My Dear;

Thanks for the letter and for the Camel newspapers of long ago. We don't write because we work every day including week-days, and week-ends. It is a hideous life. Roy's share of the book is at last done. I lag--about 15,000 words behind and printers howling.

I envy you Santa Barbara. My grandfather pioneered there when it was an adobe village one block wide. My grandmother, via Susannelle, sang as a bridge--arriving in a covered wagon from Albany--- sang the Star Spangled Banner on July Fourth in the market place.

At ten my mother was lifted out of the Spanish environment and sent to an Ill., boarding school. Also my grandparents frittered away on a great deal upon that spiritualistic colony south of the city.

I lived there in the cottage, now in a back yard, but then the center of a good-sized estate, when I was nine or ten or eleven. I forget.

It was there that Roy came to visit me at Rockwood Inn before he sailed away ---I thought forever---to China. It was there that I went blind overnight and had not the guts to kill myself when I went down in the night to the sea. I went several times after the Los A. men said I was to be blind. It was there that my grandmother took a lover and was deserted by my grandfather. She went on

living alone, becoming eccentric, dabbling in spiritualism,
breeding horses, farming and trying everywhere to get that then
indecent thing—a divorce. Her only sin was a kiss bestowed upon
her by a leading citizen. He still lives.

Meanwhile the current Asia has the book's first
chapter. The current Scribner's some pictures by Roy. The August
Delineator will have pictures and an article.

And we love you dearly and think of you and
Russell.

We are taking a 15 year lease on two floors
of a tenement and building a decent duplex—borrowing scads of
money for we are horribly broke. Roy has not had time to work
while doing his share of the book. I have no time for articles.

Buckner Kirk and Bill H. live next door
and are getting a duplex out of another old house, but not doing it
themselves. We drink with them from your gablets.

I am sorry that Mima did not impress me in any way
except with her beauty and her awful indifference to her
husband. Probably I was piqued because she showed so plainly
her indifference to me. And I did not like her play-boy, Sam
Marks at the time. All of which is unreasonable. I have not had

(3) time to read Latimer's book but the reviews seemed enthusiastic

Roy was forty last week and not having seen anybody at all --we never go out--I gave a party and supper for 30 people and got away with it---a magician and dancing.

I have got Roy to dance with me--and he is incredibly clever in picking up tap dancing. We simply must exercise and I have an old friend, ex vaudville, who teaches us whenever we are in the mood of an evening. Except for some mysterious thyroid trouble which developed last month and innumerable blood and other tests for tropical diseases and dysentary I am extremely fit.

We both are. I have a darling "high yaller", an educated girl and a tennis star, who comes to us four hours daily and is wonderfully co-operative. She is a delight to the eye and the ear and has a steady head.

Here endeth the tabloid.

Love to you both--do come back.

Chicago heat, the exactions of the Jewish tribal life in that
particular suburb, and was working from dawn--actually-until
dark reading proof and WRITING T.T.E. You see I did the last
chapter after we sold Harmon and started West. All I wanted--was
quite. I really didn't blame the woman for her subbery or snobbery
for I realized that she must be beset by people who sought her out for
their own purposes. Why should she have looked upon us differ-
ently. The fact that we had liked her brother in Peking was
naturally unimportant. But as a hostess I always feel responsible
and if she does not--that is her own affair. But "once snubbed--
twice, thrice, shy". You see--my pride or whatever gets lacerated-
was terribly wounded. And from what I have heard, her friends fall
into two classes here--exotics who are in some way dependent upon
her kindness or patronage, and friends who are equally secure fi-
nanically. We fall into neither class. I do not want to be
found dull a second time by you Russian princess and allowed to
know it. That is weak--doubtless--but after all, I make no boats
boast of any super-human qualities. And it seems to me that
annually somebody states that I OUGHT to know Mimi-why OUGHT?
She can pick and choose as almost no one else can for she is lovely
to look at, gifted, and independent intellectually and financially?
Perhaps I have a gleam of envy--I am not aware of it. But it all com-
comes down to the childish, utterly infantile resolve upon my
part always to avoid any person who has "hurt my feelin's."

I wont hit out so wildly and please explain to
Russell that while I am intensely jealous of his damnation I
was merely clawing in defense of my own ego. She has doubtless
long since forgotten the episode--probably the following morning--
but I have not. You see---I am an Indian. If there is some middle-
ground--that middle-ground which you always step upon so graciously

(3)

as does Gertrude Tone --where I could meet M.M., the meeting
refereed by you, then O.K. But if she should show her boredom so
plainly--it will be on your head, woman. You will have to bind
up my wounds. And if she demands awe from plain folk like us---we
don't deal in awe. You are her only admirer whom I know who does
not seem overwhelmed, dazzled, deprived of any vision of her as a
person--not as a manifestation of mixed blood, exotic background,
and a curious and spectacular American chapter. No one has ever
said to me that she is kind, true, tranquil, affectionate, and
really simple except you. And you may be right or she may, as she
should, bring out her gentle side for you. Whatever you or others
may think, I am at bottom shy and since having been so down-right
ill, feel the old shyness mixed with belligerence overcoming me
daily. I dread new people as I used to long ago. My "social"
manner, very garrulous, you certainly have discerned is a wild fear
that people will try to know me. I think you do. Roy does.
My sense of humor has gone down awfully during the last year--
a daily head-ache plus this endless, endless, endless need for
economy has dampened me. You know, to race through life with
an eye, racing against that eye, hoping not to out-last the damned
insufficient thing is what I am doing. But I am rising up again--
a scarred warrior. I never thought that I would ever enjoy
becoming a recluse---Roy could. I do like being a by-stander
but of late, even the procession of life has seemed a bit too much.
And here I am pouring all this out hotly upon you who should be told
only clever, lovely things and should be wading in the Pacific.

Anyway we love you. And I do hope that someday
you'll drift in again before all our heads are either white or
bald.

Had an offer from Hearst to return to the old daily job of
"female writing". Can't manage it---doctor and Roy simply hollering.
But on the side I am secretly dabbing for a job with the American--
I am likely not to get it---but I have offered my self as dance
critic for two reasons--if this depression lasts, somebody in
this meange has to have an income. Our triplex --a boon and an
accomplishment--was as wild a venture as a trip. It cost the same
and cost it in borrowed pennies. I have no regrets but to get out
of this country we must clear ourselves of debts so that we can
begin to hoard for another trip. A damned woman called me up an
hour ago for advice on Abyssinia to which she goes in Sept. Damn
her soul. And yesterday I luched with Mrs. Gifford Pinchot, a wild
but likable creature, --she rattles information around like peas
in a cup-- as a Chinese expert. The other lunchee proved to be Nat.
And HOW we cramped each other's style --he couldn't be chesty
before me and I couldn't be bumptious before him. But I knew it
was funny and he did not. You see I am really in an evil frame
of mind. The mood will pass. But Mrs. Pinchot leaves soon for
China to take moving pictures. That has a long and amusing tale
attached but as my maid has let me down, and I have an article to
write ( on spec'') and cooking to do for us and guests tonight--
I must hush up.

Dear Blanche;

Your passion for the truth is something abnormal-- NO--we haven't had the party. As a matter of fact we were hoping you'd be on-- that young man who lived in China was so sure you'd come. We couldn't do much for him except to give him names of restaurants for Roy's mother had arrived the same day. She left fifteen minutes ago. It taxes Roy terribly for their interests are so wide apart. But I do believe we've had a victory. Her pre-occupation with money, her own money, with the legacy we will have when she dies, our own expenditures---tragic. Well-- every time she raised a question I took her somewhere or Roy did and squandered our money wantonly on taxis. She'd never seen such recklessness. It acts badly upon one--this preoccupation with economy made rakes of Roy and me. But the charming thing was that she got into the mood herself at 67 and possessing the nature of a genuine miser. She got used to the idea of going somewhere and then somewhere else and eating in restaurants. The result was that her hair is bobbed, permanently waved, she has a smart hat which cost $7.50 which is $2.50 more than she ever in her life paid for a hat. She went out with her luggage looking ten years younger and saying that since she was a girl she hadn't had such a good time, that it was the first time in her life that people had devoted themselves to her pleasure and she had not been asked to put up peaches or bake or make pickles etc. She was really transform--quite cute drinking a great hefty stein of beer last night in a Bavarian speak-easy and listening to the waiters sing. She has at last got it through her head that we don't expect anything from her, that it would please us if she would spend her $300 a month on herself and not bank it-- living mean-while upon $30 a month. If we have mitigated her penury--even a little-- it is a victory. Roy was sure it could not be done. She was sure

she wanted only to sit and gaze at Roy and discuss her excellent
securities. She brought on a will which treated Roy beautifully
and me---well, it's better not to discuss what that will did to
me. Roy was simply sunk. And then I started this program of doing
something every minute of the day whether she was willing or not.
And after a couple of days she was perfectly willing. We made her
take her old will back with her and I told her to wipe the trust fund
for me off the slate because I belong to a short-lived crew--mother
and I are the only relatives left alive. Mostly we all die before
65. I assured her that she would outlive me--which she will- and that
it would benefit us if she would take my trust fund and do several
big pleasure cruises. I think maybe she might. It would make life
much easier for Roy.

W

Well-- its all over. Roy dreaded this visit. It went
along swiftly and without one hitch. Cheers.

Meanwhile-- I have my temperature and that lassitude which
makes one feel like a person behind a sheet of glass and unable
therefore to touch reality. However--I go every five days to a specialist
specialist and together we put on an act which is akin to sword-
swallowing. There is not a nook and cranny of my poor head that
has not been investigated. And there have been very astonishing
results. I have just been three days out of a ten-day sinus head-
ache. But I'm well out. The doctor, an excellent and skilled person,
is endeavoring bit by bit to widen my narrow nose. It's rather
late to do the trick --but not altogether impossible. The
low-grade infection which threatens the eyes can not be controlled
unless complete drainage is established. It is being established.
My hat-I'll say it is.

I haven't read Angel etc. I met the author--has
a big brown beard over which a very young face peers.

(3) Speaking of beard--do read Gorky's "Bystander." It is the most thrilling chronicle of Russia. And when you come on I'll introduce you to Ben Wasson, a literary agent. The joke is that I recommended the book to him because of the exquisite English of the translation. It was his English."""The translation had been made literally by a man who did the job in an unutterably slipshod manner. Ben took the translation and worked nearly six-months perfecting it. I don't know how close the book is to the original--however it is a delightful book. Ben is a young So'N boy who doesn't work at being Southern. I like him awfully and so does Roy.

Tell Russell we can take him to an anti-Facist club which is a speak-easy run by two exiles, one of whom is the son of the manufacturer of the famous Marsala wines. The result is good wine on East 11 street--good and safe.

My mind is a hash and this letter probably reveals that fact--but the day will soon begin in earnest and so I though I'd dash off these lines though the time is only 8 A.M. Gosh.

[1931]

هتل آمریك

اصفهان

مقابل مدرسه جهاد باعث

موسسه طوی جهانس

HOTEL D' AMERIQUE
ISFAHAN

Avenue Tcharbagh
En face de Madresseh
Tcharbagh

Propriétaire :
Thosni Johanness

No

Date April 18, 1939

M

Dear Blanche; It is difficult to know where to begin this story.

When we arrived in this old capital of Shah Abbas,
mostly ruins, filled with opium smoking people whose wage is not 15
cents per day, with child rug-weavers because children under 9 are
easily trained and because their small fingers tie the fine knots of the
betters rugs as bigger fingers can not do, we called upon a Prince to whom
we had a letter. This Prince is pretty typical of "enlightened Persians."

He is, to the eye, a European, wears European clothes, speaks English
faultlessly, is a graduate of the Teheran American College, has a lovely
modern home filled with Persian antiques (which escaped Pope & Jewish
collectors). We were, however, aware of his history and what existed back-
stage in his charming home. A nobody, he rose by careful bridge-playing
among the diplomats, to a position of some consequence in Teheran. As
a reward, the present ex-groom, the Shah, wed him to the grand-daughter
of a former Shah who had twenty children. She was rich in villages. This
Shah transferred her title and her wealth to this young man. He was made
President of the Isfahan Municipality. His educated royal wife is kept
in peasant quarters adjoining his modern home. At 26 she has four children
He sits in chairs, sleeps in a bed. Her quarters are practically unfur-
nished. She is without any pocket money for months at a time and is too
shabby to stir from her compound. This I learned from her only European
friend, a German woman who has steadfastly refused to receive any Persian

in her home unless she was likewise rec'd by the Moslem wife.

We found this Prince--mind-you an English-speaking and reading man-- in something of a stew. He and the town's Governor had rec'd word that they must entertain with honor some inferior Indian, inferior because Indian, named Tagore. Who or what the creature was and why, they did not know. Moreover he had with him 19 persons. Well, well. Here is where we came into a fantastic importance. Here, we became lef-hand advisors to the local gov't, obliged to conceal the fact that we were advising.

When we were in Calcutta, Tagore rec'd this invitation to visit the Shah, along with Bombay Parsis (ex-Persians). Then his heart was--at seventy--giving him much trouble. His doctor advised him to stay at home. His sec'y asked Roy to report on our journey. This we did, pointing out the fact that the passes in the mountains are not less that 9,000 feet and that roads are bad and motors in poor condition. Evidently Roy's letter was of no avail or did not get delivered. There is a great deal of British interference with all of Tagore's mail. Anyway--at this moment Tagore, fatigued from a mountain pass, is resting at Shiraz, 500 miles south with his party of 19, Shiraz, the burial place of both Said and Hafiz, two of Persia's great and bibulous poets.

Meanwhile, on the basis of our suggestions, Isfahan began to stir itself--reluctantly. It began to realize that you could not house distinguished folk, even Indians, in this hotel. I wont attempt to describe the frontier conditions. The hotel is, in this womanless country, run by two Armenian brothers who have never been away from Armenian Julfa across the river. One gave Pope $5 with which to buy an American cook book. Pope wrote him that we had no Cook-books and he would have to hunt one up in England. The cooking is simply unbelievable. I have asked him to write Pope and ask for a copy of Fanny Farmer.

Very painstakingly we went into Indian customs and diet with the Prince. We reviewed Tagore's history. They He simply could not,

HOTEL D' AMERIQUE
ISFAHAN

Propriétaire :
Thoini Johannness

هتل آمریك

اصفهان

مقابل مدرسه جهار باغ

مؤسسة طویلی جهانس

No

Date

199

M

(3) at first, accept the fact that any Indian could be a world-figure. You see the Persians have seen Indians in this country as British employes and seen them badly treated as social inferiors. He could not grasp the fact that Tagore had been knighted and had resigned his title--not had it revoked. Persians are provincial and therefore arrogant--no end.) In the end, because there were not 19 modern beds and chairs to be borrowed among the official class of this large city, this hotel was given the contract to care for Tagore and his party--including the catering. Poor Tagore. And there is another reason for depending upon the hotel--thieving is so common that no official would truce any fine article out of his sight. The Prince would lend nothing, fearing--we discovered--that if Persians did not steal his possessions the Indians would. In this vast city where there is considerable wealth in the hands of an upper class, there was not one home equipped to care for Tagore and his party. Beds began to flow out of our hotel, including one of ours. To that we agreed. Then the manager came and asked if he could have our washstand wince its porcelain basin was the only one in Isfahan that had pink roses. That went. We found, the next night, that we were looking that small object so necessary in a country where sanitary arrangements--used by servants and visiting soldiers--are mediaeval and not to be ventured into by dark. Roy and I went to bed hysterical. It seemed to us that we were sacrificing a great deal of Tagore whom we think a pretty

musty grandpa, obsessed by an idea that if he isn't actually God that he is a first-cousin to God. You know, we got awfully fed up with his snowy beard, his apricot silk robes and his love of incense--real and rhetorical. One of our rooms, the one in which I now sit, has been practically denuded--for Tagore. The only protest voiced by me was against a tin basin which had been formerly outside the W.U. where it was sometimes used for general washing and also as a bin for garbage that Persians leave in the bedrooms. I struck and very haughtily demanded crockery--without pink roses--but crockery.

Meanwhile we, two traveling"farangis", rec'd what ammounted to a royal command to tea with the city's Gov. His motor came. We were whisked across the river to a fine garden and had tea with a mean little ward-heeler in a magnificent room, like the ante-room of a state Legislature, having stiff chairs at stated intervals surrounding tables, not one curtain or piece of bric a brac, and three chandeliers, one crystal, the other two green shaded affairs suited to country court houses. At least the floor was covered by a magnificent Persian rug, ~~at least~~ forty feet square, which must have taken the labor of two years of Persian babies, half-starved, getting less than 3 cents a day, justbarely enough for three flaps of what bread. We thought ourselves in the Gov's mansion. As tea appeared it was served, along with a horrible chocolate cake that we had observed sitting on a chair where the sweeping was going on in our hotel in the A.M., by our hotel's one waiter "We were, we soon discovered, in the vacated palace of a nomad Bactiari chief that had been commandered for the Indians and "furnished" by the hotel." Eventually the Gov. got round to Tagore. The Prince, acting as interpreter relayed Tagore's life history which I had read in India, line by line. This was followed by our duet on British rule in India and on Mr. Gandhi. We have got pretty good, so good that Markel of the Times would not print my Indian article of first-hand experiences and has left it on Ben's door-step where I suppose it will remain. It is darned interesting. Get it, if you are in N.Y. and read it.

HOTEL D' AMERIQUE
ISFAHAN

هتل آمریك

اصفان

مقابل مدرسه چهار باغ

موسسه طوینی جهانس

No

Date 193

M

(5)

Eventually, the Gov., got down to business. He asked us to inspect--
for him--the quarters prepared by our Armenian Hotel for the Indians.
We found Tagore's bed (ours) with its head plump against the best window
and got that altered. We saw our rosy wash-stand. We arranged a sleeping
place for Tagore's secretary whom they had planned to park in a sort of
gentleman's dormitory, across the palace from Tagore. We arranged that
Tagore's one Morris chair should be covered with decent rugs, his mantle-
piece decorated with Persian art objects, his bare balcony carpeted and
furnished with chairs. We suggested that the mirror-panelled Persian
drawing-room( very lovely) serving as the Indian ladies' barracks, be
equipped with towel-racks( Tagore's wash-stand had one towel hook which
I had recently forced the management to put on for us) and some sort of
provision for clothes. There was and is not one bureau or dressing-table
in the city. We arranged that if Tagore rec'd officially, that they
should provide a chair of honor instead of a folding seat, and that the
reception should take place on a huge balcony facing the superbly lovely
mountains instead of the drawing-room. We got the gentleman's dormitory
arranged so that all five windows were not blocked by iron beds. Now,
I ask you? Isn't all this supremely absurd? Then we gave our lecture on
what Hindus and Brahmins eat and how their diet differs from that of Parsis
This was most needed in a town where everybody lives on fat-tailed mutton,
fat and old, steeped in grease and where no provision is made for using

fruit or vegetables. I have to order vegetables every single day in this
hotel or we get only mutton and boiled beans. Persians invented spinach
but they rarely use it although it is the only plemtiful vegetable in
this season. I taught them to cook celery here and also boiled onions.
Like Pope I am leaving my mark on Isfahan.

