Jon Bouman to the Bouman Family

Title

Jon Bouman to the Bouman Family

Creator

Bouman, Jon Anthony, 1873-1958

Identifier

WWP23154

Date

1927 December 4

Description

Letter from Jon Bouman to his family.

Source

Gift of William C. and Evelina Suhler

Subject

Latvia
Latvia--History--1918-1940
Correspondence

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

Dec. 4, 1927

My dears—

I am now a long way from home, and shall be farther away yet before I get back to Berlin. I found a fellow victim here in Mr. Urch of the London Times, a Somerset man, whose wife and family are in Paris. The occasion was a tea (English) at the the flat of Mr. and Mrs. Parkman, the former being Reuters correspondent, a young couple who have an extremely nice flat for pound 45 a year, although they say rents are rising there, too. Six rooms, parquet floors, central heating &c. But this is beginning at the end.

Last Friday week I got cabled orders to go to Lithuania and Poland, and on Saturday I took the Ostend-Riga sleeping car express, dropping off at Kovno after a night’s journey. This was formerly Russia and many of the Russian characteristics still survive. They have changed all of the street names &c. into Lithuanian and this makes it awkward to find one’s way about. It’s a most difficult language. German is a help, but not very much. Kovno is an awful place, terribly backward in many respects. But they keep their houses nicely warmed right through – much more so than in England. These great tiled stoves go right up to the ceiling and one side of the stove is part of the corridor wall, so that it is warm directly one enters from the front door.

Despite all, it has been so far an intensely interesting trip all new ground and countless possibilities from a news standpoint. I had a long talk with the Premier Woldermaras of Lithuania who is now at Geneva fighting the claims of Poland. The people have been cowed by centuries of oppression, and to me don’t seem ripe for a real democratic government. There are leaders of sorts, all fighting among each other, and what the end will be, God knows.

Riga is a fine city, where one could live; I wouldn’t say the same for Kovno. Riga has a most attractive old part going back to the 11th century; I went all over it this forenoon. I now have Lithuanian, Polish and Lettish visas on my passport. Poland and Lithuania are in a sort of state of war, without actual fighting. Now I wanted to go from Kovno to Vilna, about 60 miles but the frontier is closed so I had to come here to Riga and work my way around, about 600 miles in all via Dvinsk, which seems absurd, yet there is no other way. And I had exhausted my first Polish visa by passing through the Polish Corridor, so I need another one now. The time one loses is dreadful, not that I mind it so much because it gives me a chance to look around here, but it is costing the AP a pretty penny. Well, let it.

It is very annoying I cannot look after my own business at this distance. I think I must advise you not to give notice to Newberry, I have nothing in sight, and can do nothing from here. I had just written to the Petri’s but never posted the letter as I was called away. The Foreign Ren Association will help me to find an abode. But being torn away and chivvied about in this fashion, I have no chance to attend to my own affairs.

People are skating here on ornamental waters, today being fine and sunny, with a few degrees of frost. All I am afraid of is snow, which is apt to block the trains in this part of what used to be Russia. All along the railway lines they have miles of hurdles and pine plantations to break the snowdrift from overwhelming the tracks.

Next object is Vilna, then Warsaw, and back to Berlin. All my love to you, the girls, and Bill.
Thine,
Jack

Original Format

Letter

To

Bouman Family

Files

http://resources.presidentwilson.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/1927-12-04.pdf

Citation

Bouman, Jon Anthony, 1873-1958, “Jon Bouman to the Bouman Family,” 1927 December 4, WWP23154, Jon Anthony Bouman Collection, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia.