AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN
script notes. It has been said that we look somewhat alike. Physically he is extremely nervous, having little control of his hands, so that the query arises as it did about the frog, why he does not cure himself, but such queries lead to the deeper mysteries and are unanswerable. No man has been more important in the literary, professional and social life of the city than Mitchell. The letter to which I have referred, giving the author's explanation and estimate of Hugh Wynne, his most successful book, follows:
November 4, '97.
Dear Judge,—I take my large paper because of having more to say than I can with comfort get into note paper.
I wish, first, to say how much pleasure your letter gave me; it is despatched from a critical standpoint, so remote from that of the newspaper critics that, forme, it is a quite precious and thought-compelling document. To take it in detail, I shall like, some time, to see your treasures and talk over these for days. Next, yes, Mt. Hope is a pen-slip, to be amended, as in the second edition have been many minor errors of name, place or date.
No, Mr. Wolfe, Mr. Webb, Mr. Howe, are in the Virginians and Esmond for Gen'l W., etc. It was usual unless the men were on duty. Even now, it is our army usage to address, in social life, all men under a major in rank as Mr.
Ardmore, Bryn Mawr are recent names and as to this I hesitated long. To use them brought the matter in hand within the realizing capacities of the dullest, and I was trying to make a great story leap into life again—an intended error in name or time did not affect me as a novel writer.
In Quentin Durward the wild Boar of Ardennes is killed fifteen years before the true time of his demise and of quite other fashion. As to Conshohocken and Norristown people who criticise and many they be that forget that H. W. presumably wrote these authentic memoirs circa in the 1820's when Norristown and Conshohocken had nominal existence.
H. W. is an autobiography with the limitations of that rarely used form. With the ego one can get a sense of personal product. Without it we lose this charm. In Esmond, Thackeray shirked it and made his hero tell his tale in the third person nearly throughout. Hence there is in Esmond no sense of its being a man's tale