All the Days of My Life: An Autobiography Part 64

HENRY VAN d.y.k.e.

220 MADISON AVENUE, July 28, '97.

MY DEAR MRS BARR:

Jewett brought the book--the novel and I read every word with pleasure, in spite of the grief and sorrow, the pain and anguish that came to the hearts of the brave and good. Every thing in the book is consistent, harmonious. The religion of the people, the cruel creed, the poor and stingy soil--the bleak skies, the sad and stormy sea, the wailing winds, the narrow lives and the poverty, the fierce hatred and the unchanging loves of the fanatic fisher folk, are all the natural parents, and the natural children. They belong together. You have painted these sad pictures with great skill. You have given the extremes, from the old woman who like the G.o.d of Calvin lived only for revenge, to the dear widow who refused to marry again, fearing that her babes might be fuel for h.e.l.l. The story is terribly sad and frightfully true. But it is true to Nature--Nature that produces and destroys without intention, and without regret--Nature, the mother and murderer of us all.

You have written a great book, and you are a great woman, and with all my heart I wish you long life, and all the happiness your heart can hold.

Yours always,

R. G. INGERSOLL.

The recent death of Robert Barr will give interest to the following letter:

HILLHEAD, WOLDINGHAM, SURREY,

Aug. 10, 1901.

DEAR MRS. BARR:

I was very glad indeed to receive a letter from you. I hope you are all well on your hilltop. I have not been in America since I saw you at Atlantic City. I intended to go this summer, but I am off tomorrow to Switzerland instead. I spent all last winter on the Island of Capri in the Bay of Naples.

Your remark about loving your neighbors, but keeping up the fence between, is awfully good, quite the best thing I've heard in a year.

Our neighbors on the side next you are Scotch people, who own a tea plantation in India, and we like them very much, but there is a fine thick English hawthorn hedge between. My ten acres of Surrey is hedged all round, except the front which faces the ancient Pilgrim's Way, and there I have built a park fence of oak, which is said to last as long as a brick wall. It is six feet high, and can neither be seen through, nor jumped over.

Mary L. Bisland has been staying in Norfolk. She was in London last week, and I invited her out here, but her married sister, and her sister's husband were with her, and she couldn't come. She is coming in October. I met her on the street quite unexpectedly last Wednesday.

London is so large, that it always seems strange to me that anybody ever meets anybody one knows. Mary was certainly looking extremely well, but she says her nerves are wrong. She suffers from too much New York apparently.

Your books are the most popular in the land. I see them everywhere.

There was a struggle in this neighborhood for your autograph, when it got abroad that I had a letter from you. I refused to give up this letter, but the envelope was reft from me by a charming young lady, daughter of a Scotch doctor of London, whose country residence is out here.

I hope you are well, and that all your daughters are well, more especially the young lady I met at Atlantic City. I trust she has not forgotten me.

Yours most sincerely,

ROBERT BARR.

THE CONGREGATIONAL HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY Bible House, Astor Place, New York.

May 13th, 1897.

DEAR MRS. BARR:

What shall I say of your book? That I read it through in one night, which proves my interest--that I have read parts of it--the last three chapters--more than once, and that I envy the hand that can strike such a blow at the cruelest caricature of G.o.d, the Father, ever invented by man, the child.

Thank you for many happy hours. Please go right on, smas.h.i.+ng idols, letting light into superst.i.tions, and emanc.i.p.ating consciences until the Millennium; which will dawn about the time when you have finished the job.

Sincerely yours,

JOSEPH B. CLARK.

Oh, let me say the style was a feast of Saxon to one who loves the language of the people, as I do.

THE CENTURY 7 West Forty-Third Street.

MY DEAR MRS BARR:

I should have written long since to thank you for your "Bernicia," but the month of April was a very busy one, and the composition and delivering of a very long course of lectures at Yale University, left no time for correspondence, however attractive. But the journeys to and from New Haven, made a pleasant opportunity to follow in imagination the pictures of your charming heroine, and I found much delight in your fresh and simple story, told with the same skill, which appears in all your work. I am greatly obliged to you for giving me this pleasure.

Believe me, dear Mrs. Barr,

Very cordially yours,

HENRY VAN d.y.k.e.

May 19, 1896.

CORNELL UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF AMERICAN HISTORY ITHACA, N.Y.

MY DEAR MRS. BARR:

I am delighted to have from your own hand your new novel "Bernicia,"

and am sure that I shall greatly enjoy it myself, and take pleasure in suggesting to others the same source of enjoyment.

How well do I remember you, as I used to meet you at the Astor Library more than twenty years ago; and your steady and triumphant march toward literary success since then, it has been a real delight to witness. With sincere congratulations,

Yours faithfully,

MOSES COIT TYLER.

26, Oct., 1895.

THE INDEPENDENT 114 Na.s.sau Street, _New York_.

Aug. 12, 1892.

MY DEAR MRS. BARR: