June 10.—For the last week my work has been rather scanty owing to bodily ailments. I am at the end of chapter xxi., and am this morning going to begin chapter xxii. In the interim our chief pleasure had been a trip to Starnberg by ourselves.
June 13.—This morning at last free from headache, and able to write. I am entering on my history of the birthday with some fear and trembling. This evening we walked, between eight and half-past nine, in the Wiese, looking towards Nymphenburg. The light delicious—the west glowing; the faint crescent moon and Venus pale above it; the larks filling the air with their songs, which seemed only a little way above the ground.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 14th June, 1858.
Words are very clumsy things. I like less and less to handle my friends' sacred feelings with them. For even those who call themselves intimate know very little about each other—hardly ever know just how a sorrow is felt, and hurt each other by their very attempts at sympathy or consolation. We can bear no hand on our bruises. And so I feel I have no right to say that I know how the loss of your mother—"the only person who ever leaned on you"—affects you. I only know that it must make a deeply-felt crisis in your life, and I know that the better from having felt a great deal about my own mother and father, and from having the keenest remembrance of all that experience. But for this very reason I know that I can't measure what the event is to you; and if I were near you I should only kiss you and say nothing. People talk of the feelings dying out as one gets older; but at present my experience is just the contrary. All the serious relations of life become so much more real to me—pleasure seems so slight a thing, and sorrow and duty and endurance so great. I find the least bit of real human life touch me in a way it never did when I was younger.
Journal, 1858.
June 17.—This evening G. left me to set out on his journey to Hofwyl to see his boys.
June 18.—Went with the Siebolds to Nymphenburg; called at Professor Knapp's, and saw Liebig's sister, Frau Knapp—a charming, gentle-mannered woman, with splendid dark eyes.
June 22.—Tired of loneliness, I went to the Frau von Siebold, chatted with her over tea, and then heard some music.
June 23.—My kind little friend (Frau von Siebold) brought me a lovely bouquet of roses this morning, and invited me to go with them in the evening to the theatre to see the new comedy, the "Drei Candidaten," which I did: a miserably poor affair.
June 24.—G. came in the evening, at 10 o'clock—after I had suffered a great deal in thinking of the possibilities that might prevent him from coming.