In working with Edith Wharton’s letters in preparation for a trip to the Beinecke, I came across one of her letters to John Hugh-Smith in which she says the following:

“Thanks a lot for The Emperor Jones. O’Neill seems to be our only real play-wright. I wish I cd. have seen it acted.”

So, a significant judgment, isn’t it? And when did she write it?

Friday the 8th.

What month or year? She doesn’t say. The letter is from the 1920s, though, according to its place in the archive; EW’s excellent biographer Hermione Lee places the quotation within a paragraph of other literary judgments of the mid-1920s (620).

Let’s look at when Friday fell on an 8th in the mid-1920s

1924: February, August

1925: May

1926: January, October

A helpful archivist at the Beinecke Library has added “probably 1924,” which is logical. In 1924, there were two Fridays that fell on the 8th, which narrows it down slightly.

In the first paragraph of the letter, however, EW says: “What Spanish experiences we shall have to compare!” which might refer to her trip to Spain with Walter Berry in September 1925 (Lee 620).

If the letter is from 1924 or 1925, she’d be planning far ahead to discuss this upcoming trip, but then, EW was a planner. She kept a diary of this trip, called “Last Trip with W.” and edited by Patricia Fra Lopez as Return to Compostela a few years ago.

What if the letter is from 1926 and she’s looking back on the Spain trip? This is unlikely because (and I’m cheating here) the next letter in the sequence is dated March 21, 1925.

So, yes: 1924 has to be it, as the archivist had noted, because the only Friday in 1925 was in May, which rules that out as a date if the letter is in sequence, as it obviously seems to be.

Is it February 8 or May 8? There’s no way to tell except by delving into further evidence from the letter: Where was John Hugh-Smith traveling, since she welcomes him back? She says she sent him a postcard from “Fair—” (paper is torn), but there’s no postcard close to the letter; the most likely candidate, sent from Rocamadour, has the year obscured and is possibly years earlier.

The exact date isn’t important for what I’m working on at this point, so I won’t pursue it.

But dear Mrs. Wharton, couldn’t you have thrown future generations a bone here and given us more than “Friday, 8th”–or, as you do sometimes, just “Wednesday”?