Part III

Tragedy, War (the eternal soldier), Résumé, Ecstasy, Final Declaration

There is an organization and symphonic rhythm to III that I did not

think I could do. The last three evenings have been wonderful for me,

anyway! A kind of ecstasy and power for WORK.

III doesn’t seem half long enough to me now--but I’m too much with and

in it to know.

127: TO CHARMION WIEGAND

[_Cleveland_] _Jan. 20th, ’23_

My dear Charmion: It didn’t take me long to decide that Buschor’s

_Graechische Vasenmalerei_ is a book that I shall always carry about

with me, even though it has taken me an unforgivably long time to tell

you so. You and Hermann [Habicht] have my sincerest gratitude for such

an unexpected and beautiful holiday present.

With a few exceptions I prefer Egyptian sculpture to the Greek, and this

book makes me feel that the Greeks had more to express in line and

design than they had in the third dimension. In pottery you get the less

ambitious and less “cosmopolitan” aspiration and expression of these

people. There is an intimacy and rusticity to the pottery which

especially appeals to the literary instinct. The famous Nike of

Samothrace always left me somewhat cool. Lady Milo is a bit imposing

(Jove’s too near around the corner) and these idealized human dolls all

stand too much on their dignity. O I know how they prostrated Heine and

Pater et al., and I do respect them--but give me these lovely vase

intaglios and arabesques--and maids and naughty satyrs with their rank

lustful lives and leaves and brine and wine!

--/--/ I think it is a credit to Munson’s platform and writing that so

much attention has already been proffered _Secession_. I was very

lukewarm in the beginning and urged him not to “waste his time” on any

magazine project. But after his visit here last summer I quickly

switched about, especially as _S_ has contained such new and suggestive

material as the last 2 numbers included. _Secession_ gets away from the

“temperamental” editorial attitude of _The Little Review_ (good in many

ways as this has been) and bases its judgment on more tradition while at

the same time being far more daring in its experiments than such

magazines as _The Dial_. It has been discouraging to see how very “safe”

_The Dial_ plays sometimes, despite its protests to the contrary.

I find that I have derived considerable stimulation from _Secession_.

Without it there would be only the vague hope that the steady pessimism

which pervades _The Dial_ since Eliot and others have announced that

happiness and beauty dwell only in memory--might sometimes lift. I cry

for a positive attitude! When you see the first two parts of my “Faustus

& Helen” that comes out in _Broom_ in Feb. or March, you will see better

what I mean. I’ve about finished the third and last part now, and am

pleased at the finale. --/--/

I’m rather worn out with the incessant activities of the last two

weeks--last _month_, in fact. I can’t stand much “society” even with

interesting people, and my acquaintance in Cleveland has somehow

increased so extensively during the last two years that with work,

reading, writing, etc., things are becoming entirely too febrile. You’ll

excuse my mention of such “ailments” I hope, as part of my excuse for

delay in writing. But I have already probably exhausted you beyond

“resentments” of such nature by this lengthy gust. -- -- -- --

128: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _Jan. 24, ’23_

Dear Gorham: I’ll wait for your next letter before sending any other

versions of “F. & H. III” The last two days have been occupied with the

enclosed strange psychoanalytic thing. I can’t quite justify the title

in words, but it came to me quite freely as _the_ right thing. Let me

know how you like it.[28] --/--/

129: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _Feb. 6th, ’23_

Dear Gorham: Everyone writes me such encouraging notes about “F and H”

that I am doubly sorry that I ever sent any to _Broom_ for publication.

Frank wrote me a very shrewd appreciation of Part II which he probably

repeated to you. Untermeyer’s mention of me among the New Patricians

prompted me to send him a copy after reading his article on Eliot in a

recent _Freeman_. I disagreed with him openly on many points, but the

substance of his last paragraph made me think he would be interested in

reading the poem. I was rather foolish to follow such an impulse, but

his answer was quite decent. He made the charge of a new type of

“rhetoric,” however, which is just what Frank took pains to mention as

fully absent. Untermeyer comes here for a lecture on March 11th and says

he wants to have a talk with me if possible. This is all right, but I am

not keen about argument. Allen Tate writes me the most glowing praises

possible, calls me the greatest contemporary American poet, etc., etc.,

so I feel about ready to deliver myself of my memoirs and expire in

roses. And then, your appreciation has especially been enjoyed. You

“get” the form and arrangement of the “Stark Major” poem much better

than Frank does, but he is right about the second paragraph being too

complicated and vague and you are wrong about the last verse being

redundant. When I get the second verse worked out to suit me I’ll send

you another copy. In the meantime I am ruminating on a new longish poem

under the title of _The Bridge_ which carries on further the tendencies

manifest in “F and H.” It will be exceedingly difficult to accomplish it

as I see it now, so much time will be wasted in thinking about it. Your

news about _Broom_ is discouraging in view of the fact that I had just

sent part III of “F and H” to Matty last week. Everything has been

bungled all the way through. I hope I can get enough material together

during the next few months for a small volume where things can be

arranged in proper order. I am so deadly sick of manipulating things

with magazines, _The Dial_ included. This latter refuses my “F and H”

and then takes such a silly thing as that Apleton or what’s-’ername

woman contained this month in its covers. I have been so rushed around

with too much society that I have not yet got at the review for your

study, but it will be done within two weeks anyway. It was much easier

to rap out this enclosed review for Fitts. Let me know what you like or

don’t like about it. I am very awkward at reviews, mainly, I suppose,

because the procedure is strange to me. I am through doing things for

Sommer until he cooperates better. He has received notice and

photographs from _The Dial_ I learn from second hand. Ten days ago this

was. I had especially asked him to phone me as soon as he heard anything

definite from them, certainly a small task, but he never peeps or comes

near. I shall not send back the photographs to you to show to anyone

until he returns them to me. He knows I paid twenty dollars for them and

that I want to keep them circulating, etc. He knew that I would be the

one to write to _The Dial_ and blow ’em up if they failed to keep their

word on the reproductions, and naturally want to know the facts of the

situation, yet he keeps his stolid distance. What’s the use? It’s too

much trouble with all the rest I have to do, though I’d be only too glad

to keep it up indefinitely if he’d show a little interest. --/--/

130: TO ALLEN TATE

[_Cleveland_] _Feb. 6th, ’23_

Dear Allen: I can’t seem to get around to write you a decent

consideration of your recent poems, “Yellow River,” etc. When I get time

to write, as now at the office, they are not by me, and you have already

had evidence of my state of mind at other odd moments. Meanwhile, do not

think me indifferent, please.

I’m afraid you will have to postpone your kind proclamations in regard

to “F and H” until the three parts appear in book form and in proper

sequence. The inadvertency of “The Springs of Guilty Song” in the

_Broom_ is too complicated to explain fully. Josephson is most

unscrupulous in his editorship, and it takes so long to get word back

and forth that I shall probably not send anything more to _Broom_ even

if they finish “F and H” with the other two parts. This is quite

unlikely as Munson writes me doleful presages about its financial

straits. Two more issues and it will probably expire. However, in case

they do print the third part which I sent about two weeks ago, it will

include a note at the bottom of the page explaining the sequence, etc.,

and correcting the misnomer “The Springs of Guilty Song.” In regard to

this latter I had a very fine appreciation from Waldo Frank who was

quite astonished at it. Then with your fine praise and Munson’s I feel

more encouraged than ever about my work. I’m already started on a new

poem, _The Bridge_, which continues the tendencies that are evident in

“Faustus and Helen,” but it’s too vague and nebulous yet to talk about.

In the next _S4N_ I have an amusing parody of Cummings and have asked

Fitts, the editor, to send you a copy. Don’t be puzzled by the name of

this magazine, it’s taken from the insignia of a mosquito fleet during

the war, I think. I wish I could partake of the genuine Tatian Theory,

but it’s not so universal in its application, I fear, as it used to be.

Sherry and bad Port are about all one succeeds in safely absorbing

around here. When am I to expect that promised portrait of you?

131: TO WALDO FRANK

_Cleveland, Ohio_ _Feb. 7th, ’23_

Dear Waldo Frank: I have not been so stimulated for a long time as I was

with your letter and its exact appreciation of the very things I wanted

to put into the second part of “For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen”

or its misnomer, “The Springs of Guilty Song.” The fact that its

intention was completely evident to you without any explanations or

“notes” from me, has renewed my confidence and made me quite happy. It

has also made me doubly anxious that you should have a copy of the

entire poem to read. This is enclosed, and, of course, is yours to keep

if you want it. It has been very discouraging the way _Broom_ has

handled the publication of this poem. The mails are slow and unreliable,

and Josephson is hasty, to say the least, in his methods. At best now,

it will come out in broken sequence, and a final Note with part III

cannot much repair the situation. I want at least a few of my friends to

have the thing in decent shape.

A few planks of the scaffolding may interest you, so I’ll roughly

indicate a few of my intentions. Part I starts out from the quotidian,

rises to evocation, ecstasy and statement. The whole poem is a kind of

fusion of our own time with the past. Almost every symbol of current

significance is matched by a correlative, suggested or actually stated,

“of ancient days.” Helen, the symbol of this abstract “sense of beauty,”

Faustus the symbol of myself, the poetic or imaginative man of all

times. The street car device is the most concrete symbol I could find

for the transition of the imagination from quotidian details to the

universal consideration of beauty,--the body still “centered in

traffic,” the imagination eluding its daily nets and self consciousness.

Symbolically, also, and in relation to Homer, this first part has

significance of the rape of Helen by Paris. In one word, however, Part

I stands simply for the EVOCATION of beauty.

Part II is, of course, the DANCE and sensual culmination. It is also an

acceleration of the ecstasy of PART III. This last part begins with

_catharsis_, the acceptance of tragedy through destruction (The Fall of

Troy, etc., also in it). It is Dionysian in its attitude, the creator

and the eternal destroyer dance arm in arm, etc., all ending in a

restatement of the imagination as in Part I. You would probably get all

these things without my crude and hasty mention of them, but to me, the

entire poem is so packed with cross-currents and multiple suggestions

that I am anxious that you should see the thing as I do, even though I

have perhaps not succeeded in “putting over” all the points which I

think I have. If you feel like severe criticism in any cases I shall

certainly welcome it. Certainly I was not “hurt” by the very accurate

criticisms you offered in your last letter.

“Nuances” in Part II takes the American pronunciation, that is, the “es”

is voiced. You were quite right about the second verse in “Stark Major.”

I have never been satisfied with it as to clarity, and it will undergo

revision before publication anywhere. --/--/

132: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _Feb. 9th, ’23_

Dear Gorham: You don’t deserve my pains in copying these two charming

things of Allen Tate’s until you send back that much belabored poem of

Harris’s, but these being yours to keep or throw away, I submit them

casually, as possible material for _Secession_. Tate sent them to me

this week, and seems to have written them in a mood of amusement with no

idea of their publication anywhere. I shall not say anything at all to

him about above considerations unless you should happen to want one or

both of them. Tate has a whole lot to offer when he finds his way out of

the Eliot idiom, which as you know, is natural to him, and was before he

ever heard of Eliot. These things are certainly not imitative of anyone

to [any] noticeable extent. They certainly beat Gerty Stein on her own

ground--that is from the standpoint of her announced desire to break up

poetry into an idiom corresponding to cubism, etc. Tate has much more

precision, while giving the same broken effect. Not that I care a damn

about such theories beyond their being merely interesting, but that may

be because from now on I feel that personal problems of my own,

extenuating from the experience in writing “F and H,” will be enough to

interest myself.

I am in a very unfavorable mood, and just after having congratulated

myself strongly on security against future outbreaks of the affections.

You see, for two or three years I have not been attacked in this way. A

recent evening at a concert some glances of such a very stirring

response and beauty threw me into such an hour of agony as I supposed I

was beyond feeling ever again. The mere senses can be handled without

such effects, but I discover I am as powerless as ever against those

higher and certainly hopeless manifestations of the flesh. O God that I

should have to live within these American restrictions forever, where

one cannot whisper a word, not at least exchange a few words! In such

cases they almost suffice, you know. Passions of this kind completely

derail me from anything creative for days,--and that’s the worst of it.

Tate wrote me a charming old fashioned sonnet on my picture that I

recently sent him. Because, in a loose way, it is so clairvoyant, I

confide it to you, an act which would be almost immodest in other

circumstances.

