June 30, 1949

Miss Marianne Moore
260 Cumberland Street
Brooklyn 5, New York

My dear Miss Moore:

At a meeting yesterday in New York of the
directors of the Bryher Foundation, which has re-
cently been incorporated for the development and
encouragement of literary endeavours in this country,
it was voted to accept the recommendation of a Com-
mittee of Selection that you should be given the
Foundation's first award. That it gives me great
pleasure in enclosing a cheque for the sum of $2,500
in payment of this award, goes without saying. The
Committee, consisting of Prof. Willard Thorp, of
Princeton University; Prof. Harry Levin, of Harvard;
and Mr. Dudley Fitts, of Philips Academy, Andover,
could hardly have made a selection to please us more.
It would be unbecoming on my part to praise your
achievements in poetry and criticism, or to specify
the encouragement which you have given to others, both
personally and by the example of your work, but it is
a privilege to the Foundation to be able to express
our gratitude to you in this way and to hope that it
may assist to further your work.

Except for the fact that the money should be
used for yourself, there are no restrictions to it.
There will be no public announcement of the award,
for it seems to us that the Foundation can help most
effectively if it operates quietly and without fanfare.
The award is in no way a secret, but I should not like
to have the distinction of its presentation robbed in
any sense by a public emphasis on the Foundation itself,
which has no career except to help as it can.

C
O
P
Y

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Department of
Comparative Literature

15 Holyoke House
Cambridge 38, Massachusetts

June 23, 1949

Professor Norman H. Pearson
233 Hall of Graduate Studies
Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut

Dear Norman:

So far as I am concerned, Marianne Moore
deserves all that the world can give her and a vast
amount more. Indeed I am particularly touched to
learn how poor she is, because only recently she
made a very generous response to the Spencer Memorial
Fund. Poetic awards being what they have recently be-
come, I think that this one might help to sweeten the
air.

We were naturally disappointed that nothing
could come of our hope to lure you to Cambridge next
year; but we realize that, at the very short notice
Perry gave us, you would probably have made your plans
already. Well, we shall try again some time; and, in
the meanwhile, I hope there will be further opportuni-
ties for getting together as we did at Rochester.

HL:et

C O P Y.

July 1, 1949

Mr. Norman Holmes Pearson, President
THE BRYHER FOUNDATION, INC.
233 H G S Yale University, New Haven

Dear Mr. Pearson:

I am at a loss, strange as the word seems in this connection, to express my emotion on receiving just now, your letter of June 30th and the cheque enclosed, $2500 on behalf of The Bryher Foundation. I ponder with misgiving the disparity in service on my part and the idealism of Bryher, yourself, and the Committee named in your letter -- Professor Thorp, Professor Levin, and Mr. Fitts. There can be no greater incentive, surely, than others' confidence in one; and stunned as I am by magnitude of the gift bestowed and the chivalry which has prompted it, allow me to say, Mr. Pearson, that I shall in any task to which I address myself, be conscious of augmented resolution, and constantly strive not to be a disappointment to those who have been so trustful as to affirm a desire for usefulness even as one would affirm the thing itself.

21 Sept 1949

Dear Bryner:

I am afraid this is all too evidently an expression of how time
has gone, for I did not get your letter actually posted, --and then, day before
yesterday, Rene called me on the phone to say that he had heard from you and
gotten your approval. Nevertheless I send the earlier letter along, as written,
since it will the circumstances somewhat more fully than Rene could have done,
since I had it first-hand. I have, despite my negligence of you, written to
three persons, as a kind of committee of approval, so that the records will be
in order for the Foundation. I have already heard in approval from Louis Unter-
myer, and when the other two have been received we will have a meeting and get
the thing finally achieved. But what a rotten time it is for you to have to make
such a gesture. The cut in the pound was inevitable probably -- and how right
you were in your apprehensions for Hilda's conversion of her installment! -- but
I had not expected so great a one. Do take it easy with the Foundation for awhile,
and we can do very nicely for awhile with what we have, until the situation be-
comes clarified. I fear also for the effect on Rita's business. I should think
it might play hob with it.

I enclose two copies of an item which should have been done in time
for your birthday, but there were delays and so it comes now. I send it in dupli-
cate so that you can use one like a passport and the other as a relic. I suppose
it has something of the light touch about it; but the truth is that it is basically
so honestly and sincerely meant that the jest, if any, becomes obscured. But I
feel pretty sure that you will understand both its fun and its fundamentals.

I enclose also a rather remarkable summary of some work on Shakesperean
pronunciation being done by a friend on the Yale faculty. So little good has been
written on this most important subject, that I thought you might be interested,
and asked him for this extra copy. When you have finished with it, send it along
to Robert if you think he'd find any profit from it.

Lizzie went to her school on Tuesday, and little Susan goes back to
college this Sunday. Lizzie passed all three of the subjects in which she failed
last spring, and so goes in with full credits and, I hope, enough real training
in study habits, as a result of her tutoring, to carry her through the future. She
really worked very hard, as she never had before, and it was a great consolation
to see the effort rewraded.

I want to get this in the mail to you at last, so will trot it to the
postoffice; but will be writing again shortly. The other two packages of the
Hawthorne journals arrived safely, as did that which contained the Faulkner and
the Stein volumes. I owe you too much ever to be properly expressive of my grat-
itude.

COPY

128, Mill Street
Springfield, 8, Mass.

October 31, 1949

Dear Professor Pearson;

A press of business has prevented my writing until now any adequate
reply to your question in regard to Mary Butts. Please believe
that your letter interested me greatly. I most certainly agree
that a work on her accomplishment would be a very happy and reward-
ing thing for many reasons, not the least of which a bestowing of
overdue recognition.

Lincoln is incorrect in saying I was a friend of her brother: I
hardly knew Tony Butts. But Mary herself I knew very well. I met
her in Villefranche in 1928, saw much of her afterwards in Paris
and London, and was with her almost daily in what were to be the
last years of her life. (This was in the winter, spring and summer
of '34-'35 at Sennen, Cornwall. I was staying with Angus Davidson
---perhaps you know his very good life of Edward Lear. We were all
writing, but met for tea, walks, meals, etc., and a memorable period
it was.)

I think I can be of some help if your contemplated project takes
form, and indeed it would give me pleasure.

As to MSS., etc., Mr. Davidson is her literary executor, and of
course can tell you of matters on which I am not now up to date.
(Angus H.G.Davidson, "Wellside," Borley, Royston, Herts., England.)
There was a rather alarming aspect here. Mary left her personal
papers to her only child, her daughter, Pamela Rodker, when she
reached twenty-one. This event has now taken place, but whether she
accepted the papers, which included some extraordinary journals, or
not, or, if she did, what has happened to them, I have often wondered.
Miss Rodker had no literary interests---she liked horses, vans and
lorries---and I am only afraid she may have been indifferent to her
mother's effects and the rest of us be the losers, though I do not
know.

I myself have some letters, copies of unpublished poems, two only,
I think, but, of much more importance, one MS: the Introduction
(55pp) to a life of Julian the Apostate, upon which Mary was work-
ing when she died. It has not been published anywhere, was sent
to Eliot for consideration for *The Criterion*, but not used. There
was another copy or two, I believe, but this one has significance
for me personally since she was dedicating the book to me and has
so indicated. Also, it is rather valuable in that it contains
corrections and additions in her own hand. I have been looking it
over today for the first time in a number of years and seeing it
afresh I see how much of her "magic" it contains. If you yourself
knew Mary you will know just what I mean. Naturally I shall be glad
to have you examine it.

2.

I find I cannot help but ask if the contemplated study would have
to do with Mary's work only or with a life as well. If the latter,
I cannot refrain, truly, from saying I feel most strongly that any-
thing more than a critique should not be left to a graduate student,
especially a youthful one. If I could talk to you about it, as I
hope we may be able to do one day, I think I could tell you why.
There were contradictions and complexities in her nature, intricate
ways in her thought, sensational chapters in her life (which
shouldn't be treated sensationally!) to which I do not see how he
could do justice. I was about the age of a graduate student when I
first knew her---by the way, I am a Yale graduate, '27 Ac---and I
must confess that not much older I wanted to tackle the subject
myself. But it led me further than I felt competent (or even
wanted then) to go, and this in spite of the fact, I say it humbly,
I felt I had some insight and a pretty good idea of how it should
be done. I feel sure the subject needs a most knowledgeable,
mature, unprejudiced scholar. I see it as rather a big job, but
if not undertaken innocently there's no telling to what profound
study it would lead.

But now perhaps I'm way off. Possibly all you have in mind is a
purely literary study---and there is considerable here, is there
not?---from *Ashe of Rings* to *Cleopatra* and *The Crystal Cabinet*.
However, do call on me if you feel I can help in the way of informa-
tion. If you pursue the subject and become fired by it, as I have
been, it would give me pleasure, I repeat, to tell you things of
herself, inklings of her thought (gleanings?), not only for Mary's
sake, but also, shall we say, for literature's?

It has just occurred to me that the English writer, Charles
Williams, could help, particularly from the point of view of her
intimate thought. Mary corresponded with him in her later life
and it was he who wrote her obituary notice in the London Times
(early in March, 1937).

COPY

128, Mill Street,
Springfield, 8, Mass.

December 1, 1949

Dear Professor Pearson;

Thank you for your interesting letter. I am on your side and will
do what I can to help.

Since our first exchange of letters I wrote to Mr. Davidson to
recommend and back you up, so to speak, and at the same time asked
about the Butts papers. His recent reply on the matter was so in-
formative in a number of ways I am going to quote it in full.

He said: "---Now I must answer your questions. To begin with, about
Mary. Of course I feel, as you do, that if somebody will write some-
thing about her, it is all to the good, and they must be encouraged.
But the situation is a bit complicated. I remain (I suppose) literary
executor, though in point of fact that office is now more or less
meaningless, since, after Camilla was grown up and married, I handed
over to her (as instructed in Mary's will) all the papers - which I
was only too thankful to do - together with the responsibility of de-
ciding by whom and when and if they should be used. I understand that
my own position is now merely that of "adviser." Now, to cite a case
in point. A young writer called Adeane, of whom I know absolutely
nothing, some time ago wrote to me and also to Camilla saying he
wished to write about Mary, first an article, then possibly a full
length life. I wrote and told him the situation, but did not see
him, though I told him a certain amount about M. He went and saw
Camilla (who was then living in London), and she took such a violent
dislike to him that she refused to let him have any of the intimate
papers. There were signs, we both thought, that he wanted to make a
kind of publicity stunt out of the drugs, etc. about which he had
evidently heard gossip. I entirely backed Camilla up in her attitude
towards him, not merely because he seemed an undesirable person, but
because I don't think the time has yet come for all that side of
Mary to be dealt with. The end of it was that he wrote a quite good,
purely critical article on her work, which appeared in a sort of high-
brow quarterly called "The Windmill". Of the "life" nothing more has
been heard. It is extremely difficult to look at the matter in a
detached way, since, as you know, those diaries horrified me, and it
also seemed to me that they showed only the worst side of Mary. I
think Camilla would also feel (and I don't wonder! - though I don't
know if she has read them) that she would not wish them to be made
use of. When I hear from Professor Pearson I shall of course have
to write to Camilla; but what I say must depend on what he asks."

I trust I am not betraying any confidences in quoting all the above.
I think not. In any case I do so because I am all for the program
you outlined and should like to make it easier for you to obtain
the papers not only for your projected work but also, finally, for
Yale's collection.

2

My one qualm, as you doubtless realized, was in connection with
certain aspects of her life (which you seem to understand) which
I felt should not be stressed. As a true friend of Mary--though
we all had reservations--I wanted to feel sure the sensational
side of her nature (for want of a better phrase) wouldn't be
brought to the fore at first. (Of course sometime it must--indeed
it makes for great interest.) But you have quite allayed that fear
in writing as you did, the same fear, you will note, that Mr.
Davidson, and also her daughter, shows.

Now I only want to see the good work go forward. What else can I
do to help? I presume that you have written Mr. Davidson. When
I answer him of course I should want to make some mention of your
letter and tell him I thoroughly approve of your project. I know
he will consider anything I say. Not that you need an advocate,
still I should like to back you up to the limit. Have you any
suggestions or particular wishes here?

If and when the project gets under weigh I hope you will let me
talk to you. A very great deal comes to mind I'd like to express,
wonderful, sad, crazy....

At that time, too, I'd be very happy to give to Yale the MS I
spoke of. There might be some other things too.

For now, with best wishes to you,

Sincerely,

(signed ) Wesson Bull

3

MAYALAND LODGE
Chichén Itzá, Yucatán, México.

sheer impossibility of any financial structure will be able to, so to speak all this. It may be that England has taken a very important step forward in indicating to others that such purchasing power will not continue. It may have an effect on France, and France is it seems to me the nub of the matter. Yet division of power is completely outside the Russian concept. What we have is the old imperialistic Russian point of view taken up by new tzars who have an ideology to toss to a wearied world. As for Rita, her point of view seems weeper to me each day. But I should like to be wrong about that for there is only England to hold to for the sake of western Europe. What I fear is that such an attitude as Rita's will be thought of as little better than a transfer of the Empire concept from the colonies to western Europe, and that England will behave as though it were. Perhaps subconsciously she herself is impelled by a little of this very feeling. I wonder what you think. England becomes a little like a business manager without a business, who will take up anything in order to maintain the profession. This is very different from the old spirit which made England; that at least was a sense of destiny.

.....

In looking back over your last letter, I see that I did not mention the Bitwell letters. I should think they might come, not only because they are so valuable, but also because they are part of your history as well as theirs. And however you may grimace to read it, yours is an important history which will not be forgotten. I am not speaking of our friendship. That is a personal relationship which would exist whether or not you had an importance or had done any good or achieved anything very durable on your own. I could admit all these things, and still have no personal relationship --- but I could not, so to speak, describe you or read about you or think about you without recognizing that your relationships with others is a part of the story.

.....

One does not wish a happy new year in the ordinary sense of the past, though one wishes as profoundly as ever. But I at least look forward to the year because of our friendship and the letters from you that it will bring with all their wisdom and perceptions. Susan joins with me in love.

22 August 1950

Dearest Bryher:

Certainly no one ever had a more loyal friend than I in
you. For who else would have understood through these many many months
that only a kind of desperate urgency to every other moment, and exhaust-
ion to those moments in between--kept me from writing to you--or, as a
matter of fact to anyone else. However, I breathe again. And as a matter
of fact this is a letter of celebration, for on the table by my office
desk stands a set of the five volumes of The Poets of the English Language.
It did not come to me--this first set I have seen of anything but proofs--
but to a fellow member of the faculty who has lent it to me. Mine will be
here, I daresay, any day now, and then will go off to you and Hilda. But
of all that, anon. Only now to say that the immense proofreading -- so
carelessly done that I spot one misprint in the index at once!--did not
end the task. For I had to write out biographical sketches of the 160-odd
poets represented, to be published in a separate pamphlet which will be
given to any schools which wish it. I wanted no biographies in the books
themselves--only more poems, as much as possible. And meanwhile with all
these things, then there was the anthology of southern American poetry to
be completed, which John Gould Fletcher had left undone at the time of his
death. I had gotten him the contract. No sooner did the morning New
York papers reach the publishers desk than--quite literally at 9:30-- they
called me to get them out of having already announced the book, and their
telegram(!) of condolence added that I would finish it. All this was new
reading, entirely new copy to prepare on sub-marginal energy. But that,
too, is now in the publishers' hands, for estimates; and although I have
biographical sketches for it also to write, and, no doubt, additional
pruning and grafting, my trip to New York a week ago Monday to put it out
of my sight, was like an emancipation from slavery. Although I have had
no holiday, and certainly could not have taken one, it is holiday to sit
down now to write you. I should have done so on my return from New York,
but I had to leave immediately for Piggon Cove, on the shore above Boston,
to go through William Rose Benet's papers, and try to give some order to
his widow who seems to have been constantly on the verge of hysteria ever
since his death. I am still supposed to do the same for Fletcher's papers
before the summer is over--if I can afford the trip to Arkansas-- but
fortunately his widow seems to be in better control of herself.

It will take me several installments to write this letter,
to cover an infinitude of matters, but I shall not wait to mail the over-
viewing mass until the end--both because you could never wade through such
a morass of chaotic correspondence on my part but also so that you need to
wait no longer than necessary. I promise no sequence in what I say, but by
the end I shall have hoped to cover it all.

But before I say anything else--and in fact nothing could
come more firstly to mind--let me say how truly superb I have found
The Fourteenth of October. I do not know how much you have changed the
sections I had already read--though I should think it was a good deal--
but I found them beautiful and moving. The World's Doom, you might have
called it, for it is certainly the present caught up in the past, or vice
versa. "How could I have known at fifteen that the world's doom and
Normans, if they were a part of it, were facts every living soul had to
wrestle with and face." This is the way to write, and this is the way
to use both past and present. I think we once spoke, in the early stages,

2

of how much I hoped you would develop Wulf's poetical strain in the language of his observations. How wonderfully you have done this! The whole Cornish landscape comes as your gift. The book turns out to be such a natural outcome both of your Cornish experience, your knowledge of the past, and, above all, your human wisdom. For of course the finest books have depths as well as particularized beauties; and you have both. Yes, this is really fine. By far the best thing you have done, and I have every hope for it. I already have one publisher who will read it carefully, but ... In what manner, this happens I don't know. But I have no typescript for Part One. I don't need it to know what a fine book it is, but obviously a publisher must. The volumes arrived in two packages at a time when I could have given it only a bleary-eyed reading. So I took them out, and put them aside without examining very carefully to see what was here and what not. Perhaps they came, but if so I have searched my tiny office, which they did not leave, high and low to no avail. Have you an answer. I have two copies each of IV and V, for Marianne once sent me those, long ago, in March of last year, after your visit. I hope it will not be an impossibility to replace Part One, and if it is quicker to have it copied on this side simply let me have it done here. They will not be ready to read the manuscript until early September anyhow.

I am proud of you for the book! It was my idea that it might be better to submit just the manuscript of it rather than both it and *Beowulf*, on

At this point the usual winter event reoccurred. In came a professor from the University of Kentucky who wanted to see the Joyce letters to McAlmon. He has just left after reading them, while I waited, for two hours. So this installment will be briefer than I expected. Another will go out tomorrow, but I must keep my word to you to send the letter on as it comes out.

the idea that you preferred to have *October 14* out first, if possible. They certainly wouldn't take two at once. On the other hand, if you'd like them to be able to make a choice, there certainly is no harm in sending off a doubled-barrel salute, so that we can see which strikes them better.

Your news of Perdita's expected child has given both Susan and myself the most immense pleasure. Why I should be a little surprised I can't imagine; perhaps because it makes so complete and sudden a change of her status. But frankly I am glad in every way, as I can imagine both you and Hilda must be. Under the circumstances it seems to be much preferable that Hilda should make her visit in the spring after, or at the time of, the birth of the baby. Because of course this is, really, an even bigger event than the marriage of a daughter. It is a continuation of the line and spirit of you both. Shall we say, for the moment, that this is Pup's great contribution. As for the library exhibition, we can have it whenever she chooses to come. Marianne, as you remember, was immensely coy about having any exhibition before her La Fontaine was finished. And for that reason I had held off what was to have been a joint one. But I think it would be more fun to have one of Hilda alone, and let the spotlight focus on a single fine image. This was really what I wanted to do in the first place. We needn't set the date absolutely, but let it fit

3

things as they work out. I'll get going again this fall--now that the
anthologies are out of the way--on the list of her contributions. And
if she has been making any notes on these, which would be of help, she
will perhaps be willing to lend them, or copies of them to me. It would
be nice if we could show the early manuscript scraps you uncovered, so
that we could have a spread in time of the manuscripts that were shown.
As far as the books are concerned, we have, between the library and my
own collection, all of them. Getting together representative magazine
appearances should not be too difficult. The Library has most of the
magazines, perhaps all. The big job will be to try to run down the early
Presbyterean things, which, so far, have eluded me.

I'm sorry about the lapse of time between Avon River and a
new book. Horace and I agreed that there ought to be an intermission of
a year, or rather Macmillan felt that way, and they have to have the first
chance at the succeeding book. And then I became to overwhelmed with
work to run down for the conferences, but will began that too next month.
At the moment the Yale Review has some of the poems, and I am hoping that
they will find one to their taste. Their taste is unpredictable, but it
is a good place to be in. When they are returned to me, or, that is,
whatever is returned to me, I am going to send off to Poetry and to The
Atlantic Monthly, a new little magazine named Facet has written a second
time for something, and although they don't pay, and I know little about
the editors I am inclined to reward their persistence with a poem. But
I am writing Hilda about this.

Enough for tonight. I shall be late at the shore for dinner
if I don't hurry. Our deepest love to you both, and thanks and thanks
again for having written *The Fourteenth of October*.

Norman

Letter II

23 August 1950

Dearest Bryher:

Today's letter also will not be as it should be.
The morning went into typing away at a few more of the pile of
unanswered letters and in reading the manuscript of an unusual
book on Gertrude Stein which I am reading for the Yale Press.
It's so hard now to get anything decent published, that I'm willing
to serve as a reader occasionally for them if there is even a chance
of adding a vote for a worthwhile one. Then this afternoon came a
professor from New York University to talk about the work of a
committee on publication of learned monographs in the field of
American literature, of which I am a member. That took three and
a half hours while I tried, successfully I hope, to persuade him to
look realistically both at the position of the publishing world and
the poor quality of most learned monographs.

But at any rate, here you must take up a second
chapter, for whatever it is worth. Let us take the Foundation and
its recipients. As to the Gregorys, I have not seen them since the
day of Benet's funeral in New York, when we sat together for a few
minutes afterwards. Marya still talks great poverty to people, but
I think the cutting edge is off and she is now somewhat in the
position of a peasant woman tucking away a few nuts in the attic
but not wanting to seem to have them. Horace is supposed to have
gotten a good advance on his biography of Whistler, and at other
moments she said that she was able to save something toward a trip
abroad, which has become a kind of symbol to them. During the latter
part of June and for all of July they were given the use of Mrs
Benet's cottage and studio at Piggon Cove, on Cape Ann, where Pat
could be with them and they could have the sea and a chance to work.
Since Mrs B told me that she had paid all food bills and all else for
them, the she was not there, it should have been quite a help. Marya
was ill part of the time, but is said to have written one good poem;
while Horace wrote three and did some of his Whistler. This month
they are in Washington with Joanna, while Horace goes over Whistler
material there. Pat is going to the University of Virginia this fall,
and though Horace is, I think, a little disappointed that he wasn't
admitted to Yale he takes it in good stead. I was a little startled
to find that at the last moment of choice by Yale he was failing in
two subjects: chemistry and math. Of course this does not mean that
he is stupid, by any means, it was patently impossible for me to pull
any wires. I imagine that, understandably, both parents somewhat
exaggerated his scholastic ability, although he seems to have done well
enough in the other subjects. I advised his going to Virginia, which
accepted him notwithstanding, and since in the end one really educates
himself he should be able to do as well as he can there. Horace is
sure that his talents are chiefly literary and he may well be right.
I enclose a nice letter from him which thanks for the second installment
of $25 from the $100 you sent me for him. I gave it to him as for his
aster holidays. Three or four weeks before his graduation I sent him
the remaining fifty dollars to take him through the extra expenses of
farewell parties etc., and he wrote a fine letter after that, although
I do not seem to be able to lay my hands on it just now. I don't think
you need feel any regret at having helped him, and everyone says that

both parents were rejuvenated by the deliverance from worry. It seems to me to be a fine example of the flexible way in which the Foundation can work.

Because of the fall of the pound, Perdita's marriage, and the like, we did nothing this spring in the way of awards. Rene seemed to think, altho I gather only for a moment, that you might want to give it up because of Pup, and that we would have no more than four or five hundred dollars to give. I have therefore stalled off the various applicants who already begin to get wind of it. However a summer letter from Rene, in California, says that we shall have between four and five thousand, which means that we ought to make a major donation. We plan to move in September on his return.

The last award we had given was of 250 dollars to Edgar Lee Masters, and I enclose a copy of the letter which went with it. I gather that it was a spiritually well as Physically warming act, and certainly he seemed grateful. Only a couple of months afterwards he died, and I am pleased that he could have had this last recognition.

There are several possibilities at hand, to take up next month, and I should like your private opinion of them. There is a very interesting group of young people in New York--some of whom I knew as students at Yale--who have been carrying on there the publication of a poetry magazine which they now call POETRY-NEW YORK. Each is a clerk of sorts, or minor business man of sixty dollar a week type-if that!-- and they have worked like dogs to keep the magazine going. They pay nothing for contributions, like most little magazines, tho this is a practise I do not like. But they have to make up the deficits themselves. The best thing about them is that they do not go out for names, and therefore give new people a chance. I had thought of giving them a grant of one thousand dollars, half of which is to go for payments to poets --in this way spreading out a number of small awards, as it were, and five hundred towards the expenses of the magazine itself. The Chicago Poetry seems in danger of falling into bad ways again, and into the hands of a clique. Geraldine Udell has lost her job with them, after all these years-tho I am told she has something else, and a young poet named Karl Shapiro has taken over the complete editorial decisions, while his wife does all the business. This is too much of a one-man show for my tastes. The NY magazine might help to be a healthy balance.

As to the individual award I shall have to look around. Kenneth Patchen keeps after me for enough money to take himself and wife to the southwest. He is terribly crippled from arthritis, and entirely bed-ridden, and I'm sure would benefit from it; but after all everyone tells me that he would be around our necks for years; his more or less avant-guard writing has been standing still for years, and I think the award would be more of an expensive act of charity than it would accomplish anything. This seems hard, but I can't be enthusiastic. Robert Hillyer, who was one of our judges, has also written in application. He is a minor poet of the conservative school, in his late 50s, was the one who stirred up the Pound controversy more out of jealousy than conviction, a reform alcoholic who drinks gripes now in place of liquor, who can publish in the magazines (popular) pretty much all of the time, and who is about to lose his job at teaching at a small college because they have discovered he is chiefly a nuisance. We would accomplish little if anything. I do have several manuscripts sent me by a protege, written by a young woman who is

3

married, has a child or two, and whose husband was a small teacher in
a small college, but I have lately heard has lost his job. She wanted
simply enough money to take care of the children, by nursemaid, for
half of each day, so that she could continue to write. An agent apparently
likes her things and has sold one or two already. It might be a possibility,
but it is a little foolish of me even to mention at this stage since
I have not yet read the mss.

The last is a letter from the Harry Levin, a professor at
Harvard, regarding Pierre Emmanuel. He has been one of our regular
judges on awards, although we made no formal appointments. I enclose
the letter, to save copying it, but wish you would return it to me. We
had said you remember that we would only make awards to Americans, and
perhaps we ought to stick to it. I don't know whether the French fund
would have anything in it for him or not. What are your views on the
matter?

There may be other things about the Foundation which will
come to mind later, but I think this about does it. And since it is
after five perhaps I had better go home, pick up the laundry and drive
back to the shore.

All love as always,

Letter III

24 August 1950

Dear Bryher:

It is already too late in the afternoon to cover
much ground in this letter, but at any rate I must forge ahead.
There were too many interruptions. This morning a young man, an
American who teaches at Istambul and who worked for me in the war,
came in bringing his part Turkish, part Russian wife for me to
meet. Naturally I was pleased to see them, but it took a good
deal of the morning.

The anthologies have arrived, and tomorrow morning
I will take your copy and Hilda's to be wrapped and sent off to
you. They will go surface, since it would cost as much as for me
to go by air otherwise. Will you take them as a birthday gift.
And I do want you to know how much love they carry, as a kind of
handful of something from the past which means much to us both.
And you did play a part too, remember, for the text of *Anthony
and Cleopatra* and of the songs from the plays, came from the folio
you gave me; and the Milton texts all came from the volumes which
were mine from you. So, too, the passage from The White Divil
which came out of your copy. Horace has given a more than generous
blurb for the jacket, and naturally I am pleased since he hardly
needed to go as far as he did, and in fact I did not know they
were asking him to do it. The books are actually to be published
on the first of the month, and perhaps there will be some reviews
of it, though they don't always review books of this sort. Do
you think that Hesse would like a copy? I should like to send him
one if you thought he would. And would Robert? If so will you
send me his address, now that *L&L* ain't.

I had a belated souvenir of the war this morning, when
I received by post a giddy medal and an enormous diploma stating
that I was now a Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur. It is dated
11 March 1946, and it looks as though it had been hanging around
France, the American Embassy in Paris, and the War Department here
ever since. I don't know much about the Legion, but anyhow it's
rather amusing as an addition. I trust you will be properly
respectful to a Cheavlier and Norwegian knight!

I was grieved to learn of L&L's demise, but you had
prepared me for the news over many months and even years. It was
obviously the right thing to do, but it is sad all the same, and
England will miss much by the loss. Nevertheless I am glad that
Robert will have full chance now to devote himself to his writing.
He has much to say and I hope will say it. His editorials have
always been models to me, and it has always been a pity that they
were perforce somewhat anonymous as editorials are. The same
things said as a book would have done much for his name. I envy
him the chance to write on his own. I sometimes dream of the
possibility of doing the same once the children are educated,
married and established. But meanwhile the pressure is no doubt

2

good for me, and I certainly keep getting fresh ideas--if only
one could have the chance to use them.

I never really have told you about how much we enjoyed
being at Perdita's wedding. They were all exceptionally cordial
to us, and as I told Hilda I think Pup enjoyed having "family" of
her own. It was otherwise so overwhelmingly John's party. She
looked really stunning; the wife of the couple we stayed with
afterwards told me that she was that "beautiful English girl."
And it was true, for she was radiant. The woman at whose house
the wedding was held was an odd sort of apparently scatter-brained
widowhood, but who is quite canny underneath. Her husband, Harold
Pulsifer, was a very minor poet who had a good many friends and the
house has an atmosphere of minor celebrity. She is obviously
very fond of John, almost more so I should think than of her two
adopted boys, whom we were told had never quite felt a part of
anything. One wants to be a lobsterman, and the other a farmer.
John, I think, has for her the quality of being literary, of having
written a few poems (she showed me one that had just come out in
an omnibus collection of a poetry society type-- between us, not
very impressive as poetry) and she did a great deal for him during
and after college. Obviously he is much closer to her than to his
own parents, there seeming to be some kind of bar between him and
his father especially; and indeed it was thought odd that he had
chosen the day of the wedding for an operation which could have been
done anytime, and then more or less insisting that his wife should
stay with him. His sisters and a brother (I think) were there,
and their relationship with John were most warm. John lived with
the Pulsifers for a while after college while he was trying to
write, and then served as companion for a spastic friend of theirs
who lived nearby. I gathered that up until the war John wanted to
be a writer, then joined the navy, was commissioned but discharged
for a bad heart mid-way. Thereupon he went to Callier's magazine
as an editor, did very well and transferred to a better editorial
post on Good Housekeeping where he received seven thousand or so
a year. One story was that he did not get on with the editor, but
the fuller explanation seemed to come from our hosts (who are
writers and great friends of his) who said that actually he had
known how high-pressure such a magazine was and how much one had
to deliver in the first year. Thereafter he set up his literary
agency, and has been working like a dog at it. The Yale Review
managing editor tells me he thinks John is one of the best, and I
am impressed by his energy and laudable desire to succeed, and
work for success. He does need to have an editorial assistant,
or partner to share the work, and manage it when he, and so that
he may, gets away. A really successful agent does have to travel,
pick up clients and writers, and I can imagine that even a trip
abroad occasionally would be useful to him. I don't know whether
Pup could help him in getting the few thousand he needs, but I
gather he does not want to take it from her. Actually it might
be worth considering some time having a business loan, at regular interest, of four or five thousand. I
think he is ready for it, and that would be the way he'd want it.
I like him very much indeed, and have every confidence in him.
Enough for tonight.
Love, Ann

N O R M A N
H O L M E S
P E A R S O N

2 3 3 H G S
YALE UNIVERSITY
NEW HAVEN · CONN

28 August 1950

Dear Bryher:

I enclose some undeveloped negatives of photographs
taken in color last summer when we were together in Florence and
at Kenwin. I brought them back to the States with me thinking
that it could be simpler to have them developed here where they
would be at hand. But because they were foreign color film it
proved impossible to have them developed anywhere here, even though
I sent them to the Agfa Company, to California where I heard that
some one did develop foreign color film etc etc. They have been
sitting on my table ever since spring when I gave up so far as
this country is concerned. I only hope that they are not so old
now that we can get nothing out of them. But could you take them
to your film store in Lausanne and have him send them off to be
developed. You look at the results first before returning them to
me, if they come out, for they are the pictures of Monte Gufoni
and Florence, with perhaps a few later ones. For one of the enclosed
films there is the original box so there should be no charge for it.
But for the other I lost the box and you will have to pay. If you
want any prints made from them, have them done in Switzerland before
letting me know the success or failure of this too long postponed
delay.

Letter IV

28 August 1950

Dearest Bryher:

This afternoon I took the volumes of the anthology
to be wrapped and posted to you for your birthday. Obviously they
won't reach you by the second, but this letter should and with it
will come our love and my love for you and the day. I did last
week send you a kind of second birthday gift: Cummings' newest book
of poems. Perhaps it will arrive in time.

I shall be in Little Rock, Arkansas, where I am flying
Friday afternoon to help Fletcher's wife go over his manuscripts,
books etc. This seems to be a kind of function I have been thrust
into lately, having been doing the same thing for Bill Benet's wife.
In some ways I am reluctant to go, but that is only in terms of the
cost—for with the anthology et al, this has been a catastrophically
expensive winter — but on the other hand I am pleased to do for John,
as I was to finish up his southern anthology, even tho it hardly
seemed as if I could face another choice amongst poems! John had
wanted me to be his literary executor, but never changed his will,
and also wanted me some day to do his biography, which I daresay I
feel I must do. Actually since the English scenes at least, and the
general background of American poetry overlap for him and for Hilda
this fact will make both easier. That is, 66 course, if you and Hilda
ever want me to do hers. Fletcher's death was tragic, and coming
only four days after Bill Benet's was extremely upsetting emotionally.
Benet dropped dead on the street, from a heart attack; but Fletcher
committed suicide by drowning himself in a shallow pond. You may
know that he was once in Bedlam, and ten years ago broke down mentally
when he was on a lecture tour, creeping to New Haven and my flat,
where I put him on his feet again before sending him home. Five years
ago he had another attack, and that time had to have shock treatments
in a santiarium before he could begin life again. His letters to me
had recently been increasingly queer, and on the day of his death I
had a letter from his wife saying he had been once more, had been
worrying over not finishing the anthology, and for me to comfort him.
But before I could write I had a wire of his death—actually three
hours after the letter came the wire arrived, and he had already been
dead. He hated the idea of suicide, as I know, having had thoughts of
it from the time he was young, and begged Charlie May to keep pills
etc from him. But the afternoon before he had lost his keys, thought
he might be attacked, and nailed down all the windows of his house.
She woke early in the morning, saw him still asleep in the other bed,
gone asleep again herself, and woke to find him gone. It was quite a
hunt to discover what had happened. But while Mrs Benet is still on
the verge of hysteria, she seems to take it with her back up, tho both
seem to rely on me for all decisions. I even had to take over the
correspondence about the memorial plaque for Benet: what form the
eltic cross should take, the kind of lettering etc. However one
must say that it is a privilege to be able to help. So I must go down
before college opens. I don't know how long it will take, but prob-
ably four or five days.

