Two photographs from a house party at Mount Hope: Herbert Ravenel Sass, Bub, Genie Coffin, and Theodore Ravenel Jr.
Book 2, Page 44 ·1900-1915
Transcription
Two pasted photographs in the upper half of the sheet, with a handwritten caption beneath in brown ink.
Upper-left photograph:
A figure standing beside a horse under a large live oak draped with Spanish moss.
Captioned (top of page):
Herbert Ravenel Sass — This was taken during a house party at Mount Hope.
Upper-right photograph (smaller, lower than the first):
Three young people standing side by side outdoors — two in light blouses or shirts and one in dark clothing.
Caption (continuing beneath the right-hand photograph):
Bub — Genie Coffin and Theodore Ravenel Jr. Louise used to spend every winter with us. Theodore went to Sewanee and at that time Sewanee had its holiday season during the winter. We used to have wonderful times riding — fox hunting and driving. I have a plate with a dark red border — with medallions of tiny flowers. Theodore gave it to me one Xmas when he was very young. He told his mother he wanted to give me a diamond ring and a silk dress — but she got him to compromise and give the plate.
AI Notes
An album page (lined notebook paper with three punched holes) with two pasted photographic prints in the upper half and a handwritten caption in brown ink filling the lower half. The first photograph shows a figure standing beside a horse beneath a moss-draped live oak. The second, smaller photograph shows three young people standing in a row. The caption identifies the subjects and recounts a family anecdote about a hand-painted plate given to the compiler by the young Theodore Ravenel Jr. ‘Bub’ is Amy’s brother Samuel Gaillard FitzSimons Jr. (called ‘Buck’ / ‘Bub’ in the family pedigree, p629). Mount Hope = Willtown (now Wiltown Bluff plantation on the Edisto). Theodore Ravenel Jr. is the son of the Theodore Ravenel who married Miss Eulalie Barnwell (Amy’s first governess) as his 2nd wife, per page 017.
Herbert Ravenel Sass (1884–1958), College of Charleston 1905, became the Lowcountry’s best-known nature writer — “Woods and Waters” columnist for the News and Courier from 1908, and author of the historical novel Look Back to Glory (1933) and the nature collections The Way of the Wild (1925) and Gray Eagle (1927). He was a younger brother of the Misses Mary and Janie Sass, who had run Amy’s Charleston primary school at 23 Legare Street (see page 028). “Sewanee” is the University of the South in Tennessee, an Episcopal institution founded 1857.