Charles W. Chesnutt to Judson Douglas Wetmore, September 8, 1924 Charles W. Chesnutt Stephanie P. Browner Kenneth M. Price Transcription, encoding, and annotation Anderson, Antje Baldwin, Sarah Weakly, Laura K. Barney, Brett Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln The New School 2025 The Charles W. Chesnutt Archive
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 Charles W. Chesnutt to J. Douglas Wetmore, 8 September 1924 September 8, 1924 Transcription derived from scan of original. Western Reserve Historical Society Charles Waddell Chesnutt Papers MS 3370 1 4 Correspondence Chesnutt, Dorothy Katherine Chesnutt, Susan Utley Perry Robinson, Helen Mable Wetmore Wetmore, Jeannette Gross Wetmore, Lucile Pipes typed copy unsigned Chesnutt, Charles W. (Waddell) Wetmore, Judson D. New York, New York Unknown Brett Barney checked; corrected Laura K. Weakly review Antje Anderson annotated, made further corrections Sarah Baldwin transcribed, encoded [1] September 8, 1924
J. Douglas Wetmore, Esq., World Building, 63 Park Row, New York City.
My dear Douglas,

“Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards,” was said by Solomon, a man who had many wives, but it seems to me you who have had only two, have more than your share of trouble, especially for a fellow who tries to make everybody around him happy -- a disposition diametrically opposite to Jeannette’s, who seems to make everybody around her miserable. It is too bad about your daughter Helen. One would think the mother would at least want to make her happy. She knew all about you when she married you, the girl is her daughter, and why she should be rubbing it into either of you is beyond me. It must be the Shylock in her regretting the pound of flesh she thinks she lost by not sticking to you, but she can’t very well have two husbands, so why she should be jealous of the present Mrs. Wetmore, is one of those mysteries of the feminine temperament which often puzzle one.

It is a pity you can’t get away from the “eternal question.” I think it would be well for you if you could forget it now and then -- at least so far as you are permitted to. But since you insist on thinking of it, and before you stop, get the September number of the NEW AMERICAN MERCURY, a green-covered magazine, and read the article on “Some Fads in Health Legislation,” the section in reference to the recent Virginia law against miscegenation. Taking the figures quoted, twenty thousand acknowledged “near-whites,” and counting them as white under the old law, and averaging them into the one million four hundred thousand white people of the state, I have figured that about one in thirty-five of the white people of Virginia today confessedly have some Negro blood. If they had wished to preserve the purity of the White race, they should have started three hundred years ago.

I am sure you enjoyed having your daughter Helen with you, no matter how it came about. I should like to see her some time. [2] J. D. W. #2 She ought to be a bright girl since she is her father’s daughter, and her mother, except for her fiendish disposition, is no fool.

I enclose a dollar you were good enough to pay William for me -- something might happen to prevent me from pressing that suit for you in the future. Never mind about the last letter; it was from Dorothy, and was of no importance except as a message from home.

Regards to Mrs. Wetmore and love to the children, in which Mrs. Chesnutt and the girls join with me.

Fraternally yours, CWC:W enc.