AT HOME IN THE WHIRLWIND
After the initial days of mobilization, the German advance, the coming
of the refugees, and the aeroplane raids, Paris became again
astonishingly normal. We got used to the war quickly. A calamity is like
death. It comes. You cannot change it. You must accept it and go on
living. We were in the midst of the whirlwind. We had our ups and downs.
There were periods of unreasonable hope, when we thought the war was
going to end by the collapse of the Germans. And there were periods of
equally unreasoning depression when gloom spread like a plague. Who will
ever forget the hope that came with the Spring of 1915? Mysterious
rumors spread of German demoralization and of the irresistible fighting
machine the British were building up. Our armies were only waiting for
the rainy weather to finish. Then the forward march would commence. But
after a few unsuccessful attempts to break through, French and British
settled down to the life of the trenches. Fortunately the Germans were
equally immobilized. But during the summer, instead of our advance on
the western front, we had to read about the German advance in Poland.
The censorship worked overtime. _Communiqués_ were masterpieces of
clever dissimulation. News was withheld in the hope of a sudden reversal
of the fortune of arms. In the end we had to be told that Warsaw was in
the hands of the Central Empires and that _les Impériaux_ were closing
in on Brest-Litovsk. In the summer of 1915, at the very beginning of the
Italian intervention, the French lost faith in the new ally. Italy,
untouched so far by the war and with the power of making an offensive in
her own hands, could not even prevent Austria from lending powerful aid
in the great German offensive against Russia! Ink and breath were spent
in extolling the union of the Latin races: but the mass of the French
people--from that time on--looked no more for aid to Italy.
[Illustration: The first snow in the Luxembourg]
We deferred hope until the spring of 1916. Surely the British would now
be ready to cooperate with the French in the final offensive of the war!
But the Germans, feeling certain that they had disposed of the Russians,
struck first. The last days of February, 1916, were (if one except
possibly the spring months of 1918) the darkest days of the war.
Although the attacks against Verdun failed, the weather in Paris
combined with sickening anxiety to make us feel that it was
nip-and-tuck. As a contrast, the summer months of the Battle of the
Somme renewed our courage. And just as we were reluctantly realizing
that this onslaught of ours was as indecisive as the earlier German
offensive against Verdun, to which it was the reply, the intervention of
Rumania came to offset the admitted failure of the Dardanelles and
Mesopotamian campaigns. At last, the war was to be decided in the
Balkans! Before the third winter set in, however, we saw Rumania humbled
by Mackensen and the Salonica army as motionless as the armies on the
western front, even though Venizelos had at last succeeded in ranging
Greece on our side. The German machine was not crumbling before a
combination of superior numbers and superior equipment, and managed to
face its enemies on all sides.
So much for what the newspapers said during those thirty months and for
what we thought about the _péripéties_ of the war. After each
disappointment we looked for new reasons to hope. We readjusted
ourselves to living in the midst of uncertainties, bereavements that
would have broken our hearts had they come to us "by the hand of God,"
and increasing social and economic difficulties. France was saved
because the French people never faltered in their belief that _dulce et
decorum est pro patria mori_. France was saved because Paris led a
normal life in the midst of the whirlwind. The Turks have a proverb that
a fish begins to corrupt at the head. If the Parisians had become
demoralized, if they had given up the struggle to live normally and
tranquilly, France would have been lost.
Initial reactions and early symptoms of war fever passed quickly. We
soon opened up our pianos, put on our phonograph records, and took to
singing again. We did not wear mourning. We insisted upon having our
theatres and music-halls. We celebrated Christmas. We stopped making
last year's suits do and refusing to buy finery. For the _poilus_,
coming home to find their women folks shabby, said it was gayer at the
front. We allowed all the German composers except Wagner to re-appear on
our programmes. Some stupidities, such as banishing the German language
from schools and burning German books, we were never guilty of.
I remember reading with amusement and amazement an article in an
American newspaper, written by someone who "did" war-stricken France in
thirty days, in which this statement was made: "There are millions in
France who will never smile again." Upon this absurd and false
hypothesis the article was built. It was easy to be sure that the writer
knew nothing whatever about France in war-time or about psychology, for
that matter. Whoever has had any experience of horrors or who has lived
through a great crisis knows that if you do not laugh you will go crazy.
