You will not be able to see the force of your objection, if you will look it straight in the face.

It amounts to this: If an actor plays the piece under our backed by our names alone, his reputation for indecency will soil us, smirch us. If Ⓐemendation But if he plays it so, additionally backed by the Mallorys names, that will make everything respectable; we suffer no smirch, because the name of the Mallorys is our protection.

Now the facts are, that you & I are respectable men, & quite well known to be so; whereas, from the Atlantic to the Pacific the Mallorys are just as well known to be thieves & ghouls, cheats & liars.

You seem to think that the Mallorys could lift up a foul man, & the public would forget, in the dazzle of this connection, that he was foul—but that you & I could not do this miracle. I confess to you it would have taken many centuries for the idea to beget itself in my head that the Mallorys could make a thing respectable which you & I could not make respectable.

Goodwin is an unknown man; grant that he is all you say: nobody knows it. Inquire—inquire: in 39 out of 40 cases you will have to go into a lot of tedious details in order to enable your man to remember that he has ever heard of Goodwin before—& then all the chances are that he will remember having seen him as the Grave-digger, or Con the Shaughran, or some other eminently decent character.

A man whom nobody knows, doesn’t need the Mallorys’ great name to protect or re-create his reputation.

I have stopped the negociations with Goodwin by telegraph. Of course I cannot act upon your suggestion to let the play pass as my sole composition—I could not do that, even though the other writer were a totally unknown person. Could you?

Raymond’s new piece is profitable in the large cities only. From what I could hear in New York, it is not likely to have a very long life. If you would like to try Cullington, go ahead & do it; I am perfectly willing, but I think he will be like the others, & require that the name be changed. If he does not, I shall have a poorer opinion of his character than you have of Goodwin’s. ⟦Meanwhile, I’ve got to write Goodwin & explain my telegram—which I wish I knew how to do it without leaving with him the conviction that I am shabbier than any one can suppose him to be. Be Jasus, if you had telegraphed so important a matter, instead of trusting it to the mail when the time was so short, I’d have got it before I left home; & then I shouldn’t have any explanations to make, now. However, I am used to disagreeable work, & am & don’t mind it as much as I am letting on to.⟧ To go back to where I was: if Cullington should fail you, or should not seem to be the right man, suppose we try your suggestion of a day or two ago—wait for Raymond. It seems quite within the possibilities that we might not have to wait long.

If I haven’t said it all, or have not said it clearly, fog forgive it & charge it to fatigue; for I’ve just got home from New York quite han[d]somely fagged out.