# CRÉATIONS

## PASTORALE

<table><tr><td>Livret de</td><td>BORIS KOCHNO</td></tr><tr><td>Musique de</td><td>GEORGES AURIC</td></tr><tr><td>Rideau, décors et costumes de</td><td>PRUNA</td></tr><tr><td>Chorégraphie de</td><td>R. BALANCHINE</td></tr></table>

## ROMEO and JULIET

Répétition sans décors en 2 tableaux

<table><tr><td>Musique de</td><td>CONSTANT LAMBERT</td></tr><tr><td>Peinture de</td><td>MAX ERNST et JOAN MIRE</td></tr><tr><td>Chorégraphie de</td><td>Mme NIJINSKA</td></tr></table>

## BARABAU

Ballet avec chœurs en 1 acte

<table><tr><td>Livret et musique de</td><td>VITTORIO RISTI</td></tr><tr><td>Décor et costumes de</td><td>MAURICE UTRILLO</td></tr><tr><td>Chorégraphie de</td><td>R. BALANCHINE</td></tr></table>

## ZEPHIRE et FLORE

Nouvelle version en 3 tableaux

<table><tr><td>Ballet de</td><td>BORIS KOCHNO</td></tr><tr><td>Musique de</td><td>Wladimir Dukelsky</td></tr><tr><td>Décors et costumes de</td><td>GEORGES BRAQUES</td></tr><tr><td>Chorégraphie de</td><td>L. MASSINE</td></tr></table>

Chef d'Orchestre : ROGER DESORMIÈRE
qui dirigera l'Orchestre de l'Association des Concerts PASDELOUIS

# A LA MEMOIRE DE ERIK SATIE

## JACK

(Création)

<table><tr><td>Danses sur la musique inédite de</td><td>ERIK SATIE</td></tr><tr><td>Décor et costumes de</td><td>A. DERAIN</td></tr><tr><td>Chorégraphie de</td><td>J. BALANCHINE</td></tr></table>

## PARADE

<table><tr><td>Thème de</td><td>JEAN COCTEAU</td></tr><tr><td>Musique de</td><td>ERIK SATIE</td></tr><tr><td>Rideau, décors et costumes de</td><td>PICASSO</td></tr><tr><td colspan="2">Le Rideau a été brossé par PICASSO lui-même</td></tr><tr><td>Chorégraphie de</td><td>L. MASSINE</td></tr></table>

# AU RÉPERTOIRE

NOCES (Reprise)

PULCINELLA
de IGOR STRAVINSKI

PETROUCHKA

LES BICHES

FR. POULENG

LES MATELOTS

G. AURIC

LES FACHEUX

G. AURIC

LES SYLPHIDES

CHOPIN
Nouveau décor de G. BRAQUES

Régisseur Général : SERGE GRIGORIEFF

BALLETS RUSSES

PRIX DES PLACES

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th>La place</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Avant-scène Rez-de-chaussée et Balcon</td><td>100 fr.</td></tr><tr><td>Loges de Balcon</td><td>100 ,</td></tr><tr><td>Fauteuils d'Orchestre 1ère série</td><td>100 ,</td></tr><tr><td>Fauteuils de Balcon 1er rang</td><td>100 ,</td></tr><tr><td>Baignoires</td><td>75 ,</td></tr><tr><td>Fauteuils d'Orchestre 2e série</td><td>75 ,</td></tr><tr><td>Fauteuils de Balcon 2e rang</td><td>75 ,</td></tr><tr><td>Avant-scène et Loges 1re Galerie</td><td>30 ,</td></tr><tr><td>Fauteuils de 1re Galerie</td><td>30 ,</td></tr><tr><td>Parterre</td><td>30 ,</td></tr><tr><td>Avant-scène de 2e Galerie</td><td>15 ,</td></tr><tr><td>Fauteuils de 2e Galerie</td><td>15 ,</td></tr><tr><td>Stalles de 2e Galerie</td><td>8 ,</td></tr><tr><td>Amphitètre</td><td>5 ,</td></tr></tbody></table>

Tous droits et Timbre compris.

Les Avant-scènes, Loges et Baignoires ne se détaillent pas.

Tous les autres soirs
- et le Dimanche en matinée -

MON CURÉ CHEZ LES RICHES

PROTESTATION

Il n'est pas admissible que la
pensée soit aux ordres de l'argent.
Il n'est pourtant pas d'année qui
n'apporte la soumission d'un homme
qu'on croyait irréductible aux puis-
sances auxquelles il s'opposait jus-
qu'alors. Peu importent les indivi-
dus qui se résignent à ce point
à en passer par les conditions socia-
les, l'idée de laquelle ils se récla-
maient avant une telle abdication
subsiste en dehors d'eux. C'est en ce
sens que la participation des peintres
Max Ernst et Joan Miró au prochain
spectacle des Ballets russes ne sau-
rait impliquer avec le leur le déclas-
sement de l'idée **surréaliste**. Idée
essentiellement subversive, qui ne
peut composer avec de semblables
entreprises, dont le but a toujours
été de domestiquer au profit de
l'aristocratie internationale les rêves

et les révoltes de la famine physique
et intellectuelle.

Il a pu sembler à Ernst et à
Miró que leur collaboration avec
Monsieur de Diaghilew, légitimée
par l'exemple de Picasso, ne tirait
pas à si grave conséquence. Elle
nous met pourtant dans l'obligation,
nous qui avons avant tout souci de
maintenir hors de portée des négriers
de toutes sortes les positions avancées
de l'esprit, elle nous met dans l'obli-
gation de dénoncer, sans considé-
ration de personnes, une attitude qui
donne des armes aux pires partisans
de l'équivoque morale.

On sait que nous ne faisons
qu'un cas très relatif de nos affinités
artistiques avec tel ou tel. Qu'on
nous fasse l'honneur de croire qu'en
mai 1926 nous sommes plus que
jamais incapables d'y sacrifier le
sens que nous avons de la réalité
révolutionnaire.

Louis ARAGON — André BRETON

e

IMPRIMERIES ALBERT PICARD. — 2.26

OPERA-COMIQUE

SOIREE
Vendredi 28 Mai

Fauteuil d'Orchestre
Nº 209

Contrôle de l'Assistance publique

OPéra-COMIQUE

SOIREE
Vendredi 28 Mai

Fauteuil d'Orchestre
Nº 209

A détacher par l'Ouvreuse

Les Coupons ne sont ni échangés, ni remboursés.

OPERA-COMIQUE

PRIX : La Place, 33 fr. 50
Droits et Taxes compris
Timbre de Quittance en sus

SOIREE du Vendredi 28 Mai 1926

Fauteuil d'Orchestre
Nº 209
COTE GAUCHE

Tous les Billets revendus en dehors du Théâtre et avec majoration seront refusés au Contrôle.

Coupon à conserver

Les Dames ne sont pas admises en chapeau.
Timbre en compte avec le Trésor.

MAISON GAVEAU (SALLE DES CONCERTS)
45, rue de La Boëtie

MARCELLE MEYER

RECITAL
DE PIANO

DIMANCHE 20 Juin 1926, à 9 heures du soir

PRIX DES PLACES (Tous droits compris)

Loge : la place, 50 frs. — Parterre réservé, 50 frs. — Parterre, 30 frs. — Pourtour, 15 frs.
1er Balcon, face et 1er rang, 30 frs. — Côté, 20 frs. — Pourtour, 10 frs. — 2e Balcon.
face et 1er rang, 15 frs. — Rang de côté, 12 frs. — Pourtour, 8 frs.

BILLETS

A la Salle des Agriculteurs, 8, rue d'Athènes ; Chez M. Durand, 4, Place de la Madeleine ;
Au Bureau Musical, 32, Rue Tronchet ; Au Guide-Billets, 20, Avenue de l'Opéra ; Chez
MM. Eschig, Neveux, Rossignol, Roudanez, Senart, Poulalion ; Au Magasin Musical et à
l'Administration de Concerts A. Dandelot et Fils, 83, Rue d'Amsterdam, Tél. : Gut. 13.25.

Administration des Concerts A. DANDELOT & FILS, 83, rue d'Amsterdam (Fondée en 1898)

Margaret Anderson who published the Little Review

Georgette LeBlanc.

Gertrude Stein

George Dangerfield

E E C: E E Cummings

Sarah Marsh

Julia Hoyt

Carl Van Vechten

Taylor: Gordon

Esther Murphy

Jane: Heap

Notes by CVV

It was a terribly grand
Thing chez la Duchesse de C—
Romaine Brooks went as something
Spanish, matador or citizen, I'm
not sure which. Natalie Barney
wrote Chinese and lighted by electric
broils much she shot on & 20 by a
hand battery. at one time they
both daveel & the tune 8 "Yes
Sir She's my Baby." Casati
appeared and disappeared in a
tower of silver cloth and lace.
Dozens of Dusshere, composites
composites, and Paul Moraud.
All went formally and a little
tiresomely for a few hours, until
very late a high half hour of
improlibility passed, in which,
in a small room on a second

"How much I enjoyed the fun may be estimated from the fact that I
—a critic!—actually not only stayed to the end, but added my voice and
my umbrella to the clamour for encores of the best 'items' long after
the official proceedings were finished."

"The Reciter brought out also all sorts of queer delightful rhythms
and unexpected stabbing accents that gave me, as a musician whose
trade is in these things and who therefore knows what's what where
they are concerned, a vast delight. It is all very well for old fashioned
purists to say that poetry should not be read through a megaphone.
The answer is that the Sitwells know what they are driving at better
than we do, and that, beyond a doubt, Tuesday's reading of some of
their poems gave us a delight in them that we had not previously felt."

"The curious thing was the happiness of the correspondence between
all the factors of the affair; the music, the words, the megaphone, and
the piquant phrasing of the lines by the reciter were as much bone of
each others bone and flesh of each others flesh as the words and the
music are of each other in 'Tristan' or 'Pelléas.' At its best, 'Façade'
was the jollist entertainment of the season."

—Ernest Newman, in *The Sunday Times*, May 2nd, 1926.

