on the balcony
to rescue our precious chaise-longue, getting
soaked in the process,—and its looking so
dismal and so like permanent rain, I went back
to bed and slept until 8.15! So we did not take
the 8.04, but the 10.04. It rained a little on the
way out, but now, after a delicious and filling
dinner, we are sitting in the garden, writing at
one of those little green iron tables. For a nation
that has such good taste in most things, I think
it remarkable the lack of taste the French have
in garden furniture! Betty having never been
out here before, the first thing we did was to
.pn +1
go out to the Terrace. On the way, we passed
a Ford standing by the roadside, which had a
familiar air. The number also seemed like ours,—so
I pulled out my license card (which I keep
with me always,—I am so afraid of ever missing
an opportunity to drive through not having papers),
and found that it was our “other car,”—in
other words, the car Miss Curtis hires from
Mrs. Gage and runs for the Association and for
herself over Sundays. You see, your license over
here is a complicated affair, and has, among
other things, the numbers of the car or cars you
drive. I am saving, by the bye, all the extra papers
that I have had to possess since I left home.
It will be fun going over them together when
I get back. Being clever children, we decided
that Miss Curtis must be near by,—if her car
was here,—so we rambled around and found
her, and also Mr. and Mrs. Bowditch and Mrs.
Sturgis and Miss Sturgis, all lunching at the
François I^{er}. We went in and said “How do you
do?” to them, warned them how expensive the
place is, and, after leaving a few chocolates, we
went on to the Bois. We get a marvelous variety
of chocolates out here—pure chocolate all the
way through, called disque d’or, on account
of a little daub or touch of real gold on each
one. Somewhat the same idea as that eau de
.pn +1
vie with beaten gold in it that we used to have
sometimes.
I intend to stand Betty up this afternoon and
get some good pictures of her to send you. She
is such a dear. I hate to think of her leaving
Paris in three weeks, but Dr. Gibbons goes to
Houlgate for the summer, and, strange as it may
seem, he takes his secretary “mit” him! One
comfort is that she is going to Houlgate, which
is on the ocean, and she has already asked me to
spend a week-end with her. This means that I
will get a swim—hurrah! My prospects of having
a vacation this summer seem to diminish as
the time goes on. Mrs. Shurtleff and Mrs. Newsom
are going to take two months off, but with
Mrs. Sturgis gone (she sails this Saturday with
her mother and father), I guess that the workers
who remain will simply take week-ends off, or
perhaps a week. We are now planning a wonderful
week-end party, starting for Houlgate
early some Saturday morning—Rootie, Elizabeth
Baldwin, Mr. Griffiths, Bryant, Simmons,
Mayo, and myself—in an auto, arriving in the
afternoon, and getting a swim, some tennis,
some food, a peek at Deauville probably, playing
with Betty, and all coming back either Sunday
afternoon or Monday morning. Doesn’t that
sound pretty nice? I haven’t the slightest idea
that we will ever really do this—but we plan it
at our Friday night parties every week now. If we
do go, Heaven knows what I expect to wear.
.il id=i09 fn=i150a.jpg w=425px link=i150a.jpg
.ca “Bettina” at Saint-Germain
.il id=i10 fn=i150b.jpg w=425px link=i150b.jpg
.ca Le Cèdre at Saint-Germain
.pn +1
I am wondering just what I planned in my
mind to wear this spring, when I left home. My
faithful purple suit continues. It is, if possible,
more faded than ever. Rootie has offered me
every conceivable kind of a bribe to have it
cleansed, and I think I may! I have bought a
hat, round and black with feathers curling round
the edge, which, with my black silk dress (which
has turned from my only evening dress into my
street dress), is my costume for teas! I have one
new waist; otherwise I have nothing. To-morrow
being my day off, I plan to shop. I must get
some thinner stockings, these woolen ones are
killing me by inches. You just try cranking a
Ford car for hours at a time in woolen stockings!
I have got to get up my courage and buy
some white skirts, although I hate to—waists
are bad enough. It is a bit disconcerting to be
told that I wear a 46! Why, why, don’t we all
use the same system of measuring clothes, coal,
essence, and lots of things? It would save so
much trouble.
Rootie and I have at last realized our ambition,
and have persuaded the lady who was in
the big room next door to us to change with
.pn +1
Rootie—thereby giving us a salon. We use my
room for a sleeping-room, and the big one for a
regular salon. With Rootie’s piano and my sofa
and chairs, it is very nice-looking, and will be
such a joy. We have not been able to ask the
crowd to come back to our house after Friday
night supper, for instance. Now we are going
to play “pounce” and bridge and all sorts of
things in our salon. The extra room divided
between us costs me only one franc more,—namely,
eleven francs instead of ten francs,—and
I think that it is well worth while. Also
Mrs. Shurtleff strongly recommended our doing
it. Last night I was sitting at the table writing,—Rootie
on the other side sewing,—and suddenly,
for no reason whatsoever, my chair simply
collapsed under me! I never had such a
funny sensation. As Rootie said, one minute I
was there and the next I wasn’t—I was under
the table! I left so early this morning that I did
not see Mme. H——, so Rootie has the fun of
telling her about it! However, she will not mind,
I am sure. She is very, very good to us. She
keeps her table up very well, and that, with the
good service and clean rooms, is pretty fine, I
can tell you. For instance, we had creamed potatoes
and cauliflower in a baking dish for the
first course yesterday noon, followed by cold
.pn +1
asparagus with French dressing (second course),
cold meat and noodles, and ended with the usual
cream cheese and confiture.
Every time I have asparagus I can’t help
thinking of the wonderful green “asperge” you
people are having. It is nearly all white over
here, and although very nice, not nearly as good
as ours from Marion—naturally.
Rumors of Russia making a separate peace are
frequent here just now. Dr. Gibbons and many
others feel that she is not to be reckoned with
one way or the other any more. They blame the
failure of the spring offensive partially on Russia’s
lack of support. The submarines are evidently
not getting everything. We have received
nine cases lately—the first in a long time. Mr.
Barbour at the American Clearing House says
that eleven hundred or more arrived in Paris
this week. We are glad, for we need everything
we can get just now. The typewriter paper, I
am very much afraid, has not come through;
still there is always hope. (Neither lot has
arrived.)
Rheims seems to be suffering particularly just
now. Every day a list of the houses ruined by
shells or fire is posted downtown, and the poor
refugees go and stand and read whether “theirs”
is gone yet. It seems to be only a question of
.pn +1
time before it will be a completely destroyed city.
All the soldiers and officers say that Verdun was
bloody, but this last month’s defensive is twice
as severe. Both sides are evidently losing
frightfully. In a great many ways I am glad
that I am in Paris, and not London. I believe
that we will be able to outlast the English in
many ways—food and soldiers. Coal seems to
be the greatest lack just now, and yet as a whole
there seems to be enough. The new meat regulation
amounts to very little. Few poor people
ever ate meat at night, and those who want to
simply buy enough in the morning.
I was at the Ritz the other day seeing Roxy
Bowen that was,—now Mrs. W. Stephen Van
Rensselaer,—and on her way to Rome with the
Honorable Stephen. They came via the Spanish
line, and I gathered that the voyage left much
to be desired. Among the tales she told (most
of which needed a little salt, I imagine), was
one of an egg dropped in the corridor and not
cleaned up during the whole trip! She was
the only American aboard. Personally I think
I should prefer the submarines and the French
line. I started to say that everything seemed
very normal at the Ritz, only we could not have
cake with our tea, it being Tuesday. Of course,
it was just my usual luck to be asked to tea at
.pn +1
the Ritz on a cakeless day! I have been told
several times that more chocolates have been
sold this last year than any time during the last
ten years—think of it! Of course, a tremendous
amount is sent to the front. It is a favorite
thing to send, but even with that taken into
consideration, it seems odd, doesn’t it?
Speaking of sending to the front, I have taken
on a Serbian soldier as a partial filleul, on the
condition that I don’t have to write him. I send
him monthly packages, but anonymously,—as
Rootie said, “Regular Daddy-Long-Legs stuff”!
I have seen so many foolish—and sometimes
worse than that—letters from these filleuls to
their marraines that I have been scared off.
But I couldn’t bear to have him starve to
death. His name not only is not Hippolyte,
but is utterly unpronounceable—sneeze twice,
cough, and end with “sky,” and you are as near
it as I ever have been!
.sp 2
.rj
Paris, Thursday.
What very deceptive things maps are, anyway.
Do you remember the day we looked up
Denfert-Rochereau on the map? We all hunted
for it, and finally located it, surrounded with
stations, morgue, catacombs, orphan asylums,
and goodness knows what else. I wonder if you
.pn +1
have the same picture that I had of it before I
arrived? As a matter of fact, I only discovered
the station a few weeks ago—so you can see
how well it is hidden. The other cheering institutions
do not exist, as far as I can see, and I
don’t care to look them up. What does exist is
a large square, with a big statue of the Lion
of Belfort in the middle. He is our landmark, as
it were, when we are coming home. From any
direction, there he stands, or rather lies, and
that means “home” in a certain sense to us.
There is a perfectly lovely garden in front of our
house, and another beside us—between our
block and Mrs. Shurtleff’s. Both gardens have
Japanese apple trees or cherry trees, and at
night, when we lie on our balcony, the scent is
perfectly lovely. As we are only two flights up,
we are just at the height of the tree-tops, so it
is deliciously cool, and, except for the children in
the park, one can hardly believe one is in the
city. Having these two parks and a square beyond,
you can imagine what very good air we
get, and that makes such a difference here. Besides
the æsthetic qualities, this house is located
at the end of a taxi-stand, which we can see by
standing on a chair on the balcony. As taxis are
few and far between here these days, it is pretty
cute for us to have our own stand!
.pn +1
You may notice that I am following your excellent
advice and am numbering this letter No.
one. Meant to begin last week, but forgot, so
here goes. Heaven help me if I miss out and forget
what was the last number I used! I am trying
to get time to re-write the Bordeaux trip.
My bad words are all worn out from thinking of
that beautiful letter going to the fishes. I am so
very glad that you called my attention to the
lack of periods and capitals in my letters. I intend
to go over this cahier very carefully! It
pretty near scares me to death when I think of
your showing my notes to any one, for they are
usually written hurriedly, and I simply say what
I think and feel without any regard to phrases or
literary value; not that I could do anything in
that line if I wanted to. Still, it does please me
to feel that I have been able to tell you enough,
and in such a way that it has interested you.
After all, it is simply because everything is so
vital here, and when one has something to say,
it is usually easy to say it.
Almost every day now, big, new, beautiful,
creamy-colored dirigibles sail over the city.
They are so marvelous-looking, with the sun on
them. I do not quite know what they are for,
but they are lovely to look at.
Having been scared into believing that the
.pn +1
pastry-shops are really closing, Rootie and I
bought lots of crackers, only to find them all
flourishing to-day, and with no immediate prospects
of closing! That is the way things go here.
Lots of talk about shortage of this and that, and
yet we all have everything.
The last few days a very large number of soldiers—a
remarkable number in fact—have
come home for “permission”—I cannot imagine
why. An oldest son—one of three at the
front—came home this morning while we were
making a call. I hated to stay on and ask questions,
when I knew how much the woman
wanted to talk with her boy. When he came in,
both the mother and father stopped talking, and
simply stared at him. Then she said, “Well, I
am glad to see you alive,” and kissed him on
each cheek. The man said nothing, but pounded
him on the back. Then the woman turned to us
and explained that he was the eldest, and asked
him if he had news of his brother, wounded in
a hospital near Arras. The simplicity of their
greeting, the wonderful control of the woman,
who is having a very hard time,—her husband
is dying of T.B.; she has three sons at the front;
her daughter of thirty is insane, the result of the
bombardment; and she herself is not strong. I
think that it is interesting to see how people
.pn +1
usually say commonplace things when they are
greatly stirred.
Rootie has finished writing, and is now waiting
for me to come in and play “halma.” Did
you ever? We have bought a board, and I expect
to be licked all to pieces, but here goes.
.nf r 0
Your very loving daughter,
Marje.
.nf-
.sp 2
.rj
Friday, A.M.
Am writing this while waiting in the car for
Mrs. Shurtleff, who is in the American Clearing
House, looking up lost cases—your paper
among others. I feel pretty important lined up
with all the military cars, and I backed into
the place perfectly, which is great, for soldiers
look down on girl drivers. Am hoping one of
them will crank for me! Letters from you and
Dad arrived for breakfast, all about seeing the
Roots. Thanks so much for them.
.rj
M.
.sp 4
.pn +1
.h2 id=linkXVII
XVII||FROM ESTHER
.sp 2
.rj
Paris, Monday, May 28, 1917.
Dearest Mother:—
I am so bursting full of the good time that we
have had during the past two days that I am
going to dash a line off to you—an inconsequential
line—even when I know that what
you want is a letter full of statistics and answers
to questions. (Funny thing, I always think that
I am the one who is wonderful about answering
everything that you ask!) I will be good
to-morrow.
To-night, I am tired and dusty, but miles and
miles of white French roads bordered by forests,
and meadows, and houses, and towns, and children,
and horses, and castles, and flags, are going
round in my head.
.nf b
“There ne’er were such thousands of leaves on a tree,
Or of people in church or the park....”
.nf-
To-day is a holiday, being the day after
Pentecost (Whit-Monday in England), and
Marje and I decided to go off for two days
somewhere in the country. Miss Curtis had
.pn +1
planned to move a family to-day in the Association
car,—forgetting that Mrs. Shurtleff had
promised us that we could go out in it,—so she
handed us over her Ford touring-car, which was
perfectly wonderful for us.
Yesterday morning we started off in dazzling
sunshine with a clear blue sky overhead. We
took the road to Fontainebleau, which is long
and straight and bordered all the way—fifty
kilometres—with great evergreen trees. We
took our hats off and talked, and laughed, and
sang, and whistled, and watched the countryside
go flying by; the trees and fields were the
most luscious green, and everywhere were huge
patches of mustard, growing dense and brilliant
yellow. Little towns, red-roofed, with a single
church spire and a few pointed haystacks, would
huddle to themselves far off on the horizon, and
always we kept tearing along between the trees,
leaving Paris and carking care behind.
We stopped for luncheon under a particularly
splendid tree and laid out our store on the thick
grass. Sardines, fresh bread, cheese, preserved
plums, strawberries, olives stuffed with anchovies,
Cailler’s chocolate and orangeade. I
never had anything taste so good, and no salt
air any nearer than Havre to account for it.
You can’t imagine what fun we had. Finally
.pn +1
when we were replete, we lay down and looked
up into the leaves and listened to the most
heavenly birds.
We reached Fontainebleau at about two.
The “New York Herald” had said something
about its being American day at F. that Sunday,
but we weren’t prepared for such an exhibition
of American flags as greeted us on all the houses
and shops, and on the palais itself. We knew,
however, that all this demonstration meant that
the hotels were full, so we looked to getting a
room for the night before seeing anything. Not
a thing to be had. Thank fortune we were in a
car and could go on to the next town.
There was a special invitation for all Americans
to visit the Fontainebleau golf course, so
we made tracks out in that direction, as the
palais and grounds were overrun with permissionnaires
and the usual holiday crowds.
Arrived at the gates of the golf club we were
ashamed at first to go in. We were tired and
dusty and blown to pieces, and the paths and
hedges looked too neat and dressy for words.
But we did hop out and walk up to a gentle-looking
gray-bearded Frenchman with a black
straw hat, and asked if we could go in. He said
he was enchanté to have Americans come to the
club, and took us himself up to the first tee. I
.pn +1
looked wistfully at the little piles of sand and
thought of the many hours spent under an
electric light between four walls of fish-net
on Seventy-second Street, and longed for my
driver.
We wandered up to some fir trees in the rough
about halfway to the first green and flopped
down on the ground. We were both pretty tired
and didn’t know where we could spend the
night, or what, in fact, the next move would be.
Marje said that she couldn’t go another step
until she had a nap, and as we didn’t know when
we should see a bed, we crawled under the low
branches of the fir tree, spread our coats over us,
and went to sleep.
It was twenty minutes of four when we woke
up. We jumped out of the bushes and so startled
a man who was driving off that he sliced his shot
and the ball went whizzing between our heads.
It was surprising to see men caddies in battered
French uniforms—probably réformés for tuberculosis—and
also young husky girl caddies
toting around armfuls of clubs. These were the
only reminders of war, for on the veranda were
Americans and French people in white tennis
shoes and blazers playing bridge. You can’t
imagine the thrill of seeing good-looking people
wearing clothes and jewelry, sitting around
.pn +1
and calling out “No trumps”—after what this
winter has been in Paris.
My, but we felt good after our nap! We met
our friend with the black hat and he took us
inside the clubhouse. He showed us most especially
the mural decorations—scenes in Fontainebleau—which
were from his brush. One
of the silver loving-cups in the glass case had
“Compliments of Charles Crocker” on it, and
Marje discovered that he is a relation of hers in
Fitchburg.
We became very chummy with graybeard,
and I mentioned in passing that we couldn’t
find a place to stay. He gave us his card—M.
Paul Tavernier—and said that he knew an old
couple who had a lovely house which they rented
furnished for the summer, beginning July 1st.
Just now they rented rooms overnight and
would serve the petit déjeuner. It was nice of
him to recommend us, not knowing us at all, but
he must have known we were nice, we looked so
innocent and unattractive. It seems funny that
over here when I’m traveling I spend my time
trying to look utterly unattractive and I meet
with dazzling success; but such a difference as it
makes when choosing hats!
I have had a gnawing eagerness to see Moret.
I believe it’s where the Barnards used to live;
.pn +1
and Professor Churchill, head of the art department
in Northampton, knew George Gray Barnard
there, and used to mention the town and
its environs in his lectures. The road leads
through the forest, and I can imagine nothing
lovelier than the acres of velvet green grass and
giant green trees. You feel so tiny in between.
We hurried back to Fontainebleau and found
25 rue de l’Arbre Sec to be a plain-looking
house on a narrow, cobbled side street. Our ring
was answered by a nice-looking little woman,
who became cordial when we mentioned M.
Tavernier’s name. She led us through the house,
which was dark and finely furnished, and upstairs
to a bedroom done in pink, with white
furniture. The windows looked out on a court
and a heavenly garden—undreamed of from
the street.
Mme. Moreau, our hostess,—I call her hostess
for she seemed just like it,—made up the
bed in fresh linen, hemstitched and monogrammed,
put fresh towels in our private adjoining
bathroom, and puttered around us adorably.
She said that she didn’t serve any meals
except breakfast, but would we like eggs with
our coffee? We jumped for joy. I haven’t had
an egg for breakfast since I was in Pau.
We sauntered out for dinner at 7.30. We went
.pn +1
to the France et Angleterre, the chic-est hotel
there, and ate on the Terrace with all the swells.
A few of the very few members of Paris haute
société that I know were there, and bowed quite
informally over their pearls. I was becomingly
gowned in my old brown felt hat, the coat of my
winter suit, the little blue serge model, and a
pair of men’s shoes that I bought from the Vestiaire.
No matter. We watched the officers and
their lady friends and the Rolls Royces and Renaults
and negotiated our asparagus with perfect
nonchalance.
To bed in that wonderful room. The armoire
was all lined with satin, and there was a plain
gray velvet carpet, and canework let into the
head and foot of the bed, and the bed was set in
an alcove with a canopy. Oh, I tell you it was
great; twelve francs, for the two of us.
And when we woke there were the eggs—and
pain grillé. It was about the time when certain
people that I know are usually on the way over
to the Vestiaire, and we hugged ourselves and
each other, I can tell you, to think that we were
off in Fontainebleau in an elegant boudoir with
trees whispering outside the window and boiled
eggs before us.
We had luncheon in the forest. We decided to
leave the palais and grounds until another day
.pn +1
when there wouldn’t be such a crowd and the
sun would not be so hot.
Moret is the cutest place ever. A cobbled
main street, with little stores and tiny streets
leading off of it, and old stone towers over the
city gates. It is on the Loire, and we crossed
the bridge and sat down in the long grass at
the water’s edge and looked back at the town
through the trees; cunning little houses with
window-boxes leaning out over the river, children
and ducks playing in the water; and topping
the town, the tower of the lovely old
twelfth-century church.
We went up to the church, and really it is the
most romantic, irregular, moth-eaten, ancient of
days that you can imagine. The inside is lovely
in outline and general construction, but here
and there it has been whitewashed and generally
renovated in a deplorable way. Some one evidently
died—as Marje remarked—and left
to the church three brilliant cut-glass chandeliers,
which give the most bizarre effect, hanging
in the main aisle. We wandered around all alone—not
a person in the place, not even a priest or
choir-boy was to be seen.
We started home and went to Barbizon for
tea. That is another cute place. Lovely villas,
and tablets outside saying what artist lived
.pn +1
there. There are several fine hotels. One was
really very snappy, and we had tea there outdoors
under a yellow-and-white striped awning.
The country all about is lovely and just shrieks
Millet. If it hadn’t turned cold suddenly I
should have wanted to get out and sketch and
let Marje work on the car awhile. She always
can find something to do, and if there’s nothing
in sight for me to draw, I always can draw her
doing it.
I have just been playing over the easier of
the Symphonic Études—if there are such—and
here I am writing away and it’s bedtime. Think
of how wonderful it was to have that car, and
find that lovely place to stay, and to have each
other to go with, and then to come home to our
salon and my darling piano!
I am waiting impatiently for the letter telling
me what I’m to do in Switzerland. I am afraid
you are quite unnecessarily worried about me.
There was a time when I was pretty ill and tired,
but I am much better now. Mrs. Shurtleff has
given both Marje and me every other Monday
off. I haven’t written to you yet about our
salon, but it makes all the difference in the world
to our health and happiness.
Good-bye for now. I will write you a sensible
letter soon, full of information and untouched
.pn +1
by frivolity. I understand that one boat has
skipped. I know I didn’t get any mail. Heaven
know when you’ll get this.
Much love, Mother dear, from
.rj
Esther.
.sp 4
.pn +1
.h2 id=linkXVIII
XVIII||FROM MARJORIE
.sp 2
.rj
June 20, 1917.
Dearest Family:—
Having written you a short bum letter last
week, I am now going to try to make it up to you
this week. I certainly have enough material,
and if this cahier is not interesting, it is because
I am writing very hurriedly, and not on account
of lack of things to tell you.
Ever since I arrived here in Paris, I have
longed more or less, and mostly more, to get up
to the “front,” and to see what this war has done
to the country and villages, and what modern
warfare is like, anyway. I have hoped that I
might get an opportunity some time, but have
only hoped. It never occurred to me that I,
Marjorie Crocker, would ever really get there,
but I have! I warn you right now that this trip
has changed my point of view in several ways,
and I only hope that I shall be able to tell you
what I saw in such a way that you will feel as I
felt. (I am, by the bye, making a carbon copy of
.pn +1
this letter, for I do not intend to have another
“Bordeaux trip” letter experience.)
Mrs. Gage wrote to Miss Curtis some time
ago, saying that she wanted to borrow her car
for a few days’ trip to the front, and would Miss
C. be willing to drive it for her? You can imagine
that Miss Curtis was willing. I happened to
be there when she was reading the letter, and remarked
at once that, if anything happened, not
to forget that I could always go as a chauffeur
too! Then I thought no more about it, until last
Friday, the 8th, when Rootie blew in to luncheon,
all agog about some Mrs. W—— who
wanted Miss Curtis to drive her to the front the
next day, and Miss C. was in the country for a
few days’ rest. As this sounded like a chance to
me, I got busy, and with Rootie’s help chased
up the “chance” as quick as we could! Rootie,
knowing how I felt, had suggested me in the
morning as a substitute for Miss Curtis, but
nothing very definite had been arranged. We
tore around from Dr. Shurtleff’s to the Vestiaire,
and there by pure luck met Mrs. W——
and a Miss Upjohn, who was with her. After
some discussions between Mrs. Shurtleff, Mrs.
W. and M. X. C., as to whether I ought to try to
go in Miss Curtis’s place, for there was every
possibility of her returning that night, Mrs.
.pn +1
W—— said that I was there on the scene, and
she would like to try to take me in place of Miss
Curtis, and we must go at once to get the name
changed on the papers,—so we hopped into
the Association car and beat it for the Agence de
la Presse, which is the place to get papers to go
to the front. I was at this stage of the game as
ignorant as you are as to who Mrs. W—— was,
and why she was going to the front, and what
the whole game was. The only thing I could
think of was that I was really going to the front.
We got the papers changed easily, and I came
back to the house all excitement, ready to start
at six in the morning. You can imagine how I
felt, for it did seem as if I was cutting Miss Curtis
out of her opportunity. We stopped at Miss
C.’s house to discuss things with her, and found
to our delight a telegram saying that she had
decided to stay over one day more, so I felt
much better. Incidentally I knew that she and
Mrs. Shurtleff were going up to the front later
on, and that they were to stay for a week or
more. After going to Mrs. Shurtleff’s and talking
it over with her, we came back here and found
a note saying the start was postponed until
three in the afternoon. This I was glad of, for it
gave me time to get ready, and also to attend
the usual Saturday morning conference.
.pn +1
Rootie and I lunched at the Bon Marché, in
celebration of the event, although I felt rottenly
about going and not being able to take her
along too. I thought that the ladies seemed a
little vague, so I took some food with me, as I
can keep going indefinitely if I am fed, as you
know. I went to the Hotel Regina, as directed,
at the hour set, and there met the rest of the
mob. The party was to go in two cars, one a
high-powered landaulet, French make, and our
Ford. Mrs. W—— was the head of our party.
She is about to found a work over here, has got
an office, and, when she gets money and a committee,
is going to have a “large work” for the
Pays Envahis, so she says. She is English, and
has written at times, and her excuse for going
on the trip was to write up the country, send it
to America, and raise money there for her work
which is about to be. Miss U. is a friend. Mrs.
W. was the next. I made the fourth, and chauffeur
of the party. The other car contained Mr.
and Mrs. Will Irwin, of “Saturday Evening
Post” fame, Mrs. Norman Hapgood, and Mme.
Perrin, the official guide, and her sister. Mlle.
Bazin (they are daughters of one Léon Bazin, a
well-known French author), and a chauffeur
who looked at me in scorn! We started at about
half-past three, our orders being to follow as
.pn +1
closely as possible to the other car, and, if we
lost them, to turn up at Compiègne, seventy-five
kilometres distant, for dinner and to spend the
night.
I am perfectly sure that the chauffeur never
drove so fast in all his life before; he just whizzed
out of Paris with us panting at his rear! Once
out of the city, I balked and slowed down to a
comfortable gait, which gave me a chance to
listen to Mrs. W——'s flow of words in my ear,
and enjoy the country. I could hardly believe at
this stage of the game that I was really on my
way to the front. We had two punctures, but,
as I was carrying two extra rims, they did not
bother much. Of course, the ladies thought I
was “so clever” to be able to change a tire! I
wonder what they expected—that I would stay
by the side of the road all night with a puncture?
We arrived at Compiègne at about 6.30,
and found an excellent hotel. The arrangement
of rooms amused me a little, for I found that
they had reserved two chauffeurs’ rooms! Although
the other one is a most superior being,
having driven Edward VII during his stay in
Paris, still I thought I preferred the hotel to the
garage to sleep in, and so made my own arrangements!
King Edward, as we called him, was
very nice, and mended my two punctures for
.pn +1
me, after taking me to the military field to get
my gas for my trip. For once in my life, I had
all the gas I wanted offered me, and did not have
to pay for it! I can tell you, I took all that she
would hold, and then filled five empty bidons
which I had, fortunately, brought with me. We
had a delightful dinner, and I for one turned in
early, for I imagined that the next day would
be a tiring one. The next morning was cloudy,
but not rainy, and we started off at nine o’clock
for Noyon, which is the headquarters for such
trips as ours. We went via Bailly, where we saw
our first trenches. Also No Man’s Land, of
Mary Roberts Rinehart fame: the first really
famous battlefield. We stopped and walked
through long communication trenches, now partially
filled up, all muddy and full of cobwebs
and dead rats. It seemed strange to think that
only last March there was fighting in those
trenches, and now they are cobwebbed and falling
to pieces. The officers’ dug-outs along the
side of the roads, all of which have been first in
French hands, then German, and now French,
were particularly interesting. Each one was
different; some had regular windows with pathetic
attempts at curtains, some were quite
palatial, others were filled with water, and all
wore a deserted and much-fought-over air.
.pn +1
The miles and miles of barbed-wire entanglements,
with corresponding miles of twisty-turny
trenches, screens of boughs, wire with grass tied
on it, and burlap curtains, showed us quite distinctly
where the original French lines were and
the Boche. The land in between is now quite
dry, and does not look like a lake, but like
an ordinary field, criss-crossed with low barbed-wire
entanglements. Here and there a grave,
mostly French. We walked along the roadway,
and stopped to look at a ruined farm; the
buildings of cement were all shattered, except
the cellar of the main house, which had a painted
sign over the door, “Notre Dame des Forêts,”
and then the hours of services. The interior had
been whitewashed, and a rude altar built at the
farther end. There were bullets, many of them,
lying in front of the door. While we were looking
around, an old man drove up with his wife in a
rickety shay. He owned the place, and was coming
for the first time to see what was left. I
hated to have him get out and look. I knew his
heart was breaking, and he was too old and already
broken to ever be able to see it rebuilt.
He was talkative, and took me out behind the
barns to see his pride and joy: what once was a
McCormick reaping machine, only just paid for
at the outbreak of the war,—fifteen hundred
.pn +1
francs,—now a mass of twisted, rusted iron
and steel, hopelessly wrecked. He did not say
much, only told what it cost, said it was his only
new machine, and then walked away. I went
back to the car. What in the world could I say?
The others had by this time walked on farther,
and I had to hurry to catch them. We inspected
more dug-outs, and then went on to Noyon.
Just before entering this town, we saw our
first Boche prisoners. I don’t know what a German
soldier looks like ordinarily, but when shorn
of his arms, buttons (taken as souvenirs), wearing
a little gray cap with a red stripe around it
on the top of his shorn head, he presents an
amusing and pathetic appearance. I don’t know
what it is that is so very bedraggled about
them, but they look so absurdly harmless, almost
like the inhabitants of the Forest Hills
insane asylum, when one sees them walking
about the lawn or sitting under the trees on
the way to Marion. They looked well fed and
young. They were working, not very hard, but
rather stolidly, I thought.
Noyon seemed to be fairly well preserved, and
very full of military life. We went to Headquarters,
and procured that most necessary of things
for a trip to the front—a French capitaine.
He was very nice-looking and agreeable, and, as
.pn +1
we discovered later on, very efficient. He let us
look around the town a bit; in fact, I went into
the cathedral for a minute, but as a service was
going on, did not get much idea of what it was
like. One thing caught my eye in the courtyard
of the priest’s house next door—a life-sized
statue of some saint carrying a lamb. A shell
had bitten a great piece out of the back of the
figure, but he still held the lamb, unhurt.
From Noyon we were escorted south to a
small town called Blérancourt, where the poilus
come home for vacation, and a gayer place I
never was in. Music, songs, soldiers dressed up
playing tag, fencing, huge signs telling of a spree
to come off that night in the big room at the
canteen run by the English. We entered this
building, and found three charming English women
who are living there, and running a rest
and writing-room and a canteen for the poilus.
They serve about seven hundred a night, they
said. They invited us to eat our luncheon in
their garden, which we were most willing to do.
I tried to get some pictures of it, but I doubt if
any of mine will come out. It was pretty cloudy
for photos.
.il id=i11 fn=i178a.jpg w=425px link=i178a.jpg
.ca Will Irwin in the Garden at Blérancourt
.il id=i12 fn=i178b.jpg w=425px link=i178b.jpg
.ca Mrs. Williams (back), Miss Dobson, and Mrs. Wethey in the Garden at Blérancourt
.pn +1
I managed to get a chance to talk with one of
these women, and she was so interesting. They
are certainly doing a good thing, staying there.
They live in the most simple way, sleeping outdoors
in the garden, wearing khaki shirts and
skirts. They are the only women in the town.
Their life is gay in some ways. A French poilu
on his four days’ leave is more of a kid than anything
I ever laid eyes on. One woman told me she
did not know when they ever rested, for they kept
up the noise and fun all day and all night too.
After a very nice luncheon, which we had
brought with us, for one cannot get food in the
military zone, we went on. We were aiming for
Chauny, or, at least, we all hoped that we were,
for Mr. Irwin told us that was as near the front
as any women would be allowed to get. The
country by this time was entirely ruined and
very military-looking,—that is to say, all criss-crossed
with trenches, entanglements, and dug-outs.
We kept meeting high-powered cars going
at a frightful speed,—mostly closed ones,—with
officers in them. I can tell you that driving
was no fun. I had to keep close to the other car
which went at about thirty miles an hour, making
a frightful amount of dust, but I did not dare
slow down or lose sight of them, for I hate to
think what would happen to a party of women
found in the zone des armées, traveling about
without the proper escort. I do not believe that
any papers would be of the slightest use. As a
.pn +1
matter of fact, the papers were all made out
wrong, and the one we did possess said that our
party consisted of Mrs. Hapgood (in the other
car), Mr. Williams (ditto), and Miss Upjohn
and Mr. Pelletier, the chauffeur. How I was to
pose as a man chauffeur I do not know.
We went along smoothly until we began meeting
a great number of trucks, gun-carriages,
and soldiers. This made me think that we must
be near the actual fighting, and I was crazy to
stop for a minute and listen for the guns, but I
did not dare to. Then we met a very nice-looking
chasseur on a bicycle, who held on to the side
of the car and gave us all the information we
wanted. First place, he told us that we were off
the regular road for Chauny, and that we were
almost at Pierrefond de Soucy, which town was
four kilometres from the actual front! This
thrilled us, as you may imagine. Then we were
held up by a guard, who talked at great length
with the first car, and after finally letting them
go on, stopped us and said that we could not
go for five minutes, that we must keep out of
sight of the first car, never stop under any conditions
until we passed the next sentinel, and
that he had no business to let us go on this road
at all, as the Germans could see us on an ordinary
day, but it being foggy he would let us by!
.pn +1
For the first time I really felt as if there were
some danger. As a matter of fact, it was practically
nil, for the Germans are very methodical in
their way of fighting, and do not fire on certain
roads except at certain times. However, our
chasseur friend told us that the woods we could
see beyond the field on the right were French,
but that the Germans were on the hill beyond.
That made them seem pretty near. We just
scurried through that town and the next. The
road was very carefully screened on one side,
with burlap and trees and wire covered with
grass. There were some guns ready for action at
the corners of the roads, and many signs saying
that autos should not use this road except after
dark. The woods were full of soldiers, who
waved and shouted at us. I found that they all
saluted our car, as they took it for granted that
we must have an officer with us like the front
car, so I began saluting back, and it seemed to
please them terribly. By the end of the last day,
I got so that I could give a very military salute
without any trouble, which I consider quite a
feat, for the driving was hard,—the speed and
the bad roads combined with the very constant
and real danger of the officers’ cars which we
met, and which, of course, would simply run
through you if you did not give way.
.pn +1
The beautiful great shade trees which line
either side of the roads have all been cut down
by the Germans before their retreat. Also the
fruit trees. In some places they did not evidently
have the time to really cut down the
trees, so they just ringed them—cut deep circles
in them so that they will die. I noticed that
in some of the villages the farmers had evidently
tried to save these few remaining ones, and have
bandaged them up. Mother probably knows
whether there is any hope for them to pull
through. The effect of miles and miles of flat
roads with simply the stumps of what were once
beautiful trees is ghastly, and I think of all the
things that the Germans have done, perhaps
this is the worst, and the thing which the people
of that district will never forgive. They say it
takes a tree thirty years to really bear, and the
generation now living will never see their orchards
bearing again.
In some places the Boches cut the trees so
that they split when they fell (always across the
roads, of course), and now there remain nothing
but rows of great white, livid stumps which
shine in the sunlight, and look so very ghastly,
and make one realize even more that this modern
warfare is not a sport. I took several pictures
of the trees, but I do not imagine that I got the
effect. It is, without doubt, one of the most impressive
and oppressive things that one sees;
every one who comes back says the same thing.
From a military point of view, cutting the shade
trees across the roads was not of great value and
must have taken a great deal of time, and the
apple and other fruit trees seems to be pure desire
to destroy. Although one thing I noticed,
the young fruit trees were almost always spared,
and this fact carries out the German theory that
they destroyed only trees which could be used
.pn +1
for shelters for guns or men. The trees on the
side of the road are without doubt invaluable in
the making of screens to hide the road when
under fire, but, even with all these facts in one’s
mind, and trying to be fair, one is infuriated to
think that these trees, so many, many years old,
should be sacrificed.
.il id=i13 fn=i182.jpg w=425px link=i182.jpg
.ca Luncheon in the Garden at Blérancourt. Left to right: Mr. Irwin, nice French poilu gardener, Mrs. Wethey, Mrs. Hapgood, French officer who escorted us in zone des armées, Mlle. Bazin, Mrs. Williams
Once again one was impressed by the fact that
a nation, or, I suppose one should say, two nations,
who were keeping the whole world at bay,
if not actually beating the whole world, could
have time to do all the things with the attention
to details which one finds in everything that the
Germans touched. Take, for example, the fact
that in the whole district which we covered—about
thirty miles square surely—there is not
a single bridge left. The present ones are every
.pn +1
one military ones, more or less temporary. That
is a true and exact statement—not a single
bridge. The same is true of telephone and telegraph
poles—not one remains. Also there is
not a stick of furniture of any sort, except things
too big to be carted away, such as pulpits and
big tables, which are hacked to pieces and are of
no value now. There is not any furniture left in
any house in any one of these villages. Germany
must simply be full of French furniture! I can’t
think what they want it for, and what they plan
to do with it, but, at any rate, they have taken
it. In the houses they have blown up, if they
have not removed it one could at least find the
remains of it,—pieces of legs or something,—but
there is no sign whatsoever, and I looked
myself in many, many houses. How did they
have the men and the time to do it all? Take
also a little fact, but one so very characteristic
of them. When an army takes possession of a
village, one of the first things it does is to number
all the houses and mark them on the outside
as to how many horses, men, and officers they
will hold. The French do this in paint in more
or less neat figures on the side of the house, but
the Germans chiseled the numbers in the majority
of cases over the house door! A little thing,
but taking time just the same.
.pn +1
I think that before I got off on that ramble I
was telling you about arriving at Chauny. This
town is pretty newly destroyed, and very completely
so. It was evidently a manufacturing
town, and the factories are now only a mass of
twisted iron and steel. The rest of the village is
literally ruined. I doubt if there is a house in the
whole town that has two walls standing. We
did not see it, if there is one. The completeness of
the destruction is what impressed me. Nothing,
nothing, left at all. It seems to me it will take
generations to ever get that one town in shape
again, and, of course, this is only one of many.
As it is still under fire, we were scooted through,
and were not allowed to get out, or take any pictures,
for which I am sorry. From here we went
via Guivry and Guisarde, two very much destroyed
towns, to Champier, where we stopped
and looked at a church which was ruined, and
also saw for the first time graves which had been
opened and emptied! This seems like a good
story, I have no doubt. What in the world the
German army wants with the contents of French
graveyards I do not know, but I do know that
they have opened and pillaged great numbers
of the graves. At first it seemed to me that the
sarcophagus might have been split open by the
shock caused by the explosion of the church
.pn +1
and other near buildings, for there must be a
jolly shock when a church falls down in pieces,
but I saw many graveyards which were not in
the churchyard and which were also desecrated.
I was interested to see the depth of the older
graves. They were all brick-lined, and surely
eight feet deep. This destroying graves has also
had a very infuriating effect on the people in
the district, particularly as there are such awful
stories afoot about the Germans using their
dead for all sorts of horrible purposes.
.il id=i15 fn=i186a.jpg w=325px link=i186a.jpg
.ca Very Old and Beautiful House at Roye Interior completely gone
.il id=i14 fn=i186b.jpg w=325px link=i186b.jpg
.ca The Cathedral at Soissons. Notice only steel bars left in windows
.pn +1
Roye was the next town. Here the Germans
played a sort of dreadful joke on the inhabitants.
They have left the outsides of the houses in fairly
good shape compared with the other villages,
but have destroyed the interiors perhaps even
more completely than ever. One house on the
road into Roye looks as if a giant had cut it in
two. The section which remains standing is partially
furnished; for instance, in the third story
there is a desk and chair, and a bust on a shelf
against the wall! Think of that bust staying
there through all the shock which must have
resulted in the building being blown up. We
saw several queer freak sights like that. Among
other things which made one feel that the innocent,
peaceful inhabitants of these villages are
the ones who are bearing the greater part of the
war was a soldier home on permission, who had
just got the key to his house from the Mairie,
for they do not let people go into their houses
until they have been inspected, as I told you that
the Germans leave everything loaded. So this
man went into his house and shop for the first
time, and we all trailed in after him. The shop
was once a good-sized store for ammunition and
fishing-tackle, and that sort of stuff,—shelves
running right up to the ceiling, with glass doors.
Every one of the shelves was emptied on the
floor and then exploded, every pane of glass
was shattered in every door to every cupboard.
This again is an exact statement. Now to take
the goods off all those shelves, to smash every
pane of glass, to burn and destroy everything
that was not movable in that store, counters and
such, must have taken time, and they did the
same thing in every single store! Upstairs the
same story—no furniture, walls mutilated, and
windows gone. All metal things gone also, except
lead, which they did not evidently care
about. The French army gathers together the
bits of gutter-pipes and lead plates which were
on the roofs, and uses them again, but the Germans
preferred brass and steel. The soldier did
not say much. He told us, in grunts and shrugs
mostly, that his wife and five children were lost,
.pn +1
evacuated, and he had not heard from them for
a long time. He kept saying, “What is there for
me to do?” And none of us could answer him.
The officer told him that the township would
have the store cleaned out for him, if he asked
them to. They use the prisoners for this, and it
must be very irritating to the Boches to have to
clean up their own handiwork! Also they send
them into the houses first to try and find any
loaded bombs, placed thoughtfully in clocks, or
under doors and such places.
After looking about the town some more, we
came on to Suzoy, where we stopped again to
see the Boche drawings in the Mairie. It seems
that they used that building for their staff headquarters
during their prolonged stay there, and
so decorated the walls a bit after their own taste.
They did this in many places, but in most of the
towns the natives have been so infuriated by
the drawings that they have already destroyed
them, but this village has saved theirs and shows
them to you with pride. I could not help thinking
of the Cook’s tourists who will be shown
them later on, I suppose. The chief and most
important one of these drawings covers the entire
end wall of the big hall. The side walls have
medallions of the various crowned heads of
Europe, more or less terrible caricatures. The
.pn +1
big picture shows two fat naked German devils,
with broad grins, and horns sticking out of their
heads, and with long, pointed, forked tails, sitting
in hell and watching and superintending the
frying of the crowned heads of their enemies.
The kings and presidents are all dangling on peacock
feathers, trying not to slip into the fire, but
all are sliding towards their doom. In the center,
in the hottest part,—in fact, right in the flame,—are
two figures, one, King George, I should
imagine, and the other a neat little Highlander
in his kilts. This is interesting in view of all the
stories one hears about the Germans being more
afraid of and hating the Scotch regiments more
than any others, is it not? The pictures are well
drawn, but are hideous, and you can imagine
their effect on a French villager! There were
also some excellent black-and-white charcoal
sketches, which were really beautifully done,
showing what happened in villages where the
Germans were sniped at. A real artist must have
done these last pictures. The most interesting
thing in the village was a rough grave in the
churchyard with a green board for a tombstone,
bearing the following:—
.nf c
“Ici a crevê
Le Boche
Qui a fait
Sauter l’Êglise.
18 Mars, 1917.”
.nf-
.pn +1
The story is that the officer, who ordered the
destruction of the church just before their departure,
was found half buried in the churchyard,
the next morning (after the destruction),
presumably killed by a French obus, but, to my
way of thinking, more likely sniped by an irate
villager. Anyway, the story is good, and the few
remaining villagers like to tell it, and do it well.
All the time that I was on this trip I think the
thing that gave me the sincerest sympathy with
the people was the thought which was constantly
in my mind: “Suppose this was Marion; suppose
this was our house, our garden, etc.”
Another rather amusing incident in Suzoy was
an old lady, who appeared from somewhere, and
insisted upon telling us her story. The thing
that was uppermost in her mind, and the thing
which she has personally against the Kaiser,—more
than the destruction of her home, the total
loss of possessions, the killing of one of her children
by an obus,—all these are of slight consequence
beside the awful fact that the German
commander took with him when he left every
solitary key in the whole village! “And how do
you expect me to get along—this is too much,
too much.” If you know how the French love to
lock up anything and everything, you can imagine
what a tragedy this was!
.pn +1
Lassigny was the next village, and was in
some ways the most totally destroyed one which
we saw. There is nothing left at all. We went
through it quickly, and returned to Noyon,
where we left our officer with many thanks, and
turned towards Compiègne, where we arrived
at about 9 p.m., tired out, or, at any rate, I was
dead. We had a good dinner, and I turned in
very soon after. I had seen so many battlefields,
so much destruction and so many novel sights,
that I was afraid I would not sleep, but I did.
Maybe the wine which we had at dinner made
me sleep, but, anyway, I only came to at 7.30
the next a.m. I had some coffee and went down
to find that the car was wet, and that the cap
on the front wheel was cut open, and the grease
running out. This meant something was wrong
with the bearings, I knew, but, as Compiègne is
about as convenient as the Desert of Sahara
when it comes to getting hold of Ford parts,
I decided to let well enough alone, and so tied
it up with wire as best I could. King Edward
showed a great longing to investigate, but I
would not let him! As long as a Ford will run,
let it run, is my motto—particularly when
seventy-five kilometres from the nearest Maison
Ford.
We all went at nine sharp to the famous
.pn +1
Carrel Hospital, and were given an hour and a half
lecture with colored slides of his system of irrigation.
This was interesting, but I fear one member
of the party felt that she would rather be out
looking at things and battlefields than at slides
of human beings, torn to pieces and then all
nicely mended. After the talk, Dr. C. joined us,
and took us through two wards. We watched
some dressings which were gory and quite interesting.
He assured us that he did not hurt the
patient, but there was a difference of opinion on
that subject, for the poilus yelled nobly most of
the time. I talked with one man particularly.
He attracted me, for he was so young-looking
and was sitting up in bed with his leg on a
pulley out in front of him, and in the most
detached position I have ever seen. It did not
seem to be part of him at all. He was reading a
choice book called “La Douleur de l’Amour.”
I asked him if he didn’t have a pain worse than
love, and he allowed that he thought yes. He
was a nice soul, and I am sending him some
magazines to while away the time, for he will
remain, even in this hospital where they are so
quick, for several months. One nice old wizened-looking
man said that he had been in five hospitals,
had seven operations, and now was here
with his right arm and left leg suspended. I
.pn +1
asked him how he stood it, and he said that he
would stand anything rather than go back to the
trenches again, and live in water for two months
at a time. A queer choice? We came away at
about half-past eleven, after having had a long
talk with Dr. C., who said the same thing that
I have heard from so many sides. I asked why, if
his system of irrigation could so reduce amputation,
mortality, and suffering, didn’t the other
French hospitals adopt it. He said that it was
a new thing, and that they would not, because
they are not used to the idea, and they prefer to
keep on in the same old way, cutting off the limb
if poisoning sets in, and so sending out a tremendous
number of needlessly crippled men. How
awful that does seem! I do hope that America
is going to be sensible and profit by all the mistakes
that the Allies have made so far.
From here we went in the direction of Soissons,
and, much to our surprise, were able to
persuade the guard at the outskirts of the town
to let us enter, for women are not really meant
to be admitted, as the city is still under fire. In
some ways, this was the most interesting thing
we saw. The cathedral was a wonderful and saddening
sight. I would give a great deal to be
able to attend a service in it some night. They
are still holding them in the ruins, and, with the
.pn +1
sound of the guns, which is very distinct, and
with all the uniforms, a service held in the ruined
cathedral, with the windows all shattered, the
roof mostly gone, and the outer walls all pitted
and scarred, must be impressive. I could not
get a good picture of the towers, or rather the
one remaining one, but I shall have a copy of
Sydney Fairbanks’s, which is taken from a
neighboring roof, and is excellent. They say
that there is not a house in Soissons which has
not been hit, and I can believe it. There are
quite a few inhabitants left still, and they say
they are going to stay until the last gasp.
We could only stay for a short time, for we
were due for lunch at the American Escadrille,
Flying Corps, which has its headquarters at
Chaudon, south of Soissons. I had hoped that
this would be the corps which I knew, but was
not too sure, for the last time we had seen Harold
Willis he was at Ham. However, you can
imagine whether I was pleased to see, when we
drove up to the camp, all the people whom I
knew: Walter Lovell and Stephen Bigelow and
Harold Willis. I, being the only thing this side
of thirty in the party, naturally had a time!
We had a swell luncheon, and afterwards saw
everything there was to see. It is lucky for
your peace of mind. Daddy, that they have
.pn +1
only single passenger machines now, for nothing
would have stopped me if they could have taken
me up. I never was so thrilled by anything—to
see them fly in circles, and upside down, and
every which way, was too wonderful. Harold
told me all about the engine, and how to work
it, and I even got inside his machine and tried
the whole thing. I hate to say it, but I am
going to have a fly some day before I die, and,
if I have a rich husband, I shall have flying
machines, not jewels, for my hobby. I saw the
most wonderful pictures, and, oh, hundreds of
things. They have two lion cubs for mascots,
and the best-looking dogs you ever saw—one
German sheep dog is so intelligent it is hard to
believe that he can’t speak. You simply tell
him anything and he does it. He belongs to the
captain. After spending as long a time there
as we could, we came home via La Ferte Millon
and Meaux, taking in the old battlefield of the
Marne, and seeing Miss Aldrich’s House on
the Marne. It was hard to believe that this
district was once as much fought over as that
which we saw first—it is so grown up now. For
one thing, they did not use barbed-wire entanglements
half as much as they do now. I cannot
get over the miles and miles and miles of fields
we saw, all criss-crossed with wire. I keep
.pn +1
wondering who is going to take it all up when the
war is over.
We arrived in Paris at about eight o’clock,
and it was a tired but thrilled Marje who came
home to Rootie.
Lots and lots of love from your loving and
very sleepy daughter,
.rj
Marje.
.sp 4
.pn +1
.h2 id=linkXIX
XIX||FROM ESTHER
.sp 2
.rj
Wednesday, June 20, 1917. 11:15 P.M.
Dearest Father:—
I don’t know whether or not I have explained
to you sufficiently about my vacation; but I do
know that the work and life in general are going
more smoothly now than for some time past,
and that with the spring more or less broken into
by one thing and another, I am only too glad to
have a steady stretch in which to work without
any more interruptions than necessary. I
shouldn’t know what to do with myself for two
or three months’ vacation, and the present arrangement,
of having the month of August and
every other Monday off, seems ideal to me.
For over a month we have doubled up, Marje
and I, and are just twice as happy as we were.
You will remember that the marginal space in
which I lived and moved, always carefully,
around my bed, was small to say the least (certainly
Madame gave me bed and board!), and
what was worse, it was in the other apartment
from Marje. By a strange system of two keys
.pn +1
hung on each front door, passing across from one
apartment to the other was made as difficult
as possible. We called it going through the portcullis,
having no idea what that meant. And
next to Marje’s room was the big salon of the
apartment, thriftily converted by Madame into
a bedroom and exclusively tenanted by the wife
of a French officer. To her I made appeal one
fine day—after hours of egging on and double-daring,
etc.—that she exchange rooms with
me. Here she was surrounded by gray paneling,
a bay window, a carved marble mantelpiece, and
easy access to the dining-room; whereas I had to
offer her a room of no size, no sunlight, the pink
wall-paper, red leather armchair, and chimney
that won’t draw. However, there must have
been something in my manner, or even something
in my smile, or in the fact that my room
was two francs a day cheaper and had running
water in the cabinet, that made her want
to exchange. Also, the doors to the salon are
broad and made of glass with only china silk curtains
to protect one, and she felt—happily—that
it wasn’t quite convenable for a chambre
à coucher. Tuesday morning dawned. All the
maids turned out in excitement. Madame was
everywhere at once, particularly where a poor
little sandy-haired tapissier was doing his best
.pn +1
to move a two-ton armoire; the whole idea was
considered so bizarre—to have one room as
bedroom, with two armoires at once—that the
work of it all presented thrills. I never saw such
dust and flurry, or such an accumulation of junk
as I extracted from my former nest.
Slowly we settled. We would stand of an
evening like newly-weds in the newly acquired
dominion and plan our furnishings. Yellow and
black was to be the color scheme, with my lampshade
and piano as keynotes—two armchairs
and a divan to be covered with something, and
the traces of the era Minard (the officer’s wife)
to be eliminated. The lace tidies came off, the
pictures of Calvary likewise, the strips of carpet
put under the bed, and the statuettes and
vases hidden. There was a washstand, a double-decker,
and a Japanese screen to be disposed of
somehow without Madame’s guessing that we
weren’t wild about her furniture. It was days
before we dared act. Marje did it. I should
have told Madame that we were navrées not to
have enough room to keep them and would they
be safe in the cellar? but Marje—a diplomatic
one—asked Madame if she thought it was quite
comme il faut for two young girls to have a
washstand in their salon? and with a “I should
think not!” it was gone.
.pn +1
We looked at cretonnes—plain stripes; then
wiggly stripes with roses and a conventional
basket; then a formal design of children playing
by a table; and on and on—always introducing
yellow. Suddenly we saw our cretonne.
A big gray pot of deep-rose peonies,
with little white birds hovering over, and a
little blue wistaria, all against a blue-and-gray
lattice, with ultimate background of black. It
is gorgeous. The design is twenty-seven inches
high. We bought yards and yards—not to say
metres and metres.
Then came upholstering. We worked with
pins and warm language, and in five days had
covered the divan, two armchairs, and six pillows.
Marje did the pinning. I did the cutting.
Then two long straight curtains beside the glass
doors.
As for our yellow, my wonderful tea-set that I
told you about, and some candlesticks painted
yellow, and some bright yellow and black-and-tan
striped pillows and the lampshade are the
only yellow things. In the cretonne was only
one pale lemon-colored flower; but I am slowly
going round with my little brush and painting in
the right yellow with water-colors. It’s wonderful,
all of it.
Then we have a nest of tables of plain
.pn +1
unvarnished wood that I got for nineteen francs—four
tables for less than four dollars—and we
fight constantly as to whether they are to be
painted cream or black. You can imagine how
lovely my black leather writing-pad that you
gave me looks on the table, and with Leo sunning
in the bay window, why, Mme. de Sévigné need
not apply; and I forgot a gorgeous blue hydrangea
that Marje gave me for my birthday.
You can’t imagine what a difference it makes
to have a place to breathe in, and to play in, and
to read the “New Republic” in, and to sew in,
and to have afternoon tea in, etc. We feel so
settled and permanent. Just wait until the war
ends and you all come over to call!
I think we both feel a good deal better for the
change. The Shurtleff car has been running
fairly well lately.
I must tell you about my birthday—Marje
wished me merry birthday the first thing in the
morning, and then over at the Vestiaire Miss
Curtis and Miss Sturgis presented me with a jar
of real guava jelly. They had some left over
from a steamer box when I first came, and remembered
how fond I was of it. I was tremendously
pleased to have any one think of my
birthday, over here where everything is so different.
.pn +1
I went visiting all morning and took packages
for prisoners, in the car, and sent them off. In
the afternoon Marje and I did more visiting and
hurried home for tea at five. Mrs. Shurtleff and
Gertrude had tea with us and admired the salon,
which had lately been fixed up, and then Miss
Curtis blew in. She was going away the next day
for two days to the country and wanted the Association
car to go to the Ford place in her absence.
She mentioned also some chairs and tables to be
delivered up in Montmartre and a bed that had
to go to Neuilly. It was after half-past five,—still
later, I guess,—and she looked dead. So
we offered to do it for her. She is always so wonderful
to us. The car had the things all loaded
on, but it’s always a job to go to Montmartre.
The streets go straight uphill—so straight that
they often end in a flight of steps, not marked on
the map, and you have to back down and try
another. Finally, we found the little back alley
which was our first stop. The concierge’s husband
helped unload the table and chairs and he
was obsequiously drunk. He was too polite for
words, and after the furniture was installed he
explained that he was no mover, but a marchand
de vin, and wouldn’t ces dames step in pour se
refraichir. I couldn’t believe what he was saying,
and Marje got hysterical over my tact (so-called),
.pn +1
and I wanted to start off quickly, but
dignifiedly. The car wouldn’t move. Crowds
gathered. Suddenly I bethought myself of pushing
the car—it was so very steep. But, of
course, we were headed wrong, and you never
can start the engine by pushing the car when
you’re going backwards. However, we decided
to push until we came to a cross street and could
then turn around. We did this amid cheers.
