Summer at Varner and a "misfortune"

         In the summer of 1903 Ima came home from New York to spend time with her father at Varner, which he called “the loveliest place in Texas.” Ima enjoyed country life, and she wrote years later of the pleasures of fishing and “’coon hunting,” and horseback riding at Varner. But that July her summer vacation took an unfortunate turn. One day, while doing a bit of sewing, she accidentally stuck a needle deep into her knee. The cartilage lining quickly became infected, and suddenly Ima was seriously ill. The event made newspaper headlines on July 11, when her father cancelled an important business trip to rush to Ima's bedside. Ima's worried grandfather Stinson wrote to her on July 28 that he had read about her “misfortune” in the newspapers.

In those pre-antibiotic days, wounds such as Ima’s could lead to sepsis (blood poisoning) and death. She was bedridden and unable to walk for several weeks. Attended by Aunt Fannie and Mike and Tom, she convalesced at Varner while her father buzzed about between Beaumont, Houston, and Austin.

         In September Mike and Tom went off to boarding schools in Maryland and New Jersey, and Ima, whose knee was still not healed, left Varner for a stay at the Austin Sanitarium. She was on crutches, but she wrote to her father that she was “comfortable and happy.” She would be there until December.

        

         Ima Hogg always managed to make the best of things.

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