Parisiennes

Saturday, July 9th., Rue de Calais, Paris.

I went to the Bois yesterday afternoon and had tea at the Pavillon Royal. I was finding ideas for "Hugo", but a party of women came to the next table and ordered tea - well-dressed, mature, rusee - and stopped me. It is extraordinary how much more critical such women are than men. The garcon was agacant (I had not found him so); the tea was bad, the cakes were bad. But the women, by dint of not sparing the garcon, got the best that was to be got out of the place. And they gossiped all the time in their cold, pretty, rapid, hard tones. When I left the place was beginning to be full of such parties, with a few men here and there. Middle-aged women, well-dressed, had appointments to meet each other there. The day was torrid and superb. The lake glistened and the park-men were watering everywhere, so there was constantly the sight and sound of spurted water. A few motors dashed about, and many carriages. Everything characteristic of July and the end of the season. I walked slowly all the way home, stopping now and then to make notes of my ideas as they occurred to me. Before I went to bed I had finished "Hugo" in my head.

Speaking of 'Parisiennes', I took a turn through the Parc Monceau to the Etoile, and back through the Champs Elysees on Friday night between 9.30 and 11 in order to clear off a headache. Honest lovemaking in the Parc Monceau. In the Champs Elysees, I saw four girls aged 14 or less - one didn't seem more than 11 or 12 being taken about by older women for the excitement of senile appetites. Some day soon there will be a tremendous outcry concerning this procuring of children. The police will become suddenly active in arrests - and then things will settle down again.

There were many pretty and well-dressed women in the Champs Elysees sitting patiently on chairs under the trees awaiting some masculine advance. I was astonished how distinguished some of them were. It was a lovely night, warm and starlit. Paris at its most Parisian. The lights of the alfresco music-halls, and the occasional bursts of music and applause that came from them, produced an extraordinary effect.

Derailed at Mantes

Saturday, July 8th., Villa des Nefliers, Fontainebleau.

I began to write my little book on Xmas on Wednesday last. On Thursday I went to see the Wellses at Pont de l'Arche. I came back yesterday and found myself in a railway accident at Mantes, six wounded.

There had already been a breakdown in a tunnel. Officials said that a rotule of an attache had got broken. It was repaired and we jolted onwards at, I should say, about 30 or 35 kilometres an hour. Then, just after we passed Mantes station, there was a really terrific jolting. I knew after 4 or 5 jolts that one coach at any rate had let the metals.

I was in a sort of large Pullmanesque compartment at the back of a first-class coach, two or three coaches from the engine. The windows broke. The corridor door sailed into the compartment. My stick flew out of the rack. The table smashed itself. I clung hard to the arms of my seat, and fell against an armchair in front of me. There was a noise of splintering, and there were various other noises. An old woman lay on the floor crying. I wondered: "Shall I remain unharmed until the thing stops?" Immense tension of waiting for the final stoppage. Equilibrium at last and I was unhurt.

I couldn't get out at first. Then someone opened the door. I soothed the old woman. I took my eyeglasses off and put them in their case. I found my hat (under some debris) and my stick. My bag had remained in the rack. I left the train with my belongings but I had forgotten all about the book I was reading, "L'Eve Future". This book was all that I lost. Two wounded women were ahead lying out on the grass at the side of the track.

Up above, from street bordering the cutting, crowds of people were gazing curiously, as at a show. One woman asked if she could do anything, and someone said: "A doctor". I walked round to the other side of the train and a minor official asked me and others to go back. "Ce n'est pas pour vous commander, mais ..." We obeyed. Two coaches lay on their sides. One of them was unwheeled, and partly sticking in the ground. No sound came from an overturned 2nd class coach though there were people in it.

Presently some men began lifting helpless passengers onto cushions which had been laid on the ground. I had no desire of any sort to help. I argued incompassionately that it was the incompetent railway company's affair. I held my bag and stick and I looked around. I didn't want to see any more wounded nor to be any more impressione than I could help. My recollection of appearances quickly became vague. I remember the face of one wounded woman was all over coal dust. We had shaved a short goods train standing on the next line, and the tender of the train was against our coach. A young American said that it was sticking into our coach, but I don't think it was. He said that the front part of our coach was entirely telescoped, but it wasn't entirely telescoped. It was, however, all smashed up. My chief impression is of a total wreck brought about in a few seconds.

I walked off up line towards station and met various groups of employees running towards train. At last two came with a stretcher or ambulance. I passed out of the station into the place, and a collector feebly asked me for my ticket, which I didn't give. I went straight to a garage and demanded an auto for Paris. But all autos had been taken off to the scene of the accident. Having been promised one in due course, I waited some time and then had a wash and took tea. I couldn't help eating and drinking quickly. Then I was told that two Americans wanted an auto. I said that they might share the one promised to me. Agreed. At last my auto came. The price was 100 francs. A Frenchman came up who wanted to get to Paris quickly (he had not been in the accident), and I gave him a place for 20 francs making a mistake in thus dividing 100 by 4. This detail shows I really was upset under my superficial calmness. We went off at 5.30.

In Arras

Wednesday, July 7th., Near Arras.

When you actually reach Arras you cannot be deceived for an instant as to what has happened to the place. The first street you see is a desolation, empty and sinister. Everywhere the damage of shells is visible. In the brief intervals of the deafening cannonade can be heard one sound - blinds and curtains fluttering against empty window frames. As we went further into the city we saw sights still stranger. Of one house nothing but the roof was left, the roof made a triumphal arch. All the streets were covered with powdered glass.

In one street we saw a postman in the regulation costume of the French postman, with the regulation black, shiny wallet-box hanging over his stomach, and the regulation pen behind his ear, smartly delivering letters from house to house. He did not knock at the doors; he just stuck the letters through the empty window frames. He was a truly remarkable sight.

Then we arrived by a curved street at the Cathedral of St. Vaast. It is the most majestic and striking ruin at the Front. It is superlatively well placed on an eminence by itself, and its dimensions are tremendous. It towers over the city.. The pale simplicity of its enormous lines and surfaces renders it better suited for the martyrdom of bombardment than any Gothic building could possibly be. Photographs and pictures of Arras Cathedral ought to be cherished by German commanders, for they have accomplished nothing more austerely picturesque, more idiotically sacrilegious, more exquisitely futile than their achievement here. And they are adding to it weekly.

To the right of the Town Hall, looking at it from the rear, we saw a curving double row of mounds of brick, stone and refuse. Understand, these had no resemblance to houses; they had no resemblance to anything whatever except mounds of brick, stone and refuse. The sight of them acutely tickled my curiosity. "What is this?" "It is the principal street in Arras." German gunnery has brought that street to an end past all resuscitation. It may be rebuilt - it will never be the same street.

Arras is not in Germany. It is in France. I mention this fact because it is notorious that Germany is engaged in a defensive war, and in a war for the upholding of the highest civilisation. The Germans came all the way across Belgium, and thus far into France, in order to defend themselves against attack. They defaced and destroyed all the beauties of Arras, and transformed it into a scene of desolation so that the highest civilisation might remain secure and their own hearths intact. Having seen Arras, I would honestly give a year's income to see Cologne in the same condition. And to the end of my life I shall feel cheated if Cologne or some similar German town is not in fact ultimately reduced to the same condition. This state of mind comes of seeing things with your own eyes.

The defence of German soil is a mighty and far-reaching affair!

Fellow travellers

Friday, July 6th., Charlton Arms, Ludlow.

I came to Ludlow today. Fat female aristocrat in train. Dust cloak. Flower outside it. Jewel to fasten it. Many rings. Manicured. Queen, Tatler. Ethel M. Dell's latest novel. 3 cushions in a decided leather 'envelope'. Elaborate lunch basket. Greedy. When ticket collectors came, she referred them, with an apprehensive gesture, to her maid, lest she might be bothered. Two of them knew of her maid. The third said roughly: "I suppose your maid has your ticket?" Her fear about being worried about anything was obvious. At Shrewsbury she held 'envelope' whilst maid put cushions into it. Maid got her out of train and transferred her to Ludlow train. There was another and older and worse woman, with an aged maid in the same compartment. very hard. She was met by a companion sort of girl at Birmingham.

