GEORGE PLATT LYNES

May tenth, 1934.

My lover.

I have not been happy. This week has been all sex-turbulence and lonliness, old desires and new codes. Masturbation has been no good, depressing and no pleasure. Aside from that I have felt down on my luck. No good pictures yet. I think I shall never find time to hang curtains or find place for my possessions. And, of course, I have wanted you desperately, wanted to make love to you, make love to you for hours on end. There comes a time inevitably when I think and dream of you to the exclusion of everything else. Luckily my hands are not tied for long. Nevertheless it is a bad business. I consciously avoid seeing people to whom I might want to make love at time, and in places when and where it might be possible to do so: all mixed-up impulses. And Glen, so proud and unlucky, so troubling, has announced he now wants only you and Jacques and me. Obviously I do not want him to want you, and I dare say he cannot have Jacques. I cannot want him myself; I have tried, I have even pretended, and one afternoon I even believed I did want him but I regretted it afterwards and not out of sentiment. It is no good. My lack of taste has become distaste. Oh, I know that happened before and that perhaps makes it worse. And I have got to be excused and wish I had the courage to say it bluntly. I feel selfish and ashamed. Between and even during his fevers, he has been so good, infinitely helpful, and I have not needed to be bucked-up, needed actual courage, until now. (I even cannot remember how long you have been away. It seems an eternity.) My moving was a ghastly job for everybody. Lloyd helped a lot with that, but he does not want me to weep on his shoulder, and I no longer have yours. Glen is more cheerful now thanks, so far as I can tell, to his new "point of view". And, strangely, I mistrust it without mistrusting him. I do love him.

Oh, my darling, please pay no attention to this. There is nothing you can do now. In my present mood I would make love to the first attractive person who came along, yet I would see to it that one did not appear. And it all has to do, I suppose, with the fact that I cannot take pictures: no sense of light values, no efficiency, no excitement. I should not be writing. I am too nervous, too discouraged, to make proper sense. Forgive me for troubling you, for wanting you, too much.

214 EAST 58TH STREET, ONE WORTHY STREET TELEPHONE: PLAZA 3-8666 - CABLES: VAUGIRARD NEW YORK

Via S.S. EUROPA

Monroe Wheeler, Esq.
Guaranty Trust Company
4, Place de la Concorde
Paris

France

GEORGE PLATT LYNES

July twenty-fourth, 1939.

My darling -

I keep wondering where you are, how far along,
wondered if you and Carmel chanced to meet in the Azores,
though of course I know you reach Venice this week. And Glen
threatens to send a wire to insist that you skip Villefranche
and go instead to Geneva to see the Spanish pictures. Perhaps
you will think of that anyway and by the time this reaches you
in Paris it will be too late. Here nothing changes but the
weather, always from hot to cold, never from dry to wet. We
go on drenching the trees and sprinkling the lawn with some
success. Two of the big thorns Paul and I transplanted are
putting out new shoots (achievement) and the lawn is not as
brown as it might be. But not a drop of rain since long before
you left, and the weatherman is too timid now to promise any.
Dora came for the weekend; coincidental charity, for I dis-
covered that her sister had made off with her best back-home
beau, had let her find it out round-about. So she was pretty
unhappy and we did get her cheered up. Our room is completely
dismanteled, and the new floor goes in this week. And new cup-

640 MADISON AVENUE, NEW YORK

TELEPHONE: PLAZA 3-8666—CABLES: VAUGIRARD NEW YORK

boards and bookshelves and woodboxes are to be installed in
the hall and two downstairs rooms. There are to be new curtains
in our room (more of the same, I think) and Paul is going to
paint our woodwork. And maybe it will not be done by Friday and
maybe I shall have to sleep in the muss. There are lovely new
photos for the Bazaar and Marshall Field, better-photos-than-
you-or-I-might-expect for Good Housekeeping; there should be
a Kodachrome to do any day now. And Kiko is to spend tonight
and tomorrow night with us, before sailing, but for all we know
he is still in Detroit and will probably turn up without wiring,
without warning; at least I shall have the pleasure of remark-
ing that other people's relatives behave as badly as mine. I
have saved this evening to take him to Coney Island, and I suppose
I may as well go on saving it to the last moment. And Glen's
Forrest is down with tonsilitis. Bob Bishop has been installing
himself all morning and has a little motor that hums like an
icebox. And now this must go to the Bremen, and I must get ready
to take Janet Taylor to luncheon. Life is O.K. but I keep on
wishing we were together, even wishing I had been foolish en-
ough to accompany you, for it would have been foolish and I
should be loving it.

GEORGE PLATT LYNES

640 MADISON AVENUE NEW YORK TELEPHONE PLAZA 3-8666

February twenty-fourth, 1943.

Dearest Mon. I've been trying and trying to think, and the more I try
the deeper the confusion becomes. But I am sure of one thing and that is
that I am not going to be able to get the child out of my head, not for
a long time; I suppose that means I cannot try with a whole heart to pick
up the pieces of our life, to start over, to be nineteen again. If he will
ever be a comfort to me I cannot guess. I know he wants to come back. But
that is too far away, and I'm not counting on it. I did give him up
but
for three weeks or so in January, I suppose you know he was my lover again
after that and until he went away. You have been hurt so much and I've been
hurt too and I feel I cannot face any more of my own double-dealing and you
shouldn't have to. It's so hellish because I'll never love anybody as I've
loved you, perhaps not as much as I love you still, hard as you'll find that
to believe. But I've got to get my life simplified, even for the worse, heart-
breaking as it is, sick as it makes me to write it. Nobody knows better than
I what I'm giving up, and yet I cannot believe it will necessarily be for
the worse. I think I agree, without considering your museum complications,
that we shouldn't live together in the circumstances. And it would be ter-
ribly hard for Glen and me to live to gether, at any rate for the time being.
I've wanted a letter from you about your plans and have waited for it. But
you shouldn't make plans until you've had this from me; if I were more

courageous I should have written it before; it takes courage to write it now.
But maybe it will make a man of me. I hope you understand. These past four years
have been bad so bad and our life was so wonderful before and I cannot face
the half-measures and the probability of making you unhappy in countless little
ways. And maybe if you have all the blows at once it will be easier for you to
start over. Do you want me and my things out of 89th Street before you return?

This is a bad rambling miserable letter but how could it be otherwise. I haven't
cried as I wrote since the first years I knew you, and it's horrible. I pray you
are as strong as you say. I'm going to be stronger than I've ever been before.

I suppose this will cross a letter from you, but I'll not answer any letter but
your answer to this, and I'll wait for that with my fingers crossed and my
heart in my throat. Give my love to Glen.

GEORGE PLATT LYNES

February twenty-fourth, 1943. Six hours later.

Mon dearest. I gave myself a powerful kick in the stomach, writing that beastly letter this morning. God knows what I've done to you. And now it's too late for me to take any of it back. I'll have to let it stand. But try to forgive me just once more. I've done you so much harm and you have been so good. The thing I cannot understand, the thing I've been asking myself all afternoon, is how I who have loved you so much could have behaved so abominably and so brutally. I've done something to myself I'll never get over. I wish to God I could know that you will be all right.