E-text prepared by Al Haines
CHRISTINE
BY
ALICE CHOLMONDELEY
1917
CHRISTINE
My daughter Christine, who wrote me these letters, died at a hospitalin Stuttgart on the morning of August 8th, 1914, of acute doublepneumonia. I have kept the letters private for nearly three years,because, apart from the love in them that made them sacred things indays when we each still hoarded what we had of good, they seemed to me,who did not know the Germans and thought of them, as most people inEngland for a long while thought, without any bitterness and with agreat inclination to explain away and excuse, too extreme and sweepingin their judgments. Now, as the years have passed, and each has beenmore full of actions on Germany's part difficult to explain except inone way and impossible to excuse, I feel that these letters, giving apicture of the state of mind of the German public immediately beforethe War, and written by some one who went there enthusiastically readyto like everything and everybody, may have a certain value in helpingto put together a small corner of the great picture of Germany which itwill be necessary to keep clear and naked before us in the future ifthe world is to be saved.
I am publishing the letters just as they came to me, leaving outnothing. We no longer in these days belong to small circles, tolimited little groups. We have been stripped of our secrecies and ofour private hoards. We live in a great relationship. We share ourgriefs; and anything there is of love and happiness, any smallestexpression of it, should be shared too. This is why I am leaving outnothing in the letters.
The war killed Christine, just as surely as if she had been a soldierin the trenches. I will not write of her great gift, which wasextraordinary. That too has been lost to the world, broken and thrownaway by the war.
I never saw her again. I had a telegram saying she was dead. I triedto go to Stuttgart, but was turned back at the frontier. The two lastletters, the ones from Halle and from Wurzburg, reached me after I knewthat she was dead.
ALICE CHOLMONDELEY,
London, May, 1917.
Publishers' Note
The Publishers have considered it best to alter some of the personalnames in the following pages.
CHRISTINE
Lutzowstrasse 49, Berlin, Thursday, May 28th, 1914.
My blessed little mother,
Here I am safe, and before I unpack or do a thing I'm writing you alittle line of love. I sent a telegram at the station, so that you'llknow at once that nobody has eaten me on the way, as you seemed ratherto fear. It is wonderful to be here, quite on my own, as if I were ayoung man starting his career. I feel quite solemn, it's such a greatnew adventure, Kloster can't see me till Saturday, but the moment I'vehad a bath and tidied up I shall get out my fiddle and see if I'veforgotten how to play it between London and Berlin. If only I can besure you aren't going to be too lonely! Beloved mother, it will onlybe a year, or even less if I work fearfully hard and really get on, andonce it is over a year is nothing. Oh, I know you'll write and tell meyou don't mind a bit and rather like it, but you see your Chris hasn'tlived with you all her life for nothing; she knows you very wellnow,—at least, as much of your dear sacred self that you will showher. Of course I know you're going to be brave and all that, bu