THE SCHOOL OF AMERICAN BALLET, INC.

637 MADISON AVENUE, NEW YORK CITY

Professor F. O. Matthiessen
Department of English
Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts

LINCOLN E. KIRSTEIN, PRESIDENT & DIRECTOR

EUGENIE OUROUSSOW, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY

Dear Professor Matthiessen:

I have just gotten back from South America and I had the great pleasure of reading your book. For many reasons it has meant more to me than anything I have read in a long time. A long time ago I had thought of trying to do exactly what you so wonderfully have done, but mostly in relation to the fine arts.

Three years ago there was an exhibition called American Life, of genre painting, at the Metropolitan, which you probably saw. I was struck as I had been before by the Mounts; and ten years ago I had the manuscript of *Billy Budd* photostated, and worked over it myself in a very amateurish way. In the painting of Bingham I also feel there is an enormous amount of connection with the whole spirit of Melville and Whitman, and Bingham was a much greater artist than Mount.

Your book brings up so many fascinating points that some day I hope I will have the pleasure of talking to you about it. In the meantime I am sending you a little book which I hope you will like. It is Melville's copy of the poems of Camoens. It has some markings in it. I don't think they are very significant, but you might like to have it anyway. It's a very small return for the great pleasure your book gave me.

P. S. By the way, the little proverb you quoted, inferring that it has a purely Anglo-Saxon source, is also very common in Spanish and in Mexico. There it goes this way: The dead man and the unwelcome guest stink after the third day.

October 16, 1941

LK/L

637 MADISON AVENUE

WICKERSHAM 2-7667

NEW YORK CITY

LINCOLN KIRSTEIN
130 WEST 56TH STREET
NEW YORK 19, N.Y.

F. O. Matthiessen Esq.
87 Pinckney Street
Boston
Massachusetts

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