PART TWO New York (1923-1925) (continued 3)

183: To His Mother

[Brooklyn] May 11th, ’24

Dear Grace and Grandma: I am told that this section of Brooklyn around here (Brooklyn Heights) is very much like London. Certainly it is very quiet and charming, with its many old houses and all a little different, and with occasional trees jutting up an early green through the pavements. I have just come back from breakfast and saw some tulips dotting the edge of one of the several beautiful garden patches that edge the embankment that leads down to the river. It certainly is refreshing to live in such a neighborhood, and even though I should not succeed in acquiring a room that actually commands the harbor view I think I shall always want to live in this section anyway. Mr. ——, who has such a back room in this house, has invited me to use his room whenever he is out, and the other evening the view from his window was one never to be forgotten. Everytime one looks at the harbor and the NY skyline across the river it is quite different, and the range of atmospheric effects is endless. But at twilight on a foggy evening, such as it was at this time, it is beyond description. Gradually the lights in the enormously tall buildings begin to flicker through the mist. There was a great cloud enveloping the top of the Woolworth tower, while below, in the river, were streaming reflections of myriad lights, continually being crossed by the twinkling mast and deck lights of little tugs scudding along, freight rafts, and occasional liners starting outward. Look far to your left toward Staten Island and there is the Statue of Liberty, with that remarkable lamp of hers that makes her seen for miles. And up at the right Brooklyn Bridge, the most superb piece of construction in the modern world, I’m sure, with strings of light crossing it like glowing worms as the L’s and surface cars pass each other going and coming. It is particularly fine to feel the greatest city in the world from enough distance, as I do here, to see its larger proportions. When you are actually in it you are often too distracted to realize its better and more imposing aspects. Yes, this location is the best one on all counts for me. For the first time in many many weeks I am beginning to further elaborate my plans for my Bridge poem. Since the publication of my “Faustus and Helen” poem I have had considerable satisfaction in the respect accorded me, not yet in print, but verbally from my confrères in writing, etc. Gorham has made the astounding assertion that that poem was the greatest poem written in America since Walt Whitman! Malcolm Cowley has invited me to contribute about a dozen poems to an anthology that he is planning to bring out through a regular publisher, and I am inclined to assent, as the other contributors are quite able writers and it will be some time before my Bridge poem is completed and I bring out my efforts in individual book form. —/—/

184: To His Mother

[Brooklyn] June 19th ’24

Dear Grace: The “wind-up” of your last letter was far from gratifying and I am sorry that anything so common as my usual lack of time for writing should have given you the impression of indifference or ingratitude on my part. Now—lest I get no other seconds before Sunday in which to write you, I’m going to get this off—for tomorrow evening I’ll be tied up with a kind of picnic to Coney Island that the office is giving and there won’t be a moment before midnight for myself.

—/—/ I wish I could be more interested in politics, but I guess it takes a different kind of mind than mine and a different education. You, however, seem stimulated very much by the spectacle and it makes me almost wish that you would become more active in some work of that sort.

As for myself this last week—I’ve been most unhappy. My uric acid resulted in urethritis which has been very painful and nerve-wracking. A steady diet of buttermilk has finally relieved me, however, and I am going to continue it for some time yet. I’m looking better now than when you saw me in Cleveland but get neuralgic immediately as soon as I deviate the slightest from my diet. I was in a perfect panic for several days, fearing I had a venereal disease, but a complete examination of my body and urine disproved any trace of that. I know now, however, just how one is paralyzed with fear at any such suspicion. Believe me, it’s awful! —/—/

185: To Gorham Munson

[Brooklyn] July 9th, ’24

Dear Gorham: —/—/ I do want to thank Lisa [Munson] especially—however late—for the last and very pleasant evening at your place. Allen [Tate] enjoyed it, he told me, more than any evening he had had in NY, and I admit to a gratifying sense of excitement when I left that recalled some of the earlier Munson-Burke-Toomer-etc. engagements that took place before the grand dissolution, birth control, re-swaddling and new-synthesizing, grandma-confusion movement (of which I am probably the most salient example) began. Allen has a very good mind and a kind of scepticism which I respect. I got very few chances to really talk with him, but I suspect that at least we have established an idiom or code for future understandings which may make our correspondence at once a simpler and more comprehensive pursuit. The boy left NY in a frightfully feverish state, however, and I am a little worried about what’s happening to him since. He was to have written over a week ago. I shall be pleased to know what he eventually comes to think about this bronco-busting city. I liked his sense of reserved opinion on some matters, and it may well be that a place like NY means less to him than to the usual young literary man.

I have just re-read your Eliot article in 1924, and hope I may congratulate you again on some very accurate estimates and constructive motives. The little magazine is better than I thought it might be,—really quite sensible looking, and better in its initial contents than several issues of The Trans-Atlantic Review that I have seen. (Even Seaver’s poetry surprises me!) It certainly is to be hoped that the Secession-Broom crowd can supply it to the point of crowding out the ever willing members of the milky way that flutter into every little magazine around the place.

I envy you the long walks and cool evenings. The office and all it means gets rapidly unbearable again with this anvil weather. I feel less querulous today, however, as E. is back with me again—to stay an indefinite brevity but under much more favorable circumstances than before. — — — —

186: To His Mother

[New York City] Aug. 12th ’24

Dear Grace & Grandma: I hope you got the postcard—it was all I could muster up for the time being. Three more hellishly hot days since and at 4 this morning it began to rain. I hope it pours for days—as I have been having queer feelings in my head from lack of sleep, swilling spells and all the nervous tremors that go with such a state of disorder. You may be glad to be in a place where you can have some privacy, go riding in the country and take your time about things. If you were once to pile into a steaming, rushing mob in the subway where the stinks of millions accumulate from day to day—you’d see how I feel about the next day’s work after a sleepless night. And when one goes to one’s room afterward, believe me, it isn’t to write letters! There isn’t much you can do in N.Y. in the summer but work & complain. I seem to be doing both, I guess. —/—/

I don’t know what CA’s doing these days as I never hear from him. And I’m not going to try to keep up a one-legged correspondence. I think of him entirely too much however—as a poisonous and unnatural person—whom it puzzles me to feel any attitude whatever toward, because from all angles he is so baffling. If he would lose all his money and feel himself disgraced I might come to have some feeling for him better than hatred. But now—I can only think of him in profane terms. But enough of this! I’m in a trap that will probably confine me the rest of my life, so I might as well laugh at such a world as my imagination qualifies me for.

When people like Gorham & Waldo Frank ask me why I don’t write more, it fairly makes me rage. They—with money supplied them and their time all their own!

But there’s no use in my going on like this when I know it will displease you. You will have letters though!

187: To His Mother

[Brooklyn] Aug 17th—24

Dear Grace and Grandma: —/—/ The last few days have been cool enough to allow me a slight recuperation from the mood in which I last wrote to you. I also admit feeling better, due to a long talk I had the other evening with Waldo Frank, just back from abroad, on the present situation and hopes for the artist in America, etc. In order to make some money, Frank has signed up for a literary lecture tour beginning next March, which will take him through the middle west and to Cleveland. He is planning on calling on CA for a little persuasive exercise in arousing CA’s interest in me. I told him that I certainly wanted him to meet you, whatever else he did while there, and that he is planning on. You, I’m sure, will give him readier welcome than the chocolate maggot.

Frank has been showing some of my work to several of the finest writers in France (most all of whom read English very well) and says there will even be a little audience there for my first book (when it comes out!). But that will be years from now, at my present rate. Even so it’s not so bad. Conrad and Anderson did not begin to write until they were over thirty-five. And Frank seems to think that I have written a few classics already. I can allow my best, and that only, whatever happens; there are too many others writing trash and near-trash these days for me to envy them. —/—/

188: To Waldo Frank

[Brooklyn] 9/6/24

Dear Waldo: Your love and thought were so welcome! For I had wanted to see you; and I was afraid that I had proved not very encouraging of (perhaps) your ideas of myself—I refer to my doldrums when we met last. And now—I can’t tell you how glad I am that you know and realize me more firmly. And, I know, I can thank you for all this without apologizing for my real despair and torture at the time—and that still tracks me a good share of the time.

The above[37] is an attempt at an approximation to the accompaniment of your own words—an “even so” and “All hail!” to a love that I have known. If it can give you anything like the illumination that the poem by Jimenez has given me—I shall not be sorry I copied it out for you.

189: To His Mother

[Brooklyn] Sept. 14th, ’24

Dear Grace and Grandma: I have just come back from a breakfast with Sam [Loveman], and he has left to spend the rest of the day with the widow of Edgar Saltus (whom you must have heard him talk about enough to identify). I have been greeted so far mostly by his coat tails, so occupied has Sambo been with numerous friends of his here ever since arriving; Miss Sonia Green and her piping-voiced husband, Howard Lovecraft (the man who visited Sam in Cleveland one summer when Galpin was also there), kept Sam traipsing around the slums and wharf streets until four this morning looking for Colonial specimens of architecture, and until Sam tells me he groaned with fatigue and begged for the subway! Well, Sam may have been improved before he left Cleveland, but skating around here has made him as hectic again as I ever remember him, and I think he is making the usual mistake of people visiting NY, of attempting too much, getting prematurely exhausted, and then railing against the place and wanting to get back home. This last alternative is really what I am expecting him to do, although he has not yet finally decided. But he does think that NY is too swift for him—and perhaps it is, I don’t know. Sam is so often in an unsettled state of mind, however, that it is hard to know in what direction to urge him. —/—/ So far, his most coherent and welcome conversation has been about you, Grace, and several matters that you seemed to think were inadvisable to put on paper to me.

But why you have been so cautious, or sweetly shy, I’m at a loss to understand, because I certainly would never be timorous about writing you any news about myself, however intimate, and feeling quite sure enough that you would not be apt to quote it either far or near—just from the very facts of our relationship. However, I don’t want you to think that I in the least minded hearing such delightful news quite orally from dear old Sam: good news is too welcome, however it comes. And now I want you—or rather want to reassure you about something that I have intended to write for some time, and in which you must believe my fullest and most intense sincerity is voiced.

When grandma wrote me awhile ago about Mr. Curtis and his devotion to you—describing as she did, such a human and very lovable person, I was exceedingly happy. But when—later in the course of the letter she mentioned that you felt that no alliance was worth anything that “broke” our relationship—that made me very worried and sad. (I have spoken to you about this attitude of yours before, and you should not persist in assuming [that] what I feel is a somewhat biased and un-natural attitude toward it. I also feel that you are unduly influenced by what Zell [Deming] has to say on such subjects, and you should know that she is a very different type of personality than you and is in a very different relationship to life. The same differences—you should be aware of in whatever opinions you hear from other people on the same subject. And remember that people—sometimes no matter how much they like you—are quite ready to sacrifice your personal happiness to prove or falsely prove their own merely personal theories, etc.) What I want to repeat to you again—and with emphasis—is that I, first, have an incessant desire for your happiness. Second, that I feel you are naturally most happy—or would be, given the proper opportunity—as a married woman. And thirdly, that I have perfect faith in your ability to select a man that loves you enough, and who has spirit and goodness enough to not only make you happy,—but to please me by his companionship. And you must remember, that whoever you chose and no matter what the circumstances might be, no such element could ever affect our mutual relationship unless you positively willed it,—which doesn’t seem likely by the undue circumspection you feel about the matter.

You must remember, dear, that nothing would make me happier than your marriage—regardless of such matters as money. And for God’s sake don’t marry—or at least seek to marry a mere moneybag. It has always hurt me to hear you jest about such matters. A few material limitations are not so much to the heart that is fed and the mind that is kept glowing happily with a real companionship. That’s what I want to caution you now,—and I must speak plainly before it is too late, because you have made as many mistakes in your life as the average, and I don’t want you to persist in what is a very sentimental attitude, I fear, regarding my reactions to your natural inclinations. As the years go on I am quite apt to be away for long periods, for I admit that the freedom of my imagination is the most precious thing that life holds for me,—and the only reason I can see for living. That you should be lonely anywhere during those times is a pain to me everytime I contemplate the future; you have already had a full share of pain, and you must accept—learn to identify and accept—the sweet, now, from the bitter. And that you are able to do that if you follow your trained instincts—I have not the slightest doubt. I’m not urging you to do anything you don’t want to; you, I hope, will see that clearly enough. I only want you to know that life seems to be offering you some of its ripeness now, and that if you will stop trying to reconcile a whole lot of opposing and often very superficial judgments—and recall some of the uninjured emotions of your youth which have revived, very purely in your heart, I know—you will better decide your happiness and mine than if you allow a clutter of complex fears and unrelated ideas to determine your judgment. I shall always love you just the same, whatever you do; and you know that. I can’t help but say that I shall respect you even more as a woman, however, if you learn to see your relationship to life in a clear and coherent way; and you are doing that, I must say, with more grace and rectitude every day. —/—/

190: To His Mother

Brooklyn, NY 9-23-24

Dear Grace: I allowed myself the luxury of three roses last Sunday, and I intend to make it as much a habit as my more persistent taste for “smokes” and wine will allow me—so pleasant have they made the room these last three days. But you are already aware of how much flowers affect me. And I am feeling better gradually as the cool days increase and the sneezing and nervous fever attending it begin to subside. You ask me about my summer, and I feel like answering that I am glad you feel that you have known little about it for summer in a place like New York (and especially when you are rushed with work as I have been) is provocative of little but groans and sarcasms. Now it’s over and “Sweet’s Architectural Catalogue” is ready for press. I may be laid off, because of this latter fact, because there is very little to do there for three months following the grand climax of the publication of that monstrous volume; but whatever happens it wouldn’t be as bad as the stifling days and nights and the strain of working with your head as raw as beefsteak. Of course I had always some solace from my happy times with friends, and I had a little swimming at Long Beach and one weekend visit to the country, but you know about that already. O’Neill has been at his place in Provincetown, Mass., all summer, so I have not seen him as you thought. My happiest times have been with E——, and I am looking forward to his return again from another South American trip next week. He is so much more to me than anyone I have ever met that I miss him terribly during these eight-week trips he takes for bread and butter. He doesn’t know his father has died during his absence, so it will be a considerable shock to him on landing.

— — — — I can scarcely imagine the old house as a foreign property, perhaps no more standing. It’s so deep in my consciousness and so much the frame of the past. When it comes to my things, please chuck what books are in the glass-doored bookcase (never mind the others) in the drawers of my desk, the only article of furniture which I should like to keep. If you can’t keep that you might box the books and mss. and send them on to me here. There are photos, clippings, letters, etc., in the desk which I should like to try to hold on to. I have gotten so used to never being sure of next week’s rent, however, that I feel like never accumulating an extra sheet of paper because it’s painful for me to think of giving up things that have become a sort of part of me. I should rise above such feelings, I know, but I haven’t been able to thus far.

Sam [Loveman] is still here, and sleeping in the back room. His catarrh improved. What his present plans are—I don’t know, as I have scarcely had a word with him since last Friday night. He doesn’t evidently think about spending much time with me.... He has really had enough opportunity, and even broken engagements on the spur of the moment. It is all right with me, because I realize that Sam touches life at very few points where I do, and this even comes into our abstract discussions of literature, quite naturally, of course, because I see literature as very closely related to life,—its essence, in fact. But for Sam, all art is a refuge away from life,—and as long as he scorns or fears life (as he does) he is witheld from just so much of the deeper content and value of books, pictures and music. He sometimes talks about them in terms as naive as an auctioneer would use. Yet he is instinctively so fine and generous that I will always love and pity him, however much my admiration is curtailed. I don’t think he will remain in New York much longer. He is really bound to his family more than we’ve ever realized, although I have thought of that a good deal. He must have the assurance of his mother’s attendance and he fancies that the “quiet” of Cleveland is a more normal environment for him. Well, if he feels that way, it’s so. Feeling, his own feeling, is the only scale there is to use in such a matter, and I shall not urge him to stay here against his will—which couldn’t be done anyway.

I have only written three short poems all summer, although I have had four previous ones published: two in The Little Review and two in 1924, a magazine published in Woodstock. These have brought me the usual amount of select applause, but no money. I have sent a recent work to The Dial, from which I hope to God I get twenty dollars because I’m in bad need of a new suit—and that would help. Becky must have mis-read the Times if she saw any reference to me or a book of mine in it. I am being urged frequently to publish a volume, and I think I would have no trouble in finding a friendly publisher, but so far I have been witheld by my own desire to complete a long poem I am working on,—you have heard me speak of the Bridge poem—before gathering my things together. I need one good sized slice in the basket, and The Bridge I expect to fulfill that part. But a long poem like that needs unbroken time and extensive concentration, and my present routine of life permits me only fragments. (There are days when I simply have to “sit on myself” at my desk to shut out rhythms and melodies that belong to that poem and have never been written because I have succeeded only too well during the course of the day’s work in excluding and stifling such a train of thoughts.) And then there are periods again when the whole world couldn’t shut out the plans and beauties of that work—and I get a little of it on paper. It has been that way lately. And that makes me happy. —/—/

191: To His Mother

[Brooklyn] Oct. 21st, ’24

Dear Grace and Grandma: The last day of my vacation, and somehow the best! So cold and sharp it is, you might think it time for turkey. You know how keenly brilliant the atmosphere around these parts can be—frequently in any season. On such days one gets an even better edge to this glorious light here by the harbor. The water so very blue, the foam and steam from the tugs so dazzlingly white! I like the liners best that are painted white—with red and black funnels like those United Fruit boats across the river, standing at rest. And you should see the lovely plumes of steam that issue from the enormous height of the skyscrapers across the way. I’ve been toasting my feet at an electric stove, a kind of radio heater that I have in my room, and glancing first at the bay, then with another kind of satisfaction at my shelves of books and writing table,—for a long time unable to think of anything but a kind of keen sensual bliss, that is in itself something like action—it contains so much excitement and pleasure. —/—/

192: To His Mother

[Brooklyn] Nov. 16th—24

Dear Grace: Another very active week. Luncheon with someone different every day,—and nearly always someone to take up the evening. But I have been so interested in several incompleted poems that I’ve sat up very late working on them, and so by the advent of Saturday felt pretty tuckered out. There’s no stopping for rest, however, when one is the “current” of creation, so to speak, and so I’ve spent all of today at one or two stubborn lines. My work is becoming known for its formal perfection and hard glowing polish, but most of these qualities, I’m afraid, are due to a great deal of labor and patience on my part. Besides working on parts of my Bridge, I’m engaged in writing a series of six sea poems called “Voyages” (they are also love poems), and one of these you will soon see published in 1924, a magazine published at Woodstock and which I think I told you about heretofore.

It darkened before five today and the wind’s onslaught across the bay turns up white-caps in the river’s mouth. The gulls are chilly-looking creatures—constantly wheeling around in search of food here in the river as they do hundreds of miles out at sea in the wakes of liners. The radiator sizzles in the room here and it is warm enough for anyone’s comfort, even yours. I feel as though I were well arranged for a winter of rich work, reading and excitement—there simply isn’t half time enough (that’s my main complaint) for all that is offered. And the weeks go by so fast! It will soon be sneezing season again before I know it.

—/—/ He [Eugene O’Neill] seems to have Europe in applause more than America. That is true of Waldo Frank’s work in France, also, where he has been much translated and more seriously considered, far more so, than here at home. The American public is still strangely unprepared for its men of higher talents, while Europe looks more to America for the renascence of a creative spirit.

Your letter came last night—was tucked under my door when I came in at one o’clock. Its tenderness and affection were welcome adjuncts to a good long sleep. I thought of you, too, just “turning in”—very likely—after the dance you mentioned, and I was very happy to think of your having had a lyric evening, dancing as you so enjoy doing. I’d like to see the A——s and the P——s myself. They were a little unfair to me—but good sports too, in a way, and unusually merry bosses. I still like to think of those five o’clock booze parties we had in the office and how giddily I sometimes came home for dinner. You were very charming and sensible about it all, too, and I thank my stars that while you are naturally an inbred Puritan you also know and appreciate the harmless gambols of an exuberant nature like my own. It all goes to promise that we shall have many merry times together later sometime when we’re a little closer geographically.

My—but how the wind is blowing. Rain, too, on the window now! There was a wonderful fog for about 18 hours last week. One couldn’t even see the garden close behind the house—to say nothing of the piers. All night long there were distant tinklings, buoy bells and siren warnings from river craft. It was like wakening into a dreamland in the early dawn—one wondered where one was with only a milky light in the window and that vague music from a hidden world. Next morning while I dressed it was clear and glittering as usual. Like champagne, or a cold bath to look [at] it. Such a world!

193: To His Mother

[Brooklyn] Nov. 26th, ’24

Dear Grace and Grandma: —/—/ Paul Rosenfeld, the critic, of whom, as you know, I am not especially fond, has just called up and invited me to a sort of reception he is going to give on Sat. evening for Jean Catel, a French critic formerly on the staff of the Mercure de France. When Rosenfeld gives this sort of party—whatever you may feel about it—you at least know that everybody (spelled with a capital E) in modern American painting, letters and art generally—will be there. Well, I’m not only invited, but am urged to give a reading before them all from my poems. Alfred Kreymborg and Miss Marianne Moore will also read from their poems. So far I have declined to read anything—as I am no vocalist, and I certainly fear the stage fright. But on the other hand, I probably shall essay a poem or so, if I’m feeling at all assured at the time, as I hate to be known as too shy a wall flower to speak to even such a “picked” audience as that will be. While I lack almost no assurance on the value of my poems, taken generally, I admit that I am considerably flattered at this invitation occurring, as it does, before I have published a single volume. (The other two have been known for years.) And so, pray with me that the tongue be less stubborn than usual in conveying my intentions from the written page. —/—/

194: To His Mother

[Brooklyn] Nov. 30th, ’24

Dear Grace: —/—/ On Friday night I am quite certain that I suffered at least a mild attack of the real ptomaine poisoning from something I ate at dinner. I started to walk home after dinner, and before I got half way I began to swell up and burn like fire. Just the usual and bad-enough case of the hives, I thought at first. I finally managed to get to my bed, but was deathly sick besides. My pulse was pumping so that at the sink, as I was drinking some bicarbonate of soda, I lost my sight and hearing in a kind of rushing and smothering of the blood, and would have fainted had I tried to stand up any longer. Later on, when the case had apparently subsided and I was lying rigidly still in bed, it began all over again. It was perfectly maddening, and I never slept a wink all night. All this convinces me that my malady was something more than urticaria, and that I had eaten something positively poisonous. I was able to evacuate in both directions during the night, however, and somehow managed to go up to the office yesterday morning, retiring back to bed again as soon as work was over and not getting up until it was time to go to Rosenfeld’s. In the meantime I had refrained from practically all food and taken a great deal of Alkalithia and milk of magnesia, hot bath, etc. I was still very weak when I got to the party, but as whiskey and soda was served I quickly revived, and everyone thought I was a picture of health.

I’m very glad to have made the effort, after all, for I have reason now to feel more assured than ever in regard to my poetry. The crowd was representative as I had expected, delightfully informal, and proved very receptive. I had met at least half of them before,—Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe, Seligmann, Jean Toomer, Paul Strand and his wife, Alfred Kreymborg, Marianne Moore, Van Wyck Brooks, Edmund Wilson and Mary Blair, Lewis Mumford, etc., etc. There was music by Copland, a modern composer, and after that the readings by Miss Moore, myself, Kreymborg and Jean Catel (who read a long poem in French by Paul Valéry) occupied the rest of the time until one-thirty when the crowd broke up. I began by reading three of my shorter poems: “Chaplinesque,” “Sunday Morning Apples” (the poem to Bill Sommer which seems to be talked about everywhere since it was printed last summer in 1924), and thirdly, a new poem which has not been printed, called “Paraphrase.” As I was urged to read “Faustus and Helen” I finally did so. Kreymborg came to me afterward and said that it was magnificent and even the conservative Van Wyck Brooks clapped his hands, so Toomer told me. I certainly read more deliberately and distinctly than I ever thought I should be able to, and I find I have already been recognized with the applause of the most discriminating. — — — —

195: To Gorham Munson

Brooklyn, NY Dec. 5th, ’24

Dear Gorham: I’m extremely sorry to have caused you such doubts and misunderstandings by what I said yesterday at lunch, and I’m further glad to say that I do not deserve all of them. In fact before your letter reached me I suddenly remembered my mention of the proposed attack on you and Waldo, and that I had given you a very incomplete account of it.

When this came up at the coffee house a week since yesterday I at once interrupted it by offering to withdraw from any participation in the issue whatever. Allen Tate was there at the time, and as a fairly neutral party I think you can rely on him to check my statement as a fact. At any rate I hope you will ask him about it when you next see him. I have so consistently defended you and Waldo in that particular company that I have so far derived little from the meetings but an unnecessarily aggravated state of nerves and feelings.

From your standpoint, I have long been aware, there is no excuse for my association with people whose activities are so questionable from several angles. And especially since I have been as strong in denunciations of them as anyone. (And let me add that I have taken no pains to conceal these opinions from anyone whatever.) Yet, at the same time, and whether fortunately or otherwise, I have not been so situated that I could possibly maintain the complete isolation which it has been your desired good fortune to maintain. While there is danger, and a good deal of it, I dare say, in my position, I have also felt that in yours, Gorham, lurked the possible blindfolding of certain recognitions, which, attached personalities being removed, you would have naturally found interesting and worthy. I can summon very little that is definite to support my feelings about this at the present time. Issues are not at all clear, and I am disgusted most of the time. You have set yourself to a rigorous program, part of which I subscribe to in action, a larger part of which I applaud you for as a critic, and another part of which I feel is unnecessarily unwieldy, limited and stolid. Perhaps all this assurance-plus is necessary in fighting as stringently as you have done and are doing, but so far I am not crystallized enough, as it were, to accept the whole lock-stock-and-barrel of it. To a certain extent, as Wyndham Lewis says, one must be broken up to live. Which I defend myself by interpreting—the artist must have a certain amount of “confusion” to bring into form. But that’s not the whole story, either.

