Christine | Page 4

my knees for this.
There are four other boarders here,--three Germans and one Swede, and

the Swede and two of the Germans are women; and five outside people
come in for the midday dinner every day, all Germans, and four of
them are men. They have what they call Abonnementskarten for their
dinners, so much a month. Frau Berg keeps an Open Midday Table--it
is written up on a board on the street railing--and charges 1 mark 25
pfennigs a dinner if a month's worth of them is taken, and 1 mark 50
pfennigs if they're taken singly. So everybody takes the month's worth,
and it is going to be rather fun, I think. Today I was solemnly presented
to the diners, first collectively by Frau Berg as Unser junge englische
Gast, Mees--no, I can't write what she made of Cholmondeley, but
some day I'll pronounce it for you; and really it is hard on her that her
one English guest, who might so easily have been Evans, or Dobbs, or
something easy, should have a name that looks a yard long and sounds
an inch short--and then each of them to me singly by name. They all
made the most beautiful stiff bows. Some of them are students, I
gathered; some, I imagine, are staying here because they have no
homes,--wash-ups on the shores of life; some are clerks who come in
for dinner from their offices near by; and one, the oldest of the men and
the most deferred to, is a lawyer called Doctor something. I suppose my
being a stranger made them silent, for they were all very silent and stiff,
but they'll get used to me quite soon I expect, for didn't you once
rebuke me because everybody gets used to me much too soon? Being
the newest arrival I sat right at the end of the table in the darkness near
the door, and looking along it towards the light it was really impressive,
the concentration, the earnestness, the thoroughness, the skill, with
which the two rows of guests dealt with things like gravy on their
plates,--elusive, mobile things that are not caught without a struggle.
Why, if I can manage to apply myself to fiddling with half that skill
and patience I shall be back home again in six months!
I'm so sleepy, I must leave off and go to bed. I did sleep this morning,
but only for an hour or two; I was too much excited, I think, at having
really got here to be able to sleep. Now my eyes are shutting, but I do
hate leaving off, for I'm not going to write again till Sunday, and that is
two whole days further ahead, and you know my precious mother it's
the only time I shall feel near you, when I'm talking to you in letters.
But I simply can't keep my eyes open any longer, so goodnight and
good-bye my own blessed one, till Sunday. All my heart's love to you.

Your Chris.
We have supper at eight, and tonight it was cold herrings and fried
potatoes and tea. Do you think after a supper like that I shall be able to
dream of anybody like you?

_Sunday, May 31st, 1914.
Precious mother,
I've been dying to write you at least six times a day since I posted my
letter to you the day before yesterday, but rules are rules, aren't they,
especially if one makes them oneself, because then the poor little things
are so very helpless, and have to be protected. I couldn't have looked
myself in the face if I'd started off by breaking my own rule, but I've
been thinking of you and loving you all the time--oh, so much!
Well, I'm very happy. I'll say that first, so as to relieve your darling
mind. I've seen Kloster, and played to him, and he was fearfully kind
and encouraging. He said very much what Ysaye said in London, and
Joachim when I was little and played my first piece to him standing on
the dining-room table in Eccleston Square and staring fascinated, while
I played, at the hairs of his beard, because I'd never been as close as
that to a beard before. So I've been walking on clouds with my chin
well in the air, as who wouldn't? Kloster is a little round, red, bald man,
the baldest man I've ever seen; quite bald, with hardly any eyebrows,
and clean-shaven as well. He's the funniest little thing till you join him
to a violin, and then--! A year with him ought to do wonders for me. He
says so too; and when I had finished playing--it was the G minor
Bach--you know,--the one with the fugue beginning:
[Transcriber's note: A Lilypond rendition of the