Hill Country Living
Hill Country Living
By Coulter Fussell
It’s a Wagner Week! Here we have a letter from Jessie Wagner to her little brother, George, who is off at Cornell for college in Ithaca, New York. This letter includes many small mentions of my favorite letter topics – Yellow Fever, house plants, social events and clubs with goofy names, Edwardian-era illnesses that strike without warning – you know, the usual. At this point, I’m very familiar with these topics. But this is my first time learning about the souvenir alligators from Mardi Gras. This seems like a really bad idea.
Saturday, 1903
My Dear old George,
How is the fever and how are you? Those are the first two questions I ask Papa on my return from Memphis. Do hope the conditions in Ithaca are much improved. I think of you so often every day, always with the most anxious feeling because you were so far away to be ill and although I should, of course, go to you immediately it would take such a long time to get there. So do take care of yourself and let us know very often how you’re getting along.
Papa, Dudley, Kalista and I went up to Memphis on Thursday; Papa and Dudley came home that night. I returned last night and Kalista will arrive — we hope – tonight. She stopped off in Oxford to see a dressmaker.
You should have been with us in Memphis! It poured down the whole evening time and there we were trying to buy a wedding clothes. Perfectly miserable!
How is Beckett? Isn’t it odd that his sister’s engagement should have been announced at the same time with Kalista’s in the same “Commercial”? Are he and “Pat” afraid of the fever? Pat must be very nice, I think; he wrote such a very nice note.
Dudley has gone over to play ball against the Wood Street boys.
Everything is baseball with us again.
Everybody is home from Mardi Gras now — all dead broke. I suppose John bought another alligator but it is dead already.
Mary Becton and Louise Collins and Bessie Mauldin went up to a University dance last week and all three were in their glory — They say Sue danced every set. That set of girls now has a club called “The Southern Belles.” Don’t know what Water Valley would do without a few clubs. That is all the social life we have here.
Our violets were not killed by the sleet and snow but are still blooming the same. Wish I could send you just as they are, the bunch I gathered this morning. Your fern is still growing. Will remarked on its beauty last Saturday.
My “Hill-Billy” Smith’s wife was taken sick last Saturday about three in the afternoon and died at ten that night of apoplexy. Quite sad, especially as Mr. Smith was out in the country visiting her people at the time.
Do write whenever you can. We all send you our very best love and lots of it, especially…
Jess
