JOHN QUINN
ATTORNEY AND COUNSELLOR AT LAW
31 NASSAU STREET

NEW YORK

Feb. 25, 1915

My dear Pound:

I daresay you remember the John Quinn who had the pleasure of meeting you several times when you were here some years ago and with whom you and Yeats, pere, the artist John Sloan and his wife and one or two others, made a pleasant trip to Coney Island one summer's evening.

I have read all of your things, both prose and verse, and always with interest and keen enjoyment. I have taken the New Age from its beginning and always read everything that you wrote in it, and other places. In the New Age of January 21st, in the article on Jacob Epstein, you wrote that "he pawned his 'Sun God' and two other pieces" for sixty pounds, and that "six of the other works are still on the sculptor's hands," and that this was not due to the war, but was so before the war was heard of. You also wrote : "One looks out upon American collectors buying autograph MSS. of William Morris, faked Remnrandts and faked Vandykes", etc.

I imagine you had me in mind when you wrote that sentence. I was a collector of Morris MSS.; not only of MSS by Morris but by Meredith, Swinburne, Hardy, Lang, Lafcadie, Hearn, Gissing, and others. Two years ago I sold all of my Meredith, Morris, Swinburne, Lang, Gissing, Hearn, Henley, Watson, Rossetti and other manuscripts for just what they cost me, plus the cost of making solander cases for them, to an

-2-

American collector and put all of the money into two large
paintings by de Chavannes "La Riviere" and "Le Vendage".
I paid $30,000 for those two paintibgs. At the time I did
so I said to a friend that I felt that I was exchanging
a hobby for art. The inference from your reference to
"American collectors buying autograph MSS of William Morris,
faked Rembrandts and faked Vandkyes" is that I am, as they say here
"a dead one", or buying only dead things. Nothing could
be further from the fact. I have bought and own a fine Cezanne,
a portrait of Madame Cezanne, one of the best Goghs in the world;
a first rate Gauguin; more than one painting by Derain; three or
four fine Picassos; threeof the blue period and two of his latest
cubist work; two important Matisses and a large number of litho-
graphs and etchings by Matisse; paintings by Rouault and ceramics
by Rourault; paintings in oil and water color by Dufy; paintings
by de Segonzac, by Chabaud, by Duchamp-Villon and by Marcel-
Duchamp, besides having perhaps the largest collection of paintings
by Augustus John in the world; and works of the Americans,
Walt-Kuhn, Maurice Prendergast, Arthur Davies, Ernest Lawson and
other living American artists. If there is a "liver" collector
of vital contemporary art in thiscountry, for a man of moderate
means, I should like to meet him.

Now, as to the relations between Epstein and myself,
these are the facts: I purchased his bronze bust of Mrs. Lamb
some two years ago for L200 or L225; his bronze figure of the
skinny nude woman with hands clapsed behind her back for L60,
and his bronze head of Rémilly John- the boy with the bright
helmet- for L60. I commissioned him last spring, before the war

3

was dreamed of, to make a replica of the two birds that he had
carved in stone that he had either sold or sent to Germany.
I wrote to him plainly that I would not pay for them in advance
but that I would send him the money the moment they were delivered
or shipped. They have not been delivered or shipped since.
I loaned him L50 when he was having his fight in Paris over
the Oscar Wilde monument, when he wrote that he needed that sum
to pay his expenses in Paris while he was making his fight there
over the monument.

I told him months ago that if he would send me
photographs of his carvings in flenite I would pick out two or
three that attracted me and buy them. The photographs never
came. The birds have not come. I'll be damned if I will pay
him, or any other artist, again, in advance of the delivery of work.
I have had too many painful experiences and too much trouble about
getting work from artists to whom I have paid money in advance of
delivery of promised work.

About a year ago he wrote me a letter asking whether
I would lend him four or five hundred pounds to buy a place
down in the country, in England, he to pay me at the rate of thirty
to fifty pounds a year. I told him I could not spare the money
and would not be troubled with such repayments. I added that I
had not been able to buy a place in the country myself, although
I should like one. In that letter I told him that if he would
send me photographs of his work I should be glad to buy what
attracted me. He repeatedly promised to send me photographs and

5

For only "original" works or art, irrespective of age, come in
duty free, unless they are more than 100 years old, when they come
in as antiques. Result, the fake went back to its fakirs. I
not only drew the law but I gave the opinion that was the basis of
its official construction. But this is private and confidential,
as all as my letter is, of course.

It made me therefore laugh out loud when I read your
sentence about "One looking out upon American collectors buying
autograph MSS of William Morris, faked Rembrandts and faked Van-
dykes, etc". "The implication", so far as I am concerned,
as Herbert Spencer would say, "is wholly without foundation." It
may be good propaganda to make Epstein an object of sympathy,
but if I had "pawned my Sun God and two other pieces" for £60,
I should not advertise the fact or permit a friend to do it. Such
"publicity", to use another sweet Americanism, would have more the
effect of sickening a person with an artist than of quickening
admiration for his work. Confidentially, Epstein seems to have
taken the line all along of a man with a grievance or lack of appre-
ciation. It was as certain as fate that he would have trouble with
the Wilde monument. He should have taken his medicine and not
complained about the attacks.

So much for your New Age fling at me. Please remember
I do not resent it one bit. You have a habit of hitting straight
from the shoulder and I respect you for it. You ought to respect
me for making my correction equally straight from the shoulder and I
believe you will.

6

I read your article on Gaudier Brezeska with great interest. Do you know where I could get any good work by him? I have seen a reproduction of only one of his things somewhere, the carving in black marble of two dogs and I was much struck with it.

Mrs. Rice, the artist about whom Yeats wrote me, and whom you know, told me a day or two ago that there were several of his things still unsold and that he had produced a lot of work recently. If you could put me on the track without any trouble of where I could get photographs of some of his things with the prices and the names and addresses of the person or persons that have them for sale, I should be greatly obliged to you.

We are not altogether dead in this country artistically. To those who think we are dead I would reply as Mark Twain did to the rumor that he had died that "the report was greatly exaggerated." There are men here that are doing good work here, among them Maurice Prendergast, Walt Kuhn, Arthur Davies, William J. Glackens, and others. We have no first rate sculptors. Largely as the result of the successful campaign started by me alone, carried on by me alone, financed by me alone, works of living European artists come in duty free, and we had several exhibitions of them last year, and are having several good ones this year. They will "improve the breed" of American artists as the horsemen say, and the effect is being seen already.

7

Instead of being 'a dead one' therefore I think I am as much
alive to good art as anybody that I know of in this country,
and that modern art owes me perhaps a greater debt than it
does to any other living man. All of which goes to show, to
come back to your article again, that as Lowell (whose verse
Yeats detests so cordially) used to say "it is dangerous to prophe-
sy unless you know."

Keep up the good work that you have been doing.

I am sorry that some of your stuff does not appear in
this country. There is a new weekly published here called
the New Republic that you ought to write for. It often has
pretty dull stuff. But it is the best we have. Perhaps if some
friend of yours called your name and writings to their attention,
they might open their columns to you.

Sincerely yours,

Ezra Pound, Esq.,

Care W. B. Yeats, Esq.,
Stone Cottage,

Coleman's Hatch,
Sussex,

England.

is, the Cat, the torso of the flat chested woman, the figure in
baster with arms locked over the head, the figure of the bullock-
human in soft marble, and the plaster cast. You say that the plastic
cast is modern and not interesting, but I should like to have it just
the same. In the Blast, I think it was, there was a reference to a
drawing that he had made in the trenches. If you have got that picture
or got any that the poor chap made in the trenches I should be very
grateful to you if you could get it for me.

