CHRISTINE

_Lutzowstrasse 49, Berlin,

Thursday, May 28th, 1914_.

My blessed little mother,

Here I am safe, and before I unpack or do a thing I'm writing you a

little line of love. I sent a telegram at the station, so that you'll

know at once that nobody has eaten me on the way, as you seemed rather

to fear. It is wonderful to be here, quite on my own, as if I were a

young man starting his career. I feel quite solemn, it's such a great

new adventure, Kloster can't see me till Saturday, but the moment I've

had a bath and tidied up I shall get out my fiddle and see if I've

forgotten how to play it between London and Berlin. If only I can be

sure you aren't going to be too lonely! Beloved mother, it will only

be a year, or even less if I work fearfully hard and really get on, and

once it is over a year is nothing. Oh, I know you'll write and tell me

you don't mind a bit and rather like it, but you see your Chris hasn't

lived with you all her life for nothing; she knows you very well

now,--at least, as much of your dear sacred self that you will show

her. Of course I know you're going to be brave and all that, but one

can be very unhappy while one is being brave, and besides, one isn't

brave unless one is suffering. The worst of it is that we're so poor,

or you could have come with me and we'd have taken a house and set up

housekeeping together for my year of study. Well, we won't be poor for

ever, little mother. I'm going to be your son, and husband, and

everything else that loves and is devoted, and I'm going to earn both

our livings for us, and take care of you forever. You've taken care of

me till now, and now it's my turn. You don't suppose I'm a great

hulking person of twenty two, and five foot ten high, and with this

lucky facility in fiddling, for nothing? It's a good thing it is

summer now, or soon will be, and you can work away in your garden, for

I know that is where you are happiest; and by the time it's winter

you'll be used to my not being there, and besides there'll be the

spring to look forward to, and in the spring I come home, finished.

Then I'll start playing and making money, and we'll have the little

house we've dreamed of in London, as well as our cottage, and we'll be

happy ever after. And after all, it is really a beautiful arrangement

that we only have each other in the world, because so we each get the

other's concentrated love. Else it would be spread out thin over a

dozen husbands and brothers and people. But for all that I do wish

dear Dad were still alive and with you.

This pension is the top fiat of a four-storied house, and there isn't a

lift, so I arrived breathless, besides being greatly battered and all

crooked after my night sitting up in the train; and Frau Berg came and

opened the door herself when I rang, and when she saw me she threw up

two immense hands and exclaimed, "_Herr Gott_!"

"_Nicht wahr_?" I said, agreeing with her, for I knew I must be looking

too awful.

She then said, while I stood holding on to my violin-case and umbrella

and coat and a paper bag of ginger biscuits I had been solacing myself

with in the watches of the night, that she hadn't known when exactly to

expect me, so she had decided not to expect me at all, for she had

observed that the things you do not expect come to you, and the things

you do expect do not; besides, she was a busy woman, and busy women

waste no time expecting anything in any case; and then she said, "Come

in."

"_Seien Sie willkommen, mein Fraulein_," she continued, with a sort of

stern cordiality, when I was over the threshold, holding out both her

hands in massive greeting; and as both mine were full she caught hold

of what she could, and it was the bag of biscuits, and it burst.

"_Herr Gott_!" cried Frau Berg again, as they rattled away over the

wooden floor of the passage, "_Herr Gott, die schonen Kakes_!" And she

started after them; so I put down my things on a chair and started

after them too, and would you believe it the biscuits came out of the

corners positively cleaner than when they went in. The floor cleaned

the biscuits instead of, as would have happened in London, the biscuits

cleaning the floor, so you can be quite happy about its being a clean

place.

It is a good thing I learned German in my youth, for even if it is so

rusty at present that I can only say things like _Nicht wahr_, I can

understand everything, and I'm sure I'll get along very nicely for at

least a week on the few words that somehow have stuck in my memory.

I've discovered they are:

_Nicht wahr,

Wundervoll,

Naturlich,

Herrlich,

Ich gratuliere,

and

Doch_.

And the only one with the faintest approach to contentiousness, or

acidity, or any of the qualities that don't endear the stranger to the

indigenous, is _doch_.

My bedroom looks very clean, and is roomy and comfortable, and I shall

be able to work very happily in it, I'm sure. I can't tell you how

much excited I am at getting here and going to study under the great

Kloster! You darling one, you beloved mother, stinting yourself,

scraping your own life bare, so as to give me this chance. _Won't_ I

work. And _work_. _And_ work. And in a year--no, we won't call it a

year, we'll say in a few months--I shall come back to you for good,

carrying my sheaves with me. Oh, I hope there will be sheaves,--big

ones, beautiful ones, to lay at your blessed feet! Now I'll run down

and post this. I saw a letter-box a few yards down the street. And

then I'll have a bath and go to bed for a few hours, I think. It is

still only nine o'clock in the morning, so I have hours and hours of

today before me, and can practise this afternoon and write to you again

this evening. So good-bye for a few hours, my precious mother.

Your happy Chris.

_May 28th. Evening_.

It's very funny here, but quite comfortable. You needn't give a

thought to my comforts, mother darling. There's a lot to eat, and if

I'm not in clover I'm certainly in feathers,--you should see the

immense sackful of them in a dark red sateen bag on my bed! As you

have been in Germany trying to get poor Dad well in all those

_Kurorten_, you'll understand how queer my bedroom looks, like a very

solemn and gloomy drawingroom into which it has suddenly occurred to

somebody to put a bed. It is a tall room: tall of ceiling, which is

painted at the corners with blue clouds and pink cherubim--unmistakable

Germans--and tall of door, of which there are three, and tall of

window, of which there are two. The windows have long dark curtains of

rep or something woolly, and long coffee-coloured lace curtains as

well; and there's a big green majolica stove in one corner; and there's

a dark brown wall-paper with gilt flowers on it; and an elaborate

chandelier hanging from a coloured plaster rosette in the middle of the

ceiling, all twisty and gilt, but it doesn't light,--Wanda, the maid of

all work, brings me a petroleum lamp with a green glass shade to it

when it gets dusk. I've got a very short bed with a dark red sateen

quilt on to which my sheet is buttoned a11 round, a pillow propped up

so high on a wedge stuck under the mattress that I shall sleep sitting

up almost straight, and then as a crowning glory the sack of feathers,

which will do beautifully for holding me down when I'm having a

nightmare. In a corner, with an even greater air of being an

afterthought than the bed, there's a very tiny washstand, and pinned on

the wall behind it over the part of the wallpaper I might splash on

Sunday mornings when I'm supposed really to wash, is a strip of grey

linen with a motto worked on it in blue wool:

Eigener Heerd

Ist Goldes Werth

which is a rhyme if you take it in the proper spirit, and isn't if you

don't. But I love the sentiment, don't you? It seems peculiarly sound

when one is in a room like this in a strange country. And what I'm

here for and am going to work for _is_ an _eigener Heerd_, with you and

me one each side of it warming our happy toes on our very own fender.

Oh, won't it be too lovely, mother darling, to be together again in our

very own home! Able to shut ourselves in, shut our front door in the

face of the world, and just say to the world, "There now."

