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CAROMNE PICHI/ER. 233
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
¦» The Suburban Solitude Of The Pichlers...
devoted much of lier time to the education of the orphaned family .
The following * year she made the acquaintance of Mrs . Jameson , who was then visiting- Vienna in company with the
daughter-inlaw of Goethe . She was charmed from the first with this highly gifted Englishwomanwhom she described as being * " as modest
as she was learned , , and as gentle as she was clever . " They visited each other frequentlyoften regretting that they could onl
exchange thoughts in an idiom , , strange to both , for though each y eould read , neither could speak the _lang-uage of the other .
Intercourse with a kindred spirit was now doubly precious to Madame P ., for society could no long _* er offer her the attractions it had
once presented ; and writing * in her old age , she deplored deeply the extinction of the " salon life" similar to that of Paris
though on a smaller scale , which in , her younger days had been _, the highest enjoyment of cultivated minds .
The change was in some measure traceable to the opening of many restaurants and public gardens where ladies miht
friends and acquaintances being thus enabled to meet gappear without ; trouble or obligation on either side , though with less economy and .
at the sacrifice of the pleasures of hospitality . What , however , in Madame Pichler ' s opinion , had been the great revolutionizer of
society was—tobacco ! and without any of the elaborate virulenceof the famous " Counterblast" her brief argument on the subject
is both clear and weighty . Men , , she remarks , could not appear in ladies' society with pipes in their mouthsand they would not lay _thenx
down ; the only alternative was , for them , to associate exclusively with each other , and in such gatherings , free from the gentle
restraint of the softer sex , they learnt to give themselves up to * coarse licentiousnesswhile women were left also quite
bthemselves , as in a harem , , to pass their time in trivial frivolity y , the result being that manners , were less refined and morals less elevated
than in the time when there had been no such interference with , freedom of intercourse .
In 1837 , the death of Herr Pichler , who had always been devotedly attached to his wife , and to whom she had been united for
a period of forty-one years , left her with no other wish than that she might soon follow him . Not only was her husband deadbut
as she expressed it , her " world was dead" too . Most of , her , own generation had passed awayand wherever she turned her
view , the political , literary , and soci , al horizon was changed . In 1838 her last novelwhich though kindly criticised was but coolly
receive , d by the public , , was published , and all she wrote afterwards was a volume of short papers on topics of the day ; a series of
stories called " Pictures of the Times , " recounting the history of three generations in one family , during the last seventy years ,
showing the alterations which had taken place in manners , fashions , modes of thought , & c , during that period ; and , lastly ,
yoi _* . x . s
Caromne Pichi/Er. 233
CAROMNE PICHI / ER . 233
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Dec. 1, 1862, page 233, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01121862/page/17/
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