v\ 
 
 
 
 
 '^^ 
 ^ 
 
 
 .^ 
 
 \ 
 
 ,^.4: "^^^ /M^-^ ^^^ 
 
 . 'o . » » .0^ \D ''^ ,\ s^ 
 
 
 
 ■M^: 
 
 
 °o 
 
 ■■'- -^o 
 
 <^.-:»- 
 
 
 ^0* 
 ■1 o 
 
 
 V ^,^ :/^^^'^ 
 
 
 

 '-'f.":'- ,0^^ ^ '^?^' A 
 
 
 
 >>-^4' 
 
 ■^v. 
 
 ^0 
 
 ^^0^ 
 
 ^oV" 
 
 w 
 
 
 
 
 V .• " • °- O, 
 
 o^. 
 
 ■^ -'^f/k'^ "^ 
 
 
 
LETTERS OF 
 HENRY WESTON FARNSWORTH 
 
LETTERS 
 
 OF 
 
 HENRY WESTON FARNSWORTH 
 
 /I 
 
 OF THE FOREIGN LEGION 
 
 -y 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 PRIVATELY PRINTED 
 
 1916 
 
Cofiyright, 1916, by William Farns^uorth 
 
 .F3 
 
 DEC 29 1316 
 
 Z). B. Ufidike • The Merrymount Press • Boston 
 
 'a,A446971 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 HENRY Weston Farnsworth was 
 born on August 7, 1890, in Ded- 
 ham, Massachusetts. In those days Ded- 
 ham was a very quiet little country vil- 
 lage. He lived there eleven years of the 
 most uneventful, radiant, joyous child- 
 hood, growing up in an intimacy with 
 his family which few other conditions 
 would have allowed. 
 
 When eleven he went to a day-school 
 in Boston. It was his first contact with 
 the outside world. One day, after he had 
 been to school for a few weeks, he came 
 home three hours late, and said, ' ' Mother, 
 if you were a man, would you want to 
 experience life? I felt that way this after- 
 noon, and I have had a soda in every soda- 
 water fountain in Boston." 
 
 The next year he went to Groton, as 
 had been planned from his birth, and 
 stayed there until he graduated, six years 
 later. 
 
vi FOREWORD 
 
 When he was seventeen he travelled for 
 the first time. Until then he had never been 
 farther from Boston than New York. That 
 summer he went with his family to Eng- 
 land and France. He was filled with an 
 enthusiasm for history, art, literature, that 
 came as a result of his reading and think- 
 ing. Milton, Lamb, De Quincey, Ste- 
 venson, Ibsen, Byron, Omar Khayyam, 
 Mommsen, Carlyle, Sienkiewicz, Rich- 
 ard Burton, had been his companions for 
 years. He was met on all sides by old 
 friends, on all sides by new possibilities. 
 
 In the autumn of 1908 he entered Har- 
 vard. His enthusiasm for reading and mu- 
 sic never diminished, but was not trans- 
 ferred to his regular studies. He made no 
 record as a student, not even a record for 
 constant attendance at courses. He lived 
 a very casual life, of no particular merit. 
 Yet through it all he read with increasing 
 interest, Tolstoi, Dostoievski, and Ibsen, 
 noticeably "PeerGynt." Music had al- 
 
FOREWORD vii 
 
 ways been one of his great delights, and 
 going constantly to the Symphony Con- 
 certs, his intelligent appreciation grew 
 very much. But reading and music did 
 not take all his time, and many of the 
 other hours were spent in a way that does 
 not deserve to be dwelt on. For all his 
 reading, he was very young and callow in 
 the ways of practical life, self-conscious 
 and shy in society, and the Unknown fas- 
 cinated him, and he made his mistakes. 
 
 That summer of 1909 he went West 
 with another man. This was the first time 
 he ever travelled without his family, the 
 first time he ever camped out, ever saw 
 great scenery, or wild nature. He loved the 
 West ever afterward — the country, the 
 life, and the type of men he met there. 
 
 The following autumn college began as 
 usual, and he slipped into the way he had 
 followed his first year. He tried to change, 
 and found that habits are hard to break. 
 So he made the decision that ruled the rest 
 
viii FOREWORD 
 
 of his life. The causes go far back, back 
 to that mysterious and unknown thing in 
 man called ' ' soul " or " nature " or ^ ' per- 
 sonality. ' ' But the tangible, outward effect 
 caijie in one act. Early in November, after 
 making his arrangements so well that he 
 left no trace, he shipped as a deck-hand 
 on a cattle-boat, and worked his way to 
 England. In his passionate desire to stand 
 alone, meeting life with his own strength, 
 he told his plan to no one. In fact, he had 
 no definite plan beyond the desire to test 
 his own power. At first he tried to support 
 himself by writing, in London ; and he 
 found, as so many thousands have, that 
 he could not. A station in Australia was 
 advertising for men — they promised him 
 a job, and he sailed steerage in a small 
 boat. The voyage was long. The incidents 
 he generally dwelt on were the steamer's 
 halt at Genoa and his few hours there, 
 his only glimpse of Italy ; the long hours 
 he had for reading Shakespeare ; the fas- 
 
FOREWORD ix 
 
 cinations of Ceylon. Years later, after his 
 death, his family found a bit of manu- 
 script, with no beginning and no end. It 
 will tell more of this part of his life than 
 any other words : 
 
 ''Lord, I wish I was coming into the 
 tropics again for the first time. I came 
 through the Suez Canal, and struck the 
 East all in a heap. Nineteen years of age, 
 and a head full of all kinds of rot at that. 
 I used to walk the deck at night and just 
 mutter names to myself. ' Port Said, Suez, 
 Aden, Colombo, Madras, Calcutta, Ran- 
 goon, Singapore, Parang' — I was espe- 
 cially stuck on the last three. I did n't 
 go there. I had been reading 'Robbery 
 Under Arms ' and Adam Lindsay Gor- 
 don's poems, and was even madder to get 
 to Freemantle, Adelaide, and Melbourne. 
 What romance I had in those days, and 
 how quick I lost it too — that fool kind, I 
 mean, like calf love." 
 
 The first port in Australia was Free- 
 
X FOREWORD 
 
 mantle. He landed, and coming back to 
 the steamer after dark, he walked through 
 one of the worst parts of the town. It was 
 a foolish risk to chance. He was knocked 
 unconscious, his money taken, his watch, 
 — even his shoes. He reached the steamer 
 and landed at Melbourne, but he had no 
 money to get to the up-country station 
 where he had been promised work. For 
 days he tried to find any kind of a job, 
 and could not. Finally he realized that 
 he was stranded and asked a man to 
 help him cable to his father. All the rest 
 of his life he never forgot that the first 
 act of his struggle for independence was 
 a cry for help, when he had travelled to 
 the other side of the world to try to help 
 himself. 
 
 He asked for little money, and went to 
 work. He spent seven months in AustraHa, 
 working on several diiferent sheep sta- 
 tions. He learned to know discomfort, hard 
 work, loneliness. As a httle fellow he was 
 
FOREWORD xi 
 
 easily frightened. Certainly one of the 
 characteristics of his later years, absolute 
 disregard of danger, was no gift of the 
 Gods at birth. He made his nerve himself, 
 every bit of it, by a grim persistence, year 
 after year. As a newcomer he was given 
 many of the worst horses to ride, and he 
 never gave in once, always conquering in 
 the end. Living sometimes with six of the 
 hands, sometimes out for a week at a time 
 with one sheep- herder, he met the reali- 
 ties of the struggle for existence, and had 
 plenty of time to think. And thinking, he 
 made a second decision, far harder than 
 the first, and wrote that he would come 
 home if his father thought it wise. 
 
 So he sailed in August, back to what 
 was apparently the old life. 
 
 Australia brought him one great plea- 
 sure in the friendship of an Irish gentle- 
 man , a strange, gifted man , whose life read 
 like a novel, and whose music, and love 
 and knowledge of books, gave him much 
 
xii FOREWORD 
 
 in common with Farnsworth — ' ' Ameri- 
 canus," as he always called him. 
 
 One of the characteristic things about 
 Farnsworth was that he made his closest 
 friends in strange lands. Convenience, pro- 
 pinquity, meant nothing to him. When 
 he met a man who interested him, and 
 whom he Hked, a lasting friendship came. 
 
 That autumn of 1910 he resumed his 
 studies at Harvard. His courses were al- 
 most all in the different literatures. This 
 was the period when he read much Tol- 
 stoi, with a comprehension that deepened 
 as he knew more of Slavic history, poetry 
 and philosophy of life, as he followed its 
 literary history. He was studying French 
 literature, too, all afire with admiration. 
 He had courses in early Italian litera- 
 ture and history, in modern fiction. From 
 the memoirs of Casanova to the ' ' Little 
 Flowers of Saint Francis of Assisi ' ' and 
 Longinus, and Irish folk-lore and Synge, 
 he read and studied. And one of the great 
 
FOREWORD xiii 
 
 influences of his life was Plato. As his 
 knowledge grew, his enthusiasm grew 
 also. The delight he received from books 
 was beyond exaggeration. 
 
 Music was as much a part of him as 
 literature, but it is of less interest in this 
 foreword to his letters, for he never made 
 any himself. His studies in music taught 
 him to have a very intelligent, as well 
 as a very deep, joy in it, and he trained 
 himself to have an excellent musical ear 
 and musical memory, though he was no- 
 ticeably helpless in those ways as a little 
 fellow. 
 
 Another thing that was so character- 
 istic of him that no one could write of 
 him without mentioning it was his love of 
 riding and his keenness for polo. It bears 
 little on this foreword, I suppose, but it 
 filled a great deal of his time in the year 
 and a half of quiet life that followed his 
 return from Australia. He had, too, a love 
 for long walks, alone, at night, through 
 
xiv FOREWORD 
 
 the woods. The Unknown is everywhere 
 at night — stars and darkness are never 
 every-day matters. All his life the Un- 
 known was calling to him. 
 
 The summer of 1911 he went to the 
 Harvard Engineering Camp, as he wished 
 to take his degree with the class he en- 
 tered in 1908. It was like him to find 
 the courses there almost impossibly diffi- 
 cult, and to read for refreshment Fraser's 
 ''Golden Bough," which might truth- 
 fully be described as ' ' heavy ' ' to many 
 people. 
 
 In June, 1912, he graduated with his 
 class, and sailed the next week for Eu- 
 rope. He had always longed to see strange 
 places. As he says himself, names fasci- 
 nated him. ' ' Black Sea,' ' ' ' Caspian Sea" 
 — he was wild with delight to be oiF on 
 a trip to the places he had dreamed of for 
 years. He went to Budapest, to Constan- 
 tinople, by boat to Odessa, and then trav- 
 elled up to Moscow and St. Petersburg. 
 
FOREWORD XV 
 
 Moscow excited his keen enthusiasm, he 
 thrilled over every detail. What he wrote 
 home of as '^the little gear" of Ivan the 
 Terrible, all the memories of his child- 
 hood carefully preserved in a museum, 
 delighted him. 
 
 Rejoined his family in Paris and came 
 home to enter the Harvard Business School 
 in September. Then that autumn of 1912 
 the Balkan War broke out, and he went 
 over to see what he could see. The whole 
 story of his trip has been told by him- 
 self, in a book that he published, "The 
 Log of a Would-be War Correspondent. ' ' 
 There is no need to repeat. 
 
 He returned in March, and took courses 
 in a Business School until it closed in June. 
 The summer was passed inDedham, with 
 reading and polo. 
 
 In the fall of 1913 the Mexican trouble 
 flared out and he went down there for 
 a short time. He was definitely trying 
 to write by now, and was much encour- 
 
xvi FOREWORD 
 
 aged when the ''Providence Journal" 
 published several of his Mexican letters 
 on its editorial page. He loved the land of 
 Mexico, and the excitement in the air. 
 And here he met one of his close friends, 
 an Englishman, interesting and charm- 
 ing, a keen sportsman, Avho had led an 
 unusual life. A bond of affection grew 
 between Farnsworth and this kindred 
 spirit. 
 
 On his return from Mexico the ' ' Provi- 
 dence Journal ' ' took Farnsworth as one of 
 its reporters, and he worked all winter in 
 the office. The details of running a paper 
 interested him, the men he met he enjoyed 
 very much. It was altogether a worth while 
 experience. But when the United States 
 sent troops to Vera Cruz, he left Provi- 
 dence and went to Mexico City for three 
 months. He was there when the European 
 war broke out. He came home at once, 
 but said no word about going over. His 
 father asked him if he would like to go. 
 
FOREWORD xvii 
 
 His gratitude and appreciation were very 
 deep. He left at once, determined to be an 
 intelligent onlooker, and to write things 
 that he hoped would be worth the reading. 
 His plan was to go, if travelling proved 
 possible, to London, Paris, Rome, Con- 
 stantinople, and then to Russia. The en- 
 trance of Turkey into the war made this 
 impracticable. He got to Paris, and there 
 met an Englishman, Bles, who had raised 
 an independent corps that had served with 
 the regular English army in the BoerWar , 
 and who was trying to do it again. Farns- 
 worth said he would enlist if his family 
 approved, and while he was waiting for 
 the answer to his letter, he drilled regu- 
 larly. Then came the time for Bles to see if 
 Kitchener would accept his corps. Farns- 
 worth, during this interval of Bles' ab- 
 sence, went to Spain, and then to the Island 
 of Mallorca, where he spent a month of 
 great quiet and loneliness. Then Bles ca- 
 bled that no irregulars would be accepted 
 
xviii FOREWORD 
 
 in this war. Farns worth returned to Paris, 
 and there the spirit of France held him, 
 and he cabled home to ask if he could join 
 the Foreign Legion for the duration of 
 the war. As soon as the answer came he 
 enlisted, on New Year's Day, 1915. 
 
 From this point his own letters will tell 
 his story. 
 
LETTERS 
 
 July and August, 1912 
 
LETTERS 
 
 Vienna^ July 24, 1912 
 Dear Mother: 
 
 THE Orient Express arrived here at six, and 
 now, having bathed and dined, I am, as 
 you might say, "at your service." 
 
 They say at the hotel that the town is deserted, 
 and that the opera and theatres are all closed. 
 The hotel is good, but nothing wonderful, and 
 the prices are terrific. The whole place is fliU of 
 Jews and Americans, and I cannot blame the 
 natives for leaving; I intend to do so myself 
 very shortly. 
 
 In the meantime, as I have nothing to do, 
 I shall begin my Odyssey, intending to write it 
 up at each stopping-place. I cannot begin in me- 
 dias res — as Boileau and others recommend — 
 because I have not as yet got there and you 
 would probably not like to wait, so I will begin 
 after the manner of Dostoievski and make de- 
 tails my forte, rather than plot, st}'le, or simile. 
 
 I slept well as far as Dover and the crossing 
 was very pleasant. A nast)^ Frenchman snored 
 terribly all the way to Paris, but, neverthe- 
 
4 LETTERS 
 
 less, the train was on time and I arrived about 
 seven at the Continental. I came out again about 
 ten and went to Cook's, who could not get me 
 any accommodation until Saturday night, as I 
 telegraphed in French, just by way of blague. 
 After Cook's, I walked, plunged in deep thought, 
 down the Avenue de 1' Opera and arrived at 
 Brentano's, where the "Idiot" was not to be 
 got. 
 
 By this time I was thoroughly peevish and 
 went to the Louvre and also the Arts Decora- 
 tifs, where is an abundance of beautiful Persian 
 things, without getting very much excited about 
 anything. I will, however, admit that you know 
 more than I used to about the beauties of the 
 little Dutch pictures, Terburg, etc. They were 
 not in that manner because he would have liked 
 them, though perhaps not found them, decorative, 
 which was my erstwhile objection, as I remem- 
 ber, and, therefore, the objection to them must 
 be put down to youthful romanticism. It must 
 be explained away at any cost because Voltaire 
 is certain that if one has not taste as a child, one 
 never gets any more. Something — not even lots 
 of bad taste — cannot be made out of nothing. 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 5 
 
 By this time it was 1:30, so I drove to the 
 Cafe de Paris, where I had a very wonderful 
 lunch. I am sure I could imitate the "fat friend" 
 describing a salade aux poissons which was the 
 piece de resistance of the meal. 
 
 You, however, will probably be more inter- 
 ested in what I thought of the Luxemburg. I 
 walked there after my lunch. It is a very interest- 
 ing place, "to my mind." We all know as much 
 as we ever will — though I suppose each genera- 
 tion will have different theories about the matter 
 — about the art of the past, but the art of the 
 present and its probable tendencies for the future 
 I find fascinating. The Rodins, especially the " St.- 
 Jean Baptiste" and" L'Age d'Airain," are very 
 wonderfiil. I am sure that Pericles would have 
 admired them; Phidias might have been jealous 
 and I am certain Polyclitus would have been, 
 but what appear to be his school do not seem 
 to appreciate the best in him. I do not think that 
 they are any better or much worse than the late 
 Hellenistics, witness the "Knife Sharpener" and 
 some of the Marsias productions of the Alex- 
 andrian period. It makes me crazy to get to Rus- 
 sia because there I expect to find a different order 
 
6 LETTERS 
 
 of things — an art that has something besides its 
 own technique to express, and that can still be 
 archaic. About that, 7ious verrons. 
 
 There are also some nice Degas, " La Car- 
 mencita," etc., which you probably know, and 
 two wonderful Carrieres, which I do not re- 
 member. Rodin's " Hand of God" is also there, 
 but I do not think it is as good as the " Hand of 
 Fate" in marble in New York. His "Douleur" 
 is also up to par. I think he makes God too much 
 of an aristocrat, — I mean in" Le Mainde Dieu," 
 — and I do not think it has the inexorability 
 of the New York " Fate." I do not mean that 
 because you are anthropomorphic you should 
 be a socialist (nihilist is better) , but if you get 
 a chance to see it, you will agree with me. And 
 so on ''ad Mesopotamia" when we meet again. 
 
 After the Luxemburg I walked about the 
 streets in that quarter and bought my " Idiot " 
 and another of the Master's lesser works. I saw a 
 whole lot of Goya prints, and I am sure America 
 would have been glad if I had bought them and 
 charged them to J. P. Morgan. There were some 
 that Mr. BuUard did not show in the Spanish 
 art thing last winter. 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 7 
 
 I dined at the Abbaye, and, having my Belle 
 Amie well in mind, I offered a glass of pure 
 water from the Seine to every dancer who asked 
 what I was going to give her. Some of the dan- 
 cing was very good. The Opera was giving 
 " Aida," the Comique was not giving anything, 
 and the Fran^ais was giving "Camille," so I 
 went to bed about ten. 
 
 Saturday was meant to be architecture day, 
 but by the time I had done Notre Dame, the 
 paintings in the Pantheon, several other churches, 
 and walked for about a half-hour in the Marais, 
 I decided that I was no architect and went to 
 Voisin's for lunch. I do not think the food as 
 good or the people less stupid than those at the 
 Cafe de Paris. The glass is not half as pretty, 
 although very nearly the same, but I feel that 
 this is quibbling. 
 
 After lunch I went again to the Louvre and 
 spent some time there. I remembered the Car- 
 na valet, Musee des Archives, etc., but never 
 thought seriously of going to any of them. The 
 more I look at ancient and modern art, the more 
 I think that J. J. Rousseau is the father of all 
 things modern, which almost everybody else 
 
8 LETTERS 
 
 thinks also, though they might object at first if 
 it was put to them in so many words. 
 
 I was quite tired after the Louvre and sat 
 and drank '' Une verree de cafp"* until it was time 
 to hustle and get my train. The Orient Express 
 leaves the Gare de I'Est at 7:13. If Papa comes 
 to Paris and the Bristol is not quite what it used 
 to be, let him dine on that train and then get 
 off at Baden-Baden. One man served nineteen 
 people to about twenty courses and gave them 
 all different sorts of waters and wines, and there 
 were no long waits and everything was deli- 
 cious. According to all philosophies, he ought 
 to have got enormous tips, but eveiybody gave 
 him one franc. I am sure Tolstoi would have 
 kissed him in public and (possibly) have given 
 him two francs — Tolstoi knew the value of 
 money. 
 
 This morning I rose about 11:30 — time goes 
 forward — and was asked to come in to what 
 I thought was breakfast. It was in the German 
 style, so I kept eating little fishes and salads and 
 things, but when, about five courses later, cold 
 meats were served after two sorts of hot ones, I 
 realized that it must be lunch. 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 9 
 
 The country is very uninteresting until you 
 get up near to Vienna; then, as you know, it is 
 beautiful. 
 
 At six I got here, and here endeth the first 
 
 lesson (?). 
 
 Your son, 
 
 Henry 
 
 P.S. I had not forgotten Ellen and her Paladin, 
 but, as you can see for yourself, there was no 
 other way to say that I supposed they were with 
 you now, and that I know how glad you must 
 be to have them thus, except by saying : " Dear 
 Mother. I suppose Ellen and Alfred are with 
 you now — how you must all be enjoying each 
 other. What a wonderful time they must have 
 had in Ireland ! " If you try to complete this plan 
 of campaign you will, or, at any rate, I did, find 
 it is a difl[icult one. Nor is it any more truly lov- 
 ing than this "last but not least" style of send- 
 ing them my best love. Still in the same style give 
 my love to Papa; he knows how I am enjoy- 
 ing the trip and that I am gratefiil. 
 
 Still, and ever, your son, 
 
 Henry 
 
10 LETTERS 
 
 Constantinople^ July 26, 1912 
 Dear Papa: 
 
 I telegraphed you yesterday to let you know of 
 
 my arrival in the Divine Port, and was notified 
 
 this morning that "Farnswo London" was not 
 
 registered. That, however, is no great matter; 
 
 you probably got the telegram; also, code words 
 
 are not accepted here. I do not know whether 
 
 they will be in Russia or not. I mean to leave 
 
 here Monday morning on the boat for Odessa. 
 
 So much for business. 
 
 In my last I told you of everything up to my 
 arrival in Vienna, and mentioned, I believe, that 
 everything was closed and deserted. 
 
 Monday morning I issued upon the town at 
 about 10:30 and instantly bought a " Guide to 
 Vienna and Environs" by somebody like Bae- 
 deker. I then sat in a cafe and read it until one. 
 I then lunched at the same cafe and afterwards 
 went to Prince Lichtenstein's gallery and stayed 
 there a long time. There were many interesting 
 Italian paintings of the fourteen hundreds, none 
 of the first order, and one wonderful Leonardo 
 portrait of a woman — not, however, worthy 
 of filling the place of Mona Lisa. After that I 
 
 1 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 11 
 
 walked home in the rain — it rained and was cold 
 all the time — and went to sleep and dined and 
 went to a sort of circus and varieties which was 
 very stupid and very long. I got home about 
 12:30. 
 
 The next morning I went to the bank and got 
 your telegram and letter, and had breakfast at a 
 cafe, and got to the Imperial Gallery at 10:30. 
 All the Titians and Correggios — the "Jupiter 
 and lo" which I adore — the best Velasquez 
 and the one Goya were locked up. The Rubens 
 were, of course, wonderful. You were in Vienna, 
 I think, and will remember them. I am sure 
 Mother was. 
 
 There were also a lot of Durers which I did 
 not think as good as Mrs. Gardner's, although 
 his portrait of Maximilian First (I think) wore 
 a whole cloak of sable. At Lichtenstein's there 
 was a great big Vermeer which was not half as 
 good as Mrs. Gardner's. There were also Van- 
 dykes — good ones — and hosts of Ruysdaels 
 and Germans of all dates. I stayed there until 
 two, and then lunched and got my ticket to 
 Constantinople . 
 
 In the afternoon I went to churches and the 
 
12 LETTERS 
 
 Riding School and public buildings, etc. I was 
 glad to take the Orient Express again at 6:51. 
 I forgot to say that some time I made up my 
 mind not to go to Budapest. The train was 
 crowded, and I had in my compartment an Aus- 
 trian engineer, who talked endlessly about his 
 son who was studying engineering in Munich. 
 
 About eleven in the morning we got into Ser- 
 bia, where the mountains and rivers and gorges 
 are wonderflil. My engineer told me that I must 
 drink the wines of the country because they were 
 peculiar to the spot and could be had nowhere 
 else. I was very glad I did. They give you, 
 as nothing else does, an insight into the won- 
 derfliUy costumed mountaineers we kept seeing. 
 They (or rather it) is not strong and yet has a 
 queer, wild flavor that — to put it unpoetically, 
 but anybody who has been there would under- 
 stand — seems as if it would taste very good to 
 a breath strongly flavored by garlic. 
 
 That evening we were in Bulgaria — Sofia 
 at 4:12 — and there, what with the scenery, and 
 the costumes of the peasants, and the goats, I al- 
 most died of Romance. If I ever get a long hol- 
 iday and loads of money, I am going shooting 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 13 
 
 in the Bulgarian mountains. It is indescribable 
 unless you have passe par la. 
 
 There was bright moonlight almost all night, 
 and in the early morning we stopped at a small 
 Turkish town where a large detachment of troops 
 was doing manoeuvres of some sort. They had 
 a lot of camels — very fine camels indeed — and 
 the music was made by a few of them on camels 
 playing a very wild Turkish air on fifes and one 
 old man beating a little, small drum "hell for 
 leather." I did not count, but I think that Papa 
 Haydn with his seventy-seven variations in the 
 same key must have been left far behind. Yet, it 
 was "terribly thrilling" (Master Builder, in case 
 you were not going to give him the credit) . 
 
 At 10 — (absolutely on time) 10 a.m. — we 
 got to Constantinople, and in here I have fitted 
 like a bug in a rug. I could spend six months 
 here without once wanting a change. Dostoievski 
 drives me on to Russia. In Vienna I felt a tour- 
 ist and a stranger, etc., but here I am perfectly 
 happy. The afternoon I arrived I went to hear 
 the howling dervishes, who howled for two hours 
 to a pack of German tourists without getting 
 any appreciation except from me, who gave 
 
14 LETTERS 
 
 them five piastres (about twenty-five cents) , to 
 the horror of my guide, who charges enormous 
 sums and who, waiving the fact that he is abso- 
 lutely necessary, gives me no pleasure whatever. 
 
 In the evening Nissim was keen that we do 
 "Le Petit Paris de Constantinople," but I in- 
 sisted on going to a stinking (good old English 
 word) hole, where I was bitten terribly by fleas, 
 over in Stamboul — I was also frightened to 
 death, being the only European in sight — to see 
 a gang of jumping and sword-swallowing der- 
 vishes. They did not eat scorpions and glass and 
 bleed the way they do in the Arab town of Port 
 Said, but the singing was the real thing, and 
 the rh)^hmic breathing was well done and two 
 got into real crises. They began singing about 10 
 and stopped at about 12:15. I spent the rest of 
 the night killing fleas and rose this morning at 
 about 1 1 in time to see the Sultan go to Mosque, 
 attended by his ministers and a number of guards 
 of various sorts. This afternoon I am going to 
 Stamboul to see St. Sofia, etc. 
 
 With love to Ellen and Mother and Alfred, 
 
 I am 
 
 Your son, _. 
 
 Henry 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 15 
 
 Odessa, July, 1912 
 Dear Mother: 
 
 I arrived safely at this place at about four this 
 afternoon. At present my one desire is to get out 
 of it. Nobody knows anything but Russian. The 
 '^Interpreter" at the hotel knows a few words 
 of German, but, unfortunately, they are not the 
 words of my repertoire. " Der schzvert on me'ine 
 linken^'^ " Wir saszen in e'lne Fischerhaus^"^ etc. 
 I made a terrible effort (utterly wilted a collar 
 and whacked the driver of my troika with my 
 umbrella) , but all to no avail. Everybody in the 
 hotel seemed to think that tickets are only to 
 be bought in the morning and kept repeating: 
 ^^ Morgen, morgen?'' 
 
 When I last wrote I had just got to Constan- 
 tinople. I kept on adoring the place, but it is well 
 I am out of it. The bills were astounding, though 
 I tried to save. In the afternoon, after the der- 
 vishes and the Sultan in the morning, I went to 
 do the Mosques. We started at St. Sofia, which 
 I found I knew fairly well from photographs. 
 You know my penchant for the Byzantine and 
 the Arabic. I sat down cross-legged on the floor 
 in the comer and stayed there about an hour. 
 
1 6 LETTERS 
 
 There were very few there, but some priests were 
 chanting the Koran, and occasional people — the 
 old and the poor — came in to pray. Of St. 
 Sofia more anon. 
 
 After that we "did" a lot of other ones — 
 one entirely Arabic in style with stalactite corners 
 (I do not know whether Arabic or not; I never 
 heard of them except in Sicily, so they may be 
 anything at all). I longed to clothe myself « la 
 Pierre Loti and sit half a day in each one of them. 
 At the time I thought it would be stupid. "At 
 present writing," as Mr. Martin says, I think I 
 was an idiot not to. 
 
 I got back to the hotel at about 7; 30 and 
 had a most interesting dinner. A huge negro, re- 
 splendent in uniform, was there with a wife. 
 The waiter said he was a Syrian; the wife was 
 Greek, as any one could see. She also was inter- 
 esting. She wore a very pretty little French dress 
 — something like Ellen's bridesmaid's — and a 
 coiffure that far outdid Canova's Venus (though 
 something on the same style) , yet the result was 
 more immodest than Ellen's Tifiany lamp. I am 
 sure you will understand the effect she produced. 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 17 
 
 It was helped out by powder, blacking, etc. She 
 was a very handsome woman. 
 
 They ate everything on the bill of fare — 
 rather he did — and the drinks were exactly as 
 follows : 
 
 (1) For him, xhr^Qperikas — a sort of Turk- 
 ish absinthe drink, with only a little water; for 
 her, a good, stout Scotch and a lean little water 
 and a huge ice. 
 
 (2) Quart of G. H. Mumm for him, and 
 another Scotch, etc., for her. 
 
 (3) With coffee in the other room — for him, 
 one more per'ika^ and he was still at Benedictine 
 and Grand Marnier when I left; for \\<^x^2iperika 
 and a large brandy and Curagoa. 
 
 As you can see, I let nothing escape me and 
 had my eyes constantly in that direction. After 
 a while, I having seated myself at the next table 
 in the coffee room, she noticed this and winked 
 and ogled. I waited for no more, but fled. At 
 9:30 I met the trusty Nissim and we went to a 
 Turk Theatre in Stamboul, where he said there 
 was a very good Turkish actor. There I got 
 more fleas and very bored. Of course, I knew 
 
18 LETTERS 
 
 nothing of what was going on. I stopped here 
 for dinner — that is, just now, at Odessa. 
 
 By this time I had got quite used to the Turks 
 and was not at all frightened of them, so we had 
 supper at a small Turkish restaurant — sort of a 
 v'llaine impasse. I had some oily pilau and some 
 coffee. We got home about 12:40. 
 
 I was very tired and slept late the next morn- 
 ing and then went to the bank. I was very glad 
 to get Papa's telegram and letter. Constantinople 
 seems very much a "foreign part." 
 
 After lunch we went in a boat up the Bos- 
 phorus to Therapia and had tea and came back. 
 The Bosphorus is beautiful and Therapia is ftiU 
 of ambassadors. I thought of you and Byron 
 and was not very much thrilled. In the evening I 
 went to a Turkish cafe chantant which was not 
 at all amusing. It is the streets and the mosques 
 and the atmosphere of the town that I adore. 
 
 Sunday morning we hired a couple of good 
 saddle-horses — Arabian — and went off in the 
 country to see the Byzantine aqueducts and lakes. 
 The country was very beautiftil, full of gullies 
 with splendid trees reaching up and wonderftil 
 bosky dells. We lunched in one of these — oily 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 19 
 
 fish and oily pilau, which was delicious, and 
 coffee — and shortly afterwards came to the By- 
 zantine relics. 
 
 If they were transported to Beacon Street, 
 you would recognize them right off; all built — 
 that is, a part of one at the mouth of a lake — 
 of splendid marble brought fi-om a mountain 
 fifty miles away, and quantities of little green 
 lizards running over them. The lake itself is in 
 a hollow between two hills, and below the aque- 
 duct is a large grove of trees something like our 
 birches. Nissim told me, with glowing eyes, that 
 formerly the Sultan used to drive out here with 
 his wives and spend the afternoon and go swim- 
 ming. If you — (interrupted by the infernal in- 
 terpreter, who rehearsed for the fiftieth time his 
 German vocabulary and at whom I yelled to 
 go away — '"''Gehen Sie weg''^ ) — if you remem- 
 ber your "Arabian Nights," you can see the pic- 
 ture; but now, he added, ^^noiis avons change 
 tout celaP 
 
 Close by here, where we left our horses and 
 went up on donkeys, we had spring water, coffee, 
 and nuts at an entirely Turkish place. Except 
 myself, there were one, two, or three Europeans 
 
20 LETTERS 
 
 — Greeks or Armenians — and a huge mass of 
 Turks who come to drink the water which gurgles 
 out of a spring. There was a heavenly Turkish 
 band of stringed instruments which "preluded 
 in twenty-six different styles and then played a 
 short air" ("Arabian Nights"). 
 
 We got home about seven, very weary and 
 Nissim in a frightful temper from weariness. The 
 hall porter — a very intelligent man, who put me 
 up to most of these things — told me that it was 
 the prophet's birthday, and that I should go to 
 St. Sofia about ten and see it illuminated. Nissim 
 went almost crazy and said he was going to die, 
 but we were off again at 9:30 — this time in a 
 cab. 
 
 Nothing but deep reading in Richard Burton's 
 "Nights" and the church itself can give you 
 any idea of what a scene it was. It was illumi- 
 nated by more than ten thousand little oil lights. 
 The huge floor space under the great dome was 
 a mass of people. The great candles in the altar in 
 the east — at any rate, towards Mecca — were 
 lighted. Near the altar priests were chanting the 
 Koran until it seemed as if their throats would 
 burst. They filled the whole church. In the side 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 21 
 
 aisles children played tag and screamed, but were 
 drowned out by the priests — only one priest at a 
 time — and the what I shall have to call " foyer" 
 was crawling with beggars. There were only two 
 or three women, and the men were mostly old 
 and ragged. They all stood up and bowed "with 
 the forehead" from time to time and muttered 
 responses. I stayed to the very end and watched 
 them put out the lights about the dome. You can 
 see the mosaics and the faience better this way 
 than by daylight. (You must think this letter like 
 the brook, but on to . . . ) 
 
 The next morning (Monday) I overslept. I 
 then had to get more money to pay those horrible 
 bills. The boat went at ten. If Nissimhad charged 
 one pound more for his services and cabs, horses, 
 etc., I should have let the boat go and gone to 
 the Consul. He judged it just right. I decided to 
 take the boat. I decided this after a ten-minute 
 swearing match, which availed not a shilling. At 
 10:04 we galloped for the boat. I could see it 
 just casting off its moorings. I told him if I did 
 not get it — no other for a week, French line 
 out of commission — that I should take his bill 
 to the Consul, and that if I did get aboard I 
 
22 LETTERS 
 
 would give him ten francs. He became as fire. 
 We charged the custom officers and stopped not 
 for their yells. We boarded a rowboat and cap- 
 tured an oarsman from another to row also. We 
 gave chase with fury and began to gain. I counted 
 Nissim his ten shillings and seized a rope trail- 
 ing behind the steamer. A (I have forgotten the 
 nautical expression) flight of stairs was lowered. 
 Like a good traveller, I saw to my luggage and 
 shoved it onto the steps and followed in a heap 
 myself. Then with great sangfroid and amidst 
 cheers and frantic good-byes from Nissim, I 
 mounted the stairs and got up my two famous 
 bags (they both went to Kentucky and you ought 
 to know their weight). 
 
 When on board I found nobody knew Eng- 
 lish, French, or German. I could not find any 
 official who could so much as read my ticket. In 
 my searchings for the purser I kept going up to 
 the deck above and soon arrived at the top one. 
 There I saw a very nice looking man wearing 
 a pair of English boots. I accosted him — by the 
 grace of God, politely and gracefully — and he 
 replied in English. Was very polite and got me 
 the purser. The purser nearly fainted at sight 
 
HENRY FARNS WORTH 23 
 
 of us, and I soon found out that my polite man 
 was Nicholas, Prince of Greece, who was sitting 
 in the gangway because he had taken the whole 
 deck for himself, and others were not allowed 
 up there. However, I saw him again going down 
 to his special dinner at 8:30, and he bowed very 
 pleasantly and asked me if I was still troubled. 
 I started to be very much troubled at this and 
 began to blush furiously, which I imagine flat- 
 tered him. 
 
 The Russian boat was quite interesting, but 
 my hand is no longer that of a ready writer. So 
 good-night, dear Mother, and with love to Papa, 
 and remember me to " Wilks." 
 
 Your Son. 
 
 I feel a very distant one here — more so than in 
 any English-speaking place, no matter how far 
 away — also perfectly happy for a' that! 
 
 Tuesday, the something — 
 I ha-ve forgotten the date 
 
 I could not get them to take a telegram at five 
 this afternoon; perhaps they will to-morrow. 
 
 Tell Papa to read Maurice Hewlett's " Song 
 of Remy." 
 
24 LETTERS 
 
 Moscow^ August 2 , 1912 
 Dear Papa: 
 
 I arrived here this morning after two nights in 
 
 the train. It was very hot and dirty and I am 
 
 beginning to get tired and a little upset in the 
 
 stomach — something the way the " Great Man " 
 
 would have been taken. I think I shall stay here 
 
 for a week or something like that and get rested 
 
 and well. 
 
 When I got off the train — about 10 a.m. — 
 there were no guides from any of the hotels. I 
 could not make any one understand "Hotel 
 d'Angleterre," so I began to yell "Slavonski" 
 at the top of my lungs and was put into a cab 
 and shipped here. Here there is a hall porter who 
 talks a little English and I have been made very 
 comfortable, so I think I shall stay. As things go 
 in Russia, it is not expensive and very clean. 
 
 The boat from Constantinople to Odessa was 
 very interesting. There were about fifty first-class 
 passengers. Except for the Prince of Greece, who 
 kept entirely to himself, nobody spoke either 
 French or English, except a nice girl who spoke 
 very fluent French. I could not fathom any more 
 of her name than Zerlinska. She was an actress 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 2 5 
 
 who had been to Alexandria and was coming 
 back. It was she who steered me through the 
 customs and deposited me in a hotel — the one 
 from which I wrote you. Almost all the men on 
 the boat were as if taken for my benefit from the 
 pages of " Dead Souls." The first meal they all 
 drank largely of vodka and urged each other on 
 to eat and drink enormously, and directly after- 
 ward everybody went to sleep and did not get 
 up until 4:30 for tea. I did not see anybody get 
 the least bit drunk or horrid. That night it blew 
 a gale and almost everybody got very ill. There 
 were two men in my cabin who groaned terribly 
 — also worse — so I spent most of the night on 
 deck. The night was clear and fresh and warm 
 and I had a lovely time. The next day we landed 
 at Odessa at four, as I wrote. 
 
 The next morning (there was a reason for 
 their saying morgen — in the morning a waiter 
 appeared who spoke French) I spent in getting 
 my ticket, etc., and went to the bank. There I 
 heard about Synge. It is, of course, the worst 
 possible news, but it is one of those cases where 
 there is nothing to be done, and I have changed 
 the poor dear's nam.e to" Spilt Milk." I imagine 
 
26 LETTERS 
 
 Phil Wrenn also did some swearing about the 
 matter. 
 
 In the afternoon I read all the French news- 
 papers to be got hold of, but was still in a bad 
 temper when I boarded the train at 8:40. In 
 the early afternoon I took the idiot guide at the 
 hotel and drove all over the city for about two 
 hours. On the train I began Dostoievski's " Sou- 
 venirs de la Maison des Morts." I do not advise 
 you to read it; it is terribly long and dull — a 
 defect which Poe was the first notable critic to 
 denounce — but with flashes of superhuman gen- 
 ius. I think it would take a professional man of 
 letters — a broad-minded one — really to enjoy 
 the book as it deserves. I know Tourguenieff 
 did, and compared many passages to Dante 
 — no more transcendant visualization and no 
 more horrible scenes in literature. Vogu^ says of 
 him that he evokes like Hugo and analyzes like 
 Sainte-Beuve; but that is only a small part of 
 him. He is a poet and a "little Christ;" he 
 understands because he sympathizes with all hu- 
 manity. After long dreary pages of the Siberian 
 winter at "hard labor" and in the hospital, 
 where, amidst dirt and filth, were jammed the 
 
HENRY FARNS WORTH 27 
 
 sick convicts and those who had been beaten and 
 those gone insane, and after a terrible confession 
 that a dying convict told him one night while the 
 others were sleeping, comes a passage like this: 
 
 " En outre, c'est au printemps, avec le chant 
 de la premiere alouette, que la vagabondage 
 commence dans tout la Siberie, dans tout la Rus- 
 sie: les creatures de Dieu s'evadent des prisons 
 et se sauvent dans les forets. Apres la fosse etouf- 
 fante, les bagues, les fers, les verges, ils vaga- 
 bondent ou bon leur semblent, a I'aventure, ou 
 la vie leur semble plus agreable et plus facile; 
 ils vivent, et mangent ce qu'ils trouvent au petit 
 bonheur, et s'endorment tranquilles la nuit dans 
 la foret ou dans un champ, sans souci, sans I'an- 
 goisse de la prison, comme les oiseaux du bon 
 Dieu, disant bonne nuit aux seules etoiles du ciel, 
 sous I'oeil de Dieu." 
 
 Except for Bedier's translation of the old 
 "Tristan and Iseut" (which Mother read) and 
 certain rare passages in Synge, I know nothing 
 in literature that strikes this note. Pardon these 
 overflowings, but one more from chapter one, 
 "La Maison des Morts:" 
 
 "Notre maison de force se trouvait a Tex- 
 
28 LETTERS 
 
 tremite de la citadelle , derriere le rempart. Si I'on 
 regarde par les fentes de la palissade, esperant 
 voir quelque chose — on n'apergoit qu'un petit 
 coin de ciel et un haut rempart de terre, convert 
 des grandes herbes de la steppe. Nuit et jours, 
 des sentinelles s'y promenent en long et en large; 
 on se dit alors que des annees entieres s'ecouleront 
 et que I'on verra, par la meme fente de palissade, 
 toujours le meme rempart, toujours les memes 
 sentinelles et le meme petit coin de ciel, non pas 
 de celui qui se trouve au-dessus de la prison, mais 
 d'un autre ciel, lointain et libre." 
 
 When I got to the hotel I was very dirty and 
 unshaved. I spent a couple of hours on my per- 
 son and then lunched in the famous restaurant 
 where you can have your fish caught. I could 
 not get any guide to-day, and it is also a holy 
 day and everything is closed — art galleries, etc. 
 I arranged for a guide to-morrow — a very re- 
 spectable looking old gent, who speaks French 
 and can say " Yes, saire" in English. I have been 
 walking about the streets and looking at churches, 
 etc., and the famous collection of captured can- 
 non. There must have been over three hundred 
 with Napoleon's proud "N" upon them. It 
 
HENRY FARNS WORTH 29 
 
 brought "War and Peace" very much to my 
 mind; also, for some reason that I cannot ex- 
 plain, it made me think, with a shudder, of the 
 horde of barbarians suddenly pouring into the 
 valley of crucified lions (see " Salammbo ") , per- 
 haps on account of my "great man" troubles 
 and perhaps too much " Maison des Morts" — 
 although I said it was dull, I sat up a great part 
 of the night reading it. 
 I have taken proper pills. 
 With love to Mother, 
 
 Your son, 
 
 Henry 
 
 Moscow^ August 6 , 1912 
 Dear Mother: 
 
 I happened to see a Christian calendar yesterday 
 
 in a moment when my mind was working, and 
 
 realized that it was the 5*^ of August already. 
 
 Hence I am leaving Moscow to-night at 8:30 
 
 for Petersburg, and from there I shall come to 
 
 Paris, getting there the 13*^^ or 16^^, at any rate 
 
 before the 17*^. I shall telegraph before leaving 
 
 Petersburg. 
 
 Of all cities I have ever been in I think this 
 
30 LETTERS 
 
 is my favorite. I should love to get to know it 
 better. There is splendor — but no "solid com- 
 fort" — just Renan's ideal, and the whole city 
 has geist. Most of it is dirty and bedraggled 
 looking, but the great gilt domes of the churches 
 dominate the view. There are Monte Cristo gar- 
 dens, restaurants with wonderfiil food and or- 
 chestras, and theatres. More about them anon. 
 
 My guide is a perfect treasure — an old Rus- 
 sian of Scotch descent, who was a seaman for 
 many years. He seems perfectly honest, though 
 greedy. The Kremlin is the great passion of his 
 life and we spend every morning there. There 
 are about six great churches and monasteries 
 there — some of them tiny — all resplendent with 
 gold and jewels and icons, the old palace and 
 the new one, arsenals, law courts, etc., and the 
 Imperial Treasury. 
 
 In the Treasur)^ is the history of the growth of 
 the Russian people. Just as you come in you see 
 a pile of old guns, banners, arms, etc., in a sort of 
 a heap, the remnants of Pugatcheff's rebellion 
 against " Empress Chatherine Great," as Lange, 
 the guide, calls her. (See Pushkin's " Captain's 
 Daughter.") The Swedish banners, sword of 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 31 
 
 Charles the Great, and the chair he was carried 
 in from "Dread Pultowa's Day;" hundreds of 
 torn, blood-soaked Polish banners, and in an 
 iron casket the Constitution of Poland and the 
 old keys of Warsaw hanging beneath the Polish 
 throne and crown; the amior of Peter the Great 
 and all the Imperial Russian standards; wonder- 
 ful Persian, Bokharan, Turkish, etc., tributary 
 gifts; gifts to the Emperors from the days of Ivan 
 down; armor of Boris Godunoff,who killed the 
 last of the Ruriks; state carriages of all times and 
 all the coronation thrones; armor of Yermak, 
 the Cossack outlaw who beat the Tatars and 
 whom "Tsar Ivan Terrible" made the chief of 
 the Boyars, but who was drowned in a sea-fight 
 on the Don; and so on for a long while. Even 
 the sword with which Ivan the Terrible killed his 
 son ; and a cradle hanging on spears for " Peter 
 the Great in his little days;" state bed of Napo- 
 leon, and his cannon stacked up about the arsenal. 
 In the old palace are the little, small, frescoed 
 rooms of Ivan, Catherine, Peter, etc. ; the room 
 where Kutuzoff begged Alexander to give up 
 Moscow without a shot (see" War and Peace") ; 
 the tower where Napoleon watched the burning 
 
32 LETTERS 
 
 of Moscow. Over a gate in the walls of the Krem- 
 lin is a little room where Ivan the Terrible sat 
 and watched the building of his cathedral after 
 he was excommunicated from the church, and 
 from which Peter the Great watched the execu- 
 tion of a whole regiment of Boyars who revolted 
 against him. They say the whole great square 
 was ankle-deep in blood. 
 
 The new palace is very gorgeous and some of 
 it in beautiful taste. I could go on to Mesopo- 
 tamia. 
 
 The Art Gallery — I have forgotten the name 
 of it, but have an English catalogue — is a terri- 
 ble and wonderfiil place. Even here " Tsar Ivan 
 Terrible" seems to cast his shadow. There are 
 many wonderful pictures of him — some melo- 
 dramatic and many not. 
 
 On the bottom floor are the Vereshchagins 
 — "The War Painter" — hundreds of little pic- 
 tures of " what he saw on his travels in India and 
 in Bokhara with the conquering army." I think 
 his pictures stand with Rodin's sculpture on the 
 pinnacle of modern art. Nothing can describe 
 his light effects. There is one of the interior of 
 an Indian underground prison into the mouth of 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 33 
 
 which the prisoners are lowered. One shaft of 
 dim sunlight from the blaze outside shoots down 
 on a white-robed prisoner looking up. From that 
 one beam you can judge the depth of the hole, 
 its putrid smells, its atmosphere, the hot glare up 
 above in the open, and from what it shows of the 
 prisoners you can feel all the age and mystery 
 of Indian civilization. 
 
 My old guide understands these pictures won- 
 derftiUy, being absolutely ignorant, just as Tol- 
 stoi said they could, and very much, I imagine, 
 as the poor Italians of Siena understood the 
 Madonna and Angels of their Duccio. 
 
 The war pictures are terrible and yet glorious 
 —the "Before the Attack" and the "After the 
 Attack" and the "General Somebody Review- 
 ing His Troops at Some Famous Pass." You 
 will find something of their realism in Kipling's 
 "Light That Failed," but little of their philoso- 
 phy. His draughtsmanship is as virile and its effect 
 as stimulating as Masaccio. I do not think he has 
 his tremendous dramatic power, but he was not 
 painting an epic and, except for Giotto, who has ? 
 He is by all means the chief of the Russian 
 painters; he is comparable to Dostoievski and 
 
34 LETTERS 
 
 Tolstoi. I could not find in the paintings before 
 his time, although there was plenty of rude real- 
 ism and theories of *^' Art for Life's Sake," any 
 Gogol to show him the way. His contemporaries 
 are all interesting. I will annotate the catalogue 
 to-night so as not to forget them. They have a 
 splendid grasp of their own history^ — that of 
 the Russian people. 
 
 The Hall of Sculpture was shut up. In the 
 other gallery was nothing worthy of mention. 
 One good — only fairly so — Rembrandt in hor- 
 rible condition. They often show in a separate 
 room a large picture and the studies made for it. 
 A very good plan. What a chance for students ! 
 
 Last night I went to a place called the " Her- 
 mitage Garden." It was one of the most thrilling 
 and interesting things I did. It is a huge garden 
 — admittance fifty kopecks — with good trees, 
 fountains, grass, walks, benches, etc., a very large 
 and very good restaurant with an exciting Gipsy 
 orchestra and singing, an open air theatre and 
 orchestra, a great big band in another place, and 
 a large, regular theatre — a good seat five roubles, 
 about the same as in America. I went to the the- 
 atre and was very much rewarded. They gave 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 35 
 
 an "Operetta" with an amusing, conventional 
 plot. Instead of one man writing the music they 
 took from everybody — Carmen, Faust, Don 
 Giovanni, Parsifal, Fra Diavolo, Lohengrin, 
 Gipsy love songs, French and German popular 
 songs, and a lot of what must have been Russian. 
 There was one bass solo by the villain in a fiiry 
 which was so sinister and terrible that it, too, 
 goes beside Dostoievski and Vereshchagin. I, of 
 course, have no idea what it really was. All the 
 chief parts were of the calibre of Lipkowska and 
 BaklanofT — the bass was better. The comedy 
 old man was splendid, and the soubrette flirted 
 with daring and refinement. ''Sophrosone" was 
 the motto of the evening — I could write it in 
 Greek. 
 
 After the operetta the five voices gave a con- 
 cert, each singing three or four songs. A great 
 many of them I did not know, but they were 
 all very good music and well sung. " Due Fu- 
 relle" was one and most were more serious. One 
 D ebussy- Verlaine . 
 
 The audience was just the sort that go to sum- 
 mer theatres in America and London, and they 
 all knew everything and applauded madly, and 
 
36 LETTERS 
 
 gigantic flowers were brought on, and to the chief 
 woman — a very splendid specimen — a very 
 large silver vase. Those who turn up their noses 
 at Russia would possibly be bored — probably 
 by the evening — and would never go to a music 
 hall — that is what this corresponds to — for that 
 sort of thing. Their great-grandfathers would 
 have to be dug up and transplanted to some cli- 
 mate where "taste" is a possible growth. In IGrO 
 (or 1700?) Abbe Bouhours doubted if Eng- 
 land was such a place. 
 
 After that a ballet — dancing not as good as 
 P. & M., but bigger chorus and infinitely better 
 orchestra, Brahms' Hungarian Rhapsody in G 
 Minor, etc. — no Rubinstein. Have been to a 
 big church festival. They do not need organs in 
 Russia — hence they don't have one. 
 
 Will write more anon. 
 
 Henry 
 
 I must add that in the " Church of the Patri- 
 archs" in the Kremlin — a church all covered with 
 old Byzantine icons and frescoes — is a head of 
 Christ, obviously by some wandering Italian, of 
 the Cavalini type (I mean the head of Christ). 
 
HENRY FARNS WORTH 37 
 
 In front of the (at any rate, a) masterpiece of 
 this far-travelling, eager-souled artist of the past 
 burns a huge, bedecked and bedizened two rou- 
 ble candle to an eager little horse soul that has 
 left its unsightly little body, and three tiny one 
 kopeck candles in honor of the three goals I made 
 from his back. 
 
 St. Petersburg^ August 7, 1912 
 Dear Papa: 
 
 I arrived here this morning at 8:30 on a very 
 comfortable train. This hotel is very different 
 from my dear Slavianski Bazar. It is all filled 
 with English, German, and American tourists. 
 It is a huge place with a breakfast room (I have 
 just breakfasted — about 9:30) where the wait- 
 ers wear knee-breeches and pink coats. Breakfast, 
 except in your room, is impossible at the Slavi- 
 anski before 11:30, and at 1 they ask you if it 
 is breakfast or lunch you want. That speaks vol- 
 umes as to the diflference between the two places. 
 I cannot get a guide here until to-morrow, hence 
 this. 
 
 In Moscow, as I think I mentioned, I went to 
 
38 LETTERS 
 
 the service on Sunday and to the extra service 
 for the Empress' birthday. The Church of St. 
 Saviour is the biggest one in Russia and was 
 packed with people. It is decorated with modern 
 paintings of great merit — most by Vereshchagin 
 — not the "War Painter" or even any relation. 
 The great dome is a wonderful piece of " dome 
 technique" — a very difficult thing to manage. 
 Correggio's true claim to supremacy lies in that. 
 The colors are also good, and for a marvel un- 
 sentimental even in the robes of the Madonnas. 
 There were a number of deacons in cloth of 
 silver and gold mixed ; they were mostly old and 
 silver-headed. The archdeacon was all bushy 
 black beard and long, curly hair, very thick. He 
 wore a surplice of cloth of gold, and from the 
 way he walked — about six foot three or four 
 — I think he had nothing on underneath. Mary 
 Garden is the only other human that can walk 
 that way. All tigers do and some bulls, Black 
 Anguses and Herefords. The doors of the high 
 altar opened and out he walked with nothing on 
 his head, looking like the arch priest of Baal 
 Devorateur among the shaven priests of Artemis 
 (see "Salammbo"), and turned his face to the 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 39 
 
 altar and began to intone. He went up a whole 
 note or more at the end of each verse, growing 
 louder and louder. He put his head back and his 
 hands on his breast and threw his voice up into 
 the dome, catching the echo just as it came back 
 and always rising in speed, volume, and register. 
 He ended in clear, ringing baritone and a boy 
 choir took it up, beginning in tenor, going to 
 boy alto, and ending in shrill boy soprano. No 
 Jehovah could sleep long or dally at the chase 
 if called upon in such a way. The bishop then 
 appeared. He wore a surplice of cloth of gold, 
 chasuble of plaited strands of gold — all stiff and 
 catching the light — a mitre of gold set with dia- 
 monds, and a huge ruby on the top. The arch- 
 deacon looked at him — I suspect contemptuously 
 — and walked in with his wonderflil walk. The 
 bishop represented the New Testament, and was 
 dull and sweet and shaky-voiced and set no 
 echoes ringing or hearts beating. 
 
 In the afternoon I went to " Sparrow Hill," 
 where " Sparrow," the robber who foiled Ivan 
 the Terrible, had his lair. Ivan once captured 
 two of his chief men and ordered them to be 
 executed. "Sparrow" came down into the city^ 
 
40 LETTERS 
 
 caught and killed his chief Boyar, and put on his 
 robes. Then he entered the palace — the guards 
 bowing before him — and ordered the men set 
 free and took them off with him. He was the only 
 man in all Russia that Ivan could never quell. 
 Now " Sparrow Hill" is a Sunday resort with a 
 big restaurant and singing and balalaika-playing 
 by men. There are splendid trees and a good 
 view of the city and river. 
 
 In the afternoon of Monday I went to the 
 horse races, which were very brilliant and ex- 
 citing. I had sufficient sense not to bet a cent. 
 Monday night I went to the Hermitage Gar- 
 den, which I described. Nothing can describe the 
 clear, warm, bracing, pale nights that they have 
 in Russia — same in Odessa, and even more so 
 in St. Petersburg, I am told. 
 
 Yesterday my guide came down to the train 
 with me and we had a very touching parting. 
 I was truly fond of him. He liked me because I 
 responded to his Kremlin and his paintings. He 
 said one thing that I think Berenson would have 
 kissed him for. We were in a very second-rate 
 collection of French and Dutch paintings, and 
 he turned to me with disgust and said : '*" Can you 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 41 
 
 tell me now, Mr. Famsworth, what these people 
 go paying away good money for these paintings 
 for ? I can't see anything in them at all, but when 
 I'm looking at Vereshchagin I can see every- 
 thing. You can even make a guess at how much 
 the queer looking guns the Bokharans use weigh, 
 and you can see the men sitting in their sad- 
 dles and standing in their stirrups and squatting 
 down in their little stinking shops and churches." 
 I told him that that was the very essence of 
 painting — he had no eyes for color, so we did 
 not go into that, neither did the early Florentines 
 and the Aristotelians — and Berenson agreed 
 with him about liking to see men really standing 
 and sitting. 
 
 When I asked him what he thought of some 
 of the Byzantine paintings he replied that he 
 supposed they had been painted by very holy 
 men and that they were very old. He was per- 
 fectly sincere about all this, and used to come into 
 my room in the morning and get me through 
 with my breakfast quickly so as to be out and 
 seeing. If I ordered him at eleven, he would 
 turn up about half-past nine and ask me if I was 
 not ready for breakfast. If I ordered Nissim at 
 
42 LETTERS 
 
 eleven, he would swear nothing was open until 
 twelve and grumble horribly. 
 
 I mean to go and telegraph right now. 
 Love to the proper people, 
 
 Your son, 
 
 Henry 
 
LETTERS HOME 
 
 October, 1914, to September, 1915 
 
On board U. S. M. S. Philadelphia^ 
 New Vorky October 5 , 1914 
 Dear Mother: 
 
 I HAVE only time tosaythat I am in a hurry. 
 My passport was held up in Washington and 
 I have had a fearful time getting one. 
 
 With best of wishes for the McGibbon horse. 
 
 Your son, 
 
 Henry 
 
 London, October 13, 1914 
 Dear Papa: 
 
 I have just left Wilkes, and am to meet him for 
 dinner later on. As I have not succeeded in mak- 
 ing any definite plans yet, the first mentioned is 
 the only thing that I have done so far. However, 
 I have many irons in the fire, and expect by 
 to-morrow evening, or next day at the latest, to 
 have made a start in some direction. 
 
 In the boat I fell in with a young man com- 
 ing from British Columbia to rejoin his old regi- 
 ment, the Grenadier Guards. I became im- 
 mensely intimate with him from the first, and 
 he is anxious to have me enlist. I don't want to 
 
46 LETTERS 
 
 enlist any way, and know that you don't want to 
 have me, and furthermore, I don't think it is pos- 
 sible, and so do not think there is much chance. 
 
 Griswood, the man I spoke of, used to be 
 a captain, and is to bring over a raw company 
 after about two or three weeks' drilling, or so his 
 colonel wrote him, and if he can put me in that 
 company, I might go with him. He is a very 
 attractive fellow and I am more or less fond of 
 him. I had dinner with him last night, and from 
 the way head- waiters, etc., snooped about, I 
 imagine that he used to be the devil of a swell. 
 That is one iron. 
 
 Wilkes thinks that I might go to the front on 
 a motor bicycle and act as errand boy. He sug- 
 gested the idea and has evidently had it on his 
 mind, as he knows all the details. We will find 
 out about that to-morrow. The idea naturally ap- 
 peals strongly to me, and particularly as he says 
 that if taken, I should probably be put with the 
 Indian Brigade. I will write you more about 
 things when the matter is settled one way or the 
 other. There would, of course, be a certain amount 
 of danger in the work, but nothing very desper- 
 ate, and in no possible way could I see more of 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 47 
 
 the war. One difficulty is my inaptitude in the 
 matter of mechanics, but I know enough to throw 
 a good bluff, and Wilkes says that as such men 
 are needed, there will in all probability be no 
 very searching tests. 
 
 If that idea falls through, I shall see the 
 people I have letters to, and take the first boat 
 to Ostend, if still open. The siege there ought to 
 make good material, and I may be able to get 
 some photos and do the regular magazine article. 
 
 As for conditions here, they are much as re- 
 ported — very dark in the streets at night, and 
 plenty of people about as late as eleven ; restau- 
 rants and theatres open, but neither crowded. It 
 is surprising how much French you hear spoken 
 eveiywhere. Belgian refugees are arriving con- 
 stantly, and all the shops have big red exhorta- 
 tions to the young men of England to enlist posted 
 everywhere. Extras are coming out every hour 
 and red and green posters advertise the extras, 
 but it is all done in the calm way that the English 
 do such things. You don't hear any more war 
 talk than you do in Boston, not as much, in fact. 
 The Germans are hated with a bitter and last- 
 ing hatred. Wilkes, for instance, talks about them 
 
48 LETTERS 
 
 in a very bloodthirsty way. He does not seem 
 
 very keen about the Russians either, but then, he 
 
 never did. Gold is very scarce, and there is paper 
 
 money for ten shillings and pounds. 
 
