77 Irving Place

Sept. 9th 1921

Dear Georgia:

I was out at Cane's over Labor Day, and there saw your purple tulips ! Oh, Georgia, such painting ! It seemed to me almost the most beautiful I have ever seen. That lower right-hand corner, with its tones of mother of pearl gray and tourquoise green! I almost wanted to eat it, and you know how sincere a form of flattery that is with me ! The entire little canvas, with its dark mysterious center, was so pure and sad and mature ! It was different from some of your earlier things, and yet it was the selfsame you, with sometremendous new wisdom, and the power to make something beautiful out of something sad and not to be helped. It is like a new form of language, and when Dove said he was as interested in what you were doing as he was in what Picasso was about, I seemed for a minute to understand him.

I had received your letter with its account
of the colorlessness of your this-summer things,
and felt a little puzzled. But after I saw this
glorious and pure thing of yours, I felt that
everything was all right, and that you were prob-
ably attacking some new tough problem, and was
more than ever anxious to see the new O'Keeffe's.

Well, the Dial has promised to print my re-
jected article on painting. Unfortunately, they
have no room for it for several months, so I sup-
pose it won't appear till the winter is in. But as
I was no surer of getting it printed anywhere else
than in the Dial, I remonstrated and agreed. They
are going to publish it in two installments, I am
told. I am to be permitted four reproductions to
go with the article, one of a Ryder, and three of
anything I choose, or can get. Watson, the editor
asked to have the rubber-plant of Hartley's I own,
so that leaves two, and I though one of Dove's and
one of yours would go well, if I could get the
right ones. I must write Stieglitz and ask him
what he thinks of it, and which ones he would re-
commend.

I have been turning out stuff since my return,

but merely superficialities. I don't know whether it's me or the heat or
the city of all three that are at fault. I hate summer, perhaps because it
depresses me.

I saw Dove in Westport, and saw a series of new drawings he had
made from which to study some paintings he has in his head. They are the
most exciting and powerful black and white work I have seen since yours
was shown, and far ahead of anything Dove has done, it seems to me. They
really have an almost elemental power. Dove looks differ-
ently, too. His mouth has gotten severe, determined corners, and yet he
himself looks more boyish. He's on the water-wagon, too, it appears,
and doesn't go to any more of the illustrators Saturday night booze-dances
at the golf club. Of course, I don't think that latter abstention deserves
any praise, for I went to one ortwo of the things myself last summer, and
a more dreary rout of useless bodies you never saw. One were almost
to be praised for self-inflicted punishment for going there.

I don't really see why my money troubles should make much differen-
ce in my work, even though it did for a while make me conscious of the ex-
treme heroism of my career. The one thing I am afraid of, is that the idea
of having to do a certain amount of work for money will do something to my
attitude. I am beginning to wonder whether the things done since my return
are bad because of that. And yet, if you enjoy working, whether for
money or no, how can setting out to get a certain sum every month by doing
some perfectly aggreable and interesting if not very thrilling work, really
hurt? What do you think of it? I don't care so much for the things I do
for the back of the Dial or for Vanity Fair, and yet I can't say I don't
enjoy doing them, and don't even like the idea of having the first of each
month to produce two small pieces on current events. I suppose if I set out
to write something that didn't suggest itself to me, and that I didn't be-
lieve, that may be pernicious.

My love to you and 291---I intend writing him shortly

Rosenfeld

77 Irving Place

Wednesday

Dear Georgia:

I want you to do me a favor.
And that is, to accept the green Duncan from
me. I acquired it to-day, after receiving
Daniel's letter saying that Stieglitz had
resigned it to me. I love it very much, but
I think I will feel more happiness knowing
it is where it is fully appreciated and pro-
ductive, than in having it down here. I want
to give it to you because I think I am be-
ginning to understand what you are and what
you stand for and what you have suffered,
and what you do suffer. Please take it, and
know that it will be a much bigger thing for
me to have given it away than to have it here.
I shall not let it make any difference to
Duncan himself---I am going to offer him the
same amount I paid Daniel, as soon as I can
get his address. So we shall all get something
from the picture--- I will not take a "no"!

Do not think that I declined your invitation because I did not want to come to Lake George. Today, in the brilliant October weather, with Stieg-litz' discription of the Wagneresque thunderstorm, in my mind, I was eager to board a train and get off at your station. It was glorious last year, and it would be glorious again this year. But for some reason I feel I ought to stay fixed in town. Perhaps because I was away too long last summer. My head is full of projects and my hand ix has lost its cunning. I must work, I must work; there is nothing else to be done. And yet, I long for the sight of the mountains and the turning trees. If I could only fly up by airplane in an hour, and flyback again !

Well, I shall have the satisfaction of knowing that you and he are unmolested and protected from your friends this month, anyway. And by the end, you, poor bird, will sit captive in your cage up in sixty-fifth street, and perhaps then I shall come up and take you both to dine at the &im Chink's---Dinner A, or one almond chicken and one chinese vegetable. I was there the other evening with Margy, and thought of all the good times

I had had there last winter.

Your letter came a week ago---it was like the cold-pure clouds
one sees drifting through the sky after a rainstorm---white cold clouds
that have shed their rain, and are floating released and clean and apathet-
ic through the breaking skies.

I feel very sorry to-night for being stupid. I ought not to
write letters, for then it always comes out. But it is even more stupid to
get discouraged because I know stupid things will out.

Do you still have prunes and apple-sauce for breakfast at Lake
George? Sometimes I think of the view out of the window at which I wrote,
and then I taste something cool and sweet like the prunes and apple-sauce
when they came out of the ice-box. And are you painting hard, tart, clean
apples again this autumn?

Love from Rosenfeld to you both.

77 Irving Pl.

Monday evening

Dear Georgia:

You would have laughed at my day to day. It has been exclusively domestic. My janitor having proven more and more slovenly in caring for my rooms, I severed diplomatic relations with him Saturday morning, and telephoned an advertisement for a middle aged woman to come between 8.30 and 10.00 A.M. every morning, to the World. They were stupid enough to run the advertisement under the Male column, with the result that yesterday morning I received visits from a number of men who looked as though they had been policemen fired from the force for taking small bribes, and also from a portion of the Chinese and negro colonies.

Meanwhile, on Saturday evening I had dinner with Herbert and Lilies, and told them my predicament. On Sunday afternoon Herbert rang me up, to tell me that that morning his papa had met in the Park a young German woman with two children, who had been in this country a week, the wife of an electrical engineer, and wanted a little morning work, as they were on the edge to her of distress. I spoke on the phone, and she agreed to come to see me. She came this morning, and brought her husband, and it is most distressing, as they are both highly educated people, he I believe having been manager of some electrical works in Stuttgart. He has been offered various small jobs, but is looking for something else, and I have spoken to a gentleman I know employed by the Western Electric Co. and he is going to see the man to-morrow. Meanwhile, she is going to do my work for me-- she says she does not like the work, but is relieved to see a "human habitation"

2

once again. A tall woman, young but not good looking, and yet one of the sort of German women with a resonance like bronze. They managed to get over here by selling everything they had; I think they had been living mostly on potatoes. We talked modern art---she says she prefers it to the old art, it gives her something more. She says Picasso is the man in Germany to-day. She liked the Hartley rubber plant for its large primitive forms, and admired the color-spotting in your pear and apple. It is really fantastic and terrible, an Arabian Nights turned sinister. She says I must be a great artist to live in such dirty surroundings, and I told her that it was the tragedy of my young life that although I lived in dirty surroundings, I was not a great artist.

Well, that is not just the funny part of my day. That was my receiving all the poor women who came to apply for the job. The World had promised Sunday morning to run the advertisement correctly this morning. Some negresses brought chaperones, and some looked a little typsy, and others were very nice looking competent women, American, German, Swedish. Waldo who came to collect some of his belongings thought it was pathetic that there were so many, but I didn't think so, not for them any more than me. There were one or two I would have liked to have tried out, but I waited for my German intellectual, and after that, I did did very brief interviewing. You would have laughed to see me discuss the thing with them. Well, I shall probably be advertising soon again, as my German intellectual's husband will doubtlessly soon get a job at 20,000 a year, about ten times as much as I shall ever earn. But, meanwhile, I shall find out how the O'Keeffe's strike her after the Picassos. I thought how Stieglitz would have talked to the poor couple--- I know they are not fakes---I wish to God I didn't suspect everybody now-a-days. It was the Cyril Scotts who did it, damn their tongues !

Meanwhile, the work goes along a slow caravan among the mountains. I shall never do the essay on Stieglitz I should like to do--- I would have to be inspired to do it, and I am prosy these days.

I have had many fine letters from Lake George recently. It

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seems long ago, when you stood on the platform all muffled up in a tight
coat with your hair smoothe like an African sculpture, and the mountains
all clear and rock-like in light grayish purple. New York is a place
where one forgets. The high buildings shut out so much more than the sky.

I hope it is warm in your kitchen? It is cold in my room. I
have only one regret. That my cooking didn't come off in Lake George. I
will yet make you with all your gorgeous stuffed birds bow before the knee
knee before the simple majesty of a casserole.

Good night to you both. Be sure and visit the little pine
woods about Fort George. I think of that often. You belong there, it has
a religious feeling.

PR

77 Irving Place

Sunday evening

Dear Georgia:

I sent you a small birthday party yesterday afternoon
from Charles'. I would have liked very much to have gone along
with it and celebrated the birthday on the hill. Being unable to do
so, I sent the party to tell you of my wishes. It's of course a
party for two squirrels, but that seems sort of appropriate to fall
time, and approaching Thanksgiving.

Many thanks for your letter, Georgia. I contained sev-
eral ideas upon which I pounced like the Hyrcan tiger on his prey,
and made them my own without any ado. That is to say, I lif-
ted them direct. I have the feeling that not one tenth of the artic-
le is my own in the real sense of the world; nevertheless I feel
quite happy about it just at present. Please explain.

Seligmann's article on me appeared in this morning's
Tribune. He has been terribly kind, and a little crazy, although
on second reading I felt he was less crazy, and I am ashamed to say
took the thing as one might take a very rich dinner, but with a
certain gusto and satisfaction. This afternoon I had occasion to
speak to Wilson on the phone, and the told me that a disagreeable
review of my book had appeared in the Herald. Well, I can afford to
laugh at that now, with Seligmann shouting out for me as he has
done. Another thing to feel happy about.

I am now standing before my epilogue. I want to let go
inside and disregard all the feelings that people will think me def-
 fy or sentimental. I hope something comes of it, and the book is
off, as they say in the races.

Much love all around

PR

77 Irving Place

Oct.1st, 20.

Dear Georgia :

Your little letter, so graphic of the whole situation,
reached me Saturday evening, and I was indeed glad to have it. Selig-
mann had already heard that Stieglitz was improving, but your news
was fresher, and cheered us all. I do hope you find time again to
drop me a note : even a line will be welcome, most of all if it tells
of continued improvement.

Give him my love, please, and this cheque. To your
private ear I confide my doubt whether it is best for me or anyone to
write him for a week or two, since the outside world still upsets his
pulse when it does manage to reach him. I wait on your advice. Of
course, it would be just as well if I could not write him for a while
since do as I may I can get out of my head the thought that Stieg-
litz ought to dismiss for the time being the idea of reopening the
room, and take things very easy, and I would be sure, idiot that I
am, to betray it in some way or other. The first three days will sure-
ly knock him out, whereas if he postponed the opening till after
the first of the year, the knowledge that he had but a few months to
go might tide him over. After all, could not Weyhe handle Marin for
the time being ? I dread the picture of his sitting in that place day
in day out, exposed to all the vagaries of the crowd. But is there
any use in talking ? Or might not the present be the best time for
a little sage advice from the medical ? What does your doctor say, if
he at all consents to talk of the months ahead ?

Perhaps I am over-anxious. I hope I am; in any case, I
know that you have the matter under consideration, and trust your
unfailing good sense. ---Meanwhile, I am wondering whether you get
your walk going for the mail: all the mail forwarded to me from the

270 West 11th

NYC 14

8.23.45

Dearest Georgia :

I thought the blankets were lying on the bed in "my"
room in Lake George where I left them : had I known
I was putting you to trouble by asking for them I
would not have done so. But here they are, looking
nice and clean and feeling warm : I am glad to have
them and greatly obliged to you for sending them to
me so directly. I shall never I think lay eyes on
them without thinking of where they lay in the
house that was so hospitable to me for so many sum-
mers, or without feeling regret that I had to
deprive you or some friends of yours in order to have
them back, or of the kind girl who as soon as she
heard I was in need of them shipped them directly
back. My place was not well heated last winter: or
perhaps my fiery blood is less fiery than it once
was: so I thought of them. Well, thank you many
times.

And keep you well. I suppose you are busy adding a
few paintings to your coming show, in the Museum
of Modern Art, I hear. It ought to be superb, and
will I know start one feeling a great blue world in
which marvellous things can happen, once again. It
will I am sure happen at just the right time, since

the need of art I know is beginning to come up from
under the steel of the war. In about two years I be-
lieve creations will appear again, and this show will
be like the flaunting of the great flag of Beauty.
Don't bother about the quilt and the steamer-rug :
let the first be and the second remain where it is.
These blankets are all I need: now I have no excuse
for not completing my book on literature, you know,
THE AUTHORS' AUTHORS on which I have been at work for
eighteen months. I have about 60,000 words of it read-
y, but several of the important chapters are not yet
written, and at my present speed may take me another
year or at least nine months.

My Sherwood Anderson anthology is being set up at the
printer's and my lower extremities are cold. One's
mistakes with one's own work hurt only oneself, but
those with that of other hurt helpless others. I have
in 1921
the piece he wrote on Stieglitz in the section I am
calling THE LIFE OF ART: I hope that section may
mean something to you in special. I have taken 350-
000 words of his and arranged them under fourteen differ-
ent headings of my own invention: now I am getting
scared!

The book however will not be out before you return, which
I am hoping will be soon. I'll tell you more about it
then.

Many thanks again, Georgia, and much love

Always