Today thinks look good. In the first place it is beautiful, warm, sunny, American weather. Every one, officers and men, was out front this noon, playing ball. In the second place, rumors have begun to look likely, some of them officially confirmed as truth. One that has a lot of color is that the still negatives of the lab are to be sent home piecemeal under convoy of four or five men. That would be good; once the negatives are out, there is nothing more to do, and they must clean out the thing. Also they are looking for a hundred men to volunteer to stay here till Sept. That is positive and official, because Frank Phillips was officially given the opportunity to volunteer for it. He hasn’t decided yet. Now if they are going to keep some of us here till Sept., it is a cinch that they are planning to send the rest home before that. My guess is that they will do it gradually, sending groups of five or six or eight to convoy these valuable historical documents home. It is not without hope.
Six o’clock now and time to manger, after which I am to go around and get a new coat, which is being altered to fit me, and then to Bellamys’ for the regular Tuesday lesson. If it gets much nicer I’m going to have them adjourn these sessions to the Bois.
Mme. Bellamy was a bit indisposed tonight, having worked quite hard during the day. I was not sorry, for I haven’t exactly the proper feeling today to teach. Did I ever tell you what she and her husband do for a living? Well even if I have, here goes: She has worked in the color department of Pathe’s for some twelve years. Her husband has been in the army from almost the beginning of the war – something over four years. He worked in the Joinville Pathe plant before that, as head of the “colorie”. She is an authority here on tinting and toning and color work on movies. His case is not so good. When he came back into civil life and wanted once more to take up his old job, there was someone else in it, and he had his choice of working under this other man as developer, or of looking for another place. I have told you how these people around here build their lives on the one factory as a foundation. It would ruin thousands if it ever toppled. So Bellamy, knowing nothing in life but Pathe, took what they offered and resumed his old life. The war has set him back not alone the four years, but also all that it may have taken him to reach from a subordinate position like his present one to a headship like his former.
I shall not stay here long because it is too hot, and it is too nice outside. But I want to tell you how we live. French rues are not like American streets. They are usually a succession of high walls, before private residences, or of flush houses, in the case of apartment sections. Apartments are more usual here than even in New York and are of about the same general character of appearance and livability as ours. The entrance is always simpler than in ours; elevators are scarce; it is not uncommon for eight story buildings to be without lifts; rooms are smaller and less airy. The average height is six stories.
Private residences are indeed private. A twelve foot wall all around the property makes them so. In the front, along the street, this wall is surmounted with red tile, which combines picturesquely with the gray of the cement wall. The entrance is always by a gate, most commonly of iron. The larger and more impressive the double feudal portal, the greater the lineage, commercial or heraldic, of the owner.
Inside the same is true of detached homes as of apartments. But let me tell you about ours. The Pathe villa property is on the corner of the rue des Vignerons and the rue de la Villa, about a hundred feet on the former and two hundred on the latter. The wall surrounds it all, except that near the gate it is replaced by a fence of iron palings. The gate is on the center of the long wall. It opens out upon the rue de la Villa opposite the rue du Bois, which, as you might have guessed, leads to the Bois de Vincennes. Our own little rue de la Villa is quiet and narrow and clean. It is only a full block long, running from the rue des Vignerons to the old fort.
There is a guard at the gate 24 hours a day. One Sunday an English lady came up in the factory where I was writing a letter and wandered all over the floor before she came to my little corner. She was looking for one of the boys, whom she knew; I said she might find him if she went over to the “chateau,” as we call our quarters. Not long after, I left the plant and went home. I found her outside the gate, with the guard barring the way. She laughed and said, “How strange you Americans are. Over in your laboratory full of valuable historical records and all sorts of tempting things, I might wander about quite undisturbed. Here where there is nothing but a few beds and tables you guard it like the king’s treasure.”
I tried my best to explain that it wasn’t the Americans who caused these things but the army. It left her rather unconvinced, and, to tell the truth I didn’t get over very strong to myself with that story.
But to continue, let us go inside the gate. It is never closed. The barring is done by the presence of the guard. There is a shade of sense in having him. The poor little French children would like mightily to go inside those huge double gates and browse around among the possessions of the “millionaire” Americans. And then they’d take their brothers in, and among them all would divide up our entire interiors. Perhaps they would even take their sisters in, and that would leave us but little privacy.
Inside the gate is a large artificial natural fountain, pretty and cooling in the summer. It is in the center of the road and just in front of the big house. To the right and left stretch the grounds of the place, large and spacious beyond the conception of a Frenchman’s thrift. Mr. Pathe had undoubtedly been to America. There are little winding roads and elm, chestnut and evergreen trees, shrubs and even bits of lawn.
We are still coming in the gate, and we find at our right a two story house running at ninety degrees to the street, from the wall back about seventy-five feet. There it makes a right angle with a garage. It is in this little house that I live. It was formerly a servants’ pavilion. It is divided into three attached residences, each complete in itself. I am in the middle one. Let me tell you about it.
The house is about twenty feet wide; the single door is on the level of the ground and opens into a room about fifteen feet deep, running the width of the house, Off of this to the left is a small room six by seven, which brings us to the rear wall. Off the main room to the right is another little square of about the six –by-seven extent, with a door leading to the back alley, and a stairway to the cellar and to the upper story.
Upstairs, a little hallway, from which open off another 15 by 20, and another 6/7. It is in this last that I live. The three parts of the pavilion are identical, even to the number of steps in the stairs before the curve begins. It is evident that in the large room downstairs, the servant family lived and ate. The little one to the left was a sort of storeroom. The little one to the right, with the back door and stairways, the kitchen. Upstairs were the bedrooms.
Now there are “double-deckers” and single cots in all the rooms, except the kitchen. This has been fitted with a wooden sink and several faucets, and serves in an insufficient French way as our washroom. The back alley contains a little outhouse.
Over the garage the rooms are somewhat differently arranged, but of the same character. Although we have about ten Fords here, and a large Packard truck, outdoor storage is all they seem to rate, and the garage-stable-shop building is used for sleeping quarters.
At the other end of the garden, some 200 or more feet away, parallel to our pavilion and to the rue des Vignerons, runs a long low greenhouse, just inside the wall of the last named street. It is in a state of disrepair and disuse that would pain old Charles Pathe’s flora-fancy. It also extends back the full depth of the property, and joins, at the rear, a brick rabbit and hen-house of ingenious design. The American despoilers have put up two long wooden barracks of the French “Adrien” type next and parallel to the greenhouses; one is the mess-hall and the other a sleeping hall, filled with double-deckers. Now let us proceed to the main building – the villa, or “chateau” or big house; we have covered all the rest of the grounds.
The chateau is of stone and cement, three stories, with an attic. In front it displays a porch and a portico, reached by a flight of gracefully curved stairs by either side. Every time I go up the steps and go into the magnificent entrance, I have to exert my will to keep from recalling that the whole villa boasts no bathtub. But perhaps the French soldiers who occupied the house before we took it on July 4th, 1918, had the tub uprooted. If they had its former site would certainly be covered with frescos, gilt, red velvet and pink angels. That’s what they’d do over here.
Inside the main door is our canteen, bulletin board and mail box, in a vestibule. Then a large room, formerly part of the mess hall; since we mess in the Adrien this room and the one opening off the right of it have become amusement rooms. In the larger, tables and benches, a piano, two phonographs, writing materials and a whole library of novels and things. In the other, a billiard table. The first floor also contains the company offices and medical office. On the upper floors are well-filled sleeping rooms.
The decorative scheme is elaborate and Gallic. In its day, the house was intended to be the last word in modernity, not to say beauty. But the French are ever voluble, and one feels that as each word seems to have been meant for the last, the speaker couldn’t bring himself to stop.
The house has a central heating system that often works, and the side buildings have lots of open fireplaces. During the cold weather, wood and a sort of coal were available. That doesn’t mean that the gov’t provided them always, but a soldier must be a promoter above all things. Right next to the Pathe place is a French wood yard. Many a night I’ve gone out and climbed the wall to do a bit of forestry work. After a while the French took to keeping a dog; luckily just about that time several big loads of wood were delivered into the cellar of the chateau, and it was very easy to keep warm. Later I tried again; the dog was gone, but in his place reigned a sharp-toothed cold. The logs were frozen to the pile, and the snow lay four inches deep over all. But we had to live so Billy and I climbed the wall numbed our hands prying loose and carried home several polar pieces.
Next post March 14.
Letters from Sidney Friend During The Great War 