Lancaster, Pa.

March 7, 1954

Dearest Hilda:

At last I am ready to give up, not my "murmuring breath", but my precious
collection of H.D. writings, to Bryn Mawr College which has just made itself
a Rare Book Room in which to house such collections. They promise to keep
this together on a shelf in this special library and I hope others besides
myself will then enjoy it. When it comes to the point, I find it very hard
to donate these books before my death, because I so often want to refer to
them; but I do not want them to be lost either, in the chaos that often fol-
lows the death of one so without relatives as I am-yes, I have a brother but
he and his wife are both complete invalids and the only niece I have pretty
remote from my interests, with four little boys, and living in Pittsburg. So,
I think it's best to part with my collection now, if you are willing. I am
enclosing the list and have marked four that I have not yet succeeded in
tracking down-but I still have hopes and if they are found, I can then add
them to the shelf. What I understand is whether you care that I am including the
privately printed volumes. If there are any that you would like me to with-
hold, of course I shall do so. And of course I have duplicates of some which
I am holding on to!

Mary Schaffner was here a week ago, with an old Chicago friend of mine who is a substitute teacher at The Baldwin School this year. I did so enjoy then both and especially the fine recent photographs of Perdita and family. Those boys are both enchanting and I do love your family. I think it's too bad they cannot see more of you. But I'm so glad you are feeling so much better and are living so safely beside your good doctor. What a lovely picture I got of your Christmas from your letter written in December! No, the book I sent you, although I have not read it, could not possibly be compared with your "Avon"-that's pure poetry - the scholar is pedestrian in contrast of course. I just thought that it might interest you since it is your period.

And what a wonderful Ausflug Bryher has had! I had a most interesting letter from her, from Pakistan-it was really thrilling, the whole business, and I hope she is now at home in Kenwin again. Spring, after a fine start, has decided to withdraw here-we are as cold as we've been all winter. Daffodils and other bulbs I'm afraid are suffering. Climate, or rather weather, is just as unpredictable as ever, in spite of all our efforts to be scientific about it. I am about to take off for Phila. and a Milanov concert there to-night; and on Tuesday we get forth for Charleston and hope to find a more spring-like atmosphere (how funny that looks, divided!:) Much love for you and Let me know where you will be this summer. And excuse execrable typing-I'm in too much of a hurry, I guess.

Bibliography of books by H.D.

