Wendell Phillips Dabney to Charles W. Chesnutt, 21 January 1931 Wendell Phillips Dabney Stephanie Browner Kenneth M. Price Transcription, encoding, annotations Swift, Bianca Anderson, Antje Weakly, Laura K. McMullen, Kevin Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln The New School 2025 The Charles W. Chesnutt Archive
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 Wendell Phillips Dabney to Charles W. Chesnutt, 21 January 1931 January 21, 1931 Transcription derived from scan of original. Western Reserve Historical Society Charles Waddell Chesnutt Papers MS 3370 1 6 Correspondence Brite, Mary Davis Chesnutt, Edwin Jackson Johnson, James Weldon Pickens, William typed letter signed Dabney, Wendell P. Cincinnati, Ohio Chesnutt, Charles W. (Waddell) Cleveland, Ohio Unknown Antje Anderson added missing note reference Kevin McMullen proofed Laura K. Weakly review Antje Anderson annotated, made further corrections Bianca Swifttranscribed and encoded
PHONE, MAIN 5168 DABNEY PUBLISHING CO. AND OFFICE OF THE UNION 412 McALLISTER STREET CINCINNATI, OHIO
January 21, 1931.
Mr. Charles W. Chesnutt, Cleveland, Ohio.
Friend Chesnutt:

I hasten to reply to the lines you so kindly sent this morning for fear that you will give me credit to which I am not entitled.

Miss Mary D. Brite is a very live personage, a white woman who comes from clerical and pre Revolutionary ancestry. She is a free thinker, a communist, an anarchist, and has been the secretary here for many years of the Civil Liberties League. When I tell you that she is very fond of Pickens, you can judge that she is absolutely free from color prejudice. She is a woman about fifty years of age, not at all sneentimental, has one son and unpleasant recollections of the husband whom she left years ago, likes to drink a highball, "she can stand only one", very fond of cigarettes, "she can smoke six without climbing the heights of vertigo, has a range of profanity that extends from doggone to damn. She is the author and originator of the article, though as between ourselves, I had to smooth it up a little bit.

I enjoyed Jim Johnson's book a very great deal. It is well bound, nice, sketchy, article.realistic, satirical.

As I sit now writing to you, before me is that life size picture that you sent. It is the centre of admiration for all who come in the office. However, until the name is known, they invariably mistake you for a great man of the world, HiberianHibernian ancestry, raconteur, boulevardier, etc. Will explain further when I see you, which I hope will be soon, since, when I drift into the sacred precincts that you call home and am in the sanctum sanctorum which I call the dining room, the years roll back and I sniff the aroma of boyhood days, for 'twas then that the family of Dabney was in all its glory.

With kindest regards to your people and the hope that I will soon be able to send some more candy, I shall ever be,

Yours to command, Dabney W. P. WPD:S

P.S. Will soon look up Ned in Chicago—you know he regards me as belonging to his set, despite the disparity in years.