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Author’s Preface

Publishers’ Note

The Publishers have considered it best to alter some of the personal names in the following pages.

Lutzowstrasse 49, Berlin, Thursday, May 28th, 1914.

My blessed little mother,

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

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:

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.

Berlin, Tuesday, June 2nd, 1914.

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

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.

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.

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.

I took your two letters with me, reading them again in the woods. They seemed even more dear out there where it was beautiful. You sound so content, darling mother, about me, and so full of belief in me. You may be very sure that if a human being, by trying and working, can justify your dear belief it's your Chris. The snapshot of the border full of Canterbury bells makes me able to picture you. Do you wear the old garden hat I loved you so in when you garden? Tell me, because I want to think of you exactly. It makes my mouth water, those Canterbury bells. I can see their lovely colours, their pink and blue and purple, with the white Sweet Williams and the pale lilac violas you write about. Well, there's nothing of that in the Lutzowstrasse. No wonder I went away from it this morning to go out and look for June in the woods. The woods were a little thin and austere, for there has been no rain lately, but how enchanting after the barren dustiness of my Berlin street! I did love it so. And I felt so free and glorious, coming off on my own for my hard-earned Sunday outing, just like any other young man.

The train going down was full of officers, and they all looked very smart and efficient and satisfied with themselves and life. In my compartment they were talking together eagerly all the way, talking shop with unaffected appetite, as though shop were so interesting that even on Sundays they couldn't let it be, and poring together over maps. No trace of stolidity. But where is this stolidity one has heard about? Compared to the Germans I've seen, it is we who are stolid; stolid, and slow, and bored. The last thing these people are is bored. On the contrary, the officers had that same excitement about them, that same strung-upness, that the men boarders at Frau Berg's have.

Berlin, Tuesday, June 30th, 1914.

Darling mother,

How splendid that you're going to Switzerland next month with the Cunliffes. I do think it is glorious, and it will make you so strong for the winter. And think how much nearer you'll be to me! I always suspected Mrs. Cunliffe of being secretly an angel, and now I know it. Your letter has just come and I simply had to tell you how glad I am.

Chris.

This isn't a letter, it's a cry of joy.

Berlin, Sunday, July 5th, 1914.

My blessed little mother,

It has been so hot this week. We've been sweltering up here under the roof. If you are having it anything like this at Chertsey the sooner you persuade the Cunliffes to leave for Switzerland the better. Just the sight of snow on the mountains out of your window would keep you cool. You know I told you my bedroom looks onto the Lutzowstrasse and the sun beats on it nearly all day, and flies in great numbers have taken to coming up here and listening to me play, and it is difficult to practise satisfactorily while they walk about enraptured on my neck. I can't swish them away, because both my hands are busy. I wish I had a tail.

Frau Berg says there never used to be flies in this room, and suggests with some sternness that I brought them with me,—the eggs, I suppose, in my luggage. She is inclined to deny that they're here at all, on the ground chiefly that nothing so irregular as a fly out of its proper place, which is, she says, a manure heap, is possible in Germany. It is too well managed, is Germany, she says. I said I supposed she knew that because she had seen it in the newspapers. I was snappy, you see. The hot weather makes me disposed, I'm afraid, to impatience with Frau Berg. She is so large, and she seems to soak up what air there is, and whenever she has sat on a chair it keeps warm afterwards for hours. If only some clever American with inventions rioting in his brain would come here and adapt her to being an electric fan! I want one so badly, and she would be beautiful whirling round, and would make an immense volume of air, I'm sure.

Well, darling one, you see I'm peevish. It's because I'm so hot, and it doesn't get cool at night. And the food is so hot too and so greasy, and the pallid young man with the red mouth who sits opposite me at dinner melts visibly and continuously all the time, and Wanda coming round with the dishes is like the coming of a blast of hot air. Kloster says I'm working too much, and wants me to practise less. I said I didn't see that practising less would make Wanda and the young man cooler. I did try it one day when my head ached, and you've no idea what a long day it seemed. So empty. Nothing to do. Only Berlin. And one feels more alone in Berlin than anywhere in the world, I think. Kloster says it's because I'm working too much, but I don't see how working less would make Berlin more companionable. Of course I'm not a bit alone really, for there is Kloster, who takes a very real and lively interest in me and is the most delightful of men, and there is Herr von Inster, who has been twice to see me since that day I lunched at his aunt's, and everybody in this house talks to me now,—more to me, I think, than to any other of the boarders, because I'm English and they seem to want to educate me out of it. And Hilda Seeberg has actually got as far in friendship as a cautious invitation to have chocolate with her one afternoon some day in the future at Wertheim's; and the pallid young man has suggested showing me the Hohenzollern museum some Sunday, where he can explain to me, by means of relics, the glorious history of that high family, as he put it; and Frau Berg, though she looks like some massive Satan, isn't really satanic I expect; and Dr. Krummlaut says every day as he comes into the diningroom rubbing his hands and passes my chair, "Na, was macht England?" which is a sign he is being gracious. It is only a feeling, this of being completely alone. But I've got it, and the longer I'm here and the better I know people the greater it becomes. It's an uneasiness. I feel as if my spirit were alone,—the real, ultimate and only bit of me that is me and that matters.