Normal human beings must have relaxation and recreation. They must
have--or create--normal conditions in abnormal surroundings. You must
go on living. You must have strength to meet burdens. So you laugh and
sing and dance. You entertain people and are entertained. You go to the
theatre. You take exercise. You enjoy your meals. A long face is either
a pose or a sign of mental derangement. In the spring of 1916 I checked
up a dozen of my women friends, all of whom had husbands or sons--or
both--in the war. More than half were widows or had sons killed. The
husbands of two were prisoners in German camps. But all of them were
planning to spend the summer in their country-homes or at the shore,
just as they had done before the war. Is not this the secret of our
ability to hold on during the "last quarter of an hour" and to continue
to hope for victory until we had obtained it?
At the beginning of the second winter, in November, 1915, I sent my
three children to live for a few weeks in my studio, which I had fixed
up especially for them. They had a piano and a phonograph and books and
toys. They moved over with their nurse on a Sunday afternoon, and
thought it was a great lark. The next day their father went to see them
and told them about the arrival of a baby sister.
Tuesday morning the children came to see us. Never shall I forget their
joy. Christine said immediately, "Hello, Hope, let me fix your feet.
Mama, could I tuck her blanket in? Hope's feet are cold. I want to hold
her soon." A little mother, she is. Lloyd, sensitive and reserved,
stood quietly looking. He patted my face and tried to speak. But his
mouth was turning down at the corners for just a second, and I had to
save the day by asking him a cheerful question. Mimi clapped her hands
and danced and said, "I like you, mama, dat's a fine baby." When Herbert
went over to the consulate to register the baby, he took Christine with
him. She heard him say to the Consul-General, Mr. Thackara, that his
French friends were teasing him about the large number of marriage dots
he will have to provide. Christine saw in this a reflection on girl
babies. With a volley of French reproof, which delighted the whole
consular office, she went for him tooth and nail.
Isn't it a joke on me to have so many daughters? I have always thought
myself a good pal, understanding men much better than women. Miss Mary
Cassatt came in. Her comment was subtle. She said simply to Herbert that
she was glad of his assured increase of interest in women's suffrage.
Surprised, Herbert was betrayed into asking why. "Don't you realize,"
exclaimed Miss Cassatt, "that you must begin now to interest yourself in
the future of your girls?" Although the coming of Hope increases the
problems of feminine psychology I shall have to deal with later on, I am
glad the war baby was a girl. My first thought, when they told me, was
that she should not have to carry a gun.
This brings me to her name. 1915 was drawing to a close with so many
darkening shadows--but shadows that did not lessen our faith in the
outcome of the war--that I thought the name imposed upon us by
circumstances. I called her Hope Delarue. Dear old Père Delarue is one
of the best known research scholars in the Jesuit Order. Our friendship,
founded back in Constantinople days, has deepened during the war. When
Herbert went off on his many trips, anyone of which might have proved
the last, he left me in the care of Père Delarue. The dear old man had
been coming to us from time to time with the news of another loss in his
family. His brother, a general in the French army, was killed. His
nephews had fallen. I thought it would comfort him to feel that there
was a child in the world to bear his name. Before going to Suez, Herbert
gave me some flat silver marked H.D.G. It flashed into his brain the day
after the baby was born that the little thing had its mother's initials!
I was up for the first time on Christmas Eve. We had a large party as
usual, with a tree for the children trimmed by the grown-ups. In spite
of the rain we tried to make our Christmas Day a joyful one. There was
the newborn baby to celebrate. At the end of the afternoon, Herbert gave
us a hurried kiss all around, and went out in the rain to catch the
train for Marseilles. He sailed the next day on the _André Lebon_ for
Port-Said. His was the only one of the three passenger boats that week
to escape the submarines. The P. and O. _Persia_ was sunk off Crete and
the Japanese mail went down seventy miles from the Canal.
I did not see my husband for several months, and then he joined us in
Nice for a few days before going to Verdun. It was a joyful reunion.
Herbert admired his children and asked what they had done during his
absence. But he forgot all about poor little Hope, who was taking her
nap. Two hours after his arrival, a lusty cry brought back to his mind
the fact that the number of his children was four.
Memories of these days are not painful, because we did not allow
ourselves to be dominated by pain while they were being lived. The
whirlwind was not of our making, nor had we gone deliberately into the
midst of it. But, finding ourselves there, we made the best of it.
Memories are precious. I would not have missed the Paris vistas of those
years. It is a blessed thing to have in one's mind the long lines of
adverse circumstances and difficulties and anxieties on either side if
at the end is hope realized. And I have my own tangible Hope, a child
whose merry, sunny nature is living proof of how Paris was at home in
the whirlwind.