PRESERVATION PHOTOCOPY: ORIGINAL MATERIAL RESTRICTED

Portage, Wisconsin

November 30, 1928

Dear Katherine:

I want to tell you all about the cats. I couldn't keep their names straight - I'm so sorry - and so we call them kitty but they never pay any attention anyway unless there is food in our hands or a large soft pet for them so it doesn't seem to matter. Mentally - but not aloud because I feel it would be too unfaithful to their real mother who named them - I call them Othello - black one - and divide between Sunflower and Electra for the orange one even though they seem and one of them is feminine. I mean the names. Now that is only mental unfaithfulness or insensitivity which is really quite natural sometimes.

But dear Black has fits and I've tried salt, fit tablets - which produce them at once - and Sure Shot Tablets for Worms. The cause is meat, I have discovered, and now the seizures are less and less painful for him. Today he simply uttered that long piercing groan, half shriek, exactly like epileptics give - Dostoievsky - and immediately I wrapped him in a rug the way my friend Mavis McIntosh advised me to do and now he's fine and didn't have a fit after all. I like Black best now because he's so delicate and sickly. But he eats ravenously the rest of the time and frightens Orange so that he walks away and leaves both dishes of food.

Orange got out between the egg man's legs and ran away on a cold rainy afternoon. I cried, called, walked in the dark wetness all evening and at half past eleven he was returned to us, anxiously waiting, by Jane Lewis who found him crying pitifully and pacing in the court yard. The black sat pressed against the window watching and mewing. When Black has a fit Orange licks his face when all is calm. I keep thinking he is getting over them and give him a little bacon or corned beef or bones and he always gets sick. So now I've decided no more meat ever for Black.

We're terribly fond of them and awfully grateful to you and your mother for letting us have them. This morning they knocked the sitting room lamp on the floor wrenching it and knocking a hole in the shade and none of us said a thing about it to either of them - so that shows we are devoted, doesn't it?

I was so excited over your job - didn't I tell you you'd get something soon? But I didn't dream so very soon - only a week - you're a genius to be able to do that. I hear you've taken an apartment and your mother says she is planning to be with you. That will be so nice and it will be grand to hear concerts together, won't it? Do you ever go down to Eva Le Gallienne's Theater? I liked her productions the best of any in New York. Be sure and see the Wild Duck, though, if it's in town. If you need a literary agent try my friend Mavis McIntosh, McIntosh and Otis, 114 West 42nd Street. Why don't you drop in and see her some time? Perhaps you know her anyway - she used to live in your town. If you know any

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one who wants to take a short story course tell them my friend Bill Breck is grand - you can get his address through Brandt and Brandt, 101 Park Avenue - we used to work there. He let me do reading for him when I was simply desperate and wild. He's a good critic, too, he gave me some very good clear ideas about my book. I have a friend Jane Holran who used to work on Adventure Magazine who is coming in from the country in a few weeks and I want you to meet each other. Did you ever see Henry Williams? His wife, whom I wanted you to know, has had to go out to Princeton to live with her parents-in-law, the Jesse Lynch Williams's.

This is Thanksgiving Day and I wonder what you did. Holidays are usually awful in the city no matter what you do. Once I had dinner in a place that I really thought was a hotel - a gold elevator - servants better looking than any of the guests, marble everywhere, faces, floor, chests, cheeks, and spun sugar over the ice cream. It was all funny. This year was funny too. Last night Mama and I went to see Jane Guyler. I had seen her in church and I wanted to take her some little thing so that I could get acquainted. It was disconcerting because she is deaf and kept saying "Hey" to everything I wanted to mumble. Her dump was awful - so bleak and bare. She said finally, "Are you lone ladies?" God! Mama said, "No, I have a husband and family," and she replied, "Yes, that's everything - everything - but we must all of us be thankful anyway".

I can't get over Mrs. Cockrum. My negro friend Mr. Pickens - the one I told you and the Corrigans about - spoke in Madison recently. Don't you think your mother would like to know him when she gets to New York? He's really grand if you don't do what I did to him right off the bat.

I have just read that life of Dickens. It's probably true and it's interesting to present a hero through the eyes of his wife mainly but after it's all finished there isn't a lot to it. He tries to show the human side - vanity, foppyery, all that, presentiousness, snobbishness, - but when it's done you don't care one way or the other. He lays it all to mother fixation.

Jim Chichester made a pastel of me with Orange. He made O. look like Alexander Pope, very sharp and ironic with kid gloves on - the strangest effect you've ever seen in cat's paws.

I do hope you're well and happy and having a grand time. I think you're awfully smart and I'm so glad you landed something right off the bat. You're very smart. I wish you were going to be there this summer so my friend Jim Chichester could see you. If you ever feel lonely to know some utter scoundrels and interesting talkers and egoists who haven't a cent and will expect you to be a mother to them in every sense of the word I can introduce ten at once. Let me know if you have the urge. Ten at once easily. One has gone to a monastery however. Perhaps you and your mother might be interested in Joe Gould - he used to be a grand anthropologist before he got lazy and Ezra Pound says he has one of the best minds in America. He's awfully grotesque looking and his teeth sometimes

fall out and he's the one that pastes his glasses on with court
plaster sometimes. Do you want to have him introduced? For
heaven's sake don't laugh if he tells you that he is my real
mate only I don't know it. One day I told him he ought to eat
spinach and he said, "I prefer not to be morbid about my diet".

I am reading the Bible. I've written only thirty pages
of my book - can't write - dream about it and get up all filled with
it and walk around for two days with my characters and write all
the time - feel like a mother dog licking her puppies - then I
suddenly read it over and loathe it all and throw it away. I
never was this way before.

I do hope you're happy and having a good time every instant

Faithfully,

Margery.

I saw your mother once and she looked grand and was so excited over
going to N.Y. to be with you.

Portage, Wisconsin

February 4, 1929

Dear Katherine:

We have been in gales and torrents over your letter. I wanted to wire you to see that your mother does not kiss Mr. Pickens in a moment of spiritual understanding - as I did. Also the use you are making of the flower pot hurts me excessively. Roach-killer, Katherine! and think of it - made by my own hands. Now a roach-killer and you don't even reproach yourselves. The city has certainly hardened you both. The Corrigans enjoyed your letter immensely. We shrieked over it. They continue to be excellent, so fine and amusing and everything.

I wonder if Tapley has called on you yet. (I suppose you shudder wondering just who will emerge next.) I have a Bulgarian, also a sailor, but the rich I know are all married and old. I specialize in derelicts as you have noted. Joe's history is good in parts, very bad in others. Mavis says he looks like the shadow of a bone. She supposes that is due to his wanting to be famous after death. I'm so glad you fed him. I wish I could send a millionaire. There is one around the village, Bob Clairmont. All the poets fight and lie and cheat to get him for a patron. They praise his poetry which is even more dishonest and treacherous. An awfully nice young fellow is going to call on you during his Easter vacation from Cornell. He's very clean, too.

