Charles W. Chesnutt to Judson D. Wetmore, 25 July 1924
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Ohio
July 25, 1924.
J. D. Wetmore, Esq.,
World Building,
63 Park Row,
New York.
My dear Douglas:
I have your letter of July 11th, enclosing circular of your magnificant property at Gladstone, New Jersey, and offering it to me for sale.1 I presume your letter is a form letter, which was addressed to many gentlemen, but all the same I appreciate the compliment, as the old colored man said when somebody asked him to change a five dollar bill. I should like, of course, to earn a commission by selling it, but I have n't thought of any of my acquaintance who might consider such a proposition. If I think of any I will call their attention to it.
Your letter makes me think I would like to run down there and look it over anyway, just to see what sort of a real estate man you are.2
Please give my regards to Mrs. Wetmore,3 in which, and in regards to you, the family join me. We enjoyed your visit to Cleveland very much.4
Sincerely yours, CWC:AWCorrespondent:
1. The property Wetmore was trying to sell, sometimes known as "Hillandale," was a large mansion on 620 acres atop Mount St. John near Gladstone, NJ, built by the architect Grosvenor Atterbury (1869–1956) in 1906 for George Rudolf Mosle (1865–1941), a White businessman in the sugar trade. Mosle sold it in 1919 after losing his fortune, and Lucile Wetmore bought the estate from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in 1924. She defaulted on the loan in 1926, and the insurance company bought it back for $100,000. They then sold it, for an alleged $1,000,000, to an order of nuns, the Sisters of St. John the Baptist, who turned it into an orphanage and added a large school building ("Mosle Estate at Peapack to be Orphanage and Convent," Bernardsville News, Thursday, Aug 19, 1926, 1). [back]
2. Chesnutt did, in fact, visit Wetmore later in the summer of 1924 (see letter to Chesnutt from Helen Moore of August 12, 1924). [back]
3. Judson Douglas Wetmore's second wife, Lucile (or Lucille) Pipes Wetmore (1894–1966), was a White woman, originally from Louisiana and widowed in 1918 after a very brief first marriage. The couple married in 1921 and had two children: Frances Lucile (1922–1993) and Judson Douglas, Jr. ("Junior," 1923–1995). After Wetmore's suicide, Lucile remarried in 1931 and again in 1945. [back]
4. It is not known when Wetmore visited Chesnutt in Cleveland, but in his letter of December 29, 1922, he mentions that he is considering "an automobile trip in the Spring." [back]
