Name/Title
AU Lambert, Elsie Pauline [Warfel] - 1957-05-30 letter to James and Caroline HarrisEntry/Object ID
1990.1.476Context
Thursday
Dear James and Caroline:
Yesterday I got carried away and I wrote a lot of "stuff." Last night I did not mail it, listening to the far off voice of grandma Adams saying, "Why Pauline what in the world would they think of you." This morning I found some other interesting matter concerning the for off North Carolina ancestors or concerning how they lived I should say. So I thought grandma it's just academic now anyhow.... so what.... and as a story it's very interesting. As psychology and sociology I could find nothing more fascinating inasmuch as I paraded around in the middle of it myself with my "grandma wings" folded just so, so tightly in fact that I had a hard time breaking out of my shell. It took me about five years after college. But while all this was going on I was observing and from my observations I could weave many a tale. One day I think I could make you love and pity my father..... going along the country road with his chubby hands stuck in his eyes and his bare feet turning in the dust because they did not pay any attention to him.... because with all those older sisters to dress for their beaus they did not look at him much. He managed to be there for meals, to scramble in and hide when Ida was entertaining her beau and then get a nickel for keeping still. Once in a while he got tired of not being paid attention to and he got under the summer kitchen with the snakes or the "pretend snakes" or climbed up in the cherry tree and grandmother then had to look at him and beg him not to fall and to come out for he was her very own little boy. The rest of the time the talked about how pretty the baby was (Caroline) with her golden hair and her blue eyes.
I believe as much as anything in the world that "little Freddie Hannon" (a child Ted knew) and my father will compare notes in the heavenly place. They were alike in being overlooked for many years. Later their mothers wrote them a poem or a letter and explained how busy they had been trying to guide 4 young girls into the right matrimonial path with so very little money to do it with and so they neglected the little boy. Sometimes as his daughter I felt so sorry for him seeing the way he was sometimes "beat" from the arguments.... and how he went along that little boy still hunting for someone to pay attention to him ass if he was their own little boy. I wanted to be his mother and say, "Of course you are my little boy. Please cheer up." But when I reached out my hands in sympathy he always did something to repel me.... to push me away and I could not.
I found an article I had saved about Butler's Island.... A seacoast plantation in Georgia. I will send it to you and you can see what I mean. It says that for hundreds of miles up the coast where the rivers came into the ocean there were these rice plantations and they were watered by the ocean tides comin gup the rivers. It explains how they did not get salt water in the rice. Now they are being reclaimed for after the Civil War they all came to nothing and went to ruin. Beaufort is right on the coast and I suppose a Stanton plantation was there and the Lambert one farther up the river near New Bern in N. Carolina. For these plantations were not of the settlements given by the English kings as grants. The settlers were the Quakers of that first migration. I am so enthusiastic about all this that I would like to visit the reclaimed plantations or the being reclaimed plantations and trace history and genealogy for the purpose of a series of novels concerning this family that is so much a part of our own history.
I have been reading the best seller "Peyton Place" about a New England town and I hope I could find a more healthy atmosphere in N. Carolina and Ohio! Read this "Peyton Place"... but don't recommend it for your daughter, the younger one.
Well, all this and more is quite interesting but the world does not need any more novels I am sure but with the person that writes the novel it is a different matter. He is impelled to write and if anyone reads of course that is good. So far all I have been able to get onto paper has been poetry.... and sometimes I have an inspiration. But there has been no inspiration since Spring. It will come again but I do not know when.
Mary Ann says that she and the baby are fine. But just now I cannot get her on the phone.
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Dis away for a week. He went to Baltimore and then to Pittsburgh and will stop in Washington on the way home.
Lucile wrote that she has a new house and a new address. She has a ranch type house now at 230 Sunset Drive, Orrville Ohio. I want to see her but don't know when. I am so glad they have the nice new house.
Well, don't think too hard of me please. I guess I have always seen life as a kind of story with cause and effect... beginning and end etc.
Enclosed is my last poem. Several of the others were more close and intimate.... so I will send this one.
As ever,
{Pauline}
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"I Have Enjoyed this Spring More than Most."
May 30, 1957
Pauline Lambert Warfel
Somehow in its quite and peacefulness
I have enjoyed this spring more than most,
In spite of a straining at the leash of effort,
And aches and pains intermittent.
Like the creator of any sort
There is joy in the creation
And pains are lost in the beauty of the ceramic.
It was too much for me.....way across the country
In our car....but there were lovely hills
And winding roads,
And green sufficient for a lifetime.
Rhododendron scattered brilliance
And late dogwood hid itself beneath the forest trees
For much of the way was forest and we looked for deer.
Today, Memorial Day, has dawned bright and cool
And scenes of soldiers guarding at the tomb
Of him who lies there, for those we'll never know
Are brought to us by magic picture tube.
The changing of the guard reminds us
That never was this soldier left alone,
And taps bring tears,
And the flag a rush of love for country
Across the years.
God keep the "beloved country"
For which they gave so much.
I shall remember when summer brings its heat
That closes in and bears us down
This spring,
In all its beauty, in all its greenness
And its flowers that wear sweet scents.
And on the day of Decoration
When the roses lavish great bouquets,
When peonies are blooming,
When iris clings another day to celebrate,
I shall remember this spring more than most.
