Dear Monroe:

Your letter has touched me very much; and I
truly appreciate your trying to put my heart at rest.

Monroe, I want you to know, most honestly, that
I have never felt any resentment. My mind, I sin-
cerely hope, is not so foolish, nor small. If I have
made any reference to the thought that you might have
heard more from Bill than I, it was with no bitter
intention, and no feeling of rivalry. You, Bill, and
I are not a triangular relation, and I have always
known that. Bill doesn't set us first, second, or third
in his heart, and why should we consider ourselves
so?

Now that Bill has written, I can see in retrospect
no reason for my unhappiness. That, unfortunately,
is usually the case. Anything I may have said before,
please put down to my own personal despair at not
hearing. Forgive me if I have seemed otherwise, and
believe that I do not feel rivalrous. When I said
that you all might be able to give me information about
Bill, it was a poor backhanded way of saying that I
had not heard from him. I did not mean that I, George
Montgomery, should have; and you should not.

Please know, Monroe, that I have tried to under-
stand all our relationships, and know that resentment
would be untrue and foolish. Anything I may ever
say will be in the nature of heavy-handed joking at
our similar situations...and irresponsible pleasure,
I hope, for us both.

I could never feel resentment at Bill's going to
Honolulu. The idea, as you say, in his career now, is
very suitable. None of us, on the other hand, can
say that he is happy that Bill is gone. Minor pains
for major pleasures, crudely.

I worry, of course, about my claim on Bill; but
know that my rivals are abstract ones, if at all. My
comparative unhappiness at times stems only from these,
Monroe. Probably I should enjoy personifying them,
but they can never be. I don't find any real reasons
among those abstractions for being unhappy, either, so
put my melancholy down to my natural tendency to
pessimism and disaster; and treat me like a rather
inefficient machine, with eccentric wheels.

Do believe that I want to be your friend too,
Monroe. Not just so that we may get along, but because
we like each other.

To answer the rest of your letter: I should be
very happy to visit you the 18th of March. I will

Friday afternoon

Dear Monroe:

Your letter, as anyone could guess, was a
very welcome one. I am sincerely grateful for your
forgiveness. Forget the apology. Just as I had an
explanation, but not an excuse. Perhaps, though, you
give me too much credit for "worldliness". I am not
good at combining drinks and commitments. I drink
at my and everyone else's risk; and shall always have
to watch out, I suppose. "To drink" is a verb, and
requires a subject. I'm a bad one.

Let's forget the whole dreadful incident,
in the light of future happier days, Monroe.

I registered the other day, and have now
begun the old, familiar round. You've no idea how I
like it. My stuff is all here, my friends are here,
and I feel situated at last. What's the word for the
tendency crayfish have? Something to do with liking
to be touched on all sides. Then they feel safe.
Tachypnoea? (that wasn't it...) Maybe the womb-theory
is too simple an explanation!

I have a hard schedule, with Calculus, Physics
French, Plato's middle dialogues, and Le Boutillier's
Design. But fortunately for a mild social life, I have
no saturday classes. That makes easy weekend trips. I
doubt that I shall visit New York more than once this
term, but would like very much to come to Stoneblossom.
Never mind the plane ticket, though, please.

Thus far, I've hardly been out of my room,
except for a few get-acquainted beers with my now
familiar roommate. He's cultured, and gentlemanly, add
has contributed nothing offensive to the decor.
(looking about, I have found him, consequently, worth-
while.) (The decor, I might add, contains everything
from broken down couches to marble tables.) I did go
out the other night to my pleasure. I was roundly slapped

on the back by one of the players last year on the football
team. Someone who I never spoke to last year, nor met.
The summer had done him strange good. He left today for
the regular army. What a furious little life it is in
Cambridge.

Le Boutillier speaks highly, of course, of the Museum's
publications. Especially the BAUHAUS. Are copies of it
for sale? I've read Bill's, so it isn't anything necessary
immediately. I simply wonder whether it can be obtained.

I've had one or two calm, chatty notes from Bill.
Also, one of the radar receptors, which hangs above me
in the breeze. Since all my furniture is black, it really
looks quite well, if a bit startling. For new guests,
it's a kind of pace-setter. Bill's hasn't continued in
that sudden vein, and I suspected he would not. It was
a sort of sham-rage, an arm-flailing, which is only
indulged so that it can be spent. He'll always feel used
on the subject, and only needs happy circumstances.
Only(!)

Back to Math...philosophy has ruined me, you know.
I can't just accept irrational numbers, and go on around
like the freshman (I take, mind you, a freshman course).
Half of me stays in Mathematics Ia., and the other half
yearns for Math 212c. But it does keep me happy with
theory rather than rote. The trouble with me is that
I can smile knowlingly when someone mentions Cartesian
Coordinates, but I never saw any. Or is that a trouble?
I cannot see trees for the forest.

Thanks again, Monroe, for your forgiveness. I
promise, in deepest gratitude, that it will never happen
again.

best love,

ghmontgomery, Eliot A-11, Harvard
Cambridge, Massachusetts

AIRMAIL

Monroe Wheeler, Esq

410 Park Avenue

New York City, NY

Dear Monie:

I am feeling very unhappy here, and not in New York for your kind invitation. I would have liked to see you before my return, and would have been overjoyed to meet Cocteau.

Truthfully, I haven't done enough in this last day and a half to warrent my coming back; but it takes that long to become myself, I guess. The first night I get drunk with friends. The next day, I build something. Then I see a movie (Volpone).. now I study. And I have a lot of it.

It all seems pretty foolish at the moment, and I'd almost like to quit college, friends, family, and fortune (!) to go off alone and paint and build. How I would love it! Never worry whether I were doing the right thing; but just make things. A not very pleasant time in New York, and a lot of foolish exams and deadlines here makes me feel old and wasting. I think I truly need a change. Then again, after all, the will that got me here, is the one which wishes to leave, and vice-versa. I guess that leaves it to circumstances to change my mind.

I don't wish to sound depressed; for I'm not.

I hope your visit with your family didn't continue as fractically as you made it seem. Mine was fairly calm, and Santa Claus bountiful if not discriminating. My birthday (today) was better, with an exposure meter, and a slightly crushed sponge cake. I spent New Years eve at Lincoln's, which was fun, really, and pleasant. I saw Paul and George, which I thought pleasing for the New Year, and met Jared French, whom I thought enormously attractive. I had no opportunity to say anything with him, though. Lincoln was civil, Fidelma shyly gracious. I drank too much, and I suppose

was my usual nervous indiscrete self.

I faked back to Hartford, put on my new boots, a fur parka, and tramped a few woods. Our house was full of refugees from the Connecticut floods.

Exams are over on the twenty-eighth, and I will have some time off, I think. If you are to be in New York, I will come down, if you'd like to have me. I think it's best that I avoid New York when I have nothing specific to do. It is very hard to leave here and carry thoughts and work with me; but I don't ever feel that way with you, and that's very fine. My painting or building is a chain-reaction. I have to feel very strongly over the last thing I've done, and the reaction I have, good or bad, releases two or three new ones. Break it up, and I'm a bit used.

To start it off today I bought dowels and balsa wood, and have built models of my furniture for the play to show you.

Which I shall do, if you tell me that I'll see you.

Love, and a happy new year, Monie,

9

Mardi gras 1846.

Dear Monie:

I've started half a dozen letters to you and then given them up. A bad practise that no doubt smacks of flightiness. I admit. However, before tomorrow's imposition of ashes, I shall attempt to enjoy myself, writing you a letter, and carrying through. Then, I'll go drink some beer, get a little tight, and think of something to give up for lent.

