Letters from a Geneva Pensionnat

By Flora Ewing

Very personal, sometimes romantic and naive, the letters will take you through feelings, worries, excitement and emotions with great humour and unimaginable details from a hundred year ago life.
The book contains about seventy letters written by Flora Ewing during her stay in Switzerland (between September 1913 and October 1914). She was living in

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dotos Limited
• Release date: Jan 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781910717028

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Letters from a Geneva Pensionnat

Very personal, sometimes romantic and naive, the letters will take you through feelings, worries, excitement and emotions with great humour and unimaginable details from a hundred year ago life

Dotos Books™ is a trademark of Dotos Limited.

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

© Flora Ewing, 1913–1914, 1937

© Judith David, 2013–2014

© Dotos Limited, 2015

ISBN 978–1–910717–02–8

Paperback edition ISBN 978–1–910717–00–4

Hardback edition ISBN 978–1–910717–01–1

The paperback and hardback editions include about hundred photographs.

Published by Dotos Books, www.dbooks.co.uk

LONDON, 2015

Foreword

This book contains about seventy letters written by Flora Ewing during her stay in Switzerland (between September 1913 and October 1914). The appendix includes two extra letters form a later period which are related to the events in the earlier years.

Flora was living in Geneva in Pensionnat Mange at Délices Voltaire, studying, travelling and making new friends.

The original letters have been kept in the family for many years and her daughter Judith David has transferred them into an electronic format.

The paperback and hardback editions contain about hundred photographs which show some people and places mentioned in the letters.

This edition is the first publication of the letters and keeps the original orphography.

Publisher

Geneva

14th September 1913

Dear Mother,

I got your letter on Friday, with great joy. Mamselle (sic) Albertine, from the other end of the table, grinned audibly at my face, (which, if you had seen, you would never laugh again,) that it would be an awful nuisance to write every week. I am very sorry that my letter was so long in coming but I really couldn’t help it and if Mamselle had sent that letter to the post soon after she got it you should have received it at least on Tuesday night. My remark about Olive’s dresses was not from envy, but because I was wondering when she could wear them; as for my dresses the difficulty I have with them is that, this one is too grand for one occasion, that too pretty to wear just now, and so I go on, and in consequence I have worn very few dresses yet.

It doesent (sic) matter about that other apron, as I think I can wear one a week quite well (Ginney’s). This week’s one is not dirty except where I slid down the banister, and that was the first time on, too, but I shall not get my apron in the road again.

I don’t care tuppence for my scent bottle, I only wanted to know where it was. I don’t know where anything of mine is, with so many people unpacking for me. Did you send the brown mad–cap? Have you got the notice of Simon Peter’s funeral yet? If you have I’m glad there’s the English Channel between me and the row there will be.

I don’t care whether my descriptions sounded jaundiced or not, I both meant and mean it. Mamselle is nothing more or less than a PIG! with a very big P. I just heartily detest her. She is a big fat heartless creature, she sneers, laughs and is really rude to the girls as well as being unreasonable. I was writing some P.C.s when she came into the room and said, Let me see your cards, of course I had to hand them over, then she said, What did you buy them for, so I said because I wanted them. Then she said with a sneer, So you like coloured cards, do you. I said I did. Then she commenced to criticize them saying this one she thought very comical, what did I get that one for. I was feeling sore about those cards already as some of the girls had been snubbing me before, upon the subject. It’s absolutely taken all the pleasure away from the things, and I really have some very pretty ones. The girls are decent enough. I cant think what I put in my last letter to depress you, or how it could depress you if it made you laugh.

We went right to the other end of the lake, on Friday, and visited the Château de Chillion (sic). We were shown all through it. I have enclosed two P.C.s of it. The highly coloured one gives the best idea of its position but doesent (sic) show the mountains at the back. They are simply lovely. I never saw such high ones, some have snow on them. I have seen Mt Blanc, it is simply lovely. When I saw it, it had a lovely pinky light on it. I have nothing much to say this time, but what I have, my fountain pen refuses to put down. I have filled it three times and still it refuses to write.

I feel quite the simple muslin frocked country maiden here among these gaudy and transparent damsels. I have counted as many as ten pieces of jewellery on one girl. Mamselle Albertine has eight rings on, sometimes, all the girls have at least one on, some four, with other items thrown in. I have worn two broches (sic) since I came here, one for my skirt only. It also seems to be the thing to show as much underclothing as possible, in consequence you see blouses like, well, five part holes and one part cloth. It was my pen’s fault the paper is in such a mess but it is filled for a fourth time and seems to be right at last.

I have now turned over a new leaf.

You remarked something about eating and habits. Well as to the eating business I never ate so much in my life, before. I have not been so hungry lately as I was at first but I eat plenty. There is not a girl likes the bread much, one of them put the matter very neatly by saying, You never can get enough of that bread, because if you take a big piece its so full of holes you really can hardly find anything to eat.

I believe I am getting worse instead of better at tennis, at least my serving is. I have too brawny an arm for tennis, because when I hit the ball it goes way out of the court altogether, or else I miss it. As to serving, I either send the ball slash into the net, or nearly knock the fence at the other end down.

You can tell the kid¹ that one of the girls has given me a lot of ripping stamps from her letters which I shall share with her. They will be all new to her. Please tell me when she arrives and I shall send them. This last week seems to have flown. I suppose it is because we have not properly begun lessons, yet, and also Thursday and Friday were holidays. On Thurs. I played tennis and stayed in, and on Frid. we went an all day excursion on the lake.

1 Her sister Dorothy, 5 years younger.

We get ripping food here, everything is beautifully cooked, and of the best, and you can have two helpings if you like. I have been the whole afternoon at this letter and that is all I have done but theres been a thunderstorm and I’ve got a headache, and the girls have such loud voices and I have no consentration (sic), therefore I was consistently being distracted.

I am the youngest in appearance and in manner too, I believe, here, but I am as tall as most and older than three or four. But the three or four younger are most kindly patronizing and anxious to keep me from falling into evil ways, that’s one of the reasons why Olive and I will not get on very well, because she is always either openly or hintingly showing me my faults; we never get together but she starts correcting me, or at tennis she amuses me very much by considering it her duty to encourage me by saying, That’s right, Flora, your getting on, etc, etc. You never see that girl for five minutes but she laughs, she laughs ever and always.

I think French people are absolutely absolutely — —. The other day Mamselle, before starting the lesson, gave us a lecture on how to use the plugs and things in the water closet and, I believe, told us why we were to do such and such thing, and when, etc. Fortunately I could not understand the latter part of her discourse which was, I believe, more interesting than the first. She is awfully cheeky about the girls’ clothes. The girl in my room has a lot of clothes she is not allowed to wear. She has a green costume but Mamselle doesent like green, so she was taken into town and had to buy another: the same with a hat, a blouse and a dress. Mam. doesent like dark clothes. She is absolutely like a silly petted child about things she cant forse (sic) you to do, but would like. She says, Now then, you see, if you had done as I said, or, You look very hot, its that blouse again. She continually harps on about nothing.

I have read this letter through and I dont see anything to depress you in it, so let me know if it has. The last page is a bit grumbly, certainly, but it means nothing. You must be having a lovely peaceful time there at home with the house to yourselves. I cant get a moments peace anywhere as we are not allowed into our bed–rooms. I find it unpleasantly different from being able to go upstairs at home, and not see anyone for a whole afternoon. I feel much comforted: Marjorie has chosen two of my despised P.Cs to copy for albums or something. All my things, needle book, hanging case for reels etc, and my little button boxes have been very much admired by the girls, also Mam. said, You have very pretty things (clothes) and must try to keep them nice. That was one of the (cont.) post card.

P.S. The P.C. is for our maid Helen.

Délices Voltaire

20 Sept. 1913

Dear Mother and Daddy,

I hope you are still enjoying yourselves. Mother mentioned in her letter that it was a little dull. Did you ever hear the story of the man who was greatly bothered with an owl which continually hooted at his window at night so that he couldn’t hear the nightingale. He shot the owl, but found the silence much harder to bear than the noise, as the nightingale has stopped too, and was forced to repent his act. Perhaps Dorothy is the nightingale whose voice I (the owl) drown, and now that you are rid of me, Dorothy having nobody to fight with, will be silent also. (Perhaps!!).

The owl is beginning to have rather a good time here. Things arent much different, but I am getting used to things a bit, and I find the time pass very quickly. Each day on looking back seems long, but it seems only yesterday since last Sunday, and yet tomorrow is another. Olive’s chum seems inclined to take me under her other wing, and I have no objections to going. She has got a face just like the Madonna’s, but is anything but Madonna–like in nature. If there has been any mischief done you can be sure she was not far from the bottom of it. Olive has had a fit of home–sickness at last, but it was jealousy helped it. She got a letter from home, and then we had dancing that evening, and Olive is like me and doesent dance much, and her chum does, and she danced an awful lot with another girl, and hardly spoke to Olive. I noticed she looked funny, and the next I saw was her crying in a corner, and refusing to say what was wrong; she recovered but hasent (sic) been quite the same since.

We go to church in a Music Hall here, and the people come in any time they like. The Minister stopped his reading today, because the late people disturbed him so, and made a speech at them. Also when the people get tired they get up and go out.

We had tea in a café after spending an afternoon in a museum and then went on the lake in a little motor boat.

When I come home, have either scones or oat cakes waiting for me when I arrive, for I shall see neither here.

You know that fat girl with the languishing eyes I spoke of, well I have had to walk with her these last two days as neither of us can get anyone else, and its awful, we don’t want to walk with each other, and simply just don’t open our mouths.

I have not got into the yelling habit, nor am I accustomed to it in other people. In fact I have been asked if I have a voice and to speak louder, continually. Marjorie is by a long chalk the most ladylike person in this school. Its all very well for Marjorie to stuff you with tales about how Mams. likes you to eat but Mams has a very clever little way of presenting you with a spoonful of stuff which is not very much, and then she says, Too much, is it? and takes some of it away. Fountain pens are most obnoxious articles because when you are searching for inspiration and are unconscious of your surroundings, you wake up to find a few blots on your possessions, and know you must have been waving your pen in the air again.

Its funny, but its very convenient, that although we only get butter and jam together on Sunday, I have never, even the very first time, missed the butter. Although at home it was horrid, this type of bread seems better fitted for jam alone. I am getting absolutely gluttonous now. After a meal is finished, I just think over the number of things I could eat more; the result is not pleasing.

We are having both heat and cold here. Cold in the morning and heat when we go out for our daily trot — its nothing more or less than a trot. The girl who has been leading lately, is so afraid anyone will get in front of her that she absolutely runs. I never go out anywhere, church or walk, but I get a stitch in my side with the pace, always.

The only day I can get for writing is Sunday. I believe we can write on Thursday in the winter but not now. I got your letter last Tuesday and the other one on the Friday before. Dorothy’s letter was a shock and a convulser, I howled over it. It was a good thing Jeannie was beside her to help her to remember and spell the hens’ names.

I expect anything short of chaos would seem orderly after the mess there was. It would take more than all Vienna put together to teach me music. They wont succeed here, I know that much. I am made to play quite a different way, here, and in consequence cant play at all. I have to lift my fingers high into the air when I play, and have all new music and am not allowed to play the old. The only thing this master has inspired my soul with is fear, which only makes me play worse and practise harder. We are not worked very hard yet, I think, and I have been making an exhibition of myself with what we have.

I have only two tooth brushes, perhaps you threw the other one away with the rubbish. Ask Dorothy how many she has, perhaps I left mine there.

I got Kate’s² letter and she sounded so funny somehow, and just as if she wasent (sic) married, her going out to play tennis.

2 Her brother Jack’s wife.

My room–mate is very decent, and doesent care much for talking, either. Mamselle says we suit each other excellently that way. As a matter of fact, my keys are on the table in my room, and in my cupboard, I have been wondering if I could take the key out, because the interfering girl took my racket out and lent it to someone and I don’t want her to do it again. Do you know that in all those dresses I have not one pocket, its atrocious. I explained carefully to Mad. how you worked my pink dress and she, as carefully, did it the other way, so I left it at that and sorted it myself after. You can say what you like about my eating but it was not pretense (sic), sometimes I ate a lot of bread and sometimes a little, my appetite was as erratic as the rest of me. Do please give Phyllis³ a poke and remind her you have an elder daughter. I wrote to her but received no reply. I cant believe I have been here only three Sundays, it seems like three months.

3 Phyllis Turnbull, her best friend.

Mamselle remarked that the ‘family’ was coming to tea today, and therefore we are to have tea earlier, as the family is about fifteen strong.

I was reading your first letter over again and noticed that about Olive. I quite agree that she seems older than me in some ways and I think she herself notices it, for she really is most horribly patronizing, sometimes. Somehow I think there is some misunderstanding between us, because sometimes she is quite gracious to me, and others will not hardly look at me, and sometimes I like her very much, and others could scratch her eyes out, or at least give her a good piece of my mind.