Then Marje took off the brake and let her coast.
Not a leaf stirring. She said the carburetor
must be wrong, and that she needed priming.
So I pulled out the primer, backing along the
cobblestones as fast as I could while the car
coasted; all women and children drawing hastily
away at the sight of a girl apparently pulling a
camion down the street with one finger. But
she started that way, and off we went. One has
to be habile quelquefois. I think that Santa
Claus in the shape of a lady from America is
bringing us a self-starter.
Then out to Neuilly with the bed. The poor
little woman that we took it to was overjoyed,
as she and her children had taken turns sleeping
on the floor ever since theirs had gone from their
home là-bas.
Finally to Maison Ford just outside of Paris.
We left the car, walked back to the gates of Paris,
.pn +1
and started to go home in the Metro. We happened
to notice that it was twenty minutes of
eight and home three quarters of an hour away.
So we went to Premier’s, one of my favorite
places. Marje gave me the dinner of my life:
lobster and real ice cream. I began talking about
all my different birthdays, especially the one
at college when I took my last exam and my
ring came. I shall never forget that afternoon.
Maidie and I had dinner at Rahar’s, where we
were forbidden to go without a chaperon, and
she bet me the dinner that I wouldn’t dare go
up to the head of the philosophy department,
whom we didn’t know at all, but who was there,
and ask him to chaperon us. Of course I did, and
of course he was lovely, and came and sat with
us a few minutes and said he hoped we’d take
his courses some day when we grew up—and I
a senior!
Then I told Marje about Bailey’s and Stetson’s
and the ocean and everything. Gee! but
we had a great time—I’ve almost stopped saying
“Gee.”
After dinner we found a horse cab in front of
the restaurant and drove home. It was late twilight,
and as we crossed the Concorde, we saw
a tremendous big yellow full moon rising over
Notre Dame. I nearly always stop when I’m
.pn +1
driving over the Concorde bridge because I love
that view down the river so, but the cab went
so slowly we didn’t have to. It was all purple
and gold, with the yellow moon and reflections in
the Seine. I never saw such an evening.
The next morning I received your dear cable
and that pleased me more than anything else.
Thank you all for thinking of me. I’ve never
been so far away before, have I?
The other night we returned home late and
very tired and we were too late for dinner,—for
a change,—so we went out and gave a farewell
dinner to ourselves: four omelettes and
lots of strawberries. Home and to bed early—we
were tired and excited and happy all at once.
We left Miss Curtis’s car beside the house in an
open space behind the sidewalk, having taken
everything takable out, and disconnected two
spark-plugs.
We were barely horizontal between the sheets
when tat-tat-tat—came at the door. Madame,
backed by half the pensionnaires and the concierge,
were in procession. We were taking such
a risk in leaving the car there—such vandalism
mauvais gens could commit. It was unthinkable
to leave a car there, la la, and, anyway, we would
have a procès verbal brought against us.
If it had been our car we would have taken the
.pn +1
risk, but we didn’t dare with some one’s else.
Up we got and dressed as hurriedly as possible.
It seemed like a nightmare. Back we put the
spark-plugs and the other things and started off.
We went to our place, where the jitney is kept,
to ask if they could possibly take another car,
and they said yes, there was just room—but
that we’d have to take the car out before 7.30 in
the morning because the car in back of it was to
leave at that time. It didn’t seem as though we
could bear it. I suggested, although I knew it
was wild (Marje is too mechanical for words),
that we leave the brake off and put logs under
the wheels and that he just give it a shove at
7.29 the next morning and roll it down the incline
into the street. By Jove, he agreed. We
slept peacefully that night and called for the car
at a quarter of nine the next morning, as we
always do.
Marje discovered that her passport had run
out, and as it is always a good thing to have
about, we chased over to the Embassy after
Saturday morning conference and had it renewed.
She was off, too, for a sudden trip to the
devastated towns, and we realized that we were
to be separated for two whole days. You know,
it was the first time since Bordeaux. I felt widowed,
and she thought it was going to be a crazy
.pn +1
party and was off the whole idea, anyway. But
she left at three sharp and I went and had a
shampoo. The Ambulance men who had brought
over the candy from Mrs. Crocker had asked
Marje to dine at the Chinese Umbrella that
night, and she hadn’t been able to let them
know she couldn’t make it; so just before she
left I promised to take Mrs. Allen and Mary,
with whom I was going to spend the night, to
dinner there and ward the men off. The bank
was closed, and Marje had had to borrow some
money from me. This and the dinner don’t sound
related, but they were.
I was pleased that the Allens would go with
me—I run over there quite a lot and they always
have something extra for me, and are kindness
itself, anyway. But I discovered I had just
twenty francs to my name. Now the Chinese
Umbrella has the best straight American food in
town, but it is expensive, as everything is nowadays.
I never was so nervous.
I met the Ambulance boys safely enough and
painted a colorful picture of Marje’s departure
and they were successfully thrilled.
But for dinner—we had orangeade and fried
chicken, slipping around our plates with no
vegetables (happily the asparagus had been used
up—also the potatoes!); cornbread, and finally
.pn +1
strawberry shortcake. When pay time came I
stepped into the office planning to throw myself
on Miss Pabris’s (the proprietor’s) neck if all
were not well. She knows me because I got a job
through Mrs. Shurtleff for one of my protégées
washing dishes at the Chinese Umbrella. But it
was nineteen francs. I pulled out my francs,
and largesse with a stray fifty centimes, and
stepped proudly out—not knowing where
Metro tickets, not to mention a taxi, were to
come from.
As we passed the kitchen windows a voice
hailed me and there was Mme. Beau, my friend
and protégée, with a dishtowel clutched in one
hand, and five francs extended in the other. The
poor thing owed it to me, she said. I had utterly
forgotten it; part of some money I had lent
her when her baby died. Mrs. Shurtleff thought
it was better to have her pay part of it back.
Well, there was supply—what cared I for
the Metro? We looked for a taxi, but there was
none to be had. So I contented myself with buying
three tickets as pompously as possible.
On Monday, hard work moving furniture and
taking packages with two amusing Ambulance
boys, just landed, to help me. One from Montana,
the best-looking thing you could hope to
see, was equally entertaining on the subject of
.pn +1
the “Harvard Sisters” who had come over on
the boat with him, and of his Paris experiences.
From tea-time on, I was all ears to hear Marje
drive up. Finally she came. About 8.30 it was.
Such a lot as she had to tell. Perhaps I shall
have something first hand for you some day, but
certainly what she said was worth talking about.
The party was made up of two carloads; among
them, Mr. and Mrs. Will Irwin, and Mrs. Norman
Hapgood.
Now I could never drive a car over such roads
or take care of the engine or tires if there should
be any trouble (Marje had three punctures), so
my idea is to go as a journalist and take the same
route as this party did. Do you think, Father,
you could get me a chance? Think over your
newspaper acquaintance.
.nf r 0
Devotedly,
Esther.
.nf-
.sp 4
.pn +1
.h2 id=linkXX
XX||FROM MARJORIE
.sp 2
.rj
12 Place Denfert-Rochereau, July 4, 1917.
Dearest Mother and Daddy:—
It is eleven o’clock in the morning, and by all
rights I should be working in the Vestiaire, but
here I am at home writing you. I’ll tell you why.
First place, it is the 4th of July, and I am away
from home for the first time; second place, it is
Wednesday, and I want to get this letter off today,
so that you will surely get it.
Everything is most delightfully upset at the
Vestiaire. Rootie and I turned up for work as
usual this A.M., and found that the balcony of
the Arts Décoratifs building—on rue Rivoli—had
been offered to the workers at the Vestiaire
this morning, to watch the parade of our soldiers!
We just all tumbled into the two cars as fast
as we could,—Dr. Shurtleff coming in ours,—and
with Rootie driving, we followed Miss
Curtis as fast as we could over to the Louvre.
When we arrived at the entrance to the garden,
under those old gray stone arches, there were
many policemen guarding the way, and they
.pn +1
all pointed down the street, saying that we must
follow the Quai, but Mrs. Shurtleff leaned out
of the car and said that we were an American
œuvre, and that we were going to see our soldiers
from special seats, so they let us through.
We put the cars in one corner of the garden
and then went through to the Arts Décoratifs
building. The balcony was one flight up, and
almost on the comer of rue des Pyramides,
where the statue of Jeanne d’Arc is. We could
see the procession as it rounded the corner at
the Place de la Concorde, and watch it out of
sight down the rue Rivoli. The sidewalks were
already lined with people, and the balconies all
along were full of people. Just as we could hear
the drums faintly, and could just make out the
Garde de Paris on their horses, with their white
belts and shining brass helmets, we heard an
ah-h—run through the crowd. A flying machine—one
of the smaller French ones, with
the tricolor painted on each wing—was making
circles and diving down low, and soaring up
again over the soldiers as they crossed the Concorde.
The pilot was magnificent to watch, but
very reckless, for he flew so low and turned
such tremendously quick curves that if anything
went wrong, he would have hurt many people,
and, of course, not had a chance himself.
.pn +1
However, it was wonderful to watch, and got the
crowd thoroughly excited. It made me think of
the performance the first man gave who went up
to show us—when we were at Chaudon, seeing
the American Escadrille. When he came
down, he got fits from the captain for taking
such chances! After a short wait, they came,
and the crowd just went mad: first, the Garde
Républicaine, on wonderful-looking horses; then
a French band, all in uniform, of course, and
much to our joy they struck up a tune just at
our corner. They were such a fine-looking lot
of men—short, thick-set, hardy, jovial chaps,
each one with a rose either pinned to his coat or
stuck in his helmet strap. The few soldiers who
formed sort of a guard for the band had their
roses stuck in the end of their rifles!
After these came the Americans!! Oh, it was
great! A score of mounted officers leading, with
one French capitaine ill the middle, and then the
band, with a drum major and all! It was too
thrilling to ever put down on paper. The crowd
just howled and shouted and jumped up and
down, threw flowers, and we on the balcony
yelled as loud as we could. Then another very
fine-looking officer, and right behind him the
soldiers. Not so very many, only one battalion,—the
Sixteenth Infantry, the flag said,—but a
.pn +1
fine-looking lot of soldiers. They were noticeably
taller than the French, were very thin, and all
much tanned. I think they must have been in
Mexico. The crowd let the first half march past,
but the last division, which for some reason did
not have their rifles, were surrounded by the
mob, which just carried them along, all good-naturedly
shouting and pushing, so that the
ranks were broken badly in some places. This
did not add to the looks of the parade from a
military point of view, but it was so typically
French. They simply had to join in, and the
police were powerless, so that the end of the
parade was a seething mass of soldiers, Boy
Scouts, men and women, with a few police trying
vainly to keep the people back. I shall never
forget it. It was magnificent. I hate to think
that our country has come into it finally, and I
couldn’t help thinking all the time that these
men, who are walking down the street so gayly
now, will probably go to the front and be killed
soon; what for? It does seem so wicked, but the
French need something to put new enthusiasm
into them, for even that undying thing, French
courage, is showing signs of wearing out after
these three years, and now the American soldiers
actually getting here does thrill them. It
was so thrilling to see a French crowd get so
.pn +1
excited. You know how it just carries you away
to hear thousands yelling and clapping. It was
mighty interesting. I imagine it is about the first
time that “The Fourth” has been celebrated in
Paris. After it was over, we came back to the
Vestiaire, and settled down to a morning’s work.
I told Dr. S. that we ought to have a holiday
this afternoon, and he agreed; so he talked to
Mrs. S. and we are to have the whole P.M. free!
I had left my typewriter at home, so I brought
my cards and things home, and am going to do
them after lunch and to-night. They can wait a
little, and I do want to get this off so.
I will take a chance on the censor reading
this, and tell you the little that we know over
here. In many ways we are as much out of touch
with things as you are. France does seem to be
really feeling the war more than she has admitted
hithertofore. It is evident in the way the people
talk in the Metro and at the restaurant and
everywhere. It is shown in the constant strikes—the
women too. This last strike of the taxis
is in some ways a good thing—the Metro now
runs all night, or rather until midnight, which
is much more convenient. Russia, from all one
hears, is out of the game, for the present, at any
rate. She is not to be reckoned with either way.
Dr. G. feels that the Allies are lucky if she does
.pn +1
not make a separate peace. Mr. A. feels that if
the Allies with our help, mostly moral help, can
give Germany a big scare in the next few weeks,
maybe there will be an upheaval there, and that
the Kaiser will abdicate, and then every one will
be ready to talk peace. If not, and if the Germans
get a good harvest,—and there is every
prospect of their doing so,—he feels that she
has won; that she can go on forever. Every
one now admits, even French officers, that the
spring offensive was a failure, and the loss of
life was something terrible, worse than Verdun;
also that the Germans have the upper hand now
in a military way. The submarine question you
can get little news about. England runs that
news, and so one can tell nothing. Certainly
there are a great many more losses than they will
acknowledge. For instance, Dr. Gibbons told
me that several times he will see in the German
lists certain boats sunk many days before the
British publish it. There is no doubt about it,
the French are lacking many things, principally
flour and sugar. The bread over here is very bad
now, very dark, coarse, and often sour. We buy
bread baked in loaves from a pain de santé store,
which is conveniently located on rue Ernest
Cresson. Inasmuch as London, at any rate, was
much more poorly off than Paris when I was
.pn +1
there in January, it is reasonable to suppose that
they are still worse off, particularly as the Germans
have sunk more English ships than any
other nation’s. It seems to be hard to get any
definite reports as to the conditions in England;
no one comes to France via England any more!
It is pretty late now, so I will stop. Lots and
lots of love from your daughter,
.rj
Marje.
.sp 4
.pn +1
.h2 id=linkXXI
XXI||FROM ESTHER
.sp 2
.rj
Place Denfert-Rochereau (XIV), July 23, 1917.
Dearest Mother:—
It is great to know that you are all so happy
at Bailey’s and accomplishing so much for us.
Little sister, sitting with hands folded on the
other side of Periscope Pond, wonders why the
youngsters don’t amuse themselves sometimes
by erecting, or by listening to Charles Thomas
erect, a good spring-board. We’ve needed one
long; and if you don’t think that summer posterity
would be grateful, then you don’t know
this member of it as well as I think you do.
I have the queerest feeling when I talk about
summer and Bailey’s. Life goes along just the
same here: up every morning, work all day, tea,
more work, dinner, write, or play, and then bed.
The weather is cool and beautiful, sometimes
quite cold, occasionally rainy, but always I
think of it being April, or possibly May; and a
week from Wednesday is the first of August.
Guess where I’ll be! Our vacation plans are very
exciting and I can’t wait for this week to be over.
This is how things have worked out.
.pn +1
When Father cabled me about going to
Switzerland, the last thing on earth that I
wanted to do was to go on a vacation. I considered
my week of grippe and my week at Saint-Germain
a terrible lapse, and wanted to do
everything in the world to make up for it.
Agathe had been sent on a vacation, because
she was worn out, and then I went off, leaving
Mrs. L—— all alone at the Vestiaire. I worked
as hard as I could during May, doing Vestiaire
work in the morning, and visiting in the afternoon,
driving the car a good deal, taking the big
packages to the stations and sending them off,
and doing a good many odd jobs. On the 15th of
June, Mrs. L—— went away on her vacation,
and I was left in charge of the Vestiaire, with
Agathe to help. It was a circus and I enjoyed it
hugely. Then on the 23d Marje broke her wrist
and besides being pretty hard to bear for a while,
it tied things up considerably. I was the sole
chauffeur for the Association, and the sole hairdresser,
amanuensis, shoe-tier, bath-giver, etc.,
at Place-Denfert. Miss Curtis went over to the
American Red Cross about the first of July,
where she is invaluable. We miss her tremendously,
however, and there will have to be a new
distributing of work in the fall. Marje and I
just adore her, and we miss working with her,
.pn +1
but she brings Miss Sturgis down to work every
morning in the car so that we see her a good
deal, anyway. She is the most clear-headed,
honest, intelligent, nice person I ever knew.
She is always a sport about everything—I can’t
imagine her doing anything that wasn’t so
square that an ordinary person wouldn’t ever
even think of doing it. Marje and I would like
to be just like her—and if ever anybody wasn’t,
it’s me! She has blue eyes and a deep voice,
anyway; and I don’t believe you can be really
efficient without them.
Well, there wasn’t much chance for a vacation
for me, was there? And I had no desire to
go away and would even now stay with Marje
if her arm wasn’t healing so wonderfully that
she can go away right on schedule too. Mrs.
L—— got back last Monday, the 16th, and Mrs.
Shurtleff left on Tuesday, the 17th. I took her
and all her trunks down to Gare Montparnasse
in a perfect cloudburst, and then had to come
back for a little hatbox. It’s the best thing I
do to handle other people’s trunks; but you just
wait till next Tuesday and I’ll be off myself.
Mrs. Shurtleff is beyond compare adorable, and I
was glad of the extra visit I had with her.
These last two weeks are being spent in winding
up loose threads, having a few families come
.pn +1
to the Vestiaire, moving the last people on our
list, going out to Montrouge for our last gasoline
supply, calling for contributions of beds, sewing-machines,
etc., buying a store of food for the
Food Department, etc., etc.
We have arranged with friends to take turns
at the office during August, attending to important
mail, sending out notices that the Vestiaire
is closed until October, giving out food to
our regular families every Tuesday, etc. The
weather is no hardship—nothing like the heat
of May and June, and for blueness and clearness
equaled only at Bailey’s.
Well, Marje and I decided, way back when
the snow flew, that we would be one and inseparable,
now and forever, in regard to vacation;
but as August loomed nearer, all we heard were
the most discouraging reports of discomfort and
expense in regard to hotels. So many of the
usual resorts are closed that the few hotels anywhere
that are attractive, that are open, boost
their prices way up. The last thing we wanted
to do was to chase around after vacation started,
to find a perch. We inquired about Switzerland
and were told by the Embassy that it was feasible;
but by business men and the general public
that it was made as difficult and unpleasant as
possible to get back. Marje dreads a long train
.pn +1
trip, and I knew Mrs. Shurtleff would have a fit
if we went, and would worry over us.
One day we asked Miss Curtis and Miss Sturgis
quite casually what their plans were, and
Miss Curtis said that all she wanted was to be
“somewhere near the sea, tied by the leg and
left to browse.” Then Miss Buchanan, the terribly
nice Scotch girl, sculptor, who gives half her
time to the work, was sounded, and we found
we all wanted the same thing. We got Baedeker,
picked out euphonious names, and wrote to
thirteen different hotels. One answered—and
sent a hideous post-card view. Miss Sturgis and
Miss Curtis keep house and were going to send
the maids off somewhere. Suddenly they proposed
taking a villa, and a Miss Hyde, also a
worker, told us of the villa she had rented last
year, and I went over and telegraphed, and yesterday
morning got a reply that it was free, so
we’ve taken it! It’s in Brittany, near Dinard,
and we go Tuesday, July 31st, on a couchette,
and arrive the next morning. We have no linen
and no silver, no coal or wood; no lamps or anything;
but we have plans! Doesn’t it sound
entrancing? Villa Valérie, Val André, Côtes-du-Nord.
