Letter from Margaret Baumeister to Minnie, ca. April 1953 — closing page
Book 2, Page 226 ·1953
Transcription
and attentions. She has bought a big scrap book for him to keep his letters and cards in, with scissors and paste, so they can work on the book together.
Tomorrow — Saturday — Dee leaves Ellen FitzSimons and is taking a room at the Westbury Hotel again, and Dr. Corbelle comes in on the night plane, and will be with her until things are calm again. So her period of waiting is over, and she faces her ordeal now in good spirits, calmly, matter-of-factly with much less tragedy and horror. She has seen the minister, Dr. McCandless, and said he was wonderful. But I doubt she will need to see him again, unless something unexpected happens. It seems almost — not that her prayers have been answered, as from it — but as though some kind of divine light and grace had drenched the painful picture with sunlight, and that a confiding child went smiling into a painful ordeal, without comprehending the meaning of it exactly, but determined to find life happy anyway. The other little amputees have shown the way.
With much love to you dear Minnie, and may this letter cheer and comfort you in the thoughts you will be having. I feel sure all will go well now. The real sorrow — if it must come — is months away.
Our love to dear Donald — Margaret
P.S. Can you check up Dee Polite? I will continue with Dee Corbelle!
AI Notes
Closing page of Margaret Baumeister’s letter to Minnie, on yellowed lined stationery in blue fountain-pen ink. Describes the practical arrangements before young Puck Corbell’s amputation — Dee moving from Ellen FitzSimons’s apartment back to the Westbury Hotel, Dr. Corbell arriving on the night plane, and Dee’s calm acceptance after meeting with the minister, Dr. McCandless. Signed ‘Margaret’ with a postscript distinguishing ‘Dee Polite’ (a separate Dee in Minnie’s circle) from ‘Dee Corbelle’ (the niece in NY). [corrected ‘Westvary Hotel’ to ‘Westbury Hotel’ (the historic Manhattan hotel at 15 E. 69th St., opened 1928). Margaret writes the family surname phonetically as ‘Corbelle’ but the canonical spelling is Corbell. ‘Minnie’ here is Mary Annie FitzSimons Allston (the compiler’s sister), not her late mother of the same nickname; ‘Donald’ is therefore Minnie’s husband Donald McKay Allston. The ‘Ellen FitzSimons’ whose apartment Dee was staying in is Amy’s aunt Ellen Milliken FitzSimons (sometime Charleston Library Society librarian) — by 1953 she would have been an elderly woman; the apartment may have been her NY pied-à-terre or that of a relative still using her name.]
The “painful ordeal” Margaret describes is the imminent leg amputation of nine-year-old Pickens Walker “Puck” Corbell — the compiler’s grandson and the addressee Minnie’s nephew — for the bone cancer that would kill him later that year. “Dee” is Puck’s mother Emma Dee Walker Corbell (the compiler’s elder daughter); “Dr. Corbelle” is his father Dr. Robert Lawrence Corbell Jr. of Portsmouth, Va. Puck died on 2 December 1953; the obituary clipping is mounted on page 227 immediately following.