4

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON
231 HGS
YALE UNIVERSITY
NEW HAVEN · CONN

It is now ten-thirty, and a little late to begin to summarize my views on the political world as since U-2 and the Summit. I was not silent out of cowardice, but only because of being so pressed for time. Let me see what I can do now in a half-hour.

(But first let me stray. Leslie told me they were going to have to stay until the middle of this month, because Mary simply would not leave until Sunday school was over for the season. But that she was already dying of hay fever. I drove by their house last saturday on my way back from Wesleyan and a press meeting there, to see the new trees you gave them. I found the hay waist high up to the front door and all over. The Brookses now tell me that they never cut it, leaving it for a farmer to cut free at the end of summer for the hay. But my God! No wonder she has hay fever, who wouldn't when she lived in the midst of a hay field. I guess next year's present will have to be an early cutting.)

To return! I find a tendency for people to speak about several different things at the same time, and thus confusing them and any argument. History and K have confused this enough as it is, without any help from by-standers. Let me try to keep my categories or periods straight.

First is the question of sending U-2's over and spying in general. This is what ex-President Truman now calls dirty business, and something he would have nothing to do with. This is absurd. The only thing bad about spying is getting caught. The U-2's are apparently an extraordinary technical achievement, and the sample photographs from them taken from 70 miles above the 'an Diego airfield are fantastic. Several things are proved. That air surveillance already exists, or can exist; and that Russia's defenses are not much if a plane is downed only 1200 miles inside the borders, after four years of similar missions. It also means that Dew Lines are meaningless, because a U-2 can carry a bomb as well as a camera. I do not believe these planes can be downed at 70,000 feet. What happened to Powers is the big mystery. But that we are not likely to know for a long time.

Secondly, should the plane have been sent just before the Summit meeting. Without knowing full details, I can't say. My guess is that they wanted to find something just splendid for the president to hold up his sleeve as a trump, pretending it had come from regular espionage rather than aerial survey. This is not to say that Eisenhower knew this plan; only that even a local commaddant in Turkey might have thought he could sprout a ribbon by such a feat. The plane did apparently make a detour in order to try to spot the pre-Summit gestures by the Russians, of which only the floating platform worked. (For the U.S., as usual, most rockets stayed on the ground, but the submarine did go around the world under water.) Speaking for myself, and hindsight, I would like to think I would have held off pushing my luck at just such a pre-Summit time. Which is not to say I believed in the Summit, or that perhaps by chance it has worked out for the best.

Which is not to say, thirdly, that the worst aspect for the States was what happened after the U-8 was down. Such a confusion has not been seen in other countries since the foreign office was taken out of the kindergartens. Everyone speaking elaborately at once, conflucting, denying, screaming, being as absurd as possible. any Americans quite honestly have been upset because the Government lied. What they should be upset about is simply that the States lied so badly. The British for example would have lied very well.

4

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

YALE UNIVERSITY
NEW HAVEN • CONN

The British would have said something like this. "What could have possessed a man like Powers to steal a plane like that, equipped for weather surveillance, and try to fly it across Russia taking pictures and pretending he was a spy, simply to sell an article to some newspaper. it is scandalous. We will investigate his commanding officer for allowing him to steal the plane." Or they would have said absolutely nothing. What happened was that U.S. bungling in an affair of this sort at this particular moment gave great satisfaction to all our allies who have for so long--rightly?--felt that the management of things should be left in their hands while the supplies came from this side. They may be right. As for the President taking personal responsibility, this was a political move and a very neat one locally for a general to take. "He is after all commander-in-chief. What the Democrats would like is to show he didn't know, and that he is therefore allowing things to go on under his nose.

The fourth step is the conduct of K. Now, personally, I do not think that the U.S. gaucheness of handling the matter had the slightest effect on what was sure to be the failure of the Summit. What it did do was to seem to make K into a virtuous being, and shift the responsibility for failure of what he after all had been the chief mover for. Again, many things seem to have changed since K's personal visit to the States. In the first place he was immediately rebuffed on his subsequent trip to China. You have always been sensitive and sound about China. She is the greatest danger to the world, and Russia knows China has no use for her in the long range plans. China began to coerce K. So did the military in Russia who are not at all happy about the supremely personal success of K's recent trips. After all they want power too, and for status reasons as well they do not want disarmament. That is why a general was with K at every moment and every call of protocol. There is still a third reason: the pressure of East Germany. East Germany is Russia's prize exhibit, her greatest mark on the forehead of the moment. And East Germany is not easy to handle, any more than Poland is, or Hungary, or Jugoslavia, and many others. East Germany wants Berlin. And I am pretty sure that K discovered on his last visit to Camp David, that Berlin wasn't going to be another Chezko-Slovakia, or the Summit another Munich. The question was then how to scuttle the Summit so that Russia would not lose face.

I might add that I think a possibly serious error was DeGaulle's insistence that the Summit Conference be postponed until he could explode two bombs. But even this didn't probably matter very much.

What are the results then. No Summit, but a Summit would have been a Munich even without the loss of Berlin. I simply do not trust the Russians, nor does my experience give any reason why I should trust them. I do not believe in unilateral disarmament. I do not believe that surveillance will work or be allowed. I am glad K's qualities have come out in the open. One sees that he can shift as passionately as ever Hitler did.

What I am much more worried about as a consequence of K's conduct is what is likely to happen here. Suddenly Eisenhower began to be referred to as having, on his return, a "hero's welcome." God forbid. He is no hero under these circumstances. K begins to scream that Eisenhower is incapable of being a president and Nixon is similarly unfit. If I were cynical I would ask how much it cost the republicans to buy K over to their side, for if anyone is making it impossible for there to be anything but a republican landslide K is the man. People will vote for Ike to show their independence of K, by which I mean they will vote for Nixon as a vote for Eisenhower.

Well, I'm glad we saw a little of the arctic and hope we'll see it once more before the bombs fall.

All love, Zymman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

YALE UNIVERSITY

NEW HAVEN • CONN

11 June 1960

Dearest Fido,

This is chancey, I suppose, to risk sending to Sesame.
But otherwise there will be weeks before you get anything from me.
I shall of course send as from now to Doris, and it is possible she
may risk forwarding to you. Though I doubt it. Of course give her
my love when you see her.

I spoke to Hilda on the phone this morning. Blanche
has gone again this weekend to Perdita and John's. My opinion had
been that two weekends in succession was somewhat overdoing it, but
this morning's talk gave me a little clue. I think our Hilda is
trying herself out to see what she can do on her own. If so this is
a very good idea indeed, because one might be able to get a companion
by the day without the problem of paying for a hotel room for her.
And there is no doubt but that Hilda likes the Stanhope and her suite.
For example I had a letter from the secretary of the Poetry Society,
a man named Gustav Davidson who sounds a little stupid. He asked
questions about Hilda's angels. She got in touch with him and he is
now coming to tea to go over lists of them. This afternoon she is
having Viola's son and daughter to tea, and then driving put to see
Viola, she says.

She is happy, happy, happy. Only she does want to go back
and put her things in shape, but she will have a wholly new relationship
to Küssnacht, and there will be Blanche and the Brunner's, and her medal.
It has become a kind of talisman which she keeps by her bedside as she
sleeps. Mary Herr has been with the citation from Bryn Mawr, which Hilda
says is beautiful. Mary treats her like a goddess, and Hilda likes it.
Already she is developing a little clique of admirers. I think it is working
out just as you hoped, and that you will be free to do what you want unless
you pick up other clingers. And do not worry about going back to Küssnacht
quickly; it will be good for Hilda to be on her own there too, with her
new found ability to do things on her own. We must be careful now to
let her do things for herself. It is the best therapy.

I enclose a review from tomorrow's *Tribune*. Somehow I had thought
it had already been reviewed there. Scott is a friend of mine, who gave a
nice review of *Avon* for me. Poor Hilda will die when she sees Gray's name
so explicitly mentioned. Scott must have picked this up from Harry Moore's
review. God only knows what Moore would have written if I had not given
him the text of three Lawrence letters of my own I had held back on (nothing
to do with Hilda) and my little veiled threats of what I would do about his
own earlier private life if he had the gall to publish those letters by
Lawrence about Hilda and Gray.

I think I have fallen behind on accounting for the books already
in. There is the autographed copy of Jean Burton's biography, tho not
inscribed to you; Aiken's *Among the Lost People*, which I don't think I had
even heard of before; and the lovely little edition of Sophocles. I shall
have to dig up a little of the history of the latter for you from Marston,
who is curator of 'ale's classical collection of rare books. He is an
authority on this sort of thing, and 'ale's collection is one of the best.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

YALE UNIVERSITY

NEW HAVEN • CONN

Life is still considerably hectic, with much left to finish up in the way of odds and ends. Some rather big odds and some enormous ends at that! However, this morning I finished editing Vassar Miller's book of poems, taking selections from three sets of manuscripts and trying to put them into a coherent and cohesive structure. God knows what she will say, but it is true that sometimes it is interesting to have an outside opinion of one's own work. This morning too I had to get on the phone and do long distance calls while I discovered a final grade for a young senior who could not otherwise graduate on Monday. It was good luck for the senior, but bad luck for me that the dean's office found me at work Saturday morning at my office. He was taking a course given by one of our professors in American Studies, who was just getting out of the bath in Princeton New Jersey at 11:30 when I called. I felt reasonably virtuous having been at the office since 8.

We are moving to the shore today, and have been in the process for several days now. I rather I should say that Susan has. For when she wants to move in the middle of the end of term, I really can't help her very much about it.

Last night Lizzie came to the house to go over her affairs. I must say she has shown immense improvement during the last year, and altho we hold our fingers crossed it might well be that she could eventually get out of the hospital. She has held a job now for a month, and they are talking of putting her on a basis where she only sleeps at the Institute and continues her sessions--rather as Joan does. And under these circumstances they also are thinking of her having an outside analyst (as they usually do against the time when a person leaves entirely. She was also inquiring about having a car. It was all complicated, and linked up in her mind or ours with the problems of budgets. But it went off well, and would have been impossible a year ago.

All of which does have a bearing on your wonderfully generous cheque for the car, notice of which was in yesterday's mail. That is, a notice saying there was a cheque waiting for me to call for and identify myself for. I can't thank you enough, and it is typical of your generosity. To have done anything for Hilda was for the sake of doing it for her and for you, each a privilege and reward in itself. But I think the cheque had better go into your general savings bank money. A car such as I can use with my hip--which precludes the shorter ones which are otherwise so good--costs four thousand or more these days. It isn't so much that cost, but what it represents. I can't simply come out with a new car and discuss the matters of finances as honestly with Lizzie as I have done. Or on the other hand, my car is actually perfectly good--I have had it only 5 or 6 years and it has gone only 55000 miles. It is good for another four or five years. I kept my last one 15 years, which was too long but still.... The doctors have advised Susan to get a new car with power steering some time because of her bersitis, and for this reason too I wouldn't want to come out with mine just for the sake of a new car for me. This isn't really any bourgeois spirit on my part, it is just good common sense in keeping things together. Especially when no one could want a greater reward than your love and nose-rub.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

12 June 1960

Dearest Fido,

Had not expected to write another letter, and there is
probably no chance of this reaching the _Seasame_ before the 15th when
you leave. But dutifully I try, having unexpectedly come back to
the office this Sunday morning for odds and ends, and called Hilda.

She said she had written you this morning, and Doris,
about her visit to Viola. Viola has, it now appears, not arthritis
but muscular dystrophy--for which nothing can be done. This is
rather pathetic, and Hilda was quite obviously deeply moved. She
speaks of going out again next weekend, and that perhaps Blanche
could come by herself to New Haven. I had not quite understood the
drift of this in our last conversation, and will be glad to give up
the weekend to entertaining Blanche, but it was indeed Hilda I wanted
to see and for whom we have refused other invitations in order to be
free. I told Hilda simply that if Blanche was coming up by herself,
I thought the train was preferable to my making the four-hour and more
drive so that she could see the Merrit Parkway. Hilda seemed a little
surprised that I would be willing to do this for hersake and not for
Blanche. But we will see.

The important thing is that I mentioned the possibility of
her staying longer if the doctor was not quite finished with checking
etc., and she said no but that she was coming back in the fall--you might
want to come over by yourself--and that he present plan was to go to
California. She has been having an itch for this; and indeed Martinelli,
Duncan et al would make much of her. I think it is an excellent idea;
she knows the hotel she wants, from asking Rosset. Don't squeel or do
anything but say it's a good idea, companion or no companion. I can
always fly out in five hours (by jet) if anything goes wrong. Amd if
you are to be free, we must free her. I have a hunch she intends
coming saying in late October or November, when Kusnacht begins to be
damp and cold. we can discuss this when you come over, for you will not
want to wait this long, nor is there any reason why you should. If you
come late September or early October you could pay your promised visit
to Maine. Then you would have your entire winter free in Switzerland
to Write or not write as you prefer, and in which to stay for a maximum
length of time in London and the Scillies. Elsie will be happy that you
can spend more time with her and the kittens, and I am sure her health
will improve just by feeling surer of you. Best of all, perhaps we can
count on at least a brief trip to the States every six months or so.

In typically ambivalent fashion, having said that the car
wouldn't work, may I now make a suggestion of what would be most welcome
and get me out of a hole. I had to paint some of the inside trim at
the shore, and ought to paint two rooms (no three) at Goodrich Street, where

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

the rain has come in and ruined the walls. The shore I have just
had done, wanting it to be fresh for Hilda if she should come, and
the town job should be done before we go in in the fall. Also we
need a new couch and chairs at the shore, since the ones we have are
now falling to pieces, never really having recovered from the hurricane.
We have put off the painting for several years, because of Lizzie's
expenses, and I suppose could put off the furniture for a few years
more. But if you were willing to have me use the money for these, nothing
could be more beneficial to health and sanity.

All love,
Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

21 June 1960

Dearest Fido,

Well, I presume the school year will actually be over some
day. Just now it looks as though it never would, and the only thing
to be concluded will be my secretary's services. She retires on the 30th.
Meanwhile I must get as much done as I can, although there will be plenty
to begin the new one with.

Last week Monday I got up a little before five and drove to
New Brunswick, N.J., fortunately getting there ten minutes before nine
in time to hear the speech I was supposed to comment on. Another was given
in its place, so that I had to extemporize on that, when the time came at
eleven. This was a national conference of foreign professors who have been
in the States as Fulbright Scholars.

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I had to be in charge of
the alumni seminars on China and on Art, two of the four given by members
of the faculty for returning alumni. The others were on law and on space science.
They were all good. You would have enjoyed the latter especially.

Saturday, Blanche came up for overnight. Hilda would not come but
was very very anxious that Blanche should. So I spent Saturday driving her to
Guilford and other points along the shore, and Sunday morning showing her Yale
and the house in town. And then took the train down to New York with her in the
afternoon so that I could have dinner with Hilda, who naturally wanted a little
company. She still seemed to be in good spirits.

I talked to Blanche a little more about the x-rays. They show the
hip joint almost completely dissolved, and all doctors have expressed surprise
that she does not have pain. A little fragment holds the pin more or less together
and the fibres of her muscles help. This may last forever, or give way. It is
a matter of luck. Meanwhile they say absolutely no exercise in the way of
massage, but to do what she wants to do in the way of walking. She has been told
and has confidence. Otherwise she is an absolutely good shape, so Blanche says.
I will talk to Prutting on the phone.

All is in hand for their departure on Sunday. I will go down, if
as present plans stand, on saturday, have dinner with them at the hotel and spend
the night in town, hire a car and take them out to the plane to be there at
three o'clock, where Pup and John and the two boys will come from Southampton
for the departure. Hilda prefers it this way rather than to keep them in town
of-rhe for the weekend, and they fortunately agree.

There has been much ado about the plane. When Blanche went for
reservations, Swissair calmly told her there was no possibility of a lower
birth, even though the letter had promised it. Possibly they might get the
two of them on a jet. There could be an upper birth. They might have to wait
ten days to two weeks. Blanche evidently did a splendid job, and I suggested
on Sunday that she ask them if she could use their phone to call her friend the
manager in Zurich. Anyhow, John told me this morning by phone that they are
back on the Sunday schedule. Oh yes, they also suggested that if they could
get a lower, then Blanche would have to sleep in it with Hilda, or they would
have to buy a third ticket. Really: I'm glad it was Swissair and not an
American Line.

Have sent off four excellent but varied paperback reprints of good
books on recent astronomy to Aldington. The Durrell poems came. Many thanks.
Also *Son of Oscar Wilde*. Many thanks.

Don't know what happened to Bernice Elliott. But guess she may be

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

24 June 1960

Dearest Fido,

I ought to be hard at work with papers at my desk, but having just talked with Prutting on the phone I think I had better pass the conversation on to you before it dims in my mind. Hilda is right; he does have a re-assuring voice, and has a good deal re-assured me. Organically of course she is all right, in respect to lungs, heart and the like. Our talk centered on the matter of her hip. The orthopedist she saw is the chief at the Medical Center, and Prutting says he is the chief man in the world today on hip repair, both in terms of operations and literature on the subject. The general situation of the hip we already know: the joint has broken down, there is a certain amount of fibrosis, the nail has slipped, etc. On the other hand some callous tissue and fibres have developed with is for the moment holding things together, and it is possible that she may adapt even further. While on the one hand she should not have exercises, and should avidly undue exertion, she ought also to avoid complete rest. It is possible that she may develop some pain later, and that later repair will be indicated. For the moment however an operation is not indicated. What pleased me was his insistence than if an operation should prove necessary later, something might be accomplished by it (I really should say could be accomplished), and that she could stand the pressure all right. It is simply that it isn't necessary at the moment. She has some medications in case she feels pain; and if it really becomes severe she can pop into a plane and come back to Prutting.

Blanche told me that Hilda was insisting that the bill be sent to her. Prutting is waiting my orders on this, after I sound Hilda out on the weekend. I had told Hilda that doctors never sent bills until after the job was finished, and then did so at the end of the month following. I am on the whole inclined to let the bill be sent directly to her, and that you should let her pay it with her own check. She has become very proud of paying her own bills, rather like a young girl who is at last on her own. And it may be one of the things for her to keep in mind as a fact of life about the States. For she is certainly coming back for the winter months, in New York and California or Florida; and after perhaps one further return to Switzerland for the following summer (not at all certainly, this is only my conjecture) will settle down here for good.

She wrote Susan a nice letter thanking for the etceteras, as spoke of this trip as "a supreme success" (the italics were hers). What has been most important is her regaining of self-confidence not only in her physical condition, but as a social being, and indeed as a literary figure. If only I were with you to celebrate we could rub noses, sniff tails, and then race round and round in circles woofing like mad!

A number of envelopes of letters, from London and Switzerland have arrived. Curious that Aldington insists that Sausalito (California) where Hilda intends to visit, looks out on Alcatraz and is a weird mixture of fishing village and artist colony. Actually Hilda might like the latter, but oddly enough a 21-year old daughter of friends of ours in California was at the shore with Lizzie for dinner on Wednesday, and when I asked about the hotel she said

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

27 June 1960

Dearest Fido,

Well the bird is back in her Kusnest, and I have had a cable reporting all well on the trip. I went down as planned on Saturday afternoon, had dinner with the two of them--Blanche recovering from a sudden flu which had put her to bed the day before--and then talked with Hilda until about ten thirty that night. I dutifully breakfasted with them in the morning, and we kept on talking while Blanche was at mass, with a fifteen-minute intermission while the last things were put in the bag. Tips were distributed to one and all, over Hilda's mild protests that I (like you) were "rather" generpus, but of course she didn't want to seem "mean." Etc. It was all very pleasant, and with one topic and another I was able to keep Hilda from being too nervy. As lady's maid I assured her that what she had would do beautifully for the trip, that to use a wheelchair at the airport until the steps to the plane was actually not only good sense but rather fun in an Atlantic-City Boardwalk, that having a private car to the airport could really be considered a saving (as indeed it is in terms of universal accounting), that the room was to be held intact until John and Perdita could pick up the china and left-over crackers (as it was). Etc. I found menus for dinner and Sunday luncheon which she and Blanche had not tasted before; and at dinner cpuld introduce her to James Johnson Sweeney, director of the Guggenheim Museum and a member of the Institute, who rendered his homage, and re-introduce her to Muriel Rukeyser who suddenly appeared in the dining room. "I rather like meeting people this way," Hilda concluded. And indeed it was nice that she could have these little tributes, and the sense that the waitors were reminded that she was a visiting Person.

We got off in good time and arrived at the airport, despite the appalling Sunday traffic, at 2:30 as planned for a 3:30 flight. John and Perdita were not there as I expected, so I was happy to be on the spot, especially as Blanche proved to be four pounds overweight with not enough American money to pay for it. Despite her protests I insisted on paying so that she c uld take her trophies with her, especially as she had made every effort to be careful about excess and had shipped many packages by surface. But it will be fun for her to have her gifts when she arrived. If Swissair had not insisted on weighing every pocketbook they would have been all right. The Swissair staff were perfectly fine with Hilda, and ti worked out well. About ten minutes before three Pup and John and Valentine appeared having lunched at Iddewild, and the twenty minutes before the plane were just about the right time for a final visit. Hilda went off first to get on the plane, and we rushed to the roof in order to see her board, followed shortly afterwards by some 20 schoolgirls off on a European summer. At least they will not have caroused on the plane. We waited in the broiling sun, and I was glad to do so for a while anyhow, for soon Hilda appeared again at the head of the gangplank and waved her scarf enthusiastically at us. Valentine was anxious to see the plane actually off, so we stayed for another half hour after three thirty while the plane waited in line for the take-off. Then we visited customs so he could see that, and finally got back into town. Instead of going directly to the Stanhope we went to their house, where I was to see Timothy, and we could pick up Woody, and then to the Stanhope for their things and mine. By this time it was too late for the five o'clock, so I at last got the six o'clock back to New Haven.

Glory be! A chapter in history ended. It was worth it. She was really happy.

Love to Doris

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

28 June 1960

Dearest Fido,

I rather rushed off last night's letter to you so that you might
possibly have news of Hilda's departure, while you were still with Doris. I
don't quite dare to risk this to the hotel there, and so hope it will be waiting
for you at the Sesame.

Am delighted that the Quest seems like home-deck to you again, but
am really sorry that the islanders have caught you up so in wanting to go out on
the boat. Actually I am both amused and not surprised at what you are discovering
about the disadvantages of being an islander "in". There is always a fascination
of the mysterious which exists for anyone like yourself who has a little more than
the usual inside track to a community---you had the same situation with yourself
in Switzerland, a little imagining yourself a Swiss, for some years. Then one
gets one's position within the circle's circumference though never at the center,
and one becomes involved in rules and regulations. Bit by bit you become more
conscious of them, bit by bit the others already "in" become more conscious of
your deviations from them. The situation is a typically bourgeois one, especially
since the Scillies are chiefly made up of middle-class refugees, or islanders who
are raising themselves up to the middle-classes. Anyhow I think it will be fun for
you to try to conform, rather as an experiment and as a further way about learning to
know the bourgeois about whom I hope you'll do a Butor.

Cricket on the Green sounds fun. If not given by a publisher, I wonder
if the title is an Anglo-Indian phrase for home, where "they play cricket not at a
playing field at the edge of the colony, my dear, but on the green."

Many thanks for the Ruan jacket. I had not seen it except in the original
black and white sketch.

Numerous packages of books have come in, for which thanks. An Edition de
Minuit, and the Butor Degrés. And Nadejine's book of poems. The Mpondor Mallarme',
and the o e by Jacques Scherer. Plus the two copies of Why Do They Like It. I think
I spoke earlier of the group of Urzidils. And I find fascinating the Earl Marshall's
ORDERS for robes and dresses to be worn at the Coronation. It might be fun to give
the latter to The Elizabethan Club.

Meant to ask you, regarding a letter from Rita what she was talking about
in terms of people being silent about the colds etc caused by jet flights. Susan
you know was miserable with an infected ear and bronchial cold for three weeks after
her trip out and back to Houston, and so were two out of the three of her companions.
She had to be treated regularly by the doctor, and this is as you know a confession
of sheer defeat on her part.

Horace's letter of which I enclose a copy came just at the time of the
Award and as you were setting out. So I have not acknowledged it. I tried to
expain to him that, at the moment, everything had been consigned to Leon Edel, but
if he wanted to do it perhaps I could sound out both Mrs Odle and Edel as to whether
they would like him to step in. I frankly do not think Edel will be able to get to
it for another six or seven years. Horace is not an influential critic at the moment,
as Edel is, nor as thoroughly scholarly a researcher. But I think people do read
what he writes and that D.R. is on the verge of an upswing. To be in on it, and to
help with it might be useful to him. What is more, it might give Horace the time
free from sarah Lawrence he needs for rest from that kind of tension. I think any
steps from now on must first be taken between you and Mrs Odle. Let me know what
you think, or how she reacts. She ought not to be forced into anything.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

To return to Hilda for a moment. I think she rather definitely intends to come back to the States for a few months break. Whether more or less I don't think she knows as yet. It is important for her to feel Kusnacht after New York, both in terms of the Villa and of Unser. She asked whether she could go directly by air from abroad to San Francisco, and I said yes, by changing at Copenhagen or Paris. I should encourage this. I was a little sorry to hear you quoting Helen adversely about Florida in terms of bad weather and snakes. The former does happen, but if she is where she can feel things are a change of scene it doesn't really matter. As to snakes, that is ridiculous for Hilda in terms of wherever she chances to go, she not being an Everglades or deserted pampas girl. I don't think Hilda yet knows when she wants to come out, and knowing your desire to be free from such responsibilities, and Hilda's own increasing self-confidence which will permit you to do this, I encouraged her into the idea that you would be coming out in late October by yourself, and that she would come out just before Christmas or after, as the case and the weather might prove. She may have her little moments of feeling dependent on you, and saying that you must come with her and that she can't go alone, but this is the moment for you to prove to yourself whether or not you really want to be free. Rather as with Kenneth, I think the bonds will be closer between you and Hilda when neither of you feel pressured by the circumstances. This is the greatest service I can render you now, but when you think of another one I shall try to do that too.

These are the last three days of Mrs Wohlenberg, so I must get back to my final clearing up of as much as possible. I shall certainly miss her.

Greet all in London. If you wander into Spinks, as them to keep their eyes open for archaelogical eskimo harpoon heads etc as well as sculptures. They might think the latter infra dog if offered.

