Beverly Randolph Johnston to Eliza Mary Johnston, November 21, 1845

[Beverly Randolph Johnston at Abingdon, Virginia, to Eliza Mary Johnston at Amsterdam, Botetourt, Virginia, November 21, 1845. Box 25, Folder 1, Robert Morton Hughes Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Patricia W. and J. Douglas Perry Library, Old Dominion University Libraries, Norfolk, VA 23529. This is my rough transcription. Additional paragraph breaks added for easier reading.]

My dear Lizzy

Your letter of the 19^th reached me this evening. Truly, with all the disposition in the world to comply with your wishes, I am somewhat at a loss for an expedient. Next week is Quarterly court here. Besides that, Capt. Matthews is to be here on Monday to stay for at least a fortnight, perhaps longer, for the purpose of taking two or three accounts of great magnitude and importance.

I am fast fixed here, then, by engagements made some weeks ago, and cannot, without a deplorable breach of faith and duty, leave home while these matters are pending. You must even Take patience, and trust to the character of accidents.

I hope your Cousin Tom will be at Smithfield. If so, you can come with him. But I have not seen him for many a day, and cannot learn now, whether or not he is to be there.

Perhaps an opportunity may offer of you obtaining convey[ance] to Wythe. If so, I can take leave of absence from here for two days, and bring you home from thence.

I am very sorry that I could not be earlier apprized of your movements and wishes. You know I desired many weeks ago to communicate your plans far in advance, that I might conform to them. But even had you done so, the present moment is one of such importance, and my engagements are so strict, that could not possibly have left home now.

I rec’d the other day, a charming little ticket of invitation to Smithfield, on the 27^th. What I have already said, shows how impossible it is for me to be present. I must therefore trust to you to say all that should be said on my part. To tender my congratulations in all truth, sincerity and kindness. To express my regrets that I cannot witness an event so interesting to a household. Each and all of whom are so highly valued by me.

Write to me so soon as you reach Smithfield and it will go hard with me indeed, if I do not find some means of bringing you once more amongst us. I have an irrepressible longing to once again see and hear and talk to you – or be silent to you which, I believe, is more apt to be the case. Tell me something about Pres. I have not heard a word of him since you went away.

Tell Ballard I am his, for the winter, am ready and willing and waiting to go into all the matters he wrote me of, most hungrily and heartily.

I have an horrid pen, as you see, no knife and this very late. I only got home since dark.

                                                                   Yours, most truly

                                                                         Bev. R. Johnston 

[Bev. R. Johnston = Beverly Randolph Johnston (1803-1876)

Lizzy = Eliza Mary Johnston (1825-1909)

Pres = John Preston Johnston (1824-1847)

Captain Matthews = [?]

Cousin Tom = probably Thomas Lewis Preston (1812-1903)

Invitation from Smithfield = probably an invitation to the wedding of Catharine Jane Grace Preston (1821-1852) and George Henry Gilmer (1810-1874) on November 27, 1845. 

Ballard = William Ballard Preston (1805-1862).]

[Many thanks to Sue Davis, William Myers, Mary Davy and Sally Young for their ongoing research collaboration.]