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225 letter 77 To Julia Ripley Dorr January 15, 1896 [New York City, New York] 15th Jan 1896 Dear Julia, It is a great pleasure to have your letter, you are so much more an artist, “trained” than I am, that I should not have been surprised at a degree of indifference to some of my verse.1 You must have felt “Unreturning”2 —the life of my heart—the loss which still gives me such a pang, that both, Stoddard and I shut it off from each other. Is not life hard, and yet we live. We are enduring a bitter trial now, in Stoddard’s increasing blindness. The 21st Dec Lorry and I took him to Plymouth where he read a poem before the Pilgrim Society.3 When we realized his condition, not a step did he take without one of us to guide him, and with it all, a painful expressive nervousness, pitiful to see. He read beautifully, but it was woeful to me. He feels best at home, and probably will never go out much more, it is a wonder to me how he bears it, for I think sometimes I cannot endure it, everything he might enjoy is cut off, inch by inch. I have to be in attendance constantly to find his pen, his everything, he still writes for the Mail,4 how long he will do that, which seems almost automatic, is a question of time and fear. Look for his poem in the Atlantic, The Caravansary,5 which he wrote the other day, lovely, he never does better work than now. In regard to my poems, you know I had no status as a poet, but Mr. Mifflin6 told Stoddard that they thought it ought to be published it was so good. But for what Howells wrote of me in Harpers,7 I should not have offered it to M & H8 —for a year or two ago I offered it to Harpers, and it was refused. I pray that M&H may not lose by it, I should feel tempted to buy up the edition secretly and destroy it, I have small hope of its selling. Stoddard is much gratified by your letters, and sends his regards to you, you may believe that he is much more gratified by praise of me than for himself. 226 Are you not at peace in your pleasant home. I hope you have your health, in age, if we can have that, we must be contented. One thing I am sure of, you have not been harassed by poverty as we have been always. Are your sons away from you. Our boy will be with us in a few days to act here awhile, he is a very great treasure to us, but I think it sad he should be handicapped by two old people, he would be glad to have me young—he is bone of my bone. I received your poems the other day, I don’t think you can surpass the delightful Fallow Field.9 But there is such an outcry about the failure in writing, from age, that I am glad to perceive that you can still go without crutches. Yours truly, Elizabeth Stoddard Manuscript: Julia Ripley Dorr Papers, Middlebury College notes 1. A reference to Stoddard’s collected Poems (1895). 2. “Unreturning,” a poem about the death of her son Willy, was originally publishedinHarper ’sNewMonthlyMagazineinJanuary1868,andwasreprintedinPoems. 3. The poem that Richard wrote for the occasion was published as “The Proceedings at the Celebration of the Pilgrim Society, at Plymouth, December 21st, 1895, of the 275th Anniversary of the Landing of the Pilgrims” (1896). 4. The New York Mail and Express. See Letter 67, note 5. 5. “The Caravansary” was published in the Atlantic Monthly in February 1896. 6. George Harris Mifflin (1845–1921). Mifflin joined the publishing firm Hurd and Houghton in 1867. In 1880, Ticknor and Fields merged with Houghton and Mifflin to become Houghton, Mifflin and Company, with whom Stoddard published Poems in 1895. 7. William Dean Howells’s “First Impressions of Literary New York.” See Letter 76, note 1. 8. Houghton and Mifflin. 9. Dorr’s “The Fallow Field” was one of her most popular poems and was widely reprinted. It was originally published in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in February 1883. ...

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