Part 1
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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
Copyright, 1918, by Houghton Mifflin Company All Rights Reserved
Published April 1918
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.
CLARA LOUISE BURNHAM.
CONTENTS
Foreword by CLARA LOUISE BURNHAM I. FROM ESTHER II. FROM ESTHER III. FROM ESTHER IV. FROM MARJORIE V. FROM ESTHER VI. FROM MARJORIE VII. FROM ESTHER VIII. FROM MARJORIE IX. FROM MARJORIE X. FROM ESTHER XI. FROM ESTHER XII. FROM MARJORIE XIII. FROM MARJORIE XIV. FROM ESTHER XV. FROM MARJORIE XVI. FROM MARJORIE XVII. FROM ESTHER XVIII. FROM MARJORIE XIX. FROM ESTHER XX. FROM MARJORIE XXI. FROM ESTHER XXII. FROM MARJORIE XXIII. FROM ESTHER XXIV. FROM ESTHER XXV. FROM ESTHER XXVI. FROM MARJORIE XXVII. FROM MARJORIE XXVIII. FROM MARJORIE XXIX. FROM MARJORIE XXX. FROM ESTHER
ILLUSTRATIONS
Marjorie Crocker and Esther Sayles Root No. 6 Place Denfert-Rochereau Women's Vestiaire and Men's Vestiaire Dr. and Mrs. Shurtleff in the Office Marjorie and Mrs. Shurtleff, with the Leopard Skin Esther and Marjorie in Ford Truck Rootie in Park at Saint-Germain Marje in the Salon at No. 12 Place Denfert-Rochereau "Bettina" at Saint-Germain Le Cèdre at Saint-Germain Will Irwin in the Garden at Blérancourt Mrs. Williams, Miss Dobson, and Mrs. Wethey in the Garden at Blérancourt Luncheon in the Garden at Blérancourt The Cathedral at Soissons Very Old and Beautiful House at Roye: Interior completely gone A German Graveyard The Air Raid on Paris on the Night of January 30, 1918
OVER PERISCOPE POND
I
FROM ESTHER
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 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. 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 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 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, 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 coeur," 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.
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.
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.
Much love. ESTHER.
II
FROM ESTHER
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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!