21,

135 E.52, N.Y.C. April 12, 1913

Dear Spiritual Advisor,--

Oh, thank you!-- such a beautiful, beautiful book, inside and out! (Editorial note-- I had sent her my newly-published poems, "Twelve Japanese Painters.") You are very nice, I think, Mr. Ficke; doesn't your family think so?

I must tell you some of the things I like especially; some, not all-- because to tell you all of the things I like especially I should have to send back the book. And that would be a mess. But just a few things that I notice in skimming through--"To strew with little waves the deep," "The boon of manifold Small joys that never can grow old," "Lightning of unleashed desires"-- that is simply terrific; so too is this, "A fury tracking toward some shaken mind." (If you will excuse my saying so, there are four reels of moving-pictures in that last.) In the first two lines of your "Two Women" on page seven, I get a wonderful picture, though perhaps not the one you intended:-- a wide, wide marble court, and, out beyond, the widest bluest sky that ever was, with swallows not too small, and very black. Of course the women are in the court, but I cannot seem to make them Japanese. In my picture they are Greek. "Some thin branch where the Spring is green," That is perfect. Tho of course it is more beautiful because of the "tall form" behind it-- a white form, I am sure-- and the "wistful eyes," that, I am sure, are gray.

Right here, and apropos of "The Birds and Flowers of Hiroshige," which I love best of all, and with which I am drunk at XXXXXXXXXXXX this moment, right here let me say that you are the only person I know whose poems about flowers and birds ans skies and things, filled as they are with your own so evident Earth-Ecstasy, quite satisfy my Earth-Ecstatic soul. The colors in that poem make me fairly stagger. And, oh, your wonderful birds! The pheasant with its "snow-clogged feet", the "wild geese that rush across the moon," the kingfisher "over the reeds of the lagoon," the crane under the sunset.'

There, there. This is a debauch. I must read a nice cool little poem. Where is the "Grecian Urn"?

I have two poems coming out in the Forum soon. I don't know just when. I hope you will like them.

Heavens! The dinner gong! Ten minutes to dress. And my hair!-- if only I hadn't torn it so feverishly. Really, in places like this, one shouldn't take time to orgify.

Honorable sir, I am as ever your unworthy slave,--

The Spirituelle Advised.

22.

135 E. 52 St. New York City, May 7, 1913

Dear Mr. Ficke,--

You speak of my recklessness in telling you
which of your poems I like best quite as if I had chosen those
for which you do not care at all. Now that is a bluff, and I
call it. There is no doubt at all that every poem I like you
like, because you were pretty well satisfied with the whole book
before you ever let it go to press. Go to! Get thee to a
hermitage!

Can you change your mind to the extent of thinking that
Witter Bynner's "Tiger" in the last *Forum* is good? I think it
tremendous. And if you say it's because I'm young that I like it,
I'll say it's because you're young that you pretend not to. And
you might tell me what you think of my "Journey" in the same
number. It is neither sublime nor rotten, so there is a middle
ground. But you needn't try to get out of it by saying "Fair-to
Middlin'". It isn't eccentric never to tell a poet
which of his poems you like best, it's just plain lazy. I beg
your pardon if I've said anything rude and hope I have.

For goodness sake send me the photograph you spoke of. Have
you no personal pride? Just recollect the hideous image you sent
me as a prologue to our correspondence, and fancy, if you can, the
horrible picture of you I am carrying in my mind at the moment.
You owe it to yourself. As for me,-- please. (And isn't there a
weeny X snap of Mrs. Ficke and Stanhope I might have? I want it
awfully bad.-- I suppose if I told you I want that more than the
other you would be mean and not let me have either. The
masculine mind moves in a straight line; it is easy to trail it.)

I am learning Russian. There are one hundred copecks in one
rouble, and Anna Karenina isn't pronounced that way.

If the prophecy contained in your last letter had been
fulfilled you are by now lying stark. If so, peace be to your
ashes.

But if not, "Serus in caelum redeas." (Editorial note--
the handwriting there is not clear.)

23

135 East 52nd Street, New York City (Postmarked May 12, 1913)

I too adore both. But then-- will you tell me which is more like you? I really know before I make my momentous choice. One has a moustache, you know, and one has not. I think the moustache is a fiction. But it is quite possible that you shaved for the occasion of the second picture.-- And you call us women vain!--

I can see perfectly well why your family hates them. They have, have they not, some elements of libel,-- if not on your temperament, at least on your character?

But tell me honestly-- I am serious-- which is more like you.

E.St.V.M.

I found a little boy at the bottle, I didn't do both these when I got them. There was a little boy on the outside having "received in the New York office" a condition," but I'm sorry just the same."

The one I've kept I think the more like you. And so I like to think is one of my favorites. He's retorting is not without interest.

I didn't know that Andrew Marver is an old love of mine, and that his boy Matrix is one of his favorites. He's not a great poet, you know, I don't mean the just great.

You were mistaken in thinking I'd disagree with Mr. Bynner's little poem in the Smart Set. I agree particularly with the part where he changed it, and he ought to be ashamed of it when he changed it, and he ought to be ashamed of it when he changed it, and he ought to be ashamed of it.

(Editorial note-- This must be Bynner's poem.)

Later I persuaded him to change it.

The original form, and so it appears in most copies.

Aren't you going to send me a snap of her and me, and forgive me for being so stupid about the picture. I got it all right.

Send me in the July issue and see if you don't get a little.

I've had a wonderful time with theome. They live about twenty miles out from New York, but one Saturday, and Bernard Kean was one of them. Why, he does try to act it worse!

"It's a pleasure for me to write, I think,-- and all the rest, but there's got to be a little fun in it, and I know something about a man of his age, just live in it, and then I shall be happy. It's a good life (almost), and so am I, and so are you, if you can know what means I can use to make you all I like.

Such a letter!

Sincerely yours,
H. MIlbry.

H. MIlbry.

24

Camden, July 8, 1913

Dear Mr. Ficke,--

If you hadn't written to me for as long as I haven't written to you I should be feeling bad just about now, thinking I had lost a friend. Probably men are different, and you haven't noticed. I hope so. You see, it was that picture, the other one, the one I was to send back,-- I have started to do it a hundred times, and then somehow haven't, and I've packed it and unpacked it, and carried it around with me for years and years,-- it's been a veritable Flying Dutchman that just couldn't get to port, you know, a thing bewitched and unholy, its influence over me has been hellish and horrible beyond expression,-- and now, take it! I have sent it home! Yes, I have. Don't ask me how I did it. I don't know.

You'll find a little tear at the bottom. I didn't do it. Both were that way when I got them. There was a little notice on the outside saying "Received in the New York office in bad condition." But I'm sorry just the same.

The one I've kept I think the more like you. Anyway, it is the one I like to think is the more like you. The one I am returning is not without interest.

You didn't know that Andrew Marvel is an old love of mine and that his Coy Mistress is one of my favorites. He's great, I think,-- not a great poet, you know, I don't mean that,-- just great.

You were mistaken in thinking I'd disagree with you about Mr. Bynner's little poem in the *Smart Set*. I agree perfectly. He spoiled it when he changed it, and he ought to be ashamed.

(Editorial note-- This must be Bynner's poem, "Union Square." Later I persuaded him to change it back to its original form, and so it appears in his book.)

Aren't you going to send me a snap of Her and It? Please, and forgive me for being so stupid about the picture. I do hope you get it all right.

Read me in the July *Forum* and see if you don't like me a little.

I've had a wonderful time with the Kennerleys this spring. They live about twenty miles out from New York. Mr. Bynner was out one Sunday. And Herbert Kaufman once. What an unusual man,-- and why does he try to write verse?

It's Vassar for me next fall, I think,-- and Latin Prose all summer. But there's got to be a little time for paddling. Do you know anything about a canoe? Someday I shall live in one, just live in it. And then I shall be happy. I'm to have one of my (own almost) all summer, if you know what that means. It means I can paddle bow all I like.

Such a crazy letter!

257

(Postmarked, Camden, Maine)

(This is one of her very few typewritten letters-- the first
so far.)

"My Native Heath" July 12, 1913

Dear Mr. Ficke,

Your letter got stuck in the box and I have just found it. Of course by this time you knew that I am back in Camden and that it is "all off" but I thought you would appreciate a word of condolence. This is it. I have been back and forth about New York so much for the last few months that it doesn't seem possible that I'm really not to see you, that I can't just run in and be there, you know. It would have been fine to see you. I'm sorry.

But why on earth didn't you come on a little sooner?
I've only been home about two weeks now.

I have a fearful amount of study ahead for this summer. I must pass examinations in mathematics and American History, and I always just-- just--skun, as you might say, through algebra, and all I know about American History is one verse of the Star Spangled Banner. It's really horrible, when you stop XXXXX and think, which I'm taking pains not to do. I'm stealing time for this letter. I hope you appreciate it.

Fannie Stearns Davis has just written me. Do you like her stuff?-- I love it.

Now I really must stop. Write to me when you get to New York. It's a lot different from Iowa to me now-- just across the yard, you know, in everything but distance.

26

Vassar College

Dec 9, 1913

Dear Mr. Ficke,--

Then you very much for "Mr. Faust." I have read only the first act, but if I should wait to write until I had finished it you might not get an answer before Senior year,-- this is such a busy place. To speak truly, I shall read it during the Christmas holidays. I think the first act very, very good. And truly poetry, even when they are saying the most commonplace things. (Ed.-Note. It is interesting

(Edited to correct photocopy error: "very interesting" should read "interesting" in her "Conversation at Midnight" which is just out and well known.)

w which is dedicated to me, should have chosen a form that has a certain resemblance to the first act of my "Mr. Faust." I am not suggesting that my play influenced her poem in the slightest degree; it is just an amusing little coincidence. A.D.F. (1937)

I saw the whole thing in the manuscript last spring when I was out at the Kennerley's. Just saw it, XXXXXX and knew that it was there. Do you know Arthur Dooley?-- Mr. Kennerley's cousin, another Englishman. He was very much struck by your XXXXXXXXXXXX"XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX" "riot over taxes",-- which tickeled me a little. Not that it isn't a perfectly good expression.

I have just met Josephine Preston Peabody. She has been here at college.

I am looking forward to finishing your book.

27.

Poughkeepsie
(Editorial Note. This letter, undated but postmarked Dec 15,
year indecipherable, is so utterly different in handwriting from
the sloppy girlish Spencerian slope of the earlier letters that
I would put it later than 1913 if it were not for the comments
on Vassar-- which sound like a thing she would have written in
her first year.)

Go to! -- Would you have me write you an Im proper letter?
--upon my soul I half believe you would! And I am not yet so
Vagarized but that such a thing is still possible. But I should
never send it, you know,-- so what would be the use?

Let me tell you something; Don't worry about my little songs
with wings; or about any of my startling or original characterist-
ics concerning which you ought to worry, an you be my friend, for
quite a different reason.

I hate this pink-and-gray college. Did you know I would?
It's a joke of a college. If there had been a college in
Alice in Wonderland it would be this college. Every morning when
I awake I swear. I say, "Damn this pink-and-gray college."

It isn't on the Hudson. They lied to me. It isn't anywhere
near the Hudson. Every path in Poughkeepsie ends in a heap of
cans and rubbish.

They treat us like an orphan asylum. They impose on us in a
hundred ways, and then bring on ice-cream.-- And I hate ice-cream.

They trust us with everything but men,-- and they let us see
it, so that it's worse than not trusting us at all. We can go
into the candy-kitchen and take what we want and pay or not, and
nobody is there to know. But a man is forbidden as if he were an
apple.

O, dear. I said that if I should write an improper I should
never send it, but I'm going to do just that thing. And it's
your won fault.

Mr. Ficke, are you fond of truncated prisms?-- If you are I
will ship you a box. This is where they grow.

I don't wonder Miss Blunt went to the University of Chicago.

(Editorial note, Ah-ha! This establishes the year of
the letter; for "Who's Who" says that Miss Blunt
went to Chicago in 1913.)

I am thinking seriously of going to the University of Moscow, and
taking a course in Polite Anarchy and Murder as
a Fine Art.

But, there! -- You will wish you hadn't stirred me up.
I am, if you prefer an unseemly abandon to a "seemly reserve",

Yours irrevocably
Vincent Millay
P.S. --That you should see any "reserve" in my signing myself
"Yours truly" is a matter of interest.
my name but

(Editorial note-- Since none of her letters are signed thus,
I suppose there must be one letter missing.)

29

Poughkeepsie, N.Y. October 5, 1915

Dear Mr. Ficke, --

I have just come across and reread two letters that I received from you last spring, and I remember how nice you are, and think with chagrin how you will probably never write to me any more.

Do you recall writing to me last April, saying that you were coming to New York and inviting me to an ice-cream soda? I can't for the life of me think why I didn't answer that letter. It couldn't have been because I loathe ice-cream sodas, -- for I must have realized even as long ago as April that you would make it something else, if requested a whiskey and soda, for instance. The reason might have been examinations, -- the reason often is, up here.

Anyway, I am become superstitious about you. I think it is fated that we shall never meet. -- And possibly that is just as well; -- I might be terribly disappointed in you. -- (You see I feel perfectly sure that you would like me.)

So you have forgotten telling me that your son's name is Stanhope. --Think of this: -- you may have told me a hundred things that you fancy still secreted in your esoteric heart! -- Doesn't that make you awfully nervous?

Sometime when you are in New York you might run up to see me. -- Mightn't you? -- Or mightn't you? -- I suppose you mightn't. -- But then, again, you might.

--Very truly

Vincent Millay

30

Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, N.Y. October the nineteenth

1915

Dear Mr. Ficke,--

So you went through Poughkeepsie and didn't
come to see me!-- How could you? -- The thought that I was
probably not here at that time does not lessen my grief, or
my annoyance.

I am not a forward miss, and since you yourself are so
retiring,--I fear we shall remain strangers.

Mr. Bynner, if he remembers me at all, will not give you
a glowing account of me. But never mind. Although I would have
chosen somebody else to "put you wise" to me.

I love the little Japanese picture. It gives me a want-
to-be-there feeling.

K

I don't know if I shall ever get out a book.-- If you have
as you say, issued three in twelve months, and do not stop
forever, you should be forced to.

(Editorial note. It would seem that I had never sent her
my "Sonnets of a Portrait-painter", "Chats on Japanese Prints",
or "The Man on the Hilltop." Probably I had grown disgusted
with her dillatory and uncommunicative and snippy letters.)

Although I do like the things you write.

I don't know what has happened to my hand-writing. --I
cross my hands differently, too,-- with the right thumb
outside, now, instead of the left. -- I don't know whether it
means a change of character, or simply an increase of it.--
What do you think?

Is it Mrs. Ficke who writes like me?-- the one that you
say came to a bad, esoteric and delightful end?

(Editorial note. No, it was quite a different person.)

I have to go to a class now. -- Does that strike you as
silly?-- Sometimes it seems to me very silly indeed,-- not
the fact that there is a class,-- or that I go to it,-- but
that I have to!

I am glad you didn't return my letter unanswered.

31

Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
November the third, 1915

Dear Mr. Ficke,--

Why you should be so curious as to my personal
appearance I can't for the life of me guess. But if you will
have it,-- no, then, I am not so funny-looking as I am funny-
sounding. People do not, so far as I can tell, say of me,
"Vincent Millay?-- Oh, you know Vincent Millay, that awfully
homely Junior!" Sometimes, in dry weather when my hair won't
wave, or when I am colorless for lack of sleep, or when I just
feel ugly,-- then I am ugly,-- but then I cancel all
engagements. And sometimes, when I am very happy, owing to an
A in German, or flowers from Saltford's, or a letter from
yourself,-- then I am exceedingly beautiful.

Yes, I room alone.-- Lord, yes. But I have no fireplace. I
wish I had.-- My room is rather nice, though. It doesn't look
like a bedroom at all.-- Except, of course, when I forget to
make the bed.

If Harvard doesn't want you,-- why don't you come to
Vassar?-- They'll XXXXXXXXXXXX let you, I'm sure.-- I'll tell
them you're a friend of mine.-- But I won't take any of
your courses.

--------Vincent Millay

33

(Editorial Note. Miss Millay and I met for the first time in New York in the winter of 1918, as I, an officer in the American Army, was on my way to France.)

She gave me a copy of her book, "Renascence," which was recently out, and inscribed it impudently "To Arthur Davison Ficke, from the only girl he has ever truly loved, Edna St. Vincent Millay." When I came back from France I threw it away, for I did not dare take it home with me for fear of a row with my family. And I have a vague suspicion that I may have received some letters from Miss Millay while I was in France; and that they were of a somewhat too ardent character for me to dare to keep them, since I did not know whether or not I might be killed over there and my papers might be sent home.)

(I returned from France in July 1919, but did not see Miss Millay again until several years later.)

P.S. I see that I have given a rather misleading account, above, of our first meeting. It was not a casual meeting; we talked for endless hours, and were both of us shaken to our boot-soles.

I had expected to be in New York for several weeks before my sailing-orders came. But the very next day they arrived--orders to sail at noon. It was then eleven O'clock. I had time only to rush to her apartment, kiss her good-bye, and see her bury her head in the pillow as I ran and barely caught the ship on which I was ordered to sail. That night, in the darkness of the muffled ship, (those were the days of submarines,) I wrote my sonnet, "Sea Midnight," and sent it to her.

34

449 West 19th St. N.Y.C. (Postmarked Sept.8, 1919.)

Dear Arthur,--

You must by all means send me the sonnets. I am
eager to see them. You should always write in the sonnet form,
letters even.

(Editorial note.-- The reference is to a large group of sonnets
which I had written over a period of several years. Only one of
them, published later as "Sea Midnight", had been written to
Miss Millay.)

As for your selling your beloved prints,-- it is an
overwhelming pity. Were I a wealthy dowager, or even a
wealthy debutante, I would be your patron,-- and you should never do it.--

My second book of poems, *A Stalk of Fennel*, will be
published this fall. There are some very good things in it,--
one group especially, a group of elegies, I am anxious to have
you see;-- but I think I will wait and send you the book,
instead, when it is "released."

I don't know Floyd's address. He is married, you know,
and beautifully settled down. Part of the time he spends in
Croton, I believe, and part of the time in a flat on
Christopher Street; but I don't know the excat number. You
could just write him, I should say, in care of *The Liberator*,
34 Union Square, E ast.

I am earning a creditable living by writing short stories
under an assumed name. Just sold one for four hundred dollars.
Now I am negociating with a moving picture company concerning
it.-- *Incredible!*

So you have been reading old letters. I must do that, too,--
consider, old friend, that someday our letters may be published
in print! At least, it would need nothing more than a
premature death or two!

I want to see the sonnets very soon.

As for the prints-- I am heart-broken for you.

Vincent,

Postmarked New York, Oct. 15, 1919

35

Arthur, dear,--

Please don't think me negligent or rude. I am both, in effect, of course, but please don't think me either.-- My mind is full of pounding steam, like a radiator. And I am sodden with melancholy.

However, I should not be saying such things to you, who have arrived quite honestly and even meritoriously at your wit's end; my own progress, while by no means vicarious, is rather piffling.

(Editorial note.-- I must have written her that my two years in the army had left me entirely hopeless for the Hopes of Mankind.)

I shall send back the sonnets in a day or two. I had to keep them for a long time, or my judgment on them would have been worthless. In order to understand them sufficiently to criticize them, I have been obliged to live so closely with them as to make it seem I had written them myself.-- The first time I read them I didn't like them. They struck me as wanting beauty, which seemed important to me, and besided that they oppressed me vaguely. It is true that they haven't, except very sparsely, the actually material beauty of color and sould which we tend to consider an immaterial, spiritual beauty. But the second time I read them I recognized that they have much beauty, and that it is of a nature truly spiritual. They weighed down on me XXXXX as before, but no longer like a cloud,-- like a great stone, rather. It is their intellectual integrity which weighs the most, although the harsh and somber restraint of your manner of treatment is extremely telling.-- I am scribbling the margin of the sonnets with my separate reactions to them. Once in a while, not often, I feel you do something for an easy, and so unworthy, reason; but for the most part I think the sequence is a very fine and beautiful piece of work.

