Berlin, Tuesday, June 30th, 1914.
Darling mother,
How splendid that you're going to Switzerland next month with the Cunliffes. I do think it is glorious, and it will make you so strong for the winter. And think how much nearer you'll be to me! I always suspected Mrs. Cunliffe of being secretly an angel, and now I know it. Your letter has just come and I simply had to tell you how glad I am.
Chris.
This isn't a letter, it's a cry of joy.
Berlin, Sunday, July 5th, 1914.
My blessed little mother,
It has been so hot this week. We've been sweltering up here under the roof. If you are having it anything like this at Chertsey the sooner you persuade the Cunliffes to leave for Switzerland the better. Just the sight of snow on the mountains out of your window would keep you cool. You know I told you my bedroom looks onto the Lutzowstrasse and the sun beats on it nearly all day, and flies in great numbers have taken to coming up here and listening to me play, and it is difficult to practise satisfactorily while they walk about enraptured on my neck. I can't swish them away, because both my hands are busy. I wish I had a tail.
Frau Berg says there never used to be flies in this room, and suggests with some sternness that I brought them with me,—the eggs, I suppose, in my luggage. She is inclined to deny that they're here at all, on the ground chiefly that nothing so irregular as a fly out of its proper place, which is, she says, a manure heap, is possible in Germany. It is too well managed, is Germany, she says. I said I supposed she knew that because she had seen it in the newspapers. I was snappy, you see. The hot weather makes me disposed, I'm afraid, to impatience with Frau Berg. She is so large, and she seems to soak up what air there is, and whenever she has sat on a chair it keeps warm afterwards for hours. If only some clever American with inventions rioting in his brain would come here and adapt her to being an electric fan! I want one so badly, and she would be beautiful whirling round, and would make an immense volume of air, I'm sure.
Well, darling one, you see I'm peevish. It's because I'm so hot, and it doesn't get cool at night. And the food is so hot too and so greasy, and the pallid young man with the red mouth who sits opposite me at dinner melts visibly and continuously all the time, and Wanda coming round with the dishes is like the coming of a blast of hot air. Kloster says I'm working too much, and wants me to practise less. I said I didn't see that practising less would make Wanda and the young man cooler. I did try it one day when my head ached, and you've no idea what a long day it seemed. So empty. Nothing to do. Only Berlin. And one feels more alone in Berlin than anywhere in the world, I think. Kloster says it's because I'm working too much, but I don't see how working less would make Berlin more companionable. Of course I'm not a bit alone really, for there is Kloster, who takes a very real and lively interest in me and is the most delightful of men, and there is Herr von Inster, who has been twice to see me since that day I lunched at his aunt's, and everybody in this house talks to me now,—more to me, I think, than to any other of the boarders, because I'm English and they seem to want to educate me out of it. And Hilda Seeberg has actually got as far in friendship as a cautious invitation to have chocolate with her one afternoon some day in the future at Wertheim's; and the pallid young man has suggested showing me the Hohenzollern museum some Sunday, where he can explain to me, by means of relics, the glorious history of that high family, as he put it; and Frau Berg, though she looks like some massive Satan, isn't really satanic I expect; and Dr. Krummlaut says every day as he comes into the diningroom rubbing his hands and passes my chair, "Na, was macht England?" which is a sign he is being gracious. It is only a feeling, this of being completely alone. But I've got it, and the longer I'm here and the better I know people the greater it becomes. It's an uneasiness. I feel as if my spirit were alone,—the real, ultimate and only bit of me that is me and that matters.