1940 · Various Places
by Hallet, Richard M.; Watkins, Ann
Various Places, 1940. Very good. Collection contains 40 complete original short stories (approximately 1130 typewritten pages), 222 pieces of correspondence and a few items of ephemera. Generally very good or better.
Our overly long title belabors that this collection has two focii: the short story author Richard M. Hallet and his agent, Ann Watkins. Watkins headed her own agency from 1910 to 1947 and represented authors such as Sinclair Lewis, William Saroyan, Edith Wharton, Roald Dahl, Carson McCullers and Ayn Rand. In 1947, she published an anthology of memorable passages from American fiction and she died in 1967.
We learn much about Hallet from a 2022 Saturday Evening Post [SEP] online profile by Frederic B. Hill, who published an anthology of Hallet's stories the same year. Hallet was a native of Bath, Maine who was heading for a law career when SEP purchased one of his stories in 1912 for the equivalent of $7,000 in today's money. According to Hill,
“Hallet then proceeded on a life of adventure and writing – working in copper mines in Arizona, lumber mills in Canada, and as a maritime officer on warships crossing the Atlantic with soldiers and horses during World War I in the face of German U-boats. All the while, he submitted short stories and an occasional article to the leading magazines of the day, including The Saturday Evening Post, Harper’s, Collier’s, The Atlantic, and others. He was being published more and more frequently.
Hallet, whose literary heroes were Joseph Conrad, Jack London, and Willa Cather, first came to national attention in 1916 when his “Making Port” was selected as one of The Best Stories of 1916 by the anthologist Edward J. O’Brien. O’Brien, in fact, termed it the best short story of the year — out of 2,500 he reviewed. Like many of his tales, “Making Port” was drawn from Hallet’s personal experience about an old salt Hallet encountered during his very first shipboard adventure, a romantic but unlucky seaman who always seemed to choose the wrong ship in a long, Sisyphean struggle to return home to Liverpool.
Hallet wrote more than 200 short stories in a long career (65 for the Post), five novels, and an entertaining autobiography, The Rolling World, published by Houghton Mifflin in 1938. Most of his fiction portrayed vivid tales of the sea, often built around shipboard tensions, and tales of Maine and New England and their small-town values and rivalries.”
Watkins' Letters
There are 41 letters from Watkins (approximately 12,000 words). The letters reveal a bright, witty and at times acerbic literary agent who knew her business and worked hard for her clients. In February of 1913 she first wrote to Hallet, “enclosing one of my folders that you may know something of the scope and character of my service, and may I add that successful authors have generously recognized the worth of this service . . .” Just three days later she wrote again (“I suggest that you give me a chance . . .”).
Many of Ann's letters lauded Hallet's work, and many made good on her promise to get his stories sold. Within a month of working for the writer, Watkins wrote: “Bearing in mind your wish, if not command, to adhere to the five cent a word rate . . . I trust you will feel that I have protected your interests as fully as it has been possible to do so . . . I think that I can get you a rate bigger than any you have thus received.” By January of 1914 Watkins had doubled Hallet's earlier rate; one editor “nearly dropped dead when I sprung ten cents a word on him. But I think I convinced him that thirty or forty thousand words, which is all he could use, might be worth this price.” She also noted that she “fixed the rate of ten cents a word as a precedent to govern the price of mss. to be submitted in the future.”
Watkins was clearly a no-nonsense type of woman; in October 1914 she confided in Hallet that she did not “permit editors to 'dine and wine' me” and boasted of selling two of his stories - “I made them pay four hundred for the story that they had turned down as unavailable at any price (but if you ever let the editor folk down there know of this I will never forgive you.”) She also told magazines small fibs about Hallet's productivity to garner interest in the writer – “don't you think you ought to get busy and send me some of the best stories you can write?”
The agent's letters showed great insight and knowledge, both in the art of writing and the business of publishing. She gave helpful advice, tips and criticism on character and plot development, and frequently described the inner workings of a multitude of magazines and their editors. There was frank information on her services and rates and what Hallet could do to help make her work more beneficial for him. She also defended Hallet when an editor accused him of stealing another writer's plot, calling him
“superior from a story-telling and literary viewpoint . . . whose powers of invention are so [much] more original, whose imagination is so much more fluent, whose graphic sense is so much more picturesque . . . it is difficult to believe that a man of Hallet's intelligence could do so idiotic a thing aside [from] the important consideration of morals and ethics.”
