Miss Etty Stettheimer.

Hotel Rockmore.

Marblehead

Massachusetts.

THE WINSLOW
A KNOTT HOTEL

45 East 55th Street
NEW YORK 22, N. Y.

GRAND

ST.

Miss Ettie Stettheimer,
Hotel Dorset

30 west 54 street
New York city

The Sun

280 BROADWAY, NEW YORK 15, N. Y.
WORTH 2-2323

EDITORIAL
DEPARTMENT

45 East 55 street,

April 17 1951

Dear Ettie;

At last the book has come and I think it wonderful. I am more than astonished - I am deeply impressed and I think everybody will be. I have already read the preface, the short stories at the end, the two reviews of Lovett and Bourne of "Love Days" and have even made a beginning on "Love Days" itself, and I think you have built a perfect and enduring monument for yourself. You say you wish to be widely read and I think you will be. By the right people I mean. It won't reach best-selling proportions, for serious books never do, but every public and college library in the country will have to have it - and there you are, permanently established where inquiring minds can get at you. I am very pleased and await the reviews with impatience. If a civilized and shrewd writer on the order of Rebecca West could do one of them, I'm sure the results would astonish all of us. In the mean time you've been shrewd yourself in the way you've put it together. The critique of Professor William James' "Will to Believe" will in itself reduce all scoffers to silence.

So many thanks, and many congratulations. You have supplied me with my summer's reading. But I'm coming over to have my book inscribed - before the rush begins.

Hastily,

THE WINSLOW

A KNOTT HOTEL

45 East 55th Street

NEW YORK 22, N. Y.

Hill and Bridge.

Ausnerl

June 10

Min Etter Stettheimer
Hotel Dorset.

30 West 54 Street
New York City

THE WINSLOW
A KNOTT HOTEL

THE WINSLOW
A KNOTT HOTEL

Seymour, Conn. August 16, 1951.

Dear Ettie;

Getting here was an ordeal from which I have not yet quite
recovered. Max had previously brought up here such of my garments and
medicines (I have a few staples allways in readiness) as he thought I might
need, and the idea was to take the Washington-Boston train which passes
through New York without change, and drop me at Bridgeport where Max would
be waiting, all of which occurred, but last Friday was suffocatingly hot, if
you remember, and the getting away from my house, locking doors and windows,
throwing away ice and perishables from the kitchen, and awaiting a
tantalizing taxi which didn't come until the last minute, reduced my courage
so that I had little left for the trip itself. In short, I arrived a wreck,
with an embarrassing indigestion (nerves) and a reminder in my back that
I had had sacro-iliac. Once here I had nothing to do but rest and finish
the tail-end of my piece about Dr. Barnes for the Art News which was also
something that had been worrying me, but it was not until Monday that I got
that done and could smile again. Now, tomorrow, Max drives me all the way home
in his car, 2½ hours to New York, 3½ hours to West Chester, which again will
be an ordeal -but this time Max will be with me, and we plan to stop in
New Hope where there is a pleasant place to lunch. But I ask myself why do
people ever travel anywhere in America in the summer?

Ever since June I have been miserable in one way or another (as I told
you) and though I think I'm better physically I am still worried about my
affairs, for it is apparent that I oughtn't to attempt to stay alone at
my place again, and the business of arranging for all that is in itself
beyond me. I ought to sell my pictures, books, etc., and get down to the
minimum of existence; but as long as I continue writing I cant give
energy to organizing myself. I have already hinted to Art News that I am
to be considered unreliable, but they dont take the hint. One of my trials
this summer, was the flattering invitation from the State Department at
write as article for the French journal Age Nouveaux sacro-ilian forced
me to resign that. So you see I'm delighted. I'll write from again, since you insist on hearing bad news from me.

The Sun

EDITORIAL
DEPARTMENT

West, Chester, Route 4, Penna.

Sept. 13 1951

Dear Ettie;

So dark this morning I'll try the type-writer - if you permit
it. Do you?

