Christine

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

Berlin, Sunday, June 28th. Evening.

Beloved little mother,

I didn't write this morning, but went for a whole day into the woods, because it was such a hot day and I longed to get away from Berlin. I've been wandering about Potsdam. It is only half an hour away in the train, and is full of woods and stretches of water, as well as palaces. Palaces weren't the mood I was in. I wanted to walk and walk, and get some of the pavement stiffness out of my legs, and when I was tired sit down under a tree and eat the bread and chocolate I took with me and stare at the sky through leaves. So I did.

I've had a most beautiful day, the best since I left you. I didn't speak to a soul all day, and found a place up behind Sans Souci on the edge of a wood looking out over a ryefield to an old windmill, and there I sat for hours; and after I had finished remembering what I could of the Scholar Gypsy, which is what one generally does when one sits in summer on the edge of a cornfield, I sorted out my thoughts. They've been getting confused lately in the rush of work day after day, as confused as the drawer I keep my gloves and ribbons in, thrusting them in as I take them off and never having time to tidy. Life tears along, and I have hardly time to look at my treasures. I'm going to look at them and count them up on Sundays. As the summer goes on I'll pilgrimage out every Sunday to the woods, as regularly as the pious go to church, and for much the same reason,—to consider, and praise, and thank.

I took your two letters with me, reading them again in the woods. They seemed even more dear out there where it was beautiful. You sound so content, darling mother, about me, and so full of belief in me. You may be very sure that if a human being, by trying and working, can justify your dear belief it's your Chris. The snapshot of the border full of Canterbury bells makes me able to picture you. Do you wear the old garden hat I loved you so in when you garden? Tell me, because I want to think of you exactly. It makes my mouth water, those Canterbury bells. I can see their lovely colours, their pink and blue and purple, with the white Sweet Williams and the pale lilac violas you write about. Well, there's nothing of that in the Lutzowstrasse. No wonder I went away from it this morning to go out and look for June in the woods. The woods were a little thin and austere, for there has been no rain lately, but how enchanting after the barren dustiness of my Berlin street! I did love it so. And I felt so free and glorious, coming off on my own for my hard-earned Sunday outing, just like any other young man.

The train going down was full of officers, and they all looked very smart and efficient and satisfied with themselves and life. In my compartment they were talking together eagerly all the way, talking shop with unaffected appetite, as though shop were so interesting that even on Sundays they couldn't let it be, and poring together over maps. No trace of stolidity. But where is this stolidity one has heard about? Compared to the Germans I've seen, it is we who are stolid; stolid, and slow, and bored. The last thing these people are is bored. On the contrary, the officers had that same excitement about them, that same strung-upness, that the men boarders at Frau Berg's have.

Potsdam is charming, and swarms with palaces and parks. If it hadn't been woods I was after I would have explored it with great interest. Do you remember when you read Carlyle's Frederick to me that winter you were trying to persuade me to learn to sew? And, bribing me to sew, you read aloud? I didn't learn to sew, but I did learn a great deal about Potsdam and Hohenzollerns, and some Sunday when it isn't quite so fine I shall go down and visit Sans Souci, and creep back into the past again. But today I didn't want walls and roofs, I wanted just to walk and walk. It was very crowded in the train coming back, full of people who had been out for the day, and weary little children were crying, and we all sat heaped up anyhow. I know I clutched two babies on my lap, and that they showed every sign of having no self-control. They were very sweet, though, and I wouldn't have minded it a bit if I had had lots of skirts; but when you only have two!

Wanda was very kind, and brought me some secret coffee and bread and butter to my room when I told her I had walked at least ten miles and was too tired to go into supper. She cried out "Herr Je!"—which I'm afraid is short for Lord Jesus, and is an exclamation dear to her—and seized the coffee pot at once and started heating it up. I remembered afterwards that German miles are three times the size of English ones, so no wonder she said Herr Je. But just think: I haven't seen a single boarder for a whole day. I do feel so much refreshed.

You know I told you in my last letter I was going to lunch with the Koseritzes on Monday, and so I did, and the chief thing that happened there, was that I was shy. Imagine it. So shy that I blushed and dropped things. For years I haven't thought of what I looked like when I've been with other people, because for years other people have been so absorbingly interesting that I forgot I was there too; but at the Koseritzes I suddenly found myself remembering, greatly to my horror, that I have a face, and that it goes about with me wherever I go, and that parts of it are—well, I don't like them. And I remembered that my hair had been done in a hurry, and that the fingers of my left hand have four hard lumps on their tips where they press the strings of my fiddle, and that they're very ugly, but then one can't have things both ways, can one. Also I became aware of my clothes, and we know how fatal that is when they are weak clothes like mine, don't we, little mother? You used to exhort me to put them on with care and concentration, and then leave them to God. Such sound advice! And I've followed it so long that I do completely forget them; but last Monday I didn't. They were urged on my notice by Grafin Koseritz's daughter, whose eyes ran over me from head to foot and then back again when I came in. She was the neatest thing—aus dem Ei gegossen, as they express perfect correctness of appearance. I suddenly knew, what I have always suspected, that I was blowsy,—blowsy and loose-jointed, with legs that are too long and not the right sort of feet. I hated my Beethovenkopf and all its hair. I wanted to have less hair, and for it to be drawn neatly high off my face and brushed and waved in beautiful regular lines. And I wanted a spotless lacy blouse, and a string of pearls round my throat, and a perfectly made blue serge skirt without mud on it,—it was raining, and I had walked. Do you know what I felt like? A goodnatured thing. The sort of creature people say generously about afterwards, "Oh, but she's so goodnatured."

Grafin Koseritz was terribly kind to me, and that made me shyer than ever, for I knew she was trying to put me at my ease, and you can imagine how shy that made me. I blushed and dropped things, and the more I blushed and dropped things the kinder she was. And all the time my contemporary, Helena, looked at me with the same calm eyes. She has a completely emotionless face. I saw no trace of a passion for music or for anything else in it. She made no approaches of any sort to me, she just calmly looked at me. Her mother talked with the extreme vivacity of the hostess who has a difficult party on hand. There was a silent governess between two children. Junkerlets still in the school-room, who stared uninterruptedly at me and seemed unsuccessfully endeavouring to place me; there was a young lady cousin who talked during the whole meal in an undertone to Helena; and there was Graf Koseritz, an abstracted man who came in late, muttered something vague on being introduced to me and told I was a new genius Kloster had unearthed, sat down to his meal from which he did not look up again, and was monosyllabic when his wife tried to draw him in and make the conversation appear general. And all the time, while lending an ear to her cousin's murmur of talk, Helena's calm eyes lingered on one portion after the other of your poor vulnerable Chris.