ALS signed “Varina Jefferson Davis,” eight pages on two sets of two adjoining sheets, 3.75 x 6, September 4, 1895. Letter to Lady Napier. In part: “After all these years of silence through which I have borne you in tenderness remembrance, it is a great pleasure to me to hear that you also have not forgotten me. A friend has sent me your address which enables me once more to communicate with you…I have buried three fine boys since I saw you and have but two children left…My eldest boy grew to be twenty one and died of yellow fever away from me. He was all I could have desired him to be, and a few weeks ago I laid him in Richmond by the side of his father where all my dead have been removed as Mr. Davis’ monument is to be built there by the Confederate States–My husband’s death [1889] has left me very desolate for though he was eighty four at the time of his death he had lost nothing in appearance or in impressiveness by old age. He always spoke affectionately of Lord Napier and of you and felt much disappointed at not seeing you both in Scotland–Our house–Beauvoir is on the Gulf of Mexico half way between New Orleans and Mobile on the coast of Mississippi–but it is so isolated that I fear to live there in the unsettled state of negroes now, and as my younger daughter Varina Anne, is a literary woman…next May I shall be seventy years old and the exceptional sorrows of my stormy life have left me little desire to go in general society even if my strength would permit it…Washington is a most beautiful city now, but the asphalt pavements, the palatial houses and fine equipages do not make up to me, or indeed to our old friends there, for the ‘tender grace of a day that is dead’ and the sound of voices that are still.” In fine condition, with ink notation to top of first page and some mild toning. Pre-certified PSA/DNA and RR Auction COA.
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