<table>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td>1916</td>
      <td>Sea Garden</td>
      <td>London, Constable</td>
      <td></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>1916</td>
      <td>Sea Garden</td>
      <td>Boston, Houghton</td>
      <td>v.47 New Poetry Series</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>× 1916</td>
      <td>The Choruses from Iphigenia in Aulis</td>
      <td></td>
      <td>Cleveland, Clark's press</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>× 1917</td>
      <td>The Tribute and Circe, two poems</td>
      <td></td>
      <td>Cleveland, Clark's press</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>× 1919</td>
      <td>The Choruses from Iphigenia in Aulis and the Hippolytus of Euripides, tr. Loneon, Tne Egoist, ltd. (The poets tr. ser. 2nd set,</td>
      <td></td>
      <td></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>× 1924</td>
      <td>Heliodora and other poems</td>
      <td>London, J. Cape</td>
      <td>no.</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>n.d.</td>
      <td>Heliodora and other poems</td>
      <td></td>
      <td>Bost. Houghton Mifflin-printed in Great Brita</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>1921</td>
      <td>Hymen</td>
      <td>N.Y. Holt and co.</td>
      <td></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>1921</td>
      <td>Hymen</td>
      <td>The Egoist press</td>
      <td></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>1926</td>
      <td>H. D.</td>
      <td>N.Y. Simon and Schuster (The Pamphlet poets)</td>
      <td></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>1926</td>
      <td>Palimpsest</td>
      <td>Bost. Houghton</td>
      <td></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>1925</td>
      <td>Collected poems</td>
      <td>N.Y. Boni and Liveright</td>
      <td>from the library of Charle</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>1927</td>
      <td>Hippolytus Temporizes a play</td>
      <td>Bost. Houghton</td>
      <td>Demut</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>1928</td>
      <td>Hedylus</td>
      <td>Blackwell, Oxford and Houghton M. Boston</td>
      <td></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>1928</td>
      <td>The Usual Star</td>
      <td>100 copies not for sale</td>
      <td></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>1929</td>
      <td>Red Roses for Bronze</td>
      <td>N.Y. Random House (The Poetry Quartos, no. 7)</td>
      <td></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>1930</td>
      <td>Kora and Ka</td>
      <td>100 copies not for sale</td>
      <td></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>1931</td>
      <td>Red Roses for Bronze</td>
      <td>Lond. Chatto and Windus</td>
      <td></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>1931</td>
      <td>Red Roses for Bronze</td>
      <td>Bost. and N.Y. Houghton</td>
      <td></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>1936</td>
      <td>The Hedgehog</td>
      <td>The Brendin Publishing Co. England</td>
      <td></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>1937</td>
      <td>Euripides' Ion tr. with notes</td>
      <td>Lond. Chatto and Windus</td>
      <td></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>1937</td>
      <td>Euripides' Ion tr. with notes</td>
      <td>Bost. and N.Y. Houghton</td>
      <td></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>1944</td>
      <td>The Walls Do Not Fall</td>
      <td>Oxford Univ. Press, Lond.</td>
      <td></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>1944</td>
      <td>The Walls Do Not Fall</td>
      <td>N.Y.</td>
      <td></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>1945</td>
      <td>Tribute to the angels</td>
      <td>Oxford Univ. Press Lond.</td>
      <td></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>1945</td>
      <td>Tribute to the angels</td>
      <td>Oxford Univ. Press N.Y.</td>
      <td></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>1946</td>
      <td>The Flowering of the rod</td>
      <td>Oxford Univ. Press Lond.</td>
      <td></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>1949</td>
      <td>By Avon River</td>
      <td>The Macmillan Co. N.Y.</td>
      <td></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>1950</td>
      <td>What do I love?</td>
      <td>Privately printed by The Brendin Pub. Co. London</td>
      <td></td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

Sorry these are done what they should be
chronological order!

many writes she will appear some time
I will send her, re this Bagnall
a gift, later.

1239 Wheatland Avenue
Lancaster, Pa.

September 5, 1956

Dear Hilda:

For so long I've been wanting to thank you for your good
letter of June 29 but the summer as usual has gone away-
faster than the fox!- and here is fall again with all it's
multiferious activities. I love summer, do not much mind
our truly desperate heat (I wonder if you remember southern
Pennsylvania summers?) and I had a perfect five weeks in
New York and New England during July, calling upon many old
friends tucked away in various northeastern states, and
spending a week-the longest visit, with Elizabeth Single-
ton in Blue Hill, Maine. So much for me-I've had a new lease
on life, haven't felt so well in years, so I feel ready for
anything. And now I'm looking forward to your visit over
here, for I do hope you will find it possible to come. You
must see the two new grandchildren. I haven't seen Perdita
and family for ages and if you are to be in New York, that
will be such an added inducement to roll over there. Of
course I'd simply love it if you could find time to come
to Lancaster and drive round a bit but I know how short
your time will be and that you want to spend it with your
own family. I don't think you need worry that you won't come
up to scratch with the children and you should certainly
learn to know Nicholas-he is enchanting in a very different
way from Valentine. Yes, I expect the young do feel sorry
for the elders; but, as you remark, age brings a much finer
happiness than youth can ever do-at least, if one is reason-
ably well. How free one is of all the "keeping up" and all
that that implies! If only one is well, and one's friends and
family well, life is heaven in these latter years. I too am
so glad that I saw Zürich and Küssnacht and that lovely and
interesting country. Your present set-up sounds ideal but
I'm sorry that you had to leave Dr. Brunner's for such a
sad reason. That's the only trouble about age-one loses one's

friends. Do you remember Margaret Ames who lived in Rocke-
feller? She was my first good college friend and we had such
a wonderful time that first year when we both visited her
Bush-Browne relatives up on the Hudson at Easter vacation.
She was a remarkable person and I loved her dearly and some-
times visited her after her marriage although not lately to
my sorrow. For she died this summer of leukemia and had been
quite ill for several years. I regret terribly not having gone
out to St. Paul when I got back from Europe, to see her. But
one's friends are so scattered-it's hard to keep up.