133: TO ALLEN TATE

[_Cleveland_] _Feb. 12th ’23_

Dear Allen: Let me congratulate you on the “Tercets of the Triad,”

however mockingly intended. It is among your very best results, as is,

also, the “Pins and Needles.” O I shall not soon forget “grandfather’s

knees,” etc., etc. The interweaving of the lines is very cunning. I

think you display a great amount of cleverness also in the “Pins and

Needles”--although I’m not sure that I applaud the name for this. There

might be others more apropos. To my mind you beat “Gerty” Stein on her

own race track. That is, you succeed much better than she in

accomplishing what is her avowed aim--to split up lyrical or

picture-word sequences into pieces in the same way that Cubists do in

painting. She is entertaining only at the expense of all coherence,

whereas you break things up into sharp impressions and also preserve the

outlines of the scattered pieces. This comparison, now that I see it

written, is aimless, because your directions and temperaments are so

entirely different. Yet its record here may amuse you as an idea that

immediately came to my mind when I read your poem.

Odd paradoxes occur. These things which you claim to have written for

amusement only, seem to carry through so far as completeness of form is

concerned better than “Yellow River” and “Quality of Mercy” where your

“seriousness” was, if anything, too evident. You won’t misunderstand me

on this, I hope. I simply mean that your satirical leanings are very

strong ... that their astringency frequently breaks up your lyrical

passages and at other times overloads them to the point of obscurity. In

an indifferent or gay mood you escape these encumbrances, as well as

[the] slight tendency that such endowments always carry with them--the

danger of occasional lapses into sentimentality. Do not be abashed. The

same was true of no less a man than Jules Laforgue, who was like you in

many ways and who naturally had far less temptations in Paris and Berlin

than you and I, Allen and Hart in Kentucky and Ohio (U.S.A.)

respectively. If I can find it I’ll send you a scrap of De Gourmont’s

essay on Laforgue that I translated last summer. This is more

illuminating than anything I could offer.

I think you need to cultivate greater simplicity of statement in your

more emotional things,--however well your present facility suits the

more ornamented and artificial congruities of satire or brilliant

impressionism. In “Yellow River” there are many lines that are too noble

to be wasted,--some of great penetration and beauty. So all this makes

me wish you would devote some extra effort into perfecting this poem,

willfully extracting the more obvious echoes of Eliot. You are certainly

rich enough to get along without them. Don’t let your interest in _The

Fugitive_ woo too many things into too sudden print. Forgive my pedantic

bass and lifted finger, but I think you are inclined to too hasty mss.

dispatches sometimes.

The ads are calling, so Addios. I feel like quoting the first verse of

_The Bridge_ for a snappy close:--

Macadam, gun grey as the tunny’s pelt,

Leaps from Far Rockaway to Golden Gate,

For first it was the road, the road only

We heeded in joint piracy and pushed.

134: TO ALLEN TATE

[_Cleveland_] _Feb. 15th, ’23_

Dear Allen: --/--/ I enclose a note from James Daly, whose poetry you

may have sampled in _Broom_. He was here last Fall visiting a mutual

friend, and I think I showed him some of your verse. After you have seen

what “some others” think of you, please return the enclosed. _Broom_, by

the way, has busted; N. Y. office closed last Saturday; March issue, the

last, to be distributed from Berlin while the tent-stakes are being

pulled up. I rejoice in a way. At least they won’t get a chance to

murder my “F and H” any more. _Secession_ will publish the three parts

together probably sometime next summer. (There is no use in my sending

anything more to _The Dial_; they just rejected my “Stark Major,” and it

is plain that their interest in helping American letters is very

incidental. Note the predominance given to translations of the older

generation of Germans, etc., who have absolutely nothing to give us but

a certain ante-bellum “refinement.” They aren’t printing the younger

crowd of any country.) All this should convince you, as well as myself,

of the real place and necessity for _Secession_. Of course I’m sorry now

that I fooled around sending “F and H” anywhere else at all. _Dial_ had

a chance at that, too, you know.

You may be indisposed to Waldo Frank, but I must recommend to you _City

Block_ as the richest in content of any “fiction” that has appeared in

the American 20th century. Frank has the real mystic’s vision. His

apprehensions astonish one. I have also enjoyed reading Ouspensky’s

_Tertium Organum_ lately. Its corroboration of several experiences in

consciousness that I have had gave it particular interest.

135: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _Feb. 18th, ’23_

Dear Gorham: -- -- -- -- Your summary of praises for “F and H” was such a

fine tribute that it might account for my backache and confinement to

the bed yesterday. But the more probable cause for _that_, however, is

liquor and the cogitations and cerebral excitements it threw me into

regarding my new enterprise, _The Bridge_, on the evening precedent. I

am too much interested in this _Bridge_ thing lately to write letters,

ads, or anything. It is just beginning to take the least outline,--and

the more outline the conception of the thing takes,--the more its final

difficulties appal me. All this preliminary thought has to result, of

course, in some channel forms or mould into which I throw myself at

white heat. Very roughly, it concerns a mystical synthesis of “America.”

History and fact, location, etc., all have to be transfigured into

abstract form that would almost function independently of its subject

matter. The initial impulses of “our people” will have to be gathered up

toward the climax of the bridge, symbol of our constructive future, our

unique identity, in which is included also our scientific hopes and

achievements of the future. The mystic portent of all this is already

flocking through my mind (when I say this I should say “the mystic

possibilities,” but that is all that’s worth announcing, anyway) but the

actual statement of the thing, the marshalling of the forces, will take

me months, at best; and I may have to give it up entirely before that;

it may be too impossible an ambition. But if I do succeed, such a waving

of banners, such ascent of towers, such dancing, etc., will never before

have been put down on paper! The form will be symphonic, something like

“F and H” with its treatment of varied content, and it will probably

approximate the same length in lines. It is perhaps rather silly to go

on this way before more than a dozen lines have been written, but at any

rate it serves to excuse my possible deficiencies in correspondence in

the near future, should the obsession carry me much further. I hate to

have to go to work every day! When I get _The Bridge_ done, or something

of equal length, I think it will be time to try Liveright or Huebsch or

Knopf for a collected publication. Just now I have hardly enough of even

quality and tone to satisfy me. Of course I’m glad to know that Wheeler

and Wescott are interested in me, especially as I am led to respect

their standards, but I might as well relinquish my mss. to the desk

drawer as to offer its publication to Wheeler, at least so far as I

know. Did he publish Turbyfill in Chicago? or was it Berlin? You will

naturally see my reasons for at least attempting the more standard

publishers first, I’m sure. And until I have the extra and necessary

amount to add, there is no use committing myself to any arrangements at

all. In passing I do want to thank you, Gorham, for your constant

interest in interpreting me to others whose added interest all makes me

confident that I have more to offer than I once supposed. And I am even

more grateful for your very rich suggestions best stated in your _Frank

Study_ on the treatment of mechanical manifestations of today as subject

for lyrical, dramatic, and even epic poetry. You must already notice

that influence in “F and H.” It is to figure even larger in _The

Bridge_. The field of possibilities literally glitters all around one

with the perception and vocabulary to pick out significant details and

digest them into something emotional.

Your visit to Amy Lowell was a characteristic literary experience in

American letters of the day, a baptism, as it were, from the Episcopal

font, endowing you with the proper blessing and chastisement necessary

for the younger generation. All hail to Amy’s poetry propaganda! but I

should not enjoy talking to her.

I think you discovered the weak points in my review pretty well.

However, I think Wheelwright’s recent letter about _Secession_ in _The

Freeman_ displayed very little evidence as prose workmanship, even of

the most fundamental nature. He certainly sustained himself much better

as “Dorian Abbott.” In the letter his partis pris emotionalism was too

evident to convince his readers properly. In this sense, a course in

advertising would be good for him, which reminds me that I’ll soon send

you one of my campaigns that not only “went over big” but is

theoretically a good piece of work. Are you still studying this modern

science?

It must be rather hellish reading through so many books every week that

your eyes pop out. Truly, you must look for some editorial post,

copywriting job, or something that will relieve you of such strains. I

think you will probably find things much smoother in your new apartment

which I’m delighted to think of. Is it in the Village? I can’t quite

place it. When I come down in June, I’ll probably plan on staying with

you and Elizabeth [Mrs. Munson].

Just now, it’s Vulcan back to the Furnace! The “bowels” poem comes out

in the next _S4N_, which bunch Tate writes that he has just joined

through my communications. He has submitted “Pins and Needles,” which I

imagine Fitts will use. I’m waiting now for _The Dial_ to send back my

“Stark Major.” Just sent a caricature of Paul Rosenfeld to _The Little

Review_, telling them to publish it, if they cared to, “along with the

rest of my inadvertent correspondence.” It is called “Anointment of our

Well Dressed Critic,” or “Why Waste the Eggs?”--Three-dimensional Vista,

by Hart Crane. Allons!

136: TO ----

[_Cleveland_] [_Feb. 20_]

Dear ----: Those who have wept in the darkness sometimes are rewarded

with stray leaves blown inadvertently. Since your last I have [had] one

of those few experiences that come,--ever, but which are almost

sufficient in their very incompleteness. This was only last evening in a

vaudeville show with -- -- -- --. -- -- -- -- has manifested charming traits

before, but there has always been an older brother around. Last

night--it sounds silly enough to tell (but not in view of his real

beauty)--O, it was only a matter of light affectionate stray

touches--and half-hinted speech. But these were genuine and in that

sense among the few things I can remember happily. With -- -- -- -- you

must think of someone mildly sober, with a face not too thin, but with

faun precision of line and feature. Crisp ears, a little pointed, fine

and docile hair almost golden, yet darker,--eyes that are a little

heavy--but wide apart and usually a little narrowed,--aristocratic

(English) jaws, and a mouth that [is] just mobile enough to suggest

voluptuousness. A strong rather slender figure, negligently carried,

that is perfect from flanks that hold an easy persistence to shoulders

that are soft yet full and hard. A smooth and rather olive skin that is

cool--at first.

Excuse this long catalog--I admit it is mainly for my own satisfaction,

and I am drunk now and in such state my satisfactions are always

lengthy. When I see you ask me to tell you more about him for he is

worth more and better words, I assure you. O yes, I shall see him again

soon. The climax will be all too easily reached,--But my gratitude is

enduring--if only for that _once_, at least, something beautiful

approached me and as though it were the most natural thing in the world,

enclosed me in his arm and pulled me to him without my slightest bid.

And we who create must endure--must hold to spirit not by the mind, the

intellect alone. These have no mystic possibilities. O flesh damned to

hate and scorn! I have felt my cheek pressed on the desert these days

and months too much. How old I am! Yet, oddly now this sense [of]

age--not at all in my senses--is gaining me altogether unique love and

happiness. I feel I have been thru much of this again and again before.

I long to go to India and stay always. Meditation on the sun is all

there is. Not that this isn’t enough! I mean I find my imagination more

sufficient all the time. The work of the workaday world is what I

dislike. I spend my evenings in music and sometimes ecstasy. I’ve been

writing a lot lately. --/--/ I’m bringing much into contemporary verse

that is new. I’m on a synthesis of America and its structural identity

now, called _The Bridge_. --/--/

137: TO WALDO FRANK

_Cleveland, O._ _Feb. 27th, ’23_

Dear Waldo Frank: Such major criticism as both you and Gorham have given

my “Faustus and Helen” is the most sensitizing influence I have ever

encountered. It is a new feeling, and a glorious one, to have one’s

inmost delicate intentions so fully recognized as your last letter to me

attested. I can feel a calmness on the sidewalk--where before I felt a

defiance only. And better than all--I am certain that a number of us at

last have some kind of community of interest. And with this communion

will come something better than a mere clique. It is a consciousness of

something more vital than stylistic questions and “taste,” it is vision,

and a vision alone that not only America needs, but the whole world. We

are not sure where this will lead, but after the complete renunciation

symbolized in _The Wasteland_ and, though less, in _Ulysses_ we have

sensed some new vitality. Whether I am in that current remains to be

seen,--but I am enough in it at least to be sure that you are

definitely in it already. What delights me almost beyond words is that

my natural idiom (which I have unavoidably stuck to in spite of nearly

everybody’s nodding, querulous head) has reached and carried to you so

completely the very blood and bone of me. There is only one way of

saying what comes to one in ecstasy. One works and works over it to

finish and organize it perfectly--but fundamentally that doesn’t affect

one’s _way_ of saying it. The enclosed poem will evidence enough meaning

of that, I fear, in certain flaws and weaknesses that, so far, I’ve not

had the grace to change. The norm of accuracy in such things is,

however, at best so far from second-reader penetration, that bad as it

is, I can’t resist sending it to you now.

Please do not feel it necessary to answer me until you are perfectly

free from other preoccupations. I know what such things cost, and knew

before your last letter exactly why you delayed. (Now that I see this

written, it sounds all-too presumptuous; however, my appreciation was

“prematurely ripe,” for that idea did occur.)