Oh, I met Otto Beyer. Then he left the most beautiful and radiant pheasant here. He said it was a present from your mother. We can't, we haven't the words nor the divine vitality to thank her appropriately. The bird was so rare and delicate, so far beyond chicken or turkey in fine flavours, so plump on the platter and so appealing. I wanted him stuffed but Mama wouldn't hear of it and now I'm thoroughly glad we didn't. I took some to the Corrigans who were exultant over it. Also Leona came for a pheasant sandwich and salad. Also kittens had neck and bones and skin and some of the darker, less beautiful feathers for being playful with. The orange one grabbed them and growled fiercely all the time, little black hanging back and mew-mewing. Sad sight. I get so many human facial expressions from them. I watch them in different postures, hunger, greed, fright, excitement, etc. Oh, the birds - we have a feeding board outside the dining room window and we sit and watch the divine things hop and peck at bread and walnuts. The squirrels come too. We even had the cardinal two days and the cherry birds. The Junco refuses to fly away when the cats charge against the glass. I can't decide whether Otto Beyer is a simple person or complex. He seems to act quite a little - no? I'm asking him here for dinner on my birthday - I'm about to be forty, I mean thirty - and I'm having the Corrigans and their guest,

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Father something, and Leona. He is getting some music pupils here. Some of his playing I like - what he plays for people seems more performance than emotion. Don't tell him - not that he would mind - but no one asked me to elaborate.

I have the Franck D minor, the Kreutzer Sonata, lots of Wagner, Stravinsky, Bach, and I threaten to get the Brahms no. 3 for Mama for her birthday. Like the man who said, "I got my wife the book case I wanted for her birthday". But the Franck is the most divine, I think. I love what he said when they all scoffed at it and didn't like it. "It sounded right, just the way I knew it would". I can't believe that was fifty years ago.

If your magazine stops never fear. I know positively that you won't have any trouble getting another and probably better job. Why don't you go to see Jonathan Cape? He has started a publishing house with Harrison Smith - 139 East 46th. You could tell Jonathan I sent you. He is the London publisher. He bought me some elegant meals, I must say. I guess he's a millionaire but married and you wouldn't want him anyway. Perhaps he isn't as fond of me because he recently wrote asking to see my new novel and I replied that I was mad at him for not publishing my other in England. Also mad at Harrison Smith. I think you do too much work on that magazine, by the way. Much too much. Are you able to get about? Just one of those duties would keep me too busy for my health.

We are raring to see your dear Ma. Also you but we don't expect you, we know we mustn't, so we restrain ourselves. Are you getting set for Norway? Is all well? Do you take Wampole's cod liver oil? I do. Tell your mother that Leona is getting along very well indeed. Love to both of you. Also love from kittens to their former parents.

Margery.

Hasn't your mother's typewriter arrived yet?

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Portage, Wisconsin

February 15, 1929

Dear Katherine and Mrs.

Be sure and go to Georgia O'Keeffe's exhibition if you haven't already been. I think she is grand and do ask for her because I know her and do tell her you know me. The red barn is Boylan's barn and one of the family said when they say it - "Why, that is our barn!"

Thanks awfully for your magazine. I judged that was the one you made yourself, proof read, made up and all the rest that you do. It's grand. Can't you persuade the art editor to use less violent colors and subjects? I think that would be an improvement, don't you?

Your friend, Otto Beyer, went to Madison to take some course in chickens or something and couldn't come to my birthday dinner. It was grand, my birthday. I thought I would be ashamed and ill to be thirty but it's wonderful - I love it - I woke up that morning feeling perfectly radiant and I have ever since. But I'm terribly lazy. I expect to be reborn at Easter. Father Corrigan has promised to aid in my redemption - I told him I was going to practice all the restraints of the tongue - I tell my private life too often - and so he suggested other things as well.

Your mother's typewriter is so slow in arriving. Was it smashed? Have you happened to meet Bob Sharpe? His address is in California where I met him. He's so clean I know you would like him and he is with the Theater Guild - did the sets for something, they tell me. Raymond McKelvey is going to hunt you at Easter when he comes down from Cornell.

Love,

Margery.

No. 1706

Portage, Wisconsin

February 21, 1929

Dearest Tockie:

Unfortunately the rumor is correct - about Betsy. She went to Milwaukee a few weeks ago and the doctor told her she ought to have the *same thing* done all over again. She has decided to go to Rochester and see the Mayo Brothers. But she is waiting until Lent is over on account of Dan. You have never seen such a darling in your life - and now she doesn't mention her leg at all and seems just as radiant and happy as ever. Just lifting the child would seem too much for her to do - and he's enormous now and walks a little. I imagine she will go right after Easter. She said she couldn't see the sense in having her leg scraped all the time. She looks awfully well and I don't know whether she has any pains now or not but I imagine she has - I don't like to speak of it because she seems to be trying to not think about it.

I thought that article about me - Lent forbids my saying what. The boy who did it is so nice, so likeable, but when my words have gone through him they come out something so different. I just shuddered about that - thinking I was already "made". Lord, that's *terrible*. In the first place "made" is out of my thoughts and vocabulary and in the second place I told him I took my work to her and waited for my sentence, the verdict, and I meant that her saying I was a good writer made me feel as confident and as great as the greatest, as Milton or Shakespeare or Joyce. Heavens, I meant him to see what faith I put in her and how horrible it is to be so passive and to have to wait for some one else to say whether you can write or swim or love. And that "intriguing" and assuming that - no, it just killed me.

It's thrilling about seeing you and your Mamma so soon. Make it sooner if possible. The cats are eager also. They have a raw egg every day and raisin bread and the black no longer has fits. I want a chow dog also. I thought I wanted Beethoven's Emperor and couldn't endure it - too brilliant. I also thought Death and the Maiden would be grand - I loved the title - and it is *terrible*. Have you heard Johnny and seen Dynamo? It is exciting about Adele. I always remember her divine playing that day, setting everything in vibration, then leaving the walls and floor simply liquid.

I have never seen worse faces in my life than your friend Otto Beyer makes. Heavens, he was at Corrigans the other night and I thought he must be in hideous agony the way he clamped his lips together and scowled. He's so nice when he smiles. Is he very unhappy? Father Helm was there and Father Corrigan and Mr. B. and a couple of other men. It grew later and later but I had such a good time asking about Aristotle and company and enjoyed the

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Port so much - or is it port merely - that finally I was amazed
to hear these words coming out of me with infinite passion and
reverence - "My stomach feels like the heart of God". You see
my idea of religion is at least not abstract.

You should go with Mavis. In fact I was the one who
told her to be sure and see that you met Orage. I'm devoted to
him and you would be interested in seeing the people, I'm sure.
If it still meets at Muriel Draper's be sure and go. She has
such an interesting apartment - awfully arty but beautiful, I
thought. The music she wants you to hear must be grand. When Mary
Williams comes back from Princeton I do want you to meet. She is
a precious creature. Did you ever take the letter to Henry?
Henry Williams at Sears - her husband. Has Bob Sharpe ever come
around or Roberts Tapley?

Have you taken the ferry over to Staten Island? That's
so much fun. Now that the weather is nice you ought to do it.
And they say a grand grand trip - almost like going abroad - is
Sandy Hook. Don't miss O'Keeffe's exhibition. She wrote me she
had been ill with the grippe. I hope she's in the gallery when
you go.

Love from

Margery.

