"I hope it is a satisfaction to you to know how well pleased I am here and that I am absolutely content. I think I will indulge myself and get a jewel with your Xmas present. 'The Perfect One' loves to deck out in gems! I have been reading an essay on Tolstoi and I am took with an attack of asceticism, unequaled by any heretofore. This, following my last sentence, is charmingly typical of my character, is it not? There is one girl here who really might be very nice. She is eyed as being somewhat emancipated by the household I think, but I think it is only Youthful freshness of a first departure and inexperience in calculating the impression she makes on the style of her audience."
At the end of the same year Nelka went for four months to Sofia, Bulgaria where she stayed with the Russian Minister Mr. Bakhmeteff, my uncle and Madame Bakhmeteff who was an American and Nelka's godmother.
She enjoyed very much that stay in Bulgaria and had a very interesting and pleasant time and great success. From Sofia she wrote a number of letters which reflect both the interest of her stay there as well as the continued constant searching so typical of her youth, and perhaps of her whole life.
Sofia 1900.
"How can I tell you how I feel at being here. It is an entirely new world. So interesting and so beautiful! No one could be lovelier to me than Madame Bakhmeteff. She comes in to my room every two minutes and asks me if I have anything under the sun and seems so pleased to have me here. It is really delightful. I have a sitting room next to my bedroom all to myself, filled with every book that I have been longing to get hold of. Everything is so picturesque. I was delighted with Denmark but how different this is. There is something I respond to in that orderly, cold atmosphere, but I think there is more that I respond to in the Orient. How much more simple and less complicated the life is here. I was almost stopped at the Hungarian and Servian frontier because I had no passport. By the merest chance I had a very old one in my bag which was absolutely invalid but which, added to my absolute refusal to leave the train, got me by the three frontiers in the end. I called a Turk and a Servian who were in the same compartment to my rescue and for an hour or more carried on a heated discussion in every language. I am going to ride every day much to my delight. The diplomatic corps have to depend almost entirely on each other and it is very interesting being thrown with people of so many different nationalities. I have been living so fully it seems to me for the last three or four years and still always a crescendo. I don't know why I always write so much about myself—egotistical youth—but how I realize my youth. Even while youth itself makes my head whirl, I stand back within myself and say almost sadly—it is youth. It is sad in a way because I know that the reaction of great interest upon me is youth, and not the interest."
Sofia 1900.
"You speak of danger; I don't see where danger is. The worst evil is prejudice. Without prejudice and without too much drive for worldly attainments, I don't see much danger. I am satisfied as far as I myself am concerned. Every moment is exciting and the regret or irritation I feel against many existing conditions is not wholly disagreeable. This is youth, and when I am older I will jog along at a slower rate. I am not like you, or like almost anyone I know, but I admire and respect those most whom I resemble the least. I am one mass of contradictions to myself, perhaps, supremely self-centered."
Sofia 1900.
"The freedom I have, good or bad, does not depend on the external conditions of one's life. I have enough sense of what is practical to keep in certain lines. No conditions on earth would hamper me mentally and I want to get life-proof through living."
"How I hate business! More and more I am beginning to think less and less of what one accomplishes materially in this life. What does it matter? I think it is less help to be able to help those about one a little materially and be more or less a nonentity as an individual than to be able to mean something as a person with a heart and comprehension. There are some beautiful things in this life that everything organized tries to make hideous and monstrous and I would always say 'gather ye roses while ye may.' I think that every one has almost a right to some happiness and a certain indulgence and the 'droit de temperament,' means something and need not always be selfish. If you do not think this, then there is only the other extreme of austere abnegation of self for any cause however trivial. Nature is the only guide and I don't believe Nature is bad. Of course the curse of freedom will allow one for a long time to distort and vilely modify natural instincts, but at least one can fly from the too palpable artificial. Dear Poodie, don't sigh. I only let off steam in words—that is safe. I am still a slave to this disgusting civilization and always your very devoted 'Perfect One', that is to be, or might have been, Nelka."