More than once when speaking of your illnesses you have said that
the slightest effort, mental or physical, fatigued you. How well I
understood you, but how difficult it is for those who do not exert their
brains very much to believe such a thing; and how little patience such
people would have with my behaviour this summer. For the effort to make
my so-called brain do something it didn't want to do completely wrecked
my vacation. It began during my first week in the country. The State
Department in Washington wrote asking me to do an article for the French
review, Age Nouveau, giving me six weeks time for it and saying some
capable person would put it into French for me. I was flattered to be
doing something for the State Department as well as for Age Nouveau, so
I said yes. But immediately I came down with my famous attack of sacro-
iliac. I thought it might pass, or possibly that I might write in the
interval of the twinges, but had no such luck. Not only did the sacro
flame into activity when I wrote but what I wrote seemed positively
insane. Finally I wrote Washington begging off, and was graciously given
an extended "dead line," and again when that was reac hed, I again begged
off. Then two weeks ago Washington wrote again, pleading for the article,
2000 words only, on the topic "Does American Painting Depend upon Paris?",
and as I felt fairly well, I agreed, and immediately the sacro came back.
Do you believe this? It was so, nevertheless. However I agonized over the
thing every day and finally got it done and off in the mails to Washington

e)
yesterday But no one would believe, unless possibly you do, the pranks my
poor head played me. Some days I could write but a line, and then erase
that; and one morning I said to myself resolutely "You must do this, good
or bad, and have done with it" and I sat myself grimly at my desk and
two minutes later found myself unconsciously on my feet with my back to
the desk. Well I suppose all writers go through such experiences but this
was my most bitter, and all the more bitter, because I realized perfectly
that what I wanted most to say I couldn't, for political reasons. Also I
had the deadly conviction that I was not a fit person to discuss such a
theme, not being in the least au courant with the Paris of today, and that
it was time for me to "bow out". Do you see? And needless to say I am
thoroughly ashamed of my "piece" - but en tout cas, it is finished.

A lovely, lovely wee k, this past one. September c can be wonderful in
Pennsylvania. And strangely, my small place is rich with fruit this year.
My rich neighbour's cook came yesterday and got two bushel baskets of
black grapes from my vines, leaving just as many for somebody else. Also
quantities of very nice peaches and crab-apples and pears. I wish you
were near. Just because I have so many Iscarcely touch them myself, but
this is partly because I remember that my New York doctor said I must
always eat "cooked" fruit - and that's a nuisance.

I wonder if you have read all this. This type-writer is faulty
and the "c's" in particular, are very jumpy. Pray, forgive them.

As ever,

<table><tr><td>MAIL</td></tr><tr><td>EARLY</td></tr><tr><td>FOR</td></tr><tr><td>CHRISTMAS</td></tr></table>

Miss Etienne Stettheimer

Pioneer Hotel

Tuscon.

Arizona.

Florine Stettheimer

Noting the frequency in America with which quite evidently gifted men start promisingly upon their careers only to succumb at the first taste of success to the temptation to paint what sells, and noting also that most of our native "classics", such as Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, Albert Ryder, George Fuller and Ralph Blakelock lived practically as recluses, I thou for a time that this inability to be valiant in the face of the public was a weakness peculiar to this land. But I find I was mistaken. Only recently I came across a passage in the memoirs of Stefan Sweig, "The World of Yesterday", that convinces me it is a trait characteristic of this period rather than this country exclusively. Here it is;

"From 1900 to 1914 I never saw a reference to Paul Valery as a poet in either Figaro or Le Matin; Marcel Proust was looked upon as the dandy of the salons, and Romain Rolland as a well-informed scholar in music. They were almost fifty years of age before the first timid ray of renown touched their names, and their great work had been accomplished in the center of the most inquisitive, most intellectual city in the world."

For twenty years or more, at every opportunity, I had been preaching the doctrine of seclusion to American painters, seeing how unequal they seemed to be to coping with the pressure that present-day publicity puts upon them. Obviously, in doing this I had to address only those who feel the imperative urge to create, or in other words, the serious artists. The others, those who think of painting as a mere money-making profession can safely be left to their own devices. They'll get the money very likely; the others will gain that deep attention of the public, I know, that more often leads to fame.

I never had occasion to preach this idea to Florine Stettheimer for she seemed to be considerably aloof from the world when I first came to know her; aloof, that is, as an artist. She and her two sisters, Miss Carrie and Miss Ettie, had a numerous and intimate acquaintance among the "intellectuals" of the town and there were frequent dinners and "evenings" in the Stettheimer residence and sometimes in Miss Stettheimer's studio, but no one