[Letter from Elizabeth Upshur Teackle to her sister, Ann Upshur Eyre, November 22, 1813]

P.A. 22^d Nov. 13

My dear sister

After waiting several days for the atmosphere of my Beotian¹ pain to clear off that my ideas might shine forth through the mist of my hazy words so as to be discernable to the sense; at last, in total despair, and darkness, after all, you will have to stretch out the arms of your wit to feel out the object of this letter, as I must write in a fog or not at all. You asked me what had made my head so disorderly disorder’d, particularly, now. Why, I can’t tell: It is a mulish head at best, and sometimes, when there is no ostensible hindrance and it will not go, for either spur or rein. Then, all of a sudden, when any rational head wou’d seem to have been curbed by circumstance it will trot off at a round ambling gait, and mush on farther and swifter ‘till it runs absolutely riot; not waiting to be guided by rhyme, nor reason. I can’t account for its curvettings². It is, (as you say of your proper person) a lupus naturae³ and wou’d puzzle a Buffoon to assign it properties, or analyze its nature. On the whole, I think it partakes of the Ass more than any other animal of magnitude, but for seeing through a millstone, it is, in sooth, a very mole.

I have been half crazed with business this fall, and have done nothing but speculate on what is to be done. Here’s the Virginia

cloth, with all et ce teras that follow in its train with pokeberry dye, bay leaves, and dye pots, &c. Then there are the waterfowls to get in, and make fat, (a business that will weigh more trouble than meat when it is over). Wheat to pick, wash, and send to Mill to be cheated as much in the toll as in the growing, shoes to make, and shoe thread to skin; and to “cap the climax"⁴ we have three or four old barn-like houses to rent to squalid applicants, with red cloaks and tatter’d black bonnets, who torment me more than so many Endors.⁵ One bawls in my ear “Missus Teagle I am a poor lone woman, with a house full of ga’als, if I had but a boy to help me along! So now, ra’aly you must speak a word for me to Mr. Teagle. I shill be turn’t out a’ Christmas, or afore for what I know, and thare, my sallet, what will I do wi’ my sallet? A finikin lady says “if you let that Mrs. ___ in to the room next mine with her ga’als, I can’t stay in the house, fur they’r of a bad carectur and people may take us all for the like together. They’r brickbatted every Saturday night, and I might get my head knock’d off, for who’d know who was who?” What can be said to such logic? What maiden can be blamed for wanting to protect her head? So you see what a vast turmoil of business I have upon me, and I have not told you half. Is not all this enough to crack my brain and fogmatize my wits? I have not had leisure

for an elegant thought, or subject for an elegant expression since. Heaven knows when! Not since my head was woolgathering first, nor since I was bitten by madness in the shape of a merino sheep. My present occupations so warp me from the bent of my nature, that I scarcely recognize my own ideas when I chance to get a glimpse of them in the form of an old letter copy, or string of rhymes, written when I was half seas over in the voyage. “If lady is me” in the full tide of successful experiment “alas those times are over; but I have had my day.”

We have had a very clever interesting young stranger amongst us. Ann Upshur’s uncle, Henry Murray. I took a fancy to him at first sight, but cou’d not rouse myself from my lethargy of don’t care even sufficiently to give him an idea of my powers, which by the bye, I begin to think are actually on the incline in good earnest. When Mr. Murray took leave of me, I begged him to stay longer with us in P. A. “Ah!” says I “you had better stay with us a little longer; perhaps you may never see me again and that will so grieve you.” “Dear madam” says he, “I will not suffer so frightful an image to take possession of my mind.” “So then you are determin'd to forget me! Very well, sir!” “Oh for God’s sake, don’t tell anyone of this. What a most malicious construction!” “Oh no, I’ll only tell a few of my friends of your gallantry, a frightful image! Very well, Mr. Murray!”

We gave him a dinner, amongst others.

The Misses Manidiers are in town, you may tell Ann. I have been to see them, and shall invite them to do something here; either tea or dinner, just as my larder pleases.

Poor Colo. Done’s family have been dreadfully afflicted for some months past. He has lost Margaret, but the severest blow is the death of his wife. She died a week ago paper tells me, who has just return’d from Phila. That poor Mrs. Lyon has paid her great debt of nature. To say that I am sincerely griev’d is saying but little of what I feel when I look back to Mrs. Lyon in the pride of beauty and affluence. Admired, beloved by all who knew her. Happy and conferring happiness on all around her. When I think of and contrast the last with the present, I feel the truth of this text, “What is man, oh Lord, that thou art mindful of him?” When she was in the zenith of her charms, and I was a girl, I always thought her a superior being, and look’d up to her as a creature not to be equal’d. The least notice of hers elated me, and yet she was always affable, kind, and affectionate. After she was married and I visited her on a more equal footing, my respect for her increased, on a rational foundation; for altho’ her character and mine were different in most respects, yet I knew and felt her value

as a woman who fill’d, with credit to herself, her high calling, as wife, Mother, and friend. This subject is a painful one, poor dear Mrs. Lyon! Farewell forever.

The Misses Manidiers have just call’d to return my visit, and they desire to be remember’d to Ann Upshur. They are to drink tea with me on Thursday, and if an invitation to you and yours cou’d but bring you here, you shou’d be invited also. Can’t you, my dear brother and sister, effect this sometime this winter? Early or late, how glad I shou’d be to see you! At all events I must see you either here or there during the gloomy cold weather, to be entirely alone is not so very agreeable to me. Mr. T. goes off to Annapolis in a week and will be absent all the winter.

When do Louisa and Mary Anne go to Baltimore? Have they given up their trip? I hear that Eliza C. Teackle is really to be married very soon to an immensely rich young man. Miss Lloyd wrote to her Aunt Hannah that she saw the Miss Teackles dashing at the Easton races in an elegant new coach and fine prancing horses, belonging to this Mr. Wallace whom Eliza is to be married to. What a triumph to Retta! And her too no doubt. I am heartily glad of it. I love

to hear of anybody’s good fortune, but my relations first and foremost, of course.

I hope the next letter from you will bring better tidings of your health. You and Mr. E and poor Anne and Virginia. On the whole, your last was but a sad letter I think. Scratch out from your escutcheon “cry and grow fat” for it is your motto. Whilst it appears to be mine, "laugh and grow lean.” This is an unnatural reversing of the right order. If you will take Laugh and Grow Fat, I will as one of the family gladly quarter myself on your family arms.

Fare well my dear friends
God bless you for ever and ever.

E.U.T.

Mrs. Gen’l Gale requests me to remind you of the early pease you were to give her for seed. She and the girls are looking up again. They have been to dine with me. And only think, Mrs. Carroll has paid me a visit, too, at last. You can’t imagine how delighted she was. Everything was so new to her.