In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

151 letter 50 To Whitelaw Reid June 7, 1871 New York City, New York June 7th Dear Mr Reid I choose to trust you here, have asked you not to read the first irrelevant page of L’s note.1 It will prove no betrayal for our friend will tell the same to all her friends if not just now, with any opportunity. I wish that she could be propped up enough to have more selfsustaining power, that she might leave M,2 and have a prospect of earning money enough to live on. Her life is insufferable, it is one eternal nag on all and every possible ground of fault-finding. When I was in Boston, left alone a moment I pitched into him, in one instant he was whimpering, and if we had not been interrupted, I should have had him turned inside out. Afterwards, I wrote him a letter, sent it to her. Do you know that she declined to give it to him—she was afraid. He might think that she had been talking against him &c. This letter is the second he has found this winter. She is too careless. I have had her letter by me for some days—from the first I wished to send it to you. The burden of what may be called the dramatic part of my life, I feel so deeply and wearingly sometimes that I am inclined to drop off fragments of it upon somebody else, especially upon someone, who does not know me—who regards me as the common-place and retired middle-aged woman—in short a stranger like yourself. Do tell whether all men and women live as I do. Do they drift or dash in a hidden current where all that is strong and strange sweet and secret may be revealed. So many men and women come to me with their lives and honor in open hands to show me. Once they fasten upon me they will not let me go. The strangest results come about. Will you take my life for a serial? I should prove the most impossible of all my characters. If you choose read my letter to her, drop it in the post, and 152 return hers to me again. You will understand it all. Perhaps you can help her in some way. Mind, I consider that I have right to send these writings and should tell L so—only I shall not at present, you are to consider it confidential. Your far off, Elizabeth Stoddard Manuscript: Whitelaw Reid Papers, Library of Congress notes 1. The note referred to here was written by Louise Chandler Moulton (see biographical note) and is no longer extant. As she reveals later in this letter, Stoddard also appears to have sent Reid her reply to Moulton, which she wished him to mail for her after reading. Reid was Moulton’s editor at the New York Tribune, for which she wrote from 1870 to 1876. 2. Moulton’s husband, William U. Moulton. See Letter 40, note 4. ...

Share