Don't let the "Imp" at the Dore show or any other of the
things at the Dore show get away, and I should like also all of the
torsoes. Even though you think the "Singer" is too placid do get it
for me. Ditto with "Caritas."

I have bought a country place and therefore the size that
you mention of a couple of them would be an advantage rather than
otherwise. In short if there is anything suitable for a garden, get
them also. There is no worry about botching the job if you just get
all of them. As I said in my cable I "want all I possibly can get;
everything at Fry's; everything at the Dore Gallery, and everything
possible elsewhere."

There is no danger of my cornering the market against
myself because there is no one person has two claims to the things,
and of course it is understood that I will pay cash to the executor
or administrator or whoever is appointed to receive it and receipt
for it.

So much for the first letter.

Now for your third short letter:

4

If you can steer the money for his things to Gaudier's sister, whether she is illegitimate or not who cares a damn, I should think that would be the better way. But do whatever is necessary to get me the legal title to all his things that I can get.

You tell the simple truth when you say that I would have been a good friend to him had he lived. I have reproached myself for not having been more prompt in the matter. But it was a remark that you made when you wrote first that he was in the trenches and hadn't any need for money but "would be probably hard up when he returned." that tended to make me less prompt about it. If he made a will to his sister, even though informal, and confirmed it in a letter to you, there ought to be no difficulty.

I hope that you can get me "the two fine new things" of which you have seen the photos.

I doubt very much whether the Luxembourg would be interested in his things, and it would be a revelation to me also if South Kensington would take them.

As I said in my cable, I would agree with you to keep my collection intact; that an exhibition should take place in London before delivery to me; that there should be a memorial exhibition held here for as long a time as we might care, and then that I should keep all the things together intact.

So don't wait to see *all* the work before you secure part of it. The way to do is to secure it as you go along, each and every piece that you can and all of it.

Let me repeat that the show that I offered to pay the expenses of was the show that included the Vorticist paintings and drawings.

5

If Fry wants to make a little profit don't let that worry
you.

I should be willing also to pay for the reproductions for
the illustrated memoir.

I am particularly anxious to get the "Singer" and "Caritas"
because you write that they were both intended for garden ornaments.
I don't know that I should put them in my garden, but I am going to
have one.

I bought an eighty acre place up in Westchester county,
twenty-four miles from Herald Square. I closed last Thursday. I
take title October 11. In March I bought a fifty-seven acre place
outside of Greenwich, Connecticut. It was on a ridge with a nine
hundred foot lane running up to it. There were all sorts of com-
plications about the lane, rights of way, and so on. I was to take
title May 1. It dragged on to July 11. Then I gave two weeks notice
that I would terminate the contract. I rescinded on July 29. Then
the bastards began to get anxious to force me and wrote me letters
daily that they could close to-night, to-morrow or the next day. I
paid $2,000 earnest money on that contract and it is tied up. I
shall be in for a lawsuit to get it back and they have threatened to
sue me for specific performance of the contract. I paid $2,500 deposit
upon this new place, which is just beyond Muldoon's on Purchase Street
three or four miles north of White Plains. It is on a ridge. It has
got some beautiful old trees, a house that I can do over, a drilled
artesian well, a wind mill, a tennis court, has a good farm, and is
one of the best places up there. I am going up to-morrow with a
sanitary engineer to make plumbing specifications and with an elec-

trical engineer to look out for buttons and press buttons and ele-
ity and telephones. And I am going to meet a carpenter up there.
will keep my nose down to the grind-stone to pay for the damn thing,
but now is the time to buy it.

There is no hurry about sending me the Lewis or the Etchells
things. I hope that Etchells is out of bed and better.