2

I talked with the Yale Rview this morning, and they tell me that they will take two of Hilda's shorter poems from the group I gave them. I write Hilda this morning, and so was able to add it as a postscript before seeing the letter. As soon as they have decided just what two, I shall send the others out also.

I must have forgotten to tell you that I gave your address, and Hilda's, to a young niece of mine who was doing her tour of Europe this summer. She was not sure just where she should go, but I knew you would be characteristically kind to her if she should come near you in Switzerland. Little Sue was just overnight in Zurich and in Lucerne, having the desire to see the Passion Play and so spending her time in a bus trip there. She seemed to like it, though I must say it's never been my cup of tea. There are other things I prefer to do first. But Europe as a whole she liked immensely, and especially Florence, wishing she could have settled down there for awhile to study music. Perhaps is the Oslo venture should go through—who knows what the war will do to the Fullbright money which pays for assignments like the one offered me—perhaps she could go then. I've just had a letter today explaining that, under guise of full democracy, I must put in an application like everyone else, saying I want a Fullbright to teach in Norway; they investigate here etc etc, ask Norway what they think; Norway says "what a good ideal", and then theoretically the State Department says my application was best. What a ridiculous situation.

I hardly know what to think of the world situation. It looks pretty grim, unless one takes for granted that it is grim to begin with, and then consoles one's self in saying that the United Nations begins to come alive, even if only with half the originally intended body, and that some such crisis was needed. There has been, I think, general dissatisfaction on this side on the official British attitude towards cooperation against the Russians in the continent, as though England had for the first time in her career become a kind of Spain or Ireland. It does seem to me, personally, though I may be wrong, that British socialism lives in a kind of dreamworld or wonderland. Churchill, on the other hand, has the best sense of the old empire: the knowledge that nations group together. I think there is very little innate socialism in Atlee Ltd, and that it is chiefly a device for interior political power of a very low order. The idea that they could not join hands with continental countries without losing personal power seems predominant in their mind. My tears go not for them but for the English people, for certainly Russian communism is no alternative, and anyone naive enough to think that Russia would live and let live so far as England is concerned still ought to have his lower cloths changed. It would have been a smart tactical move also to have rushed a token troops to Korea, but one has the feeling that Atlee would like to make a deal with North Korea, if he had to, as he seemed to be willing to do with the Chinese communists. If Atlee were Tito it might be a different thing, even though I dislike Tito, but I simply feel that nothing is coming out of this except for increasing impotency. I don't see where the hope lies except for a miracle which would bring Churchill back; even the rest of the Tories seem out of sight. But I think he could galvanize again, and certainly he wouldn't continue to sell tak repairing tools to the Russians in what is so obviously a clear-cut East against West affair in which England will be involved. Perhaps I've said too much. I don't know how you feel

about this, and I don't want to paint the U.S. as anything more than
an accidental Galliad, but better by accident than not at all. And
if it were not for the U.S. at this moment it would be the beginning
of the end.

I'm sorry I didn't have a chance to write to you on Friday,
but just as I was going to, I had a letter from Newsweek-- the parallel
to Time, which some prefer--saying that they liked the anthology and
wanted to do a review and brief story on it. They wanted some material
to use, and so I sat down and spent your time writing them a letter
which might help with details. If they should do it it would be most
unusual indeed. I never heard of an anthology receiving this kind of
treatment, and it certainly would help the sales. It will be a couple
of years at least before my costs in connection with it are met with
by royalties, which are only five cents a copy, but it might help to
make that time come sooner. Anyhow, it was fun to have done; and I
certainly learned a lot.

Today I also sent you the color film which we took last
summer which I could never get anyone to develop in this country. It
looks to me like one of these international agreements. I should
have left it behind in Switzerland, but it never occurred to me that
I couldn't have color film developed here even if it was of a European
make. I put a letter in it, in case the customs people took a suspicious
view of the case. If you can get your nice man to send it off I'll
be grateful and we can only hope at least a few pictures will still
come out. I enclose some of the films from last summer for you; the
you will have seen Hilda's before. I hope it will remind you of
Lugano and what was for me such a wonderful experience. But then,
simply having your friendship has been the finest thing of all, and
on your birthday I send you my love and gratitude simply for the fact
that you exist.

2

to you, I had had copies made of two letters to me from a friend of
Mary Butts. Her name had come up once when I was talking with Lincoln
Kirstein, and he told me Bull was a close friend of Tony Butts. I had
the idea of getting one of the better graduate students to do a study of
her writing. Absolutely not of her life, for if that came first all
attention would have been diverted from the books themselves. I thought
perhaps we could get a collection of her things together here. Like
Dorothy Richardson she deserves not being forgotten, but you know how
I admire the work of both. However, the two graduate students I did sug-
gest this to as a topic seemed horrified and puzzled after reading Butts,
and since these letters came just as I was getting more and more involved
in such work that I couldn't even write you, I let the matter drop.
Some day I shall pick it up again what Camilla is doing with the papers.
They ought to be preserved.

Your trip to the Scillys must have been superb, and just the
right thing for you to have done. Also the French tour afterwards. I
wondered about the last whether you would have picked up some local
color and feeling for the scene which might make you want to touch up
Part II of October. But probably better to let well enough alone.

I only hope your birthday was a happy event. How nice Robert
could be out as usual. I think now that there are three special birthdays
in the year: yours, Hilda's, and Shakespeare's.

address for fear the letter to Robert might never arrive.

The Oslo post seems to be infinitely more confused by bureaucratic
red-tape. I have had a letter from a friend who was there this past winter
in the same capacity. He enjoyed it, but was angry about the financial
arrangements. It seems that the US government pays one's American salary,
pro-rated on a nine-month basis (which leaves one salary-less for three
months), but pays it only in Norwegian kroner and at the old exchange rate
which is at about 70% of the present exchange value. None of these kroner
can be removed from Norway so that it all has to be spent there. But the
government insists that one pay an American income tax on the amount earned,
which must be paid in American dollars in this country. It would be about
1500-1700 at present rate, with the tax certain to go up substantially.
They pay only my expenses over, so that Susan's and little Sue's (who will
have graduated from college then) must be paid; and I daresay I would have
to take Lizzie over for at least one holiday. This is really too much of
a contribution to make to Norway or the US government. I simply cannot
afford t do it, since I already owe some two thousand dollars, which altho
I can repay gradually are too much of a burden to add more to. However, there
is a possibility that I might be able to manage a half year, which in some
ways might be better all around.

I was terribly disappointed at the vote on the nationalization of steel.
I did think the liberal party might be able to swing it, along with a few
divergent laborites; but the labor whips seemed to have things in too much
order. I am gloomy about the future (from steel to steal). Perhaps only some
more liberals like Rita would help a little.

We move into town today. It has been rainy and cold all September,
and wrteched for those in the unheated shorehouse. It is sunny and warm today,
but of course it would work like that!

Now that we are here, do say that you will be coming soon.

Love from us both,

COPY

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Professor Norman Holmes Pearson
233 H G S
Yale University
New Haven, Conn.

Dear Professor Pearson:

Thank you for your letter of September 12th in regard to several matters relating to Mrs. Hilda Aldington.

First of all, regarding the desire of Urzidel to submit his translation of BY AVON RIVER to a Swiss publisher, I may say that the correct procedure, since we control the translation rights, would be for the Swiss publisher to approach us in regard to the matter. "We then would be able to accept or refuse the terms of any offer he might wish to make or we would be prepared to ourselves propose terms.

The sales of Mrs. Aldington's BY AVON RIVER have been quite unsatisfactory to date. We still have stock of some 1300 copies.

I agree with you that it was not very nice practice on the part of our London house to put on the copies they received from us the price marked in pencil. I do not know whether this is their practice when they order only a comparatively small number of copies. That may possibly be their reason for doing it that way.

"s to our interests in the several manuscripts of Mrs. Aldington you have at your disposal, I think we might be interested in seeing (1) the fictionalized account of her girlhood; (2) the collection of miscellaneous short pieces, with the essay on Freud; (3) the manuscripts of the two novels. By the way, I can find no record of our having even considered a novel dealing with William Morris.

In the light of our failure to do well with BY AVON RIVER we do not believe that we would be interested in considering the publication of Mrs. Aldington's unpublished poems; nor should we care to consider a volume of her collected or selected works.

If you will therefore send on to us all or any of items 1, 2, and 3 we shall see that they receive very careful attention.

gusto of the originals has been much altered, as well as the physical
impact of Pound's peculiar use of the typewriter. Hilda has the faculty
of individualizing her typing much as Pound does, so that one can recognize
that she and only she could have done the original. That is much more than
one can say for me--except for the mispellings.

I don't think I ever wrote you how much I liked the Capt.
Whidden poem, and wish you would conclude it so that I could it give it a
try at the magazines here. They are so stupid that I can promise nothing,
but it would be great fun to try, and only their stupidity would deny its
publication. I like the spring of the lines, very nautical, very masculine.
I do insist that you go on with it.

I was shocked at the impudence of the London literatyr agents
in their reception of you, and how stupid it was from any point of view!
For an agent ought to do anything to try to get a new and good line; they
can exist only by enlarging their group of authors, and to do otherwise
is a negation of the will. But it seems, alas, so typical of much that
is happening, and they are only building up islands within an island,
so that there will be no empire at all even of the spirit. Let me know
what they say about Beowulf.

Part Manners sounded amusing as a row, and certainly is as
a phrase. Speaking of atom secrets I was much disturbed to see that another
English atomic scientist had bolted to Russia. This sort of thing will
make international cooperation between the British and Americans almost
impossible. It reverses the role of suspicion which the English always
held against our security, but I do not find any satisfaction in it.

As a consolation from the past, I enclose a postcard of an
early portrait of Hawthorne which I bought for you at Salem.

Susan would join in love if she were here.

7 February 1951

Dearest Bryher:

I apologize for the lapse of time between my letters, but the last week or so has found me up to my nose in writing my Melville paper to be given this Thursday at Harvard. Thank God, it is now done and being typed. These were ideas which have been with me for several years, and, alas, when I read for this occasion some of the recent books and articles on him I found that some of my juiciest deductions had been discovered by others. However I hope they haven't put them together in precisely the manner I have done, and it will have to do anyhow. If it doesn't prove too colossal a failure I shall probably send it out to some magazine. I'll have an extra copy made to send to you, or would you prefer to wait until your arrival here?

Even now when I do manage this note I presume the letter will simply sit in the post-office because of this incredible railway strike. I am curious to see how it develops. Since the government is technically running the railroads, it is a strike against them, quite willfully done with absolute disregard for law or gentlemen's agreements either. There were no trains between Boston and New York yesterday or today, and the jam in mails must be extraordinary. I presume I shall have to drive on Thursday to Boston. Susan had to drive little Susan back to Northampton this morning, since she could not go by rail. Whether this all has a pinkish angle or not I cannot tell, but it certainly helps the Russians no matter what the motive might actually be.

Your letter with the last batch of Hilda's poems arrived this morning by post, which is the third shipment of them, and the fourth of the folders. So they are here safely. I was particularly pleased that Hilda knew and approved of their coming. She seemed actually pleased, and asked me if I did not think yours too her should be here along with these from her. I shall say a mightily enthusiastic yes, of course. There couldn't be a question of anything else. I shall be writing her tomorrow to say that there will be four of her poems in the next issue of WAKE, which I hope will also please her. Now I can try in another direction.

I haven't heard a recent peep out of Horace or Marya about OCTOBER. I simply can't see how the publishers have gotten it in their heads that this is a juvenile, although of course there isn't any reason why a younger person might not read it with profit. But the nuances are for people like ourselves. Personally if I were you I shouldn't try to redo it. I'll find a way for it as it is and should be. I think it's marvelous, and I know it is.

The war situation doesn't seem to change very much, but has just gone into one of those lulls which may indicate that things are cooking behind the kitchen door. I neither have more nor less hope. As for Eisenhower's tour, I don't take his enthusiastic reports seriously. It was simply a necessary step for the American public in order to squelch the ubiquitous rumors that Europe herself wasn't going to do anything and that therefore there was no reason why we should appropriate money for arms or send troops abroad. I think on that term, it has been a success.

THE REPORTER, which John sent you, seems to have been going for a long time, but I never heard of it until last year when it started paying well for contributions and to be making a great play for the college and young intellectual class. It is mildly liberal, without having any great character that I can see, but it may improve. It is probably a good journal to watch, although you will not be excited. But it shows that John is, as we say, in the "know."

This whole episode of food packages is too wildly fantastic to believe, and if you had not been the one to say it I should not have thought it

2

credible. What can the British be thinking of. This is really the case of
a socialist government becoming not only capitalistic in its concern for money,
but absolutely like one of those fictional Jewish misers that they told of
counting pieces of gold in a dark closet! They have lost both humor and
humanity about it. A nation's stomach is always at least as important as his
bank-balance. And what is it to buy? Even in the pangs they bargain and haggle
as though they were at a pedlar's cart. I'm not thinking about the U.S. in
this respect, but the reports of their denials to France and South America and
the rest. Is it sadistic to their own people, masochistic?

Since you say, NO, I shall hold off sending you books until you
get caught up on your present chores. But meanwhile you must keep a list of
what might be amusing or interesting for the future. Just now I am reading the
memoirs of Skorzeny, which I am supposed to review. "e is the arch enemy of the
future, the new Nazi hero who will occupy the same sort of place which Goering
had: the man who remained absolutely faithful, who escaped from the American
prison-camp thereby proving himself superior, who did the half-mythical deed of
rescuing Mussolini. His escape is a disgrace to the U.S., who appear to have
though he might prove "useful". My God! What a group of naifs we are!

I am infinitely distressed to learn about "alter, and know how
worried you must be. He must be careful with himself, but it must not interfere
with your responsibilities to Hilda and P'erdita and the importance of your
coming soon after the baby arrives.

I am glad you liked the article. You are always my best reader.
And one does need a best reader, you know.

Susan joins in love.

9 February 1951

Dearest Bryher:

Just back from Harvard; now that the *alville* paper has
been given there, I can settle down this afternoon --having arrived at
one this noon,-- to prepare something to give tomorrow night at Lizzie's
school in Troy, New York. We drive to Northampton tomorrow morning, pick
up little Susan at Smith, then across the mountains to Troy. Lizzie is
anxious to have Sue there, since her birthday comes shortly, and this is
her idea of a celebration. Lizzie seems to feel so insecure these days,
that no doubt it's a good idea for everyone to go, although one could argue
quite oppositely.

At any rate the package of 1940 letters from Hilda, written
while you were still Switzerland were here when I came back. I read through
them; they were most interesting.

I think the paper went well enough at Harvard. When I finished
writing it, I found I had gone way over length for the 50 minutes of the
lecture, and so when I got it back from the typist sat down desperately to
cut golden phrases out in order to trim a little. Mostly they turned out to
be only plated-gold, anyhow, and on the whole the thing was valuably tightened.
But I did not cut enough, and had to summarize half-pages in a sentence or
two as I was actually giving the paper. Thank God for being glib by nature.
I may cut it down a little more even now, and if so will have to have it typed
again, so will wait for a true copy before sending it to you.

After the lecture there was a cocktail party given for the
graduate students at Harvard, to which I went; and then my friend Perry
Miller had three couples besides his wife and himself in to a dinner for me.
Archibald MacLeish, Harry Levin (who is Marianne's friend), and a Kenneth
Murdock who is in American Literature at Harvard. All very pleasant, and
I came down on a ten o'clock train this morning.

Have written to the nearby summer hotel about rates etc for
Hilda, but have not heard from them as yet. I daresay the letter had to
be forwarded to the manager, since I knew only the summer address.

I was sorry to hear the flu has hit Lausanne, and only hope
that you and Hilda escape it. There has been a good deal of virus pneumonia
here, but we have been lucky. I did have a slight cold over the weekend, and
was frightened lest it get in the way of the Harvard visit, but fortunately
even my nose cleared up at the last moment. I am still tired so I shall
have to be careful.

I was amused to know that Kenwin now has its new dignity of
a *named* road, but will not use it unless that too becomes a legal necessity.
I like the feeling of doing it as I always have.

Will write again next week.

13 February 1951

Dearest Bryher:

Yesterday a much nicer avalanche swept down on me here, than
you seem to have been having in Switzerland. At any rate such a deluge of
packages at one time as I have not seen for many moons. And at home the
Rouse arrived, to my delight.

Simply for the record, let me list them, so that you will know
where we stand. The books which came were the quartos of: The Beggars Bush(1661)
Philaster(1628—3rd impression); The Scornefull Ladie(1630, 3rd edition); The
Night Walker(1640); The Elder Brother (1637); The Night Walker(1661); The Maids
Tragedy(1641, 5th impression); The Scornefull Lady(1639, 5th edition); The
Targedy of Rollo(1640, 2nd edition but 1st with this title); Marlowe's 'trouble-
some Raigne.. of Edward II(1622, 4th ed.); The Scornefull Lady(1651); The Tregedy
of Thierry(1649). Quite a bunch! I gather this is all you have sent thus far.
They seem to be coming through safely, and perhaps there is no danger in sending
anything you want by mail. I am told here that actually you can carry anything
out of England you want, which is your property, even if bought only the day
before. And that this is being done all the time as a recognized practise by
the English. I say this only if you do go to England and want to bring out
anything you have there, or Maggs has for you.

More letters have also arrived. The folders are: 1929,1928,
1935, 1930, Jan-Mar 1936. I gather two more are on the way. Eventually I can
recount all that are with me. I can see why most of your letters from her are
at Kenwin, but suppose there are some earlier ones also in London. As I see the
record building up, I am wondering whether you ever saved any letters which your
mother might have kept from you during some of the trips you took with Hilda.
They would be a record of what you did together, as well as of yourself. And I
don't minimize the latter at all. You know how I feel about *that*. This is not
all for Hilda, but comparisons have no meaning between two individuals of quality.
It is a two-way channel of affection on my part, and a two-way recognition of
real importance.

I wrote you after the *Harvard* trip. I was really exhausted by
the time I got to the Emma Willard school to see Lizzie and give my talk there.
And had really not adequately prepared the lecture. But actually I think it went
off all the better for its informality. Since they were all young girls to
whom I was talking, I simply spoke of why I liked poetry and what it could do,
and how important it was to read it for pleasure and not worry about the things
one couldn't understand at first. The sound, I said, was enough, if that was
all that came. I read a good many poems, and commented on them at what I thought
was their level. They certainly did listen, and applauded more enthusiastically
than most audiences do. Lizzie was pleased and that was the main thing. "e
dro e by way of Smith College and then across the mountains through heavy snow
on the fields, a quite unbelievably lovely sight. Arrived just at four, when
I had to go until six to a tea and discussion with the school faculty on the
problems of teaching. I hadn't reckoned on that being so formidable, and could
only throw myself on the bed at the end of the evening. I think I wrote you
that Lizzie has been highly emotional in the last year or so, and I was sure that
there was a chance that she might have thyroid difficulties, which always results
(or at least may) in great ups and downs. Finally I got a basal metabolism
taken, and it showed just that to be the case. To she will start taking treat-
ment. I am delighted for two reasons: 1 that since she has the difficulty she
will get the treatment; and 2, that a great many of her difficulties have a
physical basis as well as a societal one. It seems odd to be glad that one has
discovered an illness.

2

I am sending off food packages quite recklessly to England, but sometimes feel that I am only aiding and abetting the Labor government. However it is a privilege to help, even though I do not consider it, in one sense, as a duty. I am absolutely convinced that you are right in analyzing the situation as one of sheer power politics internally, and that distresses me most. As I think I wrote before, it seems to me to be more concentrated on the adoration of money than the worst capitalism ever was.

I still have not heard from the summer hotel, but am not surprised. They probably do not open until early June. I should think if Hilda went back as of, or a little later than the 1st of July, she would have had her chance to see what things are like. Poor Uncle Norman! but then he is so old now. If he goes it will make rather a difference for Kenneth I should think.

I shall not send any more books for awhile, or until I have a go-ahead sign from you. As for myself, I still like to have an occasional book of experiences from the war, but I shall not be able to read them for awhile. Shall we say, only if they are really good. One could never be very complete anyhow, and it is hardly worth the effort.

As for trip abroad, I think that is off completely. Oslo is in a tizzy, and I have certainly left them up the creek, but it cannot be helped. Little Sue will go on the tour with her musical group, and I only wish Susan and Liz had some kind of trip, but Susan probably would not want to go without me, and I simply must work at the Hawthorne and clear my conscience. This year has been too complicated. I must get to work now on the Sinclair Lewis memorial number which must be in by Friday, and a stupid introduction to a small book by a former student, which I could not refuse to do.

Susan joins in love to you and Hilda.

22 February 1951

Dearest Bryher:

Susan and I came back from New York this noon to find a wire
about the arrival of the baby. I have talked with John on the phone, and he
tells me that he wired you the news, and sat down last night to write a four
page letter to Hilda with all the possible news in it, so his account to me of
71-pound, six ounces, black hair, 20-inch length, kindness from the old doctor
who took John's hand and said "You two have created something wonderful and
beautiful" -- all this you will have known. I am sorry that it came so suddenly
and was indiged, but certainly the doctors knew best, and John says she is fine
today after a somewhat rough night. But Pup, he said, couldn't be happier, and
John is in a seventh-heaven. He was sweet and said I was to be a godfather,
which of course pleases me immensely, since in an odd way I seem to be so much
of a proxy grandparent. It was wonderful of him to wire us, really very thought-
ful and pleased both Susan and myself. It is really extraordinary what a sense
of protection I feel toward her. Reading the letters from Hilda to you has
given a wonderful and unusual background, which even Pup will never suspect.
But it does seem a kind of fate, our meeting in New York, and then London and the
war, and our now being-if I may say so-an inseparable unit. The precise
hierarchies one doesn't know; as in all good wholes they no longer matter. But
there is a kind of bond which permits no divorce. As I have written Hilda, I
find something extraordind they fact that the Valentine should have been born on
Susan's and my tenth anniversary.

That is the reason we were in N.Y., though we tried to crowd in--
or rather I did, somewhat too much to make it an uninhibited celebration.
Susan went down early to have her hair done; I followed in the early afternoon
and trudged the streets in pouring rain to find something for Susan in addition
to the new radio we are giving each other. But no luck, and so it finally was
simply a group of orchid blossoms for her to wear. We went to Bill Benet's
widow about four, and talked over some of his papers that she had uncovered, and
then went on to the Gregory's whom we took out to dinner at the Brevoort. They
seemed well. Horace is looking forward to his vacation which begins in March,
seemed a little undecided about England, but I think will try to go since he has
discovered a remarkable packet of material about Whistler in Glasgow. I am
amazed, but apparently Mrs Whistler's heir received these with the instruction
that they must not stay in England. He is glad to get out of Sarah Lawrence at
this time, since he says they are in the midst of some sort of crise involving
radical tendencies of some of the faculty, and he doesn't want to get mixed up
in the personalities which will be exchanged. "He himself of course isn't involved.
"It is volume of poems is ready in mass and will be out in the fall; Marya's is not
quite finished to her satisfaction. They reported that they were going to take
OCTOBER to Pat Covici at Viking, so I did not try to take the ms back with me to
see what I could do. I'll let them try their channels.

After dinner, at nine, we went to Auden's birthday party. We had
refused last year for some reason, and so thought we ought to go this time. Some
interesting people-two very nice young men who turned out to be friends of Pup's,
and one of the oddest assortments of "nice" young crocodiles I have seen assembled
for some time. Wystan's particular friend I had never met before, but had not
missed much; I was given a long lecture explaining anti-semitism by a young
semitic who was re-delivering her analysis; Nabokov, the musician, with a child-
bride out of some girl's college, gave the history of Russians in Paris; etc etc.
There was to have been chamber music but there was only the babble of voices in
assorted keys. Marianne has a bad attack of pleurisy or she would have been
there. I hadn't known. Did you?

2

Tuesday afternoon Tchelitchew gave reminiscences of Gertrude Stein in connection with the exhibition being held here of paintings from Stein's rue de Fleurus. Really a good show. Tchelitchew really spoke quite well. Mrs Hunt made the pilgrimage from New York for the event, looking very swagger in an immense red felt hat on the order of the garden-party variety. I had heard some more about her from a friend who went with her to see Helena Rubenstein's collection of paintings and look at Mme Rubenstein's black pearls. It seems that Mrs Hunt made a trip with her to Mexico last winter, obviously to see Edith and Osbert in Mexico City; but Osbert wouldn't see her, so she was infinitely distressed. I told you, I think, that she had Osbert had had some kind of tiff last summer, so that when the Sitwells arrived in N.Y. last fall, Mrs Hunt took to her bed with migraine. Osbert is really very naughty without meaning to be. He coddles these ladies, as he did the New Haven one, until they think he is desperately in love with them --while it is only his gallantry--and then he has to dump them and break their psyche in order to save his independence.

I was overwhelmed by the printed envelopes. Now I know that I have arrived so to speak. But actually it is a very sensible thing to do, and an exceptionally handsome job. Really quite stunning typography, and I am sure that the mail authorities bless you for it.

As for the Fitzgerald, don't blush. I don't really think you want to read the F Scott man at this particular busy moment for you, and certainly not unless you have a curiosity or yen to recover Irish March and her green hat! I think you might enjoy the Scholar Adventurers, especially since it contains some things about Hotson in it; I'll send it. As for the Stephen Crane, there are better things to read of that sort. I'm told the volume on Melville in the series is better, Let me read the Stpehen Crane first and see what I think of it.

I haven't had a chance to re-work the Melville yet, but I am told that the lecture was well received at Harvard, which if true is of course pleasant. Thornton Wilder at least reported it that way to his sister, who passed on the word to me. I will send a copy along shortly. I did post to you this morning, a copy of the lecture on Puritan poetry which I thought might interest you, since I did it, and then perhaps you could let Hilda see it if she is interested. Of course it is very elementary, and was written for the New Haven Historical Society, where the people knew little about colonial writing in particular or poetry in general. Still you must keep up with me, I'll send you a copy of the Sinclair Lewis note when it appears next month.

Maria's tragedy appals me. I do remember her well; she was a kind of wild-black-haired beauty with an enormous dynamics in her flashing eyes; and yet a peasant: simple, trusting, eager. Just the sort for some one to play with her vigor and her trust. You remember we brought her a little present from Italy when you and I came back from there to Kenwin. I wish there were something that could be done--perhaps she ought to go home after the prison sentence, but I daresay she will never be happy again in her old innocence. It is now too late for that. I fear the worst for her. She is the kind whose animal instincts and hungers will have to be fed. Wer animal aus dem Blechnapf frisst....

There was no shame on you when the avalanche of parcels arrived. I was
like a small and ha py boy when they came, and look forward to the new group. I
shall try to check at this end on the matter of bringing books out of England,
but was told that one (as Englishman) could and did buy a book on Thursday and
bring it out on Friday, and these expensive ones too. The reasons for this are
obvious enough.

I never did read the 'enlo incident book, and ought to because I did
hear of it a good deal of courst. It was the great shame of the cousin service,
always mentioned in whisper and with a blush. That and the Cicero episode in
Ishambul.

But why fill the letter with such trivia, when nothing is important
save this wonderful grandchild.

23 February 1951

Dear Bryher:

I will never get sick of the sight of the envelopes. They are part of my life. Not all parts of one's life are good, but these are!

I am sick at the news of the cadet fund. We had talked this over during the war, and afterwards. It is too ridiculous, and immoral. After all, dear God, aren't you doing just what the Welfare State says it is trying to do. All they want to prove is that no private individual ever had a sense of responsibility, and make the voters eat from their hands. My father used to pension his oldsters himself, much better than any of the new old-age benefits do. So of course the employees have been loyal, and therefore the unions have never been able to get a foothold on his preserves. It infuriates them. They would infinitely rather have the workers get less, so long as the only loyalty is to them. Why they think this is better, or really different I don't know. It is only another aspect of how much political power stands above any truly humanitarian principles. The trouble with this "fair share to all" is that really it does mean that everything becomes a "right", not something to be earned or worked for. Where then is the incentive. And both England and the U.S. were builded by incentives. You remember I told you about the my conversation with the American psychiatrist I met in Zurich, on my way back, who was at the Congress that Walter attended, and who was in London working with Miss Freud and in the government clinics. What astonished him was the lack of initiative; all young people wanted to do was to get a safe clerkship, knowing that everything would be doled out on a "fair share", no matter what they did to earn it or more. What conceit, to think that all progress is ended, that we know all there is to know, and now have only the problem of distribution to attend to.

American historians? There are hundreds of them, not all good, but some very good ones. When you have finished this I'll send some others. Only the English never cared much about either American history or American historians. It is a very popular subject of specialization in the universities. My own department of American Studies, where I am in charge of undergraduate work is really quite popular.

The Venlo incident I mentioned last night. I'd love the book. Also, I did forget to tell you—I see that Edith's American anthology is out. Do send me a copy. I suppose you have seen it, but you haven't mentioned it. Tell me what you think. You are a good judge. I'm glad I was dilatory about the Scholar Adventurers, since Marya has sent it to you.

As to the Chinese incident—sometimes I think old Ezra had a grain of sense; money corrupts. The Labor Party, who didn't earn it, is greedier than those who did. They are the ones who actually kiss the toe of the pound note and the dollar bill. For the others it stood for something outside its veneered surface. It meant what they had done, were doing, saw could be done.

2 March 1951

Dearest Bryher:

I hope I shall not come to be jealous of the Valentine.
But here is a period of over ten days, and not a peep out of you. I feel
suddenly shut off. .... But all that is joking of course. I can imagine
that Hilda is on the phone most of the time; I can see the two of you at
long hours of coffee; I can picture your mind working over a million wonder-
ful possibilities, with all sorts of contingencies taken care of for the
future, etc etc etc. But most of all I hope I can imagine the two of you
sitting down now to be more definite about when we can expect you here. I
imagine it will still be in April --when the weather is not like now, at
one moment warmly springlike, and the next with the sky whitened with heavy
snow. But unless I know you less well than I think I do, you cannot let
too long pass before this grandchild is a thing seen as well as heard about.
I myself, naturally, have heard nothing from Pup or John. We sent flowers
earlier in the week, and have presents wrapped to go out. But I shall call
by phone on Sunday when I expect Pup may be back from the hospital. I sup-
pose Susan will try to get up to see her soon, on one of her visits to town.

The first of what is probably the new set of packages arrived
today, with its bundle of books. For the record, they are: A King and No
King (1539); ditto (1625); The Maides Tragedie (1638); and The Coronation
(1640). A fine group. I shall take good care of them for you.

This has not been a very eventful or exciting week, though a
full one. I have been seeing my graduate students for the last few days, and
going over their papers with them. No one of them is outstandingly good, but
there is talent among them, and they have turned in some interesting things.
We went to a dance last Friday night, and twirled on the floor a bit; but
generally have tried to get to bed somewhat earlier than usual while we both
catch up on sleep. I feel tired and generally debilitated, and am particu-
larly anxious to keep from getting the flu, which has been reaching epidemic
proportions generally in the East. Wednesday afternoon we went to see Ertrude
Lawrence in the new Rogers and Hammerstein musical, The King and I. Anything
by them, after the sequence of Oklahoma, Carousel, and South Pacific, always
attracts attention. This is what they call a musical play, taken from Anna
and the King of Siam (did you ever read it?) and does have a certain kind of
tension. The Siamese costumes are really superb, and Miss Lawrence is quite
remarkable. I hate to think how many years ago it was that I saw her first in
Charlot's Review. She isn't great, but she seems eternal.

Congress bickers away, with labor having withdrawn from the
Defense program on the grounds of discrimination. They seem almost immediately
to have scored a minor victory for the auto-workers, in rises; though of course
Truman protests that he is unintimidated. In Korea things seem to be in a lull,
--whether this is stalling for time on the Russian part I can't tell. The U.N.
forces make minor re-gains, but I can't feel anything decide about it.

(I didn't quite get this finished yesterday, and at home found
the enclosed note from Pup. It really has a wonderful tone to it. I feel very
happy about her.

Susan joins in love to you and Hilda. I will write her the first
of the week.

6 March 1951

Dear Bryher:

Now, with yesterday and today'd post I feel more normal
again. *Two* from you yesterday; one today, and one from Hilda. Plus
yesterday a packet of three books, and the folder of Hilda's letters
for 1951. For the record on receipt of books: Mayne, *Two Plaies* (1658),
*Jononus Virbius* (1638), and Fletcher's *The Island Princess* (1669). All
to be treasured for you, as your agent, dutifully, carefully, lovingly.

And thanks too for the notes on the letters in your today's
letter. Once Valentines have been unsealed to sight for you both, trips
made, Walters re-settled, et al, --and especially when all, or nearly
all of letters are here, I think perhaps I might,--you willing--run through
them, and establish dramatis personae. I shall establish an alphabetical
index.

10 March

That was as far as I got before. Alas. However now there are
more receipts to note: two folders more of Hilda's letters (those for
summer 1956 and summer 1957). The group is really impressive. I am
go happy that you have saved them. Their importance is really enormous.
They make a picture of so much. I wonder sometimes whether you ought not
to think of eventually putting Robert's and Kenneth's letters alongside
them. Especially at moments when they were moving in contact with Hilda,
their comments were amplify, sometimes explain hers. And of course the total
picture interinvolves and becomes roughly the same.

More books have arrived since the above. As follows: The Two
Harlequins, by Mr Noble(1718); Naunton's Fragmenta Regalia(1641); Beaumont
and Fletcher, Philaster (6th edition). And today a package with Spenser,
*Complaints* (1591)--what a marvel!; and Dekker, *The Wonder of a Kingdome* (1636) --
again, a splendid copy. I am terribly keen for you to see the shelf with
all these in line. It will be like your room too. (How dare you say you
will stay at a hotel when you come to New Haven! You have an American pied-
a-terre with us. Only when you stay long enough to do some writing will we
permit it. Though of course you must do as you want. Only we don't put
ourselves out for you, and how otherwise would you see how the kitchen works?)

I did not mention the *Hamlet* in particular, because it is now
being examined by a Miss Bartlett, who is sort of a world's central authority
of all Shakespeare quartos in the 17th century. I was waiting to get her
report. But it is a lovely thing just to have; one gets a feel from it.
Silly of me, I know, to place such importance on "feel", but I do react that
way, and for me it's important to maintain the feel for the feel.

I posted you yesterday the copy of the magazine with the brief
article on *Sinclair Lewis* in it. Not being very important, I sent it surface,
so the Lord only knows when it will arrive.

*The Long Walk Home* (my thriller also arrived this week), and
the second *Rowse* (the Cornwall Childhood) came some ten days ago. I saw Mr
Waith a few nights ago, and he was thrilled with the copy of the history you
sent him. I hope you will have time enough in New Haven to see him and
*Prouty* when you come. *Prouty* and his wife have been in bed for a week with
the flu, but apparently are getting better. Susan and I have been lucky.
The hospitals have been overcrowded, and closed to visitors. Now that a good
many of the days are beginning to be warm and dry again, perhaps the worst
will be over.

2

It isn't altogether easy to interpret the news from England. Or just what Morrison will mean in place of Bevan. I am not too hopeful. The N.Y. Times this morning gave what I suppose will be the American angle: that Morrison has had very little experience with such things, has a tendency to distrust all foreigners, and a belief that he and Londoners should distrust everyone else in Great Britain. But the internal situation still seems to me to dominate everything else in importance, and that will not be altered. I should have thought that the question of food would be enough to start a revolution, let alone an election. As you know I send some parcels to Alice, my old housekeeper. She has always been more than appreciative, but it seemed to me that her last letter had a new pitiful tone to it, which I wish weren't a part of the scheme of things. "Our grace before lunch was 'Thank our kind & generous Friend in America for our good lunch!'" This isn't the way for the English to have to behave. It is as though they were in prison. I was startled to hear from a graduate student, who has a young Labor man as friend -- a tutor at Ruskin College, Oxford -- who wrote that he was afraid that Labor was not being firm enough with the workers. Ponder that one! Think of it as a concept or philosophy for a Labour Government to adopt towards the workers. This is what is coming, mark you, a power state which is like all other power states. Don't the Ritas sense this? Or are they only being unwittingly seduced into the belief that they can share in the power. Power is the new Satan, or at least the apple which Satan now gives for the fall of man.

It is hard to know what to advise about Walter's case; but I do think for Verdita's sake that it's important for you to fly out if only for two or three weeks. And I am sureene must have things to go over with you. But chiefly because Verdita has a mother hate's pride in her kitten (after the first it won't be the same again), and I think she would want to show it off to you, feel that somehow it was withinthe proper scheme of things.

As to Hilda, we are eager to see her. I think we shall take a few days rest somewhere from 5th-9th of April, all that is left of the spring cademic holiday after the two girls go back to school. Susan is very tired, and naturally a good deal bored with having been so close to the house. But that will be just the time when Hilda will want to be constantly with Pup, so it will work out beautifully. She must come to New Haven, and we can give her the back rooms, which make a little suite to themselves, with a room she can read or work in, and her own bath, with her own staircase. I wonder if you wouldn't like that too, when you come? Then you can up and out for a walk any time early in the morning, if you want, without feeling that anyone will hear you and be disturbed into getting up themselves.

(I called Prouty about the Shakespeare Quarterly, with Hotson's article in it. He says it won't be out for three months anyhow, but we will see that you get a copy.)

To return to Hilda. I do need your advice. For example, I am sure that if I suggested it Conrad Aiken would invite her to Washington to record some poems for the Library of Congress. Would Hilda like this? There might actually be some practical advantages to it, because if they released a record along with one of their series, it would be another way of calling attention to her poetry. I imagine publishers would like it. (2) I feel sure Bryn Mawr would have her down for a reading, if she wanted to go. (3) I could arrange a small reading at Yale if she would like to have done that. Or any combination of these. I simply don't want to do anything she doesn't

feel up to. My only fear is that she might perhaps think that there
ought to be a little eclat attending her return. 'erhaps the best thing
to do is to wait until she gets here. I don't believe it would take very
long to arrange the Library of Congress recording, and that is in some ways
the most important. I am afraid because the trip comes earlier than I
thought that we can't have the Yale exhibition, for their schedule for
April is full. However I don't feel too distressed about that for I feel
sure that she will come to feel about the Suisse-N.Y. swing much as she
used to feel about London-Vaud. However, as you say in yours of the 5th,
she must save herself to be at her best for Pup and the Valentine.

As to the CARE parcels to Germany, why not. The chances for
doing harm are so much less than for doing good that it's worth whatever
slight risk there might be.

Susan joins in love,

18 March 1951

Dearest Bryher:

This has been a busy week, and my first chance for letters comes this Palm Sunday morning, while Susan is in Troy to fetch Lizzie., and I can come to the office. We have had the house full for the week-- or at least compocated, if not quite full, by the presences of out-of-town music students here for an American-Canadian musical festival. They didn't leave until last night, so one of us had to stay.

Meanwhile two more bundles have arrived. One with three fine quartos in it: Beaumont & Fletcher, *The Prophetess* (1690); Chapman's *Caesar and Pompey* (1631), and Mermion, *The Antiquary* (1641). They are really stunning additions to your collection. The second package contained Hilda's letters for Autumn '30 and Summer '40. I have started browsing in them: what a first-rate picture they make of the mood of those early war days. I am delighted at Hilda's calm and poise; obviously remembering the first war, as she did, she was most important to Pup and Robert who were facing this sort of conditions for the first time. All in all the letters add so much more than the literary picture, although they do that two. I am so infinitely grateful to you for having preserved them.

I think I wrote you that I had given the *Hamlet* to Miss Bartlett, who keeps the 17th census of Shakespeare quartos. She collated it for you; and the slip is now in the quarto. It turns out to be, not the 1636 issue which the slipcase indicates, but rather the 1637, or the 5th edition. Only a thorough collation could point this out. That doesn't make it any worse, but just pins it down. When there are more of the quartos here, I am going to have the woman who helps with the curatorship of the Yale Rare Book Room collate all of them which seem more valuable, so that you will know precisely what you have. 'On't you think that's a good idea?

Susan went to New York on Friday to have her hair done, and paid her first visit to *Ferdita* and the baby. She was most enthusiastic, got there just as the baby had been bathed and before it had gone to sleep. Says it is a most lovely baby, that the nurse seems very competent, and that *Ferdita* has never looked better or happier in her life. John says that they are planning to have the Christening in New Haven while you and Hilda are here, so we will have the chance for a real *rennion*. As to the "suite", that was just my elegant way of referring to the two rooms which used to be the servant's, but which make a little unit to themselves. I thought particularly that Hilda might like them, because one can, if one wants to, retire to them so easily.

We both immensely await your arrival and the chance to see you. I shall, if I may, rush to New York just to greet you. As to the three-day outing which Susan and I had planned from the 6th-9th, I think because Susan is so bushed that we had better take that by ourselves, and stick to the plan we had made, but I had not written you, of persuading you to come with us on a succeeding weekend, from Thursday thru Sunday, when we can pick out some spot to drive to. All Susan wants to do is to sleep, and the *trip* seems to have a symbolic value to her which I don't want to interfere with. She has kept herself at a high pitch all winter, and if she can have the feeling of doing this absolutely alone it will work the trip. It was the one to suggest that I say our trip with you would come a week or so later, and she will be immensely upset if you don't go with us on the second one. I know you will understand. Since you plan to return on the 18th, let us plan definitely to make it on the weekend of the 13th. That would be my birthday, and a particularly good time for us to be together. We'll talk this all over when you arrive.

I won't plan anything for Hilda until she arrives, but if she finally feels she wants to then I could arrange for her to give a little

3 May 1951

Dearest Bryher:

It seems so incredible to me that it was only a few
yesterdays since you were with us and in New York. I was sorry not
to have been at home when your and Hilda's phone call came. I tried
several times Sunday morning, and tried to leave messages at the hotel
to have you phone when you came in but you were ignored by them, or
perhaps too rushed. I had wanted to come into New York again to see
you before you left, but the week was a hell of schedule-filling and
Susan's flower showing, so that there seemed not even time for a few
minutes between trains at the station. The university life has been
particularly hectic ever since, so that now it will take a hundred
margenalias to the intervening days ever to fill in the gaps.

First of all, the bundles of books and Hilda's letters
came while you were still in New York. So you should add to your checklist
of titles now on your shelf at Goodrich Street, the following:

Rochester, Valentinian (London, 1685)

Belchier, Hans Beer-Pot (London, 1618)

James I, His Majesties Speach (London, 1605)

'' (London, 1607)

A Declaration of his M's royal pleasure (1619)

His Majestie's Speach (London, 1621)

His Majestie's Declaration (London, 1621)

His Majestie's Speach in the Star-Chamber (1616)

The King's Speach in the upper house (1604)

A Proclamation declaring his Majestie's Pleasure (1621)

Fletcher, The Island Princess (London 1669, 1st sep. ed.)

There were four folders of Hilda's letters--how extraordinary
it was to see those first formal letters to you from her-- as follows:

1919-20

1923

1933

1944 (with some odd ones laid in)

I presume these just about make up the total of Hilda's letters to you, except as odd ones may turn up in time, or especially in the London flat. I feel quite relieved that they are now so happily safe against any emergencies, for there will be few records to equal this one between you and her. It is a rare and wonderful archive. Don't forget sometime when you are in London again to send off the folders of letters from you to her. I will weed out any that seem unwise to save, though time makes into wisdom of preservation what the moment might seem to make indiscreet. And then of course there are Kenneth's and Robert's when you have time.

I was really quite excited about the James items. They make a
distinguished run together and should be immensely valuable to some historian.
Belchier I have never read, but must I daresay. The Rochester I should think
was rare, and the Fletcher an important addition to the others. It is good
news that the ban is off the exportation of the others, especially because now
we can entice you to stay longer with us in New Haven, since the corner of
the room is yours, and you ought to have the fun of seeing them and fooling
with them as a unit. It was really too bad to keep them always in vaults.

night before, stayed in a hotel with a dairy in the basement, where they
mixed sulpha drugs and gasoline with the milk, and which he had left because
he didn't like hotels with dairies in the basement. Now I think we will have
to have constant attendance on him, which we had wished to avoid because of
the impression on him, and take all steps so that at a moment's notice he can
be confined and committed. The horrible thing is that his intervals are so
lucid (comparatively) although built on no structure except fantasy. Poor
devil. But at least now Susan's mother is also stepping in to help, so that
she does not have to act alone. Not being "family", so to speak, there were
limits to what I could do. He always addresses me quite formally as Mr Pearson.

A new flower show started yesterday. Susan has a very smart arrangement
in it, which was well commented on, so she was pleased and it served as a tonic.
No prizes are being given, so that didn't come into question.

All love from us both,

2 June 1951

Dearest Bryher:

Saturday afternoon. I am at the office in sweltering humidity trying to clear away my desk enough to begin writing, or reading for the lecture I must give on the 11th at Bennington College on the Nazo-Soviet Pact. On the 8th I have to go to little Susan's graduation, which concluded on the morning of the 11th, and I take my car and go on from there (without returning home) to speak that night... And I have been back to the office each night for several nights past to work also. So I promise nothing in the way of coherence. Forgive me. In time the various queries will have been answered to you, and we will each be normal again. This is all right at the moment for me, but I am sick at heart to think that these latterly days have been so rugged for you. Everything seems to have tumbled at once. Perhaps you are not actually a rock of gibraltar but everyone seems to think so. With reason. I suspect you are your father's son, much more so than John certainly. He would have understood even though you could hardly have discussed it with him. I have only one consolation out of this. Your letter of the 31st, which arrived this morning, had a tone which warmed me, because it was so to speak between us. Not just because you would, as I would, have relished the going out; but because there is a kind of particularity in the relationship which is essential to both of us. How can I say it. We do not lean on each other, and that is a consolation. But we depend. Or perhaps this is saying too much. At any rate I should like to think it would continue.

You are quite right in saying no to Rowse. It would not do at all. You are You (Bryher); not an embryo Rowsechild. You have your own way to express what you have to say; it would be falsified, adolescent in another medium. You don't need to know more except as you want to need it. Not to be a tutee, in this sense. Rowse has wonderful qualities; you will enjoy him; but he does not really want to exchange ideas, he only wants to extend his audience. He will talk and talk; he will be pleased with what you do only if it is in praise of him or an ec po of him. This has nothing to do with his values to either of us in the present way; but it does mean that I would not be his pupil. You are Fido, but nobody's dog, thank God!

As to Martita, I think she will be increasingly important to you. A kind of rounding the circle back to the days when you talked behind the bushes at school. She actually needs you more than you need her, but it can be mutually rewarding so long as she does not come to feel possessive. For there is Walter, who was Bear but now depends on Fido; and Cat for whom the hearth is made up by sharing the warmth of the fire with you. They all make up parts of the whole. It is, you say, like the past returned; but not really, for you are the sufficient one. That is what you have grown to.

Again an interruption from a student, even at this hour.

Books have been pouring in. Here are the notations for your book. Marlowe, Tamburlaine (London, 1605); Thomas Haywood, The Wise-Woman of Hogsden (London, 1638); Sir Antony Sherley his...Travels into Persia (London, 1613); No-body, and Somebody (London, 1606); Beaumont and Fletcher, The Knight of the Burning Pestle (London, 1635); Robert Herrick, Hesperides (London, 1648); R. L'Estrange, Citt and Bumpkin (London 1680); Beaumont and Fletcher, The Elder Brother (London, 1651); Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (London, 1611); The Mirour for Magistrates (London, 1587); Marlowe, Edward II (London, 1612). Your shelf grows. Naturally I grow more and more excited and enthusiastic with each addition. For altho each volume is interesting in itself, it is the accumulation of them all in relationship to each other that makes the group really important. I become as excited as you are about

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and keep feeling that I ought to watch the auctions in N.Y. to see if unexpected
bargains come up in the way of later editions of B&F. The Spenser was a lovely
volume; I judge the 3rd collected edition. And of course the Hesperides particu-
larly warmed my heart, for there they were as they should be in the original
spelling and punctuation. I shall read that volume through just to see the
familiar poems in period costume. Or one should say that reading them otherwise
than in the original is really to dress to them in fancy dress which was not
theirs at birth.

Your yesterday's letter was relayed on from René into whose
envelope it had been put by mistake. Fortunately, nothing compromising in it.

Also today a package with the Charles Ford and Parker Tyler novel
in it. I had never even heard of it, which is perhaps a tribute to my essential
virginity. I glanced through it while I was waiting this morning for some one to
come for an appointment. It is certainly a period piece. With it was the Leonie
Adams volume. I shall write Hilda to thank. A little while ago came three packages
from L&L with sets of the war poems. Will you tell Robert that they arrived
safely? Hesse's package for Stevens came, and has been sent on.

I shall not try to make this a proper letter. It is almost dinner
time. Earlier in the afternoon I went to the funeral of Hermann Broch, the
Austrian writer who has been living in a garret, so to speak, in New Haven. I
shall write you about him sometime. He was a special character. Apparently had
been married again, secretly, for the past 16 months to a Mrs Mayer-Graße(widow
of the German artist), but they never lived together. Acept a secret, I was told,
because Jean Starr Untermeyer would be too upset. That was an angle I knew nothing
about. I used to see Broch occasionally; he gave me his last book, and I saw
him the week before he was found dead from a heart attack, on the floor by the
iceman. He had little or no money, but rather liked the manner of his life. La
Boheme in New Haven.

• June 1951

Dearest Bryher:

Monday morning. I realize Saturday's letter was such a hodge-
podge as hardly to make any sense, and certainly didn't contain some of the
more important things I wanted to comment on, so take a few moments now on
them. After which I shall probably not write until next mid-week, since we
have to leave Friday afternoon for Susan's-Susan's graduation which goes on
until Monday noon; then I take second car and go to Vermont to lecture that
night on the Nazi-Soviet Pact, have a class the next morning about the lecture;
and back to New Haven for a week before I have to go to Vermont again to teach
a week of the novel. This latter done to help malcolm Cowley.

Awkward news from Covici. I enclose a copy of the copy he sent
me of his letter to Hilda. I hope she can take it in her stride. Quite maladroit,
it seemed to me. But it does indicate how little likely he is to do anything
except possibly a collected poems later. And it does not make me eager to have
him do that. Of course Covici's big day in American publishing was thirty years
or more ago when he ran onto realism and naturalism in fiction; and his "big"
discovery was John Steinbeck. Horace realized that it wasn't very likely that
Covici would like the novel or any other prose; but of course I don't really
think Horace likes it either. I do. I think it is something einzigartig, and
therefore invaluable. As for the realistic autobiography that is for Hilda to
decide, but I doubt if she will want to do it. Actually she has been doing an
autobiography in recent years, but in her own way—thru the novels and short
stories, the Freud, and the notes for me on her poetry. What, I think, runs
in Covici's mind is something like this: H.D. is a "mystery", aloof, fragile,
lovely. What a smash it would be to get out a shocker of an autobiography
reasonably malicious, full of slamming around (as Richard did Lawrence), etc etc.
In other words, profit from the unexpected, as though the whole career were done
to make a tense background for the book of her life. Absurd. on July 1st,
after the second chore is finished, I will get three mss off to macmillan to
read. They will inevitably reject. Then I will take Freud to John Farrar and
try to work out something with him. One way or another I feel reasonably confi-
dent that we can get some volume either out next year, or in the works to be
gotten out.

Now for the Sandys. Wolff will be abroad during a good part
of the summer, so there is no point in killing yourself in tidying up the ms.
But when it is finished, send it to me. I can do whatever is necessary from an
American point of view to the punctuation. (I have no idea how much; mostly I
think the addition of some full stops, or maybe semi-colons. We spoke of that!)
As for paragraphing, it never bothered me. Son't worry on that score. The
cheque came last week, and is deposited in the savings account along with the
money for birthday, and I will use it as necessary. Of course it may not be,
but probably will. Wolff does believe in October, and his wife does also. I
am sure of that. I know him too well to be fooled. But it is true that he has
absolutely no capital, so that he has to be frightened of sales that don't
materialize, even if the book goes over well critically. He came without a
penny; most of the overhead is carried by his contract with Paul Mellon for the
Bollingen books on psychiatry etc. Plus a little which a friend of mine helps
with in order for Kurt to employ his step-son. In er many Kurt did have money,
and was not really commercial. Nor has he ever been here. But nothing can
bribe Kurt to do a book he doesn't like, for which I am glad; and which ought
to make a great difference to you.

I was excited to hear about Hotson's discovery. F' perhaps Prouty
will tell me about it, but I doubt it. But don't you tell me! I might spill the
beans, even with my wartime training. Walter's nervositat is upsetting, and will
be incredibly difficult for you. But do use our correspondence as an outlet for

2

yourself during these times. One does need not to let things well up inside
one. You know I do not talk; and with a certain kind of letter there is no
reason for my showing it to Susan. That is between us. As for Rita, I suspect
that she is more nervously upset about affairs in England than she will admit
to herself. In the long run the experience may be stabilizing for her; but I
suspect she will end up by conversion to Toryism. It seems inevitable and right
under the circumstances. But a kind of defeat for her, on the old terms.

The packages of books I wrote about in my last. This summer when we are
away from Goodrich Street I shall remove them to a vault in the library, and
as more come will have a proper descriptive list made up in order to have an
expert put a valuation on them locally for insurance purposes. Not that anything
will happen, but it is always better to be safe. Normally in the past, as I will
in the future, I shall send the books (your shelf, along with some of mine) to
the bank; but it is better for them not to spend more than the summer months
there. And I shall re-oil the bindings in the fall, to keep them from cracking.
That is very important, along with their being in live rather dead air.

Hilda's packages have come. Letters from Richard, and the Sitwells,
the material on the Reading, and the reviews, plus the Tyler shocker and the
Adams. The rest are probably on the high seas. Now that I am not going to be
away during the summer, it does not matter when they arrive.

Susan, incidentally, is now very keen on her trip; and it will be an
absolute and necessary Godsend to her. I worked on it very carefully without
trying to push. Now she tells people she is going. I have to get her passport
and make arrangements. Will you give me an idea of the times that are absolutely
out? I think end of July, early August is probably best, but it doesn't matter.
Altogether for about two weeks. She can have a week in Lugano perhaps, and some
time with you, with perhaps a little trip together with you in Switzerland. The
only time she has been there before it rained constantly. Or you could take a
quickie to Florence again, if it amused you to do so. The main thing is for
her to get a change. The uncle settles in a little, but it is a constant charge
and sometimes irritation (even if not to be taken as rational on his part.) He
is trying to get some lawyer to have him released. Of course none will, and I
gather than last Friday the state appointed her his conservator. This makes
the legal aspects easier in handling affairs, but will not make the uncle happy.
Obviously.

As for myself, of course I should have loved an ausflug myself, but will
save that for next year. It will do me good to get something accomplished on
the Hawthorne; it will actually do Susan good to have a treat which I have not
had (only you must understand that I do not mean this is an sinister sense).

Must stop and get to work,

Mrs Hilda Aldington
Hotel de la Paix
Lausanne, Switzerland

Dear H.D.,

I am very grateful to you for sending me your lovely book of lyrics, "WHAT DO I LOVE?" They all have a wistful aerial ring in them, with "a thread so delicate, spun so fair" that "our minds are winged, though our feet are clay."

Your prose work, THE SWORD WENT OUT TO SEA, is quite another matter. The events that you indulge in are so fragile and repetitious and, to one outside your intimate circle, so full of conflusings and delusions that they all seem to float away into thin air and leave the reader in a vacuum. If it is all a dream world that you are writing, this poor reader was left quite befuddled most of the time. A wild indulgence often brings strange riches, but it is not always sterling unless accompanied with strict discipline.

True, and grateful for it, I came upon passages of vivid imagery and poetic prose and I often thought what lovely lyrics these would make. But, and I do regret it very much, I don't believe I could persuade my associates to bring out THE SWORD WENT OUT TO SEA in book form.

But I am still interested in your writing your memoirs, not just the gossamer, ineffectual dreams but your story from the beginning before you even met R.A. and going through to the present, honestly and without pulling any punches. It is not easy I know; it would be a terribly realistic thing to do but it could be an exciting and important contribution to autobiographical literature.

Olease let me hear from you. kindest regards and do remember
me to your very dear and astute friend.

6 June 1951

Dear Bryher:

Am writing sooner than I expected, but.... I cannot resist your seeing Wallace Stevens' letter about the Hesse portfolio. The tone of it is quite extraordinary. You would have to see the formality of his manner and business-like quality of his letters, even when he seems to want to be friendly. (You know I am one of the very few around here, who is even an acquaintance!) If you did see that sort of thing you would be all the more surprised by this gaity. There is no doubt but that your gift made a "hit". Stevens' reference to private charity comes from my letter to him, which was phrased with certain elegancies. To wit: that you and I had been talking about Hesse, then about the portfolio which you had occasioned his sending to me, then of Stevens' regard for them, then your query as to whether you might not be able to help Hesse in his private charity by having him send a copy to Stevens. That this would please Hesse, and you, and indvidually me, so that I had taken it upon myself to say that he would be pleased, etc. etc.

The letter from Wolff I thought you would like to see. I doubt
under the circumstances that you can get the ms to him by the date he says,
though if you can, so much the better. At least then I could get the chosen
ms in shape for the early fall, and have time to consult back and forth with
you. But it does look as though he meant business, for which I am, as I need
hardly say, glad.

A package of books arrived this morning, so you can add the following
to your notebook inventory of what is on your Goodrich Street shelf:

Nath. Field, Amends for Ladies (London, 1639)

Tho. Middleton, More Disassemblers Besides Women (London, 1567)

John Donne, Poems (London, 1633) bound in with Juvenilia (London, 1633).

They are all fine. Congratulations. Of course I am particularly keen about the Donne, since, like the Herrick, it is, as you would say, "more my line." But I shall be giving myself a course of reading in the drama, and then we can really talk about them.

The new little book on Firbank arrived also, for which many thanks.
Firbank used to fascinate me; I haven't read him for a long time, tho I have all
his books; but this will freshen it, and I am really very grateful for the chance.

Must get back to my paper, for which I have only today and tomorrow,
and only two pages out of fifteen to twenty yet written. Pray for me.

Love from us both,

18 June 1951

Dearest Bryher:

I seem to be in a constantly hectic state, but by the first of
the month I should be more or less in order again. My desk needs cleaning up,
which is no small task in itself, and having accomplished moving to the shore
under the difficulties of having only my inadequate Oldsmobile, we are now trying
to get little Susan off on her European trip. She is, by the way, to be in
Lausanne for a week sometime about the 12th. I will get this more accurately
for my next letter, but if by some chance you should be at Kenwin, she would
love to see you. She sails Friday, but Thursday night we have to go first to
New York, then to Scarsdale to dine with strangers, and then for a farewell
recital of her group; then spend the night in New York, and see her off on the
boat the next day. It is really a silly waste of time,, but she seems to set
great store by it, so I suppose we must. Having only the single car is a tremendous
nuisance. Lizzie seems, somewhat mysteriously, to have been involved in an
accident which ripped up the right side of the station wagon, and it will be a
week or more before we get it back. The cost of fixing these wooden bodies is
colossal. It's not a very sensible material to use these days. Only since the
time we got this, for our Californian trip, have they made yhe bodies for station
wagons out of metal.

The paper at Bennington seemed to go over reasonably well. At least
there was a good deal of applause, the forum afterwards at least carried through
the time period, and the two-hour class for undergraduates the next day, based on
questions and topics of the lectures lasted half again as long. I only was able to
finish the last few pages of the ms at Bennington just before the lecture, and left
it there for the editor of the volume into which it goes, to look it over for his
comments, since I have seen nothing else in the series. I shall have to tidy it
up a little. I'll try to have an extra copy made to send to you when the final
one is typed up this summer.

Little Susan's graduation was pleasant, and fortunately the rain
held off so that the open-air functions were not called off. There is a good deal
of quasi-pageantry about commencements in this country, but really no more so, if
my memory serves, than at Oxford. Only here it is prolonged somewhat longer.

I have written Hilda again about the Covici letter, and assured her
what is only too true, that Covici is a naturalist and only understands that easily
understood method of writing. When I come back from Vermont, where I go to teach
Faulkner and Fitzgerald for a week, I shall send off some ms of hers to Macmillan.
I do not have her contract with them, but I presume that she is obligated to submit
her next ms to them, before I can submit it elsewhere. I doubt if, under their
new management here, they will be interested--being a little too regularly commer-
cial; but we shall see. Then I can really get to work, once that is settled.

The two packages of documents arrived safely, although the first had
one end almost completely open and it was simply a miracle that nothing was lost.
Perhaps you need a heavier paper for envelopes if we are to send this sort of thing.
The second came safely however, except that there was (mirabile dictu) a service
charge from the customs for ten cents! The first time this has happened. I imagine
your notation on the envelope that these were legal documents made them think the
enclosures were stock and bond certificates. Imagine their surprise when they
realized how long the statute of limitations had been in effect for them! The edition
of Waller's *The Maid's Tragedy* (London, 1690) arrived safely. It is a wonderful
copy, in excellent condition. Once back from Vermont I am bringing all your shelf
(now beginning to be two shelves) into the Library, where I shall have them properly
listed for our common records, and then an insurance evaluation made of them by a
friend here who is an excellent judge of the market. It might however be a good idea

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to send such bills as you have along, so that they can be listed at purchase price or American market value, whichever is higher. I do this only to safeguard against the very outside chance that something might happen to them. And in such an eventuality it is wise to have them actually appraised and listed, precisely as one does for jewelry. Condition plays such a part in valuations that simply titles aren't sufficient for insurance people.

A large and fine bundle of books from Hilda's May Sinclair books, plus one or two others from her, also arrived safely, and I have acknowledged them to her.

Another letter came from Stevens this morning, or, more accurately, a copy of his very nice letter to Hesse. I am not sending it on to you at this moment, for I have a feeling that the Hesses will want to show the original to you when you visit them in Lugano. And, since you could not very well conceal the fact that you had already seen it, they might think theirs less personal because he had sent me a copy. If they don't I'll send it on to you later. I was interested and pleased, however, that because, apparently, he had liked Hesse's things when I showed them to him, he had last winter bought a book of garden poems by Hesse with illustrations. I think that will please the sage of Montagnola. Hesse incidentally included a photograph of himself for Stevens, which must have indicated that he was happy to send them.

Your letter of the 15th arrived this morning. The story of Monica Felton was not astonishing, but it does show how much the confusions about Russia still exist. I suppose all of this activity of hers is in a way compensation for the loss of her leg. An act of revenge for what she considers the crime of the western powers in depriving her of it, almost as though she were a Captain Ahab revenging himself on the whale for the loss of his leg. And to do it, both would be willing to sink the ship on which they had sailed, with no other really to get to. The Russians are nationalists; they would not sign her on as a full crew member; and as a western intellectual she will be constantly under suspicion by them, hating her actually, but willing to exploit her so long as she is in any way useful.

I am sorry about the Scilly delays, and hope Walter will really improve. I suppose he doesn't want a renewed p-a, but I do think it would be useful for him. Perhaps it might be worked out in the fall, and would keep him occupied while you get away for a longer visit to us and everyone here. I think it would be better if the p-a took place, without your being there to have to share the burden after the hours on the couch. It would mean a two-directional communication on his part, rather than the direct communication with the analyzer.

I had a note from Mrs Prouty while they were on the boat, but have not heard since. So was delighted that they had struck oil, as you and Leslie put it. I hate to remind you, but don't forget that you did more or less commit yourself to giving them a couple of hundred once you get to England and can arrange it quietly. He did have rotten luck in getting no grant of any kind to support him --foundations don't like the old fashioned documentary investigations any more-- and they spoke so many time, and were deeply touched by it, of your offer of some aid. I think 200 would be ample. It would go towards photostats etc, which he will have to have to bring back with him.

I shall go down this morning, and try to get the blanks for Susan to fill out for her passport. She has a cold now, and feels run down; so that more than ever it is important for her to get a real, if brief, change. Next year, I hope I can come over with her. Pray for me with the Hawthorne notes.

I shall keep mum about Leslie's discovery from Italy, but it is certainly exciting, and goes to demonstrate a little further what both Prouty and I believe (and I think you too) that the important discoveries for a while may come from the continent. Actually they have been little explored. Even the Vatican might have some important documents. It might be exciting to send Hotson to Italy some time for a winter's exploration.

23 June 1951

Dearest Bryher:

Back from New York and seeing little Susan off, and in now to the office for part of Saturday while I get things ready to leave tomorrow for the University of Vermont, and my week of teaching Faulkner and Fitzgerald. Your letter of the 17th came before I left, and this morning yours of the 20th arrived. And the beautiful postcard of the slopes. How I envy you at the Zermatt! And of course superb packages of books. The following additional titles have come and should be checked against your notebook:

*The Tempest* (London, 1690)

*Timon of Athens* (London, 1678), Shadwell's version.

*Antony and Cleopatra* (London, 1677), Charles Sedley's version.

*Julius Caesar* (London, 1691)

*Troilus and Cressida* (London, 1679), Dryden's version

*Coriolanus* (London, 1682), Tate's version under title *The Ingratitude*

*The Jew of Venice* (London, 1701)

*Othello* (London, 1687)

*Titus Andronicus* (London, 1687), Ravenscroft's version.

Raleigh, Sir Walter: *The Life and Death of Mahomet* (London, 1637)

also:

*Imagistes* (London, 1914)

*D.H. Lawrence, Love Poems and Others* (London, 1913)

*Fenollosa and Pound, Noh* (London, 1916)

2 copies of the magazine *Seven*

Another package from Hilda (no doubt sent by you) including Master's life of Whitman, and Ezra's *Spirit of Romance* came eaelier in the week; and in this morning's mail was also the return of the Stevens and Wolff letters, and the package of Maggs bills. I think this reports the receipt of everything for the moment. The latter groups will all be useful. The later quartos and adaptations of Shakespeare are most exciting! I have no idea how common or uncommon they are individually, but the group of them is overwhelming. Your shelves are really impressive and show the greatest good judgment on your part. The condition of these new titles is absolutely first-class. I congratulate you.

I take it from the last letter that it is the England chiefly to come, until other shipments arrive from England. Plus the one more from Hilda. But I did say in one of my last to go ahead with the Morris. That is of course if you can face up to it. These have been devastating days for you anyhow without this extra work of the letters and books to package. But it perhaps is a relief to find some order coming into things at your end. The long-awaited filing cabinet, ordered after Christmas has now arrived. So there is for the moment room for everything at hand. I want however once I get back from Vermont, to rearrange things a little for the sake of efficiency. Fortunately once things get into the cabinet they are simple to handle.

How furious you must be about your South African holdings. It is maddening. Heavens knows, perhaps you will have to make one of your trips to the States by way of the Union, but then of course one wouldn't be sure of what one was doing. I don't know whether they are big enough to warrant sending Philip down. I daresay he would love the trip. Who wouldn't? Certainly he is as shrewd as they come. Expensive he may be, but he has certainly been a worthwhile investment for you. I don't know what you would have done without him. When I see how my sister-in-law has flandered about with her money, in the grip of the Labor government,

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until she can't call her soul (let alone her dollars) her own, I see how
important it is to have someone whose fingertips touch arteries.

I am glad Walter is recovering somewhat. I still wonder if a little
p-a wouldn't be useful for him once he gets more on his feet. I suppose it's
odd that a practitioner can't treat himself, but it never works out so. I
suppose there are all sorts of fears and insufficiencies latent in his make-up.
He has had several worlds swept from underneath him, and the present state of
affairs may make it seem like the first tremors of another quake. I'd be
interested sometime if you wrote me some sort of an analysis of him, for my eyes
only of course. But it would be part of the total picture too, once the Sandys
and the Scillies are taken care of.

No don't take the boxer for awhile, unless you want Elsie to have one.
But that would be hers, not yours. Who knows how you may have to traipse
around in the next year or two, and really there is no point in having a dog
unless it is properly trained. It is unfair to the dog too. Of course, as I
say, Elsie is another matter, but let her have it as hers; and be sure that it
won't bother you to see a dog with forward table manners etc.

I shall get hold of the Bowen from the library and read it. I know they
have it; it was done on this side also. It does seem a little curious. There
couldn't help but have been whispers of this sort of thing. I really do think
that Whitehall etc must be in a turmoil. So much was based on fidelity to the
service; a generation ago this sort of thing would have been absolutely unthink-
able. But how could anyone help but think that Labor's tactics were anything
but a kind of seduction, a petting party with radicalism and supra-nationalism
that could only lead finally to giving one's self completely. I daresay also
that this particular event was somehow tied into the sexual relationships between
the two men. That was what one was so dreadfully frightened of in that connection
during the war. It wasn't a matter of conventionalities but of involvements
that made one try to bear down on it when possible. As for Iran, the battle was
lost once the British tried to give ten million pound bribes. That was the old
way; why should one be satisfied with ten? If it was worth giving, then the
whole must be worth more than the token. It is the old petard, as you say.

