Letter from Samuel S. Brooke to sister

Creator:

Brooke, Samuel S. (Samuel Selden), 1841-1918

Scope and content:

Written from Orange Court House, Virginia. Letter regards life in camp and family news.

Language:

English .

Other descriptive data:

Camp near Orange C. H.
March 27, 1864

My dear Sister--
I received your letter yesterday and had only one fault to find with that was it was too short. You gave me a great deal of news nevertheless. I suppose by the time you get this Peter Hull will have arrived in town. You must know that Peter and myself are rivals either for Miss Monie or Miss Millie I don't know which, so you must spy upon him and watch him even as the cat doeth the small rat and report promptly all things of suspicious nature. I want to be even with him when he comes to camp, for when I came back he knew everything I had said and done while I was down there. You said in your letter that Miss Monie had deserted me "Entre nous." I don't care a fig if she has but you need [not] let her think that. I want to have some fun out of Peter Hull, he is evidently extremely jealous of me but I can't tell exactly whether it is Miss Monie or Miss Millie he doth affect the most. Whichever one it is there am I also. I expect you are tired of this nonsense but really it is so dull up here that I have nothing to write about.

I suppose you saw in the papers an account of the Tournament we had up here. It was a poor affair I thought, and the Queen of Love and Beauty was as ugly as a stump fence. They are going to have another on a grander scale soon I believe. I will give you a full description of it when it occurs. Capt. Green I believe will ride. None others from the Regt. have any hand in it. If either of the Miss "M's" would come up I would probably scare up an Ishmaelite and tilt for them, don't tell them I said so.

Everything is extremely quiet here. Snow fell to the depth of several inches and it rained all day yesterday so I suppose Old Meade will be weather bound for a few weeks. I do not now think we will go to Tennessee, it was merely a rumor that I mentioned before when it was thought that all the severe fighting would be done in the South West. It is now thought that yet another grand effort to take Richmond this year will be made by "Grant" in "Propria persona" who will doubtless follow in the foot steps of his illustrious predecessors and walk the plank into obscurity after his first engagement with Uncle Bob Lee.

There is nothing as yet particularly cheering or disheartening in the Military horizon. I think the prospect for an active and laborious campaign in Virginia is pretty clear and we will again this spring renew our old occupation and struggle between life and death for six more weary months. A pleasant thing to contemplate to one who has experience it. As to peace Heaven only knows when that will come. I suppose however that war can't last forever but I can see no indication of an early peace. We have gotten so used to war now that aplenty to eat is all we look for. We expect to make this our trade for we have become fitted for nothing else now.

Tell Maria I received her letter a few days ago and am much gratified at it and will answer it soon. I hope she will write to me again soon. I have been so uncomfortably fixed this bad weather and having to appear at times as witness before Courts Martial that I have postponed writing from time to time, and I wrote such a flood of them at first. I thought I would have off a while.

I am surprised Jennie did not get her letter. I sent it by private hands but who it was I have really forgotten, either Jno. Dent or Tom Berry I think, but it was an uninteresting letter anyway so she lost nothing.

I suppose you and Jennie will be over with Maria by the time this gets to you, or ready to go at all events. I would like very much to drop in to see you a little while but there is no chance of that now. I might have gotten a few days some time ago probably but made no attempt to do so. I have had my share this winter and do not expect to see you all again until this campaign is over if I am so fortunate as to survive the storm that will soon burst over us.

Will Fenton & Mrs. D continue their boarding house at the present high prices? I cannot tell how they manage to get anything eatable now up here where the army has been camped so long. You cannot get anything for love or money and we have to depend on our rations entirely which amount to 1/4 lb. bacon per day apiece about as big as your two fore fingers and a 1/2 lb. flour or meal. I hope however it may get no worse for I can hardly tell where on earth they get this from but I hope it will hold out until the campaign is over at all.

Subjects:

Confederate States of America. Army—Virginia Infantry Regiment, 47th
United States—History—Civil War, 1861-1865—Personal narratives—Confederate
Correspondence

Names:

Brooke, Samuel S. (Samuel Selden), 1841-1918

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