Page:Emergence of Frances Fuller Victor-Historian.djvu/21

 entirely and completely unravelled the tangles that troubled you (and me) in 1870. The whole story is as plain as A. B. C. You would enjoy the unfolding."

While Mrs. Victor enjoyed her work, she found onerous the labor of writing original history. To Elwood Evans she also described the condition of her work for Bancroft:

"I doubt if you would have the patience to work as one of Mr. Bancroft's assistants. Last year I wrote or worked fifty-one weeks every day except Sundays from 8 o'clock in the morning until 6 in the evening, with one hour at noon for exercise and luncheon. This year I am doing the same .... I often wish to do something for myself... but have not the strength left. But I find time to write letters that concern my work-I write a good many to find out things, and put a good deal of material into the history which would not otherwise be there: in short, work just as conscientiously as if I were doing it for my own glory, and put into Mr. B's hands and under his name all the results of my long preparation for this particular work ..."

Mr. Bancroft did express his appreciation of Mrs. Victor's devotion to her work in the first version of his Literary Industries: "I have," he wrote, "found Mrs. Frances Fuller Victor during her arduous labors for a period of ten years in my library, a lady of cultivated mind, of ability and singular application; likewise her physical endurance was remarkable." The last part of the remark was a real compliment coming from Bancroft who could stand at his desk writing for eleven or twelve hours a day. But he did not expect Mrs. Victor to stand and furnished her, as the only woman assistant, with a private study.

In May 1883 Bancroft sent Judge Deady and a few other men in Oregon who knew the state's history the proofs of Oregon I for criticism. A month later Mrs. Victor wrote Deady that she was glad he was reading the proofs and hoped that he would get those of Oregon II also, for in that volume there would be more occasion for corrections. Then she added some comments on Bancroft's editing of her work.