This place is worse than the states in many respects, notably that of evenings. I don’t know what becomes of them all. Everyone is friendly here, and most of them are interesting. The commonest workman in a smelly, dirty café is a picture, if nothing else. And they all want to be nice to the Americans. Result: take a walk, meet a French girl, sit in the park, one evening gone. Stop for a drink, meet a French man, sit in the café, another gone.

Two or three nights a week, Frank and I go down to see old M. Lozach, the photographer. He lives all alone in three stuffy rooms; there is a kitchenette, and I guess he manages to get along without a bathroom. He’s really a good chap, not yet 40, fairly decent in his habits, and mighty ignorant in photography. He lives about a half hour’s walk from here in a section about like Third Ave. & 83^rd Street. His subjects are the French equivalent for the habitants of that elite district of Gotham, and his work, which is all done under poor conditions, looks it. He rustles around and gets some hard-boiled, ham-headed, 10 francs a day, woman factory worker, dresses her all up like a 1902 chowder party, stands her up stiff like a corpse, and photographs her. He operates in back yards, front doors and the big park. One of his three rooms is a dark room. There you are.

In spite of it all, he gets some fair results, but he lacks lots. Frank built him a retouching frame and I’m teaching him to retouch. We’re trying out different papers and formulas with him, in an effort to improve his stuff. Like the whole darn country here, he is anxious to go ahead but doesn’t know how. They’re not thorough like the Americans; though they are very skillful, they don’t seem to go clear to the bottom of things, or think them out all the way. I’m not condemning the French as a nation merely because one dub of a film-fusser has fewer formulas than Frank. But that seems to be a characteristic of the people. One always feels they could do so much more in their spheres, if they’d quit rushing madly around for some petty thing that about two minutes quiet thinking or talking would accomplish.

However, to return to Lozach, he likes us and we like him and pity him. His wife left him about two years ago, and just about wrecked his life. Now he lives on from sheer inertia. One gets rather used to being alive, he says, though in his case it’s merely being not dead. Quite a philosophy, isn’t it. After which he turns around to flirt with some woman who passes. There’s your Frenchman.

He has loaned Frank and me each a camera, and he lets us work in his darkroom and have a fine time.

I think this war business is all newspaper talk – I’ve never seen any of it. When anyone talks about it now, I have to ask, “What war?” You ought to come over here where it’s safe. But seriously speaking, don’t you think it’s a rotten trick on the part of those subs to shell the slackers and stay-at-homes and never touch us?

Did I tell you that Ernie has left here to go out in the field? Also Jean Crunelle was back about a week ago on business and said things are fine where he is. He likes the work up front. Jim Bennett wrote in about the same strain. Must be true. Jack is still soldiering amongst us. Also Clarence Elmer and Billy are as funny as ever.

Do you remember Mrs. Oakes, our old godmother? She sent me a card on Decoration Day, addressed:

Sidney Friend

A.E.F. France.

No rank, organization or address mentioned, but it came. To be sure it took exactly three months, but it is an indication of what a wonderful post office system the army must have. So I still have hopes of your No. 7 unless, of course, it is at the bottom of the sea.

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Next post September 12.

Things are more or less quiet here. The even tenor of our ways strikes a bum note once in a while, but most of them are on the key. Which musical metaphor reminds me that when the Paris opera opens, I shall at least be able to hear Bohème without Alda. Also French opera sung by French artists, which ought to prove interesting. French music has never been over strong in America because it doesn’t reach its full power with German or Italian singers. But here I shall hear the real thing.

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Next post September 5.

The little I do in the course of my day’s work has proved enough to what my old Waterman. This new life here is a big block of material (virgin except for a million and one others like me, who are writing their letters as if for publication) and I yearn to sit down and carve out of it a wonderful admixture of fabrication and fact, which shall be utterly unfit for anything. As it is, it has been hard to get my hand back in, after being out of the game six months.

To be sure, you may say I could sit in my room every night from 7 to 11 and write the Great American Epic or something. But I’m afraid that would be expending electricity without anything epochal ensuing. “The American in France” will not be written indoors, I think. It will be carved indelibly on amusing little character, ideas and aspect of the country.

While we are on the subject of writing I’ll answer your question about Arnold Bennett. Yes, he makes lots of money – and writes lots of rot. He is of the Thomas Hardy school, only he never got above the primary grades. His “Old Wives’ Tale” is a masterpiece among novels in English, but that ends it. Like old Robert W. Chambers, Bennett is not an author, he is the proprietor of a book factory. He comes in in the morning, looks over the previous day’s report, and tells his foreman, “We’ll have to speed up production. Add on 10 hands in the plot department, set those Five Towns piece-workers to doing France local color stuff – we must reach 12,000 words daily.” But, one thing old A.B. does is write English, while Chambers produces novels couched in the most hearstian Cosmopolitanese that a shop-girl ever read.

Nothing at all new in your Mr. Wilcomb’s (?) idea about the partition of Russia. Only I don’t agree that Germany will get much of it. Japan has her eye on Manchuria and her hand in northeastern Siberia. As for the rest, I can see a number of small republics, ultimately, constituted along racial lines, possibly. I believe the nations are going to readjust the balance of power after this war, then enforce peace. A lasting peace would be impossible while one or more countries were too large or too strong. Hence the fall of the old order of imperialism, German, Russian or anything else.

As to the front, I am further from it than ever, for, as you may know, it has begun to move back towards Germany. Also, though there are many things about the army, which I have yet to learn, no body can convince me that there is any such institution as a large yellow card, saying, “I am at the front”. That wasn’t a dream, it was a nightmare.

I hope you realize now, young woman, that it is nothing unhealthy in my make-up that makes me love a pipe. You’ve read, no doubt, that greatest of pipe books – “My Lady Nicotine”. My two pipes are beginning to have an offensive smell, or rather two smells, one a piece. But they’re the best friends I have here; though they only gurgle a bit, I can understand their language.

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Arnold Bennett Wikipedia Entry

My Lady Nicotine – complete book online. Grandpa smoked a pipe all his life.

Next post September 3.

Sunday I went to town and saw many old churches and old quarters. Paris boasts as much a building which dates back to 1200 as we do one built last week. I’d make a better Frenchman than American anyhow, especially in that respect.

I am enjoying this thing a lot, so don’t expend too much pity on me.

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Next post August 21.

Since I wrote last I have seen much of a certain city in France. Huston, Ernie Schoedsack and Jack went into town with me one day. We went to Montmartre and had a great time seeing the “night life” of the city. Ordinarily Paris is dark and sleeping at 9:30 in these war times. But we found the “Black Cat” which stays open till 11. It was worth seeing but I can’t describe it in a letter.

Next day Frank and I went in and headed straight for the Pantheon, which, you remember, I had determined to see by day. Then we wandered all around the quarter, which is the students’ and artists’ section. The University of Paris and Sorbonne, etc., are there, and the narrow streets of the Latin Quarter; of course, every one is at war, so it is somewhat denatured.

Frank had a dinner engagement with a Scotch woman and I was dragged in. We went to the bois de Boulogne and waited an hour at the appointed place but she didn’t arrive. We had brought a bottle of wine and a cake of chocolate as our contribution. (She was to come with the lunch and a friend and we were to eat in the wood.) After an hour I was hungry; we had about 4 francs between us – it was just before pay-day, and I had insisted on buying particularly good wine. So we went back to the place where we’d bought the wine, prevailed on the woman to sell us some bread, and went out and bought some cheese, and made a meal of bread, cheese, wine and chocolate. Later in the week Frank got a letter from the lady asking us to her house for dinner; it had been mailed in time, but unaccountably delayed in delivery, so she was cleared.

After that we went to the Bois de Boulogne and walked all afternoon came back by the Champs Elysées and saw soldiers of every nation but Irish.

This will end here, with a promise of more soon. I am exceedingly healthy; not a trace of hay fever yet, though it is a week past the day for it.

Pep came this week, with a number of other old friends. It’s a small, as they say, world.

The people I’ve mentioned, as well as a pair a French women and an old, dirty and kindly French photographer, took every evening.

It is a varied time, if nothing else, and it is far from what you called “the four walls view of life.” If there is any place in the world where you fell you want to live lively, it is Paris. Some day I must tell you more about it.

