Homepage   A to Z Index  Book outline   People   Places   Plays    About these letters    About EJ Phillips  Chronology  EJ Phillips Facebook Fan Page

Columbus Celebration 1892

previous: Philadelphia Aug 1892

47 E. 21st Street N Y  
Octr 6th 1892 

My dear daughter Neppie, 

I have been working very hard since I came to the City and am not through yet.  Dressmakers are slow and rehearsals long.  We leave on the 15th for Montreal.  Think the members of the company are very pleasant. I should like to go to see you on Sunday but I could not go until Sunday Morning & would have to return in the Evening and I feel too tired to do that.  We are now rehearsing every day from 10:30 AM to 4 PM and then I have to stand up to have dresses fitted.  

I was telling [the Shailers] that tomorrow was Ted's birthday and they said it was Anton's birthday also.  He will be 15 years old tomorrow and Ted two.  I should like to see him & give him a hug and three big Kisses -- 2 for his years & one to grow on.  I wanted to buy something for him but have not had time.  I enclose $2.  Please get him something and I hope I shall do better by him for Xmas.  Tell him Grandma Nickinson sends him lots of love, hugs & Kisses & wants to see him very much. 

Great preparations are being made in the City for the Columbus Celebration and the City very crowded.  I do not like these big crowds.  I do not know any news for I have not had time to read a paper. 

I leave the City on the 15th.  We play in the "Academy of Music" in Montreal I believe.  Love and Kisses to Albert and yourself from your loving  Mother 

47 E 21st   1892 
Octr 15th 

My dear Son, 

I rather expected to see you sometime this week but do not think you have missed anything as far as this celebration was concerned.  The Evening parade was a terrible disappointment to the assembled thousands.  It took me two hours and a half to get home from the Madison Square Theatre on Wednesday.  No crossing 5th Ave at any point, though I went up to 59th Street to do it.  The City was full of people and it was quite a relief when the affair ended. 

I am glad "little bit of Sunshine" [Ted Nickinson] rec'd so many nice presents on his [second] birthday.  Grandma Nickinson did not have time to find anything for him.  She has been for three weeks every day in the theatre from 10:30 to 4 PM.  The remainder of the time attending to dress making.  I have had a little rest from the latter since Tuesday but the rehearsals were longer.  However all things must come to an end and my dresses are packed and trunks gone.  I go by West Shore RR to Troy, thence to Montreal for one week.  Train leaves at 6:15 this Evening.  We are due in Montreal at 9 AM tomorrow.  Have 2 more rehearsals in Montreal.   

I have very little faith in the play, [Joseph?] but the [Ramsey Morris] Company is a very nice one and I think the Season will be pleasant, if my health stands the fatigue of travel.  I shall not miss New York.  We are all separated and one place is as good as another to me.  I shall live better and on less money than in this City.  Anyway I have done it for the best and hope it will prove so.  If the reverse, why!  I shall have to endure it. 

I hope Diphtheria will soon be checked.  Love and Kisses to Neppie, Edward and Albert, my dear children three from their loving & itinerant  Mother 

About ten thousand people, including Italian, Spanish, and American dignitaries, gathered in Columbus Circle on October 12, 1892, the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Columbus in the “New World.” Together they dedicated the Columbus Monument, designed by Sicilian sculptor Gaetano Russo and donated to the City of New York by the Italian-American community. Columbus Circle http://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/185204028/

Since 1892 the marble statue of Christopher Columbus has stood atop its 70-foot granite column, stately staring downtown.  The New York Times, on September 17, 1892, reported on the laying of the cornerstone of the monument, which included a procession from Little Italy up Fifth Avenue. “It was something unusual for the avenue and the regular promenaders were to be seen gazing at the spectacle from the chamber windows while Italian peripatetic vendors thronged the sidewalks, and Italian mothers in rainbow attire dandled their children in their arms on the steps of millionaires’ palaces. The column of men in uniforms seldom seen above Bleecker Street marched up between the rows of brownstone houses to the lively music of the Italian national air. It was Italy’s day…”  http://daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/2010/07/1892-christopher-columbus-monument.html
Columbus Circle New York 2016 on my way to the LIncoln Center Performing Arts Library

next: Baltimore Nov. 1892

Related: Columbian Exposition, Chicago 1893  was to start in 1892 but didn't quite make it.

Bibliography
Columbus Circle http://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/185204028/ 
Columbus Day, American Memory, Library of Congress http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/oct12.html
Parade description http://www.theamericanscholar.org/what-columbus-day-really-means/
Postcards of Columbus Monuments http://www.vanderkrogt.net/columbus/postcards/postcard_land.php?land=us

Last updated Jan 11, 2019

Homepage  A to Z Index  Bibliography  People   Places   Plays   Site Map   About these letters    About EJ Phillips  Chronology  EJ Phillips Facebook Fan Page