(Editorial note.-- I later broke up the sequence, and published "Rue des Vants," "The Middle years," "Don Quixote", and shall never publish the remainder, for it is not good.)

Your little note was heart-wringing.-- It saddens me, too, personally, of course, to look into your mind through these sonnets, my dear friend,-- though, naturally, I forget you quite in reading them, as you would wish me to do.-- It is a pity you are so far away. There are so few people in the world to whom one has a word to say, Arthur!

Write me sometimes.-- I shall always care for what you are thinking.

---------- Vincent.----------

(This letter came in the same envelope with the one of
Oct. 15, 1919.)

36

Arthur, you sweet old thing,--

You were quite right about the sonnet sequence
having become a weight on my chest. But only because I CANNOT
parcel-post parcels! The very thought of it prostrates me for
days.-- I have loved them-- not all of them, but oh, so much
of them-- and I am reluctant to return them to you.-- I had
read and re-read them many times before you ever even began to
think I was keeping them a rather long time.

When are you coming on to New York? You said "January",--
but I am afraid you have changed your mind, oh, cherished
friend, and I have so wished to see you.-- I am right in
believing, am I not, that you will not be in town without at
least calling me up?-- I am in the telephone directory.

My prose name is Nancy Boyd. I have a story, I think, in
the present, in the immediately preceding, and in the
about-to-appear issues of Ainslee's magazine.-- No, I am not
getting rich, -- but I could, if I had the slightest iota of
business sense.-- Some of my stories are good, some are bad,--
almost invariably they are beautifully written, after a
flippant fashion.

No, I have not read the book of de Gourmont that you
mention,-- mebbe I will.-- Have you read Barbusse's *L'Enfer*?
-- a beautiful, terrible book.

I am sending you a clipping in which you may be interested. If I can find a copy of the play I will send you that,--XX in which case: you need never return it.-- (In testimony whereof witness my hand and seal, whatever that may mean.)

-----With love-----

Vincent

I marked the sonnets all up. I hope you meant me to.
The remarks, footling as you may think, were not appended
thoughtlessly to impress you with my serious interest. I
have really THOUGHT about the dog-gone pomes.--

V.

37.

(Miss Millay's comments on such of the sonnets as have been published are:)

Title of the series-- TWENTY RUE JACOB.

Are you determined on this title? People will never know whether to pronounce it half French or all English except "Rue",-- and even that as it it XXX were "Roo"-- but perhaps it doesn't matter. (She was right: I changed it.)

"Not all my will can change this casque of bone"

This is a fine one, Arthur. You have never done anything lovelier than the seventh and eighth lines.

"This is the burden of the middle years"

Isn't the eighth line awfully piffling as a climax to the third, which is so fine?

(The line she objects to was--"To see no heavens flush when some woman smiles." She was quite right; I changed the line before I published it.)

"What good, I ask myself, what fortunate thing"

I like this very much, except "though all the tongues shriek." --Why "the" tongues, except for the metre?-- "Though all tongues shriek, en toward the goal it knows"? or something like that.

(Again she was right-- and her objection led me to change it to the really fine line--"Seeking the unknown goal that well it knows." This is an excellent example of how much one poet's criticism can help another.)

"Wakeful, I pace the paths and watch the stars"

"Paths" is not so good as "decks", Arthur,-- for the reason that so many people, myself included, pronounce "paths" with a broad "a", thus making it assonate unpleasantly with "stars." This is, however, almost a perfect sonnet. It is very beautiful.

(The original word was "decks", which I restored in the published version. This is the sonnet "Sea Midnight"-- the first poem I ever wrote to her-- on shipboard, after our first meeting, as I was sailing off to the War. It is amusing to note, with what detachment poets XX can view poems that are dripping with their own and XXXXX another's heart-blood!)

Oct. 15, 1919

38

(Postmarked New York XXXX March 16, 1920)

Arthur, dear,

Where is Hal? And is he really going to be in this
country until the first of May? I haven't got the proof of my
book yet myself, the bestial printers are so ornery; but when I
get it I'll send it on to him, if you can tell me where he is.
Weren't you cute, sliding off to Iowa without calling me up
again?-- Ah, well! Iowa is a good place for ex-lawyers, and
middle-aged XXXXXX poets, and other landed gentry! (Now will
you be bad!)

You knew darn well I was in Cincinnati when you wired me,--
honestly, when you and Hal get together you are perfectly
ridiculous. But you are both nice and tall; which is something.

I have to give a reading up-town tonight, in place of Robert
Frost, who has the flu, God save him. If you were here, I should
ask your advice as to just what to wear, although I suppose I
can't make them think me Robert Frost, no matter what I wear.
Besides, you are never here, somehow.

That's all, I guess.

As ever,-- as far as I remember,

Vincent.

39

(Postmarked New York, April 4, 1920)

Arthur, dear,--

I am indulging in a nervous break-down, a little one. I
shall be myself again soon-- whatever that may be-- but for
several weeks I have been somebody else. I don't refer to a
temporary madness, but rather to a temporary anaesthesia. You
know how it is, old dear. Too much City, I dare say. I spell it
with a capital now, like the Juggernaut, and other oppressive
things.

Sweetest Love, you wouldn't lie to Li'l' Edna, would you?
Of course I believe in fairies, and all that.
But I hear that you are very fur-lined lately.
And I wonder.

'Would be like you to be drawn toward a most unsuitable
child.

Yes, of course, I believe in fairies; I can't deny that.
And many old ladies have been young to me.
It doesn't make any difference, either way.

But you wouldn't lie to me, would you, Sweetest Love?

(Editorial note-- I had received some money that I did not need-- and I sent it to her with a very realistic explanation about an old lady who wanted to give her a present because her work was so beautiful. In my reply to this letter, I admitted the truth, having decided that it was ridiculous of me to have imagined that money could have anything to do with our relation.)

I have sent the proof of my book to Hal in California.
Somebody said he was in New York a few days ago. Could that be?

I wanna go to China, too.

Arthur, dear, whoever it was that was so sweet to me, was
terribly sweet. I shall go into the country a little while, and
get rested. Tell her that. Or keep it to yourself. You must have
known, even if I am entirely wrong, that I would think this, as
a possibility.

Yours (very lovingly),

Vincent

I am sending you a copy of my latest poem.

(Enclosure--)

SPRING

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.

41

(Postmarked New York, May 15, 1920)

Arthur,-----

Do send me a line and advise me whether H.W. Bynner
received the proof of my book which I e'en seem him.-- I know
that he'll never trouble to tell me, and I don't want to
bother him-- he's a bachelor, and you have a wife and family,
so that you have more time to write letters than he has------
besides I don't know his address;--- and yours I never forget.
-------------------- Vincent

I knew it was you all the time, you sweet shorn lamb.---
I love you horribly!

