by Martha DeWolf
While Hovey was in Europe, his sister Fannie was in San Francisco. At the end of March, Fannie’s life with Anna and her children became even busier when Anna gave birth to her fourth child. Fannie wrote to Hattie, “We have a dear little baby in this house. Anna has a little daughter. A sweet little girl and we are all so glad that it is all over and that Anna is so comfortable.” Anna labored only two hours with this baby while Fannie took the children “into the country so they were out of the way.” Her letter is brief because, as she explained to Hattie, “I have much to do.”
Jenny Hastings daughter, Jennie Marie, had become engaged to an Englishman and even Hovey in Germany had received the news. Four months after he left New York, Hovey finally received a letter from his Aunt Fanny. Her health had not been good and he recommended that she sail to England for Jennie Marie’s wedding as “the voyage would do you much good. Your general health would be much better for it.” It is not clear exactly what was the matter but it would seem that she felt less than fit.
Jennie Marie had written to Hovey about her upcoming marriage or, as he wrote to Aunt Fanny, “her preparations to soon bow her neck to the yoke on British soil. I can hardly believe I am not to see her again; but this seems quite probable. I certainly hope everything will be as rainbow-like for the years to come as it seems to her now, & that she will find her husband quite as satisfactory as does my sister Hattie. She indeed writes me that he rather improved than otherwise as they get farther along the matrimonial road & that she desires nothing better in the way of a man. Quite the reverse of the usual after honeymoon experience”.
His experience in the hospital was, it seems, just as he had hoped, “I pick up new ideas everyday about treatment & care of patients and though I do not think the Germans treat their patients as cleverly as the Americans Dr.’s; their knowledge, theoretically, of disease is much better. They have not tact and cannot adapt themselves to the individuality of their patients as we do in America ... There is so much to see, & life is so new, everything seems so different & interesting here. For a young person one year here is worth five at home. To me, all things are very interesting & pleasant. Even the discomforts and I feel every day that by your kindness I am able to be here.”
He argues that were she to travel to Europe that, “It is not necessary to know the languages as English is spoken at all the hotels ... Medway does not need you & Uncle John can spare you for some time.......... I earnestly hope you will come with the party & after throwing your slippers after Jennie as she sails for S. America ... I [will] show you the place & talk the barbarous language in a way which astonishes even the natives themselves.”
He continued that, “we have just passed through the greatest holiday season of the year in Berlin, the Easter Holidays ... they did not close the restaurants or beer saloons, for the German is as thirsty on a solemn day as any other, & must have his beer- There have been three days in which we had no lectures or exercise & I have generally spent half the day in long walks .... among the windmills & little farms which give scanty return for the hard work put upon them for the soil all about here is little more than pure sand one great ugly plain with the nearest hills 15 miles away & even the forests seem hardly able to live.”
A month later he wrote again apologizing for not writing, “but I have been so undecided for the past few weeks, & so much i