Fleur de Lis
Saturday

It is the end of the week, and the end of an era. I have finished my play. Please send congratulations. I think it is good. It is too long and it needs a little pruning, but not such prolonged pruning as your book... You said you had periods when you thought the book was probably drivel and other periods when you thought you were the greatest thinker of all time. I started this play last spring and then decided that it was drivel and that no one could sit through it. But now I think it is better than Bernard Shaw. And better than Molière. You will perhaps be glad to know that you do not figure in it in any form whatever, and that none of the characters are based on anyone in this life. And you will perhaps be surprised to learn that it all takes place in a drawing room IN BOSTON. It has nothing to do with that particular household, but it is true that the scene was suggested by the house of Beatrice's family which I visited. Now, who shall produce it? In general it is extravagant comedy, though not too extravagant, and the second act is worthy of Noel Coward. Now you praise your book for a while.

With Bill Bullitt ambassador to Russia I am more than ever convinced that you will be Czarina.

My mother is ill, and things are all in a terrible mess in Ohio, and I may have to go there for a while. I hope not, but it does look serious. Meanwhile, it is more and more agreeable here. The weather has been too perfect, though some people call it too hot. It has been around 100 degrees all week. Dudley Murphy took me out to his beach house and we even ventured into the Pacific. Emperor Jones opened here last night. Don't know yet what the verdicts are. But Horsey and I saw it night before last, by going to the Los Angeles Harlem, and seeing it at a place called the Lincoln, which is like Harlem's Lafayette. I liked parts of it very much, but agreed with you about the end. Still I don't know how it could be made better. I think the difficulty is in having one person on the screen so long alone. It is like having a hundred chorus girls on the screen, if you know what I mean, and I don't know why.

I had a letter from Carl full of fascinating facts. None of which I can recall just now.

It burned out - as it WOULD - that Jack Moss, who is Gary Cooper's secretary, bodyguard, and constant companion, lives downstairs here in the Fleur de Lis. But at present they are both in New York, whether Gary has flown to marry or not marry Sandra Shaw who has gone with him. At any rate I guess it has all convinced the Countess that she is finished.

Is your book?

2

supervise Smudge's installation parmi ses meubles in the West Fifties,
and save what I can to sleep and sit on at 53rd. Street. Also, to try
and raise some money for myself - a small sum - and some more for Kir-
stein's fertile ballet plans, which can be executed for a very modest
sum, and give Moolie the pleasure of seeing some American dancing one day
that won't be the grave-digging of Martha Graham, the gymnastics of Mary
Wigman, the masturbations of the Albertina Rasch's girls, nor yet again
the ambitious fantasies of the Charles Weidman pupil, who thinks I should
DANCE. It will be my first trip since May, but I want to get it over with
before all the boys and girls come home, which is soon. Esther sails to-
day, if this is the fifth, and the Askews with her. Kirstein sails the
ninth, the Amsters and Badgers and Wassermanns and - oh, you knwo - are
due back soon, and I cannot stand the prospect. I am telling everyone I
am leaving August 13th., to get away from it all, but will of course
see Esther when she arrives, or rather, I will make her come straight
down here, and try and persuade her to remain here after I really go. The
rest can keep on writing to 53rd. Street, and have it forwarded. I get on
so well by post - except with Mabel.

Ellery is deluging me with pages of letters, quoting from a new poem he
is writing, asking me to think of St. Anthony addressing the fish, St.
Francis addressing the birds, of our Lord among the stones and the olive
trees. I will NOT do any of these things. He sounds to me as if he were
working up to something again, though there is a more or less natural re-
ference to a white satin Alphosine hat.

We have been through a three days inferno of heat - Eastern heat, not
Pacific coast heat - and exhausted from it, we are now shivering in front
of a fire in the cold.

Write me everything that happens at Pickfair and about every twitch of
Gary's eyelid, and - eventually - about the Chicago Fair. Shall I try and
wangle a day ot two out of Mabel's ticket, and stop in Chicago to see it?
Or will it just make me angry? I hear that people are re-acting to the
new architecture very favorably, so that, though it isn't very good new
architecture, it will make it more possible to make them accept it when
it really gets good.

Now I must stop, because I hear them returning from Olivia and Edna: I believe that Ruth Baldwin has something to do with the arrangement of the purchase of the farm, or whatever it is they have bought - or is it just that she is to be a paying guest? I really don't know, nor do I care. Goodbye, pet.

106

PATRONS ARE REQUESTED TO FAVOR THE COMPANY BY CRITICISM AND SUGGESTION CONCERNING ITS SERVICE

1201-S

<table><tr><td>CLASS OF SERVICE</td></tr><tr><td>This is a full-rate Telegram or Cable-gram unless its deferred character is indicated by a suitable sign above or preceding the address.</td></tr></table>

WESTERN
UNION

NEWCOMB CARLTON, PRESIDENT

J. C. WILLEVER, FIRST VICE-PRESIDENT

<table><tr><td>SIGNS</td></tr><tr><td>DL = Day Letter</td></tr><tr><td>NM = Night Message</td></tr><tr><td>NL = Night Letter</td></tr><tr><td>LCO = Deferred Cable</td></tr><tr><td>NLT = Cable Night Letter</td></tr><tr><td>WLT = Week-End Letter</td></tr></table>

The filing time as shown in the date line on full-rate telegrams and day letters, and the time of receipt at destination as shown on all messages, is STANDARD TIME.

Received at

154 North Main St., Bryan, Ohio, Telephone 4321

DWB32 48 DL 2 EXTRA=NEWYORK NY APR 30 225P

MAX EWING=

TRY PHONE OR MAIL PIONEER OHIO=

<table><tr><td colspan="2">MINUTES IN TRANSIT</td></tr><tr><td>FULL-RATE</td><td>DAY LETTER</td></tr></table>

HOUSE FULL OF PAUL AND RODY NOW BUT PAUL LEAVES SUNDAY
FOR ONE WEEK AND I WOULD BE THRILLED TO HAVE YOU HERE
UNTIL HE RETURNS FOR ONE WEEK MORE BEFORE GOING TO
CHICAGO STOP AM CERTAIN SPACE WILL BE AVAILABLE ELSEWHERE
DURING THAT WEEK LOVE=

MURIEL

239P

Telephone No.
Telephoned To
Time Delivered
By To Be
Attended by
To be delivered
QUESTION OF WHAT TO GIVE
Deliver

WESTERN UNION GIFT ORDERS SOLVE THE PERPLEXING

2

important step in the progress of the dance in America, if it comes off. He wished to put Balanchine at the head of it - who is a past master - with flying butressess of Fokine, so to speak; and if we can possibly get hold of enough money to carry it through its first modest year, it will be one of the really valuable things to do. Where is there any money?... Oh, dear, isn't it awful that we are not outrageously, unscrupulously, indestructibly rich?

Itap is in New York. Caroline is taking care of me, if you can call it that. She drives me mad, except that I am in a cocoon of delirium over the book, which such minor madnessess as she causes are incapable of penetrating. I get my own lunch, and today, just as I was sitting down to it alone in the house, I heard a very strange beating sound coming from the living-room, and looked in there to see the Idiot Child standing over the little round table in the bay-window, and beating it in a smiling frenzy. Need I go further? except to say that he left eventually, and that I did not eat my lunch. Why do we feel so intensely about such things? Is it the fear of extinction?

Doris sounds completely passed over into the tropics, and I will write her one of these days when I am on the border of them myself - as I was during the Beer, Butterfly, Ice Age.

There is NO ONE here this Sunday, and it is very pleasant. Not that many densely populated Sundays have not been charming, but now that you have gone, I don't enjoy them so much.

If Gary was reconciled by a Camel and a Countess, or rather, to a Countess by a Camel, what can I do with him?

You should see my hair! Lorna combed it with peroxide, explaining very carefully all the while that she had no idea how it would come out, because she had never tried it on herslef, of course, but it was whather daughters told her to do, and what they did, etc etc. ... Well, anyway, you should see it. It doesn't make me look like either of her daughters, nor yet quite like Pout, but it looks oddish. It fascinates me so that I will pobably get anothet bottle, and keep on combing it until it looks like Dorothy Sheldon, but as unaccountable as Jo Brewer did to Mrs. Murphy.

And now I shall stop writing. Pray for me, and give more than a curary glance at the Fair, though I doubt if it is worth it. Tell me about it, and don't miss the architectural gems. Oh, I forgot, you won't receive this until after you have been to the fair.

Love.

Chinese Actors Appease
Devouring Horde of Rats

Province Turned Into Stage to
Win Rodents' Gratitude

From the Herald Tribune Bureau

Copyright, 1933, New York Tribune Inc.

SHANGHAI, July 25.—The stolid peasants of southern Anhwei Province, who ordinarily are so busy tending their fields that they have no time left for cultural pursuits, have suddenly begun to devote themselves to dramatic art on a mass scale—and the more rollicking their performances are, the better they like them.

This surprising interest in amateur theatricals is not designed to amuse the actors or their compatriots, however, but is intended solely to please the millions of rats which have invaded the area. These creatures have destroyed the crops and have turned to devouring the cattle, chickens, dogs and cats. The superstitious peasants hope that their theatrical performances will put themselves in the rats' good graces so that the rodents can be persuaded to move on to some other province.

It was in the power of the recovery administration to interfere with pay scales of state and municipal employees.

## Response Called Gratifying

The President's executive council, meeting with him late in the afternoon for three hours, had surveyed the response and found it highly gratifying but concluded that it would take at least a week to determine the real temper of the country. General Johnson reflected this view in his press conference. The Administration's objective is to keep the drive under unyielding momentum meantime. It was felt that a "sag in the line" just now might be disastrous. The passing of the acuteness of the emergency had resulted in a considerable opinion in industrial circles that drastic measures might not be needed.

The President is determined to show no quarter to such sentiments. To maintain the pressure for uniting the nation in a single patriotic impulse, the government printing office was kept at high tension addressing the blanket agreements going out to 5,000,000 employers.

Government trucks scurried through the business sections of the city borrowing every electric envelope addressing machine available. The setup at the huge printing place resembled wartime activity.

The flood of telegraphed pledges began immediately after President Roosevelt's appeal for immediate enrollment of all employers under the blanket agreement to raise wages and create new jobs.

Dearest Max: Your letters are becoming more and more discouraging, and I am really puzzled as to how to proceed! You seem so aware of your dilemma that I cannot believe you to be unable to cope with it. This is the one time in your life when you CAN realize reality, and if you slide away from it this time, you will find yourself twice as unable to deal with it the next time - and life doesn't become easier as it continues, particularly the life that is ahead of us all during the next twenty-five years. If you would just DO SOMETHING - wash the dishes or cook a dinner (I myself taught you to cook sausages!) you would find a certain energy coming back to you which you could direct into other tax-paying and affadavit-signing channels. And then, too, I should think there would be a kind of fascination in delving through all those dear and memory-laden objects in that very American house, and transforming the cage you speak of as trapping your mother and father, into a place to which all your friends would like to come. Is there nothing you could do there while getting through all these details which would establish a basis of some sort for a future and diverting life? You are so ingenious and brilliantly resourceful that some fantasy of yours could turn Pioneer into a Central City Salzburg Mexico which would be included in the itinerary of every civilized American in the future which hovers so thrillingly before us, and in which the Pioneers and Green Bays and Grand Rapides and SEattles will be of much more importance than the Lidos and Monte Carlos and Dolomite's of the past. I do not have to tell you how irksome and unwelcome I know responsibility to be, but I can assure you that no burden is as heavy once it is lifted as it is on the ground.

Jack is the loyal and helpful angel we knew him to be, and if you let him down by not responding to his help, I will never forgive you. Tell him I am hunting for that "couple of bucks", and will come straight out and marry him as soon as I find them.. Thank him for his letter, and for being

2

there when you need him so much.

My own plans are more definite than usual. I plan to sail some time in
July for England (Sam has been here and gone, and generously enough to
make this possible,) and from there sail to Russia - yes, RUSSIA, I
said. You must come on before I leave and stay in this darling little
house which has seen so much of life and happiness and misery in these
past years, and which will probably be torn down with much else before I
see it again. Rody has gone - I will TELL you of his visit rather than
write of it, and that Beloved Smudge has married his enchanting Marcia
and is now on the high seas to London for a honeymoon - all this I will
tell you too - and Paul has just signed a contract to teach dancing here
for two months this summer, and many other interesting developments which
have encouraged and rewarded him for his years of work and disappointment, so I feel free to go. You take a week or fortnight and stay here,
and we will make some plans by which Pioneer will become one of the most
interesting places in America, so that when I come back from Russia -
God knows when - I can come straight there to begin my new activities.
Isn't there an old family lawyer or business man whom you can trust, and
to whom you can give power-of-attorney to act for you in all these real
and unreal estate and business matters, and who can squeeze enough out
of them to take care of your grandmother, and leave you free to roam or
settle where you please?

You are very dear and necessary to me, but are becoming almost a starnger
to me in your new state. Nothing is unbearable, and you MUST stop nursing yourself, and begin to live again, or you will make yourself into a
permanent neurotic for no good reason at all. One's father and mother DO
die, but it is ungrateful to them and their memory to refuse life because
of it.

Max Ewing, esq.,
Pioneer, Ohio.

Dear Isolde:

Your weekend sounds as busy and elaborately "movements" as possible. So many people Beginning with B!

Why don't you go right thru the alphabet, and next weekend have
a Chanler, a Curtis, a Carstairs, an Clayburgh, and a Cherry.
And so forth to Z. Thus your friends could not charge you with
favoritism and it would all be so orderly. And you would be sure
to get interesting juxtapositions for under the pouf. Cary Ross
wrote me that the weekend was GLORIOUS. And I guess it was...

I enclose a clipping relating to the Misses Dorothy and Elizabeth Gowdy, which goes to prove that if Russell and Engie were really ONE and really TOGETHER, Russell would have had appendicitis too.

I still have no set dates for doing one thing or
another. Doris the hip-roller is on the high seas rolling, and
will arrive in New York June 29th. She is coming on out to
Michigan for a visit to her family, and we all may co-incide
somewhere over the Fourth of July. After that I shall begin to
make plans. I expect to leave here any time after July 9th, when
I will have been here a month. It is very quiet. Last night we
dissipated to the extent of seeing Marion Davies in Peg O' My
Heart. I drive the car in all directions (not at once). Clear
Lake is twenty miles away across Ohio, across Michigan, and
across Indiana, and we go there whenever it occurs to us, and
stay in that house for a day or two. Then we come here for a day
or two, and it is all very haphazard, and not at all a planned
society. The weather ranges from blistering heat to windy zeros
with furnace fires and blankets. It is the only thing in this
region that is free of monotony. None of the country people seem
to be buying barber shops that do not exist, but probably only
because banks are closed and everyone seems penniless. I sug-
gested going to Toledo for a few days where I have quite a lot
of old friends, but my mother says my going there would embarrass
them, because they would all want to ask me for lunch or some-
thing, and none of them could afford to ask anyone to lunch. And
they all used to be very "rich" too, as riches go out here. So
that is the way it is. But nobody complains, and nobody even
DREAMS of a change of system. They say it is "a queer state of
affairs", and let it go at that.

There is one newcomer in the neighborhood who
claims to have been around the world, and who boasted that he had
ridden on a polar bear in the ocean. Someone doubted his
word and said he would have to see a picture of THAT before be-
lieving it. So the man got out his photographs, and he DID have
a picture of himself on a polar bear in the ocean, so I guess
that settles that. Also an odd woman named Sallie Coyle from
Oklahoma has arrived here and bought a house, and she claims to
be a rejected COUSIN of J.P.Morgan! She leads a very mysterious
and eccentric life and nobody can imagine why she came HERE. Her
Morgan connections seem to be authentic. She has struck up a
great friendship with the polar bear rider, and together they have
lived up one quarter of the town considerably. They frighten
children and they throw cans of salmon at people they do not
like. She is said to be eager to meet me. Do you think I should
take the risk of salmon cans?

There is another woman who used to live here years ago and her name was Celeste Smith, but she was always known as Lettie-Belle. She resembled Mrs. Leslie Carter in every way, and was quite a local belle. Then she shuffled off to Buffalo and got married, and got divorced, and removed to Grand Rapids where she gave piano lessons. When all her family died and she was quite alone and by no means young she shuffled off to California alone, and every one felt very sorry for her, and never expected to see her again. But in California she married a man named Finkel and came back east again this summer quite in style. I met the man, and he said he knew a friend of mine whom I had dedicated my book to - Muriel Draper! I said did he indeed, and he said no, he didn't actually, but he almost did, because he knew her husband. I thought it was all fancy, when then he asked me if I knew John McMullin, and various people whose names and connections he could not have hit upon accidentally. He says he knew them all in the war. It all sounded very unreal from the strange Mr. Finkel. Lettie-Belle said she had read one of your books but she could not recall which one. They have now shuffled off to Atlantic City. So you see... Undoubtedly Sallie Coyle is a Morgan after all.

Taylor Gordon writes very excitedly that Peggy Hopkins Joyce's film, "International House" has been stolen from his novel, "Zigaboo Dream", and wants me to look up the alleged authors of it in Hollywood...
Albert Carroll is appearing in Chicago in a play about a Russian Grand Duke who escapes the Romanoff fate by escaping to Paris as a fashion mannequin, and eventually becomes a manicure girl and a famous British matrix named Lady Diana.
We can complain of nothing. Gary Cooper will sing "Goodbye, Little Girl Goodbye" in his new film. So now, if you do not think I am better than Walter Winchell as an informer, who is?

I still hope to have you somewhere as a "fellow-traveler",
though M. Trotsky would probably call it your health.Let me know.
O.O.McIntyre says that nothing so stimulates an author as writing
a letter to a friend first thing in the morning.

Pioneer Ohio

June 23

Muriel,

I am returning scrupulously the two documents, and I am
enclosing a third which I will ask you to conserve and return
to me in person. I received it this week from Miss Mae Noble
who is in Hollywood! I nearly went mad trying to understand it.
I feared that what I did bore no relation to what I thought I
did, and that instead of having taken a west-bound train I
perhaps had really taken an east-bound ship. I realized at
length that the clipping was three years old. This does not
detract however from its quality of being wonder-making.

Saturday

GUGGENHEIM CHEERY
AS MAURETANIA SAILS

Sees Rosy Business Outlook;
Miss De Lamar to Visit
Nungesser's Ex-Wife

Miss Alice De Lamar sailed yesterday on the Mauretania to join her step-sister, the former wife of Charles Nungesser, the missing French ace who disappeared while trying a trans-Atlantic flight. The Mauretania left her Hudson River pier a little after 5 P. M., bound for Southampton and Cherbourg.

Miss De Lamar, who inherited an income from a $10,000,000 trust fund of her father, the late J. R. De Lamar, was uncommunicative, but friends said her intention was to visit her step-sister.

Solomon R. Guggenheim, financier, was on board. He was accompanied by Mrs. Guggenheim and will visit relatives in England. Mr. Guggenheim said he would return in August. He was optimistic over business conditions here and said:

"The wealth of America is so great the prospect is it will continue so for many years, unless some unfortunate political turn should come. That is not on the horizon, as I see it."

Mrs. Muriel Draper went down to say goodby to Max Ewing, who wrote the songs for the Grand Street Follies.

Harold S. Pollard, editor of The Evening World, and his wife, Chrystal Herne, also sailed on the Mauretania.

Muriel,

This arrived for you today from Dallas Texas. I
doubt that you can get there by tomorrow night, but
still I think it would be worth trying. Think of
making the acquaintance of Gyp Zarro, Hank Alvardo,
and Kid Granite.

In an early edition of today's News there was a
monstrous child for you - Harriman being carried to
court on a stretcher, with sheets and quilts up to
his chin, cigar in mouth, and derby on head, but the
edition was sold out by the time I tried to buy a
copy.

I hope to meet you soon on a tennis court.