P.S.-- The one dream of my life is all busted up, since last
we lunched at the Brevoort-- (rather nice, that, eh, what?
"Since last we lunched at the Brevoort"-- don't you sneak it
off me, ol'dear!-- as I was about to say: I ain't going to
marry the engineer,-- huh-uh.--------

I have decided to wait for you and Hal

Respectfully,
E.St.V.M.

42.

Typewritten.

(Enclosure. -- The following sonnets, I do not know when these reached me, nor do I know exactly how much I had to do with the writing of any of them. All poetry is a combination of fact and fancy, transmuted through the alembic of imagination; and I doubt whether many of Miss Millay's sonnets are exact records of the prose of daily life. Yet it is unquestionable that I played some vague and ghostly RAVEN semblance of a role in some of these poems. And I hereby boast of the fact!)

FIRST LINES OF THE SONNETS (which are here complete)

I shall forget you presently, my dear;
Loving you less than life, a little less
Into the golden vessel of great song
How healthily their feet upon the floor
Love is not blind; I see with single eye
Not with libations, but with shouts and laughter
The light comes back with Columbine; she brings
Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow!
I do but ask that you be always fair
I pray you if you love me, bear my joy
I think I should have loved you presently
When I too long have looked upon your face

And you as well must die, beloved dust,
(Note. This is the greatest sonnet in the English language. A.A.D.F.)

I only know that every hour with you
Still will I harvest beauty where it grows,--
Sometimes when I am wearied suddenly
Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare;
Only until this cigarette is ended,
I shall go back again to the bleak shore,
Cherish you then the hope I shall forget
Love, though for this you riddle me with darts,
We talk of taxes, and I call you friend;

557

(Editorial note.-- I received this letter at a time when Bynner and I were living at Mokanshan, amid the heights and bamboo groves of southern China. It shook me like an earthquake and shakes me still. It seems to me the most beautiful letter ever written... But who am I, to judge?)

77 West 12th Street
New York City

October 29, 1920

Arthur,--

I love you, too, my dear, and shall always, just as I did the first moment I saw you. You are a part of my loveliness to me. Sometimes at night, when you were in France, I would read over the sonnets you had sent me-- just as you have been doing with mine-- and long for you in an anguish of sweet memory, and send all my spirit out to you in passion. It seemed incredible you were not in the room with me, you were so much nearer than anything else, nearer than the dress I was wearing. It doesn't matter at all that we never see each other, or that we write so seldom. We shall never escape from each other.

It is very dear to me to know that you love me, Arthur,-- just as I love you, quietly, quietly, yet with all your strength, or with a strength greater than your own that drives you toward me like a wind. It is a thing that exists, simply, like a sapphire, like anything soundly beautiful; there is nothing to be done about it,-- and nothing one would wish to do. There are moments, of course, when I am with you, that it is different. One's body, too, is so lonely. And then, too, it is as if I knew of a swamp of violets, and wanted to take you there, and share them with you, because you are my friend. But all that is the least of it, my dear. And you must never think that I don't understand.

You will never grow old to me, or die, or be lost to me in any way.

Vincent.

(Editorial note.-- It was at this time and during the following months and years that I wrote and sent to Miss Millay a great many poems-- from which I eventually chose the best and published them under the title--"Epitaph for the Poet V."-- a title which I later changed to "Beauty in Exile." My reasons for making the change were purely the reasons of an artist. I should be sorry to have it forgotten that the poems were written to Miss Millay, and were rather dizzily real to me. E.A. Robinson liked them the best of all my work. He wrote me that it was "as if you had taken a leap off a spring-board." Little did he know what the spring-board was!

57

Hotel des Sainte-Pères, Paris, Jan. 26, 1921

Arthur,-- dearest--

God knows where you are now, but here's where I am,--
so near to 20 Rue Jacob that it makes my mind sick to think of
it, and my heart so lonesome for you I could cry.--- I went
over there the other night and walked way down to the end of
the dark court-yard, and stared at all the windows, and looked
at the door with the big round columns, and stood there a
long time.--

Oh, if only you were there now,-- just around the corner
from me!-- Shall I never see you again, my dear?

X

Vincent------------------

(Collected Notes on 20 Rue Jacob
was where I lived during the
war-- found when I was stationed
in Paris -- a curious little
Market, overlooking the gardens
where Adronis a Couronne
and the Marchel Satke
walked together as loan. A
hanted region.)

Hotel Raymond

20, rue d'Antin, Paris

RAXXARKKAX

April 27, 1921

My dear,

"I haven't a word to throw to a dog."--- But I must write you. -- If only to tell you that the picture is safe with me. ( Editorial note.-- A Japanese print which I has asked Miss Millav to get from Vignier in Paris and bring to me.)

--If anything may be said to be safe with me.-- And that I spent the money, as you knew I would, on riotous clothing.

-----Oh, if you were only here-- I need you so, to talk with.--- Are you ever coming to Paris?--- Or London?---or Rome?-- I will go anywhere to meet you, except back to America.--- But of course I understand that a thousand things will be keeping you where you are.

(Editorial note: Marks such as the above do not indicate elisions: I have omitted nothing. They indicate lines drawn across the page.)

As for what you write about me in your next book-- you surely cannot care less than I care what the world thinks. Do what you like.-- (I will send you a snap-shot for a frontispiece!!)

(Editorial note: I suppose I must have asked her about permission to publish my sonnets to her, "Beauty in Exile." She enclosed a picture of herself on a beach, very inadequately draped in a bath-towel, and with a beer-bottle in the background. Such things are what the college professors call "the comic life in Shakespeare.")

Someday when you are thinking of me, write me a wise letter, will you, my lover and my friend?

----- I must see you again, some time.-- It might be that I would find peace for a moment, just sitting beside you, that I feel nowhere, beside anyone.

--------- Vincent

Les Algues
Ponnville,
Dieppe

(Postmarked
I9 2I

probably sometime in the
summer, since it had addressed
to %care of Maurice Browne,
Seattle, where I was working
with him on the production of my
play "Mr. Faust"

Dearest,

I am so unhappy. But it doesn't matter.
Probably if you were here I should be unhappier still. But I'd
rather, all the same, that you were here.

It's all true, what you say in the sonnet. How
dreadful. Still, perhaps we should be wiser than we
think. Though of course we shouldn't. anyway,
I wish you were here. I need you so. I am all shot to pieces.
(This must be in allusion to the receipt of my
savage sonnet "Thanks to our lucky fate, we two
shall meet Never more humanly than heretofore.")

Never mind, my dear.

Good-luck to the play.

Is he going to produce Aria da Capo, I wonder? He wanted
to, at one time.

I am at the sea shore till September. But the damned water's
so full of people you can't get a look in.

It is a long time since I was in Camden, and you were
writing me funny letters of spiritual advice.

I love you.

Vincent

Postmarked July 26, 1921

Hôtel de l'Intendance

50, rue de l'Université, Paris

Arthur, my dear,------

I have wanted you terribly these last few days. That
is all I have to say.

Except that whatever became of Henry Evans I do not
know. I answered his note the moment I received it, and when I
did not hear from him wrote again, but got no reply. How in the
devil I shall get that print to you I do not know!--

(Come over and get it, dear-- come over and get it!)

(Editorial Note: It is quite clear that I must have
been completely insane in those days. Otherwise I
would have junked everything, and gone. "Mea
culpa!")

I need you, Arthur.-- Oh, how happy I should be if you
were here!

We have had so little time together. Do you ever think of
that?-- how few, all counted, are the moments we have had
together?-- It is incredible-- crazy.

Isn't it?

Vincent

Dear, does Hal know how much you care for me?-- I have
wondered, idly wondered.

62

d

Postmarked Nov. 10, 1921

Albergo -Ristorante

Paolo Shoshi

Duranzo, Albania

(Note: This frankest and
noblest of love-letters was
written to me! It seems
incredible. A.D.F.)

Arthur, my dearest,

I must write you, or you will think I did
not get your letters. But when I start to write you all I can
think to say to you is-- why aren't you here? Oh, why aren't
you here?-- And I have written that to you before.-- I have
no news, you see.-- Or rather, there is news enough, but when
I try to write it, it all goes from my mind, and I have nothing
to say but that I long to see you. I take the photograph
of you with me everywhere, the big one. I love it.--Arthur,
I have no good photograph of myself, but if when you are in New
York you should call on my sister Kathleen, who is now Mrs.
Howard Young, and lives at 184 West 4th Street, she would eithe
give you or tell you where you could get one that is not so
very bad. I will send you some snap-shots, too, as soon as I
get them developed.

Dear, when I come back to the States, won't you come east
to see me?-- I know you can't come to Europe, but you could
come to New York, because you often do, to see Hal, or
somebody, and don't you love me most as much as you love Hal?--
I think we might have a few days together that would be
entirely lovely. We are not children, or fools, we are mad.
And we of all people should be able to do the mad thing well.
If each of us is afraid to see the other, that is only one
more sympathy we have. If each of us is anguished lest we
lose one another through some folly, then we are more deeply
bound than any folly can undo.

Doubtless all this reasoning resolves itself into one
pitiful female cry,-- whatever happens, I want to see you
again!-- But oh, my dear, I know what my heart wants of
you-- it is not the thing that other men can give.

Do you remember that poem in Second April which says,
"Life is a quest and love a quarrel, Here is the place for
me to lie!"? -- That is what I want of you-- out of the
sight or sound of other people, to lie close to you and let the
world rush by. To watch with you suns rising and moons
rising in that purple edge outside most people's vision-- to
hear high music that only birds can hear-- oh, my
dearest, dearest, would it not be wonderful, just once to
be together again for a little while?

(Just as I wrote those last words the muezzin began to cry his prayer from the little white minaret-- he is still singing------)

63.

One is so silly, isn't one?-- Listening to him it seemed
that he was calling us to worship-- heaven knows what--
something that we both hold dear.

Arthur, I am glad that you love me. Your letters have
hurt me and healed me. Such XXXXXXXXXXXX sweetness, to be loved
like that. But to be loved like that by you,-- how shaking
and terrible besides.

That sonnet you asked me about-- the one, "There is no
shelter in you anywhere"-- was written both about you and
about myself-- we were both like that-- but are not any
more. The "golden vessel of great song", also, was written to
you. My time, in those awful days after you went away to
France, was a mist of thinking about you and writing sonnets
to you.-- That day before you sailed,-- I shall never
forget it. You were the first man I had ever kissed without
first thinking that I should be sorry about it afterwards.
There has been only one other, a boy I truly loved, in a
simpler way.

Arthur, it is wicked and useless,-- all these months
and months apart from you, all these years with only a glimpse
of you in the face of everybody. ---I tell you I must see
you again.---

Edna

Care of American Embassy, Rome.

(I think that no other letter of hers is signed
"Edna." And not all my later-acquired wisdom enables me
to understand how and why I failed to grasp the full
import of this letter, and "smash the world to bits
and remould it newer to the heart's desire.")

(What I mean is that the signature is
obscure, a surrender of her fond will-
an acquaintance we or the male and
herself as the female elements in this strong
relationship.)

(Whether it would have worked
out well, I do not know; I do not
know.)

64

Palace Hotel, Rome, November 14, 1921

Arthur, Darling,--

Your letters-- and my mother's letters-- what should I
do without them?-- You are the two people I think about over
there, and want to see. I shall see my mother again before so
very long, because just as soon as I can get the money together
I am going to bring her over here to play with me.-- But you--
what are you going to do about it?-- Or doesn't it matter?

At any rate, don't stop writing me. I get your letters,
all of them, forwarded on from place to place. If I don't
answer it's because there isn't any answer.

Yes, I think of you, too, sometimes, in noisy places,
and in very quiet places. -- Oh, I have always loved you, my
dear, from the XXXXX moment I set eyes on you first. (Or is it
sat?)

I don't know where you are in New York. I hope you will get
this.-- Give my love to Hal.-- Vincent

Did you see these sonnets in Vanity Fair? (This is scratched out)

I just remembered that Florence Mixter had copies of the
sonnets I was going to send you, and that probably she would
have shown them to you. If she didn't, don't be cross with me,
please. I hate to send you things you already know.-- (At
this moment-- just NOW-- I am sick to see you. It comes over
one, doesn't it.--

V.

Grand Hotel, Vienna, Dec. 10, 1921

Dear Arthur,--

This is where I am now, and your print is in my trunk
in Paris. I can't go to Paris to get it because I haven't the
money; and I can't have the trunk sent here, because, owing to the
street rioting and general unsettled condition of the city just
now, personal property runs a great risk of being either lost or
stolen.-- I am dreadfully sorry that you are worried about it. I
swear to you that it is quite safe, and that I will get it to
you just as soon as I can.--

If I had had the money I should have gone to Paris the moment I
received your letter and sent the print off to you some way.--
But I can't leave Vienna probably for several months yet. I am
here because it is the cheapest place in the world to live just
now, and I am in one of my periodic states of being entirely
busted.-- So please forgive me if it is some time before I can
get it to you.-- I am very, very sorry.

As for myself, I shall be quite all right, unless I lose my
head, which I don't intend to do.-- And as for you, don't you dare
breathe to a soul that I am hard-up. Because I have no business to
be and I am frightfully ashamed of it, and I don't want anybody to
be getting worried about me and sending me money to help me out.
( As they say in the <u>No Admittance</u> signs: THIS MEANS YOU)

I wonder if you have got any of my letters.-- Not that it
matters very much.