Gretchen didn't tell me she was 95 near as Bethlehem-I wonder
when it was. Perhaps I was abroad at the time. She has a
standing invitation to come here if ever she comes within my
radius.

Yes indeed, you did send me the German "Avon" and I hope I
thanked you for it-such a beautiful book. I sent it to a num-
ber of friends. I wish I knew enough German to understand
what a wonderful job you did-it must be agonizing to put your
own poetry into another tongue. And isn't it wonderful that
Bryher has had such fine reviews of her delightful "Beowulf"?
It seems to me to say everything about the British in wartime
in very small compass. I loved it and am sending it round.
How nice of you to remember Connie Wright-her book is not com-
ing out until the spring but I'll send it to you when it does
come. She has had to make many changes I think and has been
slaving on it but wasn't it good of John to place it in time
for the coming 200th anniversary of Lafayette? The "Friends
of Lafayette" an organization to which Connie belongs are hav-
ing their meetings next year at Easton because of Lafayette
College and C. and her sister and I are going to attend.

Bryher says passage is engaged for you all for about mid-Sept.
My only engagement for my tavern so far is the week of the
16th-some friends from Phila. that day and on the 18th my niece
is coming from Pittsburgh for a few days' visit. But October
is getting busy! How I wish I could get you down the week of
Sept. 24! I would drive you anywhere-Washington, Williamsburg etc.

Lots of fun and the hope that shall be seen soon.

1239 Westland Avenue
Lancaster, Pa.

December 15, 1956

Dear Hilda:

This brings you my best Christmas wishes and I'm so sorry that I have been unable to find something for you in the way of remembrance in this town of Lancaster. Books, yes, but how do I know what you would like? So I enclose a delicate little bookmark, a cinnamon-tree leaf, for your delectation. I know you will appreciate it even if it is of no intrinsic value. If I see something when I am in New York that you cannot get better in Europe, I'll send it on even if it isn't Christmas!

I did such a stupid thing-sent the Amish book to both you and Bryher when I know you see each other so often and exchange notes. Too bad of me. But I thought you'd both be interested in seeing it. This is what the Christmas rush does to me: I am off to N.Y. on the 23rd for a week or more and hope to see Perdita while there-I always greatly enjoy her and her family.

Are you out of the hospital, I wonder? I shall send this to the Klinik as I suppose it would be forwarded anyway. I do hope your leg is all right and that you will have the full use of it from now on-what a horrid accident! My cousin is still in the hospital and will be for perhaps six weeks longer.

We are still having practical summer here-no cold weather yet and no snow. Probably we shall get it all in the spring when one wants to be out gardening! Very verse is the weather. Much love to you and the hope that you really will be coming over to stay before long.

MARY E. HERR
1239 WHEATLAND AVENUE
LANCASTER, PENNSYLVANIA

July 21, 1957

Dear Hilda:

How remiss I've been about sending you sympathetic messages and such during your long incarceration! I can only plead my own obsession with my nose again-since early spring I've been occupied with biopsies, visits to Johns Hopkins and the last month, undergoing plastic surgery to catch another piece of skin that was going the way of the nose, forming another lesion where the original X-ray had burned the skin. But now, I think everything that was exposed in the early days has now been given healthy skin so that I do not anticipate any more of this kind of surgery. It is a nuisance because it keeps me so long out of circulation. I am still banded but by the end of the week expect to be free of all doctors and troubles until I go down for a final inspection in October. It is nothing to what you have had to face-a break is just about the worst thing that can happen to us after seventy for it keeps you so helpless for so long a time. A letter from Bryher the other day says that you had to go back to the Kusnacht place because the pin in the hip slipped. That is certainly hard luck but I hope by this time you can return to your own spot in Villa Verena. I shall in any case, address this letter there. My poor cousin who broke her leg and was in the hospital for nine months finally was allowed to go to her apartment-only to break the bone again-this time a jagged break but not splintered. Now she is back in the hospital for at least three months and terribly discouraged and so sunk that she will not read her mail or see anybody. She is seventy-six and I am very anxious about her.

What a wonderful experience Bryher is taking on!

