Hill Country Living
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Hill Country Living
By Coulter Fussell
This Wagner Week we have a letter from one of my favorite letter writers. Often my “favorite” Wagner letter-writers are the funniest or most honest – not necessarily the ones I would have hung out with the real life or the most morally enlightened. For years, I’ve read many letters to George from his funny friend “Elma C M” of Oxford.
I finally decided to really research who she was. After about half an hour on Google, I realized that the “Elma C M” is “Elma Coleman Meek,” the Oxford society girl widely credited (and self-credited) for coining the nickname “Ole Miss” in 1896. Sounds exactly like something she’d come up with. I may or may not have jumped up off the sofa in disbelief when I realized it was her!
Kosciusko Mississippi February 22, 1904
Dear George,
What on earth do you mean by having the blues? I thought when you had that spell before Xmas you would have had your annual. Of course, I can sympathize with you while I feel that you really have nothing to worry over and I have so much. Still, if you had preferred to tell someone else instead of me I can’t say I should’ve appreciated it. I’m awfully sorry you get discouraged so easily and for no apparent reason. I guess after this year you will take my advice for once and go to work. I really think you would be better satisfied. But in all probability by now you have fully recuperated are playing end man in the minstrel with enthusiasm. At least I hope so, for I, if anybody ever did know what is to be utterly miserable.
I feel as if the time will never come for us to go home and at the same time we all dread it. I’m so anxious to go see B but as I always am. I’m tied hand and foot. I feel that either Mama or I have to stay with Auntie and as Irene is in bed with tonsillitis. Mama has to stay with her. I hope to get Mama and Auntie moved back to Oxford the first week in March. It makes me so miserable to be away from them for something invariably happens.
I’m getting along famously, for me. Have been able to be up for four whole days. I hear from Oxford friends as often as I could expect. Everyone has been so lovely to us. All of my friends in Tennessee have been so nice and every friend we have ever had in Mississippi.
Do hurry up and come home and, as you say, there are so many things that can’t be written.
School is out 1st of June, isn’t it? I want to go to Tennessee for a few days just as soon as the school boys leave. I feel that I must go but at the same time I dread it. It will be like my going back home, every time I go in the parlor I’ll see the little Quin girl in her casket and in Tennessee I’ll see my brother. I suppose you heard of the death of little Lucille Quin. Possibly I wrote you of it. I really have forgotten everything I’ve ever done. So, for mercy’s sake, get over your blues and don’t have another case.
Write to me whenever you can for I am your sincere friend,
Elma C M
