Cooper, Ethel – October 1915
3.10.15
My dear Emmie,
… I am just back from a hospital in the suburbs, where 500 wounded soliders are quartered – I was asked to go and play to them, and though much astonished, I did not want to refuse…
Sandor has sent me a photograph of himse;f in uniform – he looks very comic and he feels ridiculous, poor dear. He drills for a week, and then is pronounced unfit and is put to military office work, for which he is equally unsuitable, He hopes to get free… but I doubt him being allowed to come back so easily…
Everything is very expensive and rises each week. Margarine has run out – they say the imported fats are exhausted now, nothing more comes in, so everything that has fat of any sort is enormously dear…
10.10.15
My dear Emmie,
I have spent most of the time helping Mrs Jaeger move from one flat into another. There are so few workmen to be had, that moving is a disgusting process now, and money does not help much.
17.10.15
My dear Emmie,
I am dreadfully worried at hearing from Harrie that you are ill – she is very kind and has written twice… I am waiting anxiously for the next mail…
I have been filling in a list of what copper and nickel I have, or rather not filling it in. Your copper water jug will have to go – it is so obviously copper that it can’t be saved, but Aunt Sarah’s soup tureen… which I suspect of being silvered nickel, I am classing as silver. It is not going to make German bullets if I can help it…
24.10.15
My dear Emmie,
I have only been at home on one afternoon, and that was on Wednesday when what we call the Allied Tea Party met here. [English and Russian women, married to Germans.]… We meet in one house or another every week to keep our spirits up…
The potatoes are being held up by the food usurers and the animals haven’t their usual food, so the fowls won’t lay… and milk is very scarce. What are the poor people to eat now? Practically nothing but potatoes.
I must get a frock for the evening – I am in rags. Most other people are too, but that doesn’t console me…
From your loving,
Ethel