July 1
Pioneer

I am just back from quite a strenuous house-party chez les Bowersox, at Maumee, Ohio. In case you don't know, Maumee is to Toledo what White Plains is to New York. It is elaborately suburban, and across the Maumee River lies Perrysburg, looking more or less like Eton, - that is, from the distance of Maumee. Anyway, the drinking was on a scale with a Rody Hall farewell... And the chief topic of discussion was the recent visit to Toledo of Antoine, the hair-dresser. Antoine had swooped down upon Lucas County with his wife and his Luigi, and with black velvet, white lilies, and cellophane. He had lacquered the Toledo ladies' heads, and at a fashion show had wrapped up Toledo girls in cellophane so tight that they had collapsed and fainted on the spot. And so now the Maumee matrons, built out in terrifying Schiaparelli shoulders, are concentrating on Lady Abdy and her chiffures, and on Daisy Fellowes. All these people had read Going Somewhere, and were under the impression that Aurora was Elizabeth Marbury. Thus we arrive again at the question of handicaps... My mother accompanied me on this drinking bout, and you will be impressed to learn that I drove a hundred and fifty miles there and back, resisting all the wanderers along the highways who are WALKING to the Chicago Fair, and begging for lifts.

Doris arrived in N.Y. a day or two ago. I sent her a note and provided her with some telephone numbers, including yours, in case she cared to do any telephoning. I don't know how long she will stay there. It seems she is going out to the Morrows at Englewood for a day or two. Elizabeth Morrow, you know, is a pillar of the hip-rolling school in Istanbul.

Alas for my good intentions to take my grandmother some beer. I went to the shop where it is sold here to get some beer, and before I knew it the proprietor had uncapped a bottle. I told him I wished he had not done that because I wanted to take the beer out. He said I could not take it out. I said it was for my grandmother and that she was out so I had to take it out. He said this was illegal, and that the bear had to be drunk on the spot. So, since there seemed to be no other solution, and since the beer was opened and was mine, I decided to drink it. I poured some of it into a glass and started to drink it, when the proprietor and also his wife rushed at me with panic in their eyes, and shouted that it was illegal for me to stand there and drink it, and that I would have to take it to the back of the room and sit down at a table to drink it, and that I must sit in such a way that it would be plainly visible from the street that I was sitting. I protested that the back of the room looked hot and dreary, and that I would be through drinking the beer in almost less than no time, and that I was a trustworthy old inhabitant who would cause them no trouble. But they said that no matter what I felt about it, if any woman who belonged to the W.C.T.U. should walk past the shop and see me standing up, she would crash in and raid the place and have us all arrested. So in the face of all this argument, I retreated to the table and sat down in a conspicuous way and finished the bottle of beer which was meant to be taken to my grandmother. I don't think she misses it very

much though, for her own supply of her own dandelion wine is far
more potent than 3.2, and even, I think, more potent than your
Connecticut variety.

The Clear Lake (Indiana) beer legislation is even more fanciful
than that of Pioneer. The store which sells it at Clear Lake has
not paid for the all-inclusive sale license, so the procedure there
is as follows. You go to the shop to buy the beer, and the law
requires that the clerk must uncap it at the counter. But it is
illegal for you to drink it at the counter. In fact it is illegal
for you to drink it on the premises at all. Furthermore it is not
legal for you to take it home and drink it there. The only alter-
native is to take it out into the street, and drink it there, on
utterly neutral ground, and then return the bottle inside the shop.
All these laws are rigidly enforced. I am lost in a maze of legis-
lation. I ordered some ice at the lake last week, and the iceman
told me he had ice for sale but that it was illegal for him to
deliver it. So I acted as iceman myself, and I never heard of
such goings-on.

Once I get ready to start west, I am going to wait from day to day
for cool weather and then leave immediately - like the fleet of
Italian airplanes that have been waiting for days and days for good
weather for flying to the Fair from Italy... Jack Becket wrote and
asked me to stay chez lui for a while, but I doubt that I will for
more than a weekend, for he is at Laguna Beach, which is two hours
away from every place else. He says that Mercedes is pleased over
Garbo's return, and that Marlene went abroad just in time to
escape any run-in there. Namara and Mindret wrote me and asked me
to BRING THEM THEIR DOG which they would wire the Winslows to
ship to me in Chicago, and then I could bring the dog along to
the Coast from there... I relay this responsibility to you, as I
feel sure the dog will receive more sympathetic treatment from
you... Try to think of ME escorting a DOG to the PACIFIC. Try hard.

I have not yet met Sallie Coyle. The most sinister development
about her is that she is AN OLD FRIEND OF STOKOWSKI'S!

I always thought that Orage advocated champagne as a self-starter.
In the meantime, if you don't have champagne every morning, I
hope you will write letters.

Have you tried cutting the grass with shears? I got a very inter-
esting effect that way at the lake.

How near finished is THE BOOK? This is now July.
Come west, little girl, goodbye, little girl, goodbye.

Dear Muriel,

I send you the enclosed clipping from the Toledo Blade to indicate to you how the title of your book is being bandied about in advance, and to warn you to HASTEN the book as fast as you can, lest its title and therefore its contents lose their value! Run!

Also, speaking of Alcibiades' dog, I think you should know about a delicate matter that has arisen in Chicago relating to quite another aspect of the animal kingdom. It is the plight of the butterfly counters in Chicago parks. It seems that there are certain municipal servants paid by the city of Chicago, whose duty it is to count the butterflies in the city parks to keep statistics about the increase or decrease in butterflies from year to year. These butterfly counters have not received their pay this last year. But neither have the Chicago school teachers or any other of the public servants of Chicago. Now the butterfly counters are protesting, and almost on the verge of striking. And as soon as any money is forthcoming to pay city officials, the counters of butterflies demand precedence over the school teachers. The city authorities are in an awful quandary. What is to be done? Don't you think the Former Pumpers of Pipe Organs should be consulted, and that maybe some pigeons should be dropped into the Loop? I don't know what else would turn the tide.

Doris the hop-toad is skirmishing on Lake Michigan and won't be down here until next week. So I am staying until after that. I am beginning to champ at what is called the bit, but I am controlling my impatience in order to be nice to my mother, who has been very lonely all year and still is.

Let me know how you feel on the subjects of the Middle Western problems of ice, butterflies, and beer. They are waiting for Esther's legislation when she goes into politics. I feel sure she is the one to straighten these matters out. As to whether or not you are the one - I'M WONDERING...

Pioneer
July 7

Still Pioneer
Monday

Dear Dispossessee - This is just after the Deluge of Doris. She and her father and mother have been here over this weekend, and there has been much Turkish delight. She is in no way different, except that she wears sleigh bells on her wrist. She made several mots which made us long for you to enjoy them. She said that on the Black Sea she was in a small ship which was adrift for several hours because it lost its udder. And, speaking of Geoffrey Scott (a propos of rats, in her philosophy) she asked who it was that he was writing a book about - was it Benjamin Franklin or Franklin Simon? So, you see... In case you care to inform her, she is at Grand Haven, Mich. Wilderness Cottage, R.F.D.#2. She will go back to the terrible turks in September. She says all the young ladies on the Bosphorus are aswoon over Gary Cooper, and refuse to marry rich rug merchants, doctors, or even bankers, in the remote hope that they may marry Gary Cooper instead!

I am all set now to leave here next Monday, a week from today, which is to say July 24th. I go to Chicago and will give the Century of Progress just a cursory glance, because I am more interested in my own progress across the continent... I am going by train to San Francisco, to avoid the heat of the Southern Route. And Noel Sullivan has invited me to be his guest there, because he is not going to Carmel after all, on account of a "bereavement" in his family. I do not know who has died, but it is doubtless the last of the opulent ancestors. Anyway, I am glad to stop there for a few days. Then I will go down the coast to Hollywood, arriving around August 1st. I'll expect you to soon come tumbling after.

This is just the psychological moment for you to arrive in Hollywood and take charge of the whole place. With the breaking of of Doug and Mary, and the imminent sale and abandonment of Pickfair, Hollywood is left without any official host or hostess, or any Buckingham Palace. The breech is made for you. Why don't you take Pickfair yourself and send for the Mountbattens and carry on the tradition? At any rate, I attach a clipping from Walter Winchell (who is out there) anent rent. Why not take "a lovely home" whether it be Pickfair or not? You might not want a swimming pool, but I would like it. And you like shrubbery. And the gardener included as well! We might as well become landed gentry for the nonce.

I take it from your letter that Mabel D. is in Taos. Anyway the easiest way to get there would be via Beverly Hills... I don't see why Mabel should mind the MSS, even if I do mind the jam. Have her give you a ranch in exchange for the MSS. of your book when it is published. She is good at that.

I feel very much suspended between the two seaboards. Most of my N.Y. friends assume I must be out west by this time, and the people I know out west know I meant to start earlier than this and can't think where I am and where am I? It would take Robbie to answer that. The current news of Hollywood is very diversified. Lilyan Tashman is wearing sleeves in the form of large captive balloons. Joan Crawford is the colour of mahogany this year, and Mae West goes to church every day. Mary Pickford is weeping. Gary Cooper is entering the third phase of his career; according to the fan magazines, his first having been a period of being shy and dominated by Lupe, the second having been a period of being <u>mondain</u> and directed by Frasso and Elsa M. (And now he is trying to get away from it ALL and direct himself, which is just the time for you. He has given up his house (formerly Garbo's)

and retreated to a ranch not far away. He did not communicate with the countess for weeks, and she, like a Jane Austen heroine, absolutely wasted away, literally lost all her weight and was just about expiring. Then just to be civil Gary gave a party at the ranch - which was to be his party to end parties - like so many of ours. The countess arrived at this party riding ON A CAMEL. Which effected a reconciliation. Now she plans to get a divorce from the count, in Reno, and make Gary marry her, so that she can feel free of him. It is all very Ibsenesque. And the poor man is quite put upon, wouldn't you say so?

Sallie Coyle came to call. She began immediately on the topic of the glory of Chinese architecture. As she has not seen it and I have not either we did not get far. I told her I thought a pagoda would be nice in Pioneer, but she said people would call her eccentric if she put one up. It develops that she is a cousin - not of J.P.Morgan - but of the Morgan who is father of Lady Furness and Gloria Vanderbilt, one of the Morgan twins, or would it be one? But, still a Morgan!

A cryptic card from Dottie Crawford in Dalmatia says simply "You find funny boys in Hungary." The picture on the card is proof of the statement...What will Lorna hunt in Wyoming?... Give the Colony Restaurant some patronage. Try and help things along. Let's debatechez Mrs. Marks on Theater Folk versus The Folk Theater. Let's both take both sides. The winner will get some beer and the loser will get some butterflies, and that will solve everything.

P.S. If you sit right down and answer this in less than no time you may address me here. Otherwise, write me care of Noel Sullivan 2323 Hyde Street, San Francisco, where I will be delighted to hear from you. I don't know where I'll stop in Hollywood - probably at the Roosevelt Hotel for a week until I find a lovely home. Keep me informed about ALL your moves, and do keep moving this way.

Hollywood, Thursday

No, you did not send me page 20. If you had I would sell it as a collector's item and send the $75.00 to Earl. So you see it was really very careless of you not to send it to me. Are you sure you have pried between ALL the logs? Then pry between the frogs.

As for the clippings, if all the clippings I have been sent relating to Kirstein's being bounced for asking whether he might ask a question were laid end to end, we could return to two-cent postage. I finally sent them to Jack Pollock, thinking he might ENJOY them most, remembering how he longed to BOUNCE Kirstein that night from the bar at Michel's. Yes, Gilly does sound surprisingly Mildredy. His reference reminds me that I hope you will see Gary Cooper in "One Sunday Afternoon" which is a really excellent and tender film laid in about 1904, and would be sure to revive happy memories of your middle age. The other night at the Gouldings', Edmund Goulding and Dwight Fiske were reminiscing about their long friendship. It seemed they had known each other longer than any other two people present. They had been friends for years and years, for hundreds of years, it began to seem. Then they began to wonder just how long they HAD been friends. They began to figure and worked over it quite a while, and then recalled that they had met in London. But WHEN in London? Then one remembered. "It was in the Muriel Draper days." And then it was placed in the "world that is past!" Do you think that forty years from now, when you will be occupying the restored throne of Catherine of Russia, I will run into Gary Cooper somewhere, and try to figure out when we met, and that he will say, "That was Out West in the Muriel Draper days?" I am sure you will eventually be the cause of the abolition of the calendar. People will come to measure Time only from you and from where you were when.

As for the films you mention, I never saw A ONE of them, except the Nero one and that was Lincoln's doing. Furthermore I never even heard of most of them. Still I am glad that as a pupil you are going on and learning by yourself without prodding. Pupils so often don't.

Am all agog over the spirits to come tonight.

What does it mean - to Turk-badger?

I am glad you are being drawn. I am too, by Billy Justema. And I think it is the best of my beings-drawn, being-drawns, what would you say? Anyway better than the Chanler or the Toby or the Walton or the Johnson or the Woodruff or the Furie or the Sheldon head. Billy hopes to do Joan Crawford next.

Norma Talmadge's mother has caught pneumonia today.

I guess that's all for now.

HOLLYWOOD ROOSEVELT HOTEL

HOLLYWOOD

CALIFORNIA

Tuesday

By chance today I ran into Vadim Uraneff looking a little ghostly! He was very much startled to see me, and asked immediately about you, and I told him a little of what I could. He was very much delighted by your imminence as well as your eminence, and hopes that you will send word in advance about when you will be here, because he has to go to San Francisco any week now, and he says it would be his luck to have it be the week of your arrival here and I guess it would. He would switch his San Francisco dates to coincide with yours, or rather to not to, if he knew yours. I told him that you had been *finishing the book* in quite a number of places, and he said he was sure it was *here* that you would actually finish it. Shall I be looking around for a little leaning tower for you to finish the book in?

I hope you are warm.

Roosevelt Hotel Hollywood
Monday

Your letter is full of what I needed to know. Now I can talk and like it if you say so.

You don't sound sick, which is quite a novelty. Sickness has about overcome this place, on account of the perfect climate, I guess. I know quite a miscellaneous lot of people here, but they come and go into hospitals in such numbers that I feel quite out of the running, not having been in the hospital yet. Lilyan took sick, as I wrote you, and went to Good Samaritan Hospital where she stayed almost a MONTH. Irene Barrymore fell over a COW at Kay Francis' Barn Dance and hurt her head which developed into bronchial pneumonia, and she was rushed to the hospital where she has been ever since and where she still is. I guess she doesn't mind it, for so many of her friends are there it is sort of like being at a party. Edith Hoffenstein has been in the hospital for operations twice, most recently for tonsil removal. Tallulah flew back to N.Y. to do a play for Guthrie McC and went straight into a N.Y. hospital and has to stay there five more weeks. Peggy Fears is still here, but going to doctors every day. It goes on like that, but I won't any more.

In spite of this general collapse there are always a few well ones. Everett Marcy looks more healthy than anyone here. I had lunch with him one day. He seems to be in more or less constant attendance on the Sillmans - Leonard and June.

The Rocky Twins smashed their palace and went off to Norway in a huff.

I asked my agent, Mr. Schulberg, why she couldn't get any appointments for me last week and she said it was because all the movie executives were at the ENK Tennis matches. This sounded implausible, but I went to the tennis match Friday and I guess she was right. They were all there - all the well ones. Lilyan was in a box leaving no one in doubt that she was the world's Best Dressed Woman. She wore gloves to her shoulders which were effective when applauding. And she wore a wool toque the size of a pea on top of her stiff waxed curls which are cream-colored this fall. Charlie Chaplin sat in the box next to ours, alone, and bundled in sweaters and overcoats as if he were at the North Pole which is where we practically are. Later that night we drove to the Hoffensteins through a fog thicker than London ever dreamed of. You just crawl through the "Boulevards" and trust. Also it was Jewish New Year.

Thursday night I am going to Hurlbut's American place (not Steiglitz') to meet spirits, my first experience with them. They are going to blow a lighted trumpet around the room, or so he promises.

What will New York be like when the Stock Exchange moves to Jersey? Will Eddie have to commute to Jersey or will he move over there? You can raise sheep in Wall Street by spring. Los Angeles is making desperate efforts to get the N.Y. Stock Exchange, and I don't see why it shouldn't have it, now that N.Y. has Aimee McPherson. Aimee is at the Capitol, preaching, and Dave Hutton is at the Palace, singing, "I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now." They are a big N.Y. success. I guess they are about the only ones on Broadway now who are!

Lincoln is very celebrated for having been BOUNCED for having asked if he might ask a question. He is referred to in the press as Young Kirstein. Like Young Woodley.

Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas are the only topics of conversation everywhere. I hope you know that Gertrude is on the COVER of "Time" last week, and that her book is even reviewed in VARIETY! Her publishers now hope to make even "Tender Buttons" a best seller. She preoccupies people here more than Greta Garbo. Variety agrees with her own opinion that "in her time she is really the Only One." I feel sure that before the winter is out she will be on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post, and that she will take the place of the Japanese Girls in the newsreels. She and Mae West vie now for press attention.

Did you know too that Mary Garden has had to sell her villa at Beaulieu and auction off its contents? And that Gloria Swanson had to take off her bracelets in court here and hand them over to pay debts? And that Roy and Dorothy Sheldon have moved into a smaller flat in Elsie Arden's building? Aren't you glad that you are richer than Gloria Swanson and healthier than Tallulah Bankhead and live in a bigger house than Dorothy Sheldon? Cary writes that Ellery is in it - your house!

No, I did not know that Beatrice had married her Tommy, because you did not tell me. Jack Pollock showed up suddenly and unannounced from Reno. He stayed three days and then went off to some indefinite destination in Idaho. It was all what you are no judge of.

Are you going to stay with the George Moore of champagne and Tommy Hitchcock, or the Irish one who is dead? Either seems as odd as the other. You MUST plan to stop here and STAY a while either going or coming.

Harpo Marx is at last going to Russia to join the Moscow Art Theater.

What is Esther's address? Emily Hahn is here. She says Joe Brewer is definitely going to be college prexy. What vast changes!

I was taken to cocktails at Ruth Chatterton's MOTHER'S. After a long life of hard work and economizing, this old lady now occupies an Italian palace on Outpost Mountain, with acres of hillside gardens, powder-blue salons, Renaissance drawing rooms, and whatever else you can think of. She has cars, chauffeurs, and a white cat. She seemed also to be WELL, but the same day I went there, Ruth Chatterton got hit on the head by a falling spotlight. She was laid up. Constance Bennett is sick. Marion Davies is sick. Miriam Hopkins is sick. Even Francis Lederer is sick. I'm sorry to be so repetitious. But this is the way it is.

I had lunch with Dorothy Sheldon's Argentine friend, Baslasky. He said it is not raining in Argentina and that the cows there are thirsty and that if it does not rain for the cows' sake soon he will have to return to Argentina, because there will be no money.

I just read a book called "Lo!" It is about showers of frogs in England. Did you know that thousands and thousands of frogs fell from the sky in England several years ago? I have sent the word to Larsson.

You send more word to me. Don't go see Palo Alto. You can go see Geo MOORE though. When will you be here?

Madhouse
August 11

Just got your communication. How mystifying about Mabel D. and Going Somewhere. Noel brought the matter up himself, saying how much he had enjoyed the book, and that he had recommended it and loaned it to various friends all of whom had enjoyed it and wanted to meet me when I was in San Francisco. Then he ended by saying that Mabel D. Dodge was particularly enthusiastic over it. Enthusiastic was the word. My dictionary defines enthusiasm as "earnest and ardent feeling". So it may work both ways. At any rate Noel certainly meant it in the accepted sense! Of course I was joking when I spoke of a railway ticket. Still I do mean to visit New Mexico sooner or later and if the lady is belligerent I am glad to know it in advance. They say that in New Mexico you have to ally yourself either with Mabel Dodge or Wytter Bynner. Isn't it awful if I have to ally with Witter Bynner? Tell me more when you think discretion permits. Of course I shall say nothing. But Mrs. Luhan must be very good, or I WILL write that Mabel and Frieda and Brett scenario. And I am going to have a very efficient agent out here!

