2

running water in a cupboard in the wall, and back of this a
cabinet de toilette with a tiled floor, where I have a small
gas stove for heating water, a dressing table, and plenty of
space for my trunks and clothes. In one corner of the room
is a picturesque staircase which leads up to the dining-room
overhead, where I am regularly eating my meals with the family
whenever I don't go out. Mme. Halevy at first refused to let
me pay anything, but I insisted that I shouldn't feel I could
eat here unless she did, so she has agreed to let me pay my
share of butter, eggs, sugar, meat, etc. I also, of course,
pay for my wood, and my coal if I can get it! And I pay her
cook $6 a month for taking care of me - which includes keeping
my fires going, doing the room, blacking my shoes, sewing but-
tons on my gaiters, etc.! I have told you about the house be-
fore, but you have probably forgotten, so let me say that it is
a very old one, dating from the days when M. Halevy's mother's
family (Bréguet by name) were watch-makers (quai de l'Horloge).
The mechanical gift has remained in the family, and the Bréguet
is one of the important types of French aeroplanes to-day.

The house runs through from the quai to the Place Dauphine, and
on the Place Dauphine side lives Mme. Halevy mere; the Darnel
H's. enter by the quai de l'Horloge, but the rooms have inside
connections - mysterious doors and passages. The concierge is
on this side, and she buys my wood, kerosene, etc., and comes to
get me when I am called on the telephone - a most obliging person,
so I am wonderfully off - always provided I can keep warm!
I have a sugar card and a coal card allowing me 30 lbs. of coal a
month! Luckily three sacks of coal have fallen from heaven

3

besides, and I use wood which is horribly expensive, but you can
get all you want. In any case, and all told, it won't cost half
what it does in a hotel, and I can have a quiet spot to work, and
a charming place to receive my friends. This morning I stayed in
bed an hour later than usual as a luxury (I'm usually dressed soon
after eight and breakfast in bed before that) and was just arising
when I walked Harry Greene - by a mistake on the part of the maid.

I shooed him upstairs to wait in the dining-room, while I made a
hurried toilet and the room was hastily put in order, and when I
went up to get him who should be there but Dr.Richard Cabot also!-
who had been hard on Harry's heels all the time, and I hadn't seen
him. There is scarcely an hour of the day without some interrup-
tion at the hotel, but here I had thought to be undisturbed of a
morning! Since they went, the Baronne de Naclos has come to
ask whether I could help her to get writing to do in America, and
now I go to lunch with Corinna Smith, to talk reconstruction, and
so it goes. I should never have written a line at the hotel even
if I'd stayed a year there; but this week I've managed to trans-
late Giraudoux's last chapter, which he has finally written, and
we sent it off in the diplomatic pouch. I had had nothing but
mysterious calls from him (and was always out) till last week.

He was away when I got here,- and then called five times before
he found me, and during that time not one word could I learn about
his chapter - the truth being that he hadn't written it and didn't
want to say so. He finally turned up, and took me to lunch in a
very famous little restaurant near the Place de la Bastille, very
unpretentious as to exterior and superlative as to food, and we

5

Mme. Halévy mère is a most delightful person, now here. The children are also delightful - a boy of fifteen, Léon, very gay and very intelligent, and Françoise, not quite eighteen, a fascinating creature, with red hair and a lovely complexion, and a delicious little slim figure; both full of spirit and charm. Their mother, who can't be much older than I, as she married at seventeen, has also lovely red hair and great distinction.

M. Halévy is interpreter to the American army, as I wrote you - he is past active military age, - and could have stayed at the Maison de la Presse, where he has had a service for the last eighteen months or more, but as he had been with the English during the early part of the war he now wanted to see the Americans, and felt Paris was too easy, besides. He is now at Nantes, but may be sent to headquarters, quite in another direction.

I don't seem to be much more immune from interruption here, after all. I no sooner got back from lunch or visiting a colony of the Enfants de la Frontière with Mrs. Smith on Sunday than one of the Red Cross people, one Barton Blake, late of

came to get my advice about Red Cross "publicity" and the French press. Monday, when I hoped to be writing all day I spent on the contrary trying to oil some agricultural wheels for the Comte de Warren and the Red Cross - a very important demand from the French to the American government pending, so that I had to do my best. Incidentally, between, I lunched with Edward Hunt, who is the head of the reconstruction bureau and doing extremely well (the amount of elaborate food I have been treated to by Red Cross gentlemen you can't shake a stick at!) and who spoke with much feeling of Mr. Osborne's death.

6

To-day (to continue my troubles of interruption) I was settling to my desk when interrupted by an envoy of the Y.M.C.A., who wished to know when I would go to the American camps to speak about the invaded regions - and I had to spend the p.m. at the Service Photographique de l'Armée with him, picking out lantern slides. I told you that they had persuaded me that this was my obvious duty - to explain France to the American soldier, who apparently understands it not at all, and thus learn something about the soldier myself. They will pay my expenses meanwhile. It is rather an alarming thought! and I have not promised to do more than one trip of three or four days, which I hope to combine with a visit to Headquarters. If this succeeds, I will try two or three more, and end by seeing all the camps. Meanwhile, as I also wrote you last week, the Red Cross is begging me to "come in" on a basis of half-time work. They would not bind me to be there every day, and would let me go off on trips, and yet would pay me $100 a month or so, and they also put it up to me as a patriotic duty. They need "liaison officers" who understand French life; and it seems from one point of view more practical to work for them regularly than irregularly as I've been doing - with nothing to show for it. If I did do this I should of course have to write more slowly, and stay longer; on the other hand, I should be more on the "inside," from that point of view more useful to the M.R. I have written to Croly to ask his opinion. It is plain I can't get home for Christmas anyhow, as things take fearfully long. Even apart from all this liaison work, which I can't avoid, as a patriotic American, it takes uncounted weeks to get one tiny bit of information, which makes the millionth part of

7

an article. I have seen altogether too many people to do any writing, yet not a tenth or a hundredth of those I need to, for my writing - and the journeys still before me! Reims, Evian (to see the repatriés) the British front, perhaps, the American camps, Lyons, the Midi, all necessary, and I'm going back to the Noyon region at the end of this week to stay in two or three villages where reconstruction is going on, to talk to the natives, etc. Meanwhile the reputation I'm getting for omni-science on all French subjects is getting decidedly trying. (I have absolutely no time to see my friends like Martha, etc., or anybody I'm not working with.) They are trying to get me to help with a plan for introducing French families to American soldiers, and vice versa - and I can be useful in all these ways, but I don't get my articles written. You should see the respect with which Mrs. J. L. Smith now treats me; and my undue reputation for knowledge is entirely due to the fact that most of this vast army of Americans is pathetically ignorant of both France and French. The Red Cross is an enormously powerful organization, and everything depends on how well it gets its wheels running in the next months. Having begun with the agricultural people, I have to keep on, as that subject is passionately interesting. In fine, I never was so busy in my life, and yet I am perfectly well - (if cold). I have no time to replace the clothes I'm wearing out at a great rate.

Daisy Polk, who was rebuilding Vitrimont, has married a French general (also a count) as I told you. Well, she and her general have turned up - (I forgot to mention a prospective journey to

8

Nancy - Luneville, Vitrimont). Sydney Howard, dea
brother, now an aviator, turned up - a dear boy. I have dined
at the Max Lagard's (high up in the Ministry of Marine) and dined
with a Maison de la Presse family and so on, and on and on!
But when the Red Cross chief engineer invited me to dinner and
theatre to-morrow night I drew the line, for I have no time to
have my hair waved or to get a theatre dress. Nothing could be
less right than my black one, tell Aunt C. - only widows and
mourners wear black, and I've got to get something else.

Now I wish to end with a loud complaint that tho' I
left New York on September 1st, and Nov. 1st is one day off, I've
had only one letter from Aunt C., written just after she got back
from N.; one from Papa, written before he went golfing and after
fishing, and one from R., written also in September.

