Excerpts from letters to Arthur G. and Edmund Clarence Stedman

Excerpt from Hutchinson's May [18]84 letter to Stedman ("Dear Friend"):

I wish Mr. Montgomery had minded his business. I would forgive his putting me on a back seat but I object after my long years of editorial service to be called a "contributor"! And a "bright writer of verse"! Oh! No more "verse" for me, thank you! This is a little howl for your private ear and you are not to mention it to Montgomery nor to anybody else.

What a silly I was ever to have my name on the title page of the L. A. L.!! I should be willing to wager—if I had it—all the money I hope you're going to make this week that ninety- nine people out of a hundred will think I did only the dates! A woman never gets any credit for serious work. I have so long had that feeling that what I wish for is not to be mentioned at all. I'd rather do my serious work quietly—I don't want credit for it—and equally I don't want to be announced as a "bright writer of verse" and a "contributor"! What is it Sally Brass says? "Drat him"? I wish my literary ideals were not so high.

Yours,
Priscilla

Excerpt from Hutchinson's undated letter to "Dear A. G. S.":

Story makes, I believe, about 5 ½ pages. The schedule allows him 10 pages and I cannot find your father's last memorandum and can't remember whether he has reconsidered & given him less. However, he (Story) is so entirely of the "polished brow of hope" style, that it seems to me grotesque to give him any more than I have selected. If desirable to shorten even this then leave out the 4th & 5th extracts. Griswold, I see, doesn't consider him very great as a writer. His poetry seems to me trash & so I didn't select any. If, however, your father thinks some of it ought to be given, please look at the advice to a lawyer [sic], p. 88, Vol. II, Life.

What about Vivian Pinckney? Please let me know what writers E. C. S. has carried over into next volume.

As Ever,
E. M. H.

Excerpt from Hutchinson's letter of "Wednesday" to Stedman:

All right—I don't want the moon. Here are two extracts—a long and a short one; take either.

I shall have to agree to disagree with you on the subject of the "higher order of literature" as applied to this Lal. I do think that Dwight with his quick perception of the noble & the pathetic, his sentiment & his flowing & picturesque style, provides in these anecdotes a better literature than is some of the almost doggerel poetry & a good deal of the inflated & pompous oratory which I myself selected for this volume in order to represent less permanently interesting writers. I suppose I'm not a judge, but his poetry bores me and I hate to put in a lot of it;—it pleased our forefathers who hadn't anything better, but wouldn't our contemporaries prefer to read a vivid thing in prose like the story of Wadsworth's escape?—a story that seems as fascinating when I read it yesterday as the famous de Lavalette escape.

You seem to think, Monsieur, my friend, that I wanted all that Ramsay to go in. I expressly told Arthur that I wanted you to make a selection from my selections. If you don't once in a while allow me to ask you thus to decide between the relative values of extracts I'm uncertain about it will make it very uncomfortable for me. After one has read two volumes of a work, one gets somewhat muddled—at least I do—& when another person comes to examine the two or three extracts he can hit upon the right one at the first glance.

. . .

As Ever,
E. M. H.

Excerpt from Hutchinson's "Monday" letter to Stedman:

I would not have asked you about the oratory had I not felt...