A Hidden Letter

by Renee Comeau
Reprinted from the Summer 2010 California State Button Society Button Brief

A few years ago, I bid on and won a pretty velvet-lined antique jewelry display case that had a charm string of buttons in it. The case was from the Jane Ford Adams collection and our San Diego Button Club was having a little auction of buttons. The inside of the case needed some repair, so I put it aside to repair later. A longtime member of our San Diego Button Club, Joan Helton, who seems to find just about anything in sewing notions and material that a club member needs, found an old piece of velvet to match the piece I needed to make the repair. Inspired one day to get off my duff and accomplish some long overdue tasks, I started the repair. When I removed the damaged velvet liner, I discovered some old letters hidden inside. The letters, written in 1941, were from an antique book dealer in Tuscaloosa, Alabama (Foster’s Book Shop) to Jane about an old Southern Charm String that he had (and later negotiated by Jane to have him send it to her).

It seems that, in exchange for some books that Jane had sent to him, he was prepared to send her the Charm String, but his mother was having sentimental fits over the thought of him selling it or giving it away. The ‘charming’ letter, at one point in the text states “the Charm String has brought down dire threats on my head, from no other person that My Dear and respected Mother, the more I hear of this damn string of buttons. It was played with by her Mother, most respected Lady, the wife of Capt. Martin, another illustrious Ancestor that I have not lived up to and before that, my most respected Grand-Mother, Magee. My Mother is a perfect dear and truly she does not get damn wrought up, but the Charm String, it’s a bit too personal, perhaps not worth a darn, I don’t know.”

And in the other of the two letters, “I certainly won’t think of keeping your books and the Charm string has not disrupted the house-hole [yes, ‘hole’ not ‘hold’]. Mother is not any sentimental idiot either; she is and had been a collector all her life. I told you that this old house was over-flowing with antiques and a little bit of everything else. She knows not what I will bring home next. Anyway, I have persuaded her to allow me to send the Charm string to you for appraisal, that’s fair, is it not? You see, Mother’s Mother was a Magee, a sister of Pelham’s Mother, at least the darn String should have charm, as this Sister started it long before the Civil War—enough of this—the String is being mailed. We may be all wet as to the value. Neither of us know one thing about it.”

In any event, finding the two hidden letters was really a lot of fun, and the text of the letters really 

delightful to read.