Borne in Blood (Page 1)
HERO IOCASTA ARIADNE CORVOSAGGIO VON SCHARFFENSEE
Text of a letter from Helmut Frederich Lambert Ahrent Ritterslandt, Graf von Scharffensee at Scharffensee in Austria, to his daughter-in-law Hero Iocasta Ariadne Corvosaggio von Scharffensee at Chateau Ragoczy near Lake Geneva, Yvoire, Switzerland.
Graf von Scharffensee sends his greetings of the season to his daughter-in-law, and hopes that the new year of 1817 will bring her good health and better weather than we have seen this last year.
I will take the children to Vienna at Easter, to purchase their annual wardrobe and to let them enjoy some of the luxuries and elegance of that splendid city. I am not yet prepared to have you join us, and for that reason, I recommend that you not ask that I include you. There will be time enough when they are a little older for you to become acquainted with them again, when their characters are fixed and they no longer answer to every turn in the wind. For now, it is fitting that they continue with me. As their grandfather, I can provide them the guidance and maturity that men must naturally impart, and which will engender the respect for their father's memory that they will need in later life. Rest assured, they are receiving the best care and instruction that I can provide them, and that I will continue to do so as long as you continue to agree not to interfere in my guardianship. We are agreed, are we not, that you have neither the position, the money, the standing, nor the ability to care for them yourself. In any contest of law, the courts must uphold my claim over yours.
Should you remarry, as much as I would dislike that to happen, I will, of course, return my grandchildren to you, provided I am satisfied that your new husband is sufficiently comfortable in funds and standing to care for them in the manner to which they are now accustomed. Your present arrangement can hardly be deemed appropriate for the company of your children, but I will not oppose it so long as you and the Comte remain discreet. If you bring scandal upon my name, I will have to take measures to constrain you, for your children's sake as well as for the preservation of my family's good name. You must still agree that as things are, you cannot offer them either education or material opportunities for the future, nor can you establish them in the world when they are older. My son ought to have provided both, but as we are aware, he did not, and his political alliances have proven to be inadequate to the changing conditions around us. The law, in its wisdom, has entrusted his estates and his children to my care. I hope to instill a distrust of radical notions in the children so that they will not commit the same order of folly that their father did. Fridhold did not expect to die in the full flower of his manhood, but still he did, and his children, without my help, are left with little or nothing to sustain them.
I write this to you from my Schloss, and send it by regular post; I extend my good wishes to you, on this, the Eve of Christmas, 1816,
Your father-in-law,
Graf von Scharffensee