Last night – the third in succession – we tried to get into the movies. I had begun to make inquiries about what one had to be, join or do, to rate a movie show. They were closed tighter than a French art gallery in war time. Last night we discovered it isn’t so hard to get in if only you go when it’s open. We did.
They had some French war pictures that were ordinary; the only thing that saved them was the English titles. I had written those. You see the things are run with French captions on one side of the screen and English on the other. One day I translated into good English a lot of these captions but I had never seen the film. It was funny to see my own words flashed up unexpectedly before me. Also I couldn’t help noticing that in one place where I had said something about three old men, the picture showed that two of them were women.
Then we had an old Vitagraph three-reeler, which was so bad it was amusing. Then a Liberation Loan song, illustrated with some good war pictures. And at last, Chaplin in The Pawnbroker. He was worth the franc and a half admission.
There is a large house here, build to the idea of a man with money, and aspirations, but no sense or taste. It must have forty rooms. It is full of painted ceilings and rococo gilt fresco work, but it has no bath tub. That is France for you. One must go to the public baths, just as one goes to the public barber. A bathtub is unheard of in the ordinary home.
I often wondered what people here think of their conditions. Most of them I have found, know no different; hence, they don’t think. It is always those who have been away from France, who realize that their own country is a “surface” land. Show and front without foundation, is what one Frenchman told me. Perfume is stronger than water. I go down stairs at the same time as a bunch of factory girls. The accumulated perfume is intoxicating; it is as if I inhaled a glass of pure alcohol. But their hands are usually pretty dirty.
Frank is out tonight taking a French lesson. It’s good to get away from him once in a while. Please hurry with that name of Dulcy’s brother.
This is a great country for rumors. In the first place, news is likely to come in most any language, and of course the translator can pat it up and add little touches of his own here and there, where he feels it will do the most good. In addition, since the latest paper is on the streets before 4 P.M., any chance word can pass as authentic, without fear of successful contradiction until morning. After 4 P.M. rumors are rife in these swift days. We have to have a new war every morning because the current one is always finished up and polished off before supper.
Yesterday I consumed a lot of dampness, exuded much French and exhumed all my Profane, trying to make a French newsboy comprehend a state of affairs that should bring about an “extra”. Such a thing was entirely beyond him. It lay outside the pale of his power of perception, like peace, heaven and America.
Of course you read, as soon as I did, the account of the German plenipotentiaries with the white flag. To me that is one of the most dramatic episodes of the war. As I have said before, the process of peace has always been a baffler. I’ve always wanted to know how they’d go about it. Doesn’t it seem mediaeval to you, just to come out between the two armies with a white flag? I feel that this war, which has shown the world so many new wonders of human ingenuity, should have improved on the peace procedure of the Hundred Years’ War.
However, the important thing, I suppose, is not how, but when? I have become a sceptic to the extent that, like most people in the news game or on the fringe of it, nothing is news now unless it is past. Only official word, definitely and irrevocably set forth in black ink, that there is peace, will raise a thrill.
The Chaplin film The Pawnbroker is available online. Click on this link to watch.
Next post November 12
Letters from Sidney Friend During The Great War 