“When you come back, pack me in a suitcase, and haul me off to Vienna or
Buenos Aires or Leningrad, and whenever you want conversation you can
take me out of the suitcase and sit me on a chair and we’ll talk very
merrily. When you want solitude I’ll fold myself in the suitcase
uncomplainingly, for days at a time. And we’ll never be bored or hurried
or under pressure to do anything ever, we’ll just be gaily disreputable
until we die. Except that you will get famous, and women will make
pilgrimages to see you, ’specially after they have learned you are
handsome. I won’t let any of ’em in, except the very loveliest ones
. . . I’ll let those in so that you will admire my taste.
“I send you a kiss-at-great-length.”
He wrote me apologetically, that if it weren’t too much trouble, he
would like me to send a heavier overcoat, and some other things, to him.
I wrote:
“You must know that I adore doing small things for you. It damn well
isn’t modern, but I damn well can’t help it . . . so I shan’t pose about
it . . . don’t have to pose with you about things.”
He sent me some Scotch from Canada, via a photographer who came back to
New York.
“NOEL ANGEL,
“I shall save the Scotch to revive me, when I finally see a
newspaper headline reading ‘President Returns to Washington.’ I
expect to be found clutching the newspaper, muttering things
about OUR CHIEF. You’ve led the paper with your Kellogg treaty
stories, three days in succession. Did you know it? _Such_ a
bright young man.”
He was coming home in two weeks! I wrote:
“Noel: When you come back I shall telephone you . . . and suggest we go
swimming; I shall telephone you, and ask to be taken to dinner . . . I
shall telephone you, and demand to be taken for walks. I shall invent
excuses to telephone you. I shall telephone you daily, hourly,
incessantly. Will you mind?
“I feel that all sorts of lovely things will happen instantly, as soon
as you’re home, and that you and I shall spend our old ages happily
(over drinks) in front of the same fireplace, regarding a long row of
books, written by you. And the old ages are so nice and far off.
“I’m looking handsome, what with sunburn turning brown, and I hope
you’ll be pleased with the effect. I remember how you look in all sorts
of moods. I have a whole collection of snapshots of you, inside my head.
One of the nicest is Himself, asleep, with a pleased expression, looking
ten years old or so.
“You wired—when a letter of mine missed a mail two or three days ago,
asking if I had taken up with a blonde. Of course not—blondes are an
adolescent taste.
“I had a ’orrible thought . . . you might have to stay in Washington,
covering the President, until election. . . . Noel, a nice old-fashioned
female (meaning myself) would then go modern. _Nice_ old-fashioned
what-nots don’t _ever_ pursue a man, they guard their reputations . . .
they are patient _for ever_. But if you get stuck in Washington, I go to
Washington and get a job waiting on table in a restaurant, and the only
thing that separates us, hereafter, is your wish to be by yourself.
“I want to know (if I met you in Washington as you suggest), if you’ll
take me to see the Washington Monument, and give me highballs, and talk
to me hours and hours and hours about politics and the Kellogg Treaty. I
don’t care what you talk about. I just want to hear your voice. And will
you pick me up and carry me about the room, but _not_ muss my hair, and
take me for a little walk about Washington. And if I’m _very_
well-behaved will you kiss me once or twice?”
He answered that by wire.
“I shan’t mind being telephoned at twenty minute intervals stop will
take you up Monument stop don’t guarantee about your hair stop yes yes
yes.”