“Rock Garden has always been the Garden of Paradise,” comes a voice borne upon the breeze, “but wherever you are or wherever you make your home, that place will soon be ideal to your friends.”
Dr. Buckel writes from the gardens of California, her thoughts turned back to Rock Garden:
Oh, what has it not been! You know what it has been to you, but you do not know how dear it is to other hearts. I almost feel as if it ought to be set apart as a place sacred to friendship and to all the sweet memories associated with it.
... Christmas at Rock Garden always comes to me as a beautiful memory of generous hearts and joyous greetings. How plainly I can see you holding up the packages and reading off the names in your own inimitable manner, while the big stocking stands yearning to give up its treasures.
And again:
... I always think of Rock Garden and the Christmas tree there and how much I enjoyed it, and how dear are the memories. All the Heinzens, Miss Sprague, Dr. Morton, the Prangs, Dr. Berlin, the Drs. Pope, and others, are all fresh in my mind, and I send them kind greetings, with love to Santa and your own dear self.
William Lloyd Garrison at one time described this home which Dr. Zakrzewska had there created for herself and for the friends and patients who were her paying guests. He said:
Dr. Zakrzewska was already settled in her attractive home in Cedar Street, Roxbury, when, in 1864, my father moved to Highland Street near by, and the two families became intimate. Although unmarried, the Doctor rarely failed to have a house full of friends and relatives, making of her home a social center for her German and American acquaintances.
She was a woman of decided opinions and the frankest speech, a circumstance which gave zest and animation to any group in which she mingled. She held firmly to the conviction that personal consciousness ends with death; that so-called spiritual communications are a delusion, that prohibition laws infringe upon individual rights; that homeopathy has no claim to science; and that armed resistance to tyrants is justifiable.
My father held diametrically opposite views, but as both were believers in the utmost freedom of speech, the social clash of arms never engendered a moment’s ill feeling. They were closely united upon the questions of anti-slavery and woman’s rights, and they were drawn by a common impulse to progressive and philanthropic movements.
Karl Heinzen, who with his wife and son made a part of the Doctor’s household, was a striking and remarkable figure. He was a man of massive intellect, possessing a high reputation in Germany as a writer of both prose and verse. His intense love of liberty and hatred of shams had made him an exile in America in the tumultuous years preceding the Civil War. He was of noble stature and frame, a spacious temple for a great soul, his rugged face betraying his indomitable and fearless character. Boston never realized the value or distinction of this moral hero, for the reason that the English language was more formidable to him than despots and monarchies. But in Dr. Zakrzewska he had a friend who appreciated his noble talents and virtues.
... I have dwelt upon this conjunction of the Doctor with Karl Heinzen because his influence upon her life was deep and abiding. To see him working about the ample grounds, trimming the grapevines and attending to the fruit trees—his recreation and pleasure—and, when the weather permitted, to behold the afternoon table-gathering under the leafy shade at the back of the grounds which rose above the house, was to receive the impression of a bit of the Fatherland—a German grafting on a Yankee hillside. The glimpse was often through or over the board fence which separated my own house on the hilltop when, in 1868, I became the Doctor’s closely adjacent neighbor. What animated talk enlivened the coffee, and how many friends enjoyed first and last the retirement and refreshment!
In the early days, sweet Mrs. Severance and her interesting family lived also on Cedar Street; the Prangs were near at hand on Center Street; the Koehlers and the Elsons were in the vicinity. The beautiful suburb of Roxbury was then full of natural charm, an object of interest to strangers visiting Boston and at that date untouched and unspoiled.
I remember a traveled friend pointing down Cedar Street towards the Doctor’s house and asking, “Have you ever been to Versailles?” adding, “The arches of these glorious elms are a reminder of it.”
For many years Dr. Zakrzewska had a summer cottage at York Harbor but it is of her busy city homes that her friends wrote most often.
One of the former internes writes to her in later days:
The year spent by me in the Hospital will always be remembered with great pleasure, particularly that part of it when I was quarantined at the Maternity and you used to ask me down to dinner at your house nearly every evening.