To Miss Walker she writes:
“Sept. 22nd. 1862.
Mannheim.
Dear Lucy,
You will, I think, already have heard from my Mother that I cannot now offer myself to accompany L. to Paris. I do not know if you are aware that three weeks ago I wrote to Mrs. B., urging her, as strongly as I knew how, to entrust L. to me for the winter, and offering to take her to any part of Europe which was thought best. I believe, at Mrs. Z.’s entreaty, Mrs. B. did consult some medical man on the subject, but I am sorry to say they confirmed her resolution of ‘keeping her under her own eye’—of course not understanding, as you and I think we do, all the circumstances.
I therefore got so decided a refusal that even I felt further entreaty to be useless, and, giving up the point, I entered at once into a six months’ engagement as English Teacher at the Grand Ducal Institution at Mannheim, where I have now been just a week, and therefore, of course, no further change is now in my power as regards my own movements....
I am much pleased on the whole with the kind of tone I find between teachers and pupils, and with the general principles, which, if not the very highest, are yet greatly superior to what you find in most English boarding schools.
By the bye, before I say Goodbye, I must tell you what horror my open window at night (even now) occasions the natives! Having violent headache some time back, an old servant assured me it was ‘the window’, and since I have been here I have been entertained with the account of a gentleman who went mad, as I understand, entirely from sleeping with an open window! So now you see the fate before you as well as me! Besides that, the doctor here (more shame for him) assures me I shall get a fever!
Goodbye, dear Lucy. Remember me to the B.s when you write.
Yours very sincerely,