Her turn of mind was practical and plodding, while the father was intellectual and aspiring. It is abundantly evident that Caroline had a bitter and desolate childhood. Expressions of affection or regard from her relatives were very rare in her experience, while her own sympathies had a most precocious development. It is said that when only three years old she was deeply concerned about family troubles.
Her only sister, the oldest child of the family, was married to a musician named Griesbach. Jacob, the eldest brother, was organist at the garrison church; and William, four years younger, was already remarkable for his splendid talents, apart from music. In the following passage from her diary we have a picture of the family at this time:
"My brothers were often introduced as solo performers and assistants in the orchestra of the court, and I remember that I was frequently prevented from going to sleep by the lively criticism on music on coming from a concert, or conversations on philosophical subjects, which lasted frequently till morning, in which my father was a lively partaker and assistant of my brother William by contriving self-made instruments. . . . Often I would keep myself awake that I might listen to their animating remarks, for it made me so happy to see them so happy. But generally their conversation would branch out on philosophical subjects, when my brother William and my father often argued with such warmth that my mother's interference became necessary, when the names of Leibnitz, Newton, and Euler, sounded rather too loud for the repose of her little ones, who ought to be in school by seven in the morning. But it seems that on the brothers retiring to their own room, where they shared the same bed, my brother William had still a great deal to say; and frequently it happened that, when he stopped for an assent or reply, be found his hearer was gone to sleep; and I suppose it was not till then he bethought himself to do the same.
"The recollection of these happy scenes confirms me in the belief that, had my brother William not then been interrupted in his philosophical pursuits, we should have had much earlier proofs of his inventive genius. My father was a great admirer of astronomy, and had some knowledge of that science; for I remember his taking me into the street to make me acquainted with several of the most beautiful constellations, after we had been gazing at a comet which was then visible. And I well remember with what delight he used to assist my brother William in his various contrivances in the pursuit of his philosophical studies, among which was a neatly-turned four-inch globe, upon which the equator and the ecliptic were engraved by my brother."
But this little household was soon broken up, the regiment of Guards being ordered to England in 1755. The parting scenes are thus described:
