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Family History
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TheRagens Wine Tastings
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December 1968 I have written this letter
today to your aunts and to your mothers, Kytja, Nadja, Jvan, Jan, Tom, Suzie,
and Robert. Their childhood was part of mine, even if every one of them would
describe it from a different angle, with different incidents and stresses on
different happenings. Your grandmother just died in
Prague, Czechoslovakia. She was the last one of thirteen children, out of whom
six had died before their first year. She was born in Northern Bohemia in 1872
and got a teacher's certificate in 1891, a rare achievement in those days. She
was married in 1897 and there were seven of us children, the first born in 1898,
and the last in 1915. For you, this is a long time ago, a different era. Also, it is far away, a different culture. But I hope that my story will give the feeling of what the essence of our family was, which is, after all partly your own heritage.
Dear Mila, Vera, Vlada, Ljuba,
Jara, and Kytja, Today is the day of our
mother's funeral. Since the moment a cable came from Prague about her death, I
have felt so closely connected with you all, thinking of each of you
individually, and, at the same time, I have a feeling of such entity that I am
writing you all at once. I know that each of us is
recalling our own childhood these days. We older ones, who had our father with
us until our marriages, were probably given more of the happy atmosphere of our
home, the feeling of security, confidence in the world and people than you, who
have lost him while still very young. But he belonged to all of us. Our father and mother were
matched as perfectly as humanly possible. In my eyes as a child, and even now,
they represented a unity of feelings, moral values and attitudes. It was a very
closed union and a real harmony. Father's adoration of our mother never
diminished, his never-failing love for her was expressed by everything he said,
the way he looked at her; touched her; that deep devotion was felt by all of us.
Our father was basically gay, liked to dance and sing, in his youth was
light-hearted, fond of girls and women. He was softer than mother, more open. It
was he who used to assemble us for the "twilight hour" where everybody
told what happened during the day, what we had learned. We used to sing songs,
recite poems, and sometimes father told us his unforgettable stories about
"the Lazy Honza," "Salt more precious than gold," and
"Three chests." Mother was more reserved, more
serious, and stronger in her principles. 'A severe judge," sometimes father
called her. She loved our father all her life, deeply, devotedly, and with
unending loyalty. After 1927, it was this love, together with her sense of duty
to her children, which was the source of her strength. I was born in Ceske, Budejovice,
where I lived the first five years of my life. I remember a big house with cold
halls, large windows and doors with knobs so high that I was not able to open
them, the swing between the door, and a spacious garden; the feeling of
animosity between us and the director of the school, with whom father had some
difficulties. And my first lie. I was picking strawberries in the school garden.
When the director saw me, he asked me what I was doing. I tried to hide the
strawberries behind my white apron, but in my anxiety and fear, I pressed them,
so my dress was full of big red spots. And the director laughed at me cruelly.
Mother said: "That happens when one lies," and I did not get any
sympathy. But not a scolding either -- mother knew that I had lived through a
bitter experience. I remember vividly when Vlada
was born. Aunt Fanynka, unmarried sister of my mother, arrived from Mseno; her
presence always meant a new baby. Vlada must have been born early in the morning
because I can see Mila, Vera, and myself jumping on our beds and making noise so
that somebody would come. Father opened a door and said: "Be good and
quiet, your brother is being born." At that moment, though, it was just his
hope, but several hours later, a midwife came to show us the baby, redfaced,
with black hair, swathed in a white cover with a blue ribbon, and we were
delighted we had a real brother. You,
Vlada, were always something
very special in our family. Mother and father were so happy that they finally
got a son and we admired you very much. I was then four years old and I must
have been jealous of you. Even today I can recall a dream, when I went into our
cupboard and there, in mother's best china cup, that with a red ornament of
flowers, was your round, black head, neatly cut off. My father came when he
heard my crying and took me into their bed. In the bliss of that warmness, all
anxieties disappeared. Then it was our old apartment
in Kutna Hora, on the first floor with windows on the street and in the back
onto the garden. Father was sick with chronic pleurisy. He was drinking large
amounts of mineral water, and the whole atmosphere was sad because he had been
transferred from Budejovice as a penalty and there was, at some time, some kind
of investigation in regard to his work among the Czech minorities. There I started school. I
remember the enchantment when I was able to read my first book about three
kittens, and how father and mother were proud of me. That was when our
"twilight hours" started. The time when mother in her new evening
dress, her hair done by a professional in our home, went with father to the
"Ball of Tea Roses," and all of us, including our father, were
admiring her beauty. That evening, Mila, Vera, and I were naughty, and in the
fight, broke the best coal oil lamp we had. Trembling, we were waiting for the
return of our parents. But we got a tray of the most delicious tortes and we
promised never to do it again. I remember when Vlada cut his
face on the corner of our table, jumping for joy that father came home
earlier. And how we suffered with him when Dr. Jager had to come many times and
cauterize the wound, which was not healing. In those three years in the old
house, I must have felt for the first time the lack of ability to cope with Mila
and Vera. Mila was volatile and full of temperament and Vera was a little
intellectual, smart and much quicker than I. They sent me to a pharmacy to buy
"Amacalf" for a penny and the pharmacist told me that I was a good
girl and gave me a piece of candy. I remember another dream, in which both of
them threw me into a ditch and an old, ugly man was mean to me. And, again, the
warmth and security of my parents' bed where my father took me, all trembling in
tears. The day in the third grade where the teacher gave us a difficult design
and I feigned stomachache and was sent home. I came home in an excellent mood,
that I had gotten out of that assignment so easily. But my mother sent me back
right away and I had to tell the teacher that I was lying. The teacher, known
for her strictness, took my hands and said: You were afraid of the picture, I
know. It is good that you told me the truth. Go ahead and try." My tears
dried out and I still remember that bunch of catkins, how well I succeeded in
that charcoal drawing. One day, father came and
assembled us all in the living room saying that he had good news. He was named
head of the agricultural school and we were to move into the director's house.
We children were not able to understand all the material advantages, but we were
very happy. The joy that was radiating from our parents' face was a good omen.
Father was found innocent of the accusations and was rewarded for the hardship
by being advanced. In this house we lived probably
more than eighteen years. It was a beautiful, spacious building, a small
mansion; on one side the school with dormitories for the students, oh the other
side the farm with barns, pond, animals, poultry, quarters for coachmen, workers
and other personnel. That was the fullest and most
prosperous era of our lives. Father was happy in his work in the school and as
head of the experimental farm. After school we used to go with him, hand in
hand, to inspect the fields. He showed us different kinds of grains and crops,
trees, birds, wild animals, plants and flowers. In the season, we used to bring
home the wild mushroom growing in one 0f the fields. Mother used them for her
delicious chickens in cream. I have never eaten that dish better prepared. Altogether, mother's cooking
was outstanding. I can recall even today that feeling of festivity of Sunday
dinners, Christmas, Easter, birthdays, when we had visitors. The fish soup,
traditional for Christmas, was never surpassed by any bouillabaisse anywhere in
France or Italy. Do you remember those three kinds of fish, with salad of celery
roots and apfelstrudel every Christmas Eve? There was turkey with almond
stuffing on Christmas day, pheasants with red cabbage on St. Stephen's day,
right after Christmas, pork roast on New Year's Day; never poultry or fish, so
your luck would not fly or swim away from you. The first geese and ducks in late
summers, tenderloin of beef with special sauce, the feasts when the butcher used
to come twice during the winter to kill the pig and make sausages. That first
white asparagus in the spring, those small "buchty" with sauce made of
egg yolks and white wine. All the fun when the barrels of red and white wine
came from Tirol, where father used to order it and when the whole family and
school janitor bottled it, feeding the whole day on ham baked in a large loaf of
rye bread. Everything, people and the
house was always given a full measure, nothing was cheated or sloppy. Mother had
good taste, believed in quality, not only of behavior, but also of everything
around her. The towels in the bathroom and the kitchen were always of linen,
sheets, too, covers of damask, as was the table linen. Always perfectly white,
smoothly ironed, the girls never had many dresses, but always of good quality;
our petticoats and nightgowns had always ruffles of beautiful Swiss embroidery,
which mother used to order directly from there. Just before the war of
1914-1918, mother had an opportunity to buy directly from the factory a large
amount of velvets. And for years, all Prasilova girls were in velvet; Mila,
light blue with a collar of white fur, Vera, a light violet with brown fur and I
in black with a beaver collar and beaver around the circular skirt. All of us
had shoes made to order from pelts of calves from the farm, which father was
able to buy raw and have it cured. That was a time of elegance and father used
to say: "Terusko, we really have some handsome children.” Ljuba. Jara and Kytja were born
in that big house. I remember every day of each birth quite vividly. Aunt
Fanynka, the feeling of admiration and tenderness about the baby, elaborate
christenings with Aunts Lea and Staza as godmothers, little golden coins behind
their bibs and those christening feasts. With mother already up, prettier than
ever. Once a year, in May, when lilac
was in full bloom, the whole family made an expedition to Kacina, a beautiful
summer castle from the end of the seventeenth century, enclosed in a large park
planted in the most exquisite kinds of lilacs, from pure white to the darkest
red and purple, from single fragrant blooms to fullest clusters. And among the
bushes, there were nests of nightingales coming back year after year. Everybody got up that morning
at four o'clock without any protest, settled in an old, large, horse-drawn
carriage, and started for the twenty-mile trip. We usually arrived just in time
to see the sunrise and to hear that sweet song of nightingales. We admired the
lilacs and then all of us settled down to a picnic breakfast of coffee cakes and
chocolate, kept hot on bricks. Those bricks, hot from the oven, wrapped in
blankets, were also used to keep one's feet warm on winter trips by sleigh to
our relatives in the country. Another exciting trip was a
yearly trip to Prague, never with all of us, just two, selected with a great
deal of justice. That meant an evening in the Opera house, in the box of our
uncle. Since then I have a hard time listening to Wagner; an evening with
Parsifal at the age of thirteen was a dose just too large. But we have enjoyed
many plays and operas and heard many concerts. Our daily meals were always on
the formal side. The table covered with white damask, all implements in their
proper places, all of us around the table on time. The family was alone quite
seldom. There were cousins and aunts; some of the cousins from the country
stayed the whole school year. Mlle. Simon from Besancon and a young German boy
from the Sudetenland, who were supposed to teach us French and German, but who
were corrupted into learning Czech; Uncle Charles, unmarried brother of mother,
debonair and worldly; grandmother from Mseno, who died in our house in 1922.
