Berlin, Wednesday, July 8th, 1914
Beloved mother,
Kloster says I'm to go into the country this very week and not come back for a whole fortnight. This is just a line to tell you this, and that he has written to a forester's family he knows living in the depths of the forests up beyond Stettin. They take in summer-boarders, and have had pupils of his before, and he is arranging with them for me to go there this very next Saturday.
Do you mind, darling mother? I mean, my doing something so suddenly without asking you first? But I'm like the tail being wagged by the dog, obliged to wag whether it wants to or not. I'm very unhappy at being shovelled off like this, away from my lessons for two solid weeks, but it's no use my protesting. One can't protest with Kloster. He says he won't teach me any more if I don't go. He was quite angry at last when I begged, and said it wouldn't be worth his while to go on teaching any one so stale with over-practising when they weren't fit to practise, and that if I didn't stop, all I'd ever be able to do would be to play in the second row of violins—(not even the first!)—at a pantomime. That shrivelled me up into silence. Horror-stricken silence. Then he got kind again, and said I had this precious gift—God, he said, alone knew why I had got it, I a woman; what, he asked, staring prawnishly, is the good of a woman's having such a stroke of luck?—and that it was a great responsibility, and I wasn't to suppose it was my gift only, to spoil and mess up as I chose, but that it belonged to the world. When he said that, cold shivers trickled down my spine. He looked so solemn, and he made me feel so solemn, as though I were being turned, like Wordsworth in The Prelude, into a dedicated spirit.
But I expect he is right, and it is time I went where it is cooler for a little while. I've been getting steadily angrier at nothing all the week, and more and more fretted by the flies, and one day—would you believe it—I actually sat down and cried with irritation because of those silly flies. I've had to promise not to touch a fiddle for the first week I'm away, and during the second week not to work more than two hours a day, and then I may come back if I feel quite well again. He says he'll be at Heringsdorf, which is a seaside place not very far away from where I shall be, for ten days himself, and will come over and see if I'm being good. He says the Koseritz's country place isn't far from where I shall be, so I shan't feel as if I didn't know a soul anywhere. The Koseritz party at which I was to play never came off. I was glad of that. I didn't a bit want to play at it, or bother about it, or anything else. The hot weather drove the Grafin into the country, Herr von Inster told me, He too seems to think I ought to go away. I saw him this afternoon after being with Kloster, and he says he'll go down to his aunt's—that is Grafin Koseritz—while I'm in the neighbourhood, and will ride over and see me. I'm sure you'd like him very much. My address will be:
bei Herrn Oberforster Bornsted
Schuppenfelde
Reg. Bez. Stettin.
I don't know what Reg. Bez. means. I've copied it from a card Kloster gave me, and I expect you had better put it on the envelope. I'll write and tell you directly I get there. Don't worry about me, little mother; Kloster says they are fearfully kind people, and it's the healthiest place, in the heart of the forest, away on the edge of a thing they call the Haff, which is water. He says that in a week I shall be leaping about like a young roe on the hill side; and he tries to lash me to enthusiasm by talking of all the wild strawberries there are there, and all the cream.
My heart's love, darling mother.
Your confused and rather hustled Chris.
