30 chapters
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30 chapters
I FROM ESTHER
I FROM ESTHER
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
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II FROM ESTHER
II FROM ESTHER
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 Fa
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III FROM ESTHER
III FROM ESTHER
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 provi
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IV FROM MARJORIE
IV FROM MARJORIE
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 do
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V FROM ESTHER
V FROM ESTHER
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 adjec
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VI FROM MARJORIE
VI FROM MARJORIE
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 pictur
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VII FROM ESTHER
VII FROM ESTHER
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, F
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VIII FROM MARJORIE
VIII FROM MARJORIE
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 g
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IX FROM MARJORIE
IX FROM MARJORIE
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,
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X FROM ESTHER
X FROM ESTHER
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
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XI FROM ESTHER
XI FROM ESTHER
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 e
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XII FROM MARJORIE
XII FROM MARJORIE
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 p
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XIII FROM MARJORIE
XIII FROM MARJORIE
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
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XIV FROM ESTHER
XIV FROM ESTHER
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
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XV FROM MARJORIE
XV FROM MARJORIE
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 wond
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XVI FROM MARJORIE
XVI FROM MARJORIE
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 perm
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XVII FROM ESTHER
XVII FROM ESTHER
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, an
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XVIII FROM MARJORIE
XVIII FROM MARJORIE
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
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XIX FROM ESTHER
XIX FROM ESTHER
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
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XX FROM MARJORIE
XX FROM MARJORIE
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 t
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XXI FROM ESTHER
XXI FROM ESTHER
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 feeli
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XXII FROM MARJORIE
XXII FROM MARJORIE
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 l
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XXIII FROM ESTHER
XXIII FROM ESTHER
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 b
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XXIV FROM ESTHER
XXIV FROM ESTHER
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 w
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XXV FROM ESTHER
XXV FROM ESTHER
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 v
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XXVI FROM MARJORIE
XXVI FROM MARJORIE
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 buck
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XXVII FROM MARJORIE
XXVII FROM MARJORIE
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
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XXVIII FROM MARJORIE
XXVIII FROM MARJORIE
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
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XXIX FROM MARJORIE
XXIX FROM MARJORIE
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 id
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XXX FROM ESTHER
XXX FROM ESTHER
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
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