The Polish Connection 16

 April 1916

Dear Barbara, Rebecca and darling Beth,

I too wish to thank you for your kind gifts which are very much appreciated. And I particularly am pleased with the picture which Beth has drawn for me. I have put it up by my bed so I can look at it each night. Do you have a photograph of yourself and the family that you might send as well?

Now that Paul and I are sharing this pleasure of writing to you, it seems rather like a game, deciding who will get which bit to write about. Sometimes he doesn’t show me his letters before sending them, so I am hoping he will not put in anything that might offend you. But I must have help still from him with writing mine as I so often do not know the right word, and he is very gifted in languages.

Things are gradually becoming better. The latrines are still far from finished, but chairs have arrived, and we now sit down to meals, which seemed as odd at first as washing within walls when the wash house was completed, and it has suddenly become immoral and a serious offence to wash out of doors. The showers are a great boon though, and I take much pride in having a shower bath without allowing the water to extinguish my cigarette. The canteen is open for longer hours now, and we can buy chocolates and apples there, but the food remains awful and insufficient, nor is being assured that we are treated exactly the same as British prisoners are being treated in Germany much of a consolation. There is watery soup with bits of grease swimming about in it, or else some stringy lumps of meat, and the fresh air makes one feel very hungry, so there is plenty of grumbling. It is no wonder your Brownies were such a treat. It is entertaining to hear about your husband’s exploits.

Love,

Peter

And in the same post came this letter.

Dear Barbara,

Money can be sent. It has to be addressed to the Camp Bank which takes care of it and we are allowed to draw £1 a week. I am sharing my money with Peter at the moment, but I know he feels awkward about that. Perhaps you could find it in your heart to send some money that he would have of his own. (He doesn’t know that I am writing this, so please don’t say that it was my suggestion if you do send it.)

But having money instantly has introduced ‘social injustice’ and a class distinction into what would otherwise have become a communist society. The men now have two sharply divided classes, the £1 a week class and the moneyless class, the capitalist and the proletariat. I don’t know what the proportion is in the other compounds, but in ours the capitalists hardly amount to 10 per cent. Nearly 50 per cent of the inmates are sailors; of the other 50 roughly 40 have been waiters, barbers, small tradesmen, or servants. The remaining 10, the capitalist class, is composed of business-men or young clerks and includes of course Peter and me.

There is no one over 50 (for men above military age are repatriated), there is no one under 18 years of age. It is a society without women, without children, and without old people. Ninety per cent of the men have no income now they are interned. It stands to reason that they make every effort to secure money, but there are few possibilities for doing so. Commerce, they say, obeys the law of supply and demand. I have certainly never seen such an overwhelming amount of supply and such an infinitely restricted demand! There are at least one hundred men or youths anxious to clean my shoes, and never in my life have my shoes looked so brilliant or have been cleaned so many times a day, though the circumstances really do not call for it. We have over eighty barbers, but I can do no more for them than be shaved once a day, which suffices, however, to make me highly popular with them. Their charge is one penny, but they do not object to the degradation of a tip of a halfpenny or more.

And if you are known as one of the plutocrats, which of course I am, you simply have to accept the offers of one of the many who wish to become my ‘private valet’ - Noblesse oblige! True, such a post is rather a desirable one, for there is no work to do: no cleaning and sweeping, no errands, no clothes to press or silver to clean. A pity really, for my own valet could do all that, and a good deal more, most perfectly. He is a very grand person indeed, and his last post but one had been that of valet to an Egyptian monarch. His name is Charlie, he is about forty, and always in the best of tempers. A very charming man really who would have made a perfect butler in the most baronial of halls. After leaving the Egyptian monarch he was the steward on a big liner, and that was how he came to be at Knockaloe. It is Charlie who cleans my shoes for the very first time every morning, also he rolls up my pelisse and folds my cover.

I can also by payment find a man to replace me at my weekly turn of potato peeling. I tried doing it once, but my conception was considered too cubist. All things considered, the social problem has found a fairly satisfactory solution during these first months in the Isle of Man.

We are enjoying reading The Thirty Nine Steps, although I have read it before. Please send any other books that you think we might like as the days are very long.

I very much enjoyed hearing about your introduction to John and then your new life in England. Perhaps you could tell us more about what life was like in Wisconsin and what family you have left behind.

Best wishes,

Paul

In my next letter I couldn’t help but tell them about John’s experiences when he was in the training camp and had to have his boots polished for inspection every day. He wrote this, “I’ve just finished polishing by boots for tomorrow. This took me three hours, and they have now got a mirror-like glow on them which resembles patent leather. This is got by ironing out the leather with a red hot spoon handle heated in a candle flame and then rubbing in polish and water. This process known as bull is strictly illegal and is a chargeable offence. However it is the quickest way of polishing boots to the required standard. It is also a chargeable offence not to have polished boots.”

I had asked John about supplying Peter with a source of money so he could buy some of his needs in the camp, and John had agreed that I can go to our branch bank in Marple Bridge and take £10 out of our savings and send it to him. I have now done that. If he spends it at the rate of £1 per week, as Paul seems to, it won’t last long. But I am sure that he will be much more frugal.

Since I wrote that I have had this letter from Peter, confirming it.

Dear Barbara, Rebecca and little Beth,

I am so grateful to you for sending money for me through the camp bank. I know you say that you can easily afford it, but I hope you will tell me if your need should ever be such that you cannot any longer afford it. I am now able to pay my own way a bit better, and can repay Paul for all that he has lent me over the weeks. You say that you cleared this with John, so please confer to him my gratitude.

Now a bit more about our camp. I will tell you about some of our other friends. We are a motley crowd and in fact, quite cosmopolitan.

One great friend of ours has the name of Schulz. As Paul can speak some Spanish he can communicate with him. He was born in Mexico and looks a full-blooded Mexican Indio, but because his name is Schulz and that sounds like a German name, he was arrested on board some ship and brought here.

His mother, he tells me, is Indian, he has never known his father, but his mother thought his name was Schulz and called her son after him. Schulz does not know his age, but he looks about twenty and has a very handsome, sullen sort of face and a cat like body. He wears a khaki shirt and riding-breeches which seem an unusual outfit for a sailor, yet he is undoubtedly one, for he spends all day long on the ground and with a huge knife and he carves tiny full rigged ships which are introduced into bottles when finished. All other work he avoids, nor does he attempt to sell his works of art.

Paul tried to impress the fact on him that it would be extremely easy for him to be set free if he would take the trouble to explain his case and ask to be put in touch with his consulate, but he has no desire for freedom. Life could be far worse than this, he remarked, and that is undoubtedly true. He is very wise really, he has no needs, demands nothing from life, does not bother about his fellow-creatures or his surroundings. On the other hand he finds great satisfaction in spitting frequently: that is his way of expressing his opinion on the universe and on mankind.

Love,

Peter

I told my pen-friends about the problem of the Easter Rising in Ireland, but of course the news we get is not necessary unbiased. And the poor Irish are suffering in another way as on the 27th of April there was a huge battle and the entire Irish 16th division of the 47th brigade was decimated in a heavily concentrated gas attack. I am so grateful that John is not in such danger, and then feel guilty when I think of all the wives who had to wake up to the news that they were widows.

The government have tried to defy nature, telling us that from May 21st onwards we shall have another hour of daylight. They say it will be better for school children, but I personally think that it will cause as many problems as it will help in other ways.