This morning an envelope addressed by Aunt C. and mailed October
11, raised my hopes, but it contained only Peggy James' wedding
announcement and an advertisement! I suppose you are all too
absorbed in Nancy to think of me, but that is a pretty poor rec-
ord, and I think somebody might write once a week, and somebody
might have written during the first half of October! I do want
to know how things are going with you all, - business, babies,
bandages, and all the rest. I hope Nancy hasn't been ill, I
hope R. and E. have had a glorious vacation - but it's well over
before now. My letters have been written regularly - I hope
you get them, poor as they are. I don't succeed in giving the
least impression of what it's all like. Paris was never more
beautiful than in these autumn days, and though I long to get

to Versailles and can't, I revel in my walks around, especially
in this heart of Paris, next door to the Seine, the Marché aux
Fleurs, the Palais de Justice and Notre Dame. One thing still
cheap in France is flowers. I have two magnificent chrysanthemum plants, which give me the sun I don't get in this room, and
all for 80 cents.

Much, much love to all the family. I wish I could step in for
a talk about all this - I'll save it all up, as not much can
get into letters. The Italian defeat looks pretty badly
from here.

Much love, Elsie.

I wish I knew whether K. and H. were still with you, and all
the details of their visit.

[1917]

Base Hospital 15.

A. E. F. December 26.

Dearest family:-

Let not the above address alarm you though it will ex-
plain why you had had no news from me. Exactly two weeks ago in
the midst of my thrilling journey through the American zone in the
house where the heads of the Press Section and the guides to visitors
live (33 miles from headquarters) I came down with the grippe. Every-
body in the American Army has it more or less severely. It has been
indeed terribly severe and often dangerous. I had had a cold and
more or less sore throat all the time I was at headquarters but when
I got to N on the evening of the 11th my guide, Capt. ? Chanler of
Boston, suggested that I get over a day and rest instead of carrying
out the very full program for next day. He had taken me to their
(his, Frederick Palmer's and Gerald Morgan's) house instead of to the
poor hotel which was awfully nice of him. Major Palmer has gone to
the U. S. A. and Morgan, Miss Ruth Morgan's brother, was also away
then, but some of the Censorship Bureau were there and there was a
wonderful cook, a refugee from Verdun. The house was one of vanished
elegance with beautiful old woodwork and grand furniture turned shabby.
It was built around an inner court and to get from the dining room,
where they lived, to the bed room you had to go up on a fine stone
double stairway. A French general had lived there all through the
war and 80 officers had messed there so you can imagine both how
spacious and how dingy the place was. I thought that a morning's
rest in bed would set me up. Capt. Chanler had asked two or three
French officers to lunch on my account and I spent a quiet afternoon
seeing a few Red Cross activities and having tea with the General of
the Division who was in charge of the New England troops last Spring.
I will not name his name but you will recognize him as hailing from
Springfield and Cleveland and descending from a certain divine. It
was a very jolly tea party but my cold persisted and next morning it
seemed necessary to stay in bed and get a doctor. A young (very
young) army doctor turned up - Doctor of the "Zone of Communications"-
a Southern boy who was quite delighted to see a "lady", as he said.
I told him my object was to get well at once and he thought it would
be easy, and filled me up with drugs and came to see me twice a day.
The second day of this treatment, Friday, he proclaimed me much better,
able to start on my journey next day. I knew I wasn't, on the other
hand, as you can imagine, I was anxious not to trespass further on the
kind masculine hospitality or to take up more time and attention from
the servants. I said if I was able to start next day I could then
get up to dinner and he said yes. I knew this would kill or cure
so up I got. But such a throat as I developed in consequence. It
was a sort of bronchitis I was having then and the doctor who had
only just got to this region was not familiar with the germ. Capt.
Chanler and I had agreed that if I was no better next day he would

It was a pretty dismal day on the whole, though I had a caller at dinner time - Col. Conger's assistant, a lieutenant not so young as some, bearing candy, papers, etc. The hospital had a very nice Xmas, great efforts were made for the enlisted men and they had Xmas trees in the wards, and the nurses had a tree for the poor children of the town, but none of this could I see, alas.

