Letter 8

Read by Delia Corrie

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26.2.32 Potsdam

… Can you remember what it was like to wonder what it was like to be overworked? Or have you always been snowed under? That reminds me – if I don’t blow long notes now, I shan’t get ‘em in today – because I have to help entertain a tea party this afternoon.

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I never blew long notes. I forgot I wasn’t beautiful enough for a party, and it took nearly half an hour to make the change, as nearly everything needed mending.. And now, to add to the joys of life the Grafin complains my dress is too short and I’ve got to let it down. Do you wonder I’m fed up with being a girl? Catch a man putting a false hem on the bottom of his trousers if someone told him they were too short! I don’t suppose you know what a false hem is!

But I must tell you all I know about this orchestra I mentioned: though that’s little enough. It is from Budapest. Arrayed in gypsy costume we ogle the audience and play Hungarian Folk tunes, the way they do in films. And that’s absodamnlutely all I know, except that it’s a pretty poor orchestra, that it will tour Scandinavia, and that I have got to ask 30RM a day (!!) I tell you, I don’t know whether I’m an abject fool or a monument of commonsense. Such is life, all muddle and madness. And I am coming back at the beginning of July, no matter where I may be in June – unless of course I fall into a Fiord and drown or fall foul of an army of Nazis.

But away with the future, and I’ll give you a short account of the past.

“Oh! My prophetic soul! - “I shan’t tell you much about the Carnival dance except that I was shocked myself (that’s nothing to go by, as I have always been an innocent young thing) that it was ludicrously like a coloured film of an impossible nightclub, and that I found it extremely amusing – in fact I didn’t get to bed till seven on Sunday morning, and felt deadly for the rest of the day.

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Excuse this letter’s being so spasmodic – but I always ought to be doing something else when I’m writing it – and every now and then my better self conquers and I do whatever it happens to be that I wasn’t – if you get my meaning. Well, on Tuesday the Graf, the Grafin and I all went to see “Yorck” at the local cinema. That was a film! On my left the Grafin sniffed and plied her handkerchief, on my right the Graf permitted himself a manly gulp. I sat in the middle and mopped up the tears as they dripped off my chin. It was marvellous! The only time I allow myself the luxury of a good cry is in a cinema, so it feels doubly comfortable. On Wednesday, Heaven help me, I washed the handkerchiefs that I subsequently scorched…….On Friday Tra! La! I had an exam: Yes, sir! And I passed. Unfortunately honesty compels me to confess there are two snags. 1) I was top (a) of the whole bally division or (b) only of my little batch – which consisted of an earnest and incompetent young man, a child who took no interest in theory of music than I do in tropical diseases, a lively little Jewess who had been absent more than half the term, and myself? Snag II is more formidable. Well, to begin with I arrived at eleven, and we were examined at 12.30. By this time the examiners were distinctly bored with life, so while I played cadences on the piano sotto voce temperamentvoll, they flirted with the little Jewess. No one attended to me. Then suddenly Prof. Tiessen awoke to his responsibilities and asked me a question which the dull young man answered, and that was all. Can you wonder that a) I passed, and b) I am not suffering from swelled head?

Must to bed … goodnight