I’m just squealing with joy!
.rj
Esther.
.sp 4
.pn +1
.h2 id=linkXXII
XXII||FROM MARJORIE
.sp 2
.nf r 0
Villa Valérie, Val André, par Pleneuf, Côtes-du-Nord,
August 7, 1917.
.nf-
Dearest Mother:—
Back to the country is my cry! Simple life,
and, therefore, simple paper. We bought this at
Pleneuf the day before yesterday, when for the
second time we tooted over there to get our papers
signed, only to find that the Mairie closes
at eleven and at four! Since then we have decided
that it is easier to let the paper question
slide, as long as the Mairie has such inconvenient
hours!
We certainly are the luckiest crew that ever
sailed! Here we are comfortably settled in a
nice little villa, with all the comforts of home
and none of the responsibilities, for the maids
(Miss Curtis’s and Miss Sturgis’s) take all of
that, and all we have to do is to eat the excellent
food which is offered us and sleep and loaf
all day long. We have all wanted to go off for
the month together, but have not known where
to go nor how to get there; so we sat around
.pn +1
and waited for something to happen, and sure
enough, a friend offered us this villa. We just
grabbed it, and came down a week ago to-morrow.
I simply cannot believe that we are in
France. Paris, refugees, jitney Fords, and work
seem so far away. We are certainly leading a
healthy life, and, if we do not all go back to
Paris with a healthy burn and lots of energy,
it will not be the fault of the wonderful air
and, I might say, sea, down here. I do not
think that any of us realized how tired we were
until we arrived. Since then we have taken
things easy.
We breakfast any time after 9 A.M., and we
babies (Rootie and myself) have an egg for
breakfast. That does not sound like anything to
you, but it means a lot to us—nice, fresh eggs
that are brought in by a girl who makes me
think of Josey, she is so persistent; the poor
hens hardly have time to lay, she is looking for
the eggs so constantly! Also we have our coffee
more like American citizens! No more boiled
milk for us; also toasted bread. We find that
the bread here is very good, and particularly so
when toasted. After breakfast, we all sit around
and plan what is to happen. Usually Miss
Sturgis and Miss Curtis and Miss Buchanan go
off to paint, leaving Rootie and myself. We try
.pn +1
to write a few letters, but it is awfully hard,
with all the things we want to talk over now
that we have the time, and with the delightful
peasant women cutting the hay and doing the
gardening right under our windows. Also there
is always Marthe, very different, very quiet and
gentle, and quite reconciled to our queer ways;
but Marthe cannot get over the “Demoiselles”
putting butter on fried potatoes! However, she
brushes our clothes so hard and so faithfully
that it makes me wish I had brought my suit
down to be cared for by her.
Luncheon comes at 12.30, or whatever time
we get home. We have a way of just running
up to the top of the hill for one peep at the
sea at 12.15, which gives us great joy, and does
not seem to bother the maids. We eat on the
porch, all covered with honeysuckle, roses, and
with a beautiful fig tree just outside.
The war seems very far away down here.
There is a hospital in the village, but otherwise
than that one can hardly believe that while
we are loafing and playing down here, men are
being slaughtered at the front, which, after all,
is not too far away! I told you that Miss Curtis
went over to the Red Cross, for they offered her
a splendid position in just the line of work she is
most interested in, and, of course, Mrs.
.pn +1
Shurtleff wouldn’t have her stay with our little work
when she has the chance to be part, and an important
part, of such a big one. She is to take
charge of the reconstructing of four devastated
villages, which are to be models to the rest
which the Red Cross expect to do later. She
goes up from here on the 13th, and, after she gets
her papers, will go to the villages in question and
live there, working among the people, planning
how to get the village on its feet again. All her
work is to be with the view to making recommendations
in the future to other committees
who will do the same work. The Red Cross is
to work through existing organizations, and to
make recommendations and give money to workers
who will be capable of reorganizing these
villages. Miss Curtis will have a wonderful experience,
won’t she? She is taking Miss Sturgis
with her, which is rather a gloom for us, for I do
not believe that we will ever see either of them
at 18 rue Ernest Cresson again, for they are
wavering about going home this winter. Also,
of course, the Red Cross will work in many other
fields, but this reconstruction is one of the most
important.
.tb
Needless to say, I was unable to finish this
without being interrupted. To-day is Tuesday,
.pn +1
and I cannot believe that we have been here a
whole week. Miss Curtis will be leaving us soon,
and then we will all be left to amuse ourselves.
Yesterday she suggested that we should each
tell all we could about our homes, families, and
she and Miss Sturgis proceeded. They were too
funny. They had to correct each other all the
time, and, of course, they each know all about
the other’s relations. They kept it up for a
couple of hours, giving us the most minute details
about the sisters and brothers, and also
describing the insides of their town and country
houses! It was such fun, we enjoyed it thoroughly.
To-day Rootie, Miss Buchanan, and I
tell about our folks. I just have to laugh when
I think of how I will describe the Green House
which is so beautiful when you learn to appreciate
it, but, from a purely architectural point of
view, is not perfect! Also 378! Never mind, I
am just waiting to have them all down to Marion
some day, and to show them what a wonderful
family I have, and to give them a sail that will
make them all jealous the rest of their lives. I
feel as if I were more or less equipped to tell
about the Roots, and I guess that Rootie feels
the same about us, so I suppose we will be able
to supplement each other’s story.
We have discovered another attraction to this
.pn +1
villa! Out in a very dirty and unattractive-looking
hen-yard, which Miss Curtis wanted to
investigate, we found a box covered with wire,
and with five or six of the dearest little rabbits
you ever saw. They are quite tame and allowed
us to hold them for a long time, just cuddling
down on our necks, all warm and so soft! I am
happy now, for I have a pet to play with. I admit
that we need a dog, but that does not seem
to be practicable just now, so the bunnies will
have to do.
Luncheon is almost ready, and I plainly see
that to be popular I had better stop this noise.
I will write you again soon, and tell you more
about how perfectly lovely it is here. Until then
don’t worry about me not having a good rest and
a splendid time, for I am. I have already plans
as to what a lot more work Rootie and I can do
this winter, now that we will be the oldest workers—not
in years, but in time. Lots and lots
of love to all. You have none of you said whether
you liked or even read my letter about going up
to the front. I sent it by Ibby with the pictures
and relics for Josey.
Lots and lots of love from
.nf r 0
Your daughter,
Marje.
.nf-
.sp 4
.pn +1
.h2 id=linkXXIII
XXIII||FROM ESTHER
.sp 2
.nf r 0
Villa Valérie, Val André, Côtes-du-Nord,
Sunday morning, August 26.
.nf-
Dearest Family:—
Last week I let time and the postman creep
up on me so that I didn’t have time to write,
but I hope from my meager notes you have been
able to get some sort of an idea of Val André and
of our household here. It has been a month of
glorious weather, with such clouds and shadows
as I never saw before I had a paint-box. The
cliffs are high and rounded, covered with gorse,
thistles, and other wild flowers. They drop
steeply down to a rocky base, and then smooth
away in a glorious beach. Val André and the
headlands just to the north form a sort of ace of
clubs, with beaches in between. The big popular
beach, edged by pink and turquoise bathing-houses
and high-shouldered stone villas, we shun
consistently. In the afternoon it is rather lovely
to watch the ever-active little French children,
barelegged and nimble, build sand-castles to
stand on triumphantly until the incoming tide
.pn +1
has flattened out their afternoon’s work. The
dark-haired bonnes sit in groups on camp-chairs
and sew as they gossip, and here and there a
deeply veiled mother makes a dark note as she
sits quietly in the shade of a brilliantly striped
awning.
There is a military hospital in an old convent
on the main road, and the convalescents wander
around, or lean out of the windows. These and
the occasional permissionnaires are the only
close reminders of the war that we have. The
beautiful rolling wheat-fields behind our villa
are cultivated by women, and it makes my back
ache to watch them lean over, hour after hour,
their sunburned hands making heavy bundles
of wheat.
We have spent two or three glorious nights in
a favorite hollow on the hillside, just at the top
of the highest falaise. We put the two big hold-alls
on the ground, then a coat, then ourselves,
then blankets. You never saw such stars.
Early in that first morning we heard voices
down on the beach below, and saw the fisherwomen
with their lanterns taking fish out of big
nets stretched on the sand.
Then the dawn came, and a pink and lavender
and yellow sunrise. We sat up on our elbows
and watched. The sand was wet, and the grass
.pn +1
about us covered with dew. The light comes so
subtly.
We didn’t wake again until after eight.
Marje and I scrambled down the cliff and had a
delicious swim. The water was a clear emerald
and the foam as white as white!
We have had a glorious time with Miss Curtis—Aunt
Midge, as we call her. The daughter
of the family with whom she and Miss Sturgis
have lived, Mlle. Griette, came on Thursday and
makes a fascinating sixth to our party. Her
father was president of the Collège de France
and a well-known man. She is cultured to a
degree, about twenty-four, and simply charming.
She understands English perfectly,—her
knowledge of English literature puts Marje and
me to shame,—yet she hates to speak a word.
In consequence, we speak English and she
French, and the effect is sometimes joyous in the
extreme.
Yesterday afternoon we went crabbing. Some
of the costumes had to be improvised, and I’ll
describe no more minutely than to say that they
ranged from simplest in-wading to full bathing-suits.
It is wild sport, especially if you are particularly
fond of crab-meat with mayonnaise,
and yet your fingers have a natural timidity!
Tableau of Marje and Mlle. Griette
.pn +1
kneeling on slippery seaweed, prettily reflected in a
pool.
“By golly, there goes one!”
“Où est-ce?”
“Oh, a big green one. Look under that rock,
I bet he’s—”
“Zut! Il s’est échappé—sale bête!!”
“Not on your tintype—not while Sister
Marje has a say-so—I’ve got my finger in the
small of his back; you hold him while I get the
net.”
“Oh, mais, en void un plus grand! Où vastu,
mon vieux? Oh, Oh, il me tient! Oh, là, là!—Il
manque de charme, celui-ci—enfin ça
est”—etc., etc.
For two hours we splashed around, chasing
and pouncing and yelling, and got in all sixteen
crabs—some whoppers. Then we took a luscious
swim in the clear sunlit water.
This mixture of dolce far niente and a lark is
going to put us in fine trim for the fall work.
Don’t forget, Father, you’re going to get some
confiding editor or journalist to send me to the
devastated towns?
.nf r 0
Love,
Esther.
.nf-
.sp 4
.pn +1
.h2 id=linkXXIV
XXIV||FROM ESTHER
.sp 2
.rj
September 4, 1917.
Dearest Mother:—
The cable came yesterday afternoon and
caused a great stir in this little ménage, I can
tell you. I hope to go to the Embassy to-day
and get my papers through. Father was a dear
to accomplish my wish. I’m grateful; but so excited
that I’m shaky, and what did I have to do
this morning but run into a taxicab, and we’ve
spent hours writing a formal statement to the
insurance companies in both French and English;
and I only broke one spoke of his wheel, but
it is too embêtant for words. We have to send
them notice within twenty-four hours and I
don’t want that taxi-driver to have a show at
making a fuss.
Mrs. Shurtleff finally got a laisser-passer to
go to the evacuated villages with clothes for the
people left there, and she and Miss Curtis left
Friday in the jitney. Miss Curtis has lent us her
Ford touring-car until her return, and, believe
me, we have hardly let the engine cool off.
.pn +1
Saturday afternoon we did shopping, and it was
such a joy to be able to go about from place to
place in the heat without having to think of
taxis or walking or anything. I asked Miss Hubbard
where to get a nice dress. The only thing
I have to wear is the old blue-and-tan, and its
clutch on life is weakening visibly. The lace and
net are tom to shreds, the sleeves that I put in
last spring are hanging by a thread, and Leo has
nothing on it for spots.
Well, she told me to go to Jenny, she being
the least expensive of all the good places. I said,
“How much do you suppose the cheapest little
frock would be?” and she said, “Oh, of course,
she doesn’t touch anything under seven hundred
francs—but they wear forever, and it would be
wonderful for our business.” “I guess it would
be death on mine,” I told her, and I should have
to hear more directly from headquarters before
any such altruistic venture. After the war, I’d
just like to get something wonderful, but not for
now, unless Father wants me to!
So Marje and I went modestly to the Printemps,
and having decided that our pet aversions
were bottle green and elbow sleeves, we
bought dresses, exactly alike, with those two features
as keynotes. We simply had to have something
for a dinner to-morrow night, and really
.pn +1
they’re not bad. We’ll have some one take
our pictures together. Then Saturday evening
we had dinner together downtown, and went
out to Saint-Germain. I never felt such heat.
We got to our beloved Mme. Poitier’s where I
stayed when I was ill, and she said that she had
received our telegram too late and that all she
had was a single room under the roof. You can’t
imagine how hot it was. We laughed our heads
off because, of course, our rooms in Paris are
nearly always cool. But we bunked as well as
we could. I spent half the night on the floor with
one pillow lying on a strip of oilcloth which was
the coolest thing in sight. We had boiled eggs
for breakfast, which made up amply for any
discomfort.
We read and slept and explored the lovely cool
forest on Sunday, so different now from the last
week of April.
Monday evening we met Mrs. Allen and Mary
and had a picnic supper in the wild part of the
Bois de Boulogne on the banks of the Seine. We
had an awfully good time—a beautiful evening
and luscious cheese and guava jelly that Miss
Curtis and Miss Sturgis gave me on my birthday.
Last night Marje took Miss Sturgis and me to
Armenonville for dinner; the swellest place right
in the Bois, with all the officers and their fine
.pn +1
friends of the bonton there, eating melon at five
francs a slice. We had a great time—we saw
several American officers tramp in, among them
André de Coppet. He nearly fell over when he
saw me. We had quite a chat about his coming
over at the last moment as interpreter.
More nice young boys are wending their way
Parisward—and in particular to Place Denfert-Rochereau.
Davis Ripley made a long call the
other afternoon with a Harvard coeval; and a
letter of introduction from Mrs. Hastings this
afternoon presents a Holyoke youth. People
keep coming from Boston to see Marje, and we
are kept pretty busy.
.tb
I started this on the way to work this morning
and couldn’t finish. Now we have finished work
and it is tea-time. We have been taking turns
driving around wet, slippery streets making
calls, and Marje is calling me to tea and the
remains of the guava.
Your letters have been most interesting lately
and my next ought to be so!
.nf r 0
Love,
Esther.
.nf-
.sp 4
.pn +1
.h2 id=linkXXV
XXV||FROM ESTHER
.sp 2
.rj
September 9, 1917.
Dearest Father:—
I’ve been there! Past the sentries, through
the devastated villages, right into the army zone.
How many pictures I’ve seen marked, “Somewhere
in France,” or, “Results of German
Shells.” How endlessly have I pored over Sunday
supplements or watched miles of film click
by, trying always to imagine myself really standing
on French soil, seeing real things. But the
pictures were always just black and white, and I
never managed to step into them.
The refugees at the Vestiaire tell vivid stories,
and they all have that inborn dramatic instinct
which can make live the scenes they describe.
But even from their background I had no idea
of the look and atmosphere of the ruined towns
as they now are. No one ever told me that the
trenches taken from the Germans a few months
ago would now be half hidden by long grass and
brilliant red poppies, nor that the summer sunshine
could ever soften the grimness of barbed
.pn +1
wire and dug-outs. Yesterday I saw for myself.
Compiègne is the sentinel to the “zone des
armées.” At the railroad station you must present
your sauf-conduit before you go through
the gate, and frown as you do so, for certainly
the official will frown at you. The streets are
full of soldiers and officers, blue with them, and
great military trucks grind past at every turn.
Even the churchyard is filled with lines of military
wagons, and horses were tethered at its
portals.
We arranged to have a bite to eat at the hotel,
and I, for one, was surprised at the naturalness
and comfort of the atmosphere. One of us, after
standing at the elevator shaft several minutes,
turned to the manager of the hotel and asked if
she would have long to wait. “I hope not, Madame,”
he said,—“just until the end of the
war.”
As we ate our luncheon we looked from the
dining-window across the big square to the palace,
now used as military headquarters. The
sentries passed and repassed with their heavy
guns before the entrance gate.
Our military cars, painted dull gray with the
numbers in white across the wind shield, were
waiting to take us on our wonderful journey.
.pn +1
As we left the narrow streets of Compiègne, we
passed several motors bearing important-looking
officers going to or from the front; they tore
around comers in just my idea of a warlike way—very
little gold braid, but business-like and
grim.
The country was lovely: rolling fields, and
deep woods, rich with foliage. My idea of a
devastated region had been a large plain, covered
with small ruined villages, blackened by
smoke. I had pictured everything bare and
muddy—no grass, lowering clouds; but here
was blazing sunlight, and such grass and flowers
as I had never seen.
At Noyon we were joined by a French lieutenant,
who acted as guide to us, and was High
Mogul to all guards and officials along our route.
He looked skeptical of a party of women, even
Americans (who are known to be wild), tearing
along on the roads where only soldiers, trucks,
and beasts of burden are seen.
The crops interested me very much. Large
fields of wheat and barley, as well as trim lines
of lettuce and garden truck, were on each side
of the road near every settlement. I asked who
planted them. “Different people,” said our
lieutenant; “the people who have been living
here right along under the Germans, the soldiers
.pn +1
who delivered the territory last March, the civil
population who came back to their homes when
the Boches were driven out.”
Until March 18th, the Germans held French
territory up to the line passing through Rossières,
Andréhy, Lassigny, Ribecourt, and Soissons.
They retreated on that date, and the present
line passes just west of Saint-Quentin, La
Fère, and Barésis. Our route was a big circle
through the section between these lines among
the towns most lately relinquished by the invader.
I felt reluctant to be whisked along so fast, for
I wanted to see just how these bridges had been
blown up. I wanted to ask that old man over
there, hoeing in the field with a tiny little girl
beside him in a black apron, what he had seen
and felt, and how he liked the Boches. But we
seemed always to keep the same pace.
At Chauny we slowed up, however. We
passed down an aisle of ruins, and stopped in a
big square. We were told: “They are shelling
the town, so that you run a risk if you stop here,
but they seem to be lazy to-day, so don’t worry.”
I was so glad to get out of the car and wander
around according to my fancy, that I didn’t
give a thought to the possibility of shells. And I
couldn’t see why they should want to keep on
.pn +1
firing, as there didn’t seem much more to do to
the place. I stood at first and looked about me.
Not one roof to be seen—just walls, and not
more than one or two stories of these. Nothing
horizontal—just the perpendicular skeletons of
buildings, and piles, piles, piles of stone in between.
The streets have been cleared of rubbish, by
the French, so that the square or “place” looked
as neat and ready for market-day as though
the market-women might come at any moment
with their pushcarts, station themselves in the
center, and display piles of carrots, cherries, potatoes,
and radishes to tempt the passing throng.
But the passing throng had passed somewhere
else. We saw nobody. On one side was a wall
marked “Théâtre”—just the front of it left,
all the rest ruins. Across the square was a large
building with “Palais de Justice” carved over
the portal, portions of the front ripped away so
that we could see the different rooms and central
staircase leading up, and up, to nothing.
Down the cobbled streets which radiated from
the square were the remains of the shops and
homes of the people of Chauny. Ruins everywhere.
The houses had evidently been blown up
from within, causing the roofs and floors to fall
in a heap into the cellar, so that it was difficult to
.pn +1
walk in and look about. The town has, of course,
been shelled as well as mined; the Germans were
determined to wipe it out completely, so that the
iron and sugar industries which made Chauny
well known may never be resumed.
The strangest kind of things would be lying
in the piles of débris—an iron bedstead,
twisted and red with rust, an old baby carriage,
a boot, a candlestick, all sorts of little domestic
things. In many houses the tiled fireplaces were
intact, and stood up among all the wreckage.
Our lieutenant climbed into one of the houses
and brought back a few tiles which he gave us.
Mine is a heavenly turquoise blue, smooth and
perfect. It is the one relic that I cared to keep.
I prefer it to a charred brick or a bent piece of
iron. It was there in its place in the war, during
the burning and pillaging, and weathered the
bombs and the shells.
Through the back windows were vistas of
grass and trees. I saw an enchanting ravine
with a stony brook running through it, and gardens,
full of rank grass and weeds. Here and
there a holly bush looked about in surprise at
being so neglected this year.
The church in Chauny is only half destroyed.
Most of the roof has been blown up, and the
west end of the nave is piled high with wreckage,
.pn +1
but the altar is untouched and there is enough
roof left to shelter about ten rows of seats. A
rough partition of wood and tarred paper has
been built across the middle of the church, which
divides the piles of broken stone, open to the blazing
sunlight, from the altar half hidden and dim.
It was very quiet. I heard a bird chirping
near by, and saw two sparrows fly through an
opening and perch on a cornice over the cross.
There is not much left in Chauny even for a bird.
The road leading north runs beside an embankment
high enough to screen a motor from
view. Where this embankment stops, a huge
screen has been built of boughs woven in and
out of a wire foundation; thus the road is hidden
for miles, and military trucks, ammunition
trains, themselves “camouflés,” pass to and fro
unobserved.
Near Villquiers-Aumont we began to see the
cut-down fruit trees: I don’t know whether to
say fields of fruit trees, or orchards; for what we
saw were rolling green fields, with fruit trees lying
prone in even rows, their naked branches—
.ce
“Bare, ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang”
—ruined carefully and deliberately.
We stopped near an abrupt little hill. It
looked like a giant thimble, with a rustic
.pn +1
summer-house on top. This was once Prince Eitel
Friedrich’s lookout, and as we climbed up the
carefully made stone steps, we saw more and
more of the wonderful view he had chosen.
French landscapes stretched away on every side,
smooth fields, winding roads, and poplars. The
group of poilus who were stationed in the lookout
gave us a gay welcome. They were ready
with information about the surrounding countryside,
and pointed out the various villages in
the distance. The officer in charge lent us his
field-glasses and showed us to the north the
spires of the cathedral at Saint-Quentin—still
held by the Boches.
We took a détour in order to see the grave of
Sergeant McConnell, the American aviator who
was killed last spring. A French flag and two
American flags nailed to a wooden cross mark
the grave; fifty yards away are a few splinters
of iron and wood, the remains of his aeroplane,
which indicate the spot where he fell. Some
splinters of wood, some rusty bits of iron, part of
the engine, are all that is left of his aeroplane.
As I looked back towards the grave I saw our
soldier chauffeur stooping to place a bunch of
wild poppies below the flags. He walked back to
his place at the wheel without knowing that I
had seen him. It was a small thing, but I felt
.pn +1
grateful to the American who had made a simple
Frenchman wish to pay this tribute. I felt, too, a
warm pride to think of this corner of a foreign
field (to paraphrase Rupert Brooke) that is forever
America!
We went next to Flavy-le-Martel. This town
is half ruined and is inhabited only by soldiers.
The great sight is a ruined factory, which is now
a grotesque pile of rubbish—wheels and boilers
and chimneys; the mass of broken stone and
twisted iron is heaped to an immense height and
in extent it looked to one like an acre of pure
destruction.
Suddenly we heard discomforting sounds—guns,
big guns, and not very far away. The entrance
gate to the factory had been locked and
barred with a sign, “No Admittance,” in large
letters, and we had to enter through a hole in
the fence, but certainly that couldn’t mean that
we were doing anything dangerous? One of the
soldiers working near by motioned upwards, and
we caught sight of a Boche aeroplane disappearing
in a big white cloud—lesser white clouds
kept multiplying as the French anti-aircraft
guns fired on. Each shot sounded like hitting a
barn door with a baseball—only fifty times as
loud. I was all for standing with my neck craned
waiting to see what would happen next, but the
.pn +1
soldiers gave one laconic look (if a look can
be laconic) at the signs in the heavens, and
walked off to the “abri” or shelter. Our lieutenant
asked us to follow, so down we plunged into
a little cellar-like place after the soldiers.
“Five men were wounded here yesterday by
pieces of flying shell,” said one of them; “so,
Mon Dieu! it is not worth the trouble to make
one’s self a target to-day.”
That seemed sensible enough, but it had never
occurred to me that anything would ever come
down and hit me. I’m not a soldier, I’m not even
French, and everything about the front has always
been a name to me until now. What am I
usually doing the first week in July? I’m helping
the kids set off firecrackers down on the beach—on
a good old American beach; or getting
the mail at the post-office to read the latest war
news. Zum-zum! and here I am crouched down
in an abri with some poilus, and a German biplane
a mile in the air straight over my head.
Wouldn’t it be funny if—I wonder how thick
the roof of this place is, anyway? Zum, zum,
zum! How foolish to drop bombs on a place that
is destroyed, anyway.
The firing became less frequent and the explosions
farther off. We climbed out to the
great outdoors again, and looked around.
.pn +1
Nothing to be seen or heard. Just as we started off, a
last zum! and a fleeting glimpse of the Boche
disappeared gayly into a cloud. That was a week
ago; I’m wondering if they have got him by
now.
Along the road on the way to Ham were rows
of neat little brick and stone houses, so unlike
anything I had seen that their very neatness
looked strange. “The soldiers have already begun
rebuilding,” said the lieutenant. And they
have done well, may I add; the architecture is of
an unimaginative, cubelike variety, but a touch
of poetry is supplied by the white muslin curtains
and climbing nasturtiums! The soldiers,
working with sleeves rolled up and with gorgeous
red sashes round their waists, smiled and
waved as we passed, and if we had slowed down
who knows but that we should have had an invitation
to tea; with a Boche avion only just lost
from view.
It was an interesting road all the way. We
met a priest trotting comfortably down the
road on a fat chestnut mare. His gown fluttered
and his beads swung by his side in time to the
horse’s gait. We all felt included in his smile as
he lifted his shallow-crowned, wide-brimmed hat
in greeting; we Americans bowed, the militaires
saluted inflexibly.
.pn +1
Next we saw—or rather were stopped by—a
herd of cows. They looked utterly peaceful
and oblivious, and along with the window curtains
and nasturtiums that we had just seen
on leaving Flavy-le-Martel, they seemed to give
hope that the forlorn shells of houses might one
day become homes again. I asked our lieutenant
what the enemy had done with the cattle
that they had found when they came. He answered,
smiling broadly, “Zay ett heem!”
Ham is interesting chiefly for its ancient château.
The town itself is only partially destroyed,
and there are at the moment fifteen hundred
and thirty civilians living there. We got out of
the motor by the bank of the canal, and looked
first at the havoc wrought to it and the bridges.
The sides have been blown up and great masses
of stone have fallen into the ditch stopping up
the deepest part of it. Rude wooden bridges
have been built to replace the stone ones and to
carry the traffic of trucks and military cars that
are constantly passing. The trees that once
stood in even rows along the banks have totally
disappeared. Not a stump is left.
The canal widens just south of the main road,
and begins to have the aspect of a stone quarry.
There is a vast area of broken stone; groups of
workmen applying themselves with pick and
.pn +1
shovel; iron cars drawn by mules moving here
and there; and the noise of incessant labor.
Across the excavation stands a great wall, fifty
feet high, split down the middle as though by a
stroke of lightning. Over the top you can just
see the tower, with a pointed slate roof.
“But where’s the château?” some one asked.
“Le voilà,” said our guide.
Oh, the hours of labor that must be put in to
restore what was once built so carefully. New
trees will be planted, but the chateau can never
be replaced. It’s all unspeakable!
Just as we turned to take the road to Nesle (I
never can be reconciled to pronouncing it “Nell”
in view of neslerode pudding), I saw a storm-beaten
signpost reading, “Saint-Quentin, 8 kilomètres”—just
as though you could go there! I
wonder just how soon one would be killed if she
tried it?
.il id=i16 fn=i248.jpg w=425px link=i248.jpg
.ca A German Graveyard
.pn +1
As we drew near to Nesle we saw a sign by the
road in English! Near a little bridge the warning,
“Look Out—no truck over 17 tons,” was
posted. Magic language! There were only one
or two Tommies about, but it was thrilling to be
in a town that had been captured and occupied
by the English. Along the road I had seen in
several places signs reading, “Sens obligatoire”;
translated literally this means “direction obligatory.”
We should say, “one-way street.” On
a house standing in the middle of a trim field
was painted, “Tipperary—Sens Obligatoire!”
We walked through the graveyard at Nesle,
where French, English, and Germans are buried
side by side. The soldiers’ graves of all nations
are nearly alike—plain wooden crosses
bearing the name and regiment in black paint.
They contrast strangely with the marble tombs
and mausoleums decorated with colored bead
wreaths, erected before the war.
A few of the German graves are more elaborate,
flamboyant even. One monument in particular
was a large sculptured plaster affair, depicting
a German soldier against a background
of burning houses, being crowned by an angel.
Across the burning village scene a scornful
French hand has scratched the words, “Camelotte
Boche!” (Boche rubbish!)
It is amusing to see German prisoners at work
repairing the damage they have done, rebuilding
roads and bridges and canals. They make excellent
workmen and seem content with their lot.
A gray-clad figure, wearing the round fatigue
cap with the red band around it, was mending
a roof as we passed. He may well have set the
bomb that was meant to level the house to the
ground; but all the same he never turned his
.pn +1
round face towards us, or missed a stroke of his
hammer in his apparent effort to make it bomb-proof
in the future.
The city of Roye presents a new phase of
destruction. Outwardly it looks normal enough,
with the exception of the fine church and a
few important buildings which are in ruins. But
it is all a brick shell of what was once a city.
The Germans have played a grisly joke on the
inhabitants, who, when they return to their
houses, discover the same old outside but the
inside gone.
Each house has been systematically denuded
of everything—furniture, decorations, glass,
metals, tools, etc., and then the interior blown
up. In the shops all the goods were emptied
from the shelves on to the floor and then the roof
exploded. Not a pane of glass, not a lighting
fixture, not a lock or key, remains. The cost to
the Germans in time and money alone must have
been enormous.
I wandered around by myself exploring further
these streets of hollow mockery. A woman
was standing in the doorway of a shop, gazing
curiously to see an untamed American behaving
as if at home. We exchanged “Bon jours,” and
I begged permission to step into her shop while
I changed a film in my kodak. The place was
.pn +1
bare, save for a few bicycle tires and tools piled
on the counter, and these the woman told me
she and her husband had buried when they
were driven out nearly three years ago. The
husband had been mobilized, and she, fortunately,
had been able to go to relatives in the
Midi.
“Goo!” came to me from the dark recesses of
a perambulator, and there was a bouncing baby,
born since the war. The woman came back six
weeks ago, having heard that her shop was safe.
She did not seem to be disheartened by the mutilation
of her property and the loss of her stock,
and has already tried to start in business again
by selling odds and ends to the soldiers and few
civilians who have returned like herself. “Mais
que voulez-vous? Business doesn’t go very well
these days.” I smiled. Competition may be the
life of trade, but customers are pretty handy to
keep it going.
I wished her au revoir, and told her I’d come
back some day when her shop is rebuilt and she
is doing more flourishing business than ever before.
Beyond Roye about eight kilometres, “as the
shell flies,” the old first-line German trenches
can be seen from the road. Barbed-wire entanglements
stretch away to left and right, half
.pn +1
hidden in the grass, and dug-outs covered by
heavy logs occur at intervals. Where the
trenches began to run along close to the road,
we left the motors and climbed down among the
narrow, rustic walks that are trenches. The
floors and walls are made of small boughs nailed
nearly one inch apart, and the depth of the
trenches is a little over six feet. They turn and
twist unbelievably—apparently following the
track of a spotted snake with a tummy-ache;
and communication trenches, “boyaux,” fork
off every fifty feet or so, making a network of
passages.
I saw a tube of iron with a star-shaped end
which interested me; the lieutenant hastily
called out that it was a hand grenade. I had read
too many war stories to be inclined to have anything
more to do with it, so I passed obediently
by; the next minute I caught my foot in some infernal
machine and my heart leaped as I wildly
clutched at the sides of the trench for support.
It was a twisted bedspring.
Near by was an opening twenty-five feet
square with dug-outs along the edge, where officers
evidently lived. There was a rustic table
under a lattice-trimmed shelter, and a flight of
birch steps led to the sleeping quarters!
The lavish grass and flowers constantly
.pn +1
impressed me. Around the trenches up to the very
edges of the shell holes, over the famous strip
called “No Man’s Land,” grows to-day a gorgeous
carpet of green grass and wild flowers. I
like to think that Nature has already begun to
heal the scars of war.
A little village called Suzoy is already known
for some rough paintings left on the walls of the
main schoolroom, by the Germans. We stopped
at the building and followed two little girls
through the entrance; they showed us the pictures
with pride; and for my part, I assure you,
what met our eyes were the most astonishing
mural decorations you ever saw.
Two naked figures, half man, half beast, sit
opposite each other with faces turned to wink
at you. They have horns and tails and the unmistakable
Boche cap on their heads. Between
them is a roaring fire on which they expect with
relish to fry their supper. In their hands are two
great peacock feathers which cross and make
graceful crescents along the length of the wall.
On the feathers are poised—or endeavor to be
poised—miniature figures of the heads of the
Allied nations. President Poincaré, in frock coat
and stovepipe hat, is trying frantically to keep
his balance; King George V is sprawling and
just ready to fall; King Albert is hanging on
.pn +1
desperately by one hand; and the Czar, in ermine
robes, is trying wildly to hold on to his
crown and keep his equilibrium at the same time.
The other kings are all awkwardly trying to
keep from dropping off. In the center, directly
over the flame is a whimsical Scotch lad, playing
his swan-song on a bagpipe. And always
the big Boches leer diabolically.
The effect on me was at first to make me
laugh, and then to make me rage. So cock-sure,
so clever, so insulting! There were other caricatures
on the side walls, medallion portraits of
George V and Poincaré, but nothing so subtle
as the big painting.
The little girls, who had stayed in the village
throughout the German occupation, told us that
the schoolroom was used as an officers’ mess,
and that there used to be a great many soirées
there. It had taken a month to paint these modern
frescoes, and the children had been allowed
to watch the artist work.
“Were the Boches nice to you?” I asked one
of them.
“Oh, yes, fairly—assez gentils; they taught
us a little German, but we never speak it now.”
“Did you have enough to eat?”
“But yes, food was brought to us every week
by the Americans.”
.pn +1
“Mademoiselle is American,” put in the
lieutenant.
“Tiens!” said the little girl, and grew too
bashful to speak.
“We should have died but for the Americans,”
she said at last, looking down at her apron.
“You had rice and vegetables, I suppose. Did
you ever have meat and eggs?” And I confess
that for “eggs” I said, not “uh,” but “uffe.”
The other child began to giggle.
“Tais-toi,” exclaimed my little friend quickly.
“Didn’t you just hear that the lady is American?”
It might be hard to express thanks, but not
while she was about should Americans be made
fun of.
On our homeward journey I saw things that
simply did not exist to my eyes earlier in the
day. The country around Bailly is full of
trenches and barbed wire, dug-outs, shell holes,
and shade trees cut down by the road, all of
which escaped me before I had had those five
full hours of tense observation; and just as I did
not at first distinguish the signs of war, so I did
not fully consider until afterward the completeness
of the destruction we had seen. In the
section of forty miles square that we skirted,
not one bridge is left—the only ones now in
.pn +1
existence are of temporary military construction.
The same is true of telephone and telegraph
poles—not one remains. Also there is not a
stick of furniture of any sort except what was
too heavy to be taken away, such as pulpits and
big tables, which were hacked to pieces and are
of no value now. That the furniture was not
blown up with the houses I am sure, for not a
piece can be found in the ruins, and I looked
carefully for any trace. Germany must be full
of French furniture, and what it is all wanted
for I can’t imagine.
It is wonderful what vistas can be thrown
open by the experiences of one day. I never
again can hear of any one who comes from
Chauny or Roye or Lassigny without seeing row
upon row of deserted, ruined houses. I never
can hear of a fortune lost in the war without
picturing the ruined sugar factory at Flavy-le-Martel.
And yet the sight of men and mules and
engines clearing out the canal at Ham is more
significant than either of these, for it means
that the energy which once built the cities of
France is deathless. A new beginning is being
made within sound of the guns; and we are helping.
We are helping!!
.rj
Esther.
.sp 4
.pn +1
.h2 id=linkXXVI
XXVI||FROM MARJORIE
.sp 2
.rj
September 12, 1917.
Dearest Family:—
You could never guess where I am, nor what I
am doing! I am just this minute the guest of
Mme. la Marquise Molinari d’Incisa, in a large
château in Touraine. The other week-end guests—it
being Monday to-day—consist of Mrs. W.
and her daughter, Mrs. H. Mlle. la Forgue,
whom I have written you about before, and who
has been so nice to me in Paris, and her brother
of seventeen, Mme. Molinari, and Rootie and
myself make up the party! Needless to say,
Rootie got me into this. I bucked and balked
and tried not to come, but I am here. We met
Mme. Molinari at Dr. Shurtleff’s funeral, and
she wanted to know what we were doing, and
whether we would like to come down to Touraine
and see her. She had a château for the month
which belongs to the W——s, who are in America!
We more or less jokingly, on my part at
any rate, accepted, and she said of course that
there was nobody to keep her company, so we
would be quite free, and could wear old clothes,
.pn +1
and so forth. The next thing I knew, Rootie had
accepted definitely, and we were to start from
Paris Monday A.M., having arrived from Val
André via Saint-Michel the Saturday before.
