Cooper, Ethel – October 1918
7.10.18
My dear Emmie,
We have gone off our heads (we means the handful of people who have held together and cheered each other up for the last four years) – we are walking in air trying not to triumph too openly or to sing aloud.
The furniture is selling very well indeed – I shall get on an average four times what it cost me! In another week, I think I shall be free of everything, and have about £200 for the day when the frontier is once more open.
I spend at least a couple of hours every morning and afternoon with Connie. Her memory is coming back with every day, but thank goodness, nothing that happened on the last day. We tell her that she fainted in the hall, and I hope she will continue to believe it.
13.10.18
My dear Emmie,
Another such week and there will be nothing left of us but a bundle of worn-out nerves hanging on a few dry bones. My new source of information (sorry to seem mysterious, but I am under promise) tells me that, whatever they are, they will be accepted. I am told that the artificial fog has utterly demoralized the Germans – (you stand there, unable to see an arm’s length before you, and through the fog rolls an army of tanks). Anyway they are said to be deserting to the enemy by regiments.
I hear today that the evacuation of Belgium has begun – not the military yet, but the civil authorities and employees.
The Spanish Grippe has broken out again, and this time with bad complications. Four people have died in this house and the next during the last few days.
20.10.18
My dear Emmie,
One only hears two questions this week – ‘Have you escaped the Grippe so far? And ‘Is the Kaiser going?’ The grippe, accompanied by inflammation of the lungs, or pleurisy, is raging.
The heavens are torn, something has happened to the ‘All-Highest’, and they are waiting breathless for the splash. And the man who for 30 years has lost no opportune or inopportune moment of letting himself be heard, sits silent……it seems to me that if we have not peace during the next few weeks, we shall have revolution, for this state of tension cannot last, and Bolschevism is as infectious a disease as the grippe.
27.10.18
My dear Emmie,
It is late – I was one of about 8,000 people at a huge meeting to hear Maximilian Harden speak….the gist of it….was – ‘Germany stands alone – her allies have capitulated…
Between looking after Connie, I wander the streets – I can’t sit in the house or work, or practise, or read anything but papers, or write anything but this one weekly letter.
…at least twice a day I get into an overcrowded tram, and go as far as it can take me and back, and listen to the common people’s talk; and one day I decide that next time I shall go out bareheaded and wrapped in an old shawl for safety, for the red Terror is at the doors, and the next day I decide that rabbits are more likely to rise against the gamekeeper than this people against the authorities – I don’t know – I am no good prophet, but all the same I have the old shawl ready!
