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71 letter 26  To Bayard and Marie Taylor April 1, 1862 New York City, New York April 1st 1862 Dear Bayard & Marie My props are knocked away! I am glad you are going, for your sakes, for it seems to be a good scheme—though I do not think that Lincoln’s nod is proof that you will be minister, but the travel and the new book will be the same.1 I am grieved to lose you you are so much to us—you are always making beginnings and we make endings. Can nothing be done to break us from our isolated life? We are too much alone, we are in such bad health, we never have any means to do anything pleasant. Our days are not festive. All this however is nothing to the grief we almost continually suffer for our boy.2 Heaven shows little mercy to organizations like ours, after it has afflicted them. There has not been a day since he died, that my soul has not cried out to the Lord God in the excess of its misery. Do not, I charge you, forget Willy’s life. I cannot go to Kennett3 now, I dare not, I have just had another violent ill turn, and though I may be well from this time, my health is not to be trusted. Shall you not come here? Can’t you come & get ready? Miss Swift’s rooms are empty—those you had.4 Do come and let me have the last spice of you. Can I do anything for you? I have been agitated since I saw in the Tribune your appointment, I thought you would go, bring me a hunk of Malachite will you, and a “rugged Russsian Bear.”5 I am busy writing a long story6 —am correcting proof, or rather Dick is7 —and I have just made an engagement with a San Francisco paper—through Mr. Ewer—to write three letters a month—$10 each.8 By the way you owe Dick $15—yet on that ancient sum. He will not ask you for it, but I do before you go—for myself—(out of that prospective $1200). You will be detained on board the steamer unless you pay. Do write me about your coming right off— Marie—what shall I say to you my dear love—I will not trust myself 72 to mourn here—I have cried a little about you going already—how can we part for so long? Ever yours dear B & M Taylor EDBS9 Manuscript: Bayard Taylor Papers, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University notes 1. In 1862, Taylor was appointed secretary of legation and then acting chargé d’affairesinSt.Petersburg,Russia,withtheunderstandingthatthecurrentchargé d’affaires, Simon Cameron (1799–1889), would soon resign, leaving the appointment open for Taylor. When Cameron did not resign, the Taylors returned to the United States in the fall of 1863. Taylor had written to the Stoddards from WashingtononMarch30 ,1862,askingiftheyhadseenthenoticeof hisappointmentin theTribune,andinsistingthat“mymostunwelcomenecessitywillbetheseparation from you two” (ed. Wermuth, Selected Letters of Bayard Taylor, 199). 2. Wilson (Willy) Stoddard. See Letter 24 in this volume. 3. Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. 4. Prior to and immediately after the construction of Cedarcroft in the summer of 1860, the Taylors lived with the Stoddards at Miss Swift’s boardinghouse in New York City. 5.TheRussianbearwasoftenusedbyBritainandtheUnitedStatesasanational personificationforRussia,indicatingitssize,strength,andfrequentbrutality.The quote is from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 5, when Macbeth addresses the Ghost: “What man dare, I dare. / Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear, / The arm’d rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tiger; / Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves / Shall never tremble.” 6. Stoddard published three stories in the next year, all in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine: “A Partie Caree” in September 1862; “Tuberoses” in January 1863; and “Lemorne versus Huell” in March 1863. It is not clear which of these, if any, she refers to here. 7. For The Morgesons. 8. Ferdinand C. Ewer (1826–1883) worked for the Daily Alta California as a reporter during Stoddard’s tenure as the Alta’s “Lady Correspondent.” He returned to New York in 1862. The engagement that Ewer facilitated for Stoddard was with theSanFranciscoBulletin,editedbyJamesSimonton(1823–1882).Inthetenmonths that she wrote her “Gossip from Gotham” column for the San Francisco Bulletin, Stoddard published twenty-two letters. 9. A postscript by Richard reiterated Elizabeth’s sense of the benefits of Taylor ’s appointment, as well as the doubt that he would actually receive “the...

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