by Shaun Usher
Heaven bless you
Your sincere Friend
W. Wordsworth
Letter No. 058
A PILE OF 5000 CATS AND KITTENS
FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED TO HIS SON
May 13th, 1875
Born in 1822 in Connecticut, Frederick Law Olmsted is considered by many in his profession to be the “Father of American Landscape Architecture” – a title that seems, even to the least qualified of observers, to be fully justified, for Olmsted had at least a hand in designing some of the most famous urban parks in the US, including, most notably, New York’s Central Park; other commissions consisted of major parkways, reservations, college campuses, and government buildings too numerous to list. To his four-year-old son in May of 1875, however, these achievements meant nothing: Henry was miles away from home with his mother and just wanted to see the family dog, Quiz, so he wrote to his father and asked for Quiz to be sent to him. This was his father’s inventive reply.
13th May, 1875
Dear Henry:
The cats keep coming into the yard, six of them every day, and Quiz drives them out. If I should send Quiz to you to drive the cows away from your rhubarb he would not be here to drive the cats out of the yard. If six cats should keeping coming into the yard every day and not go out, in a week there would be 42 of them and in a month 180 and before you came back next November 1260. Then if there should be 1260 cats in the yard before next November half of them at least would have kittens and if half of them should have 6 kittens apiece, there would be more than 5000 cats and kittens in the yard. There would not be any place for Rosanna to spread the clothes unless she drove them all off the grass plot, and if she did they would have to crowd at the end of the yard nearest the house, and if they did that they would make a great pile as high as the top of my windows. A pile of 5000 cats and kittens, some of them black ones, in front of my window would make my office so dark I should not be able to write in it. Besides that those underneath, particularly the kittens, would be hurt by those standing on top of them and I expect they would make such a great squalling all the time that I should not be able to sleep, and if I was not able to sleep, I should not be able to work, and if I did not work I should not have any money, and if I had not any money, I could not send any to Plymouth to pay your fare back on the Fall River boat, and I could not pay my fare to go to Plymouth and so you and I would not ever see each other any more. No, Sir. I can’t spare Quiz and you will have to watch for the cows and drive them off yourself or you will raise no rhubarb.
Your affectionate father.
Letter No. 059
IT MUST BE NICE TO BE A BABY
DAISY WHITE TO JOEL WHITE
December 31st, 1930
On December 21st 1930, in Mount Vernon, New York, Katharine S. White, fiction editor of The New Yorker magazine, gave birth to Joel, her first and only child with husband E. B. White. The birth was a tricky affair, the result being a long stay in hospital for mother and baby that stretched right through to the next year and left Elwyn, who was yet to write such classics as Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little, with plenty of time to ruminate about this new chapter of their lives and think of ways to welcome his son to the world. On New Year’s Eve, home alone and with Joel on his mind, E. B. White sat at the typewriter and composed this letter to his little boy; it was written, not for the first time, in the voice of the family dog, Daisy.
New Year’s Eve 1930
Dear Joe:
Am taking this opportunity to say Happy New Year, although I must say you saw very little of the Old Year and presumably are in no position to judge whether things are getting better or getting worse. However, it is all a matter of finding time to do one’s thinking in, and I suppose conditions at the hospital are fairly good except you won’t really know for about a year yet whether you have got an early blow on the head or can think at all. I always used to say life is what you make it, but that would hardly go for anybody who had received a sharp blow on the head at an early age, I suppose, and in my own case I am beginning to see where the exigencies of runthood can modify the character of the adult bitch- - -that plus the Lardnerian influence which is now very strong in the apartment and against which I have decided to put up practically no resistance, because for a terrier in my position unless I follow the line of least resistance there is bound to be a reaction prejudicial to my health- - -I mean I might just as well let myself be blown around whichever way the wind blows until things begin to settle down around here and Mrs. White and you get home and I find out what is what and where we stand. A lot of things, Joe, get under my skin: these damn tradespeople, and a bird that showed up and stayed two days leaving a small wooden cage behind when it left, and the inert quality of rubber toys, and the bedridden gait of Lardner when on the outings, and the way they jump me about my burials- - -and the result is I am irritable and aggressive and White said last night I was running ferocity into the ground whatever that meant. Ah, well, it takes a lot out of me, but my blood is in good shape (no eczema) and my only regret is that I haven’t had much chance for thinking, like in the old leave-me-in-the-bathroom days. What mornings they were, alone by that steam pipe, lying the way one of the poets used to do with my head right in the heat and all life opening up clear. It must be nice to be a baby, though; you direct descendants have a soft time compared with us retainers. Life will open up just the same, don’t you worry, steam pipe or no steam pipe—all you have to do is sit tight and don’t take any wooden nipples and you will soon get the hang of what life is all about and how hard people take it and all. White tells me you are already drinking milk diluted with tears,—in place of the conventional barley water which they used to use in the gay Nineties; so I take it life is real enough for you, tears being a distillation of all melancholy vapors rising from the human heart similar to the mists of Meuse valley that knocked over so many Belgians (got them in the throat) only you wouldn’t know about that because you are merely a child in arms whereas I see the papers all the time. I imagine a few tears in the diet are all right, as I am a great believer in lean living otherwise you get eczema, and I would not worry about that ounce that you failed to make on the scales because as I always say it isn’t what you weigh it’s who you’re with, while I was going over White’s property the other day I noticed a line or two which he seems to have written in that connection:
From scales that show a baby’s weight
Deduct an ounce, for him to borrow
Such times as he may need an ounce
To tip the scales that weigh his sorrow
..not much of a poem, but an idea back of it probably if anybody wanted to study it out. On the whole a little mournful, that poem. It reminds me of the way I felt when I met a blind man’s bulldog on a cold day on Fifth Avenue- - -he would walk a step and then crouch down and wait and had no interest in the way anything smelt (had been all through that years ago, I suppose), anyway it was very mournful to see because if the smell, or as White would sententiously call it the “fragrance”, has gone out of life, what is there left to say I. You will learn all about that, Joe, as soon as you get on your feet so to speak; meantime one can always amuse oneself observing the more antic aspects of a genteel civilisation, listening to the Bandar Log’s small talk, and watching how everything gets in the way of everything else: how the wanderer fails to keep his date with fortune because he is so busy winding his wrist watch to see whether he is late; from the sheer press of filling the fountain pen with which to write it. Oh you will see a lot of interesting and informative things- - -tears caught in lily cups, oceans de-salted by stabilizers, and prayers requiring an agency discount. I am only talking, Joe- - -I think White put a little Sherry on my dogbiscuit tonight in honor of New Year’s Eve and it has gone to my head like the heat from that old steam pipe. Ah those bathroom dreams! Maybe I ought to go out. That’s always a question, whether a dog ought to go out and walk around the block. With babies I understand the whole problem is handled differently. Anywa
y, I walked around the block with White just before he went to hospital with Mrs. White so you could be born, and we saw your star being hoisted into place on the Christmas tree in front of the Washington Arch- - -an electric star to be sure, but that’s what you are up against these days, and it is not a bad star, Joe, as stars go. Well I have just been rambling along and the bells have rung and it is now 1931 and in another hour or so the nurse will pick you up and take you into a room described by White as 823, and you will be given a little smack, a ceremony that I can’t say happens in my own case very often. The tree that holds your star will be shedding its needles very soon- - -they will drop down like rain, and the electric light in the colored bulbs will be turned out, but I have noticed that new things always spring up somewhat methodically and for every darkened Christmas tree ornament there is a white flower in spring. Or, in this particular apartment, even before spring. There are some here now called Narcissus, so come home and see them Joe, and wishing you a very Happy New Year I am.
Faithfuly yrs,
Daisy
Letter No. 060
I HAVE LOST A TREASURE
CASSANDRA AUSTEN TO FANNY KNIGHT
July, 1817
On July 18th of 1817, at the age of 41, novelist Jane Austen died following a bout of illness that reared its head in 1816 and which has since been speculatively labelled as bovine TB, Hodgkin’s disease, and Addison’s disease. Keen to remain active despite her deteriorating condition, she continued to write until March of that year, and on passing left behind eleven chapters of her seventh novel, Sanditon; it was published posthumously. Shortly after Austen’s death, her heartbroken sister, Cassandra, wrote to Fanny Knight, Jane’s favourite niece, and explained her final hours.
Winchester Sunday
My dearest Fanny—doubly dear to me now for her dear sake whom we have lost.
She did love you most sincerely, and never shall I forget the proofs of love you gave her during her illness in writing those kind, amusing letters at a time when I know your feelings would have dictated so different a style. Take the only reward I can give you in the assurance that your benevolent purpose was answer’d; you did contribute to her enjoyment. Even your last letter afforded pleasure. I merely cut the seal and gave it to her; she opened it and read it herself, afterwards she gave it to me to read, and then talked to me a little and not uncheerfully of its contents, but there was then a languor about her which prevented her taking the same interest in anything she had been used to do.
Since Tuesday evening, when her complaint returned, there was a visible change, she slept more and much more comfortably; indeed, during the last eight-and-forty hours she was more asleep than awake. Her looks altered and she fell away, but I perceived no material diminution of strength, and, though I was then hopeless of a recovery, I had no suspicion how rapidly my loss was approaching.
I have lost a treasure, such a sister, such a friend as never can have been surpassed. She was the sun of my life, the gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow; I had not a thought concealed from her, and it is as if I had lost a part of myself. I loved her only too well – not better than she deserved, but I am conscious that my affection for her made me sometimes unjust to and negligent of others; and I can acknowledge, more than as a general principle, the justice of the Hand which has struck this blow.
You know me too well to be at all afraid that I should suffer materially from my feelings; I am perfectly conscious of the extent of my irreparable loss, but I am not at all overpowered and very little indisposed, nothing but what a short time, with rest and change of air, will remove. I thank God that I was enabled to attend her to the last, and amongst my many causes of self-reproach I have not to add any wilful neglect of her comfort.
