Confusion and chaos: an Englishman abroad describes the outbreak of war in a 1914 diary of Parisian life encompasses the looting of German-owned shops and all too quickly a capital city under attack: ‘the streets in total darkness with only a big searchlight flashing from the roof of the Hotel de Crillon... the atmosphere suggested war, the calm of desolation, the uncertainty of an invisible terror’.
Absorbingly written by a cosmopolitan Yorkshireman named Bernard Thistlethwaite, his diary begins on March 16th 1914 as the expatriate begins an apparently idyllic new phase of young married life at 159 Boulevard Montparnasse with his wife Katherine and a round of galleries, friends, operas and boat trips.
In early August the morning paper delivers the news that Europe is on the brink of war and Thistlethwaite records the events unfolding on the streets of Paris which our writer records from the perspective of being both an Englishman and an expatriate living in a city he clearly feels very at home in.
On August 1st he describe the confusion and chaos following the French order of mobilisation as our writer attempts to help his visiting aunt secure a passage back to England amid a landscape of ‘taxis and cabs overflowing with people and luggage and folk of all nationalities trying to comprehend the best way forward’. Of his fellow Englishmen he despairingly notes, ‘English people are quite incapable of realising that anything can happen outside of their tame preconceived conceptions, it is typically Britannic to suppose that France must necessarily postpone her war so as not to interfere with a British bank holiday’.
On August 3rd Thistlethwaite describe soldiers leaving for the front ‘very cheerful and brave’ and declare the most noticeable thing about Paris being ‘the unnatural quiet which seemed like the atmosphere before a thunder storm’. Thistlethwaite describes restaurants and shops with Germanic connections being looted, their windows broken as the price of goods increases and neighbours turn on neighbours. Amid the rising chaos a telegraph announcement delivers the news that England has declared war on Germany and our writer secures train tickets from Saint Lazare for himself and his wife to travel to Dieppe where they will cross via New Haven to England where some safety awaits in their hometown of Great Ayrton, Yorkshire.
They travel part of the journey with an American with no ticket or passport ‘who had walked over the lines to get in the train’ and make friends with three sisters returning from a holiday in Switzerland. On arrival in London on August 6th 1914 it is noted, ‘London appeared almost exactly as it always does which seemed curious after the great change which came over Paris’.
Our writer returns without his wife to continue his work in Paris for the American Fairbank Company. As he travels from Dieppe on August 15th he witnesses the British expeditionary force marching westwards through his train window. Diary entries reveal a sense of normalcy running alongside an underlying as yet invisible terror as the city transforms. While our writer enjoys a drink on the terrace at Maxims on the Rue Royale on Sunday August 30th a troop of cavalry ride past and he later discovers that three bombs have been dropped on the east of Paris.
By the end of August, as initial patriotic excitement faded away, the reality of a German advance became apparent ‘people were beginning to seriously consider the possibility of a siege of Paris and everyone was asking himself ‘si c’est bien un siege... we were informed that all able bodied men in Paris would have to defend the town willy nilly’. On August 31st our writer converts to Catholicism and is baptised by Father Clifford of the English Catholic Church (there are many passages documenting his wish to convert to Catholicism throughout the diary).
The evening before he quits Paris Thistlethwaite dines in the Imperial Club: his diary entries contemplate, ‘in a case of life and death business obligations and duties become childish’ and his time in Paris leads him to contrast the differing attitudes between the two nations, ‘to a Frenchman business is simply a useful part of life which may at times be entirely suspended by some occurrence or catastrophe..... the death of a relative, the face of a mistress, the approach of the enemy....... the Englishman on the other hand sees almost nothing in life but business and the attaining of money’. Entries end on Tuesday September 1st 1914.
ADDITIONAL DESCRIPTION : c. 115 leaves, 12,000 words, written to verso only of a manuscript book bound in old hessian, stained with some fraying to joints and corners and along outer hinges. Clean, crisp and in an entirely legible hand.
Bernard Thistlethwaite (1888 - 1960) was born in Great Ayrton, Yorkshire, living in Paris, France and later Kensington, London. He was married to Katherine Standing and had nine children. His parents were William Henry Thistlethwaite and Alice Elizabeth Dixon. He was also author of a book titled ‘The Thistlethwaite Family. A study in Genealogy’.
