Letter from Edward Renouf to Anny Schey von Koromla

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Schwaz

16 June 1930

Dear Baroness Schey!

The car is ready.

As I said on the telephone, all’s well here. I’m sorry Beate is showing her family such an unflattering side of herself – that she takes the presence of her siblings as an opportunity to spoil the atmosphere with her unfriendly moods. Since we’ve been alone she’s been neither unpleasant nor unreasonable. I’m stricter than I used to be. On several occasions I’ve had words with her about good manners, amiability in general, attentiveness, gratitude and so on. Although she took these reproaches badly (one could hardly expect otherwise), she doesn’t mope and is constantly trying to improve herself.

You yourself probably noticed that while Inge was here and had me to herself, Beate avoided me and spoke to me either antagonistically or not at all. But less than half an hour after Inge had left, Beate came up to me and tried to reconcile herself to me and win me over with all sorts of talk and childish patter. This case reminds me of the old maid who was consumed by jealousy because her little lapdog wagged too much when greeting another old maid. She hid her pain by chasing the dog away as if she hated it. As soon as the door was closed to the old rival, though, she took the dog in her arms, called it all sorts of endearing names and let it eat cake (soaked in cream) from her own teacup (Beate brought me strawberries).

Jealousy is a significant and complicating factor in Beate’s mental life and suggests that she has more need for love than ability to love herself.

She recently told me that when she’s slightly upset or annoyed about something and notices that her audience is vexed or empathetic about it, she immediately gets into the role and plays it up until she’s genuinely upset or angry. I was astonished at this admission. It means her moods are nothing more than a lack of will and self control, along with the rather less remarkable desire for social acceptance. She also told me she has no fear of having iodine rubbed into her wounds when she’s alone, whereas she flinches and squirms with pain if there’s anyone else there.

The headache was nothing serious. By midday she was eating like a bear and calling for more. When I looked in to ask how she was, she said she had a pig of a headache and that it was actually quite divine in bed, and not at all boring. And with that she pulled the blanket up over her ears and laughed contentedly. There’s no trace of this ‘malady’ today.

In terms of B’s behaviour and the tasks she had to do, this last week was quite satisfactory.

You promised to send me information about Florence, and as quickly as the echo of your promise, the information came! Many thanks for that.

I’ve not yet made good on my promise to trim the hedge. The weather has been so ominous, with some rain and thunder every day, that we haven’t dared make the trip to the forest yet. But we do have exciting plans to combine that task with a strawberry hunt!

If you see Janne, please send her my very best regards, along with the hope that I’ll see her again soon, either in good health or recovering here! Greetings likewise to Clemens and my fearless Inge.

Sincerely yours,

Edl

PS I hope you’ll be able to read this letter and that you won’t find too many mistakes in my tentative German. I would have drafted it, gone over it with a critical eye and written it out neatly had I not been called away so urgently by a story I’ve just started.

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