John H. Griffin

PLEASE ADDRESS ALL BUSINESS CORRESPONDENCE DIRECTLY TO: GLYDE & HOLLAND, MANSFIELD, TEXAS

April 18, 1956

Miss Katheryn Hulme
Little, Brown & Company
34 Beacon Street
Boston 6, Massachussets

Dear Mrs. Hulme,

I have just finished going through your fine book "The Nun's Story" which I am to review for the Dallas Morning News, and there is something strange here. In about 1945 a friend of mine, an English priest, Rev. John Webster wrote me about a Belgian nun leaving her convent, spoke of playing for her (as I recall) modern symphonic compositions etc., which she had not of course heard in her years as a nun. My memory is not exact, but I believe he mentioned something about her being the niece of one of the English statesmen. In any case, my recollections of her so exactly coincide with the Sister Luke of your book that I wonder if they are the same. It is of no importance insofar as my review of your book is concerned, but odd that a story that so impressed me eleven or twelve years ago should come across my desk for review in the form of your book. I will, of course, incorporate none of this extraneous material into my review should you care to confirm or deny my deduction that your heroine and Rev. Webster's are one and the same person.

Mansfield, Texas

May 1, 1956

Miss Katheryn Hulme
1430 Wildwood Drive
Los Angeles 41, California

Dear Miss Hulme,

Thank you for your answer to my query concerning
*The Nun's Story*. I have finished my rereview of your mag-
nificent book and sent a copy to Little, Brown. If there
has been a change in publication date, we should be notified,
since Little, Brown gave us May 14th and we are running it
about that time.

In the event that Little, Brown does not send you my
review, I am enclosing it. You may find my enthusiasm for
it a bit exaggerated, or that it might better fit into the
book page of *The Desert-Father's Gazette* rather than a
metropolitan newspaper, but I could not find any other way
of doing it.

In any case, I think you are extraordinary to have such
a perception into a life that is obviously not your own, and
you may as well be prepared to have most reviewers consider
it an autobiographical work. My congratulations.

It is my hope that I may someday read "The Wild Place"
when I am a little less busy.

P.S. You will forgive my calling you, in the review, 'Madame Hulme.' It was not meant to be a mannerism, but was simply an involuntary form which crept in because I was so certain that you were a European.

I join you in chewing fingernails since my own new novel,
NUNI, is to be published on the 15th of May by Houghton Mifflin.

John Howard Griffin
Mansfield, Texas

A review

THE NUN'S STORY by Katheryn Hulme
Boston: Atlantic-Little, Brown $4.00
(Publication - May 14, 1956)

Anyone expecting this to be another of mawkishly religious
works we have come to expect from such titles is in for a
slight jolt. For Madame Hulme, bless her, has had the almost
unheard-of audacity to write a beautiful rather than a merely
pretty book about the religious life.

With great narrative movement, she takes us into a set-
ting more foreign to most of us than that of another planet -
the polished halls, chapel, refectory and dormitories at the
convent Mother House in Belgium of a nursing order of nuns,
and later into one of their asylums, and later again into
their hospitals in the Congo and Holland. But more importantly
she takes us through the inner life of the nun in the person
of her heroine, Sister Luke. We follow this extraordinarily
believable woman from the day she enters the convent, through
her slow formation in detachment from the world, until she is
no longer Gabrielle, daughter of a famous surgeon and herself
a distinguished nurse, but Sister Luke, the nurse-nun. We
are shown what she studies, her inner struggles in achieving
those disciplines necessary to a life of total selflessness
and dedication to mankind in the name of God. We see that
she does not flee the world to escape it in some haven of
security, as so many imagine, but that she tears herself from
it in order to serve it through God in a way that would have
been impossible had she remained in the world.

THE NUN'S STORY - review - 2

We are taken into the heart of the cloister so skill-
fully that we actually become participants. And the life
here is very severe. The weakling could not remain. Silence
prevails among the two hundred nuns except at recreation and
even then there must be no mention of the past, nothing
personal and nothing trivial. Food is eaten from flat boards
instead of plates. We sleep on a straw mattress in a barren
little cubicle that is identical to all others, in which
we can keep no personal object, no photograph, nothing to
identify the cell as our own.

Here one learns to think and feel, to act and react
according to a divine premise. It is a life of silence and
poverty, of chastity and obedience, of work and prayer. It
is a life wherein one is no longer concerned with things
like personality and ambition as we know them in the world.
One seeks to be the littlest and least-known rather than the
most important and best-known. Paradoxically, this utter
unconcern for personality makes for the strongest and richest
of personalities, as the utter unconcern for personal happiness
makes for the deepest happiness. For this life transforms
women not into feelingless and automaton creatures, as many
suppose, but into the very essence of womanhood. It produces
saints, but not sour-faced ones. It enables a Sister Luke
to think never of herself and always of her patients, to
look with love on faces and bodies distorted by disease or
insanity and to see that even in the most degrading of her
ministrations to them she is, in truth, being accorded the

sublime privilege of ministering to the wounded body of Christ,

THE NUN'S STORY - review - 2.

Ranging from the complete realism of clinical frankness, of brutal murders of two of the nuns, of dusts and sweats and stenches of both physical and moral suffering, there nevertheless pervades every page the peculiar fragrance of a faith that supernaturalizes all things into their real perspective - a perspective which is almost never the obvious one.

But Madame Hulme's creation is strange - a mixture of great facility in describing things very difficult to describe, and along with that a certain clumsiness in construction and style. There are many flashbacks, and even worse, flashforwards, and cliches marring an otherwise fresh text.

This is a shame, for had the work been as perfectly presented formally as it is in content, it would have been unique. Her characters come alive superbly, and you can sense the vast, cool odor of sanctity in the Mother House and the tight, clinical odor of sanctity in the Congo hospital. And the logic of their lives, that logic which is so implacably rooted in God and which is therefore so implacably selfless, that logic which has such a strange tone to our ears and hearts — it becomes clear and understandable in Madame Hulme's exposition. That is the triumph of her work and one that outweighs its occasional faults of style and construction.

- 30 -

Mansfield, Texas

May 4, 1956

Dear Miss Hulme -

In great haste to tell you that I have a note from
Little, Brown informing us of the change in publication.
Will hold off if possible on the publishing of the review.

With warmest regards,

John Howard Griffin

Los Angeles, May 28th 1956

Dear John Howard Griffin:

You must think me a boor for not having answered your delightful letter of May first sooner, and - most especially - for thanking you for that completely remarkable review of THE NUN'S STORY. When I tell you that your letter arrived while I was in San Francisco (where I remained for 10 days) and that upon my return here I encountered a mountain of mail, mainly business, to be answered, then perhaps you will forgive the long delay.

I cherish your review of my NUN. I pray to heaven that Little-Brown notified you of delayed publication, so that your review will not be "wasted" four months before actual publication date. The Book-of-the-Month Club chose our NUN for its September selection, which accounts for the delayed publication - until September 6th, I believe. The Catholic Book Club also chose it as their September choice and I had both these bombshells of news on May first, the very day you were writing your letter to me!

Meanwhile you've had a book born and I heard the review of it on TV's CAVALCADE OF BOOKS yesterday afternoon - a very good review, I thought. Turnley Walker did it. He is obviously one of your fans. One can always tell when he's 'het up' about an author; his voice pitches lower and he clasps the book tightly and sometimes pounds with it on his desk as if to hammer in that it's a must for the serious reader..... I'm sure you'll have fat sales from that review. CAVALCADE has a tremendous audience and much of the southern California book-stores' displays and promotion are built around that program.

From the catalog squib you enclosed with your review, I learned that you were the author of THE DEVIL RIDES OUTSIDE -(Without a book I was mad to lay my hands on when it first came out, since it went into the religious life which I myself was planning to write about...but I purposely stayed away from it until my own opus was complete. Now at last I'm free to read freely and both your books will be my first acquisition.

Thank you again for that fine review and especially for the merited poundings you gave me for the flashbacks and the flash-forwards and the cliches creeping in! I was aware of the flashes, which I too abhor; but I could find no other way out of my dilemmas...but those cliches I thought I'd weeded out totally with the help of Ted Weeks to whom a cliche is practically an obscenity! Incidentally, the lady you called Madame is a native Californian, born in San Francisco and educated there! But I spent years abroad before the war and left a good-sized piece of my heart in the Old World, so your deduction was not entirely wrong. All my best wishes for NUNI go with this letter.

Gratefully yours,

Mansfield, Texas

May 30, 1956

Dear 'Madame' -

Thank you for your lovely letter this morning, and my heartiest and warmest congratulations on the wondrous news about THE NUN'S STORY. I am overwhelmingly pleased, not only for you, but most especially to learn that such a rare story will have such guaranteed circulation. It sounds trite to speak of the good such a work can do - subtly and invisibly - but it can; and it is almost desperately needed in our world today.

Yes, Little, Brown is keeping us notified about the book's publication and the review will be in the week of the book's release and not before. I shall also do it for the Houston Post - a different review probably under a different name - a thing I frequently do with works I particularly like.

Only one thing has intrigued me; or - more exactly - puzzled me, since the whole work intrigued me; that is the statement that the scapular's history is unknown. I am a Carmelite minor and of course wear the scapular and it has always been my impression that it's history was known. Is this considered historically dubious?

NUNI is doing well - very well saleswise and is getting extremely mixed reviews, being called everything from a great work to a foolish one. The NUN'S STORY will also get mixed reviews from that clique who think that the Vatican writes our works for us and that no Catholic can be an artist. It has troubled me (not because of myself) and I have been working on an article explaining how much the Church liberates us; but have abandoned the idea because it would only be taken as more propaganda.

All for now. Thanks again for your letter and if I can be of any further service to you, do not hesitate to call on me.

Los Angeles, Calif.

June 4th 1956

Dear John Howard Griffin:

I can't resist writing to you just once more. Though I ought to have enough will to terminate this beguiling correspondence, since both of us presumably earn our livings by writing and should ration ourselves on spendthrift words!

That scapular query of yours draws me. That para. in the NUN explaining what IS a scapular was inserted, in galley, at suggestion of Ted Weeks who wrote, "At no point have you clearly identified what you mean by 'scapular'. I had to look it up, so did a couple of other readers and since Webster isn't very clear on the point only by inference did we finally realize that it is that starched white sheeting which springs from the neck."

So then, I had to look it up also, going farther than Webster. I consulted a dictionary of religious terms (can't recall title of it) and found that the origin of the scapular is lost in antiquity although generally understood to be a symbol of the yoke of Christ. However, some scholars believe that the scapular is a vestigial garment which once was a functioning work apron that slipped over the habits of the vowed ones. The apron theory seemed very plausible to me, especially when I learned of the amount of elbow-work that goes into the scrubbing of the habits made of white serge. However, I chose the yoke symbol for my book, for obvious reasons. One absolutely uproarious incident relating to the scapular inquiry of Ted Weeks was the fact of my discovering that all through my Ms. I had mis-spelled 'scapular'. I had left off the final ß which made it a shoulder bone instead of a garment. One total reading of galleys was devoted exclusively to the hunting down of every scapula in the book! I'm a convert, only four years old in the Faith, still wobbley in Catholic spelling.

Thank you again for your letter. It starts off my day with a happy smile.

Yours,

Mansfield, Texas

June 7, 1956

Dear Katheryn, et voilà, par exemple,

Yes, just a very short note, because as you say, we both make a living at this business and my publishers are this morning reclaiming my new book *Passacaglia*; but your note about the *scapula* so pleased me, I could not resist starting my day with an answer before I get back into the intricacies of my characters. There are many strange parallels here. I, too, am a convert of only four years standing, having fought it for years and finally having written my conscience into the move with *The Devil Rides Outside*. I stayed away because I thought it would destroy my objectivity as an artist - a thing totally false and contrary to subsequent experience. It was in fact my saving, for I shortly thereafter became paralyzed from the waist down and heaven knows how I should have taken that without the strong gift of the faith. Over two years in a wheel & chair gave me the chance, though, of filling my life with lessons in philosophy and theology with the top members of the great Carmelite faculty and of producing a great backlog of work in my first draft which is now invaluable to me, and only a week ago I was able to ride my first horse in four years. With daily therapy and medication, the disease has been arrested - which is an almost miraculous triumph according to the country's finest doctors. These things make for a very great happiness, to put it mildly; especially when you are a great big ox like myself.

One thing I wanted to point out, and haven't - my hint about the clichés, which you, dear lady, called a pounding. It is terribly easy to say such things and then not be able to substantiate (cliches, characters overdrawn, underdrawn, etc., all of the standard critical paraphernalia); and I may even have been mistaken in labeling it, but I recall a few expressions such as "looking for a needle in the haystack" which were not used in dialogue but in narrative; and that was the point I meant; actually I go on to speak of the otherwise freshness of your language and expression.

