1870.12.23 English
The royal institute for the deaf-mute december twentythree eighteen hundred and seventy[1]
My dear brother!
From my dear beloved kathrine and myself a small Christmas parcel has today been sent to you[2]. We hope that you will find a way to share nicely among yourselves the content of the parcel. please enjoy, it is love coming to you dear people. may the good lord grant all three of you a merry and wonderful Christmas joy. did i mention in my last letter that i have once again received five hundred daler[3] for my machine and hope to get more. thank you so much my dear brother for your last letter. your suggestion about the parliament seems quite opportune and timely. the prospects of getting this post are unfortunately not very bright, but nevertheless it is proper to apply for it. we shall do whatever we can to help, and with the help of the good lord you may well get it; but perhaps he has something better for you, dear brother. i am longing to receive word also from brother john, but maybe he will send me a christmas letter. dear sweet mother was supposed to receive a letter from my kathrine; she has been wanting so often to write, but i am sure dear mother knows that the toddlers[4] can make such good intentions come to nothing. however, for now let me convey her fondest greetings. well, will you visit us during Christmas?[5] yes, the youngest has now been christened, and it is also true that i have forgotten to tell you that she was named after the recently departed; in other words, her name is sarah, and this pleased dear brother-in-law peter[6]. hence, we had to give up our first intention, to name her after the dear countess knuth. and now our warmest and fondest greetings to dear sweet mother to dear brother iohn and to you dear brother from all of us.
Your deeply devoted brother
R. Malling Hansen
[1] CB: This is the fourth oldest writing ball letter that we know of!
[2] CB: A small comment from the perspective of our present time: It is December 23, and RMH has sent Christmas presents to the brothers, and the mother, who live in Lolland, some 130 kms south Copenhagen! And since the Danes celebrate Christmas on December 24, this means that parcels and letters are distributed on December 24, mailed from Copenhagen on the 23rd! Impressive!
[3] JMC: an old Danish coin, nominally worth 2 kroner. RMH uses the short form “daler”. The formal name is “rigsdaler”, translated as “rix-dollar”. 500 daler must have been quite a substantial sum of money at the time.
[4] CB: RMH and his beloved wife have at this point in time – Christmas of 1870 – four children – all of them girls – and all of them below 4 years of age! And presumably he was not the type to change napkins!
[5] CB: The interrogation mark - ? – was written by hand, because it was not part of the keyboard! The question is somewhat odd, since it is Dec 23, and he is asking whether the mother and the brothers plan to visit them for Christmas?
[6] SA: RMH’s fourth daughter’s name was, in all official contexts, spelled ”Zarah”. I suspect that RMH in this letter wrote Zarah with an “S” because he was using a machine that did not include the letter “Z” in the keyboard. We know that there was a great variance in terms of different keyboards on the early writing balls; for instance, the specimen of the Danish National Museum of Science and Technology dating from 1870 does not feature the letter “z” on the keyboard. Each writing ball was built by hand and could be very different from each other.