There isn't much more to tell about the affair. We too, are
awaiting Tagore. We want to see his sec'y, a swell Indian, again--not
Tagore. I want to see the Indian women because Markel wants one of those
itty bitty nicey nicey articles on"ferment among women of the East".
I believe he printed the one on China since we got the check but used some
photographs and cut Roy's pay for pictures, down to one third. Oh.
Editors.

By the way, Pope is charged here by officials with having
smuggled antiques out of the country illegally. Detectives were finally
put on him constantly. But one does not know what to believe here.
We met a not very nice Bahai rug-weaver who has written a chapter on
rug weaving for the limited mix edition Pope Persian art book. And the
most trying young English man with an American wife, sort of half-
baked Greenwich villagers, long-haired, professionally grubby are just
leaving having spent a year working here for Pope, making architectural
drawings.They asked us to join them for a trip. But we have got our-
selves an Armenian, probably a crook, to travel with us. We were afraid
to be seen with Pope employes, particularly with an Englishman. For the
English have spent millions here, bribing officials, bribing Sheiks to
keep the country in disorder. They made this Shah, picked him out, pushed
him towards Teheran where he, eventually, over-threw the constitutional
gov't for which many young Persians and Armenians had died some years ago.

The militarization of the country, wholesale conscription, is reupted to h
have two reason(1) That there shall be a useful standing army which can
serve the Shah's benefactors(2) That it can beused by some poer against Rus
Russia. Russia will get this country, I am certain, once the peasants dis-

هتل آمریك

اصفهان

مقابل مدرسه چهار باغ

موسسه طوی جهانس

HOTEL D' AMERIQUE
ISFAHAN

avenue Tcharbagh
En face de Madresseh
Tcharbagh

Propriétaire:

Thomini Johannness

No

Date

195

M

(7) cover that in Russian peasants are having a chance. Persian villages are simply miserable, owned by landlords who sieze one-third of everything and anything else that takes their fancy. The peasant almost never owns his land. He builds a house from which he can be evicted according to the landlord's whim. This is one of the reasons why Persians build so little. Anything good is likely to be confiscated. The only way to keep out Communism is to better the peasants' lot. It is being made worse. In the last week, sugar( a Russian monopoly since three weeks ago) upon which Persians almost subsist, has tripled in price, owing to the shortage. Breaking Persia's promise to the League of Nations ,the opium growing is being increased in a land where there is never enough food. For there is so little that can be properly tilled. And also the food surplus of the Norht, is sold into Russia across the Caspian, enriching the Shah privately while people elsewhere are on the verge of starvation, constantly. It is a mess. It is a rather good joke on the local English Mission( a tool--quite frankly--of Ebglish interests) that they bought some property from a mullah, taking over his tenant farmers whose crops were already sowed. The result is that within the C.M.S. Compound walls there has come up a fine crop of opium which they may not destroy unless the tenant farmer fails to pay his rent'''''' Not long ago the Girls' School let out land and the mission was rebuked by an English visitor who discovered that the tenants used it for opium.

But then, the largest proportion of this opium has, in the past, been purchased for English and American morphine and for English re-sale in China, via Hongkong. That is a matter of record. Why shouldn't their mission grow if their Colony Hong Kong sells it? In H.K. the gov't shops sell to boys who get their first smoke for ten cents. There is control of sale by no control of new addicts--or was not last Dec. Ugh. Watta world, darling. Watta, world.

Now about ourselves. We are getting practically no mail since the failure of Junkers in Germany. That company financed the air mail service here which had never made a penny but kept out the British who wished to make Teheran an air base for their mail to India--take a look at a map and laugh that off. The poor Junkers flyers, jobless, going home to a jobless Germany, spent one night in our hotel, they played a phonograph with German records until dawn and drank horribly, poor lads. They were gone when we arose. Roy and I have done some mountain climbing--once with the splendid archaeologist, Dr. Schmidt and his two Americans, working for the Penn. Museum at Dpmvgan. We are to live with them later for a week. They are a nice group. They have never gone home during this job in order to save their travel money and carry on. Schmidt, you and Ruseal, must know. He will be in Philadelphia next winter. He wants us to motor with his two boys, White and Lockwood (from Chi. Univ) to Constantinople in Sept. He will join us in Paris if we get there. I have had a letter from Paris, from Dr. Salvemini whose French wife will arrange our living, $5 a day for two, including everything. He will be at Yale next winter. He, too, you must know and love. Our Italian friends in Brooklyn Astoria, Robertoff and Maritza Bolaffia, are--he reports--completely down and out. Anti-Facists, they must stay in America. They are citizens. Harris Berlack, our Jewish lawyer friend, is trying to get Maritza her appointment as an Italian, German, French, English interpreter. She was to study Polish also when I left and had passed the city examinations already.

HOTEL D' AMERIQUE
ISFAHAN

هتل آمریك

اصفهان

مقابل مدرسه چهار باغ

موسسه طوی جهانس

No

Date

193

M

(9) Roy's face has its very bad days, when he has sketched continuously. However there are also days when he looks extremely fit now although his eye and mouth continue to draw badly when he laughs. We are forcing ourselves through Persia. We are diverted but not deeply interested. There is much to paint. But Roy hesitates--from habit, I believe--to do much painting. He is worried because I am finding almost nothing of interest. I tell him that we can pay Holt back and let the book go, that he must do exactly what he feels that he wants to do. Old Economic Pressure has been at Roy's heels too many years, I fear. We are not having a bad time. The discomforts are not great enough to bother us. So long as we can still get alcohol--and there is plenty here since arack contains 54 percent like vodka which I have learned to drink-- we can always cook enough extra food to have palatable meals. And the Armenians are quite fun. We are being wined with old vintages of the famous Julfa. I am serving as a sort of visiting doctor to the Armenians who have not yet enough doctors. Our private Armenian was treating a boil with "donkey's milk in which ivory had been soaked" and as a visiting psychologist to a German business man, an Oxford graduate, a Berlin Dr. of Economics, who--after the bank crashes--came here as a trader and has gone blooey suddenly, owing to general discouragement and perhaps, delayed shell-shock. I gave him hell yesterday and he got up and walked three times' round his garden. He's healthy, handsome and his wife is simply splendid. The

local English doctor is a surgeon and was treating this man with open contempt. not understanding how nerves and soul can be quite as sick as organs.

The country looks like New Mexico. The air is delicious. Now and then a nightengale which has, for the moment, escaped cats and the worse trappers who sned them as pets to sell in Teheran and Bagdad, sings in a tree which branches into our open window. Lilacs and purple iris are in bloom. Everybody hands you a spray of lilac. I had an enouctner in the bazaar with a Suffi dervish, a courtly and clean gentleman in rags and with long hair who sings Omar. He had such fine eyes that I liked him. Next time we met Roy was along. Dervish gave me lilacs and his rosary which, it develops, is mostly semi-precious stones, well-wron with praying. Roy and I climbed a mountain and there, upon a rocky legde, we found our Dervish. Next day a shadow fell upon our open door. Our Dervish with an armful of lilacs. But such fragments of human experiences are rare. The women here are still not only shawled by curtained and go stumbling about. But one sees them at the movies, peering with one exposed eye at the antics of co-eds, at Charlie Caplin (last night) in The Pilgrim, helping a girl in the kitchen of a country house. How bizarre! What can these women be thinking about. The movies show foreign men as courteous, the women strong and free if nonsensical. Here the new laws prevents marriage at nine. Here women are old, spent, haggard at thirty and replaced in the harems by merechildren who must become fagged, spent, ill. But again, the country is lovely. And here and there we have made a warm Persian friend. And in Teheran Roy found a splendid Armenian painter, a natural artist and a natural Bohemian with his pretty wife. We were as much at home in their studio as on 11th St. The huge tribal family dined us. It was quite fun. They came from the Caucasus. And we have several Zoroastrian friends. And we have Dr. Schmidt to go to and the two lads, superb fellows whom we spent three wild days with here. We would all like to go into Ethiopia together some time.

HOTEL D' AMERIQUE
ISFAHAN

Propriétaire :
Thomi Johanness

No

هتل آمریك

اصفان

مقابل مدرسه جهار باغ

موسسه طوني جهانس

Date

195

M

(11) It is exactly noon according to somebody's time. For across the way two infants on a house top with lovely voices are crying to the faithful that they must pray. They do this of their own volition, being only apprentices in a silver shop. Each day I hear them. Sometimes one hears voices crying thus at night, crying out to the Faithful to pray. Fanaticism--is on the wane. The mosques here, lovely ruons, are open to visitors. Pope is thanked for this since it was he who insisted upon seeing mosques and photographing them. But one does not go free ly. One must have a police permit and be dogged by a policeman. There is no tranquil idling in the courtyards yet as in cathedrals. The mosques are doomed to ruin. They fall apart from day to day. While the 13 Armenian churches with their bad murals are shining with daily care and sweet with incense although a German Lutheran is attempting to woo the Armenians away from their sinful Christianity to his German brand and what he calls "salvation."

Roy will soon come in from the bazaar. He sent his love to you both as I began this letter. Forgive its length. I assume, however, that you are interested. In fact, I know you are.

Love to you both,

Caroline

My Dears;

I wonder where you are--sitting in a Tower of Ivory looking down on the lake and listening to the wolves? Roy and I are sitting on the balcony of the attic floor of a German boarding-house in Shanghai, and Roy is putting the finishing strokes on a portrait of Soong, brother-in-law of Mrs. Sun-Yat-Sen, brother of the President and Minister of Finance. It's like this--we planned to scot through Shanghai-- had a beautiful two weeks in Peking --and then Roy had a strange order from Fortune. Ten portraits of the ten most important financiers, regardless of race, in Shanghai. The missionary work was to be done by Gould, a local newspaper man. We loafed along and Roy then found that Gould, having sold the idea of Fortune had not himself come back. Roy had to go about like the Fuller brush man, bouncing into offices and getting bounced out again. We were at the Palace but the rate was high, owing to the presence of a ship-load of oturists. I moved us into the most God-awful British boarding-house on top of an antique office building--the attic. Shanghai is so low that there was water in the elevator shaft. Nevertheless there are a dozen such places happily inhabited by British. I used poor judgment because I was coming down with a type of flu-acquired in Nanking which is filled with sick and neglected floor refugees and sick soldiers. When I got my second wind I romped out to a German druggist--I had already looked at more than a score of places per day--and said "I've a cold on my chest and I want some cough syrup. I'm in a British boarding-house and I want a German boarding-house." He amiable gave me both. The place never advertises. We are the first Americans to invade it. Nevertheless the food is beautiful and we have had a sunny balcony upon which I have got rid of the germ and Roy, poor dear, has conquered his without

going to bed or stopping his job. He is on the last three
portraits. We had to put our sailing over until Nov. 4 to
do the job. It will net the family $750. And aint that swell?

Had a beautiful time in Kyoto with the old painter,
Seijo. He has been very ill. But he kept us with him for two
days. We dug around in his priceless collections of combs, his
own pictures. The family evolved a kimona for me and a wig. But
the coiffure--even hollow and mostly lacquered paper-- is horrible
to carry. It accounts for that curious mannerism of the Geishas
who always walk as if they had stiff necks. If you don't walk that
way you get completely off center. A small geisha with a large head of
hair plus combs and ornaments might easily flop over, I fancy.

We reached Peking the day after the Mukden bombing--
student riots and general excitement. But nothing to what Nanking
was on Oct. 10, the celebration of the formation of the Republic
and four days before the convening of the League. There were 3
gunboats (Japanese) in the harbor and they kept them manned
continuously. The rumor (Chinese) was that on the day of the League
discussion, IF things went against Japan, she would blow up Sun
Yat Sen's tomb, a very easy thing to hit, white on the green hill-side
The true story of the third gun-boat is very amusing. Usually
there are 2 gun-boats in the harbor. And then the Japanese Minister,
in Shanghai, rec'd an official invitation to share the President's
box at the review of troops in honor of the Tenth. The invitation was
delayed, having been sent to Peking. The Minister contemplated going
by train. But he was warned that coolie and student activities
along the line might embarrass him, and the Chinese. He could not
get a plane. And so a gun-boat was despatched. It started late and
missed the tide. Therefore it could not get in for the celebration.
At Nanking no one knew that the gun-boat was merely taxi-ing an
official. Late on the tenth the gun-boat steamed in. Everybody

(3) went to pieces, including our Minister. And the poor belated Japanese-- he got hell from his own Foreign Office for employing a gun-boat during such tension. It is said that our own Minister issued a warning to Washington that the bombardment of Nanking was about to begin.

I'll tell you one more fantastic story. Since the threat of war between China and Japan, and the boycott, the Japanese have finished building a new gun-boat for China. A friend of ours went to call on the Chinese Minister in Tokyo. He was away, attending the official launching with all the Japanese. The gun-boat got here. It was fussing around in the harbor last week and got stuck on a mud-flat. The only boat at hand was a small Japanese boat which kindly gave the new boat a tow. Before the boat got pulled off some Chinese, seeing their gun-boat with a rope attached to a small Japanese boat, assumed that the latter had been captured by the former. This was reported. An official investigation began. Meanwhile the Yen went down on the exchange and did not recover for another day.

The Japanese aggression in Mukden is the result of the military in Japan defying the civil and may bring about a frightful Japanese shake-up. But the Chinese, the innocent pacifists, have been doing everything in their power to annoy and provoke the Japanese. They are guilty of a great many abominable incidents. And the idea that China turned the other cheek in Mukden is a little ridiculous. There is every belief that the Chinese troops were disarmed by agreement with the Chinese General, Chang soliang, a son of the old bandit, Chang-so-lin (now dead). At any rate, their General was handily away from home and taking a prolonged drug cure in the Rockefeller Hospital when the trouble was becoming acute on every hand. It is said that the Japanese military paid him a whopping big price to get rid of him.

(5) Jim and Nancy will be in America at Anne Arbor for one year. Roy is very impatient with Nancy. I think she is socially impossible. But I have a feeling that alone she may be a very sensible and reasonable woman. I think she is self-conscious with Americans-- and rightly so. For after all she is a coolie and is married to a man who is an American citizen, whose traditions are alien to her, and who speaks of the Chinese as THE chinese. They seem happy enough. Jim seems to us a trifle too missionary and a trifle seedy intellectually, too much religion, too much baby tending and not enough social life of any sort off the campus. We go there to spend three or four days. I dodged it. We are so private and so comfortable. But we will go in order that Nancy won't be hurt. She might think we stayed away because they are social outsiders--racially. Jim is pathetically glad to see Roy. But I don't think Jim has any perspective on his own situation. I wish he would make his children speak Chinese and be Chinese at least one day each week. They go to the American school and play only with American mission children.

We spent an afternoon in Nanking with Pearl Buck of The Good Earth. She is a lovely person once you learn that she has lived out of China only about four years of her life and is Chinese inside. I go to tea here this afternoon to meet her again at the American Club where she is to talk on the Chinese novel, I believe.

And that's enough. I wear your socks, your perals, your hats, your Syrian robe and a blue dress with a heavenly Botticelli carpet for its upper part--so there.

Love from us both,

C/ Thos. Cooks, Colombo, Ceylon if you write at once.
Otherwise C/ Cooks, Calcutta, India.

(3) outside herself. My problem will never be settled--never. How bound we really are to our childhoods or by our childhood attitudes of mind.

I am sorry I failed to give you Ben's address. I thought I did. Isn't it queer? I can almost see myself writing out "Woodstock Tower, Tudor City." So I got the stockings-- aheaven-sent Matthias gift and Roy, the darling, lost out through my ineptitude.

His face is not recovering as it ought. I am trying to make him visit a Spanish specialist here, the leading neurologist. The eye does not function properly and both eyes are too <u>nausei</u> sensitive to light. He will not worry over himself. But I worry. My massage is, I feel, not likely to be right. For I do not know precisely the right spots to stimulate. He is such a darling--as you know.

We are enjoying traveling for the first time. Really, I mean that We have always enjoyed getting to places. But the transportation has always worn us out, overcoming the distasteful and uncomfortable. The Dollar boat upon which we came from Hong Kong was simply disgusting--dirty--cheaply run--bad food--sloppy social conditions. But the Tatsuda Maru upon which we came from Shanghai was simply beautiful. It was the first time that we had slept in beds--on a boat-- or had the pleasure of a daily swim and sufficient deck space for comfortable walking in our lives. And we simply made the most of everything. Unfortunately the trip is short. Roy and I worked in our enormous cabin. The room boy had marked aesthetic leanings. He actually cried with excitement over Roy's Doll Theater sketches. He carried them off to the Capt. who had not shown himself at all. And mind you, that little <u>swine</u>, practically issued an order that Roy was to present himself at his quarters immediately after dinner and do his portrait. There was nothing else to do. The little beast posed and Roy did a charming sketch. He never even thanked him. Just absorbed it as a memento to display to other artist passengers. The Japanese are an awful people--I was awfully irritated for Roy is in no condition to draw by artificial light.

Dear Blanche; Such a time as we are having. Gosh'

We came to Japan very anti- and anyway expected to rush right through to Korea. And we have been six weeks in Kioto playing around with geisha, ( of the first degree) painters, and potters. The gret-grand-son of one of the temple artists and four other Japanese gemman and one lil Japanese lady, all go for an American picnic and a swim in lake Biwa tomorrow. Wr converse hilariously out of a collection of dictionaries. They have taken us in, in a truly western way. Their lives are simple and of the old untouched style. We can eat anything from raw fish to cakes which look and act like jelly fish and enjoy it. We spent an evening with Seiho (I do not know whether that is the way to spell it) and Roy has gone out to sketch this man's own "dancer" and the son( one of the legitimate ones) arrives to play around with me in a half hour. S's things hang in the Louvre and are grand. The son let us have a portfolio of wood-cuts of this last year's pictures. Roy is simply in an ecstasy. Poor infant, how I wish we could manage a year for him of nothing but painting.

Anyway he is happy sketching. Today noon we spent in a restaurant upon the outskirts of town, patronized mainly by the better class of farm labor, magnificent creatures who strip to eat. The "madame" allowed Roy to do her and her daughter. The latter is as lovely as any Japanese satge figure.

And speaking of the stage-- we simply went mad over the theater in Tokio. We met three of the leading actors and sat around behind stage. Really the Japanese are too kind. In Dec. we return to Kioto instead of going on to *HAKUHEI* Canton so that we may play around here with actors during the classical drama season.

We spent an evening with one of the greatest flute players who had carved his own instrument out of bamboo, who looked like a cross between a stage Samurai and Pan. He was so physically beautiful that

TELEGRAPHIC ADDRESS "IMPEHO TOKYO"

The Imperial Hotel
of Tokyo

that Roy sat as if he were in a trance and stared at him. We were at a
tiny home of an old gentleman once high in official circles who decided
that Japan was on the wrong track, that he was on the wrong track
and retired after the war from everything. He lives frugally with his old
wife in a tiny house below the Miyako hotel and is making a study of the
flute and its history. The flue player was so shy of Europeans that he
could not bring himself to play much but through the young artist who took
us we learned much about the instrument. He has offered to play for us
next December. The potter has offered to house us in his tiny place up
by Kyomizu temple and near the central kilns.

The fun of all this is that we had not a letter to a single soul
in this crowd. We met by chance the son of a Japanese admiral when
he was taking an English lesson preparatory to going to Boston to look at
Japanese art. He was leaving Tokio the next day for Kioto and insisted
that we come too. He took us to a very spicy hotel on the river where no
European had ever stayed. We were there a week on mats and where parties
were on until dawn and the minstrels came by the balcony all night. One
particularly gay evening the dancers dressed me in a kimona and some
awfully nice gentleman incog. ( there are many such at these gay places)
sent out at midnight for a photographer and Roy and I in borrow Kimona
were photographed with two geisha no bigger than dolls and a crowd
of young gentlemen and "ladies" who spent the evening at the hotel.

As a native hotel of that type never keeps anybody more than
a couple of nights we had to move on at the end of a week to the Kioto.
Then we couldn't seem to go and here we are ending a month in a house
sublet to us by a missionary. The building has been a temple and then a
restaurant in the past and is a great hodge podge.

Thomas Cook's, Paris.

Sept.25. [1925]

Dears;

We are in Paris. This we know. It rains and rains and rains. There are chimney pots that never smoke. There are chairs on the sidewalk. Also There is chicory in the coffee and water in the cocoa. However, it is most unfashionable to be here. The Americans who could live nowhere else in the world except the Left Bank because the cultcha was so much better than any other have vamosséd. Living is so high that cultcha does not matter. The habits of the Rotonde are in Munich, Salzburg and London. The little flies have followed the big bugs. We breakfast at Deux Magots with a half dozen French. "No sacrifices is the motto of our high-brows. What Paris offers is apparently only good when the country is in a post-war collapse. Its recovery and higher living-standard, apparently everywhere, has discouraged Americans. We were seriously told that we ought to go to London where the "art" is "live", to Munich or Salzburg"if we wanted to be with important people etc." Well, we are in Paris.

We have spent the second night in our studio, a tiny pent-house arrangement with an outside balcony, back and front, a bath, no kitchen, atop the tiny Hotel Montana, corner of Boulevard St. Germain des Prés and Rue Benoit. It was like this-- we were totally discouraged about getting a studio at all, furnished and on a short lease. I chanced to look up at the sky and saw this vacancy. It costs with service nearly $50 a month. That is not too much for it. But it is too much for us. Insull's money is fading out-- just a couple of hundred left.

AND clothes to get. I arrived with your lovely print and my blue combination, your Roger Peet hatx (the last of the lot) the stockings you gave me and practically nothing else at all. I bought

(2) a $28 three piece Jersey to see me through the winter. Roy has the Sachs suit he bought on Russell's confidential ad'.

The landlady likes us. She is thinking of a ten percent reduction if we stay. For three days we have searched the town for cheaper lodgings.

The trouble is--light and floor-space. We can find cheap large unheated and unfurnished studios which would be fine IF we were to spend a year. But a winter---there is surely no saving. Roy is happy here. We look out and see the spire of St. Germain and hear its bells.

Stepping outside on the balcony we see Sacre Coeur. The street is so little that there is no night or early morning traffic. Paris is noisier than N.Y.-- or as noisy. The little cabs with their squeaking horns are entirely gone, replaced by huge modern affairs taking up twice as much street room and carrying no more passengers. Food is high. But still we can dine for $50 apiece. The food is better than Greenwich Village food at the same price. Our plan is to gamble on this studio for three months. If, after that time, our finances are too flat we will hasten to some obscure and cheap place elsewhere.

Roy has always wanted to paint without telephones, art editors, etc. We had hoped to have a separate room, a cubby in which I could write.

Privacy is too expensive. Of course, we were smart we would budget ourselves at once. But we aren't smart and so we will spend until we are on the brink and THEN do something fast. Our buyer in Harmon paid his installment on the second mortgage. That and some of our margin must go to my mother in San Francisco who is boarding now.

She is too old to chore for herself any longer and she was always inexpensively inexpert as hell. Probably all these details are rubbish and not worth setting down. But They are a warning that eventually we may have to borrow $500 at 6 percent on Roy's life insurance or some such collateral. You two may not be the victims and so, please, don't have this contingency on your minds.

Roy is so very happy in this room that I can not bear to think of

(3) making a change. We had hoped to depend for advice upon our
two friends, Dick and Alice Lee Myers. He has just lost his job
as Fashion Dictator of the L.H.J. and the Curtis people owe him
three months back pay''''' I don't understand why with $13,000 a
year they did not conserve their money in this past year or at least
during the two past years as they saw the magazine shrink, saw Sat. E.Post
drop from 200 to 75 pages'''' But on the contrary they expanded, took
over a second apartment and did it up with modern plumbing, remodeled
a rented villa in Normandy. Now they are simply sunk. Dick is like a
deflated balloon and so embittered against his country as if the U.S.A.
had somehow served him a dirty trick. That is the result of twelve
years abroad and no contacts except with rich, traveling Americans.
Life for such people becomes terribly unreal. They are no longer
Americans. Their children are not American. But they derive their
whose support from the U.S.A. boobs and Babbits or, as they call them,
dollar chasers. Meanwhile they have not become in the least French. They
do not even like the French. I am impatient with them and at the same
time we are both torn with pity since the burden will fall upon Alice
Lee who is courageous beyond words. She is really a brick. She was
Alice Lee Herrick, of Chicago. After the death of her father there was
no money and she and her invalid sister ran the Gargoyle tea-room.
Alice is threatening to start cooking here in Paris.

Now while I am talking troubles, will you do something
for me? Will you set aside any hat you think would become me or any
other garment you might like me to have( if you have such garments
in this beastly period) and send them to Maritza Bollafio, 3026
Academy St., Astoria, Long Island. PLEASE**please. You remember the
Italian civil engineer, small and dark and beautiful who was so
overwhelmed by your black velvet dress and you in it? And his blonde
wife who passed top out of 90 people in the gov't examinations for

(4) Italian, French, German and Yugo Slav? They are in one room in a tenement—all their furniture has apparently been sold. He had a dishonest partner who, last year, embezzled all the money from Roberto's last job. They came to America, anti-Facists, with enough money to do very well and for a time they did very well. They are civilized, competent, energetic. WELL—for more than a year they have been on the relief fund of the Ass. of American Engineers. They are citizens long since. For odd jobs Roberto was getting $15 for three days a week. That $15, Nat writes, has been cut to $12 and may be withdrawn altogether. I can not think how they are making out.
Maritza was not eating enough when we left. She was already living on two meals a day. And she was in need of surgery. Baehr is looking out for her health. But they are terribly proud and fearful of exploiting our friends. It was most difficult to get them to accept help of any sort that they could not pay for. Nat has bought a workable ranch and though he has left his job seems unworried financially. He wrote us of their circumstances. It does not seem to occur to him that they might take over their Conn. ranch during the winter. At least he says nothing. Their letters to us are uncomplaining. They are gorgeous people, really. They are both aristocrats in the sense of family— her father and brothers were magistrates in Yugo Slavia. She was raised like a princess on a vast estate. But it was some time before I learned about her girlhood. They can not return to Italy. There is starvation there. (We had a day in Naples) They would be jailed, not because of any activity but because they have expressed liberal anti-Facist opinions in America. Darling Dr. Salvemini is now at Yale. But I know they will not burden the old man who nearly died last winter here. We called yesterday on his exquisite old French wife.

Maritza and I are about the same size in girth—or were. I am agreed. Persia was hard work—too hard. I am very thin, very grey, my skin is

(5) fried by the sun and wrinkled more than it should be by the loss
of flesh. We simply had not adequate food during the 7 months because
it isn't to be had.

The news about Margery Lattimer is horrible and yet--
and yet--it seemed to me that she must have always been emotionally
over-wrought, chronically so, shaken to pieces like a frail boat with
a heavy engine. This death is surely a release for a troubled soul.
The time is short when the novelty of her position would have been
gone. The better Harlem Negroes would never have welcomed her long.
I met several such women at a party. They were treated nicely but no
more. They were, we saw, of no consequence to the Negroes who do not
look for racial salvation by that route but by their acceptance
as Negroes. The little half-caste will have a better chance in life,
doubtless, as a mulatto with a dark father rather than as the child of
a white woman who could not have been anything but an outsider in the
end. I do think the end of that exotic romance is fitting and merciful.
I wonder if you agree. So rarely do things end in life as they end
in books. Death rarely comes soon enough to solve the problems.
Poor soul. I can think of no worse fate, either, than to move from one
"art colony" to another because they offer the only tolerant society.
Here, it is an advantage still to be queer. We met Gardner Hale's ex-wife,
Marice Obry now, formerly Marice Rutledge. Since Hale there have
been two young, very young husbands. She drinks. She had D.T. when
the last husband, now in N.Y., signified his desire for freedom and
has just come out of the hospital, a broken, wise-cracking old woman.
The tragedy is that people rush her, not because of her lovableness,
but, as they said to us, "She's a terrible sot and you can't begin
to count her husbands. Some of them have been extremely important
men." A curious standard.

Blanch, I did not write because traveling
by 11 different motors before leaving the country, living on

(6) native bread chiefly, I had none too much energy although
the high places agreed with us both, <u>magnificent for seniors</u>

Roy or I will write you the last chapter of our trip,
Bagdad to Jerusalem via Damascus etc. We can't complain, on the
whole. We are really well. When Roy is rested his eye does not droop.
When he is tired it shows. His mouth is well except that he is never
able to whistle. Some muscle has quit. But whistling is not important.
He is not actually disfigured except when tired.

He is so happy, talking French, sitting on sidewalks and
looking forward to painting. We have been to see a few shows. We are
not either of us impressed by contemporary work. Foujita has a big
picture of two male nude ladies loving each other. It is a really
beautiful piece of painting. Unfortunately he was not satisfied
that the meaning was clear and so he has them sitting upon a chintz
whereon one sees a similiar pose of a man and woman. The newspaper
vendors offered Roy a book called "The Little Lesbians." It is in the
air.

Instead of looking like orchids the Left Bank French girls
are either tanned or painted brown and wear sport clothes—with
high-heeled shoes. Everybody has hairpins and hair. The wax models
have flowing tresses and there are hairpins on the balcony of the
studio. My hair is a dirty grey. I look ten years older than Roy. I
dare not tell my age because people do not now credit it, challenging
me with faking a few years in order not to appear older than Roy. It gave
me a terrible shock on my 44th birthday in Ispahan when a young man
said, "Are you ONLY 44? Then How old is Roy?" Whoops. But even that
can be borne.

Meanwhile--love to you both and we will send a
decent travelogue.

If Greece is cheap—may see you there. Meanwhile will hold
out here until Roy has had a little bit of the change he so badly needs.

Darlings; Why desert your paradise? Anyway IF you desert-- do hasten Paris-ward.

This is the French situation. Although "not a sou for America" was chalked on walls there is apparently no hostility and we have been in contact with Roy's French Major--an ass and ready for war, hostility or anything--and with Mme. Salvetini, French nobelwoman, economist, daughter of a historian and wife of Gaetano S.--now at Yale. If you get in touch with the Bolaffios you will probably see him. He has become such a fixture in the U.S.A. that he writes Count Sfroza--who called here before leaving to teach at Wisconsin--( some beautiful gent' ex-ambassador to China) I can't begin to tell you how much I appreciate your helping the B's. They are in debt. But a small manufacturer named Wells, probably a Levantine Jew by birth, has created a temporary job for Roberto as draughtsman to get him out of the bread-line and got Maritza a temporary typing and translating job in some bank. It is all temp'. Moreover, he has loaned them money with that grand generosity so many Jews possess. Mr. Wells has an English accent. BUT he knows Baghdad too well and too many Persians well to be English. Anyway--he has been a miracle-worker. To get back to France--clothes are higher than N.Y. Luxuries of any sort are out of sight. Meat is pre-depression high, except a few cuts and chickens. Labor is getting the same old starvation wage. Rents are again cheap, having tumbled since the depression. The sight of any American gladdens the eye of any Frenchman for purely material reasons. The French are frantically bidding for American tourists against Austria and Italy. And do remember that Herriot is still asking out loud everywhere for the debt to be paid instead of a loan to Austria which has passed the Chamber! Do remember that the gold of France--since

(2) the refusal to pay, is all being moved to the U.S.A. as the French believe their own country in a bad way because of the refusal to pay. I don't know how the English feel. They are always whining about being brave in the face of disaster. They do whine all over Africa and India. Isn't bravery a curious thing to whine about? Such a contradictory people. And again France--the U.S. Minister was showered with little sums from various parts of France from individuals who thus paid what they believed to be their individual share of the debt.'' The whole thing here is political and Frenchly selfish. To hell with America as a nation. That's the line. But we are not down. Mulct individual Americans as much as you can. We pay twice what our maid does in the same shop for oranges, for cans of milk. Now we don't shop. She feeds herself and us--three of us on $2 a day. Emma is a darling, talks intelligently. No char-woman. Don't know her history. She has known Romain Rolland in the past. Anyway--we buy nothing but food and working materials.

Meanwhile G.Tone has indicated that in these time our rent in N.Y. is too high. Perhaps I told you she wanted power of atty. to work out some new basis for us . But we put the actual borrowed cash and our own money into actual wood and bricks. There you are. We have no out. We are more than mere tenants. We are investors who are stuck. But we dropped G.T.'s rent so that she pays $150 now and we are slipping back over $25 per month on our amortization. But even with that--a $32 studio and a 20 cent maid makes Paris cheaper at this time while I have no leisure in which to do the house-work.

Pope is here.

Wrote him a note since we lived with Eric in Persia. He wrote a very flossy letter and sent an embossed invitation to a private lecture. Aint he the boy--wonderful.

Come on over to see me.

Dear Blanche;

It was just as well that Roy did not discover you
in S.F. He had to make the whole trip so terribly fast--under
21 days. In S.F. he spent only two days and one night, trotting
about with my mother. She would have quite gone to bits if he had
spent any time with other persons.

He rushed south--between trains--he saw a Hollywood
agent. In San D. he fixed up his mother's business affairs. She
was in a muddle. She's preety old to be bothered with stubborn
folk who wont pay on their mortgage. Roy got her to relinquish
her equity to an insurance broker who will split with her
whatever he gets out of the place, now worth next to nothing,
originally worth more than $12,000. Since only $5,000 was her
original investment and she had 7 percent interest for years she
is taking a loss of only several thousand. But a loss is a loss.
It means that we will not get the Conn, house for summers. And
this summer was simply hell.

After San D. Roy spent an afternoon with his agent
in Hollywood--again between trains! Franchot was not in Culver
City. He was not working. No one could locate him. Roy should not
have waited to notify him. I wanted him to write or write Franchot
before leaving N.Y. But Roy so best hesitates to involve involve
other people in his job-hunting. The agent got Roy in to see one
of the big M.G.M. men. "The Good Earth" will soon go into
production. I think Roy secretly longs to have a hand in it. But
he insists that Hollywood is filled with competent men who have
quite as much to offer. However, Gibbons--M.G.M. art director--
is the husband of Dolores Del Rio who has, believe it or not,

"Turn to the East." "Roy had a very nice time with Gibbons and also with his superior--Lewin. Both very civilized."

Meanwhile, we spent a fantastic Sunday--before he left-- as the day-long guests of Nicholas Schenck--an entire accident. Sailed on his yacht, bathed in his pool, drank his rum and a bit of his caviar. With us--in the end--was his horrible brother, "Joe" and the hero notorious Blumenthal--"Bloomy" - of the Walker regime; a handy-man and crooked agent for Walker. Just thugs. It is a miracle that movies are as good as they are, controlled by such low-brows.

Hope you read the book and tell me frankly what you think of the elementary anthropology.

Sorry about your cold--we both have them--everybody has a cold here. Usual Fall scourge of sniffling and sneezing.

The Persian book is to be done by the Oxford Press. That's almost--almost certain. Costs to be discussed with printers today.

Hope the mothers are all in order again.

Next year I will make the tour. That is the only way we can keep OURS in order. I am surely glad that you have the money with which to meet all your emergencies. So many of us can only meet them half-way, and that is an agony. George Baehr is now completely floored by a penniless mother-in-law who complains and does not co-operate although everything has been done to make her happy.

[1933?]

MyDear; So sorry about the eyes, so sorry about Christmas, so sorry
about your mother. Oh--Mothers--let me write an essay on them. My
mother, hating the place I put her and mistrusting and disobeying
the fine doctor (because I procured him) is now wropsed over to
another excellent place in Oakland. Bed-ridden in the place she
did not like she is able to walk 45 min. at a stretch in the place she
chose with the help of poor over-worked Kennedy Owen. It is a victory
over me--I might have known as much would happen. She knew all
about this other place but did not tell me when I was there. And so
save for seeing you and Russell and getting in proper touch with
Roy's mother-- that arduous and nasty trip was for nothing. Cost a
lot that trip despite economies as I had many expenses in her behalf
which were--as things have worked out--extravagances. Whoops'.

Mother has got to be a victim of something or somebody---fighting that
imaginary opposition is the spice of life for her. It would be very
amusing were she not my own. But I'm still emotionally detached.

However, we are not economically detached by any means--and our
economics--I wont go into them too deeply for fear your hair would
rise. What we live on is a mystery---We live and we are not yet
in debt. But Roy was offered $25 for a double page panorama of
a crowd at a Chinese railroad station. When he had got through
with materials and models and ten day's steady drawing---
nothing. That is the new ASIA magazine. Cosmopolitan, not liking
his style or him, gave their Pearl Buck serial to a man, never in
China. His absurd Chinese like the absurd Chinese in the Companion
bring any number of out-cries. Roy isn't good enough as a mixer--no
flask on the hip, no dirty stories, no slap-you-on-the back manner.
Hence--no work. He isn't a joiner. In N.Y. you ought to join and
join and give cocktail parties and parties.

Franchot Tone is at the Waldorf with Joan Crawford
whom he is mad about and whom he will doubtless marry when

she gets her decree in May. He is simply ga-ga, is educating her up to his standards--I wonder. Her contract lapses in two years.

He now has a 5 year contract at a huge figure, is or will be rich in his own right--I wonder if ---well, I wonder. He says she has come "up" by her own heroic efforts from a hotsy-totsy girl in a night club, is a great artist and needs a play on Broadway. Doubtless he will angel it. Here her reputation is pretty semilly. Made "stag "films which the Faribanks family had to pay a fortune for to suppress. But I suppose she is young enough to have turned over several leaves. Franchot is a darling and is sure she has turned them over.

They are quite openly living together at the Waldorf. The publicity is sickening, so personal. They dance nightly at the Casino. Give autographs. Poor Gerturde, Mr. Tone, Molly and her husband Jerry Tone were all obliged to come and give thier blessings. Poor Gertrude is now also at the Waldorf, a soul lost in Babylon. One thing--that film which was making when we saw Franchot cost $300,000. It is due to be released here next weekk--awfully delayed. I am wondering if some of this isn't a well-planned Crawford gag to put the film over. She is its star. And while Franchot is NOT the amale star the pictures of Crawford and F. are used for the billing. He says the film is really not good and isn't likely to make back the money.

Meanwhile he rises in a month to star-dom on his own, under his own director. It is his plan to motor up to Carmel and to see you there. He suggested it himself. He may bring Joan for a "quiet" afternoon with us---wow. Wont she be sunk?

Tonight we dine with XXXXX Arthur Garfield Hayes and hear the low-down on the Nazi trial in Berlin?

Dear Blanche;

How nice--your letter came with breakfast. Thanks we will give ourselves a theater-party or, rather, we will go to your theater-party. I will report on that, later.

Now, as to news. There is none. Roy has a couple of small jobs. He did one of the loveliest illustrating jobs he has ever done for anybody. He took the two pictures--lovely clear water-color studies--in to Pictorial' Oh yeah! The Jewish editor--formerly editor of a racketeering Hearst carpenters' and builders' publication said, "I don't like them at all." Since he could not say why he liked them NOT, or what he wanted, our artist walked right out with them under his arm. He could have grovelled. He would have hemmed and hawed had he not known that they were the best two pictures he has done in years. What really happened, I fear, is that the story--very poor--was adversely accepted by other members of the staff. They probably decided not to print it. Wanting to get out of paying for the illustrations they damned them, knowing that Roy would walk out. One of the models feels so badly that he offered to let his own bill go. Naturally Roy will pay him. The pictures cost two-weeks time and more than $18 in model-fees. But there are so many artists now and so many photographers that editors, most of them utterly untrained young men who have taken small salaries when more-experienced were let out, are acting very badly. That is that! As to Hollywood we have heard nothing from Franchot Tone who is, according to Winchell, secretly wed to Joan Crawford. I did not ask Franchot for anything, except his own ideas on what an artist should be prepared to offer to a director. It doesn't matter. If Roy will

make the trip West--he does not say whether he will or will not----
I can get him plenty of letters.

We went to the Clapp's for tea. The other guests
included a woman artist(portrait-painter) whose name I did not
get but who seems to have met you this winter. Rather plump.
Lives a lot in Italy and is very naïve about Facism's effect upon
Italian living-standards etc. (aside from its effect upon intellectual
freedom). She said that her rich Italian friends were not safe
on the roads around Perugia in 1922 until Mussolini marched on
Rome. That is a myth. We were on all those roads with our bicycles,
traveling chiefly by night--when her bandits were abroad--in order
to avoid the heat. We spent some time in Perugia where there was
no lawlessness apparent. The only violences which we encountered
were in Sienna where the Facists boys, young hoodlums, beat to death
two Italians who were accused--by them--of radical leanings. All
the small shop-keepers had skulls and cross-bones painted on their
walls in order to ingratiate themselves with the Facists whose
depredations they feared.

Spent a lovely evening with Salvemini, down from
Harvard. I refused to dine with him, and the Bolaffios. Probably
rude of me. But I had to tell him that, on my side, the whole
thing would be "artificial" since I had known them intimately for
six years, only to come to the conclusion that I did not know them
at all. They are weeping around on everybody about my wickedness.
But I am willing to tell them straight out what I feel. Until they
ask for a statement from me they can moan all over the place. Whoops'.
I mean to hang onto my own integrity, whatever they do with theirs.
Salvemini said the most amusing thing we have ever heard. His
wife is a darling, a French economist, daughter of a famous
philosopher and widow of a famous French historian. She must be
55. But she is entirely bound to the apron-strings of her mother,

(3)

92, a titled lady who rules her relatives. Dr. Salvemini said that his m-in-law (who has evidently absorbed his wife) was "a charming lady. We get along perfectly," he said. Then he added with a twinkle, "We get along perfectly because we have never met." You see, he is of peasant origin although he is one of the greatest of modern Italy's historians, and a former Senator!

As to the Clapp tea, we had a very spially and amusing time with them both. The other guests were Mr. and Mrs. Mukerji. Why is it that Hinuds always succeed in marrying washed-out New Englanders (like Gertrude Emerson)? Usually washed-out and also older than themselves. Mrs. M. teaches at the Dalton school.

Went to a dinner-party of Chicago people. Exx There I met the famous Bob Titus of Fanny Butcher. He was very much titillated by her marrying. But I could give him no news. She is expected to come here within a few weeks.

We were invited to dinner by a very intelligent Baptist missionary from the Congo. I knew he would have very little money to spend. He was giving a party for ten people. I suggested Lajhiri's, rather than a hotel. The missionary went 'round and made arrangements for a special dinner. We had expected to dine with some ten or a dozen missionaries. There was only one--a brilliant man from Ceylon. The guests included Mrs. Alexander Powell; apparently not quite right in her mind. She got very angry when I said that I loathed explorers. (I did not know that she was the wife of the explorer Alexander Powell.) I explained that I hated people who thought it was important to be the "first white man or woman" etc. I admire scientific research in any field. But no exploration for the sake of lectures and general boasting. The other guests were convulsed. One man, from the Natural History Museum, whispered to me that Powell spent exactly 11 days in the Congo, which he and

his wife crossed by plane. Out of that 11 days he got two adventure books!''''

There was a charming English boy, a petroleum man, with his Belgian bride. And also the Martin Johnsons whom we had spoofed a good deal between ourselves. They are just as Kansas as when they were born. But they are also two of the most ingenuously friendly folks you ever saw. Simply darling. He is quite ill. Kidney disease. But they start out soon for two more years in the Congo. She is a plump little haus-frau type who probably does her shooting, photography etc., in a most orderly manner. Evidently --despite the drivel that they write or, at least, sign--- they are just two very plain-minded people who make a living in the jungle. One can almost believe that they have established hours or a schedule for their adventures.

Now as to clothes---Mrs. Stimler did a very fine job. As a result I have a lovely over-blouse and a flaring dull silk "slip" skirt. Already worn with great success. The silk cost $7. (I take a terrible lot of cloth.) Mrs. Stimler was under the impression that she should charge me too little, making me a sort of "gift" in return for my recommendation to you and to Margaret Wycherly. I refused any such nonsense. This is no period for people of her status to make "gifts" and, also, that sort of thing --essentially Jewish or oriental-- is very far from my idea of the way business should be carried on. She asked me $ only $5. She had made four trips down for fittings and also done the shopping. Meanwhile, she had been very badly treated by a friend of mine (I had nothing to do with this job.) who had made her come 5 times to fit a skirt and who, in the end, abused Mrs. Stimler for charging $3.50---$3 for making, and balance for car-fare! I paid Mrs. S. $7.50 which was very little but, at least, considerably more just than $5.

(5) I hope you don't think me reckless. Really you owe me money for the time I spent listening to hymns of praise. Mrs. S. hymnning for all she was worth, in your honor, let two great tears roll down her nose because you had gone. Now I felt just as badly but I refused to cry with her. Do what you like about her bill. Meanwhile I do think it is pretty horrid of me to expect any financial aid, with reference to the dress. After all I do carry a beautiful leather bag. I blow smoke into people's eyes through a gold-mounted cigarette-holder. I powder my nose and rouge my lips with a golden flourish. I have a becoming hat--at last. I smell like a mimosa on the Riviera. And then some. I would be very happy, Madame, to make a compromise and charge you--al la Stimler-- only $5 for the making or, nothing at all for any of it. Do not have it on your mind. Meanwhile, I did forget to ask you the wisest course with reference to my Tecla pearls? I forgot each time to tell you the pleasure I have had--and also prestige--from them. The strings have stretched. Had I best take them to Saks for re-stringing? I have postponed doing anything because I wanted to do the right thing. What do you do under such circumstances?

With reference to the other two dresses I must make a confession. Mrs. Stimler said that she could do the job. I saw, however, that she was filled with uncertainty, rather scared of the task. Meanwhile I had a latter from my mother that she was down to rock-bottom for clothes. I knew that would be the case soon. I had not out-fitted her since my visit--save for night-clothes etc. I sent her on one of my hats--a grey which you have not seen. I sent her your two dresses because she is unable to shop. I told her to return them if they were not practical. She wrote me that she had a dress-maker who said that the seams were so generous that there all that was needed was letting out. That letting out has probably been done--thereby saving me not only an out-lay here but also

absolving me from the necessity hateful business of running from
shop to shop.

Your Chicago friend wrote a nice letter (followed by
a mailing list of inordinately expensive oriental books to buy)
We have no hope in that direction. For she proposed asking the
Chiacgo Univ. Press to undertake the publishing. Naturally they
have no interest in illustrated travel books and no organization
for their production or promotion.

Meanwhile we have had an unsolicited call from
the head of the Oxford Press in London. He is hysterical with
excitement over the pictures. Would like to have Laurence Binyon
see them for the British Museum''' Anyway--I hope printing
costs don't kill this project. If it goes through I will have to
produce the book by the end of June'' I will be dead if I do. But
I will have died in a good cause. It is awful to write with the
frontof your brain and with a feeling of complete emotional exhaustion.
I have been extremely and incurably fatigued ever since Africa.
(That I do not say much about) Probably it was not Africa but
just me. I have been living emotionally at a very high pitch since
birth--living in an emotional cauldron. I am of the opinion that
I have come to some sort of end of my resources--as to strength.
It is an awful conviction. I do think that if, after Persia, I could
have played in Paris or played here or anywhere I might have
pulled myself together. I was not meant for a cooped-up seductive
life, such as we live. I need physical activity, no routine and a
variety of interests. I hate routine as badly as I hate monotonous
food. I am reverting. I am restless in mind and body and so damned
tired. Golly.

Dearest Blanche;

I hope you won't be disappointed with my birthday gift.
It was like this--Bergner was sold out for two weeks in advance
of closing. Roy couldn't get tickets for your money plus love.
Or you love plus your money. We were simply flattened. Then we
turned, with some misgivings, to Petrified Forest. We thought the
first act splendid. And thought there was no second or last act at
all. It was a good idea--a cross section of America in an isolated
gas' station. A sort of morality play. But it went so hay-wire and
so symbolic and was so over-written and so over-dramatized that
we could hardly bear it at the end. However the leading man still
attracts hordes of women who wait to see him when he comes out.
We had to get our first row balcony seats for that a week in
advance through the box-office. It was lots of fun to be in a
thatx theater again. And it resulted in increased satisfaction
with the movies which are cheaper and not often worse. We went
to the Hect-Noel-Coward-MacArthur whimsy which has had high praise
from their buddies, the critics. The lines are smaaarrttt. But Noel
Coward is a most unpleasant personality--to us--on the screen.
And he is too wicked to be real in the part. And the idea of a
ghost coming back with sea-weed from his drowning in one pocket and
with real money in the other was just too much tripe. It has all
been terrible over-praised.

Roy is at his Post meeting. I don't expect him
home until late. This evening's blow out is at the home of Leslie
Buell (head of the For' Policy Ass.) and the bill is--two pacificists
and two militarists, one a genuine General and one an ex-Major who
wrote Roy about G.H.Q. (his home in Jersey) and his wife, "The
General" Must be dretarded, this gent.

Roy is going into the camp of the D.A.R. and of the Amer Legion on Wednesday to make one of his tolerance speeches for my crowd, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.

I am on the Manhattan board of this now. Unfortunately I have little faith in the Manhattan branch. Of the 200 members they are mostly over fifty. And mostly upper middle-class. And mostly Jewish, including Mrs. Swope etc. I do not think any organization should be all of one race--any race. The Jews are notably radical-intellectual. With so many it is a form of recreation. I can never tell whether they are really realistic. The weakness of all our organizations except the pro-Communist League Against War and Facism, is that they cater solely to upper middle-class people who are so often already convinced. They let their lights shine under bushel baskets. It never reaches the lowly who are the mothers of the sons who will be sent out and shot. We are, however, staging a Mother's Day Peace Mass meeting which seems a good idea. Gold Star Mothers. War babies who are pacifists.

Blanche Murka has offered to read some of her devastating speeches from Lysistrata. And one Metropolitan star has offered to sing.

The Salvation Band has offered to play national and international airs on the side-walk until the show starts. I suggested a recruiting booth for which Roy is to make a recruiting poster. Recall the Gov't poster "Join the Army and see the World!" "Join the Navy and see the world." I have phrased it "Join the Peace Army and Save Civilization." I hope that a year from now we can do the whole thing in a more leisurely fashion and have many recruiting booths all over the city.

rest. They got lost at night, two days running. He tells me that she is a vegetarian from choice, not conviction. I wonder if fish is banned. Wish I knew. But I haven't quite got the nerve to call up and ask "Say you, how about fish.?"

I suppose New Mexico is humming with scandal.

Met some people last night--among them Rosamond Gilder---whom she was of who several had come back from New Mexico with all the gossip about Tony and Dodge and Frieda and Frieda's illness and Frieda's Italian lover. My word, what a mess! These people were in Taos when Dodge forgot to pay Tony's wife one month. Tony went over to the pueblo and wrote out a proper bill for his wife and sent it to Dodge. It is all so grotesque and so utterly without dignity.

Last night we were invited to one of the most sumptuous homes. I have ever been in. The wood-panelled entrance hall is as large as our studio. The dining-room is nearly as large. The drawing-room is as long and twice as wide. All Italian--- hand-carved beams and freESCO frescoed ceiling. Two priceless tapestries. Rose brocade curtains--- at six arched windows and no air whatever anywhere. Well, the dear lady who owns all this gorgeousness and apparently lives in it all by herself with about five hand-maidens and lackeys is going to stop the next war. There are 200 peace organizations in N.Y. City. She sweetly told our very select select group (including a drawing-room vicar) "I have examined all the existing peace organizations. I said to myself there must be something I can do for peace which nobody else is doing. "That's what is wrong with everything. Too many organizations all working for the same thing and over-lapping and wasting energy and also money. Americans are like that, I think. Anyway she decided to offer pacifists and lay people--at her own expense--- a news service on all measures in Washington which have any bearing on peace or war etc.

(3) I heard from Franchot. He has no information. Says there are
jobs--he thinks. Will put Roy in touch and will also house him if he
does arrive. Thinks Hollywood may move East. I doubt it. Taxes or
no taxes it seems to me that Hollywood would be foolish to leabe
its nature-made deserts, mountains and ocean.

I suppose everybody out your way is wrought up by now
over the Minor kidnapping and scalping party. I know it is very wrong
of me. But I so loathe Minor that I hoped that it would be proved
a frame-up by his own crowd. His wounds were remarkably light for
so much bleeding and howling. I met Bob Minor first in Chicago where
he and his then lovely artist wife were living in the Negro slums,
preaching anti-white violence and down ith the U.S.A.

I would like to live long enough to see what comes
out of the present chaos. I don't suppose I will. For I thin masses
of people move so slowly or are moved so slowly. I do fear living
long enough to see the rise of a Dictator. So much Dictatorial power
has been vested in Roosevelt during this emergency and was vested in
Wilson during the World War that the Facist attitude of mind is already
established

The Socialist Party here is demanding expulsions of
all Left Wing members and a definite stand against class violence.
More and more we are coming around to the idea of manufacture for
consumption and not profit. But class war-fare--nix.Nix.

We are having the Clapps to supper on Friday. He has been
feeling rather low and they had the loan of a car and went to
Virginia. They had a rotten time--blizzards, snow, rain and
everything else. He was very amusing about his "rare, rare, rare" but
who passed the ant.

And he was the son of the Village Chief's Hunter as anybody knew
who was the son of the Village Chief's Hunter as anybody knew
The name of this little brown African boy was Boomba.

Darlings;

Glad to have news of you. There isn't much for me to say
announce, save that I have not gone mystic and we will be here when you
come, whenever you come. As to my "silent help". You probably got my
meaning. The Communists rushed into the Scottsboro case; sent in obnoxious
Jewish lawyers because the town is anti-Semitic. They ruined--deliberately-
the boys' chances of life. Communists here say that the "boys do not matter
but their death will be good propaganda in the South among Negroes." To
me that is shocking. Life is the right of the boys and just as dear to
them as to any hysterical Communist. I felt that by silence the
boys' case might drop out of the lime-light and into obscurity and they
might, therefore, get off with long sentences. The testimony in the case
was horrible. It was unprintable, unreadable,. Some Communist busy-
body sent it to us. What I really felt, that the girls and the boys were
both victims of a backward culture in the South and not really worth
saving. Naturally that is not the stand one takes. Be very careful where
you give money these days. The Communists are organizing societies and
magazines etc. all over; called by them "innocence" clubs" since they get
wholly native people to lead them, organize them, publicize them. The
treasurer is always, however, secretly a Communist and keeps control of
expenditures. We got dragged into the Artists in Action---just once.
I think that Communism may be an ideal--that is Communism run, not by a
Dictator but by a Commission of experts. The present Communists are cer-
tainly the lunatic fringe in N.Y. My typist met one before our door, an
old friend. She said to her "What are you doing these days?" The young
lady replied, "I have been to three Communist meetings today. You see, I
am terribly over-sexed. By going to meetings and making speeches I rid my-
self of my surplus emotional energy." She wasn't funning. A Communist is
never humorous.

A Communist friend of ours who poses carefully as a Norman Thomas Socialist and is so accepted, called a strike of fashion artists. The strike, unsupported by the A.F. of L., was premature. Finally the poor devils of artists, controlled by a non-artist outsider, trickled back to work. Our FORMER friend confided to us, before we dropped him, that he regretted not breaking the right hand of the first artist who went back and broke the strike for which the organizer was getting $75 per week while the artists were going without. I said "You can't mean that." His answer was even more appalling. He said, "I wouldn't break anybody's hand or arm. I would hire one of the professional thugs among the Communists." Meanwhile has any Communist friend told you of the true story of Fiego Rivera and the Radio City mural? My only fear of Communism is that it will produce, by its ravings, premature Facism. I dread giving up all liberty under any regime. I don't want to be run from Gary, Ind. I don't want to be run from Moscow. There may be no place soon for middle-of-the-road people.

Art is not improving. Roy does all sorts of lousy work and paints to keep his mind off the rent. Mother is on the rampage. Where she is she has gained in weight; now walks; has had no heart attacks. Now says everything that was wonderful is simply vile. I will send her fifty per month plus doctor's fees. She can go where she likes. I have done my best. This is no time to be inconsiderate of Roy. The weather is too hot and this damned struggle to survive is too wearying. The wailing letters have begun after some nine months of peace. I have implored her to be considerate of Roy. But she will do what she wants to do and the answer will be, "I did it to help you. It was not for myself, but to save you from having to worry about the illness which my inferior living conditions would certainly have produced. Why is it that when we do our best to please the worst so often results? I know I am stupid. But I do my best. I think only of you etc. Ultimatums do no good. The last one only resulted in her appealing to people who moved her from Berkeley. Mother is always the "victim of her good intentions." The truth is the poor dear is the victim of her incurable