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179 letter 61  To Julia Ripley Dorr March 31, [1879] New York City, New York March 31st 329 E. 15th Dear Julia, When your last letter came we were waiting for Marie Taylor to arrive and I concluded not to write you till after our return from Kennett.1 I have been skurrying about since, too much wrapped in my own small necessities, but now I will try to answer your questions. The Papyrus dinner2 was a success, a novel pleasure to me. All the lady writers present except one EDBS were complimented in the toast given by our guests. You may imagine how gratifying it was to me to be so ignored and before women who were not my superiors. Mrs. Burnett3 amazed me. She was all covered with new clothes, regardless of expense, ready made I should judge ever so many buttons to her gloves. She peeled them off at the table as if she were about to go into the suds. She has no style, poor manners, but she is a fine genius and whips the United States in novel-writing. Oliver Wendell Holmes,4 whom I never saw before looked like a superceded monthly nurse out of snuff. Miss Alcott looked old and not especially pleased, Mrs. Whitney5 looked amiable, self-satisfied, Mrs. Dodge6 stolid, Louise Moulton7 short-breathed and dazed, Rose Hawthorne, sweet and uncertain—there have I been ill-natured enow? Louise Moulton goes abroad again. She called on me a few weeks ago for the first time in four years, or since my separation from Laura Bullard.8 A mutual friend in Boston asked why she had not called before. She said when she was in NY before it so happened she could not have Laura’s carriage to come in! There’s friendship for you. Lorry is well and so growed,9 he is a great comfort to me for he is so good. We think now of placing him with a drawing teacher an artist. He has an ugly nose but a very interesting face and manner. 180 For the first time Stoddard is discouraged, he has lost almost the power and wish to struggle, at fifty-four a failure—he says. We cannot get away, we owe so much rent &c. and must stay to work it off. He has decided to contribute to Scribner’s a series of papers & has begun to read but the labor is very great, the work slow.10 He is also negotiating in regards to some biographies which will give him all the work he can do for the present.11 Stoddard has not taken any place on the Independent12 he sometimes writes book notices there. What a pity you should stay alone in your pleasant house. It is one of my ideas of the charity I would like to have the power to bestow— to have a house well appointed [illegible], with books and a good cook, and then invite cultured, [hampered?] lonely people to visit me, I would give them what they could not otherwise have. I would begin with Mrs. Akers Allen13 who has been shut up in the Portland Advertizer Office at the drudgery of a daily newspaper—I would fat her body and soul and send her back with all her physical and mental joints lubricated with the finest rites of hospitality. There are so many like her at large in the treadmill of poverty and work. We went to Kennett with a few of Bayard’s old friends. A car was placed at Marie’s disposal, and we went with her, Stedmans, Putnams,14 Boker, Whitelaw Reid, and several others. It was a trial to Marie to have a second funeral. Old Mrs. Taylor is almost helpless with rheumatizm and Old Mr. Taylor is childish, memory gone. There was an immense crowd in the Longwood graveyard but I felt no acute grief, too much bustle, too many curious people—I cannot make Bayard dead—he never meant to die and fought for life until the last day came. Marie says his determination was wonderful, he suffered dreadfully for weeks. He took with him the fatal disease which probably undermined his health for years. Did you see what S wrote in the Atlantic.15 One life is already published which is a great annoyance to Marie—a poor miserably written thing.16 Marie will not die of grief, her idiosyncracies stick out in spite of her loss—but she is a sincere...

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