The blow which has been threatening for a long time has fallen at last, and I was marched off to the dressmaker with three of my dresses, to start with, and down they have come. However she said, when she heard that I had only begun corsets, that if I left off them, I could have my skirts shorter, so (I could scream just now, there’s that fat girl jabbering away about nothing and, not having a gentle voice, she is disturbing all the room!) so I have decided to have my skirts shorter. Mad has done nothing else but peer at my skirts since I came. She has a most piggish way of continually announcing that I am nearly seventeen, everything I do or say, or happens, nearly seventeen, seventeen this, seventeen that. It’s bad enough to be going on seventeen, but to have it thrown at you six months too soon is more than human nature can stand. The family has arrived, and the row!! Its all boys except three girls, and the boys are boys indeed! They commenced having a tug–of–war outside the back door and absolutely swarmed around, and I had to wait about fifteen minutes at the head of the stairs, waiting for them to go away before I could come out. I don’t think much of your ‘charming Swiss youths’, and am more than likely to return wholehearted and thankful–hearted. I don’t see why, in this outlandish place, girls should put on long dresses soon, and boys of sixteen wear socks! and never dream of long trousers till about twenty–one. Its absolutely comical, the boys here sprout moustaches very early indeed, and the result is not a success with short trousers…

I am enclosing a P.C. to show you the different rooms. The house looks a beautiful country mansion, there in the P.C. but the flats which absolutely surround it are carefully hidden. They have managed that photo very cleverly because it is not nearly so nice as that, the grounds look beautiful there, but they are untidy and look sort of unkempt, a bit.

We sing hyms (sic) at night and its awful!!

There are only two beds in my room. They say its pretty, but I don’t see it. The wall paper!!! The floor is polished, and twice I have come bang! onto the floor when walking or dancing over it. The girl in my room leaves a week tomorrow, and I am wondering who I shall get next. I tremble when I think of the undesirables, of which there are many.

We start lessons properly at ten o’clock, but we new girls have an hour with the other pupil teacher who is a most peculiar specimen. She has a broad flat expressionless face. She cant keep order, nobody respects her, she giggles all of a sudden at nothing, has little bursts of temper, also at nothing, is absolutely characterless, has no opinions of her own, absolutely not a scrap of firmness, but wavers and wiggles over her decisions; continually worrys (sic) you to do this or that without need. Even her very walk shows just a weak wiggly nature. She hears our lessons in the morning for Mamselle. We get an old man with twinkly eyes for literature (at least I think its literature, but he talks so fast I understood nothing). We get a young man for, I don’t know what, but he lectured us upon Italy, and as he spoke very slowly I understood quite a lot. We also get a conceited funny little creature for History; she absolutely ought to put her hands in a glass case and send them to a museum, she would get more people to look at them then. We don’t appreciate them enough.

Did you give Helen her post card?

Olive and Marjorie are so funny when they are writing. Olive will demand in a highly dictorial (sic) voice, Marjorie, are you remembering such and such a thing. Marjorie replies very humbly that she has not yet done such and such a thing. Olive then replies, Well, see and remember then, or, Very well, but don’t forget, now. Now and then, Olive comes down off her high horse, being obliged to ask Marjorie how to spell some word which even I could spell, one was, Please Marjorie is there a ‘p’ in glimpse?

They have stopped me reading, very effectually, by simply giving me a French book to read; it isent (sic) even interesting and therefore I always find something very pressing to do when they say I can read.

Do ask somebody to send me a post card because I am going to arrange them on the walls. Mamselle likes you to plaster the walls absolutely, with as many as you like. I am willing to do anything to hide the wall paper.

Its funny but Marjorie is three years younger than the other pupil teacher and has been here only a fortnight, but everybody does what Marjorie wants instantly and never dreams of disobeying, and yet she never scolds or anything. Olive says her father is coming to fetch her as soon as we come back from the mountains, and, really, it is not worth waiting the full time as I wont get any more lessons, so can I come home then with them? It would be ripping because from what little I saw of Mr Reavell⁴ I like him very much.

4 Marjorie and Olive’s father

Time’s up now so I must stop. Hurry up and write, jog anybody’s elbow, Phyllis, Cathie, Ray, anybody, to write to me.

With much love to both,

I am your loving and dutiful! daughter, Flora.

