December 15, 1945

Dear Cal,

I hope that you come to stay with Jean whenever you like and stay as long as you like. The longer you stay, the longer I will like it. I should in honesty list my shortcomings such as morose silence, but they are boring and obvious. The charming and fey lady at 225 E.19th St. might be used as an excellent reference, though I prefer the mind of God. At any rate, there are two floors, two typewriters, beautiful pictures, too many books, but, in fact, adequate provision for whatever solitude and privacy you and Jean may require. I forgot to say, two studies. I won't be able to get back to my place until the 1st of February, but if you come any time after that, the pleasure and delight will be such that I will play Mozart as a greeting. There are also two stoves and two beds. If you and Jean don't like a studio couch for two, let me know before I depart from New York so that I can take back one of the cots I have here.

My brain pan still throbs in empathy after Jean's story, which there can't be any question of our taking as long as Jean does not mind waiting until some less good stories are published. I think much of the writing is as good as anything else of Jean's and only the death at the end might I think be questioned as not truly prepared for unnecessary, but perhaps I am at fault as a reader.

I wish you would let me know what you think of Shapiro's letter to me and my reply, which will be in next week's Nation.

Your dialogues as projected make me think that with a sufficient amount of indoctrination, no more than that of any medical student, Jean and I might induct you as an apprentice in the Black tongue circuit, whose founding fathers are Juvenal, Horace, Dante,莎士比亚, and Jane Austen is a founding aunt. As a beginning or conclusion to the conversations with Allen, I'd like to suggest what may have already occurred to you, a conversation in which Allen exhauats his friends and starts running himself down, and then accuses himself of lack of charity, forbearance, and imaginative sympathy. I am myself, and so am I. It's a bitter childland I am sick at heart, for I feel as if I were one thousand years of age. I feel as ugly as yonder shoes. And yet as Lady Montagu said on her deathbed, "It all has been most interesting". But this does not belong in a letter.

Yours affectionately,
J.R.L. MORE.

20 Ellery St.
Cambridge, Mass.

Jan. 24, 1946

Dear Cal,

Do you have any new poems you would like to see in The Nation? Margaret Marshall asked me to get some. Anyway, let me know.

Will you tell Jean that I was flabbergasted by her citation of Philip with respect to Kuh and against Albert. I have a theory that Albert is never right about anything, but on the other hand Philip's cat Foldie was the Lady Macbeth of cats, evil in every motion of her being, which shows that Philip is no judge of cats, not to speak of the way his new cat has turned out.

Hurriedly,