 With much love to Mother and Ellen. 
 
 Your son, 
 
 Henry 
 
 Hotel Continental^ Paris^ 
 October 19, 1914 
 Dear Mamma: 
 
 I arrived here on Saturday night, after leaving 
 London at 10 a.m. Strange to say, the boat, 
 Folkestone- Dieppe, was so crowded that many 
 had to stand. However, trains, luggage, etc., are 
 all in perfect order. I suppose that the crowd 
 was because Ostend and Calais routes are not 
 running. 
 
 I picked up several French men and women, 
 and several had been over to England to buy 
 heavy clothes, etc., for the soldiers. They had 
 found the same shortage there, but report fac- 
 tories running like mad. 
 
 I did not see any one who took the war in the 
 almost hysterical way some members of Espe- 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 49 
 
 ranza used to. Even the Belgians are cheerful and 
 practical. I think you will find more hatred felt 
 and expressed in England than on the Continent. 
 Also, strange to say, there are more alarmists, 
 and rumors of Zeppelin raids, etc., worthy of 
 Mexico are handed about in the Mexican fash- 
 ion, with lowered voices. 
 
 I picked up a Welsh captain of the Second 
 Ghurkas now in France, who had been detained 
 much to his rage by the General Staff. It was 
 his pleasant duty to dash about music halls, etc., 
 and arrest any drunken officers he might find. 
 He told me that the night before he had done 
 the bravest action of his life, and run in a major. 
 I noticed he had the South Afi'ican D. S. O. 
 medal and also the Indian Northwest Frontier 
 medal. He said himself that he was an officer 
 and considered himself a gentleman, and not a 
 policeman. 
 
 He let drop one bit of information which I 
 had suspected before, namely, that while waiting 
 to report himself one morning at headquarters, 
 he had had a glimpse of the map, and that the 
 English position was far stronger than reported. 
 I asked him if he wanted to elucidate, and he 
 
50 LETTERS 
 
 said he did not, but again assured me that that 
 was the fact. I think myself that there are at 
 least twice as many British troops at the front as 
 are reported there. 
 
 Paris can best be pictured by saying it is like 
 London in time of peace on Sunday afternoon 
 at three o'clock, the only difference being that 
 you see no young men about. That is the gen- 
 eral atmosphere of the place. 
 
 I spent six solid hours walking the streets on 
 both sides of the Seine, and finally lunched at 
 a half-swell restaurant on Boulevard Capucines. 
 It was that or the one lower. There was a fair 
 scattering of bourgeois and bourgeoises and off- 
 spring, and by choosing a strategic table, I was 
 able to eavesdrop on three sides. Some were dis- 
 cussing the morning papers, but most was mere 
 chatter, such as only Zola truly appreciates. An 
 English and French soldier came in together in 
 full campaign kit, — Englishman with rifle, can- 
 teen, knapsack, etc.. Frenchman of the light cav- 
 alry, with a big leather-sheathed sabre. He was 
 limping and obviously a convalescent. A reporter 
 came in and took a few notes from them, but 
 otherwise they did not attract very much more 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 51 
 
 attention than the same sight would in Constan- 
 tinople or Mexico City. They seemed the very 
 best of friends, although the Frenchman knew 
 very little English and the other only his native 
 tongue. 
 
 At another cafe three Belgian officers were 
 sitting and a Belgian refugee in chauffeur's cos- 
 tume came up, and after a smart military salute, 
 asked the way to the Belgian consulate. He said 
 he had come on a bicycle from Boulogne. After 
 he had gone one of the officers said, '"'' II faut 
 avoir du courage pour fair e ca^'' and the others 
 agreed and dropped the subject. 
 
 In walking around the streets you would not 
 notice much war-time excitement. The majority 
 of the shops are closed, and often on a red, white, 
 and blue poster about eight inches square it tells 
 how many of the owners and workers are at the 
 war. Also a good many of the round advertising 
 columns that stand on all avenues and boulevards 
 are now covered with red, white, and blue stripes 
 and " Reserved for military advertising." Natu- 
 rally there is none of the continual advertising 
 for enlistment that so covers London. 
 
 While walking, several aeroplanes passed 
 
52 LETTERS 
 
 overhead and a good many on the streets looked 
 up at them. On all sides you could hear the people 
 saying, " C^est un Francais; les Taubes ne vien- 
 nent plusP Once while in the rue Francs Bour- 
 geois one passed directly overhead and an old 
 woman dashed cackling into a doorway. Her 
 husband yanked her out with foul names and 
 made her walk with him in the middle of the 
 street. 
 
 At night the Boule' Miche' is fairly crowded 
 and much as usual. There is a thin sprinkling of 
 soldiers, both English and French, but as far as 
 I could see, they were behaving very well. Auto- 
 taxis are still plentiful, but regular motors are 
 very scarce and then either on Red Cross duty 
 or carrying soldiers. There are no motor buses. 
 The streets are not quite as dark as in London, 
 and as in London, the sky is swept in all direc- 
 tions by big searchlights. One beam will some- 
 times follow a cloud for ten minutes at a time 
 and then pass on. By nine most of the places are 
 closed everywhere. I believe that some of the 
 devotees still carry on a night-life somewhere, 
 but it is not in evidence, and by ten the streets 
 are as deserted as those of Boston at one. Some 
 
HENRY FARNS WORTH 5 3 
 
 of the movies run till midnight, mostly carry- 
 ing war films. All the regular theatres are closed, 
 but the Folies Bergeres and a few others run 
 movies. 
 
 I have not seen about the facilities for getting 
 to Rome and Constantinople as yet. I am going 
 now to the embassy to see if I can make a visit 
 to the battlefield of the Marne. They say it is 
 very interesting. 
 
 Yourj^/5, 
 
 Henry 
 
 Cafe Terminus^ Paris^ 
 October 30, 1914 
 Dear Papa: 
 
 Since my last my plans have indeed suflfered a 
 sea-change. As you say Metcalf predicted, I 
 found that there was no direct route to Russia, 
 owing to the closing of the Dardanelles. I still 
 think it would be possible to get there by way 
 of Switzerland, Austria, Rumania, etc., but it is 
 not sure and would be very expensive. Also, while 
 I was casting about and finding out what I could 
 about travel in Austria, I met a man by the name 
 of Bles, who is forming a corps of volunteer 
 
54 LETTERS 
 
 scouts, which he thinks will in time form part of 
 the division at present being raised by Colonel 
 Kitchener ( brother of the big one) , which is to 
 join the Belgian army. 
 
 This Bles is a very interesting man. He com- 
 manded a similar troop in the South African 
 campaign and also in Alaska, when there was 
 a fight with the Indians there. He has also shot 
 considerable big game, prospected, etc. Also, 
 unlike most of such people, he is a man of letters 
 and knows a good deal of art and music. For 
 the last seven years he has lived here, and writes 
 in various magazines. He is also an authority on 
 aeroplanes (not rich enough to practise) , and on 
 jiu-jitsu and other Japanese sports; also Japan- 
 ese metal work and pottery. As might be sup- 
 posed, I have taken a great liking to him, and 
 have formed one of the friendships that I seem 
 to fall into in foreign parts. 
 
 I have not yet enlisted in his corps, but I go 
 lo drill regularly twice a day, 8:30 to 12:30 and 
 2:30 to 5:30. The whole thing is as picturesque as 
 possible. The daily procedure is as follows: Bles, 
 very smart in English officer's uniform, modi- 
 fied with some Canadian details that he considers 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 5 5 
 
 more practical, calls to order at 8:30 sharp. There 
 are sixty in the squadron, but twenty-four is the 
 usual number present. We have men from South 
 Africa, Trinidad, Argentine, Belgium, Switzer- 
 land, Canada, United States, Honduras, Java, 
 England, France, the Caucasus, and Malta. The 
 four non-commissioned officers are Francotte, a 
 Belgian of forty- five, who is not strong enough 
 to work in his own infantry; Kyros, an Argen- 
 tine rancher, twenty-two years of age; Messelie, 
 a man of unknown nationality, ex of the Trini- 
 dad Light Horse; and myself. We meet in a 
 riding school and do manoeuvres on foot, each 
 one of the brigadiers taking command in turn. 
 
 I have learned to put the six sections through 
 the most complicated manoeuvres, advancing in 
 open order, forming triangular formation, form- 
 ing squares, and all that sort of thing. Also I 
 have learned to get my commands out smartly 
 and to correct any one that makes a mistake. 
 
 After that Bles takes command and puts us 
 through the English cavalry sabre drill. Then we 
 have a class in signalling, semaphore, and exam- 
 ination in Morse code signalling. Same thing re- 
 peated in the afternoon. The sabre drill, which 
 
56 LETTERS 
 
 we now do at fiill speed, is very violent exercise, 
 and hence I am in splendid condition. Also, I 
 have worked harder over this thing than any- 
 thing I have ever done. It is no simple thing to 
 learn to manoeuvre men, the Morse telegraph 
 code, the international semaphore signals, and 
 a pile of guides to range- finding, all in a week ! 
 I have been working twelve hours a day and 
 very hard. Also, all that information is worth 
 having. 
 
 I as yet don't know whether I will definitely 
 join or not. If you don't want me to, write and 
 say so. I have told Bles that I will abide by your 
 decision. Of course I could see the war with the 
 corps better than in any other way imaginable. 
 Part of our duty is to be despatch riders, and 
 thus we would not be confined to one narrow 
 field of action. As for danger, it would exist, but 
 not nearly in so great a degree as for the regular 
 troops. Practically negligible, in fact. 
 
 Bles has promised to make me lieutenant as 
 soon as the thing is really crystallized and I 
 formally enlist. I do hope you won't think the 
 thing too risky. I have an inward conviction that 
 I should never be touched. Also I have a great 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH si 
 
 admiration for Bles. He can keep his temper in 
 exasperating moments, keep cheerful and busi- 
 nesslike when everything seems going wrong, 
 and make the most of any little opportunity that 
 offers, more than any man I have ever met. In- 
 cidentally he can get more hard work on deadly 
 stupid things out of me than anybody hitherto 
 encountered. As for expenses, I shall have to 
 buy my uniform and that is all. Bles expects to 
 leave in a month or six weeks. 
 
 I shall write more anon. I could write a 
 volume on Bles' "Light Horse." With love to 
 Mother, as ever, 
 
 Henry 
 
 Boulevard St. Germain^ Paris ^ 
 November 1 , 1914 
 Dear Mamma : 
 
 I am now installed in a lodging, 22, rue de 
 Somerrand, that is to say, abaft of the rear of 
 the Musee Cluny, and can from the bathtub 
 overlook the garden in front of the Musee, 
 which will show that my position is a very stra- 
 tegic one for the fostering of the ideals that a 
 student in Paris should have. I use the word 
 
58 LETTERS 
 
 "student" with conscious pride, for I am now 
 studying war quite as hard as any Balzac hero 
 ever studied politics or art. 
 
 I have written the Da a lengthy account of 
 the facts of the case, but there was so much to 
 be said that I could do no more than summarize 
 and hence probably gave no real conception of 
 my doings. I also think that I overdid the grind 
 of it all, for though the hours are long and hard, 
 I enjoy most of the work. 
 
 I have picked up particular friendship with 
 Bles, as previously described, Francotte, a Bel- 
 gian garde civique^ and one of our corporals, 
 and with a strange being named Burger. This 
 last is by a Dutch officer out of a Javanese 
 woman in Batavia and married to a Russian 
 wife. He is incredibly long, thin, and pale, with a 
 little worm-eaten moustache and hollow, mourn- 
 ful eyes. He wears a pair of rough cowhide boots 
 with ordinary ill-cut trousers tucked into them. 
 The coat buttons right up to the chin. He is a 
 doctor of psychology by profession, and speaks 
 French, Dutch, English, Swiss patois, Italian, 
 German, Danish, and Russian ! Also some kind 
 of Hindu, " one or two Malay dialects," and 
 
 I 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 59 
 
 a little Japanese. He is to be our hospital corps. 
 He has an attractive apartment up on top of 
 Mont Rouge and seems thoroughly well known 
 in the entire Latin Quarter. He does not do the 
 drill, but usually comes to the afternoon session 
 to look for progress. At my first appearance he 
 came up to me and asked if I had not been living 
 at Hadem Keui during the battle of Tchatalja. 
 It turns out that he had been working with the 
 Turkish ambulance corps at the same time and 
 had recognized me. He is an old acquaintance 
 of Bles, and we three have dined together four 
 times, twice with BQrger, once with Bles, at their 
 homes, and once with me at the Cafe Restaurant 
 de la Sorbonne — very picturesque occasions, 
 Bles in uniform with sundry campaign medals 
 and some kind of a decoration, Burger as de- 
 scribed, smoking a Dutch pipe, and myself as 
 usual in an old suit which I keep pressed to 
 please Bles, who takes the queer clothes of his 
 troop to heart. We talk almost entirely war, 
 and Bles and I expand on the beauties of the 
 U. S. M. C. Burger on the first day I saw him 
 prophesied that the Germans would force Tur- 
 key's hand, and furthermore that, rather than 
 
60 LETTERS 
 
 lose Constantinople, they would declare Holy 
 War, and that Egypt, most of the rest of 
 Africa, certain districts of the Punjab, all Af- 
 ghanistan, the bulk of Persia, Samarcand, Dzun- 
 garia, Moro, and such places would follow suit. 
 Bles scoffs at this, and I am in your habitual posi- 
 tion of believing both sides possible and seeking 
 the truth. 
 
 There is also endless discussion and chart- 
 drawing of various methods of entrenchments 
 and the use of light artillery, the Creusot 75 and 
 the mitrailleuse. The news from the front here is 
 so vague that there is not much use in discuss- 
 ing it. 
 
 This place is out of paper and I must close. 
 
 With love to all, 
 
 Your^/.9, 
 
 Henry 
 
 Cafe de Rohan^ 
 1 , Place du Palais Royal^ 
 November 3 , 1914 
 Dear Papa: 
 
 I drew £30 this morning, and am writing this 
 lest you should worry as to what I am doing. 
 
HENRY FA RNS WORTH 61 
 
 I still have the ^200 in gold and did not need 
 this money for immediate expenses, but I drew 
 £20 on Wednesday a week ago. I wanted this 
 money to put up as a deposit for a horse which 
 I have hired to practise sabre and other exer- 
 cises on. The owner lives and has his stables in 
 Neuilly, and as I wanted the horse in the Manege 
 Monceau, rue de Toqueville, he insisted on a de- 
 posit of 700 francs. As he insisted on the deposit, 
 I made him put the money in the bank in such a 
 way that he can only get it out with my signa- 
 ture. Besides the deposit, I agreed to pay for its 
 keep and give him a louis a week. I don't think 
 that is extravagant. 
 
 I do this in the distinguished company of 
 Comte de Montmort and a certain Tollendhor 
 de Balsch, both of Bles' troop, and we sabre- 
 practise on horseback regularly for an hour every 
 noon. Both the others are first-class fencers, but 
 I have the advantage of them in riding and horse- 
 manship. Bles says that on foot I am hopeless, 
 but mounted, a very good opponent. My forte 
 is attack and defence on the nigh side. Polo has 
 been a great aid in getting a long reach and hard 
 thrust on that side. If I can get either of the 
 
62 LETTERS 
 
 others on their nigh side, I can touch the horse 
 either cut or thrust, and nearly ahvays the leg of 
 the man. 
 
 As I am about to write Mother now, in an- 
 swer to hers of October 2, 
 
 Yours as ever, 
 
 Henry 
 
 Cafe de Rohan ^ Paris, 
 1 , Place du Palais Royal, 
 
 November 6, 1914 
 Dear Mamma: 
 
 I am interested in what you say of the good work 
 of Mr. Norton. I called on him on the lO'^'^ or 
 12*^^ of October in Burne- Jones ' house and found 
 him out, but was received by a very pretty house- 
 keeper. At that time, according to her, he had 
 not got any automobiles as far as the Conti- 
 nent, but expected to some time in the next few 
 days. By skilful questioning it appeared that he 
 was entangled with British red tape and I lost in- 
 terest fast. Dill Starr, of Groton-St. Mark's fame, 
 is one of his bearers. As to the St. Bernard- 
 like rescue of sufferers on the battlefield, I have 
 also a screed of disillusion. In the English army, 
 
HENRY FARNS WORTH 63 
 
 as in all civilized armies, the hospital corps and 
 the sanitary corps is an important and large 
 factor. They work on the actual firing line, res- 
 cue the wounded, administer the first aid to the 
 wounded, and tag the wound with a special tag, 
 telling its nature and severity. Then they turn 
 their cases over to the, as you may say, amateur 
 Red Cross, who hover behind the lines and run 
 base and field hospitals. Being within sound of 
 the guns, and seeing occasionally some wild shell 
 explode, might by an ignorant enthusiast, partic- 
 ularly a woman, be taken for actual fighting, and 
 I don't doubt that many articles will appear, 
 written fiom this standpoint. 
 
 Anybody who really knows, will immediately 
 see the difference between such thrilling scenes 
 and those that take place in the trenches and 
 ahead of them. 
 
 M}^ point is that if Bles can put through his 
 idea, I would with him really see the war and 
 that not from one narrowly restricted field. Every 
 man in our troop knows at least two languages, 
 and has learned to send cipher despatches in two 
 or more languages, which even an expert crypto- 
 gram reader would have difficulty in making out. 
 
64 LETTERS 
 
 Also we all know the different signalling systems 
 thoroughly, and each man is well educated and 
 intelligent. 
 
 Our ambition is to serve as scouts — the 
 French word eclaireurs is better — and also 
 as despatch-bearers. We would not be in the 
 trenches, but we would be collectors of informa- 
 tion ahead of the trenches ; really about the same 
 thing as Uhlans. 
 
 You see the difference, don't you, between Bles' 
 Horse and Norton's Red Cross? I shall know 
 definitely in two weeks if Bles can achieve his 
 desires. If he can't, I am no worse off for the 
 information gained and can still go about my 
 original plans. 
 
 I have not yet finished Cramb,but can see how 
 
 well written it is. I don't see why it makes the 
 
 Germans any more understandable to you. It, 
 
 as far as I have gone, draws them as maddened 
 
 and blinded by jealousy. I wish Cramb could 
 
 have lived to read how the English and French 
 
 are fighting. 
 
 With much love, 
 
 Henry 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 65 
 
 Cafe Universal^ 
 Puerta del Sol, Madrid, 
 
 November 13, 1914 
 Dear Ellen: 
 
 Bles has gone to London to see if he can hurry 
 things along at the War Office. I know he can't, 
 because until Kitchener's million is complete, 
 nothing else will be done at the War Office. 
 
 So in disgust with mankind in general, I came 
 down here with one of our hope-to-be officers, 
 Christobal Bernaldo de Quyros by name, a son 
 of the Marquis de St. Yago tous qu^il y a deplus 
 grand d''Espagne. I thought he was Argentine, 
 because he said he came from there, but here on 
 his own dunghill he turns out to be a terrific 
 swell. 
 
 Last night we dined with Brother Antonio in 
 his lodging. Christobal is still in bed, hence I am 
 here gathering local color and about to go to 
 the Museum. The old father is out in the coun- 
 try somewhere, so Christobal and I are staying 
 at the Madrid Palace Hotel, the sort of place 
 
 the B family would have revelled in ten 
 
 years ago. Fancy cooking that tastes as if done 
 by a machine, and quantities of over-liveried 
 
66 LETTERS 
 
 supercilious flunkeys. As we are living together 
 in the cheapest habitable room, it may explain 
 the superciliousness. 
 
 I am disgusted with Madrid as a city. The 
 Q,u^'ros family are delightful, simple, travelled, 
 hospitable, and just as you would expect them 
 to be; but the city — no. If you came here, you 
 might rave of the picturesque, but compared to 
 Havana, all smothered in tropiail palms, or 
 Mexico, with its zeraped peons, distant moun- 
 tains, and air of tragedy and bullet-marked 
 walls, this is all flat enough. Also it lacks the 
 charm of Paris. There is indeed a park with 
 trees all vellow with autumn, and green grass 
 and the like, but Chapultepec with its gardens, 
 dungeons, and thousand year old trees, or the 
 Alameda, with thick pastoral shade and blind- 
 ing tropical glare and splashing fountains, makes 
 all this seem pale. There are, of course, plenty 
 of faces that might be by Murillo or Velasquez, 
 even some Goyas, but the same are in other 
 places, and here there are no fierce-looking rag- 
 ged soldiers or thin Egyptian-faced Aztecs. 
 
 Also it is cold, and I am really thinking of 
 nothing but the war and devising means to get 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 67 
 
 to it. Last night I sat up late writing a sort of 
 memoir of interesting things and places I have 
 seen. This morning it seemed not in the least like 
 anything I ever saw in print, but nevertheless of 
 a certain merit. I mean to go to Barcelona soon 
 and finish it there. It passes the time while wait- 
 ing to hear from Bles. And if I can make any- 
 thing out of it, it may please the Da or the Ma. 
 While on the train a really hideous thing 
 occurred to me, namely, that after having been 
 dined and lunched and well treated generally by 
 Wilkins, I then met a friend in London, — I 
 don't know if I wrote you about him, Walter 
 Pierce, painter, whom I enjoyed infinitely, — and 
 thereafter never thought again of Wilkins until 
 a few nights ago. You can do amthing with Wil- 
 kins. For God's sake, write him and let him know 
 that I did not mean to be rude, and that I know 
 he was more than really polite to the Da's son, 
 and that I feel like a wonn ! I don't myself see 
 how the thing can be explained, but if you can 
 do anything, do it, for the love of God! 
 
 I dreamt the other night that Lee and I had 
 a long and intelligent conversation, what about 
 I don't remember, except that in a general way 
 
68 LETTERS 
 
 I told him to write down every morning what 
 
 he dreamt the night before, because who knows 
 
 what children dream about, or from what they 
 
 draw the necessary experience? 
 
 I got that all from the Javanese psychologist. 
 
 Au revoir. 
 
 With love, 
 
 Henry 
 
 Puerta de Sol, Madrid, 
 
 November 13, 1914 
 Dear Mamma: 
 
 I have just passed three hours in the gallery here. 
 May we both live to spend one day in this city 
 together ! On every side some master line, some 
 color to ravish the eye and enlarge the mind; 
 nothing to blemish and everything to uplift. The 
 still, serene conceptions of the Old Masters is 
 the only atmosphere. A hall of Goya, — not the 
 Goya of the prints, the child of hell, but Goya 
 the master, full of life and color and line, but yet 
 serene. Then a long gallery of Titian, Tintoretto, 
 Rubens, Vandyke, and one or two others, a big 
 round room of Velasquez, all alone and always 
 at his best, a hall of Murillo, as I have never seen 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 69 
 
 him before, a hall of portraits, and that is all. 
 There is nothing else like it in all this world ! You 
 can look up in some modem Baedeker or some- 
 thing and get the list of pictures. I can't describe 
 them, except to say that to many it has been 
 given to paint Christ, but to paint the spirit of 
 Golgotha, to Velasquez alone. Titian and Tinto- 
 retto also I never understood before. There is a 
 series, Moses in the Bulrushes, Judith and Holo- 
 fernes, Esther and Ahasuerus, Queen of Sheba 
 and Solomon, Joseph and Potiphar's Wife, by 
 Tintoretto, all small, and all more ravishing than 
 Botticelli's Venus and Mars. It all makes me feel 
 like a brand saved from the burning. It seems as 
 though for two years past I have been follow- 
 ing false gods, or rather devils, and following on 
 the nervous in art. I could give my soul now to 
 hear Jaques Thibaud playing that " Chaconne" 
 of Bach's again. I feel as though I had been a 
 long way under ground and had at last come 
 back to the true light again. Nothing is more 
 abhorrent to me just now than anything that 
 smacks of nerves. I hope it will be given to me 
 to keep the distinction between devil's art and 
 God's art clear in the fliture. Rodin's " Penseur," 
 
70 LETTERS 
 
 which of late I have spent much time before, now 
 looks to me like Satan himself! 
 To-morrow I go to Barcelona. 
 
 Love to the Da, 
 
 Henry 
 
 Cafe de Paris ^ Barcelona^ 
 November 21, 1914 
 Dear Ellen: 
 
 There is a howling gale outside and quantities 
 of fine rain, and yet warm, and smelling like the 
 first of our spring storms at home. I have been 
 waiting here a week, and this morning received 
 a wire from Bles saying that he hoped to fix 
 matters with the Belgians in two weeks' time. 
 I suppose that means he has failed in London. 
 It all makes me feel criminal, sitting here an ab- 
 solute y^i/zra/z^ and spending my evenings at the 
 inevitable Jockey Club that exists in all Span- 
 ish-speaking cities. 
 
 I suppose you, too, have read Cramb on Ger- 
 many. It is the best written historical pamphlet 
 I ever read. It makes me in a way admire the 
 Germans, and yet I want to fight them for other 
 reasons than mere love of excitement. 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 71 
 
 This is really a loathsome town, lazy, and 
 without art. Also, it is impossible to buy a book 
 in English or French that is worth reading. I am 
 ploughing through a tome on Alaric that pur- 
 ports to be a novel, written by a professor of 
 psychology who wants to become an artist in his 
 dotage. It is very learned, but does nothing but 
 remind me of the huge pictures in " Salammbo." 
 A bona Jide inspiration is the only excuse for 
 writing a book, or any artistic effort, for that 
 matter. 
 
 I went to "Mignon" at the opera here, and 
 the orchestra was led by a little man who felt the 
 music, but drowned the voices. I went with the 
 Italian consul here, whom I met at the Club, and 
 we talked music until two. He knows nothing 
 but his own national style and a bit of French. 
 Beethoven, Brahms, and Franck are closed to 
 him. Still, it was a slight comfort. 
 
 This town is surrounded with wild miniature 
 mountains, and Varrichotti, the Italian, and my- 
 self took horses and spent a day among them. 
 Coming home we stopped at a peasant's house 
 and drank some wine in a room all dark, except 
 for a huge fire. It was so fascinating that we 
 
72 LETTERS 
 
 stayed until it was pitch dark. The trails down to 
 the city are very rough and Varrichotti was ter- 
 rified. This for some reason elated me and I took 
 the lead at a jog-trot, slipping and stumbling 
 and sending stones rolling over the edge into the 
 dark. I got one fall, but fortunately on a broad 
 place, and the horse was not marked. Varrichotti 
 was so far behind that he did not catch on. I 
 was in a mood when I would have gone over the 
 edge without a quiver. 
 
 That night I saw Velasquez's "Crucifixion" 
 in a dream, and ever since have been wanting to 
 start a novel. I could think of countless things to 
 say, and even a beginning, but no plot. I have 
 decided to take a leaf fi-om the "Idiot" and to 
 go ahead and write what is in me, and not try to 
 force things or to consider what the public wants. 
 
 I feel so dishonest waiting here, when the Da 
 sent me to the war, so much so that I don't dare 
 write home. Add to that that I have lost, or did, 
 rather, in one sitting, ;^ 150 at baccarat, and you 
 will imagine how contemptible I feel! 
 
 De Quyros of Madrid gave me a letter to 
 a swine here who put me up at this Club — the 
 Jockey Club, not this cafe — it is now only 10a.m. 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 73 
 
 and Barcelona is still asleep — and he pro- 
 posed joining the game. After dining me very 
 nicely, he, being very simple in his manners, as 
 are most chic Spaniards according to my experi- 
 ence, tried to get me away from the table, but 
 after a few losses, I am always like the proverbial 
 fool. I have not been into the baccarat room since 
 and shall not go again, but that does not palliate 
 in the least. I shall write to the Da and tell him, 
 because it is only honest, and yet I know that 
 it will give him pain. I hope your little Lee will 
 never turn out such a fool. I seem bound to be 
 a thorn in the Da's side, and yet God knows 
 I wish otherwise. 
 
 I have decided to go to Palma de Mallorca 
 and wait there for two weeks, then, if I hear 
 nothing from Bles, I shall make a stab at the 
 Red Cross, and if that fails, join the Legion. 
 That will, at any rate, stop expenses. 
 
 In the meantime, it is a comfort to hear that 
 Adam is a success. I suppose it 's my fault that 
 a sort of gloom hangs, or seems to me to, over 
 Dedham. What is worse, I at bottom don't think 
 it is all my fault. 
 
 If they would only ask some definite thing of 
 
74 LETTERS 
 
 me, I would do it cheerfully and feel at rest. 
 Also once at rest, I knoxv I could write what I 
 want to, and doing already what was wanted, 
 would not have to worry about whether it suc- 
 ceeded or not. If you can give me any sugges- 
 tions, do it, and "lay on, Macduff!" 
 
 Love, 
 
 Henry 
 
 Grand Holel^ Palma de Mallorca^ 
 November 26, 1914 
 Dear Mamma: 
 
 I arrived here this morning, for reasons which 
 I wrote Ellen two or three days ago, and won't 
 rehash here. If curious, it will be a fund for you 
 to write and ask her. 
 
 I have been reading more or less about the 
 island and it is really a most interesting place. As 
 long as I can't get to the war, I am better off here 
 than in Paris, or at least I think so. I caught a 
 fearflil cold in Barcelona and was so miserable 
 on the boat last night that I fully expected to 
 have typhoid; about two hundred per day are 
 dying of it in Barcelona ! However, a long walk 
 in the hills here this morning has put me in 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 7S 
 
 good shape again and I feel no more typhoid 
 symptoms. 
 
 The town is rather large, but scattered, and 
 very simple, quiet, and picturesque. There is one 
 beautiful cathedral, and some attractive ruins of 
 a castle in the offing. I believe there are some 
 twenty castles in the island, some very handsome 
 and even inhabited. I mean to go to a small 
 town, Sollaire, on the other side of the island, 
 and live there until Bles definitely makes up his 
 mind if he can do anything or not. After that 
 I shall try Norton's or somebody else's Red 
 Cross. The closing of the Dardanelles has put 
 an end to my first scheme. 
 
 In Barcelona I picked up a German and an 
 Austrian, — there are a lot of them there, try- 
 ing to get to their respective araiies, — and by a 
 great display of tact, managed to become fairly 
 intimate, especially with the Austrian. I think 
 Cramb is absolutely right in his diagnosis. The 
 only thing I differ with him in is calling the Ger- 
 mans the most great-minded, as well as the 
 greatest, of England's foes. Mad with envy is 
 how they strike me. At the expression " English 
 Channel" they froth at the mouth. I imagine 
 
76 LETTERS 
 
 that on the battlefield their courage and patriot- 
 ism is no greater than that of any of the other 
 nations involved. 
 
 Owing to my jumping around so, I have not 
 heard a word from home for three weeks, but 
 expect shortly a large pile of letters. 
 
 I will write again shortly and let you know 
 what my plans are, when more matured. As 
 usual, I am ashamed to say, I have a half-baked 
 literary project on hand, and that is really what 
 I came here for. 
 
 Love to the Da. 
 
 Yours, 
 
 Henry 
 
 Palma de Mallorca 
 
 December 2 , 1914 
 Dear Mamma: 
 
 It occurred to me just now that even though 
 
 I was not doing anything very heroic here in 
 
 Palma, I might at any rate write home and tell 
 
 you so. I have changed hotels and am now 
 
 in the villa, so-called, of the one from which I 
 
 last wrote. It is a little place of some seventeen 
 
 rooms, perched on the cliffs across the harbor 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 77 
 
 from the main town. It is all very beautiful and 
 calm and picturesque. Also it's the cheapest place 
 I ever got into, and that is why I stay. 
 
 I advise you to look up Mallorca in the " Bri- 
 tannica." I have read up on it a bit and it is 
 all very interesting. The little huddled town and 
 the cathedral rising like a crag out of the sea, 
 the harbor fliU of fishing-boats, lateen sails, and 
 the stern mediaeval castle of Belver facing the 
 cathedral from the heights on this side, all make 
 the Middle Ages seem near and fresh. As long 
 as the sun is out, it is really warm, and at nights 
 it is very cold. 
 
 I am having more success with my writing 
 than ever before. That's another fundamental 
 reason for my stop here. I really do think I shall 
 be able to finish an actual novel and have it go 
 more or less the way I want it (which is a new 
 departure in my field) . It seems to me as though 
 my experience in the Prado museum might bear 
 finit. It is the fourth organized attempt to write on 
 the same subject. Three have in various past times 
 been torn up. This time things move slowly, but 
 with no nervous wear and tear. Every day I 
 get things clearer in mind. 
 
78 LETTERS 
 
 The only other lodger here is a little French 
 reforme^ trying to get his chest up to standard 
 measurement. I detest him, and hence have no 
 distractions. 
 
 My programme — rise at 7 and walk on my 
 veranda while the sun rises, and admire the ca- 
 thedral until there begins to be fair warmth in the 
 sun, then read over yesterday's writings, change 
 when advisable, and go ahead until about 10. 
 Then dress and drink a cup of coffee on the ve- 
 randa downstairs, and then fish from the rocks till 
 lunch. After lunch, long walk in the hills around 
 Belver and return between 3; 30 and 4, drink tea 
 and write till 8, then down to read the papers, the 
 local Spanish daily and twice a week the " New 
 York Herald," then to bed about 9:30. It is so 
 cold that that is the only place. You may notice 
 a lack of writing hours in the programme, but 
 that is really not my fault. In order to have 
 anything definite and coherent and which can be 
 joined to what has gone before, I have to think 
 a long time. Even then, I write with a shamefiil 
 slowness and have just now completed the sec- 
 ond chapter, of which the first is ragged and very 
 short. The whole business would have to be re- 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 79 
 
 written anyway, if I was ever to show it to any 
 one. I am trying gradually to put in everything 
 of interest I know and have seen or thought. I 
 think that is better than trying to force things. 
 I believe a plot of some kind will work out of 
 itself. 
 
 In the meantime, I have telegraphed for my 
 mail and am eagerly waiting news from home. 
 I haven't had any for a month. If you write that 
 you despise me, I could always join the Legion 
 and try to redeem matters. 
 
 With love to the Da, whom I think it would 
 
 please if I could publish a novel. 
 
 Yours, 
 
 Henry 
 
 Villa Victoria^ Palma de Mallorca^ 
 December 4 , 1914 
 Dear Ellen: 
 
 This island is truly a fascinating place, and the 
 longer I stay, the better I like it. I think it was the 
 original home of the lotus trees; beyond the daily 
 exodus of the fishing fleet in the dawn and their 
 return in the twilight, and the lazy movements 
 of occasional tramps, nothing seems to go on. 
 
80 LETTERS 
 
 Most offices are open from 9:30 to 1, and 
 there are of course innumerable y^^e days when 
 nobody works. Everybody and everything seems 
 to be simple and easy-going, yet there is but 
 one beggar in the town and everybody seems 
 to know and rather like him. He was made blind 
 by an American shell in Cuba, but says that 
 he bears me no grudge. I, like every one else, 
 give him five centimos (one penny U. S. A.) 
 when I pass him. He doesn't make any ex- 
 cuse of dire poverty, but smokes rather good 
 cigars. 
 
 Every day I get up at dawn to see the fish- 
 ing fleet go out, and always the cathedral right 
 across the harbor from this place seems more 
 mediaeval and impressive. Have you ever lived 
 opposite any really good piece of architecture, 
 which was alone among the commonplace? I 
 don't mean that the town of Palma is common- 
 place, but from here no details of houses can be 
 made out. The roofs look like chickens swarm- 
 ing about the huge brooding cathedral. 
 
 I walk and fish and write every day about the 
 same hours, and take all my meals here, and am 
 from the negative or passive viewpoint a model 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 81 
 
 boy. Also at the present moment a very serene 
 one. 
 
 The housekeeping of the place is deeply in- 
 teresting. A little French reforme and myself 
 are the only lodgers, and yet, according with the 
 Spanish custom, they serve us two huge meals a 
 day. For lunch, hors (foeuvres eggs or macaroni, 
 fish, a green vegetable, a meat, and fruit, dessert, 
 and coffee. For dinner, soup, fish, entree, vege- 
 table, meat, etc. All this and lodging for about 
 two dollars a day of our money. In Joliga, an 
 island southwest of this, you can do it for one 
 dollar and a quarter. 
 
 I wish you could influence Alfred to speculate 
 or something that would bring in several mil- 
 lions, and then hire me as courier guide and 
 let me run you about for a year or two. I won- 
 der if Uncle Theodore has ever put in here, and 
 if so, if the Burgii liked it as much as I do. It is 
 really fairly warm here during the day. We eat 
 outside and never wear overcoats. At night it is 
 cold, and then I go to bed. 
 
 Unfortunately, there is nothing to read, not 
 even French books to be had in the town. That, 
 however, makes me write the more. In six days 
 
82 LETTERS 
 
 I have covered about fifty-two block pages in a 
 middle-sized hand. I mean that that amount has 
 survived the tearing-up process always so dear to 
 me. There are a host of things that would bear 
 describing, castles, ruined and otherwise, moun- 
 tains, etc., but I simply cannot sit down and do 
 it. I doubt if it would interest you very much 
 if I did. 
 
 As soon as Lee begins to have consecutive 
 thoughts, I hope you will give me a detailed 
 account of what he thinks about, I really take 
 the greatest interest in him, and for some reason 
 feel a sort of part ownership in him. The other 
 one does not affect me that way at all. 
 
 Au revoir^ my dear, one of these days, and 
 
 please write me a long screed of gossip from 
 
 home. 
 
 Yours, 
 
 Henry 
 
 TELEGRAM TO WILLIAM FARNSWORTH 
 
 Lyon, December 24, 1914 
 
 Love to you and Mother. 
 
 Henry 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 83 
 
 TELEGRAM TO WILLIAM FARNSWORTH 
 
 Paris, January 5 , 1915 
 Joined Foreign Legion for duration of war. 
 
 FaRNS WORTH 
 
 TELEGRAM TO HENRY FARNSWORTH 
 
 Boston, January 6, 1915 
 Think you have done right. God guard you. 
 
 Mother, Ellen, Father 
 
 Paris, January 1 , 1915 
 Dear Mamma: 
 
 Your letters, which arrived in a large packet and 
 with many re-addresses upon them, brought 
 great joy to your son, who was, and had been 
 for some weeks, more lugubrious than necessary. 
 I hope in a few days now to be a "soldier 
 of the legion," — not St. Augustine's, but not 
 wholly despicable "for a' that," — and then my 
 joy will be complete. My name is already on the 
 list, and Tuesday morning, when all the volun- 
 teers for the new regiment they are forming are 
 to be rounded up and selected, I have been 
 
84 LETTERS 
 
 promised by the French captain in charge of the 
 recruiting to be one of those accepted. If not, I 
 can join the Ambulance, as already written to 
 Papa. 
 
 Christmas, on my way to Paris from Barce- 
 lona, I stopped off at Lyons and walked way out 
 into the country along the Rhone. I thought of 
 you riding Adam — do you go alone? — and 
 longed and longed to be with you on Eve. I 
 wonder if you know the Rhone and the country 
 about Lyons. It is veiy beautiful, and for once 
 a pale winter sun came and lit up a gigantic white 
 cloud and made me think of a passage from a 
 French opium smoker that I had been reading : 
 
 " And after the other things had passed away, 
 dawn came, cold and bright like the winter in 
 France, and lit up a white cloud which shone in 
 the heavens like ethereal silver, and from within 
 the cloud a choir of horns played Cesar Franck 
 until the unseen trumpeters blended into one note 
 and a clear light burned steadily for a while and 
 I found myself again," etc. 
 
 I know that that sort of thing is not your style, 
 but for a week I have been thinking about those 
 sorts of things and it all seemed perfectly natural 
 
HENRY FARNS WORTH 85 
 
 at the time. I speak of it now because I spent 
 some time this morning looking at the towers of 
 Notre Dame, and thought of }'OU again. Also 
 this afternoon I am going to a concert of Cesar 
 Franck, and was much struck by what you said 
 about Rhodes, Rembrandt, and your taste in lit- 
 erature. To say the truth, I don't think there is 
 much sense in it, because all art is expression, and 
 d' Annunzio, whom I don't know much about, 
 by the way, has never tried to express the things 
 that Rembrandt or any of his kind were inter- 
 ested in, but Dickens, Balzac, Gogol, and Dos- 
 toievski are nearer the same catalogue, though 
 probably writers of the same epoch are the only 
 ones who really hit the mark. 
 
 This is, I suppose, the most solemn New Year 
 we will ever see. Nothing can over-express the 
 quiet fortitude of the French people. In your 
 lessons I hope you will learn them as I am 
 beginning to do. 
 
 Your Son, who sends you all his love. 
 
86 LETTERS 
 
 Cafe des Deux Magotts^ 
 Paris, January 1 , 1915 
 Dear Papa: 
 
 I am very sorry that I did not get your cable 
 about Mr. Bird until yesterday, though for two 
 weeks already I had been trying to join the 
 Legion. Otherwise, I should have joined the 
 American Ambulance and would have been in 
 a position to send the articles at once. As it is, I 
 shall not know until Tuesday morning whether 
 the Legion will accept me. They are getting up 
 a new regiment and have more recruits than 
 necessary. However, I cannot draw back now, 
 and as a matter of fact, I don't want to, and 
 even think it the wiser mo\'e in the long run. 
 The American Ambulance, the one I can join, 
 at least, works with the English army, and the 
 French operations are much less known. 
 
 Of course I may have to drill for two or 
 even three months and that will delay matters, 
 but on the other hand, a company of recruits 
 was sent right into the first line after two weeks' 
 training, to replace a company that had been 
 wiped out. The new volunteers in the Legion, 
 those that joined during the month of Septem- 
 
HENRY FARNS WORTH 87 
 
 ber, were sent forward in November and have 
 had heavy losses. That may mean that we shall 
 be wanted to fill up gaps. There will really be 
 matter for an interesting book, if it turns out 
 thus. At the worst, we are bound to take part in 
 the big spring campaign, when the serious offen- 
 sive begins, and with a stroke of luck, I might 
 be in at the death — the Prussian death, that is. 
 If on Tuesday morning I am refused, I can still 
 go with the Ambulance. 
 
 One point interests me intensely. It is the 
 values of the English and French armies. To 
 read English magazines, you would gather the 
 opinion that the British were fighting the war 
 on land as well as sea. While the French are ver}^ 
 polite in singing their praises in print, the fact 
 remains that the portion of the line held by the 
 English is infinitesimally bigger than that held 
 by the Belgians, and that whenever advances 
 occur, it is always a cooperating force of Allies 
 that gains ground. I imagine that this does not 
 agree with your views, and of course I know 
 nothing definite, but in talking with Americans 
 who worked with the British hospital corps I 
 found that they always admit "the two sides" of 
 
88 LETTERS 
 
 the question, and usually favor the French army 
 
 as a fighting machine. Certainly it is true that as 
 
 the British get relieved every two days at most, 
 
 they are in fresher condition than the French, 
 
 who are relieved every three days at least, and 
 
 are often four or five in the gutter trenches. 
 
 I shall cable Tuesday if I get a chance, and 
 
 let you know what I am up to. As to personal 
 
 matters, it is well that I at last got some mail 
 
 fi-om home. For the last month or three weeks 
 
 I have been so morbid that almost anything 
 
 might have happened. Among other things I 
 
 imagined, or rather took for granted, that you 
 
 all despised me, and that nothing but a sense 
 
 of duty kept you from cabling me not to come 
 
 home again. Reading the mail yesterday at Hot- 
 
 tinguer's was like coming out of ether. 
 
 With love, 
 
 Henry 
 
 Cafe des Deux Magotts^ 
 Paris, January 1 , 1915 
 Dear Ellen: 
 
 You are truly the best of sisters, and a bunch 
 of your letters which reached me here in Paris 
 
HENRY FARNS WORTH 89 
 
 were the most welcome things I ever received. 
 You forgive, cheer, and stimulate, all in one act. 
 I hope you will never have reason to be sorry 
 for it. 
 
 As just written to the Da, for the first time 
 I don't know how many weeks, I am trying to 
 join the Foreign Legion, and have every reason 
 to expect that I shall be accepted on Tuesday 
 morning. 
 
 To-day is Friday, and it is lucky some mail 
 arrived before the interim of three days of in- 
 activity. I have been so unduly nervous of late 
 that I truly think, in a city where people of ne- 
 cessity are more or less watched, I might have 
 been shut up as an idiot. 
 
 It has nothing to do with things in hand, 
 but being still full of Mallorca, I must write of 
 it some more. It was there in Valldemosa that 
 Chopin wrote his funeral march, and it was from 
 there that George Sand wrote of him as "vel- 
 vet fingered Chopin." Also Richepin in his me- 
 moirs looks back to a winter's month spent there 
 as the happiest and most peaceflil of his life. 
 
 About an hour's walk fi-om Terrino, where I 
 was living, brings you to cliffs wilder and more 
 
90 LETTERS 
 
 magnificent than any you have ever seen, with 
 caves and tunnels, and awflil holes in the flat 
 rocks, at the bottom of which you could hear the 
 sea sucking in and out, but so far down that you 
 can see nothing. In some places the foraiation is 
 almost the same as Dore's conception of Hell, 
 and over all the warm Mediterranean sun, the 
 blue water dotted with little lateen sails. 
 
 I used to sit there by the hour and dream, 
 and dream, and watch the clouds. It is only fair 
 to say that I was waiting for my baggage to come 
 from Paris. But even otherwise, I should never 
 regret that month. I used to think a lot of you, 
 and our days in Marblehead, and one March 
 morning when we drove out to Nahant. 
 
 Here the sun never shines and it rains most 
 of the time. If it were not for the spirit of the 
 French people, it would be impossible. " Call it 
 fate, call it God, call it France and Russia" is 
 nearer the truth. 
 
 In the Paris " Midi" was a cabled quotation 
 from this morning's leader in the "Times." I 
 think even the English are beginning to realize 
 what France is doing. Kitchener promises three 
 hundred and fifty thousand men next month and 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 91 
 
 a million more by spring. The French papers say 
 nothing of two million in the field, and heartily 
 applaud the British, saying politely that Kitch- 
 ener's opinions are the same as facts. 
 
 Over and above the men mobilized, the 
 French have more recruits, foreigners, reformes^ 
 and those over or under age, than they can 
 handle. The whole countrj^ gives its money, and 
 beyond the fact that the ''Marseillaise" is sung 
 too much in theatres and played too much in 
 movies, nobody glooms much of any. Even those 
 that are starving — not few — keep quiet about 
 it, and realize that those who have something are 
 doing their best for them. 
 
 Have you heard of the Catalan regiment from 
 
 Toulouse, who stayed two weeks in their trench, 
 
 fought seventy-two hours without stopping, and 
 
 when there were only five hundred and sixty of 
 
 them left; and they were relieved, asked for more 
 
 ammunition and permission to advance? 
 
 With love, dear, 
 
 Henry 
 
92 LETTERS 
 
 Paris, January 5 , 1915 
 Dear Mamma: 
 
 I formally and definitely joined the Leg-ion 
 Etrangere this morning, and to-morrow morn- 
 ing I go into barracks here in Paris, and as soon as 
 the company is ready, on to the front. The join- 
 ing was to me \&ry solemn. After being stripped 
 and examined as carefully as a horse, and given 
 a certificate of "aptitude," I went to another 
 place and was sworn in. A little old man with 
 two medals and a glistening eye looked over my 
 papers and then in a strong voice asked if I was 
 prepared to become a soldier of France and, if 
 asked to, lay down my life for her cause. Then 
 I signed, and was told to report the next morn- 
 ing and be prepared to start training at once. 
 
 I went out and walked down the Boulevard 
 des Invalides, with Napoleon's tomb behind me. 
 It was warm and foggy, and the golden-winged 
 horses on the Pont Alexandre III seemed to be 
 stirring through the mist. Lately I have come 
 to love Paris beyond all cities, and now I think 
 in a dim way I can understand how the French 
 love it. I suppose if America were fighting for 
 her life, I should feel the same way about my 
 
HENRY FARNS WORTH 93 
 
 own country, though I don't about England 
 or Serbia, and differently about Russia. Belgium 
 surpasses everything. 
 
 Last night I met a newspaper man I had known 
 in Vera Cruz and Mexico. He was with an Eng- 
 lishman, also a reporter, who was most inter- 
 esting. He has been in the Egyptian civil service 
 and knew a lot about Mohammedan matters. 
 We talked from nine to three, while Rourke slept 
 peaceflilly, and I was much flattered that the Eng- 
 lishman took copious notes on the German spirit, 
 their strength in times past, and on Turkey and 
 the Turks' attitude toward the Germans in 1912 
 and 1913. Rourke told me that Varges, one of 
 Hearst's photographers, had been in jail ever 
 since two days after landing. I was ver^^ intimate 
 with Varges in Mexico City. 
 
 I enclose New Year's leader from "Le 
 Temps." With love to the Da, 
 
 Your Son, who feels on the brink. 
 
 Paris, January 9 , 1915 
 Dear Ellen: 
 
 I have now been five days in the Legion and am 
 beginning to feel at home there. We are at pres- 
 
94 LETTERS 
 
 ent in the barracks of Reuilly, but already there 
 is talk of going to the front. I am in the 15*^^ 
 Company, 2^ reghnent^ premitre regiment de 
 marche (whatever that is in English), and the 
 13*^^ Company, which is leaving the week after 
 next, lacks twenty men and is to take them from 
 ours. As there are only thirty-five men so far in 
 the 15^^\ I am told that I stand a good chance 
 of going. If I do, it will be luck surpassing and 
 infinitely more than I hoped for. More of this 
 anon. 
 
 As for the Legion, as far as I have seen it, 
 it is not much like its reputation. Of course this 
 regiment is newly recruited — although the two 
 regiments de marche are already on the front, 
 and the 13^^ Company is going to fill up gaps. 
 
 In the first place, there is no tough element 
 at all. Many of the men are educated, and the 
 very lowest is of the high-class workman type. 
 In my room, for instance, there are " Le Petit 
 Pere Uhlin," an old Alsatian, who has already 
 served fourteen years in the Legion in China 
 and Morocco; the Corporal Lebrun, a Socialist 
 well known in his own district ; Engler, a Swiss 
 cotton broker fi'om Havre; Donald Campbell, 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 95 
 
 a newspaper man and short story writer, who 
 will not serve in the English army because his 
 family left England in 1 745, with the exception of 
 his father, who was Captain in the Royal Irish 
 Fusiliers; Sukuna, a Fijian student at Oxford, 
 black as ink ; Hath, a Dane, over six feet, whom 
 Campbell aptly calls ^'The Blonde Beast" (vide 
 '' Zarathustra") ; Von somebody, another Dane, 
 very small and young; Bastados, a Swiss car- 
 penter, born and bred in the Alps, who sings 
 — when given half a litre of canteen wine — 
 far better than most comic opera stars, and who 
 at times does the Ranz des Vaches so that even 
 Petit Pere Uhlin claps; the brigadier Mus- 
 sorgsky, cousin descendant of the composer, a 
 little Russian; two or three Polish Jews, non- 
 descript Belgians, Greeks, Roumanians, etc. I 
 already have enough to write a long (ten thou- 
 sand word) article, and at the end of the cam- 
 paign can write a book truly interesting. 
 
 As to my going to the front, it is technically 
 against the rules, as only those who have been 
 inoculated four times — at ten-day intervals — 
 are supposed to leave. On the other hand, I stand 
 in well with the Corporal, thanks to Bles, who 
 
96 LETTERS 
 
 taught me to drill with my eyes shut and in 
 any language; and thanks to God and a month 
 in Mallorca, which gave me strength to raise a 
 service rifle from the muzzle with each wrist — I 
 was lame for two days, but was reported to have 
 done the feat ''''tout simplement^ en passant'''' — 
 and thanks to an unmistakable bullet scar on the 
 hip, which the Sergeant, a Russian of the regular 
 army, noticed and gave undue importance to — 
 it came in the Telacpalon affair and was treated 
 with cotton and electric tape at the time — and 
 lastly thanks to young Christobal de Qu)tos, 
 whom I left in Madrid and found again in the 
 ranks of the 13*^^ Company, about to be made 
 Corporal and very friendly with both the Lieu- 
 tenant and Captain. Also the fact that I knew 
 how to clean a gun and never "kick about the 
 food" weighs in the scale, and also, having — 
 please don't think I 'm trying to be tough, for 
 most of your men friends could and would have 
 — knocked out one of the Belgians in a certain 
 esoteric manner which made me instantly very 
 close with the Pere Uhlin, the Mulvaney of the 
 three companies. 
 
 All that page is what I am most full of — my 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 97 
 
 own chances of getting to the front. Now for 
 general detail. 
 
 We live in the Caserne de Reuilly in the bar- 
 racks of the 46*^^^ regiment de ligne — a very well- 
 known regiment, who have been in all the wars 
 since 1650, and have their campaigns painted on 
 the wall. Also it is the oldest and most uncom- 
 fortable barracks in town. It is about a mile from 
 the Place de la Bastille and in the Quartier du 
 Faubourg St. Antoine. We rise at 6:30, drink 
 one cup of coffee, and drill from 7:30 to 9:30. 
 Good fast drill, with guns at the regulation 
 French "Carry arais" — a hellish position — 
 most of the time. At 10:30 La Soupe^ and rest 
 until 12:30. Then drill till 3:45, clean arms, 
 more soup at 5, and freedom till 8:30. It is hard 
 on those in soft condition, but easy for the others. 
 The drill is purely of the recruit order and done 
 in sections. Little Lee could be taught to do it. 
 I may add that it's not done half as smartly as 
 Bles used to exact. The more I learn, the more 
 I know that Bles was bom for a drill-master. De 
 Q,u}Tos tells me that he has gone as observer in 
 an aeroplane, with the French. I wish him luck; 
 he is physically unfit for either the French or Brit- 
 
98 LETTERS 
 
 ish service, but deserves better. To-day is Sunday 
 and we get off at 10:30 a.m. Hence this length 
 of letter. Ordinarily I cultivate acquaintance. 
 
 Campbell is a really interesting man; Harrow, 
 and then all over the world in most capacities. 
 He never mentions it, but I suspect from certain 
 tricks of the trade that I picked up from Race — 
 whom he knows — that he is no stranger to the 
 British secret service. His acquaintance in Paris 
 is of the amusing type. He has already taken me 
 up to the " Daily Mail" office, where I met some 
 very nice men, among others, S. Ward Pryce, 
 whom I knew slightly in Turkey, and Rourke, 
 whom I knew pretty well in Vera Cruz and Mex- 
 ico. All these people seem to respect us very much 
 for joining the Legion. Campbell is not over 
 respectable from the New York or New England 
 standpoint, but he is a man and a gentleman for 
 a' that — Scotch of course by descent, although of 
 French upbringing in spite of an English school. 
 
 Lebrun, our Corporal, is also worth know- 
 ing; of Belgian descent, although in Paris since 
 six years of age. He is of the type which brought 
 victory to the French Revolution. Wounded at 
 the beginning of the war, he asked to go back to 
 
HENRY FARNS WORTH 99 
 
 the front; but when requested to stay and drill 
 recruits, he accepted, on the condition that he 
 might remain a corporal. He does not approve of 
 authority, and if all men were like him, it would 
 not be necessary. Like all Socialists, he likes to 
 argue. Last night, after the lights were out, he 
 began to argue with the cotton broker, and be- 
 came very heated. So much so that Campbell was 
 afraid of bad blood. The broker had announced 
 himself as a radical anti-clerical. Finally Camp- 
 bell made himself heard, and Lebrun angrily 
 asked him his party. " French Traditional Royal- 
 ist," replied Campbell, and Lebrun gave up with 
 a good-natured laugh. Extremes met. Bastados 
 began "iVow^ sommes tous les freres^"* the Le- 
 gion's song, and all passed over. 
 
 With love, 
 
 Henry 
 
 Amhassadt la Republique Franqaise aux Etats- Unis 
 Washington^ It January 12, 1915 
 
 My dear Governor: 
 
 In answer to your letter of the 7^^, I hasten to 
 say, first, that the enlisting of young Mr. Farns- 
 worth is one more token of the admirable sym- 
 
100 LETTERS 
 
 pathy shown us by so many Americans in the 
 great struggle in which we are presently engaged. 
 Be so good as to convey to his father the feel- 
 ings of gratitude which such a noble act cannot 
 but elicit in every French heart. 
 
 Concerning the Foreign Legion, I can assure 
 you that most of the elements there are excellent. 
 A great many people are French; the officers are 
 among the best we have, most of them being 
 French too. The number of Americans is also 
 very great, and, if I mistake not, they form a 
 group apart, having been included in the same 
 recently, where, judging fi'om letters now and 
 then printed in the American papers, they lead 
 a life which seems to interest them very much and 
 to answer their expectations. I have just before 
 me, at the present time, on my table, a letter from 
 an American friend of our cause who wants to 
 enlist himself, if that be possible, and who has 
 already at the front, in the Deux'ieme Etranger^ 
 his only son and his two nephews. 
 
 I do not think it is at all impossible to locate 
 a private soldier in the Foreign Legion, any more 
 than in any other regiment. If your friend knows 
 the Company to which his son belongs, he has 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 101 
 
 the fairest chance that his letters, or almost any- 
 thing he would choose to send him, would reach 
 him. Some letters may be lost, but others, with- 
 out doubt, would reach their destination. 
 
 I have several nephews in the trenches, and 
 while at first, in the confusion of the early days, 
 nothing from their families could reach them, for 
 many weeks now almost every letter, and even 
 bundles and parcels of chocolate, etc., arrive 
 without difficulty. 
 
 With best wishes for the welfare of the brave 
 
 young American who has so pluckily espoused 
 
 our cause, and with best souvenirs to you and 
 
 Mrs. Guild, I beg you to believe me, my dear 
 
 Governor, 
 
 Most sincerely yours, 
 
 jusserand 
 Hon. Governor Guild, 
 Boston, Mass. 
 
 Paris, January 17, 1915 
 Dear Papa: 
 
 Although I have sent a postcard to Hottinguer 
 
 to forward my mail to the barracks, none has 
 
 come through yet, and hence I am without any 
 
 news from home and have nothing but Legion 
 
102 LETTERS 
 
 gossip to write about. I don't suppose it is the 
 sort of thing that interests you much, but I, in 
 spite of dirt, cold, blistered heels, and hard work, 
 find it fascinating. 
 
 I am thoroughly at home by this time and 
 good friends with every one in the company, even 
 including a Belgian whom I was forced to lick 
 thoroughly. The two great Legion marching 
 songs, ^'' Car nous sommes tous les freres^'' and 
 the old, the finest marching song in the world, 
 
 '* Soldats de la Legion 
 
 La Legion Etrang'^re, 
 N^ayant fias de fiatrie. 
 
 La France est notre m'^re^^* 
 
 are quite true at bottom, at least in the 15*^ 
 Company. Farm hands, professional soldiers, 
 wood workers, journalists, socialists, royalists. 
 Christians, and Jews are all working in harmony, 
 and each one doing his best for himself and his 
 comrades. Our Captain, a veteran of 1870 and 
 a retired Legionary, is largely responsible. A 
 Frenchman of the best type, an aristocrat, a coun- 
 trjTnan, the best shot, and still one of the best 
 marchers, he uses the most extraordinary com- 
 mon sense. He keeps up the most iron discipline 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 103 
 
 while drill is going on, and will give a man two 
 days in jail for a dirty capote or even for talking 
 in the ranks or for being late to the appel^ but 
 outside of business he is as indulgent as possible. 
 In spite of the good spirit of the company, the 
 place is no Sunday- School, and on some occasions 
 he could raise trouble if he wanted to. He never 
 winks at the delinquents. He tells them what he 
 thinks of them and what he will do if it happens 
 again. So far nobody has repeated an offence. 
 
 There is also a picturesqueness about it all that 
 I never expect to see equalled. Reggie Water- 
 bury has turned up here, and having been in- 
 troduced to Donald Campbell, a most genial and 
 amusing soul of vast acquaintance here in Paris, 
 we three often dine together. Campbell and I 
 get leave till 10 p.m. and Reggie puts on his 
 bully suit — so as not to be refused admittance 
 — and the three of us go about to all the most 
 "exclusive" bars and cafes. The ftmny part is 
 that Campbell and I, being in Legionary uni- 
 form, excite great admiration, and the most 
 respectable old gentlemen, catching sight of the 
 Legion button, step up and ask us to drink with 
 them. The other day I bought a pair of boots and 
 
104 LETTERS 
 
 was at the caisse paying for them, when the man- 
 ager of the shop dashed up and said that he would 
 not take any pa\Tnent from " iin des petits Le- 
 gionnaires.'''' I explained to him that I had plenty 
 of money, but that if he would give me a reduc- 
 tion, I would see that the difference went where 
 it would be really appreciated. He gave me ten 
 francs off, and I gave five to Le Petit Pere Uhlin 
 and five to de Hath, a Dane and a gentleman, 
 explaining of course how I got the money. Uhlin 
 sent a money order to his wife in Alsace and 
 de Hath bought a pair of gloves. I mention this 
 episode because it is a good example of the way 
 things go in our company. Although Uhlin has 
 spent hours showing me how to take down the 
 rifle, to grease boots, fence with the bayonet, pol- 
 ish my belt, etc., I have never dared offer him 
 any money, although I knew he had not a cent 
 except the five centimes per day that is the reg- 
 ulation pay. 
 