To Katherine Green JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

Portage, Wisconsin

December 1929

Darling Tockie:

Honestly I can't, I can't thank you for that beautiful Booklite and for your remembering me when I know how rushed and frantic and flighty everything is in the city. I kissed it. I really did. And I was the happiest this Christmas that I have ever been. I still feel so happy and all my delight is in front of me and I rush into it and it isn't diminished but stays always the same. I just fold it over my face with my eyes shut and when I think of that Booklite and your picking it out and the darling paper with the little girl and her mother and the wreaths I can't tell you about how I feel because the more I put down the more I have to put down and it is endless. Your darling mother gave me three pairs of lovely stockings much too goody for me and those delighted the soul out of me too. It was such an enchanting surprising thing. What can you think of my humble modest handkerchief case sent in an envelope? Take my gratitude and my love as a present, won't you please? It is endless, I tell you, and wear it like a cloak or like boots. I never had such lovely beautiful things before - roses and plants and the most wonderful music of all - the new Bach recordings, five records, and Petrouschka and from Herbert the Ravel Daphnis and Choloe (..! :!!) and Chopin and negro spirituals and money for a dress and six pairs of chiffon stockings and perfume from John Bryan that I had secretly decided to buy for myself because I wanted it so much and then I got strong and transcended my desire for it and he sent it and it was the largest size. I wonder if I ought to marry him. That was so magical and a beautiful telegram from Thomas Wolfe and a blue leather address book with gold and a gold pencil and photographs of my family of boys and a Michalangelo drawing and Milton and Chinese book ends that are lovely and stationery and silk underwear and a tiny Tony Sarg angel with a harp and a little Japanese thing for beads and Zona gave me a book some one must have given her - Cabell if you please - it was the only sad thing about Christmas. Everybody gave me just what I wanted and they seemed to sense what I would want and when I saw that loathsome book, that man that we both dislike, I wondered if she really hated me and I walked up and down saying, "O why? O what did she mean by it?" and my darling mother, brave ironist, said - "Why she probably didn't give it a thought". That was the only mean horrid thing in Christmas but I've forgotten it already. She gave Mama some lovely French soap in pastel shades, perfectly beautiful. She hates me so once she did love me. Those old platitudes do mean something. And I can't tell you other things - fruit, candy and two beautiful purses and O I am dying from joy and enchantment really. Thank you thank you and isn't it kind of a gift to know that my gratitude to you and my love for you is endless? When I

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think of you now you are married and living in such a sweet house
with your nice furniture all dull and gleaming and fireplaces
and that lovely strong Jim just smiling so generously and being
such a good host. Do it soon please.

Love always,
Margery.

P.S. Remember Jack Lyons and the Gregorys? They liked you a lot.

To Katherine Green

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Fisk University Archives

Portage, Wisconsin

January 13, 1930

Dearest Tockie:

You are grand to write me that long long letter when everything is so busy in New York. I had a lot to tell you when your letter came and now I haven't so much because I feel dim with unhappiness or something. I am so frightened to start my book because I have had such dreams about it and I have worked so much on it emotionally that now I am faced with all my hope for it and I don't feel equal to what I have to create. It is all something that simply shouldn't be mentioned or written about because it always seems to come before you begin, you grow desperate, I do anyway, and the world gets so dim - that is what I hate. I am getting so lazy I don't even wash and wipe the dishes but merely assist, if you please, and I shall be punished, never fear. My book is postponed until Feb. tenth and I suppose every one will think I am everything in it and think me horrible and that will be my punishment. I wanted to send your darling Jim a Christmas card and I didn't and that punishes me because I thought he would be so surprised and I thought he might be pleased too. Did you ever get the birthday telegram I sent you? My mind is going like a saw mill - I am crazy about the Booklite and I kiss you now by mail fifty million times. Won't you send me the answer to Brothers and sisters have I none but that man's father is my father's son? I can't get it. I can't remember the answer and I was out at your house the other night and I asked them all and they said they couldn't - but I think they were just saying that and enjoying knowing and not telling. Honestly, I've just learned there are people like that. I know Otto knew. Your mother strained and gulped and took off her glasses but she couldn't get it and neither could Eleanor. They promised to ask Mr. Baedeker when he comes today but I am afraid they won't and if you have time will you tell me and explain how the answer is because I can't get it even with the answer. Gust said he put it all in matches and built the prison and the men and the father and grandfather but he couldn't get it. Your mother woke up early and said - "I have it. It has to be great-uncle". Oh, she read the book you sent - Is Sex Necessary - the chapter about our parents and Junior and the one about fudge making and other evasions and substitutions. We almost died, really I have never laughed more. It is lovely.

You didn't think Jim Chichester was idealistic did you? Isn't he like all the other children that like me? You know. How this would grieve him. How it grieves me. My lovely Meridel Le Sueur had her book turned down. She is a grand writer. Poor Betsy - I saw her one day when she was wretched and really she has depth. She is going to have the baby in March or February. You should have been with me when I read for the Junior Golden Gossips

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who have made me an honorary member of their society. I read
The Little Girls and that made a hit and they asked for another and I
had Monday Morning which is better and I said, "I'd like to read it
but I'm afraid you'll think I'm immoral and I'm not, I don't think
I am." Mrs. Klenert, Georgia O'Keeffe's sister, said, "That
sounds like a guilty conscience, Margery," and I said in the deep
silence and gloom - "Oh, it is, I'm sure that's what it is. But
I'm only worried on account of my parents and when people don't
speak to me happily I think they are shocked at me." My God, Tockie,
wasn't that _awful_? I haven't been the same since. I got out of
there and I couldn't stop thinking of nothing and feeling like March
winds ripping my ears out and my ribs on the inside and Lord, I never
felt restless until then and I just walked around the town and I
don't know yet what happened to me. They were all so generous and
full of praise and praise un-nerves me for some reason. It over-
stimulates me until I am worse than drunk and I believe none of it
but _I want to believe_ and I want them changed by me into something
more honest and open. I learned from Zona to be honest and I mean more
honest than is necessary and I also learned from her that awful truth
that people always tell only what they want you to know - no more,
no more - and how do we know what they are and how do we know what they
want and need and can take?

I wish I were sitting in your house now, in front of the
fire, and talking to you and your husband and kissing you both and
we would all sit and eat apples and look in the fire and talk about
your baby and it would be there in the room with us, there forever,
always itself, always flying through us and brushing our cheeks and ribs
and stomachs and ankles on the inside. Love always to dear Tockie
and so much hope and longing for your happiness -

Margery.

No. 1767

Portage, Wisconsin

January 27, 1930

Dearest Tockie -

Hurray! I see it at last. I worked hard with the answer and now I see it! You are just a darling to write it to me and that nice long letter. Your mother didn't phone the answer and I had a feeling she wouldn't and so it was just grand to know.

Your room sounds so nice but your jobs give me the cuivers! How - why - in heaven's name when do you find time to do all that work? I really would like to know.

I've been an azure color ever since hearing Mady's mis-
guided reports about Mrs. Klenert. Will you call her and
explain? I would write her but I haven't her address and you
might not want me to tell her you told me but -

Once in my apartment I said that Georgia O'Keeffe's sister lived in Portage, that she was married to the son of a butcher and that the sister had an O'Keeffe I'd heard and she probably kept it behind the ice box! That's what I get for such talk! I said it just to be cute I suppose and if it gets back to Miss O'Keeffe and Mrs. Klenert I shall feel like an ass because I like them a lot and they like me and when I said that I didn't know them. Can anyone shut her up? No! But could you explain that she had the story wrong and that I didn't know either of them at the time and that I like them both extremely? Mrs. Klenert adores her sister's painting. It was terribly superficial of me to say it in the first place. Mady knows someone on the edge of the Stieglitz - O'Keeffe crowd - or something - and she has probably told him and said I told her and he has told Georgia. Oh Lord! Please stop her. Isn't she dangerous though? And heaven knows what sweet things she spreads about me. I don't mind what she says about me but I do mind what she says I say. When she first came to N.Y. she talked all the time with the most amusing Eastern accent. She's Miss Margery, is plenty!

