23 chapters
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Selected Chapters
23 chapters
FRENCHWOMEN IN WAR TIME
FRENCHWOMEN IN WAR TIME
If this little book reads more like a memoir than a systematic study of conditions, my excuse is that I remained too long in France and was too much with the people whose work most interested me, to be capable, for a long while, at any rate, of writing a detached statistical account of their remarkable work. In the first place, although it was my friend Owen Johnson who suggested this visit to France and personal investigation of the work of her women, I went with a certain enthusiasm, and the l
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I MADAME BALLI AND THE "COMFORT PACKAGE"
I MADAME BALLI AND THE "COMFORT PACKAGE"
One of the most striking results of the Great War has been the quickening in thousands of European women of qualities so long dormant that they practically were unsuspected. As I shall tell in a more general article, the Frenchwomen of the middle and lower bourgeoisie and of the farms stepped automatically into the shoes of the men called to the colors in August, 1914, and it was, in their case, merely the wearing of two pairs of shoes instead of one, and both of equal fit. The women of those cl
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II THE SILENT ARMY
II THE SILENT ARMY
Madame Paquin, the famous French dressmaker, told me casually an incident that epitomizes the mental inheritance of the women of a military nation once more plunged abruptly into war. Her home is in Neuilly, one of the beautiful suburbs of Paris, and for years when awake early in the morning it had been her habit to listen for the heavy creaking of the great wagons that passed her house on their way from the gardens and orchards of the open country to the markets of Paris. Sometimes she would ar
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III THE MUNITION MAKERS
III THE MUNITION MAKERS
Aside from the industrial class the women who suffered most at the outbreak of the war were those that worked in the shops. Paris is a city of little shops. The average American tourist knows them not, for her hectic experiences in the old days were confined to the Galeries Lafayette, the Louvre, the Bon Marché, and the Trois Quartièrs. But during the greater part of 1915 street after street exhibited the dreary picture of shuttered windows, where once every sort of delicate, solid, ingenious, c
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IV MADEMOISELLE JAVAL AND THE ÉCLOPÉS
IV MADEMOISELLE JAVAL AND THE ÉCLOPÉS
Mlle. Javal, unlike Madame Balli, was not a member of the fashionable society of Paris, a femme du monde , or a reigning beauty. But in certain respects their cases were not dissimilar. Born into one of the innumerable sets-within-sets of the upper bourgeoisie, living on inherited wealth, seeing as little as possible of the world beyond her immediate circle of relatives and friends, as curiously indifferent to it as only a haughty French bourgeoisie can be, growing up in a large and comfortable
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V THE WOMAN'S OPPORTUNITY
V THE WOMAN'S OPPORTUNITY
Madame Vérone, one of the leading lawyers and feminists of Paris, told me that without the help of the women France could not have remained in the field six months. This is no doubt true. Probably it has been true of every war that France has ever waged. Nor has French history ever been reluctant to admit its many debts to the sex it admires, without idealization perhaps, but certainly in more ways than one. As far back as the reign of Louis XI memoirs pay their tribute to the value of the Frenc
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VI MADAME PIERRE GOUJON
VI MADAME PIERRE GOUJON
Madame Pierre Goujon is another young Frenchwoman who led not only a life of ease and careless happiness up to the Great War, but also, and from childhood, an uncommonly interesting one, owing to the kind fate that made her the daughter of the famous Joseph Reinach. M. Reinach, it is hardly worth while to state even for the benefit of American readers, is one of the foremost "Intellectuals" of France. Born to great wealth, he determined in his early youth to live a life of active usefulness, and
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VII MADAME PIERRE GOUJON (Continued)
VII MADAME PIERRE GOUJON (Continued)
I had gone to Lyons to see the war relief work of that flourishing city and Madame Goujon went South at the same time to visit her husband's people. We agreed to meet in the little town of Bourg la Bresse, known to the casual tourist for its church erected in the sixteenth century by Margaret of Austria and famous for the carvings on its tombs. Otherwise it is a picturesque enlarged village with a meandering stream that serves as an excuse for fine bridges; high-walled gardens, ancient trees, an
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VIII VALENTINE THOMPSON
VIII VALENTINE THOMPSON
Fortunate are those women who not only are able to take care of themselves but of their dependents during this long period of financial depression; still more fortunate are those who, either wealthy or merely independent, are able both to stand between the great mass of unfortunates and starvation and to serve their country in old ways and new. More fortunate still are the few who, having made for themselves by their talents and energy a position of leadership before the war, were immediately ab
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IX MADAME WADDINGTON
IX MADAME WADDINGTON
One has learned to associate Madame Waddington so intimately with the glittering surface life of Europe that although every one knows she was born in New York of historic parentage, one recalls with something of a shock now and then that she was not only educated in this country but did not go to France to live until after the death of her father in 1871. This no doubt accounts for the fact that meeting her for the first time one finds her unmistakably an American woman. Her language may be Fren
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X THE COUNTESS D'HAUSSONVILLE[D]
X THE COUNTESS D'HAUSSONVILLE[D]
Madame la Comtesse d'Haussonville, it is generally conceded, is not only the greatest lady in France but stands at the very head of all women working for the public welfare in her country. That is saying a great deal, particularly at this moment. Madame d'Haussonville is President of the first, or noblesse, division of the Red Cross, which, like the two others, has a title as distinct as the social status of the ladies who command, with diminishing degrees of pomp and power. Société Française de
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XI THE MARQUISE D'ANDIGNÉ
XI THE MARQUISE D'ANDIGNÉ
