Fighting France, from Dunkerque to Belfort
()
About this ebook
Edith Wharton was one of the first woman writers to be allowed to visit the war zones in France. This resulting collection of 6 essays presents a fascinating and unique perspective on wartime France by one of America’s great novelists. Written with Wharton’s distinctive literary skills to advocate American intervention in the war, this little-known war text demonstrates that she was a complex and accomplished propagandist.
However, these eyewitness accounts also demonstrate a troubling awareness of the human cost of war.
Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton (1862–1937) was an American novelist—the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Age of Innocence in 1921—as well as a short story writer, playwright, designer, reporter, and poet. Her other works include Ethan Frome, The House of Mirth, and Roman Fever and Other Stories. Born into one of New York’s elite families, she drew upon her knowledge of upper-class aristocracy to realistically portray the lives and morals of the Gilded Age.
Read more from Edith Wharton
The Custom of the Country Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Writing of Fiction: The Classic Guide to the Art of the Short Story and the Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Children Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Mother's Recompense Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summer Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Glimpses of the Moon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Touchstone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Son at the Front Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Roman Fever and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Old Maid: The 'Fifties Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Manhattan Noir 2: The Classics Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Reef Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Collected Short Stories of Edith Wharton Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Works of Edith Wharton. Illustrated: The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome and others Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Custom of the Country Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Backward Glance: An Autobiography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Roman Fever: Short Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/550 Feminist Masterpieces you have to read before you die (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5In Morocco Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Greatest American Short Stories: 50+ Classics of American Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Short Stories Of Edith Wharton - Volume I: Madame de Treymes & Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In Morocco Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Children Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Italian Villas and Their Gardens Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTwilight Sleep Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Related to Fighting France, from Dunkerque to Belfort
Related ebooks
Fighting France, from Dunkerque to Belfort Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFighting France Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWar & Travel: “There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that receives it.” Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEurope from a Motor Car Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGlories of Spain Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRoman Holidays, and Others Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Little Tour in France Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sunny South: An Autumn in Spain and Majorca Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPrince Otto: A Romance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTale Of A Soldier Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Year in Paris: Season by Season in the City of Light Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5In the Land of Mosques & Minarets Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Midsummer Drive Through the Pyrenees Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNisida - 1825 (Celebrated Crimes Series) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Treasury of Regrets Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Spring Walk in Provence Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMy .75: Reminiscences of a Gunner of a .75m/ m Battery in 1914 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVoltaire Almighty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Prince Otto Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Little Tour in France (1884) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Moon Endureth: "The best prayers have often more groans than words." Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVignettes: A Miniature Journal of Whim and Sentiment Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEdinburgh: Picturesque Notes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPaul and Virginia from the French of J.B.H. de Saint Pierre Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPierre and Luce Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNotre Dame de Paris Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hunchback of Notre-Dame Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBetween the Thunder and the Sun: A Correspondent’s View of War Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Marne: The Story of a Battle that Saved Paris and Marked a Turning Point of World War I Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTwo classic novels ISFJ will love Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Essays, Study, and Teaching For You
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Way I Heard It Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Human Nature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmerican Values: Lessons I Learned from My Family Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Profiles in Courage: Deluxe Modern Classic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Defining Moments in Black History: Reading Between the Lies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Truth: Sex, Love, Commitment, and the Puzzle of the Male Mind Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History That Turned a Generation against America Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Complete Papers and Writings of Abraham Lincoln Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Story of the Trapp Family Singers Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Reconstruction Updated Edition: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-18 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Handy History Answer Book: From the Stone Age to the Digital Age Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Souls of Black Folk: The Unabridged Classic Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Barbie and Ruth: The Story of the World's Most Famous Doll and the Woman Who Created Her Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Modern Times Revised Edition: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5My Grandfather's Son: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Trail of Tears:The 19th Century Forced Migration of Native Americans Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5AP® U.S. History Crash Course, 4th Ed., Book + Online Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFounding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Whose Middle Ages?: Teachable Moments for an Ill-Used Past Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mossad: The Greatest Missions of the Israeli Secret Service Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Story of America: Essays on Origins Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related categories
Reviews for Fighting France, from Dunkerque to Belfort
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Fighting France, from Dunkerque to Belfort - Edith Wharton
Table of contents
FIGHTING FRANCE, FROM DUNKERQUE TO BELFORT
The Look of Paris
I: August
II
III: February
In Argonne
I
II
In Lorraine and the Vosges
In the North
In Alsace
The Tone of France
FIGHTING FRANCE, FROM DUNKERQUE TO BELFORT
The Look of Paris
(August, 1914-Febuary, 1915)
I: August
On the 30th of July, 1914, motoring north from Poitiers, we had lunched somewhere by the roadside under apple–trees on the edge of a field. Other fields stretched away on our right and left to a border of woodland and a village steeple. All around was noonday quiet, and the sober disciplined landscape which the traveller's memory is apt to evoke as distinctively French. Sometimes, even to accustomed eyes, these ruled–off fields and compact grey villages seem merely flat and tame; at other moments the sensitive imagination sees in every thrifty sod and even furrow the ceaseless vigilant attachment of generations faithful to the soil. The particular bit of landscape before us spoke in all its lines of that attachment. The air seemed full of the long murmur of human effort, the rhythm of oft–repeated tasks, the serenity of the scene smiled away the war rumours which had hung on us since morning.
