The Living Present Part 13

The d.u.c.h.esse d'Uzes (_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 castles, Lucheux, built in the eleventh century. This she turned into a hospital during the first battle of the Somme in 1915, and as it could only accommodate a limited number she had hospital tents erected in the park. Seven hundred were cared for there. Lucheux is now a hospital for officers.

She herself is an infirmiere major and not only goes back and forth constantly to the hospitals in which she is interested, particularly Lucheux, but sometimes nurses day and night.

I was very anxious to see Lucheux, as well as Arras, which is not far from Amiens, and, a vast ruin, is said to be by moonlight the most beautiful sight on earth. We both besieged the War Office. But in vain. The great Battle of the Somme had just begun. They are so polite at the Ministere de la Guerre! If I had only thought of it a month earlier. Or if I could remain in France a month or two longer? But helas! They could not take the responsibility of letting an American woman go so close to the big guns. And so forth. It was sad enough that the d.u.c.h.ess risked her life, took it in her hand, in fact, every time she visited the chateau, but as a Frenchwoman, whose work was of such value to France, it was their duty to a.s.sist her in the fulfillment of her own duty to her country. Naturally her suggestion to take me on her pa.s.sport as an infirmiere was received with a smile.

So I must see Arras with a million other tourists after the war.

The d.u.c.h.ess prefers for reasons of her own to work, not with the n.o.blesse division of the Red Cross, but with the Union des Femmes de France. As she is extremely independent, impatient, and enterprising, with a haughty disdain of red tape, the reasons for this uncommon secession may be left to the reader.

And if she is to-day one of the most valued of the Ministere de la Guerre's cooperators, she has on the other hand reason to be grateful for the incessant demands upon her mind, for her anxieties have been great--no doubt are still. Not only is the duc at the front, but one of two young nephews who lived with her was killed last summer, and the other, a young aviator, who was just recovering from typhoid when I was there, was ill-concealing his impatience to return to the Front.

Her son, a boy of seventeen--a volunteer of course--in the sudden and secret transfers the army authorities are always making, sometimes could not communicate with her for a fortnight at a time, and meanwhile she did not know whether he was alive or "missing." Since then he has suffered one of those cruel misfortunes which, in this war, seem to be reserved for the young and gallant. She writes of it in that manner both poignant and matter-of-fact that is so characteristic of the French mother these days:

"I have just gone through a great deal of anguish on account of my oldest son, who, as I told you, left the cavalry to enter the cha.s.seurs a pied at his request.

"The poor boy was fighting in the splendid (illegible) affair, and he was buried twice, then caught by the stifling gases, his mask having been torn off. He insisted upon remaining at his post, in spite of the fact that he was spitting blood. Fortunately a lieutenant pa.s.sed by and saw him. He gave orders to have him carried away. As soon as he reached the ambulance he fainted and could only be brought to himself with the greatest difficulty. His lungs are better, thank G.o.d, but his heart is very weak, and even his limbs are affected by the poison.

Many weeks will be required to cure him. I don't know yet where he will be sent to be attended to, but of course I shall accompany him.... The duc is always in the Somme, where the bombardment is something dreadful. He sleeps in a hut infested with rats. Really it is a beautiful thing to see so much courage and patience among men of all ages in this country."

In the same letter she writes: "I am just about to finish my new Front hospital according to the desiderata expressed by our President of the Hygiene Commission. I hope it will be accepted as a type of the surgical movable ambulances."

Before it was generally known that Roumania was "coming in" she had doctors and nurses for several months in France in the summer of 1916 studying all the latest devices developed by the French throughout this most demanding of all wars. The officials sent with them adopted several of the d.u.c.h.esse d'Uzes' inventions for the movable field hospital.

She has never sent me the many specific details of her work that she promised me, or this article would be longer. But, no wonder! What time have those women to sit down and write? I often wonder they gave me as much time as they did when I was on the spot.

THE d.u.c.h.eSSE DE ROHAN

Before the war society used to dance once a week in the red and gold salon of the historic "hotel" of the Rohans' in the Faubourg St.

