Jon Bouman to the Bouman Family

Jon Bouman to the Bouman Family

Bouman, Jon Anthony, 1873-1958

WWP23087

1920 April 11

Letter from Jon Bouman to his family.

Gift of William C. and Evelina Suhler

Germany--History--1918-1933

Correspondence

Berlin, Germany

Rachel Dark

Denise Montgomery

English

PROOFREADING

Evelina Suhler is the granddaughter of Jon Anthony Bouman and inherited the family collection of his letters from the years of World War I. She and her husband gave the letters to the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum in 2013.

Sunday evening
April 11, s ‘20

Dearest;--

Last Thursday, on looking in my dinky little letterbox in between the double doors of my room, I found yours of April 2 which had therefore taken 6 days to come. What joy! and in it I read that you had sent another letter or letters to the Central, whither I hied myself instanter, so I found one letter there enclosing more from the girlies, to my great content. Did you send more than one to the Central?

I am glad to hear that you have met some congenial people, the Blackmores. I laughed when I read that Mrs. B. had been travelling for six years to visit relatives, and had now come home! About time, I think!!

Herewith I send a copy of a letter I got from Yonath the other day. Of course I have written to Collins at once, also to Yonath. This is just a piece of lyrical tomfoolery – everybody shifting the responsibility for some definite action on to somebody else. However I suppose the matter will soon be settled now, this being a formality to have it black or white for recording purposes. I imagine.

Glad to hear all your news about Auntie Pell and Minnie Bacon who seems to have found the Wagram Hotel satisfactory. It is always rather a difficult matter to recommend a hotel. I want to thank Mary and Betty for their nice letters and am pleased to hear they got honours at school. But Mary must not do any more “moddeling” or she will get muddled. Ha ha! What a joke. Laugh, loud and long! Oh yes, I have splendid dinners although I get no milk in my tea and no butter on my bread. Shoulder of deer, and leg of wild boar, and things like that, don’t you know!

Talking about tea, there is “tea” and “real tea”. I had some this afternoon. A cup of hot water, with a dash of brown liquid from a teapot that had been steaming since last month. How I shall enjoy tea when I get home again, with real milk. Just think there are children here of three years old who never tasted a drop of fresh milk! I had a long talk yesterday with the leaders of the American Society of Friends who are running children’s feeding here. Hoover gives free transportation of food from America and they are feeding 36000 children and nursing mothers in Berlin and soon they will be feeding 100,000, or 750,000 in all Germany, which is divided into 11 districts superintended by subcommittees. They are doing splendid work, and the people are very grateful for it. Enclosed is a week’s menu for you to see what they get.

Days fly past, and this job is more like the Holland job than Paris, as I have no hours, all hours are working hours, also Sundays but there is plenty of variety and I don’t mind as I have no home to go to. Enderis being a bachelor, devotes himself to his work, same as Collins, and I must say he is at it hard all the time. When I come in at 10 a.m. he is already there, and he is still working often after 10 p.m. Then of course he complains he has no system and flies about & neglects food at the proper time , but I quietly take mine when the time comes to have it; it is foolish to do otherwise, and one accomplishes after all no more.

The weather has been gorgeous today also – only one day of steady rain last week which was just the thing needed and everything has sprouted amazingly. The Tiergarten through which I walked this afternoon, is looking charming.

I have just had dinner in my auriferous splendiferous hotel; Saturday night and Sunday night are something of gala nights and I have and I have been amusing myself at the sights and the frights and their clothes. Some of them are killing! O.Wers all of them, you would be amused. Men with cropped hair and no necks, and women!! least said soonest mended. Old Herr Lorenz Adlon, the proprietor, comes in and bows ceremonially to all the tables. He now has only one bow, he used to have three: (drawing of a 45 degree bow) to an ordinary guest;
(drawing of a 90 degree bow) to anybody with a title, and (drawing of a 135 degree bow) to members of the Court. He is a funny old cove, tall and thin, with a shock of silver hair, he is overy 70 and started as a wine merchant. He has managed almost all hotels in Europe in his time and then built the Adlon, which cost 4 million pounds. He had only 3, so the Kaiser advanced him the other million.

This is certainly a model hotel; the rooms replete with every convenience, and that is no exaggeration. All the furniture & fittings are good, of sound workmanship, but you never saw such a dining room! Adams, Empire, Louis XVI in an inextricable medley, and to crown it all, the newest of new German arty metal medallions let into the walls, which scream at you, and the whole thing gives you mental indigestion. The room is paneled with rosewood; very excellent and genuine, but simply crammed with “decorative” schemes and gilt (!!) in parts. Imagine gilt rosewood! As for the beautiful coffee pots (“bean” coffee) they have they have gilt metal covers and handles of the most extravagantly ugly kind. And the jam is the “official” jam, like nothing else in the world, but one has got to eat it instead of butter.

Unter der Liden is a fine broad thoroughfare about a mile long, with a linden-planted promenade down the centre. Smart shops and office buildings, type of Pall Mall or Piccadilly.

At one end is the old palace where the ex-Kaiser’s grandfather William I lived. He used to have his bath only on Saturday nights, and as the palace didn’t boast of a bathroom, a sitzbath was carried across every Saturday from the Hotel de Rome across the street. But in his latter years the spirit of progress triumphed, the Emperor had his own bathroom installed, but unfortunately he slipped on the wet floor and stubbed his toe whereupon he became very angry and swore he would have his old bathtub back again from over the way. That is the story, and anyone who doesn’t believe it has to pay me half a crown.

Thanks very much for those French camards. I got two of them together the other day. They will be much appreciated by my confreres of Havas. One of the German cartoonists is very funny today about Reuters new office; the picture is that of “Auntie Reuter” –a slanderous old party” an awful looking female in a poke bonnet owned only one tooth looking out of a window grinning. I cut it out for Moloney who nearly had a fitwith laughter, and it is going to be sent to Sir Roderick Jones, in London.

I see that Perry Robinson has got a knighthood. He is a newspaper (Times I think) correspondent who once made a fearful fool of himself at The Hague. Some joker told him that the frequent advertisements of “Ant. Deden Englelscher” (Bill will remember) was an anti-English manifestation, and he telegraphed that as showing how anti-English the Dutch of The Hague were!!! I am told positively it appeared in his paper. What do you think of that? Another half crown if you don’t believe it.

A Paris acquaintance named Burr Price (what’s in a name?) has just passed through coming from Warsaw, en route for Paris and Washington. He had fearful stories about typhus raging in Poland. This is truly an awful world!

Kiss the bairns for me, and with all my love,

Thine forever,

Jack.

Letter

Bouman Family