We went early, watched the cooking in process, got stuffed up with unheard-of knowledge of every kind, and then waited for the customers.
They interested me beyond everything; although it is a very poor neighbourhood, it was not the very poor who came. Some quite well dressed people, with baskets nicely covered and lined, appeared and were more than satisfied. One bank clerk’s wife assured me that it was the greatest Godsend to her, because she was working, too, and they were both now assured of one good warm, substantial meal every day, and nothing else mattered.
A mother of seven, "steps and stairs," clinging to her skirts had tears in her eyes as she spoke of the salvation the Kitchen had brought to her family.
When I saw the quarts of soup disappearing in jugs and pails through the swing doors, I took fresh heart and decided to make another onslaught on the Amazonian mother who would let her offspring "go without" instead of "demeaning ’erself" to any truck with bones.
Have you ever noticed how a little thing can change the whole outlook; how you can be transported by a lift of the brows, the glimpse of some unexpected object, miles from your base?
As I sat there behind the counter of the Communal Kitchen in the Westminster Bridge Road, I was suddenly transported to South Germany, to that little Bavarian university town we both know so well. What do you think transported me? Why, the sight of a student-like person, German, surely, carrying the little arrangement of dishes in a stand (I’ve forgotten its German name and glory in the lapse), which used to bring my greasy dinner from the hotel Drei Mohren.
Did these days really exist? Do you remember my landlady with the sweet, deprecating smile, her painful humility, her awe and worship of the temporal powers that ruled her destiny? How we distrusted it all, sure that it was a false foundation for life, and that freedom is the heritage of the human soul!
Even then, we were both conscious of hidden fires—of smouldering hates. They were deferential to us; yet inwardly loathing, perhaps fearing us. They have not changed at all, Cornelia, the little river which watered German sentiment in that horrid mediæval place, has only broadened and widened into a vast and overwhelming sea. They were getting ready even then. I could see it in the jealous eyes of the women, their veiled and laboured politeness at the coffee parties had nothing convincing about it. It did not warmly enfold you like the gracious hospitality of kindred peoples. They were bidden to hate, and they knew how to do it, and could veil their fine accomplishment in the art.