It seems a long time since I have seen anybody I cared
anything about.

Edna

66.

(Editorial Note.-- While Bynner was visiting me in Davenport in December, he had asked me how I would feel if he asked Miss Millay to marry him. I told him frankly that I thought it was a superb idea which would enrich all our lives. On my advice, he cabled her-- and received the dizzying reply--"Yes, Hal."

Several months before that, while I was in New York, I had had what was meant to be a charming light love-affair with Gladys Brown. But it did not stay as frivolous as it was meant to be; by this time it was serious, and it kept getting worse-- resulting in my eventually asking for a divorce from my first wife and marrying Gladys.

It would take a person as crazy as Miss Millay or myself to understand the emotional truth of this tangled situation. It sounds as if we were a bunch of queer rotters. Which we weren't. I have always loved Miss Millay and always shall, and I hope that she will always love me.) A.D.F.

7 Floragasse, Vienna IV, January 24, 1922

Dear Arthur:

I am writing to you on the typewriter, because I want to write you a long letter, and I hold a very nervous pen lately. Does your hand get that way sometimes, so that you want to dig in the earth with it, or whittle it, or thrust it into a broad fat back,-- anything but write with it?

Your letters of December the 19th and 27th have just reached me, forwarded from Rome. The others came some time ago; I believe I have received them all. You do not know how much they mean to me, my dear friend. Sometimes they have thrust loveliness back into my life, where there seemed almost no place for it. I am living in a city of cutious and difficult days in this grey city where there is never a shred of sunlight. Outside my window is a great grey wall flattened against it like a hand; it is so near the window it is almost in the room; I have to keep the light burning all day long. I smoke too many cigarettes, and the German food nearly kills me-- hot bread and cabbage and grease, when what I want is a bowl of plain rice and an apple. Fortunately I have to exercise, because I can't afford taxis, and I loathe street-cars. And set against this environment is the following dramatic situation: I am living, chastely and harshly, with a man with whom I once had a love affair, a man whom I breathlessly and ruthlessly abandoned for someone else, and I whose consciousness of the wrong I did him is always boiling in his mind. We do not want to be together; we are thrown together by the most ignominious circumstances; we have almost no tastes or opinions in common; but except for each other we are entirely alone in a strange city, so that we are constantly forced back into each other's society; he is ascible and sarcastic; I am hard and pugnacious; we spend all day and half the night in quarreling, or in abstaining from quarreling with an effort which whitens his face and makes my back ache; then we separate, either with a make-shift amiability or with the sublime insult of the encounter, and go to bed; and I lie awake until four o'clock in the morning, at times desperately getting up and turning on the light, smoking a cigarette, trying to read, then lying down again and making another try of it; finally I fall asleep from entire exhaustion into a succession of little dozes, from each of which I am slowly, chokingly awakened by a glimmering and malevolent nightmare.

outside of the usual realm of human love. Nothing, I think,
except my frankness to him could have saved our friendship
from a catastrophic wreckage.

Well, there's no denying that I love you, my dear. I have never denied it for a moment, since the first time I saw you, either to myself or to anybody else who seemed interested. When people ask me if I know you I say, "Yes, I know him." Then if they ask me if I like you, I say, "I love him." And that's all there is to that. And they can shut up, or go on asking questions, or talk it over among themselves.

You, best of all, know how I feel about you, and always shall. No one can ever take your place to me. We know each other in such a terrible, certain, windless way. You and I have almost achieved that which is never achieved: we sit in each other's souls,

(Editorial Note. God! Jesus Christ! What writing! I do not know to whom she wrote a certain later sonnet, but I feel like her last line--"And raise you high above the run of men.")

But that's no reason why I couldn't marry Hal, and be happy with him. I love him, too. In a different way.

Well, enough of that. It was like you, generous and comical, to send me your revered father's impeccable paternal cheque. I accept it quite humbly and gratefully, in spite of my man-sized talk. (Oh, Arthur, you are so sweet, so sweet!)

But as for your getting Florence Mixter involved in my unregenerate book-keeping, I forbid it. I am going to write to her, in answer to some sweet and human little notes she has sent me-- that is, if you will please send me her address which I have lost-- that all is very well with me, and that I am having the time of my life in Vienna, and that I shall soon be coming home.

As a matter of fact, I shall be quite all right now, really, I swear it.

I am glad you like the Lamp and the Bell. (Note. I had especially praised those unique and exalted lines--"And I shall hold you high in my hand against whatever darkness.") I know it has beauty in it. Someday, perhaps, I shall take it apart and make a really fine play of it throughout. I wrote it last February, under pressure of great hurry, and of course there are holes in it. I heard they produced it magnificently at Vassar. The copy you have is full of little typographical slurrings and misunderstandings which make it a little muddy in places, but which will be corrected in the next edition.

The sonnets about me in Seven Years are beautiful. (Note. At that time, I projected a book by that title, but did not like it when it was finished. The sonnets were published as "Beauty in Exile.")

I have just been reading them over again. And you must by all means add the one which begins, "In times hereafter". But I think you should not say "flee" to worlds where only shadows move." For surely people as proud as the people you tell of do not flee from anything; they move, they turn, they go,-- but they do not flee. (Now tell me to mind my business. I shall bend my glance downward and reply with serene arrogance that it is my business, I am one of the people)

(Note. She was quite right. I accepted her suggestion of "turn.")

The first "Girl Beside Pool" is very, very lovely. I hope the public will know it is I,-- I shall be happy to have them

know, when they read your book, that you love me like that.
Almost everybody, to be sure, is mortal, but the gods should
worry.

I am sending you some new sonnets of mine.

Arthur, dearest, I feel quite gay and risible, having got al
this piffluous bunk off my chest and onto yours. Next best to
talking with you, after all, is writing to you, This dam letter
seems to be full of after alls. Makes me think of a little
French poem I wrote once, and had forgotten:

Et après tout qu'est-ce qu'on a fait

Pour la beauté, qu'on aime tant?--

Tout simplement, un cri ou deux;

C'est tout ce qu'on peut, pour la beauté.

Well, goodbye. I shall now issue forth and fodder my
bewildered Muse on Wiener schnitzel, Brussels sprouts and beer.
Here's to crime. May the lowliest live to commit it.

With love,

Vincent

Write me. And do not tear things, for God's sake, post them.
I am suffering in this place.

(Enclosures, the four sonnets

"I know I am but summer in your heart,"

"Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!"

"I, being born a woman, and distressed"

"Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find" )

72

70

I know I am but summer to your heart,
And not the full four seasons of the year;
And you must welcome from another part
Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear.
No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell
Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing;
And I have loved you all too long and well
To carry still the high sweet breast of spring.
Wherefore I say: O, love, as summer goes,
I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums;
That you may hail anew the bird and rose
When I come back to you, as summer comes.
Else will you seek, at some not distant time,
Even your summer in another XXXA clime.

Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!
Give back my book and take my kiss instead.
Was it my enemy or my friend I heard?--
"What a big book for such a little head!"
Come, I will show you now my newest hat,
And you may watch me Purse my mouth and prink.
Oh, I shall love you still, and all of that.
I never again shall tell you what I think.
I shall be sweet and crafty, soft and sly;
You will not catch me reading any more;
I shall be called a wife to pattern by;
And someday when you knock and push the door,
Some sane day, not too bright and not too stormy,
I shall be gone, and you may whistle for me.

I, being born a woman, and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body's weight upon my breast;
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however,-- this poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain--
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn with pity; let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.

Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find
The roots of last year's roses in my XXXXX breast;
I am as surely riper in my mind
As if the fruits stood in the stalls confessed.
Laugh at the unshed leaf, say what you will,
Call me in all things what I was before,
A flutterer in the wind, a woman still;
I tell you I am what I was, and more.
My branches weigh me down, frost cleans the air,
My sky is black with small birds bearing south;
Say what you will, confuse me with fine care,
Put by my word as but an April truth:
Autumn is no less on me that a rose
Hugs the brown bough and sighs before it goes.

Editorial note. I think it possible that the first of these sonnets has some personal relation to me. Thank God, the other three haven't! They must be about her raft-friend.

72

Hotel Ritz, Budapest, Feb. 23, 1922

Arthur, dear,--

Mixter?--

Will you send the enclosed letter to Florence

Having written that, I sit and think of you.-----

I wonder if you ever wanted to be with me as much as I want to be with you tonight.

Having written that, I sit and think again.

Two years since I saw you,-- two terrible years.

Arthur, what do you think of me?-- Do you think I am crazy?

Well, dear, goodnight.-- I have been over an hour writing this note.-- A hell of a way to spend the evening!

I shall now go down into the lobby and sing in a high XIXX clear voice to all the Galician Jews and Japanese ambassadors there assembled, how "Frankie and Johnny were lovers," and what a mess they made of it.----- And so to bed.

Good-night, dear, dear Arthur.

---------Vincent---------

74

(Editorial note. I had gone to Harvard as Curator of Japanese Art. I was still married-- and was in more kinds of confused agony than can easily be imagined.)

Shillingstone, England, Nov. 8, 1922

Dearest Arthur,--

My heart bleeds to think of those poor Harvard youths dolling themselves up X in mauve socks and silk shirts open at the throat to make a hit with you!-- I know-- don't hit me!-- you're not that kind-- but who's going to put them wise, sweet trusting darlings?

I got the book-- ten thousand thanks-- but I haven't time to go into that now.

As for you and that nice girl Gladys Brown, I have only this to say: that one reason why she wants a home and you don't is that you've had one for the last eighty-five years, and she hasn't; every feller's got a right to make a calf off himself ONCE in a lifetime, and just because you took your turn some time ago, you needn't be so superior.--(So take that, light of my tents!)

Never mind, old dear. I do understand. Women are hopelessly practical.-- But then, so are men.-- And there you are.

I love you, Arthur, as much as if you had beaten me every Saturday night for a year,-- but you do make me laugh.-- However, my laughter is sometimes rather misty, I'm afraid--- you ARE so sweet, and so funny, and so lost.

I don't get over my disgust at not seeing more of you while you were here.-- I'd like to live right around the corner from you for months and months.-- That's how gone on you I am.

Yours till I take my final vows

Vincent---------

75.

Dear Arthur and Gladys--

Be happy-- oh, be very happy for a long,
long time!

----------You are two beautiful people.-- I love
you both.----- My heart is with you.

Vincent---------

Hôtel des Panorama, Cassio-sur-Mer
Bouches du Rhône, France

Dec. 6, 1922

(Editorial note. This was written when I had written her that I had smashed everything, got a divorce, thrown up my job at Harvard, and gone to live in an obscure hole in New York, 41 Washington Square, with Gladys.)

76.

Arthur, dear,

It's not true that I don't like the sonnets. I love
them. You know perfectly well, you eying dog, that I think
you write wonderful sonnets. The reason why I haven't said
anything about them is this:-- I have been sick, so that I
can just drag about, and what strength I have must go into the
XXXXXXXXX novel which Liveright is to receive in the spring;
and I couldn't bear simply to write, "I received the sonnets;
they are very nice." I wanted to have time to speak of each
one separately, go over and over them, telling you what I
hought about every little thing. And I haven't been able to do
that. So I've said nothing. And you know XXXXXX that what
I'm saying is the truth. So there's that,-- and you just stop
nagging me.

Isn't it funny about you and Gladys?-- My God-- it's
marvelous.-- You don't need to tell me what a nice girl
Gladys Brown is-- "Nicer than that!!!" I know in my way,
just as well as you know in your way, how nice she is.-- I
knew it the first moment I set eyes on her in Prunier's. You
can't fool me. And you didn't think we'd like each other!--
Man don't know very much.

Is this a snippy letter, dear?-- No, it isn't. I shall
love you till the day I die.-- Though I shan't always be
thinking about it, thank God.-- Yet I shall be thinking about
it every time I think about you, that's sure.

As for Hal, there's not the slightest danger that I
shall marry him: he has jilted me!

With love,
Vincent.

Dec 17, 1922

Am. Ex.Co.--II, rue Scribe, Par is.

To 42 Commerce Street, New York City.
Paris, 29 Oct. 1924.

Darlings. Here we are in Paris, at last. We had so hoped to
find you still here.

Our glorious and wonderful journey came to an unpleasant end
ar Delhi. Vincent got sick and I got sick and spent a week in
a hospital in Bombay. She with dyssentary and I with
 illogical fever. We left the hospital too soon, to catch the
 boat to Marseilles and on the boat I got flebitus. I had to be
taken from the boat to the train in a stretcher and ambulance
and the same way in Paris from the train to the hotel. Edna
arranged everything wonderfully, although she was still very
weak. We are now 14 days in this hotel. I have not moved and
must lie perfectly quiet on my back. Vincent does everything
for me, which is a lot. The doctor thinks I am doing fine and
we hope that I may get up in a few days and will be able to
leave for Holland in a few days and then for New York, where
with the help of God we hope to be in your arms before the end
of November, about 14 days after this letter reaches you.

(No signature)

Dear old Artie and Gladys--

Isn't it the limit?-- (I sharpened this pencil
with a fruit-knife%) We shall see you soon and tell you all our
troubles-- never mind, we've had a lot of things besides
troubles since we set forth-- and it's been worth it.-- So
much love, dear friends

Vincent.

(Enclosure.)