The 'Correspondence' Affair #22 - March 3, 1913 (Millicent to Alexander)

[avirra.livejournal.com]

From : Thun, Switzerland

March 3, 1913

Dearest Alexander,

I will start by letting you know that the worst of the illness seems to be past at the school now. Ermengarde and myself (through either luck or the elixir) have managed to avoid catching it, but we lost one of the teachers here to it. Our testing was delayed for a week in deference to a mourning period for her. Miss Chapman had been a member of the staff here for nearly nineteen years. As she was the one that taught English to the non-native speakers, I did not have many dealings with her and so did not know her very well myself, but her loss was keenly felt among many of my fellow students.

I do realize that there must be many things that you cannot talk about in your current line of work, so I shall endeavor not to ask too many questions. It seems ages since I was last in Paris myself, but I suppose it was only three years ago. Seems a lifetime. I was very sorry to hear of Uncle Lucien's injury, but grateful it wasn't worse than a broken arm. Did he say what had happened to cause it? I must get off another letter to him, the dear man.

I am feeling the melancholia coming again, but I suppose I should expect that with the anniversary of Mother's death approaching. I wish I had at least been able to see where they actually buried her. Perhaps it would not have actually have given me the sense of an ending that it does in my imaginings, but as it is, I feel almost as if I have unfinished business.

In a way, I suppose it is fortunate that I have the play to concentrate on. Brutus does tend to be a bit long winded, so I gave a goodly number of lines to memorize. He is such a tragic character, but if I may venture an opinion, not terribly bright. I have to agree with your assessment of his friendship. Pulling the man to the side and yelling in his face would have been the better course than stabbing. I've noticed, however, that any time Shakespeare puts the word 'tragedy' in a title, the characters seem to drop like flies. I suppose that is simply good theatre.

Regarding my test results, my Italian has improved to where I am considered over my age level, but my German still sadly lags. Still, I have hopes that I might be able to eventually locate a native speaker to learn from. No offense meant to the ladies working here who are from Germany, but they have very thick regional accents. I have been told by one of the older girls that asking them to help me with a German accent would be very close to asking a Cockney to assist someone with their British accent.

My cooking score also improved. Not to the point where I would feel comfortable cooking for company, but at least were I called to do so, I would worry less about sending them to the doctor for acute indigestion.

I was quite interested that there are so many kinds of Celtic knots. I wear mine constantly though Ermengarde has warned me that I seem to rub it when I become preoccupied with thought. As for the pipe, I am glad it has become a source of entertainment. I cannot say that I ever gave any thought to there being more than one sort of pipe tobacco, but when one considers the variety of teas in the world, I suppose it only makes sense.

I shall keep a good thought toward your travels all being safe ones wherever they might take you.

Always yours,

Millicent

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Comments

[mrua7.livejournal.com]

As usual another excellent and informative chapter. The comments on German were spot on. Many years ago I worked with a German woman and she told me there are not only different regional dialects but people can have difficulty understanding each other at times. For example, everyone from Northern Germany should be able to understand Bavarian, Austrian, and Swiss German to a certain extent. If a Lower German person speaks in his dialect fluently and a man from Bavaria does the same, they will have trouble understanding each other.

[avirra.livejournal.com]

*g* I had personal experience with the German to call on. I took three years of German in school and we were taught Northern (also called High) German. My uncle married a German woman while he was stationed there in the Army and she spoke Southern (or Low) German. She thought it was hilarious that a Southern born American had been taught to speak Northern German.