Lines began to form at the grocers and the butchers. One waited and waited and waited. My servants spent most of the day in the early months of 1918 in sugar and meat-lines. All over Paris it was faire la queue for everything, even for tobacco and matches.
Although it was an expensive proposition, I found it necessary, with my large family and constant guests, to buy groceries through an agent. A large English firm seemed to be able to furnish everything—if you paid their price. The order-man who came around every week was a rascal named Grimes. He had the genius of a book-agent, and worked you for an order by playing on your fears. Here is a monologue that I wrote out one day just to record how Grimes sold things.
"Rice? First-class American rice?" (Why Grimes called rice "American" was more than I could understand.) "Still got a little of it—please don't ask me the price. Don't think of that now. Better let me put you down for a hundred pounds of it and just shut your eyes to money. Golden syrup? Just brought three cases of it up from Bordeaux myself. No telling when we will see any more. The submarines are worse than ever: awful, isn't it, but it's best that the newspapers don't tell us the truth. I'm going to let you have two dozen tins of syrup if you don't tell anyone. It's on account of your kiddies. I recommend that you don't let older people touch it. Stack it away for the time when your sugar card—I'm not pessimistic, but I believe you can't be too sure about sugar cards. A funny fellow over at our place said a neat thing: 'It's hard to believe in a paper shortage when the Government has voted sugar cards and those new identity cards.' Biscuits, when have you and I seen a biscuit? I got a few cases in from America. I'll let you have some. I'll reserve a couple of hams and some sides of bacon and hang them in our cellar for you. Gad, you're lucky to have those four babies. It's only because they need the bacon this winter that I give it to you. Now, didn't I tell you that you must not think about money? Trust me to give you a square price. It's safe to say that the beans and other dried vegetables I'm letting you have will make you shiver when you get the bill. But if this order figures up to two thousand francs, you can rest assured that three months from now it would cost you three thousand francs. And six months from now, with all the good will in the world, I couldn't get you the stuff.
"No use mentioning flour. Can't give you any. They say that the Government is meeting on the quiet half the price of the flour before the bakers see it. Comes high but it pays 'em to keep the people quiet. Everything else can go up, but not bread. No m'am, I say it positively; got to give 'em bread and the chance to have a little fun." (I'm sure that Grimes never studied Roman history, but he had arrived at the formula of panem et circenses.) "But we shan't starve. Better off in France than they are in England or Germany. Save the bread for lunch and tea: give the children a cereal in the morning. Just by luck, I have a few cases of American oatmeal and hominy grits.
"Of course, the porridge means milk. I know what you're going to say. But I've got hold of powdered milk made in Brittany. They say it's an American invention. Only one big tin to a person, but then you're six and we'll count the babies as grown ups. You can't tell how long they'll be able to keep transporting milk to the city. Order as much canned goods as I can give you. Canneries are running out of tin. Food we put up in paraffined paste-board doesn't keep very well, and there is mighty little paste-board.
"It's a good thing you don't depend upon cocktails to keep you going. I have a big auto-taxi ticking out there. The man who is going to pay for it would be glad to let it tick all night just so he got what is inside. One hundred bottles of gin. You know, the ordinary five-franc gin. I'm going to get thirty francs a bottle at the Hotel Meurice bar. But they'll be two bottles short. There they are—yours—right under my hat on the table.
"Now please let me read over the order. Not a luxury on it. Macaroni, beans, lentils, prunes, dried-apricots, salt, and yes, there must be some soap. Better let me put you down for a good hundred bars. The Marseilles people tell us they have got to stop making it soon."
Then he resumed his reading, and I didn't dare to say a word. On those rare occasions I was pensive. My husband would say: "You don't need to tell me. That scoundrel Grimes has been here. Good Lord, I wish we had an anti-hording law, like England."
"But, oh, Herbert, the children you know."
I tell this story because I believe it illustrates the thought that was uppermost in the minds of Paris women. We had faith in our armies. We stuck to our homes. We were willing to stand anything. But the constant talk of food shortage got on our nerves. We pictured our children without milk and fats and bread. It was not hard for the Grimeses to fill pages in their order-books. And you could not reason with us that laying in supplies was a sin against the community.