Jon Bouman to the Bouman Family

Title

Jon Bouman to the Bouman Family

Creator

Bouman, Jon Anthony, 1873-1958

Identifier

WWP23092

Date

1920 May 9

Description

Letter from Jon Bouman to his family.

Source

Gift of William C. and Evelina Suhler

Subject

Germany--History--1918-1933
Correspondence
Berlin, Germany

Contributor

Rachel Dark
Denise Montgomery

Language

English

Requires

PROOFREADING

Provenance

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.

Text

Hotel Adlon
Unter der Linden, Berlin
Jurmany, Sunday
May 9

My dear bairns,

It is about time you had a letter all to yourselves, but I have been so busy that I have never been able to write except to mother.

First of all, I got your two nice little letters of last Saturday, May 2. They came yesterday, so it took about a week to get them. You must have had a nice time at the Zoo. I never knew the elephants were fond of banana skins – I am not, and I am nearly an elephant, as I am getting so fat. Oh dear! there I have told you a secret which I meant to keep for mother. The owl with the heavy eyelids must have looked like me when I get up in the morning, or rather afternoon, as I work at night now.

This afternoon I took a walk with a gentleman from London, whom I knew only slightly and what do you think? He lives in Southwood Lane, and his name is Russell. He lives in one of those houses near the village with the porches over the doors. And what do you think again? He used to live in Stanhope Gardens before, (near Northwood Rd)

I am surprised that you have had rainy days. Here it is fine almost every day. Summer has come in, because the fountain in the hotel garden is running now. There is a garden much like that one at the Three Steden Hotel, which you could see from my room, do you remember? Well, my room here overlooks the garden too, and in the middle of it stands a fountain, like a Japanese pagoda, on four bronze elephants, and around the basin sit eight bronze frogs which spit water into the basin. And the basin is gilt! my dears, and when the sun shines on the water it is like molten gold, which is a sight the Germans seem to like very much. It is about the only gold they can see.

I discovered a very pretty group of statuary the other day, also a fountain, very huge and kolossal, it is Father Neptune seated on a big shell and from the basin below four water animals are looking up to him, a seal, a tortoise, a snake, and a crocodile. Underneath the shell are water babie, very real, one is just slithering down a steep rock into the jaws of the crocodile, and he has a comical look of terror on his face. Then on the other side , a horrid octopus has would one tentacle around a water baby’s foot and one of the sea-gods near is done so real that you can almost hear him shout: “leave go, you nasty beast!”
On my way there, I passed the dog market, or rather some people along the kerb, who had the sweetest little puppies for sale; I was just thinking of Mary; how she would love them; they wobbled so funnily on their short stumpy legs with their fat tummies; I let one of them crawl over my feet and he enjoyed himself tumbling over and over, and then and then he wanted to worry and bite my boots, so he had to be taken away.
There are plenty of dogs of all kinds in Berlin but I have seen very few Katzenbuckels, to my great sorrow. In Paris there were any amount of them!

I was thinking of you all this afternoon when I was out with that gentleman in the woods near Berlin, about 5 o’clock. I thought how you would be having tea together, and what a fearful surprise you would have if I were to come in suddenly. I would drink up all the tea and eat up al the bread and butter and scones and cakes, leaving NUTHING for Betty. We went into one of those garden restaurants, very fine and Kolossal. We asked for tea and got coffee (?) without milk or sugar, one and sixpence a cup, or rather three halfpence, as the present value of the German money is, and it wasn’t worth even that. So I was envying you people very much indeed although I had roast goose for dinner and a bottle of wine from the cellars of the Archbishop of Treves!

Well, my dears, be good children until I come back –I mean keep on being good after I come back and hug mother for me at once –altogether: one-two-three- HUG!

Don’t mind this writing, I can really write quite well but not with a hotel pen.

Your loving,
Dad.

Original Format

Letter

To

Bouman Family

Files

http://resources.presidentwilson.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/1920-05-09a.pdf

Citation

Bouman, Jon Anthony, 1873-1958, “Jon Bouman to the Bouman Family,” 1920 May 9, WWP23092, Jon Anthony Bouman Collection, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia.