He faced life with the same equanimity and lived gaily with his Scottish wife, who added two Maze children to the five already born to her. They lived at the Moulin during the summers, and around them gathered painters such as Dunoyer de Segonzac, Simon Levy, and lovely Odette des Garet. There were also writers who came from Paris and friends from England; and during the last prewar summer Yvonne Lefebure, the noted pianist, lived in one of our cottages.
One week end when Winston Churchill and his beautiful wife were our guests, a unique picture was made. Its distinction was that it was signed by five artists. It came about in this fashion: Winston was painting on the lawn in front of the house. A view of the long canal shaded by overhanging trees stretched before him. I had invited Paul Maze and three fellow artists to luncheon. They approached Winston standing in his white coat in front of the easel and crowded around him. Undaunted by such critical observers he drew four brushes from his stock and handing them round said, "You Paul shall paint the trees—you Segonzac the sky—you Simon Levy the water and you Marchand the foreground, and I shall supervise." Thus I later found them busily engaged. Winston, smoking a big cigar, a critical eye on the progress of his picture, now and then intervened—"a little more blue here in your sky Segonzac—your water more shadowed Levy—and Paul your foliage a deeper green just there." It was all I could do to drag them away to luncheon.
That was the week end Winston decided he wanted to paint our moat. After careful thought he made up his mind that he preferred the water rough to smooth. Sending to Dreux for a photographer, he placed two gardeners in a boat and told them to create ripples with their oars. I can still see the scene with Winston personally directing the maneuver—the photographer running around to do snapshots—the gardeners clumsily belaboring the water. With characteristic thoroughness Winston persisted until all possibilities had been exhausted and the photographer, hot and worried, could be heard muttering, "Mais ces Anglais sont done tous maniac."
Sometimes we went to Paris to dine in one of the small restaurants frequented by artists. The evening would be enlivened by Segonzac and Paul who would act comic scenes, inventing them as they went, eventually to be joined by the waiter and the proprietor who thoroughly enjoyed the fun.
One evening we had a fancy dress ball at the Moulin for my grandchildren and their friends. The best part of the fun, as is invariably the case, was making one's own costume. We danced to a gramophone and the children did imitations in the manner of Paul. But even then the cloud of approaching war overshadowed us and I thought with apprehension of the future awaiting those young boys and girls. Only a few years later two of the most brilliant were sacrificed.
Our happy life at Saint Georges-Motel had earlier inspired my mother to acquire a château nearby. Not far from Fontainebleau, it was built of stone and was of the Renaissance period. What immediately appealed to her was the legend that the great financier and builder, Jacques Coeur, had given it to his daughter; from this she derived the vicarious pleasure any tribute to the female hierarchy gave her. Once settled, she proceeded to let her fancy roam, creating improvements so steadily that in spite of failing health her last years were happily employed. She was forever critically surveying her demesne. Walking in the garden with Jacques and me, she would suddenly stop us and, pointing to the river which flowed past the house, would say, "This river is not wide enough; it should be twice as large"; and when next we came an army of workmen would have enlarged it. A great fore court separated the village from the house. It was sanded instead of being paved. "This is all wrong, it should be paved," my mother commented severely; and the year of her death old paving stones brought from Versailles covered the court. Her intellectual activity, by no means abated, found vent in an International Council to secure equal rights for women the world over. The Council had its headquarters in Geneva, and my mother, with Miss Alice Paul, directed its work nearer home. She also furnished and maintained a recreation hostel for the use of nurses from the American Hospital in Paris, and took a friendly and helpful interest in the lives of the people among whom she lived.
