My dear Son:
The announcement contained in your two letters to myself and
Theresa of the marriage upon which you have resolved and which is to
take place soon, I have received with pleasure in several respects.
Under the impossibility to form an opinion in regard to conditions and
persons from my own knowledge, I willingly submit to the confidence
that your age and your experience will protect you against such disappointment
as indeed thoughtless and inexperienced youths fall prey to. I
therefore wish and hope sincerely that all the beautiful virtues which
you praise in your future life companion and which well balance the
absence of material endowments for a sensible man who feels that he
stands firmly on his own feet, - will always prove themselves genuine,
but also that you will always prove yourself worthy of the possession
of such a treasure and that in this way the union will result in the
true happiness of both of you.
Your two brothers have also chosen life companions without fortunes.
That you overlook this lack of fortune with so much equanimity is pleasant
to me also, in so far as I therein presuppose a confirmation of what
Mr. Eggers stated here a few months ago, that is, - that your circumstances
and business are in a prospering condition. Mr. Eggers' visit
was so short that in regard to much that I should like to know I have
received only very incomplete information or none at all. Thus
I know, especially of your business, only in a general way that it is
of commercial character and that you are associated with a partner;
but I have not learned for example of what kind that business is, -
whether your partner is a German or an American, etc.
In one of your former letters you mentioned at one time a young
Frenchman by the name of Nicollet, whose acquaintance you had made.
He was some time ago an assistant in the Paris Observatory and has furnished
several works which are not without merit. Why he had to leave
France I have not learned. Later (perhaps seven or eight years
ago) he furnished (I do not know whether anonymously or over his own
name) in an American newspaper of journal a clownish article about truly
absurd discoveries which he alleged Herschell had made at the Cape of
Good Hope. This article at that time was even translated into
German and furnished a remarkable proof of how very coarse a mystification
may be without losing the power to fool many people. This Nicollet
is said to have died in America a short time ago. I should like
very much to learn something more in regard to his course there.
Also another astronomer, a native of Switzerland who had made his home
in America for nearly fifty years and with whom I kept up some correspondence
from time to time, namely, Rudolph Hassler, chief of the North American
(United States) Coast Survey, died a short time ago, as I learned from
the newspapers.
With the sincerest wishes for the enduring happiness of your
union,
Your affectionate father,
C. F. Gauss
Goettingen, February 15, 1844.
P. S. Letters via Liverpool travel neither
more securely nor more quickly than via Havre, but always cost an enormous
postage here, about three times as much as via Havre. Therefore
in future send no letters via England, but always via Havre.
Notes from translated copy:
[Eugene Gauss and Henrietta Fawcett were married February 14, 1844,
in St. Charles, Missouri]