All, all love

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

29 June 1960

Dearest Fido,

A sultry muggy day that Hilda would absolutely have loathed. Now it is raining, and that may help a little, but I am caught in my office without a raincoat. I shall be shoaked to the skin if it is more than a brief shower, for it is already nearly six and I must drive back to Branford for dinner. I might have written you earlier, but tomorrow is Mrs Wohlenberg's last day. I still have my annual report to the President of the University to write, and the booklet we send out annually to the doctoral alumni in American Studies; but otherwise I have done most of what is directly official. There is much more however before I can cross the street to the library.

This afternoon I finished reading Nadejine's autobiography. I must say I enjoyed it. The earliest sections on his younger boyhood are a classic. He writes extremely well, and with wit. One presumes that as a career-man as guest he had practised up these tales of an exotic youth. Anyhow the result is a good document as well as entertainment. A little later he falters, not being quite sure how to go, and begins to repeat himself. Then he gets fresh breath, and is excellent as a university student and as a young revolutionary. I think I think more highly of the manuscript that Kurt does, and indeed am not sure but what with a little editing something could be made of it. Shall we try it out on John. I spoke of it to him and Pup, and the latter of course was eager to read it. John's opinion might be excellent, and I feel very sure he could sell portions of it to well-paying magazines, even if the whole were difficult to place as a book. This might help Faith, and eventually give Nadejine himself a little niche. Eventually I should go for a book even if it is uneven. What do you think about letting John see it. Of course I can send it directly to a publisher or two, and so not involve him in any difference of opinion. Who owns the literary rights and could make a contract. You and Faith?

Volumes One and Three of the Maggs bound Travel 'atalogues were in today's mail. They will be useful references.

A formal announcement came yesterday from Michel et Marie-Jo Butor announcing the birth of their daughter Agnes on June 17th. The wife's name intrigues me. Certainly it can't be French?

Susan and I both wept for sympathy at the letter of the 24th. Oh Lord I ought to have told you, my dearest, that this would happen, always happens when one has a boat. It is perfectly hopeless. And one always takes the same water tour with each set of guests so that no comparisons can be made.

I do hope Doris's operation goes all right. One has to take the gamble.

Maybe you should send the Codrington. It sounds intriguing. You beguiled Susan into buying _Born Free_. Would Hilda like it?

All nose-rubs and sniffs of love,

Norman

30 June 1960

Dearest Fido,

I am blushingly reminded by Lady Vyvyan's letter to you of the 29th of my further silence concerning her manuscript "Arctic Adventure." I wrote you my initial suggestions in December (I think) hoping to be able to confirm or alter these by a subsequent reading. As you know from my letters to you, from that time on (or should I say the absence of my letters), things began to snarl up and I have been more or less breathless ever since.

In the last two days I have, however, at last been able to sit down to read the manuscript again without interruption. Naturally I had in mind the advice of Lady Vyvyan's agent that she should cut 10,000 words from it. This is, I think, sound advice; and if I were a publisher's reader I should suggest that much of this cutting could be accomplished by ending the book with the first paragraph on page 241 ("...out of their lives forever.") Lady Vyvyan might wish to add another closing paragraph, but so far as the book itself is concerned the climax of the canoe trip has been reached, and the rest of the book has no particular interest to the general reading public. What makes the canoe trip itself such an exciting accomplishment is the cumulative nice details she puts down. In this latter section she has to move too quickly over geography to give the intimacy of the specific. Actually something of this same weakness comes in the earlier pages of the manuscript, where I could wish Lady Vyvyan might try her hand at rewriting and compressing. The real interest begins with the trip on the Mackenzie. By Fort Smith and the Great Slave Lake we are in it, and the pace is established. The pages before this read almost as though Lady Vyvyan herself were not yet quite warmed up for the set, had not quite yet gotten into her stride. I would suggest that she start with Fort Smith, and but by bit work whatever is necessary from previous pages in as flashbacks. This would catch the reader's interest at once both in the scene and in the travellers, so that as in a mystery story one can wonder how they got there. Conrad and Ford Madox Ford always advocated this kind of strong beginning, but I daresay they are too old-fashioned now.

If she were to make revisions of this kind I should be glad to send the manuscript around. I do suspect that the British market may be better than the American for this sort of book, but one can never tell. It certainly ought to be published. What an adventure it must have been, and how much I envy her the experience!

2 July 1960

Dearest Fido,

Absolutely a note and no more, for I must rush to pick up
Lizzie at her bookshop job and take her to the shore for the weekend with
us. She is still at the Institute, but working each day. We hope it is
a good beginning.

The Fourth is always a little overwhelming, and tonight we have
a steak picnic for fifty of the family--probably forty is more accurate--
doing this jointly with a sister of Susan's. I must make fires and cook while
the others drink cocktails. It keeps me busy.

Yes do by all means come over in the end of August if you want.
I warn you only that everyone will be out of New York if you plan any business
outside of our talks. Labor Day, at the beginning of September, is the last
fling for people. I am not sure when Hilda will want to come over, but almost
certainly not until late November or quite possibly after Christmas.

Glad carthage goes, or will go.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

Dearest Fido,

9 July 1960

Well, I worked like a dog to get as much as possible done before
Mrs Wohlenberg left, and worked like a dog to try to break in
Mrs Dingle since she began to work. She is very good, and once
she gets the hang of things the chores will go easily. At the
moment I am afraid chiefly of trying to give too many directions
all at once.

The Fourth was pleasant, although as always a clan becomes a little
overwhelming before a three-day holiday is finished. We had the
group--it turned out to be forty--for supper Saturday night, and
so fortunately had that out of the way at the beginning.

I spent a good deal of the weekend lying on the couch hammock and
reading the two volumes of James Fenimore Cooper's letters, which
I had promised the American Historical review I would review for
them. Finally on Wednesday I got the review off, only two days late--
which is something of a record for me. Now one more review, one
article on the Mark Twain House for a mid-western magazine, and one
Voice of America talk on Stein, Pound, and some others to be broadcasted
to Europe. At least it pays a little. The others do not.

Thursday when my secretary took the day off to see a daughter graduate
from something or other I took the chance to drive to Gardner to see my
mother. I had not been able to go up after Hilda's arrival, taking
each robbery of time as a moment to see her in New York. My mother is
better, her face fuller, and she even takes a few steps, writes a
little with a pen but not understandably, and pays visits to others in
the hospital in her wheelchair. But her mind is as clouded as ever, and
instead of feeling happier at her recovery I must be frank to say I feel
depressed. This can go on indefinitely for her, several years at the
least, for she is of course beautifully cared for and not at all exerting
herself in terms of a possible strain. The result is I guess we must find
a nursing home for her, and this is a sad thought--for they are generally
speaking so incredibly depressing. There are a number in Gardner, but of
a tawdriness not to be believed. There is one near Worcester, I am told
which is quite nice, and if there is a vacancy there I suppose it will do.
But I am sure she will be unhappy. But the present cost is twelve thousand
a year without counting extras or doctors expenses etc. Anyhow I feel a
little depressed by the whole thing.

You were wonderful to write so faithfully during your trip. I envied it
all but the sitting in the harbor at St Mary's. If I were really to visit
there, I think I should prefer the hotel and taking the society in stride.
I adored the clipping about the return of the Henry Dundas. There is
something fundamental about this, no nonsense about any "Quest"--just a
good sailing and pulling lifeboat now owned by a man "who occasionally
hires the craft out on charter." I'm not sure the sale of RUAN will be
large on the islands. But I really am glad you made the trip. It is all
grist for your next Beowulf. I do hope you can get to those, even if you
feel they must be tucked away for the moment.

NORMAN

HOLMES

PEARSON

231 HGS

YALE UNIVERSITY

NEW HAVEN • CONN

Saw that an American tanker had blown up in the Milford Haven. Was relieved that you were not there.

Several envelopes of letters came in from London. Of course the mails are good now, with all the summer boats on. I was not sure what the copy of *Pass Friend* was that Mrs Walden was sending you. This is just curiosity. Poor Alberto! I am afraid his morale has gone for the moment, but I think it will pick up again soon. This will probably disillusion him for Portugal, but I doubt that he will ever get to Brazil permanently. Maggs sent the Kingston, AFAR IN THE FOREST and the Ballantyne, CHARLIE TO THE RESCUE, both excellent additions to the juvenile collection. I shall note the proper place for the book your father owned, when Maggs sends it over. I have ordered three or four more Ballantyne, Fenns, and even a Henty from Brimmel. I think you will be pleased when you come for your tour of inspection.

New York and New Haven can be so grimly muggy in August, that it seems almost better for you to come in October. And one might as well be practical, even if you do come primarily--as I hope--to see me and catch up on things, and to be here at the time of *Ruan*. Any chance of Helen flipping over at that time for a week? I am glad she felt somewhat assured by Gerald Gros's visit. I think he is a good man. We can go into all this later; obviously Kurt and Hee can not seriously hope to run a business of this sort from such a distance as Switzerland is from New York. I feel they thought they could.

Spinks sent the little ivory seal over by airmail, which was nice. It arrived the day after the letter announcing it. It is a charming piece of carving, hard to tell how old but perhaps as much as 75 years, that is end of the 19th century. It is Alaskan obviously (from the inlaid eyes) and west coast certainly from the Japanese influence shown in its design as a sash pull, with the three holes from which the string comes. I am delighted with it, a man with a real sense of art and nature conceived it. I wood with obvious delight and gratitude!

Will be interested to know what Odle's reaction will be to Horace and the papers. A new book out on D.R. published by the University of Michigan. I have ordered a copy to see what it is like. I think done only from the books, which is all right too.

Should be over the lump soon, and back in stride
just as you return to your typewriter,
All love,
Zorwan

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS
YALE UNIVERSITY
NEW HAVEN, CONN

13 July 1960

Dearest Fido,

"These are times that try man's soul," Tom Paine before
the Revolution, but actually he was thinking of some elevating stirring
of the spirit. It ain't so now! A friend of mine who is an ex Colonel
in the Air Force told me yesterday that he had never expected to live to
be embarrassed by being an American. It seems to me I know no one now
who is not offended by Eisenhower. The United States Government seems
like a psychotic personality; it isn't even a case of right or wrong any
more, just of incredible confusion and maladroitness. No matter what
happens, things are done badly. I don't know what _should_ be done, mind
you. I don't know what I would do, for example, in the case of Cuba, where
Eastro can exist only by means of enemy, and with Batista gone of course it
is U.S. But after paying _no_ attention to Middle and South America for a decade,
as the government has ever since the War, and then suddenly to say after Cuba
we will pay you, to other states, this is stupidity. I don't know what is
happening when one knows that Russia can say to hell with the Monroe Doctrine
and obviously get away with it. When Russia can interfere by advise on the
American elections, (so that at one time I thought this would be sure to elect
Nixon, and now have the Republicans pull so many boofoos that the Democrats
are bound to win (probably should win) and many parts of the world will call
this a victory for Russia. What government except ours could have planned
a trip to Japan under present circumstances and included a trip to Formosa
as a next-door slap at China. One should have known the risks to prestige;
the risks to the body are unimportant. Now this Bering Sea incident. I'm sure
no intention was had of flying over Russian territory, _but_ considering the
moment of history...no wonder the British are furious. I think one can say
flatly that never in American history has the country's prestige been so low,
and that never in history ought it to have been higher. Meanwhile Eisenhower's
press staff put out gay dispatches of how he spent ten days of golf in Hawaii
and looked so wonderfully brown (probably it was a good idea to let the japanese
incident cool off, but why advertise the golf?). On Sunday the dispatch said he
went to chapel and then left church immediately for the golf course. For Christ's
sake couldn't he go home for lunch first! They speak of his one month's vacation
at Newport rather than the Summer White House, as earlier presidents referred to
their vacations. I am fed to the teeth.

I'm not very sure that Kennedy, who is certain to be nominated to office
as the Democratic candidate has ever made very clear stands on anything. But at
least he seems to have a well-oiled political machinery which works together. That
is much more than can be said for the Republicans, even if I am classed as such.
In any event Nixon can certainly not clear himself of the lousy timber now on
that side, so we'd better take a chance on going to school all over again--very
slowly this time.

Flip over to Europe for a week by jet? I couldn't look a European in
the eye, even a custom's official!

Three nice letters in from you since my last, and the two copies of
Nadejine's book. Sorry you had such bad luck with the Picasso show, which might
have been interesting from the Artemis point of view. I myself am going to an

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

Art Nouveau show next week in New York, if I go down for a meeting at the Advertising Council, as I'm supposed to do. It's more my period at the moment, a good past to bury myself in.

I imagine Hilda will be pleased that you got at her books in London storage. Send over whatever she likes; they could be stored for her on this side in case she ever wants them for a flat in the States.

What is your Spinks lion? I don't remember your speaking of it. He sounds wonderful. I will try to cope with Odle re Horace. And write her at the end of the week. I am trying to do the *American Studies Newsletter*, now overdue for two years. The sweat rolls down my face meanwhile, which does not help. So far I have not been able to put my nose inside the yale library.

BUT OF COURSE YOU **MUST** DO A BEOWULF for that series.

Will try to see if anything can be done about the Hendersons' Violet Hunt things. This may be difficult until one can actually look at the scrapbooks. I will see if I can get them to give me somewhat more information. Presumably Maggs could put a price on them.

Delighted that Hilda seemed to have liked her trip. Poor dear, I am not surprised the food seems a little dull to her after the Stanhope.

I must run now and fetch the Hansens to the shore for a farewell visit. The Ingholms will be coming down too, and can perhaps drive the others home after dinner. He seems to have quite recovered himself for the moment at least, and has the awareness of what can happen. This may be a good danger signal to him in the future. He is well along on the first draft of his dissertation, and still hopes to have it finished in time for his degree a year from this June. I am sorry that he didn't actually finish it before leaving, but this is not surprising. The difficult thing is that he has had to borrow a year's salary in advance (about 1,500 dollars I believe) and will be hard put to repay it in Denmark (where he borrowed it from the banks) now that he must work on the dissertation still and not to do extra jobs of teaching and writing. However he has made a great deal out of these two years in the States, and if he can stand the strain should have pulled himself up several notches in life. If I had to choose on terms of human beings I should take Elsa. She has been a wonder to take so much in her stride. I think she will be very happy to return to Denmark and her friends there. Their baby Susan apparently has thrived on this side, because of the good baby food.

Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

25 July 1960

Dearest Fido,

So many things have piled up day by day that I find it almost
as impossible to know where to begin, as I found it impossible to discover
a free moment in which to write. You must be angry with me, but your kindness
will win out (I hope as always).

Probably, as often, I had better start with the oddments at hand,
and get on to chit-chat as time today and tomorrow will allow. My new secretary
leaves for a month's vacation at the end of this week. I try desperately to get
as much done as possible. She is good, but slow in finding her way around. I find
too that she diddles a little between letters, and dawdles sometimes too. I do
long for the old days with Mrs Wohlenberg. They would have been impossible to
continue however, for this morning she came in tell me that she is being remarried
on August 10th. A very nice fifty-year old bachelor who is associate dean of
engineering. (Her last husband was dean). They are hard to break in at fifty, but
I daresay she will be successful.

I have been thinking of you, and with you, so to speak, even when
silent, for the galley proof on *Ruan* was read by me and has now gone back to
Holsaert in New York. He called to say that Helen's proof had also arrived, and
that the sheets were now back at the printers. It took several days but I did
manage to find a few changes that even I thought better not left. Normally I
loathe reading galleys, but this time I was glad of the chance to read *Ruan* again,
word by word. It is one of your absolute bests, written from very close to the
heart, and as it appears now it seems effortless. That is the test of good writing.
Yes, *Ruan* is a beautiful book, and no lollypop by anyone's definition. I have sent
along the original typescript to Collins as you asked to have done. This does not
bear a correction of any kind, except in the foreword. This latter they can restore
easily, since the corrections were obviously made. I enclose a copy of my covering
letter to Collins. I will send another copy to Helen when I write her later in the
week.

Horace has written again about the Dorothy Richardson book, as in this
copy of his letter to me. Your letter having meanwhile come about your conversation
with R. Odle, I decided the only way to keep matters cooking for Horace was for me
to write Edel directly, saying that the possibility of Horace's doing a book had
come up, that R.O. did not want to do anything against Edel's wishes but did hope
for a book, and that I had had a hunch that he (Edel) had really wanted to get out
of the book but had not wanted to hurt her feelings. I called New York University
to get his address, found he was on Cape Cod, and wrote there. No answer as yet.
Meanwhile Horace called Saturday morning by phone, and talked and talked about how
much he wanted to do it, how well he would do it, etc. He was mysterious about his
publisher, but said the publisher would give advances if I could get money for a
year off from sarah Lawrence. The latter situation interests and troubles me. Horace
is 63 (he says) and at 65 (66 by his birthday) can retire with some pension. His
leg bothers him, he says, and he almost never gets out anywhere. If only he can get
this year for the Richardson book he will only have actually to teach two years at
Sarah Lawrence, since they do not penalize for absences if they have to pay him
nothing. He is trying to establish his reputation so that when he retires he can
keep getting jobs like the Richardson. He has devised the knack for doing this,
somewhere between the Whistler and Lowell as exemplars. Of course I could only
say I had not yet heard from Edel. But I hope it works out. Today I had a letter
from R.O., quite definitely wanting Gregory. We shall say. I think it will work out.

2
NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON
231 HGS
YALE UNIVERSITY
NEW HAVEN · CONN

Much interested in Lorna's accounts of Robert.

The Hansons finally departed last Wednesday morning from New York. Elsa was deeply touched by your farewell gift to her. She looks forward immensely to seeing her own friends for a change, and of course showing little Susan to them. We tried to give a few things, and in the course of the year I had given Eric a good many of my duplicate books in American literature. Of the standard texts one gets sent a good many copies by one publisher or another. I try to distribute these where they will do the most good. He seemed to hold out psychiatrically pretty well, although I had a long talk with him about this and his reaction to pressures, just before he left. He tried to get me to confirm that I really believed in the voices he had heard and the accusations he felt. I would not, but said he ought to consult a psychiatrist once he had his dissertation finished and his debts paid off. One might say he should not delay, but he had to borrow between one thousand and fifteen hundred dollars in Denmark for the two years, Elsa not having been able to work as planned. This is the equivalent of a year's salary as teacher. You will howl, but better I think to get on his own feet, for her sake at least.

So sorry to hear about the Margery Lewis troubles. It will be difficult for her and S.L.

Most interesting card from you and Elsie, as from Aventicum. I long to see it some day.

Thought I would never see anything again, a week ago last Friday, when after waiting obediently at the cross section for the Walk signal to flash for pedestrians, I stepped out only to hear the squeek of bicycle tires, and gasps from the sidewalk as a burly graduate student (one presumes) had tried to sneak past the lights and came hurtling around the corner not seeing me for pedestrians waiting to walk in another direction. I turned to look and he was coming straight towards me. I was lucky. For once I did the right thing, perhaps remembering bull fights. I reached out my left arm and seized the handle bars like the horn of a bull and turned the wheel from me. With my right arm stiffly in front I hit him also to deflect the machine. My left arm was like iron and I held the machine up and from me so that it ended alongside me as one steps back after a veronica with a bull. My arm is still black and blue, or rather yellow-brown from the bruise, but I was not cut nor knocked over. The man was humble with apologies that it was not my fault but entirely his. I agreed. So did the audience. We separated and went out ways, mine to discuss a 250,000 dollar art project with Ford Foundation money which an Art Institute (not Yale) doesn't seem to know how to spend. But I had not felt my heart pound quite so hard, for a long time, as when I walked on down the street.

I don't think we came to any firm decision about how to spend the money. He was only asking questions and paying for the lunch.

I was glad my anguished letter reached you. I got to the post box to mail it and found that it had slipped out of my pocket. Some good soul must have picked it up and done my job for me. I was afraid that some p.a. instinct on my part had caused me deliberately to lose it. Probably it's excessive on my part, and linked with a sort of fatigue from which I am just now beginning to recover. But it reached a stage what made me go back to the doctors and have ulcer tests done all over again. Fortunately everything is fine, including thyroid.

3

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

26 July

This being Tuesday morning I can start again, at least until David Horne returns with the 45 typed pages of copy I have written for the *Yale American Study Newsletter*, which we send to alumni of the program and to interested etceteras. It is supposed to come out yearly, but I never was able to get it out last year so this is a double number. In order to save time, although the money comes out of my own pocket, I hired Horne (now working for the Yale Press) to edit it for me. It takes too much of my too little time for me to be sure that I have been consistent with capitalizations and the like. And I am sure that I should be unclear in some of my explanations without the help of his eye to question. (I might add that writing and rewriting these 45 pages has taken some of my time lately, especially as I want it out of the way before my new secretary leaves for her month's holiday on August 1st. The other big task to be completed is my annual report to the university president, and the lists of books I want on the library reserve shelves for my courses next year. These should have been at the library in June so that the library staff could take their holidays.)

The best item in this morning's mail (there naturally having been no letters from you for several days, as a result of my own silence) was the enclosed letter from Leon Edel. For once everything will work out all right. Now the question is the money for Horace and how much. There is thirteen thousand in the savings account with no demands expected to be made on it. I will try to work out what is necessary and let you know. However I can't really imagine he intends to duck out of Sarah Lawrence's next year schedule at this late date. He must have them eating out of his hand if he is able to take his year off at this late date, without waiting for the fall of 1961. Anyhow, I am glad it is working out. This will be important for Horace, and for Dorothy Richardson. And of course for Rose Odle as well. I know how she must feel, just as I know how Leon must have felt on the other side. The situation is much the same as my own with Mrs John Gould Fletcher. Edel is a very fine person; I am sure I am right in thinking that he did not have the heart to hurt R.O. when she had her heart set on his doing the biography. As for myself I am glad again to have had the chance to be a middle-man or entrepreneur in another of your important good deeds. I think we make a good pair. And, naturally, I hope you think so too.

There seems to be a call for a good deal of entrepreneurial work just now. Last Thursday the New York Times called me in the evening, when we had guests for dinner, to say that my chief student both as undergraduate and graduate, now a Professor of American Literature at Duke University, had thrown himself out of the twelfth story of the Durham hotel and committed suicide early that morning. He had already at 40 had one of the brilliant careers, had just been given a six thousand dollar fellowship by the American Council of Learned Societies (which I helped him to get) so that he could have next year off to write a book on the Spanish Civil War. But about a month ago he had written me to ask if I could get him another professorship for the fall of 1962, since he was in love with a student and was going to marry her a year from this coming August after she returned from a year abroad. He and his own wife had agreed to separate as of December--it was always a rough a tumble marriage-- and she was to have come north this summer but not

5

NORMAN

HOLMES

PEARSON

231 HGS

YALE UNIVERSITY

NEW HAVEN • CONN

At that point there were the usual interruptions--Horne with the copy of my *Newsletter* so marked up that I had to go through it again with tooth and comb; then the visit of a young man who came to talk about Fenton, this fellow having been a protege of Fenton's--so that I felt like talking to a grandchild. Then just after lunch (with Prouty) there came a summer student from the program in American Studies for high school teachers, to talk about Jack London. Also a graduate student doing his dissertation under my direction on Thornton Wilder. I am supposed to read his chapter by tomorrow. Can I? I have two other long papers also to read by then, or somehow someday.

A nice note in today's mail from lady Vyyvyyan asking me to send her ms back airmail. I hope she does manage to get it published.

Several parcels from you of books etc., but I have not had time to absorb them, except for the catalogue of Sylvia's show in London, for which I am deeply grateful. I should think she must be thankful too, or will be. Nothing could do more to raise the market value of her private non-Joycean collection than these shows in Paris and London. No wonder she was disappointed not to have it put on in New York and elsewhere on this side. Her book seems to have gone well in London too, and the publishers must have been grateful to the government for advertising it so well. Will Sylvia be over in the fall when you come?

To get back to your letters for a bit. It would be rather fun, historically, for Anne Lindberg to take Kenwin, but I should not advise letting it with Elsie. It would be fatal. Did I tell you that Mrs Van Johnson (the movie star who looked at Kenwin) has recently got a divorce? So now we know why she lost interest. I was glad Helen was interested in Hilda's prose. My next publication of hers will hopefully be the *Helen* volume for her 75th birthday, but Rosset is difficult to get to commit to anything. Among prose I suppose *The Gift* ought to come next. Perhaps she would be interested in the Pound, as going with the Freud.

What fun to go to Hamburg. It is said to be an absolute Sodom, but not presumably in reference to ancestors.

You might like Huckleberry Finn. It is definitely an adult's book, I think. I do have an absolutely wonderful book for you for your birthday. At least I thought it was wonderful. I can hardly wait to send it to you, but fear that I can find nothing else for the day, and what will poor Fido do then, poor thing! It is not great art but it is great fun, very skillful, and next door to our cup of blubber.

Thank you for taking care of the Clodd. What a bore he is! He writes me now that Hilda has left everything up to me, vis-a-vis manuscripts. I am glad she signed *Hymen*, though we will probably see it in a book catalogue before long, as so many of Edith's young friends do with the books she has signed for them. No she did not write Russell twice. It is simply the old ground being gone over and over again.

Will see what I can do about the Peace of Amiens. But doubt that we have anybody who knows the period. There will be nothing directly, I daresay.

Your Spinks lion sounds wonderwoofy. I long to see it or a photo of it. Why? Because, for some reason or other, you seem to have an instinct for this sort of thing. I remember how your eye caught the Boddha at Spinks. It is the best thing

6

I have. The next best things are also the fruit of your eye. How do you do it?

Have sent the Nadejine off to John and Perdita for their looking at. Then I
can discuss with them the next best-step. This can be one of our agenda in
October when you come.

The days are really a little dreary, since I cannot seem to get across the
street to the library, and yet simply must go. Alas, the new secretary takes
a long time to break in, and does not manage to get as much done as when Mrs W
was here.

Another blow came when a letter from Texas actually confirmed at last that
the University of Texas, at Austin, had the William Wetmore Story papers that you
and I looked for twice in Italy, once in Rome when I went to the Keats-Sheeley House,
and again in Florence when I saw the Marquessa di Medici. This means I will somehow
have to go to Austin for ten days, but do not see how I can do it until fall or
winter.

I just begin my second three-year term as Chairman, but have announced that
at its completion I am already applying for a sabbatical year (This means half pay)
followed immediately by a second year without pay. The request for two succeeding
years under any circumstance is considered blasphemous. Why we would have to go to
the Trustee, the Provost said when I told him. Okay let's go, I replied. The
chairman of the English department said, but surely you don't want two years off in
succession! Oh, don't I, I said. And I must have them if anything is ever to be
done. I'll manage the second year somehow.

How will you ever manage to have gotten through this boring screed!

A'll love as always,

Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

27 July 1960

Dearest Fido,

This is chiefly a series of acknowledgements of goodies

received from you in yesterday's and today's mail. I liked them much
more than the proofs of Fenton's book which also arrived, or the text
of this number of the *Newsletter* which is coming back to me hourly from
the secretary.

I am of course delighted with *Vera* and shall live like a
beatnik in Poppyland.

"This is just the night to meet 'Old Shuck,'" was Sylvia's
greeting. "I've quite made up my mind to see him, if he
is to be seen, and I shall not go home---"

Well that's just the way I feel myself, only tonight we are scheduled to
go to Stratford to see *The Tempest*, so I suppose it's Old Shuckspeare I'm
likely to meet.

Your father's prize book, *The World Before the Deluge* is also
a prize addition to the collection. And Richardon's *Ralph's Year in Russia*
would have been wonderfully commented on by Nadejine. What a pity he could
not have seen it. There are several people presently working, as Fenton was,
on the Spanish War. So *Britons in Spain*, not likely to be much available in
the States, will be most welcome. Low's *This England* is of course always
history. The two sketch books will be well preserved, as will Nadejine's
scrapbook. Vol IV of Max Muller's *Sacred Books of the East* will be nice for
your sake, as will the *Tibet and Nepal* with its yellow-robed lamas. I should
think the best place for the adaptation of *Don Quixote* would be with the juveniles
collection. Not quite an historical novel, but probably often read as such.

Now I must sit down and assemble my reserve book list for next year,
both for my graduate and my undergraduate seminar.

It is wretchedly muggy outside, and is now sprinkling a little. We do
desperately need rain, and I go to the town house on first coming in from the
shore, to put on the hoses for the gardens; and then slip back before evensong
in order to turn them off. Fortunately there is enough rain in storage. It is
only a matter of shrubbery and lawns.

Also Thank for the second copy of the ms of *Selected Poems by Wilda*. I think I will keep it, since I have the original.

All love,
Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

30 July 1960

Dearest Fido,

What a day! Suddenly early in the morning the rain began, and I got out of bed and put the furniture away from the porch with my eyes half opened. It is still raining in mid-afternoon, although not drenching and blowing small gales as it had been doing. I had planned to drive to Gardner today to see my mother, but a 2 1/2 hour drive each way in blinding rain and winds is tiring so I did not go.

It was just as well I guess. Lizzie, who has been doing well at a job in a bookstore and gift shop, but living nights at the Institute--this is a necessary part of the treatment, as with Joan--called from the country to the Institute this morning (three o'clock) to say the car she was in had broken down. Later she appeared at little Sue's with some engineer (actually about ten this morning) to whom she was engaged, and whose ring (particularly bought for her) she was wearing. I was at the office, and so did not have time to get back to the shore before Lizzie took the man next door to meet Susan. But little Sue had wanted me to call Susan by phone so we could talk before her meeting. Susan was not quite sure of his name, aluwas (or something like that) except that it had originally been something else. Not Jewish, and I should gather probably Polish. His father is in the army. Susan said he was on the whole much better than she had dreaded his being. After the meeting with her mother, the young man (29) was to take her back to the Institute. God knows what will happen. As for me I took a tranquillizer. Under normal situations one might have been glad to have her off one's hands, and sometimes these marriages with several steps socially below are just what American girls and women want since the men look up to them. I have seen that happen. But of course p.a.-wise I can just imagine what must be going on. The case worker, or intermediary with us, was just to start on her vacation today; but she seemed to be back on the job. I suppose I will know more on Monday.

But I hope you do see just why I really have no choice but to sit on a stump during this period of my life. If this had happened when I was abroad, it would have been impossibly difficult for Susan. For the moment I am licked, I guess.

Plams have now been made to put my mother in a nursing home near Worcester. I am told it is an excellent one.

I was absolutely flabbergasted to find quietly tucked away among letters in a yellow envelope the announcement of Faith's death. But you never mentioned this, even when we were talking about Nadejine's manuscript! I cannot be sorry of course because of her ill health. I presume this will complicate matters a little with the Nadejine papers since you will now have to confer with her literary exectors as sharers on behalf of her estate. Should I make an effort, through London book dealers (I think this is not quite Maggs cup of tea) to get a complete set of her books as a memorial to be put in the library. Monty, one presumes will have her papers, correspondence etc.

Thought you might be amused by the enclosed, although perhaps Helen has told you. I should think it would sell well, if given a good translation. I am told, for example, that the French translation of The Leopard is much better than

2

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

the American one.

The ms of Lady Vyvyan's book was sent back by airmail to her, as requested, on Friday, and I have written her today. My new secretary went on holiday as of yesterday. Most of the big jobs were done before she left; now it will take a week at my desk to clear up letters etc., but I hope things will march.

Agnes Latham wrote a very nice review, I thought, of my young colleague's book. By Kernan. He was a student of Prouty.

Sorry Wendy has such bad luck with "Remembering Jenny." You must describe their house for me sometime. Is it not "done" for a husband to work? I notice she gets out after everything, and he is handy about the house, and tries to ease household duties as much as he can and have her slippers out so she can be comfortable while preparing dinner after coming home from work.

Delighted with MrA's postcard of Provence cowboys.

And with Chester Page's extraordinary correspondence card of brocade. Not quite organically suited to the recipient, but I look on him as your parallel to Hilda's Florida Swan.

More and more I think I would like Margery Lewis. I like her relationship to S.L. and the latter's family.

Poor Masefield. I was saddened by his letter, so suddenly formal, so end of the road and an old man now. He was not before. He may of course perk up. One hopes so.

Little Sue and her husband and the two children go back to town tomorrow after their month in the next door house. We rent it for August. They have been great fun, and the little boy has delighted in the water. He swims a little off the docks with water wings, and at the moment is fearless. I think next year when he is three he should be able to swim without life preservers. I had a friend search out a small wooden toy boat in Maine for him; it has been a success! He adores it and takes it to bed with him: a sailing dory with two blue oars and a mooring. All one can buy around here are plastic boats. This is about a foot long and has the feel of the water; it goes splendidly in the waves. The others bob. Who wants a boat to bob!

All love,
Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

2 August 1960

Dearest Fido,

Things become a little criss-crossed in regard to the D.R.
papers, and a letter in today's mail from R.O. says that she is alarmed
because she now hears that Horace's plans are vague. "So if I am not too
late," she says, "don't fix anything in the way of access until we know
that H.G. is definitely prepared to begin now." I enclose a copy of my
answer to her, so that you can keep in touch. I shall say nothing to Horace
for the moment.

"Many, many thanks for clearing the ground with Edel so promptly,"
Horace writes to me on the 28th. "You didn't 'dally' in the least--but knowing
how quickly publishers forfet what they hear, I wanted to be on firm ground before
writing a letter on the Dorothy Richardson book. Edel has really cleared the
way. I've written to him at once so that detail is settled. Now I feel ready to
write seriously to the publisher. I do hope your office is as cool as my attic
in the Palisades; we've expanded the house a bit so that overnight guests can
be made both welcome and comfortable. A good summer (such as this one) has made
my garden and Palisades completely charming. It's a pleasure for me to stay in
my attic and write."

Perhaps I'm a little worried about the relationship with his
publisher being less firm than I had been led to expect. Yet... I think
you will have done D.R. a good turn by making this possible. Gradually the
corners get tidied.

My office by the way is notriosuly the sweatshop of the Graduate
School. My room in the Library is cooler, but it is unlikely I shall be able to
get there this summer.

A busy day so far. Most of the morning went with trying to settle
a Professor amaura, from Japan, who has come to New Haven to study Melville
and also Shakespeare. He talks reasonably good English. I had gotten him a
room and so only had to see to that, take him to the Library to arrange for his
permissions there, and to introduce him to various pertinent curators, then to
the Shakespeare Institute where I had gotten him enrolled, show him where books
could be bought, and then take him to lunch so he could know where and how to
eat. This being out of the way I had to see about a fellowship for the wife of
an Indian student, the wife being tearful (naturally enough) about not being
admitted to the graduate school where her husband was studying in American Studies.
For his sake I took care of that. This being out of the way I had an interview with
a graduate student who had turned in the first part of his dissertation on Thornton
Wilder, which proved to be carelessly written and thought out. This being out of
the way I had to see a friend of Donald Gallup, curator of American literature, who
was nearly in my class at Yale, and I have known. A writer of true confessions who
has now turned to doing a biography of Mary Stuart and the other two Spanish queens,
and who doesn't understand either why he can't get Guggenheim fellowships or why
his eleven and twelve year old good children-crocodiles in Mexico haven't written
in three weeks. That being out of the way I went to the library to finish checking
some Jonathan Edwards manuscripts for some one else. And then that being done I
have written to Ro.O. about D.R., and will write you, and then try to glance at

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

the 200 pages about our Catholic Queens which the true confessor insisted on leaving.

I was delighted to have your letter of the 30th so promptly in the mail this morning. But where, my darling Fido, did you ever get the quaint idea that people get ulcers when they conform too much. You know perfectly well that the person who truly conforms hasn't a pucker in his intestines. It's quite the opposite, the non-conformist who bleeds.

Do tell me more about the Scillonian reaction to Ruan. Has Doris's copy arrived, of bound galleys? But surely you don't really think that what the Scillies are to you, they are to Wendy (for example). And I think not really even for Doris, though you can share her special definition. Most of these people like St Mary's as others like Tunbridge Wells.

The Germany ausflug sounds interesting. Wish you'd go out on prowl and do some sniffing for me.

Yours of the 28th came yesterday. I shall be curious to know what Helen thinks about *The Mystery*. She just might happen to like it.

As tp Horst I have a suspicion in the long run she was rather frightened of us. She can handle her own in a clinic, and perhaps feared we were salon. But she did not really reply after the first Christmas.

There is a sort of intermission vis-a-vis Lizzie. The social worker intermediary is on vacation so there is no one for us to see. Lizzie and the young man did go directly back to the Institute, she was put back on bounds on the second floor and not allowed to speak to the boy even by phone until Monday afternoon. Nor allowed to go to work, which will make her boss furious since he is on vacation so the shop is closed. The boy came to see Susan again yesterday afternoon. She rather likes him. He is Richard Salews, not Polish or Catholic. Is a designer of jet exhausts and has a good enough income to support her, and seems very much devoted. Cannot understand all the restrictions, but says he will support a psychiatrist for her etc., and will go to see the social worker. He graduated from the University of Rochester in music, and then studied with Frank Lloyd Wright, has good manners etc. Well, we can only see. There is no point in having opinions. But it is good that Susan likes him and his seriousness about Lizzie and about her situation.

All love,
Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

3 August 1960

Dearest Fido,

Your TOP SECRET letter of the 31st was in this
morning's mail. But Helen had treated us like the firmly-knit
couple you and I are, and had written me a letter to Goodrich
Street which was forwarded to the shore and reached me last
night when I went home. It was so we would know about the same
time. She was of course a little gentler with me, and said simply
that they had done what they ought to have done long ago, that is:
to resign.

I am deeply sorry, more so perhaps than you will at
first thought conceive, because you have been the one of deepest
intimacy with them in the last few years. But my friendship goes
back to Germany at the beginning of the thirties, I was one of the
sponsors to bring Kurt into the country, I gave them my bed and my
desk and the like for their first apartment in New York, since they
arrived just after Susan and I were married. And then I was an
incorporator of Pantheon, though never a stockholder in it, for want
of money.

Together they built up Pantheon into a very special kind of
publishing house, just as Kurt's whilom Wolffverlag and Pantheonverlag
were special because of his first wife's great wealth. In other words
money was never much of an interest for them. Kyril Schabert has his
own special character, and certainly nothing could have been less like
either Kurt's or Helen's, with the credit all on their side. Unfortunately
the money behind Pantheon all came from Kyril's mother who has gone on
living (with Parkinson's) beyond, one presumes, the time expected, thus
giving Schabert all the less to live on, support his first wife and second,
the children at schools etc. So I doubt that the end, as you put it, was
"sudden and bitter." That is, unless Helen and Kurt honestly believed that
they could keep editorial control of a New York firm from Switzerland on
the basis of one visit a year. If it had been simply a matter of reading
manuscripts there would have been no problem. But it wasn't and couldn't
be, and this is what made me unhappy about the situation from the very
beginning.

As to what we do, or where we go after Ruan let us wait and see.
It would surprise me very much if Helen did not make some tie-in with
another firm, after a decent interval which would probably just about
coincide with the right lapse of time between your publications. If she
does, why then we go along with her, as would be most natural. I say this
chiefly because we have been wonderfully fortunate in having Kurt and Helen
to deal with, in view of the personal relationship we both have with them
and their high respect for the integrity of a text.

I do hope Helen will come over with you. Your friendship will mean
much to her. And I think can mean a lot to Hilda also, eventually.

All love, Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

6 August 1960

Dearest Fido,

I drove to Gardner yesterday in a long day's rain to visit my mother. She seemed in good spirits while I was there, but very subdued. I gather she has not been as well for the last fortnight, and certainly not out of bed during that time. The nurse reported that at least once when being fed breakfast she did not try to open her eyes, and had apparently had another slight stroke. At least her blood pressure had dropped one night from 170 to 100. One doesn't really know. Perhaps the nurse is right in saying that she fears my mother is "simply running out of gas."

Cricket on the Grass has arrived, for which many thanks indeed. We shall take it with us tomorrow. Susan and I were asked to the Berkshires for Wednesday night at Lenox, to hear the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood, the summer festival. Susan has been so anxious for at least a few nights away that it seemed like a good chance to combine the two. So we go tomorrow to Williamstown, Mass, a half hour from Lenox, where there is an excellent hotel so Susan can have her breakfast in bed, and Williams College with a summer theatre, and an unusual art gallery I have never seen. We will go to Lenox on Wednesday, but must drive back early Thursday afternoon for the graduation banquet for the Summer School in American Studies. I shall have to give a papal blessing. I say down with all organizations.

