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#2037: Willa Cather to Ellery Sedgwick, June 7, 1944

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⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ Dear Mr. Sedgwick1:

I had great pleasure in reading your friendly letter three weeks ago, when I returned from a long stay on the West Coast. Why, my good friend, your memory has dropped a stitch! You ask me whether A Chance Meeting3 was ever republished. It was republished in a slim volume called "Not Under Forty"4- - -and you yourself wrote a most charming and friendly review5 of that volume for The Atlantic Monthly6! I do not keep many reviews of my books, but that one is filed among those I did keep. You had more knowledge of the atmosphere of Mrs. Fields'7 house than many people who have written extensively about those old Boston8 days. Mr. Van Wyck Brooks9, for example, usually a most punctilious writer, in his book10 on autumnal New England11 credits me with editing a volume of Mrs. Whitman's12 letters. Mrs. Whitman died some years before I first went to Boston, and it was dear Miss Jewett13 who edited Mrs. Whitman's letters.

No, I am not familiar with the story about Flaubert's14 messy dressing room which you attribute to Henry James15. But I do remember that somewhere James admits that he sent both Flaubert and Turgenev16 each of his books from time to time as they appeared, and that the gentlemen never acknowledged them. Very sporting of Mr. James to admit it, wasn't it?

Very cordially yours, Willa Cather