We are still too much involved with little Susan's departure to be
absolutely certain about her mother's trip; but I think the later date will be
all right. Certainly as all right as the former. I still have to get her to
fill out the passport application; but have gotten it and will work on it at my
return. Susan is dreadfully tired, and she always has a phobia when she thinks
she is being pushed. So I have to be careful about that. She certainly won't
mind having Pup or Valentine there, and she will be going to Lugano anyhow. If
it does seem wise she could go straight to Lugano and then back to Kenwin and you.
I know what she'd love most of all would be to see a little of the mountains, etc.
You may remember that the last time she was there, it was foggy all the time.
And the trip to Rome would be perfect, much better than Capri. We will work it
all out. When she has the passport I will immediately make plans about the plane
etc. But that will have to wait until week after next. Will probably not have
a chance to write next week; but meanwhile all love to you from us both.

24 June 1951

Dearest Bryher:

On checking little Susan's dates
for "ausanne, last night, I discover there is
less time than I thought. So drop you this note
as I stop to pick up my books on the way to
Vermont. She is scheduled to be staying at the
Hotel Mirabeau, 31 Ave de la Gare, Lausanne, from
July 5-8. On either July 6 or 7 (the schedule was
not definite for that, the group of 24 girls from
Smith is to give a concert at the University of
Lausanne. If by some chance you and Elsie, or some
others, could go to the concert I know it would be
a great boon; for I daresay not many will go. Money
isn't involved, I gather, but I daresay pride is.
Sue would very much like to see you, if you have any
free time; and I know she would love seeing Kenwin
or any of Lausanne or environs that you could spare
time to show her. Perhaps she could be driven out
into the country; but since they are travelling by
their own Italian bus everywhere, that may be just
the thing she doesn't want. I hate to ask this of
you at this time, knowing how busy you are. But she
would love it, and I know you will like her. You
met her for a moment at the house, as we were going
over the books on your shelf. Her name, incidentally
is Susan Tracy. Much love,

5 July 1951

Dearest Bryher:

The Fourth of July is over, and I relax a little. Lizzie
has been having a houseparty with four girls from her school to stay with
us, and Johnson's Point has been overrun with weekend guests and the arrival
of the Trevelyans. We settle in for a little.

Forgive me for not having written earlier in the week after
my return from Vermont. Monday I ran errands, and recovered the station
wagon from the garage where it has been repaired; now it glows like a newly-
washed child, with a shiny and unaccustomed exterior. Tuesday I worked at
scraps in the office and recovered the lawn furniture from the paintshop where
it had been because there was no station wagon to truck it in.

The Fourth was pleasant as an occasion; there were some 25 at
lunch at the Bennett big house on the point, scattered at various tables which
divided by age groups. Many hats, kites in the wind, firecrackers, toy flutes,
and general gaiety. At night there was a brave attempt at fireworks, though the
local laws now so limit the amount of powder which can be contained in them,
that there was as much splutter and fizz as there was brilliant illumination.
Poor Mark was miserable; his ears having been cleared up, he paid for his
recovery by hearing again what had been blissfully denied him last year. Most
of the time he huddled in remote corners and shivered. In the early evening he
followed the girls out on the path and then disappeared. At midnight I searched
everywhere in vain, for although he could hear the explosions he could not hear
my voice. I thought of him in the drenching rain which fell at midnight,
hunched in some nook of undergrowth, and expected him waiting outside the door
this morning. He was not there, and I searched again; but this time the
Bennett gardener had found him locked in their greenhouse, where he had fled
only to have the door shut on him. Mark certainly wishes that the United
States had never been separated from England!

There were bundles of course waiting for me when I returned.
So add to your list of what has arrived, the following: Beaumont and Fletcher,
Cupid's Revenge (London, 1635), 3rd ed.; Fletcher, The Faithful Shepherdess
(London, 1624), 2nd ed.; Jack Drums Entertainment (London, 1616), 2nd ed.;
The Whole Woorkes of George Gascoigne (London, 1587). All very fine additions
to your shelf. I have taken them and all the rest to the Library, where the
girl who works in the rare book room will catalogue them for us, check on any
questions of condition, and when that is done a rare book dealer whom I know
will certify that they are hear, make evaluations of them in case their value
is higher than the cost to you; and this list will serve for insurance purposes
in case of an unlikely disaster. I will of course send you a copy of the list,
so if you want to, why don't you wait and check your notebook against this. It
will save you time. I am delighted but embarrassed about the two wonderful
Milton's. Did you forget that you gave me, during the war, a fine copy of the
1645 Milton Poems? This is the more expensive of the two. I have a suggestion.
Since you have gotten the permit to export this, and since it would be silly for
me to have two copies--much as I love old John-why don't you send it over anyhow,
let me eventually sell the poorer of the two copies and put the money into the
savings account and eventually put it towards the cost (if necessary) for
publishing one of Hilda's books? It will have proved an easy way of getting the
money out of England, and too good a one to miss. I am told that a copy of this
will normally sell from $750 up, depending upon condition etc. What do you
think? As for "rent" (as you call it), I need none; my rent is the thought that
with your bookshelf at our house we can count on longer visits to Susan and
myself while you renew acquaintanceship with your library. And even counting
"rent" on the other terms, then your message via Susan of your success in finding
the Cotton "ather Magnalia fills me with tremendous gratitude. It will make my
new graduate seminar infinitely easier and more successful. Just one of those

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particularly valuable cases for original typography etc. I cannot thank you enough.

Now let me run through the letters that have also come from you. The Langland of course has not yet come, nor the folders of letters. I am looking forward to having yours to Hilda join the rest. I have said, and will continue to say, how important all of these are when together. As for Robert's there is certainly no hurry, and under the circumstances agree with you that you had better hold on to them for awhile. He, above all, might think it odd. As for the Kelmscott, you are probably right again, and anyhow there is no particular hurry. I notice that the Yale Library has all but five or six. I thought I might get a list of the lacunae, which are not necessarily the rarest. It might be fun, sentimentally, to fill out their list. Incidentally I am taking a subscription for you to the Yale Library Gazette. Sometimes it might have an article which would interest you. The color photographs? Don't worry about them. Why not save them until Susan arrives, and she can bring them back with her. Apparently the whole business of color work in films is highly nationalized. Especially now that things are so complicated for you, I don't want you to think about them again. As to Hotson's, it will be easy to see them on your next visit. Ridgefield, Conn., is only an easy hour from New Haven, a pleasant afternoon's ride. I look forward to meeting them through you. I did very much like Mary Hotson's letter about your books. She has the "feel", and I think her reactions are informed, sensitive and important. Naturally I am eager to have the Sandys ms arrive, but there is plenty of time of course, and I will push ahead as fast as I can when Wolff returns at the end of the summer.

As to Elizabethan documents I haven't really had a chance to study them, but they look interesting. Will get at them.

I wrote Susan's Susan to phone you, and hope the letter reached her in time. Don't worry if things didn't work out. She will understand. I explained just enough so that she would understand.

Am pleased that the Prouty parcel worked out. Haven't heard from him since his wife wrote from the boat. But that is not surprising. After all he is there to work, and both of them are demons for making the most of an opportunity. Your help will be a great help, in every way. Prouty is most able--not really with Hotson's flair, but a kind of steady somewhat old-fashioned doggedness in arranging data once it is dug out. Curiously he lacks self-confidence even though his Yale appointment was a great feather of recognition. So, most of all, your parcel will buck up his spirit. He is somewhat childlike in that regard, splutters a bit, is enormously bucked by a word of praise, and downcast if for some reason he does not get it. Some find it exasperating; I take it simply as his manner.

I did know that the particular packets of books were from Hilda, and thanked her for them in my last. She seems in good spirits and enjoying herself. I hope the influx of visitors is not too much for her this summer, but sometimes she thrives on what might be a bad diet for others.

I was interested in the Categories visit. As to the Swinburne letters, I had read copies of them obtained by a Yale instructor who is editing all of Swinburne's letters. They are all about flagellation, a sport which never appealed to me; they are all in that manner. I wonder if she saw a ms article on Swinburne's sex life which the B.M. has, and this boy has the right now to publish. It is all very much in the schoolboy birching manner; I daresay it is all actually linked up somehow with the schoolboy-master relationship, which did have a profound effect (not altogether for the good) on some of my friends. It is all partly a matter of starvation. I suppose Marya can handle it, but I hope she doesn't make too much of it, as it is not quite her cup of tea. She is wrong in thinking the Wise material has not been gone over, but I won't interfere with her or give advice. In this case I think most of the stuff is genuine. As for Pat, I think you realize now what some of the difficulty is. We were quite right to help as we did, but he is not really with his feet on the ground. It may work out; of course he is young, and Americans have a way of carrying on

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adolescence for an unusually long period--far too long, I think, but perhaps it can't be helped. Part of his trouble, I think, is that Marya especially has insisted upon a quality of brilliance (for him as for the girl) which he perhaps feels an inadequacy for living up to; also, I think, a certain indifference. Then again Marya is so hopelessly impractical and unworthily, that he feels responsibilities which would not normally be thrust on one of his age; as he did at the time they were so hopelessly involved in debt. All of Marya's talk of conspiracy against her may also be disturbing. I take Walter's intuitions very seriously in this regard. Do draw him out on the matter, since at moments of crisis I will almost certainly be called on to step in. Anything I can know, even in the way of surmise, is important to me. It lets me begin my groping without having to work absolutely in the dark. Pat is basically very fine, and does have brilliance, I think. But it perhaps does not develop naturally, and as you say he is without any absolute toughness for the necessities. Called on too quickly for them. In studies he is erratic, not really well trained, though he has had the opportunities for it. But altho some of this ill-training can be laid at the door of typical non-discipline in school, a good deal comes from the inner unbalance of which Walter speaks.... But all these things notwithstanding, the Gregories give him an unusual and invaluable background, real devotion and belief in him; and perhaps we ought not to expect adolescence to be too stable unless it is to be dull at the same time.

Marya worries me a little more than Patrick does, and much more than Horace (who keeps things together). But this trip may be the leavening she needs.

The McLean-Burgess affair still intrigues me, though of course MI-5 knows much more about it than is being told. And because they do not tell all they know, --nor does Parliament insist on it as Congress does--the whole thing may fade out. It seems that Isherwood and Burgess were close friends at one time, and Isherwood made rather a fool of himself (I should think) in an interview he gave the *Daily Express*. Was Burgess a Communist, Isherwood was asked? "Well, like the rest of us, he was very much in favor of the United Front and Red Spain and so forth...It meant, don't you see, that we were pretty favorable towards Russia...I mean, it went without saying. But as far as I know, Guy was never a card-carrying party member. I have the strongest personal reasons for not wanting to go to Russia and I should think Guy Burgess would have exactly the same sort of reasons. We both happen to have exactly the same sort of tastes, and they don't meet with the approval of the Soviets. In fact, I'm told they liquidate chaps with our views--rather beastly, don't you think?" But quite apart from this sort of angle, is, to my mind, the disappearance of the old kind of fierce national loyalty which the British could count on in its officials. Whatever you want to call it: the public school spirit, the sense of a gentleman's honors, all the sneered-at Tory virtues. One of the worst appeals which Russia seems to give to the naive is a supra-loyalty which denies the validity of the word treason. As you say, this is nothing but war; and Labor ought to realize that they will lose out as much as the Torys will if Russia gains an upper hand. For Labor depends on the structure (basically) of what the older England, like your father, built up. Their innovation, for whatever it is worth, is simply what they call a more equitable distribution. Upset the system (as with the Iranian deal, or the relationship to the colonies) and there is nothing left to distribute. Then England becomes a colony to Russia, and Labor is nothing but Fools if they think that Russia gives a snap about them even if Labor is willing to cuddle up. This is no balance of power in the old sense; they had better know which side their bread is buttered on. Perhaps ten or twenty years ago the situation was different. I don't know. Now it should not be so difficult to see.

Do continue to be firm about the dog. This is not the time for you to settle down properly to train another. Especially since with Valentine,

et al, you may be called on to travel more. I am glad Elsie is interested in
painting. It is good therapy.

Susan grows more and more excited about her trip to Switzerland. It
is wonderful to see her interest. She has had her passport pictures taken,
while I was away (mirabile dictu) and goes today to place her application. I
shall try to arrange for her passage early in the week. I may send her straight
to Geneva, from which she can go either directly to Lugano and Hilda, or to
Kenwin, depending on which you prefer. Now be frank about this. I see many
angles, all possible. You could join them both in Lugano, and make some trips
with her to St Moritz or Como for the day (and thus get a break from Kenwin and
its involvements), or she could simply be with Hilda and then come to Kenwin on
her way back to join you for a day or two. Or longer if you wanted to make a
little trip with her at the end, and get yourself away from Kenwin. The only
thing will be to let Hilda know when, roughly, to expect her, so that she can
engage a room either at the Bristol or somewhere else for her, and possibly for
you.

Must close now. Write when you can. And all love from us both.

19 July 1951

Dearest Bryher:

Again to many days have passed, but I have been absolutely overwhelmed with trying to finish up the copy of my article on the Nazi-Soviet Pact and American writers. I found it unusually hard to polish, since in a sense it is all contrived. No individual actually acted as I made this ubiquitous "American writer" act in the face of things; nevertheless the presentation had to be somewhat in that line. I shall be curious to know what you think of it. Actually it does not represent what you yourself thought (and I do not pretend to present the British point of view), because you always had such a clear-cut and unusually sharp penetration of the shams of the Russians and Germans both. This quality has always been one of your virtues. At any rate you will see it, but perhaps not before it gets into print. Things always read better in printer's ink than on the results of a typewriter.

I won't be able to finish this letter to-day, or, rather, only the first installment of it; even though the article is now being typed and is done with. But first of all the important things. Susan has her plane reservation on TWA, direct to Zurich. She leaves Idlewild on August 6 and arrives on the 7th there. It was the only time I could get, and won't I hope be too inconvenient. She could stay in town near you if you are too crowded at the villa. I say this because I gather you would prefer to have her come directly to Lausanne from Zurich. I'll check on the time of arrival in Zurich and see whether it's best for her to spend the night of the 7th there. I should think it might be fun. Can you or Rita see that she has a room. Perhaps for her alone, the hotel by the lake might be most fun. Her return is from Zurich at 4:30 in the afternoon of August 26th. All else I leave to you. She would love to go to Italy with you, I know. Anywhere or anytime. Actually I think it would be a good idea for you and she to go off together. I think you may need a change of air from Penwin, with all the hullabaloo of arrivals and departures. And it might make housekeeping for them easier. But Susan won't mind children or anything, so don't worry about that. She is really most excited about the trip. It will do her a world of good, and freshen her whole spirit. I can't tell you how grateful I am to you.

Now for the next immediacy: the recent arrivals of packages, which have been coming in steadily. The 1561 Langland came in (a stunning copy, much better than the one Yale has). It is already being catalogued by the woman who is doing it for us. Others now here are:
- Beaumont and Fletcher, Wit Without Money (London 1639).
- Fletcher, The Faithful Shepherdess (London 1634), 3rd ed.
- The Overthrow of Stage Plays (London 1599)
- Fletcher, The Night-Walker (London 1640)
- Middleton, The Roaring Girl (London ?)

I shall take these over tomorrow. The girl has already made a start at cataloguing them for you. She is now making careful descriptions of them, bibliographically and with attention to identifying qualities (in case of theft), and then will compare them with the authoritative bibliographies to see what they lack or differ from. Some interesting things may develop. I am also having her indicate whether or not Yale has copies of the same titles, but only because by this means I can let Prouty know what might be used carefully by graduate students. After she has finished her lists, I shall have the books evaluated for insurance purposes, taking either purchase price or American value whichever is higher. This is treating them as one does jewelry, which is what they deserve.

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The Magnalia arrived this morning also, with the little quarto also in the package (included in the list before), and I have been fondling it and puring over it. Dear Bryher, what a wonderful copy it is. It is immaculate, and the map (rare) is such fun to look at. It shall be so infinitely grateful to you for it. I have always had a curious affection for it. It is one of the monuments of colonial American writing, and yet it has never been reprinted except once in the 18th century in a Bowlderized form, with spellings and typography changed, and even the grammar. Two men at Harvard and two of us at a sale hope someday to do a scholarly edition of it so that it can once again be available. We feel that the two great and oldest American universities ought to share in doing this.

There have also been the many packages of letters. Hilda 1947; Pup, 1940-51; Hilda 1950; Bryher 1946-47; Hilda 1948; Agnes Latham 1944-51; Hilda 1949; Bryher 1939; Bryher 1941-46. Plus the package of Hesse letters. This is a most disorganized chronology, but forgive me for listing them as I put my hands on them. They will all be put properly in order in the filing cabinets. The one from New York arrived safely, and with the one I ordered with your Christmas-time check for it, I shall now be safely accoutred for some time. It does make a tremendous difference of course. I think I also acknowledged the Gaudier book of Ezra's. I am sure I must have forgotten something. Oh yes, the TLS review, for which I thank you. It was done most generously by Edith, although of course that is a great secret. She whispered it to me last winter when I saw her in New York.

... I have just been summoned, and so will postpone the rest until tomorrow morning. But meanwhile will send this off with all love,

24 July 1951

Dearest Bryher:

My plan to finish the letter last Friday was effectively foiled, since apparently I cannot stop my academic duties even in the midst of summer. At any rate I spent all Friday reading the re-written sections of a dissertation on Reiser which a student had done at my orders, and because of which I did not think I could let him waste his weekend. (He has stayed in New Haven all summer in order for me to keep a finger on him.) Saturdays I do not come in the office in summer, and so spent the time trimming trees, pulling down wild grapevine out of branches it was choking, and cleaning paths. Yesterday afternoon I spent in supervising a grand-scale shifting of pianos. Mrs Bennett has given little Susan her own grand piano, so: our piano in town was moved to the shore; the piano there was moved to Susan's sister's; and the grand piano moved back into our house in town.

But now at least I can go back to finishing the letter.

I wish you could have stayed with Hilda for your anniversary with her. What a wonderful relationship it has been for you both—with ups and downs of course—and, for you, the most immense responsibility—but so it is with all relationships which are not simply the mixture of mud and water

More books have arrived since last Friday, a list of which I indite herewith for your record. The two Milton poems: that of 1645, and 1673, for which of course I thank you from the heart. Then:

*   **Ben Jonson, Catiline (London, 1635)**
*   **John Day, The Blind Beggar of Bednal Green (London, 1659)**
*   **Nathaniel Field, Amends for Ladies (London, 1639)**
*   **T.M., A Mad World my Masters (London, 1640)**

All fine and wonderful additions. As to your request about what books are mostly bought now in the States I shall make inquiries from a good friend of mine who is a dealer. I do know that the Elizabethans of just the sort you are getting are particularly sought after, and perhaps amongst others I should go on buying as much as you feel you can. Especially anything before 1600 is easy to market, if literary in nature. "Anything before 1600 is good", as the man who buys books for Yale said about the Langland. And it looks well in the U.K. for you to buy of this nature, since after all one could sell any of these which were not particularly dear. Then, too, if you wanted; I could have someone keep his eyes open here for B&Fs which might come up for sale at the auctions next winter, and help to complete your runs of those editions, since you could pay for them in Swiss francs also I should think. Remember that what you would be doing is to transfer money to the States in non-income producing assets here (which are a good thing to have anywhere), and since the money is already out of England you are not really getting any more out by shipping the equivalent of the francs back to England again. A few however might establish the principle that you could buy from England if you wanted to. Am I clear? Best, I think, to buy in England with your English funds, as a way of getting the equivalent of the funds out. Best to buy from U.S. with Swiss funds, as a way of transferring Swiss to this country. Don't buy in Switzerland unless very unusual because prices there are high. We would buy here only if great bargains came up as they sometimes do. Your name needn't come in. I could put in bids under my name, then you could pay me, but the books would be yours.

As to the Morris volumes I spoke of (the Kelmscott, which Yale doesn't have), you are probably right in not splitting up your set. I simply thought you had two sets: one complete, one incomplete. But I shouldn't think about it again.

I was distressed to hear about the episode of the pearls. I only hope the insurance was valid for their loss in this way. I do hope so, even if they weren't the best. As for their being worn, of course the jewelers

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were correct. Pearls must be worn frequently or they go dead. I suppose they require love, as persons do. I know that Susan has a small string and tries to wear them a good deal just to keep their quality. I hesitate to speak of it, (altho we mentioned it before), but if you have a dinner ring amongst the other things in the bank, why don't you give it to Pup. I've never seen her wear one, but now that she is a matron I imagine she would enjoy it for dress occasions. Certainly this is no time in her life to load her down with such things, but a single one might be appropriate. Perhaps she does have one already. we've never discussed the matter of jewelry or anything else.

To go back to books, neither the second or fourth folios have arrived as yet, but of course I shall let you know when they do. The Mather came so beautifully that I doubt if there's any risk. However you could send the first folio back by Susan if you wanted to. Even if she's over her weight allowance, the cost is no more than postage. Probably better than for you to bring it in yourself, although I doubt if any hitches would come.

As to funds for Hilda's publication costs, I shall check again on that, but you can transfer up to three thousand to me without gift tax, and I doubt if they'd catch on anyhow. If you do want to send 2500 you could, and I'd add it to the special savings account I have of what is really your money (including the passge money. Then you could do another transfer after the first of the year. If you do, have them make out the transfer to THE UNION & NEW HAVEN TRUST COMPANY, which is where I bank. The last transfer stupidly required a small fee on this end just because I didn't want to take the money in cash, but preferred a bank cheque.

I sent you the details of Susan's flight reservations, and will pick up the ticket today or tomorrow. In some ways, for your sake, I wish she weren't to be there in these hectic days ahead; but perhaps it is a good excuse for you to get away. Why not try Italy and Kenneth. I had a letter from John, with their plans; and a photograph of the baby. I shall be writing him today.

Thank you for sending the people to the Lausanne concert. Really, the consular people can be dreadfully obtuse. I was frightend that there wouldn't be decent audiences anywhere, but really it was almost inevitable. They will have had a good trip anyhow, and the mere fact that they have sung abroad will carry some prestige at home for them. Little Susan wrote from "ausanne that she had had your letter, and was sorry to have missed you.

Horace's book of poems has just been sent me from the publishers, and looks very good indeed, though it came only yesterday and I have not had a chance to read it yet. I shall not send you one, since I imagine he will do so himself. If not, let me know. Your comments, relaying Horace's on Spender's self-advertismment delighted me. Spender is such a fool!

I am jumping with delight at the Christmas present of the painting of the house at Klingsor. How marvelous! It will be superb. Certainly Susan can bring it back, but... there are some abominable things that must be done. I shall go to the customs people and get it all straight. There will have to be a certificate from Hesse that it is an original. Copies are dutiable, an original is not. Plus some sort of clearance from the Swiss authorities that it can be exported. Otherwise, as my friends know from ad experience, there can be the devil tp pay at both ends. If a certificate from "esse does prove necessary, I should have him make out separate ones for all three. As to the selection from Stevens' poems, he has never permitted a selected poems, tho I am working on him now to persuade him to do it. He thinks it immodest; I say it is selfish, since it means that my students must buy all the books to get the necessary poems for study. I think eventually he will, at least I did help to persuade him to collect his prose essays which are coming out this autumn. But I shall send you, for him, one of the new Oxford books of American poetry with a good selection from him in it, with a few also of Hilda's; and that will make a start. Also a wes tern for yourself, but for winter reading. You will be too busy for some months yet. I suppose you simply have not had a chance to finish up the Sandys; I am waiting for the copy so that it can

be here before Wolff returns in September. Wasn't it being typed in England.
I could have it typed here, you know!

I have been looking at Hesse's things in the Library. Somewhere amongst
my papers I have a list of the surprising number of his things in the great
German collection at Yale. I will send it surface to you, since it might
please him to know how well represented he is here. Perhaps he might be able
to fill out with some of the privately printed things which Yale lacks, since
it would be useful to his reputation in the States to have one place where
everything of his could be found by students. Yale has by far the greatest
collection of German things: the best Goethe collection outside of Germany,
the Thomas Mann papers; the great collection of German baroque literature., etc.
etc. He should be amongst them.

I must have omitted many things in this letter, but will try to recover
them by the time of my next.

Love from us both,

27 July 1951

Dear Bryher:

A hurried note at the end of the afternoon, devoted to Bill Williams who appeared again in town, about your letter of the 24th. The air agency and I spent the morning between here and New York on the phone, to see if it was possible to shift to Geneva from Zurich; but, alas, the only possible dates for the return trip come too late in September for Susan to be able to make and still get Liz ready for school etc etc etc. I'm awfully sorry about all this, because I suspect that I am more than responsible for the Zurich arrangement, on the basis of my trip and forgetting the particular circumstances of B.O.A. C. and the like. I hope it won't be too impossible however as it is. If you do want to spot-check Rome or Florence between the 8th or 9th and 15th, Susan might be able to go direct from Zurich to Geneva, meeting you there and going on by plane together directly to Italy, saving Switzerland for the end. She could, for example, go from Italy to Lugano after you had been together, returning to Kenwin between the 22nd and her departure, all of which might be easier for you. She could spend between 15th and 22nd there, with perhaps a bus trip with Kat, or one by herself such as we took. And mostly rest. But of course I leave all this to you. Have not discussed it with Susan, but if you want her to go on the 7th (when she lands) or 8th (the day after) to Geneva, you could send me cable stating hotel where you were to meet in Geneva, and when.

I feel an increasingly guilty feeling at piling up all this on you, with so many visitors at one time, and such a Grand Hotel atmosphere as is invading you. If we were starting again, I should say no to the whole thing; but I am sure if anyone can swing it, you can. And you know how I feel and what devoted gratitude I have.

1 August 1951

Dearest Bryher:

I'm afraid I left the two letters which arrived yesterday at the shore, where I took them last night for Susan to read. So that I shall have to answer them from memory, and pick up odds and ends in my next. But I do not want to wait the extra day for this to go off to you. Don't worry about Italy. Susan and I can do that with you on another occasion. I still worry a good deal about you and how much is being put on you at this time. If only things had worked out so that Susan could have gone in July-- though goodness knows there seemed to be as much then. I think we shall have to work it in the future so that Pup and John alternate, or at least do not duplicate the same year. But to return: Susan has much to see in Switzerland, where she had such bad weather before, and she will not have seen Lugano before this time --I think it is indicated that she visit Hilda for awhile, unless Hilda is too exhausted by the thought of double visits. If Susan or I have not heard from you before she reaches Zurich, she can perhaps either phone you from there that night or send you a wire when she expects to reach Lausanne.

I am relieved to know that the Hesse is a watercolor rather than an oil; I suppose your word "painting" somehow made me think of the heavier medium, tho for no good reason. Customs are always easier on water colors, so perhaps we needn't bother the Magister at all. Susan can put some sort of nominal value on it when she brings it back, and I can fight it out with the customs if they object. I don't if they do. Certainly it isn't worth making the old man go to Lugano.

Books arrived yesterday also. The fourth folio Shakespeare, which arrived nicely but I notice that the front binding is free from the spine and back. I shall ask advice of the dealers first, but if they say so don't you think I had better have this repaired, since it is not a contemporary binding. I don't know whether it was that way when you had it, or whether it shook loose by being bounced in the post. As I told you, Susan can carry back the first folio with her by plane if you want her to. It might seem more natural for her to bring it into the country for me than any comments on why you should be bringing it for a brief visit. John offered in a letter to bring anything I wanted him to, but he will be making his trip thru France by car, and I imagine that Valentine will be bundle enough for the Pup when she comes back.

The other two books were the Ovid Elegies of Marlowe, and the copy of England's Parnassus (London 1600). What beautiful copies these are, and the bindings are lovely. Certainly none of my anthologies will be as famous as Allot's is. It and the England's Helicon are perhaps as well known as any. I shall take them to the Library tomorrow. The copy of the second quarto Othello you mentioned must be a great gem. I can't very well advise you one way or the other about giving it to Robert. It would grace your collection or his equally.

I drove yesterday to New York State to run over some letters from John Steinbeck, which a dealer wanted me to look at, without any thought of buying. Since I lecture on him I thought I'd better, and did, although they were certainly disappointing. I can back at half-past six for what turned out to be a real sorrow for all of us here.

Mark is dead. He has been failing of course during the last year, for after all seventeen is quite an age for a dog to reach. He found it harder to get up any, even the lowest stairs into the house, as his hind legs lost

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their power to push him up. Whenever he missed or slipped it meant an anguish of pride to him, and it hurt his dignity to be helped even though he was grateful for the assistance. This summer it has worsened, although being at the shore revived him a good deal, and he liked to wander slowly about his territory, pretend to examine the boundaries each morning, and drink from the shell at the foot of Venus. But there were moments when he found it hard to rise to his feet, and although day before yesterday he walked to the tennis court to be with Susan, and barked at the newsboy which he did as a sign of his prerogative, yesterday he did not go and when Susan returned he was in our wing and could not get up at all. She and Liz carried him out on a rug, and he did manage to stand to eat his supper, then collapsed again, and when I came back was sitting on his haunches without being able to get to his feet. He covered me over with the welcome of his tongue, but I knew it was all over. So I called the vet at once, asked him to go back to his office, then picked up Mark in my arms and carried to him the car and then into town. From his eyes I knew that Mark knew it was over too, and as he lay beside me with his sad eyes on me and his paws against my leg I could have wept. But it was better this way, and right that I should have taken him. He has really been mine for the ten years since Susan and I have been married, and was in a way her wedding present to me. He had a quality of loyalty and devotion which I envied, and there were many many times when I leaned on it as a staff. All these things are cliches to anyone, like yourself, who has had a dog; but they become cliches because they are true. I feel very empty, but very grateful all the same.

With love from our both

3 August 1951

Dearest Bryher:

I shall actually finish this note tomorrow, when I shall come in town in the hope that there will be a letter from you advising Susan as to her actions on reaching Zurich. Do not worry however if you did not have time to send one, since she will get a room there for the night, perhaps see an aunt of her brother-in-law, who is an afficionada of Jung's and lives in Zurich, and come on to Lausanne on Wednesday. She may call you from Zurich. I shall perhaps advise her, other things being equal, to go to that luxus hotel by the lake, since they can do all sorts of arrangements for her ticket to Vaud etc etc.

I have your last two letters by me, and find that I answered most of the matters in my last letter to you. I have just written to the professor, giving him permission to use the poem for publication within the U.S. and Canada, on payment of fifteen dollars. I have had the cheque made out to Hilda, but to be sent to me. Without a power of attorney to handle such matters for her, I daresay this is a little irregular; but since I am sure she will raise no objections I think it is all right. When we do get things properly in shape, it might be a good idea on one of her trips here to have the thing regularized. I should actually like to keep track of Liveright's to see that they pay her brother the correct amounts. I am always, perhaps unreasonably, suspicious of them.

How marvelous that Herring liked the Scillies, tho no one can keep them from being primarily yours, and I daresay your polter geist added warmth to the islands for him. I am eager to see them. I think I told you that when I was at Oxford it was always my yen to go there for a holiday. I was never quite sure why--it was simply an irresistible and inexplicable impulse. Now I think it must have been vibrations set up before our friendship actually occurred. At least it is nice to think of it that way. You have not spoken of Herring for a long time, and I wonder how his book is progressing, or his plans for entering the family business?

Do send the King John by Susan. The second folio arrived yesterday in absolutely tip-top condition, and is already with the others at the Library. I do not like to keep them lying around my office, for who knows what highly literate maids or janitors might take a fancy to it. I

I do hope that Elsie is calming down. Get her to give Susan some recipes for specialities de la maison!

I don't think I've mentioned Miss Latham's superb edition of Ralegh's poems. Naturally I was delighted to find your name in the place of honor among the acknowledgments. Having just finished reading her letters to you, I know how richly this was deserved; but in any event, and without the particular help you gave --in fact as well as in encouragement and stimulus--it was altogether proper. Her text of course is far and away the best we have, and I myself am grateful that the Muse's Library will make it so generally available. I might conceivably quibble with her for occasional changes in the Elizabethan punctuation: since colons have a value to me which is different from that of a full stop, for example. But on such matters there can never be any general agreement, and I am more than pleased that she kept the Elizabethan spelling. Her notes on the mss of the poems, and her brief hints as to their individual interpretations are

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models of decorum. So in fact are the various divisions of her
general introduction. She has given us the chief facts of the biog-
raphy, and I suspect there are no facts which have not somehow or
other been introduced without ostentation. I like her style; there
are infinitely pleasing and carefully wrought turns and balances,
quite as one would expect from a person so involved with the age as
she was, but given a nice tone which is both her own and typical of
the dons and donnas. I think she must have taken infinite pains with
the introductions and they were worth every minute of it. I suppose
it is too much to think that she would now turn to the history and
Ralegh's other work; but how fine it would be if, with her knowledge
not to be wasted, she were to give us a 20th-century tribute in
completeness, so that we would have Sir Walter not alone with his
mythical cape, but with his sword and his pearl earrings and his pen
and his blood.

........

Now in on Saturday morning, and your letter is here. Many thanks.
It would not have made any great difference; and if something goes
wrong and you cannot get to Zurich, that of course is all right. I
only suggested Bau au Lac because I thought you were not to be in
Zurich, and I remembered that the other place had little or no English.
I spoke always German to them. I liked your hotel immensely. It was
quite the sort of thing I like.

Susan understands all the difficulties. You absolutely must not put the Schaffner's second to Susan. This is their first visit, and John's absolutely first. They could never forget not being the true center of attraction, even if their reasons told them otherwise. Perhaps I'm not saying this very well, but I think we both know what I mean. The main and wonderful chance for Susan is to have an absolute change from New Haven and family life, simply as a refresher. She would love to go with you and the Schaffners on any excursions, but you must also do things with them without her being along. Perhaps some corner somewhere in Lugano will turn up, so that she could be a few days with Hilda and away from you and the Schaffners. That might be the best solution. At any rate she knows about the little hotel near you, and is much intrigued by the possibility of meeting the Glovers. And she loves to poke around on her own, and can keep herself busy exploring antique shops in Lausanne for pieces of old cloth etc. Also simply sitting in the sun, and having breakfast in her room at the hotel usw usw usw.

......

