#Gustav von olnhausen
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
tortoisesshells · 2 years ago
Note
Unusual Fic Author Asks: Perspective Flip for "Physician, Heal Thyself - Or, Our New England Cousin: Being An Unpublished Excerpt From the Lives of the Staff and Volunteers of Mansion House Hospital, Alexandria, Virginia, in the late War"
kind friend, this was SUCH fun to come back to!
men may rise on stepping-stones Of their dead selves (Mercy Street, T, continuing the spiritual crossover with AL:VH, ~900 words)
In which something is the matter with the dead and dying of Mansion House, in late May of 1862,
or,
Mary Phinney von Olnhausen had never considered her mind particularly inclined to suspicion, and the circumstances of life in Mansion House were of such a magnitude of concern that investigating what struck her as abnormal about that place would be as futile a process as examining the strand of a beach she had once seen, grain of sand by grain of sand – she could gain little knowledge by the experience, and what she had gained would be swept away – by the grey tide of the Atlantic, which she and Gustav had watched for many hours, while hoping the unshadowed sun and clean sea air might provide some relief from the wasting disease which would, in some short months, claim him –
Her mind was wandering.
Mary pinched the bridge of her nose against the coming pangs of a headache – whether from the exhaustion, or sorrow, or hunger, or even the irritatingly tuneless whistling of the dentist’s apprentice – she could not say. There were two empty beds which had been occupied when she had performed her last rounds, and it –
It pricked at something in her. Her better senses, perhaps, or conscience.
Read the Rest on AO3!
4 notes · View notes
theenglishnurse · 4 years ago
Text
Her Name Was Libby
Tumblr media
READ ON AO3 HERE
Mary had never been a good patient. Even as a young child she would fight tooth and nail to leave her sickbed, much to the frustration of her mother. It seemed even a fever hot as a Massachusetts summer did little to slow down the headstrong and determined young girl. Only one thing had been able to settle her, that is one person. Her father and his beautiful recitation of Ulysses.
She had not remembered the fit of hysteria that had caused her to flee from her quarantine room. The head nurse could hardly fathom finding the energy to lift her head off the pillow propping her up let alone sprint down the old oak stairs of Mansion House, in her undergarments no less. Miss Phinney had been slightly mortified by that fact but had felt far too tired to grieve over such, quickly taking back to her bed with the help of the anatomist that current sketched her.
“Who did you see, miss?”
“My Father…”
The woman in pink, who introduced herself as Lisette, was far calmer than one should be after witnessing nearly half the staff being rammed into by a delirious damsel. Mary was forever grateful for her gentility and discretion as she helped her back into the plainly made bed, her chemise clinging to her body from the never-ending sweats. And yet this stranger seemed so familiar, as if she had known her her entire life, not hesitating a second over her curiosities or her to draw her in such raw form compared to the usually well-dressed nurse the hospital had come to know, expect and respect.
“My father gave me fortitude when I was sick as a child. He died soon after I married.” Mary paused, looking to her lap, suddenly remembering the spectacle she had caused. “I'm sorry if I alarmed you,” she breathed, not sure whether to laugh or cry, instead changing the subject entirely. “Why do you do this, sketch me?”
“It is my work. And my habit.” Lisette chuckled, her hand continuing to shade, not stopping even for a moment. “You care of people. I draw them. You have a husband at war?”
“No!” Mary stated far too quickly, shaking her head for added emphasis. “I'm widowed. It's been... well, quite a while now. . . “
“And your daughter?” Lisette continued to draw, not seeing the confusion and sadness that washed over the pallor face of her subject for another moment, realizing quickly she had crossed the line in the sand.
Mary had been shocked by the question, flabbergasted how this stranger knew about such a secret, on she had buried so deep, even Jed was never to know of her. It would have been one thing to seek a position as a Union nurse as a widow, but to state she had lost a child and a husband within two months of each other would have been grounds for immediate rejection by Dragon Dix.