I understand *Atlantic Monthly* gave me a fine review in this issue, but have not seen it. The one review which has caused apparent national outrage was the New Yorker's of May 19, which produced only an effect of cherishable laughter in me. But I have received a scad of indignant letters from people all over the country, especially protestant clergymen, sending me copies of their (futile) tongue lashings to the New Yorker.

Your note this morning was a great pleasure, and I cannot close without repeating once again that I think your book is wholly remarkable and share with you in its triumphs.

Mansfield, Texas

June 16, 1956

Dear Katheryn,

Always there are good excuses to write and since this
is my birthday and there was a letter from you to help me
start it right and I have only an hour before going to deliver
a lecture on THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BLINDNESS to a convention in
Dallas - (dreadful subject for such a hot day) - I cannot
resist answering your letter.

These are wonderful days for us in the country. Passacaglia

glides downhill now with no effort, the children are superb,
have had their polio shots and we are planning a big Father's
Day & Birthday celebration for tomorrow. I took my little
Susan-Michle horseback riding for the first time last evening
since we were along together while my wife ran over to visit
her aunt for a couple of hours - and a strange and poignant
little thing occured. Susan, who was wild with the initial
pleasure of riding went to sleep in my arms very shortly after
we'd got to the end of the pasture. My wife then came
streaking out across the fields in the car, blowing the horn
and absolutely frantic, having returned to the house and found
us gone. I had miscalculated my time completely, thinking it
was about seven. I said: "Well, for eheaven's sakes, we're
out here in full sight - what were you worried about." It
turned out it was after nine! - a matter of night that bothered
neither my horse nor myself. In any case, we now know a faultless
way of putting Susan to sleep ever the need should arise.

I am terribly pleased to learn that our nun is safe there
with you; not that one would worry about such a lovely and
resourceful woman, but still it gives a very fine feeling.

Am enclosing a little write-up of the type that I am
very fond. As you can see it was done by an old friend of
myne, a former AP staffer with whom I had lost contact long
ago.

About Father Murphy - he will be a great and sane champion
of your work - and he is a man of tremendous importance behind
the scenes; a Chesterton authority, founder of the Christian
Culture series and awards, and one of the most delightful men
you ever knew. He is very anxious to read your book - a real
character, a Basilian, Ph.D., a great Thomist thinker and part
of my "underground" in this war against action groups who
insist on seeing as ugly those things which God created as good.
The Basilians fill my files with every conceivable type of
valuable material on these subjects, screening writers for
me (on ethical questions, particularly concerned with morality
and the novel,) proof read, along with the Carmelites and Dominicans
all of my articles etc. I shall enclose a couple of notes from
Father Stan for your interest, not immodestly I hope but because
all of these things apply directly to you and your work come
September, particularly the review Father Gardiner will give you (which
is always a very important one) and also because I have no doubt

that you will probably get a big free-wheeling review from Father Stan, and he can - as you judge from these notes -- be a little disconcerting; but most of all because in a world of puritanical and narrow-minded and unrealistic priests and action groups, it is good to know that there are strong forces on the side of reality and frankness and artistic freedom - as these things will amply demonstrate. As you perhaps know, my involved correspondence with Hubert Maino, a fine and touching priest but one directly opposed to the views of most Catholic authors (me, Muariac, Greene, Waugh, etc.) (he has condemned us all at one time or another, and does it again periodically now and then in The Michigan Catholic), is to be published soon, airing both sides of this question of the treatment of evil in literature; and The Basilians have been tremendously instrumental and helpful in guiding me through the maze in my response to him. Hence Father's reference to the "society for the sterilization of literature" - which concerns Fr. Maino's great action campaign for "Clean Literature." In any case, as a Catholic you have two powerful audiences - the Catholic one and the non-Catholic one, and were we to write to please either one we would be committing suicide; the chichi critics form one bulwark and the Leagues for Clean Literature form an opposite one - if you can manage to ignore the two, you are safe; and ultimately (ironically) both end up respecting you more than their pets.