 The other day Campbell was paid two hun- 
 dred francs for some stories he wrote in the 
 " Daily Mail." He dined Waterbury and myself 
 and Sukuna, the Fijian from Oxford, and then 
 bought twenty litres of wine for the company. 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 105 
 
 As for leaving for the front. The 13^*^ Com- 
 pany, which was due to go this week, is still here. 
 I had put in an application to go with them, and 
 was told yesterday by the Captain that if I in- 
 sisted, I could go when they left, but he asked 
 me personally to stay in the 15^^, and I think 
 in the long run it will be better so. The 13*^' is 
 nothing to brag about, and is not well thought 
 of by the general staff who reviewed us all the 
 other day. On the other hand, we received spe- 
 cial mention and are well thought of by all. We 
 have not a soul in jail at present and have never 
 had anybody on the sick list — also, as a com- 
 pany, we have rejfused all bureau jobs, and by 
 request we all carry ftiU weight packs at all drills. 
 I am now in the first file, and have so far the 
 best shooting record in the company. The stan- 
 dard is very low and 150 meters the longest range 
 so far. Our old captain puts his ten shots in a 
 circle of eight inches at 400, just to show us what 
 he considers normal Legion shooting — he is 
 considered one of the best shots in France — and 
 Pere Uhlin, who detests marching and drilling, 
 never appears at the butts. 
 
 In the meantime, I am learning to really speak 
 
106 LETTERS 
 
 French and understand the French, and when it 
 is all over, will have material for an interesting 
 book. 
 
 A bit of silliness that, being on the heart, must 
 come out, is that a Martinique nigger, who be- 
 lieves he has divining powers, fell into a violent 
 fever yesterday after the typhoid inoculation, and 
 prophesied about some of us. Two were to be 
 killed, one of them the Corporal, several of us 
 wounded, and for myself, medaille militaire. I 
 would give my soul for it! 
 
 With love to Ellen and Mother, 
 
 Yours, 
 
 Henry 
 
 Hotel St. Pkttrshourg^ 
 
 33 (fe 35 Rue Caumartin^ 
 PariSj January 21, 1915 
 Dear Aunt Alice: 
 
 While I was eating sodden potatoes and salt beef 
 out of a tin pail, known as the gammelle.^ in the 
 room of the 15*^ Company of the first regiment 
 of the Paris Battalion of the Foreign Legion, 
 a letter was given me, and in it was a check for 
 £5.2 5. from you. 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 107 
 
 I don't know when my heart has so bounded 
 with joy. My own funds being somewhat ex- 
 hausted, I had for ten days been living on the 
 regimental pay, sou per day and half a pound of 
 tobacco every ten days. 
 
 I don't believe any of your Christmas gifts 
 brought more joy. I immediately obtained leave 
 for the afternoon, and am now just out of a 
 hot bath, am smoking a good cigarette, writing 
 in a comfortable hotel, and am brimming with 
 gratitude. 
 
 On the 31^* of this month we leave for Lyons 
 and on the 15^^ of February for Albert, a small 
 town on the Somme, where I am glad to say the 
 fighting is active. 
 
 In the meantime I have found four sympa- 
 thetic friends in my company and like the rest of 
 them. The work is hard, but every one is glad to 
 do it, and we all — I am not writing to hear 
 myself talk, as some one said of Hall Caine — 
 love France and are willing to do our little best 
 for her. 
 
 I think of you, in your rooms in the Ven- 
 dome, all peaceful — so am I until the 15^^ of 
 February — and thank you from the bottom of 
 
108 LETTERS 
 
 my heart. You have provided me with little 
 comforts, and during the life in barracks my 
 body as well as my heart will remind me of youi' 
 everlasting kindness. 
 
 Your affectionate nephew, 
 
 Henry 
 
 Hotel St. Petersbonrg^ 
 33 (fe 35 Rue Caumartin^ Paris^ 
 \_about January 2 5, 1915] 
 Dear Papa: 
 
 I have just read your letter concerning the Le- 
 gion. What I have written before explains pretty 
 well the situation. To be technical. I am in the 
 Premiere Battalion, Premiere Regiment, 3 Re- 
 giment de Marche, de la Legion Etrangere de 
 Paris — which means that the regular Legion has 
 been made open for enlistment for the duration 
 of the war and that an extra battalion has thus 
 been formed. As most of the recruits joined in 
 Paris, the Battalion was christened Legion 
 fitrangere de Paris — and as they may form 
 another, it was called the first. 
 
 As for the class of people, De Hath, Broke- 
 man, Campbell, Engler, and Sukuna are all gen- 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 109 
 
 tlemen whom I would not hesitate to invite to 
 dine at home, though Engler is very bourgeois 
 (the virtues compris) . As for the rest of them, 
 you would detest them, and I say frankly that 
 I like them, for the most part, and so does the 
 Captain, who is more of an aristocrat than any 
 of us. They are rough, drink when they have 
 money, and when they have not, do not try to 
 bum drinks. They will all go to considerable 
 trouble to do a comrade a favor. I am not the 
 one to rave about "good red blood," but I feel 
 a personal pride in the 15^^ Company and will 
 stand up for it. The way the men will march on 
 horribly blistered feet, and say nothing about it 
 to the officers, is splendid, and the drill is no joke. 
 We march 24 kilometers a day, manoeuvre two 
 hours at Vincennes, and two hours' section drill 
 in the Parade ground. That in full campaign 
 outfit. On shooting days we do no drill, only 
 march from the Reuilly barracks to Auteuil, 
 shoot at the butts, and march home, from 6 a.m. 
 to 5 p.m. I assume you will think me young and 
 hence wrong, but I would rather go into action 
 with my company than with any English regi- 
 ment, or most that would be raised in Boston. 
 
no LETTERS 
 
 I hope you won't think me uppish, because I 
 am at bottom both affectionate and respectful. 
 
 H. W. F. 
 
 Pans, January 25, 1915 
 Dear Mamma: 
 
 We have at last definite marching orders, and 
 twenty of us leave Thursday for Peronne, the 
 general headquarters of the Legion. It is about 
 fifteen miles fi-om the German lines, and we are 
 to make ourselves useful there and complete our 
 training, get used to the atmosphere, and take 
 our place in the ti'enches as soon as possible. 
 
 All is bustle and excitement. Everybody is 
 being re-equipped, and with the best that a Gov- 
 ernment can supply, and many of the men are 
 going to the various newspaper offices and beg- 
 ging warm clothes, etc. At the last moment a bit 
 of unexpected pride prevented me from going. 
 I have left enough in my letter of credit to get 
 me home after the war and buy my own extras. 
 There are so many without a centime, who are 
 going just as I am and who hate the cold nearly 
 as much. 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 111 
 
 Last Friday we shot, all three companies to- 
 gether, at four hundred meters. I regret to say 
 that the night before, instead of coming back at 
 8:30 as the regulations rule, I returned at 1:30 
 a.m. and unfortunately ran into a Brazilian lieu- 
 tenant of the 13*^ Company, whom I had always 
 detested. He said nothing about it at the time, 
 but at the Butts, as I went up to shoot, he stood 
 behind me and made sarcastic remarks about my 
 handling of the rifle. We shoot lying down at 
 that range. Fortunately the French rifle agrees 
 with me and I put four shots in the bull's-eye. 
 The Lieutenant, contrary to regulations, gave me 
 four more and told me to shoot again. At that 
 range it is a great strain, at least for me, to shoot 
 with the necessary care. I perspired freely, but 
 got four more bulls. It ended by my making 
 a perfect score with twenty rounds. At last he 
 relented, and said to the scorer, ''''Enjin nomme 
 lepointeur il ne vaut pas la peine de bruler les 
 munitions tout la matinee^^ and then in English 
 to me, with a man to man, instead of officer to 
 private, accent, " I was going to give you four 
 days in jail on bread and water. Instead, you 
 are now a sharpshooter. But please don't let it 
 
112 LETTERS 
 
 happen again, and I advise you to resign as 
 soon as the war is over. You may be of service 
 at the front, but in my opinion you are not the 
 type that is wanted in the ranks." After that he 
 gave me a drink from his canteen, talked about 
 Mexico, and ended by telhng me to ride his 
 horse back to barracks, as he was going else- 
 where. 
 
 It was owing to this affair that I am on the list 
 to leave. The Colonel reviewed us Saturday and 
 talked with those who were recommended to 
 go. When he came to me, he put his foot down 
 and said I must have at least two months' train- 
 ing before going out, and the Brazilian saved the 
 day by personal intercession. 
 
 I can't express my joy at leaving the cold and 
 dirt and dulness and drill of barrack life. At 
 Peronne we will have the work without the ex- 
 citement, but it is a step. We will be doing some- 
 thing actual, and I have hopes of being sent on 
 among the very first. 
 
 The Captain told me briefly that some things 
 were tolerated in the English and American 
 armies that were not in the French, but that enfin 
 I had always given proof of hon volonte v/hen 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 113 
 
 work was concerned, and that France needed 
 men and he would try to give me a chance 
 among the first, because he was sure that I had 
 volunteered to fight, and not to get a better job 
 after the war. I would really do anything for 
 that gallant little old man, with his wispy fiery 
 moustache, proud, kindly bearing, and wise old 
 desert eyes. 
 
 Our caporal Fournier, a Swiss, has deserted 
 and disappeared. The prospect of a winter cam- 
 paign was too much for him. Also a Russian 
 Jew had hysterics last night when told of the 
 death of his brother-in-law. He was reforme this 
 morning and dismissed quietly. He always was 
 a swine, and there are three or four more, 
 his friends all, whom I would not trust under 
 fire. 
 
 On the whole, twenty of the twenty-six I am 
 personally sure of and am glad to be with. Old 
 father Uhlin, the old legionary, who, by the 
 way, always does exactly as he likes, has ar- 
 ranged to ride on the wagons and fight on foot. 
 He is a most remarkable man, and though he 
 cannot read or write, the more I know him, the 
 more I believe he is one of the wisest men I ever 
 
114 LETTERS 
 
 met. His common sense is astounding. He is 
 truly the type of peasant who wrote the " Fabli- 
 aux" one thousand years ago. 
 
 I have material for a book worth reading. I 
 know that a second Abraham Lincoln would 
 write it by the camp-fire, but being as I am, I 
 can't write with half-frozen fingers, and it takes 
 me a long time to digest what I take in. As 
 for what I wrote in Mallorca, there are a block 
 and a half of it in the Hotel Terminus Gare 
 St. Lazare. 
 
 By way of lugubriosity^ if I get myself shot, 
 you can recover all my effects by asking the con- 
 sul here to send the trunks which I left there on 
 January 6. I locked them up in the storehouse 
 this afternoon, and they are all there, marked 
 with my name. In the meantime, the mails are 
 not very regular, and you may not always hear 
 from me. If anything should happen, you would 
 hear almost at once, so for once no news will be 
 no damage. 
 
 I have arranged with Hottinguer to forward 
 my mail, and in the future if you will write there 
 I will get the letters in time. 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 1 1 5 
 
 My official address is : 
 
 2 Armee 
 14 Corps 
 28 Division 
 56 Brigade 
 
 Premiere Etrangere 
 
 3 Regiment de Marche 
 15 Companie 
 
 Caserne de Reuilly 
 (That is the Legion post-office.) 
 
 All revoirf With a full and joyous heart. Love 
 to the Da. I am glad you all approve of my 
 action. 
 
 Henry 
 
 Paris, February 1, 1915 
 Dear Ellen: 
 
 At last the final delay that according to my 
 
 experience is inevitable in all army movements 
 
 is over, and to-morrow we start forward. We 
 
 were supposed to go Thursday, but this time it 
 
 is a sure thing. 
 
 Yesterday we were reviewed for about the 
 
 hundredth time in full campaign order. Even the 
 
1 1 6 LETTERS 
 
 cartridges have been served out, ninety-six of 
 them per man, and they add considerably to the 
 weight of the equipment. You, with what you 
 consider more vital things in mind, will turn up 
 your nose at this last item, but if you stand in 
 the ranks for one hour and ten minutes with the 
 sort of pack necessary for an inspection, your 
 back and shoulders will tell you that it is of the 
 utmost importance. I know you get used to it 
 in a few weeks, but even that is unnecessary. 
 
 I have made up my actual campaign kit and 
 Pere Uhlin has gone over it thoroughly and pro- 
 nounced it quite sufficient. He has also taught me 
 to make it up in such a workmanlike way that 
 a captain who happened up in the barracks asked 
 me where I had seen service before. It weighs 
 about two-thirds of what the rest are starting 
 with. What is more, Uhlin assures me that I 
 am quite right in thinking that anything that is 
 necessary can always be got hold of at the front 
 in one way or another. 
 
 At the last minute another legionary, a man 
 who says he does not remember what country 
 he came from, but whom I suspect of being a 
 German (Bavarian or Bohemian), has dropped 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 117 
 
 in and is to be our Sergeant. He has completed 
 his fifteen years and is coming along because he 
 wants to have his pension in his son's name. 
 Although that is what he says, I think his real 
 reason is the joy of it. 
 
 I could write you ten pages about the doings 
 of this one and Uhlin during the last few days, 
 on how to pass the guard at the barrack gate, 
 and generally def)' all the rules of military life, 
 but I shall not inflict them. In all affection, it 
 would be wasted. Hereafter, it shall be written, 
 but by an unworthy hand. Uhlin's song of pack- 
 ing the sack would need a Rabelais and a Kip- 
 ling to expound to the public. There is an official 
 string provided to tie the tent pegs to the outside 
 of the sack. He gave at least twenty-seven uses 
 to which it might be put, all in his slow Alsatian 
 legionary argot. Before the end Campbell and 
 myself were rolling on the floor in an agony of 
 laughter. The scene in the dirty whitewashed 
 barrack room, lighted by one guttering lamp, 
 with the black shadows cast by the rifles in the 
 rack, old Uhlin with his little desert-bleached eyes 
 snapping and his fi-eshly waxed moustache bris- 
 tling like a cat's, and Campbell with his genial, 
 
118 LETTERS 
 
 ineffaceably Bohemian air, — it will always re- 
 main, it is one of the pearls without price that 
 many a worthless rolling-stone may carry in his 
 memory, but which, alas ! he can only share in 
 part and that a faint one, and with a world of 
 Pharisees who turn up their noses to criticise 
 aesthetically the method of presentation, under- 
 stand nothing at all about any of it, and sub- 
 consciously pity the man who in turn pities them 
 back. 
 
 All this, however, is of no great matter. The 
 one thing of any importance is that we leave 
 for the front to-morrow morning at 12:35 and 
 go to actual active service. All the men that 
 are good for anything in our company are well 
 looked on by all the officers, and it is generally 
 understood that we are actually to fight, and that 
 before long, too. 
 
 I have overhauled my rifle for the fifteenth 
 time and put it in a properly greasy campaign 
 condition. I long and long to see something bet- 
 ter than a black spot at the other end of the fi-ont 
 sight. From general gossip it is thought that 
 where we are going most of the fighting is vil- 
 lage fighting, which is far more amusing than 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 119 
 
 the trenches, particularly in this bad weather, 
 when not very much is going on. 
 
 To be more serious, the more I learn of 
 French and France, the more I am glad to 
 have a chance to do my little best for her. For 
 Heaven's sake, try to give your boys a chance 
 to travel and for a while to live in Paris. What 
 they lose in worldly effects they will gain tenfold 
 in inward joy, which those less fortunate can 
 never dream of. I don't set up to know either 
 French or Paris, but I am making their acquaint- 
 ance and am very glad even of that. 
 
 As for details, I have shaved my head and am 
 growing a beard. It is of a dark reddish color 
 that some gorillas have, and far from pretty. 
 
 As for other things, write to Hottinguer, 38 
 
 rue de Provence. They know how to address my 
 
 letters so that they will get there. I will write 
 
 to you when I have the chance, but it may not 
 
 be very often. In the meantime I send you my 
 
 best love. 
 
 Henry 
 
120 LETTERS 
 
 \_Somewhere in France] 
 February 14, 1915 
 Dear Mamma: 
 
 After a week in a small village, where we made 
 route marches every day, learned to carry the 
 sack, and personally got into wonderftil condition, 
 we packed up our belongings and came on to 
 this village of , where we are in daily artil- 
 lery contact with the Germans and not more than 
 a few kilometers from the first line of trenches. 
 In four or five days more I ought to be there 
 myself. In the meantime we are getting a fair 
 breaking in to the '^horrors of war." 
 
 On arrival here we were put into bad quar- 
 ters, and Engler, Campbell, Sukuna, an old le- 
 gionary (not father Uhlin), and a Pole hovn 
 Igeria, and I all got out and found a very com- 
 fortable hay-mow near the kitchen of a battery of 
 75 artillery. We soon made friends with them, 
 and yesterday when they went to bombard, they 
 left us in charge of their fire and told us to make 
 ourselves at home. We did this by fiying some of 
 their potatoes. In the midst of this we began to 
 bombard with fury, until the echoes began to be 
 continuous. This put us all in high spirits, when. 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 121 
 
 with a hiss like a hellish rocket, a German shell 
 came through the roof of our sleeping quarters. 
 Two men were knocked down and one hurt a 
 little, the rest of us not touched. Of course we 
 had to pick up and get back to the company 
 quarters. I personally lost half of my belongings, 
 buried in dust and debris. However, nothing of 
 any value was lost, and now my pack is easier 
 to carry. 
 
 For about an hour shells dropped on the vil- 
 lage, but not much of any damage was done. All 
 last night we fired pretty steadily though slowly, 
 and now the German shells are falling thickly 
 around us. I suppose fifty have come over and 
 burst, one carrying off another piece of our roof. 
 
 Campbell, Sukuna, the old legionary, Moreno 
 by name, and myself have found another quar- 
 ter. It is again in a hay-mow, reached by a ladder, 
 which the rest lack energy to go out and steal. 
 Just now we are all up here writing, and nobody 
 seems to mind the continual hiss and bang. 
 
 I wrote a postcard earlier in the day to the 
 Da and asked for a gift of moneys. Please explain 
 to him that I have £40 on my letter of credit, 
 but need that to get home after the war. Also 
 
122 LETTERS 
 
 I don't, strictly speaking, need any. I only want 
 it to buy cigarettes, hot coffee, clean socks, wine, 
 white bread, etc. It would of course be better 
 for me to go without such luxuries. 
 
 As for mail, write to Hottinguer. He can al- 
 ways get mail to me. 
 
 Love to the Da and Ellen and Ellen's brood. 
 
 Henry 
 
 March 6, 1915 
 Dear Papa: 
 
 I am writing from the trenches, so please excuse 
 the extraordinary paper. I have no need to be 
 so mournful as it looks. 
 
 As for news. There is not much in our dis- 
 trict. The cannonading, which was described in 
 the Officiel Communique as excessively violent, 
 has dwindled to an occasional flurry of shells. 
 In my company we have a loss now and then, 
 usually the man's own fault for not keeping his 
 head below the trench line. We have been work- 
 ing fairly hard mounting guard and digging all 
 through the night while in the trenches, and a 
 bit of digging on other sectors during the four 
 days' repos. Not an over-exciting programme, 
 
HENRY FARNS WORTH 123 
 
 but there is a general feeling in the air that with 
 a little better weather, things may start up a bit. 
 A few mornings ago the Germans delivered 
 a flirious attack on the French line about seven 
 kilometers to the right of our position. These 
 wretched people chose a minute when one bat- 
 talion was replacing another in the trenches. The 
 French were practically elbow to elbow in their 
 trenches, and they say that the Germans suffered 
 big losses. There was cannonading for about half 
 an hour and then the rifles began to splutter 
 briskly, growing rapidly from the prairie-fire- 
 like crackle of the beginning of an engagement 
 to the constant drumming of the resistance to the 
 charge. The whir of the mitrailleuse at fiall speed 
 at once loudened and steadied the sound effect. 
 Rockets and candle bombs hung steadily over the 
 scene. The light artillery roared, and way back in 
 the distance the English naval guns, so gossip has 
 
 it, mounted at , thundered steadily. The 
 
 rifles died away in ten minutes, and in half an 
 hour the thing was over, except for the rumble of 
 distant big guns. In that respect the Germans are 
 well provided. A Russian of the 4*^ section of 
 my company told me the other day a 405 milli- 
 
124 LETTERS 
 
 meter shell dropped in on them and destroyed a 
 week's advance digging that they had been doing. 
 
 As for personal matters. I love to get your and 
 Mother's and Ellen's letters more than I ever 
 did before. I know that you are eager for mine, 
 and suppose I ought to write more, but really 
 there is not much time; rifle and arms must be 
 kept clean, the mud must be scraped off shoes and 
 capote^ and I need lots of sleep nowadays in order 
 to keep as fit as possible. When the advance 
 comes, I want to be one of those capable of doing 
 my share of it. I still have trouble with my feet 
 marching, but by taking good care of them and 
 using plenty of grease, I get along well. In an- 
 other month I ought to be a fairly good soldier, 
 physically, that is, for though I know what is to 
 be said fi'om the fireside on the point, I am not 
 very strong on cantonment discipline, or on the 
 respect due the humors of sous-officiers . 
 
 In the meantime Sukuna and I live in the 
 greatest peace and mutual enjoyment of each 
 other's company. We are in the same section and 
 squad, and in the trenches share the same cabin. 
 Sukuna is always writing to old ladies and gen- 
 tlemen who interest themselves in Indians and 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 125 
 
 other native students at Oxford, and in return 
 has received delicious tucker boxes from them. 
 These we share en Legionnaire^ and sometimes 
 he gathers in so much that it is all we can both 
 do to carry it. 
 
 Evening ''Alertef' I go to work till dawn. 
 Love to all, 
 
 Henry 
 
 [About March 7, 1915] 
 Dear Ellen: 
 
 When I wrote to Mother last, bombs were burst- 
 ing not far away and two of the bunch had 
 already been slightly hurt, but I was not yet a 
 soldier. Now I am, having just come back from 
 four days in the trenches. At the moment I am 
 sitting in the sun and writing on the back of a 
 biscuit tin, which came last night to Sukuna. Tlie 
 idleness is explained by the fact that six of us are 
 mounting guard in a little wood outside of the 
 village. I have been washing clothes all the morn- 
 ing, and am now about to cook some macaroni, 
 also the property of Sukuna. The same kind soul 
 has also provided me with some good cigarettes. 
 There is a little hint of warmth in the sun — only 
 
126 LETTERS 
 
 random rifle shots and a distant battery and the 
 quacking of wild ducks breaks the silence. 
 
 Your and Mother's letters came yesterday, 
 apparently just having heard of my enlistment, 
 and were a great joy. I have not the time here 
 to try to put you in the full atmosphere of the 
 trenches, and their sensations and reactions. You 
 read the papers and know that there is a deal of 
 mud and water and cold, and not overmuch room. 
 Sukuna, Campbell, and myself are stationed in 
 an avant petit paste. Our cabin was 10 by 5 by 
 4 and, all of us being lazy souls, filled with no 
 ordinary clutter and dirt. All day we slept, ate, 
 cleaned our trenches and rifles, and smoked Su- 
 kuna's tobacco. The wily Fijian seems to have 
 unlimited old ladies who send him "tucker" 
 boxes. 
 
 Then came the magic of the nights. At sun- 
 down we began to do sentry, hour on and hour 
 off" till daylight. We were about 50 meters from 
 the German trenches and not allowed to shoot 
 (why, I don't know) . As the night grows and 
 you stand crouching and watching for any sign 
 of life ahead of you, the very air seems to come 
 to life. All is still, nobody talks above a whisper, 
 
HENRY FARNS WORTH 127 
 
 and all lights are out. From trenches all along the 
 maze of line shots crack out and stray impersonal 
 bullets whiz by on unknown errands. A huge 
 rocket candle shoots up and hangs for a moment 
 above the earth, lighting up a section of the coun- 
 try, big guns boom out, and shells like witches 
 riding to a feast whiz by. Sometimes, with a 
 whistle and bang, a half-dozen "75's" swoop 
 over like a covey of devil's quail, and we stand 
 crouching and watching for any sign of human 
 hfe. It never came. Just the impersonal bang 
 and whistle. 
 
 I must do my cooking now and leave a lot 
 unsaid. We go again to the trenches in two days. 
 I will try to write from there. As a Parthian 
 good-bye, — send me two tooth-brushes, stiff, and 
 some paste (easier to carry) , a machine to light 
 cigarettes with — both with alcohol and that 
 string stuff — a pot of boracic ointment, and one 
 of vaseline, this latter a big one, and if you are 
 the sort of Christian Christ was, 100 cigarettes. 
 I have not a centime to bless myself. 
 With love to all. 
 
 Your brother, 
 
 Henry 
 
128 LETTERS 
 
 March 17, 1915 
 Dear Mamma: 
 
 It seems an age since last I wrote, and I have 
 received a whole packet of letters from you and 
 the Da and Ellen. Times have been busy with 
 us here, — our regular work in the trenches and 
 dui'ing the four days' repos^ always on the move, 
 going out at night to strengthen the line in weak 
 places, and hasty digging in the pitch dark, what 
 and for what you know not. Many of the men 
 think they are overworked, and grumble the way 
 such people do. Sukuna and I go on as peace- 
 ful and contented as ever. The others have been 
 at it all winter and are more tired, I suppose. 
 ■ Hottinguer also sent me 250 francs, which I 
 suppose must be from the Da. He must have tele- 
 graphed it after receiving my begging letter. I 
 am much touched and very grateful. I thank him 
 as best I can. 
 
 Knitted socks, from the maids, as you say, 
 have also arrived, and a most glorious muffler. 
 One pair of socks is on and comforting, and the 
 muffler, during the one cold night we have had 
 since its arrival, was wrapped about my body as 
 a belt and was welcome. 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 129 
 
 The money has made a great difference; 
 was immediately able to buy candles for our 
 cabin in the trenches; sugar, which Sukuna 
 loves, matches, etc. Sukuna for the moment is 
 without a centime, though his train of eatables 
 still arrives with fair regularity. At seven this 
 morning we arrived here, where I first came to 
 the front, by the way, and this evening or to- 
 morrow I hope to give a feast of cheese, white 
 bread, tobacco, wine, jam, and pate to all those 
 who have been kind to me in my destitution. 
 
 As for war news, there is the usual scarcity. 
 The Germans have been bombarding fliriously 
 at times, and with slow steadiness all the time. 
 We sit in our trench cabin or mount guard at 
 night in the advance posts, and dig interminably, 
 deepening and strengthening the trenches, and 
 little or no attention is paid to the whistle and 
 bang of the shells. 
 
 The other day, for various reasons having 
 rowed with the Sergeant, I was sent up to work 
 through the night with the 3^ Company, and 
 stayed up there during the day, as my own com- 
 pany, the 6^^, was to replace them some time 
 during the next night. As all the cabins were full. 
 
130 LETTERS 
 
 two others in the same predicament and myself 
 established ourselves in the cellar of a house, the 
 top of which had been blown entirely away. That 
 afternoon the Germans let shells drop like rain 
 on the village for a while. The noise was terri- 
 ble and wonderftil, too. The damage, everything 
 being already ruined, amounted to nothing. 
 Finally they set fire to a group of farmhouses on 
 the other side of the canal. As the darkness came 
 on, the flames became fearful. I never saw such a 
 blaze, lighting up the whole countryside as bright 
 as day. I was put on "kitchen corvee ^"^ which 
 means carr}dng the stuflTof the Z^ Company down 
 to where the wagons were, making room for the 
 6*^ Company, which was coming up. The road, 
 which is unfortunately exposed to the enemy, 
 was as bright as day, and most of the men were 
 herded into a hoyau on the other side of the canal. 
 By staying discreetly in the rear I managed to 
 get left behind, and was free to take the road 
 with only my sack of bread for company. Alas! 
 none can paint such a scene, and I am too tired 
 to attempt a description. The canal is lined with 
 poplars, which cast magic shadows on the blaz- 
 ing flames. Every two or three minutes shells 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 131 
 
 came over and burst over the fire. The bombard- 
 ment in the afternoon had smashed several of 
 the poplars, and they lay all mangled and drag- 
 ging their tops in the sleepy, beautiful canal. Bul- 
 lets zipped by and forced me to hide from time 
 to time, when the great green German candles 
 sailed up into the black sky, and hanging for a 
 minute or two like earthly stars, lit up the vicin- 
 ity beyond the firelight. 
 
 War is terrible and hard, incredibly, but what 
 thoughts and scenes it raises ! Walking back with- 
 out the bread sack, and knowing there was no 
 hurry, I whistled the Fifth Symphony and 
 thought of you. I don't know when I have been 
 in a sadder or more tender mood. The shelling 
 died down to an occasional shot, and no Germans 
 disturbed my walk home. It was a warm even- 
 ing, and with the fire to help out, was almost like 
 Dedham garden on a night in June. I longed 
 and long to be at home again, but war is war. 
 Nothing can approach it, and every man ought 
 to know it once. 
 
 After getting back to the 3^ Company quar- 
 ters, I got my sack and things and crossed the 
 canal to the burning village. It is in the trenches 
 
132 LETTERS 
 
 in front of this that my section is placed. My 
 company turned up about midnight, and I spent 
 the night on guard on watch, and as usual, set- 
 tled in our cabin with Sukuna. 
 
 All this may not make much sense, but I have 
 only had two hours' sleep in two days, and have 
 done a lot of digging and marching and a deal 
 of ear and eye straining, watching for first signs 
 of a German attack, which all their shelling was 
 thought to prelude. 
 
 It is about 11 a.m. now, so good-night, dear 
 She. I long to be with you all again, once the 
 war ends. I think it will be this summer some 
 time; then for the rest and peace of Dedham! 
 With love to the Da and Ellen, 
 
 Henry 
 
 March 18, 1915 
 Dear Ellen: 
 
 I wrote a long letter to Mamma yesterday, so 
 
 there remains little of news for me to tell you. It 
 
 is only because there is, for once, nothing to do, 
 
 and because I enjoy your letters so much, that 
 
 I write at all. I am tired out, covered from head 
 
 to foot with dried trench mud. Sukuna and I are 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 133 
 
 sleeping or making tea in our little cabin, a cor- 
 poral puts his head in and gives me a bunch of 
 letters from home. It really seems like getting 
 news from Paradise. Not that I am unhappy, but 
 the contrast of it all. 
 
 When on guard I spend hours and hours 
 imagining myself home next autumn, that is, 
 assuming the war ends this summer; also I talk 
 with Sukuna about it all, and he knows you and 
 Mamma and Papa, the horses, the polo, the 
 Nickersons, the Hales, the river, and all the rest 
 of Dedham so that I think he would be able to 
 pass for a native, if he should ever meet another 
 wandering Dedhamite. I in turn know his little 
 island, two hundred miles from Suva, where his 
 father is chief; the Island of Tonga, where he 
 spends his time when possible; his rooms, Wad- 
 ham College, Oxford, his friends there, and his 
 chiefs at the Colonial Office in London, where 
 he once worked as some kind of a deputy com- 
 missioner from Fiji. I think I am possibly more 
 fond of him than any man I know. He's quite 
 as amusing as the average, better educated, and 
 of course knows the world well — in the travel- 
 ling sense, I mean ; also, to be comrades and share 
 
134 LETTERS 
 
 everything as we do through a winter campaign 
 in our section is no mean test of character. I 
 don't mean to seem to brag, but really he and 
 myself are the only ones who came up from Paris 
 together who have not let their nerves go a bit. 
 Sukuna despises petty things and keeps his sense 
 of proportion just what it was. 
 
