The Living Present Part 10

III

The Waddingtons being the great people of their district were, of course, looked upon by the peasant farmers and villagers as aristocrats of illimitable wealth. Therefore when the full force of the war struck these poor people--they were in the path of the Germans during the advance on Paris, and ruthlessly treated--they looked to Madame Waddington and her daughter, Madame Francis Waddington, to put them on their feet again.

Francis Waddington, to whom the chateau descended, was in the trenches, but his mother and wife did all they could, as soon as the Germans had been driven back, to relieve the necessities of the dazed and miserable creatures whose farms had been devastated and shops rifled or razed. Some time, by the way, Madame Waddington may tell the dramatic story of her daughter-in-law's escape. She was alone in the chateau with her two little boys when the Mayor of the nearest village dashed up with the warning that the Germans were six kilometers away, and the last train was about to leave.

She had two automobiles, but her chauffeur had been mobilized and there was no petrol. She was dressed for dinner, but there was no time to change. She threw on a cloak and thinking of nothing but her children went off with the Mayor in hot haste to catch the train. From that moment on for five or six days, during which time she never took off her high-heeled slippers with their diamond buckles, until she reached her husband in the North, her experience was one of the side dramas of the war.

I think it was early in 1915 that Madame Waddington wrote in _Scribner's Magazine_ a description of her son's chateau as it was after the Germans had evacuated it. But the half was not told. It never can be, in print. Madame Huard, in her book, _My Home on the Field of Honor_, is franker than most of the current historians have dared to be, and the conditions which she too found when she returned after the German retreat may be regarded as the prototype of the disgraceful and disgusting state in which these lovely country homes of the French were left; not by lawless German soldiers but by officers of the first rank. Madame Francis Waddington did not even run upstairs to s.n.a.t.c.h her jewel case, and of course she never saw it again. Her dresses had been taken from the wardrobes and slashed from top to hem by the swords of these incomprehensible barbarians. The most valuable books in the library were gutted. But these outrages are almost too mild to mention.

IV

The next task after the city ouvroir was in running order was to teach the countrywomen how to sew for the soldiers and pay them for their work. The region of the Aisne is agricultural where it is not heavily wooded. Few of the women had any skill with the needle. The two Madame Waddingtons concluded to show these poor women with their coa.r.s.e red hands how to knit until their fingers grew more supple. This they took to very kindly, knitting jerseys and socks; and since those early days both the Paris and country ouvroirs had sent (June, 1916) twenty thousand packages to the soldiers. Each package contained a flannel s.h.i.+rt, drawers, stomach band, waistcoat or jersey, two pairs of socks, two handkerchiefs, a towel, a piece of soap. Any donations of tobacco or rolled cigarettes were also included.

This burden in the country has been augmented heavily by refugees from the invaded districts. Of course they come no more these days, but while I was in Paris they were still pouring down, and as the Waddington estate was often in their line of march they simply camped in the park and in the garage. Of course they had to be clothed, fed, and generally a.s.sisted.

As Madame Waddington's is not one of the picturesque ouvroirs she has found it difficult to keep it going, and no doubt contributes all she can spare of what the war has left of her own income. Moreover, she is on practically every important war relief committee, sometimes as honorary president, for her name carries great weight, often as vice-president or as a member of the "conseil." After her ouvroirs the most important organization of which she is president is the Comite International de Pans.e.m.e.nts Chirurgicaux des Etats Unis--in other words, surgical dressings--started by Mrs. Willard, and run actively in Paris by Mrs. Austin, the vice-president. When I visited it they were serving about seven hundred hospitals, and no doubt by this time are supplying twice that number. Two floors of a new apartment house had been put at their disposal near the Bois, and the activity and s.h.i.+ning whiteness were the last word in modern proficiency (I shall never use that black-sheep among words, _efficiency_, again).

One of Madame Waddington's more personal oeuvres is the amus.e.m.e.nt she, in company with her daughter-in-law, provides for the poilus in the village near her son's estate. Regiments are quartered there, either to hold themselves in readiness, or to cut down trees for the army.

They wandered about, desolate and bored, until the two Madame Waddingtons furnished a reading-room, provided with letter paper and post-cards, books and, I hope, by this time a gramophone. Here they sit and smoke, read, or get up little plays. As the chateau is now occupied by the staff the two patronesses are obliged to go back and forth from Paris, and this they do once a week at least.

