Dear Mr. Frankfurther,

The Editors of The New Yorker have asked me to write a profile--one of their (intimate, personal biographies)--of you. It is to run in three parts, that is for three weeks on end, since you were considered a large subject. I am therefore writing "like the profile of a justice Hughes, last year." It is something I would be樂ing to happen.

All this would sound frivolous to ask you whether I can come to see you sometime next month, in June, and have your cooperation--without being thrown down the steps.

The project is less than frivolous or humorous. The New Yorker has had a good literary standard in these Profiles. Last year, I believed, it was Chief Justice Hughes, by the well known biographer, Henry F. Pringle....

I would like to come and have a little talk with you. I don't intend to ask you any personal questions. I shall try to learn the worst about you--from your enemies and rival operators.

I was asked to come when I

The New Yorker's satirists love to feed on Supreme Court Justices. Last year, I believed, it was Chief Justice Hughes. But that was too solemn.

I shall be working over this probably to about mid-July, giving it about two months. It should appear, probably in early September.

They tell me that they had you listed on their list for years--but waited until you became, as they all along knew you would, a Justice of the Supreme Court. They have asked me to write this profile. I was delighted. Between solemn books and biographies, I have often written occasional pieces for them, but seldom one that appealed to me so strongly/upon a subject.

I am writing to ask you if I may come to see you once or twice, if I may have your cooperation. It isn't absolutely necessary. But I was hoping that in your case, with your cooperation, a really fine job could be made of this.

I was going to come to Washington early in June, or at the end of this month. I wanted to attend one of the Sessions of the Court. Do they not adjourn for the summer soon.

I can tell you what I need, so that you might send me to the stuff

May 22, 1940

Dear Justice Frankfurter:

You certainly put me in my place "with the greatest of ease"!

I should have known better; and now must bury my head in confusion. But I rally from that, as quickly as possible, and say that I do believe that my proposed pen portrait may "do good" rather than ill, especially at this time. I do see you as the model of the tough-minded liberal who should be upheld; and no mere frivolity, such as writers often use in these magazine pieces, need enter into the thing.

/in fact, I don't know what we should do without men like you here and there, at this time.

But, as you say, it will be all the better for being done without cooperation or advice of any kind on your part/or the shadow of responsibility, I shall keep away, mixingx relying on the common tools of my trade. Anyway, after reading your scintillating letter, written with such a fine Italian hand, I'm afraid of you, and better keep away.

I should have known better, should have foreseen the entirely just and admirable attitude you would take; and now must bury my head in confusion, asking only to be forgiven now and in the future.