Augerville-la-Rivière possessed, as do most French villages, an old stone church not devoid of architectural beauty, but for my mother it lacked an essential—a statue of Joan of Arc; it irked her that the Saint who to her represented Militant Womanhood should not be honored in the church of what had now become her village. Being a Protestant, she could not herself donate the statue, but her ingenuity found a solution in persuading Mrs. Harry Lehr, an old friend and a Catholic, to present it. Fully aware of Mrs. Lehr's parsimonious habits my mother did not entrust her with the choice of the statue, but herself selected a fine life-sized example. The Archbishop of Orleans having agreed to induct the Saint in a fitting ceremony, a chosen company repaired to the château for the occasion. With Saint Joan held aloft on a dais, the Archbishop, surrounded by acolytes and priests, we marched in procession to the church, passing through a throng of kneeling villagers. Mrs. Lehr, as donor of the statue, had a prominent position behind the Saint, and her chatter, which she was unable to restrain, desecrated the solemn silence. My mother, who could always be relied upon to dominate a situation, furiously and loudly observed, "Bessie, will you shut up!" Thankfully I observed that, obedient as we all were to such admonishments, Mrs. Lehr thereafter maintained the dignified deportment the occasion decreed.
Saint Joan having been devoutly ensconced in her niche embellished with votive candles and flowers, and a Mass celebrated in her honor, we returned to the château for luncheon. Noting that our French friends were surprised by this, to them, incomprehensible ceremony—for how could an American Protestant wish to exalt a French and Catholic Saint—I explained to their amusement that it was Joan as a militant rather than Joan as a Saint that appealed to my mother.
On my next visit to her it struck me as strange, since she could no longer walk, that she should wish to build a bowling alley. It was in vain I tried to turn her thoughts to more suitable amusements. A bowling alley duly arrived from America. Here the nurses my mother no longer could do without sometimes bowled. More appropriate was a Bath chair Queen Victoria had used during her visits to Cimiez, which had been made by a famous French carriage builder. Its beautiful lines had captivated my mother, who had ordered a donkey, complete with its harness, sent all the way from Sicily to draw her. Now the chair stands with other elegant vehicles of the past in the Museum of Compiegne, to which we gave it.
Gradually my mother weakened, and we took her to her little house in Paris where, in the venter of 1933, she died. Leaving the old world with its marked respect for the departed, where men have time to doff their hats and women to cross themselves in greeting, I found it strange to be met in New York by policemen on motor bicycles who preceded the hearse with screeching sirens while we raced to St. Thomas Church. But the service there was triumphantly symbolic, with suffrage societies flying their banners as they came up the aisle wave upon wave. A hymn my mother had herself composed was sung—it naturally concerned a woman.
We spent a few weeks in Florida with my brothers. Having married so young and lived in Europe so constantly, it was a joy to me to see them and to recall events of a youth that seemed long past. From a childhood memory Harold now became a very dear brother, whose sensitive nature I learned to appreciate, and I was glad to have the pleasure of meeting the cultured and charming lady who shortly became his wife.
On our return to France, I plunged again into my work in Paris and with the children at Saint Georges-Motel. In time my chief interest there became a sanatorium or, as it is called in France, a preventorium, where there were some eighty young children who were recuperating from operations or in need of preventive care. Later the Ministry of Health stressed the needs of children in the early stages of tuberculosis and we added fifty beds in open-air shelters in the woods nearby.
So many children aged from one to five required a large staff, so to our hospital nurses we added some thirty young students and trained them as
children's nurses. We were encouraged in our work by the Minister of Health and the Académie de Médecine, which gave us their Médaille de Vermeil and their Médaille d'Or. The visits of foreign pediatricians and nurses who attended the international congresses held in Paris were even more flattering. I remember that on one occasion at the time fixed for departure the German pediatricians could nowhere be found and the motor buses had to return to Paris without them. An hour later we discovered them busily writing in notebooks; they explained that Hitler himself had given strict orders that in every institution visited any new departure must be carefully described. We were deeply impressed that these elderly men should observe his dictates with the punctiliousness usually attributed to students.
During the American advance in Normandy our hospital was slightly damaged by gunfire, and later we gave the buildings to the Department of the Eure whose own preventorium the war completely destroyed.
