What do you suppose I have done since I last wrote to you?
I have actually been to the theatre for the first time in four years.
Would you ever have believed that I could keep out of the theatre
such a long time as that? Still, I suppose going to the theatre--to a
sort of variety show--seems to you, who probably continue to go once
or twice a week, a tame experience. Well, you can go to the opera,
which I can't do if I like, but you can't see the heroes of Verdun not
only applauding a show, but giving it, and that is what I have been
doing not only once but twice since I wrote you.
I am sure that I have told you that our ambulance is in the salle de
récréation of the commune, which is a small rectangular room with a
stage across one end. It is the only thing approaching a theatre which
the commune boasts. It is well lighted, with big windows in the sides,
and a top-light over the stage. It is almost new, and the walls and
pointed ceiling are veneered with some Canadian wood, which looks
like bird's-eye maple, but isn't.
It is in that hall that the matinées, which are given every other Sunday
afternoon, take place. They are directed by a lieutenant-colonel, who
goes into it with great enthusiasm, and really gets up a first-class
programme.
The boys do all the hard work, and the personnel of the ambulance
aids and abets with great good humor, though it is very upsetting. But
then it is for the army--and what the army wants these days, it must
have.
Luckily the men in our ambulance just now are either convalescent,
or, at any rate, able to sit up in bed and bear excitement. So the beds
of the few who cannot be dressed are pushed close to the stage, and
around their cots are the chairs and benches of their convalescent
comrades. The rest of the beds are taken out. The big military band is
packed into one corner of the room. Chairs are put in for the officers
of the staff and their few invited guests--there are rarely more than
half a dozen civilians. Behind the reserved seats are a few benches
for the captains and lieutenants and the rest of the space is given up
to the poilus, who are allowed to rush when the doors are opened.
Of course the room is much too small, but it is the best we have. The
wide doors are left open. So are the wide windows, and the boys are
even allowed to perch on the wall opposite the entrance, from which
place they can see the stage.
The entire programme is given by the poilus; only one performer had
a stripe on his sleeve, though many of them wore a decoration. What
seems to me the prettiest of all is that all the officers go, and applaud
like mad, even the white-haired generals, who are not a bit backward
in crying "Bis, bis!" like the rest.
The officers are kind enough to invite me and the card on my chair is
marked "Mistress Aldrich." Isn't that Shakesperian? I sit among the
officers, usually with a commandant on one side and a colonel on the
other, with a General de Division, and a Général de Brigade in front of
me, and all sorts of gilt stripes about me, which I count with curiosity,
now that I have learned what they mean, as I surreptitiously try to
discover the marks that war has made on their faces--and don't find
them.
The truth is, the salle is fully as interesting to me as the performance,
good as that is--with a handsome, delicate-looking young professor of
music playing the violin, an actor from the Palais Royale showing a
diction altogether remarkable, two well-known gymnasts doing
wonderful stunts on horizontal bars, a prize pupil from the
Conservatory at Nantes acting, as only the French can, in a well-
known little comedy, two clever, comic monologists of the La Scala
sort, and as good as I ever heard even there, and a regimental band
which plays good music remarkably. There is even a Prix de Rome in
the regiment, but he is en congé, so I 've not heard him yet. I wonder
if you take it in? Do you realize that these are the soldiers in the ranks
of the French defence? Consider what the life in the trenches means
to them!
They even have artists among the poilus to paint back drops and
make properties. So you see it is one thing to go to the theatre and
quite another to see the soldiers from Verdun giving a performance
before such a public--the men from the trenches going to the play in
the highest of spirits and the greatest good humor.
At the first experience of this sort I did long to have you there. It was
such a scene as I could not have believed possible in these days and
under these conditions if I had not actually taken part in it.
As soon as the officers had filed in and taken their seats the doors
and windows were thrown open to admit "la vague," and we all stood
up and faced about to see them come. It was a great sight.
In the aisle down the centre of the hall--there is only one,--between
the back row of reserved seats, stood Mlle. Henriette, in her white
uniform, white gloved, with the red cross holding her long white veil to
the nurse's coiffe which covered her pretty brown hair. Her slight, tall,
white figure was the only barrier to prevent "la vague" from sweeping
right over the hall to the stage. As they came through the door it did
not seem possible that anything could stop them--or even that they
could stop themselves--and I expected to see her crushed. Yet two
feet from her, the mass stopped--the front line became rigid as steel
and held back the rest, and, in a second, the wave had broken into
two parts and flowed into the benches at left and right, and, in less
time than it takes you to read this, they were packed on the benches,
packed in the windows, and hung up on the walls. A queer murmur,
half laugh and half applause, ran over the reserved seats, and the
tall, thin commandant beside me said softly, "That is the way they
came out of the trenches at Verdun." As I turned to sit down I had
impressed on my memory forever that sea of smiling, clean-shaven,
keen-eyed, wave on wave of French faces, all so young and so gay--
yet whose eyes had looked on things which will make a new France.
I am sending you the programme of the second matinée--I lost that of
the first.
I do wish, for many reasons, that you could have heard the recitation
by Brochard of Jean Bastia's "L'Autre Cortege," in which the poet
foresees the day "When Joffre shall return down the Champs
Elysées" to the frenzied cries of the populace saluting its victorious
army, and greeting with wild applause "Pétain, who kept Verdun
inviolated," "De Castelnau, who three times in the fray saw a son fall
at his side," "Gouraud, the Fearless," "Marchand, who rushed on the
Boches brandishing his cane," "Mangin, who retook Douaumont,"
and "All those brave young officers, modest even in glory, whose
deeds the world knows without knowing their names," and the soldier
heroes who held the frontier "like a wall of steel from Flanders to
Alsace,"--the heroes of Souchez, of Dixmude, of the Maison du
Passeur, of Souain, of Notre Dame de Lorette, and of the great
retreat. It made a long list and I could feel the thrill running all over
the room full of soldiers who, if they live, will be a part of that
triumphal procession, of which no one talks yet except a poet.
But when he had pictured that scene the tempo of the verse
changed: the music began softly to play a Schumann Reverie to the
lines beginning: "But this triumphal cortège is not enough. The return
of the army demands another cortège,"--the triumph of the Mutilés--
the martyrs of the war who have given more than life to the defence
of France--the most glorious heroes of the war.
The picture the poet made of this "other cortège" moved the soldiers
strangely. The music, which blended wonderfully with Brochard's
beautiful voice, was hardly more than a breath, just audible, but
always there, and added greatly to the effect of the recitation. There
was a sigh in the silence which followed the last line--and an almost
whispered "bravo," before the long shouts of applause broke out.
It is the only number on any programme that has ever touched, even
remotely, on war. It came as a surprise--it had not been announced.
But the intense, rather painful, feeling which had swept over the
audience was instantly removed by a comic monologue, and I need
not tell you that these monologues,--intended to amuse the men from
the trenches and give them a hearty laugh,--are usually very La
Scala--that is to say--rosse. But I do love to hear the boys shout with
glee over them.
The scene in the narrow streets of Quincy after the show is very
picturesque. The road mounts a little to Moulignon, and to see the
blue-grey backs of the boys, quite filling the street between the grey
walls of the houses, as they go slowly back to their cantonnements,
makes a very pretty picture.
It does seem a far cry from this to war, doesn't it? Yet isn't it lucky to
know and to see that these boys can come out of such a battle as
Verdun in this condition? This spirit, you see, is the hope of the future.
You know, when you train any kind of a dog to fight, you put him
through all the hard paces and force him to them, without breaking
his spirit. It seems to me that is just what is being done to the men at
the front.