Beloved, precious Mama:—On awaking this morning, my first thoughts were of you and of dear, darling Papa! Oh, how it reopens the wounds scarcely healed, when this day of pain and anguish returns! This season of the year the leafless trees, the cold light, every thing reminds me of that time!
Thousand thanks for your dear letter received yesterday. Well, only too well, do I remember every hour, almost every minute, of those days, and I have such an inexpressible longing to throw my arms round your neck, and to let my tears flow with yours, while kneeling at that beautiful grave.
The tender love and the deep sorrow caused by His loss remain ever with me, and will accompany me through life. At the age I then was, with its sensitive feelings, it made an impression which, I think, nothing can efface—above all, the witnessing your grief. Happily married as I am, and with such a good, excellent, and loving husband, how far more can I understand now the depth of that grief which tore your lives asunder! I played our dear Papa’s organ under his beloved picture this morning, and my heart and my thoughts were in dear England with you all.
We found our children well on our return, and Irène prospers perfectly on her donkey’s milk.
My mother-in-law is so much pleased with the book,[69] and it has interested her very much. She came to see me early this morning on account of its being the 14th. She is always so kind and full of attentions.
Darmstadt, December 17th.
How dear of you to have written to me on the 14th; thousand thanks for your letter! How much I thought of all on that day you can imagine; also what good it did me to know that you still thought of me so kindly with those recollections. I am so sorry to hear that you are so suffering. I hope Osborne will do you good, and that rest and quiet will refresh you.
Darmstadt, December 21st.
* * * I hope by this time that you are quite recovered, though this mild damp weather is not made to give one strength. I feel it so much also, and am really only kept alive by steel, for off and on I am so weak that I nearly faint if I have to stand any time, and this is so unpleasant.
* * * I am trying to found what is no small undertaking: a “Frauen-Verein” to be spread all over the land in different committees, the central one being here under my direction, for the purpose of assisting the International Convention for nursing and supporting the troops in time of war, which was founded at Geneva, and to which this country also belongs. The duty in time of peace will be to have nurses brought up and educated for the task, who can then assist in other hospitals or amongst the poor, or to nurse the rich, wherever they may be required in time of war. This committee of women has to collect all the necessary things for the wounded and for the marching troops, has to see to their being sent to right places, etc.