#hesse

[maureen2musings]

Flowers embrace the moonlight

nicoles_moments

[livesunique]

Schloss Braunfels,  Braunfels, Lahn-Dill-Kreis, Hesse, Germany

[allthingseurope]

Rauischholzhausen Castle. Germany (by Philip Jahn)

[thirdity]

The more discriminatingly, the more sensitively, and the more associatively we learn to read, the more clearly we see every thought and every poem in its uniqueness, its individuality, in its precise limitations and see that all beauty, all charm depend on this individuality and uniqueness — at the same time we come to realize ever more clearly how all these hundred thousand voices of nations strive toward the same goals, call upon the same gods by different names, dream the same wishes, suffer the same sorrows. Out of the thousandfold fabric of countless languages and books of several thousand years, in ecstatic instants there stares at the reader a marvelously noble and transcendent chimera: the countenance of humanity, charmed into unity from a thousand contradictory features.

Hermann Hesse, My Belief: Essays on Life and Art

[diemelusine]

Princess Maria Anna Friederike of Prussia, Landgravine of Hesse-Kassel (1858) by Franz Xaver Winterhalter. Schloß Fasanerie.

[teatimeatwinterpalace]

Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, 1881.

Queen Victoria - April 4, 1880 | Darling Victoria, May every every blessing be showered on you on your dear 17th birthday and may you have strength given to you to be that support and help to your dear Papa which he so greatly needs! Every, every where you see what your beloved Mama did – how she worked for your country, watched over & led everything & how she stood by & supported your dear Papa – and you must try to follow in her footsteps – Modestly, unpresumingly , not putting yourself forward too much but being always ready to help & ready to do at Home what Papa wishes & requires. You must learn not to be posée, not talk too much or too loud – but take your place as your beloved Father's eldest daughter deprived of your beloved mother!

Queen Victoria - December 8, 1880 | Darling Victoria, I cannot tell you what pleasure your dear affte. letter of the 14th gave me! It shows so much good sense & right, proper feeling - as well as such confidence in your old loving Grandmama who loves you as a Mother & wishes to be one to you as much as she possibly can. God bless you for it sweet Child ! [...] And at the dinners remember not to talk too much & especially not too loud & not across the table.

Married life did little to stem Victoria's chattering. Her husband became one of only two people able to silence her, the other being the Queen. Years later, her younger son, Louis Mountbatten, became a third. In her memoir, Without Prejudice, Victoria's friend, Gloria Vanderbilt, complained: 'Rarely can one get a word in edgeways.' The diarist Chips Channon pronounced Victoria 'garrulous to the point of madness'. | The lives & deaths of the Princesses of Hesse by Frances Welch.

Louis Mountbatten | My mother was very quick on the uptake, very talkative, very agressive and argumentative. With her marvellous brain she sharpened people's wits, and of course especially my father's.

[the-last-tsar]

Tsarina Alexandra and sister Irene.