Stockton Axson to Jessie Woodrow Wilson

Title

Stockton Axson to Jessie Woodrow Wilson

Creator

Axson, Stockton, 1867-1935

Identifier

WWP17468

Date

1913 November 15

Description

Stockton Axson sends Jessie a congratulatory letter and apologizes for not attending her wedding or sending a gift due to his hospitalization.

Source

Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University

Language

English

Text

My dearest Jessie

Of all my misfortunes in being ill at this time quite the greatest is in the fact that I am not going to be able to go to your wedding. In fact, I can take the other misfortunes philosophically and be thankful that the case is no worse, thankful that this wonderful friend Dr. Dercum discovered that I was near to a breakdown before I actually broke, and commandeered me into his hospital (against my will), and by so doing has prevented what I now know would have been a breakdown. It doesn't require a great deal of philosophy to see the silver cloud lining in that cloud. But it does make a drain on all the patience and compliance I have to forego your wedding without mourning.
But there are compensations there too, and the chief of them is that I had that beautiful evening with you and Frank. I find my gratitude going out in quite copious streams to Mrs. Harper for releasing you both to me for that quiet little “comfy” visit at the inn. And you were both so dear—of course I knew you would be because when a fellow has known somebody like you for all these years he has learned what to expect, but you see I hadn't had a chance to know Frank very well, and now I feel as if I had known him almost as long as I have known you, and I love him almost as much—for indeed, dear Jessie, he is a splendid fellow and all of him a man, and not the least thing he did to please me that evening was to call me “Uncle Stock”—bless his heart! You see, people a great deal better and finer than I am have enough egotism to want to feel that that those who marry their dear ones are “sort of” letting them also into their affections. And “Uncle Stock” did the business for me—I wanted to get up and hug Frank right there on the spot. But don't think my regard for him and my affection for him are based solely on this episode. No, no, he's just the sort of man one naturally admires—so frank (“Frank by name and frank by nature'”, as Dickens would say), so poised, so strong in all the intimations of his manhood, and just the sort of fellow one feels so safe in seeing one of his dear ones commit her life to.
You would were good enough in one of the dearest of letters, written to me this past fall, to say that you girls had regarded me always as “your other father”. You will never know how deep that sunk in on me, for indeed, dear heart, that represents, reciprocally, just my feeling to each and “all of yez.” Of course, you are grown-ups and quite important folks in the great world now, but to me you are and always will be just mylittlegirls, my Margaret, my Jessie, and my Nell. I so often feel that all the big real happiness of my life has been as a member of the family consisting of your Father, your Mother, and you three. And neither big world-important things nor the great happy things that bring the marriages that bring the separationss can ever alter the sweetness and security of love like that. And so as I can't come to your wedding I am writing you a letter (with Dr. Dercum's permission) and it is turning out to be a sort of a love letter too—but it would be strange if it didn't, with so much love behind it. And you can just tell Master Frank from me that he needn't raise any objections “whatsoever” because he's in it too.
Dearie, with all the wedding presents that are flowing in, it is I, not you, that are chief loser by the fact that “nary a one” is arriving with my honorable card attached. I will have to blame Dr. Dercum for that. I had my mind all made up about what I wanted to get, and was going to get it the next time I went to N.
Y. (to be very honest, had been waiting for a certain check to arrive) when this major “magerful man” as Bamie'sTommy Norton used to say) got me back by the scruff of the neck and the seat of the trousers and “turkey-walked” me to his hospital and clapped me in bed and put a bigger man that than what I am in the room to see to it that I staid here till I got leave to rise. The taking-off of Prince Hamlet's father—“Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd”—was not more sudden and peremptoryBut possibly, dear, this, like everything else, may have its good side. For maybe when you get settled down to house-keeping (whenever that may be) you or Frank might drip me a confidential hint as to whether or not you already have more Turkish rugs than you know what to do with—for it was to them that my fevered imagination was turning.
This is getting to be a busy long letter for a very busy girl to read. But there is a great deal more love than words in it, dear child.
I believe that, barring those things which are beyond the power of man to control (such as accidents) and therefore quite outside all reasonable anxiety, your life and Frank's are, is going to be happy and as useful as happy—and I know that's the way you would want it. And so may all good from the God of good be with you both.
An all love, my darling Jessie, first for yourself and then for Frank, and then for all the dear household, from

Uncle Stock

Original Format

Letter

To

Sayre, Jessie Woodrow Wilson, 1887-1933

Files

http://resources.presidentwilson.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/SAtoJWS19131115.pdf

Tags

Citation

Axson, Stockton, 1867-1935, “Stockton Axson to Jessie Woodrow Wilson,” 1913 November 15, WWP17468, Jessie Wilson Sayre Correspondence, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia.