During the months of her mother’s gradual recovery she seems each day to have been happier than on the one before.

    June 6, 1833, POTSDAM

At a little before eleven this morning, Mary, Ginkie, Henry, [7] Mr. Lettsom [8] and I set off from Berlin in a very curious rickety machine of a carriage, to leave Mama for a whole day and night, which feels very impossible, and is the best sign of her (health) that one could have.  We were very happy and we thought everything looking very nice.  We were sorry to see no friends as we left Berlin, for we looked so beautiful in our jolting little conveyance with four horses and a post-boy blowing the old tune on his horn.

[7] Her brother, afterwards Sir Henry Elliot.

[8] The tutor.

To escape the heat of Berlin they moved out to Freienwalde.

    June 14, 1833, FREIENWALDE

A beautiful morning, and at about 10 they all set off from Berlin, leaving Mama, Papa, Bob’m and I to follow after in the coach.  After they went, there were two long hours of going backwards and forwards through the empty rooms, then having said a sad good-bye to Senden,[9] Hymen,[9] Mr. Lettsom and Fitz, though we know we shall see them again soon, we got into the coach with the squirrel in a bag and drove off.  I could not help feeling very sorry to leave it all, though it will be so very nice to be out of it, but I knew we should never be all there again as we have been, and all the misery we have had in that house makes one feel still more all the happiness of the last month there.

There is nothing to say of the country, for it is the same as on all the other sides of Berlin; the soil more horrid than anything I ever saw, and of course all as flat as water, but just now and then some rather nice villages....  After about two hours there we came on, first through nice, small Scotch fir woods, then quite ugly again till near here, when we got into really pretty banks of oak, beech, and fir, down a real steep road and along a nice narrow lane till we got here, where they were all standing on the steps of our mansion ready to receive us.  Mama was carried to the drawing-room ... before the house is a wee sort of border all full of weeds, but nothing like a garden or place belonging to the house, but there seem very few people; then there is a terrace, which is very nice though it is public.  Mama is not the least tired and quite pleased with it all.  It is very, very nice to be here, able to go out without our things and expecting no company, and what at first one feels more nice than everything, not having any carriages or noises out of doors; for eight months and a half we have never been without that horrid, constant rumbling in the streets.  It is very odd to feel ourselves here; unlike any place I ever lived in.  The bath house is close by, but that is the only house near us.

[9] German friends at Berlin.