I have always loved children; but like the old lady who lived in a shoe, what with my preventorium and recreation school and, in 1939 and '40, a few hundred refugee children from Paris, I had so many I very nearly did not know what to do. But at least it meant that we never experienced the tedium of country life.
My day began early, for there was always much to be done. I used to walk to the three separate establishments where our refugee children were housed. There were also the sanatorium buildings on the hill just beyond the village to visit. Walking quickly I could do it in the three hours before lunch, unless delayed by too lengthy reports. I used to think how fortunate it was that the nurses in charge were too busy to spend time in unnecessary conversation; otherwise I should never have completed my task. There was also the temptation to play with the babies in the communs—there were sixty of them and all so sweet—which had to be resisted. There was just time to note their needs on the pads I always took with me.
The sanatorium with its eighty small children came second in the daily round. I took time to visit the various departments, the wards, the playrooms, the nurses' quarters, the kitchen, the outdoor playgrounds and the reception pavilion where newcomers had to be isolated to prevent the introduction of possible infections. Each child had its own cubicle enclosed in glass. There was a crib and a bath in each, as well as a table and chair and special toys, and in front of every room were individual outdoor runs separated by glass. The building faced south and was gay with sunshine; and the children, seeing each other and doing whatever they pleased, did not appear to suffer from their isolation.
From the isolation quarters I would go to the shelters in the pine wood where children in the early stages of tuberculosis lived. There were some thirty of them sleeping and eating out of doors. But there were two heated rooms where they were bathed and dressed. It did one good to watch the roses coming back to their cheeks. My only complaint was that they grew too fat. One had forever to buy new clothes for them. Dr. Du Bouchet, our pediatrician, directed this little colony and also supervised the refugee children in the other buildings. She would sometimes accompany me down the hill to the "Little Mill" in the village.
We had originally bought this building for our vacation school and had since added to it, so that now some twenty children lived there, refugees sent to us from the Red Zone of Paris. Ardent little Communists, they sang the "Internationale" instead of the "Marseillaise," and when told to salute the French flag balled their little fists and shouted, "Heil Hitler who comes to deliver us." It was these boys and girls, not yet in their teens, who gave us the most trouble. I had three different superintendents before I found a young woman able to cope with them, for they were both undisciplined and untrained, and displayed a marvelous ingenuity in destruction. On every visit I had to register a new complaint. Throwing things down the water closets was one of their chief amusements. It was often impossible to get a plumber, since most of them had been mobilized, so that one of our old gardeners had to do a job which for him was complicated and difficult.
The successful superintendent was a pretty young woman, the daughter of a gentleman jockey. She appeared to have inherited his skill in managing refractory animals, for under her direction the children changed astonishingly—they even ceased balling their fists and singing "Heil Hitler." It was soon apparent that this charming little person possessed an astonishing degree of energy and decision. The authorities responsible for evacuated children informed us that we were not authorized to move them and that in case of need Army lorries would be sent for them. So when later we moved our sanatorium children, the others had to be left behind, awaiting the promised lorries. Even had we been permitted to move them there were not sufficient cars for one hundred and fifty children and a numerous staff. When German planes began to bomb the area and the French Army lorries failed to appear this young woman decided upon flight, taking with her all the children who were old enough to walk, leaving the youngest ones with the babies in the communs. Thus, they hiked to safety, sleeping in the woods or in empty farms where they milked abandoned cows, cooking food which they bought or begged, bombed in the lorries they occasionally got rides in—and miraculously not one child was hurt. Three weeks later, when the armistice was signed, this young girl brought her charges back to Saint Georges-Motel and, demanding an interview with the German general who had taken possession of our château, informed him that it was his business now to house and feed the children until she could return them to their parents. He did it.