There's a little looking-glass on a nail up above the _eigener Heerd_

motto, so high that if it hadn't found its match in me I'd only be able

to see my eyebrows in it. As it is, I do see as far as my chin. What

goes on below that I shall never know while I continue to dwell in the

Lutzowstrasse. Outside, a very long way down, for the house has high

rooms right through and I'm at the top, trams pass almost constantly

along the street, clanging their bells. They sound much more

aggressive than other trams I have heard, or else it is because my ears

are tired tonight. There are double windows, though, which will shut

out the noise while I'm practising--and also shut it in. I mean to

practise eight hours every day if Kloster will let me,--twelve if needs

be, so I've made up my mind only to write to you on Sundays; for if I

don't make a stern rule like that I shall be writing to you every day,

and then what would happen to the eight hours? I'm going to start them

tomorrow, and try and get as ready as I can for the great man on

Saturday. I'm fearfully nervous and afraid, for so much depends on it,

and in spite of knowing that somehow from somewhere I've got a kind of

gift for fiddling. Heaven knows where that little bit of luck came

from, seeing that up to now, though you're such a perfect listener, you

haven't developed any particular talent for playing anything, have you

mother darling; and poor Dad positively preferred to be in a room where

music wasn't. Do you remember how he used to say he couldn't think

which end of a violin the noises came out of, and whichever it was he

wished they wouldn't? But what a mercy, what a real mercy and solution

of our difficulties, that I've got this one thing that perhaps I shall

be able to do really well, I do thank God on my knees for this.

There are four other boarders here,--three Germans and one Swede, and

the Swede and two of the Germans are women; and five outside people

come in for the midday dinner every day, all Germans, and four of them

are men. They have what they call _Abonnementskarten_ for their

dinners, so much a month. Frau Berg keeps an Open Midday Table--it is

written up on a board on the street railing--and charges 1 mark 25

pfennigs a dinner if a month's worth of them is taken, and 1 mark 50

pfennigs if they're taken singly. So everybody takes the month's

worth, and it is going to be rather fun, I think. Today I was solemnly

presented to the diners, first collectively by Frau Berg as _Unser

junge englische Gast_, Mees--no, I can't write what she made of

Cholmondeley, but some day I'll pronounce it for you; and really it is

hard on her that her one English guest, who might so easily have been

Evans, or Dobbs, or something easy, should have a name that looks a

yard long and sounds an inch short--and then each of them to me singly

by name. They all made the most beautiful stiff bows. Some of them

are students, I gathered; some, I imagine, are staying here because

they have no homes,--wash-ups on the shores of life; some are clerks

who come in for dinner from their offices near by; and one, the oldest

of the men and the most deferred to, is a lawyer called Doctor

something. I suppose my being a stranger made them silent, for they

were all very silent and stiff, but they'll get used to me quite soon I

expect, for didn't you once rebuke me because everybody gets used to me

much too soon? Being the newest arrival I sat right at the end of the

table in the darkness near the door, and looking along it towards the

light it was really impressive, the concentration, the earnestness, the

thoroughness, the skill, with which the two rows of guests dealt with

things like gravy on their plates,--elusive, mobile things that are not

caught without a struggle. Why, if I can manage to apply myself to

fiddling with half that skill and patience I shall be back home again

in six months!

I'm so sleepy, I must leave off and go to bed. I did sleep this

morning, but only for an hour or two; I was too much excited, I think,

at having really got here to be able to sleep. Now my eyes are

shutting, but I do hate leaving off, for I'm not going to write again

till Sunday, and that is two whole days further ahead, and you know my

precious mother it's the only time I shall feel near you, when I'm

talking to you in letters. But I simply can't keep my eyes open any

longer, so goodnight and good-bye my own blessed one, till Sunday. All

my heart's love to you.

Your Chris.

We have supper at eight, and tonight it was cold herrings and fried

potatoes and tea. Do you think after a supper like that I shall be

able to dream of anybody like you?

_Sunday, May 31st, 1914.

Precious mother,

I've been dying to write you at least six times a day since I posted my

letter to you the day before yesterday, but rules are rules, aren't

they, especially if one makes them oneself, because then the poor

little things are so very helpless, and have to be protected. I

couldn't have looked myself in the face if I'd started off by breaking

my own rule, but I've been thinking of you and loving you all the

time--oh, so much!

Well, I'm _very_ happy. I'll say that first, so as to relieve your

darling mind. I've seen Kloster, and played to him, and he was

fearfully kind and encouraging. He said very much what Ysaye said in

London, and Joachim when I was little and played my first piece to him

standing on the dining-room table in Eccleston Square and staring

fascinated, while I played, at the hairs of his beard, because I'd

never been as close as that to a beard before. So I've been walking on

clouds with my chin well in the air, as who wouldn't? Kloster is a

little round, red, bald man, the baldest man I've ever seen; quite

bald, with hardly any eyebrows, and clean-shaven as well. He's the

funniest little thing till you join him to a violin, and then--! A

year with him ought to do wonders for me. He says so too; and when I

had finished playing--it was the G minor Bach--you know,--the one with

the fugue beginning:

[Transcriber's note: A Lilypond rendition of the music fragment can be

found at the end of this e-text.]

he solemnly shook hands with me and said--what do you think he

said?--"My Fraulein, when you came in I thought, 'Behold yet one more

well-washed, nice-looking, foolish, rich, nothing-at-all English Mees,

who is going to waste my time and her money with lessons.' I now

perceive that I have to do with an artist. My Fraulein _ich

gratuliere_." And he made me the funniest little solemn bow. I

thought I'd die of pride.

I don't know why he thought me rich, seeing how ancient all my clothes

are, and especially my blue jersey, which is what I put on because I

can play so comfortably in it; except that, as I've already noticed,

people here seem persuaded that everybody English is rich,--anyhow that

they have more money than is good for them. So I told him of our

regrettable financial situation, and said if he didn't mind looking at

my jersey it would convey to him without further words how very

necessary it is that I should make some money. And I told him I had a

mother in just such another jersey, only it is a black one, and

therefore somebody had to give her a new one before next winter, and

there wasn't anybody to do it except me.

He made me another little bow--(he talks English, so I could say a lot

of things)--and he said, "My Fraulein, you need be in no anxiety. Your

Frau Mamma will have her jersey. Those fingers of yours are full of

that which turns instantly into gold."

So now. What do you think of that, my precious one? He says I've got

to turn to and work like a slave, practise with a _sozusagen

verteufelte Unermudlichkeit_, as he put it, and if I rightly develop

what he calls my unusual gift,--(I'm telling you exactly, and you know

darling mother it isn't silly vainness makes me repeat these

things,--I'm past being vain; I'm just bewildered with gratitude that I

should happen to be able to fiddle)--at the end of a year, he declares,

I shall be playing all over Europe and earning enough to make both you

and me never have to think of money again. Which will be a very

blessed state to get to.

You can picture the frame of mind in which I walked down his stairs and

along the Potsdamerstrasse home. I felt I could defy everybody now.

Perhaps that remark will seem odd to you, but having given you such

glorious news and told you how happy I am, I'll not conceal from you

that I've been feeling a little forlorn at Frau Berg's. Lonely. Left

out. Darkly suspecting that they don't like me.

You see, Kloster hadn't been able to have me go to him till yesterday,

which was Saturday, and not then till the afternoon, so that I had had

all Friday and most of Saturday to be at a loose end in, except for

practising, and though I had got here prepared to find everybody very

charming and kind it was somehow gradually conveyed to me, though for

ages I thought it must be imagination, that Frau Berg and the other

boarders and the _Mittagsgaste_ dislike me. Well, I would have

accepted it with a depressed resignation as the natural result of being

unlikeable, and have tried by being pleasanter and pleasanter--wouldn't

it have been a dreadful sight to see me screwing myself up more and

more tightly to an awful pleasantness--to induce them to like me, but

the people in the streets don't seem to like me either. They're not

friendly. In fact they're rude. And the people in the streets can't

really personally dislike me, because they don't know me, so I can't

imagine why they're so horrid.

Of course one's ideal when one is in the streets is to be invisible,

not to be noticed at all. That's the best thing. And the next best is

to be behaved to kindly, with the patient politeness of the London

policemen, or indeed of anybody one asks one's way of in England or

Italy or France. The Berlin man as he passes mutters the word

_Englanderin_ as though it were a curse, or says into one's ear--they

seem fond of saying or rather hissing this, and seem to think it both

crushing and funny,--"_Ros bif_," and the women stare at one all over

and also say to each other _Englanderin_.

You never told me Germans were rude; or is it only in Berlin that they

are, I wonder. After my first expedition exploring through the

Thiergarten and down Unter den Linden to the museums last Friday

between my practisings, I preferred getting lost to asking anybody my

way. And as for the policemen, to whom I naturally turned when I

wanted help, having been used to turning to policemen ever since I can

remember for comfort and guidance, they simply never answered me at

all. They just stood and stared with a sort of mocking. And of course

they understood, for I got my question all ready beforehand. I longed

to hit them,--I who don't ever want to hit anybody, I whom you've so

often reprimanded for being too friendly. But the meekest lamb, a lamb

dripping with milk and honey, would turn into a lion if its polite

approaches were met with such wanton rudeness. I was so indignantly

certain that these people, any of them, policemen or policed, would

have answered the same question with the most extravagant politeness if

I had been an officer, or with an officer. They grovel if an officer

comes along; and a woman with an officer might walk on them if she

wanted to. They were rude simply because I was alone and a woman. And

that being so, though I spoke with the tongue of angels, as St. Paul

saith, and as I as a matter of fact did, if what that means is immense

mellifluousness, it would avail me nothing.

So when I was out, and being made so curiously to feel conspicuous and

disliked, the knowledge that the only alternative was to go back to the

muffled unfriendliness at Frau Berg's did make me feel a little

forlorn. I can tell you now, because of the joy I've had since. I

don't mind any more. I'm raised up and blessed now. Indeed I feel

I've got much more by a long way than my share of good things, and with

what Kloster said hugged secretly to my heart I'm placed outside the

ordinary toiling-moiling that life means for most women who have got to

wring a living out of it without having anything special to wring with.

It's the sheerest, wonderfullest, most radiant luck that I've got this.

Won't I just work. Won't this funny frowning bedroom of mine become a

temple of happiness. I'm going to play Bach to it till it turns

beautiful.

I don't know why I always think of Bach first when I write about music.

I think of him first as naturally when I think of music as I think of

Wordsworth first when I think of poetry. I know neither of them is the

greatest, though Bach is the equal of the greatest, but they are the

ones I love best. What a world it is, my sweetest little mother! It

is so full of beauty. And then there's the hard work that makes

everything taste so good. You have to have the hard work; I've found

that out. I do think it's a splendid world,--full of glory created in

the past and lighting us up while we create still greater glory. One

has only got to shut out the parts of the present one doesn't like, to

see this all clear and feel so happy. I shut myself up in this

bedroom, this ugly dingy bedroom with its silly heavy trappings, and

get out my violin, and instantly it becomes a place of light, a place

full of sound,--shivering with light and sound, the light and sound of

the beautiful gracious things great men felt and thought long ago. Who

cares then about Frau Berg's boarders not speaking to one, and the

Berlin streets and policemen being unkind? Actually I forget the long

miles and hours I am away from you, the endless long miles and hours

that reach from me here to you there, and am happy, oh happy,--so happy

that I could cry out for joy. And so I would, I daresay, if it

wouldn't spoil the music.

There's Wanda coming to tell me dinner is ready. She just bumps the

soup-tureen against my door as she carries it down the passage to the

diningroom, and calls out briefly, "_Essen_."

I'll finish this tonight.

_Bedtime_.

I just want to say goodnight, and tell you, in case you shouldn't have

noticed it, how much your daughter loves you. I mayn't practise on

Sundays, because of the _Hausruhe_, Frau Berg says, and so I have time

to think; and I'm astonished, mother darling, at the emptiness of life

without you. It is as though most of me had somehow got torn off, and

I have to manage as best I can with a fragment. What a good thing I

feel it so much, for so I shall work all the harder to shorten the

time. Hard work is the bridge across which I'll get back to you. You

see, you're the one human being I've got in the world who loves me, the

only one who is really, deeply, interested in me, who minds if I am

hurt and is pleased if I am happy. That's a watery word,--pleased; I

should have said exults. It is so wonderful, your happiness in my

being happy,--so touching. I'm all melted with love and gratitude when

I think of it, and of the dear way you let me do this, come away here

and realize my dream of studying with Kloster, when you knew it meant

for you such a long row of dreary months alone. Forgive me if I sound

sentimental. I know you will, so I needn't bother to ask. That's what

I so love about you,--you always understand, you never mind. I can

talk to you; and however idiotic I am, and whatever sort of a

fool,--blind, unkind, ridiculous, obstinate or wilful--take your

choice, little sweet mother, you'll remember occasions that were

fitted by each of these--you look at me with those shrewd sweet eyes

that always somehow have a laugh in them, and say some little thing

that shows you are brushing aside all the ugly froth of nonsense,

and are intelligently and with perfect detachment searching for the

reason. And having found the reason you understand and forgive; for

of course there always _is_ a reason when ordinary people, not born

fiends, are disagreeable. I'm sure that's why we've been so happy

together,--because you've never taken anything I've done or said that

was foolish or unkind personally. You've always known it was just so

much irrelevant rubbish, just an excrescence, a passing sickness;

never, never your real Chris who loves you.

Good-bye, my own blessed mother. It's long past bedtime. Tomorrow I'm

to have my first regular lesson with Kloster. And tomorrow I ought to

get a letter from you. You will take care of yourself, won't you? You

wouldn't like me to be anxious all this way off, would you? Anxious,

and not sure?

Your Chris.

_Berlin, Tuesday, June 2nd, 1914_.

Darling mother, I've just got your two letters, two lovely long ones at

once, and I simply can't wait till next Sunday to tell you how I

rejoiced over them, so I'm going to squander 20 pfennigs just on that.

I'm not breaking my rule and writing on a day that isn't Sunday,

because I'm not really writing. This isn't a letter, it's a kiss. How

glad I am you're so well and getting on so comfortably. And I'm well

and happy too, because I'm so busy,--you can't think how busy. I'm

working harder than I've ever done in my life, and Kloster is pleased

with me. So now that I've had letters from you there seems very little

left in the world to want, and I go about on the tips of my toes.

Good-bye my beloved one, till Sunday.

Chris.

Oh, I must just tell you that at my lesson yesterday I played the Ernst

F sharp minor concerto,---the virtuoso, firework thing, you know, with

Kloster putting in bits of the orchestra part on the piano every now

and then because he wanted to see what I could do in the way of

gymnastics. He laughed when I had finished, and patted my shoulder,

and said, "Very good acrobatics. Now we will do no more of them. We

will apply ourselves to real music." And he said I was to play him

what I could of the Bach Chaconne.

I was so happy, little mother. Kloster leading me about among the

wonders of Bach, was like being taken by the hand by some great angel

and led through heaven.

_Berlin, Sunday, June 7th, 1914_.

On Sunday mornings, darling mother, directly I wake I remember it is my

day for being with you. I can hardly be patient with breakfast, and

the time it takes to get done with those thick cups of coffee that are

so thick that, however deftly I drink, drops always trickle down what

would be my beard if I had one. And I choke over the rolls, and I

spill things in my hurry to run away and talk to you. I got another

letter from you yesterday, and Hilda Seeberg, a girl boarding here and

studying painting, said when she met me in the passage after I had been

reading it in my room, "You have had a letter from your _Frau Mutter,

nicht_?" So you see your letters shine in my face.

Don't be afraid I won't take enough exercise. I go for an immense walk

directly after dinner every day, a real quick hot one through the

Thiergarten. The weather is fine, and Berlin I suppose is at its best,

but I don't think it looks very nice after London. There's no mystery

about it, no atmosphere; it just blares away at you. It has everything

in it that a city ought to have,--public buildings, statues, fountains,

parks, broad streets; and it is about as comforting and lovable as the

latest thing in workhouses. It looks disinfected; it has just that

kind of rather awful cleanness.

At dinner they talk of its beauty and its perfections till I nearly go

to sleep. You know how oddly sleepy one gets when one isn't

interested. They've left off being silent now, and have gone to the

other extreme, and from not talking to me at all have jumped to talking

to me all together. They tell me over and over again that I'm in the

most beautiful city in the world. You never knew such eagerness and

persistence as these German boarders have when it comes to praising

what is theirs, and also when it comes to criticizing what isn't

theirs. They're so funny and personal. They say, for instance, London

is too hideous for words, and then they look at me defiantly, as though

they had been insulting some personal defect of mine and meant to

brazen it out. They point out the horrors of the slums to me as though

the slums were on my face. They tell me pityingly what they look like,

what terrible blots and deformities they are, and how I--they say

England, but no one could dream from their manner that it wasn't

me--can never hope to be regarded as fit for self-respecting European

society while these spots and sore places are not purged away.

The other day they assured me that England as a nation is really unfit

for any decent other nation to know politically, but they added, with

stiff bows in my direction, that sometimes the individual inhabitant of

that low-minded and materialistic country is not without amiability,

especially if he or she is by some miracle without the lofty,

high-nosed manner that as a rule so regrettably characterizes the

unfortunate people. "_Sie sind so hochnasig_," the bank clerk who sits

opposite me had shouted out, pointing an accusing finger at me; and for

a moment I was so startled that I thought something disastrous had

happened to my nose, and my anxious hand flew up to it. Then they

laughed; and it was after that that they made the speech conceding

individual amiability here and there.

I sit neatly in my chair while this sort of talk goes on--and it goes

on at every meal now that they have got over the preliminary stage of

icy coldness towards me--and I try to be sprightly, and bandy my six

German words about whenever they seem appropriate. Imagine your poor

Chris trying to be sprightly with eleven Germans--no, ten Germans, for

the eleventh is a Swede and doesn't say anything. And the ten Germans,

including Frau Berg, all fix their eyes reproachfully on me while as

one man they tell me how awful my country is. Do people in London

boarding houses tell the German boarders how awful Germany is, I

wonder? I don't believe they do. And I wish they would leave me alone

about the Boer war. I've tried to explain my extreme youth at the time

it was going on, but they still appear to hold me directly responsible

for it. The fingers that have been pointed at me down that table on

account of the Boer war! They raise them at me, and shake them, and

tell me of the terrible things the English did, and when I ask them how

they know, they say it was in the newspapers; and when I ask them what

newspapers, they say theirs; and when I ask them how they know it was

true, they say they know because it was in the newspapers. So there we

are, stuck. I take to English when the worst comes to the worst, and

they flounder in after me.

It is the funniest thing, their hostility to England, and the queer,

reluctant, and yet passionate admiration that goes With it. It is like

some girl who can't get a man she admires very much to notice her. He

stays indifferent, while she gets more exasperated the more indifferent

he stays; exasperated with the bitterness of thwarted love. One day at

dinner, when they had all been thumping away at me, this flashed across

me as the explanation, and I exclaimed in English, "Why, you're in love

with us!"

Twenty round eyes stared at me, sombrely at first, not understanding,

and then with horror slowly growing in them.

"In love with you? In love with England?" cried Frau Berg, the carving

knife suspended in the air while she stared at me. "_Nein, aber so

was_!" And she let down her heavy fists, knife and all, with a thud on

the table.

I thought I had best stand up to them, having started off so

recklessly, and tried to lash myself into bravery by remembering how

full I was of the blood of all the Cholmondeleys, let alone those

relations of yours alleged to have fought alongside the Black Prince;

so though I wished there were several of me rather than only one, I

said with courage and obstinacy, "Passionately."

You can't think how seriously they took it. They all talked at once,

very loud. They were all extremely angry. I wished I had kept quiet,

for I couldn't elaborate my idea in my limping German, and it was quite

difficult to go on smiling and behaving as though they were all not

being rude, for I don't think they mean to be rude, and I was afraid,

if I showed a trace of thinking they were that they might notice they

were, and then they would have felt so uncomfortable, and the situation

would have become, as they say, _peinlich_.

Four of the Daily Dinner Guests are men, and one of the boarders is a

man; and these five men and Frau Berg were the vociferous ones. They

exclaimed things like "_Nein, so was_!" and, "_Diese englische

Hochmut_!" and single words like _unerhort_; and then one of them

called Herr Doctor Krummlaut, who is a lawyer and a widower and much

esteemed by the rest, detached himself from them and made me a

carefully patient speech, in which he said how sorry they all were to

see so young and gifted a lady,--(he bowed, and I bowed)--oh yes, he

said, raising his hand as though to ward off any modest objections I

might be going to make, only I wasn't going to make any, he had heard

that I was undoubtedly gifted, and not only gifted but also, he would

not be deterred from saying, and he felt sure his colleagues at the

table would not be deterred from saying either if they were in his

place, a lady of personal attractions,--(he bowed and I bowed,)--how

sorry they all were to see a young Fraulein with these advantages,

filled at the same time with opinions and views that were not only

highly unsuitable to her sex but were also, in any sex, so terribly

wrong. Every lady, he said, should have some knowledge of history, and

sufficient acquaintance with the three kinds of politics,--_Politik_,

_Weltpolitik_, and _Realpolitik_, to enable her to avoid wrong and

frivolous conclusions such as the one the young Fraulein had just

informed them she had reached, and to listen intelligently to her

husband or son when they discuss these matters. He said a great deal

more, about a woman knowing these things just enough but not too well,

for her intelligence must not be strained because of her supreme

function of being the cradle of the race; and the cradle part of her, I

gather, isn't so useful if she is allowed to develop the other part of

her beyond what is necessary for making an agreeable listener.

It was no use even trying to explain what I had meant about Germany

really being in love with England, because I hadn't got words enough;

but that is exactly the impression I've received from my brief

experiences of one corner of its life. In this small corner of it,

anyhow, it behaves exactly like a woman who is so unlucky as to love

somebody who doesn't care about her. She naturally, I imagine,--for I

can only guess at these enslavements,--is very much humiliated and

angry, and all the more because the loved and hated one--isn't it

possible to love and hate at the same time, little mother? I can

imagine it quite well--is so indifferent as to whether she loves or

hates. And whichever she does, he is polite,--"Always gentleman," as

the Germans say. Which is, naturally, maddening.

_Evening_.

Do you know I wrote to you the whole morning? I wrote and wrote, with

no idea how time was passing, and was astonished and indignant, for I

haven't half told you all I want to, when I was called to dinner. It

seemed like shutting a door on you and leaving you outside without any

dinner, to go away and have it without you.

If it weren't for its being my day with you I don't know what I'd do

with Sundays. I would hate them. I'm not allowed to play on Sundays,

because practising is forbidden on that day, and, as Frau Berg said,

how is she to know if I am practising or playing? Besides, it would

disturb the others, which of course is true, for they all rest on

Sundays, getting up late, sleeping after dinner, and not going out till

they have had coffee about five. Today, when I hoped they had all gone

out, I had such a longing to play a little that I muted my strings and

played to myself in a whisper what I could remember of a very beautiful

thing of Ravel's that Kloster showed me the other day,--the most

haunting, exquisite thing; and I hummed the weird harmonies as I went

along, because they are what is so particularly wonderful about it.

Well, it really was a whisper, and I had to bend my head right over the

violin to hear it at all whenever a tram passed, yet in five minutes

Frau Berg appeared, unbuttoned and heated from her _Mittagsruhe_, and

requested me to have some consideration for others as well as for the

day.

I was very much ashamed of myself, besides feeling as though I were

fifteen and caught at school doing something wicked. I didn't mind not

having consideration for the day, because I think Ravel being played on

it can't do Sunday anything but good, but I did mind having disturbed

the other people in the flat. I could only say I was sorry, and

wouldn't do it again,--just like an apologetic schoolgirl. But what do

you think I wanted to do, little mother? Run to Frau Berg, and put my

arms round her neck, and tell her I was lonely and wanting you, and

would she mind just pretending she was fond of me for a moment? She

did look so comfortable and fat and kind, standing there filling up the

doorway, and she wasn't near enough for me to see her eyes, and it is

her eyes that make one not want to run to her.

But of course I didn't run. I knew too well that she wouldn't

understand. And indeed I don't know why I should have felt such a

longing to run into somebody's arms. Perhaps it was because writing to

you brings you so near to me that I realize how far away you are.

During the week I work, and while I work I forget; and there's the

excitement of my lessons, and the joy of hearing Kloster appreciate and

encourage. But on Sundays the day is all you, and then I feel what

months can mean when they have to be lived through each in turn and day

by day before one gets back to the person one loves. Why are you so

dear, my darling mother? If you were an ordinary mother I'd be so much

more placid. I wouldn't mind not being with an ordinary mother. When

I look at other people's mothers I think I'd rather like not being with

them. But having known what it is to live in love and understanding

with you, it wants a great deal of persistent courage, the sort that

goes on steadily with no intervals, to make one able to do without it.

Now please don't think I am fretting, will you, because I'm not. It's

only that I love you. We're such _friends_. You always understand,

you are never shocked. I can say whatever comes into my head to you.

It is as good as saying one's prayers. One never stops in those to

wonder whether one is shocking God, and that is what one loves God

for,--because we suppose he always understands, and therefore forgives;

and how much more--is this very wicked?--one loves one's mother who

understands, because, you see, there she is, and one can kiss her as

well. There's a great virtue in kissing, I think; an amazing comfort

in just _touching_ the person one loves. Goodnight, most blessed

little mother, and good-bye for a week. Your Chris.

Perhaps I might write a little note--not a letter, just a little

note,--on Wednesdays? What do you think? It would be nothing more,

really, than a postcard, except that it would be in an envelope.

_Berlin, Sunday, June 14th, 1914_.

Well, I didn't write on Wednesday, I resisted. (Good morning, darling

mother.) I knew quite well it wouldn't be a postcard, or anything even

remotely related to the postcard family. It would be a letter. A long

letter. And presently I'd be writing every day, and staying all soft;

living in the past, instead of getting on with my business, which is

the future. That is what I've got to do at this moment: not think too

much of you and home, but turn my face away from both those sweet,

desirable things so that I may get back to them quicker. It's true we

haven't got a home, if a home is a house and furniture; but home to

your Chris is where you are. Just simply anywhere and everywhere you

are. It's very convenient, isn't it, to have it so much concentrated

and so movable. Portable, I might say, seeing how little you are and

how big I am.

But you know, darling mother, it makes it easier for me to harden and

look ahead with my chin in the air rather than over my shoulder back at

you when I see, as I do see all day long, the extreme sentimentality of

the Germans. It is very surprising. They're the oddest mixture of

what really is a brutal hardness, the kind of hardness that springs

from real fundamental differences from ours in their attitude towards

life, and a squashiness that leaves one with one's mouth open. They

can't bear to let a single thing that has happened to them ever,

however many years ago, drop away into oblivion and die decently in its

own dust. They hold on to it, and dig it out that day year and that

day every year, for years apparently,--I expect for all their lives.

When they leave off really feeling about it--which of course they do,

for how can one go on feeling about a thing forever?--they start

pretending that they feel. Conceive going through life clogged like

that, all one's pores choked with the dust of old yesterdays. I

picture the Germans trailing through life more and more heavily as they

grow old, hauling an increasing number of anniversaries along with

them, rolling them up as they go, dragging at each remove a lengthening

chain, as your dear Goldsmith says,--and if he didn't, or it wasn't,

you'll rebuke me and tell me who did and what it was, for you know I've

no books here, except those two that are married as securely on one's

tongue as Tennyson and Browning, or Arnold Bennet and his, I imagine

reluctant, bride, H. G. Wells,--I mean Shakespeare and the Bible.

I went into Hilda Seeberg's room the other day to ask her for some

pins, and found her sitting in front of a photograph of her father, a

cross-looking old man with a twirly moustache and a bald head; and she

had put a wreath of white roses round the frame and tied it with a

black bow, and there were two candles lit in front of it, and Hilda had

put on a black dress, and was just sitting there gazing at it with her

hands in her lap. I begged her pardon, and was going away again

quickly, but she called me back.

"I celebrate," she said.

"Oh," said I politely, but without an idea what she meant.

"It is my Papa's birthday today," she said, pointing to the photograph.

"Is it?" I said, surprised, for I thought I remembered she had told me

he was dead. "But didn't you say--"

"Yes. Certainly I told you Papa was dead since five years."

"Then why--?"

"But _liebes Fraulein_, he still continues to have birthdays," she

said, staring at me in real surprise, while I stared back at her in at

least equally real surprise.

"Every year," she said, "the day comes round on which Papa was born.

Shall he, then, merely because he is with God, not have it celebrated?

And what would people think if I did not? They would think I had no

heart."

After that I began to hope there would be a cake, for they have lovely

birthday cakes here, and it is the custom to give a slice of them to

every one who comes near you. So I looked round the room out of the

corners of my eyes, discreetly, lest I should seem to be as greedy as I

was, and I lifted my nose a little and waved it cautiously about, but I

neither saw nor smelt a cake. Frau Berg had a birthday three days ago,

and there was a heavenly cake at it, a great flat thing with cream in

it, that one loved so that first one wanted to eat it and then to sit

on it and see all the cream squash out at the sides; but evidently the

cake is the one thing you don't have for your birthday after you are

dead. I don't want to laugh, darling mother, and I know well enough

what it is to lose one's beloved Dad, but you see Hilda had shown me

her family photographs only the other day, for we are making friends in

a sort of flabby, hesitating way, and when she got to the one of her

father she said with perfect frankness that she hadn't liked him, and

that it had been an immense relief when he died. "He prevented my

doing anything," she said, frowning at the photograph, "except that

which increased his comforts."

