Letter from Kathleen to Will: 10/7/1919
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A letter to Will, in Cincinnati, Ohio, from his wife, Kathleen, in Savannah, Georgia.
1919-10-07: ~AUDIO~---images---comment---transcript---notes---links---site navigation
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1919-10-07: audio---images---~COMMENT~---transcript---notes---links---site navigation
I always like the friendliness between Will and his father-in-law.
1919-10-07: audio---images---comment---~TRANSCRIPT~---notes---links---site navigation
510 Bolton St. East,
Savannah, Ga.
Tuesday
Dearest Will,
I expect by this time you are somewhat tired of my letters about the pen and so on. I was very glad indeed to have your letter by special delivery on Sunday morning. How was I to know you had been so busy and that that was why you did not write!! I was sorry to hear you had such a tiresome trip + hope you are rested now.
It is extremely hot here most uncomfortably so and mosquitoes are numerous, altogether the weather conditions are not very conducive to good temper either on my part or the kids. The baby is angelically good. Bill is so fat, he gets so hot and quite cross at times but the mosquitoes do plague him.
Margaret enjoys the school. I am enclosing a letter from her.
I was delighted to get the pen yesterday. It is such a help + Kathleen was so pleased when I put her in it. I am surely grateful to have it at last. Kathleen is so fat. She is heavy to carry. I want to get her weighed. Her hair is growing, + it is curly. Billy is funny sometimes. I gave him a handkerchief with a hole in today + he said “I don’t like this one.” I said “Why not.” “It broken” he answered. He fell half way downstairs today - stopped in the middle until I rescued him, howling. Other day he fell out of the swing + today Margaret fell out of the swing + also down in the street, so you can see I am kept busy comforting the fallen.
I went to Church on Sunday morning. People enquired after you + were pleased to see R + me - or said they were.
I send a piece out of the Savh paper today.
Father says to send Hambone too.
I am glad the Ottermanns had you to dinner on Sunday and hope you were invited somewhere last Sunday.
I received the check for $32.02 + Father cashed it for me as I do not go downtown very often.
I am glad you enjoyed the Ball game. Darling Boy Will you excuse if I smile when you say you have no time to write to your wife but still you had time to take afternoons off for Ball games? I am really awfully glad that you went and enjoyed them + hope you get to see the sixth game in Cincinnati.
I do hope you will be able to find a house. I shall be glad when we can settle down again.
How are your errors. I recently had a visitor to tell us we had not started an additional member to the family. Expect you are glad to hear this.
Mosquitoes are just feasting off me now so you must excuse the way I write.
I am sorry the Gere’s holiday was cut short - Hope Mr. Gere is alright now. Please remember me to all the people around.
I cannot sit still with mosquitoes anymore so I must take this to mail.
Much love + thank you very much indeed for sending the pen and also for your letter.
Kathleen
INSERTS
Newspaper clipping - column
As a Woman Thinketh
By Helen Rowland
Lost - a husband. Anyone of a million or so wives can identify him by this description.
(Copyright, 1919, by the Wheeler Syndicate, Inc.)
I have lost him -
My perfectly good husband!
It isn’t as though he had “passed on” to a better world
For then, there would be memory - and the hope of meeting him in Heaven, and the insurance - and all that!
(To say nothing of the consoling knowledge that I look “interesting” in black).
It isn’t even as though I had divorced him.
For then, there would be alimony.
And all the excitement and suspense - and the simply wonderful Nevada climate!
It isn’t even as if another woman had “lured” him away from me.
Because a husband that can be “lured away” isn’t worth the rope with which he has to be tied.
And the woman who “lures” him is sometimes a delivering angel, in disguise.
But this - this is different!
And I miss him so!
I miss the long, quiet, inspiring evenings, when he used to read to me from Bernard Shaw or Walt Whitman.
(Or the sporting page, or “The Crazy Kids,” or the stock quotations.)
And the hustle and bustle of getting him off to the office mornings.