Halfway through that last paragraph the janitor came up with a
notice from Western Union of a telegram to a Lieutenant Pearson, which
had been posted on the bulletin board for graduate students. He thought
it might just possibly be for me, so I called the main office to make
sure AND IT WAS YOUR CABLE! Lord God! to think if I had missed it.
You did all properly, and the address was correct; but the stupid
messenger boy took the easiest way out. I have it all correctly down;
Susan will be thrilled when I get back to the shore and tell her (but
she would not have been disappointed if it had worked otherwise.) You
will presumably meet her in Rome. At this point I start chuckling to
myself when I remember the certificate of merit awarded to you as a
travel agent. This must be another feather in your cap. Rita will be
infinitely jealous when she sees how you have coped. I can never
properly say to you how grateful I am.

10 August 1951

My dear Bryher:

Whether this will greet your return to Kenwin, or
reach you slightly afterwards is problematical; but I do hope it
will have come after a successful trip. I know it will have
meant an intense pleasure for Susan, not only for the moment, but
afterwards as she remembers it,—and for me too as I come to share
in it. The many shifts in probable plans only gave additional
excitement.

Another package of books has come and been delivered
to the library. The volume of nine B&F's, beginning with THE MAIDS
TRAGEDIE 91641), 5th ed. was definitely in order for you to get. It
is a splendid addition. Also RELIQUIAE WODTONIANAE (London 1672), 3rd
ed.; John Webster, THE WHITE DIVIL (London 1612), 1st ed.—a fine copy,
and makes I think your second copy of this; Raleigh, A DECLARATION OF
THE DEMEANOR AND CARIAGE OF... (London, 1618); and John Mason, THE
TURKE (London, 1610), 1st ed. All fine. I think when we have the cata-
logue of the whole group, we should be able to make up a brief list of
disiderata, which can guide Maggs somewhat. There are some runs of
editions of the same book, which we must try to fill in for the sake
of completeness.

Incidentally I have loaned the Elizabethan documents to
a David Horne, who is one of Prouty's protégés, and the one whom Leslie
thinks so highly of that he asked him to be a collaborator on a project.
He will take excellent care of them, and be able to give some sort of
an analysis for us. He helped me on some of the date charts for the
anthology, and both Susan and I like him immensely. She can tell you
more about him.

I think I wrote you that I did send off permission for
that professor to use Hilda's poem in his book; and I am answering today
a request from and old professor to use ten scattered lines from her
poems in an article he is doing. Since in this case it is not complete
poem I am letting him have the use gratis. That is quite customary and
in order.

The surface envelope with the Gregories' letters arrived
today and is filed. It seems to be going well for them, and I am delighted
that they like Paris and Venice so much that they refreshen all the cliches
of travellers for centuries. I was glad too of Walter's revised opinion
of Pat. He gives the very reason which I saw for helping both them and
him with the funds from the foundation. It will, I hope, take him over
the hump. The success with his essay at the university will be a great
encouragement.

Things seem more or less quiet on the international front,
though there have been moments when I have been profoundly disturbed by
the Balkan possibilities. I really still look for trouble between Yugo-
slavia and Bulgaria, with the U.S. probably having to back up Tito while
Russia is obviously using Bulgaria as a tool. This would be enough to start
a holocaust, and would be a dreadful prospect all around. There is cert-
ainly every reason not to halt such preparations against eventualities as
you have been making. I wonder how your South African affairs are pro-
gressing. I believed with you that the Union was a fertile spot for
investment and one of the safest. But it is obviously true that fertility
of soil breeds weeds as well as grain, and one must take care.

I shall be writing again, early in the week. Give my love
to the Schaffners when they arrive.

16 August 1951

Dear Bryher:

Your Roman letter arrived today, and I was delighted to learn
that Susan had safely arrived. I had a note from Zurich on the evening of
her arrival there. How good it was of you to have Alsie on hand. Susan
was of course pleased, and for her to be with Alsie in that way was to have
a Swiss point of view from the beginning. I have a feeling--perhaps a hope--
that it might have given Alsie pleasure too, and the feeling that Susan was
hers. It may be of great help when Kenwin becomes filled to the eaves,
and attentions have to be parceled around.

As for news, you will have picked up what little there has been
--and that chiefly domestic--from my letters to Susan. I asked her in my last
to tell you that the King John arrived safely. What did you decide to do with
the Othello. I simply want to know whether to expect it by mail or Susan's
hand, or not. I am always so relieved when something has been en route and
then finally arrives. I spoke to a New York dealer, sub rosa and without names
about the problem of what to buy. He was non-comittal, saying only that 18th
century and 19th century was not fetching good prices in this country; and
that early science was. But the first two are, generally speaking, not your
cup of tea; and I'd keep away from the last as being too specialized, and
I think chiefly en vogue here as something not really yet exploited. I should
keep to late 16th and early 17th literature etc, as always being more or less
stable. Maggs asks rather high prices, but one can depend on them, and even
with a little loss of capital it is hardly as much as capital levies and is
at any rate a transferred asset. So long as you stay by literature no one will
question you. I have loaned the documents you sent to a David Horne, who is
Prouty's young protégé, and he is cataloguing them for me and examining them
closely. He is quite excited. Only one is early, and the rest are 18th century,
but all connected, he feels, with the Burbage family, which is a specialty of
his and perhaps gives the clew for tracking down the modern descendants of the
family. He was also excited about the reference to Blackfriars in the earliest
document. I shall give a fuller report later.

I am much interested in what you say about the Italian printing
house, but must ponder it a little more and as I go through the mss I have here.
Most publishers would prefer not to publish something privately printed in this
way, since it does take the edge off. But the price is of course very reasonable,
and I am sure if Kenneth and Uncle Norman are having things done that it must be
beautiful work. I think I can get the Freud done here, which may answer the bill;
but perhaps The Sword (which I think might be difficult) would be in order. I shall
let you know on this shortly.

I have been turning over the Foundation in my mind, so that when René
comes back to his office in September we can have a meeting. At the moment my
thoughts run about like this, and I should be interested in your reactions. Per-
haps better not to discuss with mail with René, since he has a phobia about your
knowing. Of course I am not convinced at all of the necessity of this. I know
too well what goes on in similar foundations, (for example Jock Whitney's), and
they know well enough. With Valentine's birth and all other complications, etc.,
we can postpone for the moment actually setting it up with large funds for an
indefinite future. But as René points out, you can give sums to it for income
tax purposes which will be comparatively little out of your actual income, and do
much more good than if it went to the U.S. government as taxes. The general aim
should be as before to be completely free in using money as seems best at each
moment. For example Wm Carlos Williams is not fully recovered from his shock;
needs some money for a year's rest at least during which he can write and not
have to practise medicine. I think a grant of 3000 would be in order for one
year in which he could finish his novel series. There is a young magazine starting
in the South, which is free of old influences, and the editors are working hard

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This is in no way to say that René is not a very able lawyer indeed, and a good man for you to have represent you. But I don't think that literary matters of this sort are very much within his experience, or at least as much so as he would like to think from his friendship with Simon & Schuster. Actually I like René very much, and find him intelligent and good company except when he talks about writers, or gets the idea that, for example, if we give Horace money we should direct the schooling of Horace's son; or that we should know exactly how much income a writer has before we allow him an extra privilege of help.

But if we re-incoporate immediately, can we really keep René from knowing. He is, after all, Philip's American representative; and I should think Philip would be forced to tell him. Then René is closely tied to the banker who handles your accounts, and if anything is to go out from that ever--for the sake of tax deductions, which will still be important to make; or at least René will give them out for something else if not for this--then René will know, and have to know. I am of course just thinking out loud. But I'd like your opinion about a plan to close out the Bryher Foundation after we have given out the present funds to Williams and some others. Then for a couple of years do nothing officially, but if something comes up that interests you, you can give it through me or as a private and personal award. Then, after a decent interval, you and I can have a new enthusiasm, which may seem to René quixotic but not a slap in the face--and equally not confuse the tax experts--; and we can establish the new thing under the name of the Kenwin Foundation, or something of that sort. The real point is that whether or not you begin by giving a little each year from the Swiss account, eventually you will want to use some from the American funds since you can give proportionately so much more, without cost to you, to avoid income taxes here. I do think we can set up a better charter, and my own legal firm of Wiggin & Dana here, which advised me before, knows all about this sort of thing since they are Yale's lawyers and constantly involved with foundations and the like.

I'm delighted that you liked The Sea Around Us. It has been a great success here. As birthday for Bryher I am sending Wm Carlos Wms autobiohraphy, which I have not read yet but which might amuse you. You were particularly naughty to order Siddartha yourself. If you don't honestly tell me yes or no to my queries I shall never ask you but simply send on.

I have saved the water color until last. But I am infinitely happy with it; it has such a wonderful wamrth; all the freedom of the small sketches raised up to this without losing any of the freedom; all the integrity of being Hesse himself without the glaze of slickness. Yes, this makes all the anniversaries rolled up into one, and I shall always delight in it, and in all the memories of the etceteras which it contains. Do give my affectionate greetings to the Valentines, and to yourself my gratitude and love.

he weaves.

I feel more confident about the result of the elections, in the past few days; though perhaps not too confident about what will happen once the Tories get in. A good many things are past recovery. Bevan's tactics seem to me to sabotage this election, on the plan that Tories cannot stay in and there will be no one but himself to take over thereafter. I think Atlee is through, and might as well lay eggs to hand over to the government once they have been dropped. The final blow to Labor hopes seems to me to come with the Egyptian move, and no sudden show of strength on Labor's part will drive out of the British mind just what the Labor Party will have seemed to bring on to England. I do not say this is necessarily Labor's fault; but the people will think it is, and C hurchill will iterate that it is; and so for political purposes it might just as well be. I do not know how the few Liberal votes will go; I daresay that ones like Rita will not vote for Churchill simply to get Labor out, but other ones unlike her will. My feeling is that British morale must be very low just now, but I am anxious to have your views on it. Perhaps I only hope morale will seem dimmer, paradoxically because there might be a chance to alter things.

I still seem incredibly rushed, but hope things will quiet down. I have to give a speech to the townspeople of New Haven at a banquet Friday night in honor of Columbus Day, and still have it to write. But I have tonight and part of tomorrow in which to do it, and if I can only think up some appropriate angle it should not take long to do. Fortunately it is only for some 20 minutes. This is not really my cup of tea, but is done at the request of the university authorities. I am saying my prayers for myself. If only you and I had had longer in Italy together, I might have given the talk in Italian; had we gone south I might have done it in Sicilian which is most appropriate to New Haven's large immigrant population. Anyhow I shall be sharing the program with Ezio Pinza, who can no doubt take care of the native touches.

Forgive me for not retelling events in detail. Susan I suspect took care of the domestic matters in her thank-you for the Brooke book. This must be his annus mirabilis. This is the third one within practically a twelve-month. Susan, by the way, will pick up Mageries and folders from Pup in ten days or so. She goes to town on Thursday, and Pup will no doubt be back, but we feel perhaps too busy for interruption. I have written Pup, telling her not to bother to post.

Be sure and rest. We join in love,

12 October 1951

Dearest Bryher:

In writing you last I forgot to quote to you from a
letter from Wallace Stevens, which, I feel sure, was intended for
your ear. "Hesse," he wrote apropos of my telling him among other
things of the wonderful watercolor you gave me, "seems to be a warm-
threated man. When I wrote to thank him, he replied but said he was
experiencing a great 'Müdigkeit' and so on. The other day I received
from him a leaflet containing two poems which he seems to be distribu-
ting to his 'Korrespondenten' in general. There is probably a sort of
wolf-pack that follows him round. His idea of throwing out a poem or
two to slow them up and invite them to devour each other sounds almost
like folk-lore. Was it all right for me not to attempt to thank Bryher
except in the way I did in my letter to Hesse? I could have written her
in your care but thought, in so many words, that a gift given with such
delicacy (that's the right word although I don't like it) should be re-
ceived in the same manner."

I hope I was right in telling him that he was right. I
am sure it was the right way for him, and I feel that it was for you also.

I have finished my Columbus day oration, which is a little
fatuous as such things are bound to be by the definition of their genre,
but will perhaps -- if I can enunciate properly, and am not asleep by the
time they call on me--fit whatever bill they have erected. Here are only
so many variations one can play on the theme of a maritime explorer, and
the skill, if there is one, depends on slight variations. I have had
several copies made, and if one is left over after the show tonight I shall
enclose it in this letter to you. I only ask you to read it after a soggy
desert; and you will probably have to leave home to get so typical a fac-
simile of a Columbus Day banquet. (I wonder if we will get "floating
island"?) But only with such heaviness on your stomach will you be in the
mood to stomach this also.

I heard the other day that Macmillan were offering 1500
copies of BY AVON RIVER for bids as remaindered books. I imagine one could
get them for ten or fifteen cents apiece, and for a moment I thought idly of
buying them in. But on second thought it seemed stupid to do. If 1500
people can be persuaded to buy the book for one dollar or for 69 cents, and
get to like the essay and the poem, and through them Hilda, these will be
more people to buy the next. And books were meant to be read and not to be
pulped. So I'd prefer to have them sold and enjoyed, no matter what the
price, than to remain stored in Macmillan's warehouse.

16 October

The oration was delivered, and apparently the Italians liked
my high hortatory manner -- somewhat like Italian opera, I should think --.
Actually it did seem to go off pretty well, which was a distinct relief; and
even the movie stars picked up one point or another in their own remarks, and
came up to talk about it afterwards. The papers took the various copies I
brought with me, but since I had made so much of it in the first of this letter,
I made another copy for you, which I enclose. Only because this sort of thing
by me, perhaps isn't so familiar to you. Remember that there are only a certain
number of things that can be said about Columbus; so whatever skill there is
comes in the variations on an old theme.

I have also agreed to do the blurb for them, so as to give the proper
angle for Pantheon to do their publicity. I will try to send you a copy of
this, but if you want me to incorporate anything you want to give me on the
special aims and implications do send it to me at once. And I shall have to
put a little biographical material in, but I will keep it at a minimum. I
think you can trust me on this.

Lastly there is the matter of the jacket and its design. We thought it
would be great fun if we could use some picture on the <u>letter</u>, jacket, to
enliven it: and I suggested that perhaps there might be something in the way
of mediaeval illustration either from a manuscript about Hastings, or a
soldier or scene from the time which we could use. I will look myself,
but you have been through so much material that you may know of just the
thing, or that no such thing exists. Obviously we want it to be as you want
it. We see it in two colors (the jacket), with possibly the illustration
covering the whole front of the jacket, with a nice staging of the title
in upper left-hand corner. They do some beautiful jackets, and I am quite
content about it. We must get at this at once, so that finished jackets
can be done in early December. So I must have your suggestions on this, as
well as any material for blurb for inner flap.

We agreed that no maps were necessary, and I hope you do. The scene
and chronology of action is self-sufficient; and I don't want to tie this
down to the status of text-book manner.

I hope all this excites you as much as it does me.

39 GOODRICH STREET HAMDEN 14, CONNECTICUT

22 October 1951

Dearest Bryher:

Oh, if only I had had an historical sense, I should have seen
Wolff earlier and wired you about the book on the 14th. Except of course
that you would have been en route, as evidenced by the two letters from Lowndes
containing various to-and-fro letters between you and Hilda which were con-
tained in it. Susan goes to New York tomorrow, for her hairdresser, and I
hope will have time to see Pup and pick up the things from her. Thursday we
are going to the outskirst of New York to visit an orchid grower, and buy the
plant you gave her last spring. We have waited, because she wanted one which
would bloom more or less at this time each year, and so wished to see it in
blossom. Your letter of the 19th also arrived. Nothing more to report on the
Wms case, at least until I hear from you. I picked up the Saturday review which
reviewed it this week, not unfavorably, but with absolutely no mention of anything
that concerns us, and with the statement that Wms did not have the nature to
understand complex personalities like those of Ezra or Eliot, and that his regards
for "details" (which I took to mean "facts") was not all that it might be.

I think it better on the whole that Hilda goes to la Paix rather
than stay at Kenwin for all the winter; I think the freedom to follow her own
program for the day most important, her ausfluge for teas and occasional shopping
becomes much more important; and, chiefly, there is the value of having informa-
tion to exchange when you meet, rather than having shared everything at the mo-
ment it happened. Also, although perhaps sometimes a problem for you to run into
Lausanne for your hours with her, and important reason for getting away from the
particular details of the house.

The books I think we can manage despite the Swiss; unless I hear
to the contrary, if any occasion or queries arise, I shall claim on understanding,
or having understood as gift. I am scholar etc., who could make use of them.
Never occurred to document gift, etc. It all seems perfectly plausible, and
certainly the row indicates sound judgment in having them on this side of the
water, since Switzerland hardly the place for Elizabethan scholarship. Things
are no different than before except for details of title, which can always shift
again as the situation shifts. It is a nuisance and troublesome to you, but the
realities aren't altered.

More of all this later. As to October, we all seem happy as is
with the 2nd part, but if you wish to change better to do so absolutely at once,
and send revisions directly to me by air and let me either re-copy at this end
or insert into copy which Wolff hopes to have by first week in November. He will
need for estimates etc., and I shall need, perhaps, for blurb. But I hardly think
the latter. You can straighten me out on that score. Having queried you as to
possible illustration to be used vis-a-vis Hastings, I suppose the obvious answer
really is the Bayeux tapestry, with some one of its scenes. Do you have prefer-
ence, or shall I tell Wolff to leave it up to the designer and what he thinks
will work in best. It would be nicest if you did have a choice which pleased you
above all others. Let me know.

Susan joins in love,

30 October 1951

Dearest Bryher:

I commenced yesterday with the letter, but as usual there were
too many interruptions on the part of students, telephone etc. I presume it
will never really stop until I am through with the whole game. But of course
the game is interesting so that is a consolation.

To get to the important things first, e.g. October. Of course I
am glad you are glad. I have no idea how it will "catch on" with the general
public. Horace's views, which I share somewhat, is that appreciation will come
cumulatively as the series progresses. He thinks it will begin a new era of
historical fiction. Add him to your list of those who really like it. So does
Wolff; his feeling for it is absolutely genuine, as is his wife's and their son's.
Add me, but now add also Susan. She had not read it before. I asked her to, to
get any comments she might make. She was absolutely and completely happy about it,
and when I ask her to do a thing of this sort, even when the book is by friends,
she always at least whispers her true reaction to me, and that is not always favor-
able. She never ventures an aesthetic criticism, but simply whether she likes it.

As to the title, I can take the matter up with Wolff, but neither
Susan nor I see any reason to change it. I can establish what the date means on
the jacket, and the jacket design will explain. Otherwise people will buy only
by recommendation, and from that will know. I don't worry.

I hope the revisions come promptly, since I promised to get things to
Wolff by first week in November. I can hold up a little but not too long. Now
as to the few hundred words which you suggest writing about the Battle etc., that
will be superb and an enormous help. BUT, dearest Fido, sit you down at once and
drift your paws over the keys of the machine and send to me by earliest post, for
the jacket with the blurb on it must be finished by the sale's conferences in
December. I must have what you say, but I must have it now. Bring in the relation-
ship to the present in a few sentences also. Hilda once gave me notes of the same
sort for my statement for the jacket of one of hers. The intent of course is to
steer clerks and reviewers in the right line. Readers also; it takes the place of
a preface, but written by some one else.

Wolff asked me to go over the ms, and if I thought there was something
which might be too confusing to an American audience to ponder it. I shall not go
hog-wild, and you will see in galleys.

As to dedication, fine. Shall we simply put it

For
W. S.

Since Hilda's will be in initials naturally, this would make a kind of pattern for
the other two. Be sure to let me know answer to this, so that I can type out the
extra page.

I shall look at Bayeux tapestry things, and will write Wolff. Am a
little afraid of Saxon material (which I personally love), as perhaps being just out
on dates, and therefore calling down the carpers on our necks.

I think that is all for the moment on the book. The answers to the
financial question will probably arrive ten minutes after I have posted this.

As to your suggestion about a formal agency, with salary (which in
some ways would be great fun), there are these objections, which must be taken
seriously. I give them not in the order of their importance; actually it is the
sum of them, not any particular one, which counts. 1st, it would be very bad for
my position at Yale if it seemed to them that I was following a second profession
of business pageancy at a time when I am supposedly paid by Yale as a teacher and

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 HGS
YALE UNIVERSITY
NEW HAVEN·CONN

4 November 1951

Dearest Bryher:

Months and months ago, how,
I asked the curator of Yale's famous collection
of German literature — which includes the
finest Goethe Collection outside of Weimar—
to list what they had in it of Hesse's writings.
There are other copies of course on the regular
library shelves, but this is an attempt to have
a permanent group, complete in itself, which
can be absolutely secure for the future. I have
just uncovered the list amongst my papers, and
thought that Hesse himself might be interested
to see how well represented he is on this side
of the Atlantic. I daresay they miss many of
his privately printed booklets, and therefore
can never be complete; but it is just barely
possible that he himself, were he to have extra
copies of those which are missing, might be
interested in helping them to complete it. They
might even be able to solicate some money if he
were interested in selling. I gather that they
do not, alas, have any of his manuscripts; but
the books at least they ought someday to have.

THE FOURTEENTH

OF

OCTOBER

by BRYHER.

Like a Saxon companion-piece to the Bayeux Tapestries, the pages of Bryher's historical novel disclose the warm and colorful story of the resistance to the Norman invasion of Britain at the Battle of Hastings. It is the story of the Saxons and Saxon culture, centered in their assault and concerned with the dilemma of accepting a conquest which altered history. In a series of brilliant reconstructions, Saxon life and landscape take on a vitality which will reward readers of every age. As fictional history, this tapestry-novel should establish a new mode of narration. The Eleventh Century lives again in its own terms. But, like other great historical novels, *The Fourteenth of October* marks more than a particular date. The world of 1066 A.D. is that of any people whose freedom is ever threatened or whose way of life seems doomed. The sensitive reader will find himself sharing a decisive moment. In her newest book, Bryher shows how richly she has matured her art of fiction.

19 November 1950

Dear Bryher:

It is perfectly disgraceful on my part to have let so long a time pass without writing you, and I will not let longer go by even though this will not really be a satisfactory reply to your many wonderful letters which come like slanted sunshine into my busy days. As to the busyness I shall explain that later, for the sake of the record, except for a few jottings. Highspots have been two Wednesdays ago when Susan and I went in town for the night to hear Osbert give a talk at the chic Colony Club, before something called the Contemporary Literature Club, entertained for the event by the inimitable Mrs Hunt (your favorite!). It was good to hear Osbert, or rather to see him and Edith again. I change the verb because frankly his talk was very much left-handed and I could hardly follow the subject through the remarks. Its title was "What it means to be a literary person." The chairman who lolled back in his chair, hands folded under his neck, struck me as familiar as well as revolting, and I discovered afterwards that he was a former and brash young student who talks in an excited voice like a master of ceremonies at a night club, jumped to his feet after the talk in a spurt of applause and then said, as the introducer a prize fighter who was about to spar, that Osbert would read some poems. I wish you could have been there to hear them. I used to say that Edith or Osbert on the same program. Obert read like a parody of his talk, and like a caged bat flying like hell to get out of a room in which the lights had been put on. It was glorious! But we did, as I say, enjoy seeing the two, and they were wonderfully cordial, Edith saying that we must come down for the reading of Macbeth at the dress rehearsal on the following Wednesday. We did, but to tantalize you I will leave that episode until my next letter. And I must not forget to say that we visited the Valentines at their house for a cocktail before the Colony reading, and then took the two to dinner. They seemed very happy indeed, and we were delighted to see them.

Now, as to your letters: How wonderful of Sylvia to have gotten the ribbon, and I shall write her immediately when it arrives. And my thanks to you. I may not wear the ribbon on my suitcoat, but I shall certainly wear one on my pajamas so that I can sleep with dreams of French knighthood.

And what on earth are you reading books on areodynamics for? Susan and I are intrigued.

The Indian-Tibetan-epal situation is shocking. We are really in for a 30-years war at the least. But it may keep the combat out of western Europe. It would be a satisfaction to see Nehru proved such a naif, if the consequences were not so awful.

The Hotson episode seems to be working well. It is quite true that he is broke. The Fullbright money was what had been supporting him last year, and his reason for being eligible was his fine work in cryptos during the last war. He had what is known as a graduate fellowship. He is a very special person, makes more enemies than any man has a right to, but frightens people who would like to decry him by the discoveries he actually makes. His work on Marlowe was of course epical, and his Shelley discoveries proved him versatile. Shall I try to get you copies of those books? As for the dictionaries, it might seem odd for him to want them, if one did not remember that the O.E.D. is based on historical principles and therefore has to be at first hand for a man in his work, at every moment. I would not use one much, because the shorter O.E.D. which I have is enough; but I would be lost without it, and a man like Kokeritz has almost worn out his full-length one. No,

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a person like Boston must have a set at his elbow if he is to do his best. You have obviously gotten along famously with him, and if it does prove possible to help him without loss of life through swords I know you will feel immensely gratified. Do keep the Hotson letters; it will be an important chapter for you.

Oh yes, the Four Saints program came, as did the book of spy-escapes etc., and the letters. The Valentines had a copy of a book which Rita brought over, saying that I would know what was to be done with it, she thought. John seemed to find it close to his heart, and hoped it was for them. Will you advise. Do you think we should let them keep it anyhow if it was actually for your collection chez moi? I am willing of course.

I did manage to get the five little letters from Hawthorne to Una, his daughter, at auction, for the ridiculous price of sixty dollars, plus auction comission. The signatures were clipped, but that meant nothing to me. The more expensive letter was bought by a dealer friend of mine, who says he is sure the real purchaser will let me have a copy. Ditto with the letter from Emerson to Hawthorne which went up at the same sale, but at sold for more than I wanted to bid. The texts count most for me. I discovered that the John Rylands Library, in Manchester, had three letters in Mrsaskell's collection, and when I wrote they sent me photostats of them plus another they had. They were most courteous about the whole thing. So with the five copies I got on my trip to Salem, the total number is now 1023. Quite a total, it seems to me.

I have passed on to Prouty your comments from Lanhers. I hope she will have luck. Anyhow she will prove whether or not there is any material.

I am of course pleased that the titles to Hilda's things are being cleared up in England, and when they are done we will get at the American affairs. I can do some of them myself, and we can have someone in "ene's office do the more difficult job with Liveright who publish the collected poems. That above all I want straightened out for Hilda's sake. Will you tell her that the wonderful group of odd mss arrived safely? And wish her and yourself a happy Thanksgiving. I shall write her later this week.

Yesterday's football game with Princeton was lost dismally by Yale, though the game was exciting to see and we both wished you could have been here. The cold was nipping, but the game kept us warm.

Do copy out that item of your meeting with Pound, for me.

The orchid book came and is simply BEAUTIFUL. Susan is delighted beyond words, and will be writing you soon.

And so shall I.

Love from us both,

I enclose a clipping from yesterday's *Times*. I was delighted at the importance of the final item by which his life is to be remembered!

25 November 1950

Dearest Bryher:

Your last letter, dated the 23rd(?) of November tells of your dreadful floods. If you could be here today you would think us in the same spot, for the gales howl and the rains pour down, and it is just on the edge of being cold enough for a blizzard. For once I am happy at not being at a football game, for the Harvard-Yale game is being played today in Cambridge where the scene must be like one of 'ante's lowest levels of eternity. I only hope 'ale will be able, all the same, to squeeze out a victory, for she certainly will not be able to throw many forward passes to help in doing so.

I was desperately uppet to hear of poor Hilda's fright, and she may be very lucky indeed to escape so easily from what must have been an incredible strain. It is a good indication of how well she has recovered. I am anxious to hear more details in your next. Ferdita and John are expected to visit us later this afternoon, when I go home from the office, and I shall pass the word on to them. Or perhaps they will already have heard. They are coming up for a second Thanksgiving dinner with his parents. We had ours on Thursday with the Bennetts. There were some eighteen there, and it was a very pleasant affair.

--- at that point Susan called on the phone to say that John had just called her. They were delayed on the train for an hour and a half, until the tides should go down and uncover the tracks at points between here and New York. The winds are now doing better than 85 miles per hour, and a state of emergency has been declared in several points along the shore. They arrived safely however and are coming to us after dinner tonight.

I can't tell you how happy I am at the news that Coutts think they may be able to swing the matter for Hotson. And the whole dramatic saga of negotiations etc seems wonderfully fictional. I have heard no word from Prouty on the Hotson paper, but will be eager to hear it in N.Y. Prouty has just published a study of the sources of *Machado About Nothing* which I will be sending you within a day or two. It has an amazing amount of research in it, and says some important things, chiefly in destruction of the all-too-easy theory of a missing play-source which Shakespeare must have adapted. Some people seem to think he could have done nothing on his own. I think you may be interested in it; it is not precisely my cup-of-tea, but all the same....

The news that Edith's agent is so clammy about the two mss is simply infuriating. I become more and more discoruaged, and this seems to me only another example of the inertia which sţţzes England. If this is being 20th century, as Rita says; and we are 19th, then more power to the past. Let us all become reactionaries! Why this agent won't even try!

I was distressed to hear about Elīše's nephew. She has had more than her share of troubles, God knows. Tell her how sorry I am, if you want her to know I was told.

2

I was puzzled for a moment when you said you had received *Two kinds of Time*, until I remembered that I had indeed sent it to you.

remembering that you once said you liked travel. I know the youngish man who wrote it, slightly, and have heard the book well spoken of. It was almost a Book of the Month choice, but then came Korea, and it no longer became patriotic to criticise Chaing (spelled correctly?) Pound's letters are slanted of course in their selection, and naturally don't give every side of him, and one misses the particular individuality of the typewriter in his hands, or is glad to miss it, but there are many good things said in it. But there is also no doubt but that he was a psychiatric personality almost from the beginning. I don't think precisely paranoid, but over stimulated ego-centrism.

By the way I have been teaching his economic poems to the graduate students in preparation for the cantos, and one reference he makes is unknown to me. 'Perhaps you can help.'

"Oh, what a charming man,"--
"That's how the press blurb ran,--
"Professor K----s is."
Now they can't fire him.
NO! they won't hire him.
Still Dr. S----'s
Not tied to the ring around,
Not quite snowed under.
Being a physicist
They can't quite bribe him.
Oh, what a noise they made
Those parliamentarians.

The first is obviously Keynes. Who could the 'r S---- be? You might know just offhand. Obviously someone who mixed up in economics and money, which is Azra's particular bugaboo.

The book and ribbon haven't arrived yet, but should be here any day.

I enclose a clipping from the last New Yorker which I thought might amuse you in regard to the reading. It all seems perfectly probable. It is a little hard for me to say just what I felt about it. I was a little put off and embarrassed by Monroe Wheeler's introduction. The reading took place in the basement theatre, to the accompaniment of distant rumblings of the subway, like ghosts passing or the industrial age protesting. The stage was first bare, with at one side a longish table covered with deep red velvet, edged with gold fringe like a baronial hall; while at the other was a great high-backed carved chair beside a reading table. Microphones at each end gave a special tone. First "estcott and the two professional actors came down the aisle, and seated themselves. Then, following a mummur among the audience, Edith and Wheeler walked down. She was dressed in a gold and blue satin brocade, looking very regal except for the fact that it was hung in such a way that she looked as if she were advancing in a mediaeval wigwam. (Perdita said it looked like a maternity gown.) The robe was extra special; when Edith said she had nothing suitable to wear, Wheeler rushed around, got a silk company to donate the material, the Museum paid for Mainbocher to hang it, and after the performance it was to be given to Edith for keeps (as we say.) Mrs. Hunt was distressed because there was no suitable purse to go with Lady Macbeth's robes, so she had one made, but it wasn't finished in time, to Mrs H's infinite distress. So Edith carried a black leather bag, for a touch of ragged modernity. When they (E & W) mounted the podium, the other three rose in tribute, and Edith turned

first to them and then to the audience, raising both hands in an ex cathedra blessing (or so it seemed). Wheeler introduced her, in what would have been superlatives even for Mary on the announcement by the Pope of the doctrine of the Assumption. "When Dr. Sitwell announced that she would return to America," he said, "it was incumbent upon us to provide some way in which she could repeat the inexpressible triumph of her rendition of the Facade. And when Mrs Vincent Astor called on her at Renishaw, she expressed diffidently her always hope that one day she might be Lady Macbeth. It was Somerset Maugham who suggested Glenway Wescott for "acbeth. "Wescott, Maugham said, read poetry with such sonority that one hardly knew whether it was poetry or not. It is altogether fitting that Mr Sitwell should play Lady Macbeth, for in her veins runs the actual blood of Lady Macbeth herself. But it is not alone for the royalty in Mr Sitwell's blood that we welcome her today, but for the royalty in her voice. I say, and I say it without qualification, that hers is the most beautiful voice of any person alive anywhere in the world." etc etc.

Anything following seemed somewhat anti-climactic. But Edith would sit and read from her great notebook (sometimes with glasses) her acute observations of the inter-relationships of long o's, clipped a's and unexpected caesuras. Then she would rise, brush back the gold and blue brocade into something less than a tent and more than a gown, and read, stressing every syllable slowly and distinctly. As one or the other at the opposite table came to her part, he she or it would rise and respond. The other woman, who played the handmaiden at the end, gave one of the best wails I have ever heard. Wescott was actually better than I would have thought, and the second man was adequate. Edith reached her climax when she was out-outing the damned spot, and did this rather better than some other spots. But she was always interesting, though a little elocutionary despite her protestations of the opposite. Susan perhaps expressed it best when she said that the explanations of sonic values were wonderfully interesting, but that Edith never made it quite seem what she said it would be. Which is only that Edith is human.

The whole thing was, I think, not quite the triumph of the "acadue, but triumph enough. It seemed a little like a private theatrical transferred from the drawing room to the stage.

But I was infinitely glad I went.

MAYALAND LODGE
Chichén Itzá, Yucatán, Méx.

7 December 1950

Dear Bryher:

Like a thrifty Yankee, I am using up old paper which cluttered
my desk drawers. I HAVEN'T left for Yucatan, though if one were to absorb
the American atmosphere of general gloom at the moment, I ought perhaps to
set out for brighter climes--at least spots where decay set in so long ago
that it is generally accepted. I have never seen the people in such a mood
as these days because of the Korean situation. It looks very much as though
we would have to chalk off the first real defeat in American history. We
have always been lucky, as, by and large, the English were lucky in the past.
We muddled through sometimes as the only way to get there, but our immense
resources of materials overwhelmed in the long run. We criticise ourselves
constantly -- you know it was once said that the two most self-conscious
races in the world were Jews and Americans--but it never occurred to us that
we could lose anything. History belied it and gave no experience. The young
undergraduates are frightened of having to go into the army--not for terms
of physical fright but because they see their lives dissipated. The intellect-
uals are frightened because, in a typically American fashion, they have always
believed, or thought they believed, that a reasonable approach to situations
would straighten them out, that Truth always wins out, and that conferences
and compromises always came closer and closer to Truth. The American system
of values has never been threatened so much before--and psychologically it
doesn't matter very much whether such a system is naife or not --and everyone
feels sure that the system will be lost even in final military victory.

Tuesday night I gave a public lecture on "science fiction"--a new
genre of superman technocracy in the novel; and it was ominous in reading it
to see the new primitive fears of science gotten out of hand, and able only
to be saved in control by more science and the rule of scientists. Nothing is
more basically anti-democratic. I was really quite fascinated in science
fiction, and will try to copy out the lecture for you sometime if you're
interested. I tried to show how a new primitive myth was springing up for
the first time since the advent of Christianity.

I'm not sure how I myself feel. Not quite so desperate as most,
I think, though highly elated. Your comparison of the present situation to
Munich, with the postponement of active hostilities for another year or so
seems to me most acute and perceptive. You have a real "nose" for such
things, now as before the last war.

As for Hilda, I should not try to move her until the last possible
moment. It simply isn't worth it, and she is so much better now, and happier
than for years, that she ought to hang onto the present milieu. You know of
course that we will never allow her to go for want in this country. And I
will pull every wire I can at the end, knowing also that she will be helped
by her distinction as an artist. I mean this! Since she has a daughter,
however, now in this country, the letters ought to come from Pup, since that
would be the expected source of them. At any rate I do hope she will still
feel she wants to come on a visit this spring, and it will give her a chance
to feel her way here. And you must be here too, because your plans will need

2

constant local revising. As for another book by Hilda in print, we will get at it after Christmas when the publishers begin more actively thinking about the next winter season. Macmillan will read her mss of fiction, and we will have to have either their acceptance or refusal before we can go elsewhere. Personally I think it will be a rejection by Macmillan, but perhaps I am too gloomy about that house. We can see about a guarantee later, when we move elsewhere. Meanwhile I am delighted to know that most of her mss are here, as well as copies of all that she has done. This is a most important thing to have achieved, thanks to you. They are safe, as your letters are. If you want to ship anything else over, even temporarily, I can store it in the bank, or send it further into the country, and then we can return them to you in Switzerland or elsewhere if the future turns out happily.

As to next summer who knows. The Norwegian thing turned into such a tangle of redtape that it has completely fallen through. I finally wrote to the government, asked them to clarify some issues and send me the application blanks for the Fullbright Fund which was to pay the expenses for Norway. This went to the govt weeks before the final date for filing, but I heard nothing until a fortnight after the closing date when I received a form letter saying that since I had not filed all papers in time nothing could be done. This was annoying and most embarrassing, since after all I had been invited by the Norwegian government as the person they wanted. Little Susan is to go abroad again anyhow, since she will be travelling with a small chorus of girls from her college who are to give recitals over most of Europe. It is too good a chance for her to meet the musical world there, for her to miss. Perhaps we shall be able to work it so that Lizzie can have a chance to see something of Europe before it is too late, but whether her mother will take her or not I don't know. Probably it won't seem wise for one reason or another. As for myself I shall almost certainly stick to the Hawthorne letters, as a kind of devotional act. It seems a little inane to keep on annotating letters at such a time, but I have a desperate feeling that this must be finished before I am.

So you see it becomes all the more important that you and Hilda come here. And please do let me know your definite plans in this regard, for I want to arrange a few appearances for Hilda, and such things as recording her voice for the Library of Congress collection.

I have sent you off a couple of bundles of books as a small Christmas present from Susan and myself, as well as a subscription to the "erald Tribune Book Review" section which I thought you might like to see and pass on to Hilda afterwards. I count on your choosing from it what you think you might like in the way of volumes for me to send you. And it will give you an idea of what goes on in the publishing world.

I couldn't be more pleased than with the marious news of Hotson and the fact that he is likely to be able to get his additional year in England, thanks to you. Of course he will answer all necessary questions, but I daresay he is not attuned even to the simplest bureaucracy.

Oh yes, John sent along the copy of the book, without my having followed it up, so I daresay you must have written him. We were sorry to miss him at the time of the gale, but hope to be seeing them again soon.

Next week I have two lectures to give (not yet written): one on colonial N.E. religious verse, for the New Haven Historical Society; and the other on modern American poetry for an undergraduate fraternity. The Xmas holidays begin a week from Friday, and I shall have time to catch my breath and write again. Susan joins in our deepest love to you.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON
233 HGS
YALE UNIVERSITY
NEW HAVEN · CONN

9 December 1951

Dearest Bryher:

This is not really a letter - too few of mine are--
but I am back at my office on Sunday to clean up a few matters, and
also try to put into shape my notes for my tomorrow morning's lecture
at 9 o'clock. And I have not yet gotten to that. But I should like
to get off to you the copies of the letter of conveyance which my
lawyer has drawn up in regard to the novel. The "other valuable
considerations" involved are, if you are asked, the money paid from
me for the book's publication, plus the time involved in seeing it
through the press. The conveyance states "absolutely and forever",
but as I understand it only your heirs can renew the copyright and
at that time can claim it for themselves. At any rate we understand
each other sufficiently on this score, I think, not to have very much
likelihood of a misunderstanding. However by the grant, neither the
British nor the Swiss governments can claim anything from it. Perhaps
you should, however, enter the sum of one dollar as among your incomes
for the year. I enclose my cheque for your stupendous reward, which
you can cash in order to make it legal; plus two copies of the deed,
both of which should be signed, and one returned to me for my records.

The latter part of last week was annoyingly busy. On
Thursday night I re-gave my paper on the Nazi-Soviet Pact to the gradu-
ate students in American Studies; on Friday night we went to the first
Assembly (New Haven's elite social gesture, where debutantes are intro-
duced), before which we had a dinner party, but only one couple because
of (a) Susan's bursitis (now fortunately pretty well over), and (b) the
likelihood that we might have to cancel because of her brother's death.
We hear of him only by telephone reports from Florida, from Mrs Bennett;
but he seems to grow weaker, and they have had to put in a tube thru
his stomach in order for him to take any nourishment, and that he cannot
seem to hold. The doctors said that if they did this, he might live
six months longer; but quite frankly I hope he will not, unless of course
he should not be in too great pain and enjoy the prospect as best he may.
We had so hoped that he might have been rewarded with a miracle, because
of his extraordinary courage during these past two years.

Yesterday I went to New York and gave a talk at the annual
luncheon of the Graduate English Association of New York University.
About 200 were there. It was not too difficult since they had asked for
me to repeat the talk I gave last autumn on problems of literary executor-
ship, and this permitted me to carry it one step further towards its final
form. During the Christmas holidays, I should be able to tidy it up, and
send it around to the few capable lawyers in that field for their legal
OK. The New York Times sent down a reporter, so perhaps there will be
some notice of it in tomorrow morning's paper.

I am deeply touched by the Christmas gift you mention in
your last letter, and it will be a travelling carpet against which I can
rest my head and dream.

I shall be writing again in a day or two.

20 December 1950

Dearest Bryher:

These seem unseasonable times in which to be wishing
anyone a happy Christmas, but I do so all the same: to you, Robert,
Walter, and the rest (I have written Hilda to go by the same mail).
It is brisk here--the temperature about 20, or a little lower, and the
girls, who are both back from school, have gone skating tonight. Susan
is at home fixing up Christmas greens, and I am back at the office
since I must go to New York tomorrow, and want at least the sporting
chance that this letter will reach you before the holidays. As I wrote
you before several little packages have gone off to you, and I had hoped
that the special packet to go by air mail would have been a set of the
Italian pictures from two summers ago. I sent them away ages back, and
a little over a fortnight ago they came back as finished. But the color
of the prints was so preposterously wrteched, that the dealer insisted
that I refuse them and send both prints and negatives back to be re-done.
He promised them for Christmas, but I dare say the film people are irked
and will jolly well make me pay for it by the delay. So you will have to
take a promise on them, and I shall hope to be able to ship them shortly.

Tell Robert that I have at long last actually ordered the
copy of the anthology for him, but asked to have it sent here so that I
could write in it before sending it on. It should have been here by now,
but there have been railway strikes which have delayed everything in the
mails, and I presume the publishers use all their packaging people for
more leitmotite orders.

It is really situations like this series of wildcat strikes
at the principal terminals, like Chicago, Washington, and New York--of such
a nature that no freight could move anywhere except in a narrow radius
within the country, at this season of Christmas and war, above all others--
that caused the government to declare a state of emergency. For whether
the strikes were communistically inspired, as they well might have been,
nevertheless they might just as well have been; and only in an announced
state of emergency does the government have the power of cracking the whip.
The first hysteria of the Korean defeat seems to have died off the people's
faces, but there is no happiness in its place. Under cover preparations
are being made thick and fast; Alaska seems to be a center of natural
defense attention, various of my old friends have gotten in touch with me--
so I say let the dead (which is me) lie buried.

In fact it is very hard to take a cheerful view of affairs
even in terms of a long pull. For I think a good many thoughtful Americans
are pretty well convinced that the western continental nations certainly
won't fight, that there simply isn't enough free capital in the world to
go on financing them. For even without question of whether there was to be
any left for ourselves, America would simply be in the position of mortgag-
ing the whole world until, like Kreuger's match kingdom, it all fell to
pieces and Russia would come in anyhow. Russia has her own people, and now,
mirabile dictu, has the one race in the world--the Chinese--who can be
offered up as gun fodder without hruting Russia herself for another 75-100
years, when no doubt the Chinese will take over. America could use the bomb,
but what would we do if Russia actually for some reason surrendered? Try
to divvy up governing it as we have western Germany? Then if ever would
come bankruptcy. Now the important thing to be understood, and I suspect
few will understand it, is that this point of view cannot be taken simply
as one of capitalistic bankers. Or would be changed by being the kind of
liberal which Rita pictures as her rosy-fingered-dawn (if not red heaven).

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Where the torture lies is in the present anguish of American values. These values may be naive, but they are believed in. They may not always be followed, but they are the slogans to which one rallies, as one prays in a time of terror. The Americans believe in the existence of something they call Truth, that this exists even if we haven't gotten there; that Truth is good; that it can be increasingly reached by reason--therefore conferences, open discussions, covenants. That Truth, which is good, should be irresistible. They are faced with an enemy which lies as a course of action, that reason and persuasion are not paths to follow; and not good so much as power seems to be the motivating instincts of the opposition. Americans believe in being humanitarian; they have been taught from small children that they must share wealth, do good with it; and even if they do these things gauchely and reluctantly, they are not normally happy unless they do so, as an average child is not happy when it lies. They think that people whom they help ought to like them, and be grateful for their having been done good to. And they still instinctively believe that individualism is the best way, and that nothing is therefore really owed to them as an obligation, nor do they owe it. That is a paradox of humanitarianism.

What serves as the shirt of Nessus is that Americans both believe these things and know that it is unrealistic to do so. They are tempted to give up western europe and the east, and yet they are unhappy at having to do so--as though they had compromised with their integrity and face a pyschiatric maladjustment.

Perhaps our great grand children would bless us most if we were to throw in the sponge, let Russianism take over the whole world and wipe out three generations, by which time the Polandisms of the Czarist times would come back and a whole new series of little nations spring up in the wake of the downfall of Russia by its own weight. But there is no comfort in all this for us, or for the children and grandchildren we know, and what do we know beyond that?

Donne will be wrong. Each man will become an island to himself. The United States will become an island, and the best thing will be to try to live on that island. What will frighten us is the great wall outside, and perhaps even Byzantium will fall again at last.

But I guess we might as well make it Byzantium as long as we can, so have Philip bring over as much as he can and send it direct to me, and it will be saved here for you. At least this seems to be the only chance, and if we are wrong then the things can always be sent back. I'd get as much out of Switzerland as I could, on this same basis; for I feel pretty sure that no matter what happens on this side the things will be cared for, and there will come a time when the comparative vitality of the Americans will reassert itself. As a matter of fact one always tends to underestimate American moral strength; they always rise slowly and sluggishly, but they do rise. And in America at least there would be a great effort even on the part of native conquerors to show that things were cared for. Because the values would still be there even if suppressed.

Certainly it is a painful but good step to see the european countries bring their armies together. And for that at least we can look to Korea as a blessing that it started off in a comparative corner. Whatever fight there is will at least be better. But France is the danger spot as she has been almost since the Franco-Prussian wars. One can understand how

3

she has come to feel this way--and why England begins to feel a little bit the same way. But it doesn't help, and there seems to be almost an imp of perversity at work, as though Baudelaire's contrariness had kreapt into politics. One does wrong knowing one does wrong, and acting as one's own God in inflicting punishment. This of course may be inately moral (by paradox) but it certainly makes for a wretched neighbor.

But enough of all this..... I shall send you a copy of the science fiction talk as soon as I get my only copy back. It is certainly an odd strain of writing, though very much of our times. The paper may amuse you; apparently it caused a slight stir on the campus. I got through my lectures on colonial american religious verse without too much difficulty, as with the talk on modern poetry in general. After Christmas I am limiting myself to one such talk a month. The students make too many demands on one. But I do have to go and give a half-lecture half-reading at Harrie's boarding school, and must try to work that up carefully for her sake; and I have been asked to give a talk at Harvard early in February for which I must polish my apples. I'll send you a copy of the Harvard one when it is finished.

Prouty was in today to seek advice on how to answer an attack on his Gascoigne books by some one who thinks that because Prouty said the source of one book was autobiographical he meant that you could only regard the book as a fact and not as a work of art. I told him to be gentle. He is to read Hotson's papers, and I shall tell you how that goes off. Of course I am delighted that Hotson slipped by the new iron bars and got his pounds in time. I should like to know more about what caused the letter situation you spoke of. Perhaps Philip can tell.

I shall be writing after Christmas, but not wait until then to thank you for the cheque. I shall share it with Susan for our mutual benefit. You know how I feel without my spelling it out.

Susan joins in love to you; and do, as I intend to do, forget everything except that it is Christmas.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

26 December 1951

My very dear Bryher:

Your Christmas cable arrived to greet us all; Perdita, John and the baby were with us for a while on Sunday afternoon; and during Christmas Day, after the presents had been unwrapped, I finished the first checking of the galleys of October. And of course besides those were my own thoughts of gratitude for the Christmas cheque; Susan's delight with her handkerchief and the Digby which arrived the day before Christmas; and the photographs of John's which he brought with him : — all these to keep Kenwin and Lausanne very much in our minds.

It has been wonderful to see October for the first time in print. I found the usual number of dropped sentences etc in the proof, to vex one; but on the whole they have done a fine job of it, and the vast majority of changes have been printer's mistakes from the copy, so that our bill for alterations should be much smaller than usual. How the prose does hold up! I can say this with some confidence. After all, to read a book as many times as I have recently read this one, and still find myself engrossed with the narrative and moved by the beauty, is an achievement on the part of its author. Susan as you know really loves the book. She gets the whole feeling nicely, and has for her special delight the unveiling of the name of the narcissus. I don't know whether or not Wolff did send a set of galleys to you. He promised to, but said also that he would send to Perdita, but they had not received it. So perhaps yours did not come either. I do not feel we ought to wait, and I shall give it another reading but send it back by the end of the week, or at the latest by the first of next. I have not seen the design for the covers, but presume it will be sent me shortly. The page proof should be back before too long, and then will be only the fun of seeing the bound volumes.

Perdita and John seemed in fine form. Perdita matures each time I see her; is less "nervy", and as far as one could casually tell, is very happy. John too settles into greater ease, is charming both with her and with the baby, and is a good deal more "natural" than when we first met him. He also has a good deal of consideration for Perdita, which is obviously appealing to me. I think I remarked to you that when they made their trip to Maine at Thanksgiving time, they did not stay with Mrs Pulsifer but with an Eleanor Graham who entertained us after the wedding. This seemed to me to be a break for freedom on John's part, and although I could not publicly applaud, I did do so privately. Moreover, Mrs Graham, now divorced and lonely, did a good deal of weaping on the Valentines' shoulders, and so John will not go back for a week, as she wanted, but they say Eleanor can come to New York, where it would be easier for Pup. They were thrilled at your present to them of another trip, and, I think, genuinely surprised. They talk of wanting to come over in the late spring, and when John asked what I thought, without being able to consult you, I thought there might be much to say for it. Especially since it might be a good idea for Hilda to try her next visit in the autumn—a more reliable season than spring, as before, and we might be able to work in a little trip with the two of you and Susan and myself. Also it seemed as though it might make your summer a little less hectic than this one turned out to be; so that when Melitta comes for her visit you could truly

2

get away on your own. You could either go on your digging, or if I should
be able to get over you and I might be able to slip away then. Of course
I am hoping that you will find it necessary to come over in February, or
thereabouts, for business; which would let us see you then as well as in the
fall when you come with Hilda. I do think it seems indicated that you be
here when she is. You can always cope for her, and she should not be that
dependent on John and Perdita. I don't know what your plans are for the
winter. I think you would have to be firm with Walter, despite his opera-
tion -- and for his own preservation, for it is not good for an old officer
to be too dependent. Of course, however, you may wish to put off confer-
ences with René until the affairs are in their new order. Quite frankly
I am shocked at his demands. A lawyer is someone one employs for one's
own interests; so long as he serves them he derives benefits. But they
are not his by any rights whatsoever. Do what you wish regarding him, but
do not be too soft-hearted. He has been a hard worker, but he has done
more than all right for himself. Unless there were an air-tight contract
between you for a time-span, he cannot morally or legally demand anything
from you in the way of lost compensation; and I know he would immensely
lost caste in his profession if it ever leaked out. I shall not let it
leak, but I do not want you to feel unduly obligated. It is all of a piece
with the type of board of directors he set up for the Foundation, which so
shocked my lawyer when he read how he had placed his firm and the bank in
a position of absolute control. This could only be unhealthy. The function
of a lawyer is to advise; the function of a bank is to advise: in neither
case is it to control.

I agree wholeheartedly with your general intent in putting things
in order for the moment. (As to absolute details, of course, I am not
qualified to advise.) But I enclose a clipping (return sometime for my
files) which pictures the increasing difficulty of permanent foundations.
I think the government's view is stupid and immoral, but I think it is
coming anyhow. They say now of the Ford Foundation, for example, that altho
the Fords gave it, the money truly belongs to the public since the public
would otherwise than by its tolerance have had it in taxes. As for your
foundation, such a ruling would put down by taxes every gift we have given,
at least to Marianne and to Horace. So that if we truly wish to help at
a maximum it seems as though judicious gifts (outright) would be more
effective. At least it means that one cannot plan for a longtime future
with very much certainty of how it will work out. Much more effective, I
think, to do such a thing as only you could do for Agnes; or if we wish to
help such a person as J.F.Powers (a kind of Sansom in America) then let's
do it as a gift, since he has already published a novel; or if we find a
book which ought to be published, then let's do it as a business venture
as we have yours. Your phrase, "things like that" is just the right one.
Let it be a motto.

Speaking of things like that, I wonder whether this would have any
appeal to you? Does the name W.W.Gregg mean anything to you? He is the
scholar of the Elizabethan period: his checklists of plays and masques, and
general bibliographical work on the quartos etc is fundamental. He has
edited innumerable rare papers on the Elizabethan stage etc. He has honorary
degrees from Oxford and Cambridge ( rare for a scholar), but no American
honorary degree. A week ago when I was serving on the English Department
Committee for suggestions to the Corporation as to honorart degrees next
spring, his name was suggested again. But the answer was that he was only
in the most moderate circumstances and could never afford to come to get it.
I wondered this: what would you think of providing him out of pounds with
his passage over and back. I am sure that one way or another he could be

3

taken care of on this side, by perhaps a lecture, or a little help one
way or another; and it needn't be a long trip. I said nothing of course
to the committee, and of course the Corporation might not wish to do so;
but I do know the secretary of the university well, and could whisper to
him that if Yale were to give him a degree his passage over could be
arranged. Everyone feels that Greg would be made immensely happy by this,
he has so many American friends and admirers but has never come; he could
take a look at the Folger, and perhaps I could even get the Huntington to
pay his way out there. And it would be a honor to what he has accomplished.
I see no reason why Greg should not know who gave him the passcode, but
otherwise there need be nothing made of it. He is 77 and I suppose it
would have to be done this year or not at all. Unless Yale had special
plans still in connection with their anniversary, in which case it might
come up the following year. I don't know him, but I do admire what he has
done.

I did not get a chance actually to subscribe to the Shakespeare
Quarterly but will do so this week; also will order the Myers Iceland book
to be sent you; also, for the sake of Matthey, will send you the new
Capote which you can read if you want and then send on to him. I'll glance
at it first myself.

Did I thank you for the little book of Edith's, which came some time
ago? I do now. I see that she has an anthology of winter poetry out on
this side. I presume it must have been published in England, but do you
want a copy of the American edition for your collection?

I am amused at your trials and tribulations with the dictaphone. But
it will work out; just keep at it. I know that I must get one for myself
some day soon, since it is almost impossible to work out a schedule for me
to use a parttime secretary; but with one of these I could dictate at my
convenience, and she could collect it. But they are still awfully dear on
this side, and one must have two machines: one for self and one for seccie
to play it back on. But they are the thing! And you'll bless it once a
true marriage between you and the machine takes place. We all grinned to-
gether on Sunday about it.

I was amused also to think of your exposure to science fiction. My
little dab was all I did, and I did not keep up enough ever to go on with
my paper. But I will try to have a copy made of it for you, with all its
roughnesses. You might be amused.

I am eager to have the Piozetti engraving come. I like its sound
and his sound, especially when it comes through your sound.

All best wishes for the New Year, and my love to all, but especially
to you --in which Susan joins.

Norman

31 December 1951

Dearest Bryher:

A last letter of the year to you, and chiefly to announce
that the galleys for OCTOBER are now in the mail, as of last
Saturday, and
will be waiting for Wolff when his office opens on Wednesday. By working
early Christmas afternoon, before driving to Susan's sister for some festivi-
ties, and again when we returned (and it really was a Christmas treat to work
on it!) I got my reading of it done against copy; then I had a clever student
who works for me and is on the literary magazine also read it against copy,
and Susan and I both read it by itself. So I hope we picked up most of the
errors, but I feel certain that there will be some which will stare my con-
science in the face for eternity. But how few books could stand up so well as
this did under the many and close readings! It is a triumph on your part. I
have even talked to a Swedish friend, who has connections with Bonniers in
Stockholm, and will give him a copy on the possibility that the Swedes might
like to translate it. Wolff also tells me that the jacket is finished, and he
has put a copy in the mail for me. If it comes and I can keep it, I shall send
it along by air to you.

Now I wish you would draw up a list of those whom you wish
copies sent to, so that they can have them quickly. And if you wish to write
out some little cards to go with them, do so; or I can simply have the usual
printed card "With the compliments of the Author" to be included. Hilda, I
believe, also wanted a list to make out, or rather to consult with you and to
avoid duplication. And then tell me how many you wished shipped to you in
Switzerland. I shall of course airmail the first batch to you, that is, I
should think, four: one for yourself, one for Hilda, one for Walter, and one
for Elsie; for they will not want to wait for anyone else to finish. I shall
picture you all in your corners, nose-deep against print, reliving the battle.

I will go down to talk about publicity with Wolff later on, when
it is more nearly finished.

It is exciting to learn of the progress of your latest fiction,
and of course I am eager to read it. Don't let it get too cool.

But I am sorry at all the messes that seem to be brewing about
the property. I cannot help but feel that René is cutting off his own nose.
He seems to have the feeling he "owns" you, and indeed I think he likes a pro-
prietary feeling about everything; but how stupid it is. After all he is some
one one hires to tend one's affairs; he is not an uncle nor a guardian. Lawyers
seem to feel they have a privileged position. I am so annoyed at some of them
in New York now engaged in clearing up Sinclair Lewis's estate: he left his books
and papers outright to Yale; they were in a house in the Berkshires. It is
eleven months since he died. Have they turned over the papers or sold the house?
No they say they must go over the papers quietly "we have been working on them
for twelves months"; and we don't sell the house until everything is clear.
So their fees pile and pile up, eating into the estate. Another friend has a
realtive whose estate is being nibbled away for over a year and a half, with no
trust funds involved. They make work and then charge for the work, parcel it
out and get power through returns of other parcels. Which is the way I look at
the Chase and the lawyers.

I think you have done the only wise thing about the Foundation, especially now. When he lets me know we can arrange for the dispersal of the remainder, and dissolve the corporation. I never really could work with Rene, since he put so many ifs and buts into every situation, and it was usually someone else who had to mollify him on the score of the grant. I should think you might make a new Will when you come over, and as far as helping people are concerned, you can give up to three thousand each to individuals without a gift tax. (The recipient is never taxed anyhow). And if it is out of Swiss funds, and they have no restriction you can give as much as you want. If you want to use me as an agent, I can distribute the sums for you, and explain to Leslie and the others whatever limitations in time or sum seem necessary. As to Leslie, yes, you must not make him feel that this goes on forever. He is worthy enough, and does excellent work, important work, but I gather he has the temperament which would permit him to count too much on others and not make any efforts himself. It wouldn't be good for him to be a remittance man for ever.

The Vinsauf manuscript is exciting, and I shall be eager to see it. I suppose they are waiting until the Christmas rush on the mails aisles over before sending it on. I shall be hearing from them shortly. We can talk about the Elizabethan books when you come over. They are still be catalogued (it does take forever, but the librarian is doing it in her spare time), but this should be finished before you come. I intend to make it a working library for students here and elsewhere, as I find out that they are working on relevant material. This makes the B&Fs all the more important. Waith will be able to use them, Prouty's students and others. And it will be a simple thing to have the Vinsauf microfilmed, which I shall do as soon as it arrives.

The etching arrived safely last Friday, and we all admire it immensely. He has given new life to what might otherwise have been a hackneyed subject. The lines are almost like engravers lines, but with the delicacy of an ink line. He has very real ability. So we had it as a New Year's greeting after all!

The week since Christmas has been pleasant. Saturday was Susan's birthday: she slept late, the girls got lunch and I had ordered a birthday cake; her sister and son came for cocktails, after which we went out to dinner and then to the theatre; so that there was a little gala connected with the day.

Tonight we go to the "aith's to welcome the new year in, and it should be pleasant though I would as soon sleep it in.

The legal document arrived safely, as well as the letter containing letters, and they are all nicely filed away. Given another good working day and I should begin to make a dent on my desk. I have the manuscripts of books on Fletcher, Whitman, and Hawthorne to read; some class papers to correct, some offprints to read, and two essays to write, so the rest of the week should be full.

Susan joins in new year's love to you all.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 HGS

3 January 1952

Dearest Bryher:

Your wire arrived so that I could call New York and leave the message before the meeting with the sales force. Wolff was not at the apartment when I phoned, so I left the message with his son. I wrote later, but have not heard in answer what they thought would do best. I myself plugged for APPRENTICE SANDS. "We shall see. Your last two sheets of suggestions arrived after I sent the copy to Wolff, but I shall wait until I am sure that everything is in my hand, and then go to N.Y. and change before they set up. "Estimates and sample pages can be set up from what they have. There is plenty of time.

I have been spending a hectic time since Christmas. First in getting off Sands to Wolff, then at the Modern Language Meeting at Boston, where I went early Saturday morning and returned Monday afternoon in order to be here for dinner on Susan's birthday. Lizzie had prepared an excellent dinner, and we had a pleasant time of it. Both Susans had gone to New York that day for their hair, and everything was ready on their return. Since then I have worked liked mad on accumulated correspondence, letters of recommendation, filing away stacks of paper, and trying to clear things up for the re-beginning of classes of Monday and some desperate lunges at preparing the agenda for the conferences on American culture. I should have begun that long since, but I knew that if my desk and office table were not clear I could only be frustrated. So I have been working long days and nights at it. Also have tried to read the proof on the Pound bibliography, which I have pretty well finished this Saturday afternoon. One or two questions to ask at the library, and then I can send it to the printers to finish. I certainly never intended to spend so much time on a work which is not mine, and not really quite satisfactory. However I needed it to be as good as it could be, and it will be worthwhile for my teaching. It is a good indication of how fugitive things become. I keep adding cards to my index of Hilda's things and yours, but there is still much to do. I cannot do Hilda's for example until I really know about her Philadelphia things.

I was fascinated by Oakeshott's article on Raleigh's working papers. This is truly a "find." I can think of few more exciting things. How does Agnes react? I am told that the Phillipps papers, from which this came, contain wonderful and unknown things still. They were bought en masse by Robinson (the London dealer) and a syndicate, and case upon case remains in Robinson's cellars, which have never been opened and the contents of which never catalogued or even known in general. Phillipps was a 19th century merchant, I believe, who bought mss wholesale. Such things as two mss of Piers Flowman have so far turned up; there is a feeling that literary history will have to be rewritten when everything is in hand. Meanwhile they open a case "occasionally", when the spirit moves them. At Boston I heard of new treasures which a friend brought back from a recently opened case.

12 January 1952

Dearest Bryher:

I am sorry to have let so many days pass without having written, but having spent holidays of ferocious attack on back letters accumulated on my desk I found myself in the midst of classes again without moments for breath, and although the desk is now disheveled once more, I have had to wait until this Saturday morning to snatch a moment. Even now, such involved considerations as your truly magnificent offer of a year free from strain must wait until next week and the examination period when I can have the leisure properly to explore it.

In glancing over the previous paragraph I suspect that its somewhat mandarin manner must have come from the fact that I have just sent off a note to Marianne congratulating her on the award of this year's Bollingen Prize, which was announced this morning. The judges voted yesterday here (the Prize is now administered by Yale). I think everyone will be pleased. It is now, I think, the chief prize in poetry, and it is nice she could have it. Horace will, I am afraid, be disappointed, but he has many years still to go, and entre nous I knew it could not happen when I found that Louise Bogan was one of the judges. She has just done a short history of 20th-century American poetry, without even a mention among her lists of poets of either Horace or Maria. Somewhat rakishly, after a couple of drinks, I accused her of being naughty for deliberately leaving them out. Her answer was that she might just as well wage all-out warfare. What a sense of responsibility on the part of a critic and historian! I must admit I was a little shattered. But at any rate do write Marianne and tell her you are pleased. Pound and Stevens are earlier winners, as well as John Crowe Ransom.

I have had a letter from René (a very nice one) about closing out the Foundation, saying that we have $8,839.60 against which we have the commitments for two payments of $1500 to Horace. He asks, and I agree, that we can risk paying the 3,000 now in order not to keep the Foundation alive for two more years simply for that sake. René feels there will be something like 5700 still to disburse, and we will get together on that. There are several possibilities on which you might give me your opinion. Cummings, I understand, has inherited some little money from an aunt, and so is comparatively better off. But Connie Aiken is his last year of the chair at the Library of Congress and will be without any income after June (I think). Since we've always rather planned to do something for him, and there is a sort of sentimental attraction from the past, I should say 3,000 or so to him. Then I wondered what you would think of 1000 or 1500 to a young Elizabethan scholar named David Horne, who is working on Peele and the Elizabethan stage, and is a protege of both Prouty's and Leslie's. Leslie has asked him to a joint project, which is a tremendous honor and boon to Horne. Horne is an instructor at Yale, no funds of his own, a wife and small baby. For next year he has a fellowship of 3000 to let him go to the BM and Records to dig up new material. He knows both, and having found things that escaped Leslie's eye was the reason for the latter's admiration. He wants to go to England

for six months or so, work like mad, leaving wife and child (sensibly)
behind), and gather material which can hold him for several years
afterwards. The funds will barely support him there and leave family
on this side (his wife is sensible, has been there, and knows he can
work best when quite undisturbed), but he is worried because he will not
having funds for hiring photostats or a copyist and reader in Records
to help him. He has no idea that I could help him, but simply was telling
me his troubles. He is already 39, having had to leave college to support
his mother, until after the war. Prouty thinks he is the best yet; and
I think, in terms of records and that sort, he will become distinguished.
We can work out balances or divide between those two. Easier this way
than trying to arrange for pounds while in England, as it would give him
something, if left over, to use on this side. Both Aiken and Horne seem
very much down your alley. Let me know how you feel.

After writing you about Greg, I discover Yale is to give honorary
degrees this year, because of her 250th anniversary, only to Yale graduates
distinguished in public life: viz. Acheson, Taft, etc. I think much
better, since the degree would mean so much) to wait until next year, bring
up the matter then, and let him have trip and honor (from Yale and elsewhere)
at that time. If we fail then for a degree, we send him anyhow. If Yale
doesn't, everyone else will give degrees; but I am selfish and don't wish
Yale robbed of the distinction.

The Vinsauf arrived yesterday, having been sent on the 3rd from
New York, and as the package stated, was missent by the post office to
Portland, Conn. Not the fault of Schab, who addressed correctly. I had
just posted him a letter asking where it could be, and had to rush a second
saying all was well. I have seen the Gascoigne, which is now being catal-
ogued, and it is a beauty: a fine clean copy with good margins, and I
think probably a bargain. The cataloguing of the books seems endless, but
will be worthwhile. A new photographing machine is now at Yale, so that
I can have duplicate cards made for the set: one set for you, one for me
to keep with the books, and a third in some safe place in case of fire or
theft.

If Philip is actually coming over, perhaps it seems indicated
that you ought to gird your loins and be here while he is talking to Rene.
I know the other side, and have suggested not coming, but chiefly not
coming alone. Much could be settled finally and for all if you were
actually here. Travel is of course not very nice at this time, but today
it is so brief as not really to matter. If it were not for business I
should say why bother. You spend most of time with me; we can go over
many matters including Sands. Melitta's visit might be a godsend. Susan
will probably go to Florida this month or early next for a visit to her
mother and brother, but probably no overlapping and her visit there would
be brief. She tells me her brother now has cancer of the lungs as well,
which will perhaps mercifully hasten the end. If New Haven should be
impossible, I can easily run often to New York. It would give us a unique
chance to talk over your various collection of responsibilities, in which
you let me share.

To return to Rene for the moment, his fee seems outrageous, but
in fairness I ought to explain that he was anxious to have it before Jan.
1st so he could get it in on last year's (1951) income with its lower
taxes. All the same ....

Many thanks for the list for October. I shall check next week,
and tell you which address I need. I had only the layout for the jacket
and had to return it without sending along. But it is very handsome.

Susan joins in love,

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

29 January 1952

Dearest Bryher:

Details do not seem to have been cleared up so quickly as I had thought, and, hence, no true letter to you; but at any event being back at my office tonight, let me get another fragment off, before I begin my tomorrow morning's lecture--the first on Gertrude.

