Helen Hunt Jackson Papers, Part 2, Ms 0156, Box 1, Folder 19, letters from Thomas Bailey Aldrich to HHJ, 1882-84.
Transcribed by Jennifer S. Tuttle, 2014.
On printed letterhead
Editorial Office of
The Atlantic Monthly,
Boston.
May 20, 1882.
Dear Mrs. Jackson:
The little poem is lovely, and shall find a place between two slabs of prose, where it will seem exactly like an exquisite flower in the crevice of a rock. But I shall not call it a sonnet, for it ends with a couplet, which gives the poem that air of epigram so foreign to the slowly-[unrolled?] music of the sonnet.— Yes, Mrs Aldrich is to go along. We are going to see the coronation of the Czar—and perhaps get blown up with dynamite. We are to be dreadfully sick on the North Sea, and have a peep at Denmark and Norway. But best of all will be the great fair at Novgorod-Velikoi, which is attended every year by over 200,000 cream of Tartars. You envy me? I envy myself, as Rip Van Winkle said the day he was married “mit Gretchen.”
In haste,
Yours very faithfully,
T. B. Aldrich.
On printed letterhead
Editorial Office of
The Atlantic Monthly,
Boston.
May 22d, 1882.
Dear Mrs. Jackson:
You are ‘sweetness and light’ itself, and I couldn’t dream of taking any postage-stamps from you.
I sent you in a separate leaf the last seven lines of Taylor’s “Lars”—his best poem, to my thinking.
In haste,
Faithfully yours,
T. B. Aldrich.
On printed letterhead
Editorial Office of
The Atlantic Monthly,
Boston.
June 14th 1882.
Dear Mrs. Jackson:
I am in the traditional attitude of perfidious Man—“One foot in sea and one on shore”, but to two articles on Oregon “constant ever.” With all the serial matter I have in hand, I cannot give Oregon more room than that.
Write no more, lady, write no more than just two of your most charming papers, and send them to that gloomy myth, the Editor of the Atlantic Monthly, No. 4 Park St, Boston.
From the edge of the sea a shadow waves farewell to you!
Very faithfully
T. B. Aldrich
[Note: throughout this letter, TBA alludes to Balthasar’s song in “Much Ado About Nothing,”
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more. / Men were deceivers ever, / One foot in sea, and one on shore, / To one thing constant never. / Then sigh not so, but let them go, / And be you blithe and bonny, / Converting all your sounds of woe / Into hey nonny, nonny.]
Nov. 20 1882.
Dear Mrs. Jackson:
I think that your idea of a chromatic pencil for the blue-pencil man is admirable, and my commendation goes for something, since I am myself the other (and perhaps the worser) half of the fellow. In short, we are twins. After he has marked a proof, it passes into my hands for further decoration. Seriously, the significance of these underlinings does not seem different to me. Some of them call the compositor’s attention to an imperfect letter or an obtrusive blank that thinks itself up and insists on joining the company of its titled neighbors of the alphabet; the other marks are addressed to the author, and point out supposed errors of construction etc, etc. In studying the proofs of my brothers and sisters I have discovered many very curious things. Few writers, for instance—I am speaking of trained writers—make correct use of the words “only” and “even”. The majority will write: “I was only there two days”, meaning “I was there only two days.” or “even than” instead of “than even”. These things, and the repetition of pet words, are what the blue-pencil man is on the lookout for. Such attention to details seems very funny in the face of a great thought, but the great thought is all the better for it. Don’t you think so? For my part I bless the indigo man—not meaning my poor self—for all he has taught me. He can’t to save his soul write a paragraph himself, but he knows how to bring me up with a jerk when I write carelessly.—
I was very glad and very sorry to get home. I was glad to see my children—but I wasn’t glad to find 83 letters that had to be answered.—Of course I had nothing to do with the [posting?] of you as a story-teller, nonetheless what I want for the magazine is story. Everybody [trusts?] and everybody writes description papers. The early and late successes of the Atlantic were made by purely imaginative literature—essays, novels, short stories, poems. The illustrated magazines, demanding things that can be pictured, have hurt literature. We have become architects and landscape makers instead of figure painters and sculptors.
