Likes her book [ The Deepening Stream ] very much, especially Morris and his wife. He is entirely real. Likes Adrian, too. All the Paris part quite wonderful, and Matey very good in that section. Earlier she is too fully specified. A mistake to try to tell all, as she did herself in The Song of the Lark. Proust succeeds in it, of course, but that's in the first person. Writers ought to keep the third person more distanced than most do; it shouldn't resemble first person. Looks forward to telling her about someone she met at Aix-les-Bains this summer [Mme Franklin Grout, niece of Flaubert]. Willa [Stout #1027]
So much to catch up on. Has taken an apartment with Edith. Hopes Dorothy will come to tea. Please see February Atlantic [ "A Chance Meeting" ]. Still remembers when she first read Flaubert in Red Cloud, and later with George Seibel in Pittsburgh. Has been able to save three farms in Nebraska by catching up their interest payments. So glad Dorothy likes "Old Mrs. Harris," a story that almost does what she set out to do in it. Willa [Stout #1148]
Sorry to be late replying to invitation to tea being held in the Jewett garden in May. Has many happy memories of that garden. Was last there three years before Mary Jewett's illness. Would be too painful to go there again. Sorry the village has not kept up the house where Sarah and Mary Jewett gathered such beautiful things. Similarly, Mme Franklin-Grout's estate in France, which was left as a retreat for women writers, was turned to other purposes by the French government right away and her Flaubert collection sent to a museum in Rouen that no longer exists. Tolstoi's estate has been damaged by the Germans. Sarah Orne Jewett still lives in her work. [Stout #1621]
Sorry not to have written in so long. Had many irritations during the Christmas season—numerous letters from soldiers to answer, hand very bad. Enough to make her quite misanthropic for a while. The company of Yehudi and his family cheered her up. Still can't write by hand. No need to quarrel because of differing views re. talking about books, as opposed to writing them. Finds the book he sent her at Christmas, The Unquiet Grave, excessively jaded. The frequent short quotations from Flaubert entirely misrepresent him. He was hearty and hardworking, never bored (though sometimes boring when he insists on putting in every detail). Willa Cather [Stout #1699]
Enjoyed his letter, but his memory failed him: "A Chance Meeting" was republished in Not Under Forty, and Sedgwick wrote a very pleasant review of it in the Atlantic Monthly. He understood Mrs. Fields and her milieu more than most. Van Wyck Brooks, who is usually so careful, even credited Cather with editing a book of Mrs. Whitman's letters; Miss Jewett was the one who did that. Had not heard the story of Henry James encountering Flaubert before, but recalls that James said he used to send Flaubert and Turgenev copies of his books and never got a response. It was big of James to divulge it. Willa Cather
