28/6/19                                                D.B.B.

                                                       Friends War Victims Relief Centre

                                                       A.P.O. 

                                                       S.5.

                                                       B.E.F.      France

Dear Père,

It is difficult to make time for writing just at present. The office hours, though not exceptional – 9-12 and 1.30 -6, and 9-12 on Saturdays – eat up my spare time after having been used to the whole day in which to stretch oneself. I am starting this Sat. Morning after breakfast but before office hours: but shall not finish it till tonight at least. And I have written no other letter but that one rushed off to Mère the first night.

I am situated on the ’troisième  étage’ of the Britannique. I have a two-bedded room in partnership with a Mr Baxter – a very striking and affable personality, but whom I have not yet had time to know – and the great french window opens to overlook the Avenue Victoria which is parallel to the Quay Mégisserie, on the north bank of the Seine between the Pont au Change to the East and the Pont Neuf to the West, so we are quite near Notre Dame and the Louvre. The office is only round the corner in the Rue de Rivoli (53) which is also parallel to the river.

There are thirty two members of the mission staying in the hotel, of whom about half are vegetarians, so I am well in the current. We have breakfast from about 7.15 to 9.am served individually; lunch at 12.30; a cup of tea and petit pain with jam about 5 (in the office); and Dinner at 6.30. Before I go to bed I have found some biscuits and cheese and nuts very acceptable, though they feed us really very well. For dinner tonight we had 1. thick soup, 2. hard boiled eggs cut into about quarters and sauced, with new potatoes, 3. turnips in chunks with creamy sauce, 4. strawberries, 5. an invariable little cup of coffee. Lunch is similar except that it lacks 3 and 4. and ends with cheese and nuts with of course the coffee. Breakfast is the most disappointing, simply consisting of as much bread as you like with a limited portion of butter or marmalade plus about two coffee cups of strong coffee with a limited amount of sugar. Still there is nothing to grumble at.

This afternoon Mr Walter Bowerman and myself joined a party on/of American Red Cross and YMCA tour by motor brake(?) to visit all the spots in Paris having associations with Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. I enjoyed it very much and felt very strongly again the hold of what is I suppose the world’s great democratic epic novel.

We saw the famous Maison Francois Premier – the finest example of French Renaissance architecture – we went to St. Sulpice – passed through the Rue de Babylon, across the Pont d’Austelitz – through the Cemetary of Père Lachaise, etc. – all intimately associated with the story. In the Cemetary the guide also introduced us to the tomb of Abelarde and Heloise (said to be the world’s greatest lovers), to the splendidly sculptured erection ’Aux Morts’. What a genius the French have for sculpture and statues! Nowhere have I seen anything approaching them for embodied animation. They seem to one to embody what I believe to be the charm of the French people (amidst so much that is charmless and often slovenly) – their main ’élan vital’ – an impulsiveness and à plomb and unhesitating vigour, which are so easy and natural as to be almost unconscious. For instance we saw two soldiers (French) with their girls under their arms standing talking in a crowd just beyond the Arc de Triumph. Every now and then with sublime naturalness and playfulness which was nearly seriousness, and without any trace of self consciousness, either fair worlds (?) rub their faces together – she turning her face up and back against his chest, he bending his – and the whole seemed the most natural and the prettiest thing imaginable. I must send you cards of some of their finest groups – such as that in the Place de la Nation, and that of Polyanthus spying upon the wooing of the Sea Nymph and her shepherd lover which constitutes the famous Luxembourg fountain.

Now it is Sunday. I was tempted out last night to see how the French celebrate the signing of the Peace. It was a crowd: but quite unlike English crowds, for it knew how to behave itself while yet romping and tense and brilliant-eyed, with excitement. We went along the Rue de Rivoli and Tuilleries to the Place de la Concorde. Every now and then some twenty or so young people would form in a line holding hands and dash round in file, until a space was cleared when they would complete a ring and rush round with great glee. This would be enacted every few minutes. They came out to see nothing in particular but only apparently to revel in the contagion of the crowd. Many simply stood or sat about, round and upon the statues and railings etc. Watching the effervescing crowd.

Coming back we noticed one typical little drama. A Frenchman, highly excited, was fraternizing with half a dozen English soldiers through some railings and offering his reluctant wife for them all to kiss – no easy matter through the railings without the entire consent of the young lady – and he was quite serious over it all, and our khaki friends did not mind. The Louvre and Palais Royal were brilliantly illuminated all over with gas jets.

This morning I went again the St Sulpice Church near the Luxemborg – over on the south side of the river – I was in time to see three times the procession of the Blessed Sacrement passing round and round the great church (inside of course). There must have been over a hundred children in the procession all dressed prettily in white and holding elaborately worked little standards or lighted tapers. They were mostly little girls under twelve. There were in addition some fifty girls up to twenty all veiled with white; besides quite a number of youths and young priests. The Lady’s Chapel – behind the central alter – is the most beautiful in Paris. A beautiful cave is hollowed out in the marble background and a sculptured figure of the Virgin with babe is descending with her foot upon a serpent – the cave bathed with a pale light.

As the procession passed up the Nave at the last, the elaborately –robed priest with the grand crucifix passed while women with children in their arms passed before him and he lowered the   crucifix down to each child to kiss – these were women and children not of the procession. There is much that is pretty and effective in these things, but little that touches my real religious  instincts. 

There is a piano here in the Reading Room next to our bedroom and a good variety of music: but I should rather like my ’Intermezzo’ and ’Simple Aveu’ and even ’Bascarolle’ if easily sendable. I should also like a pair of slippers. That red pair of Pères fitted me like gloves except that the left one pinched my big toe. They are too expensive out here to buy. I also should very much like my comb sent on: also that Bible Hilda gave me in 1915 – in Front Parlour: also a bag or two after the style of my brush and comb bag would be most useful for separating handkerchiefs and ties and dirty things etc. etc. i.e. always if you happened to have such things. A great many papers reach here: so I doubt if I could make time easily  to read the Nation even if Ian sent a copy: so perhaps we had better wait a bit.

I went for a cycle ride last Friday evening right across Paris along Rue Monmartre etc. To the Boulevarde des Batignolles, when I circled round to the Poste and Avenue de Neuilly I made almost a complete circuit of the Bois de Boulogne, returning via the Avenue Victor Hugo to the Place de L’Etoile: where the Arc de Triumph is and whence no less than eleven ’grand Boulevards’ radiate, each with its splendid avenue of tall trees, and thence I freewheeled with folded arms right dowm the Champs Elysées which is like a cycle track and thence ’home’, near what is known as our landmark – the Chatelet tube (i.e. ’Metro station). I heard two bands playing in the Bois de Boulogne. The French have got a sense of ’tone’ or fitness. Their music grips you at once. Not that it is so much better than say ours: but it is rich with expression, because I think the players feel its fitness and harmony with the environment. It breathes a rich passionate pleasure, a joyful sensuousness and a social unaustere impulsiveness, which is attained as much by their choice of their favourite music, their eschewing cold and austere music as by their finer musical touch. I intend to study their music more intimately. 

Well I must close for now. I have written no one else yet. It is now 3.pm. Love to all.

 

                               Don