An Onlooker in France 1917-1919Orpen, William, Sir
History
An Onlooker in France 1917-1919
Orpen, William, Sir
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives; World War, 1914-1918 -- Pictorial works
The great family really was composed of a number of little families.
Mine consisted of Lord Riddell, George Mair, Lieut.-Colonel Stroud
Jackson, D.S.O., George Adam, Sidney Dark and Gordon Knox, and great
were the meetings at Foucquet's before lunch.
For the most part, my life consisted now of painting portraits at the
"Astoria," or attending the Conference at the "Quai d'Orsay." During
these I did little drawings of the delegates. For a seat I was usually
perched up on a window-sill. It was very amusing to sit there and
listen to Clemenceau--"Le Tigre"--putting the fear of death into the
delegates of the smaller nations if they talked too long. Apparently,
the smaller the nation he represented, the more the delegate felt it
incumbent on himself to talk, but after a while, Clemenceau, with the
grey gloves whirling about, would shout him down.
President Wilson occasionally rose and spoke of love and forgiveness.
Lloyd George just went on working, his secretaries constantly rushing
up to him, whispering and departing, only to return for more whispers.
Mr. Balfour, whose personality made all the other delegates look
common, would quietly sleep. The Marquis Siongi was the only other man
who could hold his own at all with Mr. Balfour in dignity of
appearance.
As a whole there was just a little mass of black frock-coated
figures--"frocks" as we called them--sitting and moving about under
the vast decoration of "Le Salon de l'Horloge." Some of the little
people seemed excited, but for the most part they looked profoundly (p. 101)
bored, yet they were changing the face of the map, slices were being
cut off one country and dumped on to another. It was all very
wonderful, but I admit that all these little "frocks" seemed to me
very small personalities, in comparison with the fighting men I had
come in contact with during the war.
[Illustration: XLIII. _Field-Marshal Sir Henry H. Wilson, Bart.,
K.C.B., etc._]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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