Yesterday I lunched at the M.G.M. studios, many many miles away and I got there on oh so many blue geese that weren't even blue. After lunch Adrian took me on various sets and I met various charming people including Marie Dressler. I gave her your regards without your permission. She could not have been sweeter and told me to come and see her any time. I saw Miss Harlow at her work. It is too much to begin on here... I saw real monkeys and false human monkeys in training for the new Tarzan film. We went on set after set until we reached the set where Miss Garbo is at work on Queen Christina. An armed guard blocked our progress there. No one dares see her or breathe the air near her. A secret passage has been built for her car to enter the studio. Also secret passages from her dressing room to her sets. But Adrian did send for the queen's costumes to show me and they are magnificent. You know of course that we are in for a long series on Queens in the movies. Greta is doing Christina of Sweden. Dietrich is to do Catharine of Russia. Norma Shearer is to do Marie Antoinette. Kay Francis is to be the Empress Josephine. Helen Hayes is to be Mary. Queen of Scots. Probably that man at the Algonquin will be Victoria in the end.

It seems I am to see Mercedes at dinner tonight. She swims with Garbo every morning at seven or so I am told. I dare say I will not venture to mention Garbo's name to her. One does not speak of Garbo. It is a faux pas to mention her - like speaking of Henry Ford in Detroit. Mercedes was smashed up recently in an automobile accident, and her face was badly cut. I have not seen her yet but she has sent tender messages.

Now. Yesterday when I left MGM with Adrian to drive many miles away to Tallulah's (in the Garden of Allah) to see her new monkey, (called first King Kong, then called Sappho, now called King Sappho) when, as I say, I went into the parking space (acres) to get into Adrian's car, there sat, in the sun, in an adjoining car, California Horsey... It was too sudden to be a successful encounter, but I am to see him again soon. He asked about you and I said you were in Connecticut and that there were rumors of your going to New Mexico. But he said those rumors had been about for years, and I let it go at that, He looks healthier than anyone we know.

Gary Cooper is at work on Design For Living. The Alfred Lunt part. Or

what WAS the Alfred Lunt part. The whole thing is changed. Not a single line from Noel Coward is retained. NOT A SINGLE WORD. The screen play is by Ben Hecht... Gary Cooper's fat man named Jack gave me the scenario to read because I wanted to read a scenario. I have read it. And little man, what now?

Sam and Edith live in Spanish splendour. They had a party Wednesday. Mme. Foujita (French) is odder than anyone we know. Foujita has discarded his earring. Zoe Akins was there. Miss Bankhead and Miss Fears and the Fredric Marches and Anna Duncan and Mr Saslawsky (via Dorothy Sheldon) and Richard Bennett. I may be plaing tennis with Miss Fears chez Claudette Colbert today if Miss Fears gets around to it. She awakens after noon and wears sleeping pajams to do her shopping and to attend parties. Just gets out of bed and goes out wherever she is going. It is all very convenient here except that when you are going is usually as far away as Rhode Island is from Manhattan Island.

Last night Marion Saportas took me to dine at the Colony which is THE PLACE here now. It is a fabulous restaurant on one floor and a minor Monte Carlo upstairs. The gambling is open and forthright and the stakes are high. The place is packed with nervous faces. New stars and old all in a jam. Norma Talmadge, former queen of them all, looks wistfully at Lilyan who is now the local Lady Colefax. Lilyan and Tallulah are not good friends. So very careful courses have to be steered. Both of them had invited Adrian to dine last night, and as a result he dined at home alone, because to accept either one would be to offend the other and precipitate scenes. Minor scenes. The really major scenes on this Coast ensue, apparently when Miss Tashman and Miss Constance Bennett are in the same place. Then you must flee for your life. At present Miss Bennett seems to be in retirement. I like Lilyan Tashman very much. More than I ever did on her N.Y. visits. And not simply because she has been so nice to me. But she is really very poised and very right about the whole scene out here and about her place in it. She is extremely successful and enjoys everything she does to an extraordinary degree. She has very much of the drive and the gusto and the concentration of Mary Garden. And oddly enough she is beginning to look like her.

Jack Becket asked me to come to Laguna Beach for a visit, but I was so delayed in getting here, he has removed to Santa Fe. What does it mean?

Namara is in a revue with the Rocky Twins. They appear as the Dolly Sisters. She appears as Violetta in La Traviata. It closes Saturday night. I am going then. Namara lives in a house on a hill with trees growing through it - through the house. Very very odd. And the beds roll indoors or out on a little ferris wheel contraption which I find very hard to explain in print or even in a diagram. Wait until you see them. Nothing I hear about New York makes me want to be there. I feel very much at large, and I enjoy it.

Tell me all your plans as soon as you make them. The Roosvelt Hotel here will remain my address for a month or so anyway. When you get to Mabel's I will sign my letters "Sitting Bull" or "Hiawatha" and then she will feel you have nice friends out west and will not intercept our correspondence.

Yes, stop at the Fair. All railroad tickets are good for 30 days. There are extraordinary things at the Fair but even now I can't go into them.

More anon.

M.E.

And I have written a film story for Paramount's new star, Baby Leroy, who is one year old. Of course he may not use it. Then again he may. It seems that Wm. Hurlbut has written a play for *you*. I am dining at his house tomorrow night. It is said to be the most exotic house here. It is early American. That is why it is so exotic.

Gary Cooper has a black eye. It is said to be caused by make-up poisoning. But many people are dubious... The Countess came to the Barn Dance dressed as a rooster. I guess she meant to be Chantecler. She spent most of the night on the telephone. But Gary did not come. So she changed into an evening dress, and looked pretty forlorn in the barnyard.

Kay Francis found her party so strenuous she is going to Honolulu to recover.

Every night here is colder than 53rd Street on a Sunday morning in January. The other night we went to the Bowl to hear Grace Moore. We were bundled in everything at hand, and sat shivering in our wraps, on the verge of pneumonia, and Grace Moore came out and sang, "Fly Away, Fly Away, Death, - Fly Away, Breathe"

Yours,
BIG CHIEF BUFFALO BIG SEA WATER

Roosevelt Hotel

Hollywood
Sept. 6

Monday

Dear Sane Accurate Woman: I hate to interrupt so often the Life of Brahms which you are writing, but I do think you should be given a little idea of Adrienne Ames' little party yesterday. First of all, re her house, think of the Vatican. Exact Truth forces me to admit that her house is not as big as the Vatican, but still if you think of the Vatican you will be In the right general direction. We arrived in the vicinity of the house, and in all directions were lined up limousines all as big as locomotives. Handsome blonde chauffeurs sat waiting in all these chariots. Entering the house, we were ushered up a white marble staircase and down a black marble staircase into the bar which was enormous and all the walls were painted to resemble VENICE, so I felt immediately at home. Peculiar liberties were taken with the layout of Venice, for the Grand Canal splashed right up over the facade of San Marco as if there were no Piazza at all. But, to get on, Miss Ames, very blonde of hair and entirely mahogany of skin, received in the bar in white pique. And her young man, Bruce Cabot, also coal black assisted. You realize the import of the juxtaposition of an Ames and a Cabot in Beverly Hills... After these ceremonies we went out through various patios, loggias, corridors, past little rotundas, and over numerous escaliers, into the garden, a sort of Van Cortlandt Park. Here and there a little pepper grove. There and here a little pine grove. And in between, pools of water lilies and splashing fountains d'apres the Luxembourg Gardens. In the far distance, the swimming pool filled with water so blue it must have been dyed. A few very healthy looking, very beautiful coal-black white people were splashing therein. Along the pool ran a severe stone wall in the middle of which was a completely outfitted FIREPLACE overgrown with roses. There was no fire because the evening was warm, but I can imagine on other days it is comfortable to swim alongside a good roaring log fire. Groups of Argentines passed trays filled with miniature mountains of caviar and odd oblong biscuits which completely concealed fragile sausages. Champagne cocktails were running over. In another region of the garden fifty tables were set for supper. Rows of huge bronze candleholders held countless scores of huge white candles to illuminate the tables. An orchestra in white dinner jackets held forth in one little pavilion. Photographers were at their work with flashlights, and fan writers clustered in groups to write about the guests. The one thing lacking was the guests. Miss Ames had failed to put her address on the invitations and many people never found her place at all, it being so insignificant. Furthermore her invitations had read that the party would be at half after five, and no one realized she expected people to stay on to supper. So most people who did get there had made other plans for supper. Irene Barrymore asked Miss Ames why she did not have the invitations read that it would be a supper party. And Miss Ames replied that she hated to "clutter up" the cards with details like that... So we left and climbed into our locomotive of a limousine, and policemen saw that we left the grounds safely, in case the resentful populace should "entertain dangerous ambitions" towards us. So much for this little Sunday P.M. affair, which, you must realize was nothing in the nature of a FUNCTION.

We then went on to the Colony where the world's best beefsteak is to be found. The steaks come from New York individually wrapped in cellophane. The Countess di Frasso joined us, blazing with diamonds and buried in furs and looking very handsome, I must admit, and very amusing. After dinner she and Irene B. went upstairs to do some

gambling, leaving me with Lionel B. for an hour or more. I really like him very much, though I never liked him particularly in films. He is a very good painter and a very good musician and one of the few people out here who are not completely absorbed in pictures. Mrs. B. came back and said she had lost two hundred dollars. So she got some more money and went back, and won back a hundred and eighty-five, so she was only out fifteen in the end, in case you can't figure...They then drove on to Beverly Hills again and I started to take a taxi back to my hotel, but woe was me, there wasn't any taxi. It was after midnight so the streetcars had stopped running. Everything had stopped running. So there was nothing for me to do but walk home, a little distance comparable to walking to Flatbush, and over very unfamiliar trails. I was very much annoyed, but could not fail to appreciate the fantasy of my trudging home thus after such embarras de luxe. Anyway the night was cool, and I needed the exercise! On Wednesday night Mrs. Barrymore is giving a large party which she maintains is for me and Lucius Humphrey who has recently arrived here. Won't you come? She told the Frasso she wanted her and Gary to come, and the Frasso said Mrs. B. would have to invite Gary separately because SHE had "washed her hands of it all." So shall I wash my hair?

