THE DARKEST DAYS
Problems of war time housekeeping in France did not go back to 1914. The
learned political economists who demonstrated to their own satisfaction
that a general European war would not last a year were dead wrong.
Millions were mobilized. Nations were at each other's throats. The
Germans were able to retaliate against the naval blockade by submarine
warfare that threatened to decrease seriously our own communications
with the outside world. But somehow we managed to go through year after
year without feeling the pinch of decreased productivity. And somehow we
accepted the inflation of currency and continued to subscribe cheerfully
to successive war loans with money that came from God knows where. One
hears now much about how we suffered in 1915 and 1916. Morally speaking,
I suppose we did suffer and that we were aware of the strain as time
went on. But from a material point of view the war did not make itself
felt much until 1917. It was only in the spring of that year that a
cartoonist was inspired to draw a necklace of anthracite, tipped off
with an egg for a pendant, over the caption, "Her Jewels." Coal cards,
sugar cards, and bread cards were to us the signs of Germany's weakness.
Successive Cabinets realized well enough the prudence of anticipatory
restrictions. In the autumn of 1916 the newspapers put forth a _ballon
d'essai_. Every day they published a homily on the virtue of practicing
economy. It had no effect on my servants, this constant warning of a
shortage to come. No restaurants obeyed the voluntary rationing
measures. The Government did not dare to introduce obligatory rationing.
Public opinion rebels against restrictions of individual liberty. We had
to feel the pinch before rationing measures were tolerated.
Sugar cards came first. They were "put over" on the public during the
rejoicing over the intervention of the United States. Coal cards were
instituted only after the bitter lesson of the late winter months of
1917 bid fair to repeat itself. Not until October, 1917, did I have to
put my signature as _chef de famille_ (my husband was so often away) on
an application for bread cards handed me by the concierge. A fourth New
Year of war came and went before we experienced what we had read about
in other countries--real lack of necessities. The reserves of everything
gave out suddenly. For the first time ability to spend money freely did
not solve household problems.
Some difficulties were insoluble. They were the difficulties centering
around a shortage of coal supply. I never realized before that in our
modern civilization coal is really a dominating factor in making
tolerable existence in the city. The winter before the sudden giving out
of coal affected only our heating. In the first months of 1918 coal
rationing led to cutting down on gas, electricity and water. In modern
apartments, just as there is no way to heat them except by radiators,
there is no way to light them except by electricity and no way to have
hot water except by turning on the spigot. We were in what the French
call a _cercle vicieux_. We had a fox-and-geese-and-corn problem. For
instance, when a municipal ordinance forbade giving hot water except on
Saturdays and Sundays, your first thought was to heat water on the
kitchen gas-stove. But your allowance for gas was insufficient for
cooking. Nor could you use gas for lighting to save electricity.
Petroleum for lamps or cooking was unobtainable. Everyone made a rush
for candles and wood alcohol. They gave out. When you thought of honey
and jams to make up to the children what they lacked in sugar, everyone
else thought of honey and jams at the same time. We lived on the sixth
floor. The electricity rationing made possible running the elevator only
at certain hours. And when the elevator broke down, all the steel was
going into cannon and all the workers were turning out munitions. You
just walked up six flights of stairs all the time.
Aside from cooking and baths and heat and light, the coal shortage
affected your laundry. So you couldn't change linen more frequently to
compensate for lost baths. In the old days the laundress would cast her
eyes around for more stuff to pack into her bundle, and if you gave her
a free hand, would gather up things that had never been soiled. Now she
picked out of the basket what she saw fit to take. In the same way, I
used to struggle to keep my milk supply down. It was a common trick for
the dairy people to load you up with milk and butter and eggs and cheese
in collusion with your cook. Now you had to beg for enough milk to give
the babies a cup apiece a day; butter arrived in exchange for a heavy
tip; and eggs appeared not when you ordered them but when the dairy
chose to send them--which was rarely.
To have the laundress acting like that, and other people acting like
that, was living in Alice's Looking-Glass House. Things were
contrariwise. One day the laundress came to tell me that she could take
no more work. The wash house where the work used to be done had shut
down. My poor woman was dissolved in tears to think that a business that
she had spent twenty-three years in building up had to drop its
customers. I did the best I could by getting in a scrub woman for the
day to wash the most important things in cold water in the bath-room.
That was hard enough. But how dry them? Old tricks would not go: there
was no heat in the radiators. You see, as I said, all the troubles came
at once and were due primarily to coal shortage. There was no remedy.
Insufficient food supply because of lack of means of transportation.
Insufficient lack of means of transportation because of shortage of coal
for freight engines.
I bought dark jersey dresses for the babies, and lived in dark things
myself.
I was fortunate in having a good cook and nurse who stayed with me
through thick and thin. But when I came to get a _femme de ménage_ for
chamber work I realized how justified were the complaints of most of my
friends. Women could make big money in munition factories. The large
country element, scared away in 1914 or called home to take the place of
men at the front, did not feed Paris with help as in peace time. I had a
succession of giggling sixteen-year-olds, pottering grandmothers, and
useless loafers. One _femme de ménage_ I called "Toothless." She thought
it was an English pet name, and beamed under it. She was a farm hand
from the Marne district. The family fled before the Germans. She was
left in charge until the soldiers drove her out. "Toothless" put the
chickens in a little hay wagon, tied the cows to the back of it, and,
with her employer's silver on her lap, drove alone through the night to
safety. She was herded with other evacuated peasants on a steamer bound
for Bordeaux. The ship was torpedoed and she lost her teeth by the
explosion. I felt very sorry, and regarded her somewhat as a heroine
until the truth dawned on me that she was speaking of a plate. I didn't
think of this myself. She asked me for an advance one day, explaining
that she had to pay it down to a dentist when she ordered _more_ teeth.
A stranded Russian student followed "Toothless." She held out until her
prosperous father sent money from Petrograd through the Russian Embassy.
Try as hard as I could and offer more than I wanted to pay, I could not
get a regular third servant. I used to be amazed at the letters from
American friends, asking me to send them servants. It must have been the
popular notion in the United States that France was full of women eager
for the chance to work.
In the fourth year of the war, we began to feel the drain on the
nation's manhood. The constant killing and crippling and calling to the
colors of older men and boys made it almost impossible to get any work
done. Bells or lights or plumbing out of order--you waited for months.
Where in 1915 I had found half a dozen paper-hangers and painters eager
to bid against each other for the job of renovating my studio, I had to
beg and bribe men to come in 1918. It took me four months to get what I
wanted done. Herbert became expert in carrying trunks and boxes: but
that did him no harm. There is a bright side to everything.
Lines began to form at the grocers and the butchers. One waited and
waited and waited. My servants spent most of the day in the early months
of 1918 in sugar and meat-lines. All over Paris it was _faire la queue_
for everything, even for tobacco and matches.
Although it was an expensive proposition, I found it necessary, with my
large family and constant guests, to buy groceries through an agent. A
large English firm seemed to be able to furnish everything--if you paid
their price. The order-man who came around every week was a rascal named
Grimes. He had the genius of a book-agent, and worked you for an order
by playing on your fears. Here is a monologue that I wrote out one day
just to record how Grimes sold things.
"Rice? First-class American rice?" (Why Grimes called rice "American"
was more than I could understand.) "Still got a little of it--please
don't ask me the price. Don't think of that now. Better let me put you
down for a hundred pounds of it and just shut your eyes to money. Golden
syrup? Just brought three cases of it up from Bordeaux myself. No
telling when we will see any more. The submarines are worse than ever:
awful, isn't it, but it's best that the newspapers don't tell us the
truth. I'm going to let you have two dozen tins of syrup if you don't
tell anyone. It's on account of your kiddies. I recommend that you don't
let older people touch it. Stack it away for the time when your sugar
card--I'm not pessimistic, but I believe you can't be too sure about
sugar cards. A funny fellow over at our place said a neat thing: 'It's
hard to believe in a paper shortage when the Government has voted sugar
cards and those new identity cards.' Biscuits, when have you and I seen
a biscuit? I got a few cases in from America. I'll let you have some.
I'll reserve a couple of hams and some sides of bacon and hang them in
our cellar for you. Gad, you're lucky to have those four babies. It's
only because they need the bacon this winter that I give it to you. Now,
didn't I tell you that you must not think about money? Trust me to give
you a square price. It's safe to say that the beans and other dried
vegetables I'm letting you have will make you shiver when you get the
bill. But if this order figures up to two thousand francs, you can rest
assured that three months from now it would cost you three thousand
francs. And six months from now, with all the good will in the world, I
couldn't get you the stuff.
"No use mentioning flour. Can't give you any. They say that the
Government is meeting on the quiet half the price of the flour before
the bakers see it. Comes high but it pays 'em to keep the people quiet.
Everything else can go up, but not bread. No m'am, I say it positively;
got to give 'em bread and the chance to have a little fun." (I'm sure
that Grimes never studied Roman history, but he had arrived at the
formula of _panem et circenses_.) "But we shan't starve. Better off in
France than they are in England or Germany. Save the bread for lunch and
tea: give the children a cereal in the morning. Just by luck, I have a
few cases of American oatmeal and hominy grits.
"Of course, the porridge means milk. I know what you're going to say.
But I've got hold of powdered milk made in Brittany. They say it's an
American invention. Only one big tin to a person, but then you're six
and we'll count the babies as grown ups. You can't tell how long they'll
be able to keep transporting milk to the city. Order as much canned
goods as I can give you. Canneries are running out of tin. Food we put
up in paraffined paste-board doesn't keep very well, and there is mighty
little paste-board.
"It's a good thing you don't depend upon cocktails to keep you going. I
have a big auto-taxi ticking out there. The man who is going to pay for
it would be glad to let it tick all night just so he got what is inside.
One hundred bottles of gin. You know, the ordinary five-franc gin. I'm
going to get thirty francs a bottle at the Hotel Meurice bar. But
they'll be two bottles short. There they are--yours--right under my hat
on the table.
"Now please let me read over the order. Not a luxury on it. Macaroni,
beans, lentils, prunes, dried-apricots, salt, and yes, there must be
some soap. Better let me put you down for a good hundred bars. The
Marseilles people tell us they have got to stop making it soon."
Then he resumed his reading, and I didn't dare to say a word. On those
rare occasions I was pensive. My husband would say: "You don't need to
tell me. That scoundrel Grimes has been here. Good Lord, I wish we had
an anti-hording law, like England."
"But, oh, Herbert, the children you know."
I tell this story because I believe it illustrates the thought that was
uppermost in the minds of Paris women. We had faith in our armies. We
stuck to our homes. We were willing to stand anything. But the constant
talk of food shortage got on our nerves. We pictured our children
without milk and fats and bread. It was not hard for the Grimeses to
fill pages in their order-books. And you could not reason with us that
laying in supplies was a sin against the community.
In my apartment-house (and it was the same all over Paris because of the
new law) the water-heater was having a good rest. I used to have the
kids bathed every night in the week except Sunday. Sunday was a real day
of rest. My servants liked to go to early mass and Sunday afternoon was
"off" for them and for the governess. Circumstances aided in keeping
this side of Sunday as my Covenanter grandfather would have had it. But
after the restrictions you bathed Sunday morning or never. And you had
to wait for your bath. Inferior coal, parsimoniously stoked, took the
water-heater a long time to get going. We chose the next best to
godliness. Church attendance fell off. The lawmakers who restricted
bathing to Sunday were anticlericals as well as traditionalists.
I had been putting off doing over the apartment and our studios each
spring and fall since the war began, saying to myself that I would wait
until after the war. But in the autumn of 1917 the time had come to do
something. The painter was so short of men that I had to wait three
weeks before he sent someone simply to see what was to be done and to
make an estimate. The men cleaned half the paint in October. They never
came back to do the other half. I was tired of the dull grey wood-work
in my husband's studio and the painted grey wainscotting effect that ran
around the walls shoulder high. The place looked like a battle-ship
turned wrong-side out. Standing in the middle of that studio and looking
up to the skylight, I felt as if the hair was flying right off the top
of my head. The time came when I could stand it no longer. The painter's
soldier son, home on _permission_, agreed with me. But the father shook
his head when I asked him to paint the lower part a cheery buff and the
upper part cream-color. He had no helpers. I pled with him then to give
me the paint properly mixed, lend me brushes and ladders, and I would
send for them and do the work myself. It took me a whole morning to
remove a part of the imitation wainscotting. Then other things more
pressing came up. My husband, who had been oblivious to the old
combination, protested. Fortunately, one of my wounded _filleuls_, who
was able to get around without crutches, did the rest. I helped when I
could: for I do love to paint.
The rugs in my drawing-room needed cleaning. At the Bon Marché they
offered to write my name down in their books. But they warned me that
they could not call for the rugs for three weeks, and that I must
understand that they could not be delivered before January. In the end I
sent the rugs to three different cleaning places and waited from four to
six weeks to get them back.
The curtains of my drawing-room windows were dark green velvet, too
depressing a color for wartime. I wonder how I lived with them so long.
The drawing-room faces north, and I wanted yellow silk curtains to
invite the sunshine in. The curtains should be a frame for the best
picture in the drawing-room--a view of Paris that is the reverse of the
picture described in the first pages of Zola's Paris. The idea ran away
with me, and the momentum of it carried me through the difficulties I
found when I tried to get an upholsterer to make the curtains. We are
all learning new trades. The curtains were made finally by an artist,
who, in order to earn her living through the war years, learned to do
retouching of photographs. She and I worked together at those curtains,
and you would think that an upholsterer made them.
Then the electric-bells--why can't they be fixed so one can wind them
up like a clock? They would not work; that was certain. I unscrewed
their little tops and punched the things like miniature
type-writer-spacers which the buttons ought to have hit: no ring.
Herbert said they "needed new juice" in the batteries. He had the
concierge send up some stuff that looked like salt. I climbed on the
pantry table to reach the suspicious-looking butter crocks hitched to
twisted waxy wires, and poured in the stuff with water according to
orders. Still no ring. Then I telephoned for the electrician. Perhaps he
would consent to send me Jean Claude, the nearsighted, who put in the
wires when we first came and had always been able to make them work.
