July 16, 1914.
Your Fourth of July letter came this morning. It was lively reading,
especially coming so soon after my first quatorze de juillet in the
country. The day was a great contrast to the many remembrances I have
of Bastille Day in Paris. How I remember my first experience of that
fete, when my bedroom window overlooked one of the squares where the
band played for the three nights of dancing. That was a fierce
experience after the novelty of the first night had worn off, when hour
after hour the dance music droned on, and hour after hour the dancing
feet on the pavement nearly drove me frantic. To offset it I have
memories of the Champs-Elysees and the Place de l'Hotel de Ville turned
into a fairyland. I am glad I saw all that. The memory hangs in my
mind like a lovely picture. Out here it was all as still as--I was
going to say Sunday, but I should have to say a New England Sunday, as
out here Sunday is just like any other day. There was not even a
ringing of bells. The only difference there was to me was that Amelie
drove Pere over to Coutevroult, on the other side of the valley of the
Grand Morin, where he played for the dance, and did not get back until
long after daylight. I did put out my flags in honor of the day. That
was the extent of my celebrating.
In the evening there was a procession at Voisins, and from Meaux and the
other towns on the hill there was an occasional rocket. It was not
really an exciting day.
The procession at Voisins was a primitive affair, but, to me, all the
prettier for that. It looked so quaint with its queer lanterns, its few
flags, its children and men in blouses, strolling through the crooked,
hilly streets of the old town, to the tap of the drum. No French
procession, except it be soldiers, ever marches. If you ever saw a
funeral procession going through the street, or one going about a
church, you do not need to be told that.
I was glad that this little procession here kept so much of its old-time
character, but I was sorry it was not gayer. Still, it was so
picturesque that it made me regret anew, what I have so many times
regretted of late years, that so many of the old habits of country life
in France are passing away, as they are, for that matter, all over
Europe, along with ignorance and national costumes.
I must tell you that up to three years ago it was the custom in this
commune, which, simply because it is not on a railroad, has preserved
its old-days air and habits, for wedding and baptismal parties to walk
in procession through the streets from the house to the church and back
again. Pere Abelard used to head the procession, playing on his violin.
There has been but one event of that kind since I came, and I am afraid
it will be the last. That was for the baptism of the first grandchild
of a French officer who had married a woman born in this commune, and
the older members of the family had a desire to keep up the old
traditions. The church is at Quincy, just a step off the route
nationale to Meaux. Pere walked ahead,--he could not be accused of
marching,--fiddling away for dear life. The pretty young godmother
carried the baby, in its wonderful christening finery, walking between
the grandmother and the father, and the guests, all in their gayest
clothes, followed on as they liked behind, all stepping out a little on
account of the fiddle ahead. They came back from the church in the
same way, only father carried the baby, and the godmother scattered her
largesse among the village children.
It is a pity that such pretty customs die out. Wedding parties must
have looked so attractive going along these country roads. The fashion
that has replaced it is unattractive. To-day they think it much more
chic to hire a big barge and drive down to Esbly and have a rousing
breakfast and dance in the big hall which every country hotel has for
such festivities. Such changes are in the spirit of the times, so I
suppose one must not complain. I should not if people were any happier,
but I cannot see that they are. However, I suppose that will come when
the Republic is older. The responsibility which that has put on the
people has made them more serious than they used to be.
I don't blame you for laughing at the idea of me in a donkey cart. You
would laugh harder if you could see the cart and me. I do look droll.
But this is the land where nothing astonishes any one, thank Heaven.
But you wait until I get my complet de velours--which is to say my
velveteens. I shall match up with the rig then, never fear. Rome was
not built in a day, nor can a lady from the city turn into a
country-looking lady in the wink of an eye. By the time you have
sufficiently overcome your prejudices as to come out and see me with
your own eyes, I'll fit into the landscape and the cart in great style.
Absolutely no news to write you, unless you will consider it news that
my hedge of dahlias, which I planted myself a month ago, is coming up
like nothing else in the world but Jack's Beanstalk. Nothing but weeds
ever grew so rank before. Pere says I was too generous with my
biogene--the latest French thing in fertilizers. But I did want them to
be nourished in a rich soil--and come up quick. They did. I can
actually see them grow. I am almost afraid to tell you that they are
over two feet high now. Of course you won't believe me. But it is not
a fairy tale. I would not have believed it myself if I had not seen it.
Alas! I find that I cannot break myself of reading the newspapers, and
reading them eagerly. It is all the fault of that nasty affair in
Servia. I have a dim recollection that I was very flippant about it in
my last letter to you. After all, woman proposes and politics upset her
proposition. There seems to be no quick remedy for habit, more's the
pity. It is a nasty outlook. We are simply holding our breaths here.
July 30,1914.
This will be only a short letter--more to keep my promise to you than
because I feel in the mood to write. Events have broken that. It
looks, after all, as if the Servian affair was to become a European
affair, and that, what looked as if it might happen during the Balkan
War is really coming to pass--a general European uprising.
It is an odd thing. It seems it is an easy thing to change one's
environment, but not so easy to change one's character. I am just as
excited over the ugly business as I should have been had I remained near
the boulevards, where I could have got a newspaper half a dozen times a
day. I only get one a day, and this morning I got that one with
difficulty. My "Figaro," which comes out by mail, has not come at all.
Well, it seems that the so-called "alarmists" were right. Germany has
NOT been turning her nation into an army just to divert her population,
nor spending her last mark on ships just to amuse herself, and keep
Prince Henry busy.
I am sitting here this morning, as I suppose all France is doing, simply
holding my breath to see what England is going to do. I imagine there
is small doubt about it. I don't see how she can do anything but fight.
It is hard to realize that a big war is inevitable, but it looks like
it. It was staved off, in spite of Germany's perfidy, during the Balkan
troubles. If it has to come now, just imagine what it is going to mean!
It will be the bloodiest affair the world has ever seen--a war in the
air, a war under the sea as well as on it, and carried out with the most
effective man-slaughtering machines ever used in battle.
I need not tell you--you know, we have so often talked about it--how I
feel about war. Yet many times since I came to France to live, I have
felt as if I could bear another one, if only it gave Alsace and Lorraine
back to us--us meaning me and France. France really deserves her
revenge for the humiliation of 1870 and that beastly Treaty of
Frankfort. I don't deny that 1870 was the making of modern France, or
that, since the Treaty of Frankfort, as a nation she has learned a
lesson of patience that she sorely needed. But now that Germany is
preparing--is really prepared to attack her again--well, the very hair
on my head rises up at the idea. There have been times in the last ten
years when I have firmly believed that she could not be conquered again.
But Germany! Well, I don't know. If she is, it will not be for lack of
nerve or character. Still, it is no secret that she is not ready, or
that the anti-military party is strong,--and with that awful Caillaux
affair; I swore to myself that nothing should tempt me to speak of it.
It has been so disgraceful. Still, it is so in the air just now that it
has to be recognized as pitifully significant and very menacing to
political unity.
The tension here is terrible. Still, the faces of the men are stern,
and every one is so calm--the silence is deadly. There is an absolute
suspension of work in the fields. It is as if all France was holding
its breath.
One word before I forget it again. You say that you have asked me twice
if I have any friend near me. I am sure I have already answered
that--yes! I have a family of friends at Voulangis, about two miles the
other side of Crecy-en-Brie. Of course neighbors do not see one another
in the country as often as in the city, but there they are; so I hasten
to relieve your mind just now, when there is a menace of war, and I am
sitting tight on my hilltop on the road to the frontier.