All day the sky had been banked with thunder–clouds, but by the time we reached Chartres, toward four o'clock, they had rolled away under the horizon, and the town was so saturated with sunlight that to pass into the cathedral was like entering the dense obscurity of a church in Spain. At first all detail was imperceptible; we were in a hollow night. Then, as the shadows gradually thinned and gathered themselves up into pier and vault and ribbing, there burst out of them great sheets and showers of colour. Framed by such depths of darkness, and steeped in a blaze of mid–summer sun, the familiar windows seemed singularly remote and yet overpoweringly vivid. Now they widened into dark–shored pools splashed with sunset, now glittered and menaced like the shields of fighting angels. Some were cataracts of sapphires, others roses dropped from a saint's tunic, others great carven platters strewn with heavenly regalia, others the sails of galleons bound for the Purple Islands; and in the western wall the scattered fires of the rose–window hung like a constellation in an African night. When one dropped one's eyes form these ethereal harmonies, the dark masses of masonry below them, all veiled and muffled in a mist pricked by a few altar lights, seemed to symbolize the life on earth, with its shadows, its heavy distances and its little islands of illusion. All that a great cathedral can be, all the meanings it can express, all the tranquilizing power it can breathe upon the soul, all the richness of detail it can fuse into a large utterance of strength and beauty, the cathedral of Chartres gave us in that perfect hour.
It was sunset when we reached the gates of Paris. Under the heights of St. Cloud and Suresnes the reaches of the Seine trembled with the blue–pink lustre of an early Monet. The Bois lay about us in the stillness of a holiday evening, and the lawns of Bagatelle were as fresh as June. Below the Arc de Triomphe, the Champs Elysees sloped downward in a sun–powdered haze to the mist of fountains and the ethereal obelisk; and the currents of summer life ebbed and flowed with a normal beat under the trees of the radiating avenues. The great city, so made for peace and art and all humanest graces, seemed to lie by her river–side like a princess guarded by the watchful giant of the Eiffel Tower.
The next day the air was thundery with rumours. Nobody believed them, everybody repeated them. War? Of course there couldn't be war! The Cabinets, like naughty children, were again dangling their feet over the edge; but the whole incalculable weight of things–as–they–were, of the daily necessary business of living, continued calmly and convincingly to assert itself against the bandying of diplomatic words. Paris went on steadily about her mid–summer business of feeding, dressing, and amusing the great army of tourists who were the only invaders she had seen for nearly half a century.
All the while, every one knew that other work was going on also. The whole fabric of the country's seemingly undisturbed routine was threaded with noiseless invisible currents of preparation, the sense of them was in the calm air as the sense of changing weather is in the balminess of a perfect afternoon. Paris counted the minutes till the evening papers came.
They said little or nothing except what every one was already declaring all over the country. "We don't want war— mais it faut que cela finisse!
This kind of thing has got to stop": that was the only phase one heard. If diplomacy could still arrest the war, so much the better: no one in France wanted it. All who spent the first days of August in Paris will testify to the agreement of feeling on that point. But if war had to come, the country, and every heart in it, was ready.
