OTTILIE ASSING TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Hoboken[, N.J.] 2 Dec[ember] 1878.

MY DEAR FRIEND:

With intense interest I followed you on your wanderings to all those places
which are so familiar to me through your descriptions that I am under the
impression as if I myself had once seen them in childhood. Your feelings
I can perfectly interpret; I know what it is to visit such old haunts from

my own experience and should have given a great deal to be the pigtail
that hangs behind him during this trip as elsewhere. That you should pick
up Perry¹Perry Downs. is just like you and natural enough under the circumstances.
Among all the leeches that feed on you he is one of the most harmless
and least expensive, and since you are wisely going to put him in the little
house you will not be greatly troubled by his presence. But how then about
the gardener? Shall I answer advertisements and see applicants while the
house is occupied at least for the present or do you intend to build another
if a suitable man should present himself?

Saturday I received a letter from Ludmilla in which she mentions the
suicide of her former husband and also the rumor about her stopping a
small annuity.²At age fifty-one, Ludmilla married an Italian officer twenty years her junior, Gino (or Cino) Grimelli (1841–78) in 1873. While many of Ludmilla’s closest friends disapproved of the marriage, Ottilie wrote to her sister: “I keep repeating my hope that Grimelli will prove as true, as faithful, and as thoroughly good and noble as Douglass.” Two months after their marriage, Ludmilla and Grimelli were separated. Ludmilla wrote to her sister that her husband was abusive and a philanderer. They were divorced a year later. In 1878, Grimelli committed suicide. Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 312–13, 321. This she declares <to be> untrue and says that it has been
contradicted. So much the better for her, yet there remains the disagreeable fact that he would be living today if he had not resigned his position
in the army in order to marry her. To be sure, the world does not lose
anything in him, but nevertheless I would not be in in her shoes.

Queer people the Osbornes!³Possibly a reference to Byron Osborne (b. 1832), a ship’s carpenter who lived in Hoboken, at 183 Bloomfield, for a few years in the 1870s with his wife, Elenor (b. 1838), his sister Charlotte, and several children. 1850 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Monmouth County, 218A; 1880 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Monmouth County, 403; 1900 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Monmouth County, 7B; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995.” When they lived in our neighborhood
they did not return my call, and now, when I ignored them they went
such a distance to see me. This shows at least that there is no prejudice
of color behind, but some people act most strangely when natural, inborn
tact clearly points the way. Mr. Lange⁴Johannes “John” Daniel Lange. recently furnished a striking illustration in this line. When Dr. Kudlich’s daughter died⁵Hans and Luise Kudlich had a large family of nine children: Helene, William Tell, Paul, Herman, Lenora (Leona), Cora, Edith, Hans, and Matilda. Mathilde “Matilda” R. Kudlich died at age fifteen in October 1878. “New Jersey, Deaths and Burials Index, 1798–1971”, Ancestry.com. he merely sent
a card, the coolest manner in which the most distant acquaintances can
manifest their sympathy, although the summer before last, when he was
engaged to his wife, the two came almost every fortnight to spend Sunday
afternoon with the Kudlichs. I have not seen him since the evening when
you were here, but yesterday had a very pleasant call from Franenstein.⁶Karl Heinrich Gustav Frauenstein. I
told him of your glorious place and he said that he would much like to see
you there some time in a favorable season.

No better prospects yet concerning the disagreeable house, and matters are even so far worse that the druggist who occupies just half of it,⁷Probably a reference to Dr. Julius Fehr.
has not yet paid his rent for November, and if then he could not pay fifty
dollars, I don’t see how he will raise a hundred now. I don’t anticipate to
get anything from him and don’t judge him a conscientious man, else he
would not have taken the larger and elegant upper story, furnished it in
fine style and even bought a piano that his wife might thump <it> and
jingle for the edification of mankind. This is too much in the style of
Charles⁸Charles R. Douglass’s financial struggles were a source of constant tension with his father and frequently led to serious strains in their relationship. In 1870, after just two years in Washington, D.C., Charles was already in debt to his father by over one thousand dollars, and the situation only worsened in the years that followed. By the middle of the decade, Douglass was routinely being hounded by Charles’s creditors, who threatened both father and son with legal action, not to mention embarrassing publicity, unless Douglass agreed to pay his son’s ever-growing debts. In one striking case from early 1876, Douglass was asked to cover a debt of $175 that Charles had somehow managed to run up while serving as a member of his local school board. Although his financial difficulties could be partially explained by the relatively low wages that Charles earned in the government clerical jobs he held during much of his early career in Washington, D.C., a history of making bad investments, combined with a rather extravagant lifestyle, clearly exacerbated the situation and further strained his father’s patience. Pierre Islam, Perplexing Patriarchs: Fatherhood among Black Opponents and White Defenders of Slavery (Wilmington, Del., 2019), 126–27; Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 551, 570–71; Blight, Frederick Douglass’ Civil War, 205. and of Mr. Beneck to expect much good. We both acted differently in former days. A most painful disappointment it is to me that under

the circumstances I have yet to postpone buying cigars for you. It has
always been endless gratification to me to see you smoke and enjoy them
and I feel the deprivation most keenly.

On Saturday I called on Mrs. Nickert.⁹Although Assing refers to Mrs. Nickert, given her advanced age (ninety-four), it is more likely that she meant her mother’s cousin, the French-born Anna M. Reihl (1784–1882). Reihl immigrated with her daughter Emilie Reihl Nickert (c. 1823–79) and son-in-law, the Reverend Peter Nickert (b. 1825), to the United States in 1852. The family initially settled in Buffalo but within a few months of their arrival were living in Lancaster (also in Erie County, New York), where Nickert became pastor of a small German American church. By 1865, Reihl, along with her now-widowed daughter and granddaughter, Marie, or “Mary,” was living in Rochester, New York, where her daughter supported the family as a French teacher. In the early 1870s the three women moved to Brooklyn, New York, where Mary Nickert (1855–90) married a Russian immigrant named Theodore Walpulski (b. 1847), in 1873. All three women lived in Brooklyn until their deaths. 1855 New York State Census, Erie County, 36; 1865 New York State Census, Monroe County, 14; Lohmann, Radical Passion, 336, 346, 360, 361–62, 364n; Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 99–100, 111, 115, 128, 341; Find a Grave (online). The old lady bears the weight
of her ninety-four years remarkably well. If only she could have a little
more company and be free from care, but Mrs. Nickert’s earnings fall
shorter every year, and all which I can do for the present is to give them a
few articles of clothing. Need everywhere!

Everything good to you!

Yours ever

OTTILIA

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 286–88, FD Papers, DLC.