If I go on like this you too, my little mother, will begin echoing Kloster and tell me that I'm working too much. Dear England. Dear, dear England. To find out how much one loves England all one has to do is to come to Germany.

Of course they talk of nothing else at every meal here now but the Archduke's murder. It's the impudence of the Servians that chiefly makes them gasp. That they should dare! Dr. Krummlaut says they never would have dared if they hadn't been instigated to this deed of atrocious blasphemy by Russia,—Russia bursting with envy of the Germanic powers and encouraging every affront to them. The whole table, except the Swede who eats steadily on, sees red at the word affront. Frau Berg reiterates that the world needs blood-letting before there can be any real calm again, but it isn't German blood she wants to let. Germany is surrounded by enormously wicked people, I gather, all swollen with envy, hatred and malice, and all of gigantic size. In the middle of these monsters browses Germany, very white and woolly-haired and loveable, a little lamb among the nations, artlessly only wanting to love and be loved, weak physically compared to its towering neighbours, but strong in simplicity and the knowledge of its gute Recht. And when they say these things they all turn to me for endorsement and approval—they've given up seeking response from the Swede, because she only eats—and I hastily run over my best words and pick out the most suitable one, which is generally herrlich, or else ich gratuliere

Berlin, Wednesday, July 8th, 1914.

Beloved mother,

Kloster says I'm to go into the country this very week and not come back for a whole fortnight. This is just a line to tell you this, and that he has written to a forester's family he knows living in the depths of the forests up beyond Stettin. They take in summer-boarders, and have had pupils of his before, and he is arranging with them for me to go there this very next Saturday.

Oberforsterei, Schuppenfelde, July 11th, 1914.

My own little mother,

Here I am, and it is lovely. I must just tell you about it before I go to bed. We're buried in forest, eight miles from the nearest station, and that's only a Kleinbahn station, a toy thing into which a small train crawls twice a day, having been getting to it for more than three hours from Stettin. The Oberforster met me in a high yellow carriage, drawn by two long-tailed horses who hadn't been worried with much drill judging from their individualistic behaviour, and we lurched over forest tracks that were sometimes deep sand and sometimes all roots, and the evening air was so delicious after the train, so full of different scents and freshness, that I did nothing but lift up my nose and sniff with joy.

The Oberforster thought I had a cold, without at the same time having a handkerchief; and presently, after a period of uneasiness on my behalf, offered me his. "It is not quite clean," he said, "but it is better than none." And he shouted, because I was a foreigner and therefore would understand better if he shouted.

I explained as well as I could, which was not very, that my sniffs were sniffs of exultation.

"Ach so," he said, indulgent with the indulgence one feels towards a newly arrived guest, before one knows what they are really like.

Schuppenfelde, Monday, July 13th.

Sweet mother,

I got your letter from Switzerland forwarded on this morning, and like to feel you're by so much nearer me than you were a week ago. At least, I try to persuade myself that it's a thing to like, but I know in my heart it makes no earthly difference. If you're only a mile away and I mayn't see you, what's the good? You might as well be a thousand. The one thing that will get me to you again is accomplished work. I want to work, to be quick; and here I am idle, precious days passing, each of which not used for working means one day longer away from you. And I'm so well. There's no earthly reason why I shouldn't start practising again this very minute. A day yesterday in the forest has cured me completely. By the time I've lived through my week of promised idleness I shall be kicking my loose box to pieces! And then for another whole week there'll only be two hours of my violin allowed. Why, I shall fall on those miserable two hours like a famished beggar on a crust.

Well, I'm not going to grumble. It's only that I love you so, and miss you so very much. You know how I always missed you on Sunday in Berlin, because then I had time to feel, to remember; and here it is all Sundays. I've had two of them already, yesterday and today, and I don't know what it will be like by the time I've had the rest. I walked miles yesterday, and the more beautiful it was the more I missed you. What's the good of having all this loveliness by oneself? I want somebody with me to see it and feel it too. If you were here how happy we should be!