Mundane matters

Friday, July 5th., Yacht Club, London.

Eleventh anniversary of our wedding yesterday. We dined at the Cafe Royal.

Raymond Needham came and lunched with me at Yacht Club, and told me much about Lord Beaverbrook and much as to his own private affairs.

"Right Ho Jeeves" by P.G. Wodehouse was dedicated "To Raymond Needham K.C. with affection and admiration"; Needham was a barrister who successfully defended Wodehouse in a tax case brought by the Inland Revenue.

On Wednesday night Eadie came to the flat and read two acts of "The Title" very well. The first act, though, I thought, consistently good, seemed a hell of a length.

Dennis Eadie (1869–1928) was a British stage actor who also appeared in three films during the silent era. Eadie was a leading actor of the British theatre, appearing in plays by Edward Knoblauch and Louis N. Parker. In 1916 he became the first man to play the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in a feature film.

I lost my food card.

Americana

Sunday, July 4th., Comarques, Thorpe-le-Soken.

Edgar Selwyn has been here for the weekend. Edgar gave me some good tips about screen-writing. He said: "You haven't got to write for London, you have to write for Thorpe." I added to this and said: "You have to write for a Thorpe man who can't hear and who can only read simple words." I see that any projected revolution in the film can only be done gradually.

Edgar told me that the rents of N.Y. theatres ran from 40 to 70 thousand dollars p.a., and that the Morosco was $45,000. I already knew how much the Morosco holds. It held $16,000 a week for "Sacred and Profane Love". Edgar read two acts of "The Bright Island" while he was here and I doubt if he saw anything in it at all. He said that political plays always failed in U.S.A., and that you could not interest the U.S.A. people even in politics themselves, to say nothing of plays about politics. I don't believe either of these statements.

Speaking of the labour question in U.S.A., Edgar said that for the big Labour meetings the streets were always choked with cars - and not Fords either. It is obvious of course that if there are 12 million cars in use in U.S.A. a vast number of working men must possess cars. It means one to less than every nine of the total population, men, women and children.

See also, 'Sailing for home' - November 30th., http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/sailing-for-home.html

Bibliophile's delight.

Monday, July 3rd., Fulham Park Gardens, London.

The Academy sent me the MS. of an article by Elizabeth Robins on Ibsen, to which I am to write a companion article. I was struck by the lack of "literari-ness" which the MS. disclosed: large, slow calligraphy, uncertainty in spelling and punctuation, and a hundred little things which mark the beginner. Yet she has written several books, one of them quite first rate and notable.

I have bought the hundred books which Bells allows you to select from the six hundred volumes of Bohn's Libraries. They stand in a long beautiful row, houseless on the top of my shelves. Arriving late last night from Witley, eager to view them - they had been delivered in my absence - I cut several of them and looked through Juvenal, Suetonius, and da Vinci. I found that the celebrated and marvellous passage in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Philaster", about marrying "a mountain girl", in which occur lines

                                                        And bear at her big breasts
                                                        My large coarse issue

must certainly be based on a passage in Juvenal's Sixth Satire.

Today I began to read "Benvenuto Cellini". He seems to have been less absolutely reprobate than I had imagined. The mark of the truly great man is on every page. I was enchanted with a phrase attributed to Benvenuto's father. Benvenuto was in trouble with the magistrates, and his father was defending him with moral support. "My father, in answer to these menaces, said, 'You will do what God permits you and nothing more.' The magistrate replied that nothing could be more certain than that God had thus ordered matters. My father then said boldly to him, 'My comfort is that you are a stranger to the decrees of providence!' "

What strikes me regarding the book technically, is its literary naivety and lack of art. It must have been written without any prearranged plan, currente calamo. Evidently much of primary interest has been left out - some by design but more by accident.