The following letters were written in 1888 and 1889, by James Parton to the Honorable Alfred R. Conkling of New York City. In December, 1888, Mr. Conkling wrote to Mr. Parton, making him a formal offer to assist in the preparation of the “Life and Letters of Roscoe Conkling.” Mr. Parton generously declined to accept payment, but took a great interest in the work, and during the following year corresponded frequently with Mr. Conkling, advising upon specific points and setting forth the general principles of the art of biography.
We are indebted to Mr. Conkling for permission to print these letters, which are full of wise suggestion to the literary “recruit,” and of genuine human interest to all lovers of good reading. They give us glimpses of Mr. Parton, not only as a conscientious writer of biography who had acquired a rare mastery of his art, but also as a man of aggressive interest in public affairs, of broad mind, and a singularly wholesome nature.
Newburyport, Mass., Dec. 8, 1888.
Dear Sir: I am glad to learn from yours of yesterday that we are to have a biography of so interesting and marked a character as the lamented Roscoe Conkling, and I should esteem it a privilege to render any assistance toward it in my power.
JAMES PARTON IN 1852, AT THIRTY YEARS OF AGE.
The great charm of all biography is the truth, told simply, directly, boldly, charitably.
But this is also the great difficulty. A human life is long. A human character is complicated. It is often inconsistent with itself, and it requires nice judgment to proportion it in such a way as to make the book really correspond with the man, and make the same impression upon the reader that the man did upon those who knew him best.