(The nice lunch you put up for me took me all the way to Dresden with some tea; and the pretty box is on my table now.)

 

26-4-'05

 

Dear Dr. Jacobs;

   I gladly sent the fifty cents to the Woman's Journal for you.

   Shall be much obliged to Miss Kramer[s] for the translation of the notices--it is very kind of her.[A] I'm much pleased to hear that the lecture stirred people to further discussion--that is the best result.

   The books came safely--thank you very much.

   Here I am gradually recovering my strength--that was a most exhausting trip. I quite broke down in Hamburg--had bronchitis and had to give up the last two lectures. But I'm glad I came--it is a fine thing to remember.

   My best regards to Mr. Gerritzen and that nice boy of yours![B] Also to all friends.

   Cordially--and with most grateful remembrance of all your kindness,

 

[signed]
Charlotte Perkins Gilman

 

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A. On Dutch international suffrage activist Martina Kramers (1863-1935), see Document 13.
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B. Jacobs's husband, Carel Victor Gerritsen (1850-1905), was a highly regarded reformist member of the Dutch parliament. A moving account of their unusual courtship and marriage and of his decline and death is in Jacobs's memoir Memories, pp. 109-37. The "nice boy" is Charles Jacobs, Jacobs's nephew, whom she and Gerritsen informally adopted after the death of his father, Jacobs's brother Julius Jacobs. Charles lived with the couple starting in 1896. See Bosch & Kloosterman, Politics and Friendship, especially p. 64.
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