And then suddenly it flashed back to her, the moment as clear to Mary as her father sitting in the chair, a Cherub like toddler balanced on his knee suckling a chubby hand, the sunlight peeking through the curtains dancing on the chestnut-colored curls that graced her head.
“Who did you see, miss?”
“My Father…and my daughter. “
A few moments of silence passed as Mary forced herself to speak her name out loud for the first time in a few months. Just thinking of her flooded her memories with the entire biography of the young girl’s life. Mary remembered the moment she realized she was expecting, the maid playfully noting how her sheets had gone two months without bloodstains. She remembered telling Gustav, how ecstatic he was that he nearly lifted her in the air, instead simply placing a hand on her stomach. That is where it would stay every night as her stomach grew as did the child’s movements wild whenever he spoke. Mary sobbed the first time she heard her cry, bursting into the world during the coldest of January mornings following two days of labor and three hours of pushing. Gustav however was even more emotional the first time he held his daughter, her wide eye, slated to turn honey brown, already focusing on his voice and solidifying the fact that they would be inseparable. When she was two, Mary had thought the Child had caught a cold, but that wishful thinking was quickly shatter by a rattling cough, her baby struggling to breathe. By the time the doctor had arrived, it was far too late, the unmistakable Diphtheria lesions having suffocated her. The day that she died, there little Maus, so did Gustav’s will to live. Mary had tried everything to lift his spirits, to ease him back to the land of the living as she herself struggling not to drown in the sea of sorrows. Nothing worked and now he remained in Concord, buried with the only thing that may have saved him.
“Her name was Libby.” Mary started slowly, Lisette’s pencil coming to a halt as she listened.
“The honorable Miss Elizabeth Louisa von Olnhausen… “Mary smirked, remembering the day her daughter . . . their daughter had been born, her husband Sitting behind her in bed as they simply stared at this tiny being, they had created.
“Such a big name for a tiny thing, “Mary laughed, Libby immediate grasping the woman’s finger with all her strength.
“Don’t worry, my Liebling,” Gustav smiled, planting a kiss on her temple. “She’ll grow into it.”
7 notes · View notes
jomiddlemarch · 5 years ago
Photo
Tumblr media
Mary’s ballgown was blue.
Again.
She was not sure if Jedediah would remember the dress she’d worn to the Green’s ball during the War, the one that had been ruined during Aurelia’s emergency hysterectomy; it had been an extravagance to bring a taffeta ballgown to the hospital and she could not regret its loss very much, though it had reminded her of who she had been before she had become Nurse Mary. It was Mrs. von Olnhausen’s best dress, because she had never been called Baroness by anyone in Manchester, not even in jest. Gustav, at his most mirthful, might call her meine Baronin in a very grave tone; this was most often when she was scrubbing the kitchen’s flagstones or red-cheeked in an apron, stirring something on their temperamental stove.
The dress she’d brought to Mansion House Hotel was watered silk in bleu de Lyon, a hue richly deep and vivid, darker than the dusk of summer sky but with something of that light in it. Jedediah, a Marylander brought up on the bay, preferred the seashore but she was reminded of a lake she’d loved in the New Hampshire woods, the blue of the irises that her mother had grown. Mary did not care for the elaborate styles of fashionable dress, preferring narrow plaits instead of wide, lace or bows but not both; she had acceded to the dressmaker’s insistence on trimming the dress with silver lace and velvet insets with as good grace as she could muster, reminding the woman she would be wearing a collar of moonstones and matching earrings. She was lucky her hair curled naturally, so she did not require the assistance of a maid to arrange it in the intricate, artful style of braids and falling ringlets required for an evening reception. She’d wear a comb inset with moonstones at her crown and long for the moment she could take it out.
