Cooper, Ethel – September 1916
3.9.16
My dear Emmie,
Things are happening so fast that one can scarcely write them down – Rumania has declared war on Austria – Italy on Germany – Germany on Rumania – turkey too and now, after nearly a week’s anxiety and pressure – Bulgaria on Rumania. Luckily we seem to have that beastly little Greece more of less safely in our hands…
We have got an egg-card now, which entitles one to one egg a week, but I have not been able to find my one egg yet.
Personally I flourish on bread, potatoes, a little, very expensive smoked fish and a filthy jam make with saccharine instead of sugar…
I have had a letter from Mrs Oldenburg in Lausanne saying that £25 has arrived for me…
I was …with Mrs Jaeger all the afternoon – they have half a dozen Russian prisoners quartered there to help with the harvest… they were peasants, and all but one came from Siberia. Next time I will take them some cigarettes, but of course the Jaegers treat them well, and Mrs Jaeger spoils them when-ever the inspector is not about…
10.9.16
This was the account of the sudden police raid which turned my flat simply inside out in search of compromising papers and a diary – I had laid those letters to you in between pages of my full scores of Beethoven’s quartets each week and they somehow escaped…
17.9.16
My dear Emmie,
My letter writing will get duller and duller now, and it would be wiser if I gave up writing altogether and burnt the last year’s letters, but I shall chance it and go on!…
24.9.16
My dear Emmie,
I am so sleepy after a sumptuous dinner at Frau Jaeger’s, that I can scarcely see. One so seldom has meat, or much to eat, that when one does it makes one absolutely comatose! And today it was a huge duck, a thing I have not seen for a year… You see, even poultry-owners are obliged to deliver the eggs to the municipality and are only allowed one egg a week, so Frau Jaeger made up her mind to eat her poultry before any law on the subject came in to force!
