Do you wonder that our emotions are wearing us to a frazzle? It is not only feminine emotions that are affected, because there are those of our directors who said they could not go to St. Dunstan’s (the hospital school for blind soldiers) because they would not be able to sleep for nights afterwards. It is a mistake not to see such a wonderful place, however. There never was a more cheerful, hopeful place in the world. Sir Arthur Pearson, the blind man who runs the place and is its inspiration, is doing the kind of reconstructing of lives that probably has no parallel in the world. He is having the men taught not just the trades and occupations that blind men are taught in other places, but all sorts of things. We saw men learning anatomy, who after a year’s most strenuous training will be certificated masseurs. They take the regular examinations that the sighted people take and get excellent marks, and always get positions. There were men learning cobbling and carpentry, and chicken-farming and shorthand and typewriting and matmaking and weaving and basketry. The whole place was full of whistling, singing men who were going about their business as though they were like everybody else in the world instead of in total darkness forever. There were 500 of these men.
People tell me that English men and women have passed the emotional stage and have now settled down to work without the waste of riotous emotions and bursting feelings. It must be so or they would be dead, and they could not be doing the wonderful “war work” that each one of them is engaged in. From the highest to the lowest each woman has her work, her nursing, her preparing vegetables in hospitals (as Mrs. Waldorf Astor’s sister was doing), her making of supplies, her managing a hospital in a private house, her organizing “hostels” for nurses, raising funds, everything that one can conceive of as a job for women is being done, as never before. Of course the street-sweeping by women is a kind of war work, and the bus conductoring, and delivering mail and telegrams, and driving cars and ambulances. The streets are full of women in uniforms of all sorts, all smart and business-like. Women in England are coming into their own. What is to happen after the war when the men come back can well fill the minds of those who are given to prophesy changes, for a change is taking place here that can never be undone. In addition to women taking a new place in the working world, class distinctions are being broken down in a way that is making itself felt to those who a few years ago could never have dreamt that such a change was possible. A few days ago Miss Dunlop and I were lunching with a Lady H. on Carlton House Terrace, overlooking St. James Park. In front of her house is the famous Crimean monument, flanked on one side by the beautiful statue of Florence Nightingale and on the other side by a statue of the father of the husband of our hostess. In the course of the talk at the luncheon, which was most informal and frugal, the conversation turned to the most-talked-of subject at meals nowadays, her “work,” and Mrs. A., who has a thousand-bed hospital on her grounds at C. and who spends almost her entire time in the wards, not nursing but talking and cheering the men up, said the men don’t know it, but they are giving us far more than we are giving them, and Lady H. replied: “Our whole outlook is changing. Take, for instance, us here to-day. A short while ago you (meaning Miss D. and me) and we (meaning Mrs. A., Sir Harry L., the other guest, an elderly man who had recently lost his only son, and herself) would have had nothing in common, and now we have everything in the world.” This was said most simply and sincerely and was what she really felt.
I can’t tell you the number of people who have given us this same impression, and I can’t begin to tell you how they all have tried to express to us what they think about our coming over to help them. Many individuals have talked to us separately with tears in their eyes and the warmest handshakes, and we have had speeches made to us in theaters by actresses and managers, who have led the whole audience in cheers. We have been stopped constantly on the streets by people who have asked us if we were not some of the “American Sisters” and wasn’t there some way in which they could express to us their appreciation of what we had come to do. Could they not take us to their homes and give us tea, and could they not come to our hotel and take us out in groups to sightsee, and could they not send us tickets to this or that, and could they not make special arrangements to have Towers of London, and the Zoölogical Gardens and Lambeth Palaces and Houses of Parliament and such little things opened for us at unusual hours? We have been literally swamped with kindnesses. One officer has made himself almost a nuisance by giving us theater tickets for every single night and has been so insistent that every single nurse should go out to see something every night that we have come to dread his daily telephone calls or visits. Mrs. Page had a reception for us and Mrs. Whitelaw Reid, and the Archbishop of Canterbury asked us to tea, and we spent a wonderful afternoon at Cliveden, and Sir Thomas Lipton sent us all chocolates and invited some of us to motor out to his place. The Royal Overseas Officers Club gave a reception for us, the American Woman’s Club opened its doors to us. We have been sent choir seats at St. Paul’s for special services and special tickets to the Royal Investiture, and there have been a number of other things which lords and ladies of high degree have asked us to in greater or lesser groups.
To-morrow there is luncheon for me at Lady P.’s (a St. Louis woman whose sister I know), then a motor ride to somewhere on the Thames to see a hospital where the nursing is done by New Zealand women. In the evening there is dinner for Miss D. and me with Mrs. F., the editor of the British Journal of Nursing, and after that I hope to get out to Elizabeth M.’s to spend the night, as I am afraid that will be my last chance to see her, as we are due to leave Saturday the 9th. I spent a most beautiful Sunday with her last Sunday, going to church with her in the morning and just sitting and talking with her most of the afternoon. She has two splendid boys, Jim just four and John about 18 months. Jim, Sr., is doing three men’s work, it would seem, on the go from early morning till 10 or 11 at night. E. seems very well. She is this year most sensibly putting all her time into taking care of her men folks large and small. I had a little call this afternoon on Lady H.-H., and found her most lovely to look at and charming. We had such a nice talk and wasted no time on preliminaries. I am going to a special service with her in the morning at Westminster Abbey in St. Faith’s Chapel. My nurses are all pawing the ground, they are so eager to get to work.
Lovingly,
Julia.
Extract from letter from Lady H.-H. to Mrs.
L. in New York:—
“Thank you for sending me a letter by your most interesting and delightful niece. I wish I might have seen more of her and her wonderful contingent of nurses. I went to the Waldorf Hotel to talk to them all at 8:30 on Friday night. I can’t tell you what I said, but they seemed satisfied and I felt that it drew me nearer to you and your wonderful nation, and I wish it were possible to come to you and help you bear the heavy cross and suspense and anxiety. I know every step of the way and what it means, the long, weary march on the road of sorrow. But now God has let me see the glory and the triumph of it all, and I am no longer afraid.”
France, Monday, June 11, 1917.
Dearest Daddy and Mother
and all of you:—
We have at last arrived! I wish I could tell you where, but I can’t. This much I believe I can say, that it is on the outskirts of a large city, a beautiful old city. Our particular hospital is on a race course, which looks now like a vast circus establishment or a county fair, for it is covered with rows and rows of canvas tents, each of which holds about 14 beds. All around the edge are lovely thick trees, sycamores and locust they seem to be, under which are small conical tents, small single-room shacks of canvas and paper, and long, single-story “huts,” as they are called. These huts are made of thin wood and roofed with tarred paper and are divided into single cubicles, the whole hut accommodating about 16 or 18 people. This part that I am describing is the nurses’ corner of the paddock. It is really very beautiful, for the grass and hedges and trees are so green, and along the walks are little flower-beds, and pansies and geraniums and roses are all in bloom. If one looked only at this corner of the huge place, one might imagine oneself in some summer camp at home. But just a few hundred yards away are those scores of tents full of wounded, and every night more are brought in and others are sent away. This of course is the most beautiful time of year. The trees are full of birds, who chirp and sing all day long. And every few minutes along the road on the other side of our hedge troops go marching by. Some have bands and some whistle their marching tunes, but all march on and on. There are any number of hospital establishments like this all around here, and also thousands of troops of all sorts are in camp near. We got just a little glimpse of the situation as we were driven out here in huge motor ambulances from the station.