20/7/19                                                                                 D.B.Bearman

                                                                               Friends War Victims Relief Cttee.

                                                                                                 A.P.O. 

                                                                                                    S.5.

                                                                                           B.E.F.      France

 

Dear Mère

I suppose you will have received my letter during the week – I forget which day I posted it but probably Wednesday. Since then I have made many new departures – in fact I really ought to keep a diary, ’mais ca ne fait rien’.

Thursday night Dr. Henry Hodgkin – passing through to Grange –le-Comte meeting this weekend – addressed us & we had quite a fine serious interlude. The keynote of his address was the sins of our age – those we are becoming conscious of & therefore growing out of. And in the first rank of these be placed ’exploitation’ – the using of or even the looking upon men as means instead of ends. It was a splendid, unaffected, unstrained, natural talk & he embraced the whole colour question in his address. 

Friday I cottoned on to some of the young Americans and we availed ourselves of the standing invitation to members of our mission to go to the YWCA (French & therefore Y.Mlle.C.A) girl’s English club. We played games – it is the rule that they all talk English though naturally practically all French girls – such simple games & so funny in pidgeon English. Our two(?) games were ’Snake’? – sitting in a circle & passing an handkerchief along so smartlyt hat the one standing in the centre is not able to touch you while it is in your posession, when you would go to centre & ’’Fruit basket upset’, where you all have names of fruit, & the one standing in the centre names two who have to change places before he or she can bag one of their chairs, etc. We then had some dancing & I got a couple of the sauciest to waltz with me – different waltzes of course. One of them was telling me how an English officer tried to kiss her on the Grand Boulevards late Monday night (14th). He only kissed her on the neck ’which did not matter’. I expressed my surprise, & explained my confirmed opinion that Parisian girls did not mind being kissed. She hesitated & then made the delightful rejoincal… ? but which I believe not to be true – ’not on the streets’. Well! Que voulez vous? What a pity I was not born with more mother-wit – but I laughed & as Père would say, that was all I said.These fairies are a little bit ahead of me. // Saturday afternoon Walter Bowerman, a splendid fellow, & myself cycled out through the Bois de Vincennes – east – to the Marne, beyond Nogent & had a most delightful swim which has made me feel fine and fit & quite anglo Saxon again – quite a Blonde Bête (a stupid blond) – until this afternoon anyhow. We went to the pictures (cinema) in the evening.

This morning W.B. again and myself cycled to the Rue de Théatre just beyond the Champs de Mars & attended the French Friends Quaker Meeting at Madame Dalencourt’s. It was strangely interesting, all in French. But they are very mystical and other worldly.

This afternoon Walter Bowerman had asked me to reserve for a visit to a family in Passey – the wealthy residential west end of Paris. Mdlle, the aunt (Madame’s sister) has just returned from Spain where she has been tutor to the King of Spain’s children. We cycled there again. They have a fine old house standing in its own grounds, & they keep a couple of rabbits anyhow, for we had to help catch them on first arriving. I will not attempt to describe Mlle, the daughter – who I took for about 26, but it seems is only 19 – but one thing hit me. She was dressed with a strange simplicity, as indeed they all were, and yet she was about the best dressed girl I have seen. There were three other Mlles present, all of the richer class of Parisians, of whom a Mlle Madeleine was very pretty. It is the little details that hold one in these people. Both this Mlle & the daughter have most fairy lips which one cannot help watching. The daughter speaks English perfectly & I unburdened my heart to her on the subject of my disappointment in Faust at the Opéra. She later played the violin twice with piano and organ accompaniments,& twice as a solo with piano. The second of the latter was Handel’s Lago at my request, & she simply made it throb. (I have been learning it lately on the piano here)

Then we all adjourned to the garden & played more simple games – games which English people would rather be bored to death I imagine at something serious, than play. But these people have a genius for making simple things charming. The first game was for one to go down the garden and everyone else to say ’’pourquoi’ – why he or she was sitting down, referring ? to when they have returned – anything silly will do, such as because you are joly, or beautiful, or tall, etc. & you have to guess who said it of you. Mlle Madeleine was the first & was told that someone had said ’pasque je t’aime’ – because I like you, & the silly little creature guessed it was me who had said it. As if I should have used the familiar tu in any case. It was very amusing but not in the least embarrasing, for one is never embarrased in Paris – not scarcely self conscious. After my walk down the garden, I was told that some one had said because I was sympathetic & I guessed rightly that it was the aunt. In a later game, Mlle the daughter had to cross question us all – But what an animated picture she was to look upon! We had to leave to get home for dinner at 7.00pm. But I shall not forget those grown up children in a hurry. The daughter has passed no end of examinations & I think a licentiate of music, but is none the less a girl, with an initiative & abandon & restraint & wit, an English woman would scarcely dream of.

Well I must close. We had a very quiet Quaker meeting tonight: but I spoke a little on the ideal Service of giving v. enjoyment & receiving & quoted Lord Lytton’s verse as a description of what Hell might be like: realizing how we have failed to serve.

                             ’Since all that I can ever do for thee

                             Is to do nothing: this my prayer must be:

                             That thou shalt never know nor ever dream

                             The all-endured that nothing done cost me’

 

Love to all

Yours affectionately

             Don