The term is at its happiest, with dulled memories of the last exams, and few forebodings of those coming. This is the time for Cambridge Lambs to gambol.

I've spent the weekend in Scituate, where it was bitter cold, though sunny, and where I climbed rocks, felt the sea, and sniffed a lot of cold wet kelp. I'm feeling very healthy, and at peace with all. This afternoon I spent with John Wild, the philosophy professor, who is my secular instructor into the mysteries of anglo-catholicism, and who has attempted for three years to lead me out of a unitarian morass. Unitarianism, the purgatory for protestants. As a matter of fact, Monie, I'm being confirmed this Easter. A thought which gives me great joy.

Next weekend, for the first time since I saw you, I am going to New York. I called Giorgio and said I'd be down. I don't know what I'll do yet, but intend to just treat it as vacation. I'm going to stay at the Biltmore, where they have student rates, I find.

I've been taking a lot of photographs, for which I've received some praise and no censure. I've made altogether, I guess, about a hundred dollars so far on portraits, and sunk it all right back into

paper and films so that I can take my friends. Individually, I did a
series of nudes which I am going to exhibit in the spring show here,
and which I calculate to shock. They'll remind you (godammit), of
Icarus at the bottom of the sea. The subject looks as though he had
just fallen, slowly. I find, to my great pleasure, that anybody is
willing to pose for anything, and it opens one's intelligence and
sensitivity to a frighteningly great degree. Like the canary who
suddenly finds his cage opened. One beats his wings too fast, goes
into screaming ascents, and fastens out of breath on a drapery.

I know you told me to do *one* thing, Monie, but the problem will
in the end consist in being one person, not just in doing, now, one thing.
I'll find the way to find the way.

There's much to be gained in a logical state of confusion, and
much to be forever lost in certainty. I don't mind if I fit in some
previous definition of "adolescence". I couldn't make definitions,
myself, and can't look upon myself as a proper noun. I'm a verb.
(at this point, Mephistopheles appeared from behind the stove, I believe).
I know my problems pretty well, Monie, and also know that at their roots,
lies laziness. As long as I produce, there'll be no unhappiness.
Laziness is my real fault. I'd like to label it a curse; but that's just
a feeling that labels are easier to live with and forgive, like proper
nouns.

I want to be loved, but I don't care to be of much interest.

Are you well and happy, Monie? What are you doing? I've decided
not to go to Bermuda, which would just have been a gracious trip with
a crude host. What a lot of essentially coarseness there is, underneath
the most poshished exteriors! I think I can forgive sensitivity everything,
and coarseness nothing. There's a kind of dullness of feeling - hard to
word - a lack of wit, a sort of primitive amoral fog - like finiding that

Munroe! I feel badly not to have contacted you as soon as you
returned, but I've not been feeling too well, and have been up
visiting friend O'D for the last month. Cambridge has certainly
not seen the last of GHM (now G Michael HM!), but did
need this country sojourn, which will continue for some short
while longer, I think. I wander the hills, work in the garden,
and think how silly I can be. I'll soon go back to Cambridge,
and ready the town and myself for next falls plans, which are
pleasant and definite. No more school, thank God. Parental relations
are fine at last, and I am learning to settle myself.
I'm going to stay in Cambridge and be the town photographer,
which I already am. Giorgio may laugh, but then. I love the
work, the people, and the art, the place, and best, me. Dad
is only too happy to provide the means, and Cambridge seems
fond of me. I need support myself in little style; for I
have sold everything I owned, and found out how little there
was that I liked! No protest; for I kept what I did. (about
three, a skull, 60 stones, and myrolleiflex. best, G.)

Jun, W.H.Tfd, CT.

Munroe Wheeler Esq.
410 Park Ave
N.Y.C. N.Y.

Aug. 2, 1950

Dear Monroe,

Sorry not to get around to thanking you for the
leaflet on Eastman House. What a horrid place it sounds,
where "organ music is the tradition" as one pores over
bromoils. On the other hand, I'll bet some of those
old lenses would be right down my alley.

