[A few paragraph breaks added for ease of reading. The year is not indicated in this letter, but other letters from this trip reveal Amiens was on the agenda for July 11, and Charlotte was traveling with Abby.]Amiens, July 11
Honey dear: -
You will be amused at our transitions! Sunday night we were in Cambridge in the academic atmosphere, and our quarters became much quieter and assumed a great air of repose after the departure of the Royal Show! They were not expensive - we had a large and very pleasant sitting room where our meals were served, two small and not very attractive bedrooms and two meals, breakfast and mid-day dinner, abundant and good for 10s per day including service.
Last night we spent in the lower town of Folkestone, in some rooms to which a commercial hotel referred us - to be accurate one room with 3 beds! Very unattractive, but cheap. There is an elegant part, but we didn't stay there. Tonight we are with the Religieuses de Louvencourts near Amiens Cathedral, in sisterly neatness and quiet, really perfect! Charlotte has not felt up to her social standard since leaving London, though she is trying to appreciate economy[.] She doesn't really understand the oldness of the Oxford and how that house was really very nice, albeit simple. Its queerness was old age! But she adores this, having strong Episcopal tendencies. And I must say the Sisters are dear - they have hovered over our belated supper like two angels and been so patient with our feeble French. Charlotte knows much more than I, but I can guess their meaning quite as quickly - by reason of not worrying about grammar!
Well - we left Cambridge with three of our pet purposes unsatisfied. We did not go rowing on the Cam because we forgot it the only decent evening. It rained most of the time. We did not go to the roof of King's Chapel because it rained every time we could go during open hours. We did not see Pye's manufactory because we chose to go to tea at the Hopkinses! I can send to Pye for a catalogue, but I can't have an English tea-party by mail!
Monday they were sweet at our place about our early departure. The cab had a puncture but fortunately another was near so we got the train. We had a long cab ride between London stations and alas & alack, I left my umbrella, my elegant folding silk umbrella, in the cab. 'Twas very dark and though we both looked in after leaving, in the excitement of a big strange station, time-table unknown, I plain forgot it. It has been two days without rain since! The first days since we landed. But if I can only get to Paris, I shall buy one at once. In London I wrote within 15 minutes to Scotland Yard, for Charlotte just by chance had noted the cab number. If there had been any cab system I could have caught the thing, for I knew the umbrella was gone at once, but there were hundreds of cabs all in a mess - no system at all, such as we have at big stations, no management of calling them &c. I go to Scotland Yard on our return to London - which will be rather fun, though I expect no umbrella there! It had my name & address on it. It was too good an umbrella to bring - but I literally had no other. All my old things have gone to glory - and this would have folded if the weather had permitted it. Well - I remembered the lady in Maine and have not fussed!
We had about 6 hours in Canterbury, and went up in the West Gate, where we saw the prisons and the old armor. Very interesting - also a heavenly view from the top, of the whole region, and especially the Cathedral. We had service there in the Choir and went all about. A beautiful war memorial is just by the foot of the old Norman arches in the School. The war memorials all over are wonderful - they are in practically all the Oxford & Cambridge colleges. The cathedral is beautiful - as before - and we wanted to stay longer so much!
We hadn't time for St. Martin's or the Augustinian place, but walked along the City Wall, and took the Dover train! In Dover we had about half an hour and walked where we could get a good look at the Castle - and yearned to go up to it - it's like the Rhine castles in effect, high up, and with a lovely skyline, and old and grey, though still a fortified place. The train between Dover & Folkestone wound in and out through tunnels in the cliffs and gave us fine close-up views - but we wanted to scratch those chalk cliffs! They're wonderful. And the outlines of hills in that country are exquisitely rounded. Even riding through in the train gives one ideas.
At Folkestone we got our cheap joint and then walked up on the Leas to S-T-Y-L-E! Very interesting. Like the cliff walk at Newport, I suspect. But down below on the sand, reached by lifts, was somewhat of a modified Nastasket. [sic] We went to our 3-bed room and slept undisturbed by bugs. Here I had really expected them!
This morning we rose betimes, and 'twas well. We hurred back to those Leas, found the Harvey statue in the undisturbed peace of 9:30 a.m. and such a heavenly view of the channel, with that fleet of red-sailed Dutch fishing boats, and all the traffic! So many vessels of all kinds in sight. We found the little church with its quaint inscription to Harvey's mother, and then hastened back for our porter to escort us to the boat before the trains should come in. We got fine places for our chairs, and had such a delightful crossing! It was like a mill-pond, and so sunny and beautiful, we loved it and hated to land!
Then came dirty France. No joys in Boulogne! The porter stung us, I think - but exchange is enough in our favor to balance! All really was all right except our inability to find the largest marine biological station in France! We asked at least 10 people and nobody knew anything about it. We asked in English and in French, at elegant bank and governmental fish station, and one policeman shadowed us for a half-mile as suspicious characters, but we finally boarded a trolley car and escaped! That took us out to a suburb to which one kind friend sent us and by so much war stuff. British war cemetery, old regulations, torn down quarters - oh, everything! And a man - English - in the compartment coming down here told his companions lots more! I don't know whether I'm glad I'm here or not.
July 12
My pen gave out at that point. We haven't our suit-cases here, so this is French ink, off a book stall man who showed us all his maps and sold us none. It is horrid to have no guidebook. There is no new one except of Paris. Dr Flather lent us an Amiens, but we need maps and remarks!
Well - we've been to battle-fields. I didn't want to go, but Charlotte did, and I thought maybe I'd regret it if I didn't! So we went - a car from a Y.M.C.A. place with an English driver, a young man who had been a despatch carrier about here. We took the "shorter trip" for about $12 each. The car would have held more for the same price, but nobody appeared. We went from Amiens where the signs of shells are only occasional along a road to Peronne. As we went we saw the trees by the roadside, lovely big poplars, with some gaps replaced by new trees - then only an occasional battered tree, dead and black, left standing, then none. The country here is rolling in big flat rolls - and nothing impressed me more in the war zone than the uninterrupted views - all trees gone! And there are many tree-bordered roads and patches of woods in the unhurt part.
Presently we took a side road - very hard for the back & head - and came to the "Big Bertha" which shelled Amiens, 22 miles away. It's still there, smashed by the Germans when they left, only 12 feet of the end of the tube have been cut off and taken to Australia by the troop who cpatured it. It was under a hill in a little wood - a few trees still standing. Many minor gun foundations in the vicinity to fire at the same time and mislead. The gun was found by accident in the general Australian advance - it had never been exactly located. 'Twas a tremendous thing, tube over 50 feet long, 15 inch shells weighing over a ton, and wonderfully mounted. There were three others, one near Ortend.
We found the fields wonderfully reclaimed for miles - thousands of men have straightened them out and fine wheat crops &c are growing. But every once in a while there would be a smashed house, or a wrecked sugar factory, or a dump of barbed wire &c &c. then as we got nearer Peronne there were more unreclaimed fields, all rough, but overgrown with poppies and chamomile and many other flowers, very brilliant now.
Peronne and Albert were the two large places we saw. (hm - that Frenchman didn't know how to fill this pen after all!) - and they were just like the pictures. An extraordinary amount of work has been done in clearing up, the old stone & brick is for the most part neatly piled, and many buildings are built or building, but it is ghastly! The folks are living in such little places - parts of houses, one story brick or wood things, and there are rows & rows of British army huts, a street of them here & there. They were shaped like a half cylinder with 2 small windows & a door at the end & corrugated iron cover, only a little higher than a man in the middle. And it's all so dusty, the fine white dust of crumbled concrete &c. We had lunch at a new little hotel, very decent. A tire punctured, so we had to wait about an hour and therefore saw much of Peronne!
We went on to the front line used 2 years by the Germans, and in a less fertile region where the soil is poor anyhow no effort has been made to reclaim. We saw the irregular maze of zigzag trenches, now fallen in, but with openings into the tunneled dugouts deep below. A mine crater about 300 feet across, - and the soil all white chalk - crumbly soft stone. Many flowers partly conceal the trenches, but the irregular white heaps remain. The places we saw had such familiar names, the hill of St. Quentin, Longeval, Belville Wood (only battered black trunks above the 4-year scrub).
We came into Albert, perhaps larger than Peronne, less rebuilt, the place where the Virgin's statue hung so long. There was so much desolation there, so many long streets. The work of clearing and rebuilding is helped by little railroads which they have in rail-length sections, rails, ties & all made together, all ready to lay on almost any foundation, along the edges of streets, up around large buildings &c. These were used in the war. Everywhere are ruins and war dumps. The Germans destroyed both this & Peronne as they retired. Then as we came back to Amiens, having been around a triangle, roughly, of about 60 miles, things again got greener & fairer.
Of course there were cemeteries all along. British, French (one of 8,000 graves, I remember), Australian German. This was not an American sector. Many of the cemeteries they are just grading and sowing to grass. There are many monuments on hill-tops & at cross-roads commemorating particular battles or valiant regiments. We saw the Somme over & over, and the unused canal whose bed was such an obstacle. The guide told us the specific things which occurred, but I shall remember only the general impression - the larks singing, the flowers, the fields, the trenches, the towns & villages & farms.
Tonight we've been to the Cathedral, which fortunately was hurt very little, though a whole big house is down across the Square. It's wonderful - all you read of it is true, but after all I like the English ones better. We go again tomorrow for longer - and then on to Paris. We've not had our suitcases for now three days, to avid taxi fares, and I'll be glad to see mine.
This place is most diverting, but wondrous[ly] clean! We've been late to two meals owing to difficulties with the language, and that's a crime! The sisters shake their fingers at us. But they're sweet, and tonight we made it! And it's like an enlarged Peterson Lodge, that table. There must be 10 decayed gentlewomen of various ripe ages. One crumbed her bread in her wine, because of no teeth. Another brought her own cherries & washed them in her water glass, à la Miss Randolph, a third fixed up some mess whose nature I could not see! We had (a) soup, (b) boiled eggs in cups - I ate mine neatly - (c) boiled carrots, delicious, (d) a little dab of jelly on a large plate. Plenty of bread all along - no butter. We have glass rests for our knives and keep them and our spoons, though we had 4 sets of plates. Many of the ladies had their own wine bottles. I forgot to mention the half dozen women in good repair, and three rather lively ones at another table. Two sisters served. At breakfast we could have eggs and chocolate (served in a pitcher, about a pint, to be eaten in a bowl with a tablesppon) or tea or coffee, and bread and jams. Charlotte does quite a bit with her French - the sisters speak a negligible amount of English, but we are very comfortable. The electric lights went off at 9:30. It's now 10 and dead still. But activity begins in the court below at 6 a.m. We have feather beds to put on top of us - not needed, because there are blankets also - and of course a crucifix in the room.
Will you be willing to send this on to Jessee please? I'm afraid I'll not have time to write it again - and ask her to keep it for me, as I'd like to remember what I saw!
With much love -
Abby