 K ,for instance, has utterly gone to pieces. 
 
 A piece of chocolate or a hot coffee seems to him, 
 when he wants them, the greatest thing on earth. 
 Twenty minutes extra on guard, because some 
 one has overslept, will put him in a rage for the 
 day. He is a nice fellow and I still like him, but 
 as a companion I prefer the black Sukuna, who 
 is of sterner stuff. 
 
 I have an amusing anecdote about K . 
 
 One evening we went to a deserted and wrecked 
 factory to get coal. We did not know the section 
 at that time, but knew that the coal was exposed 
 to the German trenches. While gathering in the 
 dark I saw a party of six men come up at a 
 distance and begin to gather at the other end 
 of the field. Two had rifles. They did not see 
 
 us. Suddenly K dropped something and 
 
 made a noise. Instantly we heard a bolt flung 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 135 
 back and a cartridge slipped in. I pulled K 
 
 down and we lay for a minute waiting. Then we 
 heard the men talking German. As we were un- 
 armed, it was no place to offer fight. On all fours 
 I departed to the shelter of the building, went 
 through it to the other side, and approached the 
 men from the back. I soon found out they were 
 in French uniforms, and it turned out they were 
 Russian Jews, belonging to our company. I went 
 
 back to K , expecting to find him quietly at 
 
 work, and rather ashamed of my own nervous 
 mental attitude. I found him with his nose in 
 the coal, quite demoralized. It must be added 
 that that was in the very beginning, and now he 
 has better control of himself and does not trouble 
 too much over shells or stray bullets. 
 
 All this aside from the point. I propose to 
 bring Sukuna home with me, if the war ends 
 before September. The term at Oxford does not 
 open till November, and he has much reading to 
 do before it does. He is black and has Polynesian 
 features. I wonder if we at home are too paro- 
 chial to stand for him. He is a chief at Fiji and 
 a swell in England, with a crown agent to man- 
 age his money affairs, and all that sort of thing. 
 
136 LETTERS 
 
 I am afraid that just the people who would run 
 their heads off to meet the people in England 
 that he visits, and who write and send things to 
 him, would be the ones to make themselves snobs 
 if he appeared in Dedham with no other recom- 
 mendation than he had been my comrade in the 
 Foreign Legion. It may be added that the Brit- 
 ish Government want him to take command of 
 a company in the Expeditionary Force that the 
 Fijians are sending, but that he prefers the Le- 
 gion. I know that all of us would like him. He 
 is about as lazy in small ways as myself, and as 
 fond of creature comforts. He swears that he 
 would study hard if he came with me, and that 
 would Ggg me on to write. Please advise me 
 about this as soon as possible. 
 
 I have also a bit of spleen to tell you as pri- 
 vate. The more it shocks you, the better I shall 
 be pleased. Warm things are nice to have and 
 books are interesting to read, that is granted, but 
 if you come in from four hours' sentinel duty in 
 a freezing rain, with mud up to your ankles, you 
 do not want to change your socks — you go out 
 again in an hour — and read a book on German 
 thought. You want a smoke and a drink of hot 
 
HENRY FARNS WORTH 137 
 
 rum. I say this because several times I have been 
 notified that there were packages for me at the 
 paymaster' s office. To go there hoping for such 
 things, and receive a dry book and a clean pair 
 of socks, has been known to raise the most dread- 
 ful profanity. Don't dwell on this. It's only 
 amusing at bottom. 
 
 I meant to say at the very beginning that 
 Mother wrote me the babes were better, but it 
 would have interrupted the flow of continuity. 
 I suppose I have left out something I want to 
 say, but can't think it up now. Oh, yes — some 
 boracic arrived from Mother that was most 
 gratefully received. As you may remember, I 
 had already written to you for some. 
 With love to all, your brother, 
 
 Henry 
 
 March 27, 1915 
 Dear Papa: 
 
 After writing so lengthily to Mother and Ellen, 
 I was moved on at 5.30 a.m. to a new sector. 
 To be honest, the letters were written from jail, 
 where my row with the Sergeant had landed me, 
 and I was sent forward with the other prisoners 
 
138 LETTERS 
 
 to reinforce the 3^ Company. In our new posi- 
 tion the Germans are more active and there was 
 continual firing almost all night, also considerable 
 cannonading. Little damage was done, however. 
 
 After three days my company replaced the 
 3*^ and I resumed my normal standing. I was of 
 course a silly ass to allow matters to get in the 
 state they did, where the first time I was caught 
 with the slightest infraction I was given the max- 
 imum. However, this morning another man was 
 punished and made a false and silly excuse, and 
 the Captain made a reference to myself as one 
 who, when caught, admitted the guilt and took 
 the punishment in good spirit. So I don't think 
 the incident did any harm. 
 
 The afternoon my company arrived, the Ger- 
 mans let fall a flock of saucisson^ huge bombs 
 flung by a sort of modem catapult. They carry 
 something like a hundred pounds, so people say, 
 of explosive, and made a truly horrible explo- 
 sion. Several cabins were knocked down and 
 some damage done in our 4^^^ section. At last our 
 "75's" came to our rescue, and for ten minutes 
 the air was filled with the whistling shells and 
 the hard metallic bursting of those famous shells. 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 139 
 
 The German lines, after a short smoke-covered 
 period, were quiet for the rest of the night. 
 
 After five days in the trenches, we came back 
 to our usual resting-place, rested yesterday, and 
 are off again this afternoon for the trenches once 
 more. 
 
 A new adjutant has been placed in command 
 of our section. He is an old legionary from Africa, 
 though still a young man, and has the eannarks 
 of a good soldier. It will be a comfort to have 
 a man who knows his business over us. The 
 firemen from Paris may be good drill-masters, 
 but as campaign leaders they are nothing but a 
 nuisance. 
 
 I cannot tell you how much I was touched 
 by your telegraphing the money, especially after 
 my own stupid and despicable actions. I reiterate 
 that to have you pleased with my actions now is 
 an undying joy! 
 
 Also, it is getting warmer, and I hke the life 
 better. 
 
 With love to Mother, 
 
 Yours, 
 
 Henry 
 
140 LETTERS 
 
 April 4, 1915 
 Dear Ellen: 
 
 We are now en repos at a rather comfortable 
 little town. "We" in this case is the whole regi- 
 ment, and we have also been put into a new army 
 corps. Two days ago we were reviewed by Gen- 
 eral De Castelnau, second to JofFre they say, and 
 it is rumored that he was pleased with our appear- 
 ance. What is more interesting is the rumor that 
 we are to be joined with the African troops — the 
 Tirailleurs Algeriens and Senegalle — and the 
 Turcos. That would mean attack and fighting 
 all the time and seems almost too good to be true. 
 Trench-holding, especially when there is work 
 to do and long guard hours, is neither inspiring 
 nor exciting. I may add that being bombarded 
 is not too attractive, either. There is nothing to 
 do but wait. You can hear the whistle of the shell 
 louder and louder as it comes nearer and nearer, 
 then the shock, flash, and bang of the explosion; 
 a breath of relief, purely instinctive, and you wait 
 for the next and wonder in which direction they 
 will change the range. Luckily I may say frankly 
 that I do not especially mind them, and in fact, 
 when on guard in advance post with Sukuna, 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 141 
 
 we have several times blazed away with our rifles 
 until we brought down a couple of 77's upon us. 
 It was done to discourage the officiousness of a 
 Polish Jew, who began to think himself of too 
 much importance in the community. 
 
 I don't know if I wrote that I met Victor 
 Chapman in the trenches and now often see him. 
 Somebody told me that he was near us in the 
 Mitrailleuse section. I went down to visit him, 
 and just as I got to his cabin a bomb fell back of 
 it and knocked the roof in. Fortunately nobody 
 was hurt, though the dirt was so driven into my 
 beard that I have hardly got it out yet. 
 
 This morning tooth-brushes, etc., arrived, and 
 were much used and welcomed. I am afraid that 
 I have been something of a brother to the daugh- 
 ter of the horseleech, but then, I always have, so 
 far as that is concerned. What is worse, I don't 
 see anything in all this that points to that prom- 
 ised day when I shall be self-supporting. 
 
 As for other matters, company matters, a new 
 adjutant, an old legionary of some forty years, 
 has been put in command of our section, and the 
 reign of the Pompier is over. This was well em- 
 phasized by Sukuna and myself. We went out of 
 
142 LETTERS 
 
 our cantonnement one noon when we were sup- 
 posed to be consigned, and lunched at a neigh- 
 boring inn. Unfortunately the Pompier Sergeant, 
 who especially delights to punish me, was there. 
 After lunch he amused himself by yelling at us 
 for some minutes and by giving us both four days 
 consigne. As the thing had not been done abso- 
 lutely according to the letter of the law, we asked 
 the Adjutant about it, taking the ground that 
 a mistake had been made. That delightful soul 
 explained that what was meant by the restric- 
 tion was that it was forbidden for legionaries to 
 get themselves caught out of hours, and that the 
 affair was unfortunate. Ten minutes later the de- 
 testable Sergeant turned up and rescinded his 
 punishment, a thing he would never have done 
 of his own free will. 
 
 I express my thanks for material benefits, but 
 really, long letters are just as welcome. 
 
 With love to your boys, 
 
 Henry 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 143 
 
 April 10, 1915 
 Dear Mamma: 
 
 It is a warm April morning and, having spent 
 three days digging second-line trenches in beastly 
 weather, we are having a day of repos. Our can- 
 tonnement is in a large farm, and now the yard 
 is filled with soldiers, washing, cleaning clothes, 
 rifles, etc. I am sitting on a chair, borrowed from 
 the patronne^ beside the dunghill, and writing. 
 Sukuna is in the kitchen persuading the slavey to 
 make cocoa for us, and standing near me, smok- 
 ing, eating an orange, and talking, is a young 
 Swiss from Montmartre, putting the finishing 
 touches to a clay head which he began to model 
 in the trenches. Yesterday, being cold and rainy, 
 everybody was gloomy and cursing; to-day all 
 are cheerful, talking in Hebrew, Russian, French, 
 and English, and one little man is snapping his 
 fingers and singing a Spanish song. I often talk 
 to him about Barcelona and Madrid, in what 
 Spanish I still remember, and in return he does 
 little odd jobs for me. Many of the men are 
 shaving, but my beard, which is an actual beard 
 by this time, remains untouched. 
 
 I see Chapman every day now and enjoy him 
 
144 LETTERS 
 
 very much. He showed me eight articles by a 
 swine named Rachr, written in the "Evening 
 World." If by any chance you saw them, you 
 may put down the whole business from begin- 
 ning to end as lies. 
 
 I have so much to say that I really lack cour- 
 age to begin. Some day you will hear my camel 
 bell again and I can tell you all you want to 
 know. I am not sick of the war, and burn to see 
 some real fighting ; but yet, I long with a steady 
 yearning to be home again with you and the Da 
 and Ellen. 
 
 It is a Sunday morning and a little church 
 bell is ringing, and cocks are crowing on the dung- 
 heap. As far as the war is concerned, I might as 
 well be in Dedham. I hope that before long we 
 will be upon the firing line again. 
 
 Your letters are a comfort. Love to all. 
 
 Henry 
 
 April 23, 1915 
 Dear Papa: 
 
 The other night we were bundled out and moved 
 
 still further back. We are now almost outside 
 
 the sound of guns. As usual, there are conflicting 
 
HENRY FARNS WORTH 145 
 
 rumors of all soits, but I hope and believe that 
 before long we will be sent back to the first line 
 and in a more active section. For the last three 
 weeks we have done nothing and had little time 
 to ourselves. We have been reviewed by Gen- 
 eral \^obliterated by the censor^ put into a new 
 division, brushed and polished, and in some cases 
 put into new clothes; also we spent a few nights 
 making quick marches to small villages close to 
 the line, where in case of necessity we could be 
 rushed up. 
 
 As for further details, as they say in the Off- 
 ciel Communique^ Rien a signaler. It is still fear- 
 fully cold for this time of year, and my hands are 
 suffering. I am only sending this because I've 
 waited already too long for a tiTily comfortable 
 opportunity. 
 
 My love to you all. 
 
 {Mailed May 8, 1915] 
 Dear Mamma; 
 
 I do hope that this arrives on the morning of 
 
 May 19. It is all, naturally, that I can send in 
 
 the way of birthday offering. It carries much love, 
 
 and hopes of seeing you before the next year ends. 
 
146 LETTERS 
 
 As for news. There is none of any personal 
 nature. We are still in our small village, drill 
 every morning, and get ourselves cussed all the 
 afternoon by stupid sous-officiers. Chapman, 
 Ames, and myself are in jail for having come 
 back late to cantonnement^ and Sukuna and I are 
 trying to transfer to the Mitrailleuse service. We 
 may succeed. This so-called repos is harder than 
 anything I have ever done, and gets desperately 
 upon the nerves. Strangely enough, most of the 
 men seem to like it; because their miserable skins 
 are in safety, I suppose. In another week I shall 
 go to the Colonel and try to transfer into an 
 active regiment, if such a thing is possible. There 
 are many talkers who are sure we are destined 
 for the Dardanelles. In a way I hope we are. 
 It would be desperately picturesque, and under 
 D' Amade there 'd be no lack of incident. 
 
 I suppose by now spring is well advanced in 
 Dedham. Here it came all of a sudden, for now 
 we go en tirailleur through the woods, all car- 
 peted with flowers and with little green leaves. 
 It makes me think of the Little Welds and Green 
 Lodge. 
 
 We are so far from the front that even our 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 147 
 
 own big guns make only a distant thunder ; suf- 
 ficient, however, to start the fever going in the 
 blood. With all this reorganization and giving 
 out of new supplies they must be going to do 
 something with us. With the Grace of God, I 
 hope we will put our bayonets on some night 
 and receive our baptism of fire. 
 
 I have received two gifts of cigarettes and 
 some magnificent briquets^ and Hottinguer has 
 said nothing about duties to pay. If you would 
 address everything to me. Legionnaire H. W., 
 etc., C/o H. & Co., it would obviate all trouble. 
 
 With love and happy returns of the day in 
 
 all senses, 
 
 Your son, 
 
 Henry 
 
 I have been given a new style of capote and have 
 had my picture taken therein. I have also one 
 taken in the old en tenue while on guard in a 
 village, and I hope to be able to send you both 
 of them. 
 
148 LETTERS 
 
 May 19, 1915 
 Dear Mamma; 
 
 I am writing once again from a new cantonne- 
 ment^ this time after six days in the trenches. 
 Thank God, the repos of our regiment is over. 
 They woke us up at three one morning, — 
 ''^Allez hop. -Sac au dos et en route.'''* We trooped 
 off on a hot, muggy morning and did thirteen 
 kilometers before the grande halte., which was 
 held in a small village. Here for the first time it 
 was definitely known that we were bound to 
 relieve a battalion of Tirailleurs Algeriens., in 
 trenches some twelve kilometers fiirther on. We 
 ate and lay about on the grass all the afternoon, 
 and at seven heaved up our sacks once more 
 and went off at the command, '' Pas de route. 
 En avant marche^'' which means — a long jour- 
 ney ahead. In the gathering darkness we passed 
 through a couple of villages where the Tirail- 
 leurs were drawn up on both sides of the streets. 
 As the stars began to come out, we approached 
 a black "Pelleas et Melisande" sort of forest, 
 with high towering oaks and small young birches 
 and beech in amongst. We passed through a high 
 gateway of ancient brick, with the top of the 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 149 
 
 coat-of-arms shot off by a shell. Inside the woods 
 it was so dark we had to go in single file, each 
 holding to the back of the other's pack. Big 
 guns were pounding occasionally in their myste- 
 rious way, and the big war rockets at times sent 
 their light flickering through the trees so far over 
 our heads. 
 
 In time we came out on a brick wall pierced 
 with loopholes and shattered by shells. All was 
 dim in the starlight, for there was no moon. 
 There the boyau began, two kilometers of it, nar- 
 row and deep. Before our backs broke we came 
 to our trenches, and found the Arabs already 
 at the entrance, with their sacks beside them. In 
 silence we threw our packs on the cabins allotted. 
 Then most of the sections slept, and our squad 
 took the guard. The Arabs went off wishing us 
 good luck, and once more after six weeks I was 
 alone under the stars — peculiar gun-broken si- 
 lence — watching my section, leaning on my rifle 
 watching the rockets and thinking long thoughts. 
 
 The guard over, three hours of it, I fell into 
 a heavy sleep without noticing much where, ex- 
 cept that I was beside Sukuna. In the morning 
 birds were singing, and we found that we were 
 
150 LETTERS 
 
 in a sort of a fake section, some 600 meters from 
 the enemy. These trenches were not bad, though. 
 The cabins were arranged by squad, instead of 
 by twos and threes. We had nine in place of six. 
 I also found that Chapman and Ames were 
 with their Mitrailleuse directly beside us. During 
 the six days we saw much of each other. With 
 Chapman I talked American politics — his father 
 had just been up to Amiens to see him — Charles 
 Lamb, Emerson, and other worthies. With Ames 
 I tested his system on the revue de Monte Carlo, 
 doing all the baUs for a week. We won between 
 £100 and £1000 every night. It really is the 
 most astonishing system. If you start with 2000 
 and play long enough, you cannot lose. It goes 
 by sections of 50 's, and you never bet more than 
 40. The drawback is that you have to work the 
 whole gambit sometimes to win your 50. Ames 
 is the offspring of an Ames of Baltimore who, 
 when cast off by his family, ascended to the inner 
 parts of the Argentine and came back rich and 
 married to a noble Spaniard. Ames is very flip- 
 pant, ill-disciplined, amusing, and supposed to 
 have the most nerve in the Mitrailleuse section, 
 no mean thing to have said of any man. 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 151 
 
 The afternoon after arrival we lost a sergeant 
 and two wounded in a little bombardment, but 
 since then have had no trouble. 
 
 Money has arrived from the Da, and cigar- 
 ettes and unguents from yourself. I am very 
 gratefril for all. 
 
 I caught a furious cold lying out in the — 
 
 but not the only — cold night we had. I was out 
 
 there en patrol^ but needless to say, no Germans 
 
 put in an appearance. They never do when I 'm 
 
 about. 
 
 With love to all, 
 
 Henry 
 
 May 30, 1915 
 Dear Papa: 
 
 Your funds and those of Aunt Alice arrived at 
 the same time and were both more than welcome, 
 I being entirely out and Sukuna having lost his 
 last 80 francs a week before. You can hardly im- 
 agine the joys of cooking eggs and fresh vege- 
 tables, after an uninterrupted spell oi game lie. 
 I am writing in cantonnement., having arrived 
 last night from six days in the trenches. This time 
 it was for our section a very peacefiil session. 
 
152 LETTERS 
 
 Most of the time there was not even the crack 
 of a rifle to break that peculiar brooding silence 
 that pervades the inactive portions of the front. 
 The night that Italy declared war, the French 
 regiment on our right wing began to shout, and 
 brought on a frisillade and some cannonading. 
 The next afternoon there was another bombard- 
 ment and several were done for. Fortunately, the 
 trenches where we are, are too far apart to throw 
 the big bombs they gave Dompierre, one of our 
 winter billets. Here we have adequate shelters 
 and shells are negligible quantities. 
 
 Sukuna and I are now recognized patrolmen, 
 and go out whenever it is the turn of our section. 
 We made two this last few days, one a cumber- 
 some affair of fifteen men, with the intention of 
 capturing any Germans that might be prowling 
 about in front of the lines. The other, seven of 
 us, including two corporals and a sergeant. It was 
 to carry French newspapers into the German 
 lines. We could not get through the barbed 
 wire, there being an incredibly bright moon, so 
 we stuck them on a stick on their barbed wire. 
 Although plainly visible from our own lines, the 
 Germans have ignored them. 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 153 
 
 I am about to write to Debby, and will go 
 into more details there. 
 
 With love to Mother and you, 
 
 Henry 
 
 May 30, 1915 
 Dear Ellen: 
 
 It being a very cold, gray morning and the court- 
 yard of our cajitonnement being dirty — we ar- 
 rived last night from the trenches — I decided 
 to porte ma lade ^ and succeeded in persuading 
 the doctor that I needed a day of rest. Hence, 
 while others are cursing and brooming, I write 
 in peace ; also I have gotten a sheaf of straw and 
 am very comfy. This throws a glimpse into the 
 side of military life not much advertised at pres- 
 ent. A species of low and self-contained cunning 
 is a thing one learns from association with old 
 Legionnaires. The strange thing is that nobody 
 thinks any the worse of you for these self-given 
 holidays. It goes without saying that in the 
 trenches one does one's work without a murmur 
 and well, and thus stands in with corporals and 
 sergeants. For the trench loafers the trick is not 
 so easily turned. 
 
154 LETTERS 
 
 Of the last six days in the lines, rien a signaler^ 
 except two patrols, which lacked nothing but 
 the Germans to make them successful. Between 
 the lines is a broad fertile field of beet sugar 
 and clover. It grows high enough to hide a man 
 crawling on his stomach, and in spots, even on 
 all fours. It is here that the patrols take place. 
 The first was an attempted ambuscade. Fifteen 
 of us, with an adjutant, a sergeant, and two 
 corporals, went out and hid in a spot where 
 Germans had been seen twice before. None ap- 
 peared. The next night seven of us were detailed 
 to carry French papers, telling of Italy's declara- 
 tion of war, into the German lines. We crawled 
 from 9 o'clock till 11:30, and succeeded in stick- 
 ing papers on their barbed wire. They have since 
 then steadily ignored them, much to our disgust. 
 
 There is a certain fascination in all this, dull 
 though it may seem. The patrol is selected in the 
 afternoon. At sunset we meet to make the plans 
 and tell each man his duty; then at dark our 
 pockets are filled with cartridges, a drawn bay- 
 onet in the belt, and our magazines loaded to the 
 brim. We go along the boy an to the petit poste 
 fi-om which it is decided to leave. All along the 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 155 
 
 line the sentinels wish us good luck and a safe 
 return. In the petit poste we clamp on the bay- 
 onets, blow noses, clear throats, and prepare for 
 three hours of utter silence. At a word from the 
 chief we form line in the prearranged order. The 
 sentries wish us luck for the last time, and the 
 chief jumps up on the edge of the trenches and 
 begins to work his way quickly through the 
 barbed wire. Once outside he disappears in the 
 beet weeds and one after another we follow. 
 
 Then begins the crawl to the appointed spot. 
 We go slowly, with frequent halts. Ever)^ sound 
 must be analyzed. On the occasion of the 
 would-be ambush, I admit I went to sleep after 
 a while in the warm fresh clover where we lay. 
 It was the Adjutant himself who woke me up 
 with a slight hiss, but as he chose me again next 
 night, he does not seem to have thought it a 
 serious matter. 
 
 Then, too, once home we do not mount guard 
 all the rest of the night, and are allowed to sleep 
 in the morning; also there are small, but pleas- 
 ing discussions of the affair, and above all the 
 hope of some night suddenly leaping out of the 
 darkness hand to hand with the Germans. 
 
156 LETTERS 
 
 It's time now that I began cooking Sukuna's 
 and my midday meal of eggs, so good-bye, my 
 dear, and love to all. 
 
 Henry 
 
 June 4, 1915 
 Dear Mamma: 
 
 This afternoon we go up to the trenches; hence, 
 peace and time to write in the morning. It is 
 a dull, gray, hot morning, and I am sitting on 
 a big pile of freshly cut clover that smells of 
 pastoral ease. Your so-called hero is for the 
 moment "ver)^ calm." In the distance we can 
 hear the clarions practising a march tune, but not 
 even the distant thunder of big guns speaks of 
 war. 
 
 The other morning the company was on a 
 digging coj'vee in a battered village near the cha- 
 teau, when the Germans let fly 912 shells of all 
 calibre in the space of forty minutes. Their lack 
 of munitions is less noticeable here than in the 
 papers, but they have at least kept very still since 
 then. The casualties were two or three men 
 and six horses. It does not seem as though there 
 were any way of ending this rabbit-warren war. 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 157 
 
 Nevertheless, I have an inward conviction that 
 it will end in September or October. It does not 
 seem credible that humanity will go through an- 
 other winter campaign. 
 
 Victor Chapman, at his family's suggestion, 
 has put in application for transfer to the Ameri- 
 can Flying Corps, but I am fond of the 3^ de 
 marche^ for all its grumbling and cursing; and 
 as long as you are agreeable and our Captain 
 stays with us, I too shall stay. There are obvious 
 drawbacks to being a soldier of second class, but 
 I was always a runner after the picturesque, and 
 in good weather am not one who troubles much 
 where I sleep, or when, and the picturesque is 
 ever with us. 
 
 It so happened that the Captain was pleased 
 with our bringing the papers to the Germans 
 and gave the seven of us f. 20 to prepare a little 
 fete. What an unforgettable supper! 
 
 There was the Sergeant, Zampanedes, a freak 
 of classic type, who won his spurs at Zanina and 
 his stripes in the Bulgarian campaign. Since, 
 he has been a medical student in Paris; that to 
 please his family, for his heart runs in different 
 channels, and he studies music and draws in 
 
158 LETTERS 
 
 his spare time. (From the amount he knows, I 
 should judge that "spare" time predominated.) 
 We first fell into sympathy over the Acropolis, 
 and cemented a true friendship over Turkish 
 war songs and Byzantine chants, which he sings 
 with a mournful romanticism that I never heard 
 before. 
 
 Then there was Nicolet, the Company Clar- 
 ion, serving his twelfth year in the Legion, an in- 
 credible little Swiss, tougher than the drums of 
 the fore and aft, and wise as Nestor in the futile 
 ruses of the regiment. 
 
 The Corporal, Mortens, a legionary wounded 
 during the winter and cited for bravery in the 
 order of the army. He was a commercial trav- 
 eller in his native grand duchy of Luxemburg, 
 but decided some five years ago to leave his debts 
 and troubles behind him and become a Petit 
 Zephyr de la Legion Etrangere. 
 
 Sudic, a butcher firom the same grand duchy, 
 a man of iron physically and morally, and men- 
 tally unimportant. 
 
 Covalieros, a Greek of Smyrna, who might 
 have spread his silks and laces at the feet of a 
 feudal princess and charmed her with his shining 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 159 
 
 eyes and wild gestures into buying beyond her 
 means. He also has been cited for reckless gal- 
 lantry. 
 
 Sukuna and myself brought up the list. We 
 were all in good spirits and flattered, and I, be- 
 ing in funds, put in f. 10 and Sukuna the same. 
 Some of us drank as deep as Socrates, and we 
 ate a mammoth salad under the stars. Nicolet and 
 Mortens talked of the battalion in the Sahara, 
 and Zampanedes sang his Eastern songs, and 
 even Sukuna was moved to Tongan chants. Like 
 iEneas on Polyphemus' isle, I feel that some 
 years hence, well out of tune with all my sur- 
 roundings, I shall be longing for the long warm 
 summer days in northern France, when we slept 
 like birds under the stars, among congenial 
 friends, when no man ever thought of the mor- 
 row, and you changed horizons with each new 
 conversation. 
 
 This time our company is stationed in the vil- 
 lage, a guard and corvee. It is a bore that the 
 companies take in turn and I have dreaded it. 
 Now Sukuna, Covalieros, and myself are ap- 
 pointed to the post of observation on the roof, 
 and unless a shell blows us all to glory, we do 
 
1 60 LETTERS 
 
 nothing but mount guard at night, being exempt 
 
 from all corvee. 
 
 With love to the Da, 
 
 Your son, 
 
 Henry 
 
 June 5 , 1915 
 Dear Ellen: 
 
 I have just posted a long one to Mother, so there 
 is nothing to be said, but as I am in the obser- 
 vation post at night and have nothing to do days, 
 and as Sukuna is still obstinately asleep, the spirit 
 moves again. 
 
 Our company is on guard in the deserted 
 village belonging to the chateau behind our 
 trenches, and I am sitting on a junk of white 
 cornice stone, leaning against the battered Hos- 
 pice. Not a floor or an interior wall remains of 
 what was once a fine old abbey or monastery of 
 some kind, only the bare brick walls and the 
 coat-of-arms over the main gate; all else is splin- 
 tered, twisted, burnt, and shattered by the shells; 
 the debris slops over and fills half the little 
 brick-walled fruit garden. The ruin is completed 
 by huge piles of earth flung up by the chambres 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 161 
 
 d'^abris in the making.The ground is pot-marked 
 by shells which have dropped there. 
 
 It is a bright morning, with a fresh breeze 
 stirring at times, and all about the grounds a 
 swarm of men are working in the usual dilatory 
 way, picking up rubbish, finishing the chambres 
 (Tahris^ and carr^^ing big logs for the same. A 
 German aeroplane is somewhere over our lines, 
 for I can hear the batteries shooting at it. You 
 soon learn to tell an aerial shooting match from 
 an actual bombardment. Here, of course, we live 
 in the depths of the strongest cellars, which, filled 
 with straw, make a better cantonnement than we 
 usually get. The people who are doing the work 
 naturally grumble a bit and wish they were in 
 the trenches, where, by the way, you are if any- 
 thing a little safer, but we three observers have 
 time to see the mournfiil beauty of it all and are 
 content to stay here for six days. 
 
 In case of bombardment all the sentries come 
 into the cellars and we mount to our shell-splin- 
 tered, unprotected roof. Hence our present free- 
 dom from bickering or snarling sous-officiers. I 
 am low enough to rather hope for one. We 
 might fall in for some kind of a medal, if they 
 
162 LETTERS 
 
 knocked the roof down without blowing us up. 
 I really believe that if a man is destined for a 
 hit, he will get it regardless of where he may 
 be. The other day a mitrailleur was killed by an 
 eclat that came through the narrow door of his 
 cabin while he was reading the paper in supposed 
 security. 
 
 If you ever have the ambition to come as far 
 as Paris again, I hope you will visit the Meis- 
 soniers in the Louvre. They achieve the very 
 spirit of soldiers on campaign. 
 
