14 St. Luke's Place,
New York City,
November 29, 1920.

Dear Bryher:

Thank you for all your care in telling me of modern English
writers. I quoted to Mr. Scott what you tell me and he agrees that the
field is restricted.

"No Wit, no Help like a Woman's" is one of the plays that I have not been able to get and I do not know "Eastward Ho" nor Petronius but I delight in the Gull's Hornbook; I have admired it from the first. What you say of Wycherly interests me and I hope you will finish the essay you speak of. He is completely in oblivion so far as the modern world is concerned, I think, and if you could bring him to light it would be a fine thing. I do not know how elastic editors' and publishers' minds are with regard to literature--the essence of literature that is, apart from fashion. I should submit to _the Dial_ with assurance, anything that I was thoroughly interested in and be sure of its being welcomed and read with enjoyment whether it were used or not. I am a little in doubt as to the exact nature of the editorial policy. I have not met any of the editors but Scofield Thayer but he is enthusiastic and I think he is sincere in not wishing to miss anything good. Dr. Cross of _The Yale Review_ is a book-worm and a great enthusiast over sources; his life of Fielding and his life of Sterne are very complete and show faith in people's being able to enjoy such things; moreover, the Yale Review has published some poems, imaginary poems by a Greek or Roman by a Mrs. Crewe which lead me to think that the Yale Review might be interested in work which does not specifically treat of modern life, and _The Yale Review_ has an ambition, I think, to cover a wide field. We expect to have it at the library soon and I shall watch it to see what the trend is. _The Bookman_ is a possibility; it also has "ambitions" but it is so inept and woolgathering a publication that I am wasting time in considering it.

Your "Girl-Page" has just come and I hope you do not begrudge
me the pleasure I have had from it. The opening is delightful; the
treatment throughout is just right, I think, and anything but unpsychological.
I am interested in what you say of Mary Frith as the possible model for
Moll Cutpurse and the Gallathea incident is exceedingly droll. I like the
phrase very much, "the depth of a leaf" (This root of childishness...has
scarcely the depth of a leaf) and "brush cloaks, make clean spurs, nay, pull
off strait boots" and I like

"But you can keep a little tit-mouse page there,

that's good for nothing but to carry toothpicks."

and I like the exposition of wildness. At the end, "the imagination of a
child joined to the freedom of a boy sums the thing up very well I think.

I detest effeminateness and prudishness but "Here's brave wilfulness!"
gives me food for thought which is irrelevant and perhaps tiresome. Wilfulness in

2.

itself, is an attractive quality but wilfulness fails to take into account, the
question of attrition and attrition is inevitable.

I have your *Development* at last and hardly know what to say of the pleasure
that it has given me. The positiveness and absence of exaggeration in the
narration give it an authoriatativeness which is very striking and the
instinctiveness and intenseness of the wording, give to a great many of the lines,
the force of poetry. The passage beginning "The sea was a wide mass of luminous
metal" is a very great achievement as description, I think, and the exhibition
of the basset hound, the *tea-party* and the frying-pan tea and the waste-of-time
aspect of school life are of a piece with the best things in literature.
"Camels, vultures, scorpions, and even jackals" is a masterly summary of Egypt
as we imagine it and the sense of the land is in all the places which you describe.
The exposition of the baffled sense one has of being outside what it is one's
birthright to enjoy, is the great feature of the book, I think.
The satire in "I don't believe you appreciate travelling, at all," is one of
the things that one remembers and the poems are full of power. I especially like
"Give me freedom in your woods."

I have always liked fairy-tales; they have never seemed less real to me
by reason of the fact that they describe what never could have happened and
tennis--not compulsory--is a good half of my life but my experience of
childhood playmates--of girls at least--corroborates yours and dolls have
always seemed to me, the dreariest, tawdriest things in the world.

Thank you for looking after my interest in the matter of the essays.
Do, if I am not burdening you, secure me anything you can.

I am delighted to hear of the elephant; I wish I could see it. How large
is it?

P. S. Tell H. D. that I have not seen Mrs. Scott's poem but will set
about getting it. I wanted to see it myself but I see Mrs. Scott or anyone
else so seldom that I am handicapped in getting what I want. I have not
heard anything of Contact. Horace Brodsky's *Rainbow* made a stir--perhaps
it was merely the suppressing of the first number that made a stir--but I
have not seen it.

I am returning *The Girl-Page* to this address and I hope it will reach
you safely. Our post-man put quite a bad crease in it but it is otherwise
intact.

I copied the first two paragraphs of your essay on the Girl-Page,--
which seemed to me particularly prepossessing;--in case I should be able
to show them to anyone who might be interested in the Wycherly. They
are very interesting in connection with Development, I think/

14 St. Luke's Place,
New York, December 13, 1920.

Dear Bryher:

I shall like any name you select for me; I am in my
family, a weasel, a coach-dog, a water-rat, a basilisk and an
alligator and could be an armadillo, a bull-frog or anything that
seems suitable to you.

I hope I am on the way to Greece though by a round-
long way around. I like what you say about me and marvel that
you can say anything at all for it is true that I have not *frustrated*
been so far, any of the things that I particularly wish to say.
You could not see any education that I have had, with a microscope
so I do not know that I am justified in blaming education with
my ice-bound state. I should attempt observations in prose I think--
nothing absolute. To put my remarks in verse form, is like trying
to dance the minuet in a bathing-suit but for the time-being I
have some things to say about sea-weeds and serpents
in plane-trees that will have to appear in fragments. If I seem
to take your efforts for me coolly, do not be deceived; your
criticism has helped me and in having been the occasion of your
illnessy sketch of a Petronius-flower-strown Greece, I find rich
satisfaction

Vachel Lindsay is an unalluring bird of Paradise, isn't
he. "The pumpkin in the moonlight" is a little hard to harmonize with
the night, light, colour or anything but Vachel Lindsay.

Your advance on the book-seller is highly amusing; I
am sorry you did not have time to inquire for Development." Let me
know without delay, won't you, when "Adventure" is ready?

I wish I could fence. I was not allowed to fence when I
was in college because it was thought that it would be bad for my
back but I yet hope to learn.

Speaking of education, I was greatly amused last year, by
"The Gordian Knot" in the *Marionnette*; the "wis, wis, wis," of the
priests when deserted by their university background of education, at
Alexander's point-blank inquiry about the money and their reliance on
formulas intermittently and irrespective of anything:

"He who would this not untie,

Must *abide* W H A B C D E F G H I."

Do you remember it?