And the wild excitement of hunting for his shoes - and his hat and his pepsin tablets and his safety razor blades, and the court-plaster, and his gloves, and his newspaper.
And the cozy, little heart-to-heart, before breakfast scraps.
And the 11 o’clock telephone calls, and the making-up, and the candy and flowers, and all that!
The house is as quiet as the dead!
But there are no flowers - and the music is lacking.
Sometimes I catch a fleeting glimpse of him as he slips in, after dusk, with just enough strength to plunge wearily into bed.
Or again, when he wakes, up, at the last moment in the morning, with barely time to drop into his clothes, gulp down a cup of coffee, and rush past me with a peck on the cheek and a muttered “g’bye”.
Sometimes on rainy days I hear him moving restlessly about in his room - and swearing softly.
But it is like living with a disembodied spirit!
Ah me! If only he had gone to France, or Russia, or the Klondike - or even Paradise - I might have hoped, some day, to have him back again.
But what hope is there for a wife like me!
Don’t try to console me by telling me
That it is almost winter, and the wind and the snow and the frost will soon drive him back to his fireside again!
What joy is there in having a husband’s material body around the house
When his spiritual self is roaming the fields, in the wake of a silly, little, white ball -
Twenty miles away!
What hope is there for me?
My husband - has joined a golf club!
**********
Newspaper clipping (the one that WJ told Kathleen to send):
Meditations of Hambone
(Copyright, 1919, by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate.)
BOSS SAYES PLINTY O’ WORK KEEPS FOLKS OUTEN DEBILMENT - - EF DA’S RIGHT, AH SUTN’Y OUGHTER BE ONE GOOD MAN!!!
**********
Savannah, Ga.
Tuesday
Dearest Will,
I expect by this time you are somewhat tired of my letters about the pen and so on. I was very glad indeed to have your letter by special delivery on Sunday morning. How was I to know you had been so busy and that that was why you did not write!! I was sorry to hear you had such a tiresome trip + hope you are rested now.
It is extremely hot here most uncomfortably so and mosquitoes are numerous, altogether the weather conditions are not very conducive to good temper either on my part or the kids. The baby is angelically good. Bill is so fat, he gets so hot and quite cross at times but the mosquitoes do plague him.
Margaret enjoys the school. I am enclosing a letter from her.
I was delighted to get the pen yesterday. It is such a help + Kathleen was so pleased when I put her in it. I am surely grateful to have it at last. Kathleen is so fat. She is heavy to carry. I want to get her weighed. Her hair is growing, + it is curly. Billy is funny sometimes. I gave him a handkerchief with a hole in today + he said “I don’t like this one.” I said “Why not.” “It broken” he answered. He fell half way downstairs today - stopped in the middle until I rescued him, howling. Other day he fell out of the swing + today Margaret fell out of the swing + also down in the street, so you can see I am kept busy comforting the fallen.
I went to Church on Sunday morning. People enquired after you + were pleased to see R + me - or said they were.
I send a piece out of the Savh paper today.
Father says to send Hambone too.
I am glad the Ottermanns had you to dinner on Sunday and hope you were invited somewhere last Sunday.
I received the check for $32.02 + Father cashed it for me as I do not go downtown very often.
I am glad you enjoyed the Ball game. Darling Boy Will you excuse if I smile when you say you have no time to write to your wife but still you had time to take afternoons off for Ball games? I am really awfully glad that you went and enjoyed them + hope you get to see the sixth game in Cincinnati.
I do hope you will be able to find a house. I shall be glad when we can settle down again.
How are your errors. I recently had a visitor to tell us we had not started an additional member to the family. Expect you are glad to hear this.
Mosquitoes are just feasting off me now so you must excuse the way I write.
I am sorry the Gere’s holiday was cut short - Hope Mr. Gere is alright now. Please remember me to all the people around.
I cannot sit still with mosquitoes anymore so I must take this to mail.
Much love + thank you very much indeed for sending the pen and also for your letter.
Kathleen
INSERTS
Newspaper clipping - column
As a Woman Thinketh
By Helen Rowland
Lost - a husband. Anyone of a million or so wives can identify him by this description.
(Copyright, 1919, by the Wheeler Syndicate, Inc.)
I have lost him -
My perfectly good husband!
It isn’t as though he had “passed on” to a better world
For then, there would be memory - and the hope of meeting him in Heaven, and the insurance - and all that!
(To say nothing of the consoling knowledge that I look “interesting” in black).
It isn’t even as though I had divorced him.
For then, there would be alimony.
And all the excitement and suspense - and the simply wonderful Nevada climate!
It isn’t even as if another woman had “lured” him away from me.
Because a husband that can be “lured away” isn’t worth the rope with which he has to be tied.
And the woman who “lures” him is sometimes a delivering angel, in disguise.
But this - this is different!
And I miss him so!
I miss the long, quiet, inspiring evenings, when he used to read to me from Bernard Shaw or Walt Whitman.
(Or the sporting page, or “The Crazy Kids,” or the stock quotations.)
And the hustle and bustle of getting him off to the office mornings.
And the wild excitement of hunting for his shoes - and his hat and his pepsin tablets and his safety razor blades, and the court-plaster, and his gloves, and his newspaper.
And the cozy, little heart-to-heart, before breakfast scraps.
And the 11 o’clock telephone calls, and the making-up, and the candy and flowers, and all that!
The house is as quiet as the dead!
But there are no flowers - and the music is lacking.
Sometimes I catch a fleeting glimpse of him as he slips in, after dusk, with just enough strength to plunge wearily into bed.
Or again, when he wakes, up, at the last moment in the morning, with barely time to drop into his clothes, gulp down a cup of coffee, and rush past me with a peck on the cheek and a muttered “g’bye”.
Sometimes on rainy days I hear him moving restlessly about in his room - and swearing softly.
But it is like living with a disembodied spirit!
Ah me! If only he had gone to France, or Russia, or the Klondike - or even Paradise - I might have hoped, some day, to have him back again.
But what hope is there for a wife like me!
Don’t try to console me by telling me
That it is almost winter, and the wind and the snow and the frost will soon drive him back to his fireside again!
What joy is there in having a husband’s material body around the house
When his spiritual self is roaming the fields, in the wake of a silly, little, white ball -
Twenty miles away!
What hope is there for me?
My husband - has joined a golf club!
**********
Newspaper clipping (the one that WJ told Kathleen to send):
Meditations of Hambone
(Copyright, 1919, by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate.)
BOSS SAYES PLINTY O’ WORK KEEPS FOLKS OUTEN DEBILMENT - - EF DA’S RIGHT, AH SUTN’Y OUGHTER BE ONE GOOD MAN!!!
**********
1919-10-07: audio---images---comment---transcript---~NOTES~---links---site navigation
1.
This is a stop in the Tour of letters between Will and his wife Kathleen in September and October of 1919.
The brochure for the Tour is at:
2.
Margaret enjoys the school. I am enclosing a letter from her.
I can't remember if we have the letter from Maggie.
3.
I was delighted to get the pen yesterday. It is such a help + Kathleen was so pleased when I put her in it. I am surely grateful to have it at last.
The end of the pen saga.
4.
Kathleen is so fat. She is heavy to carry. I want to get her weighed.
I think that Will responded to this in his next letter: Why don’t you all get weighed? I would have a better idea of how fat you were getting. I weighed and haven’t lost a pound.
The only thing is, I'm quite surprised that Kathleen's letter made it from Atlanta to Will's office overnight.
5.
I went to Church on Sunday morning. People enquired after you + were pleased to see R + me - or said they were.
R is, of course, Kathleen's older sister Ruth.
6.
How are your errors. I recently had a visitor to tell us we had not started an additional member to the family. Expect you are glad to hear this.
The errors are physical issues, in Christian Science language. And the mention of the visitor indicates that Will and Kathleen weren't using any form of contraception. Interestingly, Will wanted know when the visitor arrived - see:
7.