Watkins comforted Hallet through nearly a year of little success, providing updates on which magazines were considering stories, and telling him tactfully but directly about rejections. In February of 1915 she lauded one of his stories as “in my estimation one of the most powerful yarns you have done – in fact one of the most remarkable tales of primitive life I think I have ever read. Conrad never did anything better.” One week later she described a story as having “two qualities so rare that editors are likely to be afraid of it as they would of the Dodo bird if that creature walked into their sanctum. These qualities are originality and genuine literary value.” In March she sent a much longer than usual letter, providing key insight into big name publications, addressing his concerns and listing all of his sales to date. She did her best to ease his mind (“Nothing is so hard to overcome as the editor's conviction that his reader will not like a story that appeals to him personally . . .”) and kept her humor up: “the question before the House is: WHAT DID YOU DO WITH THE SEVENTY TWO CENTS?” In April she also casually referred to one editor as a “fat-head.”
Watkins' hard work paid off; in December of 1915 she wrote:
“I, Ann Watkins, Literary Agent, of 30 East 34 Street have sold Richard Hallet of God-knows-where, occupation doubtful, to Everyweek Magazine, for what 'proximates' ten cents a word.”
She signed that letter “Self-Respectfully,” and in following correspondence sent more checks and posited that soon they would be able to raise the writer's rates yet again.
Manuscripts and General Correspondence
There are 43 separate typescripts by Hallet in the collection, with all but three of them being complete. There are 38 different stories, a couple are either duplicated or variants, and, per a bibliography of Hallet's works published in 1967, only three appear to have been published. Most stories are in the genres described above and include a yarn about a prospective lawyer and an inventor going into New York and renting a room together, only to learn that the building held curious, and perhaps dangerous, mysteries:
“The Federal Secretary sat on the chair, and gazed vehemently, nay, with a black weight of argument in his eye which would have turned the sense of any jury. But the door, like Sancho's ass, answered nothing; and the towel hung unsuggestively over the handle, a spotless white. But say; not altogether white, under his agitation. His hand had turned up a corner touched with blood.”
Another story, “A Man May Kiss a Pretty Girl,” is about a man seeking quiet to read Robert Burns, while obsessing about his pipe:
“Now Mr. Blackiston knew as well as you or I, that we come obliquely into the possession of all great thoughts. If we look at them bluntly, they disappear, like those faint constellations in the sky, which appear only when imperfectly regarded. His pipe had been the very thing to throw these matters of uncontaminated intelligence thus desirably out of focus. Pulling at it, pinching in the tobacco where it curled perilously over the edge of the bowl, coughing and blinking in the smoke, he pulled furtively at the veil of the mysteries, and under cover of this diversion, came blustering upon full knowledge in her dimly-lighted den.”
A third, “The Lost Portage,” centered on Native Americans:
“Black Wolf, a Chief, allowed a plague of fire to leap out of his reservation during the reign of Hanrahan the Great as fire ranger. That was a bad day for Black Wolf and for those within his wigwam. For many moons he ceased to venerate his ancestors. Hanrahan, a yellow god in a green shirt, did not at first press his advantage over Black Wolf. He had been charmed by Chamnaistiqua, a daughter of the chieftain. In her company he often walked the trails above Sick Dog, revealing his Toronto wisdom in the native tongue. Her arrowy shapeliness satisfied his heart; the language of the Ojibways came like honey drip from his glib tongue. Very often he waxed poetic. 'Oh slender-fingered one,' he murmured, 'thou shalt be sent to an institution on Mushrat to learn of things more fully. They father I hold in the hollow of my hand. He can deny me nothing.'”
The collection also contains 128 letters of varying length from Hallet's fans, fellow authors and friends and family written on a range of topics. There are an additional 10 letters in Hallet's hand, written to his daughter Nancy in the mid-late 1930s. Another 43 items of correspondence come from publishers and include rejection letters along with receipts of payment for accepted works.
