This little missive sums up the joy of “Teedie’s” winter in Egypt and Syria, and so it seems a fitting moment to turn to other interests and occupations, leaving the mysterious land of the pyramids and that sacred land of mountains and flowers behind us in a glow of child memories, which as year followed year became brighter rather than dimmer.
III
THE DRESDEN LITERARY AMERICAN CLUB
MOTTO “W. A. N. A.”
It was a sad change to the three young American children to settle in Dresden in two German families, after the care-free and stimulating experiences of Egypt and the Holy Land. Our wise parents, however, realized that a whole year of irregularity was a serious mistake in that formative period of our lives, and they also wished to leave no stone unturned to give us every educational advantage during our twelve months’ absence from home and country. It was decided, therefore, that the two boys should be placed in the family of Doctor and Mrs. Minckwitz, while I, a very lone and homesick small girl, was put with some kind but far too elderly people, Professor and Mrs. Wackernagel. This last arrangement was supposed to be advantageous, so that the brothers and sister should not speak too much English together. The kind old professor and his wife and the daughters, who seemed to the little girl of eleven years on the verge of the grave (although only about forty years of age), did all that was in their power to lighten the agonized longing in the child’s heart for her mother and sister, but to no avail, for I write to my mother, who had gone to Carlsbad for a cure: “I was perfectly miserable and very much unstrung when Aunt Lucy wrote to you that no one could mention your name or I would instantly begin to cry. Oh! Mother darling, sometimes I feel that I cannot stand it any longer but I am going to try to follow a motto which Father wrote to me, ‘Try to have the best time you can.’ I should be very sorry to disappoint Father but sometimes I feel as if I could not stand it any longer. We will talk it over when you come. Your own little Conie.”
Poor little girl! I was trying to be noble; for my father, who had been obliged to return to America for business reasons, had impressed me with the fact that to spend part of the summer in a German family and thus learn the language was an unusual opportunity, and one that must be seized upon. My spirit was willing, but my flesh was very, very weak, and the age of the kind people with whom I had been placed, the strange, dreadful, black bread, the meat that was given only as a great treat after it had been boiled for soup—everything, in fact, conduced to a feeling of great distance from the lovely land of buckwheat cakes and rare steak, not to mention the separation from the beloved brothers whom I was allowed to see only at rare intervals during the week. The consequence was that very soon my mother came back to Dresden in answer to the pathos of my letters, for I found it impossible to follow that motto, so characteristic of my father, “Try to have the best time you can.” I began to sicken very much as the Swiss mountaineers are said to lose their spirits and appetites when separated from their beloved mountains; so my mother persuaded the kind Minckwitz family to take me under their roof, as well as my brothers, and from that time forth there was no more melancholy, no bursting into poetic dirges constantly celebrating the misery of a young American in a German family.
From the time that I was allowed to be part of the Minckwitz family everything seemed to be fraught with interest and many pleasures as well as with systematic good hard work. In these days, when the word “German” has almost a sinister sound in the ears of an American, I should like to speak with affectionate respect of that German family in which the three little American children passed several happy months. The members of the family were typically Teutonic in many ways: the Herr Hofsrath was the kindliest of creatures, and his rubicund, smiling wife paid him the most loving court; the three daughters—gay, well-educated, and very temperamental young women—threw themselves into the work of teaching us with a hearty good will, which met with real response from us, as that kind of effort invariably does. Our two cousins, the same little cousins who had shared the happy summer memories of Madison, New Jersey, when we were much younger, were also in Dresden with their mother, Mrs. Stuart Elliott, the “Aunt Lucy” referred to frequently in our letters. Aunt Lucy was bravely facing the results of the sad Civil War, and her only chance of giving her children a proper education was to take them to a foreign country where the possibility of good schools, combined with inexpensive living, suited her depleted income. Her little apartment on Sunday afternoons was always open to us all, and there we, five little cousins formed the celebrated “D. L. A. C.” (Dresden Literary American Club!)
On June 2 I wrote to my friend “Edie”: “We five children have gotten up a club and meet every Sunday at Aunt Lucy’s, and read the poetry and stories that we have written during the week. When the book is all done, we will sell the book either to mother or Aunt Annie and divide the money; (although on erudition bent, still of commercial mind!) I am going to write poetry all the time. My first poem was called ‘A Sunny Day in June.’ Next time I am going to give ‘The Lament of an American in a German Family.’ It is an entirely different style I assure you.” The “different style” is so very poor that I refrain from quoting that illustrious poem.
The Dresden Literary American Club—Motto, “W. A. N. A.” (“We Are No Asses”).