At the dressmaker's, the next morning, the tired fitters were preparing to leave for their usual holiday. They looked pale and anxious—decidedly, there was a new weight of apprehension in the air. And in the rue Royale, at the corner of the Place de la Concorde, a few people had stopped to look at a little strip of white paper against the wall of the Ministere de la Marine. General mobilization
they read—and an armed nation knows what that means. But the group about the paper was small and quiet. Passers by read the notice and went on. There were no cheers, no gesticulations: the dramatic sense of the race had already told them that the event was too great to be dramatized. Like a monstrous landslide it had fallen across the path of an orderly laborious nation, disrupting its routine, annihilating its industries, rending families apart, and burying under a heap of senseless ruin the patiently and painfully wrought machinery of civilization…
That evening, in a restaurant of the rue Royale, we sat at a table in one of the open windows, abreast with the street, and saw the strange new crowds stream by. In an instant we were being shown what mobilization was—a huge break in the normal flow of traffic, like the sudden rupture of a dyke. The street was flooded by the torrent of people sweeping past us to the various railway stations. All were on foot, and carrying their luggage; for since dawn every cab and taxi and motor—omnibus had disappeared. The War Office had thrown out its drag–net and caught them all in. The crowd that passed our window was chiefly composed of conscripts, the mobilisables of the first day, who were on the way to the station accompanied by their families and friends; but among them were little clusters of bewildered tourists, labouring along with bags and bundles, and watching their luggage pushed before them on hand–carts—puzzled inarticulate waifs caught in the cross–tides racing to a maelstrom.
In the restaurant, the befrogged and red–coated band poured out patriotic music, and the intervals between the courses that so few waiters were left to serve were broken by the ever–recurring obligation to stand up for the Marseillaise, to stand up for God Save the King, to stand up for the Russian National Anthem, to stand up again for the Marseillaise. " Et dire que ce sont des Hongrois qui jouent tout cela!" a humourist remarked from the pavement.
As the evening wore on and the crowd about our window thickened, the loiterers outside began to join in the war–songs. " Allons, debout! —and the loyal round begins again.
La chanson du depart" is a frequent demand; and the chorus of spectators chimes in roundly. A sort of quiet humour was the note of the street. Down the rue Royale, toward the Madeleine, the bands of other restaurants were attracting other throngs, and martial refrains were strung along the Boulevard like its garlands of arc–lights. It was a night of singing and acclamations, not boisterous, but gallant and determined. It was Paris badauderie at its best.
Meanwhile, beyond the fringe of idlers the steady stream of conscripts still poured along. Wives and families trudged beside them, carrying all kinds of odd improvised bags and bundles. The impression disengaging itself from all this superficial confusion was that of a cheerful steadiness of spirit. The faces ceaselessly streaming by were serious but not sad; nor was there any air of bewilderment—the stare of driven cattle. All these lads and young men seemed to know what they were about and why they were about it. The youngest of them looked suddenly grown up and responsible; they understood their stake in the job, and accepted it.
The next day the army of midsummer travel was immobilized to let the other army move. No more wild rushes to the station, no more bribing of concierges, vain quests for invisible cabs, haggard hours of waiting in the queue at Cook's. No train stirred except to carry soldiers, and the civilians who had not bribed and jammed their way into a cranny of the thronged carriages leaving the first night could only creep back through the hot streets to their hotel and wait. Back they went, disappointed yet half–relieved, to the resounding emptiness of porterless halls, waiterless restaurants, motionless lifts: to the queer disjointed life of fashionable hotels suddenly reduced to the intimacies and make–shift of a Latin Quarter pension. Meanwhile it was strange to watch the gradual paralysis of the city. As the motors, taxis, cabs and vans had vanished from the streets, so the lively little steamers had left the Seine. The canal–boats too were gone, or lay motionless: loading and unloading had ceased. Every great architectural opening framed an emptiness; all the endless avenues stretched away to desert distances. In the parks and gardens no one raked the paths or trimmed the borders. The fountains slept in their basins, the worried sparrows fluttered unfed, and vague dogs, shaken out of their daily habits, roamed unquietly, looking for familiar eyes. Paris, so intensely conscious yet so strangely entranced, seemed to have had curare injected into all her veins.
The next day—the 2nd of August—from the terrace of the Hotel de Crillon one looked down on a first faint stir of returning life. Now and then a