Posted on  UTC 2025-02-01 08:00

Heloise's love for the dithering Grillparzer finally hit the buffers in (or perhaps somewhat before) 1838, after eight years of waiting for him to take up the adoration she was offering him.

By late 1838, in Alexander Costinescu (1812-1872) she had found a man who wanted her. There is no hint that there was a queue of suitors competing for her hand – the situation strikes us as having been a Hobson's choice. We don't know, but we might suspect that there was no queue of prospective brides for him either. The transition from Grillparzer to Costinescu was effected painlessly, apparently with Grillparzer's full approval.

We have almost no information about the details of this transition, but we have a letter to Grillparzer written by Heloise in May 1835 in which she was pressing Grillparzer, who wanted to change his apartment, to move into a room in an apartment that would be shared with her and her family.

After this moment, we have no more letters from Heloise to Grillparzer. We can imagine his fright – he must have felt that he was being manouvered into a commitment. We can reasonably assume that the ditherer finally distanced himself permanently from this adoring young woman.

We are not sure whether Heloise got to know Costinescu independently or whether the relationship was brought into being through some machination of Grillparzer's. We have no evidence, but getting this now troublesome young woman not only married to someone else but transported 1'200 km away to the eastern margins of the Empire would have solved his problem permanently.

It must have become clear – or have been made clear – to Heloise that Grillparzer, who already had a longterm equally inconclusive relationship with Kathi Fröhlich, was never going to marry her.

A woman's lot

Heloise was thus faced with the hard reality that faced an unmarried woman in her late twenties. She needed a husband, sooner rather than later. The economic, social and biological clocks were ticking away inexorably. Her father was getting on, her younger sister was soon to marry, her elder sister had positioned herself as the head of the family.

As such, Heloise shared the destiny of the lower- and middle-class women of the time, ultimately needing to find a man – almost any man – who would support her financially and socially and keep her from the grinding poverty awaiting her as a maid or seamstress. By the time she had reached 28 and a reliable chap like Costinescu turned up, she took the only rational decision available to her.

Frank Holl, Seamstresses, 1875.

Frank Holl, Seamstresses, 1875. In the nineteenth century unmarried women of all classes had very few respectable options for earning their keep, the main ones being governesses or seamstresses. The grinding poverty and ceaseless labour of the latter became a meme among the socially aware. In 1843 the poet Thomas Hood (1799-1845) wrote a poem The Song of the Shirt which raised awareness the miserable lot of the seamstresses: Work—work—work, / Till the brain begins to swim; / Work—work—work, / Till the eyes are heavy and dim! Although images of modern human suffering were not very saleable, some painters took up the challenge. Frank Holl's painting is free of the histrionics common in that genre. Image: Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter.

A quarter of a century before the 28 year-old Heloise took her fateful decision to throw in her lot with her Romanian engineer, Jane Austen, in her novel Pride and Prejudice summarised such a situation in the character of the 27 year-old Charlotte Lucas. Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine of the novel, is deeply shocked that her close friend Charlotte has agreed to marry the odious clergyman Mr Collins, whom she herself had so spiritedly rejected. When confronted, Charlotte explains to her:

I am not romantic, you know. I never was. I ask only a comfortable home; and, considering Mr. Collins’s character, connections, and situation in life, I am convinced that my chance of happiness with him is as fair as most people can boast on entering the marriage state.

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813), Chapter 22.

Charlotte's choice of Mr Collins had, from the viewpoint of Elizabeth, serious downsides in Collins' character and general repulsiveness. But, as Charlotte knew, her friends and relatives were all nearby – her life would change, but only somewhat. When we consider Heloise's choice of Costinescu, however, we realise just how many more serious downsides she would face.

Marrying Costinescu would mean leaving her beloved, exciting Vienna and moving far, far away to Moldavia, a rural patch 1'200 km away from Vienna on the outer eastern edges of the empire. She would leave behind her family and friends to become a stranger in a strange land.

In her first months in Jassy she remains hopeful that friends and family might visit her in her rural outpost on the edge of the known world:

I decided to leave my father, although I certainly could never have so decided, had my admirable husband not promised me that he would invite my beloved father, after some years, to join us.

'Family Notes'

But it never happened and it never would happen – the thought of twenty-four days and nights there and back on a postcoach would repulse the kindest friend or the most caring father.

As far as we know, she never learned Romanian, a deficit which would only enhance her isolation.

A wise female friend could have pointed all these drawbacks out to her, but may have refrained because she, too, would know that time was running out for the young woman. The eligible Viennese men were focussing their attention on the late teens and early twenties. Heloise's eight year-long dallience with Grillparzer came at an opportunity cost (her lost youth). Without a solution (that is, an eligible bachelor) she would inevitably drift into a poverty-stricken spinsterhood.

Let's be cruel for a moment and suggest that Alexander Costinescu, the engineer-architect swot who was good at maths, trigonometry and technical drawing, but over-sensitive and prone to depression, was more the Mr Collins than the Mr Darcy figure in this tale.

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