Transcription
Berkeley Springs (Bath) July 1t 1853
My dear Kate
I received ↑yesterday↓ your letter of Sunday and Monday last, and rejoice to find you have all survived the late intense weather. I have been for four or five days in this watering place, which is in a small valley among the Mountains, and, as far as my experience goes, one of the hottest places in the known world. You will be surprised to learn however that my greatest amusement, during the heat of the day, is at the ten pin alley, and that I am getting quite expert at bowling–The perspiration
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it produces is awful–and only to be allayed by the cool baths for which this place is famous. Tomorrow I trust to emerge from this oven and to return with Mr Andrew Kennedy to〈his〉Cassilis, where I shall be once more within the reach of cooling breezes. Mr. John Kennedy rejoins us there on Monday, and then in the course of a day or two I shall return with the latter to Ellicotts Mills–and thence–(in the fullness of time) homewards.
Tell Robert I charge him not to work in the sun during the hottest hours of the day–should this intense warm weather continue. He injured
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himself by it last summer–and I would not have any thing happen to him for all the hay in the country.
I am sorry to hear that Mrs Coits fete champetre proved such a failure–although I am no friend to these attempts to bring city show and extravagance into the country. The[y] put an end to all our rural jollifications of former days. Our neighborhood is gradually growing too fine for real rural life. I prefer the joyous, informal rurality that I find in Virginia.
I am glad to find that Julia has at length cast loose from Ingleside and in on her way home to the Cottage–I trust you will have a fatted chicken killed
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〈for her sake〉on the occasion Farewell–The weather is so hot that I cannot write–nor do any thing else but play at bowls and fan myself–
With love to all
Your affectionate Uncle
W.I.
[END OF PAGE 4]Transcriber
Marisa CalderioLanguage
EnglishNotes
Washington Irving. Letters. Volume IV, 1846-1859. Aderman, Ralph M., Kleinfield, Herbert L. and Jenifer S. Banks. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982, p. 417.
