1871.10.13 English
copenhagen thirteenth of october eighteen hundred and and seventyone
my dear brother at this very moment finally i have gotten my leipsiger machine in working order after it was returned to me and i am utilising the first piece of paper to send you a few lines a couple of other machines are being finished during the next few days and they will show even better print and also a different kind of script of which you will hopefully soon receive samples my sincerest thanks for your latest dear letter i am very pleased that you persevere in working hard with the english language if you can achieve virtuosity in that language it will god willing bring you much pleasure and benefit but also it is a great pleasure in itself to struggle with the language and to conquer difficulties and make progress congratulations with completing the marling[1] once again so very kind of the countess as well as thaning i am longing to hear news about our dear good mother’s health we are faring very well thank god even if kathrine my beloved kaethe is not yet fully recovered but with the help of the good lord i expect her to regain her strength it seems that our housekeeper miss kasse will be useful and a pleasure to us her pay is a mere five daler a month and yet i hear that this a a very good salary the toddlers are all well iuliane has learned how to knit and knows almost all the letters of the alphabet of course it was about time too but she is rather naughty just like i was when i was small these days our youngest is very excited for having discovered that she can do more with her legs than just dragging them along she can now stand up and is beginning to try to move them now dear brother please don’t turn up your nose just because of all my typing errors the sequence of the piston rods of the ball that i am now using is different from the one i have been practising on during the last few months where is the dear countess these days i would very much like to tell her something about the writing ball and send her some better typing samples than those she got sometimes last year best wishes and regards from all of us to dear little mother and to you dear brothers from your deeply devoted brother
R. Malling Hansen
(signed by hand)
[1] This sentence and the following I interpret as follows: His brother Jørgen, who is apparently staying at Hunseby on the island of Lolland, just a few kilometers from Knuthenborg Manor, and on a piece of land obviously owned by the count/countess of Knuthenborg, has been allowed to lime ( = marl) the soil. Maybe this refers to Jørgen’s vegetable garden?? Judging from the many letters from RMH to the brothers and to the mother, everything indicates that they ‘both all three’, as he puts it in several letters, are staying together or close to eachother at Hunseby. Both of them seem to be working at the Skelstrup School close to Maribo. The person referred to as Thaning we don’t know, but later on Jørgen was married to a Thaning.