V

Madame Waddington, knowing that I was very anxious to see one of the cantines at the railway stations about which so much was said, took me late one afternoon to St. Lazare. Into this great station, as into all the others, train after train hourly gives up its load of permissionnaires--men home on their six days' leave--; men for the eclope stations; men from shattered regiments, to be held at Le Bourget until the time comes to be sent to fill other gaps made by the German guns; men who merely arrive by one train to take another out, but who must frequently remain for several hours in the depot.

I have never entered one of these _gares_ to take a train that I have not seen hundreds of soldiers entering, leaving, waiting; sometimes lying asleep on the hard floor, always on the benches. It is for all who choose to take advantage of them that these cantines are run, and they are open day and night.

The one in St. Lazare had been organized in February, 1915, by the Baronne de Berckheim (born Pourtales) and was still run by her in person when I visited it in June, 1916. During that time she and her staff had taken care of over two hundred thousand soldiers. From 8 to 11 A.M. cafe-au-lait, or cafe noir, or bouillon, pate de foie or cheese is served. From 11 to 2 and from 6 to 9, bouillon, a plate of meat and vegetables, salad, cheese, fruits or compote, coffee, a quart of wine or beer, cigarettes. From 2 to 6 and after 9 P.M., bouillon, coffee, tea, pate, cheese, milk, lemonade, cocoa.

The rooms in the station are a donation by the officials, of course.

The dining-room of the St. Lazare cantine was fitted up with several long tables, before which, when we arrived, every square inch of the benches was occupied by poilus enjoying an excellent meal of which beef a la mode was the piece de resistance. The Baroness Berckheim and the young girls helping her wore the Red Cross uniform, and they served the needs of the tired and hungry soldiers with a humble devotion that nothing but war and its awful possibilities can inspire.

It was these nameless men who were saving not only France from the most brutal enemy of modern times but the honor of thousands of such beautiful and fastidious young women as these. No wonder they were willing and grateful to stand until they dropped.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A RAILWAY DEPOT CANTINE]

It was evident, however, that their imagination carried them beyond man's interiorities. The walls were charmingly decorated not only with pictures of the heroes of the war but with the colored supplements of the great weekly magazines which pursue their even and welcome way in spite of the war. Above there were flags and banners, and the lights were very bright. Altogether there was no restaurant in Paris more cheerful--or more exquisitely neat in its kitchen. I went behind and saw the great roasts in their s.h.i.+ning pans, the splendid loaves of bread, the piles of clean dishes. Not a spot of grease in those crowded quarters. In a corner the President of the Chamber of Commerce was cas.h.i.+er for the night.

Adjoining was a rest-room with six or eight beds, and a lavatory large enough for several men simultaneously to wash off the dust of their long journey.

These cantines are supported by collections taken up on trains. On any train between Paris and any point in France outside of the War Zone girls in the uniform of the Croix Rouge appear at every stop and shake a box at you. They are wooden boxes, with a little slit at the top. As I have myself seen people slipping in coppers and, no doubt, receiving the credit from other pa.s.sengers of donating francs, I suggested that these young cadets of the Red Cross would add heavily to their day's toll if they pa.s.sed round open plates. Certainly no one would dare contribute copper under the sharp eyes of his fellows. This, I was told, was against the law, but that it might be found practicable to use gla.s.s boxes.

In any case the gains are enough to run these cantines. The girls are almost always good looking and well bred, and they look very serious in their white uniform with the red cross on the sleeves; and the psychotherapeutic influence is too strong for any one to resist.

Madame Waddington had brought a large box of chocolates and she pa.s.sed a piece over the shoulder of each soldier, who interrupted the more serious business of the moment to be polite. Other people bring them flowers, or cigarettes, and certainly there is no one in the world so satisfactory to put one's self to any effort for as a poilu. On her manners alone France should win her war.

X

THE COUNTESS D'HAUSSONVILLE[D]

I

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.

[D] Naturally this should have been the first chapter, both on account of the importance of the work and the position of Madame d'Haussonville among the women of France, but unfortunately the necessary details did not come until the book was almost ready for press.

Madame d'Haussonville is President of the first, or n.o.blesse, division of the Red Cross, which, like the two others, has a t.i.tle as distinct as the social status of the ladies who command, with diminis.h.i.+ng degrees of pomp and power.