Regardless of these issues you will be assured, I hope, that I have so far found nothing in either your work or Waldo’s which I would wish to attack. Your generosity, meanwhile, certainly deserves my thanks for appreciating the sometimes necessary distinctions between a personal friendship with a man and one’s opinion of his work.

My rewards or discredit from participation in a magazine issued by your enemies will be bound to be, to a certain extent, somewhat embarrassing, yet, as you recognize, I still feel that I can owe myself that freedom on a clear responsibility. I am growing more and more sick of factions, gossip, jealousies, recriminations, excoriations and the whole literary shee-bang right now. A little more solitude, real solitude, on the part of everyone, would be a good thing, I think.

Let us have lunch together soon. I won’t take absolute “vows” before that, for this letter is a very crumb of my feelings.

196: To Gorham Munson

[Brooklyn?] Dec. 8th, ’24

Dear Gorham: Reflecting on our conversation at lunch today I have come to feel bound to suggest that you take whatever decisions or formalities are necessary to “excommunicate” me from your literary circle. How much further you may wish to isolate me depends entirely on your own personal feelings, but I am not prepared to welcome threats from any quarters that I know of—which are based on assumptions of my literary ambitions in relation to one group, faction, “opportunity,” or another.

1925

197: To His Mother

[Brooklyn] Jan. 4th, ’25

Dear Grace and Grandma: I might say that this is the first “day of rest” that I’ve had since I came back,—but fortunately that doesn’t mean that I am all fagged out by any means.[38] I’ve managed to get some regular sleeping hours, have curtailed my liquor rations (since New Year’s eve) and am feeling as well as anyone could ever ask. Just came back from a luscious breakfast (I make a practice of a regular meal on Sunday mornings because I sleep so late and also walk a good distance to the restaurant) and have bought some gay marigolds and narcissi from the funny little florist woman nearby who has a regular case on me, or rather has an amusing way of flattering one. She’s a sight, alright! Bumpy body, pocked face, mussy hair and a voice that simply barks at you, it is so raucous. I can’t be seen passing her place without her glimpsing me, and signaling. When I enter she jumps at me with such phrases as—“Well my handsome Good Looking again! How’s my big boy? Ain’t he a dandy!,” etc., etc., etc. I generally get enough from her to make my room gay on a quarter, and indeed, today, with my Christmas decorations still up and the snow-light coming in from the roofs of the piers below me—it is festive. Allen Tate, Sue [Jenkins] and Brown are coming over for tea this afternoon, so I won’t be the only one to look past the little flying swan still dangling in the window.

Tuesday night as I sat alone in my room I pictured you at the Miracle. You must tell me how you like it, and what you did on New Year’s eve. Our party at Squarcialupi’s (what a name!) was a delight. I was sent out to get some more Victrola needles about midnight, and before I got back the whistles began to blow. Even though it was in an uncrowded neighborhood—people began throwing their arms around each other, dancing and singing. Whereat I went into such an ecstasy as only that moment of all the year affords me. I hugged my companion and started singing Gregorian chants or something of my own version approaching them, and I hope in good Latin. O New York is the place to celebrate New Year’s! There is such spirit in everyone, such cordiality! Your telegram came next morning before I was up (I didn’t retire until 6) and I trust you got my answer on my way to breakfast. I am very happy these days and the more so because I trust you are. —/—/

198: To His Mother

[New York City] Feb. 10th, ’25

Dear Grace: I suppose you’ve been reading about the great unprecedented fog here, which still more-or-less continues. Well, it’s just been hell for me over at Columbia Heights. I haven’t had 6 hours of solid sleep for three nights, what with the bedlam of bells, grunts, whistles, screams and groans of all the river and harbor buoys, which have kept up an incessant grinding program as noisesome as the midnight passing into new year. Just like the mouth of hell, not being able to see six feet from the window and yet hearing all that weird jargon constantly. It does no good to go to bed early under such circumstances, yet I’m forced to do so, just because I’m too tired to do anything else. I hope tonight will be somewhat better. —/—/

I’m hoping to hear from you today or tomorrow. Please give my best to Charles [Curtis] which reminds me that I do not share your trepidations concerning him which you expressed in your last letter. I don’t think you ought to let such minor doubts annihilate the affection and devotion that he has proffered you so beautifully. I’m really planning on your marriage this spring, and I think you will be foolish to delay it until later.

199: To His Mother

[Brooklyn] Monday

Dear Grace and Grandma: It being the birthday of our country’s father and a legal holiday, I’m not obliged to be at the office. But it doesn’t mean that I haven’t been mightily busy. In fact, for the last three days I have been working very hard to finish up a series of poems for my book (if the printer ever gets around to take it seriously) and they are about done. There are two more to be finished—and then I’ll feel better, even if the book is a year in getting printed. You know one makes up one’s mind that certain things go well together—make a book, in fact—and you don’t feel satisfied until you have brought all the pieces to a uniform standard of excellence. I have revised a good many poems, and had to complete others that were half finished, and it all takes a great deal of work. This sounds as though there were going to be a great number of poems in the book, which, however, isn’t exactly so. But the book will at least afford me some credit in the world, if not at once, at least later on. —/—/

200: To Charlotte and Richard Rychtarik

[Brooklyn] Feb. 28th, ’25

Dear Lotte and Ricardo: My grandmother sent me a picture of the artist before the Public Hall garden model, clipped from the paper—and as tonight is the night the beds were announced as being supposed to first bloom, I think of you as walking in a perfect Venusberg of flowers and shrubbery. Alas for me! I have only one white hyacinth in my window and a bad breath from last night and luncheon today. But, for once, I was able to retire to my room—away from friends and “enemies” and spend a quiet and economical Saturday evening. I owe enough answers to letters to keep me in a week, but I know well enough that tomorrow night will find me in a Spanish restaurant near here, recently discovered, which serves the finest ruby-colored and rose-scented wine in N.Y. besides delicious smoky tasting sardines and hidalgoesque chicken. Waldo Frank knows Spanish very well, and was able to convince the management, thereby, that we were not revenue officers. Since then life even in “my” retired neighborhood in Brooklyn has been gay. I know you think me terrible, and given over entirely to pleasure and sin and folly. Certainly I am concerned a great deal with all three of these—and even so, don’t get all I want. What worries me is that I’m so restricted in other ways besides. Even, yea, on the holiest impulses. For didn’t I promise to take Richard’s drawings or rather photos around to The Dial—and haven’t I, so far, completely failed to make a move? Really, I ought to sob in your laps for forgiveness. But to save your patience, I won’t even mention excuses. I’ll only mention that the matter has been frequently on my mind and that I’ll try to do something about it very soon. I’ll also try to get back to you somehow without damage to the drawings (originals, etc.) which I’ve kept so long.

It’s fine to know you have a new piano. Sam [Loveman] says that it’s a beauty. If I ever get any money that is one of the first things I shall put it into. After so many years of negligence, however, I doubt if I shall be able to perform much on it! Which reminds me that I almost never get to hear any of the fine concerts here, after all. Money, lack of time and other things conspire to keep me away. Only once this winter have I stared at the baton,—and that was Stravinsky’s. But he disappointed both Waldo and myself by not including the Sacre du Printemps on the program. I don’t care for what I heard of his latest work. Indeed, the Petrouchka was the only fine thing on his program. I can probably bet on your having heard him in Cleveland.

My book is indefinitely stalled as the printer has run out of money, but I’ve been working hard to get finished with a f!!!?!!?!

18 hours later Sunday, March 1st:

WELL! It isn’t often that one gets an earthquake inside a letter, but this letter carries the evidence of one to you this time! Thank God I’m living still to finish the ending of that last sentence. I had, as you see, started the word “few” meaning to follow it with “poems”—when the room began swaying frightfully and I had the most sickening and helpless feeling I hope to ever have. By the time I got down the stairs people were coming out of other rooms all over the house, etc. I ended up with making a call and drinking wine, and so your letter has been waiting almost twenty-four hours for me to recover. The feeling was simply frightful. But you have probably read all the details in the papers by this time. I understand it was even noticed in Cleveland.

201: To His Mother

[New York City] March 10th, ’25

Dear Grace: It takes this night work at the office to make me continually sulky, and with two more nights of it again this week in prospect, don’t blame me if I’m not exactly gay. I would have written you on Sunday had I been in a better mood. I certainly resent going around and around feeling as though my legs as well as nerves would give out at any moment. I dread to think of the summer and all that it means—and it’s not so far away. I have pretty definitely made up my mind to take a job on a boat for S. America during that season, at any rate, and avoid the otherwise exhausted state of mind and body that the city, heat and my hay fever always cause. But more of that later. The trip to Norway possibly may not come through at all as there has been some difficulty in settling the estate of E——’s father, and things are at present very much tied up. —/—/

Gorham, of course, I don’t see at all, nor hear much about. I understand that he regrets his awkwardness in dealing with me as he did, etc. But his change of personality which had long preceded this particular situation at which I took offense, had already changed my feelings about him considerably, and I strangely enough don’t miss seeing him half as much as I had once thought I would under such circumstances. Of course, I’m really his friend, as I know he is mine, but it may do us good to separate a little while. Many of his ways and opinions had begun to bore me a great deal, and that feeling may have been mutual, so far as I know. —/—/

202: To His Mother

[New York City] 3/28/25

Dear Grace and Grandma: —/—/ I have also been in a state of rush regarding the completion of a few remaining lines and corrections on poems to be included in my book, which the printer is beginning to set in type. This little man, Jacobs, by name, certainly is devoted to the cause of literature in going ahead as he is—paying for the cost of the paper and binding as well as dedicating his time and strength—free of charge—to the details of typography, setting, etc. For he is well enough convinced that he will on no account reap any more remuneration from the book than I will. Poetry of my kind is not popular enough nowadays, you know, to sell.

Nevertheless, I am somewhat stimulated by the fact of the book being actually now in progress. Getting that wad of my past work into permanent collection and out of the way, so to speak, is an hygienic benefit. Then—I shall feel myself all ready to begin the honest-to-goodness efforts on my long Bridge poem. —/—/

203: To Charlotte and Richard Rychtarik

Brooklyn April 9, ’25

Dear Charlotte and Ricardo: —/—/ It will be amusing to ask Sam [Loveman] about this person when I next see him. We generally have Sunday morning breakfasts together in a Spanish restaurant nearby and talk over our troubles as well as pleasant reminiscences.

As you picture matters, the usual bacchanale of life around here and among my friends still occupies me a good deal. Some of it is sweet and clarifying—but as time goes on I tire of certain repetitions that occur in it and seem to be developing certain reactionary tendencies toward solitude and more austere examinations of myself. Above all, with the regular amount of highly detailed work I have to do every day at the office,—the “grind” in other words, and all the tempting other activities outside my real self, I feel worn out most of the time and so distracted that I lack the reflection and self-collection necessary to do the work, the real work that ultimately concerns me most. Still, considering the slight time which I have for any real freedom I think I have done a good bit of work during the last two years. But I cannot profess to any real ability in measuring it. One struggles along blindly most of the time. —/—/

You both should read Port of New York, a book by Rosenfeld dealing with Stieglitz, Marin, O’Keeffe, Sessions, Hartley, Williams, etc.—I differ with Rosenfeld on many matters, but the long chapter on Stieglitz in this book is very fine indeed and [the rest of this letter is lost].

204: To Thomas Seltzer

Brooklyn, N. Y. May 4th, ’25

Dear Sir: In the same mail with this letter I am submitting the mss. of a book of poems, White Buildings, for your consideration.

Mr. Samuel Jacobs, already known to you, I believe, by reason of his composition work on the Tulips and Chimneys book by Cummings, had thought of bringing out this book himself, but recently has become involved in other work to such an extent that he feels it would be better handled by a “regular” publisher. He has, however, recommended that I send the mss. to you. And his steady interest in the matter is, I think, well evinced in the free cooperative services he says he is glad to offer the publisher of White Buildings.

Mr. Jacobs has made me a cost estimate on an edition of five hundred copies, quoting the prices of all work as done by his press, The Polytype Press, 39 West 8th Street. In the following quotations, which are based on an edition that should be admirable in every detail, Mr. Jacobs has eliminated the cost of composition, which he says he would like to do free of charge, on account of his personal interest in the poems and in having them well set up. I quote from his signed estimate:—

500copies—White Buildings—64 pp.

Stock (Warren’s Oldstyle)$ 17.00

Makeup (by Pelley Press)16.00

Lockup & Presswork40.00

Casing and Shipping2.00

Binding (@ 25¢ per copy)125.00

TOTAL $200.00

In view of the fact that Mr. Jacobs’ reputation as a typographical expert and producer of notably beautiful books is so well established by this time, I feel that the above estimate is surprisingly modest. I have taken the liberty of introducing it in such detail at this time because it represents a considerable economy in proportion to the book’s probable production cost through other hands.

As to the selling qualities of White Buildings,—I surrender that prophecy to the publisher. That there are admirers of my work to the number of five hundred, I am certain. And I can personally guarantee the sale of at least 150 copies through the various mailing lists to which I have ready access, and through the interest of my friends. Mr. Waldo Frank has admired my poetry considerably, as well as Eugene O’Neill. I have been assured that both of these writers will be glad to be quoted to that effect on a jacket or announcement accompanying the book. And these statements might have an appreciable effect on both sales and reviews. Not to enumerate the reasons here, I have reason to expect that White Buildings will receive favorable review from at least six out of ten writers who would be likely to treat with it, anyway.

The bulk of the book has already appeared in the following magazines: The Little Review, The Dial, Secession, The Double Dealer, 1924, The Fugitive, Broom, etc. I am hoping that I may hear something from you regarding your decision on this mss. within a month’s time, as I may be out of the city for a period after that date.

205: To His Mother

[New York City] May 7th, ’25

Dear Grace and Grandma: The photos of the cherry tree in bloom were a joy to have and keep. I like especially the one with yourself, Grace, standing underneath. The attitude and expression you took were gracious and lovely. The tree and the entire yard, for all that, have a great place in my memories, and now that the place is liable to be sold at any time I’m especially glad to have the pictures.

By this time I hope and pray that you are both fully recovered from your attacks of grippe and indigestion and nerves. The recent weather has been pretty decent here, and as far as myself is concerned, great improvements have been made. I’m feeling even better than at Christmas when I was in Cleveland, and guess my color shows it. Diet and general caution have put me in fine shape along with some slight medicine the doctor gave me. It certainly makes a big difference in one’s mental reactions and attitude, as you said in your letter, Grace.

Last Monday I had luncheon with Bill Freeman, and with the result of some statements that may interest you. We talked about everything else under the sun but business during the meal, but before we left the table Freeman abruptly introduced the proposition which I had faintly expected. He asked me if I ever expected to go back to Cleveland to live, and I replied that at present I had no wish to do so, but that such a thing was by no means improbable if, for certain reasons, I should sometime feel obligated to. Then he went on to say that the Corday and Gross Company needed someone of my type in their copy department very badly, and that they would be glad to connect with me in case I cared to go back. He further mentioned that I was the one “brilliant” copywriter they had ever had there, that the company had fully realized, long since, that they made a great mistake in letting me be lured away without raising my salary, etc., etc. Well! I must say it was a satisfaction to be so spoken of. I was glad to know, too, that such an opportunity will always be at least plausibly open to me in case I am ever again located in Cleveland for any length of time. I suggested to Freeman that I might still do some writing for the company on a free-lance basis, here, if they cared to commit some special job to me now and then, and from his answer I judge that the possibilities on that score are not exceedingly remote. I would certainly like to make a little extra cash on the side, as you know how pared down my present salary keeps me.

I went in and made application for a raise again the other day, this time with the expressed desire of knowing definitely within a week, as I said “the decision will affect my future plans.” Which is no threat merely, but a fact. I think I will get the raise, but if I don’t—it’s me for the sea during these summer months, and a change from office routine for awhile. It is going to be hot enough without working nights at the office here, the way we shall undoubtedly be forced to, at a bare living sum! If I can’t be paid enough with all the time and effort here at the office to save at least $5.00 a week, then I might as well, for all I can see, be seeing a bit of the world while I’m young enough. Two more years of this routine here will kill my imagination anyway, but I’d rather stay around here awhile now until my book is published and out of the way. —/—/

On the whole I think it’s better that the printer acted as he did, as it will mean much more recognition from the general public to have the insignia of a regular and recognized publisher on the volume than it would to have just a printer’s sign. That would suggest to the general public, whether true or not, that I had paid to have the book brought out myself, which makes a bad impression on reviewers, and puts me in an unpleasant position. That’s one thing I would never do,—at least with a first book. It’s enough to put good food on the table, without having to rub people’s noses in the plate who don’t want to eat! —/—/

