Letter from Lou Andreas-Salomé to Freud, September 8, 1922

[Göttingen, soon after 8 September 1922]

Dear Professor,

I am writing at the same time to you and Daughter-Anna in answer to your two letters which have just arrived, because you Anna, you dear good child, are chiefly responsible for the fact that I am positively in floods of tears. And I will tell you the reason why: according to all my information it appeared that neither money nor so-called Care packages (on which an enormous duty has to be paid in Russia on collection) could be sent to my last surviving brother150 and his family; but this does not apply to the American ‘Ara’ parcels, which must be paid for (not less than five dollars) here—and these five dollars I did not possess. What it means to me to have them, and to owe them to your kindness, I cannot tell you—and in any case it is not necessary, for you well know what love I bear to my ‘brothers’.

I myself will quite certainly turn up in Berlin hale and hearty and strong as a lion. I personally do not lack any necessities. Daughter-Anna has given too affecting an account of my hermit existence without locusts or honey. I am ashamed therefore to spend so much money on myself, money which is the hard-won product of your holiday labour. This is my only objection. Apart from this I would never feel ashamed to accept something from you; I only feel the pleasure of gratitude. Today only this brief note. It will just reach you both in time and then I shall be able to talk to you in person. I am particularly looking forward to what Dr. Eitingon has just taken away with him and what we, so Anna says, will be able to read straightaway, even before the Congress opens (I have been thinking a lot about the theme in question, as far as it had been developed at that time).

Yours,
Lou

The photo of Anna enclosed in her letter makes me delighted to think that with her near sixty years151 she is a coeval of mine, and yet it reminds me somehow of her former youth.