School for Peter Christian. When he arrived she was calmer, though she
soon became delirious again, and the attending physicians, L. L. Jacobsen
and Joachi mBallesig, had to bleed her, apply leeches, and keep an ice pack
on her throbbing temples around the clock. The next day she was a bit
better and could be bathed, but on the evening of Monday, September 10,
death tightenedits finalgrip onthe febrile woman.Four dayslater Mynster
deliveredwhatPeterChristian’sdiarydescribesas“apricelesslittlesermon,”
afterwhichpeoplewentouttoAssistensCemeteryandinterredtheremains
in the Lund family burial plot. Johan Christian Lund, age thirty-four, was
left with Henrik, age seven; Michael, age six; Sophie, age five; and little
Carl, two years old.
As usual, the Rudelbach sisters were on the spot and could report the
latest news of the Kierkegaard saga to their older brother: “Just lately the
poor family is beset with much grief: Their eldest daughter, married to the
eldest Lund, is dead after delivering their fifth child. The birth went ex-
tremely well, and the woman was fine afterwards, but the boy died and the
midwife did not do enough to get rid of the milk, which went up into her
brain, so that the poor woman went mad and died ten days later. Recently
theirsontheshopkeepersetoffforNorthAmericatoseekhisfortunethere.
So the old folks cannot expect to see hi magain. The doctor [Peter Chris-
tian] will also be leaving town soon, so the poor parents have grief enough
to endure just now.” There is a note of drama in the misses’ report but also
somethingofthatrepellentlackoffeelingthatistypicalofthosewhogossip
too much.
The pained and poignant letter that thirty-one-year-old Petrea Severine
wrote to Niels Andreas in early November 1832 is in an utterly different
vein. Petrea Severine was not accustomed to writing. She repeatedly made
mistakesintheuseofcapitalandsmalllettersatthebeginningsofsentences,
and her punctuation needed improvement, but it is precisely this latter
trait—the absence of pauses—that gives her letter the breathless tone that
surelyreflectedPetreaSeverine’sownstate.Herthoughtsseemtohaverun
directly out of the pen and onto the paper in a sort of strea mof conscious-
ness. “Dear Brother / I have wanted to write to you for a long time but I
havebeensosorrowfulanddejectedthatIhavebeenunabletobringmyself
to do it the sad cause Nicoline’s death which occurred shortly after your
departure you have I presume learned of from [Johan] Christian’slettersit
has spread a loss in the family which I think no one feels more than I and
Christian you will certainly say but to judge fro mappearances he is dealing
with it better than I now it has been two months and I think I miss her
more than in the beginning it has made a great assault on my mood which
was in any case bad enough before the world is so dark and sad to me I
{1813–1834} 39