Letter to 'My dearest Ellen,' 12 October 1940 — describing her own 'funeral' (page 1)
Book 1, Page 537 ·1940
Transcription
[Page 1.]
12/ Oct. 40
My dearest Ellen:
I went to your funeral yesterday — may you never have another. But it wasn’t a bad funeral at that. Of course, it started out awful sad, but it got brighter and brighter as things went on and wound up in a gale. I sat right up front with the mourners — perhaps I was your closest of kin — certainly no body
AI Notes
First sheet of a six-page humorous letter (pages 537–542), numbered 1–6 in pencil at the top of each sheet. Written in dark blue fountain-pen ink on cream paper. Dated ‘12/ Oct. 40’ and opening ‘My dearest Ellen.’ The writer is Judge Henry C. Hammond of Augusta, Ga. (partner in Hammond, Kennedy & Yow, whose envelope is mounted on page 535; identified as ‘Judge Hammond’ on the pencilled cover note at page 540). He describes, with mock-solemn comedy, attending the funeral of another woman named Ellen who has been mistaken for the recipient, and the genealogical ‘skirmish’ that broke out among the mourners over which Ellen had actually died. The letter is a tongue-in-cheek love-letter affirming the living Ellen’s place in the family of Christopher and Catherine FitzSimons.
The writer is Judge Henry C. Hammond of Augusta, Ga. — a great-grandson of James Henry Hammond and Catherine FitzSimons, and therefore a second cousin of the recipient. He had attended the funeral of a different Charleston woman also named Ellen FitzSimons and uses the mistaken-identity to write an extended mock-elegy to his very-much-living kinswoman. The conceit runs through six pages (here through page 542).