206: To His Mother

[Brooklyn] Sunday afternoon

Dear Grace and Grandma: —/—/ I am enjoying a quieter afternoon than I had expected, due to the happy failure of some people to call whom I had invited for tea. I have received so many courtesies at one time and other from Gaston Lachaise and his Madame that I invited them along with Slater Brown and Sue [Jenkins]. But each of the parties finally phoned and called it off for various reasons. The Lachaises are soon to leave for their country place near Bath, Maine, and have been nice enough to urge me to an extended visit with them this summer if I can possibly do so. Just a mile from the ocean—and a wonderful beach set in a cove of rocks topped by pines! How I would love to go—and I really may decide to. As I have been mentioning, the summer at the office and the extra night work required looms up before me as almost unthinkable. I have asked for a raise—but it has not been settled as yet. I think I impressed it upon the boss, however, that if it isn’t forthcoming I have other plans. I inquired again yesterday, but have been put off until Tuesday. Well, we’ll see. I have got into such a rut of repetitious feeling, thought and dissatisfaction with myself that it seems the only salvation to break away for awhile into some change of work and environment. I am still considering a trial of ocean. Even if it’s not at all ideal it may jog me up a bit. I really need more air and exercise at my time of life, and after four years or more of this sedentary office routine you can hardly blame me. Sam [Loveman] would take over my room and things while I’m gone. All in all, though, I’ve repressed my instincts so much that I can’t seem to make up my mind with any decision about anything. —/—/

I have not yet heard what Thomas Seltzer, the publisher, thinks about my book, but I ought to before another week. When I told Waldo Frank about submitting there he became somewhat excited, said that he had wanted to bring it to his own publisher, Boni and Liveright, and made me promise to turn over the mss. to him immediately if Seltzer didn’t take it. As you perhaps remember, Waldo had originally intended to take the book to Liveright, but told me some weeks ago that Liveright was not in the proper mood to be talked to at the time, etc., etc. Well, I got little satisfaction from waiting around indefinitely—so decided to start the book on its rounds. It takes long enough to find a publisher, as a rule, without depending on the moods of any one of them. Even now, if the book were accepted today, it would probably be next spring before it could actually appear. I’m figuring that publication in book form will give me at least enough prestige to get a little money for my magazine contributions. Besides this, I have begun to feel rather silly, being introduced everywhere as a poet and yet having so little collected evidence of the occupation. There won’t be any explosions of praise when the book appears, but it will make me feel a little more solid on my feet. —/—/

207: To His Mother

[New York City] May 28th, ’25

Dear Grace: —/—/ I gave notice to the boss as soon as I found out definitely that I was not going to get a raise. The time is set for a week from this Saturday. You know my feelings and reasons well enough from former letters, so it’s not necessary for me to repeat them now. Later on in the summer I may take a boat job on the South American or West Indian Routes, but at present I have been very lucky in being invited out to a lovely farm near here (Brewster, N.Y.), to spend a month or so. Brown has just bought it, and has urged me to come out and help him plant the garden, etc. And this is just what I have been needing, exercise, open air, and relaxation from the tension of the desk (which had become very threatening to my health and nervous stability, I can assure you). This invitation came subsequent to my resignation at Sweet’s—so don’t think that I have been seduced by a tempting prospect of any kind. I was ready for ANYTHING after the prolonged tension and confinement here for the last year, and whatever happens I shall not regret having left the office.

E—— has or rather will take my room over at Columbia Heights, and I have reserved it for myself again after October, as it’s such a good room I don’t want to loose my hold on it if possible. Write me there up to June 6th, when I leave for the country, and I shall write you much more in a few days. You certainly haven’t been very generous, yourself, with correspondence lately. I hope you are both very well. C.A. [Crane] looked me up here recently and offered me a job which I was all ready to take. Whereupon he became so pettily dictatorial that I withdrew quickly. In some ways it was all very funny, and I’ll write more about it later. We parted on friendly enough terms, I guess. — — — —

208: To His Mother

Brooklyn, N.Y. June 4th, ’25

Dear Grace and Grandma: Practically everything is packed up. There has been a real turmoil, too, I can tell you. The frightful and sudden heat of the last 3 days brought on a fearful attack of uric acid trouble—headaches, bladder trouble and urethritis. No sleep for three nights and I have been dieting on buttermilk and crackers. Besides trying to complete all arrangements by Saturday and still give some time to the office, I have had 3 engagements with the dentist. I thought one tooth had an abscess and had to have an x-ray taken to find out that it hadn’t. There is one more trial with a filling tomorrow and then I’ll be through. I’m about done out, however, and a feather could knock me over. Furthermore, all these exigencies have about used up all the money I had saved up, little enough! -/-/

I did enjoy that talk with you over the wires to Cleveland! Your voice is so much better than ink and paper.

Have a good time in Chicago, and, by the way, why don’t you explain my case to the Ross’s—that is—if any opportunity appears. They give thousands to charities every year—and boast about being patrons of art. Why don’t they help some artist who is trying to live—and still get something done? A small allowance for me six months of the year would mean almost nothing to them—and it would keep me alive and productive in some cheap place in the country. You might mention Frank’s and O’Neill’s and Anderson’s admiration for my work,—and that I have a book about to be published.

They won’t be hard to convince on C.A.’s neglect of me, as they have had their own evidence of that side of him.

Everyone thinks it a crime the way I have been treated. I’d be glad to work six or eight months of the year if I could have the remaining time for my natural creative activity. Please see what you can do about this.

I hope Grandma is not too overborne by this torridity.

209: To His Grandmother

Patterson, New York June 17th, ’25

Dear Grandma: —/—/ As for myself—things couldn’t be better. I have great quantities of fine Guernsey milk every day from a neighboring farm, the finest butter and eggs and fresh vegetables—and so much outdoor exercise than I am brown as a nut already with the sun and all greased up at the joints. Sleep nights like a top and the uric acid trouble has disappeared completely—at least for the time being. When you consider that this is only about my tenth day out here such results seem astonishing, don’t they? I should have written you more if there had been a moment, but you have no idea how busy we have all been. There has been a great deal—tons—of wood to clear away from the house, rubbish, also, and a lot of old plaster they threw out in making alterations. Then we have been building bookcases, shelves and tables for the inside, as well as scrubbing and rubbing down floors. Getting up every morning at five-thirty. The air is so fresh and the birds so sweet that you simply can’t stay in bed a moment longer. And how good breakfast tastes! We have bought a good oil stove, which works on about 10 cents a day. All our cooking and lamp-oil comes to much less cost than similar means in the city would cost. Brown has a Ford which he got for 35 dollars! We go marketing about 7 miles away to the nearest town every three or four days. This place, you know, is quite delightfully isolated from other houses. It’s about 150 years old—and did I tell you that a lot of wonderful old rope beds and furniture came right along with it? —/—/

210: To His Mother

Patterson, N.Y. July 10th, ’25

Dear Grace and Grandma: —/—/ Life has been going along here at Brown’s farm as pleasantly as anyone could wish excepting that the last few days I have had a considerable touch of the [rose] fever. I had expected to evade the whole season, but I guess I’m in for a few days of it here, despite the altitude and other favorable circumstances. We have the house painting almost finished. I’ve already mentioned how I enjoyed doing that. Brown and I have been making screens for the last couple of days and now I defy a mosquito to attack my slumbers or a fly to fall into my soup. Although planted very late in season Brown’s garden is about up, peas and beans, and soon will follow a whole menu of delicious vegetables for the table. This is the kind of place I am going to have when I can afford it. Perfect quiet and rolling hills, almost mountains, all around—with apple orchards and lovely groves of trees and rocky glens all about the house. Yesterday afternoon we picked blueberries—about four quarts in an hour—and there’s nothing better to eat with cereals for breakfast I can tell you. It’s pleasant to pick them, too—great patches of bushes laden to bending with the beautiful milky-blue fruit that looks the freshest thing on earth. The huckleberries will be out later—and there will be simply bushels of them. Brown also has great quantities of raspberries, blackberries, currants and gooseberries—as well as elderberries on his place. Also plenty of sap maples and walnut trees. I haven’t yet stopped enthusing about the place, you see, and when you mention buying land in Florida, that dry and tourist-ridden place, I find it hard to agree with you. Brown has even been so nice as to offer me a strip of land as my own and a great pile of cut timber to build me a cabin—if I will stay here with him and Sue [Jenkins]. You can’t beat his affectionate generosity in any friend on earth. I wish you could know Sue, also. Well, someday you will, I’m sure, as I’m not likely to lose my enthusiasm for them very soon.

This Florida plan of yours prompts me to worry a little, Grace. You must certainly be cautious about investing your money there the way things are going at present. Of course I have been hearing all that you have about the tremendous sums exchanged there in real estate, and maybe more than you. That information is certainly nothing that one has to be “tipped on” these days. Everyone—even the farmers around here—are scraping their coins together and rushing down to Miami to buy little lots, and I know well enough that at least some people have made and are making fortunes there. But doesn’t such a great campaign of advertising as this now seems to be—doesn’t it arouse your suspicions as to the validity of the proposition to the small investor? Remember, Grace, that the stock market is run on the same plan and with the same tactics—and the daily crop of suckers can be reaped in other fields and byways than Wall [Street], and often is. If you had thought of investing in Miami property a year or so ago it would undoubtedly have meant a considerable profit. But—as I see the situation now—the whole proposition there is like a whirling roulette wheel that with every revolution spins a higher figure—but which has already begun to slow down. I don’t see how the situation can be otherwise when there has been such a wholesale flux of gamblers to the place as there already has been. For certainly there is a limit to the value of property—and there is a limit to the present national craze of flocking to Miami. I may be wrong, of course, but it seems to me that most of the fruit down there has been picked up already. It might net you something to try and sell for others down there, but I would be awfully slow about making any investments myself—at least until after I had been there long enough to ascertain some direct information of my own about matters. In such “gold rushes” watch out for the boom psychology that animates everyone concerned—even the losers—into bursting their voices with salutary legends of their luck and the general prospects of the place. It amounts to as much a conspiracy as though they had all sat down together at a great mass meeting and agreed to swear they each saw Jesus bathing on the beach. Of course I can see your special interest in going to Miami this winter to make money—but I’m blind to the other advantages of the plan. Especially when you have as lovely a place—only a day and a half further away—down on the island [Isle of Pines] to go to, and where living expenses will be about one third as much. (Miami is a very expensive place to stay, I understand, especially since this boom.) Further—it seems to me you ought to take a run down there—for at least two weeks—regardless of other plans. Or otherwise, after all this time, who is to know what is becoming of the place? I’d jump at the chance to go there myself. Please don’t resent my advice about these foregoing matters. My opinions on such matters have to be got off my chest naturally—as they are inevitable concomitants to my interest and affection in you both. I certainly have no desire to stand in the way of anything you wish to do.

My trip to South America is as hazy as it’s always been. It may be that line of boats or some other across the Atlantic for me when I get back to New York—I won’t be able to wait long for employment anywhere as I have only about the carfare back to town. I may even take some other kind of office job. My chiefest concern while I have been out here is to avoid worries of whatever kind for awhile; doing that, you know, takes a kind of discipline after one has been so constantly precautious and apprehensive as I have been for the last five years. With my health and nerves all ready to snap beneath that strain I decided that life wasn’t worth it—and the pretense of living under such an attitude of mind year after year was certainly not worth continuing. So I am—at least for awhile longer—content to drift a little, let things take care of themselves, reduce my needs and requirements to a minimum and avail myself of as much time for free breathing and meditation as possible. The boat job would—on the South American line—permit me practically three weeks of time (absolutely to myself) out of every eight. This time would be spent in Buenos Aires at one end of the trip, and at New York at the other. I might get some time to write and read again. I really hope very much to make connections with this line for that reason, even though the first job I could get wouldn’t amount to more than 65 dollars a month. At least three-fourths of my living expenses while on the job would be gratis, of course. And I even long to be entirely away from the best of friends at time. It gives you a fresh picture of the world. One trip would decide whether I cared for the job or not—six weeks and 12,000 miles. I could probably get a job as night watchman or as engineer’s writer. But you have to take what places are open when the ship comes in.

Exactly how much longer I shall stay here isn’t decided yet. But it will probably not be more than two weeks from now. In New York I shall stay with either Allen Tate or E——,—probably with the latter as E—— is still staying in my old room at Columbia Heights. At any rate that will be the place to write me. I’ll let you know more details of course, when they are settled. In the meantime I have written to Freeman who is still with the New York office of Corday and Gross if he has any free-lance ad writing which I could do for them while I am out here. That will probably amount to nothing at all, but the idea occurred to me and I thought I ought to try it out at least. If I could pay my share in household expenses here I should like to stay all summer as I have certainly been made to feel extremely welcome. Otherwise I can’t go on accepting things as they are. —/—/

Eugene O’Neill wrote me that he was enthusiastic about some recent things I had sent him, and I have enough enthusiasm from other astute and discriminating people in America to make me feel that my writings are justified. Publishers shy at it, of course, because they know it won’t make them money. Meanwhile the same flood of mediocrities in verse continues to be printed, bound and sold year after year.

Your story of the Fourth sounded very jolly indeed. Nothing could beat the hilarity of this place—with about an omnibus-full of people here from New York and a case of gin, to say nothing of jugs of marvellous hard cider from a neighboring farm. You should have seen the dances I did—one all painted up like an African cannibal. My makeup was lurid enough. A small keg on my head and a pair of cerise drawers on my legs! We went swimming at midnight, climbed trees, played blind man’s buff, rode in wheel-barrows and gratified every caprice for three days until everyone was good an’ tired out. The guests are still recovering, I understand, in their separate abodes in the city. It certainly is infinitely pleasanter drinking and celebrating on a wide acreage, like this farm, than in the tumult and commotion of the city. Aside from this one blowout I have not had a drop since I have been here—and have not felt like drinking, either. The desire for booze in the city comes from frayed nerves and repressions of the office, I’m sure. —/—/

211: To Waldo Frank

Patterson, New York Friday

Dear Waldo: I’m awfully sorry about the Jimenez translations: they are locked in my trunk at Columbia Heights in my letter file. But I’m going back to New York about a week from tomorrow and I’ll be glad to copy them—and either send them on to you—or directly to The New Republic, as you may direct. That would be—at most—only a few days later than they would arrive had I sent them along with this letter. I don’t know what you are accenting in your thesis on the poet, but I think [the] short poem on the Virgin better than the one called “The Three.” I think you sent me only these two.

Along with your letter today comes the news from my mother that transactions are about completed for the sale of our home in Cleveland. If this really eventuates I may be called upon to help them move—which will defer my plans for sea roving at least until after September. However, I may decide to evade the moving: I can’t at present see my way to make any definite plans without risking some kind of unpleasant entanglement. I wish that “wile” and “guile” were easier instruments for my imagination to use! There is always some other immediate duty or requirement for me to perform than creation. I’ve had only above five hours at the writing table since I came out here, and now it’s about time to look for a postage stamp—I mean the wherewithal for it—to post this letter! Of course I’ve had a good time, find I enjoy painting house, gardening, etc. BUT——.

At any rate your sanguine hopes for White Buildings warms me. It came back from Harcourt yesterday. They couldn’t make anything out of most of the poems. My “obscurity” is a mystery to me, and I can’t help thinking that publishers and their readers have never heard the mention of Sir Thomas [John?] Davies, Donne, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Valéry or even Emily Dickinson. Within a few days, probably, I’ll get time to make you a copy of the mss. It has been loutish of me not to have delivered the poems to you long before this, but hurry and general confusion have been mainly responsible. In looking over the selection I hope you will (when the leisurely moment arrives) have the impulse to make what comments and criticisms occur to you. I am dissatisfied with at least half the poems, but I realize that this will possibly always be so with regard to poems written more than two years back. Reason seems to dictate, then, a certain amount of necessary indifference, that is, if I’m ever to print any collection of poems before the grave. —/—/

212: To Waldo Frank

New York July 23rd

Dear Waldo: —/—/ After the quiet and freshness of the country the New York or rather Manhattan mid-summer seems more than ever intolerable. Rather ghastly, in fact. But Cleveland won’t be much better. Gorham was thoughtful in writing me news of a possible position with Henry [Robert] McBride as publicity man. I am going to see them about it before leaving,—as it might be a decent sort of thing for me.

Dos Passos has just come back from the hospital, after about two months of some influenza complication which has almost finished him. Cummings looks bilious and harried. His connections with Vanity Fair are broken and like the rest of us he is looking for pennies. Jimmy Light has just sailed past Columbia Hts. for England where he expects to put on some O’Neill plays. He has sole direction of the Provincetown theatre (not Greenwich Village branch) when he comes back in September. Have you thought of sending your play to him? The repërtoire that is at present planned doesn’t sound any too brilliant to me. Haven’t seen Jean or Gorham yet,—but expect to tomorrow. Such is the news in a hasty batch.... —/—/

213: To Waldo Frank

Cleveland Aug. 19th

Dear Waldo: I have been trying to get time and clarity to write you for the last two weeks—ever since I sent you the mss. of White Buildings—but the nightmare hurly-burly and confusion here intercepted me consistently. Three more weeks of it and I shall be able to get back to Brown’s place in the country and collect myself. Our old home will be rented by its new owner to a fraternity, my mother and grandmother will be leaving for Miami, and Cleveland will become for me, I hope, more a myth of remembrance than a reality, excepting that my “myth” of a father will still make chocolates here.

There has been one bright afternoon, however—last Sat. when I went out to Brandywine valley (between here and Akron) and revisited Bill Sommer. The old baldpate was asleep on a sofa when I looked through the screen door and knocked. Arose a great bulk in white undershirt and loose white duck pants—the black eyes revolving in the pallid or rather, dusty-white miller face like a sardonic Pierrot’s. The few hours I was there were spent with him out in the old school-house studio, surrounded by a flower garden and filled with plentiful new wonders of line and color. I wish you could have seen several of the oil children’s portraits that he has been doing! And there is a line drawing of a head and hand that I am bringing back to New York that you will greatly care for. While we were both chewing, smoking and listening to the crickets I finally found out why Sommer has been so remiss about joining in with me in my several efforts to expose him to fame and “fortune.” He hates to let his pictures leave him. Against that impasse, I guess, nobody’s efforts will be of much avail. It’s just as well, of course, if he has triumphed over certain kinds of hope. I admit that I haven’t, at least not entirely. I still feel the need of some kind of audience.

