train and boat to London, and thence down to Southampton to board the ocean liner taking them to Madeira, Las Palmas and Tenerife, always staying in the best hotels, then back via Barcelona, Genoa and Milan, arriving back at Schaffhausen on 16 April.
For Carl it was the start of a new life of considerable luxury; for Emma it was the beginning of getting to know the man she had married. He certainly looked the part: tall, handsome, beautifully attired. But at some stage during the honeymoon there was a quarrel about money. Swiss law gave the husband, as head of household, ownership of all his wife’s possessions, and the power to make all final decisions in matters pertaining to family life, including the education of the children. Accordingly, the first thing Carl had done once they were married was to pay off his 3,000-franc debt to the Jung uncles. The amount of the debt tells you something about Carl’s incipient taste for good living, a side of his character Emma was now discovering for herself. ‘Honeymoons are tricky things,’ Jung admitted to a friend years later. ‘I was lucky. My wife was apprehensive – but all went well. We got into an argument about the rights and wrongs of distributing money between husbands and wives. Trust a Swiss bank to break into a honeymoon!’ He laughed at the memory. But Emma had seen Carl’s temper and how it could flare up out of nowhere. Ever since he was a boy Carl had flown into rages. In time Emma learnt that the rages soon passed. But for now it was distressing.
Then there was the question of sex. Was Emma surprised to discover that her husband was still a virgin? Two years earlier his mother had commented, on one of her visits to the Burghölzli and before he became engaged to Emma, that Carl knew too few women. Almost none, in fact. Jung himself later admitted he had not had ‘an adventure before marriage, so to speak’ and until his marriage he was ‘timidly proper with women’. In one way this may have been a relief to Emma, given the terrible fate of her father. But she would not have been the only ‘apprehensive’ one, as Carl suggested. And now she knew Carl was not quite the man of the world he presented on the surface.
Then there was also the evident difference in their personalities. Quiet and studious as a child, as an adult Emma came across as shy and reticent, sometimes hiding behind the formality of her social background. With marriage she happily took her place in the background, giving those who did not know her the impression that she was, if not the Hausfrau, then just the wife. Carl was the extroverted one, the one everyone wanted to talk to. But it was only half the story, as Emma was finding out. The ‘other’ Carl, the hidden one, was unsure, introverted, plagued by a deep sense of social inferiority, and much in need of Emma’s quiet support. Whilst Carl’s childhood had been strange and lonely, Emma’s had been safe, loving and happy, protected from the ills of the world at the Haus zum Rosengarten, overprotected perhaps. That world did not begin to break up until she was twelve, when her father first became ill with syphilis, and by then the confidence bestowed by a happy childhood was deeply embedded. She also had the confidence which came from belonging to the privileged niveau of society. It was a feeling Emma carried with her all her life, allowing her to behave in the quiet, modest manner noted by everyone who met her. A double confidence. Her new husband had neither.
On 24 April, shortly after returning from honeymoon, the Jungs moved into a rented apartment in Zürich, on Zollikerstrasse, the road leading up to the Burghölzli asylum. Here, south of the city, the houses were solid rather than grand, the apartments spacious and the countryside within easy reach for afternoon walks. Unlike the eastern slopes of Zürich, which lay in the shade with damp air and bad soil, the southern slopes were on the sunny side, with good soil and little fog. Carl had taken up Bleuler’s offer of a temporary post at the asylum, acting as his deputy whilst others were on leave, just filling in time whilst he looked for a better job elsewhere. It was a typically generous gesture from Bleuler who had already suffered Carl’s precipitate resignation six months earlier, and it was received with a typically grudging gratitude by Carl.
With Carl back at work, Emma took stock of her married state. She started to set up home, arranging for furniture and fine antique pieces to be brought over by horse and cart from the Ölberg estate. Her mother came to help, plus a live-in maid, also from Schaffhausen, and gradually the apartment took shape. It was not the kind of living Emma was used to but it was only temporary after all. In many ways it was refreshing. From her bedroom window in the mornings she watched as bare-footed farm boys in short trousers and braces led cows down the hill to the slaughterhouse, and smallholders from the neighbouring village of Forch came down in their wooden farm carts to sell their vegetables at the market, the husband in front driving the horse, the wife and children behind among the laden wicker baskets. Given Zollikon’s proximity to the Burghölzli asylum, quite a few of the villagers worked there as helpers, the low wages still better than they could earn as farm labourers or domestic servants.
Carl left for work early every morning, walking up the hill through farmland and meadow, past the Burghölzli kitchen gardens where inmates in overalls were already hoeing and digging, watched over by the Wärters in their long green garden aprons – then on through the gates of the asylum, up the front steps and straight into the early morning meeting. These days he was always smartly dressed in a suit and tie, waistcoat, and his gold fob watch and chain, which he wore till the day he died. But once on the wards he donned the doctor’s white coat like the rest of the medical team and his daily routine began. He rarely got back before eight because Bleuler insisted Burghölzli staff eat their meals with the inmates, and the days were long for Emma left sitting in their apartment with nothing much to do and hardly any friends.
Some days she would make her way into the centre of town, walking down Zollikerstrasse, then taking the tram to Stadelhofen, where she joined a crowded, busy, modern city. Zürich was so much larger, noisier, and more commercial than Schaffhausen. Everything seemed so much faster. Trams could travel at fifteen kilometres an hour, conveying shop girls, hairdressers, waiters, bank clerks and office workers from the outskirts into the business district and back out again after a long ten-hour day. The tram drivers and conductors sported military-style uniforms and handlebar moustaches, as did the captains of the paddle steamers which plied their way across the lake, bearing freight as well as passengers.
By 1903 Zürich was a city on the make. Its population had doubled since 1890 to over 162,000 and was growing by the day. The unification of the outlying districts under one ‘City Administration’ in 1893 had propelled it into an era of thrusting capitalism and commercial activity, quickly followed by a property boom which led to massive land and building speculation, which in turn led to a financial crisis. But by the turn of the century the recovery was in full swing. Everything relied on Zürich’s geographical position on the Limmat and the Sihl rivers flowing from Lake Zürich, their bridges linking the two parts of the town, with a chain of Alps beyond, each peak with a Gasthof or hotel on the summit. Zürich was postcard-pretty and good for business: commerce and finance, banks, a stock exchange, import and export, construction and engineering, heavy and light industry, all thrived on the shores of the lake. Further out in the industrial district of Sihl factories and sweatshops produced silk, cotton, lace and embroidery and bit machinery of every sort, all stored in warehouses on the bank of the Limmat beyond the Bahnhof Brücke, the bridge leading off Bahnhofstrasse. Rich foreigners were beginning to flock to Zürich for the Alps, the air, the shops and the lake. Fashionable hotels catered for this early tourist industry, none grander than the Baur-au-Lac, with gardens leading down to the lake. ‘Hotel-keepers who wish to commend their houses to British and American travellers are reminded of the desirability of providing the bedrooms with large basins, foot baths, plenty of water, and an adequate supply of towels,’ advised the Baedeker guide. Thomas Cook & Son had a bureau in the Hauptbahnhof, the central station, if further guidance were needed; they reminded travellers that no servants were allowed on the platforms: luggage had to be conveyed by the uniformed porters.
As spring gave way to a hot summer and she got used to her new surroundings, Emma found there was plenty to do in Zürich, quite apart from her usual reading, writing, needlework or knitting, and helping Carl to write up his daily reports and research. There were plenty of museums: the Ethnographical Museum, the Municipal Museum of ‘Stuffed Wild Animals’,
