Читать книгу "Not I, but the Wind..." - Frieda von Richthofen Lawrence - Страница 16

Adr. Frau Karl Krenkow

Waldbröl—Rheinprovinz

It’s really very nice here—Hannah is very bright and so decent with me. Her husband is “a very good man”—uninteresting. She never loved him—married him because she was thirty and time going by. Already she’s quite fond of me—but do not mind, she is perfectly honourable—the last word of respectability. Then there is “Opar-O’pa”—how do you spell it?—Stülchen. He is seventy-three—a lovely old man—really a sweet disposition, and no fool. Now he is really lovable. It was Kermesse at one of the villages yesterday—Sunday—and we went to look. It was jolly. Onkel Stülchen bought us a Herz—a great heart of cake, covered with sugar, and sugar grapes, and sugar roses, and a bird, a dove—and three pieces of poetry. It’s rather quaint. Strange, how deep symbolism is in your soil. Herr Stülchen brought up Hannah, since she was five years old. Her father was killed—or died awhile after the Franco-Prussian War. Now I am fond of him.

Here, I am so respectable, and so good—it is quite a rest. We are not dull. Hannah is really intelligent. We amuse ourselves a good deal with my German. In three months here I should know quite a lot.

It’s a quiet, dead little village—miles from everywhere—rather pretty in a tame sort of way—a bit Englishy. Once they let me begin, I shall knock off quite a lot of work. There is that novel on my conscience.

I write in the morning, when one is wonderfully sane. Waldbröl is good for my health—it is cooler, more invigorating. Trier was like a perpetual Turkish bath. I like this air.

If you must go to England—must you?—go before I leave Waldbröl. Don’t leave me stranded in some unearthly German town. How are you? I am not going to sound worried over you, because I am so a bit. You might write to me and tell me a few significant details. The tragedy will begin to slacken off from now, I think.

I wrote to you yesterday, but it wasn’t a nice letter, so I didn’t send it. Things are better, surely, and growing better—oh yes!