Wedding letter to Kate, pages 6–7: 'Had Tody been waiting?', Sunday at Church, Mary's & T.G.B.'s mock argument, Monday's preparations and Theodore in the garden

An open-book scan of the wedding letter to Kate. The left leaf is paginated 6 at top centre, the right leaf paginated 7. The writer continues the running narrative of the wedding week. The left column (letter page 6) describes a Sunday: the subject who ‘had been going to Church every Sunday for so long’ dines and leaves the couple together to go to Church; Mr Williman & Mary Lay come after church; Mary, in a joke, says ‘I dont mean to Speak to you’ to T.G.B. (the bridegroom) when he enters the room, whereupon he says ‘Why, yes dear,’ & kisses her — ‘So you see how Gay & lively he is’; Harriett Crafts visits after seeing ‘Barker’ downstairs; tea (now taken at table); Addy arrives. The right column (letter page 7) describes Monday’s preparations: Miss Louisa unpacking with help from her family; her walk to Broad Street and return on ‘Brother’s’ arm before T.G.B. came home; dinner; the writer finding Nell and Louisa discussing tea-spoons; the writer breaks up the party reminding Nell that Theodore is waiting in the garden — Nell answers in mock terror ‘Oh! dont Stay, go to Tody’. Major ‘Mrs. Williams’ → ‘Mr Williman’; ‘Mary [Phane]’ → ‘Mary’ (Mary Lay above); the two pseudonymous ‘[Phane]’ / ‘[she says]’ attributions to a phantom person → both are T.G.B. (Theodore Gaillard Barker); ‘Sol B’/‘Sol & Susan’ / ‘Annie [unpacked]’ → ‘Miss Louisa unpacked’ + ‘Nell & Louisa discussing tea spoons’ + ‘T.G.B. came home’; ‘Brother G[en]’ → ‘Brother’s arm’ (apostrophe-genitive); ‘Sophie’s. Nell says in a temper “Now they don’t stay, get [Sophie]”’ → ‘in the garden / at which — Nell says in a terrified tone “Oh! dont Stay, go to Tody”’ — anchoring the bridegroom’s pet name ‘Tody’ (=Theodore Gaillard Barker) on this very page.

Letter continues on page 193L (=letter-page 8). The triple-attestation of the bridegroom’s identity on this single page — T.G.B. (twice in the left column, once in the right), Theodore (right column), and the pet name Tody (right column) — together with the L.P.K. initials on page 191R and 192L, settles the wedding letter as Theodore Gaillard Barker’s marriage to Louisa Preston King. The “Barker” whom Harriett Crafts had been seeing downstairs is presumably another Barker family member at the reception; it is not necessarily T.G.B. since he is in ‘our room’ simultaneously.