Last night was Dan's birthday and we were over for dinner. Betsy's leg hurt her terribly and she seemed so odd it **frightened** me. She was completely **wrapped away** from everyone, as if no one on earth could help her and she dropped things on the floor and **criticized** him! And I respected him the most I ever have - he was so nice and so understanding. But she was **outside the world** even. Do mothers have to go outside the world, journey far off, to get the **souls** of the children? Lord, I was **frightened** and

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Mama felt odd too. She looked as if she was trying to keep
from giving birth to it there. Its expected around Washington's birthday. I remembered my darling cat getting hers and that was sudden and the cat just came out and honest I've had pains ever since. At the table I said, "O Betsy I dreamed I was having a baby and it was so frightening and I said, 'O its illegitimate - I'd be so happy if the people didn't mind' - and it really is only in the minds of the people, isn't it?" They all laughed and so did Mama and if I ever get this book written and a good healthy man I want is married or something I'll tell the people and ask forgiveness and get a baby - hurray! But Betsy looks as if she doesn't want it now. Wouldn't that be awful? She looks scared too. And her leg hurts all the time. And she doesn't look to see what he is thinking to know what she should think. She looks at the ceiling all the time. Actually my stomach aches when I think of her.

Love always to dear Tockie.

Devotedly,

Margery.

Portage, Wisconsin

Dearest Tockie,

Do you know that this is four days after the publica-
tion date of my book and I haven't had a copy so far? I
wanted to send you an autographed one but I can't wait and
so I ordered one for you to be sent right from the office.
Could the book be suppressed? Is that why I haven't heard
one thing, or received even one copy of it? O I hope not.
I saw one copy, a boy sent it to be autographed. Horrible
jacket. Vile blue wooden doll, shop window kind, kind they
put furs on and paint silver - I thought these people could
be trusted but apparently not. There was a swell review in
the Milwaukee Journal. I wasn't taking it seriously until I
found that Herbert didn't do it and then I did. I think when
people know you you can't take it as seriously. I like
criticism from some one who has never seen me. I have been in
a terribly regressive state lately - suffering about Zona again
because Tapley sent me a bundle of her letters and she used to
write me all the time and apparently really loved me. But I
have been wondering why everything always means more to me than
to others, when I love I seem to appreciate more and feel more
and be more devastated and - Boloney! Perry Goldman is
psychoanalyzing himself by mail to me - and really I do like
him very much - and his vim to reveal all to the world leads
him to send letters unsealed through the mail with such words
inside and such experiences as you read only in Freud. But
he is such a darling, everything reversed from what he once
was, so natural now and more simple and honest and eager to
be liked. I want you to like my book - it is me. I hope it
reaches you by Monday. I'm reviewing for the World again.
Betsy is going to the hospital any day now. I shall write to
you and write to you whether you write to me or not and you
are one, almost the only one except my Ma in whom I feel
emotion just the same size as mine. It is such a relief.
How are you? What are you doing?

Love. Devotedly, affectionately, lovingly, foreverly
and angelically -

Margery

Portage, Wisconsin

March 5, 1930

Dearest darling Tookie:

I went to Madison and that's why you haven't heard
from me. I met your mother the day I got your letter and I said
I had heard from you and when she asked how you were I said I
thought you were sad and homesick. She announced it to the whole
table later. I felt as if I had certainly betrayed you. I'm so
horribly sorry. That's all I said, that I thought you were sad
and homesick. I could hardly bear it, reading your letter, I
could hardly breathe. I had thought so steadily of you two as per-
manently together and happy and eventually working it all out that
I simply couldn't breathe. It can't be true. How sad I am over
your unhappiness. I want you to be so very very radiantly happy,
the way you were that day when you went fishing with him and had on
your best perfume. I can't bear it any other way. I had the same
day a long sad letter from Jim. He is simply beside himself, has
left the store, his aunt died, and he was almost in tears over what
he did to you - he might well be! You know Helen Boyd was the only
person he had a letter to that he tried to see and she was also be-
side herself and didn't ever respond to his note. So... I wish
you two could know each other. He needs to know you. I can't make
him do a thing. He calls his apartment the Victorian Era and simply
hides in it all the time. They say his roommate is a bill. I writhed
at his telling you that about Jim not intending to go. God, I am
furious about it. Jim writes as if he has died. He won't say what
he is doing. It is as if he can hardly live. I wish you two could
know each other. He can appreciate some one like you heartily and
he needs to know you. I shall write to him again and try to persuade
him to leave that horrible apartment of his that he loves so much.

When you see a review of my book will you send it to me?
I haven't six dollars for a clipping bureau and so I am dependent
upon my friends just sending me the reviews. Harry Hansen sent me
the World one, some one else the Tribune. The book has sold over
fifteen hundred which is fair for fifteen days. In Madison they call
it abnormal, a vile book, and a professor said "The whole thing is
simply filthy. It is certainly in keeping with her disordered
mentality". Jack Lyons who once acted as if it was the blood of life
now speaks of it with polite murmurs, didn't even thank me for the
copy, didn't ask me to write in it, and hasn't had time to read more
than one hundred and twenty three pages of it. The Vivases haven't
had time to read it. Your grand letter about it warmed my soul. Mary
Sperry wrote the same way - a grand beautiful letter. You have saved
my life. She said if she hadn't been so frightened she would have
been exactly like Megan Foster. Isn't it strange? Old ladies in
Madison are buying it and carrying it wrapped in brown paper! It is
so chilling that I am thinking entirely about my new one now. I
have turned my back on this. I want to be written about the way
Elizabeth Madox Roberts is written about - this book has enduring
value. She is really splendid though.

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

Dearest Tockie, thank you for all your lovely lovely thoughts of me and all the grand things and I adore you and I cannot speak of your sadness or hardly dare think of it. Write me it was all a mistake and that it is coming out all right. I almost flew to Jim, I couldn't help it. I was going to do something about it, I couldn't bear it. Tell me it is all right now. It surely is. It has to be. Love always, Love from the big Mitt.

Devotedly
Margery.

To Katherine Green

JEAN YV TOCK

COLLECTION

No. 17797

Portage, Wisconsin

March 21, 1930

Dearest Tockie,

Thank you such a lot for that lovely Lawrence poem!
How beautiful that part is - but be, O be, a sun to me -
I love that. Thank you an awful lot for sending it. But
isn't it tragic that he is dead? Only 55 years old and he
sounded eternally young, seeking a new world and a new man
and body all the time. I wonder what he died of. Thank you
also for the review: That was grand of you. I just can't
pay $6 for that clipping bureau. I don't think its worth
it. I reviewed Tapley's book for the Tribune. I wrote
1000 words. I suppose it will be cut terribly. It is a good
book. The Times review is only a partial estimate of it. You
would like the book. The triumph of it is that with an in-
conspicuous style he puts it across. I don't agree with his
metaphysics but I had to feel it all anyway. A review is
going to come in the N.Y. Evening Post - book page - soon. A
friend of mine wrote it. Ronald from the book, to be exact.
He was quite nice about it. I thought he would be furious -
but the review will be very critical I'm sure. Could you send
that to me? He will forget it, I know. I wonder if the Sun
has said anything. You and Jim both wrote - no, Jim wrote -
that there was an awful one - the New Yorker. A girl here
takes it but found no mention of the book. It sold 1700 and
is selling very slowly. They are pleased however and parti-
cularly with the "critical reception".

