LITMIR.BIZ

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were on leave, just filling in time whilst he looked for a better job elsewhere. It was a typically generous gesture from Bleuler who had already suffered Carl’s precipitate resignation six months earlier, and it was received with a typically grudging gratitude by Carl.

      With Carl back at work, Emma took stock of her married state. She started to set up home, arranging for furniture and fine antique pieces to be brought over by horse and cart from the Ölberg estate. Her mother came to help, plus a live-in maid, also from Schaffhausen, and gradually the apartment took shape. It was not the kind of living Emma was used to but it was only temporary after all. In many ways it was refreshing. From her bedroom window in the mornings she watched as bare-footed farm boys in short trousers and braces led cows down the hill to the slaughterhouse, and smallholders from the neighbouring village of Forch came down in their wooden farm carts to sell their vegetables at the market, the husband in front driving the horse, the wife and children behind among the laden wicker baskets. Given Zollikon’s proximity to the Burghölzli asylum, quite a few of the villagers worked there as helpers, the low wages still better than they could earn as farm labourers or domestic servants.

      Carl left for work early every morning, walking up the hill through farmland and meadow, past the Burghölzli kitchen gardens where inmates in overalls were already hoeing and digging, watched over by the Wärters in their long green garden aprons – then on through the gates of the asylum, up the front steps and straight into the early morning meeting. These days he was always smartly dressed in a suit and tie, waistcoat, and his gold fob watch and chain, which he wore till the day he died. But once on the wards he donned the doctor’s white coat like the rest of the medical team and his daily routine began. He rarely got back before eight because Bleuler insisted Burghölzli staff eat their meals with the inmates, and the days were long for Emma left sitting in their apartment with nothing much to do and hardly any friends.

      Some days she would make her way into the centre of town, walking down Zollikerstrasse, then taking the tram to Stadelhofen, where she joined a crowded, busy, modern city. Zürich was so much larger, noisier, and more commercial than Schaffhausen. Everything seemed so much faster. Trams could travel at fifteen kilometres an hour, conveying shop girls, hairdressers, waiters, bank clerks and office workers from the outskirts into the business district and back out again after a long ten-hour day. The tram drivers and conductors sported military-style uniforms and handlebar moustaches, as did the captains of the paddle steamers which plied their way across the lake, bearing freight as well as passengers.

      By 1903 Zürich was a city on the make. Its population had doubled since 1890 to over 162,000 and was growing by the day. The unification of the outlying districts under one ‘City Administration’ in 1893 had propelled it into an era of thrusting capitalism and commercial activity, quickly followed by a property boom which led to massive land and building speculation, which in turn led to a financial crisis. But by the turn of the century the recovery was in full swing. Everything relied on Zürich’s geographical position on the Limmat and the Sihl rivers flowing from Lake Zürich, their bridges linking the two parts of the town, with a chain of Alps beyond, each peak with a Gasthof or hotel on the summit. Zürich was postcard-pretty and good for business: commerce and finance, banks, a stock exchange, import and export, construction and engineering, heavy and light industry, all thrived on the shores of the lake. Further out in the industrial district of Sihl factories and sweatshops produced silk, cotton, lace and embroidery and bit machinery of every sort, all stored in warehouses on the bank of the Limmat beyond the Bahnhof Brücke, the bridge leading off Bahnhofstrasse. Rich foreigners were beginning to flock to Zürich for the Alps, the air, the shops and the lake. Fashionable hotels catered for this early tourist industry, none grander than the Baur-au-Lac, with gardens leading down to the lake. ‘Hotel-keepers who wish to commend their houses to British and American travellers are reminded of the desirability of providing the bedrooms with large basins, foot baths, plenty of water, and an adequate supply of towels,’ advised the Baedeker guide. Thomas Cook & Son had a bureau in the Hauptbahnhof, the central station, if further guidance were needed; they reminded travellers that no servants were allowed on the platforms: luggage had to be conveyed by the uniformed porters.

      As spring gave way to a hot summer and she got used to her new surroundings, Emma found there was plenty to do in Zürich, quite apart from her usual reading, writing, needlework or knitting, and helping Carl to write up his daily reports and research. There were plenty of museums: the Ethnographical Museum, the Municipal Museum of ‘Stuffed Wild Animals’, the Landesmuseum, a massive building in the neo-Gothic style recently opened in celebration of Zürich’s increasing importance, housing an extensive collection of Swiss artefacts from prehistoric to modern times – bridal coffers, carved altars, old sleighs, tapestries, a distillery from the ancient Benedictine monastery of Muri, musical instruments, local Swiss Trachts (each canton having its own costume), china from the old factory at Schoren, banners and ducal hats and military uniforms of every kind, plus an entire Zürich house from the fourteenth century. But as far as Emma was concerned there was nothing more important than the Zürich Central Library with its collection of 160,000 books and its large, high-ceilinged, silent reading room – open in the morning from ten until twelve, and again after lunch from two till six, entry costing 60 rappen – ideal for her research into the Legend of the Holy Grail, which she now returned to with joy, like greeting an old friend.

      Emma found a pleasing anonymity in Zürich: whilst the Rauschenbachs were the foremost family of Schaffhausen, known and respected by everyone, here Emma was mostly unknown and unregarded, in spite of her great wealth. The old ruling families of Zürich kept very much to themselves, entertaining one another in their villas in quiet, prosperous districts such as Seefeld, or meeting for private luncheons in fine restaurants, or at one of their many Vereins: the Yacht Club, the Rifle Club, the Rowing Club, the Riding Club, and the recently founded Automobile Club. Who among them would want to pass the time of day with the wife of an Irrenarzt employed at the Burghölzli asylum – an institution which had, after all, been built high up on the Zollikon hill, well away from the town, for a reason? This snobbery bothered neither Emma nor Carl, who were content, each for their own reasons, to be outsiders: Carl because he was born that way, Emma because society never held much importance for her, preferring as she did the company of close friends and family.

      Marguerite often came to visit during that first year and the sisters would wander up and down the Bahnhofstrasse or the Parade Platz, though Emma bored of it quickly, one shop being much like the next. With the exception of the fashion houses. Both sisters were interested in the latest fashions, noting they were distinctly more modern in Zürich than sleepy Schaffhausen. Day wear was much the same: long-skirted and high-necked, worn with hats and button boots, but evening gowns were very décolleté, set off by heavy strings of pearls. The waists seemed narrower in Zürich, fishbone corsets pulled tight every morning by the maid, and the hats seemed larger, decorated with plumes and bows and veils, the hair curled with heated irons and pinned up with combs and grips. Feather boas and tassels were the fashion that year, and no lady went about without gloves, short for the day, long for the evenings. In the summer months the dark patterns gave way to white – long white skirts, high-necked white blouses, white stockings, white shoes. Swiss lace and embroidery came into their own then, along with parasols and wide straw hats decorated with ribbons and cherries and artificial flowers. Perfumes of violets, lilies-of-the-valley or eau de cologne were especially popular. On the Bahnhofstrasse in the recently opened Salon de Beauté there were boxes of rice powder, pots of white and rose creams, tiny bottles of nail polish and glass balls of bath salts displayed in discreetly half-netted windows, offering manicures and pedicures and other beauty treatments in the privacy of curtained-off niches, administered by trained young ladies in white overalls with their hair tightly pulled back.

      After their shopping exertions Emma and Marguerite usually went to a café for kaffee or thé citron and pâtisserie. Other days they might take the cable tram up to the Grand Hotel Dolder, with its wide terrace and Zeiss telescope to better appreciate the view of the Alps. There were two picture houses showing newsreels and new features like The Great Train Robbery, jerky and silent except for the piano accompaniment, though good bourgeois people rarely visited them other than incognito, via a private side door. Emma and Marguerite preferred to promenade along the many

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