Re Brzeska memoir:

I should think that if Lane did it in London he would publish
it here. I dined last night with Mitchell Kennerley and Willard
Huntington Wright. Wright knows you and knows of you. He left
early to get an eight o'clock train. Kennerley and I talked about
the new magazine until eleven. Wright sent me the night before the
proof sheets of a book on modern art of about 350 pages. It is to
have four illustrations in color and about twenty-five others in
half tone. It is rather scientific. He talks about the close of the
first cycle, and he talks about the close of the second cycle, and
that Cezanne closed the third cycle. What the hell ever that means!
Some of the chapters of the book are good. I made eight or ten
criticisms of it. He took them well but stood by his guns. In speak-
ing of the impressionists and of writers like Zola, Flaubert and so
on he jumbled in a damn fifth rate American slush writer named Theo-
dore Dreiser. He also jumbled in Joseph Conrad, although Conrad hadn't
published a book when Zola, Flaubert and others were writing. He
was utterly unfair to Arthur Davies calling him a weak academician.
He knows nothing of the modern men here. He praises a little hole-in-
the-wall place kept by Stieglitz at 290 Fifth Avenue, Stieglitz being

9

who owned a lot of patents. He was a chess player. He invented a new move or a new game. He had three or four daughters. One of them was a painter. His wife is the woman who made a lot of noise trying to suppress noise in this town. Among the companies owning patents that the old man controlled was the Electric Boat Company. That company owns patents on something connected with submarines. Old man Rice was ill in the spring. At the beginning of his illness he gave his wife a power of attorney. His physicians told him that he would have to get out of business. Kennerley told me the story last night of how the old man owned 18,000 shares of the Electric Boat stock that he thought was worth about ten dollars a share; that as his illness increased the price of the stock mounted up, and that finally when it got to about $135 a share his wife under the power of attorney sold 17,000 out of the 18,000 shares. This figures up to about $2,300,000. If he had kept it to-day he would have been worth two or three times that. It sounds like a fairy tale but it is God's truth. Now the old man is better. He has got his health back but he regrets that his wife was such a good business woman. There are times when it pays to be patient. In fact patience is almost next to genius, if one knows when to stop waiting. His doctors last winter having advised him to get out of everything now advise him to get into something; so he has changed his mind about giving up the Forum and wants to keep on backing it.

So the Forum is out of the question. I thought all I had to do was to press the button, speak to Kennerley on the telephone, and close for it. Of course Kennerley uses it as an advertisement

August
July 26, 1915.

Publication must be made here to save the copyright.

The cost of paper and printing here is scarcely
more than it is in London, not five percent (5%) more today.
On account of competition the cost of printing has gone down
at least fifty per cent (50%) in the last two or three years.

Monthly infinitely are preferred to weekly. International
weekly impossible. Impracticable to prepare text. Impracticable
to confer regarding it. Entirely too much of a strain.

**Size:** Magazines are made up in sheets aggregating thirty-two pages. So it should be multiples of thirty-two, preferably ninety-six or one hundred and twenty-eight. Two pages above ninety-six would cost as much as thirty-two above.

Our high class magazines are generally published
on the 20th or 25th and bear the date of the succeeding month.
In England they are all published on the first. Hence our
publications would precede the English publication by about
ten days. There would be so much time saved.

The publication here by the 20th would mean that
the text would have to be in final shape at least one month
before that. So that the publication of the September number
would have to be ready for the printer, finally revised, by
July 20th, or at the very latest by August 1st.

The English publication would have to be made up of
sheets sent from this side.

2

There would have to be two business offices, an American business office and an English business office. The American business office would attend to the delivery of copies here, the obtaining and printing of the advertisements, and the keeping of the accounts, the final reading of proofs and correspondence abroad and carrying out the instructions of the different editors.

The chief office would be in London. There would be perhaps a London editor or a chief editor and an American editor who would be sub to the London editor.

The sheets would be sent to London and the London business office would have the London advertisements ready to be put on the front and back of the American sheets with the English cover and would attend to the publication and mailing of the English edition.