A remarkable collection combining the unpublished works of a notable 20th century short story writer with the efforts of his unflinching female literary agent. (Inventory #: 7918)
Our overly long title belabors that this collection has two focii: the short story author Richard M. Hallet and his agent, Ann Watkins. Watkins headed her own agency from 1910 to 1947 and represented authors such as Sinclair Lewis, William Saroyan, Edith Wharton, Roald Dahl, Carson McCullers and Ayn Rand. In 1947, she published an anthology of memorable passages from American fiction and she died in 1967.
We learn much about Hallet from a 2022 Saturday Evening Post [SEP] online profile by Frederic B. Hill, who published an anthology of Hallet's stories the same year. Hallet was a native of Bath, Maine who was heading for a law career when SEP purchased one of his stories in 1912 for the equivalent of $7,000 in today's money. According to Hill,
“Hallet then proceeded on a life of adventure and writing – working in copper mines in Arizona, lumber mills in Canada, and as a maritime officer on warships crossing the Atlantic with soldiers and horses during World War I in the face of German U-boats. All the while, he submitted short stories and an occasional article to the leading magazines of the day, including The Saturday Evening Post, Harper’s, Collier’s, The Atlantic, and others. He was being published more and more frequently.
Hallet, whose literary heroes were Joseph Conrad, Jack London, and Willa Cather, first came to national attention in 1916 when his “Making Port” was selected as one of The Best Stories of 1916 by the anthologist Edward J. O’Brien. O’Brien, in fact, termed it the best short story of the year — out of 2,500 he reviewed. Like many of his tales, “Making Port” was drawn from Hallet’s personal experience about an old salt Hallet encountered during his very first shipboard adventure, a romantic but unlucky seaman who always seemed to choose the wrong ship in a long, Sisyphean struggle to return home to Liverpool.
Hallet wrote more than 200 short stories in a long career (65 for the Post), five novels, and an entertaining autobiography, The Rolling World, published by Houghton Mifflin in 1938. Most of his fiction portrayed vivid tales of the sea, often built around shipboard tensions, and tales of Maine and New England and their small-town values and rivalries.”
Watkins' Letters
There are 41 letters from Watkins (approximately 12,000 words). The letters reveal a bright, witty and at times acerbic literary agent who knew her business and worked hard for her clients. In February of 1913 she first wrote to Hallet, “enclosing one of my folders that you may know something of the scope and character of my service, and may I add that successful authors have generously recognized the worth of this service . . .” Just three days later she wrote again (“I suggest that you give me a chance . . .”).
Many of Ann's letters lauded Hallet's work, and many made good on her promise to get his stories sold. Within a month of working for the writer, Watkins wrote: “Bearing in mind your wish, if not command, to adhere to the five cent a word rate . . . I trust you will feel that I have protected your interests as fully as it has been possible to do so . . . I think that I can get you a rate bigger than any you have thus received.” By January of 1914 Watkins had doubled Hallet's earlier rate; one editor “nearly dropped dead when I sprung ten cents a word on him. But I think I convinced him that thirty or forty thousand words, which is all he could use, might be worth this price.” She also noted that she “fixed the rate of ten cents a word as a precedent to govern the price of mss. to be submitted in the future.”
Watkins was clearly a no-nonsense type of woman; in October 1914 she confided in Hallet that she did not “permit editors to 'dine and wine' me” and boasted of selling two of his stories - “I made them pay four hundred for the story that they had turned down as unavailable at any price (but if you ever let the editor folk down there know of this I will never forgive you.”) She also told magazines small fibs about Hallet's productivity to garner interest in the writer – “don't you think you ought to get busy and send me some of the best stories you can write?”
The agent's letters showed great insight and knowledge, both in the art of writing and the business of publishing. She gave helpful advice, tips and criticism on character and plot development, and frequently described the inner workings of a multitude of magazines and their editors. There was frank information on her services and rates and what Hallet could do to help make her work more beneficial for him. She also defended Hallet when an editor accused him of stealing another writer's plot, calling him
“superior from a story-telling and literary viewpoint . . . whose powers of invention are so [much] more original, whose imagination is so much more fluent, whose graphic sense is so much more picturesque . . . it is difficult to believe that a man of Hallet's intelligence could do so idiotic a thing aside [from] the important consideration of morals and ethics.”
Watkins comforted Hallet through nearly a year of little success, providing updates on which magazines were considering stories, and telling him tactfully but directly about rejections. In February of 1915 she lauded one of his stories as “in my estimation one of the most powerful yarns you have done – in fact one of the most remarkable tales of primitive life I think I have ever read. Conrad never did anything better.” One week later she described a story as having “two qualities so rare that editors are likely to be afraid of it as they would of the Dodo bird if that creature walked into their sanctum. These qualities are originality and genuine literary value.” In March she sent a much longer than usual letter, providing key insight into big name publications, addressing his concerns and listing all of his sales to date. She did her best to ease his mind (“Nothing is so hard to overcome as the editor's conviction that his reader will not like a story that appeals to him personally . . .”) and kept her humor up: “the question before the House is: WHAT DID YOU DO WITH THE SEVENTY TWO CENTS?” In April she also casually referred to one editor as a “fat-head.”
Watkins' hard work paid off; in December of 1915 she wrote:
“I, Ann Watkins, Literary Agent, of 30 East 34 Street have sold Richard Hallet of God-knows-where, occupation doubtful, to Everyweek Magazine, for what 'proximates' ten cents a word.”
She signed that letter “Self-Respectfully,” and in following correspondence sent more checks and posited that soon they would be able to raise the writer's rates yet again.
Manuscripts and General Correspondence
There are 43 separate typescripts by Hallet in the collection, with all but three of them being complete. There are 38 different stories, a couple are either duplicated or variants, and, per a bibliography of Hallet's works published in 1967, only three appear to have been published. Most stories are in the genres described above and include a yarn about a prospective lawyer and an inventor going into New York and renting a room together, only to learn that the building held curious, and perhaps dangerous, mysteries:
“The Federal Secretary sat on the chair, and gazed vehemently, nay, with a black weight of argument in his eye which would have turned the sense of any jury. But the door, like Sancho's ass, answered nothing; and the towel hung unsuggestively over the handle, a spotless white. But say; not altogether white, under his agitation. His hand had turned up a corner touched with blood.”
Another story, “A Man May Kiss a Pretty Girl,” is about a man seeking quiet to read Robert Burns, while obsessing about his pipe:
“Now Mr. Blackiston knew as well as you or I, that we come obliquely into the possession of all great thoughts. If we look at them bluntly, they disappear, like those faint constellations in the sky, which appear only when imperfectly regarded. His pipe had been the very thing to throw these matters of uncontaminated intelligence thus desirably out of focus. Pulling at it, pinching in the tobacco where it curled perilously over the edge of the bowl, coughing and blinking in the smoke, he pulled furtively at the veil of the mysteries, and under cover of this diversion, came blustering upon full knowledge in her dimly-lighted den.”
A third, “The Lost Portage,” centered on Native Americans:
“Black Wolf, a Chief, allowed a plague of fire to leap out of his reservation during the reign of Hanrahan the Great as fire ranger. That was a bad day for Black Wolf and for those within his wigwam. For many moons he ceased to venerate his ancestors. Hanrahan, a yellow god in a green shirt, did not at first press his advantage over Black Wolf. He had been charmed by Chamnaistiqua, a daughter of the chieftain. In her company he often walked the trails above Sick Dog, revealing his Toronto wisdom in the native tongue. Her arrowy shapeliness satisfied his heart; the language of the Ojibways came like honey drip from his glib tongue. Very often he waxed poetic. 'Oh slender-fingered one,' he murmured, 'thou shalt be sent to an institution on Mushrat to learn of things more fully. They father I hold in the hollow of my hand. He can deny me nothing.'”
The collection also contains 128 letters of varying length from Hallet's fans, fellow authors and friends and family written on a range of topics. There are an additional 10 letters in Hallet's hand, written to his daughter Nancy in the mid-late 1930s. Another 43 items of correspondence come from publishers and include rejection letters along with receipts of payment for accepted works.
A remarkable collection combining the unpublished works of a notable 20th century short story writer with the efforts of his unflinching female literary agent. (Inventory #: 7918)
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