Installed at the Hotel du Quai Voltaire in the summer of 1920, just across the Seine from the Louvre, Willa was absorbing atmosphere for the next book. “Anybody would be a fool,” she wrote to Blanche Knopf, “to shut themselves up with their own ideas about the city, this rather particular city, swimming in light outside. I feel very comfortable for fifty francs a day—food and lodging, that is—which is not much if you consider exchange.” On July fourth she wrote to her Aunt Franc describing the parade of French war orphans carrying American flags and sporting the names of their sponsoring states. “After the parade I stopped a number of the children and greeted them and one little boy would point to himself and say ‘I am Michigan,’ and a little girl would say ‘I am Tex-ass.’ I like to think of them and thousands more in the remote parts of France, growing up with the feeling that that flag is their friend.”
A journey to one of those remoter parts was necessitated on Aunt Franc’s behalf. Willa went to inspect G.P.’s grave at Villiers-Tournelle, about fifteen miles from where he fell at Cantigny. The name on the cross read “Cacher” rather than “Cather.” She arranged for this to be corrected.
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