Dec. 31.

I am continuing this letter in Paris where thank heaven I am at last. On the evening of the 26th about 9.30 p.m. arrived a nurse very sick with pleurisy who had to be put in my room as there was no other place. The poor thing coughed steadily all night, so I did not get a wink of sleep either, and next day I persuaded the doctor that it was time I went to Paris. The hospital was getting busier and busier, admitting 175 to 190 patients a day (almost all with grippe and pneumonia). So the nurses were beside themselves. There were 65 nurses and 1200 patients. These last were then being put in the Y.M.C.A. tent for lack of other space. The nurses naturally had no time to look after convalescents and I was sure I should be better off in a Paris hotel. The doctor agreed to let me go, and let me go out and telephone to Col. McCoy at the hospital office. The first breath of air I had had. Col. McCoy said he would make all the arrangements and on Friday the 28th at 4.45 arrived a lieutenant and a limousine to take me to the station. He did everything that was necessary there, got me a seat in the train and handed me over to the care of a colonel (another young one, you should see the age of our officers nowadays), who took me to dinner where I ate for the first time with an appetite, (The hospital food was most unappetizing and adapted to lumbermen rather than invalids), and when I reached Paris I found another lieutenant waiting for me with a limousine and Ernest who had most opportunely arrived the night before and had managed by chance to discover the hour of my arrival. We proceeded together to the hotel where I found a nice room with a fire and a bunch of roses and where Gertrude Exly and Miss Morgan were both waiting up to greet me. I had been away 22 days and in bed for 16 of them (I was at that hospital 10 days) my but it was good to see Ernest. I had hoped against hope that he would reach headquarters before I arrived. It seems he isn't going there at all and I had timed my arrival most neatly to meet him here where he will be for a week or so. He came around here Saturday morning and again in the afternoon and we had arranged that he would come to lunch on Sunday. I thought I might be able to get out but meanwhile Miss Morgan asked me if I would not like to see Major A. Lambert the head doctor of the Red Cross who is in this hotel. He does no medical work here only organizing and this was a great favor which of course I was delighted to accept as he is a very distinguished

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general practitioner and could give me just the advice I needed
about how much to do, etc. He is a perfect dear and came up
yesterday morning and ordered me to stay in bed 24 hours more at
least in "even temperature". He is going to continue to make me
gargle, spray, etc., and will see that I get readjusted to life and
weather in the right way, so you see I am very lucky. I feel very
well now. I was pretty tired the day after my journey but now I
only cough a little and my ear has given no trouble. If I continue
to be deaf I shall have to have it "blown up" in a few days. I have
come out of this much more luckily than most people and have been
wonderfully treated by our Army as you see from this long account.
The only thing to lament is the awful loss of time, already 3 solid
weeks lost, and I fear I sha'n't be in condition to do real work for
another week. So I shall be obliged to stay long enough to make
up for it or else be accounted a complete failure by everybody.
As you see the Army has given me exceptional opportunities. My army
sight-seeing was only half done and I had at least a month of writing
to do on that alone and the other NR work only half done, but of
this in another letter soon, I want to get this off. I didn't send
it from there as it had to be censored in the hospital and I couldn't
have said much of anything of interest with that knowledge, also I
hated to have you know me in hospital till I was out of it. I
have given away no military secrets as you see and name no names,
being under oath in that respect. Ernest looked tired when I first
saw him, having had a tiring arrival, but looked much rested yesterday
and seems well and in good spirits. I have enjoined him to gargle,
etc., as he had the beginnings of a cold and he promised to. He
spent half the day here yesterday lunching with me in my room and
helping me receive M. Halevey, etc. in the p.m. It is great to
see him and find he likes his job, his major and his fellows so much.
I will write K. next. It is a disappointment not to be able to go
about with him, but I hope to before the end of the week. I got a
bunch of letters from home at hospital just at Xmas, but could not
reply as I would like at the hospital either, where all letters are
read by doctors. Best love to all.

Elsie.

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