Ch. 1: May

(_underscores_ denote italics)

Lutzowstrasse 49, Berlin, Thursday, May 28th, 1914.

My blessed little mother,

Here I am safe, and before I unpack or do a thing I'm writing you a
little line of love. I sent a telegram at the station, so that you'll
know at once that nobody has eaten me on the way, as you seemed rather
to fear. It is wonderful to be here, quite on my own, as if I were a
young man starting his career. I feel quite solemn, it's such a great
new adventure, Kloster can't see me till Saturday, but the moment I've
had a bath and tidied up I shall get out my fiddle and see if I've
forgotten how to play it between London and Berlin. If only I can be
sure you aren't going to be too lonely! Beloved mother, it will only
be a year, or even less if I work fearfully hard and really get on, and
once it is over a year is nothing. Oh, I know you'll write and tell me
you don't mind a bit and rather like it, but you see your Chris hasn't
lived with you all her life for nothing; she knows you very well
now,--at least, as much of your dear sacred self that you will show
her. Of course I know you're going to be brave and all that, but one
can be very unhappy while one is being brave, and besides, one isn't
brave unless one is suffering. The worst of it is that we're so poor,
or you could have come with me and we'd have taken a house and set up
housekeeping together for my year of study. Well, we won't be poor for
ever, little mother. I'm going to be your son, and husband, and
everything else that loves and is devoted, and I'm going to earn both
our livings for us, and take care of you forever. You've taken care of
me till now, and now it's my turn. You don't suppose I'm a great
hulking person of twenty two, and five foot ten high, and with this
lucky facility in fiddling, for nothing? It's a good thing it is
summer now, or soon will be, and you can work away in your garden, for
I know that is where you are happiest; and by the time it's winter
you'll be used to my not being there, and besides there'll be the
spring to look forward to, and in the spring I come home, finished.
Then I'll start playing and making money, and we'll have the little
house we've dreamed of in London, as well as our cottage, and we'll be
happy ever after. And after all, it is really a beautiful arrangement
that we only have each other in the world, because so we each get the
other's concentrated love. Else it would be spread out thin over a
dozen husbands and brothers and people. But for all that I do wish
dear Dad were still alive and with you.

This pension is the top fiat of a four-storied house, and there isn't a
lift, so I arrived breathless, besides being greatly battered and all
crooked after my night sitting up