Typescript extract from 'Life of Dr. W. S. Halstead': letter from Millwood, December 29, 1855

Scanned page 73 of Book 1 — Scan of original. Open full size →

A single typewritten page on plain paper. A small caption typed at the upper left reads:

From Life of Dr. W. S. Halstead

The letter follows, with its own dateline:

From Millwood

Saturday evening

Dec. 29, 1855

The letter which came to-day, dearest Pape, makes me feel as though I hadn’t written to you at home at all. And I believe in truth my letters have been nothing, or mere skeletons, to whom what materials there was to make letters of, for which I hadn’t time. And when I had time hadn’t the capacity to fill out. But until now, when illness has brought a pause, necessarily it has been a continued hurry. My letters have been written at odd ends of time, never consecutively and almost invariably in a hurry. I do wish daily and hourly that you could be here, or not being could have some rapport with me by which you could know of my thousand different feelings. It is all such a new life, so different from anything we in the least know of at the north tint until you see it you cannot form an idea of it. The ease and liberality with which everything is conducted makes it seem so natural that one forgets that is in reality great magnificence. I wrote to Mama about our “mount” the other day — — just for an ordinary party eleven horses and besides that Mrs. Singleton had in use a carriage and horses, the girls had gone to town with another, and Mr. Wade followed us in his buggy with a pair.

We sit down every day fourteen to twenty at dinner — — — people come and go, stay or not as they please and it all passes off as a matter of course. But besides all this, which impresses one of course, there is the family, which seems to me the most remarkable of any I ever saw, four unmarried sisters — — each utterly different from the other and yet it is impossible to say which is the most attractive. Such high-bred elegance and with sufficient more than ordinary cleverness, such perfect feminity and womanliness. And then the men — — you know — — no you don’t know half for I didn’t until I saw him here, what my Frankincense is, and Wade is in his way as admirable. I think I haven’t said a word about him as yet — — which is beastly ungrateful for he has been the soul of kindness to me and is without so charming,so loveable that I can’t any too much in his praise.

He has, in common with them all, singularly unpretending manners and this joined to perfect ease and familiarity with the world, gives him at first the appearance of indifference. But his constant thoughtfulness of others and forgetfulness of self, his thorough goodness of heart and purity of mind warms you in a moment. You would not believe me were I to tell you — — yes, you might, dear Pape, but other men couldn’t — — how tender and gentle those two great men have been in my sickroom. Half a dozen times a day brother Wade will come to my room to enquire about me and always with some suggestion for my comfort that shows he really thinks about it — — — — — — — — — — —

A pencilled annotation at the foot of the page reads:

Mrs. Frank Hampton

from M. H. —

M —

AI Notes

A single typewritten page extracted (per the caption at upper left, ‘From Life of Dr. W. S. Halstead’) and reproducing a letter datelined ‘From Millwood / Saturday evening / Dec. 29, 1855.’ The letter describes a small dinner at Millwood of about fourteen, with affectionate reflections on a recent gathering and warm praise for her husband ‘Frankincense’ (Frank Hampton) and his brother Wade (Wade Hampton III). A pencilled annotation at the foot identifies the writer as ‘Mrs. Frank Hampton’ (Sally Baxter Hampton) with the source noted as ‘from M. H.’ The typist spells the surgeon’s surname ‘Halstead’ but the figure intended is almost certainly William Stewart Halsted (1852–1922) of Johns Hopkins surgical fame; the published Life would have reproduced the letter as family material. ‘Mr. Wade’ is Wade Hampton III (only one person, not two), ‘Mrs. Singleton’ a Hampton family connection, and ‘Pape’ the writer’s own father, to whom the letter is addressed.

The writer is Sarah “Sally” Baxter Hampton (1833–1862), a New York belle who had married Frank Hampton on 12 December 1855 — just over two weeks before this letter. She writes from Millwood, the seat of her father-in-law Wade Hampton II, to her father (“Pape”) in New York; “Frankincense” is her pet-name for her husband, and “Mr. Wade” / “brother Wade” is Wade Hampton III. The “four unmarried sisters” are Frank’s sisters — daughters of Wade Hampton II + Ann FitzSimons, and the FitzSimons family’s most prominent Columbia kin. Sally died of tuberculosis in 1862; Frank was killed nine months later at the Battle of Brandy Station, 9 June 1863. Her letters were later collected in A Divided Heart (Ann Fripp Hampton, ed., 1980).