• 58. Caroline to Lotte Michaelis in Göttingen: Clausthal 13 July 1785
[Clausthal] 13 July [1785]
My dear Lotte,
|119| Tomorrow I will say — the day after tomorrow! And the day after tomorrow I will say — tomorrow, and then — today I will be with all of you! [1] Saturday we will be eating our midday meal in Osterode, so we will be not be arriving until the evening. I hear that Schlözer has postponed his ball until Sunday. [2] But that is not what I am looking forward to most . . .
Above all, my angel — and for this I also humbly beseech Mother — please do not in any way let me be a stranger in my parents’ home; instead let everything be the same as it was, in all sincerity; [3] I will be arriving, e.g., on Saturday evening, when the table settings will be put out for the last time, and Mother should not, for example, already get out the Sunday settings, but should instead merely put a napkin out for me, which I will then keep until the following Sunday — and so on. [3a]
Please also thank Mother in advance for the linen for the little dress, and, upon my word, it was not at all supposed to mean that I would have wanted to buy one here in the meantime. |120| Madam Böhmer would also have offered me a finished dress like that. I was hoping she would think of it again. Out of sheer affection for Auguste she made such fearsome faces that the dear girl was scared to death.
During that trip, [4] by the way, there was absolutely no inconvenience; she slept the whole way there, then was awake the whole way back, gazing at the heavens, which reflected back from her heavenly eyes. [5] Lotte, now as before the child is still an angel; though she does now have a pronounced snub nose, she is absolutely no less charming. [6] But look at me chattering on like this for so long. More on Saturday! More! More! [7]
Notes
[1] 13 July 1785 was a Wednesday; the following Saturday, when Caroline was scheduled to arrive in Göttingen, was 16 July 1785. Osterode is just southeast of Clausthal (Ignaz Heymann, PostKarte von Deutschland und den angrenzenden Laendern, 2nd ed. [Triest 1806]; Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Cartes et plans):
[2] August Ludwig Schlözer had also given a ball the Saturday following Caroline’s wedding in June 1784. Back.
[3] A touching testimony to how intensely Caroline wants not to feel a stranger in what is now her childhood home. See also the quizzical lament in her letter to to Lotte Michaelis on 15 June 1785 (letter 56) — a year to the day after her wedding:
Yes, today I have been married exactly one year. How quickly, how slowly has it passed. Right now, at this moment, as I look back, the girl I was and the mother I have become seem separated by but a single stroke of the clock.
The sentiment resembles that of the young woman in the following illustration who rediscovers her childhood dolls while simultaneously rocking her present — quite real — infant with her foot (illustration from Johann Friedrich Cotta’s Taschenbuch für Damen auf das Jahr 1800 [Tübingen 1800]):
[3a] Johann Caspar Lavater, Geheimes Tagebuch, 2 vols. (Leipzig 1771, 1773), vol. 1, following p. 174:
[4] Presumably the trip(s) mentioned in Caroline to Luise Gotter on 22 June 1785 (letter 57). Back.
[5] At the time Caroline is writing, of course, the night sky could offer a considerably different spectacle of celestial illumination without the interference of artificial and ubiquitous urban lighting (Matthäus Merian, Dorf bei Nacht mit Sternenhimmel [ca. 1601–25]; Herzog August Bibliothek; Museums./Signatur C Geom. 2° [189] oben rechts):
[6] (1) Gynäologie: Erstes Supplement oder XIV. Bändchen: Die Kunst mit Weibern glücklich zu sein; Inhaltsverzeichnis deutscher Almanache, Theodor Springmann Stiftung; (2) Johann Timotheus Hermes, Sophie’s Reise von Memel nach Sachsen, vol. 3 (Leipzig 1778), illustration following p. 558:
[7] Caroline is understandably elated at the prospect of visiting her home, family, and acquaintances in Göttingen again; Auguste, of course, was still an infant and would be meeting her Göttingen relatives for the first time in Göttingen itself ([1] Der Freund des schönen Geschlechts: ein angenehm und nützlicher Taschenkalender für das Jahr 1808; [2] Taschenbuch für edle deutsche Weiber [1800]; Inhaltsverzeichnis deutscher Almanache, Theodor Springmann Stiftung):
Here illustrations evoking a similar visit home by a young mother and child from approximately this period (Pieter Yver, Familienbesuch [1736]; second illustration: from Johann Friedrich Cotta’s Taschenbuch für Damen auf das Jahr 1800 [Tübingen 1800]; third illustration: Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki, Ankunft der Tochter bei der Familie [1792]; Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum; Museums./Signatur DChodowiecki-Kopie Z AB 3.14):
Translation © 2011 Doug Stott