Remember the woman who stopped us one night and said I must know Jack Munday – he had the same hat cord. She’d be convinced now, for he’s here. Also Pep and lots of others from the old place.

Apropos of four walls and Mrs. Cleveland, have you read Lewis Waller’s “Wood Carver of ‘Lympus?” It’s worth reading a couple of times. And I couldn’t stand “The Jungle” on shipboard; I gave up on it.

So far I haven’t had a word from home or Nannette. Of course I’m pleased to claim a nephew with a vocabulary consisting of “Dada,” but I know a kid about four years old who can talk French! Besides, “Dada” won’t do me any good; when I get back Bobbie will be reading Bernard Shaw and will be able to tell me in minute detail what was the crime that put Oscar Wilde in prison.

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Wood Carver of ‘Lympus

“Bobbie” is Robert Friend Rothschild (1918-2015), eldest son of Sidney’s sister Nanette and her husband Herbert Rothschild.

Next post August 20

Does all New York come to the nearest subway station when it wants to have a family fight? It is a long time since I have been in it, so my memory may have failed, but I don’t recall any such arrangement. But Paris – why I’ve seen more battling in the subway than in the war. Every time I’ve been to Paris they had to call in a policeman to settle a subway scrap. And the police are so pretty. They carry swords, have a uniform that looks like a soldier’s, pink, fat cheeks, and blond moustache and beard trimmed close. They may not all have these features, but that’s the type. They’re fearfully polite; all they do is remonstrate in gentle tones. If the people didn’t respect authority, the “sergents de ville,” as they are called, would suffer considerable personal damage.

The Notre Dame positively casts a spell over you. There are some 34 bridges over the Seine in Paris. Notre Dame is near the river and can be seen from many of the bridges. At dusk or dark it works a charm that the most prosaic person possible can’t fail to perceive. By that I mean Frank Phillips.

He and I walked some miles last night, and struck some queer places. I saw a dome which I thought was the Pantheon and which I wanted to locate and know. So we set out in the general direction of the thing. We went through some crazy, crooked, crowded streets – a sort of slum. Bats flew all around – queer thing it seems in a city. We found another dome – St. Paul’s church cussed, retraced our steps, crossed the river, walked much, and finally in the blackness of 9:45 in Paris came suddenly upon the imposing, awesome Pantheon huge in the night. We waited about 5 minutes till some one passed and we asked to be sure.

It is a good plan to see Paris in the dark first, because you get an indelible impression of wonders that, by day, are marred by the sordid banal influences which crowd close around all these French places.

The even tenor of our way continues undisturbed. I find it is a long time between pay-days. I have been here just a month today, and pay-day is the only event worth recording.

The war, of course, goes on and the Statue of Liberty is still some thirty-five hundred miles distant. But cheer up, don’t let it affect your health. As some one said today: “Well if it isn’t, at least it’ll be a year nearer the end.” There you have it.

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Next post August 18.

It is very quiet here. The long range gun has begun again for the first time in about two weeks. It never hits near here, but we hear it. Occasionally it kills a couple of women and children; great achievement, isn’t it. Kultur gains a lot by shelling two or three little kids playing in a park. Makes one wish he were in the infantry where he could at least get a pop at some of the Boches.

I don’t know whether you follow war news or not. In the states I didn’t, but here it is the biggest thing there is. At any rate, next time you see a map with the Soissons, Rheims and Chateau-Thierry on it, take a good look at it, and see what great work was done in the recent drive. The line used to be a triangle from Soissons to Chateau-Thierry to Reims, and the Franco-Americans have made it a straight line from Soissons to Reims in about two weeks.

Of course, by the time you get this, the drive is ancient history, but it is very vivid to me now. Your newspapers have it as soon as ours to here, so I am not violating any secrets.

Saturday night I had a real home dinner at the house where my pupil says: “Hit ees ay pain,” meaning; it is a pen. The dinner was the kind that begins with four kinds of hors d’oeuvres and doesn’t end at all. Along about 9:30 they had what is called: “un petit canard” – a little duck. They pour a little rum in the bottom of a glass and put a lump of sugar in it. After the sugar has absorbed it all, they eat the sugar. Just about then I decided that this dinner might be a continuous affair, so I got away. Not before I’d had a jolly good evening, however.

