Queries

2005

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1999-2002

Student Queries

2005

2004

2003

1999-2002

Howells's "Hope" and Crane's "The Open Boat"

I am a student who is currently taking a class on classical American Literature, respectfully beginning with reconstruction and ending just shy of the twenty-first century. One of the writers that we are studying is Stephen Crane who to my understanding was influenced by William Dean Howell. Mr. Crane wrote a short story based upon his experience adrift called “The Open Boat.” I have heard that Mr. Dean’s poem “Hope” either helped inspire Mr. Crane’s story or was inspired by it. I would like to know which of the rumors, if either, is true. I humbly submit to your expertise on this matter as I have had difficulty shedding light on it myself.  

In all sincerity

James Knox

jameswendellknox@yahoo.com

(Cross-posted to the Crane Society site)

Howard Pyle's Painting to accompany Howells's "Monochromes"

I am trying to locate a painting by the American illustrator, Howard Pyle, created as an illustration for a work by William Dean Howells, entitled Question and which I believe was given by the artist to the writer. The Delaware Art Museum is in the process of planning a retrospective exhibition of Pyle’s work to celebrate both the centennial of the artist’s death and the founding of the Museum. The painting, first published to accompany “Monochromes” in Harper’s Monthly Magazine (1893) was reproduced again (somewhat altered by the artist) for a collection of Howells’ work entitled Stops of Various Quills (1895). The image is of particular interest because of a point it makes regarding Pyle’s approach to allegorical subject matter. As such, I am very interested in locating it in the hopes of borrowing it for the exhibition. I would be most appreciative for any information regarding its present whereabouts.

Margaretta S. Frederick, Chief Curator
Curator, Bancroft Collection
Delaware Art Museum
2301 Kentmere Parkway
Wilmington, DE 19806
302.351.8518 | (f) 302.571.0220
www.delart.org
www.preraph.org

1. “A Calendar of the Letters of William Dean Howells,” ed. William M. Gibson, George Arms, and F.C. Marston, Jr.,  which Edwin Cady cites in PEBBLES, MONOCHROMES,A ND OTHER MODERN POEMS as “Unpublished”?
2. A letter from Howells to his father dated 3 Nov. 1890 (again, cited by Cady as such, p. xi).  

The "Calendar" was a collection of photocopies and transcripts assembled at Indiana University by the editors of the six-volume edition of Howells letters. The particular letter Cady cites is (along with most of Howells' letters to his father) in the Howells Family Papers at the Houghton Library, Harvard University.  

--Thomas Wortham

Thank you for undertaking a study of your ancestor, J. M. Comly. He was indeed an important individual, and his life reflects in so many interesting ways upon nineteenth-century America.

A very large collection of his papers are at the Ohio Historical Society Archives/Library in Columbus, Ohio, including 31 letters from Howells. Much of the approximately 1,500 items in the collection (not only correspondence and letterbooks, but also diaries, journals, scrapbooks, and newspaper clippings) have been microfilmed and might still be available through interlibrary loan. The library issued a printed guide to the collection some years ago (Andrea D. Lentz. The James Comly Collection: An Inventory to the Microfilm Edition. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio Historical Society, 1973), and it is also described in some detail in their on-line catalog. Several of these letters are printed in Mildred Howells’ edition of her father’s correspondence (Life in Letters, 1928) and in vols. 1 and 2 of Howells’ Selected Letters, ed. George Arms, et al., (Boston, 1979-1983). Also a few of Comly’s letters to Howells are among the Howells family papers at the Houghton Library, Harvard University.

Good luck with your research.

Sincerely,

Tom Wortham

PS You might be amused to know that after I retired from active teaching at UCLA in 2008, that I moved to Perry county, Ohio, whose seat is New Lexington, the birthplace of your ancestor. I suspect, however, that Gen. Comly would wonder (like most of our neighbors) why a sane fellow would leave Pasadena, California, for the hills of Perry county!

Thomas Wortham, Professor Emeritus of English

UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90049

**********

If Not Literature: Letters of Elinor Mead Howells. Ed. Ginette de B. Merrill and George Arms. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1988.

Henry James once described his friend Howells as "the most addressless man I know." Certainly the summer of 1890 was a most peripatetic period in his life. IF y ou have access to vol. 3 of Howells' Selected Letters (Boston, 1980), your find a partial summary of his travels that summer in a letter to Thomas S. Perry, dated 9 September 1890:

14 days at Willsborough Point, New York

14 days at Lake Placid, New York

12 days at Plattsburgh, New York

21 days at Saratoga, New York,

and the 8 days before writing this letter at Lake Luzerne, New York.

From there he went on to Lynn, Massachusetts for most of the remainder of the month.

But even this list needs augmented:

He wrote to one correspondent on 21 June 1890, "I'm going off to parts unknown next week with my family," and his first stop appears to have been at the Stevens House, in Vergennes, Vermont. Here he wrote to his father on 29 June 1890: "We expect to take a little steamer that runs down the river, and cross to the New York side of the lake (Champlain) tomorrow, where we have heard of a nice little hotel at Willsboro' Point, N.Y. We intend now to settle down there for a while, but may change our minds on seeing the place. I will send you a fixed address as soon as I have one." In addition, while the family might have been settled for a few days here or there, I suspect (from the extant correspondence) that Howells himself was scouting out other places during this period, perhaps even making a run to Kittery Point, the place in Maine where he eventually was willing (almost) to call home.

My great regret when we edited Howells' letters years ago was that we did not include in the volumes a calendar of his correspondence. It would have been fairly easy at the time, but what does youth know!

Sincerely,

Tom Wortham
Thomas Wortham, Professor Emeritus of English
UCLA, Los Angeles, California

********

Bromfield Corey

In an article whose name and author I do not know, there is apparently a reference to the character of Bromfield Corey (The Rise of Silas Lapham) as a type of Jamesian aesthete -- an artist figure who would seem at home in Henry James' work. I'd be grateful to anyone who knows where I can find that reference, or similar commentary on Bromfield Corey. Thank you.

1/18/10