Cooper, Ethel – June 1918
2.6.18
My dear Emmie,
We have had the most anxious week that we have spent for nearly four years….We try to hope that the worst is over – certainly the advance is somewhat slower, and certainly the Germans expected to be in Paris and Calais by now, but there is no doubt that they will strain every nerve and sacrifice anything to achieve that before the promised American help arrives.
It is Fraulien Ludicke’s birthday and the pension is asked to tea with her. We gave her each our fortnightly egg, and she has baked a warcake – 1 lb of boiled potatoes rubbed through a sieve, ¼ lb of sugar and 4 eggs. It certainly looks a most imposing cake. Her presents would make you laugh – 20 lb of potatoes, a saucepan, a tiny bottle of salad oil (very valuable!) two glass dishes, 2 lb of asparagus, a bottle of raspberry essence, and a pair of bath shoes, made out of an old shawl which Lady Thomas gave me years ago.
9.6.18
My dear Emmie,
Our potato rations are to be reduced, we hear, but as I see in Austria they have none left, and are on bread-rations of 2 ½ lb a week, we ought to be content! Here we have had 4 lb of bread a week till now, but from next Monday, it goes down to 3 ½ lb.
I am writing stupidly, but a girl in the next room is practising her singing exercises in a little high piping voice, and getting a semitone sharp at the end of every phrase. I always think of Herr Karg-Elert’s remark when he first heard her – Upper and lower register very indifferent, but one can confidently say that the middle register is very bad.
16.6.18
My dear Emmie,
I have been having tea with Connie Jaeger. Our friendship is a source of chronic wonder and interest to me, for we have not a single taste, thought, or opinion in common, beyond a mutual love of strong tea with plenty of milk. If I had to sum up her character, I should say she was one of the crassest materialists I have ever met, with a very good heart and quite devoid of soul. She would probably say of me that I am a waster of time, with no idea of what is really important in life, most unpractical, and with a somewhat perverted sense of morals. Our point of difference today was the never-ending subject of potatoes. It appears that her porter’s wife has been stealing them from the cellar – that is why our stock has run so low – Connie was outraged and she can’t realize that the experiences of the last four years have made that woman feel that she has a perfect right to steal from the rich, but is not going to demean herself by begging for the potatoes that she is quite willing to buy, if these same producers would sell them to her. But the strong tea is a great link, and Connie smuggles me in a quarter of lb of sausage every week from the farm, and I know how to touch up two grey patches in her beautiful red hair with henna, and altogether we are excellent friends!
23.6.18
My dear Emmie,
This is Midsummer-night – St. John’s night, they call it here, and for nearly a week we have had wild storms and hail, and now the thermometer is only about 8° above freezing. Against my will I have had to get out my winter coat and skirt. But I daren’t order a fire, much as I should like to – coal is so scarce and so expensive that it must be saved up for the winter.
30.6.18
My dear Emmie,
We are going to have a bad winter – even the official reports do not much try to disguise the fact that the harvest must be poor. I only hope we don’t have to live on swedes, as we did two years ago. I can eat potatoes or barley for every meal and be thankful, but swedes!