In Passacaglia I have a French Catholic author write to such a group saying that he begins his day with novena prayers to the Holy Spirit and that before writing each sentence he asks God if it is all right; and he therefore concludes (like Bloy) that, startlingly enough, God is far less restrictive than the groups who purportedly act in His name. And this is obviously true. All of these things are fascinating, but I won't keep you longer because I know things are piling up on you. Please don't think me presumptuous in telling you all of these things. You are an established writer and know the ropes, as does your agent; but The Nun's Story is going to bring some of these things to the fore in a way not before experienced. (And that is a great compliment.)

I think Houghton is going to want to change Passacaglia, since it is a relatively unknown name in America (although Collins plans to publish under that title.) I can think of nothing to replace it.

Ah, enough. Never "wonder bitterly" about the Old Jewish God. You can't win. The only thing I've ever found to do is love. Otherwise, He'll keep slapping you down till He either gets disgusted and quits or you get all of the resistance to His will knocked out of you. Only then is there happiness - so it's the best way after all...the only really interesting way, as you know only too well. Enough for now. I've got to go infuriate a bunch of workers for the Blind by telling them to stop putting us in their nasty little backrooms with our brooms and mops, etc., to stop showing in visitors to see how well we do what any idiot monkey could do, to stop putting ceilings on our possibility of accomplishing normal and ceilingless lives, etc... The good onestake it right, the do-gooders take it wrong. God love you,

Mansfield, Texas

August 28, 1956

Dear Kathryn,

Thank you for your lovely letter, especially in view
of the hectic months surrounding you. Please do not bother
to answer this one. We shall be with you in thoughts and
prayers and very great happiness for you and for the world
that will profit so magnificently by the diffusion of Sister
Luke's story throughout the world. I am forwarding your letter
for Father Stan's review on to him, and I know he will be
pleased.

It looks like my "Street" is going to the movies also.
Very promising. I have been working day and night for
so long now I scarcely know my family anymore. Have a
little story coming out in November Catholic Digest in case
you should run across it, and the transalation of a fine
article from Pere Laframboise (isn't that a wonderful name?)
for a bit later.

My **Devil** goes to the U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 15.
Keep a good thought. As you know, the big banners were
the Catholic Women of Detroit. I was very amused there-
fore to have word from Father Stan that Father Gerald Vann,
O.P. - a celebrated English Dominican Thomist and writer
had written him recently:

"I was so glad to have your letter and to know of your championing of Griffin against the powers of darkness." I imagine the Nat'l. Council of Catholic Women would blow a gasket to hear themselves thus characterized!

All for the moment. When things settle down a bit for
you, we will always welcome your news with great joy. Will
keep you posted from time to time but with the understanding
that you do not need to answer these "bulletins." Oh, be on
lookout for my big debate with Bishop Dwyer of Reno re his
recent cavalier and stupid remarks concerning such Catholic
novelists as Maurian, Greene and Bernanas. I was asked by
both Dominicans and Basilians to give answer and did, although
I hate to do this sort of thing.

Best love to both of you from all of
us here.

P.S.

My one black fear - as I wrote to Father Stan, is contained
in this paragraph dictated to him which I transcribe:

"A card from K.H. telling me that the NUN'S STORY sold
to the movies. It should make a superb one if properly handled.
I do hope they won't mess up the chapel scenes by replacing
Gregorian Chant with some sweetly-harmonized choral work done
by the Girl's Clubs of America or some such."

I hope that you can persuade them to keep it tight in
this respect.

Bansfield, Texas

Sept. 8, 1956

Dear Kathryn,

Here are copies of the local reviews - one you have already read by me, and another by Sister Teresa of Jesus, C.S.J. I thought I should send you this one immediately, since Sister Teresa is a most strange woman - an "independent", claiming to be Anglican but not accepted by them, and quite belligerent about some of her pet peeves - and there are many. She is the only member of her order thus far, but is in many ways a woman of great worth - though tremendous stubbornness. I got acquainted with her, thinking she was a Catholic, when she wrote a scathing article against Foucauld (calling him a libertine, etc. as though such sins were never forgiven, and generally putting in a lot of unconfirmed suspicions of her own.) She knocked my head off for <u>xx</u> rebutting her, told me she was not a Catholic, that she reserved the right to her own opinions, etc. I tell you this to explain some of the strange tone to her excellent review. The titles of our two reviews are very significant, I think.

Again, congratulations and best love to both of you,

Mansfield, Texas

Oct. 1, 1956

Dear Kathryn,

In haste, just received a note from New Jersey (of all
places) giving me hell for my review of your book. The woman
said it was a GREAT book and I should be ashamed of mentioning
anything about the flash-backs and flash-forwards. She further
stated that it was the first non-detective book she's read
in years and that it was more fascinating to her even than
most detective fiction. She thinks I was pretty lousy about
the whole thing.

I wrote her back and told her to rip off the end of my
review and just read the good parts, and that I agreed with
her on all counts and was sorry I'd said those things at all
and that she must forgive me.

All my best love to both of you,

FEAST OF ST. FRANCIS

JMJ

Mansfield, Texas

October 4, 1956

Dear Kathryn,

How generous you are to send me such a nice long letter. Strange, I was thinking about you yesterday morning at Mass (Ste. Therese) and telling myself: "I must write her what she probably already understands - that we have an understanding that she need not answer my letters nor I hers in times of stress." And so I have said it, and it is a wonderful feeling isn't it, because there are so many who jealously count letters and make a fetisch of these protocols. I thought, too, should I not write you some warnings, because I have been through that rather unique experience of writing a "spiritual" best seller, and it is full of dangers; but then I told myself that there was no need in it, that you were solid and stable enough to withstand the devilment involved in it, in what people try to do to you and make of you. Had I not been paralyzed and more or less "knocked out" for a couple of years, I doubt if I could have withstood the <u>INSIST</u> terrible temptations to pride, the temptations of considering myself in the light in which an exaggerated public opinion almost forces you to become.

About the letters to Father Stan. Don't worry. You did
nothing wrong in addressing a copy to me, and I appreciated it
and thought it lovely. In the seeming "inner circle" I'm
afraid we are very lax about observing such protocols - we
blithely shoot things back and forth, having a free and easy
exchange, and paying no attention to anything except that we
naturally break no confidences or anything like that.

On your N.Y. trip, just revel in it and as long as you
(as you say) "keep everything calm inside" it will go fine.
I went on it - on all the TV and radio panel shows, interviews
and the like, and although I went there wildly protesting,
belligerent and somewhat frightened of it all, I ended up
having a fine time. Your dread of it is sufficient guarantee
that you will triumph and bring your refreshment to all of those
people.

I have a feature story coming out (about me, that is) on
AP, with photos and all, Oct. 15th, so look for it. Explains
about the Supreme Court hearing which takes place the 15th.
Don't bother to look in <u>LOOE</u>. The thing's all messed up -
my agent called to tell me both Colliers and Look are bidding
on it, and she's inclined toward Colliers, so I don't know who'll
get it. Have not finished it yet, but should do so tonight.

Have been writing a long defense of Colin Wilson's THE
OUTSIDER, which I consider a work of major importance and which
is being attacked by some quarters. You must, someday, read it.
An illuminating work, one you will love. A portion of it which
strikes both of us concerns what happens to many authors whose
works become progressively less vital and more formalized. He

goes into this magnificently, shows that it comes from a state
where you suffer from lack of self-criticism **XX** which causes
a deterioration in one's "inspiration." And he makes the remark:
"There is no danger to self-knowledge so great as being
universally accepted as a spiritual leader."

I write you about this, because I see it as my own most
devastating temptation. It can only be fled by hewing to the
narrow path of work, of solitude, by abandoning everything to
God through work and by seeking to BEING become littler and
littler. It is enough to realize this, I think. The dangers
are so terrible, they nullify the temptation and give a sense
of freedom once they are **XX** realized. I have forced myself
to let the admirations go by the wayside. In fact, to shun
them, because they immediately make demands contrary to your
own deepest inclinations. My second book affronted most of
the people who loved my first. My third will affront most of
the people who loved the second, etc. You will be placed in
that frightful stereotype of "spiritual leader," probably **X**
already are. (And in truth you are a real spiritual leader)
If I were you, I would study very hard in order to retain the
daring that will continue to make you an authentic one and
help you to avoid that stereotype. I fled to the Carmelites
to escape it, because the sheer pressure of mail and public
opinion was forcing me into that mold. You have the buffer
of your own good sense and your Faith and of course Sister
Luke. Thank God for that. God has seen fit to use you as
an instrument to bring people to Him. This means that the
devil will try to poison that, very subtly, and use your
conversion to his advantage and paralyze you into the image
you yourself most detest, that of public piety. The people
who will be initially discountenanced by your refusal to exhange
the steel of reality for the sugar of piousness, will eventually
be helped by that very shock. All saints and all artists must
be "originals", daring. We must avoid, as de Coöte says,
the stereotype of the "general practitioners of religion who
are all identical."

The only way I know of doing it is by keeping very close
to the sacraments, by prayer and a certain amount of solitude
and recollection, by never letting your mind decide what is
real if it contradicts your soul's judgment that it is unreal;
even though this may seem entirely opposite from what your
mind tells you.

I pray that you in no way interpret this as an analysis
of what is, but only as a perhaps superfluous warning that
may be of some eventual help to you. Do you know Von Hildebrand's
magnificent little Liturgy and Personality. If not, you will
find great help in it; also in Poucel's Mystique de la Terre.

Now, I must close. Such a long letter, but after working
hard all day, it was a refreshing outgush for me. You will,
I think, enjoy STREET OF THE SEVEN ANGELS - it is great fun
and the scene is the St. Jacques quarter of Paris. It is a
study of what Chesterton called "sanctimonious serpents," but
lightly, as satire in the Moliere mold. It will outrage many,
bless them.

All for now. God love you and Sister
Luke. Yours devotedly,

P.S. - forgive the wretched composition of this letter. I did want to tell you that I have read tons of reviews and particularly the N.Y. ones, and blessed the good ones and cursed the bad ones and in general shared in your GOOD and LEGITIMATE excitement. I fear the preceding letter sounds wet-blanketish, and is not meant to be. Revel in your just rewards - that is the way it must be, only beware of the crackpots, sanctimonious, et al; beware, too, in future works of thinking of how any of your friends and critics will view this or that. If they are really good (as Father Stan, Father Vann, O.P. et al) they will amaze you with their authenticity of reaction. Gardiner will, bless him - a fine man to whom I am devoted - say that no future work really stands up to whichever one he has praised in the past; it is a good quirk of his. He is a tough critic, solid, and your good review from him is most valuable. The only way you'll ever get another one, believe me, is simply not to give a damn what he thinks. In that way, I have got two good reviews out of him, and I expect Street to upset him enough to wheedle out a third, which, to my knowledge has never been done in the history of the magazine.

Oh, have a little piece coming out in Nov. Catholic Digest, which is also to be turned into a radio drama for Fr. Noonan's *Hour of St. Francis*; it is nothing but may amuse you.

Congrats on the Shepherd pups. I have a monstrous black bear of a Newfoundland, but cannot plan any parenthood. The nearest full-blood one is in Illinois, and besides, although this one is like a mother to my own children, I think she's incapable of having them herself. She is a great animal, out of the finest champions of the breed, with awards in obedience. When we brought the new baby (rather the most recent one) home from the hospital, she stood at the gate with a teddy-bear doll in her mouth, and we never have discovered where she filched it. A publisher in St. Louis gave her to me after she kept embarrassing him by showing up in the morning after a night of foraging with fine frozen roasts and chickens, still wrapped and with the warppings unbroken. No one ever found out where she got those, either.

I hope AP runs the picture of my little family. You would melt at first contact with Susan Michele. I never speak English with her, and although I speak with the accent Tourangeau, she has somehow come up with the most grotesque accent de Toulouse and sounds like a vraie commerçante des Halles. It's hilarious, such rolled 'r's and nasals and flung aigues and graves you never heard. I just sit around and beam at the little fishwife who'll be having her second birthday next month.

Mansfield, Texas

October 11, 1956

Dear Kathryn,

I don't know why, but yours of the 9th telling me that
you lived in Paris and worked with Gurdjieff for such a long
time was rather like a cold sock on the jaw (not in the unpleasant
sense, but in the shock sense.) This delights me, and I hope
someday we can get together and talk about this. While you were
there with Gurdjieff, I was in Tours, just ninety miles away,
working as assistant to Dr. Fromenty in the Asile d'aliénées,
women's sector, with just such "Sister Lukes" to help care for
the patients. I was doing research there until the war, when
they took the doctor into the army and left me and eight nuns
to care for 120 women in straight-jackets.

I am simply overwhelmed that you went through the Gurdjieff
mill; but you must not interpret my previous letter as "fretting"
about your x imagining yourself to be anything but the quintessence
of nothingness, as you say. I was referring only to your work,
not to yourself, who are the quintessence of quite a greatness,
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. What an extraordinary
background you have, and how much I envy you your knowledge
and experience.

The AP story will be out the 21st instead of the 15th.

Again, let me apologize for that last letter, which causes
me to blush. It was like teaching a Ph.D. to spell cat.

STREET has already sold to England and this morning to
France.

Ask Sister Luke to say a prayer, and say one yourself,
will you? I may have another wheel-chair siege, a slight
relapse has paralyzed my right leg once more, but we hope
to restore it with a lot of work. I don't mind any of it
except that it is rather nerve-wracking and slows down my
work, and it frightens me in the even that something should
happen to my wife or children and I'd not be able to make
it to them quickly.

All the best to you and Sister Luke and have a grand
time in N.Y. Pi is standing close to the TV in the event
you should appear on one of the programs and she has all
of the tape-recorder equipment connected so she can record
anything that might be said.

Mansfield, Texas

October 23, 1956

Chere GRANDE VEDETTE DE TELEVISION,

At some ungodly hour this morning people started calling
me from the main house, telling me that you were soon to be
"on". I bustled up then, and we had breakfast in the living
room and Vedette Sloan was much disliked merely because he was
taking time, we all agreed, which should have been given
to you. Then, when you did come on, and I was concentrating
on what you were trying to say, especially the bit about fiction
not necessarily being "untrue", the ladies, ever helpful, were
discreetly filling in the picture with details about a simple
black dress, an upsweep hairdo and many other things which I
managed to block out in favor of you and Will Rogers.

Anyway, it was all too wonderful and you handled your
part superbly, I thought. I would have been thrown had some
of those questions been tossed to me.

Yours,

Mansfield, Texas

December 8, 1956

Dear Kathryn,

Thanks for your most welcome letter this morning - and you do sound harried, just as I feel at times; so I dash this one back to you in equal haste and with the understanding that you enjoy it, (if possible) and IGNORE IT.

We will be watching the Garroway show of January 6th and wish you all good luck on it.

Strange things here. Houghton and I have decided this week that STREET is too complicated, and it occurs to us that with practically no rewriting it is two separate books, so XX I'm somewhat bewildered to find that I have two books ready to come out in stead of one. This means a lot of franc-tic correspondence with European publishers who have already bought it and may not wish to go along. Anyway, it doesn't make much difference.

Yes, I'm quite well again, though too busy, really, what with a great deal of correspondence on the desegregation issue, the Supreme Court issue, etc. Remeived this week a request from the research psychology dept. of the Univ. of Illinois to send them my observations on the psychological aspects of confession...as though such a thing could be done in less than a full volume -(andx as though I could do it.) Nevertheless, one cannot refuse such a request in good conscience, and I think it is hopeful that they even bothered to make it. How I hate this emphasis on confession as a "therapy" though, rather than a sacrament...but I have told them that, too.

Thank you for your prayers; and know that you have not only ours, but those of the Carmelites as well. We are endlessly happy with the soaring of the book.

This is nothing, so all for now. Our best love to you and "Sister Luke"...

John H. Griffin

Mansfield, Texas

January 23, 1959

Dear Katheryn,

I am preparing an article for High Fidelity Magazine which I think might interest you. It deals with the experience of listening to various musical works after having been exposed to them through literature (as Huxley's use of Beethoven Op. 132 Quartet in *Point Counterpoint*). Obviously there are thousands of mentions of music in literature, but we want to deal with those that really affect the story or are intrinsic to it (Mozart b mi Adagio - *Jean Christophe: Gide Symphonie pastorale* etc.) Or perhaps something like Gide's discussion of the Chopin works in his *Journals*.

It occurs to me that a person with your interests has certainly had such experience. If so, or if you think of other examples in literature where music plays such a role, would you note them down for me? I would be most interested in your reactions to this project and your comments in general.

There is unfortunately an element of haste. I know your time schedule must be full and will certainly understand if you cannot take time to write me about this.

Miss Katheryn C. Hulme
1430 Wildwood Drive
Los Angeles 41, California

JHG:LM

Katheryn - page from type letter !