Have been spending time on the proof for Fenton's book. Enough little loose threads to have made it worth while. I have two hundred more pages to go through, but hope by working on Sunday (tomorrow) to be finish it. And hand it in to Horne Monday morning. Yes, he is the one. Now neither scholar nor writer, just editor (but I must say he is an excellent one!)

A letter from Kyrill Schabert as on the 4th. "As you may have heard," he writes, "Kurt and Helen have decided to resign from Pantheon. Our Board of Directors accepted their resignation with great regret. I do not have to tell you that this creates a gap that cannot be bridged so easily but you have my assurance that I will do everything in my power to preserve the confidence which you have placed in Pantheon." I wrote two lines of condolence and sympathy for this hour of separation from "loved ones."

Tomorrow afternoon I believe Susan and I are to go to see Lizzie and her young man, so that I can meet him and we can "discuss" (the word is Lizzie's) their plans. Actually of course we can discuss nothing, since the Institute's reaction must be learned by us first, and the social worker has been on vacation. Of course Lizzie committed herself, and by three weeks notice can always reverse this. Perhaps she will. I rather

h

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

hope not. She called her grandmother yesterday to tell her (we had said to wait), but told her grandmother to keep it a secret. This noon at Mory's, the undergraduate and alumni university club, a young man came up to say how happy he was about her engagement. The secret seems a little of an overstatement. However Susan really does like him and his appearance, so do Sue and Jim. He is a rotestant, whatever that means, so at least there's no mixed marriage involved. As for children, well, "ought" is not the same as "will be."

Now to more pleasant matters, although possibly Lizzie's affair will seem fine in the end.

You poor unfortunate thing. I do loathe this about Woolford, and grieve for you. She has indeed been a faithful ally.

No there never was a letter about Faith, at least which reached here. But quite possibly it happened while you were on the boat, which is no time for a correspondent to be wholly complete in her reporting.

I didn't really mean to chivvy Archie Aldridge. At least if I di, I see I shouldn't have.

What a first-rate letter by Urzidil about Germany. I go along with him, but being less involved would probably poke my nose here and there with some interest. But you notice I have never suggested that you and I should go there.

I'm not sure how much will be needed for Horace's year. There is plenty of time, and money enough. I am like yourself amazed about the whole year off from sarah Lawrence. Something impels him even beyond his health, I think. And it may well be that he feels out of sympathy with modern youth, hence they with him. I have been astonished recently to hear him and his poems and translations bitterly attacked by the younger generation of poets and teachers--I mean the early 30's in age. These of course are the heroes, or mold the heroes for the students. Horace always prided himself so much on his contacts with students and the young that it would hurt. I was surprised to find one of his poems in that magazine Hilda contributed to at Mr A's suggestion. A little off beat for the old Gregory, unless he had a reason like hers for sending in. However I do not at all think we are wrong in helping him or D.R. in this way. And a good book of discovery will be a fine flower to wear behind his ear!

All love,
your
Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

14 August 1960

Dearest Fido,

We got back from the hills on Thursday night just in time to
dress and return to town for the American Studies Summer School banquet,
and for a stream of appointments on Friday including a couple of hours at
the Institure re Lizzie, and the dinner (br dal dinner) we gave that night
with other aunts and uncles for a niece's wedding on Saturday. So I am back
in town this Sunday to write you and work at my desk, for later this afternoon
we have Lizzie's fiancé coming for a visit after he sees her. I am getting a
little ulcerous, I fear.

So there are many ways to begin the letter, chiefly however not
that there is so much to say as that I do want to send my love before your
U-2 visit over Germany with Elsie. You ask what I wanted to know, and this
is reasonable enough. But I don't know. It is just curiosity, I guess. As to
how humid the political air is, what the shop windows look like, what vices
and what virtues are growing wild in the fields and up through cracks on the
sidewalks. Elsie will see it with good Swiss eyes.

Thought you might be interested and (b) amused by the enclosed
clippings. The headline for Vikings reminds me of our trip. But the idea of
such a route is wonderfully funny. Why don't they go directly and dig if
they know where to point toward. It reminds me of my great failure as a Boy
Scout, when I was taking my second class tests. We were to be tested on our
ability to track through the snow: I suppose the supposition was that we would
be after Indians or wolves. In fact it was the scoutmaster who set off to
lay the trail. I started out after the proper interval, looked at the terrain,
saw the only possible exits, cut across and headed him off so that I was
waiting (with imaginary gun uplifted) when he appeared exhausted from the
woods. My argument was that an able woodsman outsmarted the enemy; his was
that cricket in the snow followed certain rules of sportsmanship or no
Waterloos would ever be won. It was clash of ideologies. I never did quite
make my second class badge. I regret it now of course; one has a certain lack
of confidence.

Several packages of yellowbacks have come in, I have read with interest
betweenwhiles. Poor Urzidil. He is standing up to all this difficulty with his
wife's eyes very well...... Poor Melitta. I was surprised, and wondered a little if
Hilda's visit had not somehow made her uneasy--that is, for the past, for the chance
of belonging. She does not of course belong, and like many people must have a certain
constant sense of power and tribute. I think the failure to get grants falls in
this category. I am sure she would not get them in England. Maybe she would. Heydt
too unnerved her; she wanted him badly. I said her visits with Hilda unnerved her;
I could equally say that they gave her something wonderful which she now misses more
than ever. When Hilda goes back, Melitta will be happier...... Rose Odle wrote a
nice letter and appeared to be happy with the arrangements. Apparently Edel could
not have written more charmingly to her. He has excellent manners always..... Perdita
and John have Nadejine's manuscript now and are busy reading it.

3

me to commit her for thirty days and then go to court and have her legally
committed permanently, but not only could I not comment without seeing
Susan but I am not very keen about it. It would mean the end of any relationship
I could have with her, and I am not sure it would be successful if the young man
wished to contest it on Lizzie's part. Susan saw them afterwards; they had
meanwhile had a staff meeting and decided that the Institute would commit her
on their own tomorrow. The second step of course they cannot take. I am not
sure but that they are acting rather academically about the whole thing, but
the incident of the money disheartens us, if only they had kept to the earlier
timetable they mentioned! Although the engagement has not been announced
formally, everyone seems to know about it, and I am congratulated. And you can
imagine that the wedding on Saturday was not the happiest way for Susan and me
to spend the day.

It will turn out all right one way or the other. It is simply somewhat
confusing at the moment. And all this, with my mother and Lizzie, will make
you see why I have not felt that a trip abroad was quite indicated at this time.

to ask if he could come to see me Friday afternoon. He "wants to see me." I
wonder what he is after. This morning's New York Times reported the death of
his father. I doubt he came into any inheritance. We shall see NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON
231 HGS
YALE UNIVERSITY
NEW HAVEN • CONN

231 HGS

22 August 1960

Dearest Fido,

I send this to Munich--and a carbon of it to Kusnacht in case

of some mishap. Not of course that there is much of importance to write abput,
especially when I ought to be sitting at my desk and my typewriter doing the
review of a book on Cummings which is the reason for the white line at the
beginning of this paragraph. I procrastinate. The heat is intolerable. I
wish I were at my old place on the corner of the Königentasse and the
Maria Josefastrasse, by the English Gardens, just off the Nikolalplatz in
Schwabing, or at my house in the Isartal. Alas, I have not only this
review to do; but a half-hour's broadcast to write for the Voice of America
on poetry; and an article for a mid-western magazine on Mark Twain's House in
Hartford. Plus a five-book review on Pound for the Saturday Review. Pray for
me now in and the hours of my need.

Am eager to see the later notes for Artemis. I agree that it is a
good plan to get the notes in shape, no matter how you may later decide to
divide the book. And as you say it leaves one free. So much might work into
a Beowulf series which I always hope you will write. Perhaps once the Mediterranean
book is done, you will want to shift back for a bit to the modern.

I lick my chops at the idea of your doing the Germany trip, and the
names of your hotels rolls off the tongue like honey. I hope it will taste that
way. I do not actually remember whether or not I knew the Contiannale in Munich.
I was not much of a hotel man there.

You say that Anne Lindberg is "more" your "type." But you have never
said anything about your tea with her except that it was going to take place. I
thought also she was going to take tea with Hilda, but she has said nothing either.
You must write when you get back to a typewriter.

Your letters of the 18th and 19th came in reverse order, so I thought from
the account of your interviwer that he was the one who was coming via Mr A for Hilda.
He sounds incredible.

I recommend tranquillizer whenever your stomach heaves at Hilda's plans.
The dangers are of course there, but let her try them all the same. It does not mean
that you ought to go along. In fact I rather think the opposite is indicated; and
I wonder if it wouldn't be better for you to make your New York trip alone. Or have
a fortnight here on your own, overlap her by a week perhaps and then you go on back
to your writing or to whatever travels you may want to do.

The Byrd clippin was quite extraordinary. One really doesn't know.

I don't think I thanked you for the very charming little ivory whale from
the Spinks Straits. He has a most engaging grin, and is again obviously west coast
and done with the holes put through so that it becomes the end of a sash string about
the waist. I am delighted with it. I think you will be too when you come.

Sent off a few books to you this morning. By air, which was spendthrift
but I could not have had the 2nd come without nothing. Stupidly sent Hilda's by
surface however. I hope they will arrive by the 10th.

All seems quiet as at the Institute, although anything may happen at any
moment. However one always hopes for the best, and in this case it is time and
consideration. I must run down to the hospital however for a visit to Malcolm Cowley.
In for a prostate operation, and recovering nocely. Tomorrow night we have to entertain
overnight the widow of a friend of mine, Eric Knight, an author killed in the war.
A Yorkshireman who had come to this county. This afternoon Stephen Guest called

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

23 August 1960

Dearest Fido,

It seems a pity to have nothing but a carbon copy of
a letter waiting for you at your birthday. Perhaps I can have a
little pile waiting at your feet when you come. Then you can blow
them out as though they were candles on your cake.

At least I have finished the little review of the book
on Cummings, and although it is not a very good review I send a carbon
along to you by separate post, for your amusement. But how can I say
for your amusement except for your smile in knowing how much it could
and ought to have been. I find it a little hard to be sprightly these
days and in this weather.

With it goes a letter from Butor. I sent his little daughter
a baby spoon. I have asked him for his address, since he will be in
Paris. I think you might like to meet him on one of your visits there.

The biannual royalty report from Pantheon came in, with a
check for $704.28, which I shall deposit to the account, less $11.44
which was for Hilda's *Freud*. The report runs more or less like this,
although I can show you the whole thing in October when you come over.
Hilda's *Freud* sold 12 copies, less one return. As for yours:

```
PLAYER'S BOY      65 copies, plus 50% of British royalties (5.24)   62.23
ROMAN WALL       225      , plus " " (3.56)                      194.95
Gandharan Art     32 copies, less several returns                   187.70
OCTOBER          113      , plus 50% British (7.22)                 104.34
BEOWULF          74       (no English edition of course)             64.95
GATE TO THE SEA   96 copies, plus 50% British ($43.94)               78.67
```

Two things struck me: one is how *Roman Wall* has stood up in terms of
sales, and that *Player's Boy* compares very favorably with the others;
secondly, is how unbelievably low the British sales by Collins must be,
to judge from the royalties!

The situation with the Institute is now unnerving. Apparently
they told Mrs Bennett that they could commit Lizzie permanently once the
30-day ban is up if they put it on again. The lawyers say this is true, but
say we should hire independent psychiatrists to make examination and testify
in court. Poor Susan is in constant tears, completely discouraged, and angry
at the Institute who at the moment are indeed playing very aloof and stern
and superior. They do seem a little insistent on trying to crush out of Lizzie
any hope of ever achieving what she thinks she wants, and I think they may
be wrong in her case in insisting that she find an intellectual solution for
the problem. The associate head tells me this is her sickness, because she
can't. I tell him there are several kinds of people who find their answers
in several kinds of way. I nibble at tranquilizers(but not so constantly
that you need worry). It is all puzzling and confused.

Tomorrow I start on my Mark Twain article. I hope it will spin
along the road.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

29 August 1960

Dearest Fido,

Your walross, your Hitzacker, and your Bristol Kempinski
letters have all come. I wish I could return as superb a series for
the 2nd, but you have my complete love as the best I can offer. I only
wish I might have been at Kusnacht with Hilda and yourself to help woof
out the candles on your dogfood.

The Hamburger zoo was always a delight; I remember especially
the penguins which it seemed to me I first realized there. They were like
international diplomats I thought, and unlike airplanes the strut didn't help
solve their problems. Or perhaps they didn't realize they had any. But I
like the walross immensely, and could go into a flap over him or her.

The Hitzacker excursion made the whole trip right to do. I
suspect it is just as well that, this time at least, you didn't see the
only living relative. You were back in just about the proportion that one
can go back, skipping a century. Your glimpse will pleasantly haunt you.
Somehow too--though this may not be right--I am glad that neither Hilda
nor I were there with you. This had to be yours alone. I treasure it now
from your letter, which was from your having given it to me.

So too is your first Berlin impression. All this is just what
I wanted from you. How can I give you anything at all when you give me so
much this way. Your empty landscape beneath you must have made it seem
like the world gone gray. I think your impressions are more trustworthy
than mine would have been. No of course not, there is nothing you are seeing
now in Berlin that you can directly take over into the memoirs perhaps. But
quite unknowingly in corners of your mind you are being freshened.

I would have written you on saturday, but being a good lad I sat
down and wrote at least a first draft of an article on the Mark Twain Memorial
at Hartford, for a midwestern magazine's Mark Twain number. A labor of love on
my part for the Memorial. About 2500 words. I have tidied it up a bit today,
sent off a copy to Hartford to catch any loose threads, and will have it typed
professionally on Thursday when my secretary comes back from her month's vacation.

A nice card came in from Rose Odle, who seems pleased at last. I
hope she remains so. Saturday I had a phone call from Horace. His optimism
about a contract and fat advance royalties was apparently unfounded. Now that
I find his source of hope was a new young editor at Macmillan, I suspect he
overread the cards. But he is full of confidence. One or two houses are out, he
says, because they would want a fat book. His model apparently is what he did for
Whistler and Amy Lowell. I prefer the former book to the latter. But breathe no
word of all this to R.O., for I am sure Horace can find a publisher and will, and
that he will do a good job. He has his heart set on a whopping advance, however,
which I myself do not forsee from anyone for a book on D.R. I will get seriously
down to a discussion with him about finances later. Perhaos I can arrange to lunch
with him alone some day when you are over, so that we can confer later. Something

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

is throbbing away under his fur; I am not quite sure what. Pat is expected back in a few weeks, he said, and will then look for a job. I, like yourself, regard with some horror the fact that it coincides with the return of his sister. It is a little too much Blood of the Volsungs. But maybe it is the modern metamorphosis or making it new of Swann's way.

After a cool but highly workable month it is now, as one might have expected, unbelievably muggy and uncomfortable. But I have only my Voice of America broadcast and a thousand word review of Pound to be written--having realized I cannot hope even to put in a comma on the Italian notebooks this summer. So I am reading a spy story or two at night, as well as an arctic book a night.

All love for your birthday,

Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

man on the street who has heard about it (Lizzie can't understand why we won't announce it in the newspapers, and takes it as being an action of positive ill, much like our refusal to insist on her instant release). I rather lost my temper I think and described the family interest (not hers, for I told her as grandmother she had a right to be involved) as being like that of a group of terriers closing in on trapped rats, that it was no business of theirs what we did, and that if it continued I would mpve the family away (mine, of course). Oh well.... It was pure Fiji Island! You would have been much interested to have seen it, but it left us a little exhausted. Fortunately, yesterday Lizzie was allowed to come down for eight hours, her first leave from the hospital since the hight the stars fell, and the boy was allowed by permission to be there also. The day passed very pleasantly, although I felt a flutter or two of the duodenum in anticipation of what might eventuate. I suppose it is our own uncertainty of what is right or wrong that makes goading of this kind somewhat unbearable. They cannot know or be told the full facts of the case,.... well, well, well, I daresay it will turn out one way or the other. Anyhow I have promised to take Susan somewhere for the spring vacation if we last that long.

Forgive me for getting this out of my system at your expense.

Your German letters were exactly what I wanted. I do thank you for them. I suppose I really ought to see Berlin before it is too late. One feels about it rather as one did about imperial China or Warsaw; that soon it will be impossible. I should think what is most impressive is the sense of sharp division in the world, between the east and west zones--this is a thing very much of the moment. I take it you did not risk the Pergamon things. I think you did well as it was, and Elsie's eyes should have been a great aid.

So sorry about Doris. I suspect the strain on her will be great until she has the operation.

Munich of course I saw when it was still in the debris. It is hard to know how I would feel about it now. I suspect I would think of the past more than I could see the present. Anyhow, assuredly too many tourists in Munich. I think I will take Hitzacker.

The Interview? You are a star performer, a real pro. (I do wish Hilda would see the Express person). I don't know that I approve the phrases the reporter used on his own (like "Macabre splendor") but I approve of every one of your own. I like the declaration of independence from your brother. I like the sense of tribute to your father. And I so heartily approve of your being honest in saying that a talent (in this case your talent) ought not to be wasted. Bless you for wanting to see life for yourself.

That the books pleased you naturally pleased me. How I wish I could have been with you on your day, or with Hilda on hers. But I have done the latter once at least.

The account of Edith is worrying. I do not know what a case of nerves is (to use Sachie's phrase) but I am worried. HOWEVER I do not think you can do anything about it so long as she is in England. And you do need to have your little fling with the boys.

Helenic plan sounds excellent. Or possibly one of the isles just off Turkey. Which do I mean. Susan's sister went there a year ago, a good hotel and some lovely ruins available by car in short drives. The hotel looks at the sea. I must check on this.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

Several packages of yellow in, and I read as always with pleasure, especially some tidbits from the old files you still have. For example the one from Nevil Shute. Very good, I thought. And especially Blumberg's perfectly extraordinary letter about operating during the Blitz. This is a quiet classic. Frederic Heyman's letter about Prague rather surprised me in terms of its tone when he spoke of Prague; but perhaps I just wish to hear that the climate is not healthy for artists. I think he longs for a little (within) to return, which is natural as he grows older. He is a very able man.

Do let me know if Heydt comes over with Dori for a San Francisco visit. I wonder if he will. On the whole I think it was wise of them to give up the idea of the chalet.

I was interested in your re-advertising for Henty material. I have never seen anything offered, even a single letter. It is most odd.

So glad things are going well with Blakeston. You have really saved his life.

And so sorry that Sylvà is getting divorced (so to speak). This is always difficult. Shouldn't you tell her to let me know when she comes to the States? My first thought was that she might be suited to Hilda for two or three weeks in California, especially as this would be a way of heaping Sylvia; but of course let Hilda do her own deciding. I was thinking only in case nothing else worked out. In New York I suspect we can make other arrangements. Of that more later.

Viola Jordan's letters delight me. I feel I know Con and Sue and all of them, and have been revelling in Con's conversion and the picture of her reading Thomas Paine.

A very fine letter by the way from Stephen Lewis, and I was happy to have his picture. He has a certain real dignity, as only a good islander and man of the sea is likely to have.

Oh, I forgot to tell you that Natalie Barney has given the Yale Library, Romaine Brooks' portrait of Carl Van Vechten. I think Van Vechten had thought it was his, for it hung in his home for many years and he had it elaborately framed. Then R.B. asked for it back and apparently gave it to Natalie. She has kept the frame, I guess, and the canvas cracked a little when they rolled it for shipment here. But it will be mended and a frame found I am sure, and anyhow there is a Romaine Brooks item at Yale which is pleasant.

All love to you and to Hilda. I do not quite dare send this to Kenwin and so it will be waiting for you at Kusnacht.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

17 September 1960

Dearest Fido,

Back at the office for a Saturday as I try to pick up my desk after the first few days of interviewing students and new members of the faculty. I can report some headway, but since it is already mid-afternoon you will have to forgive a rather spotty and spastic letter as I twitch from one Fido-link to another on my desk.

A letter from Holsaert tells me that your list of author's copies of *Ruan* has reached him. In going over your list I found only the following omissions which you might want to consider for one reason or another. Let me know and I will add any you might wish to include.

*Heydt*. (I know, but since he is still useful for our Hilda mightn't we look at a copy as an investment; especially since he will be hurt not to have one.)

*Lethbridge*

*Goughs* (altho I don't know their Turkey address.

*Osbert* (especially because Edith will not be chez lui with her copy. And he adores you.)

I have drawn up an American list which I will dictate off tomorrow. You can add to it as you wish: John and Pup; Harold Doolittle; Horace and Marya; I think also a separate copy for Patrick; Mary Herr; the Hodgsons; Viola Jordan; Marianne; Jean Starr; Urzidels; Rosslers; Melitta. Do you wish a copy sent to Hildegarde in California? Oh yes, the Hotsons naturally.

Most grateful thanks for the various books which have been coming in.
To wit: Wolfe's *FROM DEATH TO MORNING*, Story's WILLIAM WETMORE STORY AND HIS FRIENDS; Herring's edition of *The Critic*, which I had not known of before. As I did not either of Lorna Lewis's *THE ANIMAL WORLD*. And the Joan Evans JOHN RUSKIN. Also the Santayana MY HOST THE WORLD. And the pamphlet book on Lawrence and Maurice Magnus, with what I always thought was a most lively work.

But much more important in one sense was the arrival a fortnight ago, or so, of the Bethlehem book from Hilda's London library. Somehow my new secretary misfiled the letter from the London shipping firm, or storage firm, which asked me to let them know if it came safely so that they could begin to send the rest. I can't write them because I don't know to whom or the address. Do you have a record. The book did come safely, although perhaps over-beautfully packed if one thinks of the expense involved.

Another one or two of the yellowbacks have arrived, but nothing in them could compare with the postcard you sent of Hitzacker. I fell in love with it at once. What fun it would be to walk about there for a week or so, just looking into dooryards. However the yellowbacks are always illuminating, and I love Viola's little bout with her son and her reading of Thomas Paine. But poor Edith's situation makes me weep. It is impossibly difficult, and my mind keeps turning to those horrible last years of D.R. in her nursing home. Or of Faith. Still, Edith's story of Paulette Goddard has a touch of the old fire in it. Much amused at Doris on the puffins. She is as bad as I was on the Sands. Any word from Collins as to how they like *Ruan*? I see it arrived safely at the London end.

3

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

YALE UNIVERSITY

NEW HAVEN • CONN

You are very perceptive of course about the large Bennett clan and Lizzie. The hospital has recognized this for a long time, so have we. For even longer. I look on cousins as a group to be seen only very occasionally when young, and providing perhaps two out of twelve as congenial with the rest intended to be despised. This is fine when intercourse is limited to family dinners once every two years. It is impossible where the family is a permanent boarding school. But nothing is to be gained from moving away now. Simply to understand it is better. Oh well! The Institute has begun to relent or change their tactics, and has let her out for the last two Sundays and two Wednesday nights for dinner. undays she spends with us, one dinner with her sister and another with her grandmother. The young man is allowed to be along but we have to drive to and fro. However this is to be relaxed. My feeling was that perhaps it was worth putting them in something like more normal contact and if it is to fall apart this is the way that will do it. Lizzie has never had much to work towards that was substantive. Of abstract goals she is not capable. But of all this we can talk when you get here. For the moment everything seems to be going well.

How sad about Dorothy Richards. I had wondered if you would not like to see them in Boston some visit. But now that you have seen her, once is perhaps for the moment enough.

Pleased that you liked the Greenland book, which contained much more than I hoped for. The *Sonotaw* was simply as a demonstration. One would be interested to read something like this for the eskimaux at Churchill, for example.

The hurricane did a certain amount of damage, but we were very lucky. Susan and I came in town in the morning --I naturally to work, she to get out of the path of the eye. Others stayed, but this seemed to me to be immoral, since it obligates others to rescue one. But after the eye passed we drove back, and found we had to walk the last quarter mile in water up to her hips. Wearing leather shoes I took them off and walked barefoot, praying for there to be no nails. A seawall went, tearing out part of the road and ruining the tennis courts, the bridge across the meadow was down, but we did not lose any trees to speak off and no boats. Now there is chiefly debris to pick up. But we move in town again tomorrow night, after we take Liz and her young man to dinner (or rather are taken to dinner by them).

More excitement at the shore comes from the 83-year old devil who owns the land across the road from us, and is putting in a thirty-foot wide road down. Actually he does not own it outright for there are several part owners among his relatives, all of whom hate him. I am trying behind his back to negotiate for the purchase of one owner's one-quarter interest which I hope will be enough to stimie him until he dies. This owner is in bad health, bot not so bad that she couldn't sell--her lawyer tells me. probably I can't even afford a quarter interest, but I haven't heard anything so far and meanwhile the road advances. It will be a pity to lose the woodland atmosphere.

Had my two-monthly check up with the doctors yesterday, who reported all well. My mother seemed weeker but not unhappy when I saw her on Wednesday. She has the television to watch and this keeps her occupied although her mind stirred up at the same time.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

24 September 1960

Dearest Fido,

Your letter of the 21st was in this morning's mail, and dis-
couraged me at the thought that you might not after all have a chance to
see the boys. How I hope this is not true, both for your sake and because
I am sorry for Elsie. Do you think, perhaps, it can be a little because--
after your wonderful trip together--you are now leaving her? Such a reaction
can be quite involuntary and very real.

This has been, as I warned you, a full week for me. Both
undergraduates and graduate students have been returning and need schedules
made out. Fortunately my new director of undergraduate studies seems to be
taking a good hold of his job and will soon be able to carry it quite on his
own. The new secretary, alas, seems to find it a good bit for her; and the
secretary next door says she has been nearly in tears at the pace. This is
possibly true, but when I am told that the pace was too great also in July,
I wonder what the future will be. Meanwhile I resort to prayer, for she is
excellent and I should not like to lose her.

On Tuesday I went to New York for a meeting of the Round Table
Committee of the Advertising Council of America, and decided to stay on for
the exhibition of first editions and manuscripts on espionage, put on at the
Grolier Club by a long-time acquaintance who is now with CIA. It was mildly
interesting, but most old hat for some one like yourself. I stayed for the
early part of the lecture but had to leave in order to catch the ten o'clock
train back. Between the committee meeting and dinner I called Pup and went
up for a drink and conference. At least I got there, for Second Avenue was
lined with policemen--as many as ten at a single corner--because of the U.N.
I walked back from Pup's to the Yale Club, across from the Grand Central, and
ran into one protest march by pro-Castrotes singing gaily as they marched.
Workmen leaned out from scaffolds and booed, and some Anglo-Saxon woman burst
in front of me in tears, crying to the policemen to send them back to Cuba.
The whole town was in a kind of tenseness, and I felt it especially in the
evening when I taxied up Park Avenue and was stopped while two screeching
and red-lighted motor escorts flew down taking K and Castro somewhere.

