Highest praises are always given to the Swiss. They have given warm clothes, warm food, and a warm welcome to countless refugees that I have talked to.
What you say about the feeling in America, that France at the end of the war will be safe from the encroachment of other nations for generations, sounds encouraging, but does that imply that the end of the war is a long way off? I have been astonished ever since coming to France to find the general expectation is for an early termination of hostilities—very early, this spring or next fall at the latest. My opinion was formed almost entirely by the “New Republic” and the Frank H. Simonds articles in the “Atlantic” and in the “Tribune,” so that I considered the fall of 1918 to be the most logical time to hope for the end. What the Allies have to do seems still well-nigh insurmountable, but to my surprise, young and old, rich or poor, wise or foolish, seem sure that 1917 is, indeed, l’année de la victoire et de la paix. I can’t tell whether it is because they wish it so hard or because to people who have seen and are living among the results of such tremendous desolation, it seems impossible for it to go on longer.
Please send more “New York Tribunes.” You have no idea how they are appreciated by all of us. I took the ones Mother sent over to the Shurtleffs, then over to Mrs. Houpt’s, then up to Miss Dorr’s when I went to tea one afternoon, and when I asked some people in they were the features of my party. The W. E. Hill drawing of “scenes in the hat department” brought down the house.
We haven’t seen such good war pictures over here at all, and the pictures of the stage and society and art exhibitions, etc., are fascinating. It is wonderful to know that such things are going on. Then for news, the regular “Tribune” was gobbled up. We have only these punk French papers and the punker “New York Paris Herald,” which costs three cents and consists of one sheet of four pages—of nothing. We read, “Quiet night on the front”; “Wilson presses investigation of ——, may write note to Germany”; and accounts of the London dog shows morning after morning. Take pity. And especially the magazine sections of the “Sunday Tribune,” and more stuff by Hill!
Now for my Hymn of Hate which is in this case a Hymn of Heat. I am cold. This is a theme which has been elaborated in every degree of variation, and amplification since December 23, 1916, I think. I wrote you about that time that our steam heating had died suddenly and ingloriously, so it was with relief that I read in your letters of this morning no trace of worry about how I was managing to exist. All the old wiseacres that I meet, and this includes Mrs. Shurtleff, shake their heads and say, “If your father and mother knew how you were living, what would they say?” and I think to myself, “They would probably think it was jolly well good for me—and that it was a terrific joke.”
As I said, the Chauffage Central didn’t marché on December 23, and hadn’t marché-d since. The proprietor says he can’t get any coal, and this may be true enough, for the Seine has been rising and rising, and a few days ago was higher than at any time since the floods of '08. Great quantities of coal are at Rouen, but the transports can’t get under the bridges to bring it to Paris, with the river so high. It seems that almost every one’s proprietor was far-seeing enough to get in a huge supply last summer, but ours was probably strolling along some sunny beach and never gave the question a thought. To-day Mme. H—— heard that he has been laying in coal at his residence this last week, and still won’t provide for us. The only indemnity he can be made to give is five francs a day per apartment, and it costs about two francs per room a day to keep heated by coal or wood. The five francs pays to keep alive the stove that Madame has had put in the dining-room and for the extra gas she uses in cooking.
And where do we come in, we pensionnaires? We buy our own coal or wood or petrol stove, as the case may be, and it’s very hard on some of us, particularly Mlle. Germain. And on top of all this, we freeze.
I thought at first that it would be lovely to have a darling little fire every night, and I never thought what it would be to get hold of darling little logs and then make them burn. For a week or two it was more or less fun and very war-y, but the drawbacks begin to pall after weeks. You see the fireplace is only nineteen inches wide (I measured it with the little blue tape measure Mother gave me), and the logs I burn are about twelve inches long. So at best the heat penetrates to a maximum distance of five feet. And finally the logs they send me are wet—and you can’t get kindling. If you could imagine the amount of time I have spent kneeling in my fur coat before the miniature fireplace trying to light a couple of wet logs with an old copy of the “Herald,” you would certainly smile. Here’s where the cases from home came in strong. Our good helper Agatha and I split them into kindling and made two bundles and I carried them home. It is typical of the Latin Quarter that no one gave me a second glance as I strode along the street with a big bundle of wood on each shoulder. They burned as nothing ever has burned in my sight before. I told Mrs. Shurtleff that I was going to write next for a case of kindling from America!
Fortunately it is not as cold here as it is in New York, although this confounded thermometer means so little to me that I can’t tell you just what it is. Some days it’s zero, others it’s 2, and in the house it’s 5 or 7, and it feels just as cold as that would be on good old Fahrenheit. It’s just as cozy to live in my room these days as it would be to live in a tent out on Place Denfert-Rochereau. I can see my breath if I care to look, but I’m tired of it as we approach the fifth week. I wear my fur coat most of the time and sometimes my hat, and settle down on a hassock in front of whatever fire there is, to read. I have tried wearing gloves, but the pages stick so that I lose in temper what I make up for in warmth. To play my piano is like playing on icicles. But I play just the same and then go into the kitchen to warm my hands. I have Louise put some of my wet logs on the back of the stove when she has been cooking and it has dried them out fairly successfully.
You can imagine what getting up in the morning is like. If it weren’t immodest I’d like to dress out on my balcony, for I think the temperature would be an improvement. The very walls of the room are cold, they haven’t been heated for so long. And as for touching the bare floor or a door-handle! Really, had I the tongue of Greeks or Jews or possibly Siberians or Esquimaux I would describe our home atmosphere, which makes itself felt as it whistles under the doors and around the windows—but not unless. But I wouldn’t think of moving even if I knew of any warm place to go. The people are just like a big family and I’ll never desert Mme. H. —— Micawber. It will be lovely in the spring.