 The other night, while still in cantonment, we 
 had an alerte. Of course rumors of it preceded 
 the order, and everybody got ready and then 
 sat about in the gathering darkness. The Com- 
 mandant's orderly, who plays first violin at the 
 Cafe de Paris, brought out his violin and the Ad- 
 jutant played the accompaniment. Some thirty or 
 forty soldiers and an old hag with three tiny, 
 dirty children were the audience, and the two 
 played the same tunes that danced Maurice into 
 fame. The Adjutant, a well-born man whom 
 fourteen years in the Legion have turned into the 
 most blase soul on earth (though the iron has 
 entered into his heart), with his firm-featured. 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 163 
 
 weak, indomitable face, and the half-caste violin- 
 ist in his cavalry gaiters, and the crowd of us 
 standing about and beating time in spite of our- 
 selves, brought Meissonier with a rush to my 
 mind, that made me reverence him. 
 
 With love to Lee and Famie, — and for 
 Heaven's sake, don't bring them up too cramped. 
 What they lose in shekels they will more than 
 gain in treasures of the mind. Tell them early 
 about Burton, and let him early be one of their 
 
 heroes. 
 
 With love, 
 
 Henry 
 
 June 10, 1915 
 Dear Papa: 
 
 This is designed to arrive on July 3, and to let 
 you know that I am more than ever before, 
 perhaps, full of thoughts and longings for 
 you and Mother. Next year we may all be to- 
 gether. 
 
 We are still in our usual inactivity, and I have 
 no Prussian helmets or other trophies to send. I 
 have sent Aunt Alice photos of the village where 
 we enter the boyau to go to our trenches. For 
 
164 LETTERS 
 
 the last six days our company has been mount- 
 ing guard there. 
 
 I wrote Ellen how Sukuna and I fell in for 
 the job of observateur. It was decided after the 
 first night that the roof where the post was situ- 
 ated was insufficient. Shortly after finishing my 
 letter to Ellen, the Captain came along and sent 
 us out to hunt up a better place. We at once 
 seized on the belfry of the ruined church and 
 found that, though in a terribly dilapidated state, 
 it would still bear our weight on the very top. The 
 view from there was excellent. At night-time we 
 mounted for the first time, accompanied by the 
 Russian Corporal in charge of us. He turned out 
 to be what we 'd call a "married man," mean- 
 ing one with whom the thoughts of wife and 
 family weigh more than the "lure of danger." 
 The wretched man protested bitterly, but we had 
 already boosted up straw into the room under 
 the belfiy, and there was nothing for it but to let 
 us sleep there. Not a shot was fired all night 
 long, and the night after we went up in the for- 
 tified tower which the artillery had just given up. 
 
 To the north of us the French have made a 
 successfial attack, and to the south there has been 
 
HENRY FARNS WORTH 165 
 
 terrible rumbling of heavy artillery. I suppose 
 some day it will have to be our turn. When it 
 does, everything being comparative, I am more 
 and more sure that I shall be able to give a good 
 account of myself 
 
 Last night a torrent of rain fell and there was 
 a meter of water in the trenches. 
 
 With love and hopes for many happy returns. 
 
 Henry 
 
 June 19, 1915 
 Dear Mamma: 
 
 In a letter lately received from Ellen she won- 
 dered if I was in the Dardanelles expedition. By 
 now you must know pretty well where I have 
 been — for the last month. By the time this 
 reaches you I hope, and half expect, to be in the 
 region north of Arras, where the 2 de marche^ 
 stiffened with old Legionnaires^ fought its way 
 to fame — and sadly, to practical annihilation. It 
 held the centre, being flanked on one side by a 
 regiment of chasseurs and on the other by one 
 of tirailleurs (Algerian) . After fifty minutes of 
 pas de charge, three Gennan trenches were taken. 
 Then the chasseurs and the tirailleurs quit — 
 
166 LETTERS 
 
 according to the story — and the Legion went on 
 alone and took the fourth. As our regiment is 
 something below half strength and there are no 
 more recruits to fill up, there seems some prob- 
 ability in the rumor that we will be sent up there 
 and the two cast into one. 
 
 As for news here, it is not of the brightest. The 
 other night the Germans crept up in the grass 
 and carried off two men of our third section, 
 who were working some thirty meters beyond 
 our line. Sentinels were supposed to be posted 
 beyond the line of workers, and Sukuna and I 
 were on a patrole sent out to guard against just 
 such doings. The disgrace did not fall upon us 
 two, we were under orders and could only do 
 as told; but such things rankle, and I was so 
 proud of our company — much the best of the 
 regiment. 
 
 The patrole consisted of four men and a ser- 
 geant of the first section and four men of ours — 
 the second. We were told to be ready to leave 
 at 9:30 from the petit poste of the first section. 
 At the appointed time we met, and with no in- 
 structions at all scrambled out of the trench, and 
 in close, disordered formation began to climb 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 167 
 
 through the barbed wire. I happened to be next 
 one of our men, a Russian peasant, quick, reso- 
 lute, and conscientious — a good patrolman. We 
 exchanged glances. " // va arriver une malheur^"* 
 he said, and without an order went off to right 
 wing. Sukuna and I took the left. The rest scram- 
 bled on in the middle after the Sergeant. By the 
 time we had passed through the entanglements, 
 so much noise had been made that Germans 
 working in fi-ont of their lines — cutting grass, 
 by the sound — were called in, or at any rate 
 stopped working. 
 
 We blundered on in this way some thirty 
 meters, and then halted and formed a sort of ru- 
 dimentary line of tirailleurs. No directions were 
 given as to what to do in case of attack — which 
 was more than probable, as it was evident the 
 Germans had heard us and as most of the men 
 walked upright. During this halt we thought we 
 heard a rustling towards the right wing, but in 
 our own centre several angry disputes were going 
 on and nothing definite could be made out. Then 
 on we went again in the same fashion towards 
 the middle of the field which divides the trenches, 
 and after a time lay down and, I believe, consid- 
 
168 LETTERS 
 
 ered ourselves in ambush. There we stayed some 
 hour and a half, during which the Germans sent 
 up fusees every two or three minutes, and dur- 
 ing which the grass on all sides was filled with 
 the subdued gentle rustling of men crawling, as 
 a patrolman should. 
 
 Our people kept up a brief dispute in whispers, 
 and a nineteen-year-old child next to Sukuna 
 wiggled his feet obstinately, and told us not to 
 be afraid, when we remonstrated. Naturally, no 
 notice was taken of the signs of the times, and in 
 fact nothing definite could be made out. There we 
 lay, like sheep ready for the butcher, the minor- 
 ity of us waiting with cocked rifles for the mo- 
 ment when the Germans, having cut us off, would 
 open fire, and with the expectation of being shot 
 by one of our own men in the confusion that 
 such an event would have brought on. As you 
 know, I am given to undue optimism, but neither 
 Sukuna nor I expected to come back that night. 
 At midnight we did troop back in perfect safety, 
 and found that the Germans had let us alone, 
 gone in behind us — from the right wing — and 
 taken two of the unarmed workers we were there 
 to guard. 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 169 
 
 If we go to Arras, according to percentage, 
 I will very likely get hit. Personally I don't for 
 an instant dream of such a thing, and have the 
 same conviction I always did have. If I do, 
 please don't come over. I will see you again any 
 way in a few months now, and over here you 
 could do nothing but torture the Da and make 
 yourself sick. 
 
 I love you. Mother, but I mean this, espe- 
 cially the part about there being no need to 
 
 worry. 
 
 Henry 
 
 July 4, 1915 
 Dear Ellen: 
 
 This is late for the 16*^^, but it has the same mes- 
 sages as though it were earlier. At the time I 
 should have been writing, I was at least thinking, 
 so morally it is the same. At the same time I was 
 marching (or most of the time), so physically it 
 was impossible. 
 
 Long ago, during the bleak bombarded days 
 in Capy, the Russians in the regiment set up a 
 petition to get out of it (each hoping to himself 
 to fmd a loophole of escape during the change of 
 
1 70 LETTERS 
 
 regiments) . The other day, while we were peace- 
 flilly in the trenches of Tilloloy, the petition 
 bore fruit. Now they are to go either to Russia 
 or to a French regiment — like Ahab, they leave 
 unwept — and the Belgians are going, too. The 
 Italians have already gone, and the Deuxieme 
 marche is either under the ground or in hospi- 
 tal and cannot give us reinforcement, so we are 
 again on our way back from the front. 
 
 We were relieved by a French regiment at 
 9:30 of a very stormy evening, just as the rain, 
 which had been only an intermittent drizzle dur- 
 ing the day, burst into a near-tropical down- 
 pour. Wet through and covered with mud to the 
 knees, we started for some vague place the other 
 side of Montdidier. It was only eighteen milli- 
 meters of march, but we put the whole night into 
 it, arriving at 3:30 of a damp, misty morning. 
 During the night the rain stopped and we walked 
 ourselves nearly dry. 
 
 By a new arrangement five men in each sec- 
 tion were told off to put their sacks in the wagon 
 and to walk at the rear of the section and carry 
 sacks of those who otherwise would have fallen 
 out. I was one of the so-called bon marcheurs^ 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 171 
 
 and excited myself to a great degree of dried 
 spleen by carrying the sacks of lazy, but healthy, 
 Jews. 
 
 After a day of rest we took the road again 
 and did twenty-five more kilometers. It speaks 
 well for the training you get at the front, for I can 
 truthftiUy say that I was not a bit tired, though 
 I carried my own sack, which is a heavy one. 
 
 I hope nobody will shake the wise finger and 
 say I should not have grumbled about the Jews. 
 Those sorts of jobs go in turns, and Sukuna took 
 my place in the natural course of events. Papa 
 has gathered the impression that because I often 
 write that I am in the boite^ I am not well looked 
 upon by superiors. That does not follow in the 
 least. The Foreign Legion is not a bit like Gro- 
 ton School or even Harvard College — and in 
 my opinion has a far better spirit. Rules are 
 many and strict. You break one and get caught. 
 You make no excuses and are given a punish- 
 ment. There is no ill-feeling on either side. At 
 least it has been that way since the Adjutant — 
 who has been promoted Lieutenant — came to 
 us as Chief of Sections. At Capy, under the yoke 
 of the Pompiers, I was given to frequent and ill- 
 
1 72 LETTERS 
 
 concealed rage and scorn. It is a point of satis- 
 faction with me that the sv/inewho used to do the 
 cursing has, in spite of very general promotion, 
 remained in his grade and been kicked out of our 
 section by the Lieutenant, and is now as meek 
 as Moses. With the Captain and all the Legiona- 
 ries, I am very much bien vu, and nearly always 
 am called on for patrols, observation posts, etc. 
 
 It is my opinion that shortly the regiment will 
 be broken up and the engagements broken. I 
 do not want to become naturalized French and 
 go in a line regiment. Neither do I want to 
 leave the war, or to take a three-year engagement 
 in the Legion. The American Ambulances see 
 nothing, in spite of what they write home. I do 
 very much want to join the Aviation Corps. 
 They have been flying at the front. I shall write 
 to this effect to the Da and explain things flilly. 
 I suppose I should need about ;^1000, which is 
 a nuisance. Also, if things move quickly, I may 
 have to cable before these letters reach you. 
 
 With lots of love. Dear, and many soft mem- 
 ories of past 16*^^ and hopes for future ones, 
 
 Henry 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 173 
 
 [July 4, 1915] 
 Dear Papa; 
 
 About a week ago I received a welcome note 
 from Hottinguer, saying he had received funds 
 to my account. But there was an unpleasant ad- 
 dition to the effect that of the f 128.50 he had 
 kept f. 125 for himself for charges he had paid 
 in postage, etc., for me. Hence I have taken £lO 
 out of my letter of credit — or at least begun the 
 process. 
 
 I don't want to seem stupidly extravagant, 
 but really in the army here money does make an 
 enormous difference. Now that summer is here 
 it means that you can buy eggs, fresh vegetables, 
 etc., even fresh meat in some places. Things cost 
 very much, eggs 3 sous apiece, and all that sort 
 of thing. I don't merely throw it away, except 
 for the fact that the company food is amply 
 nutritious and I do not need cauliflowers, aspar- 
 agus, macaroni, and eggs. 
 
 Now for more seriously depressing news. I 
 have just written Ellen how and why we have 
 been again called back from the front. It is my 
 opinion that we shall shortly be disbanded and 
 all the duration of the engagements broken. In 
 
174 LETTERS 
 
 that case I am anxious to join the U. S. Avia- 
 tors, who are now at the front and have been 
 north of Arras. I suppose I should have to sup- 
 port myself, and it would mean about ^1000 to 
 see me to the end of the war — which will occur 
 in November — and get me home afterwards. 
 I hate to ask for the money, and naturally put 
 myself entirely according to your advice. The 
 facts will be as follows: 
 
 I can become naturalized French — which I 
 do not want to do — and join a second-rate line 
 regiment, one which will never see any more 
 fighting than we did. Or sign a three-year aifair 
 in the Legion and hope to get to the Darda- 
 nelles eventually. Or the Ambulance — which I 
 know means nothing. I know a Sophomore driv- 
 ing one of the Morgan- Harjes ambulance cars, 
 who thought himself quite a hero because he had 
 two or three times gone up to bombarded vil- 
 lages to cart away the wounded. One of them 
 was the village where we used to go for repos. 
 
 I have just time to give this to a man who is 
 
 going to Montdidier. 
 
 Love to Mother and yourself, 
 
 Henry 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 175 
 
 [Jlbout July 17, 1915] 
 Dear Papa: 
 
 By this time I suppose the drafts have arrived, 
 and any way there is no good in mincing mat- 
 ters. I was given two days' permission in Paris, 
 as an American citizen, and at the first sight of a 
 big city went quite off my head and blew in every 
 cent I could get hold of. If you had been in Paris 
 lately and knew the enthusiastic reception with 
 which the permissionaires were greeted, and the 
 exceptional tolerance from all parties given to the 
 troops of the African Army, Zouaves^ Tirailleurs^ 
 Chasseurs^ and Legionnaires^ you would know 
 that there was some excuse for my piggish pro- 
 ceedings. A thin one, for I personally have done 
 nothing to deserve any ovation. At any rate, I 
 had a time that I shall never forget. I am sin- 
 cerely sorry for it, and am now doing the pen- 
 ance of regimental life on one sou a day quite 
 contentedly. 
 
 Many people with broad hems to their gar- 
 ments say that the Legion makes a brute of a 
 man; but don't blame my proceedings on the 
 Legion. I have done the same thing before, as 
 you know, and the Legion is in no way to blame. 
 
176 LETTERS 
 
 Think only that, when all the other troops said 
 the thing was impossible, the Legion took not one 
 line, as planned, but four, and was not stopped 
 then, though more than half the officers and men 
 were down at the taking of Souchez. 
 
 I have all this to say about the Legion, because 
 now I am in it — the real, hard, incredible thing 
 — what with the Russians, Italians, and Belgians 
 . . . Z de marche so we were . . . brought up to 
 the full effective with professionals from Saida — 
 Regiment Etranger. 
 
 After coming back from Paris we did two 
 days' desultory drill, with constant rumors of the 
 change coming, and then suddenly at the com- 
 pany rapport one afternoon the Captain came 
 into the square formed by the sections, wearing 
 his best jacket, with the big Officer of the Legion 
 d'Honneur medal on his breast, more red in the 
 face than ever, and with his mustachios twirling 
 angrily. Old Moreno roared out his " Garde a 
 vous'*'' with a tinge of break in his hard old voice, 
 and the Captain said '''' Repos'''' right away, and 
 stood for an instant looking at us. Then in the 
 formal military way he told us . . . when and 
 where we would entrain on the morrow, details 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 177 
 
 as to pay, etc. Then he began to speak of the 
 regiment, how it had never been tried, but how 
 he had never doubted it, and what a comfort it 
 had been to him ever since the winter months to 
 have a little nucleus of men who always could 
 be trusted to volunteer for anything hard or 
 dangerous, and could be trusted to do it well 
 and intelligently. He ended up with the bad news 
 that he was to leave us, " effected " to a French 
 regiment. For twenty-five years he said he had 
 served . . . and now to take off the flying wing 
 of the Foreign Legion, even to go into any other 
 regiment on earth, was a terrible blow to him. 
 At any rate, though he could not be there to see 
 us and help us, he hoped that the Volunteers 
 of Paris would hold up their end with their 
 older brothers, who had fought so gloriously in 
 Arras. We were all fighting for the right cause, 
 and that after all was the most important. If after 
 the war any of us should ever see him an)^vhere, 
 he hoped that we would take a drink together as 
 two good Legionnaires, 
 
 Then he walked out, and not half a dozen had 
 the voice to cry, " Vive Captain Escall! " By his 
 justice, gallantry, and wonderflil constantly good 
 
178 LETTERS 
 
 spirits this most unemotional of men had so eaten 
 himself into our hearts that many wept frankly 
 at the idea of leaving him, and those of us who 
 did not had a hard time not to. 
 
 The next morning after the Captain had made 
 his good-bye speech and we were lined up be- 
 hind the fessos waiting for the order, " *Shc au 
 dos^^'' he came down the line and shook us all 
 by the hand. When he came to our squad, with 
 Corporal Mortens, Sukuna, Covalieros, and that 
 crowd, everybody being already much strung 
 up, he embraced us one and all. I have not had 
 the same feeling of desolating woe at leaving any- 
 body since the days when I used to say good-bye 
 to Mother and take the train to Groton, finding 
 all lonely in the world. 
 
 Escall had punished me, but there had never 
 been any discussion about the justice thereof nor 
 any respect lost on either side, and if you only 
 knew him, it would be a pleasure to you that this 
 no mean judge of nature liked and respected me 
 in spite of certain obvious failings. I shall be 
 proud of the fact all the rest of my life. Escall 
 knew exactly what happened in Paris, too. 
 
 As for the other details, we are now in the first 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 179 
 
 Moroccan Division, the best one in the French 
 
 Army, and though now they are reforming after 
 
 their losses around Arras, we are bound to be 
 
 called upon to do the same again. If anything 
 
 happens to me, you can be sure that it was on 
 
 the way to victory, for these troops have been 
 
 . . . but never beaten. 
 
 With love to Mother and Ellen. 
 
 Henry 
 
 2nd de ?narche—l^^^ Etrang'^re 
 Battalion A, Comfiagnie I 
 
 \_Postmarked August 3 , 1915] 
 Dear Mamma: 
 
 I have received at least live letters from you and 
 two from the Da. They are the greatest of bless- 
 ings and come into my weary world most wel- 
 come. The two regiments being cast into one and 
 the whole division being brought up to strength, 
 etc., goes wearily on, and in the meantime our 
 soldiers do *''' A droit par quatre'*'* and other sec- 
 tion drill until it seems as though my mind would 
 go. Having slopped over more than a little dur- 
 ing my two days' permission in Paris was an ill 
 wind that had some good effects, for I feel that 
 
180 LETTERS 
 
 I have had my good thne and can well afFord 
 to do my service and not kick against the pricks 
 to any but you. Here I am on good behavior — 
 carry a full sack when I know how to pad one 
 with straw in the most cunning way, and all that 
 sort of thing. 
 
 Papa writes Bob Stevenson is going to a train- 
 ing camp where they are to march five or six 
 miles per day with full complement of transport 
 wagons. It is not my place to set up as an au- 
 thority, having done nothing at all in the way 
 of fighting, but if the marches were sixteen to 
 seventeen miles, half the wagons broken down, 
 much rain, trenches to dig, etc., they might gain 
 some actual idea of what war is — not an expe- 
 ditionary campaign, but the sort of thing they 
 would have to face if America was invaded. Still 
 I suppose that can never happen, and there is no 
 use giving people sore feet and aching backs for 
 nothing. 
 
 The other day we were waked at 2 a.m., and 
 at 3 sent off in a pouring rain for some indefi- 
 nite place across the mountains for a divisional 
 review. We went off slowly through the wet 
 darkness, but about dawn the sun came out and. 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 181 
 
 as is usual with the Legion, eveiybody cheered 
 up, and at 7 a.m. we arrived at the parade 
 ground after fifteen kilometers in very good spir- 
 its. The two regiments of Zouaves from Africa 
 were already drawn up. We formed up beside 
 them, and then came the two tirailleurs regi- 
 ments, their colors with them, then the second 
 Etrangere^ two thousand strong, and finally a 
 squadron oi Chasseurs d^ Afrique.Wo. all stacked 
 arms and lay about on the grass till 8:30. Sud- 
 denly the Zouave bugles crashed out sounding 
 the " Garde a vous^^'' and in two minutes the divi- 
 sion was lined up, every man stiff as a board — 
 and all the time the bugles ringing angrily from 
 up the line, and the short staccato trumpets of 
 the chasseurs answering from the other extrem- 
 ity. The ringing stopped suddenly, and the voices 
 of the colonels crying '''' Bayonnettes aux Canons'''' 
 sounded thin and long drawn out and were 
 drowned by the flashing rattle of the bayonets 
 going on — a moment of perfect silence, and then 
 the slow, courtly-sounding of the ^^ General! 
 General! qui passe!''"' broken by the occasional 
 crash as regiment after regiment presented arms. 
 Slowly the General rode down the lines, with 
 
182 LETTERS 
 
 the two Brigadiers and a Division General in his 
 suite. 
 
 Then came the dejile. The Zouaves led off, 
 their bugles playing ^^ As tu vu la casquette^ la 
 casquette.^'' Then the tirailleurs^ playing some 
 march of their own, slow and fine, the bugles 
 answering the scream of the Arab reed flutes as 
 though Loeffler had led them. Then the Legion, 
 the second Etrangere swinging in beside us at the 
 double, and all the bugles crashed out with the 
 Legion marching song, 
 
 '' Tiens -voila du boudin fiour les Beiges ^ 
 Y en a fiour les Beiges y en a^ 
 Parce qu'ils sont des bons soldats. 
 
 Pour les Suisses y en a et les Alsatien- 
 Lorraines,^^ etc. 
 
 On and on went the bugles playing that light, 
 slangy tune, some of the verses of which would 
 make Rabelais shudder, and the minor varia- 
 tions of which bring up pictures of the Legion 
 marching with thin ranks in foreign, blazing 
 lands, and the drums of which, tapping slowly, 
 sound like the feet of the regiment scrunch- 
 ing through desert sand. It was all very glori- 
 ous to see and hear, and to wind up, the chas- 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 183 
 
 seurs went by at the gallop — going off to their 
 quarters. 
 
 To wind up the day, the Colonel took us home 
 straight over the mountain — fourteen kilometers 
 over mountain-goat tracks. When we got in at 
 3:30 p.m., having had nothing to eat but a bit 
 of bread, three sardines, and a finger of cheese, 
 few of the men were really exhausted. It was then 
 I got your letter about the training camp. Really 
 it did make me feel a bit superior, and made 
 me think less than ever of our military system — 
 and if possible, more of the French. I don't think 
 any other army would have done it on the food 
 ration we did, and even Sukuna admitted that it 
 was doubtfi.ll if many English regiments would 
 have done it under any conditions. 
 
 As for news, that 's all I have, but do continue 
 to write me frequently, even if there is nothing 
 to say. Here in this division I feel incredibly far 
 fi-om home. 
 
 Love to Ellen and the boys and the Da. 
 
 There is a rumor that we may go to Morocco, 
 as things are going badly there, but I don't 
 believe it; we cannot be replaced here. 
 
184 LETTERS 
 
 August A^, 1915 
 Dear Ellen: 
 
 I am sending enclosed in this a little ring. It is 
 not supposed, by myself at least, to be a thing of 
 beaut}", but it is interesting. It is made of alu- 
 minum from the fiise of a German or Austrian 
 shellhead picked up at Tilloloy and made by an 
 old Legionnaire with a little file he stole some- 
 where. How he made the little holes in it I don't 
 know, but he worked for some time, and gave it 
 to me because I did him a good turn one night, 
 when he was about to be arrested by the patrole 
 for being out late at night in a state of obvious 
 and noisy drunkenness. 
 
 I wish I could make you see the man in the 
 flesh ; people like him appear only, as far as my 
 experience goes, in the Foreign Legion — a Rou- 
 manian from Constantinople, speaking Turk, 
 Greek, Roumanian, French, a little English, 
 Spanish, and Arab; about six feet two inches, 
 and very skinny and pale, with a half-dozen long 
 hairs on each side of his upper lip, about the 
 color and consistency of a big tomcat's whiskers. 
 He has more useless accomplishments than can 
 be stated. He imitates cats, dogs, and mules from 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 185 
 
 Senegal — a peculiarly noisy breed — and can 
 use his feet with the same force and accuracy. 
 When he thinks drill is getting a little dull, he 
 amuses the whole section by going through the 
 motions as though he were a monkey, and when 
 the Sergeant begins to scream, quotes accurately 
 fi'om the theory book how the thing should be 
 done. He was once a sergeant himself — was 
 broken — is now first-class, but too lazy to go 
 to the class of eleves corporeaiix. He can also 
 pour a litre of wine into his mouth, holding the 
 bottle a foot away, and get it all down without 
 spilling a drop. He is also an expert tailor, wash- 
 erman, rifle-shot, etc., and was originally a law 
 student in Constantinople. He has a fund of comic 
 stories, falls in occasional glooms when ofl' by 
 himself, and sings Turk songs, gets drunk once 
 a month, and stays so for three days. 
 
 There is something so incongruous about your 
 wearing his ring that I don't suppose you will, 
 but the man is absolutely honest, which is more 
 than many are under like circumstances, and even 
 when drunk will never ask a sou from any one. 
 He washes clothes, cleans rifles, mends capotes^ 
 shaves people, cuts hair, greases boots, and 
 
186 LETTERS 
 
 mounts guard for others until he has enough. 
 Also he is a brave man, and always cheerful when 
 it rains and the marches are long and the sacks 
 heavy. 
 
 The corpora/ d'' ordinaire is screaming " Aupo- 
 tales ;'^'^ which means that I must go and peel 
 potatoes, so good-bye, dear, and love to the 
 boys. 
 
 There is no news. 
 
 Mgust 6, 1915 
 Dear Papa: 
 
 News from Hottinguer of 330 francs has arrived 
 
 just now and is more welcome than ever. Many 
 
 thanks to you and Mother and Ellen and Alfred. 
 
 As to the details you wanted, they always 
 
 send a letter saying that they have received for 
 
 my account, etc., etc. I always ask to have it 
 
 forwarded in cash, which they promptly do; it 
 
 is, I think, the only way. Drafts direct I should 
 
 have to send back to them and run the risk 
 
 of their being lost, whether registered or not. 
 
 Parcels I receive at weird intervals; I think 
 
 five altogether — three of chocolates and two of 
 
 cigarettes. 
 
HENRY FARNS WORTH 187 
 
 Sukuna, by the way, is becoming as dependent 
 on boracic acid as is Mother herself. 
 
 The only kick I have about mail is that" Life" 
 stopped coming some time ago — after four or 
 five numbers, in fact. I much enjoyed it, though 
 I could not agree with Mr. Martin's high opinion 
 of Wilson as President. His famous note did not 
 seem to me any better worded than some of his 
 Mexican sayings, and as he never backed up 
 those, I did not for a minute think that anything 
 but the whirlwind of public sentiment would 
 make him stick to this one. As long as the people 
 " stand behind the President,' ' they will stay where 
 the immediate profit leads. I am, of course, in no 
 position to judge those things, and only splutter 
 a bit because I remember the unwholesome posi- 
 tion I was in last August, when there could be 
 no feeling of pride in announcing my nationality. 
 Here people seem well disposed towards Ameri- 
 cans and many individuals are doing fine work, 
 but as a Government I am ashamed to say that 
 I really and truly feel that we are contemptible, 
 and that it is Wilson's talk and shilly-shally that 
 makes us so. We have an expression over here 
 for the souls who never can take a leap at the 
 
188 LETTERS 
 
 Rubicon and yet are fine talkers — here in the 
 Legion, but I shan't obtrude it on you. I do wish 
 you would write me at some length what you 
 and your fi'iends do think of our attitude. 
 With much love to you all, 
 
 Henry 
 
 August 13, 1915 
 Dear Ellen: 
 
 I have received Mother's of July 19 and 25 and 
 can think of nothing but one quotation there- 
 fi-om : " Our last note is off, and now if Germany 
 persists, we shall have to take action." Since then, 
 according to Paris newspapers, another Amer- 
 ican boat has been blown up. When will people 
 perceive that Wilson will never do anything but 
 talk, and realize the Devil's role that his calm 
 views, high principles, and endless staying open 
 to the other side's point of view has played in 
 Mexico ? 
 
 I suppose as usual that all this will be put down 
 as childish and unconsidered, but save this letter 
 as you did the one about the Illusions Perdus^ 
 and you will see I am right later on. I feel more 
 bitterly about Wilson and his bourgeois — in 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 189 
 
 Balzac sense, not the ordinary French one — 
 virtues than I ever did about any public thing 
 before. 
 
 As for local news, as usual there is rien a 
 sig'naler. We are still refitting in this d — d vil- 
 lage, and rumors fly about three times a day. As 
 for myself, I keep out of trouble and stand well 
 with all parties, and the mountains are beautiflil, 
 and you may bathe in ice-cold mountain streams, 
 and see all Switzerland rising like the pillars of 
 Heaven out of the haze over the French low- 
 lands. Nevertheless, I should leave to-night for 
 Lyons and liberation, Marseilles and the Dar- 
 danelles, or the fi'ont and trenches with an equal 
 cheer. We march, clean rifles, present them and 
 ourselves and our linen and our reserve rations 
 till the grasshopper weighs like a cross and the 
 men grumble and do it so stupidly that it's worse 
 than the infernal barking of the Sergeant. 
 
 We will probably go to the trenches shortly. 
 If so, so much the better; but if we are liberated, 
 I think I shall dash home by the first boat and 
 stay there a month or six weeks and get my 
 " Campaign with the Legion" written, and then 
 try to get back again in the Aviation or Am- 
 
190 LETTERS 
 
 bulance, or anything that Papa approves. This 
 seems too ideally happy ever to come true — 
 worse than that, I dreamt the whole thing last 
 night, and my dreams never come true. 
 
 If we are put into French regiments to finish 
 a year's service, as the latest has it, I shall ask for 
 the Legion or the Zouaves at the Dardanelles. 
 It will at least make a change, for it appears that 
 there are no dull secteurs such as usually fall to 
 my fate, and to march in triumph into Constan- 
 tinople! The Golden Horn still seems to have 
 the mysterious fascination for me that it had 
 before I knew it — alone of any place I have ever 
 wanted to go to and have seen. 
 
 Some fifteen years hence, if I and you are not 
 already dried up — I suspect you of that possi- 
 bility, and have a fear of it myself — you must 
 pack up and let me cart the whole family, espe- 
 cially the boys, about for a year. You are quite 
 capable of doing the guide to St. Paul's and 
 other interesting parts of London and Paris, but 
 somebody who was there when he was young 
 ought to take them to Mexico, thence by the 
 Spanish boat to Spain and Mallorca, thence to 
 Russia by the Nord express to Petrograd, Mos- 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 191 
 
 cow, Odessa, Bucharest, Constantinople, a long 
 stop, and end up with the Egyptian mail to the 
 Piraeus and the spring morning on the Acropolis, 
 to watch the maidens of the Caryatids' porch in 
 everlasting beauty against a blue Mediterranean 
 sky. 
 
 I know as well as you the futility of this kind 
 of dreams and that it leads to no benefit, and 
 that some one who was not there in his youth 
 would have to pay for the party. Not one neces- 
 sarily who stayed at home at the grindstone all 
 his life, but one who has kept his interests there 
 and not been out searching for interest where he 
 found it. 
 
 All of which means that I am bored to death 
 and make up for it by dreaming about past and 
 present and future. The last looks bad. I don't 
 see as any of this campaign has done anything 
 towards that hoped-for day when I shall be cap- 
 able of earning my own living in the way the 
 Da thinks I ought to. I suppose the poor Da 
 realizes this and it adds to his worries; then, 
 the more I gloom about present and fliture, the 
 more I dream about Dedham and the happy 
 days there with you and Mother and the Da, 
 
192 LETTERS 
 
 and long for another session of it with no worries 
 
 in the wind. 
 
 Good-bye, dear. With love, ^ 
 
 ^ ' ' Henry 
 
 \The censor's stamp contains the word " Belfort," 
 implying that he was near there.'] 
 
 [August, 1915] 
 Dear Mamma: 
 
 We are on the move again, and I have hopes 
 that the repos is over. To be sure we are not up 
 to anything very exciting as yet, only trench- 
 digging in a section duller than any as yet seen, 
 but once out of the infernal village, I have hopes 
 that we will not go back there. 
 
 As usual we left at 2 a.m. and marched under 
 a full moon through a misty sunrise and on into 
 the early heat of the morning, doing twenty-seven 
 kilometers. Then we stopped for the night and 
 went on at 1 a.m. the next day, the Captain wear- 
 ing his Moroccan burnous and looming ghostly 
 white at the head of the company. We did thirty- 
 one kilometers, much of it up and down steep 
 hills, and some of the men got sore feet and fell 
 out. I was so glad to hear the booming of the 
 
HENRY FARNS WORTH 193 
 
 cannon again that I was no more than healthily 
 weary of the sack and could have done ten or 
 fifteen more in the afternoon after a grande halte. 
 
 Here the trenches are held by a battalion of 
 respectable Territorials. After making the coffee, 
 some of us were lying under the trees and talk- 
 ing to these old boys and watching a stoop-shoul- 
 dered, unmedalled Captain talking to the Ser- 
 geant- Major about something, leaning on a cane 
 and looking much like the Da talking to Mike. 
 Suddenly a couple of shells steamed past and 
 broke in a neighboring quarter of the town. With 
 incredible activity one and all of the old boys dis- 
 appeared down an abris^ the Captain included. 
 I don't think it even occurred to any Leg-ion- 
 naire to move out of a comfortable position in 
 the shade on a hot day for a couple — or even 
 the fifty which followed — miserable TT's. A tri- 
 fling incident, but really it brings out a point I 
 am aiming at. 
 
 Papa says he dislikes the reputation of the Le- 
 gion, admitting that naturally he knows no more 
 of it than that. If he could spend an hour in this 
 village, I think he would change his mind, for 
 the contrast is enlightening. 
 
194 LETTERS 
 
 On the one hand are the Territorials, wherein 
 every man is honest and respectable and legally 
 married to a wife, and all that sort of thing. They 
 live in dirty quarters, carry dirty rifles, and fall 
 into their ranks in a gossipy way, every man 
 chattering with his neighbor or the Sergeant. 
 
 On the other hand, in the Legion everything is 
 cleaned up and shipshape, with iron discipline and 
 polished accoutrements, men who stand like ma- 
 chines in the ranks, and of whom not a man but 
 has utterly got over whatever fear he may ever 
 have had of shells and so forth. With us the sous- 
 officiers know every detail of the service back- 
 ward and are mostly capable of exacting prompt 
 obedience and respect by force of personality. As 
 for the officers, it is well known that they are the 
 best corps of officers in France, and probably in 
 the world. 
 
 The surroundings here are no more sordid 
 than those of the common soldier anywhere, and 
 as long as you are soldiering, I think it as well 
 to do it with people who are soldiers to the very 
 marrow of their bones. As for my refinement 
 and fears that I may lose it, my hands are in 
 poor form, rather toughened, and naturally I 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 195 
 
 have picked up a lot of argot; otherwise, I have 
 of late been reading Charles Lamb, Pickwick, 
 Plutarch, and a deal of cheap French novels, and 
 "War and Peace" over again. If I see we are 
 to spend winter in the trenches again, am think- 
 ing seriously of writing to London for a pair of 
 real waterproof and practical boots and some 
 Vicuna underwear. H. G.Wells' "Ann Veron- 
 ica" I found interesting, though it was trite and 
 irritating at bottom. I wonder if you remem- 
 ber it. 
 
 I wish from time to time you would send me 
 one novel that you find interesting. Books are 
 too heavy to carry when on the move. Naturally 
 either in French or English. The state of the 
 German mind, Plato, or Kant are not necessar}^ 
 for the moment, and I have read Milton, Shake- 
 speare, and Dante. 
 
 September 2, ^ 1915 
 Dear Papa: 
 
 The night after writing to Mother of our trench- 
 digging and marching, we received . . . every- 
 thing and . . . doing the fifty- odd kilometers in 
 two . . . but oh! how gladly, as far as I was 
 
196 LETTERS 
 
 concerned. As we stopped in a small village on 
 the way . . . the . . . came through, echoing 
 through the , and their . . . like mad. Then 
 
 we . . . that the . . . was on . . . and that . . . 
 real . . . and . . . come at last. 
 
 That evening our sick ones who came on by 
 train saw our artillery on trains headed north, 
 and rumor says that the 2 Etr anger moves out 
 this morning. This time things are sure. We can't 
 stay here more than two or three days, and drill 
 and reviews and all the hell of military life is 
 over. 
 
 As to where we are going, nobody knows 
 or cares very much. Some say Dardanelles, but I 
 don't think the tirailleurs would ever be sent to 
 take Constantinople. It is too much in the founda- 
 tion of their creed. Others say Champagne, Ar- 
 gonne, Alsace, etc., etc. Sukuna and I . . . and 
 pray for Belgium and a general drive alongside 
 the English. We both want it so much that we 
 do not put much faith in our arguments, but there 
 are really about ten good ones why that should 
 . . . will be a second Arras, and this time there 
 will be reinforcements behind, for now it is 
 known that the Legion and the tirailleurs can 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 197 
 
 break the German lines in one go, and it is merely 
 a question of having troops that will go into the 
 gap we make. I should think the English could 
 hardly refuse that position, with the two million 
 and the twenty kilometer front. 
 
 This would be very glorious indeed, and as 
 the regiment would immediately be very much 
 shot up, it might get what was left of us out of 
 winter in the trenches. On the other hand, it is 
 a sad fact that regimental changes are always for 
 the worse, and I suppose shortly you will hear 
 ft-om me digging trenches in some filthy hole 
 where it rains all the time. 
 
 As for the ^85, thanks very much. It is easily 
 thought I had better do without luxuries. I even 
 see the point myself, but in the meantime a few 
 francs make the well-nigh unbearable support- 
 able with philosophy. 
 
 With love to all, 
 
 Henry 
 
 September 5 , 1915 
 Dear Mamma: 
 
 As yet no progress, but we are still held ready 
 to move at the first order. In the meantime it 
 
198 LETTERS 
 
 rains, is cold, and I personally bore myself terri- 
 bly and would welcome any conceivable change. 
 
 Sukuna, as usual, is very calm, reads the 
 "Weekly Times" including the advertisements, 
 and tells me that when we are needed we will be 
 called up. The obvious truth of the remark helps 
 not at all. 
 
 If I ever find myself in a regiment about to 
 go back to refit again, I think I shall take pains to 
 get myself decently wounded and pass the time 
 in hospital. 
 
 Hence letters from home are more gratefijl 
 than ever before, and though it seems terrible 
 to hear of Adam's downfall, it did make sort 
 of natural reading. I almost feel like suggesting 
 your riding Eve, who has proved herself able to 
 stand on all fours for some years now. I suppose 
 not to ride at all is the sensible course, though 
 I should never advise it to you. 
 
 I have had some experience of misery in the 
 last months, and would never advise anything 
 to any one that meant that, under any circum- 
 stances. Don't let this work you up, for I took 
 it with open eyes and am still very much of the 
 same idea. I want to see the war from close to. 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 199 
 
 and do not allow incidentals to irritate for more 
 than the moment. 
 
 I am much interested in the Plattsburg Train- 
 ing Camp. If you meet any one who went there, 
 I wish you would skilfully pump him a bit and 
 find out how practical the training was. Spirit 
 and all seem to have been line, according to a 
 stray copy of " Life" that turned up, but did the 
 trainers learn to get the most out of the men in 
 hard conditions — to make them march on sore 
 feet when there were no wagons — get what food 
 they could in a pouring rain — work night after 
 night at the same dull digging — put up with the 
 insolence of stupid sergeants, and all the real 
 hardships of a campaign ? 
 
 Association with such Legionnaire captains as 
 Escall and our present Leroy bring it home more 
 and more. What a rare bird even a first-rate 
 captain is ! The present Leroy has been with us 
 about a month. Came from hospital after May 9 
 and has just been given the Officers' Cross of the 
 Legion of Honor — a little gratification that 
 many a colonel has to do without. I shall prob- 
 ably write more of him anon. 
 
 Love to the Da. Henry 
 
200 LETTERS 
 
 September 12,1915 
 Dear Mamma: 
 
 Your letters, two of which arrived this morning, 
 
 are a great blessing. A little sympathy is a very 
 
 grateful thing when one is bored to death and 
 
 exasperated by every one else in the world. 
 
 I always try to write of the most interesting 
 events in these surroundings, and the fact that 
 you seem to look at them in something the same 
 way makes it all seem a little less futile. 
 
 As for your glorious French Army — I beg 
 to differ. Glorious battalions d''Afrique as much 
 as you choose and I will always go you one bet- 
 ter, but the conscript of the "National Army" 
 are another tale. Our old 3 de marche was never 
 considered as a very remarkable outfit, but it is 
 significant that all of the three secteurs we occu- 
 pied, strengthened, fortified, and turned over to 
 French regiments are now in the hands of the 
 Germans — the last one, Tilloloy, what with the 
 barbed-wire, sixty feet thereof, in fi-ont of the 
 trenches, and heavily embanked loopholes, was 
 untakable as long as the defenders stuck to their 
 guns. That the thing was done by surprise makes 
 it all the more inexcusable. 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 201 
 
 To-morrow, so they say, we leave at 3 a.m. 
 for Division Headquarters and Poincare presents 
 the regiment with a flag. I suppose the cere- 
 mony will be impressive, but do not look for- 
 ward to it very much. Marching orders are all 
 I ask of Heaven, and there seems no sign of 
 them. 
 
 Why we were rushed back from the trench- 
 digging in Alsace and all our hopes raised is a 
 question I suppose only the Chiefs can answer. 
 The thought that they had their reasons gives 
 one no comfort. 
 
 I wish you could or would read "War and 
 Peace" again. Tolstoi, even more than Stendahl, 
 arrives at complete expression of military life. 
 Incidentally, his conception of family life is no 
 less utterly true to nature, at least as I see and 
 experience it. 
 
 With love to Adam's legs. May they bear you 
 
 in peace hereafter. 
 
 Henry 
 
 Will write again after the review, if it ever 
 comes off. 
 
202 LETTERS 
 
 September 16, 1915 
 Dear Ellen: 
 
 Yours of August 30 was a true pleasure. The Da 
 had just written me a backing-up of Wilson, in 
 which he assumes that if I knew more of current 
 events and had a wiser heart, I should already 
 have come to the same conclusions. These things 
 being so, you poured oil on the waters, and not 
 the least of them was the fact that you scented 
 that I sometimes fear a Pharisaical outlook on 
 your part — when I say your, I mean it for you 
 and your friends and entourage. 
 
 I was in the ranks beside Kraimer, the man 
 who made the ring, this morning, when, a divi- 
 sion being drawn up, M. Poincare and M. Mille- 
 rand and General de Castelnau and a lot of others 
 presented the regiment with a flag decorated with 
 the grande croix de guerre. When the collective 
 bugles crashed out with the 'Mz/ drapeau'''' and 
 the twenty thousand rifles flew up to the present 
 arms, there were tears in his eyes and he whis- 
 pered, " Chez nous a Bel a Bes on porte la Legion 
 d^Honneur?'' The President's speech was good 
 and very short and addressed — it is characteristic 
 of the French attitude towards the Legion — to 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 203 
 
 the Zouaves and tirailleurs^ the 4*^^ regiment 
 of the latter having received a flag as well. He 
 spoke of the Marne, where the Division broke 
 the Prussian guard, and ended up with a ringing 
 praise for the action north of Arras. It was also 
 characteristic that the Legion received its flag 
 before the others, and that our Colonel gave the 
 commands. 
 
 I shall write again in three or four days. Now 
 I must go and bathe in a mountain stream. 
 Thirty-five kilometers on top of the review and 
 the defile make it necessary. 
 
 With love, 
 
 Henry 
 
 2<* Regiment de marche du 1 «^ Etranger 
 
 COMTE— RENDU 
 
 Capitaine Gabet: 
 
 En r^ponse a votre note du 28, j'ai I'honneur 
 de vous rendre compte que le legionnaire Farns- 
 worth, a ete tue le 28 Septembre. C'etait un ex- 
 
204 LETTERS 
 
 cellent sujet. Ci joint en retour la demande de 
 renseignements de I'ambassade. 
 
 Le Capitaine Command^ la C'^ 
 
 Lallseliez 
 Aux Armees le 28 Octohre, 1915 
 
 October 29, 1915 
 Robert Bliss, Esq., 
 
 Ambassade des Rtats-Unis d' Amerique a Paris 
 
 Sir: 
 
 I have the honor of receiving your letter of Oc- 
 tober 25. 
 
 The captain of this company has obtained the 
 enclosed note relating to Mr. Henry W. Fams- 
 worth's death. I was not with him in the battle 
 where he died, but knew about it by some of the 
 men in his company. I appreciated him very 
 much indeed. 
 
 I am, Sir, at your entire disposal. 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 AUGUSTIN HeREDIA 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 205 
 
 Hospital Complimentaire 
 1 7 Pre Aux Clercs, 
 
 Lyon (^Brettaux)^ France^ 
 
 October 2, 1915 
 Dear Mr. Farnsworth: 
 At the request of your son, I am to say with 
 real pain that he was severely wounded on the 
 afternoon of the 28*^ of September last, on the 
 4*^ day of the battle of Champagne, a little in 
 fi-ont of the German wire entanglements of the 
 second line before the Fortin deNavarin. A large 
 number of machine guns were on the right flank, 
 and in front, where they were concentrating their 
 fire on the leading files of the attacking party, and 
 no stretcher-bearer could possibly reach the spot 
 where he was lying. Toward dusk the column 
 was still being held up. I left for the rear about 
 this time, but all I could do, I regret to say, was 
 to ask medical people to go up if possible. As one 
 who has seen a great deal of him here, I would 
 venture to mention how much his coolness under 
 fire has on occasions helped to steady the section, 
 and how his indifference to danger prompted him 
 at all times to volunteer for the most dangerous 
 posts. Under a withering rifle and machine gun 
 
206 LETTERS 
 
 fire, he denied my first word and dug a hole for 
 me, to which act I probably owe my life. Up to 
 the present, no fi-esh information of him has come 
 my way, but I shall always be glad to fijmish 
 any previous news. May I here express my pro- 
 found and sincere sympathies. 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 J. L. V. SUKUNA 
 
 Camp d'Jirovd^ November 2 , 1915 
 
 To Groton School 
 
 Groton^ Massachusetts : 
 I suppose you have heard by now that Henry 
 Farnsworth was killed in Champagne in the last 
 days of September. A brave fellow he was and 
 a gallant one. The two or three times I met him 
 at college he made little impression. But of the 
 months I knew him in the Legion, I respected 
 him and enjoyed his companionship more and 
 more. When everything was going badly — we 
 were disreputably officered in the 3"*^ de marche 
 — and every man was finding fault, grumbling, 
 making all the possible steps to get out of the 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 207 
 
 Legion into French regiments, he was always 
 optimistic, serene, and an immense moral force 
 in his company. "Leave the Legion? Never!" 
 When we were transferred to the 2^ de marche 
 and the true Legion, then he was exultant. 
 Many of the 3"^^ felt insulted to be put with 
 these "desperate characters," but he only told 
 them since they had come to fight, they should be 
 the more happy to be put with the most fearless, 
 perhaps the most famous regiment in France, 
 since the 9*^^ of May and 16*^ of June. I know 
 he could have wished for nothing more glorious 
 than to die as he did when the 1^* Etranger 
 again covered itself with honor on the 29*^^. 
 The Tirailleurs Algeriens flinched on the right, 
 but his Battalion went on and was demolished. 
 Victor Chapman 
 
WITH THE LEGION IN THE 
 CHAMPAGNE 
 
 By J. L. V. SuKUNA 
 
 The 24'^^ September broke a close and warm 
 day. The severe cannonading of the two previ- 
 ous days had perceptibly calmed down. The rou- 
 tine of the last few nights — communication-trench 
 digging in the white clay soil of the Champagne 
 District — had been dispensed with the evening 
 before, an omnious sign, the old Legionnaires 
 whispered, of the closeness of the impending 
 storm. Here and there, basking in the sun, were 
 scattered small groups discussing the superiority 
 of the French artillery, the possible rapidity of 
 the advance, — for an advance all believed it 
 would be, — or the probable part of the Mo- 
 roccan Division in the coming conflict. In the 2^ 
 Company's camp a young Cambridge under- 
 graduate, a half-blue, was sparring with his ad- 
 jutant before an excited and sympathetic audi- 
 ence. Throughout the day the military road run- 
 ning from Suippes was filled with Territorial 
 units, men of the Colonial Corps, and vehicles of 
 every kind and description. Late in the after- 
 
210 LETTERS 
 
 noon the " fall in " was called, and the Colonel, vis- 
 ibly moved, announced the part allotted to the 
 regiment. It was to be in reserve to support the 
 Turcos — Zouaves and Algerian Rifles — and 
 the 2d Etranger^ upon whom of the Moroccan 
 Division had fallen the honor of participating in 
 the great initial assault. That evening the regi- 
 ment was to move forward to take up position. 
 The high-strung feeling of expectancy culminat- 
 ing in the Colonel's speech brought in its wake a 
 reactionaiy feeling, confused and depressing. The 
 hours seemed so long. All sense of relation and 
 the power of connective thought appeared either 
 lost or hopelessly dulled. Some laid down to rest; 
 but the younger and the less experienced, betray- 
 ing unmistakable signs of nervousness, sat 'round 
 dimly lit camp-fires, chatting disconnectedly. The 
 night was dark and still. Overhead ominous black 
 clouds seemed to be furtively gathering forces. 
 At 1 a.m. the rassemhlement was called, and a 
 few minutes later the Legion was en route^ head- 
 ing for the first line trenches in close proximity 
 to Souain. 
 
 Drizzling rain was falling. The communica- 
 tion-trenches, running immediately behind the 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 211 
 
 first line trenches, were reached at 2:30 a.m. Or- 
 ders were given to settle down ; the wait would 
 probably be for some hours. Cannonading had 
 begun again, growing in intensity almost imper- 
 ceptibly. The heavy guns, far away in the rear, 
 were heavily engaged. Towards dawn the field 
 artillery immediately behind the Legion began 
 to thunder and roar. From a deserted observa- 
 tion post a magnificent view of the bombard- 
 ment was seen. About two hundred yards away 
 there zigzagged a narrow white line, the parapet 
 of the enemy trenches. Away to the left it dis- 
 appeared in the declivity of the ground, and to 
 the right it ran back until it was lost behind a 
 barren white ridge. Every moment white flashes 
 of light — forked lightning in a tropical storm, 
 they looked like — seemed to dance over that thin 
 white line, followed by columns of smoke of vary- 
 ing sizes, some black and some white in color, 
 with others of a yellow-bluish hue; and then ren- 
 dering crashes as the pieces of exploded steel flew 
 on their deadly errand. The air rocked and quiv- 
 ered. The vibration seemed to penetrate every 
 fibre. Overhead the endless streams of missiles 
 firom the heavy guns hissed, and below them the 
 
212 LETTERS 
 
 innumerable shells of the soixante-quinze sang 
 and howled not unmusically. But the German 
 guns held a dignified silence. Rain was falling 
 in torrents. At 8 a.m. the artillery fire had de- 
 veloped into one continuous and incessant roar. 
 From the observation post the thin white line 
 was no longer visible. It was entirely enveloped 
 in dust, smoke, and flame. The German guns 
 were now firing spasmodically at the field- pieces 
 to the rear; but some shells were falling in the 
 trenches. The order to move came at last. Cold, 
 stiff, and hungry, it was a welcome change. Rifle 
 and machine gun fire could now be heard above 
 the roar of the guns. The attack had opened. 
 Through the Boyau de Martinique came a con- 
 tinual stream of wounded. The Germans were 
 using tear shells. The eyes smarted and ached, 
 and tears flowed abundantly, obscuring one's 
 view, in that narrow way full of wounded. 
 
 After half an hour's slow progress a shallow, 
 narrow communication-trench, fi-om which the 
 Turcos had rushed to the assault, midway between 
 the enemy's first line and our own, was reached. 
 The drain was a heart-rending sight, fiill of the 
 dead and dying, those who in the previous nights 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 213 
 
 had contributed by hard and difficult digging to 
 minimize the losses of this day. Some German 
 field batteries, somewhere on the Souain-Tahure 
 Road, were raining shrapnel on that trench of 
 the dead and at the approaches in the rear, where 
 two squadrons of cavalry were vainly endeavor- 
 ing to hack through that curtain of lead. Thrice 
 they reformed and thrice they were scattered. For 
 some time no further progress was possible. Sud- 
 denly a battery of soixante-quinze began firing 
 short, dropping several shells into the Legion. 
 For a few minutes a panic threatened. It was 
 during these critical moments that Captain Junod 
 rendered signal service: stepping out of the 
 trench and calmly walking along the parapet, in 
 full view of the enemy, he rallied the men. The 
 enemy's first line had long ago fallen; but desper- 
 ate hand-to-hand fighting was still taking place in 
 the woods immediately in front. A halt was called 
 at the German first line trenches to gather in pris- 
 oners and to reform the line. The havoc wrought 
 by the French bombardment was everywhere 
 very evident — enormous holes, barbed wire en- 
 tanglements completely destroyed, trenches filled 
 in and dig-outs smashed. Sandbag loopholes 
 
214 LETTERS 
 
 above seemed able to withstand the unprece- 
 dented battery, and some of these were in a re- 
 markable state of preservation. 
 
 The German heavy guns and few field-pieces 
 were now heavily engaged in a tir de barrage. At 
 3 p.m. the order came to advance in support of 
 the Turcos. Rain had again begun to fall. From 
 the direction of Souain French field batteries 
 were trotting forward in support of the infantry 
 advance. Huge shells, raising columns of black 
 smoke hundred feet in height, were bursting all 
 around them; but on they came, apparently not 
 in the least concerned. From a small valley south 
 of Navarin came the sharp crackle of rifle fire, 
 and in the bluish purple light of the gray autumn 
 twilight, troops of various regiments — Chas- 
 seurs., Infantry of the Line, Colonials — could be 
 made out deploying to the right and left;. Sud- 
 denly a strange bugle call rang out, followed in- 
 stantly by loud and continued cheering. Doubts 
 were soon dissipated as French bugles began 
 sounding the charge. Chasseurs .^l^urcos., Legion- 
 naires., mingled in that fight, and in a few minutes 
 all was over. The German onslaught had been 
 met and broken. Early that night the Legion 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 215 
 
 replaced the Turcos in the first line. The Ger- 
 mans, evidently very nervous, kept throwing up 
 lights all through the night, followed by salvos 
 of rifle fire. 
 
 Early next morning some units of the Chas- 
 seurs relieved the Legion; the whole of the 
 Moroccan Division being now gradually placed 
 in the reserve. The regiment took up position in 
 a valley north of Souain at 6 a.m. in groups of 
 sections. Its mission, it seems, was to attract the 
 enemy's fire while along the wooded ridge to 
 the east reinforcements could pass unmolested in 
 the direction of the Butte, Souain, and Nava- 
 rin. Through the valley ran the main German 
 communication-trench between Navarin and 
 the trenches passing Souain. It was the obvious 
 route for fresh troops to take. Shortly after 
 7 a.m. a tir de barrage^ which increased in in- 
 tensity as the day wore on, was directed on the 
 valley and on the whole length of the communi- 
 cation-trench. It was a perfect inferno. Officers 
 and men went down quickly; but the Legion 
 clung on all day, sections changing position fre- 
 quently. At dusk the regiment was ordered to 
 retire to the southern end of the wooded ridge. 
 
2 1 6 LETTERS 
 
 then to take its place with the Division which 
 had now been all withdrawn. The darkness, the 
 limited space, and above all the devastating ar- 
 tillery fire rendered the movement an extremely 
 difficult one to execute in good order and with- 
 out heavy loss. In the circumstances confusion 
 was inevitable. Captains lost their companies and 
 men their section and squad commanders. Many 
 strayed away, only to perish in the hurricane of 
 steel. Camped on the wooded ridge, the expla- 
 nations, the anecdotes given gratuitously of that 
 trying day, the charges and counter-charges, 
 would have made the heart of Tolstoi glad. 
 
 The morning of the 27^^ September was com- 
 paratively quiet; the enemy's fire being again 
 mainly directed on the valley below. In the mean- 
 time, the regiment proceeded to dig itself in. 
 Towards noon Battalion A was called upon to 
 relieve units of the Turcos in the second line, at 
 the northern end of the communication-trench 
 connecting Navarin and Souain. The day was 
 showery and cold, with occasional strong blasts 
 of wind. Away behind the Fortin de Navarin a 
 German observation balloon floated in the air. 
 This fresh movement of troops was at once sig- 
 
HENRY FARNS WORTH 2\7 
 
 nailed and some German field batteries imme- 
 diately opened a murderous fire on the commu- 
 nication-trench; while the valley to the south was 
 again ploughed with huge shells. For half an hour 
 a fire more accurate and intense than anything yet 
 experienced devastated the ranks. Some sections 
 entirely disappeared. But during the early part of 
 the afternoon several batteries oi soixante-quinze 
 moved up into the valley between the ridge oc- 
 cupied by the Moroccan Division and the Souain- 
 Tahure Road, and these guns after a few rounds 
 silenced the enemy's field-pieces. The night of 
 the 27*^ was passed quietly in the wood, that is, 
 so far as bombardment by the enemy was con- 
 cerned; but all night long the soixante-quirvze 
 near the Souain-Tahure Road kept up an inces- 
 sant war. 
 
 On the early morning of the 28*^ the German 
 heavy guns began searching for these batteries, 
 tearing and ploughing up in all directions the ridge 
 and woods covering the Division. The noise and 
 din of the high-explosive shells were ear-shatter- 
 ing, and the huge columns of thick black smoke 
 were awe inspiring. But clear above the thunder 
 and crash of the Teutonic storm the decisive bark 
 
2 1 8 LETTERS 
 
 of the 75's from the valley below rang sharp and 
 true. At 2 p.m. the order to prepare to attack 
 passed 'round, and an hour later the Legion, with 
 gaps filled up, moved out in columns of double 
 companies. The bombardment was still heavy, 
 and as the regiment following the ridge passed 
 by the Zouaves and Algerian rifles, men were 
 falling on all sides. Sweeping 'round to the north- 
 west at the end of the ridge, the Commandants 
 led their men in the direction of the Fortin de 
 Navarin. In the woods on the left the infantry in 
 the first line were closely nestled in their trenches, 
 some knee-deep, others the regulation depth. 
 Stray bullets began to sing in the air. At the 
 crest before the Fortin de Navarin the regiment 
 halted for a few minutes to enable the Turcos 
 to come into line on the left. The enemy were 
 still about two hundred yards away. And then, 
 with bayonets fixed, '"''En avantf'' Through a 
 little scraggy pine avenue Battalion A rushed. 
 Away to the left, in the open space, the Turcos 
 were advancing. Bullets sang louder in the air. 
 Tap, tap, tap, — the machine guns were firing 
 methodically. A short halt was called and an- 
 other rush till the wire entanglements of the enemy 
 
HENRY FARNSWORTH 219 
 
 were clearly visible — whole and untouched. 
 Here again for some reason unknown the regi- 
 ment halted. It was now near 4 p.m., and at 
 this juncture no further advance could possibly 
 have been undertaken in the face of converging 
 machine gun fire from the wood on the half- 
 left front, from the Ferme de Navarin, and from 
 the wood on the right flank. The leading files 
 suffered severely. Of the officers the best had al- 
 ready fallen. The Commandant was dead. Pine 
 leaves and branches cut off' by bullets were fall- 
 ing like rain. The groans of the wounded and the 
 cries of the dying sickened and weakened one. 
 Still no orders came. Through it all, when the 
 fire was at its heaviest, could be heard the voice 
 of Captain Sunod, upon whom had developed 
 the command of the Battalion : ^^Ne boiigez pas^ 
 mes enfants!''' And there the Legion stayed until 
 far into the night. 
 
^'^ 
 
 ^'FARInSWORTH^ 
 
H 129 79 
 
0^ 
 
 o V 
 
 t^O^ 
 
 ^^ 
 
 
 ^' 
 
 
 
 vOv-, 
 
 ■:^^ %/■ 
 
 
 ^ ^ 
 
 "'^'^41it>W 
 
 
 
 'o » 
 
 .-^ 
 
 A 
 
 - 
 
 '<■ 
 
 0^ 
 
 ■'' "°- 
 
 ■*b 
 
 v-^ 
 
 
 _^ 
 
 
 ^x. 
 
 
 
 
 ^^ .. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ .^^ 
 
 \ 
 
 A 
 
 ^.^ 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 '^ *o* ^* Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proce 
 ^ * -» (D Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
 
 "^jr ^^32,"- ^ -^ Treatment Date: 
 
 0' 
 
 ^^ c^' W . .^ 
 
 Q ^ PreservationTechnologii 
 
 ^ 'V' A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATI 
 
 r\ 111 Thomson Park Drive 
 
 Cranberry Township, PA 1 6066 
 
 ^ , , (724)779-2111 
 
>.^' 
 
 
 0' 
 
 .0 V: 
 
 r/): 
 
 
 ^■p. 
 
 
 
 aife'^ '\.^*'' :^IC^.'\ "W^ 
 
 .0 ^, - ^'