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213 letter 72 To Edmund Clarence Stedman February 3, [1890] Mattapoisett, Massachusetts Mattapoisett 3rd Feb Dear Stedman— Forty centuries are swept away, and I am back in the old house with drifts of snow piled round it; the roads are blocked up, and that beautiful snow silence is everywhere. My father and Dick are smoking by the fire, touching on this topic, and that, and I must say, that father knows a great deal more of political affairs than consequences, and results, than my spouse does, who is busy with his Boker paper.1 Why, or how Dick has saved the old correspondence with Boker, he does not know, beginning about 52, letters brimming with energy and vivacity. Some years ago, I destroyed my letters from him, they were too awfully compromising, should they ever come to light what a history—pursuit, satiety, remorse were the text of many. I held to him till the discovery of an awful truth. He was a curious mixture, could weep with his victims, but he was the sort of man that would have taken the virgin Mary from the ass before Joseph, and helped her kindly into an adjoining hedge— We had a nice visit in Boston, saw Lorry, the opening night of The Pembertons,2 he acts his small part well, and has gained in grace and ease. He is at home on the stage, now he says. Dick saw Mr Houghton,3 who told him he had read my novels and was interested in them, that he would have liked to re-publish them, but he was advised not to. I do not like Dunham4 he treated me so cavalierly the last time I was in his office, I do not care to go again. I asked Dick what he thought of Houghton bringing out a vol of poems, he answered that he would rather have him bring out a vol of my stories.5 Dick will never take any step of the sort for me. I brought lots of work 214 to do, but I am so lazy and lotusy,6 boozing over the fire of oak wood, or watching the changes of the wind on the surface of the harbor. I am received on so different a basis by everybody here, from that elsewhere, that it douches my vanity entirely. Father said to me utterly forgetting that I had ever written any—that he had no faith in novels, poor stuff— There was a copy of The Morgesons here which got lent, he forgot it till somebody inquired for it, and it was found at a neighbors, where it had been twenty years. You ought to have our oysters, they are not like NY’s, far better in flavor, and eels right out of the mud, [sweet?] as a curd. Yours ever EDBS— Please excuse errors, poor pen, bad grammar and, Punctuation. Manuscript: Edmund Clarence Stedman Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University notes 1. George Henry Boker died on February 2, 1890. Richard published “George Henry Boker” in Lippincott’s in June 1890. This memorial of their early friendship made use of the letters Boker had written to him in the 1850s. 2. Lorimer Stoddard performed the role of Livingstone De Groot in the Philadelphia premier of The Pembertons by Henry Guy Carleton (1865–1910) in 1890. 3. Henry Oscar Houghton. Letter 66, note 20. 4. Most likely Oscar M. Dunham. See Letter 70, note 1. 5. In 1895, Houghton Mifflin published Stoddard’s Poems. When Richard later approached them about reprinting Stoddard’s novels, they declined. 6. A reference to Tennyson’s “The Lotos-Eaters” (1833). ...

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