The same thing would apply to a French edition if there was one, but I do not believe that at the present time an international review printed wholly in English or printed in English with an occasional article in French would pay of publication in France. It would not pay to publish it separately. Copies could be supplied to the continental booksellers from London.

I said to Kennerley that we didn't want too much generosity, we wanted a little savagery

4

as anyone's, and the office part of it is economically run.

Kennerley has very kindly gone over all these
things with me and thinks that the scheme is a good one but
is very strongly of the opinion that the fund should be at
least ten thousand dollars ($10,000). Otherwise he says we
will be worried. He is willing and glad to do all he can
to help it along without his name being used.

My idea is that there should be an editor in London,
that he should keep ahead of the game except on emergency
matters and that a committee of three act here to forward
stuff to England for approval. One of that committee might
possibly be a young man who seems to be a live wire named
Willard Huntington Wright, who has just written a book on
modern art that might probably set your teeth on edge. But
he is alive and vital. He was editor for some time of the
Smart Set. I believe that he knows you personally. He has
just returned from Paris. I might advise myself on the
political matters but not write. Kennerley suggests that the
third man be Bliss Carman. When he made the suggestion it
struck me that Carman was a back number, but Kennerley is
strongly of the opinion that Carman is not a back number and
says that Carman knows vital living stuff when he sees it and
is a generous appreciator of it. I said to Kennerley that we
didn't want too much generosity, we wanted a little savagery

publishes another volume of Spooning River,
read him. If he changes his gait he is likely to be like
a horse that does it - but will come a cropper, whatever that
means.

Orick Johns (Alas poor Orick is I am told n. g.).
They said that he is a hopeless drunkard and that he doesn't
do good stuff, that it is a great pity, but that he has had
his chance and he is done for and he absolutely couldn't be
relied upon.

Kennerley says that the more he thinks about the
thing the more he thinks that it has a fine future and might
be a very powerful thing.

What I thought, if you approve of this thing, would
be to have a sort of prospectus printed giving an outline of
the thing, and the financial requirements. Then it ought to
be, I should say, incorporated as a company. The subscribers
could receive stock, or you could receive the stock as your
profits if it was a success, and the subscribers would get
bonds. Rich men generally don't want stock in a paper because
it is more likely to be a liability than an asset.

3

nerve.

Walt Kuhn dined with me Saturday night and I told him that I had kicked the stuffing out of the whole Brzeska thing and charged up the £150 that I had paid for drawings to profit and loss and that I wouldn't give 50 cents a piece for the drawings alone. He said: "Forget it; that's what you get for dealing with a woman". And then he added, what really hadn't occurred to me before, that he thought I was rather sporty in buying these things and said "The kid is dead, there will be no more things to be done by him, they will never go up in price, they will have no market sale, they will not be sought by dealers and collectors and I told my wife when you told me that you were buying his things that I thought it was a very sporty thing to do, buying things by a man without any name, a man who was now dead and left comparatively few works". He thinks Miss Brzeska with my £150 in her pocket doesn't realize that. Let her find out who else will advance money to her in advance of getting things. I wont.

Don't forget to send your bill for cabling separately.

You must be heartily sick of this whole thing, of the cables and of the letters. I am sorry that you have had so much trouble about them. Although the whole Brzeska thing has come to nothing, I am very grateful to you for all the trouble you have taken and the attention you have given to the matter. Remember me to Yeats and also remember that the guaranty of the £100 or £120 to you re Egoist for one or two years, (I am perfectly will-

NEW YORK February 11, 1916.

My dear Pound:

I received at 1:15 today your cable as follows:

"John Quinn,
31 Nassau St. N. Y. C.

Brzeska wants all money for drawings
immediately.

Pound"

Before dealing with this message I will briefly
summarize the letters I have received from you since I last
wrote in August.

I received on September 6, 1916, your letter of
August 26th, with the proposed magazine and with which you
enclosed prospectus. On the same day, September 6th, I
received your letter undated but postmarked London, August
23, 1915, enclosing receipts from Etchells and Lewis for £10
that I sent you on July 27th for drawings by them.