I do hope weather and everything else will be propitious and that she'll have lots to tell about such an unusual holiday. If she sees Perdita on the way home, I'm so hoping she will at least spend a night at the Cosmopolitan Club with me-she'll surely have to get to the Air-port from New York. But perhaps it's possible just to drive from Perdita's spot on Long Island in which case I shall be greatly disappointed. I haven't seen anything of Perdita for ages-simply haven't had time when I was in New York this winter as I wanted to be with my cousin as much as possible. And I do miss that engaging young family.Connie Wright, owing to John's getting her book placed so nicely, has seen them several times and is as taken with them as am I. I hope you'll enjoy Connie's tale-I think she has brought the two principal characters to life, which is always an achievement in an historical study.

Your poem in the New Yorker this week delighted me and I wish you'd send them oftener to that interesting sheet. I read it quite thoro ughly and am often rewarded thereby, in story and poem and profile and sometimes book review. Bryher says your "Selected Poems" is out in a paper-back-I haven't seen it but shall send for it soon. Any other publishing by you?

My love and very good wishes to you as always and I do hope the leg is now really on the mend and that you can soon be on your own. But do use a cane! Plan to come over in 1959 for your 50th re-union even though you you left Bryn Mawr in disgust after freshman year! I know everybody will do you honour there.

As ever,

February 3, 1958

Dear Hilda:

I have two such lovely letters from you, one written in July and the other after Christmas, and I'm afraid I have been very casual about writing to you. But I think when I write to Bryher that she gives you my news and I am always a bit shy of making you feel you must answer my letters when I know it must be an ordeal for you—especially if your right arm is affected by the left leg break! I'm so glad you are getting around even though on your "sticks"—my cousin calls her great brace the Empire State Building. But she too is getting around with the aid of crutches but only in her own apartment. You are very good to be so interested in her progress. She is ever-so-much happier since she can be at home and is really evincing some hope that she may be able to be more independent. At present she has a housekeeper and her daughter to help her in and out of bed, which seems to be the hardest work. She will be 77 this summer.

Bryher wrote me that she and George Plank were to be in Lugano from the middle of January so I suppose she is not yet back in Zürich. How happy you will be to hear all their experiences in a place you love so well. I wish you could have gone too. But "hame's best" for the likes of us, I think. I can hardly bear to leave my comfortable spot in winter weather and even hate to go out at night. It's been a rather cold winter but very open. However, snow-drops are pushing and many daffodils (because I planted them too shallowly) and the jasmine hedge at the back has many tiny yellow blossoms. It is the first thing to show and often gets nipped and ruined in February and March. Christmas roses are still going strong, so you see we have quite a succession of bloom even in winter. I put in a lot of tulips last fall so the garden should be gay in April and May.

I was so sorry to hear about Miss Volkart and do hope she is now recovering satisfactorily—see what my typewriter does!

You are good to remember so much of the little visit to Lan-
caster-how vividly you must recall! I suppose that is the sensi-
tive artist in you-you get such clear impressions and feel so
much about experiences, while people like me just muddle along
with the vaguest recollections-there seem such a multiplicity
of them. My friends are always accusing me of not remembering
with whom I go to the theatre and movies etc. and I ask them
the next week or so whether they've seen such and such-"why of
course," they say, "I saw it with you!" Great embarrassment on
my part. But, say I, at the play, one can think only of the
play and not of one's next-door-neighbor. But it doesn't work
even for me and I get the feeling that I really am losing my
mental alertness-the worst thing, in my opinion that can happen
to one. I am going to a science lecture soon on the possibilities
of space-travel-do you think I shall remember anything about it?
Or even understand what it is all about?

I have read almost nothing except magazines for ages-have you
anything to recommend in the way of books? I looked for your
poems in The Atlantic and in Poetry, London and America, but could
not find them-perhaps next month they will appear. I look forward
to them always. I was so sorry to miss Perdita and her family
when I was in N.Y.-they were all on Long Island and a good thing,
too, I'm sure, to get away from all the Christmas over-eating,
over-drinking, over-socialability and all the other overs that
that season seems now to offer.

All my love to you and Bryher it she is there and I do hope you
will soon be able to get around as you used to do-but it does
take time.

Ever,