I have said all this badly, because I haven’t time fully to express myself. I sometimes think of retiring from the Atlantic in order to write letters. You’d be sorry!
Mrs. Aldrich desires her warmest remembrances to be sent to you. Are you not coming east—is it east to you? –before long?
Very truly yours,
T. B. Aldrich.
On printed letterhead
Editorial Office of
The Atlantic Monthly,
Boston.
Dec 4, 1882.
Dear Mrs. Jackson
Thanks for your note, which I haven’t had time until now—and haven’t now—to answer. I am on my way to the theatre to see the Langtry—having a ticket entitling me to six dollars’ worth of her.
I have taken the Mexican paper. Where shall I send the proofs to you—say three weeks hence?
When do you come to Boston? I hope you will eat a little dinner with Mrs. Aldrich and me before your bronchial tubes are closed to navigation.
In great haste
Very sincerely yours,
T. B. Aldrich
On printed letterhead
Editorial Office of
The Atlantic Monthly,
Boston.
Oct 10 1883
Dear Mrs Jackson:
Your pleasant letter, touching incidentally on my exemption from physical ills, found me lying in bed and nursing a double sprain in shoulder and wrist. Ten or twelve days ago I was showing Edwin Booth that I could hold at arm’s length a greater weight than he could. The result was that I lost the use of my hand for what seemed an age. I am only now able to hold a pen—and my peace. Being one of the fragile sex not adapted to suffering pain, I didn’t have any peace for a week or more. And my good little wife, also. Speaking of her reminds me of a message which I have neglected to send you. We want you and Mr Jackson to come and try our new house sometime this approaching winter. It is very sunny and comfortable, and is full of the odds and ends which we have been collecting these fifteen years. We have a spacious guest-chamber packed from floor to ceiling with welcome for you. When are you coming to Boston? (Since penning the word “Boston” I have assisted at a lunch, a funeral and a wedding!)
I beg of you not to fancy that I presume to decide on the merit of the poems which I return to you or on those which I retain—I only decide whether or not I want them for the magazine. That often enough is a question which has no bearing on the poetry as poetry. For instance, at present I am taking no poems that I can dispense with, for the reason that I have on hand an accumulation of such ms., and I am anxious to clear out my pigeon-holes and be in a position to avail myself of fresh matter for the new year.—
I think I should greatly like a true account of the Mormons, such an account as you would give. Mr Phil Robinson saw everything thru’ rose-colored spectacles, and made the mistake of rather seeming to excuse, if not defend, polygamy. The views he held in conversation were very much modified in his book. Mr. Niles refused to print the book as it was first planned. I think that Mr. Phil. Robinson must have met that “young Norwegian handmaiden with a voice like Jenny Lind’s”! When I visit Salt Lake City I shall bring Mrs Aldrich and the twins!
Ever very sincerely yours,
T. B. Aldrich
P.S.
I wish I could get your proofs to you, but it isn’t practicable. I shall probably use “Chester Streets” in the January Atlantic unless you send me the Mormon paper in time.
T. B. A.
On printed letterhead
Editorial Office of
The Atlantic Monthly,
Boston.
Feb 2d 1884
Dear Mrs Jackson:
The lyrical brook-like flow of “A Bit of Lace” almost won me to take the poem, in spite of my objection to its argument. Wasn’t the poor old woman fortunate in being able to weave a kind of merchandise in demand, and was the wholly disconnected woman who had gold to pay for it altogether a sinful creature—for that reason? Should she be ruthlessly ground up the instant the “gods” get their long-promised (and, it seems to me, superfluous) “mills” into working-order? Because wretched men and women are crowded into filthy rooms in dark slums, should 59 Mt. Vernon Street, with its one sunny spare guest-chamber, be knocked into a cocked-hat? No, madame: and for fear that your poem should suggest some such logical action on the part of some honest mechanic, I shall not take the verses. Let them go into The Century, and let the gods grind up Gilden (very slowly) in his stained-glass residence!
Ever truly yours
T. B. A.
On printed letterhead
Editorial Office of
The Atlantic Monthly,
Boston.