If you and I were in New York tonight we should perhaps be seeing Marianne get the National Book Award, given by the publishers and bookstores to the best novel, best non-fiction, and best book of poems. Like the Bollingen it now ranks above the Pultizer, and Marianne will have gotten both. I meant to write you several days ago when I first heard of it, but with Susan's getting off to Florida, and the weekend I did not have the chance. This should bolster her immensely. I did drop her a note about it and said that I was telling you, so that I hope you will congratulate her. Vis-a-vis the Bollingen, I had a note afterwards from Stevens-- who was down for the dinner for the judges the night before the award was made-- in which, gratuitously, for we had not discussed her that I remember, though perhaps we had, he said: "It made me ha py too to hear of the award to Marianne Moore. She belongs to an older and much more personal world: the world of closer, human intimacies which existed when you and I were young--from which she and her brother have been extruded like lost sheep. As a matter of nature they stick together. What she has she has tried to make perfect. The truth is that I am much moved by what she is going through. It is easy to say that Marianne, the human being, does not concern us. Mais, mon Dieu, it is what concerne us most." You will understand why I like Stevens, quite apart from the poetry; it is for the same reason that I feel so easy with you and with Hilda.

The other two awards are to be given to Jones' *From Here to Eternity*, which is big and sprawling and essentially artless -- it might well be his only book of any interest--; and to *The Sea Around Us*, which certainly well deserved it for the non-fiction. Now we shall have to wait for the Pulitzer, and see what the final score is. It all has an air of the daily double on racing sheets. I happened to glance at a list of the year's prizes a few days ago, and had not realized until then that Horace had been given something called The Union League Civic and Arts Foundation Prize, for his Selected Poems. I must have missed it in the papers. I shall write him to congratulate him, but, wish I knew a little more about it. Thank you for tipping me off at Horace's disappointment in not being told by me about *October*. Things moved so fast just about that time that it must have slipped my mind, tho I did write him at Christmas and told him how much we owed to him, etc., and that we would get together to plan things when it came out. After I had written you about Louise Bogan attitude just before the Bollingen, and how she said "Well, if he wants a fight he will have it!", I began to wonder what she meant, and suddenly thought of Horace's and Marya's history and looked it up to see what they had earlier said about her. "Less adventurous than Miss Taggard, Louise Bogan held far more closely (shall we say?) to the fixed idea of the hammer and the chisel, and less to the looser phrasing of Miss Millay. A fierce, almost frightening rhetoric and an unguard ed love of passionate

3

I have not heard a peep out of Leslie, although I had thought perhaps something would bring him to the Yale Library. I daresay, however, that he is busily at work on his notes from England, and in tidying up the discoveries he has made. Prouty is apparently doing the same. I hardly lay eyes on him, which is wise on his part to keep at his desk; but he tells me that he has just finished, or is just about to finish, the article on the theatre he discovered, and wants me to read it now. He is much excited, and I must say it sounds like a first-class discovery. I have sworn secrecy.

I will of course not send you the History of Western Man. I did not bother to buy it for myself; do not expect the text is very exciting, but the pictures, as they came out in LIFE were quite good. Do you want the new Dos Passos? I get mixed impressions; most say it is bad, but one or two (not the best critics) claim it as "perhaps his best." I am however sending you, when I have read, a history of the Rockefeller Foundation -- not to tempt you -- I think quite otherwise -- but because it is echt Amerikanisch. There has never been anything like these Foundations any time in the world's history. It has a profound effect of course on American thought and attitude towards socialism; so much of what is claimed as prerogative or privilege of the state elsewhere, comes outside the state, as this way, here. Mita, for example, I daresay never thinks of them as part of the American scene and psyche.

I am sorry to hear about uncle Norman's increasing senility; it is always pathetic, and must be rather hard on Kenneth, who obviously remains most loyal.

I was delighted with the Revue de Suisse and Matthey's poem (especially its dedication). The ear is very good, with that crystal diction which I admire so much. One is not tortured by syntax, but there it not simply is at the same time, or simply is, that is exists of itself. Will you forward to him my congratulations?

Have the Shakespeare Quarterlies begun to arrive yet? If too long intervenes, do let me know. Though it was months before Hilda's miniatures began to go to her.

To go back a long way in correspondence, though not again in terms of the answer which came finally to me, I find that the remainder copies of BY AVON RIVER were sold to the Harlem Book Shop in New York. Don't you think it might be wise for me to order, say, twenty copies, to put away against exigencies. I have a dealer friend who would order them for us at cost, that is at his discount. He was the one who told me in glee, that he sold a copy of PALIMSEST to the Carnegie Institute. He wondered why? So do I, since it was an official sale to the Institute and not some individual of good taste within the office.

The Shepherd arrived a few days ago. Many thanks. I shall read shortly. You know I have a special interest in him, since I saw something of him when he was here, in view of his friendship for my Trevelyan brother-in-law who is a fellow of King's, where he was master.

I have been heartsick these past few days at the news from Cairo. You must be even more so. I daresay most, here anyhow, do not realize the extent of the burning and ravaging which must have gone on. I hold no brief for Shepheards as architecture, nor the Turf club, nor automobile salesrooms nor cinemas; but the first two were part of something which might have stood as a memorial. They will not be built again, I think; there are no wealthy foreigners to go to Egypt in the old way. I suppose that down the Nile (or does one say up?) towards the source things will not have been altered, and Luxor will remain Luxor. These cleavages are perhaps inevitable; the old

4

empire was gone; but why can't old empires be allowed to die in their
sleep, like old gentlemen; and not be strangled in bed by the heirs who
are impatient for the spoils. Yet I think in some ways, that the riots
were a good thing, as shocker: that is, suddenly perhaps people will realize
that one has to go slowly. It obviously shocked Egypt too; quite apart
from any, not unevident, Soviet fingers-in-the-pie. Curiously enough Farouk
apparently behaved rather like a king. I would not have expected him to.
I suspect the birth of his heir made him suddenly aware that he too was in
danger of being considered an anomaly.

The radio tonight announced briefly the new austerities for England.
It is sad about the food; I cannot say the same for the modifications of
the health act, tho it sounds odd to say so. But one must share; and one
cannot hand out fillings as tho they were peppermints at a party. The Bulldog
put up a good show when he was here, and obviously did much good. Not a
murmur could I hear at the 300,000,000 just announced. So far it seems to
me that he has restored dignity and management. I heard his Toronto speech;
the improvisations at the beginning made him sound old and as though he were
talking through false teeth and the plates were slipping; but when he got to
the prepared section it was like old times.

But it is almost ten, and I still have my lecture to prepare. Have
not heard from Susan since she went to Florida, but she will be glad to be
out of this weather. It snowed last night; tonight it was ten above zero
when I left and will go close to zero before morning. However there were
several hours of sunlight today--the first in weeks -- and it was almost like
a religious experience.

My deepest love, as always.

Zarman

2

could be published with a note that it had been performed by the Club
in honor of the Queen. Leslie (he Norman-ed me after three minutes) was
simply delighted with the idea (he is an honorary member of the Club already),
and he has just that sense of the dramatic to make it appeal. But this
morning it became even clearer: of course! it would be presented in honor
of the old Queen Elizabeth and the new Queen Elizabeth. This afternoon
I saw the two guiding mentors of the Club. They were enchanted, and since
both have powers with the Yale Press, I think, tho I still cross my fingers,
that it will be done. Is it not superb, dear Bryher? I only wish you and
Hilda could be here, with Edith to play the Queen. There are only three
parts besides her: the poet, the musician, the painter; and it will only
take about fifteen minutes. There is a meeting of the Board of Governors
of the club tomorrow, to which I am going anyhow. I think we must have
the Ambassador come for the fete.

Susan returns on Friday. I have had a couple of letters from
her and she seems to have enjoyed it, and found her mother's house delight-
ful, though of course the air of death hangs over everyone. Her brother is
in constant pain, and some days cannot either speak or smile when they go
to see him, but today she writes that he had spoken again, quite without
complaint, did smile at a joke, and was altogether incredibly filled with
integrity and character. Susan had been at an orchid house and is bringing
back four "botanicals" with her, purchased still from that fifty dollar
bill you gave her; and she wrote (you will remember that she bought others
last fall) "AND I have not spent all of Bryher's gift yet!" So she will be
thanking you, and I do thank you.

Now for the letter in answer to the letter which I could not go
on to do when my one typing finger of the right hand bled unless I padded
it so that it felt like putty against the key. As so often, I wish I could
touch you so that the current of gratitude could flow without words; for
as your sensibility and wisdom are so constantly a strength for me, so are
your kindnesses an almost necessary reliance. In this case it is not to
say no, but to explain perhaps as I have not explained what, so to speak,
my plans have been; and I do it as I would do it to no other person; cer-
tainly as I have not done it to any other person. I see the things I have
to as these-- or perhaps I mean the things that are particularly mine to
do, some instances inevitably, and some by chance. I have, chiefly, to
finish the edition of Hawthorne's letters, and to polish up the French and
Italian notebooks. I hope I can finish the rough work on them, particularly
the first, this summer or by late autumn. Sometime, then I will have to
have time off, to do the worst of the scholarly digging for points that
have no instinsic value perhaps but are necessary to the completion of
aesthetic of scholarship, so that none will say there are points still to
be done. I must also do, and that quickly, a N.Y. journal kept at the
beginning of the 19th century, very early, of some great-great-great aunt
and a similar grandmother of Susan, to please an old lady whose dream it
is that they shall be done before her death, and she is now in her eighties.
(This is pure sentiment on my part; but my God, if she wants it that badly,
she has the right to have it.) Then there is the biography of Fletcher,
which he died thinking I would do for him. But we come closer now to what
seems to be my unique potentiality and therefore perhaps my unique duty.
I wish to do the memoir of Hilda and I wish, whether you like it or not, to
do the study of your work and of you—for I say it, my dear Bryher, with
the deepest sincerity, that you are remarkable, and this not only for your
character which I think I know in my special way, but also for these new
novels, and for some from the past like Peowulf and Manchester (which was

3

your calling card to me)— these having their place, and no small place,
and being the beginning of a kind of destiny for you. You and Hilde are
at a center, and I might not have put it so bluntly if it were not for the
occasion; but there is another center. In knowing you two, and in having
been so to speak the friend of so many in a generation a setp or a half
step before me in time, having been confidant, having gone over more papers
of a private nature than perhaps any one in my position has ever done,
having also, for whatever it is worth, what taste or critical ability I have
been endowed with or have developed, — these things being conjoint with
the personal, each helping the other but not tied down, doesn't it become
apparent that at least I must do the history of modern American poetry
towards which all these things seem to point, and along whose path I have
gone hardly knowing where I was travelling. I know the past, from the
beginning, and I suspect that ultimately it will be the history of American
poetry as a whole which I must write; but I see the use now of the past as
a way toward understand the particular present which I shall know perhaps
as no one else does.

I say this because I do not want you to think, as it must seem,
and has seemed to many, that there is no direction. VanWyck Brooks has just
finished a one-man history of American letters from early 19th-century to
1915. It has taken him some eighteen years to do, and he did not touch the
colonials. I could not even do it in five years, nor make a stab at it,
but meanwhile through teaching, being forced to articulate and face new
angles my understanding constantly increases. I cannot understate how much
I get and add to my understanding just now from what would be otherwise the
mere chores of the classroom. It is not all waste. But of course it exacts
penalties; for instance the chairman of the department of American Studies
has made arrangements to be off three years from now; Professor Williams,
the senior man in American literature will be away two years from now, for the
year. It would be catastrophic if I went.

There is another angle to make the right moment somewhat more
distant than I would like, though the need for that moment mounts, and with-
out some help such as you might give me it could never, even then, be a
possibility. That is, the family of a wife and two girls which, or whom, I
married. Because of the war and my absence so soon after we were married,
and because of the particularly cruel selfishness and thoughtlessness of
the girls' father who did his best to break things up between them and me
during the war, the path back towards some kind of possible relationship
has been difficult and a matter of torture both to them and to me. With
the older girl it is now all right; with the younger one it begins to be,
though she managed (of course unwittingly) to split wide open the one year
free I have had since the war. Her temperament is not a stable one, nor
can Susan really cope on her own; her school grades are always precarious
and no one knows whether she can get through more schooling or not, altho
she needs to if for no better reasons than protection. But until she is
finished with her schooling; she will not wait long to be married (to anyone)
after that, I am sure, the house has to be kept as a house (home), no trips
for absences during her holidays, etc. This is not generosity on my part;
it is that or the lives of both will be permanently marred, as they now may
not be; and if they are marred, and if there could be any sense of guilt
attached to me, then quite frankly, and again without premeditation, it
would be all up between Susan and me. I don't think I'm saying this very
well; it sounds blunter than the reality; but you, Bryher, could understand
this better than anyone I know. It is good, between such friends, to be
able to say it.

There is lastly the question of money, which you have the right
to know honestly. Again it makes no sense from the point of strict logic;

review in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, which will be fun if it works out, and Walter should be impressed. I believe it's a good paper. One of its editorial writers is now a student of mine. Are there other good Swiss outlets where it might be pleasant to have reviews? I think it's important to circulate a good many copies of this first one, and the not lavish I shall be generous with them.

I am greatly distressed about Gerald Henderson. Couldn't Philip, with his connexions, find out something? The result is the same anyhow, but one might know how to approach the matter better. I do think Philip might know how to go about it.

I shall be eager to know what, if anything you picked up from Kenneth, and whether you brought the third folio back to Kenwin with you as I hope you did. The Brut looks interesting. Will you send it to go with the rest; I can then at least check carefully as to whether it has been published or used in a scholarly fashion. As to the other book in New Haven, I myself would say yes if finances permit. It is an excellent copy, large and clean, and of course definitely now or later must be in the B&F, which takes precedence. Thanks for the Pangolin. I can, if you want, sell a number of them for ten dollars apiece and give the money either to Robert or Marianne. Perhaps if to Marianne, better to sell but hold the money for some months, since she will have gotten two thousand from the Bollingen and the other award. I am always a little frightened at her too great generosity to her brother.

Your report of the Christopher Fry sounds interesting. He is over flamboyant with the language, but there is vitality in it and he has a sense of the theatre which seems to me important. The Elizabethans always had; poetic drama later lost it; the play became simply a poem. Sorry the books were in such a mess, but it was lucky you were there to do it, and useful so to speak to inventory them again.

Susan returned last night, looking rested but not very tanned, since she reported alternations between temperatures of 40 and 73 almost within the day. Her brother grows weaker but keeps up his courage. She liked her mother's house immensely, and I presume she will make annual visits to her.

I feel a little silly (New-England-wise) about my last letter, so don't pay much attention to it.

All love, as always.

2

concentrate next on the selected poems. That is my next move, once
I have talked to Farzar tomorrow. As to my seeing Hilda, it was my
thought that perhaps my quiet visits with her could revive her inter-
est in things.

I shall see the Wollfs also tomorrow, for lunch, and will be
able to report more on SANDS. I am so pleased that Hodgson wrote.
His letters are sparing. Incidentally, I have written to a good
friend of mine who is president of a college about 45 miles from
where Hodgson lives, to see if he can very quietly dig up any informa-
tion about his situation, bull terriers, etc. Prescott has been a
real friend, and his usefulness is indicated by the advertisement
which I enclose. We decided to put in a little extra money for an
ad or two. I will ask Wollfs tomorrow about whether one should write.
I am not quite sure what is comne il faut on this side. Will also
try to get some information on sales to report to you on Thursday.

I must close and run to pick up some laundry etc before
going to the shore. Do take care of yourself, Fido, until we can
sniff out rabbits together and I can scratch your ears.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

19 June 1953

Dearest Bryher:

The trip to New York was a little exhausting, and I spent yesterday in a flurry of working on the Hawthorne letters and so did not report immediately to you. I saw the Wolffs and lunched with them after going over the reviews. There were some excellent ones, but they told me they had shipped off copies of each of them to you, so I shall not report on them in detail. As to the sales, so far they have sold 1300 copies. Certainly not overwhelming, but indicating a steady though small public for the things. We plan to run another add or two in the early fall, to try to pick up a little early Christmas sale and buying, and of course their salesmen will be on the road again, with the reviews behind them, and should pick up a few more. Did I tell you that the *Renaissance News*, a scholarly newsheet will run a review in their fall number. Prouty is to review it, so it will be an enthusiastic one.

I saw Farrar, about Hilda's Freud, and was glad that I had not trusted to correspondence about it. He began by saying rather elaborately that he was not sure about their list, or the possibility of rendering justice to it if it were subsidized, and I could see where he was leading. So I simply jumped in and embarrassed him into saying that of course he did want to use it, and then got him to arrange for an absolute estimate of what we would have to put out --naturally he thinks it is I who am doing this-- and I should hear from him shortly. Personally I feel it will go through, but is taking some pushing. Then he went off to his analyst, and I went on to the Advertising Council. I think I told you of my bad luck with POETRY in trying to get any of the Helen sequence in. Naturally it was much complicated by the fact that it was a long poem, and difficult to break up into small units. Wolff remarked on the fact that I had heard nothing from Suhrkamp about AVON RIVER, and he promised to write again. Suggested that I go over via Swiss Air, which stops for an hour at Frankfort, where he thought he could get Suhrkamp to come out to the airport to meet me for a talk. It might be a good idea.

I am eager to know just when you want me to arrive so that I can arrange for passage, but since we will now have to wait to hear from Suhrkamp I can't act swiftly anyhow so it doesn't matter too much.

Did I write you that little Susan gave back her ring to the boy some weeks ago, and the engagement is booked. Too bad, but infinitely better that it should happen now rather than later.

Give my love to Hilda. I hope Walter keeps on his leash.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

27 June 1953

Dearest Bryher:

It is Saturday afternoon, muggy and warm, but I have had to
let two days go by since I came back from my trip to New Hampshire and
Vermont, and must not let the weekend pass without an overdue letter to
you. I came back from New Hampshire Wednesday night. The trip was reason-
ably satisfactory, very much so if only because it was done, and I have
had the chance to go through the Franklin Pierce papers (he was 14th Pres.
of the U.S., friend of Hawthorne's at college and through life) to see if
I could glean a lost grain or two to use at footnotes. There were some,
and if not important at least they were of a kind I might never otherwise
have been able to turn up. Now that I have been through annotating the
letters once, as I did last summer, I can make trips like this one and have
them reasonably definitive.

On my return I found a letter from Aiken, with enclosure,
copies of both of which I enclose. I don't know what to advise you to.
I remember Kaiser's quite fine reputation, or at least think I do, as from
earlier days and Germany. I don't know his wife's poetry. Aiken spoke to
me about them at the American Academy meeting, but I told him to write me.
The grant to her seems a sort of affidavit; so does the mere fact that the
man in Bollingen was able even to recommend them. If you think you should
or could or want to do something, I don't see why Rita couldn't purchase with
pounds their passage out and back, and so use English funds for this. I could
give them, then, say, 750 from here in dollars, payable to them when they
reached Italy. I gather there would be the problem of their taking sufficient
funds out of Italy otherwise. This is a little different from the kind of
lifeline we usually through out from this side, but I daresay it would make
no precedent, since it arose thru Aiken and some chance. Let me know what
you think. You need not return the carbon copies; I have a set for myself.

The two envelopes with letters to you have arrived, and I read
them with interest. Hodgson's should have been a real delight to you; he
would not have written so without utter sincerity. I feel certain of that,
in his case; he is quite capable of "polite" letters. The letter from
Painsfield was an equal compliment to you, for it must be an act of friendship
to write that frankly. The mood of the two books is of course a good deal
similar, as the situation of the characters is, and the note of the hero.
(i.e., rather lonely, aloof, sensitive boy, out of touch with times--and this
to his credit-- feels an adolescent rather than passionate love for a girl
who marries someone of whom he is fond). This would not, does not, did not,
bother me for two books, tho I think the reviewers would pick it up if it were
the character of the hero and his situation in a third. But I gather the
Swiss one shifts the pattern. As to the question of a "way out", why that
is the way the author sees the story; not much one can do about that. She makes
the error of not seeing that Sands' master also was of an earlier age. Yes,
I daresay it is for the cultivated reader, not however for the "elite" only.

I am glad you were sent the San Francisco review. I thought it
very good of its kind; not pretentious but telling one quality and what one
will get. I e caught the theme very nicely. All in all Jackson is a most

C O P Y

C O P Y

18 June 1953

My dear Conrad,

I have just torn up the third letter I have written to you --
and Ernst has written and torn up one -- in several weeks. We are going
through a bad time and if I write more than a few lines it begins to come out.
The letters then have to be torn up. I will not send such letters.

I don't want to plague you, but I am pretty sure that there
is no other way, because you are the only person who has ever gone out gunning
for money for us -- the only sensible thing anyone has ever done, apart from
two friends who have had a little money to give and have given it (I mustn't
pass them over, it is like telling one's beads.). You have held out hopes
of getting some of this benevolent American wealth for us in the course of
time, perhaps even this autumn. Well, apart from our general, total, and
perpetual need, we need money, or the assurance of it, NOW.

I don't mean the fact that the rates, which were due to be
paid at Christmas and have to be paid next week, and come to £29 something,
can't be paid. That is nothing.

What I mean is that I have got this research Fellowship from
Bedford College to edit Musil's posthumous papers, which are kept in Rome,
and the college expects me to go to Rome the moment it is cool enough (I can't
stand much physical stress, and heat makes me feverish, which is not favourable
to good intellectual work), i.e. about the middle of September, and be back
in London not more than a week after the beginning of the term, i.e. about
the middle of October, which is required under the terms of the award. If I
don't do this, of course I knock the bottom out of the research. In fact, if
I don't see how to do it within the next two or three weeks, I must write to
Bedford College and resign the Fellowship. At the moment there seems little
chance of anything else. This would not necessarily kill our work on Musil
permanently, but it would certainly kill my last hope of an academic career.

The only people in England who could and should do something
towards financing this project are the English publishers of Musil. They
have been told over and over again, in the strongest and clearest of terms,
that we have no money and that they must help, and all we get from them is
airy expressions of friendship and admonitions not to worry. If they do ever
do anything, which is doubtful, it will not be more than our return tickets,
but they won't say.

Bedford College thinks in 4 weeks I could get a general picture
and collect enough photostats to start on, and that I should go to Rome again,
if possible, in the Christmas vacation. Although officially it is only I,
you know that the Musil work has ramifications that are not and cannot be
confined to me, and we must both go. We need 1) the fares, and for easy and
comfortable travel, or I become ill, i.e. bed-ridden; 2) about £100, we are
reliably told, for a month's stay for two people; 3) cost of photostats of an
unknown quantity of material, and judging by London prices I shouldn't feel
safe with less than £100 for that. So it comes to about 1,000 dollars you
originally suggested. That is excluding a return at Christmas. I devoutly
hope it would not be necessary, if only because of the strain.

-2-

Dear Conrad, I must not say another word or I shall begin to pour out things better stamped on hard. Please let me know if there is or is not hope enough for me to hang on a bit longer before deciding to tell Bedford College I can't do it, a pretty embarrassing thing to do after the academic year is ended and their committees are scattered about Europe holiday-making. And please let us know too what the KING COFFIN TV performance was like, what was said, what you thought of it all, and so on and so on.

I have done nothing for weeks but work. So has Ernst. So there is no news of any kind. We are surrounded by desperate deadlines.

Great hugs to Mary and to you. Oh, dear people, I wish everything were different, in our own way different. (Suddenly thought that might be a fairy wish and something might occultly say: "I'll give you different all right! And see how you like that.")

Love from us both,

Eithne

You do realise how this letter is written, don't you? You do know, don't you, that we *hate* to bother you and are ashamed at asking for help. There are such *other* things to talk about!

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

3 July 1953

Dearest Bryher:

Over a week now and no news from you. I hope it has been only that you have been busy and not that things have gone awry. I worry a good deal about you and the fact that you have had so many burdens this summer—more than it seems reasonable for any one person to have had to carry. That, as I hope you know, is the chief reason I could not add myself to your problems, and did not feel that really I could take any on my own shoulders. Hilda is watched over; so is Walter; —but who, Fido, gives you the chance the run on your own.

It has been almost unbearably hot here. There have been nightly thunder storms, but the heat and humidity continue despite hailstones the size of small eggs, and rain like torrents from the heavens. The hailstones tore into Susan's orchids, ripping holes into the leaves and bruising where it did not devastate. They will live all right, but less handsomely for a time.

We leave this afternoon for the Fourth of July weekend in Gardner. It is my father's eightieth birthday and so rather a special event. Normally we do not try to go because of the incredible holiday traffic on the roads, but he was not at all well last winter, and one suspects he will not have too many more birthdays. The arteries near the heart are beginning to paralyze, the doctors say, and that is hardly good news. He will go however later to Canada for a cruise with my mother up the St. Lawrence, so he is hardly crippled so far.

One wonders what all the disturbances in East Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia portend. Obviously the intimations of the Melenkov uneasiness are being somewhat born out. One must remember always that the Russians have hitherto had to do almost completely with peasant and non-industrial types, so that the enforced industrialism has given some benefits previously (even at a cost of freedom) which must have seemed substantive to the people. I always used to say that if one was God and anti-communist, one would let Russia overrun Europe in order to bring some intelligent nationalistically and independently-minded people inside the iron curtain. Then the curtain would burst its seams. Perhaps that's what is happening now. But it does seem hard to have a face another long period of war. It must be the heat that puts my mind on such topics.

6 July 1953

Dearest Bryher:

We drove down this morning from Gardner, where I had gone for my father's 80th birthday on the Fourth of July. Your letter of the 30th was waiting for me. It took much longer this time for it to come than it usually does. Alas, the news was what I had feared. What caused me to write you as I did. It seems barbaric! I cannot understand it. And for Hilda especially, who needs (and any doctor ought to know it) very special consideration and tenderness. I hope tomorrow's letter (your tomorrow's which should reach me on my tomorrow) will have more news after your visit. Walter is a real help at such times, and especially good with the Cat. It is too maddening for me to be in suspense, both about her and about you, dear Fido. I wish there were something to do. Naturally if you and Walter think I could be of any help in persuading her, or getting her on her feet, you must let me know. I always have my passport. I suspect however that she might look on me too much as a special emissary, unless she did not know my plans had been changed. Only you must go to London and the dentist. You need the break simply for the sake of gaining a little strength for the hard period ahead. And remember that Hilda may say things in her present state which she does not really mean. But you are too experienced a Fido not to know this.

I write only hurriedly about the Ernest Kassers. Probably best to check with Agnes. Musal is not my cup of tea either, tho I sympathize with the poss ibility of using him to get them on their feet. As the biography would perhaps do in certain circles--not purs, but that doesn't matter. I agree with you however, that the way to do it would be with English currency if at all. Perhaps they would need too much luggage, typewriters etc for plane allowance for luggage, but certainly plane tickets as by Rita plus 100 pounds _if_ they could manage to get permission (as they should to use it for literary expenses. As a precedent for Aiken and English friends, certainly not; for once on English currency possibly. I am too worried to think it out properly.

I'm glad you liked the Kokeritz. It will be published in England, so don't worry. But it should give you some pleasant moments. I have a feeling he takes a little poke at Edith's impressionistic ideas of Shakespearean pronunciation, or I'd suggest a copy for her. Give her my love incidentally if you see her. The other book you mentioned, I did not send. I'd say this evens my thanks for the flower book, which a recent guest at the house here sent. The accompanying letter came afterwards.

Do keep me in touch. Shall I keep on writing to Hilda as I have? I will not mention details of course or reports from you. A letter or two (which she will not answer) might possibly divert.

The deepest love to you my dear Fido

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 HGS

YALE UNIVERSITY

NEW HAVEN • CONN

7 July 1953

Dearest Bryher:

Your second letter arrived this morning, to my great relief. I have no real fears (except for her strictly, physical condition) is she can get to the Brunner, especially the section run by the son. Congratulate and thank the Bear for me. No one else could have done it, and it is done just right. I shall not be entirely easy of course until she is safely there and I have the report of her arrival. Meanwhile, however, I shall not be so nervous as the earlier reports have made me.

Am glad too that you will be getting to the Scillies. You need the change and it would be a pity to disappoint Dean and the boys. Tell Doris that I shall be sending off a second overcoat and some winter underwear which she can distribute as she thinks fit. I shall mark as used clothing which they are, and send her a letter which she can show. I do not of course want to have her pay anything as duty. If you remember, ask her if she could send me the Swinburne letters she said she still had --one or two I think,--which I could let, if she were willing, the friend of mine see. He is editing Swinburne's letters, and the edition is supposed to be complete. Doris spoke of selling them possibly, and I could try. Am afraid she would have to leave the price up to my judgment if sold on this side. Everything of course depends on the nature of the contents of the letters. The editor is only an instructor here and could not buy himself, alas. But perhaps she will not mind his having copies. Only he must make copy himself. I suggest you ask, so she can back out gracefully if she wants. If I send clothes, it will seem a little too much like pressure on her.

Yes, Musil-Ernst should be handled from U.K. They fear money cannot be gotten out, but I think it can when properly arranged. Perhaps Rita could help. Then there could be no question as to how they ontained funds in Italy. I had planned to do something for Hodgson, but as of next Christmas since the last amount should have tidied him over this year. Better to have it regular, if it seems wise (as I think it will) to continue. I have not yet heard from Howard Lowy (President of Wooster College, in Ohio, which is nearby Hodgson; and imagine he is making discrete inquiries so we can see what is really needed. I hate to do it all in the dark. His letter to you makes it an easier contact. As you know I do not want to disturb his pride.

I enclose a new review which Helen Wolff sent me to pass on to you. Stupidly she did not say where it came from, but the first and last paras should delight you as they did her and have me. They will make good quotations for the advertising in the fall. I think I will put in a little more, enough for a few then and perhaps another one or two late November or December. No news yet on the estimates from Farrar for the Frued book. I shall have to nudge him, but have a good excuse apropos of other matters.

The bundle of _Two Selves_ arrived this morning, and will be useful to have. Now there is a little demand for these, and I could sell them thru

2

Kirgo, the bookdealer who published the Pound bibliography, if you want them in some of the various libraries. He has done very well with sending out copies of Hilda's AVON RIVER which he bought and buys remaindered. I think better to make the libraries, when possible, buy--since it indicates a true interest and better care. But there is something to be said for having them available. What do you think? Naturally I would keep a couple of copies back for emergencies. Small profits could go in the savings account --our illegitimate Bryher Foundation.

As to my coming over, it might be possible as you say, later in August or even very early September. But better, I think, now to wait and see how Hilda is. I will have everything in order, for vacations--and the passport is already here. But early August will be soon enough to dec ide, and you will know then too much better how you are both feeling and fixed. As you say, "so much depends on how Hilda is."

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

8 July 1953

Dear Bryher:

The matter of the fish lens protein treatment of cataracts of the eye, may now well be a thing of the past; but if Dr Glover wishes to satisfy himself on the matter, you might send him the enclosed article from the *Journal of the American Medical Association* which pretty well disposes of any hope in that quarter. Actually Walter might be interested in it too. And so might you. I found it quite admirable both as an evidence of how thoroughly the profession tries to check on such claims, and also as a matter of purely literary exposition. The punch is saved for the end! As you will see, the article is hot off the griddle. My Boston surgeon-friend rushed it off to me.

A letter came in this morning from my friend who is President of The College of Wooster; I had asked him for help in determining Hodgson's situation. He writes that he had been away after commencement, and goes on to say: "I do want you to know that I have put the matter concerning Ralph Hodgson into the hands of a former student of mine who lives in Minerva. I think we shall have word before long. At any rate, the person can be depended on utterly to proceed with discretion and tact. Naturally I am interested in what you are trying to do here, and I think it very fine of you to be concerned." I feel confident that we will have something from this as a result, and on that basis can determine just what we should do in terms of an annual sum. It is important neither to overdo it, or underdo it.

I think I have not brought you up to date on the case of David Horne. I had hoped to explain verbally and in detail, and will still do so when we next are together. Now he has resigned from Yale in order to write fiction for popular magazines, or try to. So far I think he has sold nothing. He says he will finish the book on the Alleyns. I don't know directly, for he has completely avoided both me and Prouty. Prouty is fed to the ears; I am not pleased. Actually I think he must be going through some psychiatrically disturbed period; nothing is straight in his explanations of what happened. But he must work it out for himself, unless he asks advice. Certainly I had thought him a dedicated scholar.

will feel about them as you do, but think I should know them, qua
information if nothing else.

In my Kenwin letter I said, answering your suggestion of
late August or early September, better to wait at least until early
August and see how things go then. But there is no question but that
the earlier plan would only have been complicated beyond reason. For
people like ourselves, shifts in plan hardly matter. I work away at
papers in my office; the room really begins to neaten up. One feels
it all to be a ritual, and I shall be re-born a virgin.

The Second Folio, with the inserted page of poems, has come
this week. I have acknowledged to Kenneth Maggs. What a beautiful
job they did. Really there is no one comparable to the British for
this delicate work. It is a marvel. Do tell him again how pleased
I am with it, when you drop in.

I suppose there will be no chance to get at the CLOSE-UP
blocks, but if you do send them along direct to Rochester, as I said
before. They will be eager to have them.

All greetings to Rita and Edith when you see them. And of
course all love, scratches behind the ears, and pats on the rump to
my Fido.

JOHNSON'S POINT BRANFORD, CONNECTICUT

with infinite charm, allusiveness, and great delicacy of wit. I found them
irresistable. It is not only letters to him which ought to be saved en masse,
but sometime we must find another correspondence or two; though I doubt they
will rival those letters to you.

I liked particularly his love of things that grow in his garden;
the daffodils from Trenoweth--I should almost have thought him to have been
the monk with his narcissus bulbs and his drawing. Surely Doris must have
some daffodil to bear his name. What a wonder and joy it would be to him
as he looked at it in that special bed he has for the newest ones, from his
kitchen table as he munghed his toast and his own-made marmalades. And do
tell Doris again for us, what exquisite pleasure our own daffodils have given
us. Not even George treasured them as Susan has done--or both have done
equally. And as for myself I was quite won over, and as these increase and
multiply and are divided I swear that there will be nothing in our spring-
times beds but this borrowed field from Cornwall. I was never so taken as
by their sight en masse outside, and single-blossomed within our house. If
I were a god I should never drink except it were nectar from their cups.
Byron had his skulls for holding wine; the libertines had their silver cups
molded from the breasts of their mistresses; but I should have my cup of
gold on a saucered perianth.

I write this from the shore, on a typewriter borrowed from Susan.
My fingers go tremblingly over the unfamiliar keys. But I can manage the
letters for love from us both, and our affectionate greetings to Doris if
this manages to reach you at Trenoweth and before you have left her.

Lorran

N O R M A N

H O L M E S

P E A R S O N

2 3 3 H G S

Y A L E U N I V E R S I T Y

N E W H A V E N · C O N N

22 July 1953

Dearest Bryher:

There is really little or nothing of a normal sort to report from this end—the time between my last letter to Lowndes and this having been spent in the heat between weeding at Goodrich Street in late afternoons and annotating Hawthorne's letters during the rest of the day. A little Korean boy, who is having trouble with the State Department, which is being stuffy about renewing his visa, has kept me busy; but it looks now as though he would be able to go to Switzerland, where he has a scholarship, so that problem ought soon to be off my hands.