Jean Claude, we heard, had come back from the war. But the electrician
answered that Jean Claude had been sent to the front again in spite of
his eyes. He would let me have apprentices. The boys were so short that
the big monkey-wrench in their tool-kit was as long as their forearms.
They climbed my step-ladder and tinkered with the bells for most of an
afternoon, while I held the ladder through a sense of paternal
protection for anything as young as that and was glad I had bandages and
ointment in my cupboard. When evening came, they were like the boy in
the song, who said:
"I don't care what my Teacher says,
I cannot do that sum!"
Quite naturally they explained that they must ask somebody at the shop
what to do and promised to come back next day.
But they did not return. Luckily our dentist turned up on a forty-eight
hour furlough. He and his wife knocked long and loud at our front-door.
When the first surprise and delight of seeing him back, looking so
bronzed and fit, had passed, I apologized for the bell, and told my sad
story. The problem awakened the dentist's interest. He went walking
about tracing the wires. French wires are all just hitched somewhere
above the picture moulding line so you can see them.
"Aha!" came from the pantry. It was the dentist's voice. At the same
moment there was a prolonged ringing. "That's what comes from earning
your living by making your brains speak through your fingers. Quite
simple, quite simple," said the dentist. "I only arranged this little
affair on the indicator. It was the fourth screw from the back at the
upper line of the plate."
"Sakes," I cried, "get down from there before you give me a toothache!"
We all go through the world lighting up its darkness with our own kind
of lantern.
Throughout the war we have done with clothes as with our houses--making
things do. That went very well at first. But in the fourth winter wear
and tear had to be met. We learned a new scale of values for little
things. A green glass lampshade cost fifteen francs, and you were lucky
to get it. The plug to stick in the hole for an electric light you
scoured the town to purchase at seven francs. The steel wire your
_frotteur_ uses to polish floors quadrupled in price. My _frotteur_ went
to war long ago. His substitute, a chauffeur in the postal service, gave
us two afternoons in a month--his only free time. One day he defended
his service gallantly while he balanced a wet brown cigarette and
cake-walked the steel wire over my _salon_ floor. The long black autos
marked _postes et dépêches_, terror of pedestrians in Paris, do not
really go faster than other autos. We think they do because they were
the first autos to be used extensively in the city, and the fear of
being knocked down by them has stuck in the minds of the public.
I used to have half a dozen "nice little dressmakers" on my list and as
many milliners to whom I could send friends confidently. But as the war
dragged on, one after the other they disappointed me. If it were not
poor cut and shoddy materials, it was inability to make delivery
anywhere near the time promised. Everyone must have been in my position,
because when I turned to the department stores for ready-made things, I
found long lines awaiting for a turn with the sales woman. It is not the
fault of dressmakers. One of them opened her heart to me.
"It is very hard. Like everybody else, I keep hoping the war will end
suddenly. My reputation was made by my _premières ouvrières_. I still
keep on paying them good wages now although I eat into my savings to do
it. I cannot risk having my best girls go over to competitors. We had
our side in the strike of the _midinettes_. If it had not hit me hard, I
should have been amused to see these pretty young things dressed in
clothes cheap in material but _chic_ go marching along the boulevards
winning policemen over at every corner. I raised pay beyond my means,
and have granted the _semaine anglaise_. But they would go to-morrow for
the least thing.
"For twenty years I have had three classes of customers in Paris:
_bourgeoises_ of the solid type, who come to me for the reserved sort of
clothes that sell on line, good material and long wear. They paid my
rent. American women, who came in the summer, or hurried through Paris
in February, headed for the Riviera, wanted an advance idea rapidly
executed. That trade paid my running expenses. From actresses and
mistresses I got fantastic prices for exclusive models I promised not to
repeat. From them I made my profits.
"The first class are deft-fingered like all French women, and do their
own dressmaking now. They get their mourning from the houses that make a
specialty of that trade. The Americans do not come as they used to. My
profitable trade does not have the money for fine clothes or the
opportunity to show them off."
Curious it seems to me now, when I sit down to write a chapter about the
darkest days of the war, that I find myself penning page after page of
the story of petty household difficulties. But I want to be what the
French call _véridique_. This is how we felt during the first winter of
the American intervention, when the A. E. F. was coming to France with
painful slowness and when we were aware that the Germans were preparing
a final desperate _coup_ before Pershing could marshal an army,
effective in training and equipment and numbers. In January and
February, 1918, we were under the reaction of the Russian collapse, of
the awakening to the falsehoods concerning German military strength that
had been spread consistently for three years, of the nervous dread that
the submarines might after all prevent the coming of the Americans. The
little things, strikes, petty annoyances of daily house keeping, steady
increase in the cost of living made the deep impression.
Then came the new German onslaught, the daily long-distance bombardment
and the aeroplane raids every night.