I asked Kloster about anniversaries when I went for my lesson on

Friday. He is a very human little man, full of sympathy,---the sort of

comprehending sympathy that laughs and understands together, yet his

genius seems to detach him from other Germans, for he criticizes them

with a dispassionate thoroughness that is surprising. The remarks he

makes about the Kaiser, for instance, whom he irreverently alludes to

as S. M.--(short and rude for _Seine Majestat_)--simply make me shiver

in this country of _lese majeste_. In England, where we can say what

we like, I have never heard anybody say anything disrespectful about

the King. Here, where you go to prison if you laugh even at officials,

even at a policeman, at anything whatever in buttons, for that is the

punishable offence of Beamtenbeleidigung--haven't they got heavenly

words--Kloster and people I have come across in his rooms say what they

like; and what they like is very rude indeed about that sacred man the

Kaiser, who doesn't appear to be at all popular. But then Kloster

belongs to the intelligents, and his friends are all people of

intelligence, and that sort of person doesn't care very much, I think,

for absolute monarchs. Kloster says they're anachronisms, that the

world is too old for them, too grown-up for pretences and decorations.

And when I went for my lesson on Friday I found his front door wreathed

with evergreens and paper flowers,--pretences and decorations crawling

even round Kloster--and I went in very reluctantly, not knowing what

sort of a memorial celebration I was going to tumble into. But it was

only that his wife--I didn't know he had a wife, he seemed altogether

so happily unmarried--was coming home. She had been away for three

weeks; not nearly long enough, you and I and others of our

self-depreciatory and self-critical country would think, to deserve an

evergreen garland round our door on coming back. He laughed when I

told him I had been afraid to come in lest I should disturb

retrospective obsequies.

"We are still so near, my dear Mees Chrees," he said, shrugging a fat

shoulder--he asked me what I was called at home, and I said you called

me Chris, and he said he would, with my permission, also call me

Chrees, but with Mees in front of it to show that though he desired to

be friendly he also wished to remain respectful--"we are still so near

as a nation to the child and to the savage. To the clever child, and

the powerful savage. We like simple and gross emotions and plenty of

them; obvious tastes in our food and our pleasures, and a great deal of

it; fat in our food, and fat in our women. And, like the child, when

we mourn we mourn to excess, and enjoy ourselves in that excess; and,

like the savage, we are afraid, and therefore hedge ourselves about

with observances, celebrations, cannon, kings. In no other country is

there more than one king. In ours we find three and an emperor

necessary. The savage who fears all things does not fear more than we

Germans. We fear other nations, we fear other people, we fear public

opinion to an extent incredible, and tremble before the opinion of our

servants and tradespeople; we fear our own manners and therefore are

obliged to preserve the idiotic practice of duelling, in which as often

as not the man whose honour is being satisfied is the one who is

killed; we fear all those above us, of whom there are invariably a

great many; we fear all officials, and our country drips with

officials. The only person we do not fear is God."

"But--" I began, remembering their motto, bestowed on them by Bismarck,

"Yes, yes, I know," he interrupted. "It is not, however, true. The

contrary is the truth. We Germans fear not God, but everything else in

the world. It is only fear that makes us polite, fear of the duel;

for, like the child and the savage, we have not had time to acquire the

habit of good manners, the habit which makes manners inevitable and

invariable, and it is not natural to us to be polite. We are polite

only by the force of fear. Consequently--for all men must have their

relaxations--whenever we meet the weak, the beneath us, the momentarily

helpless, we are brutal. It is an immense relief to be for a moment

natural. Every German welcomes even the smallest opportunity."

You would be greatly interested in Kloster, I'm certain. He sits

there, his fiddle on his fat little knees, his bow punctuating his

sentences with quivers and raps, his shiny bald head reflecting the

light from the window behind him, and his eyes coming very much out of

his face, which is excessively red. He looks like an amiable prawn;

not in the least like a person with an active and destructive mind, not

in the least like a great musician. He has the very opposite of the

bushy eyebrows and overhanging forehead and deep set eyes and lots of

hair you're supposed to have if you've got much music in you. He came

over to me the other day after I had finished playing, and stretched

up--he's a good bit smaller than I am--and carefully drew his finger

along my eyebrows, each in turn. I couldn't think what he was doing.

"My finger is clean, Mees Chrees," he said, seeing me draw back. "I

have just wiped it, Be not, therefore, afraid. But you have the real

Beethoven brow--the very shape--and I must touch it. I regret if it

incommodes you, but I must touch it. I have seen no such resemblance

to the brow of the Master. You might be his child."

I needn't tell you, darling mother, that I went back to the boarders

and the midday guests not minding them much. If I only could talk

German properly I would have loved to have leant across the table to

Herr Mannfried, an unwholesome looking young man who comes in to dinner

every day from a bank in the Potsdamerstrasse, and is very full of that

hatred which is really passion for England, and has pale hair and a

mouth exactly like two scarlet slugs--I'm sorry to be so horrid, but it

_is_ like two scarlet slugs--and said,--"Have you noticed that I have a

_Beethovenkopf_? What do you think of me, an _Englanderin_, having

such a thing? One of your own great men says so, so it must be true."

We are studying the Bach Chaconne now. He is showing me a different

reading of it, his idea. He is going to play it at the Philarmonie

here next week. I wish you could hear him. He was intending to go to

London this season and play with a special orchestra of picked players,

but has changed his mind. I asked him why, and he shrugged his

shoulder and said his agent, who arranges these things, seemed to think

he had better not. I asked him why again--you know my persistency--for

I can't conceive why it should be better not for London to have such a

joy and for him to give it, but he only shrugged his shoulder again,

and said he always did what his agent told him to do. "My agent knows

his business, my dear Mees Chrees," he said. "I put my affairs in his

hands, and having done so I obey him. It saves trouble. Obedience is

a comfortable thing."

"Then why--" I began, remembering the things he says about kings and

masters and persons in authority; but he picked up his violin and began

to play a bit. "See," he said, "this is how--"

And when he plays I can only stand and listen. It is like a spell.

One stands there, and forgets. . . .

_Evening_.

I've been reading your last darling letter again, so full of love, so

full of thought for me, out in a corner of the Thiergarten this

afternoon, and I see that while I'm eagerly writing and writing to you,

page after page of the things I want to tell you, I forget to tell you

the things you want to know. I believe I never answer _any_ of your

questions! It's because I'm so all right, so comfortable as far as my

body goes, that I don't remember to say so. I have heaps to eat, and

it is very satisfying food, being German, and will make me grow

sideways quite soon, I should think, for Frau Berg fills us up daily

with dumplings, and I'm certain they must end by somehow showing; and I

haven't had a single cold since I've been here, so I'm outgrowing them

at last; and I'm not sitting up late reading,--I couldn't if I tried,

for Wanda, the general servant, who is general also in her person

rather than particular--aren't I being funny--comes at ten o'clock each

night on her way to bed and takes away my lamp.

"Rules," said Frau Berg briefly, when I asked if it wasn't a little

early to leave me in the dark. "And you are not left in the dark.

Have I not provided a candle and matches for the chance infirmities of

the night?"

But the candle is cheap and dim, so I don't sit up trying to read by

that. I preserve it wholly for the infirmities.

I've been in the Thiergarten most of the afternoon, sitting in a green

corner I found where there is some grass and daisies down by a pond and

away from a path, and accordingly away from the Sunday crowds. I

watched the birds, and read the Winter's Tale, and picked some daisies,

and felt very happy. The daisies are in a saucer before me at this

moment. Everything smelt so good,--so warm, and sweet, and young, with

the leaves on the oaks still little and delicate. Life is an admirable

arrangement, isn't it, little mother. It is so clever of it to have a

June in every year and a morning in every day, let alone things like

birds, and Shakespeare, and one's work. You've sometimes told me, when

I was being particularly happy, that there were even greater happiness

ahead for me,--when I have a lover, you said; when I have a husband;

when I have a child. I suppose you know, my wise, beloved mother; but

the delight of work, of doing the work well that one is best fitted

for, will be very hard to beat. It is an exultation, a rapture, that

manifest progress to better and better results through one's own

effort. After all, being obliged on Sundays to do nothing isn't so

bad, because then I have time to think, to step back a little and look

at life.

See what a quiet afternoon sunning myself among daisies has done for

me. A week ago I was measuring the months to be got through before

being with you again, in dismay. Now I feel as if I were very happily

climbing up a pleasant hill, just steep enough to make me glad I can

climb well, and all the way is beautiful and safe, and on the top there

is you. To get to the top will be perfect joy, but the getting there

is very wonderful too. You'll judge, from all this that I've had a

happy week, that work is going well, and that I'm hopeful and

confident. I mustn't be too confident, I know, but confidence is a

great thing to work on. I've never done anything good on days of

dejection.

Goodnight, dear mother. I feel so close to you tonight, just as if you

were here in the room with me, and I had only to put out my finger and

touch Love. I don't believe there's much in this body business. It is

only spirit that matters really; and nothing can stop your spirit and

mine being together.

Your Chris.

Still, a body is a great comfort when it comes to wanting to kiss one's

darling mother.

_Berlin, Sunday, June 2lst, 1914_.

My precious mother,

The weeks fly by, full of work and _Weltpolitik_. They talk of nothing

here at meals but this _Weltpolitik_. I've just been having a dose of

it at breakfast. To say that the boarders are interested in it is to

speak feebly: they blaze with interest, they explode with it, they

scorch and sizzle. And they are so pugnacious! Not to each other, for

contrary to the attitude at Kloster's they are knit together by the

toughest band of uncritical and obedient admiration for everything

German, but they are pugnacious to the Swede girl and myself.

Especially to myself. There is a holy calm about the Swede girl that

nothing can disturb. She has an enviable gift for getting on with her

meals and saying nothing. I wish I had it. Directly I have learned a

new German word I want to say it. I accumulate German words every day,

of course, and there's something in my nature and something in the way

I'm talked at and to at Frau Berg's table that makes me want to say all

the words I've got as quickly as possible. And as I can't string them

into sentences my conversation consists of single words, which produce

a very odd effect, quite unintended, of detached explosions. When I've

come to the end of them I take to English, and the boarders plunge in

after me, and swim or drown in it according to their several ability.

It's queer, the atmosphere here,--in this house, in the streets,

wherever one goes. They all seem to be in a condition of tension--of

intense, tightly-strung waiting, very like that breathless expectancy

in the last act of "Tristan" when Isolde's ship is sighted and all the

violins hang high up on to a shrill, intolerably eager note. There's a

sort of fever. And the big words! I thought Germans were stolid,

quiet people. But how they talk! And always in capital letters. They

talk in tremendous capitals about what they call the _deutscke

Standpunkt_; and the _deutsche Standpunkt_ is the most wonderful thing

you ever came across. Butter wouldn't melt in its mouth. It is too

great and good, almost, they give one to understand, for a world so far

behind in high qualities to appreciate. No other people has anything

approaching it. As far as I can make out, stripped of its decorations

its main idea is that what Germans do is right and what other people do

is wrong. Even when it is exactly the same thing. And also, that

wrong becomes right directly it has anything to do with Germans. Not

with _a_ German. The individual German can and does commit every sort

of wrong, just as other individuals do in other countries, and he gets

punished for them with tremendous harshness; Kloster says with

unfairness. But directly he is in the plural and becomes _Wir

Deutschen_, as they are forever saying, his crimes become virtues. As

a body he purifies, he has a purging quality. Today they were saying

at breakfast that if a crime is big enough, if it is on a grand scale,

it leaves off being a crime, for then it is a success, and success is

always virtue,--that is, I gather, if it is a German success; if it is

a French one it is an outrage. You mustn't rob a widow, for instance,

they said, because that is stupid; the result is small and you may be

found out and be cut by your friends. But you may rob a great many

widows and it will be a successful business deal. No one will say

anything, because you have been clever and successful.

I know this view is not altogether unknown in other countries, but they

don't hold it deliberately as a whole nation. Among other things that

Hilda Seeberg's father did which roused her unforgiveness was just

this,--to rob too few widows, come to grief over it, and go bankrupt

for very little. She told me about it in an outburst of dark

confidence. Just talking of it made her eyes black with anger. It was

so terrible, she said, to smash for a small amount,--such an

overwhelming shame for the Seeberg family, whose poverty thus became

apparent and unhideable. If one smashes, she said, one does it for

millions, otherwise one doesn't smash. There is something so chic

about millions, she said, that whether you make them or whether you

lose them you are equally well thought-of and renowned.

"But it is better to--well, disappoint few widows than many," I

suggested, picking my words.

"For less than a million marks," she said, eyeing me sternly, "it is a

disgrace to fail."

They're funny, aren't they. I'm greatly interested. They remind me

more and more of what Kloster says they are, clever children. They

have the unmoral quality of children. I listen--they treat me as if I

were the audience, and they address themselves in a bunch to my

corner--and I put in one of my words now and then, generally with an

unfortunate effect, for they talk even louder after that, and then

presently the men get up and put their heels together and make a stiff

inclusive bow and disappear, and Frau Berg folds up her napkin and

brushes the crumbs out of her creases and says, "_Ja, ja_," with a

sigh, as a sort of final benediction on the departed conversation, and

then rises slowly and locks up the sugar, and then treads heavily away

down the passage and has a brief skirmish in the kitchen with Wanda,

who daily tries to pretend there hadn't been any pudding left over, and

then treads heavily back again to her bedroom, and shuts herself in

till four o'clock for her _Mittagsruhe_; and the other boarders drift

away one by one, and I run out for a walk to get unstiffened after

having practised all the morning, and as I walk I think over what

they've been saying, and try to see things from their angle, and simply

can't.

On Tuesdays and Fridays I have my lesson, and tell Kloster about them.

He says they're entirely typical of the great bulk of the nation.

"_Wir Deutschen_," he says, and laughs, "are the easiest people in the

world to govern, because we are obedient and inflammable. We have that

obedience of mind so convenient to Authority, and we are inflammable

because we are greedy. Any prospect held out to us of getting

something belonging to some one else sets us instantly alight. Dangle

some one else's sausage before our eyes, and we will go anywhere after

it. Wonderful material for S. M." And he adds a few irreverences.

Last Wednesday was his concert at the Philarmonie. He played like an

angel. It was so strange, the fat, red, more than commonplace-looking

little bald man, with his quite expressionless face, his wilfully

stupid face--for I believe he does it on purpose, that blankness, that

bulgy look of one who never thinks and only eats--and then the heavenly

music. It was as strange and arresting as that other mixture, that

startling one of the men who sell flowers in the London streets and the

flowers they sell. What does it look like, those poor ragged men

shuffling along the kerb, and in their arms, rubbing against their

dirty shoulders, great baskets of beauty, baskets heaped up with

charming aristocrats, gracious and delicate purities of shape and

colour and scent. The strangest effect of all is when they happen,

round about Easter, to be selling only lilies, and the unearthly purity

of the lilies shines on the passersby from close to the seller's

terrible face. Christ must often have looked like that, when he sat

close up to Pharisees.

But although Kloster's music was certainly as beautiful as the lilies,

he himself wasn't like those tragic sellers. It was only that he was

so very ordinary,--a little man compact, apparently, of grossness, and

the music he was making was so divine. It was that marvellous French

and Russian stuff. I must play it to you, and play it to you, till you

love it. It's like nothing there has ever been. It is of an exquisite

youth,--untouched, fearless, quite heedless of tradition, going its own

way straight through and over difficulties and prohibitions that for

centuries have been supposed final. People like Wagner and Strauss and

the rest seem so much sticky and insanitary mud next to these exquisite

young ones, and so very old; and not old and wonderful like the great

men, Beethoven and Bach and Mozart, but uglily old like a noisy old

lady in a yellow wig.

The audience applauded, but wasn't quite sure. Such a master as

Kloster, and one of their own flesh and blood, is always applauded, but

I think the irregularity, the utter carelessness of the music, its

apparently accidental beauty, was difficult for them. Germans have to

have beauty explained to them and accounted for,--stamped first by an

official, authorized, before they can be comfortable with it. I sat in

a corner and cried, it was so lovely. I couldn't help it. I hid away

and pulled my hat over my face and tried not to, for there was a German

in eyeglasses near me, who, perceiving I wanted to hide, instantly

spent his time staring at me to find out why. The music held all

things in it that I have known or guessed, all the beauty, the wonder,

of life and death and love. I _recognised_ it. I almost called out,

"Yes--of course--_I_ know that too."

Afterwards I would have liked best to go home and to sleep with the

sound of it still in my heart, but Kloster sent round a note saying I

was to come to supper and meet some people who would be useful for me

to know. One of his pupils, who brought the note, had been ordered to

pilot me safely to the house, it being late, and as we walked and

Kloster drove in somebody's car he was there already when we arrived,

busy opening beer bottles and looking much more appropriate than he had

done an hour earlier. I can't tell you how kindly he greeted me, and

with what charming little elucidatory comments he presented me to his

wife and the other guests. He actually seemed proud of me. Think how

I must have glowed.

"This is Mees Chrees," he said, taking my hand and leading me into the

middle of the room. "I will not and cannot embark on her family name,

for it is one of those English names that a prudent man avoids. Nor

does it matter. For in ten years--nay, in five--all Europe will have

learned it by heart."

There were about a dozen people, and we had beer and sandwiches and

were very happy. Kloster sat eating sandwiches and staring

benevolently at us all, more like an amiable and hospitable prawn than

ever. You don't know, little mother, how wonderful it is that he

should say these praising things of me, for I'm told by other pupils

that he is dreadfully severe and disagreeable if he doesn't think one

is getting on. It was immensely kind of him to ask me to supper, for

there was somebody there, a Grafin Koseritz, whose husband is in the

ministry, and who is herself very influential and violently interested

in music. She pulls most of the strings at Bayreuth, Kloster says,

more of them even than Frau Cosima now that she is old, and gets one

into anything she likes if she thinks one is worth while. She was very

amiable and gracious, and told me I must marry a German! Because, she

said, all good music is by rights, by natural rights, the property of

Germany.

I wanted to say what about Debussy, and Ravel, and Stravinski, but I

didn't.

She said how much she enjoyed these informal evenings at Kloster's, and

that she had a daughter about my age who was devoted, too, to music,

and a worshipper of Kloster's.

I asked if she was there, for there was a girl away in a corner, but

she looked shocked, and said "Oh no"; and after a pause she said again,

"Oh no. One doesn't bring one's daughter here."

"But I'm a daughter." I said,--I admit tactlessly; and she skimmed away

over that to things that sounded wise but weren't really, about violins

and the technique of fiddling.

Not that I haven't already felt it, the cleavage here in the classes;

but this was my first experience of the real thing, the real Junker

lady--the Koseritzes are Prussians. She, being married and mature, can

dabble if she likes in other sets, can come down as a bright patroness

from another world and clean her feathers in a refreshing mud bath, as

Kloster put it, commenting on his supper party at my lesson last

Friday; but she would carefully keep her young daughter out of it.

They made me play after supper. Actually Kloster brought out his Strad

and said I should play on that. It was evident he thought it important

for me to play to these particular people, so though I was dreadfully

taken aback and afraid I was going to disgrace my master, I was so much

touched by this kindness and care for my future that I obeyed without a

word. I played the Kreutzer Sonata, and an officer played the

accompaniment, a young man who looked so fearfully smart and correct

and wooden that I wondered why he was there till he began to play, and

then I knew; and as soon as I started I forgot the people sitting round

so close to me, so awkwardly and embarrassingly near. The Strad

fascinated me. It seemed to be playing by itself, singing to me,

telling me strange and beautiful secrets. I stood there just listening

to it.

They were all very kind and enthusiastic, and talked eagerly to each

other of a new star, a _trouvaille_. Think of your Chris, only the

other day being put in a corner by you in just expiation of her

offensiveness--it really feels as if it were yesterday--think of her

being a new, or anything else, star! But I won't be too proud, because

people are always easily kind after supper, and besides they had been

greatly stirred all the evening at the concert by Kloster's playing.

He was pleased too, and said some encouraging and delightful things.

The Junker lady was very kind, and asked me to lunch with her, and I'm

going tomorrow. The young man who played the accompaniment bowed,

clicked his heels together, caught up my hand, and kissed it. He

didn't say anything. Kloster says he is passionately devoted to music,

and so good at it that he would easily have been a first-rate musician

if he hadn't happened to have been born a Junker, and therefore has to

be an officer. It's a tragedy, apparently, for Kloster says he hates

soldiering, and is ill if he is kept away long from music. He went

away soon after that.

Grafin Koseritz brought me back in her car and dropped me at Frau

Berg's on her way home. She lives in the Sommerstrasse, next to the

Brandenburger Thor, so she isn't very far from me. She shuddered when

she looked up at Frau Berg's house. It did look very dismal.

_Bedtime_.

I'm so sleepy, precious mother, so sleepy that I must go straight to

bed. I can't hold my head up or my eyes open. I think it's the

weather--it was very hot today. Good night and bless you, my sweetest

mother.

Your own Chris who loves you.

_Berlin, Sunday, June 28th. Evening_.

Beloved little mother,

I didn't write this morning, but went for a whole day into the woods,

because it was such a hot day and I longed to get away from Berlin.

I've been wandering about Potsdam. It is only half an hour away in the

train, and is full of woods and stretches of water, as well as palaces.

Palaces weren't the mood I was in. I wanted to walk and walk, and get

some of the pavement stiffness out of my legs, and when I was tired sit

down under a tree and eat the bread and chocolate I took with me and

stare at the sky through leaves. So I did.

I've had a most beautiful day, the best since I left you. I didn't

speak to a soul all day, and found a place up behind Sans Souci on the

edge of a wood looking out over a ryefield to an old windmill, and

there I sat for hours; and after I had finished remembering what I

could of the Scholar Gypsy, which is what one generally does when one

sits in summer on the edge of a cornfield, I sorted out my thoughts.

They've been getting confused lately in the rush of work day after day,

as confused as the drawer I keep my gloves and ribbons in, thrusting

them in as I take them off and never having time to tidy. Life tears

along, and I have hardly time to look at my treasures. I'm going to

look at them and count them up on Sundays. As the summer goes on I'll

pilgrimage out every Sunday to the woods, as regularly as the pious go

to church, and for much the same reason,--to consider, and praise, and

thank.