Typed letter transcript (page 2) — Aunt Ellen Porcher on the children's antics: Sam's jokes, Sea's first words, Theo's attachments

Scanned page 249 of Book 1 — Scan of original. Open full size →

laughing all the time. Maim and Thomas would propose to Sam to take Annette and do all sort of violence to her, which he always acceded to in the most delighted way much to Christie’s indignation, and when Sam was in the height of his joke they would propose something equally dreadful for Jane when Sam would become powerful in his threats. About that time Theo chimes in with "Maria good nigger. An Jane gwine kill Maria I kill Am Jane? So the fun took on a new turn andSam would suggest then “Cousin Maim, Maria too tief, Maria too beggar, beg me for all my little” at which Theo would keep a constant fire “Taint now, Maria good?” Sam’s laughter loving little face was funny to see as he would join in one joke or another. They were all as good natured as possible with it all. Sea is fast losing the baby and taking on the boy. I never play with him without wishing Kate and mother could see him. He is so merry and learns new words every day. I was playing with him the other day and he said “Sea Mama has five children”. He stopped and looked at me earnestly and said “eh” so I repeated it two or three times, each time he answered “eh” till at last he said “Fi boys!” and I answered “yes!” Then he said “baby too” and I said “baby too” so he nodded his head and ran off playing again. Theo says the baby is named Doctor G and belongs to him. Whenever I ask Sea now how many children you have he says: “Fi boys”. Theo calls his Aunt Kitty “Grandma” and “Aunt Katie” and says the big carriage belongs to him that you bought it for him to come to see the boys in. That you told him to go on the cars and he had to hunt all about for the cars. He is never happier than when he slips out of the shed room and slips into “Ta hall” where we are. He was riding a bench yesterday and paid you a visit, saying “Huddy Ma, huddy baby” and all around. All three

AI Notes

Continuation page of a typewritten transcript of an Aunt Ellen Porcher letter from White Hall plantation to her recently-widowed sister Susan Milliken Barker FitzSimons. Two scenes: first, a teasing game in which Maim and Thomas Porcher prod Sam (FitzSimons) to mock-threaten Annette and Jane, while Theo (FitzSimons) chimes in with his own Gullah-inflected lines about ‘Maria’ the household help; second, a tender close-up of Sea (Aunt Ellen’s youngest child, a Porcher) learning to count his siblings — ‘Fi boys’ — and Theo’s attachment to ‘Aunt Kitty’ and the family carriage. The ‘Ta hall’ is the child’s pronunciation of ‘the hall’.

Letter continues on the next scan. The page sits in the White Hall / Bolton December 1860 – January 1861 cluster (pp260, 264-270), Aunt Ellen Porcher to her widowed sister Susan FitzSimons. Cast of children: the FitzSimons trio Sam (Samuel Gaillard Sr., not yet 4), Christie (the future cottonseed-oil pioneer Kit Jr.) and Theo (Theodore Stoney) are visiting White Hall; Aunt Ellen’s own Porcher children Annette, Tado, Sea, and the household elder “Maim” (an in-house nickname for the grandmother Ellen Milliken) are the home contingent. In the second half, the references read “Sea” (the youngest Porcher child) — consistent with the rest of the cluster, where Aunt Ellen repeatedly notes Sea “seems to think I am Mama pro-tem” (p269). The household “Sam” (FitzSimons) features only in the first scene. The child’s imitated speech is “Ta hall” — his pronunciation of “the hall”.

The mocking byplay about “Maria” — the enslaved house servant the FitzSimons toddler defends in Gullah-inflected speech (“Maria good nigger… Taint now, Maria good?”) — places the letter squarely in the antebellum Lowcountry slave-plantation household on the eve of the Civil War (December 1860, the month of South Carolina’s secession). What the adults find funny is the small children’s casual mastery of the racial vocabulary of the world they are growing up in.