Jl.m;siia in the spring of th~ year 1339, au event 110 doubt of ~pcclu.1 interest to the V. Struvcs. Moll Hamilton's diary is a record of Continental life 110 years a1go as seen through I·rish eyes and of an Irish family's life on the Continent, especiaHy :of their efforts in lear.ning the languages. It suffices to ·say that this diary coc.tains accounts of Carlsruhe, BadenBaden, Strfassburgh, Freibur,g, Bas.le and Switzerland in general, in p~rticu1ar Geneva and Lausanne, and finally of Heidelberg, Mayience and Nzuwied. The detailed deslcriptions of Christmas and Easter in German families •a'fe particularly valua.ble and of historical interest, even to a German. Regarding iMr. Hamilton's business on the Continent, Moll's diary !informs us that "on the first Sunday 1839,, he beglan to hold morning meetings. "At eleven many English and some Germans used to 1come to our rooms 1and we had little meetings like at Neuwi,ed, but at Carlsruhe we only knew one or two English people". These were apparently religious meetings. At the end of her diary Moll tells us that on their return to Neuwied the Hamiltons stayed at the B11uderg.~meind.e (Herrenhuthters) Inn and that they took lodgings with tw:o M:oravian ~adies. The description, on her tombstone, of their s·ervant Rebecca as "beloved sister" also points to some sectarian associa!Lon. On Christmas 1839 Moll was given by her father (nothing but) ''a nice German testament". Mr. HamHtQ:n ailso gave English lessons to the 1Misse~ Struve, in exchange for th~ :Gel'lman lessons gi·ve:n to his ladies though, rather than for money. That the Hlamiltons were well-,to-do can be gaug1ed from the fact that while bringing their own maid from heland, they enga1ged a German mlaid and later a sieco.nd German :r:naid whom they took with them to Switzerland. .Moreover, Vhey had a governess (presumably from Ireland) for their daughters and a tutor (one Lauterbach) for their son, who were also among the party on the journey througtl Switzeriland. Thus it would appear that Jahr. H3lmilton was a free-lance ev!angeHst iof independent means, who might be assigned a place in a history of English-speaking sectarian missions in Germany. Towards the end of 1839, Mr. Hamilton .considered taking his family to England "to put Jiames to school, but w1e did not like this going ·so nea:r home without getting fhome", the only note of attachment to Ireland struck in M'Oll's diary. On their journey to Lausanne, the Hamiltons called at Baden on their friends the ·"Tlellesleys, 1probably Henry Richard W., later British minister to the Frankfurt Confederation, who in 1833 had married Olivia Fitzgierraild (D.N.B.). At Strassburg, they called on the Nesbitts and the .Bohns, the latter perhaps, James Stuart B., the book-seller (D.N.B.). While there are numerous English descriptions of the Rhineland and Switzerland 1at that time (including some by Irish-born ttuthors), Moll Hamilton's diary is an interesting record of how thlo~oughly many of these visitors appU.ed themselves to the learnjng 1 of the German langt1age. Jn conjunction with the records of the 317.
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