Germain, just behind the Hotel des Invalides. Here the d.u.c.h.ess entertained when she took up her residence there as a bride; and, as her love of "the world" never waned, she danced on with the inevitable pauses for birth and mourning, until her daughters grew up and brought to the salon a new generation. But the d.u.c.h.ess and her own friends continued to dance on a night set apart for themselves, and in time all of her daughters, but one, married and entertained in their own hotels. Her son, who, in due course, became the Duc de Rohan, also married; but mothers are not dispossessed in France, and the d.u.c.h.ess still remained the center of attraction at the Hotel de Rohan.

Until August second, 1914.

The d.u.c.h.ess immediately turned the hotel into a hospital. When I arrived last summer it looked as if it had been a hospital for ever.

All the furniture of the first floor had been stored and the immense dining-room, the red and gold salon, the reception rooms, all the rooms large and small on this floor, in fact, were lined with cots.

The pictures and tapestries have been covered with white linen, four bathrooms have been installed, and a large operating and surgical-dressing room built as an annex. The hall has been turned into a "bureau," with a row of offices presided over by Maurice Rostand.

Behind the hotel is the usual beautiful garden, very large and shaded with splendid trees. During fine weather there are cots or long chairs under every tree, out in the sun, on the veranda; and, after the War Zone, these men seemed to me very fortunate. The d.u.c.h.ess takes in any one sent to her, the Government paying her one-franc-fifty a day for each. The greater part of her own fortune was invested in Brussels.

She and her daughters and a few of her friends do all of the nursing, even the most menial. They wait on the table, because it cheers the poilus--who, by the way, all beg, as soon as they have been there a few days, to be put in the red and gold salon. It keeps up their spirits! Her friends and their friends, if they have any in Paris, call constantly and bring them cigarettes. Fortunately I was given the hint by the Marquise de Talleyrand, who took me the first time, and armed myself with one of those long boxes that may be carried most conveniently under the arm. Otherwise, I should have felt like a superfluous intruder, standing about those big rooms looking at the men. In the War Zone where there were often no cigarettes, or anything else, to be bought, it was different. The men were only too glad to see a new face.

The d.u.c.h.ess trots about indefatigably, a.s.sists at every operation, a.s.sumes personal charge of infectious cases, takes temperatures, waits on the table, and prays all night by the dying. Mr. Van Husen, a young American who was helping her at that time, told me that if a boy died in the hospital and was a devout Catholic, and friendless in Paris, she arranged to have a high ma.s.s for his funeral service at a church in the neighborhood.

The last time I saw her she was feeling very happy because her youngest son, who had been missing for several weeks, had suddenly appeared at the hotel and spent a few days with her. A week later the Duc de Rohan, one of the most brilliant soldiers in France, was killed; and since my return I have heard of the death of her youngest.

Such is life for the Mothers of France to-day.

COUNTESS GREFFULHE

The Countess Greffulhe (born Princesse de Chimay and consequently a Belgian, although no stretch of fancy could picture her as anything but a Parisian) offered her a.s.sistance at once to the Government and corresponded with hundreds of Mayors in the provinces in order to have deserted hotels made over into hospitals with as little delay as possible. She also established a depot to which women could come privately and sell their laces, jewels, bibelots, etc. Her next enterprise was to form a powerful committee which responsible men and women of the allied countries could ask to get up benefits when the need for money was pressing.

Upon one occasion when a British Committee made this appeal she induced Russia to send a ballet for a single performance; and she also persuaded the manager of the Opera House to open it for a gala performance for another organization. There is a romantic flavor about all the countess's work, and just how practical it was or how long it was pursued along any given line I was unable to learn.

MADAME PAQUIN

Madame Paquin, better known to Americans, I fancy, than any of the great dressmakers of Europe, offered her beautiful home in Neuilly to the Government to be used as a hospital, and it had accommodated up to the summer of 1916 eight thousand, nine hundred soldiers.

