LADIES' HOME JOURNAL
The Curtis Publishing Company
Loring A. Schuler, Editor
PHILADELPHIA

January 16, 1931

Mr. Rutger Bleecker Jewett
D. Appleton & Company
35 West 32nd Street
New York City

Dear Jewett:

Mrs. Wharton's new short story "Pomegranate Seed" is one of the most gorgeous pieces of writing I have ever seen from her or from anyone else. It is in every way a splendid story -- up to the end. But I am afraid that the great mass of Journal readers would be lost and indignant because there is no explanation of the situation that has been so interestingly developed.

And so, I wonder if Mrs. Wharton would be willing to write a new ending for the story in which the reader would learn

Where the mysterious letters
came from,

What they contained that was so
terrifying to Kenneth Ashby,

Where Ashby has gone and why.

If these points can be cleared
up, the story will become understandable to readers
of the kind who wondered about the end of Mrs.
Wharton's other story, "Mr. Jones".

I hope Mrs. Wharton will be willing
to do this.

Loring A. Schuler, Editor

PHILADELPHIA

July 6, 1933

Mrs. Edith Wharton
Pavillon Colombe
St. Brice-sous-Foret
S. & O., France

Dear Mrs. Wharton

I am sending you Parts 2 and 3 of the autobiography.

As in the case of Part 1
you will find that whole sections of the
original manuscript have been omitted.
If you feel at any point that the continuity
has been lost I should appreciate your
inserting whatever sentences may be necessary
in order to preserve the narrative.

It is seldom that we have been
privileged to publish so distinguished a
piece of work as this is.

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July 24th, 1933

Dear Mr. Schuler,

As I have just cabled you, the proofs of part I to
5 (inclusive) of my Reminiscences are being posted to you
today. It was not necessary to give you the name of the steamer
as the French post-office does not require that letters should
be marked go by certain steamer, as is done in New York.

I am writing in haste and therefore will not dwell
on the strange omissions in the galleys; but I must request for
purposes of clearness that the paragraphs omitted at the foot
of galley III shall be re-instated as they were written, and
I enclose the typed copy of these paragraphs herewith.

Yours very truly

# A BACKWARD GLANCE

Paragraph to be cut out in Part IV.

Those long days at the Mount in the deep summer
glow or the crisp glitter of autumn, the walks in the
woods, motor-flights over hill and dale, evening talks
on the moonlit terrace and readings around the library
back with a mocking radiance as I write — and with them the
fire, come figures of our other most beloved guests,
Walter Berry, Bay Lodge, and three dear friends from
England, Gaillard Lapsley, Robert Norton and John Hugh
Smith.

September 21st, 1933

Dear Mr. Schuler,

I have received the last part of the galleys of my
reminiscences, with your request that I should send them back
immediately. I expected to get them off by today's post, but
on reading them I have found such strange displacements of paragraphs,
and so many abridgments made without regard to the context, that I
find it will require a week's work to put the proofs in order. I
must tell you frankly that, as they now stand, I should be reluctant
to have them appear over my signature, and as these numbers are not
to appear till February or March, I must claim the time to put them
in proper order. I was quite willing that you should abridge the text,
but I thought that it would be done by some one who was sufficiently
competent to know how to do the work, and as I have always been
scrupulously careful to maintain the standard of my work, I cannot
let these proofs go back to you till they have been put into proper
shape.

The passages about the war are really grotesque, and
can only, I imagine, have occurred through an oversight on the part
of the printer. One paragraph describes the assassination of the
Archduke Ferdinand, and the next but one the proclamation of the
Armistice! Either all question of the war must be out of your
version of my memoirs, and they must end in 1914, or the war must
take its proper place in the sequence of my reminiscences.

I am sure you will understand my feeling as I do about
this, and I can assure you that I will do the work as quickly as I
can, and that you may count on receiving the corrected manuscript in
the course of next month.

Yours very truly

October 10th, 1933

Dear Mr. Schuler,

I am sending you the revised galleys of the last part of my Reminiscences.

In many cases I have had to strike out the names of persons whose share in my life is unexplained in your abridged version, and who suddenly appear without being in any way accounted for. In addition to this, I have had to re-write passages which had become quite meaningless through the strange cuts which had been made in them. Mindful of your wish to shorten the manuscript as much as possible, I have put in only what was necessary to make the text legible, and to save myself from the charge of complete incoherence.

With respect to the date of Mr. Howard Sturgis's books your proof reader is mistaken and I have put back my original statement.

I trust no further changes will be made in *Audition* which I now send you.

Yours sincerely