Start we did! I fortunately darned my only silk
stockings, and had my sole white skirt laundered,
and my beautiful blue linen one also put
in order. We left Paris at ten o’clock, and met
the La Forgues on the train, which was a shock
to us. They told us they thought there were
other guests already there! Half-way down, we
changed at Vierjon, and when we got off the
train (we were in uniform, of course), we heard
English-speaking voices calling us, and on turning
saw several American soldiers. We waved
vigorously and went on, but were stopped by
two of them running up and taking off their
hats, offering their hands, and saying, “Do you
folks speak English?” On our replying that we
did, they let a yell, and calling their pals announced
that they had “caught ’em, and you
bet they can talk the lingo!” We were instantly
surrounded, and our baggage taken from us, and
we were led like queens to a compartment and
sat on the seat while they lined up opposite and
shot questions at us as fast as they could talk!
I never had such fun. Of course. Mlle. la Forgue
thought that we were quite mad, and a bit
.pn +1
unladylike, I guess, but do you know I didn’t care
at all. They were nice men, and they were so
pitifully glad to hear some English! They were
going on the same train as we were, which was
fortunate for us, for I doubt if they would have
let us off the train! We got more gossip as to
what is going on in the army over here and at
home than we would get from the papers in two
years! They were all twelve of them volunteer
men from the New York Telephone Company
and the Western Union. (Their battalion consists
of five hundred, of course, but these men
were going to Saint-Nojan to drive up some
trucks.) The former are receiving their usual
wages from the company, with their governmental
pay deducted. They seemed a nice crew,
strong, hardy fellows, and maybe they didn’t
have a time getting over here—I mean on the
way across the ocean! They have only been here
a month, but they have already begun to lay
wires from one end of the war zone to the other,
all to communicate with Pershing’s headquarters,
which you probably know has been moved
from Paris, and although I know where it is, I
won’t put it down, not so much on account of
the censor as spies! We certainly had a good
time. They had taken a first-class compartment,
which is against all rules, for the army is
.pn +1
supposed to go third class, of course, but they
had one forty-four hours’ trip in French third
class, and have vowed never again. They could
none of them speak French, least of all the so-called
interpreter, but they knew how to throw
out any one who tried to enter their compartment,
and did so with joy, saying something
about “reservé pour la armée Amèricaine!” We
stayed with them till we arrived, and you would
have laughed to see them with Mme. Molinari.
We had told them that we were going to visit
a Marquise, and I think they expected a coronet
and pages, and when charming Mme. M.
stepped up and talked English with them, and
shook hands with them, they could not believe
that she was a title! My, it was funny!
After we had waved them off, and wished
them luck, we turned to the chateau. It is
quite near the station, so a little donkey named
Kee Kee carries the bags up, and you walk
a short way until you enter the estate. It is
beautiful; all shade trees, with a spring you
have to cross on stepping-stones, and such ivy
and bushes and flowers! There are two houses—the
more modern larger one, which has the
dining-room and kitchen and library and big
bedrooms, and then the old one, dating way,
way back, where we are, and which is charming.
.pn +1
The W——s put all their time and money into
the grounds and vineyards, and the houses
are simple and are lovely outside. They are
up against the rocks, and the barn or cellar
with the winepress is hewn in the rock, and has
many underground passages which lead all over
everywhere, and you can hear the spring gurgle
under them at certain places. There is electric
light and most of the comforts; also several
dogs and rabbits. The gardens run down the
terraces in front of the big house. They are
mostly annuals now, and there are fig trees and
lemon trees, which supply the lemon for our
tea! The brook comes out in all sorts of beautiful
and unexpected places, and makes pools.
There is a lovely fountain which goes all the
time, and which we can hear from our bedroom.
The tennis court is hidden by trees and vines,
and had just been put in shape so that Rootie
and Mlle. la Forgue played this morning. Across
the road is the path that leads through a tunnel
under the railroad to the fruit garden and vineyards.
Such fruit!—all the peaches trained
in diagonal lines against a white stone and
plaster wall, which has turned greenish from
constant sprayings, and the plum trees bent
to the ground with fruit, and the apples in
rows making hedges like ours at Marion. We
.pn +1
ate fruit till we could literally eat no more.
The grapes are mostly in houses, and such luscious
ones I never saw. We walked through
just picking off huge purple muscats with their
beautiful bloom still on them, big white ones,
and brown—in fact every sort. Each variety
tastes better than the one you took before! The
flowers do not compare with yours, Mother,
but are effective. The usual standards, lovely
at a distance, but I can hear you saying they
should have been de-budded!
.tb
I was, of course, interrupted yesterday, and
am now trying to finish while Rootie completes
a sketch of our house, and the others get really
dressed. We have breakfast at half-past eight,
and some of us dress and the rest wear wrappers.
As Rootie did not bring one, and had to
borrow one which must have belonged to Mr.
W——, and mine is that pink crêpe-de-chine
affair which Ruth S—— made for me when I
was at Farmington, we decided in favor of dressing
for breakfast!
I see that I must stop, and go for a walk
through the marvelous caves which go through
the cliffs for miles around here, and are in part
wine-cellars, some belonging to the W——s, and
some not. We had wine from the cellar last
.pn +1
night, and it was excellent, I thought. Mme.
Molinari is renowned even in Paris for her cuisine,
so you can imagine whether we are having
a good time or not! We had hot biscuits
for breakfast yesterday, for the first time since
I left home, and they sure tasted good.
We are really having a very good time, for
we do just whatever we want to, and although
we are not what you would call dressy, still
we are at least clean. Rootie, having laughed
me to scorn for bringing two waists and skirts,
now wishes she had done the same thing herself.
(We did not plan to stay more than twenty-four
hours.) I am so hoping to find letters from
both of you when I get back to Paris, for it is
over two weeks since I got any word, although
Rootie got a long letter from Mother! Rootie
has been more wonderful than ever these last
few days. She does fit in wonderfully. She is so
very, very clever, and can do everything well,
even playing bridge. When they get started
on that, I retire to the library and have a
delightful time reading everything in sight,
and there are lots of books. Did I ask you if
you have read “God, the Invisible King,” by
Wells? I enjoyed it.
Lots and lots of love to you both.
.rj
Marje.
.sp 4
.pn +1
.h2 id=linkXXVII
XXVII||FROM MARJORIE
.sp 2
.nf r 0
12 Place Denfert-Rochereau, Paris.
October 21, 1917.
.nf-
Dearest Family:—
You see I am being good this week and not
neglecting you as I did two weeks ago. I still
get embarrassed when I think of that time. We
are hearing all sorts of rumors about no boats
going for thirty days, but there is no reason to
believe them any more than the many other
rumors we hear all the time, so I shall keep on
writing, anyway, and nowadays I make a carbon
copy of each letter that I send. It does not
take any longer, and it seems to me to be well
worth while.
Things are about the same here. Very busy.
We have finally secured the storehouse and are
moving into it this week. The present plan is
to have all our reserve stock there, and have
only just enough on the shelves to meet the demands
during the week. The car will go to
the storehouse once or twice a week, and get
the necessary things. In this way we will have
.pn +1
much more room in the vestiaires themselves,
and it will be easier to handle more people.
We have just taken stock of our food-supply
and find to our joy that it is considerably larger
than we realized. This means that we can enlarge
that department, and with Rootie there it
will be splendid, I think. I hate to let it go at
all, and am going just the same Tuesday afternoons,
but I know that it will soon be impossible
for me to give up that much time. We
hope to move ten families a week. This will
mean pretty close calculations on time for all
of us.
It is wonderful to feel that I may be able to
be of some real use to some one for the first
time in my life. I have not felt so strong and
well and so well equipped for a winter as I do
now, for a long time. We have laid in a supply
of coal and wood, and are as cozy as can be.
I am letting many little petty time-taking jobs
slide along to some one else, and am just saving
myself for the furniture above everything else.
That sounds as if I was not doing any hard
work. I truly am. We moved all the things
from the store we call Maggi, and which is on
Ernest Cresson, a little farther down, over to the
rue Daguerre storehouse, and I can tell you it
was some job for all of us—piling the things
.pn +1
in the car, and then unloading at the other end.
Gay Kimberly’s husband returned suddenly, so
I had to run the car, as Rootie was out calling
with a Red Cross man who wants to know
the conditions of refugees living in Paris. (By
the bye, a Maxwell car with a starter has been
given us. I wish it was a Ford, on account of
essence, but we must not be fussy, I suppose.)
This morning Rootie started for church
early, and got a bath with a friend of hers who
lives in a hotel which still has its hot water on
Saturday and Sunday! I was, therefore, alone
for the morning, and after the washing was
counted and put away, and the salon tidied, and
the pillows, which had raveled, had been sewn,
I decided that I was going to pretend I was
at home; so I got dressed as if for Sunday dinner
at 378. I put on a nice waist and my pink
sweater with the gray collar, which I made
myself, and my earrings, and Aunt Sarah’s
ring. It was really lots of fun. I imagined what
I would be doing if I was at home, and who
would be there too. Rootie could not imagine
what had struck me when she came in and
found me all dressed up.
I wonder if it would interest you to hear what
we did for one family in the way of moving?
Rogeau is the name. We have had them on our
.pn +1
cards for quite a long time. It is a small family,
a tuberculous man and his wife and little boy.
We have been boarding the woman and child out
in the country, while the man was in the hospital.
This summer the woman came in to see us
to ask if we could possibly let her have another
month out in the country. We were fortunately
able to do so, and when her husband came out of
his hospital, he joined her in Saint-Prix, where
she was boarding, and together they have found
a little house at twenty-two francs a month, for
the house and garden. They will each have separate
rooms to sleep in, and the woman is most
careful about cleaning and all that. Owing to
our being able to give them the meubles, they
were able to take the house at once, and last
week I took out to them a table, two chairs, one
stool, plates, knives, forks, spoons, a stove, basin,
pail, dishtowels, pitcher, sheets, covers,—and
extra nice light warm ones for the man,—pillow-cases,
casserole, carpet, bathtowels, coffeepot,
small pillow for man, refuse pail, coat-hangers,
table-cover, and candle and candlestick
(having sent three single beds by express). With
these few things they can begin to live, and then
they will gradually get more. The man has a
little forge in an out house in the garden where
he works, and has a chair in the sun. He mends
.pn +1
pails and pans. I am giving him a chaise-longue
with Daddy’s money, so that he can rest in between
spells of work. I am so hoping that the
air and sun will rebuild him as they have others.
You would have been as touched as I was at
their joy at the few things we brought them.
You see they are really beginning to have their
home together again. This is only one of so
many interesting cases. Having no income except
from the little work he does, they are not
paying us anything for the things, although lots
of other families are paying. If it is possible, it is
so much better for them to pay something.
We are worried just now as to what we are
going to do for stoves. There is a great shortage.
And the way prices jump up from one week to
another!! We calculated two weeks ago that
every move costs us well over five hundred
francs, with the beds. Now they are much more.
Everything goes up two to three francs a week.
Beds cost ninety francs for a double lit cage,
with mattress and two pillows, where they used
to be only seventy last spring. Single beds are
fifty-nine instead of thirty-two. Stoves used to
be fifteen to twenty-five francs new, and now we
pay thirty for old ones and seventy for the new
ones. Next week they are to be fifty per cent
more, I was told. Lessiveuses are thirty-five, and
.pn +1
we have had to give them up, although I hope
to change that, and give the few big things and
no small things,—forks and knives and all that,—for
a family can, after all, save and buy those
things, and they never would be able to get
either a buffet or lessiveuse. Mrs. H—— pays
twenty-five to thirty-five francs for a secondhand
buffet now, and she used to get a big, tall,
new one for twenty-five. All the small things
are about a franc more, pails and all such. Linen
is terribly dear. Fortunately, we still have some
unbleached linen from America for the sheets.
When it goes, I don’t know what we will do.
They want nine francs apiece for the most slimsy
cotton sheets here. I do not quite see what is
going to happen if things keep on getting more
and more expensive. What will stop it all? And
I suppose Germany is richer than ever with her
latest gains in Russia. What is going to happen?
Rootie says it is time to go to bed, and I guess
she is right. Lots and lots of love.
.nf r 0
Your very loving daughter,
Marje.
.nf-
.sp 4
.pn +1
.h2 id=linkXXVIII
XXVIII||FROM MARJORIE
.sp 2
.nf r 0
12 Place Denfert-Rochereau, Paris,
November 14, 1917.
.nf-
Dearest Mother and Daddy:—
I hope that you will not worry about our being
cold over here this winter. We will not be. First
place, we find that we can heat the salon very
nicely with a wood fire, and second, we are definitely
to have our chauffage central the 15th.
We have had hot water once already, and you
would have laughed. You couldn’t see any one
for the two days, for every one was having as
many baths as possible. We will have the water
right along after the heating begins.
I went to the movies for the first time in ages
the other night. Sydney took Dulles and myself
and we saw an excellent show: that Jap man,
Sessue something (I bet Josey knows), and then
some wonderful war pictures; the Zepps that
they brought down the other day, close up, and
most interesting. The tremendous size of them
was what overwhelmed me. They look like a
whole sugar factory burned up when they are
.pn +1
destroyed. It is certainly true that no nation
but the German would or could afford to build
them now. I wonder if the French will get any
good ideas from the one which is not destroyed.
The supremacy of the air seems to be the great
hope of the Allies now. Sydney cheerfully tells
us that the Boches have an aeroplane with six
engines. Think of it. Also I believe that they
have some new horrors to spring on us soon. I
have been told by a Suisse-Français girl that
they (the Germans) have had the best harvest
they have had for years; also that their first
Italian victory fell on one of their biggest fête
days, so they are sure that God is with them. No
one that I ever see over here feels that we could
possibly win a military victory for several years,
and then it would be an air victory. I can hardly
believe that the people will be able to endure another
three years. Last spring was nip and tuck
keeping the French going, and if it hadn’t been
for the rushing over of those troops to march
through the streets on the 4th of July I hate to
think what might have happened. At least, that
is the way it seems to me. If Italy gives in, and
it seems possible, as there is some sort of treachery
there, and Russia is quite out of it, if she isn’t
worse,—on their side, I mean,—will the
French hang on? Lots of people feel that all this
.pn +1
changing of cabinets (and we have another one
to-day) means that Caillaux is the man who
will be put in eventually. He is the last chance,
as it were, and, if he is once in, it is all over, for
he is supposed to be pro-German. Rootie has
many friends of various grades in the army and
navy, who blow in and out at times and fill us up
with gossip: how the whole of America is full of
German spies; how the new submarines carry
three-inch guns and fight the Allied destroyers
on equal terms as a result; how the Chemin des
Dames offensive is completely successful; what
they think is the reason for the complete hold-up
of all Suisse mail and trains and many French
ones; how many troops have gone to Italy, and
so forth. It is more or less discouraging as a
whole. Conditions here in Paris are about the
same. The coal situation seems to be better
handled. Most proprietors have been told by
the Government that they must heat their tenants
or not ask rent. There is plenty to eat still.
Suisse chocolate is not to be had any more.
Sugar seems to be scarce, but not as bad as last
year. Butter and eggs are high, but one can buy
them. The swell tea-houses are having difficulty
to make their cakes, but they do just the same.
A great deal of honey is used instead of sugar, I
think. There were special provisions for
.pn +1
confitures being made this fall, so that I think we
shall have all we want. There are still taxis to
be seen about, but, although they have been restricted
in what they can do to you in the way
of flatly refusing to take you, still they can usually
manage to make it so disagreeable for you
that you prefer to walk. Gasoline is to be very,
very scarce even in the army, I believe, next
month, but fortunately we have a supply on
hand. I shall be very glad to turn over the responsibility
of the cars to H. soon, for there is
quite a good deal to be done, and it grows more
difficult to do it every day. Ford is completely
mobilized now, and it is very difficult to have
anything done at all.
Rootie says that we are going to have our pictures
taken, and what she says usually goes, so
you will probably get a picture of your beautiful
daughter in uniform. Don’t you dare show it to
a soul if you do, though.
Rootie says to be sure to thank you very
much for the toast-holder. We will use it a lot.
Lots and lots of love to both of you, and all of
you.
.rj
Marje.
.sp 4
.pn +1
.h2 id=linkXXIX
XXIX||FROM MARJORIE
.sp 2
.rj
Paris, January 1, 1918.
Dearest Mother and Daddy:—
If I could only tell you in words what our
Christmas was like I would be so happy, but
it’s dreadfully hard to. First place, your wonderful
packages came in plenty of time, and
were grabbed by Rootie, who informed me
that she was running our special, extra-private
Christmas morning celebration, and for me to
trust her!
We decided at the Vestiaire that we must
have a tree for the refugee children,—our pet
ones, at any rate,—and Mrs. Shurtleff was so
pleased with the idea. We got a hall in the same
building where Dr. S. used to have his meetings,
and we had more fun decorating the tree ourselves,
filling bags with candy which we bought
after hours of standing in line at Potin’s, and
we gave two hundred refugee children the best
Christmas party they ever had, I bet. We had
a prestidigitator-man first, who was excellent,
and who delighted the kids by getting enough
.pn +1
flags out of a hat to give each child one. After
he was through, we dropped a curtain which
was hiding the tree, and which looked very
gorgeous with its candles and piles of presents
heaped around the base, and bowing and smiling
in front of the tree was Père Noël (Rootie),
who gave each child two presents. They were
passed cakes and candy, and even the mothers
who were sitting around the edge of the room
(one grown-up was allowed to each family) got
some cake. Then, after they received their two
gifts, which were all sorted according to ages,
they came to the door with mothers and brothers
and sisters and were presented with a bag of
candy each, a Christmas card, and a muffler,
and were sent home. You never saw such a
well-behaved lot of children, so clean and so
good, and so happy.
Monday night we went to bed early,—that
is, I did, and Rootie sat up until all hours
arranging things for the next day. When I woke
up, I found that Rootie had ordered eggs for
our breakfast, and had slipped into the other
room and made a perfectly delicious piece of
toast for me. We had such fun over breakfast,
and then I was led into the next room where the
mantelpiece was decorated with a huge clock
with presents tied on by red ribbons. There
.pn +1
was a fire and lots of presents piled in front of it!
All this when we had said we were not giving
any presents this year! I almost cried! We sat
down on our little stool, and I began opening
all your lovely things. Oh, you were much too
good to us! The candy was and is the best in
the world. You don’t know how we pick and
choose and save the caramels till the end only.
Rootie always goes down three layers at once,
just to see what is underneath! Josey’s dear
little purse and the very effective picture of
herself and her hair and ribbon were almost too
much. Rootie was so pleased with your thought
of her. We just had a beautiful Christmas
morning together, and I can tell you we thought
pretty nice things about our families who had
taken all the trouble for us.
Rootie had every sort of a present for me. She
had thought of everything that I have ever said
I liked, or wanted to have. First place, some
lovely little shell hairpins which are delightful.
They fit your head so nicely. Then a lovely
cyclamen plant; a dear little pot to hold a baby
plant; a vase; a hearth-brush, for I get so cross
with the one there is in the room now; a photograph
of the two of us on the steps at Bourre,—which
I believe she sent you, too,—with a calendar
on it; also a calendar for the office and the
.pn +1
most delightful little machine that clips papers
together, and which I have been longing for for
ages!—also a drum because I have been saying
I missed mine so: this one is about five inches
across, and has the sticks attached, and saves
you lots of trouble, for you use it like a watchman’s
rattle; a beautiful laundry-bag, which is
also much needed, and a sachet. You never saw
such a lovely pile of things, and every one something
which I needed, and wasn’t she dear to
take all that time for me! It seems I have been
an awful nuisance while she has been getting the
things together, because I insisted upon coming
home when she was preparing them. I cannot
tell you how all her thought of me touched and
pleased me. It was just like Rootie to do it.