Do come out and make some millions of dollars before you go to Russia. Make a few billions and then go. All you need to do is whiss up something about a queen. Why don't you write up Liliuokalani and have Maud play the part?

Cards arrived today from Mary Badger and George Lynes, both in Spain but not together. George sent me a landscape and Mary sent me a bull.

No more today. It's too bad I'm not a chatter writer.

Hollywood, Monday

WHAT ABOUT YOU?

My visit here coincides with drastic effects on the populace. The day of the night of the Barrymore party Lionel Barrymore was taken very ill with flu and the party had to be postponed, for he had such a high temperature everyone would have probably caught it. Lilyan Tashman too was carried away to the hospital on the same day and is having to be there about two weeks. She was in the Winchell film for a day. Do you know about it? Winchell wrote the story, and Al Jolson claims it is about his (al's) wife, so he knocked Winchell down at a prize fight. Winchell is now suing for $250,000.00 damages TO HIS REPUTATION... Peggy Joyce came out to act in it. She acted for two days and then she "collapsed" and she is suing for six weeks salary anyway. Lilyan was put into the part Peggy was out of, and Lilyan worked one day and then she collapsed too. In despair the company is looking for a blonde actress who is healthy enough to work out the month. They think they will take Blossom Sealey. If you were here you could surely get it, for you are so healthy, and you could become a blonde overnight. Most of the ladies here are blondes of a light corn hue. And they do look very healthy too, most of them. If Jap were out here he would look very pale. When you come here you must bring all your frou-frou's to wear to the Colony. But for the rest all you need is a handkerchief or two. People at Santa Monica and Malibu and those places wear no clothes. That is ostensibly they wear none. You see them driving by in luxurious motor cars but no clothes are visible on the people. Better bring your sailor pants to wear on Hollywood Boulevard so that you will not be conspicuous.

I was taken to the Colony again last night and it was very good again. There was no Cooper there. But the Countess was there sitting on a high-stool sadly gambling away the evening. She was wrapped in ruffles of orange organdie, and an elaborate little canopy of orange ostrich fringe perched on one edge of her head.

California Horsey telephoned today to ask your address de la part de William Hurlbut. I have seen no more of Horsey since that accidental encounter at first. He wants me to go swimming some night at a deserted "castle" where bats congregate. So far I just haven't got around to it.

Yesterday I played strenuous tennis with Mindret Lord. I lost five pounds doing it and gained six back today...

I have seen lots of the familiar people and met many more odd new ones. Jack Becket, who has gone to Santa Fe, left word for me to look up a friend of his here, a boy who he said had eyes "like grapes in aspic." And the odd part of that is that he has.

Eddie writes the Odyssey was amazing and he's glad it's all over!

Sunday

To correct a mistake: one may speak of Garbo. I have even spoken of her. I dined at Adrian's again Friday night, and into his enflowered, perfumed, gold-hung, crystal precincts, came Mercedes, dressed like a very sporting little man, white pants and jacket, and white hat atilt. She was fresh from THE PRESENCE. Greta, it seems, was half hysterical, because for weeks she had wanted John Gilbert to be her lead in Queen Christina, and Friday he was signed for the part, and then she feared she had made a mistake, and she was beside herself. Garbo originally wanted to do a film about Queen Christina because Christina was such a masculine queen who led her own army and dressed as a man, etc. So a scenario was prepared, but all such aspects of the queen have been removed, and she turns out in the film to be a sweet feminine queen who loses her kingdom for love of a Spanish ambassador who never existed at all. So you see... Doubtless Marie Antoinette in her film will escape the guillotine and live happily with a Persian prince, Mary Queen of Scots will live to a happy ripe old age in the Highlands, and Queen Victoria will turn handsprings. Mae West is on the rampage wanting to play Cleopatra but Paramount won't let her. It is all beyond anything. Not a queen is being left unturned.

After Namara's show last night I looked in at the Colony again and then on with Betsy Beaton to the Barn where Earl Dancer holds forth, the first colored night club that ever succeeded out here. It was like a dreary Smalls Paradise, but the Colony of course was something else again. Mr. Cooper was wandering by himself. apparently intoxicated, and doing a little desultory gambling, and finally disappearing. One knew when or where. Lois Moran whirled in fluffy ruffles and George Raft was a menace in linen. In the midst of it sat Tommy Wan-amaker striking a familiar note.

In a little while Mrs. Barrymore is taking me to cocktails chez Adrienne Ames. Do you know about Adrienne Ames? She is a Society girl who is in the films, a Julia Hoyt of the movies. She lends tone. She sent out invitations far an wide to an enormous party chez elle today, and as if she were Tiffany's, she put no address on the cards. Everyone is expected to just INTUIT where she lives. As a matter of fact no one has any idea where she lives, whether here or Santa Monica or Santa Barbara or any other saint. But every body is going. I am going to be ready early just en cas it is miles away.

Aline MacMahon took me to lunch at Warner Brothers studio yesterday and we took a long walk through a Colorado mining village, through a street in Florence, through a Moorish city, and ending up in a large pine forest set up indoors. Then we watched Ruth Chatterton chewing gum for quite a while.

How sane and cozy and practical it makes you seem!

Saturday

Just got your chronicle. Am speechless over the riding and driving.
I told Horsey on the telephone that you were riding and driving and
that you had been thrown on Saturday. He said, "By horse or car?"
And that stumped me.

The spectral mists are over. I hate to clutter up your impression
of California by giving you a different one, but almost immediately
after you left we had a hard all night rain, the first in seven
months, and that seemed to clarify everything. Since then it has
has bright and blazing hot, even warm at night. Sorry, darling.

I am hard at work on my play again. I got well long in the first act
last spring. Then came away and could not get at it again for
weeks. Why are these lapses? You ought to know by now. Anyway,
now I am almost through the second act. And hope the third won't
have to wait another six months. I'm afraid there is no part
for you, as it does not deal with bedtime story telling. If it
does not have Ina Claire I think all will be lost.

Have not seen Vadim again, but have seen Horsey quite often. We
have taken some odd jaunts in his father's car. One to San Pedro
and Long Beach on a Saturday night. There we contemplated being
tattooed but gave it up in favor of contemplating tattooers
tattooing others. We visited a beer hall for sailors called "The
Chateau." A girl who was the image of Ruth Chatterton did a vivid
and prolonged stomach dance, dressed in a bit of gold fringe.
She too was tattooed on her upper arms and shoulders. She danced
interminably, but not a sailor lifted a hand to applaud her. No
one paid any attention to her. The sailors just sat over their
beer and cried on one another's shoulders. I don't know why.

Too bad we managed to not see any film being shot, as nothing
developed out of why we didn't, if you follow that. I think I am
going to change agents.

A large delegation met in a speakeasy night before last to welcome Leonie - all her Hollywood friends of last year and N.Y. friends of other years. She arrived very late, very vague, and left after fifteen minutes. As all the assembly had nothing in common except her acquaintance, they all dispersed too, so it was none too satisfactory a conclave. Jack Cotton was there, and we had a long confusing conversation. I said several times that it was too bad you did not stay longer. He said yes it was. I said we all tried but we could not keep you longer. He said yes. It went on like that. And then someone spoke your name again. And Jack looked very surprised and said, "Was **SHE** here? WHEN?" I gave it all up.

If you can get a copy of Modern Screen for December you will see
my picture on page 33, with Gloria Swanson and Michael Farmer and
several others around a haywagon. It proves I am in Hollywood.

I have forwarded mail to you from two Alices: Robinson and de la Mar.
Is there vital news of either?

Am glad you are seeing movies. I saw "Only Yesterday" last night and
am going to try and see "After Tonight" (with Constance Bennett)
tomorrow. I saw Ruth Chatterton in "Tomorrow and Tomorrow" last year.

Thursday

Thank you for your bulletin. I shall CONTACT the Alices soon. The same mail this morning brought a card from Gertrude Stein in Delley, asking me what I do and if I like what I do and everything but tell me to do do what I've done done done before, Baby.

Mercedes is in San Francisco and Carmel. I don't know why or how.

It sounds like a great congestion of ballets in New York. This is the auspicious year for your debut in that field, I feel.

There is very important news of San Francisco life in today's paper. I meant to send you the article, but it has disappeared. In brief what happened is this: A lady in San Francisco, a very aristicratic lady who is kin of the Pagets in England, just cannot stand the new Mrs. Hitchcock Coit tower on Telegraph Hill. So might before last she took several stiff drinks and then went out and shot it. Shot the tower. I guess she didn't hurt it much, but she fired six bullets into it and did her best. She is being severely sentenced, and the front page headlines about shooting the tower are very bewildering until you know the facts. Combined with the headlines about Lee Tracy denying he was nude in Mexico, the front pages are absorbing today.

I am making copies and carbon copies of my play. Very tedious business but there must be copies for agent, for producers, for Ina Claire, for copyright bureau, for me, etc. Fortunately a play is not as long as a novel.

Dwight Taylor, Lauretta's son, has written the libretto of a musical play, and wants me to do songs for it. So I may be doing that too. It is a stage play too, so I'll probably have to go to N.Y. sooner or later. But this is a good place to get the work done beforehand.

Horsey has been a little under the weather but is at large again.

Hollywood Boulevard for two miles is ablaze with enormous tinseled Christmas trees. Too beautiful at night and too insane by day when it is hotter than all the tropics at present. Don't know why Christmas seems to precede Thanksgiving here, but doubtless you will know, and elucidate it.

My best toabel. What do you do when your ribbon gets like this?

like this

Dear Muriel,

Yesterday was Los Angeles "Navy Day" so there was a big
air meet in the sky. The dirigible, Macon, and all the most celebrated
planes in the country came here and did maneuvres and formations in
the sky to regale the populace, but the blanket of fog was so thick
that NO ONE COULD SEE A PLANE IN THEIR SKY. Furthermore the fliers
could not see each other, so the Macon broadcasted to the city the
fact that it was above the city, and then sailed away. I thought you
ought to know about this.

The weather has grown steadily worse since you left, if
you can believe it. I mean the night fogs are thicker, and by day the
sun is more remote, and the air is always colder and damper and
danker and ranker.

Friday night I met a film actor named John Arledge who
says he met me at your New Year's Eve party last winter, so I guess
he did.

I have just read Brett's book.

Write me a Bedtime Story.

And give my best to Mabel.

The last three lines of this letter are not meant to be verse. They
are just three Hemingway sentences, but they look odd together.

Yesterday as I came into the Fleur de Lys Clark Gable was getting out
of a roadster and a street peddler tried to sell him a picture of
Roosevelt. He gave the peddler some money but declined to take the
picture. So the peddler offered me the picture, and I disdained it too,
but I was glad to have seen Clark Gable.

Pioneer Ohio
Sunday

Dear Muriel,

Thanks for your wire. Things here are terrible, and I have just gone through the most difficult month of my life. I arrived here and found Mother literally at the point of death, and strenuously resisting all treatment or medical care because she was determined she did not want to get well. She had just become despondent and let herself go to pieces. This is of course the hardest kind of case to treat because there is no **so-operation** from the patient. After I got here she became worse and worse until I had to make underhand arrangements to take her to a hospital in Toledo. She would never have gone any other way. So of course she resents the fact that I took her there. But she would have been dead by now if I hadn't taken her when I did, I am sure. I don't know how long she will have to be there, or what kind of recovery we can expect. It is the most shocking sort of illness because so unexpected. My father's death came at the end of quite a long illness and a final operation, and was a more or less logical progression. But until this fall my mother has always had perfect health, and unlimited vitality, so of course she abused it, and when she did commence to run down, she went faster than you could imagine anyone ever could. A month ago there was practically nothing left of her at all. At the hospital she is eating properly, and building up some strength, and she may rally faster than we suppose.

Even if she does get quite well again, her situation is complicated, as you know, by the perennial, and apparently eternal problem of my grandmother. In this crisis, my grandmother is the most pathetic old thing imaginable, for she is ninety years old, and frail and deaf, but in good health otherwise, and the most restless and critical old dame in the world. She is up before daylight and furious if other people are not. She is LIKE THAT. She irritates my mother so much, that I don't see how they can ever continue to live together. And I don't see how either can live alone. And I don't see how I can live with either one of them without giving up my own life completely. The whole problem looks practically insoluble. Meanwhile, as long as my mother is in the hospital, there is little for me to do but just await developments. I drive in to Toledo every week for a day or two. The snow is knee deep, and the countryside is bleaker than anything on earth.

Alice wrote, inviting me down to Palm Beach again, and said you might be going down there. I would like nothing better than to go, but I cannot plan ahead at all at present. I might get down there in March, but she expects to go north again early in March, so it doesn't look very promising. I'll come on to New York as soon as I can, but I cannot take my things out of storage or take a lease or anything until I see how things work out here. When I do come I'll have to just take a furnished place by the month which I can leave on short notice if necessary. Who is next door in the place Rita had two summers ago? I might take it for a few minutes.

I'd love to be in Hartford for Four Saints.

As if the immediate family illnesses were not enough, yesterday the ash-boy had a heart attack on my hands when he was here emptying ashes from the basement! We sent for one doctor who

Tuesday

Dear Muriel, I am back in Pioneer and able to be up and out. I watch each mail for a letter from you as if it were the only nourishment in the world. And I dread to get it too, because I expect it to accomplish a miracle, and that is probably expecting too much. It is hard to convey to you the state I am in, because you cannot realize the ramifications of the situation here. The grief over the loss of both parents in so short a time would be enough to weigh me down. But the situation their passing leaves me in is so bewildering I cannot grasp it myself. After having led all my life perhaps the most untrammeled life of anyone I know, I am suddenly obliged to take on the entire responsibilities deriving from four lives, my father's, my mother's, my grandmother's, and my own. And I am not equipped to do it, and there was never anyone so without anyone else to share it with. I am left out here just alone alone alone in the midst of all the wreckage. My life seems like a trapeze stunt, with the safety net taken away, and my breath giving out at the same time. God knows when I can return to New York or anywhere else, and God knows how I can get through the interim here. I wander alone through the floors of this house which are filled to overflowing with things I cannot transplant, cannot sell, cannot rent, cannot bear to destroy. My whole system is just numb with shock and bewilderment, until I feel I have no identity at all. Whatever integrity I have you recognize, and you will have to make it clear to me, for I have lost sight of it and everything else. I am very weak, cannot eat much, cannot sleep without drugs, and there is no one to even say goodnight to, for my grandmother cannot hear me. So please do not be remote from me. You know about golden eras that end. How does one go on, and TOWARD what, when there is nothing in sight? I would love to be in your house tonight, but I am too much of a care to be on anyone's hands at present. If I don't get better I'll go to a hospital, which is the last thing I want to do. I am physically ill, but I know it is caused by emotional upheaval, and I don't know what the cure is for that. Aurora Overauhl's solution is enviable.

Dear Muriel,

I heard about Smudge's wedding, and sent him a note belatedly. My mind is not functioning right, and things in New York seem to have lost all reality, sometimes even you, though I do cling to you as something real. If you could only make me know that you are. I have never in my life come up against the real or the difficult until now. Everything all my life was made so easy for me, and I never once questioned its rightness, or its permanence. And such complete ease has so softened me in every way and left me with no powers of concentration or organization or decision. The impact of the winter and the shock of this spring have left me so stunned that I truly fear what is happening to my mind. In sleepless nights I come to the very end of its resources and I am terrified. People here are ready to send me to a clinic, because they don't know what to do with me, and I don't know what to do with myself. Of course I don't want that. It would be the final weakness to let myself go like that. I will try whatever else there is. What is there? What is the first Gurdjieff exercise? I will truly try it, for I have to have something and soon. It was always meaningless to me before, because I was poised in a false security. I have been like a colored balloon soaring into unexpected places but always controlled firmly from the ground. Now I am just at large, flying away with no control, and afraid of being deflated. I told someone the other night that I was like a string of beads with the string taken out, and that is the truth. I am jumbled and disorganized beyond all recognition, and I don't know what to turn to. I cannot accept myself as a mature person in charge of property. I have always been in the child-parent relation to everything and everyone. It is impossible to tell you how unreal and stricken everything in the universe suddenly seems to me. Jack Pollock came here from the West coast to help me, eating twice on the way to get here. He is a very good friend to me, better than I am to anyone. But he is like a stranger and no more real than anything else. He does all the work. The maid we had all winter went into a real hysteria and has gone. Everything is sinister and distorted and I want to be with only you. But even you could not stand me the way I am now. Anyway I want to know where you are always and what your plans are, and how I could reach you if I get so I cannot bear it another minute. I have a sudden and overwhelming sense of worthlessness. If I am worth anything to you make me know it. I cannot go on like this.

Dear Muriel,

What a comfort to have your note. I was afraid that
my letters to you had sounded like a series of whinings and that
you were merely intolerant of them. In a sense they were whinings
because I am such a child. I hate the terminology of "arrested
development", etc, but it is true that my mother never allowed
me to grow up. It is as if I had been in a cradle for thirty
years. I am lost without her because I do not know how to live.
I have never participated in living, I have been always outside
of everything, I was always protected from every responsibility
and every reality. I always took the easiest way, which is only
natural, and never met any resistance. I have no self discipline.
I have skipped all the efforts and been given the rewards anyway.
As a small child I skipped grades in school and got better marks
than anyone else. And ever since I have skipped everything. I have
been at a passing show all my life with someone else buying the
ticket. I do not know how to buy my own ticket and I have lost
all interest in the show anyway. I have gone deeper and deeper
into a cocoon of irresponsibility, making one weakness excuse
another, and finding a new and more flimsy illusion to take
the place of any lost one. Many things conspired to make me
secretive, until free communication is almost impossible. I have
absorbed other people's selves indiscriminately and purposelessly,
always assuming that they would form myself a self and they have
not. All the time my mother was my real self and my whole strength.
I met hundreds of people and rejected them all as inferior to her.
I went in and out of houses and countries and heights and depths
and was unaffected by all of it because I was so strongly affected
by her, and never realized or admitted it, and never gave her
proper recognition or credit or love. I am torn to shreds with
remorse over how little satisfaction my life can have given her,
and yet I do not see how I could have lived it otherwise, with
the given. It was the most complicated and tortured pattern -
that everything I did I was doing to in some way gratify her,
but at the same time I instinctively chose the direction that
would antagonize or puzzle her. We had no mutual interests, and
yet what we did have that was mutual was all we had. That was all
we had and what had we? I cannot tell you to what an extent I
have lost all incentive, even to get up when it is day. I am
just sunk in a morass of introspection and self-dissection and
accusation - and all for the first time - and if I stay in it I
will become really unbalanced. I would go to a psychiatrist if
I did not know all the answers myself. I feel too weak to stay
sane. I won't if I stay on here alone like this in this house.
There is no one who can come and assume responsibilities for me.
And I cannot get away. I am like a squirrel racing around in a
cage, getting more and more exhausted, and unrecognizable to
myself, even in a mirror. Nothing in my life until now ever
"gave me pause." Now I am shattered and shackled all at once.
It seems as if along with entangled property I have inherited
from my mother her own faculties, and that I must go straight
through the same nervous disorder that she went through in order
to get out... This is weak and wrong and crazy, and I feel all
three. I feel as if a light had gone out, and I feel frightened
for the first time ever. It is real torture for me to attend to
the business affairs, not simply because they are so foreign and
incomprehensible to me, but because they are what killed her and
every business paper seems bloody. Instead of writing this letter

I should be hunting for the abstract of a house in Lansing that has been sold. I don't know what an abstract is. I do nothing but hedge, which is all I ever did. To go to see you would be hedging. Any way out will be hedging because I do not know how to go straight through anything. And nothing interests me enough to go through it. I feel sick and numb through and through, and even walking seems an unfamiliar function. I am like someone on a new planet, and it should be stimulating, but it is not. It is just meaningless and unbearable. I don't know why you should bother about it, and yet I hope you will. You have become so necessary to me, but I know I am not necessary to you, or to anyone else, or even to myself, and that is what is the matter with me.