On September 17th I received your letter dated
September 7th and which related partly to the Brzeska collec-
tion and partly to the magazine.

On September 27th I received yours of September 7th
with a letter from Goldring to you enclosing the estimate for
printing the magazine and the dummy and with your estimate of
expenses, etc.

Still quake to seem old
If nor can you think this a man,
this so devoid of reason

Print goes double in books,
letters double, the page lengthens,
known page

I seem to see a gleam through a mist
Clam clouds to my eyes,

The day goes without nights
who denies the seventh darkness of the tartarean
place,

Disease, crises, foods, delights injure,

We see to hand the soul on delightful things,
hang off the soul from delights,
And that we may live, we leave of leaving.

For life's sake we leave of living,
le
For mere life's length, we leave of living.

Thing guide, grive

Nor have I enus a grace to me, nor gifts of Bacchus,
Nor aught of life, but is lethal,

mere latent nature,
prone nature, mere flow of time,

cabling one hundred and twenty pounds paid Miss Brzeska in October makes total one hundred and fifty pounds drawings alone, accordance my November cables. More anxious about sculpture than drawings.
Writing.

Quinn

This leaves £30 to be accounted for by you, apart from the
£10 paid to Miss Brzeska on account of other purchases, and apart
from the £30 paid by you to Fry.

As to Brzeska's sculpture: I still want, as I cabled you,
all of his representative works that I can get, unless the prices
are jacked up so that they are unreasonable. And by "all" I mean
all; everyone that you have mentioned in your various letters.
These are:

(1) "The Dancer" which you wrote was in your care.

(2) "The Stags" and whatever else was locked up in the
woman's studio.

(3) All the things at Fry's place, including (a) "The Cat", (b) "The Water Carrier", (c) The brass paper weight; and (d) the three china cats, one white, one black and one yellow, as you suggest.

["\"Love is dead, but always young,\" but not so for Love's companion, Love's joy a fault, bright grams a falut, a film of blood and sinew, and a heart of stone. In a life mere life in age, criminal", "wrong song to aged,", "What use of welth, what usage,\nhowever leage the possession, I always needy,", "The thrist of tantalus, but the heart of stone. In a life mere jailor of my possessions,", "bitter as the menthol of a rose, and as sweet the dew of evening.", "Dragon neath golden trees, and the red fire in his eye.\n\"Avalon to the eyes, and the heart to the fire.\"", "Thus \"cares\" to confine one, \"sorrow\" to confine another.", "No peace to my soul, no rest to my eyes, no joy to my ears, no comfort to my eyes, no peace to my soul, no joy to my ears, no comfort to my eyes.", "Naught retain,", "I desire what I can not hold fast,", "And retaining hold naught,", "Full of doubt, dubious, vacillating, always", "creedful of ill,", "fell, that makes what he fears,\n\n\"O God, what can I do?\"", "A solace in desolation.", "Just as sad to see the sun go down as to see its rise,", "to see its rise and set, and to see its setting sun go down.", "But what of this, my son? Is it not enough to see\nthe sun set, and the sun rise again, and again to set,\nand again to rise, and again to set, and again to\nfall, and again to rise, and again to set, and again to\n

2

ninety-nine and nine-tenths of the law in a case like this. I
am very sorry that you should be troubled by her and her letters.

I shouldn't bother about "the family". Apparently
the family didn't bother much about him while the poor fellow
lived.

I wrote you fully last week about his sculpture and
the vorticist pictures and the Montross show.

No, my dear Pound, don't you think for a moment that
I for one instant have thought of your "joining the ranks of
people wanting money". On the contrary, I feel tremendously
your debtor and tremendously obliged to you for what you are
doing in this whole Brzeska business.