Aunt Lea, Aunt Klouda, witty and gay, who played the piano so beautifully. And
that lively group of gentlemen who came from Prague once a year to celebrate the
feast of the pig's slaughter. The house was always full,
alive, running smoothly, orderly. And mother was able to find time to teach
twice weekly at the high school. I can see her sitting in the midst of the
living room at her desk, preparing her classes. There she was also working at
her finances. Every expense was put down and there were many budgetary envelopes
whose contents were shifted many times during the month. We were such a big
family, there was never too much money, but we never had a feeling that there
would not be enough for something important. Mother was a good housekeeper, a
good organizer. Our father was broadening his
fields of activity. He was involved in the politics of the Agrarian party, which
he saw in the light of an idealist, was lecturing in professional circles. The
experimental farm was prospering, the garden bearing all that exquisite fruit
and vegetables which father imported from all over Europe at the beginning of
his management and which were grown up by now. Do you remember those pale,
almost transparent peaches, which were espaliered on the walls of our house? Or
those sweet, fragrant roses in the circle before our windows? On every day of
October 15, the name day of Teresia, our mother, father got up earlier and
brought in two bouquets of those roses, little nipped by frost. And there was
one vase on the piano, one in the middle of our table, covered with the pink
damask table cloth, the best china, festive pastry, and all of us children in
starched dresses in a row waiting to recite our poems of well wishing, the
youngest one always getting away by saying: "I am too small to learn a
wish, so I shall say my little prayer for you." Life was brisk, interesting,
and happy. The core of it mother and father, united, loving, generous, with a
sense of justice, demanding high standards and the best from themselves and from
all of us. “Work does not lower a person, but a person can lower the work by
doing it badly," was my mother's conviction. Father gave me for my fourteen
year's birthday a diary in which he wrote in his careful handwriting with a
French pen, this dedication: "The stricter you are with yourself and the
softer with others, the happier your companions will be, and the more satisfied
yourself." Not that I was able to apply it when needed, but I have never
forgotten it. The year of 1918 was very
meaningful for all of us. It was October 28 when father assembled us all,
including both maids and our wash lady in a circle in our living room and said:
"Austria has lost, and we will have an independent republic of
Czechoslovakia, with Thomas Masaryk for our president." And he was crying
for joy, we with him, everybody was embracing everybody and everybody was happy.
The little ones did not comprehend fully what was going on, but entered in the
mood of celebration wholeheartedly. And then the era of new hope and new
activities began. I went back to school; Mila left for Prague, to enter the New
School of Social Work, Vera who was unhappy in Prague was making plans to go to
study in Munich. After my graduation, I went to study in Prague, but I remember
those happy weekends at home. There was such a strong feeling of belonging to
our family and to all of you individually. Mila was always full of temperament
and elan, Vera impressed me by her intellect and sense of perfection, Vlada was
admired by all of us because he was male, strong, and with the charm of a good
heart, Ljuba was such a beautiful girl with large green eyes and something
mysterious, Jara gentle, sensitive, a little princess. And Kytja, the youngest,
loved and admired by everybody, gay, natural and spontaneous. I can see you all, my sisters
and brother and I am so grateful for everyone of you, for our childhood and
mostly for that lucky star which brought our mother and father together. There were beautiful people... Nadia December 1968 |
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