Délices Voltaire

I am ashamed of this untidy scrawl.

Please forgive me and I wont do it again.

24 Sept 1913

My dear Mother and Daddy,

You will just have to suffer this in pencil as it is written on the boat going to Lausanne, and I have managed at last to break my fountain pen. I was coming dowstairs and I scraped it against the banisters. What I complain of here is the having to write only on Sunday, because during the week I am continually finding something I would like to say, but, always, when I sit down to write on Sunday I find all my news has flown and I have practically to invent things to say. That last sentence is seemingly composed of ‘I.s’. Well remembering how bored I was the time we were four hours on the lake I am taking the opportunity to write now. Its simply ripping on the lake today. The sun is shining on us and the water, making us both warm and nice. We are stopping at a little town called Nyon, just now. It is thoroughly picturesque with its painted house fronts and creeper–covered balconies. There is upon the hill an old, grey towered château, it looks very old. I believe it had something to do with Napoleon but what he was doing in Switzerland I don’t pretend to know. All along the lake–side are houses (not all along but here and there). It must be lovely to have your garden right on the edge of lake. Its as calm as calm today. There isent scarcely. a ripple on the surface. There is a heat haze hanging round which makes everything blue: blue water, blue sky, and blue haze.

Are you meaning my brown woolen cap or the brown silk mad–cap. I have the woolen cap but havent looked in the list yet to see if you have marked the mad–cap. The tissue paper is all in my box waiting for my return.

It wasent the post cards you paid a penny each for but I should have put another 1 ½ c stamp on that letter but I got it weighed and the girl said it wasent too heavy, in consequence you had to pay twice 1 ½ c. The highly coloured P.C. was only sent to give you an idea of Montreux. It wasent a pretty card. We don’t see anything from our school but flats, much less lakes.

You needent worry about me coming back frightfully grown up because just now, at any rate, I am regarded as the school baby. The girls who are younger than me are all older; sort of, in looks. One of them held her sixteenth birthday a day or two ago, but she wears her hair proper up, her skirts proper down, high necks(very) sometimes, and the most super–fine grown up manners. I get most awful scoldings from her sometimes, for what does not concern her at all. I giggle irrelevantly (sic), however, in the middle. I am addressed as ‘petite’ (little one), and yesterday the under mistress explained carefully to me that I looked much younger than the others although my skirts are quite long now and my hair is up. She simply gasped when I explained that Olive is younger than me. Do I look so very juvenile, please? At home I was accustomed to be called ‘A big fat lump’, but here it is ‘Petite’. As to fads, it wont be that, but a wig, my hair is home–sick and is dying of a broken heart, in other words it has never stopped coming out since Corsock⁵, and these last two days its been something awful. This is ‘Thonon les Bains’ now. We were here for an excursion once, its very pretty. I shall not want to wear all your and my own jewellery when I come home, or at least I don’t think so, just now.

5 Her father’s home town in Dumfriesshire

The Austrian girl is nothing special, her clothes are smart but not grand. Mamselle has been at me about one of my blouses. She seems to have taken a dislike to it, she doesent like dark things, its my blue alpaca. She tried all sorts of ways to make me take it off without absolutely ordering me, but in vain, then unfortunately something happened. The tape is too high up on the blouse, and in consequence I had to wear a broch (sic), and in consequence the broch tore it, and in consequence Mamselle got her chance and said, Well, you don’t put that blouse on again till its mended, a most unnecessary remark, I think. Well it turned out that this tear was a most fortunate thing as it gave me something to learn how to mend on, you are supposed to tear something every week so as to learn how to mend it at the lesson. I have made not such a bad job of it for a first attempt and have taken the tape off, so now I shall be able to flaunt it once more before Mamselle’s astonished eyes.

The food is really ripping, only hasent been so nice lately. We get stewed apples about three times a week. But they are different from home and are nicer, the fruit is whole. The bread is… well, I don’t know; I am getting used to it, and am ready to eat anything. I have been punished for my greed, because I have been trying to eat the bread quickly so as to get more, and in consequence my indigestion has come back. Also since I have come here I am horribly pimply, not as bad as Olive, thank goodness, as my pimples come where they are not noticed, but really and truly the bread is indigestible.

I can well believe that ‘Poor Lizzie Black⁶’ would not in the least need leading from the path of Duty!

6 Her mother’s maiden name

(Lausanne) I have been at Lausanne and am in the