I wish you knew Herr von Inster, for I know you'd like him. I do think he's unusual, and you like unusual people. I had a letter from him today, sent with a book he thought I'd like, but I've read it,—it is Selma Lagerlof's Jerusalem; do you remember our reading it together that Easter in Cornwall? But wasn't it very charming of him to send it? He says he is coming this way the end of the week and will call on me and renew his acquaintance with the Oberforster, with whom he says he has gone shooting sometimes when he has been staying at Koseritz. His Christian name is Bernd. Doesn't it sound nice and honest.

I suppose by the end of the week he means Saturday, which is a very long way off. Saturdays used to seem to come rushing on to the very heels of Mondays in Berlin when I was busy working. Little mother, you can take it from me, from your wise, smug daughter, that work is the key to every happiness. Without it happiness won't come unlocked. What do people do who don't do anything, I wonder?

Koseritz is only five miles away, and as he'll stay there, I suppose, with his relations, he won't have very far to come. He'll ride over, I expect. He looks so nice on a horse. I saw him once in the Thiergarten, riding. I'd love to ride on these forest roads,—the sandy ones are perfect for riding; but when I asked the Oberforster today, after I got Herr von Inster's letter, whether he could lend me a horse while I was here, what do you think I found out? That Kloster, suspecting I might want to ride, had written him instructions on no account to allow me to. Because I might tumble off, if you please, and sprain either of my precious wrists. Did you ever. I believe Kloster regards me only as a vessel for carrying about music to other people, not as a human being at all. It is like the way jockeys are kept, strict and watched, before a race.

Frau Bornsted gazed at me with her large serious eyes, and said, "Do you play the violin, then, so well?"

"No," I snapped. "I don't." And I drummed with my fingers on the windowpane and felt as rebellious as six years old.

But of course I'm going to be good. I won't do anything that may delay my getting home to you.

The Bornsteds say Koseritz is a very beautiful place, on the very edge of the Haff. They talk with deep respectfulness of the Herr Graf, and the Frau Grafin, and the junge Komtesse. It's wonderful how respectful Germans are towards those definitely above them. And so uncritical. Kloster says that it is drill does it. You never get over the awe, he says, for the sergeant, for the lieutenant, for whoever, as you rise a step, is one step higher. I told the Bornsteds I had met the Koseritzes in Berlin, and they looked at me with a new interest, and Frau Bornsted, who has been very prettily taking me in hand and endeavouring to root out the opinions she takes for granted that I hold, being an Englanderin, came down for a while more nearly to my level, and after having by questioning learned that I had lunched with the Koseritzes, and having endeavoured to extract, also by questioning, what we had had to eat, which I couldn't remember except the whipped cream I spilt on the floor, she remarked, slowly nodding her head, "It must have been very agreeable for you to be with the grafliche Familie."

"And for them to be with me," I said, moved to forwardness by being full of forest air, which goes to my head.

I suppose this was what they call disrespectful without being funny, for Frau Bornsted looked at me in silence, and Herr Bornsted, who doesn't understand English, asked in German, seeing his wife solemn, "What does she say?" And when she told him he said, "Ach," and showed his disapproval by absorbing himself in the Deutsche Tageszeitzing.

Schuppenfelde, Thursday, July 16, 1914.

My blessed mother,

Schuppenfelde, Friday, July 17,1914.

This morning when I came down to breakfast, sweet mother, there at the foot of the stairs was Herr von Inster. He didn't say anything, but watched me coming down with the contented look he has I like so much. I was frightfully pleased to see him, and smiled all over myself. "Oh," I exclaimed, "so you've come."

He held out his hand and helped me down the last steps. He was in green shooting clothes, like the Oberforster's, but without the official buttons, and looked very nice. You'd like him, I'm sure. You'd like what he looks like, and like what he is.

He had been in the forest since four this morning, shooting with his colonel, who came down with him to Koseritz last night. The colonel and Graf Koseritz, who came down from Berlin with them, were both breakfasting, attended by the Bornsteds, and it shows how soundly I sleep here that I hadn't heard anything.

"And aren't you having any breakfast?" I asked.

"I will now," he said. "I was listening for your door to open,"

I think you'd like him very much, little mother.

The colonel, whose name is Graf Hohenfeld, was being very pleasant to Frau Bornsted, watching her admiringly as she brought him things to eat. He was very pleasant to me too, and got up and put his heels together and said, "Old England for ever" when I appeared, and asked the Graf whether Frau Bornsted and I didn't remind him of a nosegay of flowers. Obviously we didn't. The Graf doesn't look as if anybody ever reminded him of anything. He greeted me briefly, and then sat staring abstractedly at the tablecloth, as he did in Berlin. The Colonel did all the talking. Both he and the Graf had on those pretty green shooting things they wear in Germany, with the becoming soft hats and little feathers. He was very jovial indeed, seemed fond and proud of his lieutenant, Herr von Inster, slapped the Oberforster every now and then on the back, which made him nearly faint with joy each time, and wished it weren't breakfast and only coffee, because he would have liked to drink our healths,—"The healths of these two delightful young roses," he said, bowing to Frau Bornsted and me, "the Rose of England—long live England, which produces such flowers—and the Rose of Germany, our own wild forest rose."

Koseritz, Saturday evening, July 18, 1914.

My darling little mother,

See where I've got to! Who'd have thought it? Life is really very exciting, isn't it. The Grafin drove over to Schuppenfelde this afternoon, and took me away with her here. She said Kloster was coming for Sunday from Heringsdorf to them, and she knew he would want to see me and would go off to the Oberforsterei after me and leave her by herself if I were at the Bornsteds', and anyhow she wanted to see something of me before I went back to Berlin, and I couldn't refuse to give an old lady—she isn't a bit old—pleasure, and heaps of gracious things like that. Herr von Inster had brought a note from her in the morning, preparing my mind, and added his persuasions to hers. Not that I wanted persuading,—I thought it a heavenly idea, and didn't even mind Helena, because I felt that in a big house there'd be more room for her to stare at me in. And Herr von Inster is going to stay another week, taking his summer leave now instead of later, and he says he will see me safe to Berlin when I go next Saturday.

So we had the happiest morning wandering about the forest, he driving and letting the horses go as slowly as they liked while we talked, and after our sandwiches he took me back to the Bornsteds, and I showed Frau Bornsted the Grafin's letter.

Koseritz, Sunday evening, July 19, 1914.

My own darling mother,

I don't know what you'll say, but I'm engaged to Bernd. That's Herr von Inster. You know his name is Bernd? I don't know what to say to it myself. I can't quite believe it. This time last night I was writing to you in this very room, with no thought of anything in the world but just ordinary happiness with kind friends and one specially kind and understanding friend, and here I am twenty-four hours later done with ordinary happiness, taken into my lover's heart for ever.

It was so strange. I don't believe any girl ever got engaged in quite that way before. I'm sure everybody thinks we're insane, except Kloster. Kloster doesn't. He understands.

Koseritz, Monday, July 20.

My own darling mother,

Koseritz, Thursday, July 23.

My own mother,

Thank you so much for your telegram of blessing, darling one, which I have just had. It seems to set the seal of happiness on me. I know you will love Bernd, and understand directly you see him why I do. We are so placid here these beautiful summer days. Everybody accepts us now resignedly as a fait accompli, and though they remain unenthusiastic they are polite and tolerant. And whenever I play to them they all grow kind. It's rather like being Orpheus with his lute, and they the mountain tops that freeze. I've discovered I can melt them by just making music. Helena really does love music. It was quite true what her mother said. Since I played that first wonderful night of my engagement she has been quite different to me. She still is silent, because that's her nature, and she still stares; but now she stares in a sort of surprise, with a question in her eyes. And wherever she may be in the house or garden, if she hears me beginning to play she creeps near on tiptoe and listens.

Kloster has gone. He and his wife were both very kind to us, but Kloster is worried because I've fallen in love. I'm not to go back to Berlin till Monday, as Bernd can stay on here till then, and there's no point in spending a Sunday in Berlin unless one has to. Kloster is going to give me three lessons a week instead of two, and I shall work now with such renewed delight! He says I won't, but I know better. Everything I do seems to be touched now with delight. How funny that room at Frau Berg's will look and feel after being here. But I don't mind going back to it one little half a scrap. Bernd will be in Berlin; he'll be writing to me, seeing me, walking with me. With him there it will be, every bit of it, perfect.

"When I come back to town in October," the Grafin said to me, "you must stay with us. It is not fitting that Bernd's betrothed should live in that boarding-house of Frau Berg's. Will not your mother soon join you?"

It is very kind of her, I think. It appears that a girl who is engaged has to be chaperoned even more than a girl who isn't. What funny ancient stuff these conventions are. I wonder how long more we shall have of them. Of course Frau Berg and her boarders are to the Junker dreadful beyond words.

But her question about you set me thinking. Won't you come, little mother? As it is such an unusual and never-to-be-repeated occurrence in our family that its one and only child should be going to marry? And yet I can't quite see you in August in lodgings in Berlin, come down from your beautiful mountain, away from your beautiful lake. After all, I've only got four more months of it, and then I'm finished and can go back to you. What is going to happen then, exactly, I don't know. Bernd says, Marry, and that you'll come and live with us in Germany. That's all very well, but what about, if I marry so soon, starting my public career, which was to have begun this next winter? Kloster says impatiently. Oh marry, and get done with it, and that then I'll be sensible again and able to arrange my debut as a violinist with the calm, I gather he thinks, of the disillusioned.

"I'm perfectly sensible," I said.

Koseritz, Friday, July 25th, 1914.

Beloved mother,

Bernd was telegraphed for this afternoon from headquarters to go back at once to Berlin, and he's gone. I'm rubbing my eyes to see if I'm awake, it has been so sudden. The whole house seemed changed in an instant. The Graf went too. The newspaper doesn't get here till we are at lunch, and is always brought in and laid by the Graf, and today there was the Austrian ultimatum to Servia in it, and when the Graf saw that in the headlines of the Tageszeitung

Koseritz, Saturday, July 25th, 1914.

You know, my beloved one, I'd much rather be at Frau Berg's in Berlin and independent, and able to see Bernd whenever he can come, without saying dozens of thank you's and may I's to anybody each time, and I had arranged to go today, and now the Grafin won't let me. She says she'll take me up on Monday when she and Helena go. They're going for a short time because they want to be nearer any news there is than they are here, and she says it wouldn't be right for her, so nearly my aunt, to allow me, so nearly her niece, to stay by myself in a pension while she is in her house in the next street. What would people say? she asked—was wurden die Leute sagen, as every German before doing or refraining from doing a thing invariably inquires. They all from top to bottom seem to walk in terror of die Leute and what they would sagen. So I'm to go to her house in the Sommerstrasse, and live in chaperoned splendour for as long as she is there. She says she is certain my mother would wish it. I'm not a hit certain, I who know my mother and know how beautifully empty she is of conventions and how divinely indifferent to die Leute

Koseritz, Sunday evening, July 26th.

Beloved mother,

I've packed, and I'm ready. We start early tomorrow. The newspapers, for some reason, perhaps excitement and disorganization, didn't come today, but the Graf telephoned from Berlin about the Austro-Hungarian minister having asked the Servian government for his passports and left Belgrade. You'll know about this today too. The Grafin, still placid, says Austria will now very properly punish Servia, both for the murder and for the insolence of refusing her, Austria's, just demands. The Graf merely telephoned that Servia had refused. It did seem incredible. I did think Servia would deserve her punishing. Yesterday's papers said the demands were most reasonable considering what had been done. I hadn't read the Austrian note, because of the confusion of Bernd's sudden going away, and I was full of indignation at Servia's behaviour, piling insult on injury in this way and risking setting Europe by the ears, but was pulled up short and set thinking by the Grafin's looking pleased at my expressions of indignation, and her coming over to me to pat my cheek and say, "This child will make an excellent little German."

Then I thought I'd better wait and know more before sweeping Servia out of my disgusted sight. There are probably lots of other things to know. Kloster will tell me. I find I have a profound distrust really of these people. I don't mean of particular people, like the Koseritzes and the Klosters and their friends, but of Germans in the mass. It is a sort of deep-down discomfort of spirit, the discomfort of disagreement in fundamentals.

"Then there'll be war?" I said to the Grafin, staring at her placid face, and not a bit pleased about being going to be an excellent little German.

"Oh, a punitive expedition only," she said.

"Bernd thought it would mean Russia and France and you as well," I said.

"Oh, Bernd—he is in love," said the Grafin, smiling.

"I don't quite see—" I began.

Berlin, Wednesday, July 29th.

My own little mother,

It is six o'clock in the morning, and I'm in my dressing-gown writing to you, because if I don't do it now I shall be swamped with people and things, as I was all yesterday and the day before, and not get a moment's quiet. You see, there is going to be war, almost to a dead certainty, and the Germans have gone mad. The effect even on this house is feverish, so that getting up very early will be my only chance of writing to you.