She also kept all her girls at work from the first. As no one ordered a gown for something like eighteen months they made garments for the soldiers, or badges for the numerous appeal days--we all decorated ourselves, within ten minutes after leaving the house, like heroes and heroines on the field, about three times a week--and upon one occasion this work involved a three months' correspondence with all the Mayors of France. It further involved the fastening of ribbons and pins (furnished by herself) upon fifteen million medallions. Madame Paquin is also on many important committees, including "L'Orphelinat des Armees," so well known to us.

MADAME PAUL DUPUY

Madame Dupuy was also an American girl, born in New York and now married to the owner of Le Pet.i.t Parisien and son of one of the wealthiest men in France. She opened in the first days of the war an organization which she called "Oeuvre du Soldat Blesse ou Malade," and from her offices in the Hotel de Crillon and her baraque out at the Depot des Dons (where we all have warehouses), she supplies surgeons at the Front with wheeling-chairs, surgical dressings, bed garments, rubber for operating tables, instruments, slippers, pillows, blankets, and a hundred and one other things that hara.s.sed surgeons at the Front are always demanding. The oeuvre of the Marquise de Noailles, with which a daughter of Mrs. Henry Seligmen, Madame Henri van Heukelom, is closely a.s.sociated, is run on similar lines.

I have alluded frequently in the course of these reminiscences to Madame Dupuy, who was of the greatest a.s.sistance to me, and more than kind and willing. I wish I could have returned it by collecting money for her oeuvre when I returned to New York, but I found that Le Bien-etre du Blesse was all I could manage. Moreover, it is impossible to get money these days without a powerful committee behind you. To go to one wealthy and generous person or another as during the first days of the war and ask for a donation for the president of an oeuvre unrepresented in this country is out of the question. It is no longer done, as the English say.

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 pa.s.sions of a French mob, screeching for bread and blood, and the creation of a German Empire, will for long be a.s.sociated 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 the storming of the palace gates in 1789.

There is a small but powerful oeuvre in Paris, composed with one exception of Americans devoted to the cause of France. It was founded by its treasurer, Mr. Frederic Coudert. Mr. August Jaccaci, of New York, is President; Mrs. Cooper Hewett, Honorary President; Mrs.

Robert Bliss, Vice-President; and the Committee consists of the Comtesse de Viel Castel, Mrs. Francis G. Shaw, and Mrs. William H.

Hill, of Boston. It is called "The Franco-American Committee for the Protection of the Children of the Frontier."

This Committee, which in May, 1916, had already rescued twelve hundred children, was born of one of those imperative needs of the moment when the French civilians and their American friends, working behind the lines, responded to the needs of the unfortunate, with no time for foresight and prospective organization.

In August, 1914, M. Cruppi, a former Minister of State, told Mr.

Coudert that in the neighborhood of Belfort there were about eighty homeless children, driven before the first great wind of the war, the battle of Metz; separated from their mothers (their fathers and big brothers were fighting) they had wandered, with other refugees, down below the area of battle and were huddled homeless and almost starving in and near the distracted town of Belfort.

Mr. Coudert immediately asked his friends in Paris to collect funds, and started with M. Cruppi for Belfort. There they found not eighty but two hundred and five children, shelterless, hungry, some of them half imbecile from shock, and all physically disordered.

To leave any of these wretched waifs behind, when Belfort itself might fall at any moment, was out of the question, and M. Cruppi and Mr.

Coudert crowded them all into the military cars allotted by the Government and took them to Paris. Some money had been raised. Mr.

Coudert cabled to friends in America, Mrs. Bliss (wife of the First Secretary of the American Emba.s.sy) and Mrs. Cooper Hewett contributed generously, Valentine Thompson gave her help and advice for a time, and Madame Pietre, wife of the sous-prefet of Yvetot, installed the children in an old seminary near her home and gave them her personal attention. Later, one hundred were returned to their parents and the rest placed in a beautiful chateau surrounded by a park.

Every day of those first terrible weeks of the war proved that more and more children must be cared for by those whom fortune had so far spared. It was then that Mr. Jaccaci renounced all private work and interests, and that Mrs. Hill, Mrs. Shaw and the Comtesse de Viel Castel volunteered. The organization was formed and christened, Mrs.

Bliss provided Relief Depots in Paris, and Mr. Coudert returned to New York for a brief visit in search of funds.