Ethel Cooper – January 1915
3.1.15
My dear Emmie,
My first letter to you in the new year, and the 23rd that is waiting to be posted to you some day.
I don’t seem to have much to write about now-a-days. One reads the newspapers for an hour or two every morning, trying to weed out what may be true from what one knows to be lies. I don’t think that the German papers are worse that any others…
Herr Lange has been in Leipzig drilling recruits till now, but last week he was ordered out – he is in the West. He says he has been in the fortified ditches… (I don’t know the technical name in English – they are called Schutzen-graben in German), and he was knee deep in mud and rain. All the cards from the West say the same – in the East it is bitterly cold but the frost has hardened on the ground and it is drier…
11.1.15
My dear Emmie,
I have just had another card from Jeannie and a long letter and account from Mr. Bullock. He has sent £10 by Jeannie, and as soon as he hears that it has come safely, will send me money regularly. It is such a relief – you can’t think how uncomfortable it has been for the last six months…
Tomorrow we are going to a charity concert where Richard Strauss is conducting three of his works. I have not seen him conduct for many years, and I saw him by chance in the street today. He is barely 50, but he is getting old and grey…
18.1.15
My dear Emmie,
We are very sad today, for our Cheops has suddenly died. It was very cold, and meaning well by him I let him sleep up against the stove – I think it was too warn, anyway he got an intestinal chill, says the curator at the zoo, and died last night…
Sandor and I are seriously considering the question of his coming to live with me… he should take my bedroom and the room that opens out of it… That would leave me my sitting room and the spare room and the dining room… Of course, outsiders will gossip, but they can’t gossip more than they have done for a long time past…
I have no outside news of any sort. About one a week we go to a café where one could see 200 newspapers daily from all parts of the world. There are very few now, but one finds a ‘Times’ three or four days old… and I read them greedily…
It is bitterly cold… it is a tragedy for the winter harvest, for it will be ruined and goodness knows it will be badly needed. We have had orders to be sparing with gas in private houses and in the streets it is on half strength. I believe everyone is going to plant the gardens with vegetables instead of flowers in the spring. The general opinion is that Germany cannot be starved out if people begin to be economical in good times…
I must take Cheops to the zoo – I want to have his skin. Sandor says he will have it made into a pocket book or a writing case.
25.1.15
My dear Emmie,
So much has happened since I last wrote that I scarcely know where to begin…
Herr Lambrino… took me out for a walk – said nothing for half an hour, but… suddenly blustered ‘I am leaving for Holland on Monday to marry Miss Feez… The we move to Berlin and I want to persuade you and Vas to come too.’… As far as Sandor and I are concerned, our incomes are the same there as here, and the chances of work for him are far greater there…
