Lidia

As the only child left in the Zamenhof household, Lidia had her parents' attention to herself. She was their darling and their delight, but they did not spoil her. Dressed in a frilly, tiered dress, her shoes laced up above her ankles and a bow in her wispy blond hair, as she stood on a cushion to have her portrait taken, her round little face looked into the camera with a serious, almost solemn expression. Nearly all her photographs would show her with such a look. Her mouth tended to turn downward, so that her normal expression seemed one of secret sadness.

Lilka, as the family always called her, even when she grew up, had come at a time when her parents could enjoy her. Although the situation in Russian Poland was often insecure and sometimes dangerous, life was financially easier than it had been for the Zamenhof family in earlier years. Dr Zamenhof had a large practice, and he received additional income from his Esperanto books. The family was able to go on holidays to the country, and every year Ludwik and Klara traveled to the Universal Congresses, wherever they were held.

But Ludwik's health was getting worse: he was overworking himself, often keeping longer hours than he should, though from devotion to his patients, not for money. One day a week and sometimes two, he saw poor patients without charge. Although there had been no pogroms in Warsaw, conditions were terrible. Hundreds of Jews were fleeing, seeking refuge and a new life outside Europe. Many poor emigrants, sometimes entire families, passed through the consulting room of Dr Zamenhof to be examined and treated for eye diseases so they could enter other countries. In 1908 Klara confided to her friend Mrs Moscheles in London, 'My husband's health would be better if he could rest even a little, but unfortunately he is always working very hard.' The mental anguish he had suffered made him nervous and agitated. 'He still cannot walk', wrote Klara, 'so he always sits home at his writing desk.'

Lidia received her first education at home, beginning at the age ofsix - she did not enter school until she was almost ten years old. Klara described Lidia at six as 'very able, bright and hard-working'.

Ludwik was not as strict with Lidia as he had been with Adam and Zofia. He never punished his children physically, although he sometimes made them stand in the corner. Lidia remembered her father's discipline as firm yet kind. 'When Lidia's cat caught its first mouse', Maijorie Boulton recounts, 'she ran eagerly to tell her father. No doubt she was disappointed by his gentle "Lidia, don't you think the mouse would like to live too?" but this was part of his training.'

Zamenhof taught his children always to be honest. Many years later Lidia recalled an incident which illustrated how much her father valued this virtue. Among the objects on her father's writing desk was a stone paperweight in the form of a dog. Once Lidia noticed that the base had been broken in two parts. 'Usually when I saw something broken, tom, I preferred not to ask how it had happened,' she recalled, 'because I was never completely sure whether I myself was not responsible for it. But as for the paperweight, I truly had a clear conscience. So I bravely asked my father: "Who broke it?"

*Heanswered, "I."

'I was almost speechless. Impossible! Papa broke it?! Could Papa actually break - ruin - something?'

Dr Zamenhof told his daughter that it had happened when he was a young boy.

'He had many brothers and sisters. Everyone knows that in a home where there are many children, it happens very easily that unexpectedly, for example, a window pane may shatter with a loud noise, or porcelain figures fall from their pedestals . . .'

Markus Zamenhof had been a strict father, Lidia wrote, 'who was not very forgiving if because of childish pranks some damage happened in the home.

'And then, one day . . . from my grandfather's writing desk a paperweight fell to the ground and broke. Terror gripped the little group of children, and undoubtedly their hearts pounded when they heard the stern question: "Who did that?"

'And then from among the trembling crowd bravely Ludwik stepped out and confessed: "I!"

'The courageous confession touched my grandfather's heart. He forgave and did not punish the culprit.'

However, the children of Ludwik Zamenhof learned that there was one subject about which their father rarely revealed the truth: his own health. He did not wish to burden others on his account. In the same letter in which Klara confided to Mrs Moscheles that her husband could not walk, Ludwik had written to Mr Moscheles, 'I have indeed too much work and I feel rather tired . . . but I am not ill.'