You never saw anything like the streets yesterday. They seemed full of drunken people, shouting up and down with red faces all swollen with excitement. It is of course intensely interesting and new to me, who have never been closer to such a thing as war than history lessons at school, but what do they all think they're going to get, what do they all think it's really for, these poor creatures bellowing and strutting, and waving their hats and handkerchiefs, and even their babies, high over their heads whenever a konigliche Hoheit dashes past in a motor, which happens every five minutes because there are such a lot of them. Our drive from Koseritz to Stettin on Monday, which now seems so remote that it is as if it was another life, was the last beautiful ordinary thing that happened. Since then it has been one great noise and ugliness. I can't forget the look of the country as we passed through it on Monday, so lovely in its summer peacefulness, the first rye being cut in the fields, the hedges full of Traveler's Joy. I didn't notice how beautiful it was at the time, I only wanted to get on, to get away, to get the news; but now I'm here I remember it as something curiously innocent, and I'm so glad we had a puncture that made us stop for ten minutes in a bit of the road where there were great cornfields as far as one could see, and a great stretch of sky with peaceful little white clouds that hardly moved, and only the sound of poplars by the roadside rustling their leaves with that lovely liquid sound they make, and larks singing. It comforts me to call this up again, to hide in it for a minute away from the shouting of Deutschland uber Alles, and the hochs and yellings. Then we got to Stettin; and since then I have lived in ugliness.

Berlin, Friday afternoon, July 31st.

My sweetest mother,

Your letters have been following me about, to Koseritz and to Frau Berg's, where of course you didn't know I wouldn't be. I went to Frau Berg's today and found your last two. I love you, my precious mother, and thank you for all your dearness and sweet unselfish understanding about Bernd and me. You have always been my closest, dearest friend, as well as my own darling mother. I seem now to be living in a sort of bath of love. Can anything more ever be added to it? I feel as if I had reached the very innermost heart of happiness. Wonderful how one carries about such a precious consciousness. It's like something magic and hidden that takes care of one, keeping one untouched and unharmed; while outside, day and night, there's this terrible noise of a people gone mad.

You wrote to me last sitting under a cherry tree, you said, in the orchard at the back of your hotel at Glion, and you talked of the colour of the lake far down below through the leaves of walnut trees, and of the utter peace. Here day and night, day and night, since Wednesday, soldiers in new grey uniforms pass through the Brandenburger Thor down the broad road to Charlottenburg. Their tramp never stops. I can see them from my window tramping, tramping away down the great straight road; and crowds that don't seem to change or dwindle watch them and shout. Where do the soldiers all come from? I never dreamed there could be so many in the world, let alone in Berlin; and Germany isn't even at war! But it's no use asking questions, or trying to talk about it. I've found the word "Why?" in this house is not only useless but improper. Nobody will talk about anything; I suppose they don't need to, for they all seem perfectly to know. They're in the inner circle in this house. They're not the public. The public is that shouting, perspiring mob out there watching the soldiers, and Frau Berg and her boarders are the public, and so are the soldiers themselves. The public here are all the people who obey, and pay, and don't know; an immense multitude of slaves,—abject, greedy, pitiful. I don't think I ever could have imagined a thing so pitiful to see as these respectable middle-aged Berlin citizens, fathers of families, careful livers on small incomes, clerks, pastors, teachers, professors, drunk and mad out there publicly on the pavement, dancing with joy because they think the great moment they've been taught to wait for has come, and they're going to get suddenly rich, scoop in wealth from Russia and France, get up to the top of the world and be able to kick it. That's what I saw over and over again today as I somehow got through to Frau Berg's to fetch your letters. An ordinary person from an ordinary country wants to cover these heated elderly gentlemen up, and hide them out of sight, so shocking are they to one's sense of respect and reverence for human beings. Imagine decent citizens, paunchy and soft with beer and sitting in offices, wearing cheap straw hats and carefully mended and brushed black coats, dancing with excitement on the pavement; and nobody thinking it anything but fine and creditable, at the prospect of their children's blood going to be shed, and everybody's children's blood, except the blood of those safe children, the children of the Hohenzollerns!

Berlin, Sat., Aug. 1st, 1914.

Before Breakfast.

My blessed little mother,

I've seen a thing I don't suppose I'll forget. It was yesterday, after the news came that Germany had sent Russia an ultimatum about instantly demobilizing, demanding an answer by eleven this morning. The sensation when this was known was tremendous. The Grafin was shaken out of her calm into exclamations of joy and fear,—joy that the step had been taken, fear lest Russia should obey, and there be no war after all.

