Van Posj Note:
What Does It Say?
18 September 2019
¶ Boxes have arrived from North Carolina. We’ll talk about them later. For the moment, I am too busy throwing their contents away. Well, not all their contents — I have to sift. And, sifting one day, I noticed that the name of a committeewoman, printed on an invitation to one of the many posh dances that Kathleen “attended” during her Brearley years, was misspelled.
Why do I hear the ghost of Anna Russell doing the shriek of an alarmed chorus?
On all the other invitations to this series of parties, it was spelled correctly: “Rutherfurd.” You may have come across the name in connection with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I must confess that I first encountered it in a program for one of the Blue Hill Troupe’s Gilbert & Sullivan productions. The bearer in that case (White & Case) may have been the husband, possibly the son, of Kathleen’s committeewoman.
Why was I even looking at these things? What does it say about me that I instantly recognized the misspelling?