Washington, D. C.,
March 20,
1913.
Dear Ruth,
I'm returning your little sketches with a few markings which are to be regarded (or disregarded) as mere suggestions. I made them in pencil, so that you can erase them if you don't approve. Of course I should make many more if I could have you before me so that I could explain why; in this way I can help you but little. You'll observe that I have made quite a slaughter of some of the adjectives in some of your sentences—you will doubtless slaughter some in others. Nearly all young writers use too many adjectives. Indeed, moderation and skill in the use of adjectives are about the last things a good writer learns. Don't use those that are connoted by the nouns; and rather than have all the nouns, or nearly all, in a sentence outfitted with them it is better to make separate sentences for some of those desired.
In your sketch "Triumph" I would not name the "hero" of the piece. To do so not only makes the sketch commonplace, but it logically requires you to name his victim too, and her offense; in brief, it commits you to a story.
A famous writer (perhaps Holmes or Thackeray—I don't remember) once advised a young writer to cut all the passages that he thought particularly good. Your taste I think is past the need of so heroic treatment as that, but the advice may be profitably borne in memory whenever you are in doubt, if ever you are. And sometimes you will be.
I think I know what Mr. Morrow meant by saying that your characters are not "humanly significant." He means that they are not such persons as one meets in everyday life—not "types." I confess that I never could see why one's characters should be. The exceptional—even "abnormal"—person seems to me the more interesting, but I must warn you that he will not seem so to an editor. Nor to an editor will the tragic element seem so good as the cheerful—the sombre denouement as the "happy ending." One must have a pretty firm reputation as a writer to "send in" a tragic or supernatural tale with any hope of its acceptance. The average mind (for which editors purvey, and mostly possess) dislikes, or thinks it dislikes, any literature that is not "sunny." True, tragedy holds the highest and most permanent place in the world's literature and art, but it has the divvel's own time getting to it. For immediate popularity (if one cares for it) one must write pleasant things; though one may put in here and there a bit of pathos.
I think well of these two manuscripts, but doubt if you can get them into any of our magazines—if you want to. As to that, nobody can help you. About the only good quality that a magazine editor commonly has is his firm reliance on the infallibility of his own judgment. It is an honest error, and it enables him to mull through somehow with a certain kind of consistency. The only way to get a footing with him is to send him what you think he wants, not what you think he ought to want—and keep sending. But perhaps you do not care for the magazines.
I note a great improvement in your style—probably no more than was to be expected of your better age, but a distinct improvement. It is a matter of regret with me that I have not the training of you; we should see what would come of it. You certainly have no reason for discouragement. But if you are to be a writer you must "cut out" the dances and the teas (a little of the theater may be allowed) and work right heartily. The way of the good writer is no primrose path.
No, I have not read the poems of Service. What do I think of Edith Wharton? Just what Pollard thought—see Their Day in Court, which I think you have.