journal of a boy who has done it well done

[Breuer, Beosie]

Dear Agnes O'Neill:

Spithead Barndo
Yon of work fine

Your letter was beautiful, and I have carried it about for
with me for weeks as a talisman, forgetting that it needed
answering as a letter of affairs. Briefly, I told Mr
Currie, the L H J editor how you proposed going about
writing, the article, and he thought it excellent. The
point was, in discussing the article, he named $500 as
a good price. But it happened that he had an article by
F P A in a number of the current number, and which
I assailed from the point of view of price, and added
reasons why I thought you should get more, and quoting
about Mrxx Hearst's. I asked him to tell me
you wanted to pay me, but that I could not allow, since
if there was any editorial work connected with getting
the article into shape I expected him, and not you to
pay for it. He agrees with me on that score, and as to
what other says "If Mrs O'Neill tells
a real one, it should be worth $1,000 although that is
twice what we paid F P A for doing all the work."

So it is all up to you. Your plan of work is
fine. Please set down everything. And we will save
as much as is possible for publication. Since I am
sponsor, and responsible for this article Ib of course

want it to be a fine and true piece of work.

Mr Currie is going abroad August 17th and will be back before the 21st. Wouldn't it be better, then, to have it in his hands before he leaves? I don't know when you plan to come to the states. If not until August, it might be better for you to work on this at once, and send me all the your material in the rough. I could look it over and suggest how the material had best be strung together and return it to you for final preparation, or if the material is smooth, and it is just a question of piecing together, I could do it most effectively for the L H J. I could send it back to you for your approval and correction. to save time.

If you think this a good plan, please mark only in brackets the parts you and your husband think too personal for publication. There might be ways of reaching your casting the material differently and so not detracting from the vigor of the article.

This started out to be a cable, but I couldn't frame one, and as I am being badgered on all sides this afternoon, I am taking the liberty of sending this on as is, hoping you will forgive me for the sake of speed. Your plate still stands on the mantel as it will I suppose until I give it you with my own hands.

[Signature] Breuer

Dear Agnes O'Neil: I have finally come to believe I am a frenetic
soul, possibly because I am so completely garbled by poison ivy
and a horrid strangling cold, and then a thing happened: I was
looking out of my window and down the hill came our new neighbor
a communist girl who is living with a young millionaire and who
is going to have an unwed baby, his other wife who also has a baby
living in Croton just across the river well anyhow she is a
German girl, Erica, and is very positive and sure and brisk and
complaining, and her littler sister Urusula, the same Ursula of
the fairy tales, broad face and blue eyes and pointed chin and
wide blonde braids, she tends to the pots and pans. Well, Erica
came down the hill -- we live in a hollow under the mountain
and back a lane and there are two houses in it - ours at the
brook, and around the bend and up the hill, ruth Reeves in which
lives now Erica - and at the head of our lane lives rollo - this
was all one farm originally. Well Erica comes down the hill and I
see her through the window and a tall man, slouching under the
gold with his hands in his pocket, dark and tall and slouching and
somehow hesitant - and my heart misses almost, and I say my god
it can't be Carl, (and Carl is my daughter's father), and
they come in for bundles of Ericas and he turns out to be

Charles Garland, that boy that gave all his money to the radicals
and has been hounded by newspapers and society ever since and whose
little baby also unwedded was smothered to death in its blankets
one cold night, and the mother tried for murder, and I don't know
what became of the whole thing. Well, they were taking the bundles,
and I stiff and hostile and covered with poison ivy, apologized
for my non festive appearance saying we had been cooking dinner
for a girl who had had a baby in town and was coming home in an
hour, and she a girl who had never lived in the country -- and
yesterday from being early August weather unbelievable with the
noble colors of autumn it suddenly turned to grey with flecks
of snow -- and of the two the Garland boy was the sympathetic
one it will be hard for her, he said if it goes on like this
its so hard to keep warm and asked about her husband, and he a
fashionable light minded boy, as she, too, and witty, and altogether
vanityfairish, and he is away from dark to dark commuting and working
and commuting. Well, a minute ago they trudged back up the hill
and I watched them knees and body bent to their task, and I was
moved by the sight of this boy, and I thought of him, how essentially
shy and naive he was and honest, and so slow that whatever finally
came to him as truth it was essential that he stand by though

[3]

and heaven again fell with him. And he had a look, gentle, yet resolute, of wondering. And I thought of Anne's father, Carl who looked almost like him, except heavier with dream and with power, and who doggedly was what he was living in his dream despite of everything and failing by all standards but the holiest one -- and then I thought of your husband -- they all had the same look in their eyes - the same retreat, and the same childlike stubbornness except in your Gene it is now sharp with power and wilfulness -- and possibly now a little pride and a little sophistication - having come through and conquered the whole world of pride and sophistication and spirit - and I thought these men are the american type they are the real men and then of course I sit down and write you, whom I have wanted to write to for months now, and not done it-- I have almost telegraphed several times, but it is so footless where is that article and when is that article and so forth -- Alsie sergeant told me she had lunch with Eugene and that he said he supposed you were writing it while he was away. But I guess you didn't because I'm guessing by what I've been doing myself, stewing away the time with my very very delightful young rogue of a son, worrying everyone and myself and still not working, steadily using up every cent and still not working, and now I'm just upon a dumb article for the Kit Cornell signature - she's a fine girl, and doesn't do anything for her Beauty but to use A MBROSIA, manufactured

43

by Mrs Caroline Hinze East 59th street (for your orders, madame) and it is used by all great actresses, Douglas and Mary Pickford, Alice Brady, Mary Pickford, Marjorie Rambeau Lenora Ulric and until the end of day so forth and it is grand for poison ivy as well, I've discovered -- so how I am to get 5,000 words out of that makes me old and winds me -- and then there is Jeannie Eagels -- jerry, the tough girl, and the real thing, whose recipe for beauty, as she was falling asl eep over her dinner, which we were having on trays on our laps was that why should she tell and give away the works and anyway suppose she was the most positive person on the stage my god why shouldn't she be and who could tell better than she who gave her blood and brains and her life to a part how it should be played eccentric and grand and going to her doom, the darling, but an actress, she, not a nice girl, not a modest sweet pretty girl of talents, but a hellion in the gutter one moment, spouting oxford english the next, and with a streak of natural quality in her, which you may call genius, I don't know what to call it any more - of all the lady actresses I've met she's the one who had the unaccountable spark - but I don't know them all god wot and of the old ones gimme Grace George what a swell woman with intelligence delicacy and understanding and a heart -- and that little sly shrewd Helen Hayes also stands on her own feet, but I wouldn't trust her two feet at that -- however, all these women are Irish

and Catholic, or of catho,c origin and evidently that's the
ineluctable combination (ineluctable is a good word, what does it
mean anyhow?)n unaccountable to anyone nor to themselves nor to
god, but finally always, always to god. well, my fire's gone
out so this must cease -- but here is the dope about yur article
I'd love you to write it first because I'd love you to write it
because it was an idea of mine and I never let ideas of mine
go to smash without a good deal of pain on my part -- such as think-
ing I'm no good and so forth -- Also I'd like to see you write
it and after all one thousand dollars is money Also I too will
get a little money should you write it and then howb happy we all
would be - then I could run down to Bermuda and go to the woman's
shop and get a half dozen pairs of that diamond-shape woven blonde
cotton stockings since i8ve worn mine into holes and wear them
holes and all and the populace is fast rising against me -- anyhow

write the article at spithead, or come and visit us for a week
and write it Henry's house is lovely and warm and comfortable
and its only an hour from new wyork and you'd hate as much diversion
as you wanted, and as much solitude... and a study of your own --
so do come you'll go back within five days a richer and a
wiser woman, and ein bischen happier, for you don't know our little
peter, and not a community, and sneeden's landing always within tele-
phone call with its thrones as well -- so consider it soberly

and if you want to bring Una and that dark and certain young man
of seven and a few nurses and governesses why we'll just throw
open rollo's guest house for you and run a carpet, red plush,
out to the road plus a canopy.

Something like this is the best if you haven't yet
written your article and want to. I know how it is being a wife
and a mother myself and its hell to get away from the home
atmosphere altho it is one of the miracles of life how a man
escapes it completely and just a thin door between him and the
fuss. And I'll give you the plate I've saved for you, and
I'm sure you will be inspiration enough to Henry for him to
make you and put you on a grand plate, even with your name on
it. Do come, if it seems wise to you and Eugene, and there is
plenty of room and we'd love to have you. And that is all
I suppose there is to say. And if you're not coming up
and happen to be in the woman's shop and want to send me those
stockings or have them send them, do, and a whole community
will reward you with immortal laurel. Also I'm going to enclose
in this a piece I wrote last week while wrestling with my
beauty article, and I hope you both like it -- hail, always,