I've of course been to florida, and then after
that I went down to Nantucket for a little less than a
month. Nice enough place, really, but it didn't excite
me much. I had a darkroom there, and even picked up a
little business on the side, but only one or two of my
pictures were very good. The rest indicate a certain
poverty of imagination, as well as a new leak in my
bellows. I must get me a new camera now, which is a
pleasant thought. I met a few people, but they were all
frightful. Toward the end of my stay, I pulled a
dead man out of the surf, and gave him artificial resp-
iration until he began to peel, but still felt nothing,
so I decided to come home, where I am now, staring at a
volume of le Spleen de Paris, and writing to you.

Tell me something, Monroe; did Bill come back to New
York last fall someime, or around Christmas? People
tell me he did, which seems strange. Not that I'd have
expected to see him, since I am up here, and any special
trip would have been a little strange, but I am just
curious. No one ever tells me anything.

I saw Ruth Ford in "No Exit" last night. A rather
artless production - or it was the play that was artless -

Wilbur will be happy to know that they display his picture
of her out in front. Doesn't look a bit like her, though.
Oh dear, the fans never see my pictures.

I expect to come down to New York some time around
the first of September to have a lens coated while I
go visiting over in New York State. God and my nerves
willing, I may spend more than a day, so I hope to see
you then.

I have written to Peter, in a perfect sweat of
friendliness and honesty. I should soon have a letter
back, and he will be my first friend.

Last but not least, I find myself happily 4-F, now,
with scars on both knees. I never thought that being
knock-kneed as a child would come to any good. Perhaps
it may not yet, if I find that all the film is in the
army.

My very best to yourself, Glenway, and to Giorgio.

Geordie

Geordie

Dear Glenway,

These occasional weekends in New Hampshire seem
to be the only times I write letters anymore. It's lovely
up here now. All the summer people have gone home, and yet not
a tree has turned color yet. I've been potting plants, ferns
and such, to take back to Cambridge. Evenings and nights we
go out in the launch by moonlight. Last night we turned off
the motor and drifted for an hour or so, very pleasant.

Thanks for the critique of Frank O'H and his
works. Much as I delighted in them before, I now feel a little
fooled, jaded, or something. You can't keep your eye riveted
on somebody's talent for long; one likes to be told a little
about the world. It behooves painters, poets, and all to be
humble.

The Brattle theatre seems to have put off Midsummer
Night's D. for an indefinite period because of the success of
Billy Budd. I'll let you know when, if it's good, and perhaps
you can take a flyer to Boston for it. Shakespeare there is
marvelously done, but only occasionally moving or poignant.
It's like expecting to see an italian film and getting Ethel
Barrymore.

I enjoyed the weekend in NJ, and especially our
kind of reunion.

affectionately

By the way, my new address in Cambridge is: 2 Thomas Park

Dear Monie,

Your three notes now make me feel like a real
heel. Thank you many more than three times! Isn't that
a beautiful and lurid little booklet on Laughlin? I like
his pictures very much. There's something, though - maybe
it's because he's southern. I feel sort of the same way
about the poetry of Renaeull Jarrell, which of course isn't
anywhere near as good. Anyway, Laughlin's just my dish.
I wish I didn't write such cold little poems, myself; he
makes me quite jealous.

I'm a little sorry about that card from SWETZOFF,
faded as it was, and pink. It's a pleasant enough gallery,
modern to the point, sometimes, of absolute ambiguity. There's
just been such a show of someone named Fannie Hillsmith.
However the man who runs it likes my photographs, shows and
sells them. He gets me a good deal of business for this
portrait-mill I operate, too. They'll give me a show next
September. I could, I think, have one this January, but it
would have to consist of too many pictures I don't feel much
like showing. I'm not taking very much right at the moment,
and would rather wait until I've really begun again.