Sunday was wasted. The weather wasn’t very good; and I was on duty anyway. For about a week now it has been showery all the time. That may be the regulation French climate, but I hope not.

I am still taking meals once in a while at the homey little café around the corner. It is very pleasant. They make no secret of liquor here; there is no side entrance effect; the whole thing opens on the street with a big wide door, and there are chairs and tables on the sidewalk; women go in alone and no one thinks anything of it. In a word, it isn’t a saloon – it’s the French equivalent for what you might call a public house.

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Next post August 8.

It is afternoon and I have a few minutes to spare, so here goes.

Fred Eldredge just told me he had a letter from his wife, in which she told of getting a letter from him marked “S.S. Covington” and reading in the paper the same day that the Covington had been sunk. Of course she didn’t know that his letter was mailed after we were safe over and that the boat was hit when on the way back empty.

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USS Covington Wikipedia Entry. Includes pictures of the ship sinking.

Next post August 6.

It is still warm, damp and slow here. There is little news.

My English pupil shows signs of progress. Our plan is to visit the house of a friend of hers, study from about 8 to 9; then have tea in the little garden in back of the house, and talk till 9:45 or 10. Then we go our separate ways. This friend is a middle aged woman, who lives right around the corner from our quarters. About 6 years ago she lived in America. Oh yes, she knows all about the U.S. Didn’t she live 4 months in Bound Brook, N.J.? She talks in a sort of shattered English, and tells how she took a train in Bound Brook to go to the movies in Plainfield, but ended up in Philadelphia. Her husband was doing some work for Pathé, the movie people, in their Bound Brook plant. I enjoy these visits.

I spend the little spare time I have during the day, in studying the maps. You see, to write intelligently about a photo, one really ought to know where it was taken and its relation to current operations in the war. So I have to bone up on the various war zones, so as to be able to say with surety whether Chateau-Thiery is in Sweden or Madagascar.

Tonight there is a ball game between the Stills and the Movies. I can’t go because I’m due to go on guard in a few minutes. They play down in a large drill ground in the park.

Most of the people around here live in apartments. They are much like American ones, but have no elevators. The minute you come into a room they close the windows. I never saw such a passion for stuffiness as the people seem to have. And dogs – there are more dogs than people. France’s food problem would be appreciably lightened if she got rid of 80 per cent of her dogs. But I have seen very few dogs in apartments.

The private houses hereabouts are not very pretentious. They’re just comfortable. They are not detached houses, as a rule, but each has its little garden in front and big one in back planted with trees, grass and flowers. Most always you will find the family around a table, eating supper in the garden. It is a nice comfortable life they live. They may work hard during the day, but at night there is always the garden. The class of people who live around here seem content with that. I don’t know whether they get tired of one another’s company. I doubt if they read anything but the newspapers and some cheap paper-bound books concerning the amorous adventures of young girls in great cities, etc.

Magazines of the class of Harper’s, or even Metropolitan or Munsey’s, I have not found. They have literary reviews; Le Rire, which is like Life; and illustrated news weeklies like The Times Pictorial. I’ve never found a library.

I miss books somewhat, though I don’t know when I’d have time to read. Jack has a book about movied people, written by his cousin, Rob Wagner, which I think I’ll borrow. That will help.

Must stop now and get some sleep before I go on guard.

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Rob Wagner Wikipedia Entry

Next post August 2.

After nine hours of steady work with that deadly weapon, the typewriter, I feel I have done my share against the Germans and am ready to knock off for the day. These evening holds forth nothing more exciting than teaching some English, which I find I have forgot, in French, which I never knew, to a woman who wants to learn.

These French girls are certainly a warm lot, or at this time of year, humid, I should say. That statement sounds as if it sprang from experience but for me it is vicarious experience. I’ve been translating for some of the boys, and it’s everything from “regards from my mother” to poetic effusions about wonderful meetings, etc. etc. They vary in heat up to actual torrid ferveney. Sometimes I’m ashamed to read.

Today I had a letter from Joe Prehodzki, who was among those who were sent out to take pictures. I don’t know just where he is, but it’s near some action. Nellie is gone, too, and I miss him more than anyone else. He was such a nut I got a lot of amusement out of him.

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Next post August 1.