We had to shut the windows to be able to hear ourselves talk. Some women friends of the Grafin's who were here—we had no men with us—instantly left to drive by back streets to the Schlossplatz to see the sight it must be there, and the Grafin, saying that we too must witness the greatest history of the world's greatest nation in the making, sent for a taxi—her chauffeur has gone—and prepared to follow. We had to wait ages for the taxi, but it was lucky we had to, else we might have gone and come back and missed seeing the Kaiser come out and speak to the crowd. We went a long way round, but even so all Germany seemed to be streaming towards the Lindens and the part at the end where the palace is. I don't expect we ever would have got there if it hadn't been that a cousin of the Grafin's, a very smart young officer in the Guards, saw us in the taxi as it was vainly trying to cross the Friedrichstrasse, and flicking the obstructing policemen on one side with a sort of little kick of his spur, came up all amazement and salutes to inquire of his most gracious cousin what in the world she was doing in a taxi. He said it was hopeless to try to get to the Schlossplatz in it, but if we would allow him to escort us on foot he would be proud—the gracious cousin would permit him to offer her his arm, and the young ladies would keep very close behind him.

So we set out, and it was surprising the way he got us through. If the crowd didn't fall apart instantly of itself at his approach, an obsequious policeman—one of those same Berlin policemen who are so rude to one if one is alone and really in need of help—sprang up from nowhere and made it. It's as far from the Friedrichstrasse to the Schlossplatz as it is from here to the Friedrichstrasse, but we did it very much quicker than we did the first half in the taxi, and when we reached it there they all were, the drunken crowds—that's the word that most exactly describes them—yelling, swaying, cursing the ones in their way or who trod on their feet, shouting hurrahs and bits of patriotic songs, every one of them decently dressed, obviously respectable people in ordinary times. That's what is so constantly strange to me,—these solid burghers and their families behaving like drunken hooligans. Somehow a spectacled professor with a golden chain across his blackwaistcoated and impressive front, just roaring incoherently, just opening his mouth and hurling any sort of noise out of it till the veins on his neck and forehead look as though they would burst, is the strangest sight in the world to me. I can imagine nothing stranger, nothing that makes one more uncomfortable and ashamed. It is what will always jump up before my eyes in the future at the words German patriotism. And to see a stout elderly lady, who ought to be presiding with slow dignity in some ordered home, hoarse with shouting, tear the feathered hat she otherwise only uses tenderly on Sundays off her respectable grey head and wave it frantically, screaming hochs every time a prince is seen or a general or one of the ministers, makes one want to cry with shame at the indignity put upon poor human beings, at the exploiting of their passions, in the interests of one family.

Berlin, Sunday, August 2nd, 1914.

My precious mother,

Just think,—when I had my lesson yesterday Kloster wouldn't talk either about the war or the Kaiser. For a long time I thought he was ill; but he wasn't, he just wouldn't talk. I told him about Friday, and the Kaiser's "Geht nach Hause und betet," and how I had felt about it and the whole thing, and I expected a flood of illuminating and instructive and fearless comment from him; and instead he was dumb. And not only dumb, but he fidgeted while I talked, and at last stopped me altogether and bade me go on playing.

Then I asked him if he were ill, and he said, "No, why should I be ill?"

"Because you're different,—you don't talk," I said.

And he said, "It is only women who always talk."

So then I got on with my playing, and just wondered in silence.

I ran against Frau Kloster in the passage as I was coming out, and asked her if there was anything wrong, and she too said, "No, what should there be wrong?"

"Because the Master's different," I said. "He won't talk."

And she said, "My dear Mees Chrees, these are great days we live in, and one cannot be as usual."

"But the Master—" I said. "Just these great days—you'd think he'd be pouring out streams of all the things that most need saying—"

And she shrugged her shoulders and merely repeated, "One is not as usual."

So I came away, greatly puzzled. I had expected bread, and here I was going off with nothing but an unaccountable stone. Kloster and Bernd are the two solitary sane and wise people I know here in this place of fever, the two I trust, to whom I say what I really think and feel, and I went to Kloster yesterday athirst for wisdom, for that detached, critical picking out one by one of the feathers of the imperial bird, the Prussian eagle, that I find so wholesome, so balance-restoring, so comforting, in what is now a very great isolation of spirit. And he was dumb. I can't get over it.

I've not seen Bernd since, as he is frightfully busy and wasn't able to come yesterday at all, but he's coming to lunch today, and perhaps he'll be able to explain Kloster. I've been practising all the morning,—it will seem to you an odd thing to have done while Rome is burning, but I did it savagely, with a feeling of flinging defiance at this topsy-turvy world, of slitting its ugliness in spite of itself with bright spears of music, insisting on intruding loveliness on its preoccupation, the loveliness created by its own brains in the days before Prussia got the upper hand. All the morning I practised the Beethoven violin concerto, and the naked, slender radiance of it without the orchestra to muffle it up in a background, enchanted me into forgetting.

Berlin, Monday, August 3rd, 1914.

Darling own mother,

It's only a matter of hours now before Bernd will have to go, and when he goes I'm coming back to you.

Your Chris.

Berlin, Monday August 3rd, evening.

Precious mother,

I want to come back to you—directly Bernd has gone I'm coming back to you, and if he doesn't go soon but is used in Berlin at the Staff Head Quarters, as he says now perhaps he may be for a while, I won't stay with the Koseritzes, but go back to Frau Berg's for as long as Bernd is in Berlin, and the day he leaves I start for Switzerland.

Berlin, Tuesday, August 4th, 1914.

My beloved mother,

At Frau Berg's, August 4th, 1914, very late.

Precious mother,

I'm coming back to you. Don't be unhappy about me. Don't think I'm coming back mangled, a bleeding thing, because you see, I still have Bernd. I still believe in him—oh, with my whole being. And as long as I do that how can I be anything but happy? It's strange how, now that the catastrophe has come, I'm quite calm, sitting here at Frau Berg's in my old room in the middle of the night writing to you. I think it's because the whole thing is so great that I'm like this, like somebody who has had a mortal blow, and because it's mortal doesn't feel. But this isn't mortal. I've got Bernd and you,—only now I must have great patience. Till I see him again. Till war is over and he comes for me, and I shall be with him always.

I'm coming to you, dear mother. It's finished here. I'm going to describe it all quite calmly to you. I'm not going to be unworthy of Bernd, I won't have less of dignity and patience than he has. If you'd seen him tonight saying good-bye to me, and stopped by the Colonel! His look as he obeyed—I shan't forget it. When next I'm weak and base I shall remember it, and it will save me.

At dinner there were only the Grafin and Helena and me, and they didn't speak a word, not only not to me but not to each other, and in the middle a servant brought in a note for the Grafin from the Graf, he said, and when she had looked at it she got up and went out. We finished our dinner in dead silence, and I was going up to my room when the Grafin's maid came after me and said would I go to her mistress. She was alone in the drawingroom, sitting at her writing table, though she wasn't writing, and when I came in she said, without turning round, that she must ask me to leave her house at once, that very evening. She said that apart from her private feelings, which were all in favour of my going—she would be quite frank, she said—there were serious political reasons why I shouldn't stay even as long as till tomorrow. The Graf's career, his position in the ministry, their social position, Majestat,—I really don't remember all she said, and it matters so little, so little. I listened, trying to understand, trying to give all my attention to it and disentangle it, while my heart was thumping so because of Bernd. For I was being turned out in disgrace, and I am his betrothed, and so I am his honour, and whatever of shame there is for me there is of shame for him.

Halle, Wednesday night, August 5th, 1914.

I've got as far as this, and hope to get on in an hour or two. We've been stopped to let troop trains pass. They go rushing by one after the other, packed with waving, shouting soldiers, all of them with flowers stuck about them, in their buttonholes and caps. I've been watching them. There's no end to them. And the enthusiasm of the crowds on the platform as they go by never slackens. I'm making for Zurich. I tried for Bale. but couldn't get into Switzerland that way,—it is abgesperrt. I hadn't much difficulty getting a ticket in Berlin. There was such confusion and such a rush at the ticket office that the man just asked me why I wanted to go; and I said I was American and rejoining my mother, and he flung me the ticket, only too glad to get rid of me. Don't expect me till you see me, for we shall be held up lots of times, I'm sure.

I'm all right, mother darling. It was fearfully hot all day, squeezed tight in a third class carriage—no other class to be had. It's cold and draughty in this station by comparison, and I wish I had my coat. I've brought nothing away with me, except my fiddle and what would go into its case, which was handkerchiefs. Bernd will see that my things get sent on, I expect. I locked everything up in my trunk,—your letters, and all my precious things. An official came along the train at Wittenberg, and after eyeing us all in my compartment suddenly held out his hand to me and said, "Ihre Papiere." As I haven't got any I told him about being an American, and as much family history not till then known to me as I could put into German. The other passengers listened eagerly, but not unfriendly. I think if you're a woman, not being old helps one in Germany.