Handwritten letter from Kate, continued — on Pinger's education and a 'Standard' children's book
Book 1, Page 39 ·1860–1880
Transcription
Two facing pages of a handwritten letter in brown ink, closely written in cursive. The text continues from a previous scan and continues onto the next.
at her first ball. What might not have been the result!!! I must congratulate you on the progress of the Boys. It really is wonderful how you get through so much and so well. I assure you when your letters come telling how Christie & Sam are getting on — I am almost petrified, and it takes me some time to recover my usûal composure of countenance — if I am accidentally near a glass, and
at her surreptitious glance init I generally find that the expression of mypoutedlips is (à la Darcy). Don’t you think my education is progressing. I have achieved long-hand, but how is it you have not heard that every morn I am [busy] myself with a large slate which is to be inured with exercise. Imagine it. Then I have a little phrase book in which a “Standard” Child is made to ask & answer the most wonderful questions to her Mère et Père — and then there is a Dictionnaire which is really a “Friend in Need” when the tug of war begins, with “Mlle. dela Seiglière” [Mademoiselle de la Seiglière]. After that I come back to my proper tongue and exercise my elocutionary powers(for the benefit of [Father]) & [Hell] by reading a sketch of the Italian Poets by Leigh Hunt — I have only begun them — so that I have not got beyond that good little Dante. Tomorrow I shall pass the morning in “Purgatory” — don’t you wish you were here to listen to my flute
AI Notes
Two facing pages of a handwritten letter in brown ink, continuing from earlier scans. The writer (signed ‘Kate’ on the following page) describes a young person’s reaction at her first ball, then turns affectionately self-deprecating to her own home-schooling regimen — a slate for handwriting, a French phrase-book featuring a ‘Standard Child’ interrogating Mère et Père, a dictionnaire to consult when foreign words go wrong, and a sketch of the Italian Poets by Leigh Hunt as a preparation for tackling Dante. The letter continues onto the next scan. The boys the recipient is educating are Christie & Sam. The crossed-out ‘pouted lips’ is an à la Darcy allusion — a self-mocking nod to Pride and Prejudice. ‘Long-hand’ is a school-room writing exercise on a slate; the ‘Standard Child’ interrogates her Mère et Père. The French reading exercise is ‘Mlle. de la Seiglière’ — Jules Sandeau’s 1851 novel Mademoiselle de la Seiglière. The Italian Poets sketch is Leigh Hunt’s Stories from the Italian Poets (1846), preparation for Dante’s Purgatorio (‘I shall pass the morning in Purgatory’). The flute reference at the end is a wry 19th-century joke about elocutionary reading aloud sounding like flute-tooting.
Letter continues on next scan.
The letter is a literary self-portrait: Kate’s home-schooling regimen of French phrase-books, Jules Sandeau’s 1851 Mademoiselle de la Seiglière, Leigh Hunt’s Stories from the Italian Poets (1846), and Dante’s Purgatorio — a typical curriculum for an educated Lowcountry woman of her generation. “Christie & Sam,” whose tutorial progress she contrasts with her own, are most plausibly Christopher (4th, “Kit”) and Samuel Gaillard FitzSimons Sr. — two of Dr. Christopher 3rd + Susan Milliken Barker’s eldest sons and the compiler’s uncle and father.