[Letter from Ann Upshur Eyre to her sister, Elizabeth Upshur Teackle, c.1804-1806]

Dear Girl

I was, I need not tell you, distressed and surprised to learn the alteration in your plans concerning me, as Juliet informs me you intend a northern instead of Southern excurtion. I fear it will not only be inimical to my interest but your own as the season for yellow fever will have arrived ere you reach the Towns and in such case your visits wou'd neither be agreeable or safe. At any rate, a summer visit to a town is not to be prefer'd, as the gay and fashionable they desert it, and of course every fashionable and gay amusement, and I should be glad your Ladyship wou'd inform me, if such are not the springs to action. What are they, surely you will not be so entirely out of style as to think of such a thing. But to Bath my dear girl, and improve your health and appearance, and when winter comes, let us go together to Town. This I assure you I have seriously

contemplated, not indeed to visit Bath, for I consider myself already there. I have been led to give it this name not merely from partiality or vanity, but from our so frequently having persons repair hither for health.

Mr E and myself have long since procured a fine Turtle for my good Brother and yourself, which we continue to nurse with assiduity in the pleasing hope that you will yet alter your determinations in our favour. If eating and drinking can be an inducement, I need not again assure you, you shall have the fat of the land. Tho' now I think out, I shou'd in so doing offer up myself a victim, as I am well convinced I have in this respect the [illegible] of the ducks, chickens, and lambs. Indeed, I much fear I am too inclined to be corpulent, and that I continue to increase not withstanding my unwillingness to doze. For I seldom appear in public, without an exclamation of Heavens, how fat you have grown! This is a death stroke to my own belief that I remain pretty much in statusquo and I am almost tempted to begin a starving system.

This species of uneasiness you may thank God you are never likely to feel. Tho perhaps you

may have felt an opposite one. The ways of Heaven are undoubtedly just and we must not complain. At the same time I cannot cease to think that all extremes are bad. I have the pleasure to inform you our Aunt Kendal is regaining her health, and appearance. Her suffering have indeed been great and I trust are nearly at an end on this account. I wish I cou'd add that every species of misery was removed from her, her scourge of twenty years date seems almost to baffle every effort of indulgent Health to renew her constitution. The Col continues in the utmost distraction of mind. He not only deprives her of all comfort and peace in the day, but contrives to deprive her nights of that natural rest which a convalescent so much needs. His constitution seems to be perfectly unimpair'd, and I see no chance of her ever being released from his persecution. The docts I believe think his malady deeply rooted and incurable. I seldom visit her for really the scene shocks me more than I can express. She has spent some timebwith me, and during her stay recruited wonderfully.