Part 5
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 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 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 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 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.
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
MARJE.
IX
FROM MARJORIE
Villa des Dames, 79 rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, Paris. (February 4, 1917.)
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 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 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 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.
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), 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 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 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,
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!
X
FROM ESTHER
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 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 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 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," 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 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 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.