Transcription
Saratoga Springs July 25t. 1852
My dear Kate
I have just received your letter of yesterday which gives me intelligence of the great event at Sunnyside–the departure of Sarah and Mary for the Sea side. I am rejoiced to hear it, and feel very much obliged to Henry Van Wart for inviting and persuading them to make the visit to his cottage. I am convinced the change of scene, with Sea air and seabathing will have a most beneficial effect on the the health of both, and would advise them to remain there as long as possible. [Their] The absence of us all must make your situation rather lonely; but you shall have your turn my dear Kate, by and bye.
In my letter of yesterday I told you that I was going to a childrens party at a gentlemans country
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seat in the neighborhood. It was at the house of a Mr Finlay, son of an old friend who married into the Beekman family of New York, but also is now dead. The present Mr Finlay inherits much of the property of that family, especially of his uncle John K Beekman [late] deceased, an old bachelor and once an intimate of your uncle Peter & myself. The house was of stone spacious and solid; built in the skirts of what had once been a forest; but which was now thinned out into [clumps] groves and clumps, and green lawns until it had the air of [a] British park scenery A platform had been laid beneath some spreading trees and here the little fairy people danced while the grown up people sat around in groupes. It was one of the most charming little fêtes of the kind that I have ever seen. There were beautiful children very beautifully dressed; from the age of two and three years upwards.
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I felt like a patriarch among them; for among the spectators was Mrs James. an aunt of Mr Finlay, whom I had danced with in my younger days when she was a Miss Beekman, but who was now a venerable grand mother–and there was a maiden lady Miss Betsy Lawrence, whom I had likewise danced with [below?] nearly fifty years since, who now looked near eighty. I sat by them and talked of old times and looked on the dancing groupes, in which we recognized the descendants (some two or three generations off) of some of our early cotemporaries. To strike a balance, however, I paid some small attentions to two or three little belles, from six to ten years of age, and was received with smiles that might have made me vain had I been fifty or sixty years younger.
Among the leading personages at the Springs is Mrs Rush of Philadelphia, a great notoriety, with whom I became slightly acquainted in Europe; where she made quite
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a distinguished figure; being very tall, very rich, very clever, and speaking several languages fluently. We have now become extremely intimate and I find her uncommonly agreeable from her [great sens] ↑originality↓ of mind; her independent frankness and her great conversational powers. Tomorrow Mr Mitchell (Ik Marvel[)], and myself are to accompany her in her carriage on a drive into the country on search of the picturesque; as she is acquainted with all the fine points of view in the neighborhood.
I think it is the excitement of this cheerful society in which I am mingling, even more than the water; which has had an effect of lifting me into a more elastic buoyancy of frame and spirits that I have experienced for a long time; and I am convinced that if I had come up here for a few days, when I felt so heavy and bilious several weeks since, I should have swept all the clouds out of my system immediately.
Give my love to your father and to such of the family as you have with you.
Your affectionate Uncle
W I.
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Marisa CalderioLanguage
EnglishNotes
Washington Irving. Letters. Volume IV, 1846-1859. Aderman, Ralph M., Kleinfield, Herbert L. and Jenifer S. Banks. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982, pp. 322-324.