Pup and John both looked well, and are both looking forward to
your visit. Yes, somehow I knew I had gone astray about the first night. Fatigue
on my part I guess. Now it is left that you will be met on Saturday or Sunday
as the case may be by the Schaffners at the airport. The boys adore this. Then
I will come down on Monday night, I hope, for a quiet dinner and evening until
ten with you, if you will allow me in your kennel. One weekend they would like
to take you out to the country, and I suggested other weekends (subject to your
plans) could be with us, thus leaving them free to rusticate on their own.
I shall write Stefanson after I have checked Dartmouth football games; it would
easiest if we picked a weekend for Hanover when they had no game there and the
most of the students were gone. If possible I will try to make it the weekend
after you arrive, as there may still be some foliage. I am glad you chose as
you did. Then another weekend, you being willing, we have a football game here.

2

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

I do not really see that you need to go to the Hotsons unless you want to go.

The Ruan copies will be attended to. I feel like a good dog to have remembered the Goyghs and the California cousins.

Incidentally all these unwanted copies of books are excellent to have. They are really meaningful to students, and often of course to myself. But then I am a student.

Just after writing you about the Bethlehem book of Hilda's, the secretary did turn up the letter from Maple & Co she had sent. So I answered, but yesterday I had a second letter from them indicating that you had instructed them to continue. Thanks for saying small bundles. There will be no trouble with the customs this time.

The article on the code clerks was really sent for the sweet archness of their statements. I especially liked the idea of the two of them going to Moscow to find females for mates.

As to the Hanover trip, we can take care of all warm clothes; and for the football game also. So do not bother to bring gear for that. If worse becomes worst I can put you in the sleeping bag, but with your head out so that you can see, and carry you under my arm heading towards the field.

Sorry about Hilda seeming to hang on, but I gather also that she is a little upset because you (naturally enough) want to know fairly precisely what her plans and schedule is for her American trip. Alas, I think we'll just have to go by experience and let her suddenly move. Fortunately we can cope at this end; although I'm sorry your winter calendar can't be clearer. But don't push her in this regard. Make your calendar as on your own, and she can fit it as she wants.

Things seem to go fairly smoothly with Lizzie at the moment, and they want her to find another job and are giving her more free time. She seems a little strained, but this can be a good thing if it means she is coming to grips a bit more. However all this one can go into when you come.

The several yellowbacks have been in. I must say Dorothy Richards has your kind of grit. She is remarkable to get up the hills as she does. But Osbert's handwriting is so much like O'Neill's in the last years of his life, that I could weep from knowing his condition. It is sad for him and sad for Edith, and I think of that damned David sitting over the door and croaking "Nevermore." Shall we tar and feather him when Osbert no longer needs him? Gerald's letters always interest me--so do Cole's but in a different way--and I sometimes wish Gerald would do his reminiscences. If sufficiently detailed they would make an excellent private publication. I do not mean to avoid scandal, but lest it be misunderstood. Later it could become a period piece.

Am trying to get down to writing the Voice of America broadcast, and hope I can begin tomorrow. At the moment I feel like the subject of an absolutely true report of a teacher in a progressive secondary school here who wrote on a boy's report card: "Johnny contributes nicely to the group

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

singing by helpful listening.'' This has delighted me ever since I read it.

So also has the catalogue of The Golden Quill Press, which advertises a book of poems by Paul Scott Mowrer, called *The Mothering Land*: "Pulitzer-Prize-Winner Paul Scott Mowrer writes with an agility and authenticity that only a veteran-foreign-correspondent-turned-poet can boast." But this I have been pondering.

Had I written regularly during the week, as I intended to do, I would have sent you the enclosed clippings in the sequence in which they appeared. My heart leapt up, etc when I read the first, sank a little when I saw the shape of the hulk, and withered when I read the third. Still, it shows that my blood runs livelier when I think of the North. We might talk about the possibility of the Mackenzie for next summer.

A huge cardboard box, weighing nothing, came unsolicited two days ago from Carlsberg, the antiquities dealer in New York, from whom I bought those harpoon heads I wrote you about. I opened it, thought there was nothing but old newspapers--for reasons I can explain later--and then unfolded one which was scotch-taped. It was like a box for the ill. I took it home and unwrapped it there. Altogether there were 41 pieces of Old Bering Sea culture and Panuk culture ivories. They are simply extraordinary, obviously they are a museum's collection and probably part of the Denver Museum group from which I already bought several things. One's mouth waters, for this becomes an important collection in a field where there is so little obtainable. But alas, the price when I added the items up comes to about 1300 dollars. It is cheap compared to Spinks prices, but.... Well anyway I won't send them back until you can see them and have the fun of patting them with your paws.

All love. I hate to send this to Kenwin, but dare not do otherwise than obey today's letter.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

30 September 1960

Dearest Fido,

Maybe it will quiet down; I don't know. Anyhow, Susan
has gone to Swampscott, Mass., until next Wednesday evening for her
national board meeting of the Federated Garden Clubs, and I expect
to spend most of the time until she comes back, at the office. It is
11:30 now, and after writing you I still have six papers to grade
for a girl now handing in last spring term's work. This is un-
gracious on her part, or would be if she had not been having a sort
of nervous breakdown. So I do not feel exactly a free agent of
discipline under the circumstances.

I enjoyed your note from Rome, and envy you your time
with the boys. I shall want to hear all about it when you come. I
do hope I will have managed to leave you just a little free time of
your own, for the publicity girl at Pantheon wrote me asking if you
would possibly be willing to give an interview. She hoped to arrange
one with the NY Times. She did have the courtesy to ask me to ask you;
but I did not. I simply told her that you would. And that you would do
anything of radio or t.v. that came up to help the book. I thought
it might be amusing. Don't growl at me, my darling Fido. It will be
fun. And you did such a superb job for the *Express* that I cannot deprive
my countrymen.

The house expects to have copies of *Ruan* on the 7th, and will
airmail one to you and one to Hilda. I did not suggest holding up the
American copies so that you could inscribe them, for I thought it would be
too much of a nuisance for you, and the book is its own reward. I enclose
a copy of the jacket which I thought you and Hilda might like to have an
advance squint of.

I still swot away at my desk. Fortunately everything seems now
to be in fairish order for the Christmas meeting of the Modern Language
Association, and I have been writing endless letters, sympathetically
typed in my own touch in order to show compassion, explaining why I have
refused applications. And I have been entertaining the usual lot of
visitors from oversees who include Yale as a port of call. My own foreign
students immediately working with me are fewer than usual: two Japs, one
Korean, one Englishman, one Norwegian, and one Italian. No Russians!

All love,
Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

3 October 1960

Dearest Fido,

The merest of notes to answer your letter of the 28th, in this morning's mail. You ask about boots. No, I shouldn't bother to bring any really heavy shoes with you. The extra amount of weight is preposterous. And the Dartmouth trip will not really require this, even if we go on to Gwynn's place. If it seems wise we can buy a pair of really inexpensive sneakers which would not be bad for a half-mile or so. And, as I said before, there are parkas, warm coats and sweaters enough to take care of you. You will probably bring one of your superb tweed suits with you anyone. One will be enough. Don't forget the hideous amount of heating in the houses. And the Oldsmob is heated too--at least if one wants to. A bikini and boa will be enough, and if you are cold at a football game we can hold hands.

This was an Italian mail: your letter, one from Downes, and one from Olga Rudhe's daughter. She describes Ezra as very low in spirits. A true debilitation, I should think. Downes flies over on the 9th and will be here until the middle of December. He spoke very affectionately of the boys.

I got a beginning done on Saturday of the Freed Europe radio talk, but now have to cut that in half and go on with the rest. Yesterday had to be given to the Wesleyan Press meeting in Middletown. Lizzie came at five with her fiancée and cooked me dinner. They left about eight but I was too tired to come back to the office and work. Had been here until 1:30 a.m. Friday night, and worked at home until midnight Saturday. If only I had your energy!

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

4 October 1960

Dearest Fido,

Susan comes back tomorrow, and I shall have to keep
more sensible hours then. A pity really, because three or four
full nights at my desk might let me make a dent into a batch of
matters not attended to this summer. Letters to Japanese correspondents
etc. But they say that Orientals are patient, so I shall test the
theory.

Anyhow I have finished the script for the broadcast on
Stein, Pound and Eliot (their choices), and although I may polish a
bit, and probably will have to cut a page out because of length (I
must check between conflicting statements as to time), it is pretty
much in shape and I am pretty much relieved. Now one more review and
I will be up to date on these minor commitments.

I wish I could work as rapidly as New Yorkers do. Today's
mail brought a letter from Paula Van Doren, of Pantheon (I wonder if
she is an echt Van Doren) saying that she had arranged an interview
with you by Lewis Nichols of the New York Times, at the Beekman Towers on
Monday, October 17, at 4:30. "I naturally made this tentative and subject
to Mrs Bryher's schedule. Will you confirm this for me when you can?" So,
will you confirm to me so that I can act as relay station. You and Kat
can squawk sympathetically.

Radio appearances, if any, or television, remain to be worked
out. It might be fun for you as an experience, like climbing the backkof
an octopus.

The bundles of books have started to come in from the warehouse,
and are full of goodies. Also a package from you with *Point of Stress* and
two juveniles. Otherwise the biography of John Middleton Murry, and the Lutyens
about which perhaps I spoke. And I do not think I thanked for the Starkie,
From *Gautier to Eliot* which of course delighted my schoolmasterish valves in a
remote corner of my heart.

Your letter of the 30th was in the morning's mail. How I envy you
*Formio*. I really long for Italy, or almost anywhere. But where other than Italy
would one have such guides as the boys. They are all languages by their very
grace.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

11 October 1960

Dearest Fido,

This is the season of nothing but notes. Alas, I am
in the midst of having a professor of American Literature, from
Berkeley, visit here. He spoke last night to the graduate students,
and this afternoon to the public. After the lecture we have a cocktail
party for some forty or more, then take him to dinner and to the
train. Poor Susan must spend the day preparing for the party, and
has hardly recovered from yesterday when she had to put on a fall
flower show for the local garden club. She also exhibited however
and received a blue ribbon for her arrangement (much praised by the
judges) and for one of her crysanthemums.

Yes, of course tell Helen I should be happy to see her on
Monday, either at the Beekman earlier with you, or wherever seems
convenient. I will take the 3:14 out of New Haven, which arrived at
5:11 at Grand Central Station. If more convenient for her, she (and you,
as you decide) could meet me at the Yale Club, and I or we could go
on to the Beekman afterwards.

No word yet from the Stefansons, and I am a little puzzled.
I certainly tried neither to be under or over eager when I wrote, but
I may have gotten the tone wrong. I think I will phone by the end of
the week if I have not heard.

I went out this morning and bought a copy of the _Colette_ for you to read. Odd, I thought of you when I saw the book the other day. I thought I would wait until you came over, before asking. Books of this sort can be good, or....

All love to Hilda and Helen,

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

30 October 1960

Dearest Fido,

I really ought not to be writing to you this after-
noon. I should be correcting student papers. But we have not
spoken together since Thursday, and I may forget an item or two
when we talk tomorrow (if I am lucky enough to call before you
start out on your businesses.

Was sorry to hear that Rita's mother had died,
although I should hardly have thought it could be anything
but a relief for the mother as well as for Rita.

I have bought your paperback Bruun, and will hold
until you come op. Will try to get a copy of some book on the
Tories out of the Library. If you yourself bought the Bruun it
will be easy for me to return my to the bookstore for credit.

I thought the Tribune did a good job of the inter-
view, and he was obviously most respectful. I sent a copy to
Hilda and also one to George. I thought George would like to
feel in the know. I do wish his copy of RUAN would reach him.

All is arranged for the hotel room in Boston, and
we will be staying at the Sheraton Plaza (it used to be the Copley
Plaza) on Copley Square. The Hotsons are eager to see you, and
Mary said she would write you immediately. They hope you will
come up on the 9:30 train, arriving at 10:52 as before; but if
you prefer taking the 10:00, which gets here at 11:27 there is
no reason why you shouldn't. They will meet you at the station
in order to 'have every dear minute'. I suggested they might
leave your bag at the house, but Mary said no, it would only
interrupt. I said you were to be brought back in time to have a
little rest before six o'clock, but this is done to protect you.
Do as you wish.

I did go last night to Leslie's benefit, although Susan
stayed at the house as protection. Friday night the windows were soiled,
and Friday afternoon some boys put a hole thru an upstairs window by
means of a marble and sling shot. Two windows went next door. There
must have been 200 people (adults and children) at the benefit, and
they all enjoyed Leslie immensely. Obviously both he and Mary have
become a central point in the parish. Leslie sang and did readings
from Italian dialect, Jewish, Negro, and Lancashire, and sung songs
in the dialects of Irishmen, sailors, cowboys, etc. He sat on a stool
in red shirt and cowboy levis. Mary was rightfully proud, and I think
they must have raised quite a bit for the redecoration of the Sunday
School. It went on for two hours.

Finally got through my memorial speech to [r]enton on Thursday.