My room, my dominion, my home—how I love it! It is fairly large, but larger still is the bed, which is a dominion in itself. Alongside it I am an incident, and alongside of me the piano is an episode. The massive orange armoire, topped by my two suitcases and a hatbox, towers in vain when I look up at it in the early morning from my eider-down fastness—or (see Father) slowness. “My bed is like a little boat” no more than it is like Central Park—in fact, the darling Espagne would seem small beside it. To enter the room, to comb the hair, to wash the hands, to exit from the room, you must insinuate yourself between the bed and the wall. I might say there’s no getting around it.
I call the armoire Richard Cœur de Lion—it is strong and all-embracing. I have no bureau, but dress—instead of eat—“off” the mantelpiece. Everything is dumped into the armoire—ribbons, collars, dresses, shoes, books, chewing-gum, hats, furs, et al., and believe me, they stand not on the order of their going! I will say, though, before Mother’s last whitened tress is wound up on her finger and put away in a little Altman box at the back of her right-hand bureau drawer, that I keep things pretty well arranged on the different shelves and in the little drawers, my best clothes being left in my wardrobe trunk, but my orderliness (so-called) is due to no virtue of my own, but to the fact that I never wear anything but my blue serge dress, my old blue coat, heavy underwear, old tan boots and rubbers—never, except during giddy interregna of the old “battleship gray.” Always put on in the morning what you took off the night before, is my sine qua non—which doesn’t make any sense, but you know what I mean.
For chairs, I have one armchair of imitation red leather, which is stiff and smooth and cold, but when I cover it over with my two sweaters to take the edge off, as it were, it does very well. Then there are two little chairs made so that you sit on them diagonally,—I’ve always thought them an abomination,—but I never sit in them, just spread my clothes out on them at night. Then I have a small straight chair which goes with the little table that serves as desk.
My rugs—Heaven save the name!—are three irregular strips of carpet—one red (a little purpler than the chair) with navy-blue fleurs-de-lys (you will remember that the wallpaper is pink and gold); the other two, gray in background, with a design which would seem to be conventionalized lyre-birds and sculpins sparring in a whirlpool. It takes the two strips to show the pattern—perhaps it is the great-grandchild of a gobelin nightmare.
I have no place for my books. Indeed, I didn’t have any books when I started out, except my dictionaries, but Mrs. Bigelow has left me ten Baedekers, and any number of books and magazines have been lent me. I stack them up on the piano, but it is very untidy.
I have a little “cabinet” with a wash-bowl and running water, and I have squeezed my trunk in, too. I don’t mind being cramped, but it is fierce to invite any one in to take tea. Of course, if I had a divan or folding sofa instead of the Royal Couch, things would be simple. I have thought it over, and have hesitated less on account of the expense of buying one than the forfeiture of my one real source of comfort. I had Mrs. Bigelow and Mrs. Shurtleff and Miss Curtis and Miss Sturgis in one day for tea, and I had to sit on the bed and practically entertain through the bars. Mrs. Shurtleff is very anxious for me to get a sofa,—it’s just impossible, of course, to let any of the Ambulance men come to call here,—but I don’t know. I may get a little hanging bookcase. Just try, yourself, living without a bureau, a desk, a bookcase, or a rug, and see how screaming it is. This last week, I spent most of the time I was in the house sitting on a little hassock with my back to the radiator. It has been bitter cold, and we had three centimeters of snow, and there is hardly any coal. Mme. H—— doesn’t turn on the electricity in the morning, and turns it off at 10.45 at night, and the heat goes off about 8.30, and we can’t have fires in our rooms, and it is freezing. When I even mention these little inconveniences, I remind myself of the picture that came out in “Punch” about two years ago: a silly ass reading the newspaper and saying, “They’ve stopped the cinemas at Brighton, by Jove! That does bring the war home to one!” You should hear what my boys write to me about the cold in the trenches.
Now for the wonder in my ménage—I have a piano. One day I left the house determined to get a mouth-organ if nothing else,—I had whistled and sung quite enough,—and I was such a pest in other people’s houses, when I discovered their pianos, that I decided to do something desperate. I found a little piano-store on rue Denfert-Rochereau, with a little upright, and a darling blind piano-maker and his worried little wife—everything little. When I found that the upright (with brass candle-brackets) would be mine to command for twelve francs a month, I said, “Have it charged and sent,” in my best Lord & Taylor style.
Well, it came. It came the next morning when I was still in bed, and I had to crawl into my wardrobe trunk while it was being installed. When the heavy footsteps had echoed down the hall, I sprang forward like any Eurydice, in my dollar-ninety-eight robe de nuit. I played and played, and was a little late to the Vestiaire that morning. I had a long hard day that day, and almost forgot my new treasure until after dinner, when I sat down on the piano-stool. I was casting about for some music—any music—to play, when Mlle. Germain, a French girl here, came in and offered a copy of the Beethoven Symphonies. I struck up the Fifth, and, believe me, it was like solid ground beneath my feet. Since then I have eaten up all five—it’s only the first book that she has. We went to a concert given in a little room (I thought it was a bar when I first went in,—marble-topped tables and men smoking), but there was no symphony. I haven’t had time to go to another lately.
In spite of remembering the Steinway at home, you can imagine how happy I am with my little piano, even if it does come up barely to my hip. It is usually out of tune, and is very painful, but the little blind man comes with his wife and tunes it, and I couldn’t send it back. I play with a bicycle face my whole repertoire;—but I tell you I’m gay, and I’ve learned to watch out at the end of the F major étude not to crack my elbow against the foot of the bed, for I find that my bed gives out a metallic sound when rapped sharply with a bone. I stick my umbrella into the brass handle at the side of the piano, and then I have a “piano à queue”! After a few hours of reading Beethoven, Mlle. Germain and I get out a piece of French gâteau from the armoire and cut off a couple of slices with my shoe-horn, and sit around in our pajamas and discuss music and education and politics—and our complexions. All too soon the lights go out on us, and she says, “Bon soir, chère Mademoiselle,” and goes off down the hall by the light of her last cigarette. Oh, we do have good times!
I must tell you about the maids, for they are no inconsiderable part of my days. There are two femmes de chambre, both small, and dark, and very young. I was reading in my room one night after I had been here about a week, when Mélanie came to turn down my bed. I, thinking to turn my French on any victim, started to ask her questions about where her home was, etc. She told me that she and Maria were both from the North—Pas-de-Calais—and that they had had to come to Paris to work after their husbands had been killed early in the war.