I send the “Letter to a Young Contributor,” which will cover
nine or ten pages.
I am sorry to say that this household unites in the opinion
that February is a decidedly poor number. Mrs. Howe is tedious. “To-day” grim
and disagreeable, though not without power; “Love and Skates” [Theodore
Winthrop] trashy and second-rate; and Bayard Taylor below plummet-sounding of
decent criticism. His mediocre piece had a certain simplicity and earnestness,
but this seems to me only fit for the “Ledger” in its decline. I could only
raise one smile over the “Biglow” (“rod, perch, or pole”), but I suppose that
will be liked. Whittier's poem is daring, but successful; Agassiz has covered
the same ground often. Whipple uses “considerable” atrociously at beginning of
last critical notice, and “Snow” has a direful misprint on page 195 (end of,
paragraph) — South for Earth. I liked “Ease in Work,” “Fremont
and Artists” in Italy.
The thing that troubled me most, though, was the absence of
a strong article on the war, especially as January had none. I see men buying
the “Continental” for its strong emancipatory pieces, and they are amazed that
the “Atlantic” should not have got beyond Lowell's timid “Self-Possession.” For
the “Atlantic” to speak only once in three months, and then against an
emancipatory policy, is humiliating. Perhaps I ought to have written and
offered one, but I could not write when busy about regiments and companies, and
after that I supposed you had a press of war matter on hand, as no doubt you
did some months ago; but public sentiment is moving fast if events are not, and
it is a shame that life should come from the “Knickerbocker” and not from the “Atlantic.”
You always get frank criticisms from me, at least, you know.
P.S. I see the papers treat the number well — but so they
always do. At the lowest point ever reached by the magazine, just before your
return from England, the newspaper praises kept regularly on.
SOURCE: Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, Editor, Letters
and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, p. 112-4