We had to go over to Miss B——'s at about
eleven, for we were all to have our Christmas
dinner there,—all us workers, I mean. I had
ordered everything, and was generally in charge.
Miss B—— lives in a charming little studio
which has several of her pieces of sculpture in it,
and is very delightful, anyway. She offered it to
us and it did seem so much more homey than a
hotel. She has a big, unfinished marble in the
middle of the room which I had planned in my
mind’s eye to put aside while we dined, but I
found out it weighs tons and would have to
.pn +1
have three or four men to move it, so we let it
stay and we put our table behind it. We borrowed
the table from the rue Daguerre storehouse,
and tablecloths from the ameublement;
also chairs and glasses; and with Rootie’s yellow
saucers and Fiskie’s blue ones in between, and
fruit in the middle, we made a very effective
table.
I had ordered the whole dinner from Coute’s,
a store near by that has very good cooked things,
and which offered to send in everything piping
hot ready to eat. This last suggestion appealed
to me, especially as Miss B—— has no gas, and
cooks on her stove, which was built to heat,—not
to cook. Rootie having charge of the decorations
fixed up the place cards prettily, and
arranged the fruit. We were fifteen. Every one
arrived on time, but the dinner! I began to get
nervous at about five minutes to one, for the
meal was ordered at 12.30, and I was afraid it
must have gone astray. Dulles and Mlle. Herzog
volunteered to go to Coute’s and try to find our
dinner. After they had left, the brilliant thought
occurred to me that maybe I had told them the
wrong number of the street. It is 18, Bd. Edgar
Quinet, 18 like the Vestiaire, but not like the
Daguerre number, —19, —and the more I
thought it over the more sure I was that I had
.pn +1
sent the dinner to 19! This thought did not
cheer the company, as there is a very large cemetery
opposite Miss B——'s and goodness only
knew where the number 19 might be, so I put
on my fur coat and new hat, which is very tall,
and therefore heavy, and started out to find
number 19. I started slowly, but as I went
farther and farther, I got more and more nervous,
and began to trot and then to run. I arrived
in front of 19, which was an exceptionally
shady-looking stable, bar, hardware shop,
just in time to see Coute’s boy, on one of those
bicycle-pushcart affairs, piking down the street!!
You have no idea of what a feeling that gave
me. He seemed to be going fifty miles a minute,
and with him was our whole dinner!! I let out
a war-whoop, and started after. That coat of
mine which Aunty gave me is not patterned
after a running-suit, and to say that it and my
hat, which toppled over my eyes every minute,
and the snow, which was just perfect for coasting,
hampered me, is putting it mildly. However,
there was nothing to do but to run, so I
ran; and after about a block (which seemed three
to me), I attracted his attention, and also that
of all the population of the Latin Quarter. He
stopped and was most agreeable; said he had
looked everywhere for the right house, but had
.pn +1
found no trace. I didn’t stop to argue,—I was so
glad to see the pots and pans in that cart,—but
I pointed out the way, and we returned triumphantly
to 18. I can tell you it was a close call.
Dulles and Mlle. Herzog met him on their way
back, too, and held him up, but he had already
left the food with us. It was delicious, in spite
of its extra journey. Hors d’œuvres of pâtés de
fois gras; then two big golden-brown turkeys
stuffed with marrons; mashed potatoes all yellow
with butter, and just the right consistency;
peas cooked up with lettuce and sweetened just
a little; great plates of delicious currant jelly
(we couldn’t get cranberry sauce); a big bowl
of celery salad; and brown gravy to go on the
turkey. It was mighty good, I can tell you. We
warmed things up a little while they began on
the first course, then we shifted plates, four of
us, like regular waiters. We had planned it all
out beforehand, and Miss Curtis attacked the
turkeys. She can carve like a whizz among all
the other things that she does well. She made
one bird go the round, and then there was
plenty left of the second for Mrs. Shurtleff to
take home some cold. You never saw a crowd
enjoy their Christmas dinner more!
We had a surprise for them next. Hannah
and I decided that Christmas wasn’t Christmas
.pn +1
without a plum pudding, so we scraped up three
little already cooked plum puddings, which
Mrs. Shurtleff had steamed for hours, Rootie
and I gave the sugar we had saved this summer
for a foamy sauce, and, although we cooked it
too long, for I got so interested in eating my
turkey that I forgot it, still it was so full of wine
and sugar that it was delicious. We went to buy
a little rum to burn on it, and found to our
amusement that we must buy three big bottles,
which we proceeded to do! (The new law requires
that you buy at least two litres.) I wish
you could see our room. It looks like a bar, for
Mrs. Shurtleff also brought a bottle of cooking
sherry for the sauce. Well, we poured enough
wine on that pudding to light a half-dozen, and
with holly in the center, it looked very gay and
most Christmasy. Every one seemed to like it.
Then we had Vanilla Ice-cream and Hot
Chocolate Sauce!!! Regular ice-cream just
like home, and the best I ever tasted outside of
our house. Oh, it was good! By the time we
had done justice to this, we were all in the state
where we preferred to stand up! Some of them
went to Dr. Cabot’s Christmas carol party,
where they went from hospital to hospital singing
for the blessés. I wonder how they sang!
We certainly made enough noise, and I don’t
.pn +1
think any one had a homesick thought, and that
was what we were all scared of. Miss Sturgis
was unable to come, and we missed her terribly.
We made up a very nice plate of cold turkey,
salad, jelly, and breadsticks for her, and armed
with this and some ice-cream and sauce, we all
went down to see her. We found her with a fire
burning, and so we all sat around and talked
and some of them slept, and then Mr. D——,
a Red Cross man, blew in, and told us lots of
interesting things about being on the commission
for distributing German money for the
German prisoners in Russia the first year of the
war, and also of his more recent experiences in
Italy. He was one of the men sent by the Red
Cross with so much actual cash to help out there,
and also lay plans for the future work. He was
very interesting. We all stayed there until it
was time to go back to the studio for a Welsh
rabbit. I had to laugh when Miss Curtis asked
if I knew how to make one. I said yes without
thinking, and then realized that all I have ever
done was to watch you. However, you know I
would die before I would back out, so I went
ahead with an expert air, and gave as exact an
imitation of you as I could. I cut about the
same size pieces of cheese, ladled out mustard
with the cover of the tin, just the way you do,
.pn +1
and poured on beer in little professional dabs,
every once in a while. Then I stirred and
stirred, and although it gave me heart failure
while it passed through the gummy, stringy,
curdly stage, still it finally emerged in a smooth
thick state, and I hastily broke an egg into it,
and gave it a final beating and served it. Wonder
of wonders, they said it was O.K.! Far be it
from me to say it was luck! We had scrambled
eggs, toast, and salad also, and last, but not
least, we had “asti spumanti.” Oh, it was good!
We wanted it for dinner, but we couldn’t with
the crowd, so we had it for supper. It was
delicious.
I was lucky enough to have to go and see
Madame Brunschwig, who is the great big-hearted
woman here who has done so much for
the housing of refugees. She started on her own
backing herself, and she is wonderful. She let
me sit beside her from 10 until 12.30 one day,
and listen to her interview her people. It was so
interesting to see how a Frenchwoman does it.
She is so sharp, never misses a thing, very clear-headed,
kind-hearted, and has that quick, wise
power of decision which is so characteristic of
Mrs. Shurtleff. It was very interesting to hear
her say so many times just the things that I
have heard Mrs. S. say. I feel quite sure that
.pn +1
their two judgments on a case would be the
same. I think it is well worth noting that these
two women have done what they have without
any social-service training; they just use their
heads and hearts and common sense. I am not
yet convinced that one has to go to the Boston
School for Social Workers to be a good worker.
The gasoline situation has been very serious
over here lately; the story is that the American
Government took all the gas that came into
France for ten days because they were getting
short, and they would not stand for the lavish
use of gas which had been going on. Anyway,
they have finally stopped bons of essence for
private cars. Miss Curtis says that she has been
told that the English have made a fuss, too, for
they have not had any private cars for a long,
long time. We got ours for the work all right.
It was reduced, but still we will have enough if
we are careful, I believe. I have had lots of fun
initiating Hannah into the game of “trying-to-get-gasoline-in-Paris.”
The pastry-shops are really to be closed, I
guess; the American ones have been stopped
from making any kind of cake and even corn-bread.
We got a big chocolate cake at Rebattet’s
Saturday, but I think it is the last. I am glad of
it, for people at home are doing so much it seems
.pn +1
to me we ought to be cut down over here, too.
I shall be especially glad if they stop all this
bonbon-making; it must use oodles of sugar.
(I think we have enough for a few months, and
then we will be home.) I imagine that it is the
American Government that has brought pressure
to bear on this, and it is a good thing.
Hannah and I saw some of the cement boats
being built the other day, when we were outside
of Paris; they looked fine. Very low in the
water, just like regular barges, but, of course,
they must be built in a much shorter space of
time. I wonder if they are really using them as
much as they expected to?
It seems to be a very critical time just now
for the Allies. Lots of people are depressed and
talking very gloomily. Evidently the Caillaux
affair is pretty delicate. The English Government
has been insulted, and it is up to the
French to do away with the gentleman in question.
They called the class of 1919 the day before
yesterday, and also recalled that of '91,
which sounds as if they wanted men. All the
Americans we see speak cheerfully of three to
five years’ preparation, but I can’t believe it.
Isn’t it awful to think of Padua being bombarded?
Will there be anything beautiful left
after this war? Even Jerusalem. We have heard
.pn +1
such wild stories about how they have defended
Venice from air attacks, that there are lots and
lots of balloons up over it, and that they have
wires stretched between each two, and, of course,
a wire, even if pretty fine, will wreck an airplane.
It seems that these wires can’t be seen
very well. I do not know whether this is true or
not, but a very nice doctor who had just come
back from there told us. By the by, he is the
doctor who now gives us one afternoon a week
for our refugees; then Miss Neivin—one of the
workers, and who has had some first-aid training
at home—can go into the homes afterwards
and follow up the cases.
I wonder if the Boches have really got some
new atrocity to spring on us. Every one seems
to think that they have. I can’t see how they
can have time to think up anything else. Did
you hear about the mirrors used on submarines
so that they are very hard to see? It sounds
plausible.
Lots and lots of love to you all. Tell John-on-the-corner,
Mary Devlin, and all that I am looking
forward to seeing them all in May. Tell
Mrs. Dow that her candy is the best ever, and
that it is in much better condition when she
packs it in lead paper and in a tin box. Lots
and lots of love again, and here’s hoping that
.pn +1
you are still alive after the eleventh page of
rambling of your very-affectionate-and-looking-forward-to-being-home-soon
.nf r 0
Daughter,
Marje.
.nf-
.sp 4
.pn +1
.h2 id=linkXXX
XXX||FROM ESTHER
.sp 2
.rj
Thursday evening, January 31, 1918.
Dearest Family:—
Last night was it—the biggest raid they’ve
ever had on Paris. When I think that at nine
o’clock I was sitting up in bed with a sniffling
cold, bemoaning the fact that I couldn’t seem
to write anything but the stupidest sort of letter
when I had a whole week packed full of events
to tell you about—when I think of that, I don’t
know how I shall begin to tell you all to-night.
Every one has been expecting an air raid on
Paris for quite a time, and Sunday evening we
were all set for it, for the moon was full, and it
was the Kaiser’s birthday, and we worked our
intuitions to the utmost. Last night, when I
snuggled down in my warm bed, I had forgotten
all such possibilities.
Suddenly I heard that siren that means one
thing and one thing only. It’s a dismal, foreboding
sound. There’s also an “alerte,” a sort of
horn that blows at the same time, that sounds
as though a fiend were putting his whole lungs
.pn +1
into it. I didn’t stir at first because I thought it
might be a false alarm, but the siren and the
alerte kept it up and kept it up, so that Marje
and I, for curiosity’s sake, slipped into our fur
coats and went out on the balcony. We saw a
few aeroplanes and rocket signals and heard a
distant booming of guns. The street lights went
out one by one and the tramways rumbled ponderously
home from their last nocturnal journey.
It was an ideal night—the moon had waned
only a little and the stars were bright; but never
did “the luster of midday to objects below” give
such a desperate feeling of defenselessness as
when we looked out across the Place and saw
each tree and building stand out distinctly.
The guns grew much louder. We turned to
each other and said, “This is something new—we’ve
never heard anything half so near in any
other raid.” We were thrilled. We went across
to the other apartment to see if Hilda and Gay
and Fiskey were taking it all in, and just as we
stepped into Gay’s room, two terrific crashes
came. We all rushed out on Fiskey’s balcony
and stood there trembling with excitement. She
and Hilda said that there had been two great
flashes; Marje and I had been in Gay’s room just
at that instant, and were as mad as anything
to have missed something.
.pn +1
The five of us took our posts on the same balcony,
where we had a superb view. Way to the
left was the Eiffel Tower, invisible at that distance,
but certainly one of the goals of any air
attack on account of being the greatest wireless
station. To the north lay the Place de la Concorde,
with the heads of the Inter-Allied Conference
resting, perhaps uneasily, in the Hôtel
Crillon. All the way to the Place d’Italie, in the
extreme east, we had the panorama of the sky,
and you may believe there were five pairs of
eyes that never missed a flash or a light.
We counted as many as fifteen aeroplanes at
once, flying in groups of threes or fours or widely
separated. How thrilling to think that every
little light meant a warm living, thinking,
human being straining to the utmost—some
for defense—some for destruction. We made
wild speculations—were they French or Boche?
Why should any have lights? The Boches must
certainly want to come unobserved, and the
French must certainly want to chase them without
being seen. How can either side tell which
is friend and which is enemy, lights or no lights?
How can even an anti-aircraft gun hope to hit a
tiny moving plane way up in the air? How can
a moving plane hit another in the dark? Which
of the deep booms were guns and which bombs?
.il id=i17 fn=i290.jpg w=575px link=i290.jpg
.ca The Air Raid on Paris on the Night of January 30, 1918
.pn +1
This thought was dreadful. Bombs actually
being dropped in the suburbs of Paris on buildings,
on our friends, on the refugees, on anybody.
Suddenly a flash lit up the Place—the trees
stood silhouetted against a red glare and an explosion
thundered out. It seemed just across the
Place. I never shall forget it. We thought of the
garage with the three Fords sleeping peacefully
in it—but the flash was certainly farther to
the left than Boulevard Saint-Jacques. We were
speculating as to how far away in feet and inches
it had hit, when bang! bang!—more bombs:
funniest thing—we all took a backward step
into Hannah’s room. We saw a plane with a red
light on it—certainly a Boche—fire his mitrailleuse
and then down fell another bomb. It
was fascinating to see him so plainly, but as the
sound of his engine became louder and we could
see him flying towards us, one charge of fear
went through me. To feel that an enemy is flying
right over you, ready any second to drop a
bomb that will blow you and Marje and people
you love and the house and the street and everything
to flinders; to know that you can’t do anything—that
not even pulling the bedclothes up
over your head is sure protection; to have to
wait, wait, wait while you hear that throbbing
motor, and then wait again to see whether he’ll
.pn +1
let go that instant or not—well, as Marje says,
“It may be all right for the soldiers, but I feel
distinctly like 'women and children.’”
It lasted two hours, and we stood there in our
catch-as-catch-can costumes, trying not to feel
the cold stone of the balcony through our kid
night slippers. We were sure we smelled gunpowder,
and some one suggested gas bombs—not
exactly pleasant. The hum of aeroplanes
was continual and the explosion of guns frequent.
When one would be especially loud, some one
would call out, “Attitudes of defense, girls—turn
up your coat collars—here comes the
Crown Prince!” “Have you on your Boston
grips, Marje?—if so, no metal can touch you!”
“Here, here, you great bonehead Boche, you
came to get Lloyd George and Pershing and
General Foch and that crowd—don’t break up
our happy little home life!”
I got too tired and cold to stand out there any
longer, so I took a nap on Hannah’s bed until the
bugle of “All danger’s past” blew. You can’t
imagine how that sounds until once you’ve seen
the Germans come toward you and have felt
yourself an insignificant, but a very much concerned,
target. You never heard anything so
full of joy!
We adjourned to Hilda’s room and the
.pn +1
practical spirits of the crowd soon had some solid
alcohol burning and some Whitman’s instantaneous
chocolate in the saucepan. It certainly
went to the spot with toasterettes as an accompaniment—and
still another accompaniment
of the bugle call growing fainter in the distance.
We went to bed, and oh, how we slept! We
have wanted to experience a real raid and now
we have, and we’ve had one and that’s enough.
This morning the maids brought in wild tales
with our breakfast. The École des Mines had
been hit, on the Boulevard Saint-Michel. The
morning papers said nothing. As the workers
came strolling in to the Vestiaire, heavy-eyed
from lack of sleep, but bursting with questions,
we could get little definite news.
Mlle. Herzog and I started out hot-foot for
the École des Mines, hoping that the work would
not grudge us half an hour for satisfying our
curiosity. We found a big crowd, managed by
a policeman standing in front of the École, in
which every window was broken. So was every
window on both sides of the Boulevard for several
hundred feet, and a big ragged hole beside
the asphalt showed where the bomb had fallen.
Things seem so different in the daytime—there
were all the commonplace buildings, the tram,
the policeman, the landmarks that we know so
.pn +1
well, and yet the sidewalks were covered with
broken glass and limbs of trees, and that big
hole had been made by a real live Boche!
It seemed fairly near home too—the spot is
about as far from us as three New York short
blocks, perhaps a little farther; but it doesn’t
seem so far away to drop a bomb when some
one has come all the way from Germany.
During the day we heard of more places hit—a
hospital near Place d’Italie; a house where
one child was buried alive; a cabman was killed
somewhere, but not his horse. The worst damage
was on the Avenue de la Grande Armée,
where a three-story house was ruined. We hope
to go over to-morrow at lunch-time and see.
Thank Heaven, they missed the Arc de Triomphe.
Doris Nevin, who had supper here with us
to-night, went over to the Concorde at the end
of the raid last night and saw the wreckage of
a French machine which was burned up.
The papers have headlines and long blank
columns, so that we know nothing. They
acknowledge twenty victims, though. The Germans
mans always attack two or three nights running,
and the strain to-day has been the knowledge
that they would come again to-night. But now
one thing I know: that to-night Paris is deep in
.pn +1
a fog that nothing can penetrate; that a mist
which seems hardly more than air is protecting
us as neither iron nor steel can do; and that no
German can follow the shining rivers and lakes
to attack us. Oh, to feel so safe! It makes me
think of the Great Peace we shall have at the end
of the war. If we can only all give our strength
to have that come soon.
.nf r 0
With much love,
Esther.
.nf-
.sp 1
.ce
THE END
.sp 4
.nf c
The Riverside Press
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