December 8 Monday – Sam’s notebook: “Get to Rices by 6.45. Julia Marlow[e]’s new play. Stay all night. Hot Scotch” [NB 45 TS 34]. Note: English-born actress Julia Marlowe, born Sarah Frances Frost (1865-1950), played the role of Charlotte Durand in
Paul Kester and George Middleton’s dramatization of George W. Cable’s Southern romance, The Cavalier, which opened this night at Charles Frohman’s Criterion Theatre, Broadway and 44th St. [NY Times Dec. 7, p.34 “Offerings of the Week”]. Note: insert ad for Dec. 8 performance.
Prof. Henry Van Dyke wrote from Princeton, N.J.. to Sam.
The dinner was fine and therefore fit.
Velasquez might have made a better picture than the one on my souvenir. But he could not have said anything about my work that I would value half as much as your word. Do you mind my quoting it? That is a delicate question. The answer is written on the enclosed card.
We are studying the development of the short story in my advanced class this year. Next month we take you up. You know how it feels to be a Classic [MTP]. Note: Sam enclosed this note in his ca. Dec. 10 to Livy.
December 8 after – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam replied to Henry Van Dyke’s Dec. 8.
It probably costs you nothing to write a short story but I find that it costs me as many false starts—and therefore failures—as does a long one. And as the right start—the right plan—is the only difficulty encountered with either, consider what a rascal for time-expense the short story is to me. Ten years and five failures—that is about my luck. I had it with the one in the Christmas Weekly. And yet that one is so light and frivolous and looks so easy, and as if it couldn’t be started on a wrong plan, but I discovered four wrong ones in ten years. I have hardly ever started a story, long or short, on the right plan—the right plan being the plan which will make it tell itself without my help—except after three failures. I think you are safe to tell the advanced class that only the born artist can expect to start a story right the first time [MTP: Van Dyke, Tertius. Henry van Dyke: a Biography, 1935 p.218]. Note: this letter labeled December by MTP, but takes up the subject of short stories in Henry’s Dec. 8.