American Historical Ephemera & Photography

2 pages, 5 x 7 7/8 in., creased at folds, with area of toning/discoloration to lower right portion of first page. 

In this letter addressed to a "Mr. Derby," Varina Davis thanks him for his help during the illnesses of daughter Winnie Davis and an unnamed friend with MS. Regarding her daughter, she writes: "Winnie is today is so unwell that she commissioned me to thank you very gratefully for the trouble you have taken in her behalf and as you to decide the question of name as you and our dear old friends the Lovells think best. She does not feel able to read the proof..." Varina Anne "Winnie" Davis (1864-1898) published An Irish Knight of the Nineteenth Century with the John W. Lovell Co. the same year this letter was written, and that is likely the work her mother refers to in the quoted section above.

She then notes the former Confederate President is also unwell and therefore unable to write: "Mr. Davis is not writing any thing but has had several literary propositions which have not been accepted. [H]e is not strong and both of us ail very much in a valetudinarian kind of old aged way truly depressing." Jefferson Davis did complete A Short History of the Confederate States of America shortly before death the following year.