I wish you would bring it to a head as soon as
possible. Get for me as much of his sculpture as she has
or that you can get from her; purchase it all; get receipts and
cable me how much money you want and I will cable it to you.

It has worried me not to be able to write you fully
during the last three months, but frankly, my dear fellow, I
did cable several times that I wanted as much of his sculpture
as I could get, all of it that I could get, and I have been
waiting to have you tell me what I could get and how much it
was.

I should be obliged also to finish up the payment of
anything that is due Fry.

After you get back to town I suggest that you cable
me how much Fry wants to finish up his payment and I suggest (1)

16

I missed old Freer the other night. The next time I see him I will talk about Fenoilosa and see whether he admits what was done for him.

Don't you have any hesitation about accepting my £100 or £120 guaranty for a year or two years. I mean it, cheerfully and unreservedly, and I can afford to do it. So don't have any qualms about it.

Wright is an ass. He writes on art like a Prussian bureaucrat and reasons that way and feels that way. He is utterly impossible and he has no sense of humor.

Can I do anything about the publication of your book? Do you want to send proof sheets/over here and have me arrange for it here? I mean your book of essays. Or if not proof sheets, send over a typewritten copy of it. Of course I shall be interested in it. You write as though because it was literature I wouldn't be interested. But I am: keenly interested.

I will give your regards to Mr. Yeats. He is going to lecture on art in a few days. Who is going to publish your versions of Fenoilosa?

I don't think the title for your book "The Spirit of the Half Decade" is a good one, and I think that "This Generation" can be bettered.

I had a letter from Harvey's secretary a few days ago; I enclose it with this.

12

All you need to do is to have them carefully packed. You don't need to put in the invoice "bronze", just say "Head of a Bird" or "Wrestler" or "Seated Figure" or piece of sculpture.

You say in your letter of March 1, page 3, "the bird might travel, but I think she has set her heart on keeping the plaster cast and sending you the bronze of it." I assume that that means what you mention in your cable as "Bird Swallowing Fish". I have no objection to her keeping a plaster cast provided the £50 mentioned in your cable includes the cast at her expense and that there are to be only two casts from the plaster.

Don't forget to let me have a separate item of the amount of your cables. We had better keep that separate.

I am sending you 5 guineas in draft to your order for Miss Sanders. I am sorry that that slipped my mind. It ought to have been sent before.

This letter is dictated at red hot speed, just as fast as I can talk. I hope it will be coherent when it is written out for I shall not have time to revise it.

If you can't cable that you have possession of £500 worth of sculpture, actual, physical possession, together with a written assignment from her of the right to it and a declaration in the assignment that she has a right to sell and deliver it, I shall not send a bit more. I will pay immediately upon being notified by you that you have got possession of them or the storage

lla

You may say, why did I cable you on Wednesday accepting
offer and writing. The fact is that I hand't read your letters
when I sent that cable. I didn't read the letters until I went
home after sending that cable.

About casts: There is no reason why the plaster should not
be sent over here. It can be sent perfectly safe and well. Duchamp
Villon sent over the "Seated Figure", a larger and more fragile
thing than any of Brzeska's. It was carefully packed and came in
perfect safety. These plaster casts can be carefully wrapped and
carefully packed, each plaster cast in its own case, then that case
can be encased in a larger one. They can be sent on an American
boat and they would be safer than Miss Brzeska is herself in remain-
ing in London. If they are left there they may be blown up by a
Zeppelin. Therefore in the "interest of his memorial" she ought
to hurry them along on an American boat. She won't see the
humor of that.

The Metropolitan won't take the "Bird Swallowing Fish",
but I will agree to try it on them. I hope you will reconsider,
and if there is any casting done in England take a replica at
least of the "Wrestlers". But I want to know definitely whether the
L50 named in your cable for "Bird Swallowing Fish" includes the
bronze or not; whether the L55 named in your cable for the "Wrest-
lers" in bronze includes the casting or not, and whether the L25