Tweet
The Wartime Papers of R. E. Lee. Clifford Dowdey, ed. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1961. (197)
To MRS. W. H. F. LEE (Charlotte Wickham)
White Sulphur, North Carolina
Dabb's [House]
June 22, 1862
And now I must answer your inquiries about myself. My habiliments are not as comfortable as yours, nor so suited to this hot weather, but they are the best I have. My coat is of gray, of the regulation style and pattern, and my pants of dark blue, as is also prescribed, partly hid by long boots. I have the same handsome hat which surmounts my gray head (the latter is not prescribed in the regulations) and shield my ugly face, which is masked by a white beard as stiff and wiry as the teeth of a card. In fact, an uglier person you have never seen, and so unattractive is it to our enemies that they shoot at it whenever visible to them, but though age with its snow has whitened my head, and its frosts have stiffened my limbs, my heart, you well know, is not frozen to you, and summer returns when I see you.
Your devoted papa
R. E. Lee
To MRS. W. H. F. LEE (Charlotte Wickham)
White Sulphur, North Carolina
Dabb's [House]
June 22, 1862
And now I must answer your inquiries about myself. My habiliments are not as comfortable as yours, nor so suited to this hot weather, but they are the best I have. My coat is of gray, of the regulation style and pattern, and my pants of dark blue, as is also prescribed, partly hid by long boots. I have the same handsome hat which surmounts my gray head (the latter is not prescribed in the regulations) and shield my ugly face, which is masked by a white beard as stiff and wiry as the teeth of a card. In fact, an uglier person you have never seen, and so unattractive is it to our enemies that they shoot at it whenever visible to them, but though age with its snow has whitened my head, and its frosts have stiffened my limbs, my heart, you well know, is not frozen to you, and summer returns when I see you.
Your devoted papa
R. E. Lee
Comment