Ottilie Assing to Frederick Douglass, November 18, 1878

OTTILIE ASSING TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Stamford[, Conn.] 18 Nov[ember] 1878.

MY DEAR FRIEND:

It is with the old feeling of something like homesickness which I always experienced when leaving you after spending a considerable time with you, that I am thinking of you now. Whatever there may be distressing in the conditions under which we only can meet, yet your company for me has such a charm and affords me a gratification the like of which I never feel elsewhere. Aside from other attractions it is such comfort to be allowed to communicate anything and everything to each other, to confide unconditionally without the least reserve or distrust. I might continue yet much longer in variations on this subject, were it not for the fear that you could accuse of using incendiary language in spite of honest intentions and promises to the contrary.

The difference of climate is quite conspicuous at this stage of the season, not so much perhaps in temperature as in appearance. The trees are entirely stripped of their foliage and the cold wind and rain of the last two days contribute to give a bleak and winterlike appearance to the landscape. In Hoboken everything is about the same as usual. My Maca flew down from his stand the moment I entered my room, rushed at me— and could find no end of caresses and demonstrations of delight. Though excellently cared for and caressed by the children, he had been perfectly silent all the time, yet almost from the moment he saw me again as his audience he began to talk as finely and distinctly as ever. I really feel almost like doing wrong in leaving him again after so short a stay. All my other friends too are cordial and hearty as always. I saw the Loewenthals,^{1Ernst Jonas and Charlotte Knaur Lowenthal had five children: Amalia “Maja,” born in Vermont, and August, Julius, William, and Martha, all of whom were born in New Jersey. August E. Lowenthal (1856–86) followed in his father’s footsteps and became a physician, and his brother William (1862–1954), who Anglicized his surname to Lowell in 1919, became a dentist and oral surgeon. Julius Lowenthal (b. 1860) was a merchant. Amalia Lowenthal (b. 1854) married one of her brother August’s colleagues, Dr. James H. Rosenkrans; her sister Martha (b. 1868) married an engineer named Dana A. Bicknell. 1880 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Hudson County, 205; 1930 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Essex County, 10B; Allen Rosenkrans, The Rosenkrans Family in Europe and America (Newton, N.J, 1900), 167–68, 245; Moss, Edgar Holden, 467–69; “New Jersey, Marriage Index, 1901–2016,” Ancestry.com; Find a Grave (online).} Kudlichs^{2Johann “Hans” Kudlich (1823–1917) was born into a peasant family near Lobenstein, in the Austrian Empire. He was educated at the gymnasium college in Troppan, Austria, before being sent to Vienna to study law. While Kudlich was studying for his doctoral exam at the University of Vienna, the revolution of 1848 broke out, and he organized a student revolutionary group that marched on the Landhaus (Austria’s lower provincial diet) on 13 March 1848, demanding freedom for the peasants. In June he was elected to the new general assembly (the Reichstag) in Vienna, and on 8 September 1848 the Reichstag passed a law emancipating the empire’s peasants. The following month, however, a separate revolt in Vienna led to both the collapse of the revolution and the end of parliamentary government. Having been falsely accused of murder, Kudlich, fearing for his life, fled the Austrian Empire, and on 7 March 1849, he arrived in Zurich, Switzerland. In 1853 he graduated from the University of Bern with a medical degree. That same year, he married Luisa “Louisa” Vogt (1827–84). Her father, Philipp Friedrich Wilhelm Vogt, was a professor of clinics at the University of Bern; her brother, Karl Vogt, was a famous biologist, philosopher, and politician; and her uncle was the poet and abolitionist Charles Follens, who became the first professor of German at Harvard University. In 1854 the Kudlichs immigrated to the United States and settled in Hoboken, New Jersey, where Kudlich ran a successful medical practice until his death in 1917. In 1925, Kudlich’s remains were transferred to his hometown of Lobenstein (now part of the Czech Republic) and reinterred in the “Hans Kudlich Watch Tower.” Later, a monument dedicated to the “Peasant Liberator” was raised to his memory in Poysdorf, Austria. Hans and Luisa Vogt Kudlich had nine children. 1880 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Hudson County, 62–63; Cornelius Burnham Harvey, ed., Genealogical History of Hudson and Bergen Counties, New Jersey (New York, 1900), 535; Encyclopedia of Revolutions of 1848 (online); “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995”; Find a Grave (online).} and Mrs. Werpup,^{3Eliza Werpup.} yet the whole place has become disagreeable to me on account of that “varmint” of a house. Miss Fehr’s^{4Assing is more than likely referring to the elder of two girls, Florence (age twelve) and Louise (age ten), who were listed as residents in the household of Julius Fehr in the 1870 census. Both girls were the children of Mrs. Fehr’s first marriage, to Edmond Broquet. Florence Broquet “Fehr” von Hake (1859-1929), born in Illinois, seems to have moved from her mother and stepfather’s home in Hoboken, New Jersey, to New York City sometime after the death of her mother in 1877. In August 1878, she married Adolph von Hake in Manhattan, and by 1880, she and her husband were living on Garden Street in Hoboken, where he was identified as a druggist in the census. 1860 U.S. Census, Louisiana, Orleans Parish, 73; 1870 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Hudson County, 88; 1880 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Hudson County, 44D; “New York, New York City Marriage Records, 1829–1940,” FamilySearch.org.} failure to take a house in New-York is owing to the disappointment caused her by a young couple who after having engaged themselves to board with her through the winter, deserted her almost at the last moment. To be sure, she can’t risk the experiment without having at least her rent and expenses secured and thus some weeks or months may yet elapse before we shall move over. Dr. Frauenstein^{5Gustav Frauenstein.} however is safe for the first of May, and by that time if not before, the way will be clear. Mr. Fehr is getting deeper and deeper entangled and behaves like a madman. His foolish anger against his successor seems to have completely blinded him and may yet lead to some [illegible] catastrophe.

As I shall stay at least a week here I shall as a matter of course expect a letter from you, directed here, care Mrs. Huntingdon,^{6The daughter of George Sumner, a botany professor at Trinity College, and his wife, Elizabeth Putnam, Katherine Brinley Sumner Huntington (1825–1902) was the widow of the very wealthy Hezekiah Huntington (1796–1865), who had been a successful publisher, businessman, and onetime president of the Hartford Fire Insurance Company. Following her husband’s death, Mrs. Huntington spent several years living in Europe with her two children, Katherine and George Sumner, and a companion named Anna de Castro (1806–91), with whom Ottilie Assing was acquainted. Katherine Huntington and her household returned to the United States in 1877, settling in Stamford, Connecticut. In 1882 she moved to Florida, where she purchased a substantial amount of property and established the town of Huntington. She lived there until her death in 1902. 1880 U.S. Census, Connecticut, Fairfield County, 34; Ales Hrdlicka, “George Sumner Huntington, 1861–1925,” National Academy of Sciences: Biographical Memoirs, 18: 249–50 (1937); Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 338, 357; Find a Grave (online).} Box 105. As the two ladies go to bed with the chickens I hope to do a good deal of letter writing in my long evenings and to manufacture also an article about the Corcoran Gallery.^{7Assing’s article “Die Corcoran Galerie in Washington” was published in volume 14 of the Beiblatt zur Zeitschrift fur Bilende Kunst in 1879. Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 437–38.}—I should much rejoice if you would employ your leisure hours in writing the sequel of your autobiography.^{8Although it is generally believed that Douglass did not begin working on Life and Times until 1879 or 1880, this letter clearly indicates that by 1878, he had at least begun thinking about writing a third autobiography. Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 619.} I have no doubt you could make it a highly attractive book. John Brown, political and abolitionist reminiscences, intercourse with prominent men, such as Lincoln, Sumner, Grant,^{9Abraham Lincoln, Charles Sumner, and Ulysses S. Grant.} etc. deliverance from religious bondage and so many other interesting topics you might treat. The long winter evenings are just favorable for such work and I think that writing would strain your eyes much less than reading.

My love to your glorious place and all who walk on it either on two or four legs, to its trees, hills and valleys! I don’t dare to inquire after the poor unfortunate piece of humanity since I expect none but sad news. All good things to you!

Yours as much as ever

OTTILIA

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 281–83L, FD Papers, DLC.

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