Letter, Theodore G. Barker to his niece Ellen Barker, Charleston, May 30, 1900 — middle pages 2 and 3 (continuation, with long P.S.)
Book 1, Page 182 ·1900
Transcription
An open-book scan showing two facing panels of the same folded bifolium whose other face is on page 181. The text continues without interruption from p181 right (“offered a trip to Europe or”) to the right leaf below (“Canada or California with all your Expenses paid”).
Right leaf — page 2 (continuation from p181 right): body, close, and start of P.S.
Read in normal orientation:
Canada or California with all your Expenses paid I have not a word to say, but, as between your remaining in Asheville to work — perhaps to torture some poor little idiot with private lessons — and taking a rest with us at Brookland, stupid as the latter may be, I insist upon it. Now will you be good?
Yours affectionately
Theodore G. Barker
P.S. I expect to take Your Aunt Louisa to “Argyle”, (which you know is in “Flat Rock”) next Tuesday & leave her there for a rest from the Key — basket
Left leaf — page 3: P.S. continuation (rotated 90°)
This panel is rotated 90° relative to the right leaf — running sideways up the page from the gutter — so that the writer could continue the post-script across the back of the same sheet. Read sideways:
until she is ready to go to Brookland. — Early in July your Aunt Ellen Porcher will take John & Louisa to Brookland for the Summer holiday — So you will have the opportunity of renewing her acquaintance —
My distrust of your Sanity, & my fear lest you should go & commit yourself to some stupid contract to teach Some one’s brat, or to some other like foolishness, is what moves me to anticipate the completion of your Aunt Louisa’s plans and her invitation to you. — She & I are not at variance I beg you to understand, but are agreed Entirely in our
AI Notes
An open-book scan showing the INNER face of the folded bifolium whose outer face is on page 181 — i.e., pages 2 (right leaf) and 3 (left leaf, rotated 90°) of the four-page letter from Theodore Gaillard Barker to his niece Ellen Barker, dated May 30, 1900. The text flows: p181 right (page 1) → p182 right (page 2) → p182 left, rotated (page 3) → p181 left, rotated (page 4). The right leaf carries the body of the argument and an initial close (‘Now will you be good? Yours affectionately, Theodore G. Barker’); but TGB then continues with a long postscript that begins below the signature (‘P.S. I expect to take Your Aunt Louisa to Argyle…’) and runs onto page 3 (the left leaf, written sideways) — which in turn flows onto page 4 (p181 left, also sideways) for the final close. The P.S. promises an early-July arrival at Brookland of ‘your Aunt Ellen Porcher’ with ‘John & Louisa’ for the summer holiday, expresses TGB’s ‘distrust of your Sanity’ lest Ellen contract to ‘teach Some one’s brat,’ and insists that he and Aunt Louisa are ‘not at variance’ but ‘agreed Entirely.’ ‘A rest from the Key-basket’ is mid-Victorian shorthand for the housekeeping basket of keys — i.e., a rest from running her own household.
The sentence — “are agreed Entirely in our wish & Best Expectation to have you spend your vacation with us” — completes on page 181 (left leaf, page 4 of the bifolium), followed by the final close “Yours affectionately, Theodore G. Barker” and the outer-fold address “Miss Ellen M. Barker / Asheville N.C.”
“John & Louisa” of the P.S. are the same John FitzSimons and Louisa de Berniere FitzSimons named in the June 10, 1904 letter on pp 179–180 — children of Theodore Stoney FitzSimons (“old Toto”). Here in 1900 they would have been about 10 and 9. “Argyle” was the Flat Rock, NC home of Aunt Louisa’s family (the Kings of Mitchell-King line); “Brookland” was TGB and Louisa’s own summer home near Hendersonville. The “Key — basket” is the household keys carried by the mistress of a 19th-century home — a metonym for the labour of running a household.