Tom Wolfe wrote me a four page letter. He has made enough on his to live for 2 or 3 years! And he got a Guggenheim scholarship - 2500 - and goes to France next month. I would love to have you see him and tell me about him but he doesn't seem like the sort I can ask things of, although he wrote I was one of the 3 people, friends worth making, that the book had made.

Portage, Wisconsin

April 24, 1930

Dearest Tockie:

We are delighted and we can't wait! We pray that you will rent it and I don't think it will be hard. Just go everywhere you are invited now and you will surely meet some one who is looking for a place. It will be too grand to have you back so soon. We are counting the weeks - and it will be weeks if you are lucky in disposing of your place. (I just paid seven dollars to get this machine fixed and see it! No more Coronas for me) Come soon. I am in the depths of despair. Goldman wants to marry me. Any minute the phone rings long distance or he appears. I always find him adorable but I long to know some one older than myself. Fred came here the other day with a note for me from Zona and I wonder what he thought of me. I said, "Oh please say hello to your brother Jim for me. I met him just once but I thought he was splendid. Do please say hello and don't forget, will you? Is he going to New York? Oh, do persuade him to go. I think it would be wonderful. Oh, I hope he goes." Fred was very nice but I wonder if he thought I was crazy. I am slightly. I never have suffered intellectually before. I never knew what it was. Knowing Goldman has made me see the infinite patience and attention Zona gave me. Living here without encouragement in writing, with no companions, walking by myself to the post office and reading the big advertisements of other books, has made me understand her too. I can't excuse her values, her ideals, but those are hers. She did love me and she did try to give me a lot. I sent her a flower for Easter and she didn't acknowledge it until Monday - a very lovely note - but you can imagine - knowing me - what I went through. God save me. I'd rather be raped or abandoned or seduced a million times than to suffer remorse and to have this slow knowledge of what others meant and what you thought they meant - at once. I don't like the mind. I like, I love, negroes. Always.

And we can't wait for your picture. Do send it soon. I am so eager for it. Please have it a wonderful one of you, won't you? I have a new bookcase and a new shelf for books above my bed and I'm planning already where to put it.

I have something terribly expensive. I just ordered it, knowing I needed the money having so little of it, but simply going on and trusting not publishers but God. It is all made to my order and it was advertised in Vogue - the number before last on the next to the last page - Peasant Importing Company - 677 Lexington Avenue at 56th Street. Blue jersey embroidered in pale blue wool - lovely really. The skirt is pleated. I must say when I get it on I look something like one of the heavier opera singers. Goldman was enchanted with it. When I turned he hit his ear with his palm, groaned, and said in absolute utter infinite honesty - "But Margery dear, the back

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

is **enormous**. Something is wrong. Good Lord, have it changed. Have some of the goods taken out. It is **enormous**, really". I said, "All right. And that's the way I want it to be. Shut up." But after half an hour of his psycho analysis I said, almost crying, "It cost so much. Oh, I am miserable. I don't want it to look like that in back." "Well, it does. Take it to a good tailor and have it changed. You know you really are even greater than you think you are. You have a wonderful brain. Paula Neumann said you weren't even pretty but you are a genius and you have a marvelous brain." (My brain) (Oh I want some one to tell me I am lovely again. I want some one to kiss my feet again and worship me. I have been loved and admired a lot but I always want so much more than any one on earth is capable of giving)

Say please get a steel toe made for your shoe and kick Mady in her silk bloomers for me. At once. I am sure she is the one who queered me with the N.Y. Evening Post and Mr. Soskin who was strong for me and Nellie Bloom. He wrote a lot about it and how I knew more about women than any one. I told you about their returning Kenneth's review and deciding to ignore my book on account of my having made fun of a bosom friend. I am sure Mady is the lady. I am **sure**. Also Goodrich who is a friend of Leslie River's who is Mort saw Walpurgis Night which I promised a friend he could print in U.S.A., a new magazine, and that was rejected as not being the sort of thing they could use. My book has made me no friends - enemies instead, has caused me awful torment, has brought practically no money - four hundred dollars with forty out for Mavis - no fame, and in Portage and Madison they hand it around like an obscene book. A woman told me that it was having a fine effect on the men of Portage. So and so took it home and her husband wouldn't put it up until he had finished it and he has become so affectionate **in bed**! that "My dear I don't know what will happen and where we'll all be if I read it". Anyway that's something. I was disgusted at first but at least it rouses people and that's something. They have stopped advertising. I was enchanted to see the big ad for Mady and Lighty on the back end of the Sat. Review today and nothing at all about mine, nothing! Nobody hardly knows it but my book is really splendid. I could slap your friend Margaret Middlefort for her well meaning comment about being glad I had it out of my system. When I first began writing I got such compensation from the actual writing that it repaid me for everything. Now I get nothing but misery from the actual writing because I have such aspirations. I'm getting a double chin from it. Triple hips, double stomach, fallen arches. I know Mady queered me with Soskin. I don't care because a review doesn't help if they don't quote it. Nothing adverse that I have seen has been said about the book but what of that - it doesn't matter. I can see Mady worming her way in - I'll bet money personal friends wrote her three reviews - Tribune (Horace probably) Times (Seligmann) Eve. Post (Soskin). I know my worth but is it worth it? I never asked these mature, diseased questions before. Anything I happened to do was of course worth the effort. But - but - Kenneth was deeply hurt, I could tell, by my rebuff to his invitation to return. He says he is going to the Philippines probably to see his mother who is married for the fourth time. I can't decide whether he said it to hurt me or not. I know that soon New York will be full

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

of all the people I have written about and I won't be able to wiggle
when I do get there. They will be book page editors and publishers
and critics, all mad at me for writing about them. Get that steel
toe made soon please. In my real self I am utterly serene about Mady.
I am even glad she is publishing a book. But unfortunately I do not
summon my real self except for holidays. I am always pushed aside
and people like Mrs. Harrison Smith are always pushed forward - that
damned Gallows Orchard. This is called self pity. Egoism. Well
aren't they the constant companions of the human race? I have a pain.
Your mother and Eleanor and Miss Worgull came in for dinner and the
evening. Do come home soon and visit us. I want to cover my head
with earth and mope for a time. I loathe depression. I loathe being
anything but grateful for life and for longing for more life. That
was what I loved about my book - it was in every line a longing for
life and contact with others. I've said goodbye to it. It's buried
all right. Do send the picture soon. We're so eager for it. I'm
reducing to music. Be sure and write the moment you have disposed
of your place. Advertise in the Times *now*. When are you marrying?
Love always.

Devotedly,

Margery.

Vile Bodies - second printing. (Evelyn Waugh)

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

No. 1841

Portage, Wisconsin

June 8, 1930

Dearest Tockie:

Why don't you write to me? Are you coming home? I am staying, waiting for you, and I shall be here all summer, waiting for a long visit from you and walks and everything. Do you know that I have had a ride in your canoe, on your creek, with Gus Witt and your cook? It was enchanting. I want to go with you. Did you know that I spent two weeks in your own bedroom, reading the Settlement cook book and Two Lives and writing a perfectly outrageous book about Zona up in the tower? Your mother was beautiful to me, grand, and Ray carried up great loads of wood and kept a genius fire going - it made me feel like one actually - and every one was so grand to me that I didn't feel thwarted once or misunderstood or demanding. I even helped Brother Otto folding stuff and putting it into envelopes and Fred came in with his grandparents and went into the air to see me helping Otto. "What's he paying you?" I said, "Oh, this is all for Mrs. Green. She'll like me better if I help her pet, Otto". Your mother said quite charmingly, "But I couldn't like you better". Wasn't that nice? And Otto said, "Well, I'm going to repay her by playing to her". (!) Mrs. Schmerlein is simply lovely, she is Eva Le Gallienne in middle age. Yes? I like her a great deal. I am making your mother a grey silk purse with Italian quilting. You know my fancy work usually has to go to the cleaners by the time I am through with it or else the furnace, it is so impossible. I am trying to be neat with this and do great things.

I felt guilty taking so much from your farm, as if I were stealing from you, your place, your bed, your everything and you far away from it and me there enjoying it. I couldn't write to you for that reason and I can hardly write now.

I pray that you aren't unhappy and that I shall be rich enough to buy you a beautiful present and where in hell is that picture of you you promised us? We want it. I would like to buy you a silver, large silver dish, for huge puddings to be served to a table full of dumpling children with enormous eyes and fat elbows on the cloth, half sleeping in anticipation of the feast. I want so much for you, so much happiness. Hurry up and let me help you do something toward anything you want to do. I want to give all of myself in helping you do the things you long do to because those are the only things I really want for you. Please write to me and please send the picture and please don't forget me and please take me riding on the creek and I met Mrs. Ickes and she is so attractive and so charming and so magnetic in her own inclosed world that I felt an annihilation of all art and suffered terribly. Betsy asked me to read my new long story which I tried to do and your mother was wonderful even though she thinks I'm a louse for writing about my master and betraying her

and Mrs. I acted full of sleep and didn't say a word, neither
did Betsy or Dan. And they never asked how it came out or referred
to it in any way. Didn't I get a crack in the Nation though?
And the Bookman? And the Sat. Review.

Love to precious Tockie and a kiss from

Margery

My new book is very good. Otto said - (he hasn't read it) "But
I fear you won't be big enough not to publish it." I said, "No,
I fear I won't".

Portage, Wisconsin

July 15, 1930

Dearest Tockie:

I wanted to send you something from me and because
this is my choicest possession in the way of a handkerchief I want
you to have it. It came all the way from Egypt and it is much too
fine and nice for me. I would lose it immediately and I shall be
much happier thinking of you losing it or wiping your eyes and nose
on it. I want to make you something nice, though, some nice lovely
gift. Won't you tell me something you need? Or would you like a
box of E. Arden June Geranium soap? We are sending some to Eleanor
for a graduation present. But I want to give you a present too.
What shall it be? Would you like a purse of Italian quilting?
It will be all wads and lumps but I should adore trying....not to
spoil it. White silk crepe? Or black? Or a shade to match a
dress? Do tell me. I made one for your mother and alas! she is
so fastidious she may never carry it. It is made with a lining much
too large, the pocket inside on the wrong side and the stitches show-
ing where they shouldn't. If she were more careless looking herself
it would be perfect.

If you want to scream with enjoyment read Margaret Anderson's "My Thirty Years War" - and read what she says about my friend Orage! Also about the Baroness Else von Frietag von Loringhoven! It's not worth buying because she is definitely off reality but it is worth reading. (The opening states that she hates reality etc.) (I have tried so hard to find reality!) Strange. And strange too that a personality like hers, so similar in the beginning to the trouble with the girl in my book, should draw forth none of the meanness from critics that mine did. The difference is that she laughs at herself and I was partially serious, doing it in a tragic way instead of laughing all the time. Then too she did do something for American letters in publishing Ulysses and my sad girl did nothing but get hurt and decide to live a good life if she could find out where it was - like buying a ticket to Heaven and God. I think she thought you could buy a ticket to the Good Life. Expensive of course but worth it all.

Perhaps I shall be joining you some time this fall.
I may even write that book this summer. I am hoping to. My parents
are trying to pay off, in addition to the big loss in the bank they
owed for worthless stock and Mr. B. insists upon their paying for it -
well, I wish I could pay it. I wish I would win a prize or earn some
money or get a job that would enable me to pay it for them. But how
ironic to have to pay for such a lousy thing when they need leisure,
a car, a good time, a tent. Anyway I half plan to come to N.Y. in
the fall and it would be swell if you would be there. I can't say
for sure - I shall have to have my book done before I budge - but

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

who knows it may be done! That would be bliss, of course.

Georgia O'Keeffe has just left. Urged me to go to
New Mexico with her. Don't want to go nowhere until that book
is finished. Do you blame me?

Love and a large kiss from

Margery.

Portage, Wisconsin

July 31, 1930

Dearest Tockie:

I was so relieved to hear from you - so happy to hear -
I thought you had forgotten all about me. Are you going to be in
Chicago this winter? I hope to be somewhere else besides Portage.
I really must. I *must* go even if my book isn't finished. I am so
comfortable too, too comfortable, too fat, too easy, too serene. I
just ate about a pint of raspberry ice. Five brownies with it. I
weigh one hundred and sixty-one after dieting, exercising, sun
bathing, and sea salt bathing. I don't look disgusting yet and
when I wear a girdle I look fairly nice. I have a delphinium blue
organdy dress with a frilled collar and it is nice. I do want to
see you. I do want you to be in N.Y. if I am to be there but I
would rather be in Arizona but if I am in Arizona I want to be with
some one awfully exciting and nice - and I have to earn money too
some way. Did my friend John Bryan ever get in touch with you? He
is going to be with Fritz Lieber this winter in Chicago and he is to
play Laertes, Romeo, Iago and something else. Isn't that grand?
I'm so glad. He sent his picture the other day. Jim Chichester
is quite happy now in N.Y. Herbert Weinstock is in Europe. He
wrote a book which he sent to me. Very objective and he will
probably find my comments objectionable but he has a fine sense of
form, and a wonderful gift of objectivity. The Rogers are in New-
port and I miss them. I miss you. We both do. I *met your father*.
isn't he nice? I liked him a lot. I'm sorry I was looking so fat.
And I talked the whole time, enjoying myself as usual, and when he
had gone I realized I talked and laughed *the whole time*.

Love and a kiss -

Margery.

Portage, Wisconsin

August 13, 1930

COLLECTION

Dearest Tockie:

Today something lovely and something horrid happened. The lovely thing was your surprising, delicious looking package. I opened it and just **loved** the secret looking white tissue paper and the darling envelope with Miss Latimer on the outside. Then the scarf - how perfectly lovely it is! - all those wood colors, autumn, I mean - I shall hang it up until I wear it - right on my wall. Yes? May I? I **am** enchanted and so grateful and if you knew how strange I felt today - it came just at the right moment. I had been feeling some worm eat me from the **inside** - I have always had insane trust in my powers, you know, and I never even thought the possibility of failure - Good heavens no! - but I can't go on to a new kind of writing - I consider life so much more important than art and any life I have gotten has been so hazardous and painful that I shy at even the ecstacy of it. So - the truth is I **am** suddenly soft, I **am** not progressing, I **am** not working, and I **am** worried.

This is the horrid thing. A review from the Buffalo Times entitled - "This, My Body Not a Genuine Story of LIFE." He says that the book proves the failure of the stream of consciousness type of novel - (whatever that is, I hope to heaven I'm not really one of them) - "Some of the detail is fine... most of it is just an author shooting off her face. Thomas Beer has done it better. Thomas Wolfe does it better. So did Katherine Mansfield... Hysterically fanciful in speech and thought, almost mystic, her annoying articulateness (350 pages of it) results in a piling up of discordant simile and metaphor that means absolutely nothing to the reader...."He goes on to give some begrudging praise to the last fifty pages of the book and ends with a sneer at Cape and Smith which he refers to as the publishers of "Ex-wife". The world is convincing me now that I **am** cracked.

We saw your mother a week or two ago, one evening, one Sunday. Mrs. Grady took us out and we sat in the little screened place and the moonlight fairly washed our faces! A boy sang. Mrs. Rose of Milwaukee was there and the man was her pupil. He opened his songs with the most emotional and natural feeling, so deep and real, and then all of a sudden it was gone and he wavered and you just remembered how the first had been - as if his voice was shy at night and yet **had** to adore things. And it was the grief that has no content - a young person's exquisite delight in sensing grief before it has been experienced. It was a beautiful voice. Mr. L. was there, several of his pupils, and we had ice cream!

I **wish** you were here. Your mother said you were going to the Adirondacks to visit those people you like so awfully much. I hope it was - or is going to be - perfectly heavenly. It is always so **cold** there. It is a bit disconcerting, isn't it? And thank you -

thank you - thank you - for wanting to send me a present, for sending it, for sending it TODAY. And all by itself THANK YOU FOR IT. I am much too soft and murky to make the purse. Isn't it awful? I did want and I do want to send you something. Zona has a new governess. "Margery, she is so wonderful." She said, "If you can imagine my suffering, in a public school, having to teach children to read. The agony of that when only two or three read the way I came to read - by intuition alone, the new way. Oh, what I went through!" Zona says she is the ideal governess. Leslyn is enchanted and leaps beside this creature who is like a re-incarnation of Zona herself. She has an elfin face and the precious body of a woman who is waiting for the higher life to set in. As a matter of fact I seem to be doing that very thing. I expect Understanding, the capacity for Love, and Wisdom - all in capitals - to drop on me like rain. I expect to rise reborn and write a great work - to rank with Paradise Lost. Zona came to see me. I accepted a luncheon party at her house, then decided I couldn't go, telephoned that I couldn't, and in a second she was at the phone. I knew better than to go or she would have had me over there in no time. But I felt sick, good and sick at the intestines. And since I had insulted her she felt interested in me and came to see me. There is nothing to talk about. I tried meta-physics. The philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas which I am loving and kissing by the hour. It was - "Why of course, of course," impatiently, as if - "Didn't you know that before this?" She began to ramble about Humanism, about which she proudly says she knows nothing. Righto. I tried to make her see the things I wanted to happen to me in my mind, the world I wanted to make myself ready for - the impersonal objective one - "I want to earn the right to be there. I want to be fit to love people. I'm not now. I'm too dark inside." "Well, fancy that. How silly. I just prepare for the NEXT THING and I don't listen to lower parts of me." Oh God.....

Love and gratitude.

Margery.

To Rotherine Green

Portage, Wisconsin

November 11, 1930

Dear Tockie:

This letter is about Gisela and I'm sending it because you liked the story. Mr. Lieber edited a work called Best Short Stories of the World and I wish he would start volume two. (Perhaps he'd put me in.) Will you return it so that I can show it to Jessie about whom it was written? Any time.

I miss you. We both do. Let us see you soon - and your mother. For heaven's sake, has she completely abandoned us? I think she has.

I'm feeling very well indeed and strong in the mind. And I'm writing my story and I feel it is objective and much better than anything else I have done. Let us hope this illusion has some basis to it. Also I read Julius Caesar again and I like it the best of all. Lear I understand best at the beginning where he is so naive when he sits back, expecting love to be articulate and measured, so that he can reward it with gifts and feel greatly loved.

I saw Mr. Grady and he read the letters and said Mr. H. was liable for the whole amount. I asked for one hundred and fifty. I feel that something good is going to happen to me at last so it may mean I am getting the money. Yes? Or something. Anyway I feel something good is due - like Lear. But doesn't Portia, wife of Brutus, give you a pain in the neck? And doesn't Caesar's spirit haunt poor Brutus to the grave! Grand the way he does it and the scene between Brutus and Cassius - their quarrel and Cassius offering to kill himself is the most beautiful almost of any in Shakespeare. Think so?

Hartley was in Chicago with his roommate trying to sell their Japanese goods! He has invited me to go the next time and see Hamlet with them. The roommate has a car. Room for three. I would like to see Hamlet with you. Would we understand it. Just give us a chance! Jessie saw it and didn't care for it, however. Said she would rather read it but Ophelia appeared the most interesting of all to her.

What is the great feeling of optimism or hope or something that I have - something that exists independent of me - some tremendous faith or presentment. Am I about to die? Or to be sued? Or what? Great news hangs about my ears and uncombed hair.

How is Jim? Let us see you soon please and we would adore seeing your mother but we dare not ask her why she doesn't ever come. Would you both consider coming some day for lunch or dinner or both or all night? What? Eh?

Love from

Margery.

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

Portage, Wisconsin

Dec 20, 1978

Dearest Tockie,

Robert Magidoff, 101 South Park Street, Madison - and I don't believe he is going home for Christmas. Hartley came over Sunday and told me about his quarrel with room-mate. I could hardly believe it but now he is living in a new place in Fuller's - not earth but woods. And Meridel Le Sueur had it all fixed for them to come to Minneapolis - bringing me along so that I could see her - and she said she could guarantee them one hundred dollars worth anyway, at the least. So now I can't see her.... She just sold a story to Scribner's. Isn't that grand?

I WANT TO SEE YOU!

Thanks awfully for bringing us home but can't you come
and let me teach you Camelot? I WANT TO SEE YOU! Please inform
me about my Christmas cards. One has on it - me, the other -
birch trees. I picked out the me one for Jimibus. What
do you think? Do'st seem bold? Eh? Tsch. I am also making
fruit cakes and if you send him a box would it be nice for me
to send him a smallish cake, if it ain't too sour. I'm
trying to write three stories. However, I am greatly annoyed
by the huge surprise that is awaitin me - somewhere - and I find
it difficult to wark.

Your Ma's note to the Latimers was most satisfying - entirely
so, in fact. It warmed poor Papa instantaneously.

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

To Katherine Green

Portage, Wisconsin

December 26, 1930

Dearest Tookie:

Really that hen - well, I've named it Guardian Angel. I don't need to tell you how beautiful she is. In some lights it is almost magical, really, and the serene proud look on the face and the warm flirt of the tail feathers is too aching to be described. Really. I looked at it last night and I suddenly realized I was responding to it the way I do to O'Keeffe's pictures, her flowers that draw one into them and then fold their petals over all and hold one right against the heart of their life. As I looked at this precious white hen, with her moving feathers, and her face turned so regally, I suddenly thought of being in grief and confusion and stopping for a second before her - on the spot a tiny lyric came into my head - and I thought to myself - "how lovely, how silly" - and I forgot it. There was something about the feathers were rippling along so softly, the noble eye, the soft protection of it all - but I cannot remember my poem! I felt the way you do when a poem or a nice line comes out - as if the universe is all made plain - you know. The darling hen, my guardian angel, has already furnished me with more feelings and thoughts than the Mother Goose Suite with the sleeping beauty and the little fauns and the pagodas and fairy garden. I shall not descend to thanking you. My heart kisses you.

Margery.

JEAN TOOMER ARCHIVES
Fisk University

COLLECTION

Portage, Wisconsin
January 19, 1931

Dear Tockie:

Come soon and play games with me!

