Letter from Sarah Mills to Charles S. Peirce
(Cambridge, 05.12.1875)




Spanish translation & annotations




Cambridge
Sunday December 5th

My dear darling precious Charlie

My heart is full of sympathy for your perplexities & troubles your discontents & loneliness. Now I wish we had you here where we all love you so much & are so proud of you. But since that cannot be how I wish with the Great Ocean rolling between us there were any way to give you instant comfort & peace. But you have to wait weeks for letters which never seem to reach you. You seem to be the victim of some gigantic complication of mistakes & difficulties, for which there must come some time a solution. Your father has written you repeatedly & I hoped had done

 


something by his letters to clear things up for you but it seems you have either not received them or they have failed to give you the least comfort. I got your despairing letter of the 17th (I suppose of Nov. for you did not even indicate the month) yesterday. You gave no address although you speak of being in Paris, & this is what they complain of in you that nobody knows your address. The only way then is to direct to your bankers & as you have two that perhaps rather complicates things, although it ought to make you doubly certain of hearing. As to your account, Dear Charlie, your father says you have only to make them out as payable in gold coin & they will be paid in gold. He wonders that you do not fully understand & act upon this. That is the direction you had had from Patterson himself before you went who has intended I think to act liberally towards you & who speaks of valuing your work most highly. Did you receive I wonder a letter from him of July 26 a copy of which he sent your father & which is most explicit

 

in regard to your payment being made in gold. "The delay relative to the point whether your expenses are to be paid in gold is new to me. All expenses will be paid in gold, salaries in currency. I have added $1000 to your estimates so that your total for the year now stands $9.500. I have directed Mr. Hein to send to your bankers on account of this year, estimates $2.500 and monthly hereafter $799 until the amount of $9.500 is reached." In October –Date 21st in a letter to your father P says "The letter from Charlie contains the first direct address we have had since he left Eng. So I telegraphed him at once & wrote him fully. The money deposited to him at Wards since Aug 1 now amount to $4.144 & is added to at the rate of $700 per month. These deposits are made at his request. It wd be a great misfortune to us to have him give up work now that he has fairly started & the results promise so admirably." It seems to me all this is very clear & explicit & your trouble can only be explained by the supposition that the letters have not reached you. Every time we hear altho your letters are so gloomy I think you must have by the time they reach us all anxieties are relieved, & then the next letters are


no better. You think I have written very little & it is true but since October when your troubles came I felt as if your father & Jim would do more to set your mind at rest than I could & I knew you did not care for a great many letters. But I have thought of you constantly & wished I could do you the least bit of good. I hope you got your father’s letter about William James's to Dr. Gilman concerning the Professorship at Baltimore. I enclose the answer to it. Those places are thought at home very desiderable. The salaries are 5000 & Baltimore is a cheap place to live in. Sylvester I suppose your father has rec’d an appointment there & Child Goodwin & Gibbs have been invited as we hear.

Now dear Charlie for a little information about home. All are well excepting your poor old Mother whose rheumatism is pretty bad & threatens I think to make a permanent thing of her stiff shoulder & neck it has lasted so long. At any rate she grows old apace. Hair pretty nearly all gone. Aunt L & your father are very well. Jim flourishing & stouter than ever. Berties business is very promising indeed. Dick Loring has gone in with him & they have every prospect of success, which considering the extreme  stringency of the times is quite wonderful. Will & Helen & the children are well

 

 

but Will is feeling the hard times a good deal & his smile is stopped for the winter. There will probably be a fourth added to the lovely trio of children in February. No appointment is made at the Observatory yet. Newcomb declined the appointment, partly he said because the advantages were far less than  those he enjoyed at Washington & partly because Eliot offered him the place in such a manner that he felt he was not wanted. Fanny Clarke talks a great deal about you. She has met with a great loss in her little girl who died in October of Typhoid fever, leaving her mother very disconsolable. She always wants to hear everything about you. Aunt Lizzie saw Amy Fay at Katy Stones the other day. She was there & with Laura at Newton for a few days but I did not see her. Aunt L thought her extremely improved. The winter has set in with great severity the thermometer below 0 several nights already. I feel that I am probably housed until Spring. I am so sorry you do not like Paris since you must be there. Do Dear C

 

let me hear from you as soon as you receive this & I do hope you will be relieved of all your anxieties by the time this reaches you, by the receipt of your letters & the general clearing up of the atmosphere in which you are. Do take great care of yourself & not "get sick" as Aunt Lizzie says. We think your new French rule a great thing, but have not yet studied out your solitaire. We play whist as usual a good deal. Your father depends more & more upon it. So when Jem cannot be at home & Helen does not come we have Dumerry. You must be tired of this long dull letter & I must spare you. Do write at once & tell us something of your plans for the winter. I hope you need not remain much longer in Paris. All send you overflowing measures of love.

Ever my dearest Charlie

Your loving Mother

Do excuse this ruled paper



Transcription by Max Fisch (Peirce Edition Project), revised by Sara Barrena
Una de las ventajas de los textos en formato electrónico respecto de los textos impresos es que pueden corregirse con gran facilidad mediante la colaboración activa de los lectores que adviertan erratas, errores o simplemente mejores transcripciones. En este sentido agradeceríamos que se enviaran todas las sugerencias y correcciones a sbarrena@unav.es
Proyecto de investigación "Charles S. Peirce en Europa (1875-76): comunidad científica y correspondencia" (MCI: FFI2011-24340)

Fecha del documento: 23 de septiembre 2013
Última actualización: 22 de agosto 2014

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