Jewett Texts

Sarah Orne Jewett Letters through 1869

Sarah Orne Jewett to Horace Scudder

15 November 1869*

     I beg your pardon for troubling you again but this is quite important to me. Is it too late to change the signature to my story "The Shipwrecked Buttons?"¹ For that is signed 'S. Jewett,' and I thought a while ago that I would adopt that instead of the one I have used hitherto -- 'Alice Eliot.' I see that a story of mine in the December is credited to the latter (Alice Eliot),³ and it would be a very great satisfaction to me if the story you have, could be the same. I hope it's not too late, and if you can have it changed I shall be more obliged than ever to you.

     Thank you for your note which I received last week.

     Most respectfully,

     'Alice Eliot'

NOTES:
     ¹ By Alice Eliot, Riverside Magazine for Young People, IV (January 1870), 30-35; collected in Play Days.

    ² "Mr. Bruce," by A. C. Eliot, Atlantic Monthly, XXIV (December 1869), 701-710; collected in Old Friends and New.

     ³The origin of Miss Jewett's nom de plume Alice Eliot and its variant A. C. Eliot is a matter of speculation. It may have derived from the nearby town of Eliot, Maine, which she visited often as a child, or from George Eliot, whose life and works she spoke and wrote about.
The motive for her vacillation between pen names and real name is also vague. Between January 1868 and May 1871 she signed her first eight publications respectively A. C. Eliot, Alice Eliot, A. C. Eliot, Alice eliot, Alice Eliot, Sarah Jewett, Sarah O. Sweet, and S. O. J. (See Clara Carter Weber & Carl J. Weber, A Bibliography of the Published Writings of Sarah Orne Jewett [Waterville, Maine,1949], 29-30.) Miss Jewett's own explanation for these mutations is to be found in "Looking Back on Girlhood," Youth's Companion, LXV (January 7, 1892), 6: "I was very shy about speaking of my work at home, and even sent it to the magazine under an assumed name." Scudder could see no wisdom in this nimble name-changing and in a letter dated May 21, 1870, advised her to "drop all use of . . . pseudonym." (Houghton Library, Harvard.)

Additional notes

1869: Cary dates the letter 15 November 1869, but this seems early, because, as he reports, "Mr. Bruce" has been published in the December Atlantic Monthly.

This letter is edited and annotated by Richard Cary in Sarah Orne Jewett Letters; the ms. is held by Colby College Special Collections, Waterville, Maine.

Sarah Orne Jewett to Horace Scudder

South Berwick

30 November 1869

Dear Sir

Thank you for your kind note and especially for your criticisms on my two stories.* They will help me, I know. You were right about Mr Bruce and if I were talking instead of writing I [ could or would ] tell you of ever so many things that might have been very different. I couldn't expect it to be perfect: In the [ first corrected ] place I couldn't write a perfect Story, and, secondly, I didn't try very hard on that. I wrote it in two evenings after ten, when I was supposed to be in

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bed and sound asleep, and I copied* it in part of another day -- That's all the work I 'laid out' on it -- It was last August and I was nineteen then, but now I'm twenty -- So you see you are 'an old hand,' and I 'a novice' after all. Do you remember in Mr Bruce I made 'Elly' say that, like Miss Alcott's 'Jo',* she had the habit of 'falling into a vortex?" That's myself, but I mean to be more sensible -- I mean to write this winter and I think you will know of it. I like the Riverside M so much, and what

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you have written, and you are delightful to have dear old Hans Andersen.* I dont see the Riverside regularly though. I'm not a bit grown up if I am twenty and I like my children's books just as well as ever I did, and I read them just the same. I'd like to see the "Buttons" in print; you said the 18^th, I think. It's a dreadful thing to have been born very lazy, isn't it, Mr. Scudder? For I might write ever so much; it's very easy for me, and when I have been so successful in what I have written. I ought to study, which I never did

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in my life hardly, except reading, and I ought to try harder and perhaps by and by I shall know something & can write really well -- * There was no need for me to write this note & I'm a silly girl?* I know it, but your letter was very nice and you are kind to be interested in my stories -- So I beg your pardon and will never do so any more -- You said you had seen my name before. It was some [ verses corrected ] -- The Old Doll* -- two ~~or three~~ years ago, I think. I must hunt them up. ^I believe they were very silly^

Yours very respectfully and gratefully,

"Alice Eliot"

Notes

stories: Richard Cary, who produced a transcription of this letter for Sarah Orne Jewett Letters, identifies the two stories: "Mr. Bruce" and "The Shipwrecked Buttons." Mr. Bruce" by A. C. Eliot appeared in Atlantic Monthly in December 1869 and was collected in Old Friends and New, 1879. "The Shipwrecked Buttons," by Alice Eliot, was in Riverside Magazine in January 1870 and collected in Play Days, 1878.

copied: Jewett may have intended to capitalize this word. Her correction is not clear.