I am sorry the Gere’s holiday was cut short - Hope Mr. Gere is alright now.
I've got the Geres in the Non-family page for Ohio folks, even though I don't know much about them.
8.
As a Woman Thinketh
By Helen Rowland
Wikipedia says:
Helen May Rowland (/ˈroʊlənd/; 1875–1950) was an American journalist and humorist. For many years she wrote a newspaper column in the New York World called "Reflections of a Bachelor Girl".
It's definitely the same Helen Rowland because the photograph in the Wikipedia article is a younger version of the photo for the column here, so I guess she got married and changed her line. When I read the article I wasn't terribly impressed, but when I read it aloud for the audio reading I liked it better.
9.
Meditations of Hambone:
From:
I tried to follow the dialect given when I did the audio reading, thinking to myself all the while, "Is it offensive for me to be doing this?" But I was just reading what was there.
This is a stop in the Tour of letters between Will and his wife Kathleen in September and October of 1919.
- The previous Tour stop is: 1919-10-06 LETTER FROM WILL TO KATHLEEN
- The next Tour stop is: 1919-10-08 LETTER FROM WILL TO KATHLEEN
The brochure for the Tour is at:
2.
Margaret enjoys the school. I am enclosing a letter from her.
I can't remember if we have the letter from Maggie.
3.
I was delighted to get the pen yesterday. It is such a help + Kathleen was so pleased when I put her in it. I am surely grateful to have it at last.
The end of the pen saga.
4.
Kathleen is so fat. She is heavy to carry. I want to get her weighed.
I think that Will responded to this in his next letter: Why don’t you all get weighed? I would have a better idea of how fat you were getting. I weighed and haven’t lost a pound.
The only thing is, I'm quite surprised that Kathleen's letter made it from Atlanta to Will's office overnight.
5.
I went to Church on Sunday morning. People enquired after you + were pleased to see R + me - or said they were.
R is, of course, Kathleen's older sister Ruth.
6.
How are your errors. I recently had a visitor to tell us we had not started an additional member to the family. Expect you are glad to hear this.
The errors are physical issues, in Christian Science language. And the mention of the visitor indicates that Will and Kathleen weren't using any form of contraception. Interestingly, Will wanted know when the visitor arrived - see:
7.
I am sorry the Gere’s holiday was cut short - Hope Mr. Gere is alright now.
I've got the Geres in the Non-family page for Ohio folks, even though I don't know much about them.
8.
As a Woman Thinketh
By Helen Rowland
Wikipedia says:
Helen May Rowland (/ˈroʊlənd/; 1875–1950) was an American journalist and humorist. For many years she wrote a newspaper column in the New York World called "Reflections of a Bachelor Girl".
It's definitely the same Helen Rowland because the photograph in the Wikipedia article is a younger version of the photo for the column here, so I guess she got married and changed her line. When I read the article I wasn't terribly impressed, but when I read it aloud for the audio reading I liked it better.
9.
Meditations of Hambone:
From:
- https://zims-en.kiwix.campusafrica.gos.orange.com/wikipedia_en_all_nopic/A/Hambone's_Meditations
I tried to follow the dialect given when I did the audio reading, thinking to myself all the while, "Is it offensive for me to be doing this?" But I was just reading what was there.
1919-10-07: audio---images---comment---transcript---notes---~LINKS~---site navigation
DOCUMENT LISTS FOR PEOPLE:
- WILL: DOCUMENTS ----- Incoming
- KATHLEEN: DOCUMENTS ----- Outgoing
- THE NEXT GENERATION: DOCUMENTS ----- Maggie, Billy, Kay,
- FARMERS & GRAYS: DOCUMENTS ----- WJ, Ruth
- NON-FAMILY: OHIO FOLKS ----- Geres
GENERAL DOCUMENT LISTS:
OTHER RELATED DOCUMENTS/PAGES:
1919-10-07: audio---images---comment---transcript---notes---links---~SITE NAVIGATION~-
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