By the way—do you know if O’Neill is at present a resident anywhere on Nantucket? He has promised to write some kind of notice for my book, and I should like to get in touch with him. He wrote me from Bermuda, but where he has settled since returning from there I don’t yet know. If he has been near you I hope that you have got together.

I am enclosing an improved version of “Passage,”—the poem I wrote in the country this summer. It should replace the version that is in the mss. you have. To me it is still the most interesting and conjectural thing I have written—being merely the latest, I suppose. I’m particularly anxious to know what you think of its form. On sending it to The Dial I recently got this comment from Miss Moore:

“We could not but be moved, as you must know, by the rich imagination and the sensibility in your poem, Passage. Its multiform content accounts I suppose, for what seems to us a lack of simplicity and cumulative force. We are sorry to return it.”

It seems almost as though Miss Moore might be rather speaking of her own poems with such terms.... Allen Tate is writing a short essay (he intends a longer one later) on my work to appear along with four of the “Voyages” in the next copy of The Guardian. You will probably see it. It does hearten me somewhat that you and a few others have been so actively interested in what I’m trying to do. Certainly I have never done anything to personally deserve it, but I think my personal and economic embarrassments and frustrations have curtailed a good many of my intentions. —/—/

214: To Charlotte and Richard Rychtarik

New York Sept. 15th, ’25

Dear Charlotte! dear Richard! —/—/ I am ready to send you one of the Light masks (from last year’s production of The Ancient Mariner). Jimmie promised me one of them, and I can think of no one better to send it to than you. I’ll get a box tomorrow, pack it and send it along. You can have some great fun playing with it in pantomime around the house. The effect is unearthly—the mask belonged to one of the angels, in fact, that are described as standing on the deck of the ship as it reaches the harbor in Coleridge’s poem. —/—/

I am so afraid that the land up there will get away from me before I get there that I can hardly sleep nights. I find that O’Neill is not in town and the other person, the publisher, from whom I had planned to possibly borrow the money is away also. Would it strain your pocketbook at this time to lend me the amount, so that I can at once clinch the bargain? It was so good of you to make the offer in the first place that I feel [I] am possibly taking advantage of your friendship. But if I could just settle the matter there before it is too late, I could later borrow the money from O’Neill, or someone else and return you at once the money borrowed. I will need a little over two hundred dollars as otherwise I shall not have anything to pay the lawyer’s fees with for looking up the deed, etc. Would $25.00 extra be too much? You must allow me to pay 6% interest on the loan—and to send you a regular note for the money. I would like the time stipulation about 5 years, but I would repay it as soon as possible before that. I know you trust me, but I also want to assure you of protection in the matter. —/—/

215: To Charlotte and Richard Rychtarik

Patterson, New York Sunday

Dear Charlotte and Richard: I think I have found an even better solution for the “land problem” than the first proposition offered. A friend of Brown’s, Miss Bina Flynn, has just bought a lovely place within a half mile from Brown’s place, wonderful old Dutch house in good condition and built about the time of the American Revolution and with 160 acres of land around it. She needs money to help pay for it and has offered me 20 acres of the best of her land for $200.00. The piece that I have picked to buy is on the top slopes of a hill that overlooks the valley and it contains several open fields and a great deal of forest land. As it is much more convenient (within better access from the main road), and as it contains no useless swamps or wasteland as the other property included, I think I am getting as much of a bargain, if not more. Twenty acres is plenty to spread out in anyway, and there will be plenty of room on it for whatever place you would want, too.

Miss Flynn is out here today transacting the purchase of her property and I expect to settle with her very soon. More and more I become convinced that this is the only way for me to live, that is, when I can make arrangements to afford it as a permanent way of living, and I am sort of planning to come out here next summer and put up a temporary cabin which will at least do during the warm weather. I shall roll in the grass with prayers and pleasure when I really get this tract of land for my very own. And such beautiful country you will not find in many sections of this vast continent. Enclosed is my note for the $225.00 which I intend to pay much before the stipulated time. I shall, in fact, probably take a job in New York or on the sea this winter which will enable me to pay it back before a year is over—at the latest.

Today it is raining, but the ten days before it have been as divine as anyone could wish for. We have had big fires in the evenings, long walks, big meals almost entirely of lettuce, carrots, beets, turnips, squash, etc., just taken from the garden. Sue [Jenkins] seems to be very contented out here and is busy every moment making jellies, jams, pickles, etc. The hills are covered with wild grapes, elderberries and apple orchards. Don’t you think the quince is a beautiful fruit? There are about a dozen quince trees on Brown’s property—all loaded with their sort of kid glove golden fruit. Yesterday we had a great time making six gallons of ale. It must ripen for about five days in a warm corner of the chimney in a huge crock, and then we can begin to drink it. Brown also has a complete distilling outfit out in the shed. He makes wonderful apple jack from cider. But this is a forbidden drink for me these days!

All my furniture and things arrived in perfect condition. In addition I have been making tables and cupboards from old loose wood that has been lying around for years. They really look like antiques, all right! But I do love the weather stains and silver streaks on the surfaces. Most of the wood is oak and quite strong.

So you see how the days go.... In addition I am getting back to enough poise to read a good deal. It’s funny! Here I’ve been for over two weeks, now, and without a cent of money to my name. But I haven’t felt uncomfortable by any means. I know I can go back to a job now with a much better feeling of independence than before. —/—/

216: To Slater Brown

[Brooklyn] Oct. 21st, ’25

Dear Tories: There have been numerous “celebrations” besides the already recounted one (by Bina) on the great transaction, and the Punch Palazzo has had due patronage. The engrossing female [Laura Riding] at most of these has been “Rideshalk-Godding,” as I have come to call her, and thus far the earnest ghost of acidosis has been kept well hence. My real regret, however, is that I just missed getting the pick of jobs of the S. Am. line, last steamer—said occupation being deck yeoman at 20 minutes work a day, all freedom of ship, mess with officers or any first class passengers that seemed colloquial, white uniform, brass buttons, cap, meditation on the sun deck all day long, and seventy-five dollars a month clear sailing! The chief officer had already approved me, but before I could get over to the offices for final approbation they had already sent someone else over to the ship. We must have passed under the river. However, I noticed that my questionnaire (filled last June) had won an OK sign in the upper right corner, and I have been told to come around again on the 26th when the next boat arrives. I’m not waiting for that, however, as I need instant cash and there is not one chance in a hundred of a similar vacancy soon. Otherwise I have finished “The Wine Menagerie” and have sent it off, along with “Passage,” to The Criterion. Since the last (yesterday) Guardian has come out without the “Voyages” I am thinking of trying to become a literary ex-patriot. It’s just as tiresome as ever. This issue contains a lot of tommy-rot by Seaver and an “announcement” in the bargain that reads unforgivably: “Voyages, four remarkable poems by Allen Tate” will appear in the next issue! —/—/

Am on my way to The Dial to have lunch with K. B[urke] and shall try to bag a review or briefers from the Rt. Rev. Miss Mountjoy [Moore]. A momentous morning: Frank is going to try to corner Liveright on my vol., also. —/—/

217: To Waldo Frank

[Brooklyn] Oct. 26th

Dear Waldo: Your advice and stimulation are still with me. Your solidity and conviction seemed never more firm or luminous than during our last talk.—I was glad to see you looking so well. I wrote this out this morning, thinking it might go well in the book.[39] No other news yet.

218: To William Sommer

Brooklyn, N. Y. Oct. 27th, ’25

Dear Bill: —/—/ I know you’ll be glad to know that there is a good chance of my first book of poems, White Buildings, being published by next spring. In fact Boni & Liveright (at Waldo Frank’s persuasion) have practically agreed to bring it out if Eugene O’Neill will consent to write a short foreword. They have lost so much money on the better kind of poetry (which simply doesn’t sell these days) that they want to hook the book up with an illustrious name and catch the public that way as much as possible. Gene is a good friend of mine and admires my work—I know that—but whether or not he feels like performing this favor I haven’t yet heard. Frank thinks he can engineer the matter anyway—in time, but I don’t know. He would gladly write the foreword himself if he thought his name would count sufficiently, and at any rate will write a whole page of praise for it in The New Republic when it comes out. This and other favorable reviews that I am sure to get from friends of mine ought to make quite a sensation for the book. I’m a little up in the air with the uncertainty and excitement of the present situation. It would be fine for me in so many ways if the thing did go through!