Munson’s _Study_ came to me today. I think Liveright did a very good

job, better than I expected. The photograph seconded an impression I

remembered of you several years ago in New York. I may be repeating

myself when I mention that you came into Brown’s Chop House one evening

and greeted some friends near a table where Harrison Smith and myself

were dining;--only, of course this Stieglitz portrait gives me a much

deeper impression. --/--/

138: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _March 2nd, ’23_

Dear Gorham: --/--/ The last several days have been equally among the

most intense in my life. The annoyance comes in only on the swing of a

repressive _fate_. To be stimulated to the nth degree with your head

burgeoning with ideas and conceptions of the most baffling interest and

lure--and then to have to munch ideas on water heaters (I am writing

another book for house fraus!) has been a real cruelty this time,

however temporary. The more I think about my _Bridge_ poem the more

thrilling its symbolical possibilities become, and since my reading of

you and Frank (I recently bought _City Block_) I begin to feel myself

directly connected with Whitman. I feel myself in currents that are

positively awesome in their extent and possibilities. “Faustus and

Helen” was only a beginning--but in it I struck new _timbres_ that

suggest dozens more, all unique, yet poignant and expressive of our

epoch. Modern music almost drives me crazy! I went to hear D’Indy’s _II

Symphony_ last night and my hair stood on end at its revelations. To get

those, and others of men like Strauss, Ravel, Scriabin, and Bloch into

_words_, one needs to _ransack_ the vocabularies of Shakespeare, Jonson,

Webster (for theirs were the richest) and add on scientific, street and

counter, and psychological terms, etc. Yet I claim such things can be

done! The modern artist needs gigantic assimilative capacities,

emotion,--and the greatest of _all_--_vision_. “Striated with nuances,

nervosities, that we are heir to”--is more than a casual observation for

me. And then--structure! What pleased me greatly about Frank’s comment

was the notice of great structural evidence in “F. and H.” Potentially I

feel myself quite fit to become a suitable Pindar for the dawn of the

machine age, so called. I have lost the last shreds of philosophical

pessimism during the last few months. O yes, the “background of

life”--and all that is still there, but that is only three-dimensional.

It is to the pulse of a greater dynamism that my work must revolve.

Something terribly fierce and yet gentle.

You have no doubt wondered why I have behaved so strangely about the

review for your _Study_. It is coming sometime. At present I have

developed a chronic hesitation against it which must seem almost

pathological. I am so enthused about it that I can’t seem to adopt a

level-headed, conventionally-critical attitude about it. Also, the space

for such considerations as I would [get?] into is too restricted in the

Double-Skull to permit much more than either a screed, ineffective or

broken, or mere jacket type of advertisement. I hope you won’t

misinterpret my delay at any rate. As I said in my last note, the

typography, paper, cover, photograph--everything in fact, is of the best

taste and distinction. This book is bound to do you as much good as

Frank. The latter is shown by Stieglitz’s picture to be an extremely

mystic type. Don’t think me silly when I call the head and the eyes

extremely beautiful. Frank has done me a world of good by his last

letter (which promised another soon including further points on “F. &

H.”) and, as I wrote him, now I feel I can walk calmly along the

sidewalk whereas before I felt only defiance. He gripped the mystical

content of the poem so thoroughly that I despair of ever finding a more

satisfying enthusiast.

And now to your question about passing the good word along. I discover

that I have been all-too-easy all along in letting out announcements of

my sexual predilections. Not that anything unpleasant has happened or is

imminent. But it does put me into obligatory relations to a certain

extent with “those who know,” and this irks me to think of sometimes.

After all, when you’re dead it doesn’t matter, and this statement alone

proves my immunity from any “shame” about it. But I find the ordinary

business of earning a living entirely too stringent to want to add any

prejudices against me _of that nature_ in the minds of any publicans and

sinners. Such things have such a wholesale way of leaking out! Everyone

knows now about B----, H---- and others--the list too long to bother

with. I am all-too-free with my tongue and doubtless always shall

be--but I’m going to ask you to advise and work me better with a more

discreet behavior. --/--/

139: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK

[_New York City_] _Sunday_ [_March_]

Dear Lotte and Richard: --/--/ I am quite happy. A long walk this

afternoon in salt air and clear sunlight. Everyone carrying canes and

wearing bright clothes. Lunch tomorrow with Waldo Frank. Munson is

enthusiastic about my staying with them. They have a fresh and charming

apartment with room enough for me, so everything is FINE.

I sat a long while thinking about how beautiful you both were when I

left you last night. Yes,--of course, Life is very beautiful when there

are such people to meet and love as I love you both. Be very happy.

Along with me. I never felt better before.

140: TO WALDO FRANK

[_New York City_] _Easter_

Dear Waldo: --/--/ I don’t need to mention that it was great to shake

hands and talk with you. This I must mention, however,--that we have not

yet had a real meeting. My mind has been packed with things that must be

talked over with you when conditions are opportune. I am not intending

mysterious words. But I am looking forward to the time--perhaps the

times--that we shall get together and (in the wonderful slang phrase)

“spark.” Since reading _City Block_ I have not wavered in an

enthusiastic conviction that yours is the most vital consciousness in

America, and that potentially I have responses which might prove

interesting, even valuable to us both. My statements are awkward, and I

really do not know how to proceed about such conversations: they

“usually,” as you know, “just happen.” All this leads to a very simple

suggestion, however,--and that is that I hope you will let me know when

you are next in town when we can lunch or dine together. -- -- -- --

141: TO CHARLOTTE RYCHTARIK

_New York City_ _April 13th, ’23_

Dear Lotte: I am glad that you can use the smock. Richard’s illustration

of you using it is very effective, and the “covers the earth” drawing is

exemplary and inspirational indeed. --/--/

I am glad that you like _Our America_. Frank says some very wonderful

things in that book. It is coming out again next year and with new

additions. This time, as I understand him, he intends to mention my work

in it. Meeting some of the older poets and writers down here is an odd

experience. Most of them are very disagreeable, and don’t talk the same

language as we do, they are not concerned with the same problems. I read

“Faustus and Helen” to a group of people last evening, and very few of

them, of course understood anything that I was talking about. If it

weren’t for the praise and understanding I have received from people

like Frank and Munson and Allen Tate, etc., I would begin to feel that I

might be to blame. But this “new consciousness” is something that takes

a long while to “put across.” I want Richard to meet my friends, the

Habichts, who have their apartment filled with lovely things to touch

and look at, and who serve wonderful sherry and Benedictine. I have too

many invitations to really enjoy. Your friends quickly turn into enemies

here, unless you limit the time you give for social affairs. --/--/

142: TO ALFRED STIEGLITZ

[_New York City_] _April 15th, ’23_

Dear great and good man, Alfred Stieglitz: I don’t know whether or not I

mentioned to you yesterday that I intend to include my short verbal

definition of your work and aims in a fairly comprehensive essay on your

work. I had not thought of doing this until you so thoroughly confirmed

my conjectures as being the only absolutely correct statement that you

had thus far heard concerning your photographs. That moment was a

tremendous one in my life because I was able to share all the truth

toward which I am working in my own medium, poetry, with another man who

had manifestly taken many steps in that same direction in _his_ work.

Since we seem, then, already so well acquainted I have a request to make

of you regarding the kernel of my essay, which I am quoting below as you

requested. Until I can get the rest of my essay on your work into form,

I would prefer that you keep my statement in strict confidence. I would

like to give it a fresh presentation with other amplifications and

details concerning what I consider your position as a scientist,

philosopher or whatever wonder you are. You know the world better than I

do, but we probably would agree on certain reticences and their

safe-guarding from inaccurate hands. I shall be up to see you probably

very soon, and we can talk again. The reason for my not accompanying Mr.

Munson this afternoon, however, is that I want to get into certain

explanations of your photographs about which, now, I feel a certain

proud responsibility.

* * * * *

“The camera has been well proved the instrument of personal perception

in a number of living hands, but in the hands of Alfred Stieglitz it

becomes the instrument of something more specially vital--apprehension.

The eerie speed of the shutter is more adequate than the human eye to

remember, catching even the transition of the mist-mote into the cloud,

the thought that is jetted from the eye to leave it instantly forever.

Speed is at the bottom of it all--the hundredth of a second caught so

precisely that the motion is continued from the picture infinitely: the

moment made eternal.

“This baffling capture is an end in itself. It even seems to get at the

motion and emotion of so-called inanimate life. It is the passivity of

the camera coupled with the unbounded respect of this photographer for

its mechanical perfectibility which permits nature and all life to

mirror itself so intimately and so unexpectedly that we are thrown into

ultimate harmonies by looking at these stationary, yet strangely moving

pictures.

“If the essences of things were in their mass and bulk we should not

need the clairvoyance of Stieglitz’s photography to arrest them for

examination and appreciation. But they are suspended on the invisible

dimension whose vibrance has been denied the human eye at all times save

in the intuition of ecstasy. Alfred Stieglitz can say to us today what

William Blake said to as baffled a world more than a hundred years ago

in his ‘To the Christians’:

‘I give you the end of a golden string:

Only wind it into a ball,--

It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate,

Built in Jerusalem’s wall.’”

143: TO CHARLOTTE RYCHTARIK

[_New York City_] [_ca. May 7_]

My dear Lotte: --/--/ R[ichard Rychtarik] wanted me to ask Frank about

the privilege of translating some of the stories in _City Block_. I got

an answer from Frank this morning, suggesting that Richard translate the

book if I thought him able. Well,--translating is difficult, and

especially Waldo Frank is hard to translate, I am sure. I think it would

be fine if Richard went ahead with the stories. But before any are

published I think it would be wise to try them out on some other people

who do Czech trans. from _Czech into English_ and see how true the

original style has been preserved. You are going to be angry with me for

all this fuss, I am sure, but you see I have no way of judging how well

Richard understands English as a literary language. I don’t want to

misrepresent Richard to Frank either. Please let me know what you think

of my plan. I shall send you back the copy of _City Block_ that R.

brought. It is your copy _to keep_; Frank is going to send me another

for myself.

I am going over to the office of _The Dial_ now to leave Richard’s

drawings, etc., for their consideration. We can’t expect to hear

anything about them for two or three weeks. I’ll let you know as soon as

I do. --/--/

144: TO WILLIAM SOMMER

_N. Y. C._ _May 9th, ’23_

Dear Bill: At LAST a letter from you!!! And let me mention that it was

one of the most beautiful I ever got from anyone. AND I am expecting

more. I read it the second and third times during my meal last night

down in one of the Italian restaurants on the lower East Side. There you

get a bottle of wine (fine, too!) and a good meal (that delights the

eyes as well as the stomach) for about $1. And such service! The waiters

all beam and are really interested in pleasing you. As Rychtarik said

when he was here last week, it’s just like Europe. I don’t know where I

should have been by this time, however, had it not been for three or

four fine people,--Gorham and his wife, and Slater Brown (the friend of

Cummings, “B” in _The Enormous Room_) who, in spite of knowing me only a

couple of weeks, has put me up nights in his room during the recent

spell of grippe in the Munson household, and who has kept me in funds,

poured wine into me, and taken me to the greatest burlesque shows down

on the lower east side that you ever imagined. We went to one last

night, and I so wished you were along. (They do everything but the Act

itself right on the stage, marvelous jazz songs, jokes, etc., and really

the best entertainment there is in N. Y. at present.) I have bids in for

jobs at two very good agencies. The thing is a farce, however, the way

you are kept waiting to know the outcome of one interview after another

with various executives. J. Walter Thompson have had me on the string

for three weeks, and a letter this morning tells me that within the next

few days I must drag myself up there again for another interview with

one more Thompson executive. It is the same way at Batten’s. I shall

have to cast about for anything available from stevedoring to

table-waiting pretty soon if they don’t get a move on.

Of course I have been rushing around to a lot of other agencies, too,

but the ones I just mentioned are the only ones who have anything to

offer me at the present time. I am very glad that you reminded me about

the cost of the photographs as I certainly can use as much of that money

as you can afford to send me at the present time. Hill charged me $20.00

for the six reproductions. I can’t cash any check here, so if you can

send me whatever portion of this amount in currency through the mail (I

enclose an addressed envelope) I’ll be immensely grateful. There is, you

realize, no use whatever in my thinking about returning to Cleveland. I

should simply have to go through the same process there of looking

around for work, and under embarrassing conditions. You need me HERE,

now, more than _there_, too, Bill, as I want to do everything I can to

get your pictures shown around and maybe bought. And also, in almost

every way, N.Y. is getting to be a really stupendous place. It is the

center of the world today, as Alexandria became the nucleus of another

older civilization. The wealthier and upper parts of the city have their

own beauty, but I prefer as a steady thing the wonderful streets of this

lower section, crowded with life, packed with movement and drama,

children, kind and drab-looking women, elbows braced on window ledges,

and rows of vegetables lining the streets that you would love to paint.

Life is possible here at greater intensity than probably any other place

in the world today, and I hope and pray that you will be able to slip

down here for a week or so during the summer. You must plan on it. Later

on I shall probably take a small apartment with Brown, and then there

will be plenty of room for you to stay with us at no expense at all.

--/--/

145: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK

[_New York City_] _June 5th, ’23_

Dear Charlotte and Richard: If you have seen or heard from my mother

lately you know already that I am all fixed up in my own room and as

happy as a bug in a rug! I wish you could see it for it is very

pleasant. Two windows opposite each other so there is almost always a

breeze, square high ceiling, newly-painted light-grey walls, black floor

and white ceiling, and all black furniture very plain but plentiful. I

have a fine large table to write on. When my luck turned it seemed to

turn equally favorably in every direction. I am not having to live in

any rooming house with an inquisitive landlady always looking through

the keyhole. A friend of my friend, Slater Brown, who has just left for

a long trip in Europe, has let me take his room with all his own

furniture and all for a very low price in comparison with the high rents

everywhere around here. It’s also right in the neighborhood where most

of my friends are living. Add to this good fortune a fine new Victrola,

and you see I am all ready to begin on _The Bridge_ again. It would not

have been possible to have done this if you had not been so generous and

helped me out so much,--but I can’t tell you how fine I feel to get my

feet on the ground again and put my nose up into the sky again for a few

minutes with the _Meistersinger_ Overture.

New York has been like a blazing furnace for the last two days, but I

shall be glad to stay here all summer working at my job and writing. I

feel that I am getting now just where I have longed to be for so long. I

can have absolute quiet and seclusion when I want it, wine when I need

it, and the intense and interesting spectacle of the streets and all the

various people. --/--/

146: TO HIS MOTHER

[_New York City_] _June 10th ’23_

Dear Grace: --/--/ Really, I’m having the finest time in my life.

There’s no use trying to describe the people I go round with. Not that

there are so many--there could easily be, but I’m always cutting down on

all but the few I like the most. Last night marketing with Sue [Jenkins]

and Bill Brown down in the Italian section (where everyone looks so

happy!) was a perfect circus. We carried pots and pans, spinach,

asparagus, etc., etc., from place to place--only buying one kind of

thing in each store--jostling with the crowds, etc. I’ve never been with

young people I enjoyed so much, and they, of course, have had real

lives. Then there is Kenneth Burke up at the _Dial_ office, Matty

Josephson (who has suddenly been moved to value me highly), Edward

Nagle, Gaston Lachaise, Malcolm Cowley--but what’s the use going on with

so many mere names. You can see how much fun I am having--and all the

more because I have a job and a totally different world to live in half

the time. Did I write you that I am getting quite a reputation with my

“Faustus & Helen” poem? Although it is only now being printed in

Florence, those critics and writers who have seen it are acclaiming me

with real gusto. Waldo Frank asked me to luncheon with him recently and

said I was the greatest contemporary American poet with that piece

alone. And John Cowper Powys, whose _Suspended Judgments_ and _Visions

and Revisions_ you have read, is very enthusiastic. Since I got

presented with my Victrola I am ready to start again on _The Bridge_.

Waldo Frank is very anxious for me to have that finished, as he intends

to take me up to his publisher (Boni & Liveright), and have me published

in volume form. But, of course, such things _can’t_ be rushed as he

understands.

I have not seen or heard from Miss Spencer since I made her my initial

bow. She spoke of finding me something but evidently didn’t sprain

herself in the attempt. That’s all right, however. There was little

reason why she should have. I didn’t _ask_ her, anyway. I shan’t see her

again, as she is your friend and we have nothing special in common

anyway. Waldo Frank, Alyse Gregory & others used some influence in

getting me my job with _J. Walter Thompson_ (get the name right this

time!), but I never would have got it if my samples and conversation had

not convinced them. I begin to see N. Y. very much more intimately since

I’ve been working. It makes living here far more pleasant than ever

before. Such color and style (on men, too) I’ve never seen before--no

two alike. That’s what is so interesting--the perfect freedom of wearing

what you want to, walking the gait you like (I have a much less hurried

gait than you’re familiar with) and nobody bothering you.

I don’t know many at the office yet. It’s too immense and I’m confined

to a highly specializing dept., but I’ve already been invited out to tea

by the personnel secretary. They employ a lot of real writers as

copywriters at Thompson’s, and have an entirely different feeling about

art & business than you encounter any place west of N.Y. In fact it’s a

feather in your cap if you know a little more than you’re “supposed to”

here. I think I’ve gained immeasurably by coming here now instead of

dragging along in Cleveland month after month. --/--/

147: TO RICHARD RYCHTARIK

[_New York City_] _June 21st, ’23_

Dear Richard: --/--/ Dr. Watson, President of _The Dial_ (Magazine), has

seen your drawings, etc., and wants me to ask you if you would care to

sell him “one” of them, and the rights for reproduction for _two_

others in _The Dial_. He is offering the same price and terms to you

that he made to Sommer,--$25.00 for the original, and the reproduction

rights without any payment. So will you kindly let me know what you

think about the matter very soon?

I don’t know what selections he has made yet, and will probably have no

time to see him for weeks, as I have office hours and he is seldom at

_The Dial_ offices,--but regardless of these details, I think that it

would be wisdom for you to accept the terms, however modest, in view of

the amount of prestige it will possibly give you, in the first place to

be “hanging in his house,” and in the second place to have your work

shown to about 18,000 people through the pages of the magazine. Of

course, I am _very_ happy that he has liked your work so well. This

makes _Two_ artists’ work that I have had a hand in getting

exhibited,--both from my “home town.” --/--/

148: TO ALFRED STIEGLITZ

[_New York City_] _Fourth of July_

Dear STIEGLITZ: Your letter was the most welcome thing that has come to

me in these last two weeks since you left, however late and partial my

response may seem to be. You should have heard from me much before this

if I hadn’t been neck high in writing some climacterics for my _Bridge_

poem. That simply carried me out of myself and all personal interests

from the dot of five until two in the morning sometimes--for several

days during which I was extremely happy. Those were also the very days

when I wanted most to write you,--paradoxically as it sounds, I _was_,

of course, for you and I meet on the same platform in our best and most

impersonal moods,--SO, I’ve been with you very much. The thing which

hurts me now that I have the time to write letters, is that I not only

have left the creative currents that would have prompted me to better

statements than I am usually equal to,--but also that I’m in a low state

of reactions towards everything, following an evening with Mr. J----.

Malice seems to settle inertly but very positively in some people, and

as he is somehow attached to several really fine friends of mine whose

company I would hate to forego on such account, I suppose I must learn

to face this little clown with better results. So far, I can only say

that wine is no ally against such odds. It even turns to vinegar! and

that is much less pleasing than pure water. I don’t need to say any more

to you about this man, his vacant mind, vague eyes and empty hands.

We’ve given that enough attention. I rant here merely because I have

been cheated (willy-nilly) of pouring out a clearer cup today, as I had

planned. I, in the end, am really the one to blame.

When I say that I welcomed your letter it doesn’t mean that I was

unconcerned enough with its testament of pain and accident not to think

about you and your situation many hours. What the details of those

matters were certainly would not help me to realize any the better that

you have been going through a very tumultuous period and that it has

been very fortunate that you should arrive in the country when you did,

not that you escaped them,--but that you were able to _see_ them more

tranquilly. The city is a place of “brokenness,” of drama; but when a

certain development in this intensity is reached a new stage is created,

or must be, arbitrarily, or there is a foreshortening, a loss and a

premature disintegration of experience. You are setting the keynote now

for a higher tranquillity than ever. It is an even wider intensity,

also. You see, I am writing to you perhaps very egoistically, but you

will understand that I am always seeing your life and experience very

solidly as a part of my own because I feel our identities so much alike

in spiritual direction. When it comes to action we diverge in several

ways,--but I’m sure we center in common devotions, in a kind of timeless

vision.

In the above sense I feel you as entering very strongly into certain

developments in _The Bridge_. May I say it, and not seem absurd, that

you are the first, or rather the purest living indice of a new order of

consciousness that I have met? We are accomplices in many ways that we

don’t yet fully understand. “What is now proved was once only imagined,”

said Blake. I have to combat every day those really sincere people, but

limited, who deny the superior logic of metaphor in favor of their

perfect sums, divisions and subtractions. They cannot go a foot unless

to merely catch up with some predetermined and set boundaries, nor can

they realize that they do nothing but walk ably over an old track

bedecked with all kinds of signposts and “championship records.” Nobody

minds their efforts, which frequently amount to a great deal,--but I

object to their system of judgment being so regally applied to what I’m

interested in doing. Such a cramping cannot be reconciled with the work

which you have done, and which I feel myself a little beginning to do.

The great energies about us cannot be transformed that way into a higher

quality of life, and by perfecting our sensibilities, response and

actions, we are always contributing more than we can realize

(rationalize) at the time. We answer them a little vaguely, first,

because our ends are forever unaccomplished, and because, secondly, our

work is self-explanatory enough, if they could “see” it. I nearly go mad

with the intense but always misty realization of what _can_ be done if

potentialities are fully freed, released. I know you to feel the same

way about your camera,--despite all that you actually _have_ done with

it already. In that sense I hope to make it the one memorable thing to

you in this letter that I think you should go on with your photographic

synthesis of life this summer and fall, gathering together those

dangerous interests outside of yourself into that purer projection of

yourself. It is really not a projection in any but a loose sense, for I

feel more and more that in the absolute sense the artist _identifies_

himself with life. Because he has always had so much surrounding

indifference and resistance such “action” takes on a more relative and

limited term which has been abused and misunderstood by several

generations,--this same “projecting.” But in the true mystical sense as

well as in the sense which Aristotle meant by the “imitation of nature,”

I feel that I’m right.

I shall go on thinking of you, the apples and the gable, and writing you

whenever I can get a moment. So much has to be crammed into my narrow

evenings and holidays, that I am becoming a poor correspondent with

everyone, I fear. You will realize how much I am with you, I feel sure,

by other signs. I am sending you a roughly typed sheet containing some

lines from _The Bridge_.[29] They symbolize its main intentions.

However, as they are fragmentary and not in entirely finished form,

please don’t show them around. I only want you to get a better idea of

what I’m saying than could be “said” in prose. Some of the lines will be

clear enough to give a glimpse of some of my ideas whether or not the

Whole can be grasped from such fragments or not. -- -- -- --

149: TO CHARLOTTE RYCHTARIK

[_New York City_] _July 21st ’23_

Dear Charlotte: Your lovely letter came to me this morning ... I read it

on the way to work. And I am full of happiness that you think of me as

you do,--both you and Richard. Yes, it is my birthday and I must be a

little sentimental,--especially as all my friends have recently left the

city for places more cool and green and watery. It has been a frightful

day, torrid and frying. And I have just come back from a lonely meal in

Prince Street,--the place where Richard ate with me, and where I have

been many times since he left. Ah, yes, _there_ is wine, but what is

wine when you drink it alone! Yet, I am happy here in my room with the

Victrola playing Ravel,--the Faery Garden piece which you and I heard

so often together up in my room in Cleveland. When I think of that room,

it is almost to give way to tears, because I shall never find my way

back to it. It is not necessary, of course, that I should, but just the

same it was the center and beginning of all that I am and ever will be,

the center of such pain as would tear me to pieces to tell you about,

and equally the center of great joys. _The Bridge_ seems to me so

beautiful,--and it was there that I first thought about it, and it was

there that I wrote “Faustus and Helen,” which Waldo Frank says is so

good that I will be remembered by that, whether or not I write more or

not. And all this is, of course, connected very intimately with my

Mother, my beautiful mother whom I am so glad you love and speak about.

Indeed it was fine of you to go over and see her as I asked you to do,

Charlotte and Richard! And may I also say, in the same breath, that your

letter was very painful? It really was,--because I have known all the

things you said about her unhappiness for many, many months. _And_ there

is really nothing that can be done: that is the worst of it. I am sure

if you think a minute about my Grandmother’s age you will realize from

that alone that my Mother could not possibly leave her to come here or

anywhere else. And my Grandmother, at her age, cannot move. My mother

has had her full share of suffering and I have had much, also. I have

had enough, anyway, to realize that it is all very beautiful in the end

if you will pierce through to the center of it and see it in relation to

the real emotions and values of Life. Do not think I am entirely happy

here,--or ever will be, for that matter, except for a few moments at a

time when I am perhaps writing or receiving a return of love. The true

idea of God is the only thing that can give happiness,--and that is the

identification of yourself with _all of life_. It is a fierce and humble

happiness, both at the same time, and I am hoping that my Mother will

find that _feeling_ (for it need not be a conscious thought) at some

time or other. She must _accept everything_ and as it comes (as we all

must) before she can come to such happiness, glorious sorrow, or

whatever you want to call it. You must never think that I am not doing

all I can to make my Mother’s life as bright as possible, even though I

do not always succeed. I am doing work of a kind which I should not

choose to do at all except that it makes me (or will make me) more money

in the end than the simpler things which would satisfy my own single

requirements--and just because I want to provide for my mother’s future

as much as I can. We shall be together more and more as time goes on,

and this separation at present is only temporary. You don’t know how

grateful I am that you have given her your sympathy and love, and that

has been _real_ or she would not have confided in you the way she has.

--/--/

I hope that I have not put you and Richard to too much trouble about

those books. They will be fine here with me in my room. Mother sent me

my trunk (that much debated question which you will remember!) this

week, and it was full of all kinds of dear familiar things that you have

seen and touched in my room. There is that ivory Chinese box, for

instance, which is here before me as I write. It looks very charming on

the black table next to the jade Buddha that Harry [Candee] brought me

from China.

I have not written much this last week,--too hot for one thing,--and

then there are always people dropping in in the evening. But I am

sending you a copy (to keep) of the last part of _The Bridge_ which is

all that I have done so far, that is, in a lump.[30] You will remember

enough of what I told you a long time ago about my general ideas and the

plan of the entire poem to understand it fairly well anyway. It is sheer

ecstasy here,--that is, all my friends who have seen it, say that. It

was written verse by verse in the most tremendous emotional exaltations

I have ever felt. I may change a few words in it here and there before

the entire poem is finished, but there will be practically the same

arrangement as what you see. If I only had more time away from office

work I should have made much faster progress,--but I am perfectly sure

that it will be finished within a year,--and as it is to be about four

or five times as long as the enclosed fragment when it is complete,--I

shall have been working about as fast on it as I have ever worked in the

past. I am especially anxious to finish it, however, because than I

shall have all my best things brought out in book form, and with a

jacket or cover by Richard Rychtarik, I hope. Waldo Frank is anxious to

introduce me to his publisher when the right time comes, and so there is

no doubt but that the book will come out eventually. In the meantime

there is a long essay that I hope to write on the photography of Alfred

Stieglitz. I ought to have about two weeks for that _away from

everything_, when I could shut myself up somewhere and not have my mind

taken away from it for a moment. In it I shall have to go very

deep,--into, perhaps, some of the most delicate problems of art in the

future. You see, I too, have my moments of despair,--for there is so

little time for me to think about such things. I am succeeding in my

position with the advertising agency quite well,--but all that means

_more_ work there, and even _less_ time for what I want to do. I am

forced to be ambitious in two directions, you see, and in many ways it

is like being put up on a cross and divided. I hope to succeed in them

both,--the reasons you will easily understand. This last week I got

promoted to the copy department, and on Tuesday night I shall take the

train for Chicago. Business of the company, of course, which will keep

me out of New York for probably about ten days or two weeks. Being with

the largest advertising agency in the world is giving me fine experience

that will get me higher-paid positions in other places after awhile. In

many ways I have been very lucky to get placed so well at my age, so I

complain about nothing except that I would like to have the days twice

as long as they are--for all I want to do. --/--/

150: TO ALFRED STIEGLITZ

[_New York City_] _Aug 11th ’23_

Dear Stieglitz: The imagination dwells on frangible boughs! For ten days

now I’ve been travelling through the middle west on _business_ for the

company. Investigating certain sales facts and figures among hardware

and paint dealers on “Barrelled Sunlight,” a kind of white paint! My

mind is like dough and _The Bridge_ is far away. Your card was a warm

signal to me on the morning of my joyful return. I never saw the Venus

in her sphere before--looking on the world with the wind from Delphos in

her hair! How do you do it? You have the distinction of being classic

and realistic at once. That, of course, is what _real_ classicism means.

You don’t know how much I think about my essay on you and your work!

Please don’t think me faithless. I fly in a rage when I think of the

sacrifices I pay just to feed myself in the hope of time--a rightful

heritage of all of us--and it takes time to say and think out the things

I feel in your photographs. I’ll try and write you more soon, but don’t

misunderstand any silences from me. _I am your brother always_--

151: TO HIS MOTHER

[_New York City_] _Aug 11 ’23_

Dear Grace and Grandma: --/--/ I came near a collapse near the middle of

the week--the trip, hot weather, etc., certainly tested me and worries

kept me from much sleep--as things are. N.Y. is bad in the summer

anyway--takes all the vitality you have to give and gives you back

nothing to build with or repair. I hope things are going better now.

I’ll write maybe during next week--but worry about correspondence is a

burden sometimes when I have so much new work to think about. You’ll

understand me, I hope, in any case. I enjoyed your letter, Grandma, and

it wasn’t too long. You write extraordinarily well!

152: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK

[_New York City_] _Sunday, Aug. 19th_

Dear Lotte and Richard: Not much has happened since I got back, but it

will interest you to know that ---- came around for lunch one day last

week--and we had a talk about the book, _Ulysses_! I didn’t openly

accuse him of _stealing_ it, just “borrowing” it,--but he certainly

revealed a very weak position, leaving me to think more than ever that

he is dishonest. He denied that he had been up to my room at all until I

reminded him that he had told me so himself just a few weeks before, and

that, anyway, my Mother had mentioned that he had been up there and had

spoken about “borrowing” the book himself. This seemed to throw him into

great confusion. He said he would look around among his things in his

trunk, then, and “see” if he had taken it and forgotten to mention it to

me. Imagine! Anybody who takes a book of such a size and value DOES NOT

FORGET ABOUT IT SO EASILY. It seems to me that in admitting a thing like

that he has practically admitted all I suspected. I told him to go ahead

and look for it,--but he has probably sold it, and he will also probably

keep away from me until I go after him in earnest. It would not have

been tactful of me to accuse him of stealing right away,--but if he has

done that I think he is going to be sorry for it. Isn’t it hard to

believe!!!!

I also talked to him about the way he acted about your pictures--and

told him that I had agreed with you both in your attitude. It seemed to

make him furious that you had spoken to me about it, and he said he was

going to write you--evidently an angry letter. Maybe you have got it by

this time. It is all too bad--it has really shocked me enormously to

have discovered such crooked hypocrisy in such a good mind. I was

anxious that you should know about my conversation with ---- because, if

he does write you as he said he would, you will know that I have tried

to be as honest as I know how to be. --/--/

It is a beautiful day here, but as usual, I am sitting in, reading and

writing. Just had breakfast with Gorham Munson and Liza, his wife. You

would really like Liza, Charlotte. She teaches dancing and is dark and

quiet and beautiful. The Munsons are about the only friends of mine who

are now in town--all the rest being away in the country. --/--/

153: TO HIS MOTHER

[_New York City_] _Aug. 24th, ’23_

Dear Grace: --/--/ But I didn’t accuse him of anything further at the

time--and haven’t since,--hoping that he would possibly be able to get

hold of the book and return it to me somehow, if he got frightened

enough. However, I have a letter all written to him. It will be sent

just as soon as I get time to type it out; probably this week-end.

There’s nothing doubtful about what I say in it either. I’m only sorry

that no action can be taken against him. We are both out of the state

where the theft occurred--and the book has been banned by the mails,

anyway, so I wouldn’t get much favor in the courts on that account.

-- -- -- -- had the brass to come here the other day (this makes me think

him almost nutty) and instead of having himself announced at the outer

reception room--comes ranging around among the people in the office,

inquiring for me, and then comes up and stands and chats at my desk

without the least concern! AND--what do you suppose he wants of me.

--/--/ Just think of such an idiotic project--to say nothing of assuming

that I would care to risk my standing around here for such a project!

Then he keeps asking me out to the -- -- -- -- with a kind of desperate

insistence, as though he thought I could be recompensed for his

defaulting by satisfying some “social aspirations.” He certainly is

terrible, silly as well.

I feel one hundred per cent better since I got back to copy work. I’m up

on the fourteenth floor now with a wonderful view out over the Murray

Hill section and the East River right off the edge of my desk. I’m far

from being dissatisfied, as you suggested. The plain fact was, and still

is--that New York takes such a lot from you that you have to save all

you can of yourself or you simply give out. I need a good bed, but it

will be a long time before I can get one unless you feel like shipping

that little brass bed on the third floor down here to me sometime. That

would be fine, and could serve me always here, but you’ll probably think

it is out of the question to send it. It doesn’t make much difference

how early you go to bed if you can’t get to sleep--you know that. And

that has been the state of things with me for some time here. However,

I’m really feeling all right. It’s just tiredness--and worry that you

are very, very unhappy--what to do--etc.

I don’t know what is wrong with Charlotte and Richard. They haven’t

sent my books to me on the date they said they would, nor have I had a

word from them since Cleveland. If they are going to get upset and

offended about something that I don’t even guess having said to injure

them--then, they, like a whole lot of other people who go around just

aching to cut their own heads off, will have to do it. Perhaps they’ve

just been very busy, though; it’s certainly too early yet to make any

definite assumptions. --/--/

154: TO ALFRED STIEGLITZ

_New York City_ _Aug. 25th, ’23_

Dear Stieglitz: I am hoping that you have seen Waldo, as you mentioned

in your letter, by this time. The idea seemed so sensible to me, knowing

as I have, the uneasy frictions that have bothered both of you and

having regretted so much the evident misunderstandings all around. It is

very important for us all--that is, all who are trying to establish an

honest basis for what work we get a chance to do. It isn’t, as you say,

a matter of politics,--but something akin to our spiritual bread and

butter. Not all our manna comes from the skies. And we suffer

all-too-much from social malnutrition once we try to live _entirely_

with the ghostly past. We must somehow touch the clearest veins of

eternity flowing through the crowds around us--or risk being the kind of

glorious cripples that have missed some vital part of their inheritance.

It’s good to hear that you have been “at the camera” again and that you

are recovering, with physical and nervous rest, that extremity of

delicate equilibrium that goes into your best activities. I know what it

is to be exiled for months at a time. They’re the usual things with me,

and lately it has been especially hard to be cut up between the

necessities of a readjustment at the office (they’ve put me into a new

department and I enjoy writing copy again to some extent) and the more

natural propulsion toward such things as _The Bridge_. I’ve been in such

despair about this latter for some time!--not seeing my way to introduce

it in the way I want (the end and climax, what you have seen, is all

that’s done so far) and not getting the needful hours to ripen anything

in myself. If I can once get certain obligations disposed of in my

family, I shall certainly break loose and do only such simple labor for

my room and board as will not come into my consciousness after “working

hours.” Streams of “copy” and ad layouts course through my head all

night sometimes until I feel like a thread singed and twisted in the

morning. This has been, very likely, as strenuous [a] year and as

wasteful a one as I shall encounter for a long time, although you can

never foretell such things as long as you have a family and connections.

But I am looking forward to a more equable program when winter comes,

when people’s windows are shut, cats are quieter and the air more

bracing.

Every once in a while I [get] a statement or so noted down in regard to

my interpretation of you and your photographs. There are still many

things in the lucid explanation of them that simply baffle me. To use a

modern simile that occurred to me in that connection--it’s like trying

to locate “the wires of the Acropolis”; indeed, I may call my essay by

that name before I get through. A little recent study of Picasso and his

Harlequins has been illuminating on the inner realities and spiritual

quantities that both of you possess, and perhaps by the time you get

back to town I’ll have some other comparisons ready for you to deny or

substantiate. I certainly miss seeing you, now, and wish you might send

me one or two of those prints that are otherwise committed to the waste

basket sometime soon.

155: TO HIS MOTHER

[_New York City_] _Sept. 8th, ’23_

Dear Grace and Grandma: Both of your last letters have been so sweet and

gratifying that I am very grateful. I am glad to think of you as located

for the winter, putting in coal, and assured of the comforts that I know

you ought to have. They have raised the rent on Gorham and Liza,--and

they have been trying to locate a new place at a more reasonable figure,

but they may not move at all--so discouraging is the search. That’s one

of the banes of New York--one is on a moving cloud here most of the

time, for, either the house you live in is being torn down for an

apartment, or else the landlord is gouging you constantly for your last

cent. I never want to have any of us without some property of our

own--land and building--whether we live in it or not, but just so that

“we have it” and are not entirely subject to the whims of fortune. If I

ever get any money, I know that I shall attend to that investment before

I travel or anything else. You’ve got to have an anchorage somewhere if

you are ever to have any repose of mind.

Of this latter-mentioned article--I can’t say I have had much recently.

Of all the abominable snakes I ever heard of -- -- -- -- is the worst. I

got a letter on Wednesday from -- -- -- --. He had evidently feared my

exposure of him to them--and to ward it off he took the pains to tell

her that I was a venomous person, upset by the heat of the City, and

trying to torture him for mere pleasure. She recommended a dose of

pills, a swim, etc., as a means of clearing up my head--and otherwise

insulted me. The next morn--comes a letter from -- -- -- -- himself--in

which he denies that his letter constituted a confession at all, said

that the money was sent merely out of consideration for my loss, etc.,

and other kinds of weak trashy statements. I shall not reply to him, but

I wrote -- -- -- -- that if she had any interest in the truth or cared to

alleviate her own responsibilities in imposing such opinions on me--she

might come into town someday next week and take lunch with me. I

mentioned that I hadn’t the time to write out the extensive evidence

that I had, but that I should be glad to discuss them with her viva

voce. The whole matter made me ill the next day--but the worst now is

over, whether I ever get anything out of -- -- -- -- or not. I shall not

press the claim further than the telling of the story to -- -- -- --; it

isn’t worth it. There is absolutely no doubt about the confession in the

letter, however, and I am keeping it well out of reach in my trunk.

--/--/ By the end of a summer in New York everybody is at the limit of

endurance; there is no place to rest, get away from the constant noise

and vibrations of trucks, etc., and there’s a kind of insidious impurity

in the air that seems to seep from sweaty walls and subways. Next year I

shall have at least a month in the open country or by the sea--I haven’t

had a real vacation now for several years, you know. The time spent in

idleness when out of a job was always a worse strain than the hardest

kind of labor, so that hasn’t counted for much with me.

--/--/ I see much of Gorham and Liza--they are restful to me and always

kind. I don’t think I should care to stay in New York long if they

weren’t here. --/--/

156: TO CHARLOTTE RYCHTARIK

_New York City_ _Sept. 23rd, ’23_

Dear Charlotte: --/--/ I am planning to move myself, and shall probably

share with the Munsons in their [new] apartment. That would enable them

to get a better place and I should have hot water and good heat for the

winter which the place I am in now does not provide. I am wondering if

you and Richard could spare me a loan of fifteen dollars to help me over

the expenses of moving my things. I have not yet received a raise in

salary at the office, and I have been getting so little that I am kept

down to the bare necessities of life all the time. When something extra

is demanded I have nothing to fall back upon and the situation is really

far from pleasant. If you could do this I shall be able to pay you

sometime soon, I think, and I would be a thousand times obliged.

I am getting along very well at the office, but I intend to speak up for

an advance in pay very soon. The wages they have been paying me have

been much less than my capabilities are worth, and I don’t think I shall

have much trouble in getting that raise if I speak about it to them.

They are putting new responsibilities upon me all the time, and I am

learning quite a good deal. But there is something necessary in life

besides learning, as we all know. It is quite a stylish and almost

snobbish set of educated people at J. Walter Thompson’s--they are very

lofty and certainly seem to think that the social superiority of the

place is enough to make up for low salaries. When they can pay one of

their art directors 30,000 a year they can afford to pay some of their

copywriters more than they do.

I am working still on _The Bridge_, but it is far from complete yet. In

the meantime I am working on some smaller poems that crop out from time

to time very naturally. The situation for the artist in America seems to

me to be getting harder and harder all the time. Most of my friends are

worn out with the struggle here in New York. If you make enough to live

decently on, you have no time left for your real work,--and otherwise

you are constantly liable to starve. New York offers nothing to anyone

but a circle of friendly and understanding brothers,--beyond that it is

one of the most stupid places in the world to live in. Of course, one’s

friends are worth it,--but sometimes, when you see them so upset by the

fever and crowded conditions, the expenses and worries--you wonder

whether or not there is much use in the whole business. I am, of course,

rather tired out when I say these things. I shall probably be in a

different and better mood later on when the weather cools, and when

there is some life in the air. I have been through the hardest summer in

my life--the hardest year, perhaps, when you consider the developments I

have been through and the material difficulties that I have encountered.

I want to keep saying “YES” to everything and never be beaten a moment,

and I shall, of course, never be really beaten.

--/--/ He is in a very strange state of mind now that is dangerous. He

and his wife, -- -- -- -- have separated. I have heard them each tell their

stories, and there is nothing nasty or petty about it at all--they have

simply agreed that they have failed in establishing a certain deep

relationship which they had felt was a part of the reason for their

being together, and they are still very good friends. It is complicated

for both of them, however, by the fact of their baby boy, which both are

very attached to.

I have been making a number of drawings lately. One of Jean Toomer, one

of Waldo, and one of an amusing young lady. They are all very

interesting, and even Gaston Lachaise, who was in to see me recently,

thought that they were worth while. If I had time I should do more, but

it is really only when I am not doing what I want to in my writing that

I am very much tempted to draw. So I shall probably not do any more

drawings for a year or so. --/--/

157: TO HIS MOTHER

_New York_ _Oct. 5th ’23_

Grace, dear! I had just got my pajamas on last night when there was a

rap on the door. I opened and in walked Waldo Frank--behind him came a

most pleasant-looking, twinkling, little man in a black derby--“Let me

introduce you to Mr. Charles Chaplin,”--said Waldo, and I was smiling

into one of the most beautiful faces I ever expect to see. Well!--I was

quickly urged out of my nightclothes and the three of us walked arm in

arm over to where Waldo is staying at 77 Irving Place (near Gramercy).

All the way we were trailed by enthusiastic youngsters. People seem to

spot Charlie in the darkness. He is so very gracious that he never

discourages anything but rude advances.

At five o’clock this morning Charlie was letting me out of his taxi

before my humble abode. “It’s been so nice,” he said in that soft crisp

voice of his, modulated with an accent that is something like Padraic

Colum’s in its correctness. Then he, blinking and sleepy, was swung

around and was probably soon in his bed up at the Ritz.

I can’t begin to tell you what an evening, night and _morning_ it was.

Just the three of us--and Charlie has known Waldo quite a while--they’ve

been in Paris together and have a few mutual friends.

Among other things Charlie told us his plans (and the story of it) for

his next great film. He has a five acre studio all his own now in

Berkeley, and is here in New York at present to see that the first film

he has produced in it gets over profitably. He doesn’t act in it. But he

wrote story, directed and produced it entirely himself. It’s running now

for just a week or so more at the “Lyric” theatre to box prices. Then it

will be released all over the country. _A Woman of Paris_ it’s called. I

haven’t seen it yet.

Our talk was very intimate--Charlie told us the complete Pola Negri

story--which “romance” is now ended. And there were other things about

his life, his hopes and spiritual desires which were very fine &

interesting. He has been through so much, is very lonely (says Hollywood

hasn’t a dozen people he enjoys talking to or who understand his work)

and yet is so radiant and healthy, wistful, gay and _young_. He is 35,

but half his head is already grey. You cannot imagine a more perfect and

natural gentleman. But I can’t go on more now. Stories (marvelous ones

he knows!) told with such subtle mimicry that you rolled on the floor.

Such graceful wit, too--O that man has a mind.

We (just Charlie & I) are to have dinner together some night next week.

He remembered my poem very well & is very interested in my work.

There’s nothing else worth telling you about since my last letter. I am

very happy in the intense clarity of spirit that a man like Chaplin

gives one if he is honest enough to receive it. I have that spiritual

honesty, Grace, and it’s what makes me clear to the only people I care

about.

158: TO HIS MOTHER

[_New York City_] _Oct. 12th, ’23_

Dear Grace and Grandma: --/--/ It has been a very busy week. I have not

seen Chaplin as I expected to, he has been under the weather up at the

Ritz -- -- -- --. But Jean Toomer, Margaret Naumburg and Waldo Frank have

been very much in evidence, and to the extent of a very fine home-cooked

chicken dinner one evening at Margaret’s which almost left me gasping--I

ate so much. Toomer and I are great friends. I want to send you a copy

soon of his book of short stories and a play which has just come out. It

may interest you to read the inscription which he placed in the copy of

this book which he recently gave me:--“For Hart, instrument of the

highest beauty, whose art, four-conscinal, rich in symbols and ecstasy,

is great--whose touch, deep and warm, is a sheer illuminant--with love,

Jean.--New York, 24th Sept 23.” --/--/

Since the weather cooled I have felt almost a new being. Having had the

gas turned on in my radiator and tried it out several times, I am now

confident that I shall be able to keep quite warm during the winter. Two

friends of mine have offered me the use of their tubs and faucets

whenever I want a hot bath, which I shall avail myself of, providing I

cannot succeed in persuading the landlady to install a hot water heater

here. I do not think I shall have to buy any more clothes before spring

what with the suit you are sending and what I have on hand to use. This

certainly is fortunate, as my present salary at Thompson’s just

suffices for rent and food, really nothing more. I am waiting until the

end of this month, the sixth month, to inquire about the possibilities

of a raise. If I find that I am stalled off, I shall quietly investigate

for a position elsewhere. --/--/ I have been working very hard this week

on a stiff sort of proposition. So far they have given me only tough

little nubbins to handle--jobs that didn’t pay them anything and could

best be turned over to a cheap man,--these little left-overs are,

however, very often the most uninspiring and difficult things to handle.

--/--/ I think of you a great deal, and you must not be lonely. We are

all going on in the regular course of things toward a higher

consciousness of life and what it means. We have no reason or right to

suppose that it should be predominantly happy--seen completely, from end

to end, however, I think it is a great happiness. We must keep on

over-riding the details of pettiness and small emotions that dwarf it to

keep on seeing it that way, and that can’t be done without a real

conscious effort and vision. We know each other too well to let physical

separations mar very much. Christmas is not so far away now, either, and

then I shall see you for several days. --/--/

159: TO HIS MOTHER

_New York City_ _Oct. 20th, ’23_

Dear Grace and Grandma: --/--/ I’ve been feeling so altogether rotten

lately that my energies are about reduced to their minimum. In fact I am

seriously considering going to the Isle of Pines this winter for a

thorough rest and recuperation from the strain of the last five years.

This is no sudden idea in my head,--it is something I have reconsidered

many times for several months, and always with the growing conviction

that it is the thing to do. I think that in weighing the numerous

reasons you will agree with me quite thoroughly.

In the first place--my state of nerves and insomnia here due to the mad

rush of things, and the noisy nights around the place I am obliged to

live in, makes it imperative that I get away before I have a real

breakdown. I feel that this is certain to happen before the winter is

over unless I get some relief. And, as there seems to be no prospect of

a raise in my salary at the office, I cannot afford necessities here

that make life bearable and sufficient to keep me in a state of health.

And then, besides all this, the Island needs some personal attention

from someone in this family. You, neither of you, are able to go, and if

you were, it would cost you three or four times as much as I will need

to live there. (My expenses would be just the boat fare and after that

about 5 dollars a week for board with the Simpsons.) I need absolutely

no more clothes or equipment in any way than I presently have, so that

needn’t be bothered about. I would have a chance to breathe in some

clear air, swim and use my body a little freely. I could live very

simply and constructively--and really make it pay besides by seeing the

lay of the land, how things are being cared for, what marketing

opportunities are developing in the way of cooperative fruit markets,

etc.

I think this and other letters of mine have said enough about living

conditions in New York as it has now become--to make it plain that you

will never want to settle here. I have never accented these points in

any particular relation to you--but I am more and more certain that you

will never want to _live_ here. Rents are terrific, food very high and

unless you have unlimited funds you have to content yourself with trying

to keep clean in a dinky stuffy apartment without a porch or any of the

outdoor privileges that go with the poorest shanty. I think we have been

not fools, but fooling ourselves, to have worried so about selling the

island place. That is the best place to live I know of,--the place where

you will be far happier than ever tied up in an overcrowded city--paying

out every month more money than your food would cost you for a year on

the Island. Besides,--that grove is going to pay, and _pay well_

sometime. It will pay you well enough to afford a month’s change in New

York every year. And that’s enough! I have learned that from plentiful

experience.

After the winter I can come back here to New York and get plenty of jobs

that will pay more than what I have now. I can come back with a fund of

health and energy that simply couldn’t be gained here even if I weren’t

working at all. I think I deserve this much assistance not only as a

son--but as [a] man who has done his best to cope with all situations

that have come up, and I have been faced with some hard ones. This isn’t

a dodge--it’s a sane precaution, and if you really care for me in [the]

right sort of way you will give it your approval, I’m sure.

Please don’t think that I’m flat on my back or anything like that--by

what I’ve said. I have been at the office every day and doing my regular

work. It’s the steady and growing strain of it all that I feel--without

relief or rest, and I don’t want to disregard too many red signals--at

least with the obvious means we have of checking danger of this

seriousness. I don’t want you to waste a lot of money by coming down

here in the belief that I need bedside attention, I only want you to

know the facts as they are. If I went I should certainly spend a week

with you beforehand. But, of course, I’ll never consider living in

Cleveland again permanently--no matter what happens.

Write me soon what you think of my suggestions. I think we should

certainly not let that island property slip away. It’s a clean

home with beautiful surroundings and sunshine with quiet and

tranquillity--compared to this metropolitan living with its fret and

fever--it’s a paradise.

160: TO ALFRED STIEGLITZ

_New York City_ _Oct. 26th, ’23_

Dear Stieglitz: I hardly know how to begin--such confusion reigns at

present. It’s the usual state, however, with the additional complication

that my nerves are a little frazzled. In fact they got so on edge

writing that damned advertising under the pseudo-refined atmosphere of

the office I was working in that I had to resign the other day to save

my mind. I have the prospect of coming back after a six week’s vacation

if I want to--but I don’t want to, and as things stand at present,

haven’t got the money to carry me through the rest and contemplation

that I need. Rather wound up, you see!

Your mention of the “sky” pictures really excited me. The greatest

beauty comes out of repose, and I knew that as certain disturbances

settled (were fought through) you would recapture the basis (on a higher

plane than ever) for new penetrations and syntheses of vision. I had

hoped to go down to a plantation that my grandmother and mother own in

the West Indies this winter, in fact that was largely the basis of my

leaving the job. My intention was to get the unbroken time there to

write the essay on your work which I have never had the opportunity of

doing here. I was also expecting to finish my _Bridge_ poem (which,

done, would complete the material for my first book of poems). But these

things must evidently wait. It is certain that they cannot be undertaken

while my mind is divided between them and an office job. They are both

of them too large conceptions to be accomplished under such tour de

force conditions. Now, my mother writes me that the place may be sold at

any time and that it is out of the question for me to go at all. _If_ I

can get somebody to lend me the money, however, I may possibly go right

ahead, regardless. Both of my parents are interested in money only in

connection with my actions, and I have never been persistent enough in

the past to really clear that notion away.

Munson said that he had a fine letter from you, and he has probably

answered it by this time, telling you a number of things about his

present position with regard to _Broom_ and _Secession_. He is the

noblest young man I know in this country. Experience seems only to

sharpen a native integrity and an almost clairvoyant sense of spiritual

values. He was obliged to leave the city for his health, and while I

miss him a great deal, I hope that he will remain where he is for the

rest of the winter. Waldo [Frank], as you know, leaves for Europe

tomorrow. I am sorry that he couldn’t get time to make you that visit. I

have seen him going through a good deal, both in work and experience,

and there is no use of trying to write out any details of these things.

We shall talk about it some time. Margaret [Naumburg] has also meant a

great deal to me lately. Isn’t this little handful of us fighting

though?!

161: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_New York City_] _Oct. 28th, ’23_

Cheero, Old bird! I have just seen the “last” _Secession_! and I am in

no position, I must admit, to quarrel with you about your decision to

destroy the garbled pages of “Faustus and Helen.” A beautiful bit of

business--“blues in your breasts,” and the two lines that our hero

decided were inessential to the poem! That damned note at the end with

its ill-advised quotation from your personal comment is still worse. But

never mind, I don’t care at all if you will make the necessary clipping.

Some few friends of W[heelwright]’s have probably already received

copies to treasure as their vision may permit, but I should like to keep

as many people in America free from misconceptions about me as possible.

Why don’t you wire the consulate in Florence to stop W. from any further

rape of _S._--it is a positive elopement that seems to have no prospect

of termination. I am thinking of starting abroad with _The Dial_,

calling it “The Pile,” hemorrhoid, or something like that! My cable, of

course, failed.

Waldo left today in a better state of health than he was in when you

were here. I don’t know whether or not it was due to evasion of certain

difficulties. I have no right to make any judgments of that kind, after

all, until his writing indicates it. I am always his enthusiastic friend

and brother, whatever happens. We had lunch together day before

yesterday and he was in thorough approval of my resignation and trip to

the Isle of Pines. I have since heard from my mother, however, that the

place is liable to be sold at any time, and as that would contribute to

a feeling of real unease in going there, I have about decided to come up

to Woodstock for awhile for a rest and air, and then come back to town

for either free-lancing or a return to advertising. I might get

something at Harcourt Brace now, if Smith warms up a little. Certainly I

am not at all regretful for what I have done, it being a purely organic

necessity. I should have been “flat” if I had tried to keep up that

damned hypocrisy of advertising much longer--at least for the time

being. I am going to exact some meager contributions from my family--and

not be sentimental about it. They want me to come home, but that is, at

present, out of the question. The money it would cost for train fare

would more than pay for my recuperation at Woodstock. I wish you would

ask Brown and Nagle if it would be convenient for them to have me stay

with them for awhile, beginning about next Saturday. Underwood expects

to come here for a month and asked me to look him up a room. If I can

get him to take this at 45 Grove, I shall have my rent free. Jean

[Toomer] may arrive any day, also, and he is sure to want it if Wilbur

[Underwood] doesn’t.

This is a mad letter. I am trying to get it off--along with the

transcription of the English equivalents of the Sayn quotations from

Frank and the _Fugitive_ finales--in time to get a bath at Lisa’s and

over to the Lights in time for a free dinner. Please don’t forget your

vote on the _Fugitive_ prize, the extra hundred is worth having these

days! I’ll tell you all that amounts to anything about the _Broom_

meeting when I see you. At present Cowley feels that you have broken

relations with him by your last letter which he read the night I dined

with them. He additionally feels that you may naturally presume that his

presence at the Burke farm on the day that B. resigned had a good deal

to do with Ken’s action--which he says is not the case at all. I didn’t

say that you had all along been wishing that K. would resign! I wouldn’t

make any compromises with C. I like many things about him, but he is

still in his adolescence when it comes to certain reactions. We really

have two groups to the former ONE of _Secession_, and there is no use

trying to evade that fact,--as, obviously, you are not trying to do.

162: TO HIS MOTHER

[_New York City_] _Nov. 1st, ’23_

Dear Grace and Grandma: --/--/ Tomorrow afternoon I leave, stopping off

for a couple of days at Ridgefield, Conn., as a guest of Eugene O’Neill

(the author of _Anna Christie_, _Emperor Jones_, _Beyond the Horizon_,

etc.). I met O’Neill at some friends last week end when he was in town.

He likes my poetry very much and invited me to come to stay with him. He

has a regular estate, I am told,--an establishment that is quite

complete, and breakfast for guests is never served out of bed. If

everything goes right they are to drive me up to Woodstock on

Sunday,--about three hours through beautiful hills and foliage. My

address from then on will be _Woodstock, N.Y. care-of Slater Brown_.

--/--/

I am depending on you to help me some, as I said in my last letter. I

think you will agree that a thoroughly out-of-doors life for a month is

not only a sensible thing for me, but really due me after all the time I

have denied myself such a natural privilege. If you don’t understand

such a rightful desire on my part, then I can only say that your vision

is warped. It was fine of you to ask me home, but I know you will

realize that the atmosphere of Cleveland is anything but conducive to

rest _for me_. The amount to which I am asking you to help me will not

exceed the carfare to and from Cleveland--at most. Brown is poor and can

only offer me the hospitality of the house he has taken,--and extra

board he is unable to provide, so I am anxious to do my part and be

decent about not stretching his hospitality unreasonably. So please send

me fifteen dollars in cash or check at Woodstock sometime next week.

Even if you have to pinch a little bit, I think that the things I am

trying to do deserve a few sacrifices. I make as many as I can myself,

and still keep sound and living,--and I hope you will [be] faithful

enough--whether you see my complete ends or not--to lend me some

assistance. I hope you are both well and happy. Don’t worry about me. I

know damned well what I’m doing.

163: TO HIS MOTHER

_Woodstock_, [_New York_] _Nov. 8th, ’23_

Dear Mother and Grandmother: Felling trees and piecing them up for

warmth is a new sport to me, but I have taken to it with something like

a real enthusiasm. This is my fourth day here in the mountains, but

already I feel like a new person. My muscles are swelling and blood

simply glowing. It is quite cold, even snowed today and the top of the

nearest mountain is hooded white.

Slater Brown and Nagle make wonderful people to live with. I told you

how fond I was of B. when I was home last summer. I am made to feel not

at all a guest, as to a large extent I am not, of course, but they want

me to stay all winter here with them now. I may and I may not, depending

on how I find I can manage to earn enough money by poems and articles.

Certainly I should like to become a giant again in health, as I

naturally am. And I have never had an outing like this before in my

life.

We do all our own cooking. Brown has developed a surprising faculty for

supplying tempting and enormous meals. You have no idea what an appetite

is developed with wood chopping, sawing, and much walking in the brisk

air. I have a heavy army shirt of wool and corduroy trousers. I got all

this along with some woolen socks for surprisingly little in an army and

navy store in New York before I came out here. It was a good thing, now,

that you sent that heavy underwear of mine in the trunk when you sent

it.

The house we are living in is, of course, already furnished by a family

that lives here only in the summer. There are four bedrooms, a bath,

dining room, large studio with a huge open fireplace where we burn our

logs, and kitchen provided with an oil stove. There’s just enough

furniture and not too much, simple and in pleasant taste. The town is

about two miles away. Walking in for our provisions is very

pleasant--over rolling land, set in a valley by low mountains on all

sides around. We are quite set away from everybody--no people passing to

speak of and in a quietness that is a tonic after the endless noise and

reverberation of New York which you feel there even in your sleep.

I certainly am hoping that nothing serious has happened to prevent you

from writing to me. I have been expecting a letter from you for several

days now. -- -- -- --

164: TO ALFRED STIEGLITZ

_Woodstock, NY_ _December 5th, ’23_

Dear Stieglitz: Your fine description of the snow makes me glad that I’m

going to stay here until January--by which time I am sure that I may see

a few pure flakes myself. So far, we have only had a gentle sleet--once

and at nightfall. Today it rains and rains, and our usual wood foraging

is broken.

Slater Brown and Ed Nagle are my hosts here in the shadow of the

mountains. They were kind enough to ask me up here after I had to give

up the trip to the West Indian plantation because I found out that my

mother was trying to sell it as soon as possible. We’re about a mile and

a half from the village and very much by ourselves. My first taste of

the country for years--and a month of it has put me in a steadier mood

than I remember since childhood. But enough of this god damned

autobiography! When I get back to town I may drive trucks, stevedore,

steward on a boat or even go back to advertising. I shan’t be serious

enough about any of ‘em to worry now. I’ll certainly be glad to see you

again and peer at some of your new pictures if you’ll let me. We can

have some walks in the snow, too, I hope. Winter in New York is

stimulating, and most of our talks, so far, have been carried on under

the torrid auspices of summer.

There was a great crowd out here from the City for Thanksgiving, and the

preparations, celebration and “aftermath” are still rather buzzy in my

head. Altogether, it has kept me from writing you much sooner. When your

letter came yesterday I felt and still feel very remiss, the most so now

that my imagination, sunk in a kind of agreeable vegetable existence,

refuses to offer you any real evidence that life in the country has been

of personal benefit to me. But it’s rather pleasant to be irresponsible

and purely bovine once in five years or so. About all I am doing besides

the many chores is--grow a mustache (very slight so far!). You will

probably see Munson very soon. He left here about ten days ago, and, I

think, intends to remain the rest of the winter in Town writing as

usual. His honesty IS outstanding and he has a veneration for that

fundamental beauty in yourself which is not easily swerved. I’m hoping

that you see more of Kenneth Burke, too. He is using my room at 45 Grove

St. at present and is perfectly free with his time so far as I know.

Burke (between us only) keeps fighting off a true spiritual revelation

which is really his birthright, though he can’t consciously recognize

it. So he falls a prey to Spengler and the cynics of more reasonable

tongue--and lives in a rather unhappy and delicate state of scepticism.

He sees the surface of your work and admires it intensely, but he simply

thinks I’m cucu when I remain unconvinced that he has really SEEN one

picture of yours.

Please let me know if you hear of any job--of any sort--that I could

begin to “fill” about Jan. 1st. I think I’ll write Zigrosser if he knows

of anything, too. --/--/

165: TO HIS GRANDMOTHER

_Woodstock, N.Y._ _December 5th ’23_

My dear Grandma: Your interest in my culinary triumphs is certainly very

much appreciated. I’ve been waiting quite a while for the moment to tell

you about the Thanksgiving dinner, etc., and have just about got

adjusted again, the house in order and our simple program restored

although the last guest left on Monday. Altogether, the party and every

detail of the festivities was quite a success. Some things were very

funny and some were a little aggravating. I think I did most of the

cooking when it came right down to the last moment, as both my confreres

were so occupied with their lady friends and rather daffy that they went

around like dizzy roosters, and keeping the rest of the company

entertained and out of the kitchen was some job, too.

The people we bought the turkey from had already cleaned it and plucked

it, and had promised to make the stuffing. But at the last moment they

went back on the stuffing, and so it was left to me entirely. You should

have seen me going at it, sewing it up tight afterward and everything!

Everyone said the stuffing was great, and I liked it myself. I rubbed

the outside all over with salt and butter, and then the ten pound bird

was put into a wonderful roasting machine that Lachaise brought out from

New York which he got in the French bazaar. You put the bird on a long

spit which had a crank and catches. One side of the cage was entirely

open and that was turned toward the fire in the big studio. I never ate

more luscious turkey than this process produced. You must have seen one

of these roasting devices because similar ones have been used in New

England for many many years. It’s a large, fat oval shape and looks a

little like a big tin pig on its legs. We kept turning the bird around

inside until it was a rich brown and thoroughly done. The meal began

with potato and onion soup made by Nagle. Then turkey with mashed

potatoes, cranberry sauce, squash and gravy. Celery too. Then I made

some fine lettuce salad with onions and peppers and French dressing.

Dessert was composed of pumpkin pie and mince pie and the marvelous

fruit cake. We had cider in abundance, Marsala wine and red wine as well

as some fine cherry cordial. Nuts, raisins, etc. Quite a dinner, you

see. And everyone went wild about the cake. We had all the walls hung

with candles as well as the table. Sat down at five and didn’t get up to

dance until eight. I danced fat Mme. Lachaise around until we both felt

almost exhausted. Then there was a girl who could match me on my Russian

dance and we did that together at a great rate. I forgot to mention that

we had a Victrola, of course, which Lachaise bought in Kingston just the

day before. Lots of jazz records, etc. Most of the guests had left by

the following evening, but we have spent most of the time since in

getting things straightened around again and catching up on our supply

of wood. --/--/

166: TO CHARLOTTE RYCHTARIK

_Woodstock, New York_ _December 10, ’23_

Dear Lotte: I guess you and Richard have deserted me ... anyway I don’t

hear from you any more. --/--/

You should not forget me. I am free now--at least more so than ever

before in my life, but that doesn’t mean that I forget such people as

you and Richard who have been so fine to me and whom I shall love

always--even though I haven’t any way of proving it but to just keep on

saying so. I hear that my Mother has taken a job of some kind and is

working very hard. I am sorry to hear it, but I also know that she did

not need to do it unless she felt like it. Everything is being sold as

soon as possible. Only I refuse to sell myself any longer than I

absolutely have to. I shall beg and steal when necessary to avoid it.

This letter is very intimate, and I have written it at the risk of a

great deal of misunderstanding from you, I well know. Who

knows,--perhaps you have some quaint ideas about me by this time. But I

do hope that you will write me soon if you feel like it--and tell me all

about yourselves, how you are playing and how R is painting. I am sure

you are gaining on Time! One must.

167: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Woodstock, New York_ _Dec. 10th, ’23_

Dear Gorham: Both Nagle and B. were enthusiastic about your

investigation in obstetrics (needn’t voice my own disgust, I trust!). I

am still a little blushing about my premature delivery of two poems and

a quite personal letter to Miss Gregory as (already) Editor Managing of

_The Dial_, asking for reviews, etc., etc. However, I do hope through

her gentle accession and the rape of a former -- -- -- --to inveigle my

brain children into a little more acceptance thereabouts--in time.

I approve of your going, as announced, to Croton. Do not become as other

infectious bugs there--however much on second thought the worst vermin

seems to haunt nearer, far nearer precincts adjacent to King Street,

Lincoln Highway and the Battery for daily duels. (What you started

rolling on your return to NY or what Burke had started just before that

I am wild to know about. Cowley wrote the most mystifying hint of

volcanic disorders at the end of a letter he wrote to B. anent _Broom_

and its publication in Kingston, _which fell through_, by the way).

There have been three days of agony around here, just terminated, during

which beads of sweat were wrung and sighs heaved perpetually, but B’s

review of Cummings for _Broom_ at last is in the mailbox and I will get

a chance to write a few letters, I hope.

Last Friday I climbed the mountain (Overlook) and called on the

caretaker who lives in the house beside the ruins of the hotel. He is

very anxious to leave, has been there for seven months, etc., and I am

seriously thinking of taking the place myself at pay of 40 bucks per

month and all expenses gratis. It would be a hard winter, perhaps a

terrific experience, but I should like to keep away from the city and

its scattered prostitutions for awhile. The man who owns the place lives

in Brooklyn and I expect to hear detailed terms from him in a few days.

B. is very keen about going with me, but his previous arrangements with

Nagle may check that on grounds of honorable understanding. Certainly I

should much prefer to have B. with me there, but the whole plan is in

embryo now, and nothing may come of it. The prospect so far as money

goes is so threatening and hopeless as I see it in New York that I may

take this strenuous means of asserting myself against the traditional

conflicts of my past. --/--/

Fisher has been over a couple of times for dinner and an evening. I

couldn’t read the James book at all under present aspirations and

interests, but I have been amazed much at the finesse and depth of Pater

in his _Plato and Platonism_ which Fisher has subsequently loaned me. I

think it beats _The Renaissance_ all hollow for style and ratiocination.

What are you reading--and, more important, writing? I have been very

lazy, but am growing more tight and particular--perhaps a favorable

change after my somewhat flamboyant period in NY just before I left. I

enclose the new version of “Recitative” (which may not be final, but

which I think is really better than the original confession).[31]

-- -- -- --

168: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Woodstock_ _December 20th, ’23_

Dear Gorham: I had a kind of dirge all written to send you this morning

before the mail came: fortunately I reconsidered sending it before one

of us went into town, returning with your good news. I’m not worried

about the _Fugitive_ prize because I had not been planning at all on it

anyway, and I am enormously pleased at your news about _The Dial’s_

acceptance of you. IT WAS ABOUT TIME, however. What you have won there,

too,--you may be sure--has been gained against a deal of prejudice

against you, due mainly, of course, to your liaison with Waldo’s work,

etc.

The folks at Cleveland have disappointed me much, not only by sending me

only half as much money as I asked for and require, but by a great deal

of wailing. I guess I told you before you left here that my mother has

taken a position, since explained to me as helping a friend of hers in a

very de luxe antique and what-not establishment just started. It

involves nothing but standing around and talking to people, I’m sure,

yet mother is reported to return home every night so exhausted and

wrecked that she can hardly speak. She has not personally written me for

a month now. All the reports and symptoms come from my grandmother. But

would it have been so much different had I been at Thompson’s during

these two months, I am tempted to ask. They won’t stop to think or

plan,--either of them,--beyond the next day ahead. And woes continue

indefinitely. --/--/

Brown tells me and Nagle so little about _Broom_ that I don’t know how

well founded your report from Burke may be. Brown loves his little

secrets (of all sorts) and it’s pleasant to leave his surface sobrieties

unchallenged. Certainly Matty is not going to let go of his sheet until

it is either so dead as to be hopeless or else so loaded with debts that

his successor would be crushed under them. But there is much mail every

week to B. from _Broom_, and Cowley, Matty and B. seem to have an

enviable little love nest all to themselves.

Jean [Toomer] hasn’t written me for a long time, and I have the

suspicion that he a little resents my not writing to Margaret Naumburg.

The fact is--I’ve often thought of it and delayed because I somehow felt

that I wasn’t ready to say the sort of things to her which would

interest her. I have certainly, as far as that goes, no flattering chart

of developments within myself to report to anyone. This sojourn has

meant little more to me so far than a purely physical rehabilitation.

That is something, but not a very absorbing topic to write about.

Fisher has been over a number of evenings since you left--for tea, too,

several times. He has a great fondness for Brown and myself, too, I

think. I certainly enjoy him most alone, as the other day when I came

over to his place in the afternoon and stayed until nearly midnight.

This poet, Greenberg, whom Fisher nursed until he died of consumption at

a Jewish hospital in NY, was a Rimbaud in embryo. Did you ever see some

of the hobbling yet really gorgeous attempts that boy made without any

education or time except when he became confined to a cot? Fisher has

shown me an amazing amount of material, some of which I am copying and

will show you when I get back. No grammar, nor spelling, and scarcely

any form, but a quality that is unspeakably eerie and the most

convincing gusto. One little poem is as good as any of the

consciously-conceived “Pierrots” of Laforgue. --/--/

169: TO HIS MOTHER

_Woodstock, NY_ _Dec. 21st, ’23_

Dear Grace: --/--/ We are, all of us, in something of a strained state

this Christmas but I don’t think we need to be so much wrought up about

it as you and Grandma apparently are. After all, Christmas is only one

day in the year--and as a special day, I don’t get half so excited about

it (and haven’t for some years) as I used to. It’s too bad that we can’t

all be together, but that can’t be helped. It wouldn’t have made any

difference so far as I could see, had I remained at Thompson’s during

all this time--so far as [the] money side [of] it goes. I was just

keeping things going as it was, and had nothing left over for travelling

expense, and had I remained I might have incurred much more expense by

this time by being flat on my back. I think you take my little rest and

vacation a bit too strenuously. I’m going back to NY on the second or

third of January (if I can get the carfare) and after that I won’t ask

for any more money. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I can

probably wash dishes or work on the docks or something to keep skin and

bone together. I shall keep my old room at 45 Grove Street (which is as

cheap as any that can be found anywhere) as long as I can bamboozle the

landlady. After that I’ll have to depend on my good coat, or the

kindness of friends. I’ve been able to store up a sufficient reserve of

physical and nervous force while out here in the country to last me

quite awhile, I think. I am not at all discouraged about anything, and I

think that if you and Grandma will use your natural wits at a little

better planning--you’ll be able to get along fairly comfortably without

working so hard. One can live happily on very little, I have found, if

the mind and spirit have some definite objective in view. I expect I’ll

always have to drudge for my living, and I’m quite willing to always do

it, but I am no more fooling myself that the mental bondage and

spiritual bondage of the more remunerative sorts of work is worth the

sacrifices inevitably involved. If I can’t continue to create the sort

of poetry that is my intensest and deepest component in life--then it

all means very little to me, and then I might as well tie myself up to

some smug ambition and “success” (the common idol that every Tom, Dick

and Harry is bowing to everywhere). But so far, as you know, I only grow

more and more convinced that what I naturally have to give the world in

my own terms--is worth giving, and I’ll go through a number of ordeals

yet to pursue a natural course. I’m telling you all this now, dear,

because I don’t want you to suffer any more than inevitable from

misunderstandings--for once we see a thing clearly, usually nine tenths

of our confusion and apprehension is removed. Surely you and I have no

quarrels, and I think you understand me well enough to know that I want

to save you as much suffering from Life’s obstacles as can be done

without hypocrisy, silliness or sentimentality. You may have to take me

on faith for some things, because I don’t know whether it is possible

for all people to understand certain ardours that I have, and perhaps

there is no special reason why you, as my mother, should understand that

side of me any better than most people. As I have said, I am perfectly

willing to be misunderstood, but I don’t want to put up any subterfuges

before _your_ understanding of me if I can help it. You have often

spoken to me about how you lamented the fact that you didn’t follow

certain convictions that you had when you were my age because it wasn’t

easy enough; and I know what strong obstacles were put in your way. I,

too, have had to fight a great deal just to _be myself_ and _know

myself_ at all, and I think I have been doing and am doing a great deal

in following out certain natural and innate directions in myself. By

Jove--I don’t know of much else that is worth the having in our lives.

Look around you and see the numbers and numbers of so-called

“successful” people, successful in the worldly sense of the word. I

wonder how many of them are happy in the sense that you and I know what

real happiness means! I’m glad we aren’t so dumb as all that, even

though we do have to suffer a great deal. Suffering is a real

purification, and the worst thing I have always had to say against

Christian Science is that it wilfully avoided suffering, without a

certain measure of which any true happiness cannot be fully realized.

If you will even partially see these facts as I see them it will make me

very happy--and we can be much closer and more “together” that way than

merely just living in the same house and seeing each other every day

would ever bring about alone. I have been thinking much about you and

about dear Grandma--and I shall have you with me much on Christmas day.

We’ll be dancing a little, and are invited around to a couple of

celebrations at other houses here, but there will be no such pretentious

preparations as for Thanksgiving and no extra guests here. --/--/

1924