Jedediah would prove an adequate aid in her toilette. She did not need her corset laces tightened and she had been able to manage her silk stockings and their garters on her own. The bodice of the ballgown wasn’t terribly complicated, though he was quite good at finessing something complicated with his surgeon’s hands; he much preferred demonstrating this in removing her clothes, providing her with a running commentary on his incomparable skill. Or rather, he had done, before Johnny’s birth. It seemed likely he would return to his amusing self-adulation while helping her getting ready for Alice Squivers’s ball for Byron Hale, ignoring Alice, ignoring Byron, most studiously ignoring his first wife, his voice just that much louder than a murmur against her bare neck; he would rest his hands on her shoulders after he secured the clasp of her necklace, then let them slip to her waist. She was still slender after the babies, which she should not be proud of but was, and they both knew how much the other liked his hands there, keeping her close.
Mary’s ballgown was blue. Again. And she hoped, not devoutly but sincerely, that this one would not be stained with blood. Jedediah had not attended the Greens’ ball. She hoped this time, she might have at least once waltz with him.
10 notes · View notes
parkersrevenge · 8 years ago
Photo
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Ok but Baron von Olnhausen was actually really precious?
Other things I have learned from this book:
When Mary did farm work she took to wearing bloomers because they made farming easier than wearing dresses.
Mary liked collecting frogs as a child and would put them in her pockets to mess with her family. It freaked her sisters out a lot.
When she and Gustav married, they filled their house with hundreds of flowers, and he did build her that aquarium to keep some fish.
They also owned a series of pet birds, some lizards, and even some domesticated(?) toads.
Mary Phinney had pet lizards and toads. I can’t stress that enough.
One of my favorite historical figures of all time, Theodore Parker, was the one to marry the pair and he was actually a really good friend of theirs.
When a nurse “from the Crimea” came to work at the hospital, she was given Mary’s ward against Mary’s will, but the first introduction the poor soldiers in the ward ever had to this new nurse was to see her being bodily dragged down the hall by two soldiers while she was drunk off her ass. Everyone in the ward wanted Mary to stay, and she’d pop in from time to time to give the boys treats.
Henry Hopkins was real, and he was an angel, apparently.
36 notes · View notes
ao3feed-marymatthew · 7 years ago
Text
Through the strait pass of suffering
read it on the AO3 at http://ift.tt/2rqsKZP
by middlemarch
Each new dawn was a disappointment. That she must face the day.
Words: 2398, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English
Fandoms: Mercy Street (TV), Downton Abbey
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Categories: F/M
Characters: Mary Phinney, Mary Crawley, Tom Branson, Matthew Crawley, Gustav von Olnhausen, Matron Brannan (Mercy Street), Anne Hastings, Charles Carson, Sybbie Branson, George Crawley, Anna Bates, Violet Crawley
Relationships: Gustav von Olnhausen/Mary Phinney, Mary Crawley/Matthew Crawley, Mary Phinney & Mary Crawley, Tom Branson/Sybil Crawley, Tom Branson & Mary Crawley, Mary Phinney & Sybil Crawley
Additional Tags: Female Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Widowed, Poetry, Nurses & Nursing, Tea
read it on the AO3 at http://ift.tt/2rqsKZP
0 notes
mercurygray · 9 years ago
Text
That was not how I pictured Baron Olnhausen. Nopenopenope.
(Agressively ignores the props department for such a crummy picture.)
2 notes · View notes
theenglishnurse · 4 years ago
Link
“And your daughter?” Lisette continued to draw, not seeing the confusion and sadness that washed over the pallor face of her subject for another moment, realizing quickly she had crossed the line in the sand.
In her sick bed, suffering from the fevers that come with typhoid, Mary is forced to confront her deepest secrets and the loses she suffered before coming to Mansion house hospital
1 note · View note
jomiddlemarch · 8 years ago
Link
Excerpt:
Gustav von Olnhausen had not thought to hear something so familiar and painfully lovely— ah Sehnsucht! as he walked back to his boarding house after a long day in the mill’s laboratory. He looked about, confused as to the source of the lyric, but it could only be the young woman just in front of him, deep in conversation with her companion, another young lady, their wide, dark skirts dragging a bit on the planked sidewalk, their faces hidden by the full brims of their bonnets.
1 note · View note