I hope all went well in the Scillies and with Doris.

When I wrote my last, as from the shore, I had not realized you would have left by the time it reached you, and so addressed it to London.

Do not forget to give my affectionate greetings to Edith. I should so much have liked to have seen her. I remember the "teas" at the Sesame with great devotion of memory.

I enclose a copy of a letter from Farrar, which arrived this morning, and which agrees to the publication of the Freud book.

Considering that this is a truly commercial firm, as Pantheon really is not, I think they have been quite reasonable in their sum. Actually I suspect it is something of a personal favor, and the result of some badgering. We have plenty in the savings account, so do not worry about that in the slightest; and I propose, subject to you OK, to go ahead. I suppose this means I will have to get in touch with Merrill, which I find not altogether what I would really prefer for the book, but I shall wait until my conference with Farrar. I wrote Hilda today saying that they would do it, but did not of course mention the guarantee. I leave that up to you. But the guarantee does present some problems in the way of accounting, contracts etc., so I wrote her that they would prefer to make out the contract to me, because of the British restrictions etc., as was the case of your books with Pantheon, and asked her whether under the circumstances, in order to make all legal, she ought not to sell me the book under a similar contract to your own. I said that any royalties could go directly from me to her brother, or to the Valentines. I could explain the situation to her brother, who would understand. Actually this would be a tremendous simplification, but I suggested she wait to discuss the matter with you, on your return. There is no reason why you should not say I have written you about it. If agreeable to her, I will send a contract over.

My greetings to Mita also; tell her we hope to see her on her next trip. And all love to you as always.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON
233 HGS
YALE UNIVERSITY
NEW HAVEN • CONN

18 August 1953

Dearest Bryher:

I hope the Italian trip was a huge success, by which chiefly of course I hope that you had some relaxation. I have worried a good deal about the effect of your burdens of this spring and summer, and hope that you can get some respite.

How awful that I should not have mentioned the Vinsauf. It arrived with all speed, and is safely in my filing case until the girl comes back who can catalogue it and it can be put in with the rest of the insurance. It is a fine thing, a real treasure; and it will be safe I can assure you.

Other packages have come in also, chiefly of letters. Two more of Dorothy Richardson. Altogether these make a truly important group, and will be of great value to the future. She will have her day again. But it is odd how the Virginia Woolfs seem to have crowded her from any present critical attention. Also another batch of George's letters, delightful as ever; a smaller envelope of Hilda's letters to you; and finally Robert's manuscript. I shall read it with interest, but would you give me (sub rosa) permission to have Prouty take a look at it? I think his opinion would be most useful. It is not quite Leslie's cup of tea, I think; but Prouty has worked on the comedies and would give an idea of how it would go. We need not speak of this to Herring unless Prouty should be enthusiastic.

I have just had an accounting from Pantheon for October and Sands sales, with a check for some 400 odd dollars in return, which I have deposited in the account. There has also been about 150 dollars back from the amount for the Pound checklist, which goes slowly, but will I think sell steadily, and that too has been deposited as received. The proper accounting for all these I shall save until your visit, when we can go over them in detail.

I had another letter from Farrar today about Hilda's book, and as soon as I have the bill of sale back from her I shall sign the contract and go ahead. Hilda does seem pleased, wants to go over the proofs at the proper time, (which she certainly can), and it will give her something to do. I think I told you that Moore was most helpful with ideas on marketing it. By the way he is keen on having your book made into a movie! With Katherine Hepburn as star! It is more than a notion with him. If you will give the OK to the fee I suggested for his introduction, I shall set that in motion.

I was interested in your note on the blocks. It is as you and Doris feared, from the dampness etc., but perhaps you will

22 August 1953

Dearest Bryher:

Your letter from Anticoli was here this morning, when I arrived back from the little trip to the White Mountains with Susan and Liz. I think I wrote you, but perhaps did not, that I had to go to a rural mountain spot called Wonalancet to go thru the papers of a Seward Collins, who once edited the American Bookman and a magazine called the American Review. Because of John Farrar, who sold the Bookman to him I had been in correspondence with the lawyers about the papers, and could get no one to go over them for me. So I drove up with the others for company, leaving them at the head of Lake Wiñepesaukee (a great 22mile long body of water) while I did the job. It was very much worthwhile, since the latter of the magazines was connected with the Southern group of American writers and had very extensive correspondence with all of them. While I worked the others took a four hour ride around the lake, and later in the afternoon after I returned we drove into the hills thru the most beautiful mountainous scenery one could imagine. The air, crystal and autumnally clear -- the nights were in the 30s in temperature. Friday we drove into the White Mountains, and then over to Hanover so that Lizzie could see Dartmouth College, and we could inquire for some information needed by a nephew who enters there in the fall, and then down along the Connecticut River to a nursery where Susan bought some wild flowers and plants to go in the woods at the shore, behind Venus. Yesterday was rather too long a drive for the women, but we did manage to get a lot in, and when they have recovered I think they will remember it with pleasure. On the way up I did a little bit of Hawthorne research at Concord N.H., cleaning up what I omitted on my earlier visit, so it was altogether worthwhile.

I am delighted at your little respite at Anticoli, and that the boys were so good to you. I only wish it might have worked so that we could have done things together, but I imagine Kenneth would have preferred the moments with you alone. Of course I am nothing if not delighted at the prospect of having Kenneth's memoir; I should have been disappointed not to have known it. I daresay the Los Angeles man he refers to is a Larry Powell, librarian of the University of California branch there, who is building up a very fine library indeed. A former book dealer, Powell is greatly interested in modern writing, and is especially keen on Lawrence, Robinson Jeffers and Uncle Norman. He was the one who inisted on seeing the list of Robin Douglas's things first. I have not seen it, but since you say Kenneth took the cream I have not worried. I wish we had a fine Douglas Collection at Yale. Perhaps Kenneth will let his go here some day.

As to the figure which Archibald has in East Greenwich, I shall start my scouts at work. I have some one I think may know him, or know people who do, and will try to negotiate as for myself. I being one who knew Douglas in London etc. That would be enough to know why I might now of the existence of the piece. Assure Kenneth that I shall do my damndest to see that he gets it.

I rejoiced to think that you had a few moments in the Anticoli
gardens to make notes on FABULA. I have a special interest in it, as
you know. I still dream of the possibility that you might spend a
little time on it in the States, but perhaps you need the Swiss air to
breathe for the right atmosphere.

I had an exciting letter today from the woman I was supposed to
see in Florence this summer, telling of a group of manuscripts which
sound quite exciting for scholars. It was formed by a 19th century
magazine editor in the States, named Graham. There are some 1600 letters
from American writers still left, altho the "ermans in Florence burned
the rest of the original 4000 of them. Plus a whole series connected with
the Congress of Vienna, of all things, and what will be exciting to some
people, all the papers connected with the Ireland forgeries of Shakespeare.
The latter an absolutely unknown group of papers, I gather. I presume the
Italian family who owns all these wants some fabulous price for them—they
always get exaggerated ideas about the monetary value—but I shall get
further descriptions, and perhaps the Library here will find some angel.
I rather gather there are no Hawthorne letters left, tho there should be;
no doubt the "ermans burned those; so I am not personally interested. But
it is exciting just to think of.

A letter from Hilda came just as I wrote you last, and in today's
mail was the contract for the Freud, so I shall get ahead with that this
week or next. Unless I hear from you to the contrary I will send on the
typescript to Moore, and suggest 250 as a fee. Will wait some ten days,
so there will still be time for you to veto the matter.

Hope you found all still well with Walter on your return. I shall
keep my fingers crossed. What have heard from Sylvia, and about Adrienne?

All love, as always.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

28 August 1953

Dearest Bryher:

It is simply insufferably hot, and I shall not make much
sense out of this letter (nor, consequently, can you), but I shall not
be in town for my usual Saturday at my desk, having to go to Greenwich
to a nephew's wedding, and so cannot let so many days pass without some
word of thanks for the two most welcome letters from you.

I am so glad that you had the time with the boys; glad
too, for your sake, that you could have had it without my tagging along.
I am delighted at Kenneth's novel; I should think he might have a touch,
something of Uncle Norman's wit and knife-edge in it, but of its own
nature and tempering. As for going to stay with them, how fine that would
be; but as you realize it would of course really solve no problems. How
these will be worked out I do not know. If Hilda were willing to stay
on at Kussnacht (even in terms of a pretended conspiracy with you on
Walter's behalf; I should suggest closing Kenwin for the moment, and taking
a largish flat in Zurich (or have a temporary maid there, leaving Elsie at
the Villa) so that Walter could be brought into proximity to Brunner, and
Brunner could perhaps make an arrangement to set him at work. Obviously
you do not have to clear out of Kenwin leaving it to him; that would mean
nothing, and the relationship would be false. He would only fall back. Yet
I do not see how you can stand the strain of watchdogging always. You cannot
be tied to him in that way, and basically it is not good for him.

And of course I am keen on Hilda's staying on as long as
possible chez Brunner. If she is to withdraw into her own world, it will be
when she is at a hotel, and not mixing with people. That is a chief virtue
of the san, I should think. (You know all these things better, of course,
than I!) But could not there be a double plot, with Walter and you conspir-
ing for her sake also, and the obvious situation by which you could only
help by shifting the base to Z.

I think I sent you the Kaiser's address earlier, but here it
is again if you have mislaid it. Ernst Kaiser, 9a Eton Road, London, N W 3.
The two hundred can go directly to him.

I have given Herring's ms to Prouty who says he will be de-
lighted to read it. He is basically at work on the facsimile edition of the
first folio they are bringing out here, and he is so do the preface. He
now wants to include a census of extant copies; are you willing to have yours
listed, and if so (he knows of it of course) do you wish it under your name,
or would it better for tactical reasons be under mine.

How interesting that Kenneth sees Sands as film. Apparently
he and Merrill see something in it on those lines; I wish K could have done
it. One is scared of Hollywood. We will see once my desk is straightened.

5 September 1953

Dearest Bryner:

We drank your health, on the 2nd, at the Hotson's,
and only wished that you might have been there for a true salute.
I wired you at Kusnacht on the supposition that you had gone there
for the Day, since you had not told me precisely what you intended.
I send this there also, supposing you to have gone for the 10th. I
hope it reaches you.

We had a pleasant evening with Mary and Leslie, arriv-
ing in time for supper and staying on for awhile thereafter. We have
been undergoing an incredible heat spell, which has continued now for
a fortnight. Electric cables crack under the heat, and everyone goes
about heaving in despair. The thermometer is never below the mid-90's
in the noons, though fortunately we have had a bit of breeze off the
ocean at Johnson's Point. My Graduate School office is quite intoler-
able, though I had to come in today in order to conduct a three-hour
discussion group with the foreign students, and so have stayed on to
write you and Hilda. But to return to the Hotsons, there was a nice
breeze there, the grass seemed green and cool to look at, and all in
all we decided they had chosen their site well. And how they love
their home! It is a delight just to listen to them talk about. Leslie
clucks over his study, which runs along one side of the house, and has
windows on three exposures. They lengthened the living room by including
what was to have been a porch in it, so they have room for all their
things. And have one nice bedroom and a good kitchen. Mary bamboozled
(I can think of no other appropriate word, altho she says she simply
*explained*) the selectmen of the town into resurfacing the road to it, and
now it is slick and safe for both winter and summer. And they must have
extracted the last element of talent out of the builders, for they
visited the construction every day, oversaw the driving of each nail, and
did it so lovingly that every hammer stroke went all the straighter for
their attention. When it was done, they had the minister there, with the
chief workers, to bless the house. The workers' children came too, and
Mary explained each treasure she owned, and each worker told the children
where each stick of lumber originated. You must hear Mary herself as she
recites it excitedly. They go off next week to Maine, and no doubt they
will toast you again on your plot of ground there.

There is not much to report from this end. The weather
has stopped all thinking, and only the plodding tasks can be done. I
have added a few more footnotes to the Hawthorne letters, and in the last
few days begun to think a bit about what I shall teach this fall. I have
to go to New York for three days next week, for a meeting of the English
Institute, and when I return I must devote myself to putting the office
into shape and order, or I shall be lost when the students begin to come

8 September 1953

Dearest Bryher:

I am so sorry that the birthday cable did not go to you straight to Kenwin. You did not say you were going to Kusnacht, but everything has been so topsy-turvy lately, with longer than usual spaces between letters on each side, that I suspected you might. However, if, as I hoped, were you not to be there, Hilda did, as she did do of course, relay it to you, all was well. But I send this to Kenwin, having written you a note c/o Brunner which should find you there. I think the sugano idea excellent for Walter, and a good thing to give him a change not directly connected with Kusnacht. As for that, I still think the double tactic not impossible: that he be persuaded to stay in Zurich in the nahe from Brunner, in order to keep Hilda there longer; and she stay on to give him the opportunity for mild p.a.

Am sorry too about the Kaisers. I suspect I rushed the thing too much. It only goes to show how difficult it is to operate in terms of the U.K. from this side; and of course vice versa. One knows the Kaiser type: they bully around once the armistice has been declared, and do not really know how to live conservatively. All very old regime, I suspect. I do not think more need be done; this is quite sufficient, and we will simply hope for the best.

The heat wave here has fortunately broken; today is true early September. But still it has not rained, not even the third hurricane -- Carol--(they go ABCetc by girl's names this year) brought rain as the last one did; though it sunk a few ships, and drowned a Yale professor friend of mine on Martha's Vineyard. All grass and gardens are parched; it is heartbreaking to see, and I only hope there will be some relief before we move back to town and have to live in it. At the shore, Susan has watered faithfully, so things look much better there.

I have sent you the Kinsey, an advance copy, to Kenwin, plus a book on early British reactions to the Far West, which I did not read but looked interesting.

Much more important is that you will be soon sending a draft of Fabula. I am overjoyed to think you are in the mood for carrying it ahead. I doubt if Wolff will have any objections to next June, but it will mean working away at it. I shall show him

the first draft, with your permission, for any comments he may
have.

Delighted too that Hilda is at some new poems. There is
a touch of telepathy to this, since my birthday letter to her
expressed the hope of additional ones. These recoveries from de
profundis seem a stimulation in each event. Alas, I think I wrote you
that the *Atlantic* turned down the selections from the Helen group.
Perhaps it was a mistake to try to take chips from it. I have now
sent them off to the Virginia Quarterly in the hope they may be
interested. I shall keep trying.

It was good news that the West German elections kept on the
Adenauer side; I was fearful that Dulles' public comments might do
harm, as I suspect that Clare Luce's did in Italy. Really, despite
having voted Republican, I must say that this new State Department
group keep their feet in their mouths. One hears rumors, very sub
rosa, but from possibly good sources, that there will be a shake-up
soon, with a close Presidential adviser going in to Dulles' place.

Some change certainly needs to be made. I am not so hopeful about
the East; Rhee is difficult, though his position is understandable,
and the States are rather boxed in the whole affair. I do not know
however what can be done in that direction.

We long to hear news of the date when you expect to arrive,
though I presume you cannot tell until after the Zurich Conference
(it sounds international enough: American, Austrian, German, British)
and until Fabula gets into a tidy first shape. At any rate do not
plan to make it too hurried; it would be nice if some of the re-
working of the novel might not be done on this side, and the ms
prepared for publisher. It would save much time and heartaches, tho
I suspect this will not present similar problems to those which the
last one did.

Meanwhile, all love as always. I presume you will see the
Hesses if you, or while you, go to Lugano.

Zcoran

16 September 1953

Dearest Bryher:

No sooner have I returned from the time in New York at the English Institute than the students have begun to knock at my door, and ring me at home at night to make appointments for the next day. But at least I have a moment to myself now, and hasten to write what I can. I must not take too many sideward glances at my desk, however, and the tangle of papers on it, or I shall lose all spirit. Fortunately, the heat spell has broken, and though we still wait for rain (save for a brief thunder storm last night) it is at last and at least tolerable to work.

Several envelopes of letters have come in and will be duly put in their proper files. Horace's on his meeting with Olga Rudge I found particularly vivid and interesting. It is really touching, such efforts to free him from St. Elizabeth's, and the worst is probably that even if he were let go, he would not be given his passport and so could no return to Rapallo. I wonder sometimes too how he could manage to live were he out, but this is rather timid on my part, I presume. I could parallel Horace somewhat by meeting Omar, Dorothy's son, in N.Y. There was a series of papers on the *Wantos*, and Omar duly turned up with a little coterie of devotions. We lunched together one noon, and the truth is I liked him very much. He never, you know, lived at Rapallo, but was brought up and educated by Dorothy's parents in England--and he has a touch of the perpetual boyishness of some English (tho he must be about 28, since he came just after Mary--as a kind of Shakesperean balance, I gather) mixed up with the flavor of his American citizenship. "He is really more like an uncle," he said. Omar is training himself in Persian, and had a year there on some sort of scholarship. Now he is returning to Hamilton College to finish his undergraduate degree, which he quit, and then hopes to work in Arabic also, eventually wanting to be a historian of the great travellers between the East and the West, of the Marco Polo type. He is modest but has both enthusiasm and will-power, and wishes very much to stand on his own. One sensed this, rather than had to listen simply to protestations of independence, and I liked him for it. Actually he is a child with interests after your own heart.

I found the letter about Dorothy R most moving. Alas, one knows the David type, the扫rounger who comes in at the end. He seems to remind me of Peter Russell, the one who had the Hildabuch of Ezra's, in manuscript. They protest their interest in the literaty aspects, but their eye is on shillings and pounds. I wish there were some way to keep him from soiling them with his fingers, and I am frightened less Miss R. in one of her lucid moments should embarass all by some sudden document. But one can only hope.

How much more fortunate Uncle Norman was to have Kenneth.
The books arrived in yesterday's post, and I took one home to read last

night, but, alas, took the one intended for the library, and preferred
to wait until tonight to read my own. I shall write Kenneth when I
have done so, but I glanced of course, and with delight. I am so indebted
to you for having them sent. Nor have I forgotten the mission in regard
to the souvenir, and will cast out my lines. I have waited until the
summer was over and people, included the son, have settled in.

I am sorry that all this has come up over the Kaiser affair.
It is the bad side of the Germans which shows itself. Why do they always
bully around so, once the tears of war or distress have been wiped away?
But as for Wilkins and Bedford College, she only had a grant from them,
and was not either on the faculty or a regular student. So I think there
was no real intention of deceit on this score. As to their marriage status,
or lack of it, I am not surprised on this score, though I might have thought
that he would have legalized it in order to have his British status a little
clearer. Well, we shall see. Perhaps in the long run it will have helped,
even though one would have preferred other directions for giving aid.

Edith's plans for Hollywood sound very gay. It is perhaps not
quite such a secret as she makes out, as the clipping which I enclose
indicates. What does she say about this Reisch. One wonders who will influ-
ence whom; and I daresay our Edith will never be quite the same again. But
how wonderful it is for her to have these experiences. She will make so
much more out of them, than most would. I think you must pay her a fleeting
visit, to see her in such a nest. If for no other reason than the companion
piece to that on Uncle Norman, which you must do for her one day. There
will be a time to come back to those again, and how good the series will
ultimately be. I imagine it will be almost impossible for me to pick up
and go in that direction, but you could take Pup or even Susan along, to
exchange giggles with. It's not to big a leap anyhow for a Fido, and per-
haps it's time for another glance WEST.

The packages of clothes went off to Doris a week or so ago,
and some of the things will I hope be useful. I'm afraid I did, rather,
just pack up what there was, instead of extracting what might be unsuitable,
as in the case of formal clothes. But perhaps Doris will find someone to
whom they can be of use, or if not then she can simply toss them. The one
thing I worry about is that she should have to pay any duty. If so I'd like
to make it up to her; let me know if you have an inkling of this. Susan sent
off, ten days or so ago, for the permissions for bulbs; and should be receiv-
ing them back shortly.

I await eagerly the chapters of Kabula, but will wait before
reading (as per your orders) until all are here. If by good fortune I could
be able to have a read-through before your visit to the States in the autumn,
that would be perfect, for it would allow us to talk about it, and re-talk,
and re-modify. But I agree; I think I'd prefer to have my first sense be
that of the whole. The parts have their meaning, and deserve their emphasis,
only in terms of the total. This is true when there is plot, but perhaps
even more so in a general mood piece. I doubt if Wolff will have any object-
ions to a spring publication, though I hope we won't have tourry him too
much. We can discuss this when you come, but it makes all the more evident
the real necessity for your coming.

I had a fine letter from Hilda, written with a glow, I thought,
and filled with a sense of ease with the landscape and the excitement of her
new series. How odd that in my birthday letter I should have expressed the

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

17 September 1953

Dearest Bryher:

A nice kind of day: with something in the post from you this morning, and another this afternoon. This morning's was the first chapter of FABULA, and like a loyal one I have put away absolutely without reading, without even a glimpse. I agree that it is much better this way. I still think what would be best would be to wait until you come over before discussing it. That would give you a little break and make a slight remove. You'll see it, so, better yourself. I can see this *before* I read it, and there can be no hidden implications.

Edith sounded most fruitful with "dirt". I wish I might have listened in; there is always a lively air about her tales, and they are dramatically rendered as though international diplomacy was involved. One should have gotten her slant on the Burgess-MacLean incident. My head is buzzing at the news of the disappearance of Mrs. M. A very good article about it in this morning's N.Y. Times which I shall clip and send once Susan has read it. It is all very queer, and was completely sensational (this is strictly entre nous) in British int. circles. Heads rolled, and personnel swam for safety through the tears that were shed. Really, far too much of this sort of thing has happened for all the old boasts to be sustained. Well, it is nice in a way to know that even the British I.S. is human and fallible. One would not have thought so in the old days.

Last night I read Kenneth's tribute, which I thought very well done. Especially as it went on, it quite miraculously brought Uncle Norman before me. Or rather I should say that it brought Uncle Norman back before Kenneth, while I had the privilege of looking on. That is, I think, the secret of the success, for Kenneth's feelings were never hid, and so one could accept statements about N's stature as a writer without caring at them. Because they were made valid by the simple fact that Kenneth believed them. The idiosyncrasies, the satyr's gestures, the keenness and relish for life remain now on the printed page. I am glad Kenneth wrote it, and grateful to him for having it.

I forgot yesterday to comment on Leslie's piece. He is of course delighted at all the mentions of it, though many corners of the scholarly world hold back a little in unqualified praise. He bases it chiefly on the *torne a torno*, which some of the Italian scholars here say would be used for seeing a thing from three rather than necessarily four sides. Besides which, it does seem true that they put on plays in almost every situation; may sometimes have done it Leslie-wise, but I can't believe always so. I wonder if either actors or audience would really have liked it. For the actors it means not only backs to the audience but action going on behind their backs also, with the difficulty of following anything but verbal cues. For the audience, on many instances

26 September 1953

Dearest Bryher:

The first week of the new term is over. Thank God!
It is always one of those periods when interruptions are the norm:
one does not pretend to accomplish anything, and nothing is accomplished.
Students stand in line outside one's door to change their schedules.
There is no reason why they should, but equally no reason why they
should not.

I am in town this morning, taking a load of things to
our town house (how elegant that sounds!) and am at the office while
Susan puts them away. Your letter, and the one from the bank, were
here. Dear Fido, how can I thank you. It is a godsend, and will per-
mit me not only to catch up but to go ahead. For I do want, if pos-
sible to be able to take a few little Hawthorne trips at the ends of
weeks, so that I can continue to burrow as I did so successfully this
summer, in files of old newspapers, the Longfellow papers etc. With
trainsfare and hotels, it mounts up. Now it will be possible.

Each step ahead on your part with the Fabula delights
me. Miriam can wait, should wait, until after it and Ruan are done.
As to the time of your visit, better certainly to delay plans until
the Swiss affairs settle down or in. Hilda writes in the same mail
that she wants to leave, but is apparently willing to wait a fortnight
or so longer. Will come, she says, for at least a little while to
Kenwin, and if so it is better you say. Perhaps, one can only say
perhaps, she might stay on longer now; and if she did, it might
eventually, even in spring, better solve the problem of Walter's being
left alone. Eventually I suspect La Paix will be possible again; in
a sense it may be psychologically better that she return to her more
established days there, once the weight has been caught up again, as
though there were nothing anywhere to feel. These new poems, about
which she writes enthusiastically, are, as the earlier ones were --and
Avon, too--therapeutic. I suspect many of the shadows really cluster,
or can be made to seem to cluster, around the Cecil. Not even its
being "hallowed" by the death of the Duke of Alba there, will quite
cleanse it for her. Meanwhile, however, I wish you would inquire, so
that in the case of another emergency you will already know of some
other clinic where she can be taken.

As to the States it does not really matter, of course,
dear Fido, when you come, though we always long for your visits. I do
think, nevertheless, that we ought to talk together about the Fabula,
altho one cannot say until I have read the ms. Meanwhile I have been
patient (which is to say impatient) and obedient, and have not read

2

even the opening sentence of the one chapter now with me. Let us see.
Perhaps you will be willing to skip a season before it appears in
print and before the public eye. There is something for, and something
against, an annual appearance.

The manuscript of the *Brut* arrived safely, and was a great
surprise, since I do not recall your having mentioned this to me. I only
knew of the second Monmouth ms which you still have. Nor do I have the
bill for this, which if it is handily with you, plus any technical
description of it or its provenance I should like to have so that I can
increase the insurance appropriately. Everything is still in the bank
but will be back next week. They are all right, but a few things which
arrived since the last cataloguing are now being done at the Yale Library,
and when I have the *Brut* details, I can arrange all at once.

I do think Omar will at one time or other be appropriate.
Seldom Have I met anyone who so sounds your cup of tea. I will per-
haps have to go to "ashington soon, for Hawthorne, and that might be a
good time to sound out Dorothy on his situation. I gather he is all
right for the moment; the big problem will be when he graduates from
Hamilton, especially if he does not get his Toronto fellowship. Even
that may need a little addition, depending on circumstances. Meanwhile
I will put the extra thousand in the savings account, but will not forget
it.

As to Urzidel, I shall set my mind to it, and possibly ask
Wolff what he might suggest. He and Helen are always helpful on this
score. It is equally possible that I might be able to get him something
in the Yale Library, in which case it would not take long for Mrs U.
to build up an equal clientele here. My dear, baby-sitting is a profession
as valuable to follow as nursing. We will find something for him; he is
too useful to waste. One becomes quite annoyed with the State Dept and the
new administration, although one recognizes the political urgencies of
seeming to cut down the budgets. They will be hiring again shortly. I
only wish I had contacts in the United Nations. He would be invaluable
there.

I must run back to the house, but a letter to you was overdue,
even without your last with its particular generosity. Bless you, dear
Fido.

1 October 1953

Dearest Bryher:

We are having superb autumn days. I wish you were
here to enjoy them. Everything is as crisp as crystal, and exhilar-
ating—though more with the tang of cider than of alcohol. But
still no rain, and the grass is sallow. However we moved back to
town last Sunday, and Susan is now busily watering the garden beds,
so they begin to perk up.

I need all the exhalation I can get. Did I write
that, foolishly, I agreed to do a preface on Richard Henry Dana, jr.,
the one who wrote *Two Years Before the Mast*. You may have read it.
This preface, however, is for an autobiographical sketch he wrote of
his life up to his marriage, which is to be published by the associate
librarian of Yale, and the curator of mss. I could not easily refuse,
but it comes at just the wrong time, since it coincides with the be-
ginning of the new term. I know nothing of Dana and will have to bulk
it in; fortunately I have discovered what I think will be my gimmick,
that is the way to approach it, the angle around which I can cluster
the data. Pray for me. I ought to try to write it this weekend. But
there is still reading to do, so this will be little more than a note.

By the way I seem to have forgotten to tell you that it
was Prouty who sent you the book on Shakespeare by Feullerat. I remember
your thinking it was I. Perhaps I did, but he thinks I couldn't have
since he has never heard from you about it. Blame it on me anyhow--
quite seriously, I mean. I don't know that you need to read it thru;
I suspect it is heavy going. But the thing to remember is that Mrs P.
did some work on it with F, and that at F's death, Prouty took the
galleys (or maybe even page proofs), found them in horrible shape, and
spent generous weeks in trying to put it into some order. The book is
not being well reviewed because it sets up hypotheses about the origins
of the texts of Shakespeare, which upset the orthodox. Prouty believes
in F, so you can take the line of the importance of the suggestions F
makes. But drop him a note, so he won't breathe down my neck.

The second chapter has come from Woolford, and is tucked
away, while I whisk my tail about in impatience, and drool a little in
expectation; but will be a good dog until the signal is given for me to
start my reading.

To go back to your letter of the 18th, I am much distressed
about Lane's attitude toward Hilda's book. I am not one to suspect
politics too easily, but I am increasingly bewildered both in regard
to hers and to your own. I simply cannot fathom the indifference, which
seems more than indifference. I suspect the only thing will be for me

actually to go to London, qua American, hang around for a few weeks
on excuses for seeing publishers which are otherwise legitimate, and
sound them out. I think it can be broken, but not by letter. However,
meanwhile we can go on as we are doing. I might make the great effort
for the trilogy when the Scilly volume is done.

I was interested in your visit to Montagnola. It is rather
wonderful to think of Mann and Hesse together: neolithic giants in a
modern garden. How I wish sometime that thru Mme Bodmer you could
see her relative's Elizabethan collection. Such a fabulous thing, and,
again, a certain piquancy about its being in Switzerland.

I shall want to be kept in touch with Urzidel. It is as I
suspected when you write that he might be taken back by the Voice of
America, and not surprising that they speak of Washington. Alas, I
think he ought to take it even without absolute security, for I think
it will be good for the duration of the Republican administration, and
the Democrats are likely, if anything, to expand when and if they
return. I am sure it would not take long to build up a baby-sitting
profession in Washington either. As I told you it is more secure than
the Roman priesthood.

The situation with Walter seems to be going as well as can
be expected, and if Hilda should stay on, even while you are in the
States, it might be a further check. I am annoyed both at elitta and
Glover for not sympathising with his seeing Brunner; anyhow you must
talk to him occasionally and keep au courant with his advice on the
matter. Everything about Brunner appeals to me; I think I should like
him.

Met a friend of mine the other day, who is on the Yale
faculty, who had seen something of Bup at Nantucket and liked her and
the boys immensely. Said she had had a good time, tho being somewhat
remote and without a car had been a little tied down. Perhaps if they
decide to make a regular thing of such summers, they will get an
inexpensive automobile and store it during the winter. It's too silly
to try to operate one in New York itself.

So many knocks at the door have interrupted the last para-
graphs of the letter that I'd better not try to go on with it. But
all love, dear Fido, as always, and a pat.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

19 October 1953

Dearest Bryher:

At last I have finished the Dana introduction, which I found somehow more difficult than usual to do, and hence considerably more exhausting. I suspect it was because it came at the beginning of the school year, and therefore the writing of it was constantly interrupted by academic chores, as well as from last Thursday to Saturday by guests who stayed with us while the man gave a couple of lectures to the university.

"As a result my letters have been rather neglected, and I apologize for the silence. You will not, I think, find me too harsh on Dana, though I have presented rather the picture of his future after he left the mast and became a lawyer than I have that particularly golden day of his youth. This was all of course to tie in a little better with the substance of the autobiography of his youth, which excluded the voyage as being otherwise taken care of. But you will see it all when it appears in print, and can judge for yourself. I only beg your tolerance if he seems more of an aristocrat than a common seaman.

I myself have not really had time to read the Report, but I am glad that it interested you. Naturally I have dipped in it from time to time, and spot to spot, but cannot really discuss it with an reality. All books dealing with statistics have their values, though they often omit the tone and quality of the experiences they describe, which, in matters of this sort, are decisive. Nevertheless, it is impertant to have statistics even from a limited table of experiment, and too easy generalizations consequently break down. It is really basic and _must_ be taken into account.

I now have all but one chapter of Fabula, but your letter of the 6th makes me wonder if there is still a third revision which I should await in toto before reading it. The four I now have are, I think, all the second version. I shall wait for your clearance as well as the final chapter before taking it in my lap.

I have not seen copies of Spender's new magazine. Why not send on the copies as you finish with them; I should not think it worth a separate subscription. I am not one of Spender's great personal admirers, but his activities always have some interest to them.

I have not had a chance to write Chicago about Olive Scarlett, but will do so soon. What a pity such cases are. I only hope there can be some help for it.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

25 October 1953

Dearest Bryher:

My letters seem now all to be snatched from obscure
moments; it is Sunday night, and I am at the office while Susan
gilds or un-gilds a wooden grand piano leg which some one has turned
into a vase for flowers (with remarkable and frightening ingenuity)
and loaned it to her to show in Providence on Tuesday as a set-piece
from 'en eneicticut at a New England meeting. But of course I am not
here simply to avoid the smell of banana-oil in the gilding, but to
correct tests (since I have a new reader for my exams, whom I am
breaking in; read a little in Gauthier against tomorrow's seminar;
and prepare the beginning of a lecture on Upton Sinclair for tomorrow
morning at nine.

But there being one urgency for the "savings account"
to consider, I am anxious to let you know so that an answer one way
or the other can come back. This is something we can do from what is
already here, and something which only this kind of an eccentric fund
can manage. I think you know about the English Institute, of which I
was chairman, which meets each September in New York for four days. It
has been by all odds the most successfully intellectual group which
has established itself, as opposed the meetings of the Modern Language
association, where some 1000-1500 people mill around at Christmas, get
jobs for their students, and listen perfunctprily to brief research
papers. Each has its place, and part of the place which the English
Institute has established its its ENGLISH INSTITUTE ANNUAL, an American
equivalent of the British ESSAYS AND STUDIES, which you may know of,
since I believe I sent you a copy of the paper I gave on literary history,
which was included in it. My paper on literary executorship would have
been had not a separate agreement for it been made beforehand. At any
rate I have always been most loyal as a supporter, as has every member;
but we tried to keep attendance down to 125, and those people of some
real ability, in order to have the discussions meaningful. Eugene Waith
has just become secretary-treasurer, and another friend William Wimsatt,
from the English Department here, is the new chairman. And they discover
that Downer, the previous treasurer has let catastrophic chaos creep in.
Members pay 7.50 a year as dues, which entitles them to a copy of the
annual. But to Waith's horror he discovers that because of the steady
increase in manufacturing costs, they are not only paying for last
year's annual out of this year's dues (which meant nothing to pay for
what is owed the members) but that the Institute is five hundred dollars
short of paying last year's printing bill. As a first step to try to
balance the account, they have voted to bind last year's annual in
paper instead of boards; but this seems to me to be tactically a bad
thing to do, since the earlier eleven volumes are in boards; libraries
have subscribed expecting not to have to bind it themselves; the sense
of the series is destroyed if they do, and the prestige is lost. They