Helen Hunt Jackson Papers, Part 2, Ms 0156, Box 1, Folder 18, letters from William Dean Howells to HHJ, 1875-80.
Transcribed by Jennifer S. Tuttle, 2014.
On printed letterhead
Editorial Office of
The Atlantic Monthly.
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The Riverside Press,
Cambridge, Mass.
Prospect House,
Chesterfield, N.H.
Sept. 10, 1875.
Dear Mrs. Hunt:
I believe that I like your Princeton even better than your Colorado, which I greatly like, and I will keep it if you can wait for your pay ($10 the Atlantic page) till it is printed.
I should also like to keep two of the sonnets but for the last lines in each: to call the vine a highwayman at last changes the prettily managed figure without advantage; and my nerves say that the milk weed should not have breasts, or else the breasts should not be purple.
--What a tragedy that is of the poor old woman! I have been greatly moved by it. How rustic! How New Englandish!
--I should try to print the paper soon.
Yours truly
W. D. Howells.
On printed letterhead
Editorial Office of
The Atlantic Monthly.
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The Riverside Press,
Cambridge, Mass.
Dec. 12, 1875
Dear Mrs. Jackson:
I suppose that before this you will have got the publisher’s check for your article--which, by the way, was much liked in the magazine. You let the Chicago Times vex you needlessly, it seems to me; and yet, how these things do vex one! I wrote some verses, the other year, in which I spoke of cottonwood trees on the banks of the Miami river in Ohio—a stream by which I lived during nine years of my boyhood, and in which I spent a great part of my summer days. Some scoundrel came out in a Washington paper, and said, “Mr. Howells was from Belmont County, and never saw the Miami, of which he sings; and there is not a cottonwood any where within two hundred miles of that river.” I was mad at that.
I will see that you are put on the Atlantic’s list again, if you have been dropped from it, and I hope we shall have some more papers from you whether you go to Japan or stay in Colorado.
Yours truly
W. D. Howells.
On printed letterhead
Editorial Office of
The Atlantic Monthly.
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The Riverside Press,
Cambridge, Mass.
April 15, 1876.
Dear Mrs. Jackson:
Your MS. arrived in due time, and I read it at once. I am glad to have the sonnet, and if you can give the article—or the subject of it—something more of what I may call circumstance, I shall be glad of that, too. The details are all very pleasant, but it seems to me to need some introductory matter; there’s a sort of [hard?] dimness about it that troubles me.
--I have just read the opening of the article again, and I find that the dimness must have been in me. It’s all right in the aspects complained of, and charming in all others. Shall I put “H. H.” at the end of it? I can’t promise you an early publication, for we’re going to Centennialize a good deal this summer.
I shall look with interest at the illustrations of your Hide and Seek Town, but entirely for their own sake. The scene of my story is not in the Wachusett country; perhaps any hill-country pictures would serve; but I would rather not have it illustrated at all. I don’t think it will be published at once; it’s a bad time for books, what with the Centennial and the Presidential election.
Very truly yours
W. D. Howells.
On printed letterhead
Editorial Office of
The Atlantic Monthly.
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The Riverside Press,
Cambridge, Mass.
Nov. 6, 1876.
Dear Mrs. Jackson:
None of us like the paginal system of payment: it’s detestable; but till the public will give more for a good number* of the magazine than for a poor one, the publishers must keep to it in some degree.-- You know that it is very seldom the literary value of any given article sells extra copies of the magazine.
--I don’t think any one but Mr. Emerson could sing your poem, but if you’d let me, I should like very much to print it—as it is.
Yours sincerely
W. D. Howells.
We know that you will do your best, always.
On printed letterhead
Editorial Office of
The Atlantic Monthly.
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Winthrop Square,
Boston.
Dec. 19, 187[9?]
Dear Mrs. Jackson:
I am sending back both your MSS., with a heavy heart and a faltering hand.
The story is too long in settling down to business, and then it deals, as I suppose, with the story of the girl in our Public Library who married an English Lord. I don’t think it would do for us to touch that, though for N. Y. magazine it might.
The essential heaviness of that Moravian material has been too much, even for you. I should have to prolong the sufferings of much-postponed contributors, if I printed it within a reasonable time, and I suppose you wouldn’t like it to take its turn.
Yours sincerely
W. D. Howells.
On printed letterhead
Editorial Office of
The Atlantic Monthly.
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47 Franklin Street,
Boston.
April 18, 1880
Dear Mrs. Jackson:
Your heroism in not sending me anything has been matched only by mine in getting on without you. I think we may now fitly reward each other by calling it a bargain about those travel papers. Only, leave out the British Isles all you can, and put in all you can of Scandinavia. Papers to be not less nor more than 12 Atlantic pp., and rate of payment not to fix that of future pittances.
Good-bye.
W. D. Howells.
P.S. I shall have your Century of Dishonor reviewed by Mr. C___l S___z. [Note from the transcriber: Howells undoubtedly refers in jest to Jackson’s bête noir Carl Schurz.]
[In HHJ’s hand:] I had opened my letter to Mr. Howells by saying “Don’t you think I deserve a white mark for having let you alone so long--& for not having asked you to print anything on the Indian Question?—”.
What I asked him to engage was four papers at $120 a paper--& you see the thrifty mind of Houghton at once leaps ahead and provides that I shall not therefore expect $12 a page for any other articles!—Oh but this buyer & seller business is the same in all trades.
On printed letterhead
Editorial Office of
The Atlantic Monthly.
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47 Franklin Street,
Boston.
April 22, 1880.
Dear Mrs. Jackson:
Mr. Houghton asks me send you these clippings with his thanks, and the assurance of his unabated friendliness to the Indians. So, you see, you have failed in his case. As for me, I hate ’em so much already that nothing you say could make me poisoner about them.
But what I want is a vindictive and unsparing article on the folly, futility and dreariness of Newport: its aching hollowness and unfathomable dullness; its un-American pretentiousness; its—its—well, you know. And can you do it? At once? Thanks! When shall I have the copy? I want it for the July number.
Yours sincerely
W. D. Howells.
[In HHJ’s hand:] Too bad I could not write this Newport article. I would have liked to do it.
