The Word Cloud

If you are interested in family history - or biographical research -anything elderly relations scribble down is invaluable.   I have posted this for a ‘Word Clouder’  who shall be nameless - well she is nameless!!

Exrtract from Great Aunt Nell’s  Notebooks.   (Her adventures in Germany circa 1912 which followed on her adventures in Paris and the artist studios of ‘Le Belle Epoche’ - in the late 1890’s)    

 I went out with Iris and Marianne.    Iris was six years old and Marianne was three.   We picked many flowers and walked up a bank studied with violets.    There were mountains of gold flowers and everywhere looked like coloured hills.    We could see  all the way to Frieburg.   

The tempo of life was far gentler than Paris.   I seemed to be flung into the fourth dimension - head first.   ‘Un beau plongen!’   The houses which looked like small white palaces were scattered.   Some were  so high up  that their lights at night looked like stars.   One night I told Edmund the stars were rather low.    He laughed and said, “They are lights from various windows up and down the valley.” 

The fir trees reminded me of the fir trees far away on Brasted Chart.

A musician named Iga Kertov - the pianist - came one evening.   He was handsome and his voice was his charm.

“Sprechen sie Deutch,  Fraulein?” 

“Nein - nein,”   I said.

He looked disappointed  as he was not good at English and would not attempt it.

He played Chopin’s ‘Mazurka in B Flat’.   The gay and restless beauty enchanted me.   The delicacy and ease going from one master to another.   He played the  ‘The Moonlight Sonata’.    Echoes of beauty sank and died away.    I was asked to play but I dared not.   My spirit sank within me.    How could I?    After Iga Kertov?

Stephani’s garden was an enormous one.   The house itself  was built like an old farm and there was an exquisite green, smooth lawn - like velvet. ....  There were clumps of Christmas trees with very high points.