Societe Francaise de Secours aux Blesses Militaires is the name of the crack regiment.

The second division, presided over by Madame Carnot, leader of the grande bourgeoisie, calls itself a.s.sociation des Dames Francaises, and embraces all the charitably disposed of that haughty and powerful body.

The third, operated by Madame Perouse, and composed of able and useful women whom fate has planted in a somewhat inferior social sphere--in many social spheres, for that matter--has been named (note the significance of the differentiating noun) Union des Femmes de France.

Between these three useful and admirable organizations there is no love lost whatever. That is to say, in reasonably normal conditions.

No doubt in that terrible region just behind the lines they sink all differences and pull together for the common purpose.

The Red Cross was too old and too taken-for-granted an organization, and too like our own, for all I knew to the contrary, to tempt me to give it any of the limited time at my disposal in France; so, as it happened, of these three distinguished chiefs the only one I met was Madame d'Haussonville.

She interested me intensely, not only because she stood at the head of the greatest relief organization in the world, but because she is one of the very few women, of her age, at least, who not only is a great lady but looks the role.

European women tend to coa.r.s.eness, not to say commonness, as they advance in age, no matter what their rank; their cheeks sag and broaden, and their stomachs contract a fatal and permanent entente with their busts. Too busy or too indifferent to charge spiteful nature with the daily counter-attacks of art, they put on a red-brown wig (generally sideways) and let it go at that. Sometimes they smudge their eyebrows with a pomade which gives that extinct member the look of being neither hair, skin, nor art, but they contemptuously reject rouge or even powder. When they have not altogether discarded the follies or the ennui of dress, but patronize their modiste conscientiously, they have that "built up look" peculiar to those uncompromisingly respectable women of the first society in our own land, who frown upon the merely smart.

It is only the young women of fas.h.i.+on in France who make up lips, brows, and cheeks, as well as hair and earlobes, who often look like young clowns, and whose years give them no excuse for making up beyond subservience to the mode of the hour.

It is even sadder when they are emulated by ambitious ladies in the provinces. I went one day to a great concert--given for charity, of course--in a town not far from Paris. The Mayor presided and his wife was with him. As I had been taken out from Paris by one of the Patrons I sat in the box with this very well-dressed and important young woman, and she fascinated me so that I should have feared to appear rude if she had not been far too taken up with the t.i.tled women from Paris, whom she was meeting for the first time in her life, to pay any attention to a mere American.

She may have been twenty-eight, certainly not over thirty, but she had only one front tooth. It was a very large tooth and it stuck straight out. Her lips were painted an energetic vermillion. Her mouth too was large, and it spread across her dead white (and homely) face like a malignant sore. She smiled constantly--it was her role to be gracious to all these d.u.c.h.esses and amba.s.sadresses--and that solitary tooth darted forward like a sentinel on a bridge in the War Zone. But I envied her. She was so happy. So important. I never met anybody who made me feel so insignificant.

II

Madame d'Haussonville naturally suggests to the chronicler the sharpest sort of contrasts.

I am told that she devoted herself to the world until the age of fifty, and she wielded a power and received a measure of adulation from both s.e.xes that made her the most formidable social power in France. But the De Broglies are a serious family, as their record in history proves. Madame d'Haussonville, without renouncing her place in the world of fas.h.i.+on, devoted herself more and more to good works, her superior brain and executive abilities forcing her from year to year into positions of heavier responsibility.

I was told that she was now seventy; but she is a woman whose personality is so compelling that she rouses none of the usual vulgar curiosity as to the number of years she may have lingered on this planet. You see Madame d'Haussonville as she is and take not the least interest in what she may have been during the years before you happened to meet her.

Very tall and slender and round and straight, her figure could hardly have been more perfect at the age of thirty. The poise of her head is very haughty and the nostril of her fine French nose is arched and thin. She wears no make-up whatever, and, however plainly she may feel it her duty to dress in these days, her clothes are cut by a master and an excessively modern one at that; there is none of the Victorian built-up effect, to which our own grandes dames cling as to the rock of ages, about Madame d'Haussonville. Her waist line is in its proper place--she does not go to the opposite extreme and drag it down to her knees--and one feels reasonably sure that it will be there at the age of ninety--presupposing that the unthinkable amount of hard work she accomplishes daily during this period of her country's crucifixion shall not have devoured the last of her energies long before she is able to enter the peaceful haven of old age.