Jo: Jo March is the main character in American author Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (1868). Jewett begins her quotation with a single quotation mark and ends with a double quotation mark.

silly girl: Jewett seems quite clearly to have placed a question mark here. See also the next note.

really well: Cary's transcription of this particular manuscript went beyond his usual corrections. In addition to dividing the letter into paragraphs and regularizing punctuation, he made one or two possibly significant changes. Though it is possible to dispute this, I believe Jewett wrote: "... perhaps by and by I shall know something & can write really well." Cary's transcription reads: " ... perhaps by and by I shall know something I can write really well."
On this topic, Cary includes a long note:

Miss Jewett's schooling consisted of sporadic attendance for several years at Miss Olive Raynes's school in South Berwick and four years at Berwick Academy, from which she was graduated in 1865. Her real education came through association with her father, Dr. Theodore Herman Jewett. In her early teens Miss Jewett began to suffer from acute attacks of rheumatism. Believing that her health would improve out-of-doors, Dr. Jewett took her with him on his professional rounds. ("I used to follow him about silently, like an undemanding little dog.") At each backland farm and coastline fishing shack she absorbed invaluable impressions of people and households; between stops she observed the particularities of nature; and as they rode along he transmitted to her an abiding knowledge and love of good books. Miss Jewett dedicated Country By-Ways "To T. H. J., my dear father; my dear friend; the best and wisest man I ever knew; who taught me many lessons and showed me many things as we went together along the Country By-Ways." A man of simple tastes who "was impatient only with affectation and insincerity," he recognized long before she did the direction her life was taking, and advised her, "Don't try to write about people and things, tell them just as they are!" The first two poems in Verses are poignant memorials "To My Father," and in 1901 Miss Jewett presented a stained-glass window in his memory to Bowdoin College, of which he was an alumnus and former faculty member.

Hans Andersen: Wikipedia says: "Hans Christian Andersen ... (1805 - 1875) was a Danish author. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, Andersen is best remembered for his fairy tales."

Old Doll: Cary infers that Riverside Magazine had rejected "The Old Doll," which later appeared in the Independent 25 (July 24, 1873), 93.

The manuscript of this letter is held by Colby College Special Collections, Waterville, Maine. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

Katherine de Costa Birckhead to Sarah Orne Jewett

[ Top center -- printed image of an animal
perhaps a dog or a bear ]

[ 17 April 1870, Easter ]

My dear little girl -- I have just been asking our Heavenly Father, to bless & watch over you, & I feel that [ these ? ] my [ dear ? ] pleadings will be listened to, & that He [ will ? ]. He sees I know all you are pulling through, & if you only continue to ask for His help He will give it. What you need will come to you -- The "peace

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that passeth all understanding,"* & that nothing earthly can bring -- I am so glad we had that little talk this afternoon, it has brought you very near me, & on this the gladdest day of all the year too! I was feeling rather sad though, for it seemed so hard not to be able to join in the sweet service of prayer & praise, [ & yr. ? ] love & confidence came to me as a

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[ a repeated ] ray of sunlight & did me good, thus showing that our "thoughts are not as His thoughts," & that I was denied one thing only that I might have another [ wh. ? ] perhaps I needed most! I wish I might "keep" you my dear friend, but I am very [ weak & sinful ? ] myself, & feel that the [ "sweet seat ?" ] is the one for me, & that

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I too need to be taught. But [ we ? ] will keep each other & that will be better -- I know yr. heart is very free of love, & that you were in earnest. I saw it in yr. face & this is all our Heavenly Father [ asks, to come to him dearest ? ] bringing all yr. joys & sorrows with you, & you will find rest & comfort.

Good night & God bless
you -- always yr. very
true & loving friend

Kate de C Birckhead --

[ Diagonal across bottom left corner of p. 4 ]

Easter Sunday
April 17 / 70
Boston

Notes

understanding: See the Bible, Philippians 4:7.

thoughts: See the Bible, Isaiah 55:8-9.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University: Sarah Orne Jewett Correspondence I, Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett.
     Birkhead, Kate de C. 1 letter; 1870. bMS Am 1743 (22).
    An envelope associated with this MS is addressed to Mifs Sarah Jewett. 5 Walnut Street. Boston. It is unstamped, suggesting that it was hand-delivered.
     This transcription is from a photocopy held by the Maine Women Writer's Collection, University of New England, Letters from Sarah Orne Jewett, 1875-1890, Box 2, Folder 99, Burton Trafton Jewett Research Collection.
    Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.