Posted on  UTC 2025-02-01 08:00

Ships that pass in the night

Heloise described Ermiona as her 'loyal friend'. Ermiona is the only friend of Heloise that we know about, which is why we have needed to persecute the reader with so much of the Asachi background. But apart from that single remark, we know nothing more about their relationship. We may be able to understand a little more if we lay out the structure of both their lives in a parallel timeline.

Please note: the 'ages' given in the timeline are simply a count of years intended as a rough guide. They are not accurate to the month, meaning that the subject's true age may be a year out.

The years when their personal contact was theoretically possible are marked in light pink. The years when they were both mothers of infants are marked in red. Orange marks the years when they may have corresponded.

Heloise Höchner   Ermiona Asachi
Event Age Year Age Event
Born 09.03 0 1810    
       
  11 1821 0 Born 16.12
       
Meets Grillparzer 20 1830 9  
       
  25 1835 14 Affair with Alexander Moruzi (1815-1878) begins
Academiei Mihăilene founded
  26 1836 15 Marries Alexander Moruzi
  27 1837 16  
Vienna 08.11, Jassy 20.11
Marries Costinescu 22.11
28 1838 17  
Stillborn son 11.05 29 1839 18 Son Georges born 18.08 [d. 14.03.1856 (17y)]
Son Alexander born 28.07
Alexander baptised 21.08 (Anica Ghica-Manu)
30 1840 19  
Alexander ill
Marie born 08.11
Marie baptised 11.11
(Maria Soutzos)
31 1841 20  
Sister Susanna ill 17.04 32 1842 21  
  33 1843 22  
Son Emil born 12.03
Baptised 19.03 by Ermiona, 'my loyal friend'
34 1844 23 Baptises Emil 19.03
Alexander dies 15.11 35 1845 24 Moves to Paris with Georges
Sister Eleonore marries 21.02 36 1846 25 Attends College de France in Paris
Wickerhauser visit c. 05.11 37 1847 26  
Dies DATE TBD 38 1848 27  
    1849 28 Divorce from Moruzi
    1850 29  
    1851 30 Edgar Quinet’s wife Wilhelmina dies 11.03
    1852 31 Marries Quinet 21.07
       
    1900 79 Dies 08.05

Late-starting motherhood

Heloise was twenty when she fell in love with Grillparzer. He dithered on and off with her for nearly eight years. In effect, he wasted her best years.

There was a longstanding tradition throughout Europe that women married young, in their late teens to their early twenties, while men married in their late twenties or beyond. There were many reasons for this custom.

In 'good society' the man was expected to have established a career or to have inherited money, to have acquired some maturity and enough financial stability be able to support a wife and household. Most would be expected to have reached this state in their late twenties.

In 'good society', women, on the other hand, were not expected to be economically active or independent. They would expect to be supported by their husbands –'I ask only a comfortable home', as Charlotte Lucas put it. They therefore became nubile – in the old sense of 'marriageable', not the new sense of 'hot chick' – as soon after puberty as was decently possible.

In our timeline we can see that Ermiona was one of these early starters: she took her young nobleman Moruzi back to her parents' place when she was 13 and had a baby with him when she was 17. Contrast this with Heloise, who was 29 when she had her first baby (stillborn). Twelve years makes a lot of difference when you are young. Not only that, but in her case the convention of 'young bride, older bridegroom' was also broken: Costinescu was in fact two years younger than Heloise.

Another woman serving as a godmother, Anica Ghica-Manu (1810-1872), also did not hang around. She was 17 when she married Ioan Manu in 1827 and her first child, George Manu, was born in 1833.

As the 'childbearing age' runs past, the older a woman is, the more problematic conceiving and delivering babies becomes, in terms of both the mother's health and the baby's wellbeing. Modern medicine has smoothed out and extended the optimum childbearing period, but in centuries before the present the younger the mother, the greater were the chances for a successful birth.

In Heloise's case it is possible that the medical care and midwifery on offer in Jassy was defective compared to Vienna or even Bucharest. As we read of the health troubles in the 'Family Notes', our modern medical knowledge tells us that the diagnoses were quackery and the remedies prescribed could have no positive effect at all – probably the opposite.

But the basic fact that she started her childbearing career when she was 29 and closed it with her death in childbirth at 38 puts her at a disadvantage in an age when childbearing women needed every advantage they could get.

There really is a lot to dislike Grillparzer the ditherer for.

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