From the Little Mill my way lay along the river Avre, a lovely clear stream where trout abounded. It led past gardens and through fields and even in winter it was peaceful and beautiful. As I approached the Big Mill I could hear Pauline Maze practicing her piano. Paul's daughter was specially gifted and Mlle. Lefebure, who herself had been Cortot's favorite pupil, was training her. A Bechstein baby grand brought from our house in Paris filled the little sitting room of the house we had lent the Mazes. Pauline practiced at least eight hours a day, and Paul, who was suffering from a period of nonproduction which in itself causes artists to become neurasthenic, threatened to go mad if he heard another scale. But with the utter insensibility one genius shows another Pauline persisted and Paul, with cotton wool protruding from his ears, worked in his garden. I often found him surrounded by the children who lived at the Big Mill.
These were the oldest we had, and ranged up to fifteen. The lady superintendent was a widow of World War II and her daughter was a ballerina from the Paris Opera. The ballerina, alas, could not practice her entrechats as did Pauline her scales. Jealousy therefore marred what might have become a friendship. In the frustrated idleness of an enforced seclusion the children had got on the ballerina's nerves. Paul's nerves were also taut, and there were sharp encounters in which Mme. La Directrice's authority suffered, greatly to the children's joy. I used to wonder as I reached the scene what new conflict would engage my attention or what problem would have to be solved, for those older children were difficult to handle. We had no authority for any but inadequate punishments, and yet the parents expected us to train and educate them. I remember an impossible youth of fifteen who spent his energies bullying the younger ones and leading them astray, so that we finally asked his parents to remove him. When the day dawned I found the Directrice and nurses in tears, humiliated by their failure to handle him; while the parents, reluctant to remove him, were surrounded by groups of overawed and distressed children. He left a general feeling of failure in his wake such as I imagine is felt in prisons when a hardened criminal goes back into the world.
Aware of increasing restrictions, we nevertheless lacked neither food nor fuel for the children. Our coal came in sacks on a hearselike dray drawn by black horses with funeral trappings. The driver perched on a high seat, with a hat somewhat like a sombrero, looked like an elderly Don Quixote. Since he emptied the coal sacks, he was as black as his horses; nevertheless, he had a wonderfully grand manner as he swept his hat to the ground-he might have been a Spanish grandee expatiating the sins of a former existence.
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p; In spite of many anxieties and difficulties, it was a happy little world we lived in, for everyone was busy and the children were invariably gay. The nicest tribute we had came from the inspector of the National Health Insurance in Paris who remarked, "When I have the caffard I come to Saint Georges-Motel and the children invariably cure me of my troubles."
During the last summer before the war, the Queen of Spain, who as Princess Ena of Battenberg had come to Blenheim so many years before, motored over from Fontainebleau with one of the Infantas and her son-in-law, Prince Torlonia, to lunch with us. We were alone and talked of old times in England and I asked the Queen, who was then a fugitive in France, why she did not return to her native land instead of living in Fontainebleau. After intimating her dislike of being a refugee, she admitted that she had decided to return home because recently she had seen the very same gypsies and hawkers touring France who had heralded the revolution in Spain and she was convinced that they were Fifth Columnists.
That summer we went to Blenheim for the coming out ball of my eldest granddaughter, Sarah, who is now married to an American. My son had succeeded his father as tenth Duke in 1934. The ever-growing burden of taxation was rendering the upkeep of so great a monument difficult, and the flame of socialism which Lloyd George's legislation had fanned had increased the tension. Nevertheless between the Palace and Woodstock the most friendly relations prevailed; my son had been elected Mayor and Mary his wife was to succeed him in this office. It may be invidious to praise one's own, but to withhold what is due would be churlish. In the tradition that has kept for England her aristocratic heritage my son determined to maintain and to hand down the gift a grateful nation had bestowed on his family in perpetuity; so when the Ministry that occupied the house during the war returned to its permanent quarters, he prepared to open Blenheim to tourist traffic on a hitherto unprecedented scale. For in such a way alone could taxation be met and the upkeep of so large a house assured. His efforts have been crowned with success. No less than 126,000 tourists, with a price for adults of two shillings and six pence, have already visited Blenheim this year, which by a long way heads the takings of the great houses opened to the public.
The Glitter and the Gold Page 28