Incidentally, you can see one of my pictures at Mr.
and Mrs. Askew's house. A portrait of Hyman Bloom. I don't
get very excited about it myself, but it's decent enough.
I also have taken a picture (business again) of their Pheobe.

I'm sorry to come to New York and not see you. I
will the next time I come. Someday I hope I shall see you
quite often.

affectionately,

What WM doing in Portugal? Getting set, like a bottle of madeira,
to take himself around the Horn?

Dear Glenway

I have retracted two letters from the mails; and will try
to complete this one, without falling into the trouble you
too complain of - over philosophizing. The first was long,
although coherent. The second grasped too many of the first's
conclusions, without repeating them, and was surely simply
confusing.

I have the courage of my convictions; but am a little too
Christian to present them as necessarily correct.

I want, of course, to apologize for my change in plans.
I would have enjoyed the weekend; but we can make it soon
again, I hope. Mother and Dad have now gone to Florida;
and being able to go home and pick up a car will facilitate
matters, considerably. I can drive to New York, pick up
Monroe, and he can show me how to drive out. Don't you
think that would be sensible?

I have heard twice from Bill since speaking to you.
Once was very pleasant and gratifying, the second rather
annoyed that I so wished letters from him. He seems very
tired, and busy. The work is considerable, I guess, and
the group of small town gossips frightening and dull. He
says that he is so tired of talking about women and marraige
archly, he doesn't know what to do.

However, I shall go on expecting certain things from
Bill, despite the obvious promptings of Flesh and the
Devil. I can grasp his character as whole; but do not
wish to live in that way. I could no doubt accomplish much

in my life by a calculating juxtapositioning, and theorizing
Love as the "pursuer and the pursued"; but unfortunately for
the calculating side of me, I do not approve, really. Love
is not just another level on which one exists. It envigorates
and infuses through the whole man. It is a state of mind,
coloring all else that one may be. Otherwise, it must be
ultimately unsatisfactory. So far as I am concerned, there
is no other final cause. It is intrinsically a painful and
changing thing, if one concentrates it on *xxx* object for
itself. It is fairly serene if one does not. I am not so
much interested in maintaining the status quo of Bill's and
my rather imperfect relationship. Neither is Bill, I'm
sure. I admit he inordinately as an object to be near;
but would like to show him how to be happy in loving something,
someone.

Can any of us be grasped as wholes? Or can our character
be so understood that we can press certain buttons for certain
effects? I doubt it, really. We are passionately bound
divinely
to what we have been; but *xxx* free for what we will
be. There is no question of having to take something for
what it is, since, if it considered fixed in character, one
has made a mistake. We shall always be victimized by a
theory which circumscribed such a thing as love. But we are
taken care of if we simply participate. We make a tragic
mistake to judge our actions by their goals; and a blush-
phemous one to even fix such goals.

I realize we live in a time when theories of social
efficacy, and determinism are still the climate of opinion.
I have many battle scars from *xxx*. my particular fight for
personal freedom. I often find myself seriously hampered

in trying to think - as though I were forced to meditate in
a foreign language. But I see a kind of dispair and gloom,
completely inarticulate, all about me. Here, certainly, and
in all the young people I know. I am accused of medievalism;
but only by those who are so bound by a scientific age that
History is nothing but temporal succession. My family, too,
I think, would rather see me on the modern rack than to be-
come a catholic.

This has strayed, certainly, as I swore not to do, from
the particular to the general. All I meant to say was that
I am prompted by more than Flesh and the Devil. (although
that too, sometimes). In retrospect, I was overly worried
about not hearing from Bill..or was I, really? Perhaps
I can grapp Bill's character as whole; but if we are to be
happy, we must both grapp a whole much larger than either of
us.

My very best to Monroe, of whom I am asked to ask: what
is the positive role Love must play? (Bill is very impressed
with this..) and of you, what is meant by sophistication?

warmly,