She felt herself to be dying about half-an-hour before she became tranquil and apparently unconscious. During that half-hour was her struggle, poor soul! She said she could not tell us what she suffered, though she complained of little fixed pain. When I asked her if there was anything she wanted, her answer was she wanted nothing but death, and some of her words were: “God grant me patience, pray for me, oh, pray for me!” Her voice was affected, but as long as she spoke she was intelligible.
I hope I do not break your heart, my dearest Fanny, by these particulars; I mean to afford you gratification whilst I am relieving my own feelings. I could not write so to anybody else; indeed you are the only person I have written to at all, excepting your grandmamma – it was to her, not your Uncle Charles, I wrote on Friday.
Immediately after dinner on Thursday I went into the town to do an errand which your dear aunt was anxious about. I returned about a quarter before six and found her recovering from faintness and oppression; she got so well as to be able to give me a minute account of her seizure, and when the clock struck six she was talking quietly to me.
I cannot say how soon afterwards she was seized again with the same faintness, which was followed by the sufferings she could not describe; but Mr. Lyford had been sent for, had applied something to give her ease, and she was in a state of quiet insensibility by seven o’clock at the latest. From that time till half-past four, when she ceased to breathe, she scarcely moved a limb, so that we have every reason to think, with gratitude to the Almighty, that her sufferings were over. A slight motion of the head with every breath remained till almost the last. I sat close to her with a pillow in my lap to assist in supporting her head, which was almost off the bed, for six hours; fatigue made me then resign my place to Mrs. J. A. for two hours and a-half, when I took it again, and in about an hour more she breathed her last.
I was able to close her eyes myself, and it was a great gratification to me to render her those last services. There was nothing convulsed which gave the idea of pain in her look; on the contrary, but for the continual motion of the head she gave one the idea of a beautiful statue, and even now, in her coffin, there is such a sweet, serene air over her countenance as is quite pleasant to contemplate.
This day, my dearest Fanny, you have had the melancholy intelligence, and I know you suffer severely, but I likewise know that you will apply to the fountain-head for consolation, and that our merciful God is never deaf to such prayers as you will offer.
The last sad ceremony is to take place on Thursday morning; her dear remains are to be deposited in the cathedral. It is a satisfaction to me to think that they are to lie in a building she admired so much; her precious soul, I presume to hope, reposes in a far superior mansion. May mine one day be re-united to it!
Your dear papa, your Uncle Henry, and Frank and Edwd. Austen, instead of his father, will attend. I hope they will none of them suffer lastingly from their pious exertions. The ceremony must be over before ten o’clock, as the cathedral service begins at that hour, so that we shall be at home early in the day, for there will be nothing to keep us here afterwards.
Your Uncle James came to us yesterday, and is gone home to-day. Uncle H. goes to Chawton to-morrow morning; he has given every necessary direction here, and I think his company there will do good. He returns to us again on Tuesday evening.
I did not think to have written a long letter when I began, but I have found the employment draw me on, and I hope I shall have been giving you more pleasure than pain. Remember me kindly to Mrs. J. Bridges (I am so glad she is with you now), and give my best love to Lizzie and all the others. I am, my dearest Fanny,
Most affectionately yours,
CASS. ELIZ. AUSTEN.
I have said nothing about those at Chawton, because I am sure you hear from your papa.
Letter No. 061
A RIPPLE OF FLAME
EDITH WHARTON TO W. M. FULLERTON
March, 1908
Born in New York City in 1862, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edith Wharton was 45 when first introduced to Morton Fullerton by mutual friend Henry James. Wharton, married to another, quickly fell for Fullerton’s charms and they soon began an almost one-sided affair that lasted for four years, ending shortly
before her divorce from her troubled husband. From the very beginning, Wharton could sense that Fullerton, a man who was no stranger to playing the field, wasn’t fully invested in their relationship. Just six months after they began seeing each other, she wrote him this letter.
Author Edith Wharton
58 rue de Varenne
Dear, Remember, please, how impatient & anxious I shall be to know the sequel of the Bell letter ...
–Do you know what I was thinking last night, when you asked me, & I couldn’t tell you?–Only that the way you’ve spent your emotional life, while I’ve–bien malgré moi–hoarded mine, is what puts the great gulf between us, & sets us not only on opposite shores, but at hopelessly distant points of our respective shores ... Do you see what I mean?
And I’m so afraid that the treasures I long to unpack for you, that have come to me in magic ships from enchanted islands, are only, to you, the old familiar red calico & beads of the clever trader who has had dealings in every latitude, & knows just what to carry in the hold to please the simple native–I’m so afraid of this, that often & often I stuff my shining treasures back into their box, lest I should see you smiling at them!
Well! And if you do? It’s your loss, after all! And if you can’t come into the room without my feeling all over me a ripple of flame, & if, wherever you touch me, a heart beats under your touch, & if, when you hold me, & I don’t speak, it’s because all the words in me seem to have become throbbing pulses, & all my thoughts are a great golden blur–why should I be afraid of your smiling at me, when I can turn the beads & calico back into such beauty–?