The Marquise d'Andigné, who was Madeline Goddard of Providence, R.I., is President of Le Bien-Être du Blessé, an oeuvre formed by Madame d'Haussonville at the request of the Ministère de la Guerre in May, 1915. She owes this position as president of one of the most important war relief organizations (perhaps after the Red Cross the most important) to the energy, conscientiousness, and brilliant executive abilities she had demonstrated while at the Front in charge of more than one hospital. She i
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XII MADAME CAMILLE LYON
XII MADAME CAMILLE LYON
Madame Lyon committed on my behalf what for her was a tremendous breach of the proprieties: she called upon me without the formality of a letter of introduction. No American can appreciate what such a violation of the formalities of all the ages must have meant to a pillar of the French Bourgeoisie. But she set her teeth and did it. Her excuse was that she had read all my books, and that she was a friend of Mlle. Thompson, at whose École Hôtelière I was lodging. I was so impressed at the unusual
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XIII BRIEF ACCOUNTS OF GREAT WORK
XIII BRIEF ACCOUNTS OF GREAT WORK
The Duchesse d'Uzès ( jeune ) was not only one of the reigning beauties of Paris before the war but one of its best-dressed women; nor had she ever been avoided for too serious tendencies. She went to work the day war began and she has never ceased to work since. She has started something like seventeen hospitals both at the French front and in Saloniki, and her tireless brain has to its credit several notable inventions for moving field hospitals. Near Amiens is the most beautiful of the duc's
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XIV ONE OF THE MOTHERLESS
XIV ONE OF THE MOTHERLESS
Versailles frames in my memory the most tragic of the war-time pictures I collected during my visit to France. That romantic and lovely city which has framed in turn the pomp and glory of France, the iconic simplicities of Marie Antoinette, the odious passions of a French mob, screeching for bread and blood, and the creation of a German Empire, will for long be associated in my mind with a sad and isolated little picture that will find no niche in history, but, as a symbol, is as diagnostic as t
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XV THE MARRAINES
XV THE MARRAINES
It is hardly too much to say that every woman in France, from noblesse to peasant, has her filleul (godson) in the trenches; in many cases, when she still has a considerable income in spite of taxes, moratoriums, and all the rest of it, she is a marraine on the grand scale and has several hundred. Children have their filleul, correspond with him, send him little presents several times a month and weep bitterly when word comes that he is deep in his last trench. Servants save their wages so that
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XVI PROBLEMS FOR THE FUTURE
XVI PROBLEMS FOR THE FUTURE
What the bereft mothers of France will do after this war is over and they no longer have the mutilated sons of other mothers to nurse and serve and work for, is a problem for themselves; but what the younger women will do is a problem for the men. Practically every day of the three months I spent in Passy I used one of the three lines of tramcars that converge at La Muette (it is almost immoral to take a taxi these days); and I often amused myself watching the women conductors. They are quick, k
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I THE THREAT OF THE MATRIARCHATE
I THE THREAT OF THE MATRIARCHATE
It is possible that if the European War had been averted the history of Feminism would have made far different reading—say fifty years hence. The militant suffragettes of England had degenerated from something like real politicians into mere neurasthenics and not only had lost what little chance they seemed for a time to have of being taken seriously by the British Government, but had very nearly alienated the many thousands of women without the ranks that were wavering in the balance. This was
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II THE TRIUMPH OF MIDDLE-AGE
II THE TRIUMPH OF MIDDLE-AGE
Certain doctors of England have gone on record as predicting a lamentable physical future for the army of women who are at present doing the heavy work of men, particularly in the munition factories. They say that the day-long tasks which involve incessant bending and standing and lifting of heavy weights will breed a terrible reaction when the war ends and these women are abruptly flung back into domestic life. There is almost no man's place in the industrial world that English women are not sa
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III THE REAL VICTIMS OF "SOCIETY"
III THE REAL VICTIMS OF "SOCIETY"
There is nothing paradoxical in affirming that while no woman before she has reached the age of thirty-five or forty should, if she can avoid it, compete with men in work which the exigencies of civilization (man-made civilization) have adapted to him alone, still, every girl of every class, from the industrial straight up to the plutocratic, should be trained in some congenial vocation during her plastic years. Civilization in certain respects is as inadequate as it was a thousand years ago. So
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IV ONE SOLUTION OF A GREAT PROBLEM
IV ONE SOLUTION OF A GREAT PROBLEM
The world is willing and eager to buy what it wants. If you have goods to sell you soon find your place at the counter, unless owing to some fault of character your fellow barterers and their patrons will have none of you. Of course there is always the meanest of all passions, jealousy, waiting to thwart you at every turn, but no woman with a modicum of any one of those wares the world wants and must have need fear any enemy but her own loss of courage. The pity is that so many women with no par
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V FOUR OF THE HIGHLY SPECIALIZED
V FOUR OF THE HIGHLY SPECIALIZED
There are four other ways in which women (exclusive of the artist class) are enjoying remunerative careers: as social secretaries, play brokers, librarians, and editors; and it seems to me that I cannot do better than to drop generalities in this final chapter and give four of the most notable instances in which women have "made good" in these highly distinctive professions. I have selected four whom I happen to know well enough to portray at length: Maria de Barril, Alice Kauser, Belle da Costa
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ADDENDUM
ADDENDUM
NOTE.— Six months ago I wrote asking Madame d'Andigné to send me notes of her work before becoming the President of Le Bien—Être du Blessé. She promised, but no woman in France is busier. The following arrived after the book was in press, so I can only give it verbatim.—G.A. At the time this gigantic struggle broke out I was in America. My first thought was to get to France as soon as possible. I sailed on August 2nd for Cherbourg but as we were pursued by two German ships our course was changed
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