Feb 21st, 1884
Dear Mrs. Jackson:
I take the other one. It seems to me very musical and brook-like, if you will. The lyric I return has a phrase in it that is my special red flag—“I ween”. If you had got during the past 4 years as many “I ween”s as I have, you would be quite weened from ever using the phrase. I wonder that I can write lightly on any subject, having on my table about 1900 pages of unread ms.
Ever faithfully yours,
T. B. Aldrich
The little poem is set down for this April number—no, the May number. The other is closed.
On printed letterhead
Editorial Office of
The Atlantic Monthly,
Boston.
March 3d, 1884
Dear Mrs. Jackson:
I don’t believe that Annie Fields ever said or did an intentionally unkind thing in all the days of her life; and I don’t see how you managed to dig up the least bit of an arrow-head in such unwar-like soil as her gentle prose. I think you have improved Arbutus, but I prefer the other lyric. I always shrink from criticising anyone’s work, even when the worker is as amiable as you. I fear that I am a poor critic except in the case of my own verses. The world little knows what it owes me!
Very sincerely yours,
T. B. Aldrich.
[Note from the transcriber: In “Glimpses of Emerson,” Annie Fields wrote: “His appreciation of the poems of H. H. was often expressed. He made her the keynote of a talk one day upon the poetry of women. The poems entitled ‘Joy,’ ‘Thought,’ ‘Ariadne,’ he liked especially. Of Mrs. Hemans he found many poems which still survive, and he believed must always live” (460). Harper’s (Feb. 1884): 457-67.]
On printed letterhead
Editorial Office of
The Atlantic Monthly,
Boston.
March 8, 1884
Dear Mrs. Jackson:
(How comical it is in me to be writing letters that I don’t have to!)
I have read A. F.’s paragraph again, and fail to see that she meant to do anything but illustrate Emerson’s whimsical taste in poetry. That was well illustrated by bringing together two so different writers as you and Mrs. Hemans. Emerson’s attitude to poetry (his own or that of others) was wholly uncritical. If anything contained a good line, or even an epithet that struck him, he pronounced it a poem. Now a fine line on a fresh epithet no more makes a poem than a bit of apple on a single raisin makes a mince-pie. In his preface to “Parnassus”—one of the most whimsical and least valuable (except as a curiosity) collections of verse ever made—he gives himself away as a critic. If he had been a critic in his own work we should have had a series of noble poems, each one “an entire and perfect chrysolite”, instead of a series of detached passages of phenomenal beauty. To come back to my starting point—it was just this uncritical mood of Emerson’s poetic mind that Mrs. Fields was attempting to illustrate. D’ailleurs, Mrs. Hemans’ has two or three lyrics with an enviable liquid flow to them; though I fancy that these were not the pieces which Emerson cared for.
I’ve no doubt you will cry heresy to all this. But I am a heretic—and
Yours very truly,
T. B. Aldrich.
[Note from the transcriber: “It is from the roughnesses and imperfect breaks in a man that you are able to lay hold of him. If a man be an entire and perfect chrysolite, you slide off him and fall back into ignorance”— Alexander Smith, “A Shelf in My Bookcase,” Dreamthorp: A Book of Essays Written in the Country, 1863).]
On printed letterhead
Editorial Office of
The Atlantic Monthly,
Boston.
March 12, 1884.
Dear Mrs. Jackson:
Just a word—and I won’t write to you for the next six months.
If I had been writing to a woman less bright than you—if I had been writing, for instance, to the wife of the grave-digger in Hamlet—I would have spoken by the card, lest equivocation should undo me. I would have so explained and parenthesised the statement touching Emerson’s incongruous taste, that you would have been unable to twist my meaning or Annie Fields’s intention.
However, this affair is no funeral of mine, and I am not a little amused and aghast at finding myself officiating as chief mourner!
Ever truly yours,
T. B. Aldrich
“200 letters this winter”—only that? Dear Madame, I have to write, dictate or suggest answers to 50 letters per week, year in and year out!
On printed letterhead
Editorial Office of
The Atlantic Monthly,
Boston.
Sept. 16, 1884
Dear Mrs. Jackson:
I appear to have returned home just in time to gather in “Two Harvests—” which I greatly like.
I am sorry to hear of your accident. I hope that you will soon be able to stand as firmly on your feet as your sonnets do on theirs!
In haste
Yours very sincerely,
T. B. Aldrich
