Sarah E. Nicholas to Thomas Jefferson Randolph
| My dear brother, | January 14th 1822 |
I have been waiting with the utmost impatience for you to commence a correspondence with me as you promised to do, but as it seems to have escaped your memory I have determined to give it a little jog, (if you’ll allow me the expression) for I had anticipated a great deal of pleasure from a correspondence with you, as there is nothing I love so dearly as writing to people that I love; and I assure you that the pleasures of Baltimore are not so numerous or agreeable as not to be considerably heightened by the reception of letters from one’s friends—I think it will please you to learn that I am not at all better pleased with Baltimore upon a further acquaintance than I was at first since George Hollins left us I have not been able to bear it, my the only amusement that I have is to walk up and down market street, which is to be sure the most delightful thing in nature, but then you know one cannot be always on the street—Uncle Hollins’s is the only house that I go to, & I go there seldom enough, as to sister Caryannes she lives so entirely out of the world that I can never find in my heart to go to see her but upon special invitation; so you see from all the pleasure that I have I had as well have staid in Virginia. I am glad that we came for one reason and one only, I think it has been of the greatest service to mamma’s health, every one agree’s in saying that she has improved wonderfully, & I am sure that it will prolong her life [. . .] very much, apropos to her life, what is the reason that neither you or brother Wilson have written to her about her affairs I think it very mean in you both as it would be a very great satisfaction to her and take up very little of your precious time, [. . .] I think a half an hour once a month would be very little for you to devote to her brother W— is [. . .] intolerable—I am sorry to inform you that there is no chance of any one of us offending you by catching a foretune, as I see not the slightest chance of it so far, our cousin Sam is allowed to be the only young man in town worth the catching, & we were very busy putting caps for him when in stepped miss Mc Clair and took him from us, he is more deeply in love with her than ever. We are now deliberating whether one of us shall not catch our cousin James Buchanan, he is very amiable [. . .] & very clever, will you give your consent?
Dabney still continues his studies very closely, more so I think than when he was at Warren, he too is very tired of Baltimore & very anxious to get back to the good old neighbourhood; Aunt Carr is talking very stoutly of moving back, she begins to be very much afraid that she will not be able to make [. . .] ends of the year, meet, I think myself [she] lives rather high, she wants Margaret ver[y] much to check her, for she will not listen to me at all, although I am preaching economy from morning till night—
Mama is in dreadful distress that I should write my first letter to you on a mutilated sheet of paper & in such a hand & wishes me to copy it off neatly, but I know that you will have a fellow feeling for both the hand & the paper so that I’ll e’en take the liberty of sending this, which I beg you will answer immediately if you do not I shall be exceeding mortified— Give my love to Jane & Margaret— & beleive me to be
What has become of that note of aunt Carrs that she wrote to Jane about [you?] Nelly sends her best love & compliments to you—