Hill Country Living
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Hill Country Living
By Coulter Fussell
It’s a Wagner Week again and, as promised, I’m picking back up with the second half of a July 26, 1902 letter that Corinne Wagner wrote to her Dad, Daniel, from a college trip to Scotland. She’s attending the prestigious all-girls Wellesley College. I also have small photographs she took from this trip in the Wagner Letter collection!
There are pictures of her and her friends precariously standing on the rocky coasts of what must be Scotland, in fully restrictive 1902 women’s attire. There are also several photographs of children wearing wooden clogs in what I always assumed to be a visit to Holland. Now I wonder if the people in the photographs are actually this Scottish-Scandinavian community she describes. The outfits match the description. What a trip!
She must have been really impressed with it all because, picking back up on this letter, looks like Corinne is suddenly too good for Water Valley.
Part 2
I’m very much interested in your wholesale grocery investment. I think it is a good idea to invest in Memphis because that town evidently has a future of fair promise. Dap ought to know something about the grocery business, too, by the time. If we could only shift our interests from Water Valley, and eventually move away, even to Memphis I should be so glad. Water Valley is a deadly place and none of us are happy there.
It seems to me I never saw such green grass and trees and flowers as they have in this country. The turf is like a carpet and there are flowers everywhere. Each little cottage has a flower garden in even in the cities there are window boxes everywhere.
Scotland is the land of cakes, too — most interesting varieties of scones, buns, shortcake and the like.
A few days ago, we went out to New Haven, a small fishing village near Edinburgh, in which the natives are all of Scandinavian origin and seldom marry out of their class. The fish-wives wear short, very full skirts of a striped material, sacks sometimes lose, some belted in, peculiar cloth slippers, aprons, and caps like the Brittany peasants. They have a creel, or strap, which passes across the top of the head and supports the fish basket on their backs. The little children are trained to be fish-wives from the age of three years — beginning with a tiny basket and a few stones. Each year another petticoat is added in a few more stones, until the age of thirteen when their education is complete. The number of petticoats is a gauge of aristocracy in the village — the fuller of the skirts the higher up in the social scale they are. It was all together the most foreign looking little place we have yet seen.
My house is so cold I can hardly write — must go over to the fire and get warm. I received Jessie’s letter a few days ago and will write soon.
Meantime, a great deal of love to her and to you all. I have had Eugene’s letter recently, too I certainly appreciate them writing to me.
Affectionately,
Corinne
