Matoaca City. December 25, 1884.
Dearest Mother:
It almost broke my heart not to be able to go home for Christmas. It doesn't seem like Christmas at all away from you—though, of course, I try not to let Oliver see how I mind it. He has so much to bother him, poor dear, that I keep all of my worries, big and little, in the background. When anything goes wrong in the house I never tell him, because he has so many important things on his mind that I don't think I ought to trouble him about small ones. We have given up going to the boarding-house for our meals, because neither of us could eat a morsel of the food they had there—did you ever hear of such a thing as having pie and preserves for breakfast?—and Oliver says it used to make him sick to see me in the midst of all of those people. They came from all over the country, and hardly anybody could speak a grammatical sentence. The man who sat next to me always said "he don't" and "I ain't feeling good to-day" and once even "I done it"—can you imagine such a thing? Every other word was "guess," and yet they had the impertinence to laugh at me when I said "reckon," which, I am sure father told me was Shakespearian English. Well, we stood it as long as we could, and then we started having our meals here, and it is so much nicer. Oliver says the change from the boarding-house has given him a splendid appetite, and he enjoys everything that I make so much—particularly the waffles by Aunt Ailsey's recipe. Be sure to tell her. At first I had a servant, but she was so dreadful that I let her go at the end of the month, and I really get on ever so much better without her. She hadn't the faintest idea how to cook, and had never made a piece of light bread in her life. Besides, she was too untidy for anything, and actually swept the trash under the bed except once a week when she pretended to give a thorough cleaning. The first time she changed the sheets, I found that she had simply put on one fresh one, and was going to use the bottom one on top. She said she'd never heard of doing it any other way, and I had to laugh when I thought of how your face would have looked if you could have heard her. It really is the greatest relief to get rid of her, and I'd a hundred times rather do the work myself than have another of that kind. At first Oliver hated dreadfully to have me do everything about the house, but he is beginning to get used to it now, because, of course, I never let him see if anything happens to worry me or if I am tired when he comes home. It takes every minute of my time, but, then, there is nothing else here that I care to do, and I never leave the house except to take a little walk with Oliver on Sunday afternoon. Mrs. Midden says that I make a mistake to give a spring cleaning every day, but I love to keep the house looking perfectly spick and span, and I make hot bread twice a day, because Oliver is so fond of it. He is just as sweet and dear as he can be and wants to help about everything, but I hate to see him doing housework. Somehow it doesn't seem to me to look manly. We have had our first quarrel about who is to get up and make the fires in the morning. Oliver insisted that he was to do it, but I wake so much earlier than he does, because I've got the bread on my mind, that I almost always have the wood burning before he gets up. The first few times he was really angry about it, and he didn't seem to understand why I hated so to wake him. He says he hates still worse to see my hands get rough—but I am so thankful that I am not one of those girls (like Abby Goode) who are forever thinking of how they look. But Oliver made such a fuss about the fires that I didn't tell him that I went down to the cellar one morning and brought up a basket of coal. The boy didn't come the day before, so there wasn't any to start the kitchen fire with, and I knew that by the time Oliver got up and dressed it would be too late to have hot rolls for breakfast. By the way, could you have a bushel of cornmeal sent to me from Dinwiddie? The kind they have here isn't the least bit like the water-ground sort we have at home, and most of it is yellow. Nobody ever has batterbread here. All the food is different from ours. I suppose that is because most of the people are from the North and West.
I have the table all set for our Christmas dinner, and in a few minutes I must put the turkey into the oven. I was so glad to get the plum pudding in the Christmas box, because I could never have made one half so good as yours, and the fruit cake will last me forever—it is so big. I wrote you about the box yesterday just as soon as it came, but after I had sent my letter, I went back to it and found that rose point scarf of grandmother's wrapped in tissue paper in the bottom. Darling mother, it made me cry. You oughtn't to have given it to me. It always looked so lovely on your black silk, and it was almost the last thing you had left. I don't believe I shall ever make up my mind to wear it. I have on my little grey silk to-day, and it looks so nice. You must tell Miss Willy that it has been very much admired. Mrs. Payson asked me if it was made in Dinwiddie, and, you know, she gets all of her clothes from New York. That must have been why I thought her over-dressed when I first saw her. By the way, I've almost changed my mind about her since I wrote you what I thought of her. I believe now that the whole trouble with her is simply that she isn't a Southern lady. She means well, I am sure, but she isn't what I should call exactly refined. There's something "horsey" about her—I can't think of any other way to express it—something that reminds me just a little bit of Abby—and, you remember, we always said Abby got that from being educated in the North. Tell dearest Susan I really think it is fortunate that she did not go to one of their colleges. Mrs. Payson is a college woman and it seems to me that she is always trying to appear as clever as a man. She talks in a way sometimes that sounds as if she believed in woman's rights and all that sort of thing. I told Oliver about it, and he laughed and said that men hated talk like that. He says all a man admires in a woman is her power of loving, and that when she begins to ape a man she loses her charm for him. I can't understand why Mr. Payson married his wife. He said such nice things to me the other day about my being so domestic and such a home lover, that I really felt sorry for him. When I told him that I was so fond of staying indoors that I would never cross my threshold if Oliver didn't make me, he laughed and said that he wished I'd convert his wife to my way of thinking. Yet he seems to have the greatest admiration for her, and, do you know, I believe he even admires that red feather, though he doesn't approve of it. He never turns his eyes away from her when they are together, which isn't very much, as she goes about just as she pleases without him. Can you understand how a person can both admire and disapprove of a thing? Oliver says he knows how it is, but I must say that I don't. I hope and pray that our marriage will always be different from theirs. Oliver and I are never apart for a single minute except when he is at work in the office. He hasn't written a line since we came here, but he is going to begin as soon as we get settled, and then he says that I may sit in the room and sew if I want to. I can't believe that people really love each other unless they want to be together every instant, no matter what they are doing. Why, if Oliver went out to men's dinners without me as Mr. Payson does (though she doesn't seem to mind it) I should just sit at home by myself and cry my eyes out. I think love, if it is love, ought to be all in all. I am perfectly sure that if I live to be a hundred I shall never want any society but Oliver's. He is the whole world to me, and when he is not here I spend my time, unless I am at work, just sitting and thinking about him. My one idea is to make him as happy as I can, and when a woman does this for a man I don't think she has time to run around by herself as Mrs. Payson does. Tell dearest father that I so often think of his sermons and the beautiful things he said about women. The rector here doesn't compare with him as a preacher.
This is such a long letter it will take two stamps. I've just let myself run on without thinking what I was writing, so if I have made any mistakes in grammar or in spelling, please don't let father see them but read my letter aloud to him. I can shut my eyes and see you sitting at dinner, with Docia bringing in the plum pudding, and I know you will talk of me while you help to it. Write me who comes to dinner with you. I wonder if Miss Priscilla and John Henry are there as usual. Do you know whether John Henry ever goes to the Treadwell's or not? I wish you would ask him to take Susan to see his old mammy in Pink Alley. Now that I am not there to go to see her occasionally, I am afraid she will get lonesome.
Good-bye, dearest mother. I will write to you before New Year. I am so busy that I don't have time to write every day, but you will understand and so will father.
With my heart's fondest love to you both,
Your
Virginia.
Matoaca City. June 6, 1885.
Darling Mother: