Charles W. Chesnutt to Henry Clay Tyson, 22 November 1922
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November 22, 1922.
Mr. H. C. Tyson,
2125 K Street,
Washington, D. C.
My dear Clay:
I have your letter of November 16th, and am delighted to hear from you and to know that you are well and getting a grip on a new business, which at your age or mine is not as easy as it was in earlier years. You must have taken some little time to get accustomed not to have to go to the office at a certain hour and stay until a certain hour. I certainly wish you success in your new venture.
As to my own health, it is in fair condition. I have been troubled more or less a couple of years with a condition of the stomach which kept me feeling rather mean a good part of the time, though it did n't affect my fundamental health. However, I changed doctors recently and find myself very much improved indeed, in fact, I should say that at present my general physical condition is practically normal.
I enjoyed my trip this summer very much indeed.1 I spent a good part of my time fishing, and I would go up to the Clubhouse to dinner, play cards for an hour or two afterwards, and then dance until the home waltz. I was one of the sights of the place. It is a very delightful summer resort at Idlewild.2 My wife wants me to buy her a cottage up there but I have n’t done so yet. Susie3 and the girls are well. The girls work hard all the year and then go away to various universities in the summer time to study for degrees of one kind or another.4 Ned5 is in Chicago and is coming home for Thanksgiving, the first visit he has paid us for about two years, although we did see him for a week or ten days in Michigan this summer.
Please give my love to Jane6 and the rest of your folks when you see them. Susie and the girls join me in love to you both, and I hope to meet you again some time in the near future.
Sincerely yours, CWC/FLCorrespondent: Henry Clay Tyson (1853–1926), orginally from Carthage, North Carolina, was Chesnutt's brother-in-law; a Black civil servant and activist married to Susan Chesnutt's sister Jane Beze Perry (1859–1939). He had graduated from the Fayetteville Normal School in 1879 and served as teacher and assistant principal under Chesnutt at the Fayetteville Normal School (1881–1883). He moved to Washington, D.C., in 1883, worked as a civil servant and later as private secretary of Henry P. Cheatham (1857–1935), Black congressman from North Carolina from 1889 to 1893. Tyson was also active in the Bethel Literary and Historical Association in D.C., where Chesnutt delivered several addresses between 1899–1913. The Tysons had three children, and the Chesnutts visited them on several occasions; they also asked "Uncle Clay" for assistance in finding Helen a teaching position in D.C. in 1901 (see Helen Chesnutt, Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Lin [Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1952], 110, 196, 165).
1. August 1922 was the first summer month that Chesnutt's family spent at Idlewild, Michigan, although Chesnutt's wife, Susan, and son, Edwin, had summered at the Black resort in 1921 while Helen and her father took an extended road trip. See Helen Chesnutt, Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1952), 289. [back]
2. After discovering Idlewild in 1921, the Chesnutts spent every summer at this location in Lake County, Michigan, about 380 miles west of Cleveland. Idlewild was a popular lakeside resort for hundreds of Black families from the urban Midwest from the 1910s to the 1960s, when racism excluded them from many White resort towns. In the spring of 1924, Chesnutt purchased a plot of land, and had a lakeside cabin built (14240 Lake Drive), which was completed in 1926. [back]
3. Susan Perry Chesnutt (1861–1940) was from a well-established Black family in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and worked as a teacher at Fayetteville's Howard School before marrying Chesnutt. They were married from 1878 until his death in 1932 and had four children: Ethel, Helen, Edwin, and Dorothy. Susan led an active life in Cleveland. [back]
4. In 1922, two of Chesnutt's daughters, Helen and Dorothy, were living with their parents while pursuing their careers. After finishing college in 1904, Helen had returned to Cleveland to work as a secondary-school teacher, and she continued to live at the house until her mother's death in 1940. Dorothy lived with her parents as a student, probation officer, and eventually junior-high teacher, until her husband completed his medical degree in 1931. [back]
5. Edwin Jackson Chesnutt (1883—1939) was the third child of Charles and Susan Chesnutt. Born in North Carolina, he spent his childhood in Cleveland, Ohio, graduated from Harvard University in 1905, and decided not to remain abroad after an extended stay in France in 1906. Instead, he trained and worked as a stenographer, including at the Tuskegee Institute from 1910–1912. After obtaining a degree in dentistry at Northwestern University in 1917, he became a dentist in Chicago. [back]
6. Jane Beze Perry Tyson (1859—1939) was one of Susan Perry Chesnutt's sisters. She was two years Susan's senior and, like Susan, became a teacher when still a teenager. She married fellow teacher Henry Clay Tyson (1853—1926) in 1879, the year after the Chesnutts got married, and the two young couples and their firstborns lived with the sisters' parents in 1880. The Tysons had three children, Annie, Mary, and Edwin, and lived in Washington, DC, after 1883. Chesnutt stayed with them on several occasions at their home at 2124 K Street, NW (see Helen M. Chesnutt, Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line [Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1952], 110, 196). [back]
