Moreover, as soon as the men began to come home on their six days' leave they found their way to the generous ouvroir on the Boulevard Haussmann, where Madame Waddington, or her friend Mrs. Greene (also an American), or Madame Mygatt, always gave the poor men what they needed to replace their tattered (or missing) undergarments, as well as coffee and bread and butter.
The most difficult women to employ were those who had been accustomed to make embroidery and lace, as well as many who had led pampered lives in a small way and did not know how to sew at all. But one-franc-fifty stood between them and starvation and they learned. To-day nearly all of the younger women assisted by those first ouvroirs are more profitably employed. France has adjusted itself to a state of war and thousands of women are either in Government service and munition factories, or in the reopened shops and restaurants.
III
The Waddingtons being the great people of their district were, of course, looked upon by the peasant farmers and villagers as aristocrats of illimitable wealth. Therefore when the full force of the war struck these poor people—they were in the path of the Germans during the advance on Paris, and ruthlessly treated—they looked to Madame Waddington and her daughter, Madame Francis Waddington, to put them on their feet again.
Francis Waddington, to whom the château descended, was in the trenches, but his mother and wife did all they could, as soon as the Germans had been driven back, to relieve the necessities of the dazed and miserable creatures whose farms had been devastated and shops rifled or razed. Some time, by the way, Madame Waddington may tell the dramatic story of her daughter-in-law's escape. She was alone in the château with her two little boys when the Mayor of the nearest village dashed up with the warning that the Germans were six kilometers away, and the last train was about to leave.
She had two automobiles, but her chauffeur had been mobilized and there was no petrol. She was dressed for dinner, but there was no time to change. She threw on a cloak and thinking of nothing but her children went off with the Mayor in hot haste to catch the train. From that moment on for five or six days, during which time she never took off her high-heeled slippers with their diamond buckles, until she reached her husband in the North, her experience was one of the side dramas of the war.
I think it was early in 1915 that Madame Waddington wrote in Scribner's Magazine a description of her son's château as it was after the Germans had evacuated it. But the half was not told. It never can be, in print. Madame Huard, in her book, My Home on the Field of Honor, is franker than most of the current historians have dared to be, and the conditions which she too found when she returned after the German retreat may be regarded as the prototype of the disgraceful and disgusting state in which these lovely country homes of the French were left; not by lawless German soldiers but by officers of the first rank. Madame Francis Waddington did not even run upstairs to snatch her jewel case, and of course she never saw it again. Her dresses had been taken from the wardrobes and slashed from top to hem by the swords of these incomprehensible barbarians. The most valuable books in the library were gutted. But these outrages are almost too mild to mention.
IV
The next task after the city ouvroir was in running order was to teach the countrywomen how to sew for the soldiers and pay them for their work. The region of the Aisne is agricultural where it is not heavily wooded. Few of the women had any skill with the needle. The two Madame Waddingtons concluded to show these poor women with their coarse red hands how to knit until their fingers grew more supple. This they took to very kindly, knitting jerseys and socks; and since those early days both the Paris and country ouvroirs had sent (June, 1916) twenty thousand packages to the soldiers. Each package contained a flannel shirt, drawers, stomach band, waistcoat or jersey, two pairs of socks, two handkerchiefs, a towel, a piece of soap. Any donations of tobacco or rolled cigarettes were also included.
This burden in the country has been augmented heavily by refugees from the invaded districts. Of course they come no more these days, but while I was in Paris they were still pouring down, and as the Waddington estate was often in their line of march they simply camped in the park and in the garage. Of course they had to be clothed, fed, and generally assisted.