Do you want a kitchen helper? I have one for you
aged twenty-one, who will work for his room and board for a
while, if you want him to. Hartley's brother. He is living
in Madison to establish his residence and go to the university
next year. He hasn't the out of state tuition to start now -
it's something like two hundred and fifty a year. So Hartley
is trying to find something for him to do and he wondered if
while he was looking if the brother could work somewhere for
room and board and a few cents a week extra for stamps and the
like. I thought of you immediately and remembered Perry -
whom I still consider remarkable and who is being psycho-
analyzed in Cleveland - and I wondered if I dared ask over the
telephone but decided that paper and pencil would be better and
less dangerous. He is neat, rather shy, and used to helping his
mother around the house, and is likable, so Hartley writes. I
haven't seen him. Now don't faint please. I thought you might
welcome some one to take Minnie's place. He is not a good horse-
woman, however, or a fine penman, or any of the things Zona's
friend had to recommend her. He's just a boy I judge. If will-
ing to sample please telephone me at once. Don't however start
a cursing me and don't let that Otto start telling I'm only a
child.

I'm writing a story and I wish I were anything but a
writer. Unless it would be a good writer. I could stand that.
But not this. Art is long and life is short. How is Jim?
Don't forget me, wretch! You're full of forgettings. Lub is
eternal remember.

Margery.

Portage, Wisconsin

February 16, 1931

Dearest Tockie,

As soon as you come, I mean as soon as you can come in
town will you bring the living and the lifeless book? I have
to return it to Meridel Le Sueur. Do you like the book I sent
or didn't Otto give it to you? Why didn't you come in to see
Charlie, you and your mother? Otto was there last night with
Gus. I hope you are lots better. As soon as you can please
think out what is inhuman and what isn't. I am anxious to
know. Also please put down what ought to be in a relationship,
I mean what the world thinks ought to be. Zona sent me a
beautiful bar of sapphires, star sapphires, on Mother's Day -
by Juliet! I returned it. Was it inhuman or human of me? I
don't want to be inhuman. At the same time I want to be alive
if possible and since I took hold of her with all of my life
I want to let go with all of it. What would that wish be called?
What would be the conventional civilized thing to do? Pretense
and compromise somehow make only more chaos for me. I have
tried. Any denying of her makes me feel that I shall go to
hell, as if there is a hell. I decided that I would rather be
there and look up at the good ones in heaven. My greatest
nausea is to look down. At people. I like to think they are
all beyond me, helping me up the rocks and slides to paradise.
But in a note I used her own tactics on her. I said that soon
I knew she would agree with me that I must let go of her
completely and that she must also let go because there was no
longer any good for either of us in it. But how cruel it was
to return that pin - it was so beautiful - and how character-
istic it was of her to compromise by sending it with Juliet,
as if she must force me to accept her and her condition of
life. I will not feel like a lean chicken pecking corn off the
bare chicken yard. I do not want any one's leavings. I want
something living and full and rich and I want to pay for it
with my whole life, not dribble away in conflict and chaos and
inner division. Does that prove me inhuman? Satanic? Not
wanting to serve but wanting power? My Lord, if it does I
shall have to let it stand this time. I swear I would rather
be in hell, knowing that she is to be in heaven for her kind
acts, then think that I would have to be near her in eternity.
Whatever she is I choose the opposite whole heartedly. How
can that hurt her? But to accent another person's way of life
hurts. I accept her and I no longer want to know her. Please
be a mama and tell me what society thinks about these things.
My mother says one should never make an obvious break so that
people know, smooth it over on top, no matter what you feel -
but she didn't advise me to do that. She advised me to do
what I thought was right. Zona doesn't want to hurt people,
she wants above all to be loved and not to have to relinquish
love, and she wants the best part of one while she gives what
she has left over or time to give with her universal loves.
No, I choose burning hell to that and if I am a narcissistic
ephenolic monster that cannot serve I shall have to be. I can't

live the other way. But since my decision I feel less longing
to be loved by every one and more drawing together in myself,
as if I must learn discrimination and gain back my integrity
before I ask to be loved. I gained but what if it is toward
the inhuman, not the human. You surely know. Can't you tell
me? I'm glad you are going to Europe. Very glad. I can like
anything you want to do or any one you want to marry. I can see
what you see in it. I want to be that way. When are we going
to Watertown? Dissinger probably wants to come up sometime.
Shall we have a picnic? Do you care to see him? I have new
blue trousers and goods for an eggshell crepe dress and a pink
slim and my book of stories is still to be typed and there are
three more to write and my novel to do. And our house to be
cleaned and a few other trifles like that. What about your
poems? What about your story you were to write? What about
everything? Did you ever think to yourself, "If I suddenly
seem to waken from the dead and find I have been wrong, all
wrong, understanding nothing, completely wrong, then I shall
go insane or cut my throat". I wrote to Shirley Grove in
Chicago about Gus's house. I haven't had a reply. John Bryan
is going to Hollywood to be in moving pictures. Did you see
Kenneth Fearing's sketch in the New Yorker a few weeks back?
Let me see some of them some time. The Corrigans have gone.
They asked about you. I said you were probably going to
Europe but that you weren't sure and I had promised not to
tell! They were leaving the next day and couldn't possibly
tell. On June fifteenth they are leaving for good, for
Oconomowoc. Surprise, isn't it? He is to build up the church
there. It is supposed to be in a state of decay. He hates to
go. The baby eats coal. The other ate wood, ate one side of
its crib. Why are they so intent on fuel I wonder. They will
be in N.Y. only two days, the rest of the time in Boston and
Washington. They will be back around the first of June.
Lots of sales in Madison - Manchester's - lovely silk prints
$1.75 a yard. Charming print dress, silk, very plain, for
five ninety five. Mama has new glasses. Please come and see
US.

Love to you and your ma but I think your ma loves me
less.

Love to Tockie and happiness.

Margery

PRESERVATION PHOTOCOPY: ORIGINAL MATERIAL RESTRICTED
PRESERVATION PHOTOCOPY: ORIGINAL MATERIAL RESTRICTED

Portage, Wisconsin

May 13, 1931

Dear Sukie,

Your party was lovely. Why doesn't Dean Mardin have a
lawn? Why not? It would be so restful on a hot day. I
am thinking of the party and I liked it very much. Thank
you for inviting me. But I feel agitated at the number of
times I interrupted my betters, you particularly. It was
an astounding number, adzooks. (I just picked up a bug in
rusty black sleek parson's coat and meek legs and it stunk
terribly) (It still does) (Stink, stank, stunk) (It
smeells) I am glad you are going to Norway. I wanted to
show your mama my pretty dress she gave me and ask her if she
liked it and thought I did justice to the goods but I didn't,
I held back. In future, Sukie, I'll always hold back.
(Note Derbyshire-Cheshire dialect) Hold back, Margery, hold
back. Ought I to give back the dress? Es? Dresses I mean.
The party was nice. The maid didn't see it went on my dress
and don't tell her please. She didn't notice. And please
forget my saying that I would like to slap her. 'Twas
a joke on old Kriss Kringle and all is well in town. Do
forget it. Evelyn had a beautiful time, so did Sara and so
did Dorothy. That sleek bug was only pinched, not killed.
He wobbles on those meek pins of his'n and his coat tails
are filled with respect. I value loyalty, respect for
another's spirit, gratitude. That's why I loathe myself. I
want new name, new being, new soul. Everything new. I
want to flee the land, a shawl over my naked body, my arms
bound over my jolting breast, my eyes cast down. I want to
flee the country as quickly as possible. This is from Toomer.
It applies to me. "All our lives we have seen ourselves as
the Queen and we don't see the Stunk." That self love.
Yum-yum.

Love from
Margery