Cooper, Ethel – September 1915
5.9.15
My dear Emmie,
I have made myself a woollen dress for the autumn, for it is getting cold already, and am getting blankets and such things washed and cleaned by degrees. Sandor can still tell me nothing definite. By depositing a sum of money, I think £50, as a caution, he may be allowed to come back here till he is defiantly needed. So I am taking on the flat by the month, as it is still unlet, until I know more…
I have taken to wooden shoes. Leather is terribly expensive… so I bought sabots and clatter about the house and in the streets after dark in them. They look quite nice, if you wear coloured skirt and an apron, but they would be ridiculous under a modern dress of course. The leather has been commandeered for the soldier’s books. The last public order is that all copper, aluminium, and nickel is to be given up.
There is great lamenting among the housekeepers, for the copper and aluminium pots and pans go too! Fortunately for he there is an exception made for tea-pots, kettles and works of art, so that we keep our samovar, but I fear the dear little copper water jug you gave me when I was in King William Street will be seized to make German ammunition!
12.9.15
My dear Emmie,
…[Y]esterday I went down to Rotha, a village half an hour away (having got a police permit) to help a man with a red Cross village concert. It was so nice – he has 40 zither pupils, nearly all children… This afternoon I went to tea with Frau von Bose, an Englishwoman married to a German piano teacher… and to my delight I found Mrs Jaeger there – she got through from Switzerland this morning. She tells me that the officers at the border turned her boxes inside out – they had the stockings with your letters in their hands, but somehow missed them…
19.9.15
My dear Emmie,
I have no news of Sandor – the post has been stopped altogether to Austria and Hungary…
I saw my landlord this week, and he tells me that I can take the flat for three month. I wanted to take it for a month till I know what Sandor can do, but the landlord won’t agree to that. Then I went to the police to see if it were possible to get away – I thought of Switzerland, or Holland or England. There is no hope at all – there is a spy-scare rampant, and everyone who has been here for long, or is known to have German friends just has to stay here…
26.9.15
My dear Emmie,
I am greatly cheered today – there is a most obvious depression in the air, and the morning papers, though giving no details, say ‘Great French and English Offensive on the West Front… You don’t know how sick at heart we get here, with nothing but the Germans standpoint before one…
The news that filters through from Warsaw, though strictly censured is deplorable. All the wives and children of the men called in for service by Russia have had government support till now. Now, of course, they get none from Russian and nothing from Germany… The country is absolutely wasted – there is no food and the people are simply starving…
It is half past eleven, and I must go to the police station, where I have to report myself before 12. If one is late, one gets a condescending reproof if an amiable official chance to be on duty, or a black mark if an objectionable one is there, and I can’t afford any more black marks.
