While I was there General Grant brought me over to Vaux. What a hall! Surely the most beautiful thing of a private nature in existence, with its blue dome and black eagle at the top.
I left one evening and stopped in Paris that night. There were two air raids, and in the morning I heard Big Bertha for the first time, and when we left about 10 o'clock, just past St. Denis, a Boche 'plane came over to see where the shells were falling.
There was a wonderful service in the Cathedral at Amiens one morning, the first since the bombardment, a thanksgiving for the deliverance of the city from shell-fire. The Boche had been driven further back and the old city was out of shell-range and at peace. It was a lovely morning with a strong breeze, a little sixteenth-century Virgin had been rescued from Albert Cathedral, and it was set up on a pedestal in the middle of the chancel. There was a guard of honour of Australians; birds were flying about above and singing; they had made the interior of the Cathedral their own. Bits of glass kept falling down, and the wind made strange whistling noises through the smashed and battered windows. It was all very impressive. General Rawlinson and his staff came over from Bertangles, a few natives of Amiens came into the town for it, otherwise the whole congregation was British. It was strange! Australian bugles blaring away inside those walls!
I painted Maude and Colonel du Tyl, the brave defenders of the interior of the city during the bombardment, in Maude's cellar in the "Hôtel de Ville." General Rogers (then Colonel Rogers) used to come in constantly—a charming man, very calm, with a great sense of humour, and as brave as a lion. His little brother was working under Maude. At that time his little brother was very silent—one could not get a word out of him. Maude used to call him "my little ray of sunshine." Now he is as cheerful a "Bean" as you could wish to find.
The day the Boche were driven out of Albert, General Rogers went there and brought back the story of the cat. When the Tommies got into the town, even through the din, they heard the wailing of a cat in agony, and they found her crucified on a door, so they naturally went to take her down, but as they were pulling the first nail out, it exploded a bomb and many were killed. It was a dirty trick! Yet they who did it may be sitting beside me now in the little Parisian café in which I write—it is full of Boche. It's a strange thought, almost beyond understanding.
The light in Maude's cellar was most interesting to paint, and I'm afraid I spent far too long at it, but Maude was a good companion. Things were changing now daily. Instead of feeling the sea just behind one's back, so to speak, each day, it was getting further and further away, and there were fresh fields to explore. I was due officially to leave for Italy, but I couldn't go. Why leave France when wonder after wonder was happening? Hardly a day passed that some glorious news did not come in. No, I couldn't tear myself away from Picardy and the North. I felt that I would feel more out of it in Italy than in London, and now I know I was right. I did not do much in the way of my own work, but I saw and felt things I would never have got down South—things which were felt so much that their impression increases rather than diminishes. It is difficult at times to realise what is happening. Somehow other things keep one from realisation at the moment, but afterwards these other things diminish in importance and the real impression becomes more clearly defined.
XXXV. British and French A.P.M.'s Amiens.
I painted General Lord Rawlinson at Bertangles, which was then his headquarters, a charming man with a face full of character. He paints himself, and was good enough to take great interest in the sketch I painted of him. He had a mirror put up so that he could see what I was doing. This wasn't altogether a help to me, because, at times, perhaps when I was painting the half-light on his nose, he would say: "What colours did you mix for that?" By the time I had tried to think out what colours I had mixed—most probably not having the slightest idea—I would have forgotten what part of the head I was painting and what brush I was using. But Bertangles in August was lovely, and the lunches in the tent, even though full of wasps, were excellent. Certainly H.Q. 4th Army was well run.