I will send you sweet little Maly’s photograph next time. * * * Baby has a very fair skin, light-brown hair and deep-blue eyes with marked eyebrows, not much color in her cheeks, but pink and healthy-looking altogether.
Kranichstein, September 24th.
* * * People with strong feelings and of nervous temperament, for which one is no more responsible than for the color of one’s eyes, have things to fight against and to put up with, unknown to those of quiet, equable dispositions, who are free from violent emotions, and have consequently no feeling of nerves—still less, of irritable nerves. If I did not control mine as much as I could, they would be dreadful. * * * One can overcome a great deal—but alter one’s self one cannot. * * *
October 31st.
* * * I always think, that in the end children educate the parents. For their sakes there is so much one must do: one must forget one’s self, if every thing is as it ought to be. It is doubly so, if one has the misfortune to lose a precious child. Rückert’s lovely lines are so true (after the loss of two of his children):
Nun hat euch Gott verlieh’n, was wir auch wollten thun,
Wir wollten euch erzieh’n, und ihr erzieht uns nun.
O Kinder, ihr erziehet mit Schmerz die Eltern jetzt;
Ihr zieht an uns, und ziehet uns auf zu euch zuletzt.[123]
Yesterday Ernie was telling Orchard that I was going to plant some Spanish chestnuts, and she said: “Oh, I shall be dead and gone before they are big; what a pity we had none sooner!” and Ernie burst out crying and said: “No, you must not die alone—I don’t like people to die alone; we must die all together!” He has said the same to me before, poor darling. After Lenchen’s [Princess Christian’s] boys were gone, and he had seen Eddy and Georgy [sons of the Prince of Wales], his own loss came fresh upon him, and he cried for his little brother! It is the remaining behind the loss, the missing of the dear ones, that is the cruel thing to bear. Only time can teach one that, and resignation to a Higher Will. * * *
Darmstadt, November 9th.
* * * The new Church laws (similar to the Prussian) go through our Upper Chamber to-morrow, and will meet with great opposition. Louis is, of course, for accepting them, as a check must be put on the Catholics; for the Catholic clergy are paid by the State as well as the Protestant, so that the State has an equal right over both; but this right the Catholics have for years managed to evade. The Bishop of Mayence is doing his utmost to create every possible obstacle, but it is to be hoped that one will not here have to have recourse to the method of fines and imprisonment as in Prussia * * *
November 16th.