I am terribly sorry to have to be the first to tell you that our poor Miss Brennan died. We have her head here in the office, at the top of the stairs, where she was always to be found smiling right and left and drinking water out of her own little paper cup. She shot herself in the back with the aid of a small handmirror at the foot of the main altar in St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Shrove Tuesday. Frank O’Connor was where he usually is in the afternoons, sitting in a confession box pretending to be a priest and giving penance to some poor old woman and he heard the shot and he ran out and saw our poor late author stretched out flat and he picked her up and fearing a scandal ran up to the front of the church and slipped her in the poor box. She was very small. He said she went in easy. Imagine the feelings of the young curate who unlocked the box that same evening and found the deceased curled up in what appeared to be and later turned out truly to be her final slumber. It took six strong parish priests to get her out of the box and then they called us and we all went and got her and carried her back here on the door of her office. We will never know why she did what she did (shooting herself) but we think it was because she was drunk and heartsick. She was a very fine person, a very real person, two feet, hands, everything. But it’s too late to do much about that now.

I have a lot of live authors, Mr. Boyce, if you would like to ask about any of them, if there is anything you would like to know about any of them, I’ll be happy to oblige. Most of them have studio portraits, ready for framing, some life size, some even en famille, as we say around here in our amiable but decidedly spirited, even brisk, New Yorker Magazine Way. And thank you for your kind interest in the unfortunate Miss Brennan. I am glad to know that someone remembers her. As for her, I’m afraid she would only spit in your eye. She was ever ungrateful. One might say of her that nothing in her life became her.

Sincerely,

William (Bill) Maxwell