Gaylordsville, Conn.

June 7, 1940

Professor Thomas Reed Powell,
Harvard Law School
Cambridge, Mass.

Dear Professor Powell,

I have been asked to write a "Profile" of Justice Felix Frankfurter, for the New Yorker. It is to be a comprehensive and serious study, to run in three articles. I wonder if I may intrude a little upon your time and ask for your good offices in aiding me toward the goal of accuracy.

Part of my general scheme was to include an exposition of the Justice's philosophy of the Constitution and the Judiciary, as clear and simple as possible. Several mutual friends directed me to you as probably the best source of information I might find.

Justice Frankfurter, who knows me, has been informed of the proposed articles. I must add that he has made it clear that he cannot properly and does not wish to have any hand in what I may write of him; and that his life-long principles forbid any cooperation along the line of self-exploitation. At the same time he does not impose any restrictions upon my own freedom. I fully understand and respect the ground he takes; but sincerely believe that the story of one of our great liberals, one that happens to be a very remarkable and moving story in itself, if told as well as possible, may work great good during these parlous times that seem to be upon us. Therefore, I turn to a few of the Justice's friends, trusting that they may help a little toward filling those lacunae created for me by the Justice's modes of natural sense of propriety, and integrity of character. On my part, if only because of my admiration for Justice Frankfurter, I am bound to observe limits of discretion and good taste.

I was planning to come to Cambridge the latter part of next week. May I see you and have a little talk with you? Recess comes soon, and I don't know what your plan of movement may be. I would come, of course, at your convenience, wherever my Ford can take me, if you would indicate, kindly, the best time and place.

I have heard much of you, and have read you--some years ago, I was on the staff of the New Republic--I know it will be a great pleasure to meet you.

Law School of Harvard University,
Cambridge, Mass.

June 11, 1940

Matthew Josephson, Esq.
Gaylordsville, Connecticut

Dear Mr. Josephson:

I plan to spend Saturday next driving
Mr. Frankfurter to Amherst, where he is to speak at
the commencement luncheon, but otherwise I shall be
here over the week-end and for some ten days there-
after.

I should suppose that Mr. Frankfurter's
collected essays and his three small books consist-
ing of lectures would be completely adequate for an
exposition of his social outlook. I should be loath
to give facts or judgments that are the fruit of
intimate association, but shall be glad enough to
save you from any statements that seem to me really
blunders.

TRP:JR

Gaylordsville, Conn.

June 15, 1940

Dear Professor Powell,

Your letter was very kind. I trust you may be able to
depend on me to show some little discrimination and good taste
in going into this subject, of Justice Frankfurter, with you.

I have been immersed, for several weeks, in frankfurterana, absorbing
his
from/old and new friends--but all say with one accord that there
is a great and good man I must still see in Cambridge.

As to coming there, it happens that † must go from here (northern Connecticut) to Washington for several days, beginning tomorrow, June 16, returning the 20th. or 21 June. I was thinking of setting right off for Cambridge, thereafter, Saturday morning June 22, or Monday, June 24, when it seems you will still be in town. Unless I hear further from you, may I assume that an afternoon of one of those days will be convenient for you to see me? I shall also telephone beforehand.

As hinted above, I have heard much of you from mutual acquaintances and look forward keenly to the privilege of meeting you.

Sincerely yours,

Gaylordsville, Conn.

April 21, 1941

Dear Professor Powell:

I've often wanted to ask you what you thought of
my attempt at a pen portrait of Judge Frankfurter several
months ago, you knowing him so well and me just making a stab
at knowing him a little. When I spoke with you, I felt you were
"under wraps" and honor-bound and so forth; yet very helpful
and illuminating withal. Some fellows thought I could have
ribbed him some more. Yet I liked him on many grounds. And
anyway got no thanks from the Judge for what I did. I heard
he was just a little "miffed" in general, on the line that
he didn't want too many people to know how he ran his business.

For my own information, I would be greatly interested to have
your criticism.

And another thing. Before winding up my series of Profiles
this last year (to take up some other work) I am doing a short
one on Dr. Leon Fraser, the cultured president of the First
National Bank. I was a freshman at C.U. when he was canned by
the trustees for Dangerous Thoughts, and ever since the man
and his career held a curious interest for me. He is a psycholo-
gical case and a "split personality" and all that. I perceive
that you taught him some of his law. I perceive also that at
the dinner given to Beard last year you appeared and while
honoring my neighbor Beard, drew a few, perhaps, invidious compar-
isons between the independent course he had pursued and that
which certain other would-be scholars had pursued in the world
outside, eventually. And that Dr. F. took these remarks as some-
what "poisonal" and in his turn made some heated rejoinders.
Which you may have enjoyed, XXX for all I know or care.

I've had two long talks with Fraser, finding him very at-
tractive for a bank tycoon. I think he may still be a little
unhappy and divided in his mind; still likes to leave Wall Street
and hang about with the scholarly mob he knew in his youth.
What do you think of the man, from remembering him 'way back and
looking at him now, as leader of a continually rear guard action
on the part of finance capital. I would greatly like to have
your critical observations on this too, before I finish with it.

May I call you up on the telephone xxx some night this
week? Say Thursday, at 8.

I'd like to be allowed to come and pay my respects to you
when I'm at Cambridge again, late this spring. I seem to gather
Powell stories frequently among my friends, and my admiration for
you waxes.

Law School of Harvard University
Cambridge, Mass.

April 22, 1941

My dear Mr. Josephson:

My general impression of the Profile on Mr. Justice Frankfurter was that you made him out a much more planful person than he really was. My own notion is that from the beginning he followed his instincts without any long-range architectural design. Doubtless after things got going he erected his instincts into principles and by preaching his principles, as in "The Young Men Go to Washington," made it seem to the general public that he had a blue print plan from the beginning.

You made a number of mistakes about Mrs. Frankfurter, attributing to her some things that had happened to her sister.

You rather missed my point on "lawyership."

I don't know what Mr. Justice Frankfurter thought of it. I do know that he felt that he should have no participation in it and that, I think, would be the explanation of his not writing you afterwards.

I have mixed feelings about the whole business. Of course I greatly enjoy gossip, but at the same time I do not think that things of a private character should be put in print. The Taft letters had many indiscretions that should have waited for years before publication. There are

Matthew Josephson, Esq. - 2

April 22, 1941

a few similar ones in the Holmes-Pollock letters. Life
would get pretty bad if whatever one said freely to one's
intimates were likely to get quoted in print. Communications
would become strained, and much of the savor of free and
easy interchange would be gone.

I don't think that I know Leon Fraser well enough
to help you in any way, and after the mishaps, slight though
they were, in the Frankfurter Profile, I should prefer not
to do anything about another one except to read over a manu-
script and give my impressions of it.

I think you should be careful about saying that
Fraser was "canned by the trustees for Dangerous Thoughts."
By the time the issue was ripe, Fraser was in the Army,
and there is no knowing what would have ultimately happened
had he not been in the Army.

I have some dim recollection of some joshing on
my part at the Beard dinner, but not a single detail is in
my mind. You may well know the reason. I can be apparently
completely sober and still not have things register in my
mind with sufficient force to be there the next day.

I am going out of town for three days this week,
which will explain why I cannot sign this letter.

TRP:JR

Co. ylondoville, Conn.

May 6, 1941

Dear Professor Powell,

Thank you very much for your letter of April 28, which was not only most entertaining, but also, by virtue of its criticism, very helpful as to doubt you intended it to be.

About y's being presented so too "plausibl"--despite
on this was often suggested by his associates at the Washington
end, giving an effect perhaps not so visible at Cambridge.
I agree with you that he is a man of深入 and emotions.

"Lawyership" I had not over with several experts, receiving
conflict in definitions. I put them up in a small strip of
paper, mixed them in a hat, selected blindfold and wrote.

I see from your comments that I may have got Mrs. F.
wrong also. But I said little more than that she once did
some newspaper work in Washington (a published source) and
married the future judge. Can it be then that it was her sister
that the judge married? You say that I attributed things to
her that happened to her sister.

As to indications, little do you know how tenderly I
protected both these persons from the ferocious press, that
was handed to me on all sides. I feel that you misunderstand
there the natural kindness of my heart.

Prager was named for Dangerous Thoughts by the Columbia
trustees, and thought that non like Butler had helped put into
his head. That is, in effect, not literally. Literally, what you
say is correct, then he in a volte-face and entered the army
it became unnecessary to disclaim him. Board published an old
"statement" on this whole case in Nov. 1917, in the New Republic,
explaining his own resignation.

I have had several accounts given me of the talk you
made at the Board dinner, and your "joshing". I hope to use
this in my Profile of Prager, not as "indiscretion" as you tem
it, but in order to register a point, or an idea. Also, my
compliments should may be inaccurate again. Yet as your letter
shows, for perfectly human reasons, it becomes impossible for
me to check with the primary source and attain a greater
accuracy.

Sincerely yours,

P.S. I am aware of the criticisms you have made of the
potentially dangerous, or reversible tactic of the so-called
New Court, in its post-1937 decisions. I was unable to
incorporate this view, except by implication, in the kind of
piece I was writing. But I think you're right; and it shall dangerou

Late School of Marlboro University
Cambridge, Mass.

May 13, 1941

Matthew Josephson, Esq.
Gatlerville, Connecticut

My dear Mr. Josephson:

Just a word with regard to "lawyership." Since I was the one who had used the word and had clearly used it in a wholly complimentary sense, I do not see the propriety of seeking its meaning as a ding an inch and running a lottery for the answer.

I do not remember but what it was that you shifted from Helen Dennan to Mrs. Frankfurter. It was not, however, anything matrimonial.

I am sorry if anything I said at the board dinner was taken by Fraser as a plan at him. I can't think of anything in his career that I am moved to sin. I suspect, therefore, that what I claimed, if I claimed anything, was something that he had said that might; but I must await your report to find out anything about it.

You are right about my views of the new Court. Of course, I want them to direct overruling of pernicious old decisions like the Child Labor case and the Minimum Wage case. They are, however, dealing in a very high-handed way with legislation and previous statutory interpretations and exhibiting the same desire to rule in one direction that their predecessors did in the other. They are thereby laying a foundation for successors of a different turn of mind to repeat the same resulting process. Their work makes it terribly hard for lower federal judges to have any guidance.

In action Felix is not the worst, quantitatively speaking, though he has taken the burden of writing some of the more impossible opinions.

I haven't put much into print about my views, though I gave a hint of my attitude toward methods in my Nation review of Bob Jackson's book. It is rather a difficult matter to write as critically as my judgment dictates when some of the offenders are close, long-time friends.

TJP:JN

Cambridge 38, Mass.

December 27, 1945

My dear Mr. Josephson:

I have a fairly firm faith that such a project as you suggest, if it should be done at all, should be done without co-operation of the hero-victim. It is quite different from the type of study in the nature of an interview which S. J. Wolf does in The Times. As for myself, I wouldn't know what to say about myself except a summary of my attitudes toward law and education as derived from my published lucubrations. I might start as Eugene Field did by saying that I was born of rich but honest parents. I hate by no means whether to the right of the left of me and I disrelish stuffed shorts. I haven't a tremendous reverence for the law as a profession and I am bored with the addresses of presidents of bar associations. I prefer their conversation at round tables, those small round tables where liquids are served. My chief interest in law teaching is in methods of analysis and canons of judgment. It makes my law teaching colleagues mad when I belittle their tight articulations of loose artificialities. So you see you would add to my unpopularity if you spread my real prejudices.

Why not make up a man to write about and paint him any way you want him, borrowing from all the types and individuals you want to ? But the Batevepost is not the place for such. I'd be glad to talk with you about your plan and about other targets if you come to Cambridge,

Very sincerely yours,

Hotel Iroquois
49 West 44th. St.
New York, Jan.14,1946

My dear Dr. Powell:

I enjoyed your letter. A little session of a week
or so with the mild flu plague that has been going around
delayed me in answering you.

Well, my feeling is that this is highly worth trying.
In any case there will be, as you yourself keenly observe,
a certain amount of "invention" on my part. But I will try
to keep that side of it within bounds.

The question you raise about which kind of magazine
is to use the thing may be left for later settlement. The
piece should get itself written first in its own way. Then
if it turns out to be inappropriate for one paper and more
fitting for the other it will be sent to that one. (The Post
is a spacious and leisurely sheet, and has been stealing a
lot of the New Yorker's lighter thunder, and so on; I have
found myself benefiting by having more time and freedom
in working occasionally for the larger weekly.)

My wife and I are making an expedition to Lowell,
Mass. around the middle of next month; we also plan to stop
in Cambridge, and I hope to see you then. From here, so far,
the Powell Anthology looks like a diverting experiment.

I am staying in New York until mid-February, completing some other writing. But in my spare time I might be able to do some preliminary work on the next subject. Are there a few of the more perceptive lawyers who studied under you whom I might see here. They usually tell very good stories I find aren't there people at Columbia whom I should see? If you wish you may make some suggestions. I can probably find all I need myself.

Sincerely yours,

Cambridge 38, Mass.

January 16, 1946

Mr. Matthew Josephson
Hotel Iroquois
49 West 44th Street
New York, N. Y.

Dear Mr. Josephson:

To give you a list of names would
run counter to the conviction expressed in
my earlier letter that anything such as you
have in mind "should be done without the
co-operation of the hero-victim."

My concluding sentence in that
letter was that "I'd be glad to talk with
you about your plan and about other targets
if you come to Cambridge."

TRP:JR

Gaylordsville, Conn.

Feb.11,1946

Dear Dr. Powell:

All my plans have been both postponed and left in confusion. I was ill in a New York hotel for weeks; and it was under those circumstance that I failed to consult an important clause in your letter of Dec.27. "Miss Otis regrets."

This doesn't mean that it wasn't a good idea, in the first
place. But I shall give heed to your admonition to avoid
tormenting the "hero-victim." I shall invent as much as possible;
in fact the method of approach is a challenge to one's inven-
tiveness. But it will have to take its time. It will ripen
slowly.

I still hope to turn up one of these days--it would seem
rather late March than February--in Boston, and have the
pleasure of meeting you again.

Sincerely yours,

Dear Dr. Powell

Your charming note of the ---

Feel that yr criticisms were very helpful and
intended to be so.

The impression from the Washington end at least last
summer was that F. is nowadays "planful"/rather/ though
he may have been different before the New Deal.

Most of what I said of Mrs. Frankfurter was that
she was met in Washington and married F. Can it be,
from your letter that it was Mrs. Frankfurter's sister that
F. met and married.

I am giving a little account of your talk at the
Beard birthday dinner--which you say you are now unable to
remember because of your subsequent condition. I may
get it wrong, from the reports I have gathered--but I don't
see how you can prove that the next time, as you or state
in your letter that you were not in a condition to remember.
I am keeping your letter.

Sincerely yours,