Jon Bouman to the Bouman Family

Title

Jon Bouman to the Bouman Family

Creator

Bouman, Jon Anthony, 1873-1958

Identifier

WWP23148

Date

1927 September 29

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

Dearest;

Herewith are two checques, one for pound 20 and one for pound 10. This will pay for the rent and a bittock. How do you stand now? Will you need anything before next pay day, Oct. 15?

Remember to put a twopenny stamp on the German cheque; and cancel it by writing the date across it; I haven’t any more stamps, you might send me a little blue book next time you write.

My visitors (for there were three more besides Willie A.) departed last night and I had a rare old time with them; all except one were old enough to be grandfathers, but typical elderly Englishmen out on a spree. The first evening they took tickets including for myself, for The Mikado, which is a bowdlerized version of the dear old G. & S. play, but put on the stage with stage effects that leave London way behind. I was told the costumes were genuine old Samurai and the decorations were beyond anything these me had ever seen. It certainly was a wonderful show. The play itself had been hacked about, out of all recognition and brought up to date with countless topical wheezes funniments, but the main songs and incidents – and personages – had been retained. So now, I know that in German a Tom Tit is a Bachstelze, which I didn’t know before. Afterwards we went to all sorts of nightclubs and bars where prices are high but quality poor. I never go near them as I can’t afford it nor would I willingly waste money in this way. However, I suppose it’s an experience and journalists ought to have experiences of everything.

The next evening I had tickets for the Charlottenburg Opera House, La Tosca which was very enjoyable. Nothing less than a box, of course. Then I took them to a restaurant which is filled up in the latest style which we don’t know in London, by a firm which specializes in internal decorative work, and they were also much interested in this, and S. A. is going to put it in a book he is writing on Decorative Art. Then again on the spree: that was the second night we didn’t get home before g.m. No wonder poor gay grandpa Willie ran out of cash and I had to lend him pound pound 8.10.- I hope he hasn’t got the artistic temperament and will forget to return it. I wouldn’t have done it for anyone else, but I couldn’t help myself very well.

So that’s the reason why you get the pound 30 in two different cheques. Well, they’re all gone now. Last night I went to a chamber music concert that you have seen the programme of; tonight another piano concert at the Bechstein Hall again; tomorrow I am dining at Bodker’s flat with the correspondents of the Morning Post and the Paris Matin. I never used to go anywhere as you know, and now it seems to come all in a rush. Life is strange. I have come to the conclusion that I must take it as it comes.

I can’t post this registered letter until tomorrow so will leave a space in case there is a letter by tomorrow morning’s delivery.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Just received yours with enclosures about Mary; I will look into that matter at once. I suppose the communication from Herr N. to the Headmistress ? is primarily a guarantee of his respectability. At all events I have found his department in the telephone book.

No more just now from
Your loving,
J.

Original Format

Letter

To

Bouman Family

Files

http://resources.presidentwilson.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/1927-09-29.pdf

Citation

Bouman, Jon Anthony, 1873-1958, “Jon Bouman to the Bouman Family,” 1927 September 29, WWP23148, Jon Anthony Bouman Collection, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia.