Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belport (Hesperus Modern Voices) [Paperback]

Edith Wharton (Author), Colm Toibin (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2010 | Series: Hesperus Modern Voices

As nuanced in her observations of human behavior as she is in her vivid depictions of French landscape and architecture, Wharton fully exploited her unique position as consort to Walter Barry, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Paris, which allowed her unparalleled access to life in the trenches. Sensitive without sentimentality, and offering a valuable and extremely rare female perspective of a war dominated by the male viewpoint, this series of articles is nothing less than an inspirational testament to the strength of the human spirit at a time of the greatest adversity. 

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About the Author

Novelist Edith Wharton (1862–1937) is known for her finely crafted stories of New York mores, including The Age of Innocence. Colm Tóibín is one of Ireland’s leading contemporary writers. His novel The Master was short-listed for the Booker Prize.

Product Details

• Paperback: 122 pages
• Publisher: Hesperus Press (April 1, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1843914514
• ISBN-13: 978-1843914518
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 0.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,018,170 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4.0 out of 5 stars Edith Wharton in First World War France, July 6, 2010

By 

Robert Mosher "The Military Philosopher at h... (Virginia, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belport (Hesperus Modern Voices) (Paperback)

In addition to being a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, essayist, and author of short stories, Edith Wharton was one of those Americans who fell in love with France at an early age. She would in fact make it her principal place of residence from 1911 up to her death in 1937. When the First World War broke out in 1914, she was - not unexpectedly given her social connections (a book jacket note describes her as "consort" to Walter Berry, then Chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in France) - one of the few neutral foreigners allowed to remain in early wartime France. At the age of 52, she returned to France from England and began to work for war charities, showing a special interest in the widows of French soldiers killed in the war by finding them work, even hiring 90 of them herself to make fashionable lingerie for sale.

Much of her relief work involved traveling by car across the length and breadth of the war front in France, from Switzerland to the English Channel, even visiting the war front. In addition to reports of her observations for the Red Cross, among others, six of her car trips became the subject of magazine articles and this book in 1915. The phrase "From Dunkerque to Belfort" in the title referred to the two fortified cities located at the two ends of the trench lines that had quickly stretched the length of what came to be called the Western Front. The author clearly hoped that, after nearly a year of war, her collected observations on wartime France and how it affected both the French and her would persuade Americans to support France and even enter the war as a French ally.

From the vantage point of the 21st Century with its ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is an almost touching degree of innocence in Edith Wharton's writings about the war and about France at war. I was repeatedly reminded of the things that the author did not yet know about France, the French, their experience of the impact of the First World War, and how that experience would affect them as a nation and a people. Writing in 1915, she knew nothing about the mutinies that would wrack the French Army in 1917 - just two years into the future. Reportedly up to 30,000 French troops would leave the trenches and go to the rear, involving as many as half of the divisions then in the French Army. The authorities would respond with mass arrests and military trials which would pass death sentences on more than 600 soldiers, more than 40 of which would be carried out by firing squads. But these worn, desperate, tired French soldiers are not the ones seen and written about by Ms. Wharton in 1914-1915.

In another passage, Ms. Wharton describes visiting the fortress of Verdun, in the face of German attacks and artillery barrages. And yet, as dramatic as her visit to that citadel may have been, the true sausage grinder of the famous Battle of Verdun is still a year in the future - 21 February to 18 December, 1916. The German High Command would deliberately attack the fortress for the sole purpose of drawing in and killing as many French troops as possible. The final French casualties would amount to 371,000, including 60,000 killed; 210,000 wounded; and 101,000 missing. Nor does our author know that the French commander responsible for its defense, General Pêtain, would rise to become a living symbol of French defiance - only to fall to ignominy and be convicted of treason twenty years later for his collaboration with Nazi Germany. But no one in 1915 knew these things.

"Fighting France" is well written and easy to read little volume that might help the modern reader to understand how the war was perceived and experienced by at least some of those actually present. A map or even an historical atlas of the First World War might help some readers better follow Mrs. Wharton's peregrinations around France and recognize the militarily significant locations and dates she mentions. The book would also be of interest to those devotees and fans of Mrs. Wharton's novels and short stories who would like to know and understand more about the woman who drew so often upon her own experiences in writing her fiction. It seems clear that whether or not any of her own novels could be considered autobiographical, many elements of her life and experiences might lend themselves well to the novel, the stage, or cinema including the experiences described in this slim work.