Lou Hoover lived in China for only two years, but she developed a lifelong interest in all things Chinese. She was especially fond of the porcelains of the Ming and K'ang periods. She also learned to speak Mandarin fluently, and although Herbert never mastered the language as well as his wife, the couple spoke Mandarin whenever they wanted to communicate privately in front of other people.
After China, they moved to London. Herbert became a partner in a mining company that consulted all over the world. Until the partnership ended in 1908, their "Red Rood" house served as a gathering place for the foreign community in London. Herbert was not a hit socially. He was awkward in conversation unless it was about mining. One woman described him as "the rudest man in London." But Lou's charm and grace made everyone feel welcome, and continued to draw people to their home.
Throughout this period, Lou and their two young sons traveled the world. Both her sons took their first trip at five weeks of age. In 1910 alone, the Hoovers lived for periods in the British Isles, France, Russia, Burma, Korea, and Japan.
It was also during this period that Lou Hoover undertook her great intellectual achievement. She translated into English a sixteenth-century text on metals. Agricola's De Re Metallica was particularly challenging because the German author, George Bauer, had coined some of the terms when he published the work in Latin in 1556. Finding English equivalent phrases required extensive knowledge of both science and language, an unlikely combination as reviewers of the book pointed out after it was published. The work took five years, and won for Lou the Mining and Metallurgical Society's gold award as well as considerable attention and praise from the scholarly community.
When war broke out in 1914, the Hoovers were in London preparing to return to California. Herbert stayed to help stranded Americans, and then headed the food relief program for Belgium and northern France. He then returned home to become food administrator for the United States after it entered the war.
During this time, Lou traveled, with considerably less fanfare, back and forth between England and the United States. In London, she worked with the American Women's Committee to set up canteens, maintain a hospital, and operate a fleet of Red Cross ambulances. In the United States, she gave speeches and raised money for the war effort.
