Part 3

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, 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 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 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 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 running. Here they are too expensive to buy and mostly too poor in quality. They ask thirty-two hundred francs for a 1910 Ford.

Affectionately, ESTHER.

IV

FROM MARJORIE

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 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 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.

MARJE.

V

FROM ESTHER

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, 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 yourself between the bed and the wall. I might say there's no getting around it.

I call the armoire Richard Coeur 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. 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 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.

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 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, 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 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 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 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."

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.