Letter from Margaret Baumeister to Minnie, April 24, 1953 — page 1
Book 2, Page 223 ·1953
Transcription
Dear Minnie, April 24, 1953
I have just been spending the day in town with that precious girl, your niece, Dee Corbelle. She admitted that she was overpowered with mail, and asked me please to write you for her, to tell you she was behaving herself. It is a pleasure to write you about her. She is superior. Today we met at a book store, and she was wearing a little pink hat, and a pink blouse, in honor of a perfectly gorgeous spring day. We walked up Fifth Avenue together, looking in the shop windows, and had a delicious lunch in a fancy French restaurant in Radio City, down on the level with the skating rink. We had ringside seats, right next to the ice, and we could watch the skaters’ graceful movements. Dee told me she had never before seen a person on skates, so I felt I had made a happy choice of a restaurant.
She told me her hospital news. I have been talking with her every day on the phone, so I have heard already that she feels increasing confidence and security in her doctor, and in the management at Memorial. Instead of being nauseated by the deep X-Ray treatments, or running a fever, little Puck has been feeling stronger and better. The first day I saw Dee, she told me Puck was finding it more comfortable to lie on his bed, that his leg troubled him and he seemed tired. But as the days passed, the pain in
AI Notes
First page of Margaret Baumeister’s letter to Minnie, dated April 24, 1953, on plain yellowed stationery in blue fountain-pen ink in a flowing cursive hand. Describes a day Margaret spent with Dee Corbell in Manhattan — a French restaurant overlooking the Radio City skating rink — and Dee’s report of her young son Puck’s improving spirits at Memorial Hospital after deep X-ray treatments. [The writer’s ‘b’ loops are visible — ‘we met at a book store’ (not ‘hat store’). Margaret writes the surname phonetically as ‘Corbelle’; the canonical family form is Corbell (Dr. Robert Corbell Jr. m. Emma Dee Walker 1938). ‘Minnie’ here is the compiler’s sister Mary Annie FitzSimons Allston — the elder Minnie (the compiler’s mother Mary Anne Perry FitzSimons) died in January 1934. ‘Dee’ is Emma Dee Walker Corbell, the compiler’s daughter; Margaret’s reference to ‘your niece’ is therefore consistent with Minnie Allston being Amy’s sister. ‘Little Puck’ is Dee’s young son, named after his grandfather James Pickens Walker Sr. (the compiler’s husband, also called Puck).]