Charles W. Chesnutt to William Frederick Mackay, 21 September 1932
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September 21, 1932
The University Club,1
Attention Mr. W. F. Mackay
To CHARLES W. CHESNUTT, Dr.2
| For one copy limited edition "The Conjure Woman"3 | $10.00 | |
| " one copy "The Marrow of Tradition"4 | 5.00 | |
| " one copy "The Colonel's Dream"5 | 5.00 | $20.00 |
Correspondent: William Frederick Mackay (1876–1969), a White Cleveland banker and lawyer, was, like Chesnutt, a member of the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce and of the Rowfant Club. It is unknown what office he held at the University Club or why Chesnutt's books were ordered at this time.
1. The University Club of Cleveland was founded in 1898 as a social club for men with a college degree in the Cleveland area, and seems to have admitted nonwhite members or guests. In 1913, it acquired the Beckwith Mansion on 3813 Euclid Ave. as its club house. [back]
2. Charles Chesnutt received an honorary LL.D. (Doctor of Law) degree from Wilberforce University in 1913 (Helen Chesnutt, Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1952], 259). He only used the title sporadically in his correspondence. [back]
3. The Conjure Woman was published in three editions during Chesnutt's lifetime. The first, in 1899, was published by Houghton Mifflin Company's Riverside Press and offered, at the suggestion of Cleveland's Rowfant Club, in both a "regular" and a limited edition of 150 numbered copies on fine paper (see Helen Chesnutt, Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line [Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1952], 106). The 1929 Houghton Mifflin edition included a foreword by Joel E. Spingarn (1875–1939) and, like the previous edition, was priced at $2.00. [back]
4. The Marrow of Tradition was published by Houghton, Mifflin & Company in October 1901. The novel was a thinly veiled account of the Wilmington Massacre of 1898, a White supremacist coup that overthrew an interracial city government, targeted Black elected officials, killed between 60 and 300 Black citizens, and terrorized several thousand who fled the city and never returned. [back]
5. The Colonel's Dream (New York: Doubleday, Page, & Company, 1905) was Chesnutt's last published novel. [back]
